D&D 5E More HP - was it a good idea?

[Lanefan]

The much lower bar on where you get + ability score modifiers though.... Not a fan.

Are you talking about ability bonuses (e.g. +1 at 12, +2 at 14, etc.) or ability score increases by level? Both have dramatically increased over the editions...

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In 1e (as written) recovery was pretty much limited to what your party's Cleric or Druid could cast, what potions you had, and occasional other oddities like Staff of Curing or Paladin's lay-on-hands - nearly all of which took place outside of combat. Resting got you little to nothing. So, that 45 h.p. you started the day with had to be somewhat carefully managed because they might have to last you all week.

Even if you didn't have a priest of some sort, you could get by just fine with natural healing. One HP per day meant you would recover 14 points while traveling for two weeks between the town and the dungeon. Your maximum HP only had to last you through one dungeon, and then you could heal up again on the walk back. Random encounters could be pretty dangerous, though.

 

[aco175]

I could be in favor of adding your Con score to HP like in 4e. I would take away the optional rule in my game of getting 1/2 HP each level if you roll below that. There is also an argument of starting PCs at 3rd level to do away with the "learning" levels. This makes the characters tougher and have more HP at the start. Others argue that 1st and 2nd levels go by so fast that it does not matter.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Some posts here made me realize something (that should have been) obvious when discussing this: it's not just the amount of actual hit points one has that changes across the editions, but how easy it is to recover them during a day or even during an individual combat.

Yep, that's a big difference not just to the actual logistics of the attrition model, but to the feel of it.

(apologies if I mostly repeat what you had to say)

In AD&D, your hps were random, so could be quite low at first if not for a while beyond, and healing was a starkly limited resource in the course of a 'day' (which might actually be 4 hours or so, depending on what level spells you were recovering and how closely your DM had read the rules) but unlimited when you could just kick back for days at a time, so characters might press on injured - but, at the same time, getting dropped to 0 had a major penalty (even if it wasn't death, it was a week off adventuring), so you might need to heal them right then and there in the fight, lest they drop. So you'd fight a little, use spells to heal, when the Cleric ran out of spells, the adventure was prettymuch over. You'd retire from the dungeon (some DMs'd let you barricade yourself in a room), spend a 'day' (4hrs + 15 min/spell level) getting spells back, heal everyone, spend another 'day' topping off spells (repeat as necessary), and go back to the re-stocked-with-monsters and/or stripped-of-treasure dungeon. Attrition was in terms of hps & slots, since recovering hps any other way than magic was pointlessly slow with spells recovering every day.

In 3e, after a few levels, the WoCLW (and the like) made all that kind of moot. After each fight you'd spend a few minutes topping everyone off, and the CoDzillas could save all their slots for self-buffing (and animal-companion-buffing) and DC-optimized SoDs and the like. Attrition was in terms of slots, and slots weren't used for healing unless there was no other demand for it. Heck, if you got into full-on rocket-tag, attrition could be top-level slots, since they had the highest DCs, and why settle for anything less?

4e actually kept that dynamic (minus CoDzilla), with an innate, plentiful source of between-combat healing - the surge. Attrition was mainly in terms of surges and, also somewhat-separately (since non-surge healing was rare) daily powers (mostly attack, but also utility & item).

In 5e there's recovery all over the place - in-combat healing, hit-dice healing, full h.p. recovery overnight

In-combat healing isn't too different (proportionately) to what you could do with CLW back in the day, and between-combat healing doesn't rise to the level of 3e & 4e, so it's prettymuch a compromise position on attrition, really. Slot attrition probably trumps hp attrition most of the time, since slots can be used to heal, so if hps are holding you back, you can maybe press on a bit by blowing slots to heal, and most classes have daily slots to recharge. In addition, overnight healing means that there's no cycle of two or more days of casting and recovering healing magic to get back into the adventure.

In other editions, either the danger of being dropped to 0 was greater, or the opportunity cost to heal was less, or the decision to allocate slots to healing had to be made in advance, or the healing up from below zero was counted, or the amount of healing relative to the amount & consistency of damage was more significant, than in 5e (or some combination!).

Bottom line: in other editions pro-active in-combat healing could sometimes make sense, and in the classic game between-combat healing with spells was often necessary, while 5e in-combat healing is best reserved for when an ally actually drops, and slots can generally be used for other things.

We've never done auto-max h.p. but we long ago added "body points"...which on first blush sound close enough to your "peasant points" that I wonder if they were inspired by the same article.

IDK, could have been, it was a long time ago. I recall the rationale for the name we gave the +1d6 hps at 1st, not if that was also the reason for doing it in the first place.

Anyway, it certainly didn't hurt.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I remember without a cleric, at mid-to-high levels, healing up from an adventure could take over a month. While I suppose that’s more realistic (would the PCs get a bonus for going to PT?), it certainly was less fun.

