D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[Emerikol]

Good to see you back.

Thanks.

For a skill based game, a narrative adjudication style pretty much solves everything. Here, players cannot refer to mechanics, only to what their players actually say and what actions they employ to interact with the scene. Then the DM says yes-no-maybe. Tricky challenges are almost always inherently a complex skill challenge.

I'm talking about the game being challenging to the players playing as their characters. Examples are dungeons with traps and tricks. Monsters that have to be fought using real tactics or you lose. Things like that. Having clear combat rules is a good thing in that case.

But when it comes to dialing up combat challenges, it is delicate. Sometimes the characters are particularly tough in a certain tactic. But once the DM bypasses that tactical strength, the character is actually highly vulnerable. Sometimes, it is difficult to find a middle ground.

Dialing can be difficult. Some games make it more or less so. I had a group that was just so experienced they were like a commando team. If I didn't dial up some, they'd have fallen asleep. They knew the rules inside out and they knew every trick and tactic to out manuever enemies or to lure them into kill zones.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Played more OSE / Basic this weekend.

I love that in it, it can be real hard to hit a PC but it's devastating when you do. Like the fighter has 19 AC. Most monsters they fight have a +0 to hit. A rather tough foe might have a +5. Yet the Fighter (at level 3) has less than 20 HP give or take. A Goblin doing D6 can be an issue. A boss monster can do d8+3. You don't want to get hit.

And if you do you have to burn a valuable resource like a Clerics healing (only so many slots!) or a potion or scroll (did we find some? can we buy more?)


5E. High AC, tons of HP. Easy healing left and right.


Over the weekend the Fighter above went toe to toe with a boss. It was THRILLING. Who would connect first? Both combatants came within 5 HP of each other. Who lands the next blow might have it!

"I feel like what I do matters." A player from a previous (1E) game said. He'd only ever known 5th. That has resonated with me ever since.

People have joked about the Cleric being a healing battery but man you are so important. Anyone with healing is.

 

[Nefermandias]

(Remember, in 4e, when you roll death saves, that's per day, not per combat. You can only fail death saving throws two times per day safely.)

I was under the impression that death saved rested even with a Short Rest. Maybe you are misremembering, maybe I am. Will have to crack open my 4e PHB and check it out later.

 

[Lanefan]

...Yes. That's literally what I said. You are thinking of and as a character.

What does "a character" mean?

Because when we look at the definitions of the word that are relevant here (as in, not "His character was questionable at best"), they explicitly refer to a role in a story, to a person portrayed in a drama, to a person represented in a work.

Characters are participants in some kind of story. That was the whole point.


To think of character IS to think of story. It doesn't have to be thinking of plot, which is what I explicitly said. It's still a story whether or not there's a plot. Plenty of stories have no plot at all!

I see "thinking of story" to mean the taking of a wider view of authorship than just one's own character.

If I'm "thinking of story" I'm not just thinking of what my character is going to do or say right now, I'm thinking of how those words or actions might affect the story or plot down the road, maybe similar to how a chess player looks several moves ahead to asses the downstram effects of the move she's making right now.

If I'm "thinking of character" I'm just doing/saying what my character would in the moment and letting any downstream story or plot effects take care of themselves.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There is no "just sitting there and not expending a surge" unless either (i) you're fully recovered, or (ii) you're out of surges.

Are you saying you can't decide not to spend one?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I was under the impression that death saved rested even with a Short Rest. Maybe you are misremembering, maybe I am. Will have to crack open my 4e PHB and check it out later.

Pardon, yes, they do require only a short, not a long.

Still, this was a hard aversion of a problem so many people bitterly complain about today, the "whack a mole" healing issue. Yet 4e was the game that allegedly coddled players and made healing stupidly over-accessible!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Pardon, yes, they do require only a short, not a long.

Still, this was a hard aversion of a problem so many people bitterly complain about today, the "whack a mole" healing issue. Yet 4e was the game that allegedly coddled players and made healing stupidly over-accessible!

I really wish 5e had the same system as 4e here.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Are you saying you can't decide not to spend one?

I should hope not, as that's not true. It is, however, fairly accurate to say that you have no reason not to if you can take a short rest. Much as characters in 5e have no reason not to spend hit dice (assuming they have no other source of healing) when they take a short rest. Like. You could choose not to. But there's literally zero benefit to doing so, and very major risk of death for not doing so. Unless the character is suicidal, there is no reason not to.

4e did actually add mechanics later where you might consider not spending surges to heal up to near-max because you might need the surge for something else, but that would be pretty niche.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I really wish 5e had the same system as 4e here.

Healing and crits are the two places I still don't understand why the 5e designers reinvented the wheel. They're also some of my best evidence that the designers either were afraid to be too much like 4e, disliked 4e and thus imitated it only with great reluctance, or (what I think is most likely of all) genuinely failed to understand how and why 4e mechanics worked and thus imitated only the surface, with predictable results.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I should hope not, as that's not true. It is, however, fairly accurate to say that you have no reason not to if you can take a short rest. Much as characters in 5e have no reason not to spend hit dice (assuming they have no other source of healing) when they take a short rest. Like. You could choose not to. But there's literally zero benefit to doing so, and very major risk of death for not doing so. Unless the character is suicidal, there is no reason not to.

4e did actually add mechanics later where you might consider not spending surges to heal up to near-max because you might need the surge for something else, but that would be pretty niche.

In 5e both the bard's song of rest and the chef feat trigger extra healing when you use a HD, so this is a reason for rationing your HD over several rests, so that you can trigger this many times.