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

[Ranes]

I haven't read this whole thread, so please forgive me if you've already read something along these lines, but here's how I have made my peace with describing wounds and healing, and hit points as a mechanism.

When I was ten, I had a bad fall, as in from a tree, via rusty railings. Although I was lucky enough not to be impaled by the railings, I took a bunch of proper smackings on the way down and landed on broken bricks and other non-plush debris. I was dazed for a minute but then got up without too much fuss. At that point, my friend, who had witnessed my fumble, noted that my head was bleeding. I put my hand to the back of my head and then looked at it. It was completely soaked in blood. That's when the panic kicked in.

I ran home. Fortunately, my mother wasn't in work that day (we were latch-key kids; a common thing at the time, less so nowadays). She called an ambulance and poured water over my head, to try and wash the crap out of my wound. My panic rapidly receded, because of her composure. Then my brother turned up, inspected my wound, and said, "I can see your brain," at which point my mother's composure counted for nothing.

Once I got to the hospital, I was once again reassured by everybody else's calm and professionalism. I was stitched up, bandaged up and returned home as a hero. My only upset was being told that I won't be able to play outside for a few weeks; this was in the middle of the summer holidays.

That story isn't relevant to anything but, come on, you enjoyed it.

Imagine my PC takes acid damage. The DM says, "Your skin blisters and burns as the acid eats deeply into the flesh on your arms, chest and face." I lose half my hit points.

Then, one of the party, a non-magical character, does one of these 4e-plus things where he just gives me a cheer and I suddenly recover most of the lost hit points. Well, the way I've come to accept that is to imagine myself being wounded. I feel extraordinary pain. I see blood and broken or dislocated bone. The fear and the horror kick in. I take a chunk of hit point damage that affirms my initial assessment that this is bad news. Then someone I trust grabs me and says, "You're okay! You're okay! Get your act together, you tart!" I look at my wounds again. Suddenly, they don't appear so terrible. My reassessment leads me to realise that I can still function. I find myself non-magically healed of most of the damage that moments ago had seemed life-threatening.

Key to this rationalisation working, though, is a DM who takes pains (pardon me) to describe combat hit point loss in ways that evoke the idea of serious injury to the player, without being over-specified. If the DM tells me my arm's just been chopped off, my suspension of disbelief isn't going to accommodate someone cheering it back on.

 

[Shasarak]

I do really like the 5e Hit Dice mechanic but I also really hate the 5e magic item creation rules so I am torn about if this has actually fixed the problem or actually made it much much worse.

 

[RotGrub]

I do really like the 5e Hit Dice mechanic but I also really hate the 5e magic item creation rules so I am torn about if this has actually fixed the problem or actually made it much much worse.

I'll most likely remove hit dice from the game, as it reminds me too much of healing surges. As for magical item creation I don't see it being a problem anymore. It's all up to the DM like it was in 2e, and characters are not blowing XP and gold. The CLW wand is just a pain to keep track of anyway. I'd rather give the PCs a more powerful healing item that is more permanent. I don't like the idea of wasting time casting 20 CLW spells during play.

 

[RotGrub]

Any wound not severe enough to inflict a penalty could be ignored easily enough to let the wounded party recover all hps with a long rest.

Yeah, but if you play that way you need a sub system for such injuries. I'd rather just make HP damage linger. That way HP damage abstractly factors in those penalties for most situations. In other words, an injured warrior with 4 hit points remaining will certainly be at a disadvantage against an orc at full health. I don't see the need to always add in an extra penalty if you treat HP abstractly and just let them do the work for you.

 

[Shasarak]

I'll most likely remove hit dice from the game, as it reminds me too much of healing surges. As for magical item creation I don't see it being a problem anymore. It's all up to the DM like it was in 2e, and characters are not blowing XP and gold. The CLW wand is just a pain to keep track of anyway. I'd rather give the PCs a more powerful healing item that is more permanent. I don't like the idea of wasting time casting 20 CLW spells during play.

Sounds like we have an opposite experience because I did not especially like the 2e magical item system either.

 

[Hussar]

I guess you think that a real physical wound must always inflict a penalty.

