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

[Abraxas]

Also, just curious, it seems that a lot of people have a problem with healing surges in combat making hit points bounce up & down.

Prior to 4E, or with Pathfinder, did healing just not happen in combat in your games? Was it almost always done post combat with wands, scrolls & potions, plus whatever else the cleric could add?

I've been playing D&D since the late 70s and I've always seen healing go on within combat - be it the cleric casting Cure Light Wounds, somebody pulling out a Potion of Healing & chugging it or the paladin laying his hands on somebody.

It has been my experience that there was not a lot of healing in combat - it was always better to put the opponents down and then patch up afterward. At higher levels we saw more in combat healing, but that was because the damage the bad guys could deal to us was high enough that you couldn't be at 25% of your HP and survive.

In 4E most of the healing surge usage was triggered usage during combats - especially after the monster damage fix which really trashed our non optimized characters. Half of the PCs took a multiclass feat that gave them the ability to trigger healing surges and we changed the rule so that instead of it being once per day it was a number of times per day = to the number of times the power would normally be able to be used per encounter.

 

[Traken]

I'll admit that I can't understand some of the complaints about healing surges that you bring up...

First, healing surges do provide a lasting effect of combat, so I can't see how they reduce the lasting effect of combat. Healing surges remove HP damage, but they themselves serve as an ultimate cap on how much damage the party can take, and thus serve as an absolute measure of attrition that works regardless of class or equipment. They get rid of HP damage, but HP damage was never the real basis of attrition in D&D anyways.

Second, why wouldn't a character "feel it" after spending healing surges? If anything, a character who is down on healing surges is feeling it by definition. It means having been hurt and being down on resources, with bruises and barely-closed wounds. If having low on healing surges (or being down on daily powers, for that matter) doesn't mean that the character is feeling tired or sore, then I don't think any mechanic can provide that feel.

(This thread has really taken off...)

To me and my group, having your healing surges decrease means just about nothing as long as you are at full health and have no status effects. Yes, it is a resource that gets depleted more after difficult fights but that has (to us) a different meaning that having low HP or even having a -1 to to attack from a status effect.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Kill Healing Surges dead.

Seal them into a 50 gallon drum filled with fresh concrete, then tip the barrel into the Thames.

The Auld Grump

 

[El Mahdi]

Kill Healing Surges dead.

Seal them into a 50 gallon drum filled with fresh concrete, then tip the barrel into the Thames.

The Auld Grump

Don't sugar coat it...what do you really feel?



(LOL! I loved the imagery of that...)

 

[Siberys]

I want characters to have two pools of hit points-- not necessarily equal, but not necessarily unequal-- that are depleted simultaneously in combat. Losing all of their hit points from either pool is potentially fatal, but one pool refreshes after every encounter and the other pool relies on natural and magical healing.

That... is almost exactly what healing surges are.

This conversation is confusing me. Half the people here seem to me to be saying "I don't want healing surges, but I want a setup that is mechanically nearly identical."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

(This thread has really taken off...)

To me and my group, having your healing surges decrease means just about nothing as long as you are at full health and have no status effects. Yes, it is a resource that gets depleted more after difficult fights but that has (to us) a different meaning that having low HP or even having a -1 to to attack from a status effect.

I've found rather the opposite to be true with my groups. They obviously worry about being down on hit points during a fight, but it is the surges they REALLY pay attention to. They get a LOT more cautious when they're sitting on 1 or zero surges and can't rest yet. I actually saw a rogue use Full Defense once! lol.

I could see a few ways to tweak the whole system though that would be fun and interesting. Have non-magical healing be surge based, so you can Second Wind or the Warlord can pep you up etc at the cost of a surge. Then have purely magical healing that is surgeless. Healing potions could fall under that, if they're pretty rare (though honestly I think they worked fine as-is really). Clerics could still do surge 'inspiration' too of course. Actually that function could easily be something you add in a Theme, so the Warlord is a fighter with the Inspiring Leader/Noble/whatever theme and a cleric could have those themes too, which would mesh well with their magical healing.

I'd just like to see magical healing not be a dime-a-dozen thing so it is an expected part of the game, and you could certainly have far less numbers of surges, 2-3 per character would be fine really with the right tweaking of numbers. Now you can have slower recovery of hit points (nominally, nobody is going to bother to sit around and wait to heal in reality any more than they ever did in AD&D).

I could care less what the mechanics are called.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

That... is almost exactly what healing surges are.

No, it certainly isn't. It isn't even closely related. Healing surges are a limited resource that is depleted by all in-combat and out-of-combat healing. I'm talking about one damage track with unlimited out-of-combat healing, that represents endurance and heroism, and one damage track that uses limited natural and magical healing only, representing real injuries. Healing surges are an interesting mechanic, and I'm not saying I don't like them... but I can't figure out what they're supposed to represent, and they mean that an injured character can only remain injured for a single day. It feels weird.

 

[Odhanan]

As an option amongst others to manage the lethality of the game at your table?
Sure. Healing surges can be one of those tools.

As the baseline of the game? No.

 

[SteveC]

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?

For my two cents worth, they were one of the best balancing daily resources that have been invented, and allow the maximum flexibility in play style. Each of the alternatives above REQUIRES a series of assumptions about how a group or a campaign are going to work that may not apply to every game. If you need a cleric for your game, that's a big assumption, and one that 4E did away with. To my mind, not having someone have to play the cleric is a good idea.

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...

 

[Siberys]

No, it certainly isn't. It isn't even closely related. Healing surges are a limited resource that is depleted by all in-combat and out-of-combat healing. I'm talking about one damage track with unlimited out-of-combat healing, that represents endurance and heroism, and one damage track that uses limited natural and magical healing only, representing real injuries. Healing surges are an interesting mechanic, and I'm not saying I don't like them... but I can't figure out what they're supposed to represent, and they mean that an injured character can only remain injured for a single day. It feels weird.

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. 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.

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