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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Minigiant" data-source="post: 5878506" data-attributes="member: 63508">Yes, D&D pretty much inventing battlefield healing. In most stories,  there was HP loss and recovery but it was mostly stamina, divine favor,  luck, or morale. Physical HP loss stuck. Rarely was physical damage  removed.</blockquote>And then, of course, there are a new set of people who object to  non-magical healing (either Inspiring Word or the overnight rest) that  heals deadly wounds at implausible speed.So I understand the motivation for getting away from the healing yo-yo.   The problem is that the healing yo-yo is (1) exciting and (2) very D&D.  Healing is an essential part of what makes D&D combat fun.  [/quote]The HP yo-yo is very D&D. Only D&D and inspired works really use it. Some others do too. But "avoid the death spiral" is by far most common.Here on the real world, "damage" avoidance is king. Us humans try not to  get "hurt". We try not to lose any "HP". But damage avoidance is not  supported in D&D.It is exciting but it's not the only way.I don't want it to go away. I just don't want it as the default and only option. D&D's math is designed for you to get hit and take damage. This  encourages either "scaredy cat" play or bringing a cleric (or druid, or  wand user).I would love for the game to support another option. Something other  than going from 20 HP to 10 Hp to 20 HP to 15 HP to 3 HP to -3 HP to 7  HP to 20 HP.Here are some.1) A friend of mine designed a base class for 3E called a spellshield.  It was a d4 HD melee warrior. It had a special ability that when he or a  nearby ally was hit, he can instantly sacrifice one of his spells to  get 5*(spell level+1) damage reduction to absorb the damage. Because of  this, his character rarely got lower than 80% HP. But as the spells were  sacrificed, things got tense.This was combined with my own character who had permanent 50% miss chance (effective doubling his HP). And another character with massive AC. Overall we were unhittable but dropped if we were ever touched because of our craptacular HP. We rarely healed outside of towns during the whole adventure as there were few times of HP urgency. But the drama stayed.2) Once had a game where we looted a fully charged wand of aid. Drama  built up when our aid based THP ran out. Essentially it become a Stamina  point system as the aid THP became our measuring line. It is the source of my love of temporary HP.3) Then there's the 4E/Naruto variant I play with my cousins where Healing Surges don't grant HP, they cause attacks to miss. They are almost always bloodied and don't care.... But let them run low on HS.[/QUOTE]

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