Maybe not always but at least more than never.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Any wound not severe enough to inflict a penalty could be ignored easily enough to let the wounded party recover all hps with a long rest.

Yeah, but if you play that way you need a sub system for such injuries.

It's not a matter of 'playing that way,' it's a matter of how hps work. Loss of hps does not inflict penalties, and recovery of hit points can be relatively quick. That's consistent, as it stands.

Now, if you want hp loss to be very slow to recover, /then/ you'd need a wound-tracking sub-system to deal with the penalties of those more severe injuries. If you wanted to remain consistent.

I'd rather just make HP damage linger. That way HP damage abstractly factors in those penalties for most situations. In other words, an injured warrior with 4 hit points remaining will certainly be at a disadvantage against an orc at full health.

Hit point damage doesn't factor into anything else, though. If you want mere hp loss to represent severe enough injury that it takes a long time to recover from, then you have created an inconsistency in the system. You have characters walking around with severe injuries, yet able to perform any difficult task - even, say, run marathons - at no penalty.

I don't see the need to always add in an extra penalty if you treat HP abstractly and just let them do the work for you.

There is no need to do so. There is also no need to make hp recovery extremely slow.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Maybe not always but at least more than never.

That's how I feel about physical injury. Maybe a sword doesn't always have to leave a physical wound that takes longer than a night to heal, but it needs to be able to do so at least some of the time. That's just how swords work. They need to be able to do that, at least some of the time.

If the choices are no wounds and no wound penalties and everything heals overnight, or yes wounds but no wound penalties and everything heals in a week, then it's hard to say which of those two options is the more realistic way to model what happens when you hit someone with a sword.

 

[CapnZapp]

That did assume magic was available. If the group is ambushed in the wilderness and the cleric is pulped, the fighter and rogue still healed their 1 hp per level overnight.



Considering D&D lacks an official wound system, I've always steered clear of describign major injuries. The monster deals 43 points of damage and causes your arm to break; well, as long as you have 44 hp when you take it, you can still deliver a full-attack (using a two-handed weapon, two weapons, or a shield) with no penalty because of your "broken" arm. There is no penalty to speed for taking an arrow to the knee

There is, however, a penalty to pride for taking an arrow to the knee.

 

[CapnZapp]

Pretty much this. The 5-minute work day is a natural process driven by common sense. Who tries to do something difficult and potentially life-threatening while being at less than 100% effectiveness if they don't have to? Even a hero would only do that if something bigger than his own life was on the line, which is why I find the standard idea of a 4-6 encounter dungeon crawl rather crazy. It's just not something you can support narratively without a constant raising of the stakes.

In my ideal D&D resource model, characters would mostly juggle the use of always usable and short-term recharging abilities. Combat encounters would be assumed to be risky and only entered into if no other recourse could be found. Hit points would be the measure of fighting readiness. Long term fatigue and injury would be measured by the accrual of negative conditions after combat. These negative conditions would be removed only by the expenditure of a long term resource (say, a option or scroll). More potent resources, like powerful spells, would not be renewed per day. Only the use of extended downtime, in the form of creating potions, scrolls, or other consumable magical items, would allow the use of potent magic.

This would put the front-line characters in the position of handling most of the combat risk, and the more overtly magical classes in the position of problem solvers, expending limited resources when necessary to bypass otherwise intractable obstacles.

What all this leads to is:

Since you can't (or won't) force the players to take risks (and the excitement it carries), you create it where the players can't avoid it.

In the single fight.

There's much talk of the AD&D model of attrition. There is none about how natural the progression towards making the individual fight a challenge.

Me, I would love support for attrition (managing your HP as a resource).

But I don't want to tweak my stories to provide the pressure. Not always, at least.

Sometimes I'm envious of D&D Online, where it is clear that you need to clear out a dungeon with no way to take a long rest just because you want to.

In pen and paper terms, I would have loved to see an official discussion about this right in the DMG.

Including as a rules option the idea that you can't benefit from a short rest until you've had, say, two encounters. And no long rest until after five encounters.

With this option in play, I can write a story that doesn't care about hours and days and weeks. The party will still be challenged regardless of the time span.