D&D 5E Second Wind: Yes or No?

[Garthanos]

• No Schrodinger's wounds. You know when you are injured and when you are not.

Is that totally an advantage? "It's just a flesh wound" is well a trope for a reason. I guess that reason might relate to how uncertainty can be exciting.

Also some have pointed out how the three saves and you are out gives you a sense of active participation (though if I am not making a choice it doesnt do that for me).... or really suspense.

Speaking of that (player choices in an out of it state) I made a blog about the "party" death spirol and how D&D had prevented it nicely for the individual but when an individual goes down the party wide loss was bigger. My idea was to allow the player of the downed/disabled character to manage inspiration to boost their allies. (warlord like effects) somewhat like in movies somebody goes down the others get flash back scenes or similar effects often not all at once so the camer can pan of course.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Ahnehnois Yup. I agree and good post but I cannot xp. It is an extremely tough row to hoe for them; maintaining the sacred cow of HPs, while fully addressing their metagame construct (or less than in some folk's games), while at the same time maintaining their dissonant interactions with other systems. Being clear, forthright and accountable about the table implications of these core systems (and their modular interactions) seems to be the best way forward.

 

[Ahnehnois]

For as simple as the HP system is, it does a pretty good job of being the workhorse for handling all these different things completely abstractly. A more complicated system that took all of these variables into account might be desirable as an option, but IMO it would be unwieldy and definitely not simple.

There is a certain refined elegance to simple and functional.

You're right about simple and functional.

Here's the thing: most of D&D is not that at all. Vancian spellcasting is unbelievably complicated, especially at high levels. You have dozens of discrete and independent spell slots. Each one you have to make a choice about when memorizing spells, and then when you're choosing to cast a spell, you have to do a mental calculation of what the chances are that you'll need that spell before you rest again are, and what other resources you have. Truly leveraging that system is difficult. Most people shortcut it, either by just casting away and not thinking that much about it or saving spells and not thinking much about it (and thus failing to take full advantage of their abilities in either case). Other people simply opt out. I've been on spell points for years (one pool instead of having to track each spell), and even then I often don't bother to track points or daily uses of things for NPCs.

Would I ever advocate a system that tracks as many different possible injuries as a 10th level wizard has spell slots? Definitely not.

What amazes me is that people can tolerate doing that kind of calculus for spellcasters (or, in 4e, and even more complicated set of calculations for all characters, who have discrete abilities on different recharge times and healing surges, at a minimum).

My theory is this: people get used to things. 4e players either don't leverage the full complexity of the rules, or they've internalized the rules and the conventions of their game to an extent that they don't have to think much about what the chances are they might need a power later. The same is true of caster players for other versions of D&D; they either don't really care how many spells slots they have, or they do, and they've learned to deal with it intuitively. This is a real barrier for beginners, but can be enjoyable for experts.

My theory is that the same logic applies to health systems: people are used to hp, but even if a new system did add some complexity, they'd internalize the system and learn to deal with it. That is, if said system was well designed and written.

Certainly, that's my experience.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Also some have pointed out how the three saves and you are out gives you a sense of active participation (though if I am not making a choice it doesnt do that for me).... or really suspense.

Speaking of that (player choices in an out of it state) I made a blog about the "party" death spirol and how D&D had prevented it nicely for the individual but when an individual goes down the party wide loss was bigger. My idea was to allow the player of the downed/disabled character to manage inspiration to boost their allies. (warlord like effects) somewhat like in movies somebody goes down the others get flash back scenes or similar effects often not all at once so the camer can pan of course.

I think this idea has some potential. In a game with a tight action economy like 4e, every party member that drops and doesn't get back up before their turn comes up is a huge deal, particularly in smaller groups. I ran a game for a group of 3 PCs once, and it was really swingy for this reason. It was tense and kind of fun, but it can quickly turn an 'easy' or 'average' fight into a TPK with a few bad rolls, which makes it tough for players to know how to gauge their odds of survival.

