D&D 5E Should 5E have Healing Surges?

[Destil]

Healing surges are the single best character-based mechanic in 4E. They fix nearly every problem with healing/hit points in earlier editions. And every problem I've seen people claim they introduce is easy to fix with some optional rules.

I'm fine with them not being the default, but the rules should fully support them as an option out of the gate.

 

[Mircoles]

Anything that will help my character survive is most definitely a good thing.

 

[JamesonCourage]

But the end result there is about the same; in 4e, HP would be the unlimited track and HSs the limited.

From where I'm standing, no, it's not. Think of two pools: HP (real wounds, takes days to heal), and THP (stamina, luck, divine intervention, fate, skill, or however else you want to flavor it, takes minutes to heal). I have 20 HP. I have 20 THP. I take 14 damage in the first fight. All THP. It heals afterwards. All of it. With healing surges, I'm down some HP (the limited resource) because it drains my healing surges to restore my THP (unlimited resource). In this system, I'm not down anything. The THP heals completely, and I'm fine. Ready to go, full stamina, heroic vigor, health, and all.

If I only ever take THP damage, I can go on forever. With healing surges, taking the equivalent of THP damage slowly drains my HP. This places a hard cap on damage that can be taken, or be healed. This is good for a certain type of pacing, but it is definitely not the same thing as what's being proposed.

Like I said, what you're describing is, mechanically, Healing Surges in a nutshell.

I'm going to have to disagree. I've played the system with HP and THP for quite some time. It's the basic hit point system for my RPG, which I run for about 9-16 hours per week. From experience, it's very, very different from healing surges. The HP and THP system lets you continue on indefinitely if you avoid real wounds. With healing surges, taking "fake wounds" brings your "real wounds" down (it drains your healing surges to refill your hit points). They are not the same. Not even in a nutshell.

Another thing I'm confused about (not directed at you, Viktyr Korimir) is the assumption that HSs make fights less deadly. They're a hard cap on healing - they make fights more deadly! I mean, I could see an argument that they make individual fights less deadly, but then there's resourceless healing like CLW to take into account, so on that front it's more of a wash than anything. And then for long-term? HSs are definitely more deadly, because of the dearth of surgeless healing.

They definitely bring a certain type of danger to the game, yes. Hard capping healing definitely allows for certain dangerous scenarios that may not exist without it. I think people are referencing characters with 10+ healing surges, effectively making their HP about 250% higher than what it seems like it is on the sheet. However, those healing surges have to be activated somehow, so it may not be as straightforward as it looks at first glance.

At any rate, I just thought I'd pipe in on the difference between the two pools, since it's something I play with every single week (sometimes twice, like these past few weeks). Hope that clears it up somewhat from where I'm standing, and if I'm missing something, feel free to correct me. As the game designer for my group, I'm always open to learning something about other games that might spark some ideas for my game. As always, play what you like

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

If they would be removed, replace them with what? Spell slots? Healing potions? Healbot Cleric? Wands of Lesser Vigor? Weeks of natural healing between combats?

Well, for my proposal, I'd want all of the leader classes to retain their full ability to heal the "temporary" damage without burning daily resources and for mundane healing to be buffed considerably. (I've got some ideas to that end.) Then magical healing-- which every non-Martial power source should have access to-- should be able to heal permanent damage using daily resources.

To my mind, not having someone have to play the cleric is a good idea.

I would agree with this, to an extent. More important than making it so the party doesn't need a healer, though, is making it so that the healer doesn't have to be a Cleric.

I see a lot of "videogamey" for surges, and I'm still asking for a game that uses them as a mechanic. I think I'd like to play that game. Sadly, no luck...

I don't consider it "videogamey" at all. It just strikes me as more gamist than I like, since I have a hard time picturing what it represents in simulationist or narrative terms.

But the end result there is about the same; in 4e, HP would be the unlimited track and HSs the limited. In either set up, the one you espouse or otherwise, if you run out of the limited track, the day is over.

So far, so good.

HSs aren't (usually) directly drained, but then when the fight is over and you spend HSs to heal up, they might as well have been. Healing surges represent exactly that HP track representing real injuries - that's why life drain effects and diseases all drain HSs.

And we get to the heart of my complaints:

1) Healing surges are limited per day, so you have an effective encounter limit per day. In addition, magical healing is also limited by healing surges.

2) Any serious injury, represented by the loss of healing surges, is gone after a good night's sleep.

In my opinion, this contributes both to an unwanted limit on the adventuring day-- something which every version of D&D has in some form-- and an unwanted limit on magical healing, which I think should be limited by the caster's magical ability rather than the recipient's endurance. I think healing surges are an improvement over the previous editions' handling of injury and healing, but they "improved" it too far and introduced other problems.

Another thing I'm confused about (not directed at you, Viktyr Korimir) is the assumption that HSs make fights less deadly. They're a hard cap on healing - they make fights more deadly! I mean, I could see an argument that they make individual fights less deadly, but then there's resourceless healing like CLW to take into account, so on that front it's more of a wash than anything. And then for long-term? HSs are definitely more deadly, because of the dearth of surgeless healing.

See, now, that's the opposite of what I want. I want each individual encounter to be riskier and deadlier, with less resource management-- less vulnerability to wars of attrition.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I voted yes... but I mean: not expicitely.

But in order to make hitpoints plausible, healing spells need to do parts of the full hp, not a given amount.

cure minor wounds needs to be as effective on a barbarian as on a wizard, which is not the case pre 4e.
So I could easily see:

Cure minor wounds: heal damage equal to quarter of your total hp.
Cure serious wounds: heal damage equal to half hp
Cure critical wounds: heal damage equal to 3/4 hp
And Heal: oyu know what it does.

