D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[tetrasodium]

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!!

So self selected polling can be wrong? If only there was some field of statistical expertise wotc could have tapped to do better than "70% favorable good <70% favorable scrap". Perhaps such a field could cover why self selected polling is terrible for drawing certain conclusions as part of its core curriculum too .

I think that the "caste" you are looking for would traditionally be called something like "designers" though... Despite the Christmas layoffs and recent AI claims I think wotc still employs them

 

[Greg Benage]

1 day adventuring could quickly become 5 or 8 or 12...

Yes, this is definitely where we have different preferences. I'd just as soon they use those days adventuring and/or performing downtime activities. I can still pace the campaign appropriately. We don't need to sit at the table waiting for the cleric player to roll dice to do that. I would previously have said the exception for me would be an exploration-focused fantasy survival campaign, but again, Shadowdark handles it just fine with "fast healing" IMO.

 

[Vaalingrade]

How do people think this will affect things?

Moderately encourage healing/support concepts, solve the illusory 'problem' of 'whack-a-mole healing' by making it worth healing people before the go down, and make healers waste fewer slots to heal between fights.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, this is definitely where we have different preferences. I'd just as soon they use those days adventuring and/or performing downtime activities. I can still pace the campaign appropriately. We don't need to sit at the table waiting for the cleric player to roll dice to do that. I would previously have said the exception for me would be an exploration-focused fantasy survival campaign, but again, Shadowdark handles it just fine with "fast healing" IMO.

If that dice-rolling process takes longer than 5 minutes total, something's gone adrift.

What will, however, make things take longer (as it should) is that if they rest for any length of time in the field then sooner or later they'll likely be attacked in the field by some random nuisance or other.

Being repeatedly attacked while resting for a few days in what turned out to be an unwise place led to one of my all-time favourite player quotes: "If we rest up and recuperate here long enough, we'll all be dead."

 

[Daztur]

@Daztur I'm late to this thread, but let me tell you, I share some of your concerns, but not your conclusion. I worry about the hit point inflation that has been trending since the 2e to 3e switch. But, honestly, the buff of healing is about one of the few things I found enticing from 5.2.

Let me tell you, I know it isn't for everybody, but being a dedicated healer can be very rewarding. I could easily prepare all heals and not feel I'm missing out. I loathe having to spend my actions on "the real fun", and I would feel proud of ending a day with my party at or near full HP.

And I find 5e the least fun edition to be a healer. It is just too hostile to healers, and part of it is that in-combat healing is not enough to offset monster damage and thus not viable to do proactively. Add that to the existence of ranged and bonus action healing taking away the heal a fallen comrade mini-game, and out of combat and long term it is just gone. (Plus with monster HP being so high now there's too much peer pressure to do damage every turn) So what is left? Sneeze a few times a combat while you do your "real contribution" to the party? At least with higher healing proactive casting of cure wounds can be a thing again. Hopefully.

I don't mind the buff to round by round healing at all, I just don't like the buff to how much healing can be pumped out over the course of an entire adventuring day. That's why I like the compromise of buffing healing spells by allowing people to spend hit dice when hit by a healing spell: it allows big spikes of healing that makes in-combat healing worthwhile without making the amount downtime healing that can be pumped out get too crazy.

To be fair, by the power of concentration, 5e is openly hostile to ALL support concepts, not just healers.

Order clerics make a decent end-run around that limitation and, of course, Twilight and Peace clerics can get just nuts with their support.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What I'm saying is, if you're going to make a new edition that is so different from the previous ones that you can't viably play the same style of game, that new edition shouldn't go by the same name as the old one, because they are different games.

That only applies to 4e though.

 

[pemerton]

Using the alternative resting rules.

Short rest is a night in the dungeon.
Long rest is a week in town.

It seems to me that a lot of the issue is not about encounters per in-fiction unit of time, but more like *encounters per session, with the end of session being treated as a long rest.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That only applies to 4e though.

Well, it certainly does apply to 4e. But I still think it's clear that the design intention of 5.5 vs. 5.0 is significantly different, even if the basic math is the same.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, it certainly does apply to 4e. But I still think it's clear that the design intention of 5.5 vs. 5.0 is significantly different, even if the basic math is the same.

Neither seems significantly different me - not to each other, and not to the way the game plays.

You could make a case that third edition was a bit of a departure, but 2nd edition was already getting excessively crunchy by that point so it felt like a continuation in the same direction.

 

[Greg Benage]

If that dice-rolling process takes longer than 5 minutes total, something's gone adrift.

IME this entirely depends on the number of clerics in relation to the number of PCs and their level. And of course it's not just rolling the dice, it's counting up the results and allocating the healing, checking the resulting status, resting and casting some more. I don't want to overstate it--it's not some intolerable element of the classic rules--it's just an annoyance that adds nothing to the game IMO. There should always be good incentives/motivation to "stay in the field."