D&D 5E Slow Healing Tweak

[Lidgar]

Thinking of using a slow healing variant for running Goodman Games 5E conversion of ToEE. See any issues with the following? In short, can spend up to half your HD total on a short rest and up to your HD total on a long rest, with recovering half you HD total at the end of the long rest. Thanks!

Short Rest
A Short Rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.
A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a Short Rest, up to half of the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains Hit Points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. A character regains some spent Hit Dice upon finishing a Long Rest, as explained below.

Long Rest
A Long Rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, Fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a Long Rest, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains Hit Points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, they can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a Long Rest.
A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

 

[Stalker0]

So let’s summarize this to the actual changes (I think your op is a bit wordy for a lot of people)

• Short rest is capped at half your max hitdice spent
• Long rest does not recover hit points automatically, you must spend hit dice. Recover only half hit dice

The short rest change doesn’t do too much. I rarely need more than half my hit dice on a single rest, and when I do, there is the option of short resting for two hours….which if you can do 1 hour you often can do two.

The long rest one…this depends on the timing. Does the character heal first or regain hit dice first (or can choose the order?).

if it’s the former, that means you will have scenarios where a player is out of hit dice from short rests…and will not be able to heal at all from the long rest. This means they will need to tack on 1 more hour for a short rest to use those hitdice for healing.

ultimately like most healing variants it depends on your campaign. This model doesn’t change healing that much, just requires an extra hour here or tbere. But it does change the amount of “gas” players have…as a strong adventuring day may leave them with little healing the next day and force extended rests. That’s a perfectly fine model.

minor nitpick add a “minimum 1 hit die” to your short rest, unless you intended that 1st level characters can’t heal on a short rest (which does have interesting implications)

 

[Lidgar]

Thanks for the feedback, those are some good points.

Regarding long rest, yes, the HD recovery comes at the end of the rest. But I see your point that this can really limit the healing value of a long rest (still needed for spell recovery and other skills/magic items).

Another option would be that you recover half you hit points after a long rest (as well as up to half your HD total in any spent HD). Any thoughts on that approach?

 

[OptionalRule]

I like variations like this to change things up for mini-games. I just posted a gritty rules for slower healing myself a few days ago.

The big problem, that I'll address with a post tomorrow, is there are mechanisms in the system the cancel all of this out. In 3rd edition and earlier you always had some healing class in the party who had to hold onto all their spell slots for healing. This means they basically sit encounters out and it was rough for those players. Then they blow all the remaining slots at night and heal everyone up. Having the equivalent effect of the long rest we have in 5e. In that way Long Rest in 5e is kind of genius. I like a grittier system to change things up once in awhile, but It's hard to have one without addressing this. Hopefully the post I'll make tomorrow will address my version of that.

 

[Lidgar]

I like variations like this to change things up for mini-games. I just posted a gritty rules for slower healing myself a few days ago.

The big problem, that I'll address with a post tomorrow, is there are mechanisms in the system the cancel all of this out. In 3rd edition and earlier you always had some healing class in the party who had to hold onto all their spell slots for healing. This means they basically sit encounters out and it was rough for those players. Then they blow all the remaining slots at night and heal everyone up. Having the equivalent effect of the long rest we have in 5e. In that way Long Rest in 5e is kind of genius. I like a grittier system to change things up once in awhile, but It's hard to have one without addressing this. Hopefully the post I'll make tomorrow will address my version of that.

I was just reading your post - and agree. Given the old school nature of ToEE, was looking for something our very experienced group of players will appreciate (they all went through the original module decades ago). I think we all feel the "insta-full-heal" after 8 hours is too generous, and somewhat detracts from immersion.

 

[OptionalRule]

I was just reading your post - and agree. Given the old school nature of ToEE, was looking for something our very experienced group of players will appreciate (they all went through the original module decades ago). I think we all feel the "insta-full-heal" after 8 hours is too generous, and somewhat detracts from immersion.

In my current campaign, our first big epic fight ended with the party winning by a thread. There was a good amount of cognitive disconnect after the character who was mauled by a tiger and down 2 failed death saves slept and was like "Okay, you guys ready, lets go!"

Again, this is just a once in awhile change of pace when I feel like a survival type game with lots of details, but it's good to have something to scratch that itch now and again.

 

[OptionalRule]

For what it's worth, I wanted to add as well. I think a different system than any around is likely better for campaigns and easier to manage over time. That is a 'wound' system the reduces max hit points slightly in normal combat, more so on crits or when making death saves. This leaves healing and HP as it is but works on an attrition system to heal the wounds separately. I'll post something like that as an alterative to consider in a couple of weeks.

 

[Lidgar]

For what it's worth, I wanted to add as well. I think a different system than any around is likely better for campaigns and easier to manage over time. That is a 'wound' system the reduces max hit points slightly in normal combat, more so on crits or when making death saves. This leaves healing and HP as it is but works on an attrition system to heal the wounds separately. I'll post something like that as an alterative to consider in a couple of weeks.

I’d be interested in seeing that, but also want to steer clear of anything too fiddly. We are planning our first session next month and plan to use the “heal up to half your hp total per long rest” a go. Will report back here.

 

[OptionalRule]

I’d be interested in seeing that, but also want to steer clear of anything too fiddly. We are planning our first session next month and plan to use the “heal up to half your hp total per long rest” a go. Will report back here.

I'm posting up part 2 of the very fiddly gritty system tomorrow and will post an alternative wound system in a few week. The main barrier for me about the heal to half system is that it just forces healers to blow all their spell slots and we're back to heal-bot.

 

[OptionalRule]

I’d be interested in seeing that, but also want to steer clear of anything too fiddly. We are planning our first session next month and plan to use the “heal up to half your hp total per long rest” a go. Will report back here.

I'll post a thread on this but wanted to link it here to since you asked. Gritty Healing Part 2: Spells went up today that talks about the problem of healing skipping past any longer healing rules. As I said, I'll post a system about limiting max hp instead of managing HD this will mesh with in a few weeks (I expect that will be simpler and more accessible but I have some detail I want to work out)