How should D&D handle healing?

[GMMichael]

I believe the whole problem for many is the drop under 0 HP.

I have no problem with anything healing if you are at 1HP or more. I don't think many do either.
But once you go under 0, it's magic or doctors to go back to positive.

Yup. It's the drop under 0 hp.

Different reason though: negative hit points are a bad idea. When you're playing blackjack, does the dealer accept negative bets? Negative chips? No. When you run out, you're done.

A character doesn't have to die at 0 hp. That's why my RPG has a "mostly dead" rule. But adding negative hp rules, negative hp feats, subsystems for getting back to 0 hp or higher, etc. is just adding bloat.

It's time for players, and especially characters, to start worrying about hp the first time that they get hit.

I'm going to mix the 2 main styles and use HP where for some creatures it is all meat, most are half meat/half stamina-luck-morale and for PCs (NPCs) and some monsters it is all stamina-luck-morale until down to -1hp when it is meat.

Meat is 1e healing, and stamina-luck-morale is 4e healing.

I love the way jody puts it: stamina-luck-morale. Each, along with "meat," is an important way that hp gets treated. Maybe it's time for D&D to define hp in more detail...or come up with another kind of hp.

So if the party has to complete the quests, get up to 15th level, and save the world from a looming threat, the party with the healer might be at it for a couple months. The party without the healer could be at it for over a year.

Neither of those is a problem by itself. But if the party gains or loses a healer, the timeline is suddenly either impossible or trivial. . .

And, personally, even if the party composition never changes, I'm going to keep the time pressure on regardless. So the party's with healers just face faster-moving threats, which leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The party that must save the world is going to need one of two things: healing, or a ton of luck. The amount of healing that the party gets is an issue for the GM, not the PCs. If the GM is going to ask PCs to save the world, he's going to need to provide the healing to make it happen. The solution isn't to give healing to all classes; that just waters down the classes. The solution is to teach GMs how to structure their campaigns properly.

 

[Derren]

I prefer having a system where some damage to the character can be shrugged off. If the is a wound system with HP or something like FATE with stress and consequences. I want serious injuries to have an effect on the characters and be harder to heal.

If I remember right Star Wars D20 had something which could be ported to D&D easily.
You had HP like normal, representing luck, etc. and a Wound Threshold equal to your Con. When you ran out of HP each attack dealt its damage in Wound points and when you reach Wounds = Con you are dead.
Some things like falling or critical hits also dealt some wound damage. And I think you got also a -1 per wound, but here I am even more unsure than with the rest.

Healing HP was easy. Healing Wounds was not.

In such a system I could actually accept Shout healing etc. as long as it is restricted to HP.

 

[billd91]

I prefer having a system where some damage to the character can be shrugged off. If the is a wound system with HP or something like FATE with stress and consequences. I want serious injuries to have an effect on the characters and be harder to heal.

If HP is just cuts, scrapes, bruises, and fatigue, then everyone should be able to shrug that off relatively easily. But Wounds require treatment. Magical treatment should be best, but a heal skill, herbs, or something should also be an option. But I don't really want combat healing, even as an option- everyone will want a cleric in their group and it can easily lock the cleric into a support role. That is not something I want to see happen.

I experimented with a house rule in which 50% of all damage incurred in the preceding encounter would be healed given 5 minutes of general rest/low intensity searching/looting and moderate bandaging. The rest of the damage persisted until other varieties of healing took over (time, magic). It seemed to work pretty well and greatly extended the ability of the party to get through their adventuring day despite not having a cleric (their primary healer was a witch in Pathfinder). Basically, I treated the damage as long term bloodying and half as encounter-based shorter term energy loss and stress.

 

[Stormonu]

I would like to see a second wind type of mechanic (once per day), standard clerical healing and then generic recovery that allows a party to get hit points back in a day or two.

I'd like to see options for ways to run a party without having to have a cleric in the group - having a cleric ust provides a small buff.

As for "morale" hp, I'm fine with it in small doses, mostly as temporary hp. D&D's hp system is clearly never been a "meat" system, or you could NEVER have as many or more hp than, say, a horse. I'd

However, D&D's binary "you're fine" or "bleeding out/dead" has always irked me. I'd like to see a module for lingering effects, mostly as conditions that can get applied either for losing a certain threshhold of hit points, or for certain attacks (poisoned could be one, for example). It could also be a basis for applying those sort of wounds we hear of being applied to NPCs, but adventurers never can seem to suffer (losing an eye, leg or whatnot). With the latter though, there should be some way to overcome such injuries if you want to keep playing the PC - but would account for why some NPCs might have retired from the adventuring life.

 

[Razjah]

If I remember right Star Wars D20 had something which could be ported to D&D easily.
You had HP like normal, representing luck, etc. and a Wound Threshold equal to your Con. When you ran out of HP each attack dealt its damage in Wound points and when you reach Wounds = Con you are dead.
Some things like falling or critical hits also dealt some wound damage. And I think you got also a -1 per wound, but here I am even more unsure than with the rest.

Healing HP was easy. Healing Wounds was not.

In such a system I could actually accept Shout healing etc. as long as it is restricted to HP.

A wound and vitality system right? I'm pretty sure the 3.5 SRD had a rule for it somewhere. Iron Heroes uses something similar. It worked well in the games I've used it.

 

[Kinak]

It's worth mentioning that, outside of 4e, hit points are most of martial classes' daily resources. Requiring another class to get them back in the action while spellcasters refuel automatically has always been pretty dubious.

