(Mostly) remove healing from combat?

[Sirot]

There is much talk there has been about what system they should use for hit points and not much consensus regarding a single idea being the solution to what is a complicated problem.

What I think that needs to happen is for healing to be marginalized in the game and hit points being kept simple as possible. Healing makes combats longer by artificially extending it and encourages the designers to bloat their numbers to ensure there is balance to the party's growing ability to heal itself. It would be insane to totally remove it, but its importance should be significantly decreased.

As an example... Every character has their one second wind per encounter and what a cleric (or a warlord) would be able to do is allow a injured ally to reap the benefits of the second wind without spending an action (but spending the second wind) and having the cleric do it more efficiently.

Combat becomes faster and more dangerous.

No heal bot.

People don't have to argue about warlords anymore.

Damage and health can scale more reasonably.

Hit points system is kept simple.

Compatible with a wound system to add attrition to a campaign.

Though this comes at the cost of part of the cleric's identity. Cure light, serious or critical wounds simply becomes "Cure Wounds".

 

[Hassassin]

I agree with making combat healing rarer, but wouldn't it simply be easier to not include a second wind at all? Without a healing surge -like resource to track, it would become just an action tax on unlocking the last 25% of your hp.

 

[Minigiant]

I too want to make in combat healing less important.

The way to do this is to control the swing of hit points. Instead of focusing on what to do when damage dealt, the focus should be on minimizing the chance of being hit and damaged in the first place and make the severity of damage too much to waste time healing. Much like in Tags where players don't bother healing as the loss of tempo isn't worth the escalating damage.

I thing the amount healed should alway be equal to the average expected damage for that level. Also the average damage of an appropriate threat should always take at least ⅓ of a PC's HP (except for dedicated frontliners).

This way healing moves from a "done whenever" deal to "emergency" option. The combat could move from "take damage and heal" to "try not to take damage and change tactics/escape if you do".

 

[Oni]

Healing in combat should probably cost a more significant action than a minor. Minor action healing is pretty much a no brainer, it just doesn't put much of a dent in the action economy, meaning if the party is taking enough damage to warrant healing then there isn't any reason not. Whether you heal or do something else should be a hard choice. If you make healing too easy, or too potent, then it's going to push things toward a more grindy combat and it makes playing a cleric (or other class with healing capabilities) less interesting.

Just off the top of my head one thing they could do to combat the grindy yo-yo effect would be to give cure spells two different casting times on the same preparation, i.e cast Cure Light Wounds as a standard action for a lesser amount, or cast it with a 3 round /minute/whatever is inconvenient in combat casting time for a greater amount. That gives the cleric a real decision to make.

 

[Szatany]

What if healing was done in such a way that you want to use it on heavily hurt characters? A healing spell that has variable effect depending on how many HP target has left could add interesting tactics and tension to the game. By variable I mean effect like this: This spells heals target. If the target has 0 or negative HP, it heals 3d6 damage. If target has more than 0 but is bloodied, it heals 2d6. If target is not bloodied, this spell heals 1d6 hp.

 

[Aenghus]

Healing in combat can't be separated from a number of other factors, which include:

• swinginess of combat
• how easy it is for PCs to die in combat
• can PCs bounce back from unconciousness?
• duration of average and long combats
• ease of making and introducing new PCs

Disallowing combat healing or making it harder means PCs who are felled are more likely to stay down for the rest of the combat. This is more acceptable when combat is quick. On the other hand, downed PCs make retreat much harder and a TPK increasingly likely as more and more PCs fall.

If healing in combat is permitted, I prefer minor action heals. Standard action heals save a PC from dying but if they don't incorporate an offensive effect they drag out the combat.

I prefer low lethality for PCs combat, and less swinginess, which has a bearing on my opinions.

 

[CleverNickName]

I've played every edition from BECM to Pathfinder, and I've never noticed any of these problems with the healing mechanic. It wasn't until I started reading the posts in the "New Horizons" forum, that I had even heard the term "heal bot." (shrug)

As far as healing surges go, I honestly hope that they add them...but make them optional, since a lot of people don't seem to care for them.

 

[KidSnide]

From a narrative perspective, I wish there was less in-combat healing in D&D. I like the idea that a wound that brings you down is serious and that healing magic is difficult and time consuming. Unfortunately (to me at least), I think this would result in a less exciting game.

One of the key parts of D&D combat is that it has to appear more dangerous than it actually is. That's because folks want the feeling of fighting against dangerous odds, but the reality of making through 100+ fights in a career of adventure. In-combat healing allows characters to go down (giving the appearance that the PCs are losing), but with a mechanism of allowing the PCs to get back up and continue to fight. This dynamic emphasizes the feeling of danger while maintaining the likelihood of PC success. In 90+% of games, that's a very good thing.

-KS

 

[Nebulous]

i have seen other people post ways to cleverly separate hit point (luck damage) from Wounds (physical damage). I would like to see this taken to the next level, where characters can recuperate their luck quickly (or fairly quickly), but actual, physical wounds, broken bones, etc. needs magic or time to heal.

If they can pull that off in a simple manner i will be impressed.

AND make it modular enough so that a camp of people who don't like it can ignore it.

 

[Minigiant]

Healing in combat should probably cost a more significant action than a minor. Minor action healing is pretty much a no brainer, it just doesn't put much of a dent in the action economy, meaning if the party is taking enough damage to warrant healing then there isn't any reason not. Whether you heal or do something else should be a hard choice. If you make healing too easy, or too potent, then it's going to push things toward a more grindy combat and it makes playing a cleric (or other class with healing capabilities) less interesting.

Just off the top of my head one thing they could do to combat the grindy yo-yo effect would be to give cure spells two different casting times on the same preparation, i.e cast Cure Light Wounds as a standard action for a lesser amount, or cast it with a 3 round /minute/whatever is inconvenient in combat casting time for a greater amount. That gives the cleric a real decision to make.

Something like:

Cure Light Wounds
Minor action: Heal 1d8 +1 per caster level hit points
Standard action: Heal 1d8 +2 per caster level hit points
5 minutes: Heal 2d8 +2 per caster level hit points

Yeah. I can get behind that.