Please take the whole "Hit Points and Regaining Hit points" back to the drawing board

[Minigiant]

If you did not have full HP after a rest - doesnt it just slow down the game?

It depends.

In pre-4e, it did. It took forever to naturally heal so a party that adventured more than once a week/month needed a healer caster of a steady supply of healing potion.

That's why I suggest rest to just restore HD.

Spending all your HD restores about 40-60% of your HP.
From the Playtest at level 1, that is:
40-45% for the fighter
25-31% for the rogue and wizard
29-35% for both clerics

So it takes 2-3 days to go from 1 to full HP. 1-2 days if you have someone with the Healer theme.

Then after 2-3 days, everyone is healed to Max HP. One more days restores everyone's HD if they want that back to

 

[Neonchameleon]

Like they are now. There's virtually no difference between AD&D description and DDnext description. You can dislike hit points, a ton of people do. But then, you dislike Gary Gigax hit points as much as Mike Mearls. Hit points is one of those things Mike Mearls said he won't touch, because they "are D&D"

Which AD&D description?

Originally Posted by AD&D 1e DMG, page 61
Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are considered- it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections.
​

Originally Posted by AD&D 2e PHB
Hit points--a number representing: 1. how much damage a character can suffer before being killed, determined by Hit Dice. The hit points lost to injury can usually be regained by rest or healing; 2. how much damage a specific attack does, determined by weapon or monster statistics, and subtracted from a player's total.
​

The two are completely incompatable. ForeverSlayer seems to like 2e, many of us like 1e. 3.X is an unspecified fudge between the two.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Funny thing about memory; its unreliable.

If you did not have full HP after a rest - doesnt it just slow down the game?

No. It changes the game. There's no pushing on down a few hit points, no pressure at all, just hit the rest button and you take on every fight at full health. Some of the most fun I ever had playing is pushing on, the party down to 1/4 their health, and excelling in spite of not being full strength. Fights that would be a pushover, now become much harder, and thus, more rewarding when they are won. Always being at full health removes those kind of fights, to the detriment of the game. The fact that WOTC even thought that kind of a healing mechanic is good game design tells me they are not even playing the same game I am. It's like I showed up for a game of chess and they tossed me a football.

 

[darjr]

I mostly like the HP system.

Though I don't like the overnight healing. I would like less than the HD recovery for heal checks with a kit as well, but it isn't bad.

I like the death saves, though the nat 20 idea is a great idea from 4th ed.

I think I've had an epiphany. I don't like the overnight full hp healing. But I think my issue with it is more fundamental than the specific mechanic or what HP represent. It goes to how D&D is expected to be played by WotC designers.

I want to have games without a cleric required, but I don't want mechanics to replace that cleric, I want to play games in a different way than if the party had a cleric or lots of mundane overnight healing.

I want to, sometimes, play a game of nothing but rogues instead of a balanced party BECAUSE I want to play that game differently than I would in a balanced party with a cleric or it's standin healing mechanic. I want adventures that support that flexibility and a game that does, not one that goes out of it's way to support that balanced party style of play.

In AD&D if you had a party of rogues those players played B1 differently than players of a balanced party. I think that WotC is still stuck with an idea of how people should play, and that play style requires either a cleric or this overnight healing mechanic. And that isn't what I want. It's part of the issue I had with 4e and early wotc 4e adventures. It was fun, but eventually not satisfying.

 

[Reaper Steve]

There's lots of threads about recovering full HP in one long rest. There's a glaring assumption in every single one of them: people are assuming that a long rest is free, automatic, and may be invoked by players at any time. I think that's a very big (and invalid) assumption.

If the PCs choose to try to get a long rest in an unsafe location, they should expect to have it interrupted and receive nothing. Sorry, but barricading your party in a dungeon room while monsters attempt to bash down the door for 8 hours does not afford the opportunity for 6 hours of sleep and 2 hours of light activity. No long rest for you.

