D&D 5E Second Wind

[Mistwell]

You can't use second wind when you're in negative.

There are no negative hit points in this game though.

 

[Lalato]

There are no negative hit points in this game though.

That too!

 

[pemerton]

A character that was almost dead will realize later (after a short rest) that he was not so badly hurt.

Do you consider a character with 1 HP as "almost dead", if so... how does the character know that they were almost dead when they are 100% effective at 1 HP or at 100 HP? They can jump just as high, hit just as hard, etc. So... as far as the character is concerned, they were never almost dead.

As Lalato has pointed out, I think that the character who was reduced to 1 hp realised that s/he was not so badly hurt at around the same time that s/he realised that she was able to perform physical activity without impedence.

Hit point rules are not perfect, if realism was demanded all characters should be impaired once they got severely hurt.

D&D let this realism aside to favor simplicity/epicness.

<snip>

But once recovering from wounds becomes trivial all this epicness vanish, if a spear pierce someone's chest leaving him severely hurt (1hp) that fact should not be so unremarkable to the point of 8 hours later it is like nothing happened

I'm not really seeing anything here but a small issue of taste.

You like the "epicness" of someone who has had his/her chest pierced by a spear being unburdened by injury. (For me that's not so much epic as Pythonesque, but whatever floats your boat.) But you don't like the degree of unburdenedness to be such that, 8 hours later, s/he has full vigour for any future fighting.

Two pretty simple solutions present themselves: tone down your narration of injuries; or increase the rest times. But there's no call to lecture those who have a slightly different conception of "epicness" from yours as playing in "kindergarten mode".

 

[Uller]

I'm not really seeing anything here but a small issue of taste.

I agree. Disagreement over nonmagical rapid hp recovery is a proxy for hp as meat vs abstraction. The rules assume hp is an abstraction. A fighter down to 1 hp has not taken a spear through the chest. He almost did...he might be bruised battered and bloodied but his wounds are all superficial. But he is so exhausted he is essentially unable to defend himself from the next attack. A second wind or aan hour or so break can replinsh his reserves but he needs a longer rest to really recharge.

If you like hp as meat then hopefully the dmg will give you some good dials for hp recovery rates and maybe even some injury rules. If not I'm sure someone will come up with some. I think a great dial would be that you only recover some HD for a long rest. The DM can set the portion.

As far as the issue of second wind and short rest abuse goes...I had the same misgivings when I fisrt saw the fighter preview before the starter set was released. Mike Mearls addressed this by saying that they are not going to write rules to prevent people from doing boring things.

I've played a half dozen sessions since then. They probably average 4-5 combats per session and one or two rests (long or short). I definitely have not seen abuse of short rests.

It is the job of the DM to put pacing pressure on the PCs. Our last session ended with a tough fight with gargoyles. They landed several critical hits. The wizard, cleric and rogue are all down to 50% of max hp. But they ended the fight with a fireball spell. That got the attention of a nearby monster. There will be no short rest...they have a couple of rounds to cast some healing spells, drink som potions and set defenses. Then roll initiative...

 

[drjones]

Seems like what you are missing here is that 'too much healing' is meaningless. The amount of healing and hit points is only meaningful in reference to the amount of damage monsters and traps have a chance to be doing at the players level. Yes PCs have more opportunities for healing in this version (though still not a ton, in my game the players are going through the healing potions almost as soon as they find them because they are so beat up and afraid of dieing from a simple trap or a low level monster who gets a crit). But they also have more opportunities to take a significant fraction of their hit points in damage. They have been given a variety of resources, then put in circumstances that force them to use them to stay alive. That is not easy mode unless the DM does his/her job wrong and makes it easy.