D&D 4E Simple 5e Healing that reconciles pre-4e and post-4e HP styles

[Naszir]

The real question would be whether or not non-magical healing would even be worth bothering with. I get the feeling it wouldn't really. At best you're restoring a resource which will restore anyway. It might be useful to be able to do that mid-battle, but TBH that sort of non-magical healing is the most 'gamist' of all (really, try to do some 1st Aid in six seconds, really). I know it has been long accepted, but it is pretty hokey really.

Yeah, but if you are restoring a resouce that prevents you from getting wounded then it is important.

So, the problem is pretty clear, you're going to HAVE to have magical healing to go on for long. Not perhaps to the degree that it was required in previous editions, but there's little chance your warlord is replacing a cleric, you'll need one, or at the very least a supply of potions.

But the point is to have less of it.

 

[Sunseeker]

HP is perfectly fine the way it is. I see no reason to overcomplicate it with highly situational subsystems.

 

[Buugipopuu]

Good points. I think things like lava should just be instant death and not even deal damage.

Lava being instant death but many other common sense 'fatal' things not being instant death is bad design. You may as well make falling into a spiked pit instant death, or all critical hits instant death. You should need a lot better protection than a second level Resistance to Fire spell to survive immersion in lava, but there's no reason why it shouldn't do a large but possibly survivable (with lucky rolls or a serious investment in healing or fire resistance on an already tough character) amount of damage. Making near fatal hazards tends to lead to more interesting games than just having the consequences of every other mistake be "you die". Look at Magic The Gathering, most cards that cost 7 or more mana, 95% of the time, could just say "You win the game.", and the ones that don't aren't worth using, but the 5% of the time when you somehow manage to pull it back leads to the most interesting stories.

It also works both ways. If lava isn't instant death, you can use it as a hazard in boss fights without risking players killing said boss in a single hit with a repositioning move. Successfully knocking a boss into lava should drain a good chunk of its HP, but if you're at the level where greater demons and dragons start showing up, they should be able to keep going.

 

[Mokona]

The smallest change you can make to D&D hit points that will help people that "hate" warlords might look something like this:

1. Every character has HP - 1 = vitality points. Vitality equals luck and general energy level. Every character has 1 wound point. Only surgery, magic, or time can heal your wound point from zero up to one (1). Warlords can heal vitality and non-magical self-healing also heals vitality.

Or this:

2. All hit points are vitality points. When HP = 0 that is the precipice between vitality and wound points where you are dazed (only 1 action per round). Negative hit points are wound points. Once you start taking wound points you are unconscious. Wound points (-1 hit points) can only be healed by surgery, magic, or time. Warlords can heal vitality and can bring people from 0 back to 1 hit point.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I like the proposed method. I'm kind of conflicted on what to do with hp in 5E. On the one hand I really hate hp as a rule mechanic. On the other hand hp are essential to a game feeling like D&D to me. I don't hate the proposed method nearly as much as I hate standard hp, and it still feels like D&D to me, so to me it looks like a long step forward.

 

[Zustiur]

Perhaps I am missing something, but rather than seeming like it reconciles old-skool with 4e hit points and healing, this just seems like yetanother, new and slightly more complicated, version of hit points and healing.

I have to agree with you there Jester. I like where this is going - for a generic fantasy RPG, but it doesn't sound like DND to me.

Hit Points are Hit Points.

I can see an argument for using '% of targets HP' instead of 1d8+1 etc, but having multiple pools of health doesn't sit well with me.

Mokona's solution suits me much better. It's really just a different explanation of the system already in place (0E-3E)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, but if you are restoring a resouce that prevents you from getting wounded then it is important.



But the point is to have less of it.

For you. I enjoy the fact that it doesn't have to exist at all. Admittedly that is true more in terms of fluff than not, but once you enforce a type of mechanic for healing that is needed and only supplied by one class or by magic items, then you've introduced a type of dependency I don't really want to have forced on me.

 

[El Mahdi]

Lava being instant death but many other common sense 'fatal' things not being instant death is bad design.

Agreed. 100%.

Except...

You may as well make falling into a spiked pit instant death

Why...? Falling into a spiked pit isn't necessarily instant death. The save for it means that the character might have grabbed onto the lip of the pit, or was able to get their feet to land between the spikes. A low damage result from a fail could mean they were only grazed by a couple of spikes...painful but not fatal. Or the effort of twisting to avoid a fatal fall results in straining some muscles, etc.

There is common sense involved in a spike trap not being instantly fatal.

...or all critical hits instant death.

Again...Why?!? Critical Hits can be as definitive as instant death (if taken to zero HP or lower), or simply a significant but non-fatal wound.

Not all Critical Hits are Instant Death...some just leave you really messed up and you're never the same again...but not necessarily unable to continue a fight.


Now, getting caught in a trap that involves a 2,000 lb. block of granite dropped on top of you in a pit, and surviving...


Or falling off a 200' cliff, and surviving...



That's Bad Design.

You should need a lot better protection than a second level Resistance to Fire spell to survive immersion in lava, but there's no reason why it shouldn't do a large but possibly survivable (with lucky rolls or a serious investment in healing or fire resistance on an already tough character) amount of damage. Making near fatal hazards tends to lead to more interesting games than just having the consequences of every other mistake be "you die". Look at Magic The Gathering, most cards that cost 7 or more mana, 95% of the time, could just say "You win the game.", and the ones that don't aren't worth using, but the 5% of the time when you somehow manage to pull it back leads to the most interesting stories.

