(Mostly) remove healing from combat?

[Yora]

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.

Trying to heal your allies up in combat is also usually a bad idea. Unless you can heal more damage than the enemies can deal every round, you should focus all your energy on disabling enemies to keep them from dealing any more damage. And divine spellcasters have lots of spells that can take out enemies very effectivly.
In combat healing is best be limited to patch severely injured allies up, so you don't have to deal with ressurection. But the most effective way to use healing is to give allies a chance to disengage from the most dangerous enemies. If at the end of the fight everyone is at more than -10 hp, everything is alright. Then you have time to heal. But a simple hold person spell should prevent much more damage than cure moderate wounds could ever heal.

Compared to 3rd Edition, I don't see any need to change healing in any way. Healing in combat already is a bad idea and divine spellcasters can help the group survive a lot better by using combat spells or even just attacking with weapons.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Trying to heal your allies up in combat is also usually a bad idea.

No way! It's a great idea. In 3rd edition it meant trading in a Standard Action for someone else's entire turn (sometimes multiple turns with mass cure spells). In 4th, you trade a minor for a major/move/minor. In the action economy, this sort of healing is definitely worth it, whether you heal enough or not - especially with the right timing to get the healed another turn before they take that nasty damage.

 

[Yora]

But instead of healing an ally, you could also have buffed him at the start of the fight, making the cure spell unneccesary.

And I think you have to play on a fairly high optimization level to make full round actions more valuable than a spellcasters standard action.

 

[JohnSnow]

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.

In case everyone has forgotten, the early editions of the d20 Star Wars Roleplaying Game attempted to separate hit points into two pools, which were referred to as "Vitality Points" and "Wound Points." Wound points were a fixed number, equal to the CON score, if memory serves, which never increased. "Vitality points" were more like traditional hit points, and calculated similarly (dX per level). VP were recovered quickly, WP much slower. IIRC, critical hits bypassed VP and did wound point damage.

It's the same system, I believe, that Alderac borrowed for Spycraft. It worked, but it was finicky. And swingy. Star Wars Saga Edition scrapped the VP/WP system in favor of a much simpler hit point mechanic. Nobody looked back.

The VP/WP system was offered up as a D&D option in 3e's Unearthed Arcana. AFAIK, almost nobody used it.

 

[Deset Gled]

No way! It's a great idea. In 3rd edition it meant trading in a Standard Action for someone else's entire turn (sometimes multiple turns with mass cure spells). In 4th, you trade a minor for a major/move/minor. In the action economy, this sort of healing is definitely worth it, whether you heal enough or not - especially with the right timing to get the healed another turn before they take that nasty damage.

IMNSHO, you have highlighted the problem perfectly.

In 3e (and previously) healing in combat is a fairly major investment. This makes it rare, but highly dramatic. In 4e, it is much easier and can be done by anyone. This makes it common and boring.

Don't get rid of healing in combat, get rid of boring healing in combat.

 

[Number48]

What I would like is for a heal in combat to be roughly equivalent to doing damage. In other words, it simply comes down to how you want to play. I don't want a game where you have to have a healer, I don't want a game where you aren't allowed to be a healer.

 

[Oni]

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.

The best I've seen this handled (IMHO) in another game is various versions of FATE such as Legends of Anglerre and Strands of Fate. There are a few variations but most of them boil down to have a short term resistance often in the form of per scene HP and long term consequences that can last varying amounts of time depending on their severity and how they might be treated. And since it's very narrative it consequences can come back and haunt you in a variety of interesting ways. It's very cool and I like it a lot, but it's not very D&D and I imagine it would be a fair bit of work to graft onto the classic D&D model without the seams showing.

I suppose it would be possible to drop negative HP, and at 0 HP roll on chart of minor, medium, or major consequences based on the threshold by which 0 was passed, or give some basic guidelines for each of the injury levels and the DM decide (or both). That wouldn't hurt the D&Dness too much.

 

[frankthedm]

Mid combat healing should be the province of valuable resources such as expensive / rare potions and higher level spells. One of the largest problems with D&D healing is the base rules make magical healing have instantaneous speed even at first level spells.

 

[Izumi]

I think healing during combat should be a difficult and risky proposition A core assumption of a 2 second combat round, magical healing that takes 10-20 round casting time (and subject to spell disruption), potions that restore 1d4 a round or so until their limit is reached, and absolutely no increase my ki for untapped hp, or inspire me to increase my chi to restore my hp.

Duel vitality/wound totals are just slower cousins of the current system. Nice on the outside, no great benefit to the game. Satisfies our need for plausibility, but at the expense of more number tracking.