I have embraced the idea that HP represent the ability to avoid that one final grievous wound. After a (successful) long rest, a PC has overcome the fatigue and bruises of fighting well enough to fight again another day.

I think this comes down to a binary decision: do you want your game spammed with healing magic? If so, then sure, have a lower natural heal rate. But if you're like me and would prefer to avoid having PCs buy stock in healing potions and wands of CLW, I'll gladly take the new heal over a long rest mechanic (which does most closely match with the Gygaxian definition of HP... finally.)

Now, I do think there is room for some type of longer term injury/wound mechanic. I've seen suggestions for losing a HD (for some duration) each time you drop below 0 HP. I'll offer up something like the massive damage rule: each time you take a critical hit / damage in excess of X (Con?) / etc, you suffer a wound. Each wound does Y (such as reduces you HD.) During a long rest, you can only heal one wound. So, say a 3rd level fighter has 3 wounds. First long rest, he's at full HP, but only 1 HD, and 2 wounds remaining. Second long rest: full HP again, but now 2HD and one wound remaining. Third long rest, good as new!

 

[Mika]

Also keep in mind that the full recovery after an 8 hour rest only works if you either never dropped to zero hit points or fewer or you received magical healing afterwards. If you were stabilized after being reduced to zero hit points or fewer, the time required to fully heal adds up to 10-20 hours. Admittedly, this worst case situation should be rare, but it can occur.

 

[MortalPlague]

I'm going to add my voice to those who really like the new healing system. I won't touch hit points, they work just fine for my game. I think hit dice are a fantastic way for mundane healing to show up, and the healer's kit required to trigger them will finally add some important mundane consumables to the game.

I don't mind the long rest giving back all your hit points, but I wouldn't mind seeing just the hit dice return, either. Spending a few days patching up in town is something that can add charm to the game. Also, those cases where you don't have enough time to patch up would be that much more harrowing.

 

[Steely_Dan]

-I also don’t like the concept of regaining all of your hit points after a full rest.


-Please scrap the three death saves as well. I want dying to be a bit easier. I don’t want to have to jump through five different hoops in order to kick the bucket – In my opinion, it takes away a lot of the danger.

-Neither do I, I prefer healing your HD (10th level Cleric heals 10d8 HP etc) after a night's rest.


-Yeah, I want to go back to things simply dying at 0 HP.

 

[Trance-Zg]

With bucket-o-health charity given each day isolated dungeon crawls, attrition warfare(sieges) lose any meaning in D&D. Especially if you play low magic variant of D&D.

If some one beats you to a pulp(-1 HP to be black out) you are NOT going to be your self the next day, not even close.

I think that a good night sleep can give you 10% of your HP back(20% with a good heal check).

Also you can add that once per day you can benefit from emergency heal check(1 min tending required) to regain 1d6 HP.

Any thing else requires potions(should be relatively expensive) and cleric daily spell slots.

Cleric can have cure minor wounds cantrip that heals 1 HP per will, but can only heal you up to 1 HP(enough to get you on your feet).

 

[nnms]

And yet... I got mocked. Laughter and incredulity greeted me, not amazement and astonishment at the awesomeness of my creativity. I tried also enforcing players to be creative about 'hit' descriptions and got stonewalled.

Because you were undoing their narrative input. Your turning hits into misses and solid damage rolls into meaningless scratches through description.

It seems people just can't get past the terms 'hit' and 'damage'. To me, that showcases a very rigid mind that is unwilling to engage creative interpretations and would rather be miserable in conformity than happy in creativity.

Are you sure the commitment to reinterpretation is not equally rigid?

What's wrong with a hit being a hit? And damage being damage? You know, using what the words mean?

Some people just want the result of hitting an orc with an ax to be the orc getting wounded by the ax.

If you have to go through crazy re-interpretive contortions to make it make sense, perhaps it's not the other players that have the problem.