D&D General Refresher Course D&D Edition Numbers. AKA Modern D&D Is a Self Inflicted Problem.

[Zardnaar]

Depends on what you mean by bloat. They don't, as a concept, contribute to the hp you have available within one encounter (except with Second Wind which for most people is an action to use). There's nothing that says you couldn't include healing surges in 3e except the work you'd need to rework all healing magic (and figure out what to do about different levels of healing spells). And they also make healing proportional in a very nice way – having an action spent on healing actually giving a decent result is nice.

Do they make it harder to wear PCs down through sandbagging them across multiple encounters? Yes. That's a feature, not a bug.

If you have the cure light wounds spell in the game and the Craft Wand feat, you will have wands of cure light wounds. And I think those probably make attrition even more difficult than healing surges do, because wands have no limit other than money, and the exchange rate of gp per hp is amazing.

Wands exist but there's no big sign saying use them. They developed via forums uptake wasn't universal.

I'm not 100% they existed in 3.0 dmg. Mines missing.

If youre advocating for healing surges the nay have solved some problems but contributed to others. Hard to build tension when each PC has buckets of hp available comparatively. Combine tgat with anemic 4E monsters its fairly hard to die and contributes to 4Es slow combat.

Minis and battle grid also contributes less explicit in 3.5 and even less in 3.0.

So yeah if you like that fair enough. But its a primary cause of 4E whimpering death as well.

5E designers took a bad idea from 4E and ramped up damage for "quick" combat when they (collectively) invented the grind in the first place. Derp.

5.5 is moving back into emphasizing minis. Back then it was to sell minis I'm sure its got nothing to do with Beyond or vtt plans they had.

 

[Staffan]

Wands exist but there's no big sign saying use them. They developed via forums uptake wasn't universal.

I'm not 100% they existed in 3.0 dmg. Mines missing.

Wands of cure light wounds are on the random treasure tables in the 3.0 DMG. Further, once you become able to put any non-personal spell into a wand, its use becomes obvious (much like the wand of mage armor which lets the wizard and possibly even monk enjoy the fruits of that spell without "wasting" spell slots, at a cost of 750 gp for +4 armor instead of the 16,000 gp bracers of armor +4 cost).

It becomes even more obvious once you realize that 3e wands are useless for offensive spells, because they assume the minimum ability score and lowest caster level possible, so if you get e.g. a wand of entangle you'll get an entangle that lasts for 1 minute (which is fine) and has a save DC of 11 (which is not). So instead you look for spells that don't have saves and where caster level matters little to not at all, and put those in wands.

If youre advocating for healing surges the nay have solved some problems but contributed to others. Hard to build tension when each PC has buckets of hp available comparatively. Combine tgat with anemic 4E monsters its fairly hard to die and contributes to 4Es slow combat.

Minis and battle grid also contributes less explicit in 3.5 and even less in 3.0.

So yeah if you like that fair enough. But its a primary cause of 4E whimpering death as well.

There's a difference between the hit points available within one encounter and the hit points available over the course of an adventuring day. Healing surges let you threaten one while still having the other left. Now, 4e got the numbers wrong overall: too many monster hp, and the defenses being off compared to accuracy, but the concept of healing surges itself was amazing. They also removed the need for a cleric in the party – having a leader/support/healer type is useful, but (a) it doesn't have to be a cleric and (b) it's a nice-to-have, not a necessity.

There was a related mechanic in 3e Unearthed Arcana called Reserve points, which was basically a second pool of hp you could fill up your actual hp from in between fights, letting you heal up without using magic. Unlike healing surges though, healing magic doesn't draw from this pool.

 

[Bae'zel]

We quite enjoyed playing Adventures on Middle Earth which was basically a house ruled 2014 D&D campaign that stripped out spells, magic items and abilities that trivialized healing and exploration. Whenever I read a thread like this, my knee jerk reaction is “use D&D as a toolkit and make the custom campaign feel that you want?”. Want exploration-themed campaigns? Cross out spells like “Leomund’s Invisible Impenetrable Bacta Tank Spa fortress in the sky”? Hate HP bloat? Run a campaign that has a max level of 6, like Brancalonia.

But that’s probably not gonna solve anything. I see great things done by other companies that proved to me that 5e can work to support other things than kitchen sink fantasy.

 

[Minigiant]

Is this about HP bloat? General numbers bloat? I have often wondered if 5e would be better served with ""lower numbers" by getting rid of stuff like +CON to hp and such, but since I run on A5E FoundryVTT it'd be impossible for me to cut out HP like that.

