How do you explain overnight Healing in your game?

[Doug McCrae]

I don't feel the need to explain it. Most of what happens in the game-world makes a vague kind of sense, a few things don't.

I never bothered explaining why old people's eyesight and hearing was so good in 3e. Or why housecats are so deadly.

 

[Lizard]

The NPC issue does pop up if you're in a campaign where players interact with, and occasionally try to help, NPCs. Having rules for PC healing and no rules for NPC healing can create odd disconnects. (In general, the fact that PCs and Everything Else plays by different rules can cause issues, even if they're relatively minor. In campaigns which follow the apparently default assumption that there's NPCs with stats that you kill, and NPCs without stats that you talk to, these are minor. But if you have a recurring cast of characters that needs to interact mechanically with the PCs and their enemies, the differences between PCs and NPCs quickly become apparent. Between fewer powers, or powers no PC of the same "class" can use, it just starts feeling a little weird and artificial.)

In terms of healing, if the PCs see a wounded NPC lying in a hospital, and one says, "What the hell, I'll use Majestic Word (or whatever)" on the NPC, what happens? He probably has one healing surge to spend, so, he spends it... and is he then healed? Can one PC clean out a whole hospital with his encounter powers in an hour or so? Figure 2 uses, minimum, of healing per 10 minutes, so 6 people cured per hour... it adds up.) What does restore missing eyes or lost limbs? Normal healing? A ritual? "Just make it up" or "Whatever the story requires" are profoundly unsatisfying to me. The player might not know what will happen, but the character, who lives in the world, ought to know what to expect, and the world itself ought to be shaped accordingly. I could say that "real" wounds cannot be healed by typical PC-style magic or martial healing, and that the kind of "wounds" PCs heal are, by the nature of the hit point system, only minor cuts, scrapes, and the like, plus fatigue. So using a healing spell or ability on someone who is seriously gutted might end their pain, heal their bruises and minor scrapes, and help the wound heal cleanly and with less scarring, but won't cause the wound to suddenly close up. A Martial character using healing could be seen to be giving encouraging words and/or herbal remedies, to the same end. Figure that "True healing" requires an expensive ritual, and you allow for there to be wounded people slowly healing even as adventurers get better with a nice little nap.

It's not a game breaker, but it would be nice to see the issue addressed, even in the form of guidelines, as opposed to assuming it will never come up because you go into dungeons to kill things, and go into towns to talk to people, and there's no need to worry about how combat mechanics interact with out-of-combat adventuring. An article in Dungeon would be very nice.

 

[N0Man]

That is awesome. So if the PCs spent, say, 12 hours in a village in which four men were mauled by a bear, three children fell down a well, two guardsmen were ambushed by goblins, and a partridge tumbled out of a pear tree, all those injured folks will be fully healed, come the morrow. Definitely awesome.

If they are being healed using divine magic, absolutely. However, NPCs aren't usually designed with ways to heal themselves or spend healing surges, mechanically speaking.

Players are supposed to be heroes. They are the exceptions. They are supposed to be able to endure when the normal person could not. This is not new or unique to this edition.

I might also point out that your previous example of WotC not knowing how they are "supposed" to play hit point loss because they still described them as wounds completely misses the point.

Getting wounds is certainly what we're accustomed to saying in D&D, and it's dramatic. Nobody is saying that a fighter is going to cleave into that gnoll minion and making the gnoll minion collapse from exhaustion or lack of will power. When I say "hit point loss isn't just wounds, and hit point recovery isn't just total healing of wounds", I mean precisely that. They aren't *only* wounds.

You, however, are creating a false dichotomy. You seem to be implying that it's either a wound or it's not, and that's absolutely not true. Hit point damage isn't *just* a quantification of the severity of a wound, nor is it strictly the other factors in allowing a hero to endure.

A loss of hit points can be directly due to a wound. It can also be the other effects such as fatigue, pain, morale loss, bleeding, or the ability to remain conscious and not succumb to shock. It can be both of these things at the very same time. However, that doesn't mean that you are going to (or should) hear, "your long sword draws a heavy gash across the monster's chest, and he loses... 3 points of wound hit points, 2 points of morale hit points, and 2 hit points of fatigue hit points."

I think my favorite summary of hit points was, "Hit Points are plot protection."

The other side of the coin (healing)is very much the same way. Recovering hit points through rests doesn't mean all the wounds go away magically (though sometimes magic does do that). It means you're ready to continue, and stay in the plot. It can be a combination of actual healing, a burst of adrenaline, a new found resolve, sudden inspiration, patching a wound, slapping on a bandage and treating a wound, or countless other things. We may simply have "an extended rest", but that doesn't mean that everyone just goes to sleep and wakes up refreshed. However, not describing every one of these types of actions doesn't mean that they can't happen or be implied.

