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

[The Crimson Binome]

So with less healing available less damage gets done in a fight so fights are much less interesting, right?

The reality is that characters have a lot more healing available to them in other ways that aren't called cure light wounds wands, but work a lot like it for free.

In my experience with the Wand, it is mainly used to quickly bring anyone back up to full after every encounter. Within five minutes, the entire HP cost of the fight has been negated, and everyone is at full strength again.

The replacement effects are tied to the Short Rest mechanic; Hit Dice require a Short Rest to spend, and the other effects are only usable once per Short Rest. While it's usually pretty easy to take a few minutes after a fight to recover, it's not always easy to take an entire hour off. In many situations, spending an hour to recover means that Something Bad happens - there might be a random encounter, or the Bad Guy might get away. In many situations, if you are able to take an hour off, then you would just as easily be able to take a day off.

The Short Rest mechanic is actually fairly limiting. It's nothing like my experience with the Wand.

 

[Sacrosanct]

So with less healing available less damage gets done in a fight so fights are much less interesting, right?
.

No. How interesting a fight is has very little to do with how much hp damage was done. At least in my experience.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

wands only having 7 charges per day and you can't spend the last one without risk of it dying... so you need 4-5 cure light wands to do what 1 used to in 3e... but you needed to replace the 3e one after 3 or so adventures... so after 5-6 levels it is cheaper in 5e to just use the wands...

stock up on 1 cure as 1st level slot and 1 cure as a 3rd level slot and you could make it to 10th or so level... and then make 1 or 2 more of each...

 

[Chocolategravy]

In my experience with the Wand, it is mainly used to quickly bring anyone back up to full after every encounter. Within five minutes, the entire HP cost of the fight has been negated, and everyone is at full strength again.

This is exactly what is happening in 5E. Just without wands.

In many situations, if you are able to take an hour off, then you would just as easily be able to take a day off.

It's quite rare, unless the adventure is railroading you, that you can't take an hour off. And taking a day off, again, gives you all your HP back, unlike 0E-3E.

The Short Rest mechanic is actually fairly limiting. It's nothing like my experience with the Wand.

If that is the case are you finding your PCs are going into combat wounded most of the time, or are your fights not dealing enough damage to be interesting? You're going to be stuck with either result if you're ending up with significantly less healing from the lack of wands.

I'm not finding either to be the case because there are lots of other ways to heal that don't involve wands. Personally I prefer wands, it keeps the healing magical and means the fighter can remain non-magical and doesn't regenerate like a troll and getting knocked unconscious repeatedly from fighting is all better with 8 hours rest.

 

[Chocolategravy]

No. How interesting a fight is has very little to do with how much hp damage was done. At least in my experience.

Well you're in a very small minority then. Fights quickly become boring to most everyone else if they're just stomping puppies and never come close to losing.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Well you're in a very small minority then. Fights quickly become boring to most everyone else if they're just stomping puppies and never come close to losing.

No, I really don't think I am in the minority. I'm pretty sure most gamers have had really interesting fights that weren't tied to how much damage was inflicted at all.

And that's ignoring the fallacy that "losing a fight" = "loss of hp". There are lots of ways to "lose" a fight. Miss your objective, get captured, get incapacitated, etc, etc.

 

[chriton227]

Well you're in a very small minority then. Fights quickly become boring to most everyone else if they're just stomping puppies and never come close to losing.

"Deadly" and "Interesting" are two separate axes to me. A fight against 100 orc barbarians in a featureless field is "deadly", but not "interesting". A fight where your goal is to stop the high priest from sacrificing the princess to complete his ritual while his minions are trying to stop you from getting there can be "interesting" even if it is not "deadly"; being able to kill all the enemies in 6 rounds with little risk of dying is cold comfort when the princess died in round 3 which completed the ritual that curses all the members of the royal bloodline. Death is the most trivial consequence when a PC loses, all it costs the player is the time to roll up another character. Failure to achieve your goals and the consequences of that failure can be much more interesting, especially when those consequences affect more than just the PCs.

 

[Staffan]

So with less healing available less damage gets done in a fight so fights are much less interesting, right?

The reality is that characters have a lot more healing available to them in other ways that aren't called cure light wounds wands, but work a lot like it for free.

- Fighters have several cure light wounds per day built into the class.
- The popular healer feat tax is a cure light wounds wand that works on each character several times a day.
- The popular leader feat tax is a temp hp wand that works several times a day.
- Every character has HD for free cure light wounds several times a day.
- Most classes have healing or like barbarian simply ignore half the damage dealt to them.
- And importantly, you get full HP back overnight which will often add up to an awful lot of free healing over the course of an adventure.

All of those abilities are limited-use, though. Sure, you can stack an awful lot of them, but sooner or later they'll run out, and in some cases taking them replaces taking other abilities (particularly the feats). The 3e wand of CLW, by contrast, is exceedingly cheap at a mere 3 gp per hit point healed, and there's no limit to how many wands you can use.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is exactly what is happening in 5E. Just without wands.

Hardly, not with hour-long 'short' rests. You can't re-set after each fight - you might not be able to squeeze in a short rest at all before you die or find an opportunity to take a long rest. It makes hp attrition fairly significant, which requires the DM to gravitate towards many individually trivial encounters, and 'peck' the party to death.

It's quite rare, unless the adventure is railroading you, that you can't take an hour off. And taking a day off, again, gives you all your HP back, unlike 0E-3E.

It seems like there'd be a lot of scenarios where taking a whole hour just hanging around resting would seem impractical or inappropriate. The middle of a rescue, for instance, or when infiltrating a dangerous area. The typical dungeon crawl, even the atypical dungeon crawl.

Of course there are also plenty where you could take an hour off - like wilderness travel/exploration - but then you could probably take the full 8, too if you thought you needed it.

 

[SirAntoine]

Players struggling with 5MWD problems would still face that if not more so without better access to healing through magic.