Or:
Cure light wounds:
cure 2hp per 10hp of the targets maximum hp
(or 2tenth of the targets max hp)
etc...

Or:
Cure light wounds: Heal HP equal to 1HD (roll 1d10)
etc.

This was my houserule for 3.x

You can list those values somewhere on the character sheet.

 

[Siberys]

2) Any serious injury, represented by the loss of healing surges, is gone after a good night's sleep.

Not quite true; if you wanted to represent a severe injury, a disease track that drained surges would be a good way to represent it. Of course, that requires a bit more work on the DM end, so point taken.

See, now, that's the opposite of what I want. I want each individual encounter to be riskier and deadlier, with less resource management-- less vulnerability to wars of attrition.

Fair enough. I'm still not sure it actually makes each encounter easier, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[MooMan68]

I'm more interested in the question of how do you make Healing Surges optional and still have the game be balanced.

I'll be honest, I've never had a problem with the 3e healing system. I think mostly because I just never let the players craft magic items, so there was no ubiquitous wand of cure light wounds or backpacks full of healing potions.

If it was in the core, that would probably be a deal breaker for me. Even if I could find a way to stomach it, the rest of the players in my group would never tolerate it. It will be hard enough to convince them to try 5e in the first place. Upon hearing of 5e, most of them vowed never to touch it they felt so badly burned by 4e.

I'd like to see the system be set up so that no healing was necessary or assumed in combat.

To make it optional, you need to find a way to balance the addition.
One way is to let the monsters use it too -- which on one hand seems only fair, but on the other would lead to needlessly extended fights.

Another is to just say "If you add this system, then you need to make all encounters +2 CR (Or whatever)". Would that be sufficient?

 

[BobTheNob]

I actually think they were good in so far as the modelled durability but as an "over the day" concept rather than "all in one fight". That said, They are kinda weird. I am a fence sitter on whether they stay or go.

There are a couple of things I MUST insist on
1) Some way of healing after a fight without draining cleric spells (which was the thing which made no-one every want to play the cleric). Food, feats, whatever, just dont take away player B's stick because player A got really injured
2) Some way for player to SELF heal during the fight. Like second wind. Doesnt need to be much, but properly balanced this will stop the "healer is mandatory" aspect

Lets just not let the cleric (HEALING cleric...not the 3.0.35 battle cleric, that was just a disaster!) become the "which sucker is going to play" class.

I just want the cleric to be played not because "we must have a healer", but because people like the class. I LOVED my 2e cleric (original darksun halflig...still my favorite RPG character EVER) and would love to be able to play him without being obligated to be a healer.

 

[elemek]

Suppose hit points were divided into intervals of hp equal to some amount equivalent to the hp value of one healing surge, and unlimited healing effects such as wands and potions could not take your health above that interval. The intervals could be called wound levels, although they wouldn't correspond to any action penalties.

For instance, if your wound levels were 20 hp each, and you had four levels, you'd have 80 hp. If you took 25 points of damage, you couldn't normally be healed above 60 hp. If a big attack dropped you to 12 hp, you could be healed up to 20. Once you took a full day's rest, you'd be able to fill back up to 80.


As I understand healing surges, this is mechanically similar, but just puts the health from all your surges on one track. I think it's less elegant, and greatly inflates health totals, but it might look more natural to some people, since your health would be gradually depleted throughout the adventuring day.

 

[SteveC]

So my gaming group was talking about this issue, and we expect that it will not have the surges. The thought was that the surges system is an example of putting too much of the rules system out in the open for people to see, and also simplifying it to a large extent.

D&D has always had healing surges, but they weren't tracked as a simple resource out in the open for everyone to see. A 4E character knows how much healing they have to work with, and how many encounters they can go through in most cases. I play a rogue in 4E LFR, and I have 7 surges. As a result, I know very directly how I have to approach the adventuring day, and how much healing I can expect to be able to use.

In every other edition, that same value exists, and it should (hopefully) be talked about by the designers when they put together the spell system. The expectation of how many healing resources characters will have available to them can vary tremendously by class composition and party resources, but it's a lot harder to form a baseline for how much healing a group will have. That's extremely important for a designer when they put together an adventure, and even moreso for a DM who has to balance that adventure for their group.

What we're likely to get back to is a situation where tracking those resources is more difficult, and requires a higher level of system mastery. What do I mean by that?

Well, in 3X I played in a multi-year campaign as a cleric, so I was put in charge of the party's healing resources. It started out as buying wands of cure light wounds, but when the vigor spell came out, I immediately adapted to it. I kept track of the cost in GP per HP healed, and managed how many wands we'd need for the adventure. We had a "group share" for treasure that I had to keep track of and work with. I'd balance that "out of combat" healing with what we'd need in emergency situations, and as combat healing. I had a collection of interrupt spells when that option came out, so that characters who were taken down out of turn could get healed. I had to manage the DPR that the GM seemed to be throwing at us in a way to maximize the healing economy.

The funniest thing is that the anti healing surge crowd is upset at how everything resets after a night's rest. For a well-planned group (and ours was pretty well-planned) would simply mark of remaining spells, make healing checks, and then mark of the charges on the wands, so we'd ALWAYS be fully healed each morning.

I think that 4E would have had a lot better reception if they'd simply added a tax for wands/healing herbs/potions that would have to be paid after each extended rest and then handwaved the results. But that's over with now, I suppose.

But make no mistake: there will be a form of healing surges in 5E, they're just likely to be hidden behind the spell and magic item system, and baked into the game's economy. I expect that a lot of the controversial aspects of the game will be handled that way: if we're lucky, the designers will put considerable thought into these "behind the curtain" decisions, and we'll never be the wiser. If not, it will be on the players to develop system mastery to the point where they can reverse engineer what the right numbers are.