D&D 5E The problem with 5e

[Oofta]

Some of the HP thing is just a question of how the DM chooses to describe it. If the DM is describing physical wounds, then the "magically healing faster" makes sense. If it's muscle aches and pains along with minor bruising then the other makes more sense.

For me it's a combination, basically action movie healing. Ultimately it's just a game and an abstraction to keep the game moving and allow for the ludicrous number of fights PCs get into and survive.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Goes back to the whole "what are HP".

Where the only solutions that remain consistent to observations are "HP are not remotely physical, an arrow that hits you does not actually make physical contact, and it's impossible to sustain any physical wound that doesn't result in immediate death"; or "it is possible for someone to be physically injured without immediately dying, but all traces of injury can heal naturally over the course of an hour". Neither of which is reasonable.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

My table just agrees that everyone is Wolverine-lite with how fast they heal and just goes with it.

 

[Oofta]

Where the only solutions that remain consistent to observations are "HP are not remotely physical, an arrow that hits you does not actually make physical contact, and it's impossible to sustain any physical wound that doesn't result in immediate death"; or "it is possible for someone to be physically injured without immediately dying, but all traces of injury can heal naturally over the course of an hour". Neither of which is reasonable.

Unless you describe it differently: the arrow merely scratches you but you strain a muscle dodging out of the way.

Or, you know, magic. People heal magically quickly and don't even realize that we would consider it abnormal.

Either works and always has through all editions of D&D, most FPS video games, not to mention all of the Die Hard movies.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Unless you describe it differently: the arrow merely scratches you but you strain a muscle dodging out of the way.

That might work once, but since there's always the specter that the damage might heal naturally in an hour, we can never risk saying that any hit is substantially physical in any way. That's the absurdity of Hit Dice, which was never a problem prior to 4E.

 

[Oofta]

That might work once, but since there's always the specter that the damage might heal naturally in an hour, we can never risk saying that any hit is substantially physical in any way. That's the absurdity of Hit Dice, which was never a problem prior to 4E.

So either accept it or play a different game. I'm not going to argue with you any more, there are multiple ways to justify it.

 

[Don Durito]

I don't get this healing thing. The absurd part of it has always been the Cleric. And it's been there right from the beginning. Have people just been looking at it for so long that they can't see it?

It was always obvious back in Ad&d days that the game was unworkable without a Cleric and somewhat absurd with it. Half you face hacked off? Don't worry my god will make it better - day after day after day. (These days I don't care - but it was a major reason given for moving to other systems in the 90s).

I remember the Thieves World D20 game changed all the cure spells to 'convert' spells so they didn't heal you completely they just changed lethal damage into non-lethal. It's amazing how much difference that makes. You couldn't go back into the action straight away but instead had to spend a few hours recuperating. It did more to actually make the game feel gritty then any variation in time spent recovering hit points.

Damned if I can see what difference auto-healing hit points overnight makes from previous editions other then saving bookkeeping. You'd end up in the same place anway. (5E has changed the cleric somewhat in a way I don't like as a result - but that's a different issue, and it's been happening for a while).

If you want damage to feel real then you need to bypass hit points. Lingering Injuries can work (just don't use the table in the DMG without first changing it to match your goals - it's a mess) or levels of exhaustion - which are hard to recover. But making HP take longer to recover without magical healing seems meaningless - so long as you still have the magical healing.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So either accept it or play a different game. I'm not going to argue with you any more, there are multiple ways to justify it.

If you can't criticize, then you can't optimize. This rule absurdity is an obvious mistake, and players deserve for it to be fixed. Ignoring the problem is not a solution.

 

[Istbor]

A problem with that is that many spells don't have an attack roll. So the spellcasters are taking less risk and it gets less realistic as the character progresses.

20 equals critical hit. 1 equals critical failure. Both are a 5% chance. But this means that a Level 10 Barbarian, for whatever reason, has a 5% chance of dropping his sword in battle (or stabbing a friendly or whatever your consequence is). WHAT?! So now the barbarian misses AND loses an entire turn because he is disarmed. Again, the usual "1 equals dropped weapon" means that the party loses its main damage output source for a round.

A workaround I use is that on a 1, roll again. Roll another 1 and sure, that is the very rare occurrence that would merit disarming someone. Otherwise, it's a miss and that's it.

I think someone actually came up with it here or at WotC forums back when, but when I have characters, while in melee, roll a one, it is described as them whiffing hard enough to leave an opening. Any enemy with moderate intelligence or instinct can then make an attack of opportunity. Obviously this works both ways, and thus far, my players love it.

 

[tetrasodium]

This optional rule has nothing to do with 4e Healing Surge. It's more akin to a Second Wind, in which the character could once per encounter, as a Minor Action spend a Healing Surge to heal itself and gain a +2 to all defenses until the start of it's next turn.

I don't disagree, it's just noteworthy because all the other variant rules surrounding rest &recovery tend to be so bad

I don't get this healing thing. The absurd part of it has always been the Cleric. And it's been there right from the beginning. Have people just been looking at it for so long that they can't see it?

It was always obvious back in Ad&d days that the game was unworkable without a Cleric and somewhat absurd with it. Half you face hacked off? Don't worry my god will make it better - day after day after day. (These days I don't care - but it was a major reason given for moving to other systems in the 90s).

I remember the Thieves World D20 game changed all the cure spells to 'convert' spells so they didn't heal you completely they just changed lethal damage into non-lethal. It's amazing how much difference that makes. You couldn't go back into the action straight away but instead had to spend a few hours recuperating. It did more to actually make the game feel gritty then any variation in time spent recovering hit points.

Damned if I can see what difference auto-healing hit points overnight makes from previous editions other then saving bookkeeping. You'd end up in the same place anway. (5E has changed the cleric somewhat in a way I don't like as a result - but that's a different issue, and it's been happening for a while).

If you want damage to feel real then you need to bypass hit points. Lingering Injuries can work (just don't use the table in the DMG without first changing it to match your goals - it's a mess) or levels of exhaustion - which are hard to recover. But making HP take longer to recover without magical healing seems meaningless - so long as you still have the magical healing.

It's the shift from vancian(sp?) prepared each slot to prepared use any unused slot. Back then the cleric would prepare x cure light wounds Y cure moderate wounds etc in addition to the cool spells they want to use doing more than puttin magic bandaids on the party while now everyone who can & does prepare cure wounds has every unused spellslot available for either cure wounds or a spell that lets them do something cool without the old worry about preparing too many cure spells that will go unused & not enough do cool things spells so there is no need to do anything more than charge in & just recover everything before reaching a point where you might feel tight on spell slots.