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

[Ratskinner]

I tried to clarify it, but I'm mainly being provocative. I think there are a lot of healing ideas proposed where people don't think through the implications of what it takes to run with the main idea, simplify it for game play while preserving the main idea, but still be acceptable to a wide range of players.

Anymore, I wonder if anything is acceptable to a wide range of players. Maybe I spend too much time here....

So we are constantly getting proposals that don't really address the concerns of wide swaths of players--or get caught up in the terminology instead of the mechanics. I'm mainly interested in diminishing return healing mechanics that work, because my own explorations in various system have convinced me that it's the only way to bridge the simulation and gamism concerns simply. My criteria are probably stricter than most people would adopt for that reason, but they are my criteria after all. Nor do I pretend that they are the only way to do a good healing system. I just think that good healing systems that use other criteria will have a different set of flaws and benefits that people will react to (for good and ill).

Ahh...well then, that explains a bit. Any healing system will have its flaws and benefits, certainly. For instance, if I'm going to allow magical healing at all: I don't think I like the "diminished returns" idea along with it. To me, that sounds like the magic is still holding you together...and thus could expire or be dispelled...rather than just fixing you. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but not my thing. Which, basically, comes down to the problem with D&D's handling of magic in general. "Magic can do anything" isn't really a good basis to work from for a primarily Simulationist game. The audience has apparently rejected a more gamist/abstract model of the game. (...and D&D isn't likely to develop along Narrative lines that would handle it neatly, either.)

 

[Balesir]

Ahh...well then, that explains a bit. Any healing system will have its flaws and benefits, certainly. For instance, if I'm going to allow magical healing at all: I don't think I like the "diminished returns" idea along with it. To me, that sounds like the magic is still holding you together...and thus could expire or be dispelled...rather than just fixing you.

I just look at it as making you heal faster, while still using your body's inherent 'healing capacity'. Maybe it's because I'm used to HarnMaster, where healing magic explicitly either speeds up healing or makes healing safer, but the process is still the same "healing". Stuff that "just fixes you" is beyond "healing magic", to me - it's in the realm of 'miracles'. Which, of course, D&D lumps in with "magic"...

 

[LostSoul]

So you have composed an elaborate extended rest system composed of several mini-games whereby PCs can "flesh out" their interests and challenge themselves during downtime. That, however, is at tension with true rest; the recovery of their Healing Surges which gets them back in the (adventuring) game. Is that about right? If so, that is quite an endeavor and sounds like a great idea. It wouldn't work for certain tables but it would definitely be something that would appeal greatly to others.

Kind of; the idea isn't to challenge the PCs during downtime, but to flesh out time as a resource. If their only option was to rest, then that's what they'd do, and they wouldn't have any other way to spend that downtime. How you spend your downtime is part of how you want to deal with future encounters: if the necromancer is gearing up for an attack you might want to learn Undead Ward while the other PCs gather and refine ritual components.

Since it's a RPG I want the players to feel like they can do anything they think of, but I find that you need to have a lot of sub-systems so you can tie different actions/resources into the game's currency. Then all these decisions relate to each other.

I am curious though, the rate of Healing Surge recovery in your game is extremely low. The implications are, of course, that you likely do not run deadly, surge-heavy, combats regularly. If you would (and just ballpark, no need for precision), how many characters (and their roles) are in your game, what is the average number of combats your have per adventuring day, and what is the average loss of HS/character per day?

All those variables are very variable. The players choose what level of risk they want to face; part of my job as DM is to give them information about the game world so they can make these choices. I use a lot of rumours but have yet to come up with an "in-game" way of communicating level, so I just tell the players the level of the hex (= encounter level). Players have a stable of PCs that they can choose to play, though only one character is the "PC" for any session; the rest become henchmen. Henchmen - and all new PCs - start off at 1st level. (That helps with "Well my wizard is training so I guess I can't play" - no, just run one of your other dudes.)

I reduced XP to 1/10th standard for conflicts - social and combat. Quests, then, are the primary source of XP (and each rumour becomes a quest; they're reasonably standardized, so players can ask for non-rumour-based quests), so we've tended to see a focused, combat-heavy day (or days, if wilderness travel is involved) followed up by rest.

 

[Manbearcat]

How you spend your downtime is part of how you want to deal with future encounters: if the necromancer is gearing up for an attack you might want to learn Undead Ward while the other PCs gather and refine ritual components.

I think during heavy sandbox, open-world play this may not be much of an issue as there little in the way of "transition scenes" or "fast-forwarded time" between campaign arcs. Generally, for them, time is a sea fully circumnavigated.

However, for episodic play or scene-framed play, what you have devised would be a great way for mechanically resolving transition scene interests. I love sub-systems/mini-games, as does my group. Solid rules for mechanical resolution of handling a variety of endeavors and thus propelling the game out of the transition scene and into the new scene with some mechanical effect would be a welcome addition. I wonder if there is enough interest for such a module for the 5e devs to produce it, however.

