D&D 5E So 5th edition is coming soon

[KarinsDad]

Unless, of course, you needed in-combat healing.

Agreed.

In combat healing was definitely the purview of the Leader spell casters since activating non-use activated items like drinking a potion or reading a scroll required a Standard Action (and few non-Leader players were willing to do that often).

The main difference in 4E is that a party of non-Leaders is probably limited to 3 or 4 encounters per day max whereas in 3.5, that could be extended with more serious out of combat wand healing (the party still needed someone who could activate the wand). It did use up wands at a fairly high rate though.

To me, the 3E wand healing and charged item usage was not an everyday thing due to expense. It was a "go to the well" type thing where the players could decide to continue on, even when low on other spell resources. I miss the ability to "go to the well". The most go to the well that I have in 4E is to swap out my high level boots with a Daily item power with my old low level boots with a Daily item power.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except that this was not as true for earlier versions of the game. One of the elements of the game that I greatly enjoyed as a player was that I could prepare ahead of time with "go to the well" options. I could craft scrolls, and wands, and potions that allowed me as a player to shore up our resources as needed.

Hmmm, isn't this just saying there was an optimum way to play 3.5? (I'd say 'earlier editions', but even potion/scroll construction in AD&D was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, and only available at moderately higher levels, wands of CLW didn't exist in AD&D). I mean unless there was some meaningful trade-off this was just an example of the players understanding the optimum way to play, and the DM would have to account for that, etc. I don't think you really CAN put that kind of control in the hands of the players because 'being tougher' will always be more optimum and the DM will always have to account for it in his planning.

4E does not have this (it has potions, but they are pretty lame) and I consider it to be a game design weakness.

Instead of making the consumable items so weak for the vast majority of levels that they are hardly ever used in the game, they needed to design them to have good utility at the levels for which they are crafted and weaker utility as the PCs advance in level in order to balance out their cost vs. utility.

Which actually WAS what the 4e devs aimed for with the Healing Potion. It is a level 4 item (so shows up at basically level 1 and up). It heals 10 hit points for a surge, which is better than the surge value of ANY level 1 PC, and better than the surge value of the lower hit point PCs even up into higher heroic. Its utility naturally gets weaker as the PCs surge values exceed 10. The only flaw I see in the design of 4e healing potions is that they only exist at 3 tiers, thus many of the higher hit point PCs run into blocks of levels where the next tier potion is not available yet, but the previous tier one is almost useless. This could easily be fixed by simply having a potion with an arbitrary level and heals something like 2 hp/potion level (that would I think work OK, 10 HP at level 5, 30 at level 15, 50 at level 25, so a level 10 version doing 20 HP healing is good).

I think that would fix healing potions in the way you'd like. A character can spend a reasonable amount of money on level appropriate potions at any level if they want. A party lacking a leader can then achieve decent healing. Drop them a few over-level potions and they have a way to really ramp up in a tight situation too. Personally I think leader healing is more thematic and lack of potion options doesn't really bother me that much.

As for other non-healing potions, there are some which are actually exceedingly effective. There are others that are meh. Same with ammo, whetstones, etc.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hmmm, isn't this just saying there was an optimum way to play 3.5? (I'd say 'earlier editions', but even potion/scroll construction in AD&D was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, and only available at moderately higher levels, wands of CLW didn't exist in AD&D). I mean unless there was some meaningful trade-off this was just an example of the players understanding the optimum way to play, and the DM would have to account for that, etc. I don't think you really CAN put that kind of control in the hands of the players because 'being tougher' will always be more optimum and the DM will always have to account for it in his planning.

It's not just a way to find an optimum way to play the game. In fact, that's not the primary motivating factor.

It's a way for the player to decide how to spend his gold. Some players in 3.5 will buy the nastiest weapon around. Another player such as myself will have a Scroll of Knock and a Potion of Water Breathing so that I don't get trapped in a situation.

It's about choice. And for many players, choice = fun. Lack of choice, still can be fun, but not as much.

As a player, I want more than the 5 options that 4E gives me at a low level and 20+ options that 4E gives me at the highest levels. Why? Because the vast majority of those options are "attack foe, do damage".

I want other combat options, many of which were stripped out of 4E as miscellaneous spells got made into rituals. Tensor's Floating Disk to carry the unconscious Rogue out of combat (which I have done on numerous occasions in 3.5 and earlier).

