D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[MoonSong]

Good, nothing is more frustrating that pounding on a bad guy to see them healing faster than you can dish it out - same for the reverse for the DM. Attritition should exceed healing so fights don't last forever.

Save the healing for after one side emerges victorious. In combat healing should, at best, give you an extra round or so at the most to soak damage from an unexpected crit or otherwise bad turn of dice rolls.

But in 5e, in-combat healing is everything that's left... Long term healing is gone because everybody resets on a long rest, short term out of combat is but a formality and not something that is always roleplayed. (Have I mentioned that I find 5e the most hostile to dedicated healers?)

 

[tetrasodium]

This will not get rid of whackamole healing regardless. That would require there being some actually impactful downside for going to zero, so healers would need to focus on keeping people up.

I agree . At best it's one less obstacle to altering the other rules subsystems that enshrine wackamole. Those are largely things likely to be found in the other two core books if they happen. It's much easier to house rule a one or maybe two step things than a five or fifteen step one.

With that said though, this every much appears to be the "19/20 toddlers voted for more candy and polls can't be wrong so more candy it is" revision and I don't have high hopes in the other pieces being anything but more candy by majority vote.

Edit: autocarrot somehow decided easier should be way and now it's easier again.

 

[MichaelSomething]

With that said though, this every much appears to be the "19/20 toddlers voted for more candy and polls can't be wrong so more candy it is" revision and I don't have high hopes in the other pieces being anything but more candy by majority vote.

Then we should change to a caste like system. The greatest among the D&D community should govern the game as the masses can't be trusted with self governance. If only there was a place where D&D's greatest gathered??? Oh wait, there's Enworld! How convenient!!

 

[Lanefan]

I really think the issue here is a mismatch of priorities. Some of us want something resembling the actual experience and challenge of battlefield healing, and some of us want to minimize the time a player spends "out of action" during combat.

Put me squarely in the first of those groups.

 

[Greg Benage]

Nothing annoys me more from a believability standpoint than adventurers who go from 1st level to 15th+ in just two or three in-game months of hard-core adventuring.

This I concur with wholeheartedly. I think you can have ample downtime and pace the campaign appropriately, but I don't think a particular model of rest and healing is required to do it.

 

[Lanefan]

This will not get rid of whackamole healing regardless. That would require there being some actually impactful downside for going to zero, so healers would need to focus on keeping people up.

What it would need is impactful downsides to losing hit points yet still being well above zero.

Some minor mechanical penalty when you hit 3/4 hit points.
A further penalty when you reach 1/2 hit points.
Things get dire if you get down to 1/4 hit points.
And if you get to 0, you're out of the fight, dying, and need significant* rest before you can be cured to anything higher than 1 h.p.

* - the length of rest required could (and IMO should) be determined by how far below 0 you would have gone; for example if you were at 3 h.p. and took a 5-point hit (thus, 2 "extra" points damage) you'd need far less rest than if you'd taken a 15-point blow that meant 12 "extra" points.

 

[The Sigil]

Then we should change to a caste like system. The greatest among the D&D community should govern the game as the masses can't be trusted with self governance. If only there was a place where D&D's greatest gathered??? Oh wait, there's Enworld! How convenient!!

I believe it was Groucho Marx who said something to the effect of “I am not interested in being part of any association that would be willing to accept me as a member.”

If being on ENWorld makes me a part of “D&D’s greatest” count me out. I’m just me.

 

[jmartkdr2]

In any case, I'm not sure I like how in 5.5 the power of some common healing spells are almost doubled. How do people think this will affect things? I get that combat healing was often ineffective, but this seems like a lot. One houserule I was considering at one point, was that instead of doubling the dice like 5.5 did, some healing spells would let the PCs to burn hit dice for additional healing (one die per spell slot level.) This would achieve similar effect of increasing the spell potency, but would limit how much one person could benefit from it.

I've tried this, but you run out of HD pretty quickly.

 

[Lanefan]

This I concur with wholeheartedly. I think you can have ample downtime and pace the campaign appropriately, but I don't think a particular model of rest and healing is required to do it.

Rest and healing time can still play a rather big role, perhaps not in the down-time scheme of things but certainly in the length of time spent in the field.

Let's say the adventure site is four days walk from town, assuming good weather. The 5e (and 4e) model would have it that the party's in the field for maybe 9 days on that adventure: 4 days to get there, 1 day adventuring, and 4 days back. But if they have to rest longer and-or wait for spells to regenerate, that 1 day adventuring could quickly become 5 or 8 or 12...at which point you're asking them how many days rations they brought and whether they should think about going back to town to resupply. And so they do that - 4 days to town, 4 days back, more if the weather says so.

What was a 9-day field trip in total is now getting closer to a month. This gives the world (and its stories) time to advance, the weather time to change, the adventure foes time to regroup or reinforce or bug out or whatever, and so on.

Resting time becomes even more an issue once the party reach levels where teleport and other long-range travel magic becomes SOP, because suddenly travel time doesn't matter any more.

 

[Lanefan]

I believe it was Groucho Marx who said something to the effect of “I am not interested in being part of any association that would be willing to accept me as a member.”

If being on ENWorld makes me a part of “D&D’s greatest” count me out. I’m just me.

Oh, I dunno.

Remember, while we're being told we're "D&D's greatest" we're conveniently not being told just what it is we're greatest at, which makes a big difference.