D&D 5E [Poll] How does your group do hit points per level?

[werecorpse]

That's a slow way to roll 1d6+4

1d6+4 gives the same range but different mode, median and most importantly mean.

 

[Lanefan]

But 5E is different than AD&D, in that there are more ways to do damage mitigation. In the last eight months or so of weekly play I think I've seen a grand total of maybe 50 HP of magical healing. Beyond that, resting suffices for all healing needs.

Resting in 5e as written is way way WAY more generous than anything I'd ever allow. Then again, 1e as written is way too harsh...

You can use undead minions to soak damage instead of healing; you can use Shield spells and dodging to prevent damage; you can use missile weapons to inflict damage without taking any yourself (perhaps while another PC does the Dodge thing); you can use the Mobile feat to substitute movement for AC.

All valid tactics in any edition (except for the Mobile feat), and henches soak up damage quite nicely too. But sooner or later, unless your party is cautious to a dull and boring extreme, you're gonna get clobbered and need the healer.

What you need a healer for isn't HP restoration, it is Revivify/Greater Restoration. My players had to resort to seeking out a Couatl and trading favors with him in order to end an Intellect Devourer's Perma-Stun on two characters, because there weren't any PCs who could cast Greater Restoration. (They also needed him to Greater Restoration a third character who had been cursed by a Rakshasa.)

Healer types are also handy for Neutralize Poison or whatever it's called now.

Lan-"medic!"-efan

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

All valid tactics in any edition (except for the Mobile feat), and henches soak up damage quite nicely too. But sooner or later, unless your party is cautious to a dull and boring extreme, you're gonna get clobbered and need the healer.

Yes and no to the bolded point. Soaking damage with minions is possible in AD&D, but 1.) ranged damage doesn't work as well or as reliably (e.g. "+3 or greater weapon to hit" and no at-will cantrips means you have to get into melee or spend real spells to kill it), which mitigates the value of tanking minions, and 2.) in 5E, bounded accuracy on monster to-hit plus the Dodge action plus various feats like Inspiring Leader means that a random low-level Dodging minion is relatively tankier than in AD&D. A Dodging zombie in scale mail could take, oh, eight or ten attacks to drop: one hit per four attacks, three attacks to deplete hit points, plus zombie fortitude on top; when I rolled it just now, a bog-standard zombie without even Inspiring Leader or bonus HP from a Necromancer took eight attacks from Orc ax-blows to get three hits, which killed him (failed his zombie fortitude check). If I remember my AD&D-era math correctly I believe it would take about six orc attacks to drop a zombie. For an Dodging Inspired Necro-enhanced 5E zombie it should be in the neighborhood of thirty orc attacks.

So, minion tanks are tankier than before, and ranged attacks are more potent, so shooting from behind a wall of minions is an even more effective strategy than in AD&D. Oh, plus the fact that in AD&D your minions would have needed clerics to heal them at the end of the day so you're ultimately not saving much, whereas in 5E you just rest and suddenly all the minions are back at full health, since anyone can use HD healing per PHB errata which implies that everyone heals on a long rest, even minions, unless the DM rules otherwise.

I sort of agree with your larger point--it is valuable to have a healer just in case everything falls apart. E.g. you don't want to have to fall back and rest for an hour or a day just because some idiot fighter tripped a saw blade trap and took 24d10 to the face while everyone else is still untouched. I don't think it is mandatory though, merely valuable. At my table, my players never plan for emergencies and the PCs are (mostly) still alive.

(In fact we're starting Out of the Abyss in a separate campaign and the PCs are a Bearbarian/Open Hand monk, a Bearbarian, and an Oathbreaker Paladin/Death Cleric, which looks to me like a very narrow party with no ranged capability at all and not all that much healing... we'll see if they survive. I started the PCs off at level 1d10 for fun and they all rolled high so that will help, but I will happily strafe them to death with drow crossbow bolts at the first opportunity and then go back to the regular sandbox campaign.)

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I put in a vote of "other" because my group rolls the die and takes the result, or the rounded-up average (we call it half size, plus one), whichever is lower.

More important to the topic of the PCs hit points, however, is that I don't roll monster damage, I use the listed value (though I do roll the dice for damage added on a critical hit).