D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[Vaalingrade]

We have had parties without any combat healing, it can be done, but it's just a DPS race who will kill who first.
one advantage is that run'n'gun D&D goes a lot faster.
and everyone has had expertise in stealth so we counted on Alpha-strike a lot.

That doesn't really mean you didn't need healing so much as you found a way to do without. Like rediscovering the basic elements of food the second week of the the February 28 paycheck.

 

[Zuranthium]

I don't want healing to be useful in the middle of combat. If healing becomes useful in combat, it becomes mandatory in combat

That's not true. Healing is simply damage prevention that only works after the damage has actually been taken. Stopping damage with crowd control and direct reductions (AC, resistances, debuffing enemy attacks, countering their spells) is more powerful, if a game wants to allow for it.

The real issue is that healing is boring in D&D. It's also wildly inconsistent. Dice rolls shouldn't be used. Healing spells should be a set amount, and be more effective when the target has low health. That's how to make it interesting - force players to make a decision between efficiency and safety. Use your healing too early and you've wasted resources. But if you wait too late, then someone is going to be knocked unconscious, or outright die.

"Healing" should be an essential need for a party. It should be necessary for a group to have someone who can fulfill this role. Otherwise there isn't enough player interdependency and a DM needs to make their NPC's behave stupidly and never focus fire on one target.

When there is no longer any source of magical healing or limited-use resources that can hasten combats in various ways to mitigate damage, the adventuring stops. I've never heard a Fighter say "hey, it's ok that you are all out of magic, we can keep going!".

The players don't get to make this choice though. It's the DM who decides what the characters have to face. You can't just stop fighting when NPC's are constantly following you and attacking you.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i'd be interested to see what it would look like if they released a spell slot progression table for fullcasters adjusted to account for their attrition occuring over a 24-hour adventuring day, the expected '8 encounters' being closer to 3-4 a day, it'd have less than half the slots it currently does i wager.

The idea being, well, at some point, some classes will run low on resources, allowing the "resourceless" classes to really shine.
But that's never been the reality of D&D in my experience, because even "resourceless" classes do have a basic, elementary, resource.
Hit points.

even if they couldn't use them mid-combat it's for this reason i think the more martial classes ought to work off of healing surges rather than hit die(well, a surge or average hit die total, whichever's highest, seeing as at lower levels 25% is probably going to be less healing), letting them top-off to full much easier between combats whereas casters are working with smaller amounts of recovery.

 

[James Gasik]

The players don't get to make this choice though. It's the DM who decides what the characters have to face. You can't just stop fighting when NPC's are constantly following you and attacking you.

Typically, it happens like this. Players are in a dungeon. If they avoid triggering alarms or putting the place on high alert, and take on encounters one at a time, they might reach a point where they feel they cannot go on.

So they stop if they can. Retreat through areas they've cleared, find a safe spot, use magic like rope trick or leomund's tiny hut, etc.. Certainly, if there are enemies who realize they are there, or a wandering patrol that they can blunder into, they might fight more encounters they didn't want to. Or not.

I think that's a little beyond the scope of my argument though. "The DM has infinite dragons" argument does trump all claims that characters are indestructible, no doubt. But in that scenario, the Rogue is definitely not shining because they have no expended non-hit point resources!

You can force the issue if you want in game, but the reality is, draining the party of resources is draining the party of resources. They will reach a point of no return and no class is immune to this, even if they individually do not possess non-hp resources.

Also, I thought a feature of old-school play was allowing players to avoid or flee from encounters when they cannot win? It seems saying "no, you are going to fight more enemies today!" runs counter to that philosophy.

 

[James Gasik]

i'd be interested to see what it would look like if they released a spell slot progression table for fullcasters adjusted to account for their attrition occuring over a 24-hour adventuring day, the expected '8 encounters' being closer to 3-4 a day, it'd have less than half the slots it currently does i wager.

even if they couldn't use them mid-combat it's for this reason i think the more martial classes ought to work off of healing surges rather than hit die(well, a surge or average hit die total, whichever's highest, seeing as at lower levels 25% is probably going to be less healing), letting them top-off to full much easier between combats whereas casters are working with smaller amounts of recovery.

Second Wind comes to mind, as it can be used whether you have healing surges or not, recharging any time you get a short rest. It's impact is minor in most games because you don't get many short rests, and they take an hour, but if you actually think about it, it really gets overlooked in discussions about healing.

Imagine a day where you have two encounters, 6 hours apart from one another, and the warrior has nothing better to do than sit around and wait. 6d10+6xCon mod is a huge heal out of nowhere, making the Fighter seem like they have regenerative powers!