The real down side of 4E is that many of the miscellaneous options such as using spells for non-combat stuff in combat and using charged items mostly went out the window.

It would be great if 5E brought them back in. They don't have to be identical in mechanics to 3.5 and earlier, it would be just great to have the options. Those options could also have a balance cost associated with them.

For example, a spell to cast a 10 minute or fewer casting time lower than the spell level ritual (the vast majority of rituals that are relatively non-potent) that you know as a standard action in combat.

Players are somewhat limited in their combat options in 4E. It's mostly, use a power. The designers went overboard in their attempt to simplify the game, throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Which actually WAS what the 4e devs aimed for with the Healing Potion. It is a level 4 item (so shows up at basically level 1 and up). It heals 10 hit points for a surge, which is better than the surge value of ANY level 1 PC,

1st level Warden with CON 18 plus Toughness = 40 hit points. Not quite any 1st level PC.

and better than the surge value of the lower hit point PCs even up into higher heroic.

True. It takes a wimpy hit point PC level 7 to get to 44 hit points (level 8 with a starting Con of 8 or 9), but most PCs get there by level 4 or 5 at the latest. Course, most healing potions should be used by PCs that get more bang for the buck, so level 5 Potions of Healing start losing their luster around level 4 to 6 or so. The 5th level Wizard might still like a Potion of Healing, but the 5th level Fighter could more or less care less.

Just yesterday, we had an encounter where the minions were doing 12 points of damage (the PCs were 5th level). Minions. A Potion of Healing is pretty lame compared to that.

As written, a Potion of Healing doesn't really serve it's purpose of helping the PC for a few rounds. It's lucky to help out for half of a round. The real sad thing about it is that it helps out some classes more than others due to it's fixed value nature.

Its utility naturally gets weaker as the PCs surge values exceed 10. The only flaw I see in the design of 4e healing potions is that they only exist at 3 tiers, thus many of the higher hit point PCs run into blocks of levels where the next tier potion is not available yet, but the previous tier one is almost useless. This could easily be fixed by simply having a potion with an arbitrary level and heals something like 2 hp/potion level (that would I think work OK, 10 HP at level 5, 30 at level 15, 50 at level 25, so a level 10 version doing 20 HP healing is good).

I think that would fix healing potions in the way you'd like.

We already have too many flavors of each type of item as is. To me, the flaw in 4E healing potions is not the number of different ones, it's that they heal a fixed amount.

I think the way to fix healing potions is:

1) Limit their use to once per encounter per PC (it doesn't matter the type of potion, the magic doesn't work frequently enough to suck down more than one per encounter). Note: this is more of a balance rule that some DMs might not find necessary, but I think it is a good rule for when the DM is planning only one to three encounters for a given day and healing surges aren't at a premium.

2) Change them to Potion of Healing = 1 healing surge heals 25%, Potion of Vitality as currently written except it heals 35%, Potion of Recovery as currently written except it heals 50%.

Note: I've liked this type of healing concept for decades now and often introduced it into some of my 3.5 and earlier campaigns. It doesn't matter if one is a King or a pauper. The healing of the potion (or a spell for that matter) is the same. All versions of 4E healing that require a healing surge should work this way. It should be percentage based.


Sure, high level PCs could carry around a hundred Potions of Healing in their bag of holdings at high level and suck one down every encounter, but it still uses up a healing surge. It still has that cost, even if the monetary one is negligible. Is 25% of hit points really worth that when the party Leader can typically heal 50% for a single healing surge (often out of combat)?

Even the Potions of Vitality would eventually start to cut into the party funds and players would have to decide whether to use the cheap Potion of Healing, the moderately priced Potion of Vitality, the pretty expensive Potion of Recovery, or none at all.

And of course, with healing potions working like this, it would incentivize monsters to have them as well. This opens up a lot of good combat possibilities when a (typically humanoid) monster is able to heal itself reasonably mid-encounter (hence, another reason for the once per encounter limitation since Paragon and higher creatures get more than one healing surge). A slightly challenging encounter just became more challenging. Plus, it creates stronger reasons for healing potions to be found in monster lairs.

Course, this healing is all peanuts compared to powers like Cloak of Courage anyway at high Paragon and Epic. But at least this type of modification to Healing Potions would make them a viable option again.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's not just a way to find an optimum way to play the game. In fact, that's not the primary motivating factor.