Bounded Accuracy

5e shrunk the progression of some numbers that other numbers had to grow to compensate.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

One fix would be to have a beefier start an a duller curve for health and power. However that's not what the community originally wanted.

Minor caveat: I think it would be dramatically more accurate to say, "That's not what the original community wanted."

Because 5e's community now has almost nothing to do with the successful edition warriors doing their wardance over the corpse of 4e.

Turns out that ceding all of your important design decisions to victorious edition warriors doesn't necessarily produce the best overall outcome.

 

[TiQuinn]

Wands of cure light wounds are on the random treasure tables in the 3.0 DMG. Further, once you become able to put any non-personal spell into a wand, its use becomes obvious (much like the wand of mage armor which lets the wizard and possibly even monk enjoy the fruits of that spell without "wasting" spell slots, at a cost of 750 gp for +4 armor instead of the 16,000 gp bracers of armor +4 cost).

It becomes even more obvious once you realize that 3e wands are useless for offensive spells, because they assume the minimum ability score and lowest caster level possible, so if you get e.g. a wand of entangle you'll get an entangle that lasts for 1 minute (which is fine) and has a save DC of 11 (which is not). So instead you look for spells that don't have saves and where caster level matters little to not at all, and put those in wands.

It’s also not like there were exact rules around 1e and 2e for what could be in a charged item like a wand anyways except perhaps arcane versus divine spells. But even at that, there were staffs of curing.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Every edition so far both solves and creates problems.

I think there were a few things 1e simply had “right” but the “right” just depends on your preferences.

The more you toy with one thing, the more you break another. It’s ok as long as you can settle and choose and just move forward.

We played 1e until 3e…and for the most part 3e until 5e. You don’t have to love every edition…it’s fine. I am now skipping 2024 D&D.

But if that is the point of the OP, guess I agree.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

A long time ago I read a thing about what's better? +1 to hit or +1 damage. Very simple concept. Correct answer varies by edition. I've said fireball is a C tier spell and gotten pushback. Topic of this thread is similar to that concept. I love how ENworld loves to nitpick and declear that youre wrong and im right. Hell its practically encouraged. This is more conceptual no right or wrong answer its essentially what you prefer.

Consider what's better.

1d6 vs 30 hp
3d6 vs 90 hp

What's better? 3d6 is better its a large number right?

Looking at the average, it is the same.

But 1d6 vs 30 hp is more swingy. 3d6 vs 90hp is more reliable.

Law of big numbers.

That's essentially my argument why 5E fireball is a C tier spell. You are not required to agree with me.

Although it is never 1d6 vs 3d6 or 30 vs 90 hp...

In Mearls thread about 5MWD ive been saying its mitigated to a large extent in older D&D due to very different design paradigms. Its not better as OSR playstyle is subjective and after running a 1E adventures recently it had its own issues (D&D the Accounting).

No ome says this, I guess.

Consider. General guideline only but rereading my collection

1E/Basic line.

1d8 vs 25 hp

2E
1d8 vs 30 hp
Regain 1-3 hp overnight+ magic.

3.0 1d8+4 vs 45 hp

3.5 1d8+ 4 vs 60 hp

Regain 1 hp/level + magic

4E 1d8+4 vs 120 hp

5E 1d8+4, 1d8+4 vs 120 hp

Regain all hp overnight (and all magic). 4E and 5E also have healing surges and hit dice. Less reliance on magical healing.

I do not understand your guideline...

4E and 5E fairly similar HP the amount of damage you inflict I a big difference. This means fast combat vs slower paced. Put thread PHB's side by side 4E essentially stretched levels 3-10 or so over 30 levels.

Being ENword start nitpicking away at my numbers. They dont matter that much but we have gone from low damage low hp low healing to high damage. High hit points, high healing with the ones in the middle being somewhere in the middle.

Removal of all the badwrongfun stuff from older edition in effect has left hp attrition as the primary challenge to over come.

That sound rather passive agressive. There is no badwrongfun.
It is just that today people don't really like to be hit once and out of the fight forever.

Wands of cure light wounds, healing surges, hit dice are all solutions to no one want to be a healer. But they create new problems. Pick your favorite poison.

Yes

Designers have responded to the playerbase positive or negative since 2E if not earlier. Gygax could be a bit more my way or the high way but he could be convinced and wasn't the only one designing stuff espicially Basic line.

1d6 vs 30 hp
3d6 vs 90 hp

See my point yet? Eat lots of suger put on weight. Drink lots of booze get a hang over.

???