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

[Hussar]

Personally I Liked the wands in 3e. Meant that pacing was no longer focused on hp but rather on story elements. Fantastic. It's the same reason I have no problem with 4e or 5e healing rates.

No longer does a random die roll mean the difference between keeping up a high pace adventure or watching all that energy bleed away as the party settles down to camp.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And, to some, it's that the game 'needed' the WoCLW to keep everyone at full hps so they could actually go through a full-length 'day' instead of a "15min" one.

Don't forget my favorite - that the existence of cheap healing made it feasible to keep everyone at full HP all day, so the players felt like they needed to stay at full HP all day, so the DM was forced to throw stronger encounters in order to have any chance of inconveniencing them at all.

 

[Hussar]

Not really. A par cr 3e monster can generally kill a full hp pc in one to two rounds of attacking. Not highly likely but possible. Meaning that if you went into combat down hp, you dying chances increase dramatically.

I never understood why dm's found it difficult to challenge 3e Pc's. It quite frankly baffles me. I always had the opposite problem. How to not constantly kill off pc's.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

The problem with the wand of cure light wounds is that it exists.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Don't forget my favorite - that the existence of cheap healing made it feasible to keep everyone at full HP all day, so the players felt like they needed to stay at full HP all day, so the DM was forced to throw stronger encounters in order to have any chance of inconveniencing them at all.

It's always been possible to keep the party fully healed up for each encounter, it just meant re-charging your Band-Aid cleric frequently - the 15min workday.

In 3.5 (and, to a lesser extent 2e and, now 5e), though, monsters can hit pretty hard relative to PC hps, so it /is/ a good idea to keep the party at or near full hps. I think in all three cases the assumption was that casters with cure..wounds would bear that burden. In 3.5, though, you had the WoCLW, and in 5e you have HD and full-heal long rests, as well, so that burden could be lightened, in play, depending upon player and DM decisions. In 3.5 that resulted in CoDzilla.

 

[TwoSix]

Real 3.5 or PF players don't use wands of cure light wounds.

They use wands of lesser vigor or infernal healing, respectively.

 

[jgsugden]

When the PCs go into every encounter at full hps, the DM needs to balance every encounter for full hp PCs. That means tougher encounters across the board. Unfortunately, that means a higher risk of a 'something bad' moment that puts the party at risk for a TPK.

Seriously: We should try the game as it is designed to be run for a year before we tweak seriously with it. They built 5E with the idea that DMs *could* play with the rules, but that does not mean that DMS *should* play with the rules before experiencing them. They left cheap and widely available healing out for a reason.

 

[Aribar]

When the PCs go into every encounter at full hps, the DM needs to balance every encounter for full hp PCs. That means tougher encounters across the board. Unfortunately, that means a higher risk of a 'something bad' moment that puts the party at risk for a TPK.

I disagree that it means tougher encounters; I believe it means that there are more consistent encounters, which means it is easier for the DM to create an encounter that fits what she is trying to accomplish narratively and mechanically at the table.

Edit: I do agree with your second point. Can't think of any off the top of my head, but I recall seeing tons of house rules for 4E, 13th age, and other miscellaneous systems that play with things that either aren't broken due to system changes or cause bigger problems due to lack of experience with the system.

 

[Tony Vargas]

When the PCs go into every encounter at full hps, the DM needs to balance every encounter for full hp PCs. That means tougher encounters across the board. Unfortunately, that means a higher risk of a 'something bad' moment that puts the party at risk for a TPK.

If he's running a tailored game, in detail, sure. If he's running a status-quo sandbox, maybe not so much.

Even assuming tougher encounters, though, if the only issue is full hp, they should have more wiggle-room to allow for PC survival. It's when the DM dials up encounters to cope with excessive PC offense that you really see the line between unintended roll-over and unintended TPK getting thin.

Seriously: We should try the game as it is designed to be run for a year before we tweak seriously with it. They built 5E with the idea that DMs *could* play with the rules, but that does not mean that DMS *should* play with the rules before experiencing them.

I'm not so sure. They push the idea of 'make the game your own' via 'rulings not rules' pretty hard (to the point, for instance, of using that as a rationale for not releasing errata). I'm not so sure there's intended to be anything particularly special/valid/balanced/playable/sacrosanct about the RAW relative to whatever cool house rules a DM might come up with, this time around.

They left cheap and widely available healing out for a reason.

Except HD, overnight healing, and common healing potions are arguably both, so maybe they were left in for a reason.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm sorry, but to me saying that the rests should be "A or B depending" is like saying in real life

Stopped reading at "real life".

Yeah... if you want to use D&D as a simulation, I can't help you.

D&D is a game.

A game that is tuned for 5-8 encounters per long rest.

Whether those encounters take place over the time span of one hour or one week does not matter - should not matter.

The only thing holding back the game from handling 8 encounters in one hour or one week as well as 8 encounters in a day is the "one long rest per day" rule. Thus, removing this rule - or more accurately, allowing each adventure to set its own "long rest interval" - makes the game work better.

That's not an opinion, that's an observation. There really isn't anything else to say.