It's a way for the player to decide how to spend his gold. Some players in 3.5 will buy the nastiest weapon around. Another player such as myself will have a Scroll of Knock and a Potion of Water Breathing so that I don't get trapped in a situation.

It's about choice. And for many players, choice = fun. Lack of choice, still can be fun, but not as much.

As a player, I want more than the 5 options that 4E gives me at a low level and 20+ options that 4E gives me at the highest levels. Why? Because the vast majority of those options are "attack foe, do damage".

I want other combat options, many of which were stripped out of 4E as miscellaneous spells got made into rituals. Tensor's Floating Disk to carry the unconscious Rogue out of combat (which I have done on numerous occasions in 3.5 and earlier).

The real down side of 4E is that many of the miscellaneous options such as using spells for non-combat stuff in combat and using charged items mostly went out the window.

It would be great if 5E brought them back in. They don't have to be identical in mechanics to 3.5 and earlier, it would be just great to have the options. Those options could also have a balance cost associated with them.

For example, a spell to cast a 10 minute or fewer casting time lower than the spell level ritual (the vast majority of rituals that are relatively non-potent) that you know as a standard action in combat.

Players are somewhat limited in their combat options in 4E. It's mostly, use a power. The designers went overboard in their attempt to simplify the game, throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Just yesterday, we had an encounter where the minions were doing 12 points of damage (the PCs were 5th level). Minions. A Potion of Healing is pretty lame compared to that.

So, you have level 5 PCs facing level 16+ minions (that is level 16 BRUTE minions, non-brutes should do 12 damage around level 21)? Can't help you there, but I'd observe that the game is calibrated to certain assumptions. If you run it that far outside those values then sure, things will get odd...

As written, a Potion of Healing doesn't really serve it's purpose of helping the PC for a few rounds. It's lucky to help out for half of a round. The real sad thing about it is that it helps out some classes more than others due to it's fixed value nature.

Well, given that your average garden variety party probably has a total of 3 or 4 heals, max, plus Second Winds I suspect that in general they're enjoying more than a half round of benefit per surge that is actually used. Yup, they're slightly more useful for some classes. The whole POINT is they are a backup option that you are wise to have access to but will want to try not to rely on very much.

We already have too many flavors of each type of item as is. To me, the flaw in 4E healing potions is not the number of different ones, it's that they heal a fixed amount.

I think the way to fix healing potions is:

1) Limit their use to once per encounter per PC (it doesn't matter the type of potion, the magic doesn't work frequently enough to suck down more than one per encounter). Note: this is more of a balance rule that some DMs might not find necessary, but I think it is a good rule for when the DM is planning only one to three encounters for a given day and healing surges aren't at a premium.

2) Change them to Potion of Healing = 1 healing surge heals 25%, Potion of Vitality as currently written except it heals 35%, Potion of Recovery as currently written except it heals 50%.

Note: I've liked this type of healing concept for decades now and often introduced it into some of my 3.5 and earlier campaigns. It doesn't matter if one is a King or a pauper. The healing of the potion (or a spell for that matter) is the same. All versions of 4E healing that require a healing surge should work this way. It should be percentage based.


Sure, high level PCs could carry around a hundred Potions of Healing in their bag of holdings at high level and suck one down every encounter, but it still uses up a healing surge. It still has that cost, even if the monetary one is negligible. Is 25% of hit points really worth that when the party Leader can typically heal 50% for a single healing surge (often out of combat)?

Even the Potions of Vitality would eventually start to cut into the party funds and players would have to decide whether to use the cheap Potion of Healing, the moderately priced Potion of Vitality, the pretty expensive Potion of Recovery, or none at all.

And of course, with healing potions working like this, it would incentivize monsters to have them as well. This opens up a lot of good combat possibilities when a (typically humanoid) monster is able to heal itself reasonably mid-encounter (hence, another reason for the once per encounter limitation since Paragon and higher creatures get more than one healing surge). A slightly challenging encounter just became more challenging. Plus, it creates stronger reasons for healing potions to be found in monster lairs.

Course, this healing is all peanuts compared to powers like Cloak of Courage anyway at high Paragon and Epic. But at least this type of modification to Healing Potions would make them a viable option again.

Yeah, well, I have no desire for more book keeping. I suggested a mechanism which works and is simple to implement and deals with the most salient issue. You don't like it. OK. Fair enough, but the underlying point was that the 4e healing potion actually achieved its basic design goal, to provide players with an option to access extra healing in an emergency.