 

[Klaus]

If I were to add anything to the baseline HP system, it'd be the SWSE Condition Track.

 

[sheadunne]

I played around with a system for 3.5 that simply takes the "negative" HP that the last few editions have and made them conditions instead of unconsciousness.

So a character might have 35 HP and 15 Vitality (what used to be the negative range before death, I used Con Score + level). A character would take HP damage before Vitality. When you took any Vitality damage you received two conditions, the first giving you a -2 to all D20 rolls (shaken) and the second (staggered) gave you only one action a round. If you took the "endurance" feat you removed the shaken condition and if you took the "die hard" feat you removed the staggered condition, endurance was no longer a prereq for die hard. Some spells targeted Vitality directly, those that used to be save or die. So a save or die spell might do 3d6 vitality damage on a failed save or 6d6 HP damage on a successful save. Some undead target Vitality directly. I haven't playtested it enough to see if it works well and I certainly don't advocate for using it. But it was fun to think about. The most important thing being, simple and similar enough to what currently exists. The system only renames negative HP (which already exist) and then applies two conditions instead of unconsciousness. When you run out of vitality you're dead dead.

Healing spells (like cure light) had a choice to heal 1d4 vitality or 1d8+level HP, If you had vitality damage that had to be healed first and any extra was applied to HP (example being if you had 2 points of vitality damage and 30 points of HP damage, you had to use the 1d4 vitality cure effect and if you healed 4 vitality, you would be at full vitality and 2 HP). Rest recovered 1 vitality point a day. At least that was my initial thinking. I never really crunched the numbers so I have no idea how it would play out over time. I think I started it because I was tired of players falling unconscious during combat and wanted to give them an option to still be in the fight, although weakened.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

As an aside, I challenge anyone to come up with a healing mechanics that uses D&D-ish abstract hit points and accomplishes all of the following:

A. There is a finite limit on how much a character can take in a relatively small amount of time, despite external sources of healing being available (such as cure light wounds or potions of healing).

B. The system is elegant, reasonably simple to use and track, and at least nods towards game play and simulation of a typical D&D universe. For example, it's ok for it to support gritty play, but not if the grit excludes more epic play. It's ok for it to model the physics of healing somewhat, but not at the full exclusion of all game decisions.

C. The mechanics do not show much correspondence to the surge mechanics.

I don't think it can be done. If you think me wrong, I'd really like to see your answer.

That depends on whether or not you want the hit point system to also represent stamina over the course of a day. If so, then yes, something in the system will resemble healing surges. Currently, that's hit dice.

But limits on magical healing do not need to draw from that pool. It can have its own limitations. Either by limiting how much magical healing a character may receive, or by reducing the supply. I prefer a little of both. The big win of keeping them separate from natural healing is that these limitations can be added or removed from the game at will without any modification to the mechanics of healing, and the same goes for hit dice.

 

[Sunseeker]

If I were to add anything to the baseline HP system, it'd be the SWSE Condition Track.

I would note however, that affecting the condition track directly was one of the easiest ways to break SWSE, so I would be OK with that with the caveat that affecting the condition track directly be either incredibly difficult, or reducing effects to the condition track be very easy. I would prefer the former for the simple fact that reducing effects to the track makes the track incredibly pointless.

 

[Klaus]

I would note however, that affecting the condition track directly was one of the easiest ways to break SWSE, so I would be OK with that with the caveat that affecting the condition track directly be either incredibly difficult, or reducing effects to the condition track be very easy. I would prefer the former for the simple fact that reducing effects to the track makes the track incredibly pointless.

Oh yes, it'd have to be difficult to move someone up or down the condition track.

 

[AshySimon]

Not to get too deep into mechanics:

I want to second surges as cinematic - It's like why I like hero or action points too.  I'm not really for the try-as-hard-as-possible to kill your players mindset as a thing DMs should be doing (you know, all the time).  So, I like stuff that can save us in a pinch, but we still can't really abuse - an inclusion as a module is good too?