D&D 5E Should the Fighter's "Second Wind" ability grant temporary HP instead of regular HP?

[JRRNeiklot]

In terms of healing, new school (non-magical healing) is several orders of magnitude larger than old school (no non-magical healing). Per actual data. Not people whining on internet boards. Funny how data points out inconvenient truths.

You keep saying that, but I have yet to see any of this data you are talking about.

 

[BryonD]

What version of DnD ever supported hp as meat? AdnD specifically doesn't. It's right there in the DMG. Hp are not meat.

3e allows you to go from six seconds from death to fully healed in a day or two depending on class or level.

No version of DnD has ever expressly supported long term injury. I mean in terms of more than a month.

So what support in the rules in any edition have you ever had?

Clearly we should go back to the 3E version of healing because the people who like it, like it and the people who prefer 4E keep saying that there is no difference.

And, of course, the HP = Meat thing is a misrepresentation.
HP debates in the 1E days were not that much different than those today. There were those who would describe it pretty much as meat. But even in the days when surges and SW were near heard of, there was a overwhelming agreement that it was a blend. (I suppose at the time I may have just been lucky to be in group of more thoughtful gamers here in pre-internet Atlanta)

There was always an element of physical healing running in the mix of HP recovery. No one was ever interested in "a month" of healing. But the balance of physical and abstract harm was good and the balance of "healing" and heroically bouncing back was good. 4E changes that with a move to everything is abstract and any injury will vanish quickly.
There is NOTHING wrong with thinking this is the BEST change to ever come to D&D. Obviously a lot of people love it.
But it is closed minded and non-constructive to reject the idea that disliking this change is also reasonable. And it is also non-constructive to try to force overly simplified misrepresentations on the preference.

 

[Thaumaturge]

I'm not sure I understand. If one is violently opposed to Second Wind, why does one want a replacement for it? Doesn't one just want it to go away instead?

"Fighters at my table don't get Second Wind."

Maybe there's "no replacement" because "no" is the replacement.

Thaumaturge, the Thaumaturgist.

 

[BryonD]

As someone who was not at all satisfied with 4E, but is looking forward to 5E, it is interesting to see the exact same fallacies in the assurance of success.
WotC knows what they are doing.
Ignore the talk because of the silent majority.
Don't judge it until it is released
They did their research, they know better than the unhappy fans.
D&D is D&D, it will be fine. Everyone will join in in time.

There are more alternatives now than there were when 4E came out. And the mystique of D&D as the once and forever king of gaming is already gone.

5E (and WotC) needs as many fans as they can get.
It can fail.
It WILL be a massive thing on Day 1. (Remember all the NYT bestseller talk?)
That won't matter in the long run.
Will it have a large enough tent? Will it grow or will burn-out and attraction to alternatives outpace new players?

If you love what you are seeing in 5E then it is in YOUR INTEREST to promote the game and support it being the game of choice for as many players as possible.

 

[BryonD]

I'm not sure I understand. If one is violently opposed to Second Wind, why does one want a replacement for it? Doesn't one just want it to go away instead?

"Fighters at my table don't get Second Wind."

Maybe there's "no replacement" because "no" is the replacement.

Thaumaturge.

For me, this works. Frankly, just declaring SW = TEMP HP works. That plus massive reduction in HD recovery.
The house rule here is easy. And is no bigger deal than changes I've made in any other game (including PF).

This is a non-issue. (Unless something about the mechanics turns out to simply make this unsatisfactory. Keep in mind there are other great options and 5E MUST live up to them)


What is an issue to me is that WotC clearly stated that they were going to be aggressive in supporting every prior play style. If the quotes are accurate that there will be no official support for alternative to SW, then that puts a lie to that statement. This is among the more divisive changes in the history of the game. There is no way you can ignore it and be taken seriously in claims of inclusiveness. (Again, still holding out that there is some bad translation in this story).

But if they aren't true to this, that is a bad sign for the fundamental big tent approach.
Obviously it is irrelevant to those who love it as is. I respect that. Enjoy your game.
But it is important to the claim of inclusiveness and, I believe, important to 5E's chances of long term success through having *enough* fans.

 

[Thaumaturge]

What is an issue to me is that WotC clearly stated that they were going to be aggressive in supporting every prior play style. If the quotes are accurate that there will be no official support for alternative to SW, then that puts a lie to that statement. This is among the more divisive changes in the history of the game. There is no way you can ignore it and be taken seriously in claims of inclusiveness. (Again, still holding out that there is some bad translation in this story).

I agree. They've said there will be information on how to duplicate each edition's feel with these rules. Rules for that need to be in the books, for sure. If they aren't, there is definitely a problem. I just think that if I were setting about replicating the feel of 2e, I'd scrap Second Wind. So there would be no replacement. I can't even think of a mechanic from 2e that would be an appropriate replacement for Second Wind. A dead level seems like the best.