As for other potions I think you're writing them off far too easily. Many of them are QUITE useful. As I see it, and I've said this before, many of them COULD be made more useful as long as they're listed as uncommon items, or they could have somewhat reduced costs (like healing surges). I'd venture to say that you could make a healing potion along the lines you suggest as an uncommon as well. I wouldn't personally want it to be craftable in bulk.

Why is it that magic is the only thing that provides options in combat such that you have to have insta-cast rituals to make things interesting? I don't get it. Players are clever, they can come up with all kinds of ways to do things already. They DO find all kinds of ways to use rituals already (for that matter as anything but a very low level wizard there's no reason not to have a Tenser's Disc going all day every day).

 

[pemerton]

In the 4e designer blogs, the designers talked about how cool it was in B2 that creatures in the caves would flow out of one area and into the encounter where the PCs were at (but only when it was appropriate). Being able to do so is one of the promises of 4e that the Delve works against.

In the Delve you have two discrete encounter locations, each of which tell you where everyone is starting. If you flow one encounter into another, not only do you upset the careful balance, but you need to flip between two-page spreads. And, of course, the next encounter area is empty.

Doing this frequently in a setting that had been fluid (like B2 as originally written) and you end up with a lot of wasted design work. You also end up with a lot of page-flipping. You end up strongly encouraged, IMHO and AFAICT, to simply not do it.

I agree with this. It's why, when I ran the Well of Demons from H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth, I redrew the maps for the first bunch of encounters (all the gnoll stuff, before you get to the various rooms where demons guard the magical items needed to unlock the door to the ritual) and bundled all the monster stats together, so I could run a dynamic encounter with circular paths and the like (as per the advice in DMG2 that H2, as written disregards).

A brief description of how it went is on this old post.

 

[pemerton]

Healing potions

The party in my game has 5 PCs:

A polearm melee-controller fighter multi-class cleric - a dwarf with a cloak of the walking wounded and a Defensive weapon, and who also has Comeback Strike.

A tiefling charisma paladin.

A drow chaos sorcerer.

A human wizard multi-class invoker.

An elf hybrid ranger-cleric mulit-class paladin (for Religion skill and the LoH variant that removes a condition).

Needless to say, this party uses healing potions from time to time - the dwarf fighter would be the only exception - as they quite frequently run out of in-combat healing powers. They've never bought or made a potion - they've all been received as treasure - so the question of monetary value has not come up on the player side of the issue.

As for second wind - the dwarf uses it every encounter, obviously, and in recent session I can remember the paladin and the wizard both using it. The ranger-cleric uses it only rarely (not being in melee, he tends to take less damage). Likewise for the sorcerer.

If the party had a warlord or melee cleric in place of the paladin their healing would be noticeably improved and perhaps they probably woulnd't need the potions or non-dwarven second winds - although they would be taking more damage (the paladin has the best overall defences in the party) and would notice the reduced defence, I think, despite the dwarven fighter's capacity to do a lot of defending.

Bottom line: at least in my game, the 4e healing rules haven't produced any mechanical isssues. And I at least have no flavour issues with them - martial healing seems to me no harder to work with than hit points themselves.

 

[triqui]

I agree with everything that you wrote here.

But, it's the fact that Healing Potions are so lame that really forces groups to have a Leader in them since most of the non-Leader healing powers don't start until level 7 or higher. Allowing non-Leaders to have healing powers doesn't really address the issue of playing with any group makeup that you bring up because it does show up so late in the game.

The game as designed is the issue, not the bleed over of healing. The game is designed to almost require a Leader in it. If the team doesn't have one, the DM really has to ratchet down his encounters (or hide his rolls and fudge) or they'll eventually walk into a TPK via strong DM dice rolls, and lousy player dice rolls. Leaders are the great "swinginess of encounters" equalizer.

While this is true, my point was that giving second wind, and "comeback strikes" to everyclass, so players can rely, if they want, in self-healing was an attempt to avoid leaders (and, specifically, clerics) as "needed". I agree with you, though, that they probably failed at the task.

This deficiency could be handled if there were a way to make Healing Potions stronger (e.g. the lowest level ones do a healing surge worth of healing instead of just 10 hit points, but only one healing potion could be used per PC per encounter).