 

[Balesir]

Mini-games for social interaction, exploration and "downtime" is just what I really want(ed) for 4e - I think it could work really well there. With Next I thought there was some hope of them actually producing something along these lines, early on, with the talk of "supporting the pillars equally" and so on, but it looks like same old same old, so far, in this regard.

 

[LostSoul]

However, for episodic play or scene-framed play, what you have devised would be a great way for mechanically resolving transition scene interests. I love sub-systems/mini-games, as does my group. Solid rules for mechanical resolution of handling a variety of endeavors and thus propelling the game out of the transition scene and into the new scene with some mechanical effect would be a welcome addition. I wonder if there is enough interest for such a module for the 5e devs to produce it, however.

The sub-systems I've designed are not very interesting in themselves; they tend to be "Spend x GP and y days and get z". I don't know how well they'd work for scene-framed play.

 

[Manbearcat]

Mini-games for social interaction, exploration and "downtime" is just what I really want(ed) for 4e - I think it could work really well there. With Next I thought there was some hope of them actually producing something along these lines, early on, with the talk of "supporting the pillars equally" and so on, but it looks like same old same old, so far, in this regard.

Absolutely. Same here. Beyond those, I'll take investigation, kingdom/network/guild/tower (unit) running mini-games. I think there is a large enough market for all of these mini-games (legitimate ones with robust mechanics that aren't grueling from an overhead standpoint) that they could produce a sizable tome and it would sell well (assuming their staying with the hard book model rather than pdf).

The sub-systems I've designed are not very interesting in themselves; they tend to be "Spend x GP and y days and get z". I don't know how well they'd work for scene-framed play.

I think it depends on the group. Some scene-frame groups expect the play to be relentless and want no interruption to their "groove". To them, it might seem like needless fiddliness. These folks look at 4e's combat compared to the rest of its mechanics (specifically the abstraction of conflict resolution via the skill challenge mechanical framework) and they're given pause; it seems incoherent. To my group (and other groups like mine) it works just fine as we expect combat to be the primary arena of conflict resolution and, as such, expect it to have some mechanical bite to it. We have enough of a Gamist bent that mini-games are welcome as fun facilitators for transitions, assuming they're elegant and give the players functional, mechanical, narrative influence in the next scene (or a scene to come) either in its establishment (eg a player authored Kicker as in Sorcerer) or some other means (advantage, dice pool influence, fate point, etc)

 

[timASW]

I just look at it as making you heal faster, while still using your body's inherent 'healing capacity'. Maybe it's because I'm used to HarnMaster, where healing magic explicitly either speeds up healing or makes healing safer, but the process is still the same "healing". Stuff that "just fixes you" is beyond "healing magic", to me - it's in the realm of 'miracles'. Which, of course, D&D lumps in with "magic"...

the problem with that is that your body doesnt have an inherent healing capacity

Now if you were to enforce some sort of calorie count or ration system where magical healing speeds up your bodies processes but to fuel it the target has to eat a full days worth of rations for each days worth of healing the magic does and if he doesnt then the target suffers fatigue..... Now that I could see as a system where magic uses your bodies "inherent healing ability".

Healing surges and second winds on the other hand are just obnoxious gamist nonsense.

 

[Balesir]

the problem with that is that your body doesnt have an inherent healing capacity

Well, let's start with the fact that hit points aren't "meat" (because that would make no useful sense at all), but are fatigue, luck, will to go on and such like (because that's what the authors of the system, from Gary Gygax to Mike Mearls, have said they represent) to begin with...

Now if you were to enforce some sort of calorie count or ration system where magical healing speeds up your bodies processes but to fuel it the target has to eat a full days worth of rations for each days worth of healing the magic does and if he doesnt then the target suffers fatigue..... Now that I could see as a system where magic uses your bodies "inherent healing ability".

And then note that this is pretty much something that recovering capacity to recover from an extended rest can be seen to model. The fatigue, will to fight and general wellbeing are provided ultimately from the reserves generated by the eating and rest (with digestion) represented by an extended rest - and magic speeds up the conversion of those reserves into immediate vim.

Healing surges and second winds on the other hand are just obnoxious gamist nonsense.

I'm glad you're here to put us right on that. I would hate to think that we were in any danger of labouring under incorrect opinions or not adhering to your mandated orthodoxy. Heaven forbid that we might actually have opinions of our own, even if they are not as obnoxious and bigoted as the one expressed here.

 

[pemerton]

I guess it's OK to hate "gamist" (=metagame, I think) mechanics. But that would seem to mandate hating hit points as a mechanic, and using a wound system of some sort (eg Rolemaster, HARP).