D&D 5E How has 5e solved the Wand of CLW problem?

[Sitara]

So, the wand of CLW was in many games a necessary evil. I managed to avoid the problem in 3e with it by allowing auto heal for every 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep and keeping super hard encounters to a minimum.

How has 5e dealt with that problem aside from full heal after long rest (sleeping)? How do you heal hit point drain in your games during the day during and in between encounters? Do you always make sure there is a cleric or bard in the party to provide healing? Do you stock up your players healing potions?

 

[DaveDash]

Healing hit dice during a short rest.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The problem with the wand of Cure Light Wounds was that players could buy them, easily, and it allowed them to heal up to full after every fight without expending any meaningful resources. The item was ludicrously cheap, compared to the expected-wealth-by-level chart.

That problem is fixed in 5E, because magic items aren't for sale.

 

[Staffan]

The main problem with the wand of CLW was that it allowed you to heal up to full without expending any meaningful resources (3 gp per hp isn't meaningful). This made the attrition model of encounter design, if not entirely pointless, at least close to it (3e encounter design was based on the party having four fights of EL = party level, give or take, and the resources expended in encounters 1 through 3 meant that encounter 4 would actually be dangerous).

This has been solved by pretty much not having "free" healing. You can heal during a short rest by expending Hit Dice, but those are a limited resource. You can cast spells, but those are also a limited resource. The closest you get to "free" healing are things like the fighter's Second Wind and the Healer feat, but those are limited to one each per short rest, and given that a short rest now is an hour long that's not something you can do repeatedly in order to get up to full hp.

You can still get potions of healing for 50 gp each, but that's a lot more expensive than the 15 gp per charge for a wand of CLW, plus there are logistical problems carrying them in bulk. Plus, the game is wired so you're not guaranteed to find all that many of them like you were expected to in 3e.

 

[GlobeOfDankness]

i've found that the party's hit dice are usually more than enough to keep them going. you can even adjust their survivability on a day to day basis by limiting when they can take their short rests.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I'd never heard of this wand problem until these boards. Sounds super broken to me. I cant imagine many DMs permitting it.

 

[SirAntoine]

If you were experiencing a problem with too many wands of cure light wounds, you could have changed that. Either stop buying or using them, or limit their availability.

 

[Ricochet]

Such wands are bountiful in Pathfinder games I've played in (both AP and custom). I am a stickler for "keep pushing even while we are bleeding buckets" gameplay, so I like that the magic item economy has made them rare in 5e.

I abhore being a player in a game where everyone is pussyfooting around, and such wands generally brings down the "kick in the door and pray that fate is merciful" aspect of the game for me.

As GM I love the new healing options, and there are a few good alternatives in the 5e DMG. It seems quite well-balanced with my GM style and my playstyle. You can add healing when needed through breaks, but you can also keep the action hot and heavy if that suits the current situation better.

 

[Celtavian]

Fast hit point recovery. But as you can see in another thread, some aren't happy with that.

 

[Ketser]

If you were experiencing a problem with too many wands of cure light wounds, you could have changed that. Either stop buying or using them, or limit their availability.

In a 3.5 Forgotten Realms game our DM rolled if they are out of stock, since every other adventuring party was buying them too The first one we bought was literally the last one in the shop

Although e still managed to have three wands in the later sessions of the campaign... we managed to buy a extra and one person came with a new character and was a celever bastard enough to have a extra among his "starting equipment."