Fully agree. It's an easy solution, actually, and the 1/encounter limit avoid it to become a potion fest. I imagine they didn't went that route becouse potions would then scale with level (ie: lowest potion will heal much more at epic levels), while the cost of the potion do not (so, while significant at lvl 3-4, it's absolutelly trivial at 15-20+). That's why they went with 10hp (which is roughly a healing surge at those levels). The problem is that they should have made more versions (like a potion that heals 15, 20, 25 or so every few levels)

 

[KarinsDad]

Fully agree. It's an easy solution, actually, and the 1/encounter limit avoid it to become a potion fest. I imagine they didn't went that route becouse potions would then scale with level (ie: lowest potion will heal much more at epic levels), while the cost of the potion do not (so, while significant at lvl 3-4, it's absolutelly trivial at 15-20+). That's why they went with 10hp (which is roughly a healing surge at those levels). The problem is that they should have made more versions (like a potion that heals 15, 20, 25 or so every few levels)

The only time it would matter that a healing potion would scale with level is when the DM is only planning on one or two encounters in a given day AND the players know that. In that scenario, who cares if the Wizard chugs down a 50 GP healing potion to gain 25% of his hit points mid-combat? He has a ton of healing surges.

Course, it doesn't really change anything. By the time PCs are Paragon or Epic, who really cares if the Leader healed the Wizard mid-combat (even possibly with surgeless healing) or the Wizard gained a healing surge with a cheap potion? There are so many powerful options for all PCs at that point that this is less than a speed bump in regard to balance.

But, chugging down a 50 GP healing potion to gain 25% of your hit points when the players have no idea if there will be one encounter or seven encounters in a day (one would assume that this is the vast majority of adventuring days) is a lot more risky.

The Wizard has 6 to 9 healing surges. Using up one of them for a mere 25% of your hit points when the Cleric can heal close to 50% of your hit points out of combat (also for the mere cost of a healing surge) seems a bit wasteful.

When the game first came out, sure. It might have been an issue. But with the vast plethora of healing that came out of the splat books, it's really no longer a balance issue at all. Who would often use a Potion of Healing beyond say level 8 or so except to get an unconscious PC conscious?

Anymore, the only time I see healing potions used is if a fellow PC is unconscious. I never see a player suck one down mid-fight to just stabilize himself so that the Leader doesn't have to do anything for him. I'm sure it happens in some people's games, but the way the potions are written now, it's not worth the effort beyond say level 5 or so for most PCs/players because the healing surge loss is not worth the hit point gain.

With percentage potions, it would be worth it sometimes.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Potions are ok. Playing leaderless is ok too. You just have to use lower level monsters... (ok, seems like my universal soultion) or less monsters. They go down faster, and hit a little bit less hard. Or you face less, so an alpha strike could have a great effekt. I guess with new damage expressions, leaderless parties are indeed harder to play, because combats are over very fast or you get into troubles.

But on the other hand, imagine an all assassin party... from level 3 and up, most combats will take 1 round...

 

[TwoSix]

But the difference is that the players have little input in the process now.

The players can no longer really decide to save resources and spend their gold on healing items in order have 15 encounters in a day. Buying an item in 4E for +1 item bonus to a healing surge is pretty darn weak.

Now, only the DM can set up the game for 15 encounters and in order to do it, he has to bend over backwards to dial down the encounters and/or have ways to renew resources.

As a player, I like the option to decide the destiny of my own PC. Part of that is the option to decide to craft/purchase 10 items and stuff them in my bag of holding so that I am always prepared for any scenario, including a large dungeon with many encounters in it.

Except that this was not as true for earlier versions of the game. One of the elements of the game that I greatly enjoyed as a player was that I could prepare ahead of time with "go to the well" options. I could craft scrolls, and wands, and potions that allowed me as a player to shore up our resources as needed.

4E does not have this (it has potions, but they are pretty lame) and I consider it to be a game design weakness.

Unfortunately, those things you like are inimical to 4e's design. 4e deliberately scaled back on options for strategic planning and for player empowerment. When available, strategic planning is always the optimal solution. What you call "going to the well" is really just a synonym for optimized playing. It's just common sense to play that way. Who isn't going to buy or make Wands of Lesser Vigor if their DM allows it?

4e wanted to move the power to establish the narrative structure for the game back firmly into the DM's hands. Allowing the players to purchase items that "let them have 15 encounters in a row" is nonsensical in 4e's paradigm. If there's a need for 15 encounters in a row, the players and DM should be collaborating on a way to explain that. Being "prepared for any scenario" is another way of saying that you have the ability to bypass encounters that were meant to be challenging.