One both has to use their imagination to provide an acceptable narrative, and accept that in a heroic fantasy adventure, one has to put away some notions of reality to even get in the door. After all, this is D&D, not a medical television drama, there will be liberties taken.

 

[N0Man]

And I was pointing out that "I have an eternal wand of healing" -- and similar examples -- doesn't hold up when you have NPCs who need healing. Why doesn't the wand of healing work on NPCs? Why doesn't the cleric's unlimited out-of-combat healing work on NPCs? Are the NPCs just so "un-special" that the wand stops working? That the PC's god turns up his nose?

Where is there an eternal wand of healing?

The ability to keep all NPCs alive and healthy isn't simply a matter of whether the ability to heal them exists in the world. It's more of a matter of "economics". There aren't enough eternal wands and clerics to go around, just like despite all the technology we have in this world, many people don't receive medical attention (even in developed and wealthy nations). Sick, dying, and diseased NPCs have always existed in RPGs regardless of mechanics.

It may be a rationalization, but I think it's a valid one.

The health of NPCs really only matter for the sake of the story, and are ultimately determined by the DM.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

It is fairly simple for me and my group:

HP regained over night: Being rested, letting stress, headaches, aches and pains, etc. subside. Basically back to general fighting capabilities.

Healing Surges regained over night: Patching up wounds, setting bones, relocating limbs, etc.

Damage done the next day, especially Healing Surges being spent can be shown as wounds reopening, bones being shifted, etc. The PCs aren't sparkly-clean and fine after a night's rest they are just able to fight and deal with their wounds.

 

[ST]

I actually really like the idea that PCs could heal up a small group of NPCs just by 'hanging around' them. The idea that the minor cantrips the leaders know can actually change the situation in a village, or something, could be a great plot hook.

I'd look for ways that all the PCs could apply their assumed 'off-screen' competences to let them change their surroundings, too. The fighter or warlord offering some advice to the village guardsmen on how to handle goblins, the ranger or druid talking to the local farmers about which herbs are best to use for what situations, etc.

Hey, anything that lets the PCs both change a community could tie them closer into it. And there's a real opportunity cost that these skilled PCs are off adventuring, rather than helping the peons out. Lot of interesting potential there.

 

[Thanee]

The characters are beaten to a pulp in the fight of their lives, they barely survive and all their heal surges are used up. They take an extended rest and boom! All health is back. If there was no access to a healing power, how do you add it to the story that they are fine and dandy 8 hours later?

Well, if I want to play a realistic game, D&D is certainly not among the top choices.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Kzach]

The characters are beaten to a pulp in the fight of their lives, they barely survive and all their heal surges are used up. They take an extended rest and boom! All health is back. If there was no access to a healing power, how do you add it to the story that they are fine and dandy 8 hours later?

It's the beaten to a pulp thing that ruins it.

I refer you to the famous quote of Mike Mearls, "It rips out your eye socket for two points of damage!"

It all comes back to what you think hit points are. If you use them literally as physical damage, then your characters are going to be bloody messes of pulpy flesh and bone that have no logical right to be living, let alone standing.

If, however, you use hit points as they were meant to be, ie. an abstract representation of luck, skill, endurance and physical damage, then suddenly regaining all your hit points during an extended rest really isn't that far fetched. After all, you weren't really that beat up during the fight anyway.

 

[Garthanos]

I actually really like the idea that PCs could heal up a small group of NPCs just by 'hanging around' them. The idea that the minor cantrips the leaders know can actually change the situation in a village, or something, could be a great plot hook.

I'd look for ways that all the PCs could apply their assumed 'off-screen' competences to let them change their surroundings, too. The fighter or warlord offering some advice to the village guardsmen on how to handle goblins, the ranger or druid talking to the local farmers about which herbs are best to use for what situations, etc.

Hey, anything that lets the PCs both change a community could tie them closer into it. And there's a real opportunity cost that these skilled PCs are off adventuring, rather than helping the peons out. Lot of interesting potential there.

Very cool take on it.

 

[Naszir]

Doesn't some damage have to be explained as actual wounds? How do you take poison damage from the stinger of a giant scorpion without actually being hit? I am sure there are other examples of this.

So far I have liked 4e but it seems in all of the editions (including this one) there is some disconnect between the description/mechanics of combat/healing and the description/mechanics of some monsters attacks.

What I have been trying to do, at least cosmetically, is to say an attack was "successful" rather than an attack "hit". It's not much but breaking out of that saying that we have been so ingrained with is at least helping me visualize what is actually happening.