"Interesting... curious about your results with these, if you are inclined to share.
Regarding 9, the 6-8, since it's just an expression of an estimation of how long a party can go without running low on resources and not a rule or even a recommendation/requirement for anyone's game to follow or strive to, it has not affected my game in the least even tho I never used it.
How did it affect yours? "
- We like a game that is more challenging, and more story driven i.e. less "superheroesque". Our experience was using 6 to 8 encounters made the story fade into the background and highlighted combat and not using it allowed the opportunity for characters to "nova" and take the challenge out of combat. We have struggled with this for years, having experimented with Gritty Realism, etc and not allowing long rests unless you were in a town (which . Now we have pulled back from Gritty realism and have implemented healing as described in #1.
"1.The overnight heal is just ridiculous. In fact, in our group we mockingly call it “moonbeam” healing and have home ruled it out of the game, replacing it with Con bonus +1, min 1 healing per night."
How was your game different after you made that change in actual play? What good or bad results came from the change? Did it add a whole extra day of healing to some of the the most heavy of battles (assuming spending half-HD and then healing spells) or not even that? "
- We just made the change a few sessions ago and so far the results have been satisfactory. This process has had the benefits we were looking for, which were making Clerics/healers important while keeping the challenge up in fights.
"2.Whack a mole healing in combat. Our group left that in, but added a level of exhaustion for each time a character is dropped to 0 HP."
"How was your game different after you made that change in actual play? - The intensity of someone going to 0 HP, and the desire to prevent it, increased dramatically because we do not have a way to remove exhaustion levels yet. This has made combat more engaging since the stakes are higher.
What good or bad results came from the change? Did this discourage pressing on once someone got an unlucky drop and drive towards more short workdays or did they fight on with exhaustion? Did it encourage leaving someone down and making saves as opposed to getting them up and risking another hit dropping them again producing a second level of exhaustion? "
- We have had deadlines in our adventures since implementing the exhaustion aspect to HP drops to prevent excessive resting and preventing the players from shortening the workday. To date, we always bring someone up when they go down because we implemented a -10 HP = death, no saves rule as well, (you stop at 0, then if hit again go into negative HP) so it is always better to have team members on their feet to keep the 0 HP stop in place and so they can either self heal or get the hell out of dodge and attack from range.
We have home ruled around the healing and resting mechanics because playing RAW didn't seem challenging enough without adding more combat into the adventure than we like, however, I realize these changes aren't for everyone. You also have to keep in mind that the group I play with started playing D&D with the Red Box basic set and has been playing together since about 1980 so we are pretty good at finding ways to overcome combat challenges without expending a lot of resources using environmental aspects of the combat setting to give ourselves an advantage over our foes.