In 1e (as written) recovery was pretty much limited to what your party's Cleric or Druid could cast, what potions you had, and occasional other oddities like Staff of Curing or Paladin's lay-on-hands - nearly all of which took place outside of combat. Resting got you little to nothing. So, that 45 h.p. you started the day with had to be somewhat carefully managed because they might have to last you all week.

 

[Lanefan]

Even if you didn't have a priest of some sort, you could get by just fine with natural healing. One HP per day meant you would recover 14 points while traveling for two weeks between the town and the dungeon. Your maximum HP only had to last you through one dungeon

Which is a huge difference from them only having to last you through (at most) one adventuring day, as you'll get them all back in the morning as long as you survive.

and then you could heal up again on the walk back. Random encounters could be pretty dangerous, though.

Ayup.

I remember without a cleric, at mid-to-high levels, healing up from an adventure could take over a month. While I suppose that’s more realistic (would the PCs get a bonus for going to PT?), it certainly was less fun.

It's all about pace of play.

Allow me to put my grognard hat on for a moment and point out that there is a different (and IMO not for the better) expectation these days on the pace of play - that there has to be much more frequent excitement and action all the time, and that time spent doing anything else is time wasted.

If all you have is 45 h.p. and those are expected to last through the dungeon you're going to be a lot more cautious, a lot more careful, a lot slower and more deliberate in your explorations, and a lot less likely to dive face first into every battle than is someone who always knows they'll be right as rain the next morning. You're also going to take the time to rest up - and have choices to make as to whether to give the BBEG that time to further its plans - rather than wade through the dungeon in 2 days.

That said, a very long time ago we realized 1 h.p. recovery per day was too slow at higher levels and so we sped it up just a bit...you (usually) get back 10% of your total for an overnight rest. That, and it's a given that any party is going to have at least one healer in it, and people don't generally mind playing such.

Lan-"none of the above is very well put but I hope you get the idea"-efan

 

[Tony Vargas]

Allow me to put my grognard hat on for a moment

That thing comes off?

and point out that there is a different expectation these days on the pace of play - that there has to be much more frequent excitement and action all the time, and that time spent doing anything else is time wasted.

There are a lot of things you could be doing other than playing D&D. It's not like being in middle school c1981 and out of quarters for the video arcade. On no notice at all you whip out your phone and play something less boring than the D&D game that just hit a slow patch as the DM, mapper, & caller try to work out exactly what the first means by "...in the shape of two joined parallelograms with with vertices of 39 and 141 degrees...."

Heck, you could play D&D while waiting for your D&D game to perk up.

If all you have is 45 h.p. and those are expected to last through the dungeon you're going to be

Dead. The monosyllable you're looking for is 'dead.' No cleric, no party. The cleric is the life of the party, afterall.

Seriously, with the cleric, even at 1st level, you not only get a few CLW so whoever gets munched the hardest can last a little longer, you recover at 3d8 hps/day (+1 ea) instead of just 1 ea. Without one, weeks of downtime while all the cool parties with clerics clean out the dungeon.

That, and it's a given that any party is going to have at least one healer in it,

So your hps don't have to last the whole dungeon, his spells do.

and people don't generally mind playing such.

They surely did back in the day.

Admittedly, some folks took to the 'healer' role in 3e - when it became CoDzilla and did not actually involve much healing beyond triggering the party's WoCLWs.

That said, a very long time ago we realized 1 h.p. recovery per day was too slow at higher levels and so we sped it up just a bit...you (usually) get back 10% of your total for an overnight rest.

Wow. That is fast. Not as fast as the high-level cleric re-memorizing Heal each night...

 

[Xeviat]

Absolutely. CON score at 1st rather than CON mod every level is a neat/obvious fix. To give PCs a little more staying power across the day, CON mod could still add to HD rolled on a short rest.

My math on this worked well last time I checked. The trouble is making sure Con is still a useful stat and weighed against the others, but not so perceptively important that everyone ends up having a 14 Con.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

My math on this worked well last time I checked. The trouble is making sure Con is still a useful stat and weighed against the others, but not so perceptively important that everyone ends up having a 14 Con.

The other danger is that it significantly inflates the HP totals of low-level enemies. A goblin would go from 7hp to 17hp under this system, and a kobold goes from 5hp to 16hp. A stirge would go from 2hp to 13hp.

 

[Lanefan]

Wow. That is fast. Not as fast as the high-level cleric re-memorizing Heal each night...

I have never yet either DMed or played in a party (ignoring one-offs) that had Heal available as a hard-castable spell in the field.

Occasionally I've seen it done using Combine (happened last weekend, in fact) or a Candle of Invokation, either of which can boost a Cleric's level for purposes of what it can cast. But 12th-level PC Clerics aren't a thing here yet (we did just have a War Cleric get her 12th but I'm not at all sure she gets Heal as a spell...probably gets Harm instead). Hell, 12th-level PC anythings don't happen much around here...in all these years we've only had 3: a Thief, a Fighter, and now the aforementioned War Cleric.