The party that must save the world is going to need one of two things: healing, or a ton of luck. The amount of healing that the party gets is an issue for the GM, not the PCs. If the GM is going to ask PCs to save the world, he's going to need to provide the healing to make it happen. The solution isn't to give healing to all classes; that just waters down the classes. The solution is to teach GMs how to structure their campaigns properly.

You're absolutely right, the current setup requires the campaign to be structured around the amount of healing available. And it can be structured that way. I just don't like structuring it that way.

I don't accept we should need to restructure campaigns when healers enter or leave the party. Losing the party's only frontliner, ranged attacker, skilluser, or arcane caster can be a big deal in terms of tactics, but there's no reason we need to preserve the healer's ability to change the pace of the entire story.

It's not that I can't have an NPC cleric tagalong or hand out rings of regenerations like candy. I certainly can. But, like pacing things correctly, that suddenly becomes very weird if a player decides to bring in a healer or start multiclassing.

If anything, the fact that I would feel the need to structure my campaign around that class not being present is what causes these problems in the first place. Especially when I can let my players just choose (or not) the others without major structural changes.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[3catcircus]

So - why not treat healing (and wounds) with some more verisimiltude?

I've previously talked about making hit points act as thresholds for wounds, here.

If we use a similar approach, other than magic, healing would be based upon time, Con score, shelter/food/disease/infection factors, and the heal skill of the attending chirurgeon/physician.

So - your Con score would form a base "healing factor" from 1 to 4, shelter would add/subtract, lack of food/water would subtract, fatigue would subtract, the skill level of the attending would add, and so on. The time for a wound level would be divided by this healing factor. At the end of that time period, the wound level would decrease by one level.

Base time (assuming a healing factor of 1) would be 10 days for a slight wound up to 180 days for a critical wound - and critical wounds would have a Will save - failure would result in no healing to the next lower level AND a Fort save - failure of which would result in some permanent impairment.

Obviously - you could adapt it such that magic takes the place of he heal skill or the cure "level" bumps wounds down by a level (dependent upon how gritty you want to get). So cure light, mod, serious, crit could either add +1 to +4 to the healing factor - resulting in wounds still taking time to heal, or it could instantly heal a wound of the specific level down one level (i.e. a cure light wouldn't affect moderate, serious, or critical wounds, but it would reduce a slight wound to none and a cure crit could change a wound level from critical to serious. That same cure crit could also move a moderate wound down to slight.)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

So - why not treat healing (and wounds) with some more verisimiltude?

In real life, getting sworded in the arm might land you in the hospital for weeks. Real, yes, fun for a game, not really.

I have similar feelings towards guns in D&D. Realistic 16th century guns aren't fun... but virtually every D&D gun ruleset I've seen insists on (realistically) long and boring reload times. That's before balance implications (real life guns, 16th century or modern, are not "balanced"). I'm glad only one of my players knows how to use a sword in real life. I don't get complaints about how unrealistic D&D swording is.

 

[howandwhy99]

I like 1 hp / level / resting day. ...but this only matters if the game doesn't pause in the meantime. The world keeps moving, even if you're sleeping and kicking back.

The method above will typically allow for full healing in 1 week or less for every character regardless of level. It's not necessarily what you need to sneak out of a dungeon, if you don't think you can handle the overland trip home. A few days may be enough then.

Below 0 HPs are from a PC-only rule for us, which protects low level PCs from dying early on. -10 means dead, not negative CON as we use the whole 3-18 span for abilities rolled, A 3 CON is hard enough to also barely have the negative HP rule affect you too.

Healing HPs below 0 = 1 HP / day healing and then they must be under care. They still need to eat, breathe, lie peacefully, be kept warm (or cool), stay hydrated, and so on to recuperate. The characters have been critically injured and can easily die, if left unattended. The standard HP healing rate begins after reaching 0 HP.

 

[Minigiant]

that sounds great but can't we do something with the HD idea there... 1st level fighter can second wind for a d10 a 5th level fighter can second wind for 5d10 or 5 times for 1d10 per time... a nights rest regains 5d10..

I like the idea but it's a little too many HP regained than I like. To me a second doesn't half way fill up the tank. It gives you a third at best. Enough to take a hit, maybe two, before dropping again.

4e had it right with about 25%.

I like 1 hp / level / resting day. ...but this only matters if the game doesn't pause in the meantime. The world keeps moving, even if you're sleeping and kicking back.

The method above will typically allow for full healing in 1 week or less for every character regardless of level. It's not necessarily what you need to sneak out of a dungeon, if you don't think you can handle the overland trip home. A few days may be enough then.

Below 0 HPs are from a PC-only rule for us, which protects low level PCs from dying early on. -10 means dead, not negative CON as we use the whole 3-18 span for abilities rolled, A 3 CON is hard enough to also barely have the negative HP rule affect you too.

Healing HPs below 0 = 1 HP / day healing and then they must be under care. They still need to eat, breathe, lie peacefully, be kept warm (or cool), stay hydrated, and so on to recuperate. The characters have been critically injured and can easily die, if left unattended. The standard HP healing rate begins after reaching 0 HP.

I never liked the 1hp/day or 1hp/level/day rule as the characters with higher HD take longer to rest than lower HD characters. And those high HD PCs tend to rely on HP more than the others.

I'd be cool with accelarated healing for warrior types. Clerics, mages, and rogues heal 1HP per level per day resting. Fighter and other warriors (barbarians, paladins, and rangers) heal 2HP per level per day of resting.

Then a DM gain slide the amount to tailor his or her campaign. Double or triple rest healing for herioc campaigns. Half rest healing or longer times for grittier ones.