D&D 5E New Healing Idea: Location Based Healing

[Stalker0]

This is a house rule my group has been using in our 4e game, and I think it would be worth seeing it tried as as one of the healing module's 5e uses.

In our game, whenever we do an extended rest, if we are resting "on-site" we only recover 1 healing surge. Only when we return to our base, and get some full and comfortable rest, do we recover all of our surges.

So a version of this for 5e, with resources included, might look like this:


Location Rest
A location rest is a long rest (8 hours) that is taken in an non-ideal location. Such rests might be outdoors, or in areas with potential dangers (like dungeons).

A character that takes a location rest gets the following:
1) 1/2 of their daily resources (spells, class abilities).
2) 1/2 their normal hit dice (minimum 1).
3) Heal 1/2 their current hp damage.


Extended Rest
An extended rest is a long rest (8 hours) taken in an area of safety and comfort where characters can get full, uninterrupted rest. These would be places like inns and home bases.

A character that takes an extended rest recovers all hitpoints, hitdice, and daily abilities.


Now the amount of healing of location rests would obviously be a subject for debate, but with this model players can still get teh quick recover when absolutely needed, but it would have a time factor that many DMs are looking for (reduction of the 15 minute adventure notion). The downside would be for classes that rely on daily abilities like casters.

Thoughts?

 

[Li Shenron]

Point 1) already raises some issues (like, you get back half of your spent daily slots or half of all your slots? what if you have used less than half, do you get nothing more?) but overall there's nothing wrong with this house rule... It's basically half way between full rest and the traditionally interrupted full rest

 

[Omegaxicor]

my thoughts are two fold, and I may be wrong, 1) the idea of an 8 hours rest in a dungeon isn't always possible 2) Inns and "home bases" (whatever they are, castles I assume) may be attacked during their rest so nowhere is really "safe" compared to dungeons I suppose having lots of soldiers about would make a castle safer but you might still get woken up whether by an attack or by a bird/guard coughing.

I don't see what this improves, taking an 8 hour rest gives you everything back if you are in somewhere outside the dungeon but the same rest within a dungeon gives you only half, if you can afford to take 8 hours during a quest then you may as well get everything back...imho anyway

EDIT: ah I misunderstood your post, the idea of taking an 8 hour rest within a dungeon is still alien to me but HR sounds good

 

[Lackhand]

I like the shape of it! I'm curious about specifics -- what is "1/2 of their daily resources"? In other words:

Myrta the Magnificent:
5d4 hit dice
3x 1st level spells
2x 2nd level spells
1x 3rd level spells
(numbers chosen somewhat at random, I don't remember what she'd actually get)

If Myrta expends everything, all her hit dice, all her spells, and then rests on the dungeon floor, she clearly gets 2d4 hit dice back.

What about spells? Can she take the high level spells but leave the low level ones, since that's 3 levels of spells?
Or is it half-your-gainable-levels (so spells whose levels sum up to 5 -- the third and one second level would be fine, as would two second levels and a first level, etc)?

Or maybe half-your-spells-of-each-level-round-down, which could be simplified to "one spell of each level except your highest" or something

 

[jrowland]

I would make it a bit more granular

Hospital: full resources
Inn/safe place: 1/2 resources (with the concerns above addressed)
Icky place: 1/4 resources
Dangerous place (the Tomb of Horrors, eg): No recovery possible

I am toying with the idea that spell recovery should be separate, or at least dependent on some HP/HD threshold (no spell recovery if below 1/2 hp, eg). Or, perhaps Spell Recovery cannot be done in Icky or Dangerous places.

Also, rituals could provide these locations (Mordenkainens Magnificent Mansion), or make recovery a step better (Cleric casts "Bivouc" spell or Ranger literally builds a Bivouc such that the Dangerous Place becomes an Icky Place)

 

[Li Shenron]

Since [MENTION=36160]Lackhand[/MENTION] also raised questions on spells... do we really need a precise rule for such a corner case? It would be so much better to just say, if the party cannot rest properly, the DM should figure out some partial replenishment of daily resource around half the total.

I know that some DM don't like taking the responsibility, and some players don't trust their DM. In such case, all they have to do is not to use this optional rule.

Those who are interested, can figure out a way that they like. A default here will only cause useless debates.

But if you are interested in discussing how each of us would do it, let's go ahead

 

[TerraDave]

Its OK. It makes sense that, well, such a break would be less "restfull".

But, it still simpler to just have partial recovery across the board. If they are back at the old inn, then its probably easy enough to take a few days, in the dungeon, that will obviously be harder.

You could do the thing, from past editions, were a full day of rest gives back more, and that would have to be in a nicer place.