It also works both ways. If lava isn't instant death, you can use it as a hazard in boss fights without risking players killing said boss in a single hit with a repositioning move. Successfully knocking a boss into lava should drain a good chunk of its HP, but if you're at the level where greater demons and dragons start showing up, they should be able to keep going.

I agree that being able to survive a fall into lava should take much more than a low level spell. But how is it common sense if one fails their save, falls into lava, and then simply crawls out and continues fighting (excepting some significant protection against it)?

Falling into lava has only one of two possible outcomes: Death or Massive Maiming and Completely-Debilitating Injury. Both of which leaves a character/monster/NPC unable to continue any action...especially fighting.

I could see a rationale for making lava reduce a victim immediately to 0 HP without immediate death. But simply losing some Hit Points (or a lot of Hit Points), then climbing out of the lava and continuing to fight... That doesn't just stretch common sense, it utterly destroys it.

So...

Falling in Lava = Instant Death or this...

I think I might actually prefer Instant Death...

 

[Buugipopuu]

Why...? Falling into a spiked pit isn't necessarily instant death. The save for it means that the character might have grabbed onto the lip of the pit, or was able to get their feet to land between the spikes. A low damage result from a fail could mean they were only grazed by a couple of spikes...painful but not fatal. Or the effort of twisting to avoid a fatal fall results in straining some muscles, etc.

There is common sense involved in a spike trap not being instantly fatal.

A well-designed pit trap (still costing less than a single mid-level magic item) will have spikes taller than a Medium creature and spaced closer than the average width of such a creature's limbs. And be a hundred feet deep. You're not getting out of that with luck, guts and good reflexes (unless you're of the opinion that Evasion works with extradimensional spaces). If having all your internal organs impaled with spikes isn't immediately fatal, falling into lava shouldn't be either. The alternative is to say that HP means your flesh is superhumanly tough, and even falling onto spikes from a hundred feet isn't enough force to drive said spikes into any vital organs, which also works for lava. Or that all spiked pit trap designers in dungeons guarding powerful treasures are retards and don't put in spiked pits capable of killing the sorts of people that would attempt to get said treasure, even though it's a tiny fraction of the dungeon's total budget to do so.

Again...Why?!? Critical Hits can be as definitive as instant death (if taken to zero HP or lower), or simply a significant but non-fatal wound.

Not all Critical Hits are Instant Death...some just leave you really messed up and you're never the same again...but not necessarily unable to continue a fight.

A coup-de-grace is only an automatic critical hit, which is a trained warrior armed with a lethal weapon, against a helpless opponent, lining up a shot for six seconds. It's bound to result in decapitation or otherwise massively fatal injury. Again, it's not something you can shrug off with guts, luck, or reflexes (because you're helpless). Either hit points represent actual physical toughness, and characters can survive things like being dropped into lava or being stabbed in the brain with a boar spear, or they're not, and any situation where a character can't avoid an obviously lethal hazard should be instant death.

Or falling off a 200' cliff, and surviving...

That's actually been done in real life, sure it's highly unlikely, but rolling 20 1s on 20d6 is highly unlikely, so that's not a problem.

I agree that being able to survive a fall into lava should take much more than a low level spell. But how is it common sense if one fails their save, falls into lava, and then simply crawls out and continues fighting (excepting some significant protection against it)?

Falling into lava has only one of two possible outcomes: Death or Massive Maiming and Completely-Debilitating Injury. Both of which leaves a character/monster/NPC unable to continue any action...especially fighting.

I could see a rationale for making lava reduce a victim immediately to 0 HP without immediate death. But simply losing some Hit Points (or a lot of Hit Points), then climbing out of the lava and continuing to fight... That doesn't just stretch common sense, it utterly destroys it.

If you're high enough level to tank the damage caused by lava, you're also at the level where supposedly nonmagical humans are capable of contributing in a fight where Wizards are calling down lightning bolts and meteors on a routine basis, and you can probably challenge a Giant Squid to a wrestling match and win (if you're built for grappling). High level D&D characters are iron age superheroes, and if you want them beating up dragons and demons that out mass them by orders of magnitude without relying on layer upon layer of magical force fields, they're going to have to have superhero-level feats of durability.

If anything, it's even less plausible to suggest that normal humans who just happen to have a lot of skill go regularly go into fights with giant monsters and come out with just a few scratches without ascribing some level of superhuman damage resistance to them. Well, you could make lava as instant death, but also eliminate Huge and larger monsters (since that's at the level where one good hit should turn a normal perfectly healthy human into a pile of broken bones and organs in a pool of gore).

So...

Falling in Lava = Instant Death or this...

<Snip Image>

I think I might actually prefer Instant Death...

A Cure Critical Wounds or two and he'll be good as new.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yup, totally agree. Falling in a pool of lava and getting out is no more unrealistic than fighting a 40' long 8 ton T-Rex and having even the slightest chance of slowing the thing down, much less winning such a melee. Giant monsters would be 100's of times stronger than any human. No armor would make any difference, no parry would be effective, and nothing you could do would hold it back if it was determined to run over you. Every one if its attacks would be almost surely lethal. High level PCs are not "ordinary mortals" in ANY sense of the word and it is just futile to talk about what is 'realistic' for them to do or survive.

Rule of Cool is the only thing that matters. Is it COOL for the fighter to make it out of the lava alive (albeit with massive damage, sure) or not? I think it would generally be cool for that to be a possibility, just like surviving a 200' fall is a possibility.