But if they aren't true to this, that is a bad sign for the fundamental big tent approach.
Obviously it is irrelevant to those who love it as is. I respect that. Enjoy your game.
But it is important to the claim of inclusiveness and, I believe, important to 5E's chances of long term success through having *enough* fans.

And, yes, WotC should understand playstyle and healing are divisive issues and account for that. And I absolutely want people to get what they want out of the edition. I hope we all do. I know some people feel left out right now. I hope very few of us feel left out once the game is released.

Thaumaturge, the Thaumaturgist.

 

[Uchawi]

Clearly we should go back to the 3E version of healing because the people who like it, like it and the people who prefer 4E keep saying that there is no difference.

And, of course, the HP = Meat thing is a misrepresentation.
HP debates in the 1E days were not that much different than those today. There were those who would describe it pretty much as meat. But even in the days when surges and SW were near heard of, there was a overwhelming agreement that it was a blend. (I suppose at the time I may have just been lucky to be in group of more thoughtful gamers here in pre-internet Atlanta)

There was always an element of physical healing running in the mix of HP recovery. No one was ever interested in "a month" of healing. But the balance of physical and abstract harm was good and the balance of "healing" and heroically bouncing back was good. 4E changes that with a move to everything is abstract and any injury will vanish quickly.
There is NOTHING wrong with thinking this is the BEST change to ever come to D&D. Obviously a lot of people love it.
But it is closed minded and non-constructive to reject the idea that disliking this change is also reasonable. And it is also non-constructive to try to force overly simplified misrepresentations on the preference.

My biggest hope for 5E was creating a set of rules that could create a bridge from earlier edition healing to the most current. But that would need to account for all the abilities that offered some type of healing so you could change or swap out options to get the feel you wanted. The same could be stated for different type of saving throw schemes from static 1E tables all the way to 4E NADs. I wanted that to be the underlying theme of anything they implemented to at least attempt to provide as many options as possible.

 

[RotGrub]

Publicly, there's at least one livestream where they talk about playtesters liking actual healing over temp HP far more w/r/t Second Wind; might be the same video that some folks are freaking out about. Alas, can't find it off the top of my head.

On a more basic note; ccooke's post pretty much nails it on the head; considering they had it originally as temp HP, logic would indicate that they got enough reaction from folks wanting it to be actual HP that they switched it.

Since you haven't provided any data on this you're obviously just speculating.

It could also be the case that it was something the design team really liked and just pushed it through. I'm not convinced that this feature was testing well enough during the public playtest at all. It appeared in the sept 2013 playtest package (towards the end) and then it was replaced by a temp hit point mechanic. The designers just replaced it with something worse. It's just like the crapy poll questions in this thread, it's rather useless.

Mearls could be talking about internal playtesting, but we don't have visibility into that data at all.

 

[RotGrub]

What version of DnD ever supported hp as meat? AdnD specifically doesn't. It's right there in the DMG. Hp are not meat.

3e allows you to go from six seconds from death to fully healed in a day or two depending on class or level.

No version of DnD has ever expressly supported long term injury. I mean in terms of more than a month.

So what support in the rules in any edition have you ever had?

Completely false. You can find long term injury all over 2e.

 

[Cybit]

Aight, let's take this one at a time

1) EDIT: Confirmed in a post below by Claude, thank ya! (https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/482244757180014593)

2) There are two sets of data; the public playtest data (which contained second wind as temp HP originally) and the closed playtest data. In the final public playtest it was sent out as Temp HP; it has since been at least changed for the Starter Set version to normal HP. WotC has said repeatedly that most of the changes late in the game made have been done so when it is overwhelming feedback leaning towards making that change, and that they've been surprised repeatedly by some of the results.

In the livestream itself done about a week ago (http://www.twitch.tv/wotc_dnd/c/4523741), around the 47 minute mark, they talk about how it was going to be temp HP, but playtesters found the real HP version very popular, something that surprised them (as they said, these differences between what they thought people would like and what people ended up liking happened somewhat frequently). So the developers of the game with the playtest data have said that the real HP version was popular enough to override their initial idea of making it temp HP. Unless you assume WotC is flat out lying; that's a fairly straight forward repudiation of the idea that "lots" of people are outraged against SW being real HP.

That said, I think that by the third story release you will probably see some pretty gritty versions of characters to play as; I would expect either a temp HP version or as a reaction to being hit by an attack DR version by then. I was told by a friend that one of the developers is running a Dragonlance game in 5E and that it had pretty significant differences from base 5E; but I haven't seen that one directly yet.

Just my two cents.