 

[Horwath]

That doesn't really mean you didn't need healing so much as you found a way to do without. Like rediscovering the basic elements of food the second week of the the February 28 paycheck.

sure,

but you always need more damage and you always need more healing. it just makes things easier.
it was experiment can the game be played without any in-combat healing. Except potions, but they run out and take your Bonus action and they do not heal much.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Second Wind comes to mind, as it can be used whether you have healing surges or not, recharging any time you get a short rest. It's impact is minor in most games because you don't get many short rests, and they take an hour, but if you actually think about it, it really gets overlooked in discussions about healing.

Imagine a day where you have two encounters, 6 hours apart from one another, and the warrior has nothing better to do than sit around and wait. 6d10+6xCon mod is a huge heal out of nowhere, making the Fighter seem like they have regenerative powers!

huh, your numbers used had me have to go check the rules and i guess i've never really read the text for SW, i've always thought it recovered much more of a chunk of health (i assumed 50%) as a long rest resource.

but regardless if the fighter has this they're not the only class who's main attrition resource is HP, let all the noncasters really be thick slabs of meat through their short rest recovery, even the more comparatively frailer rogue and monk.

 

[Nefermandias]

Some differences between editions are not being captured by this analysis, such as lot of old school characters having lower stats and how easy it was to make CLW wands in 3.*e but I think I’m getting the big picture here.

Leaving those aspects behind makes your number crushing not particularly useful in the end.

 

[tetrasodium]

Let's discuss an often brought up point. Classes that don't really rely on resources (in the old days, this was the Fighter, now it's really more the Rogue) can do their thing all day, while other classes have to ration out resources.

The idea being, well, at some point, some classes will run low on resources, allowing the "resourceless" classes to really shine.

But that's never been the reality of D&D in my experience, because even "resourceless" classes do have a basic, elementary, resource.

Hit points.

When there is no longer any source of magical healing or limited-use resources that can hasten combats in various ways to mitigate damage, the adventuring stops. I've never heard a Fighter say "hey, it's ok that you are all out of magic, we can keep going!". If encounter design is in any way based on everyone doing something that isn't "stay in the back and spam cantrips", then there's a problem- classes like the Rogue do not get stronger when everyone else gets weaker, thus, if the other characters get weaker, the party as a whole gets weaker, and that doesn't lead to "the Rogue now shines", it leads to "we're all limping along and barely surviving!".

That's why this kind of class balance simply doesn't work and never has. But when 4e tried to put all classes on the same resource track, a lot of people didn't care for it. Because in their mind, they felt that not having to rely on resources was a strength. "My character can go all day, ha ha ha!" but they really can't. They just don't have to make decisions on when and where to use resources, which makes it easier to play the game for them, but isn't a strength.

If it was, a party of two Fighters and two Rogues would be far superior than any other possible combination. And it really isn't. You shouldn't look at the game as "individual characters are using resources to succeed."

The reality is, "the party as a whole is using resources to succeed". The fact that a class might not have any resources to speak of and does the same thing turn after turn isn't, in reality, a great advantage. This isn't to say that such classes are useless or don't have a place, but what they are providing isn't superior to what everyone else provides in general play. There is no "the Rogue gets weaker if other players never run out of resources" paradigm. The Rogue remains exactly the same on encounter 6 as they were on encounter 1. The fact that they could theoretically be just as viable on encounter 11 (if they somehow haven't run dry on hit points, of course) doesn't matter- the party as a whole is weakened to the point that nobody could get to encounter 11!

Resource attrition as a concept applies to the whole group, not just individual characters, because the game is predicated on the idea you need multiple characters working together to survive.

The fact that there are several different resource management methods for different classes is really not a feature (at least, as far as I've ever noticed) because there's too many variables. Oh what if they only get one short rest? What if they get no short rests? What if the Wizard uses a fireball in encounter 3 instead of encounter 5?

I'm not saying it's impossible- some of you may have long since mastered this sort of thing. I wish I had!

But from my perspective, it's a pain in the backside. I'd much rather have everyone functioning at the same power level every encounter than wonder "is this the encounter that gets turned inside out by a powerful resource?". Or worse "is this the encounter that breaks the party because they don't have enough resources?".

@Sulicius mentioned a point about "different system with different calibrations" that you are skipping over & it presents a critical problem with a foundational cornerstone of your entire post. The resourceless classes in "the old days" had a second tentpole of power that was far more of a factor than the fact that they were some flavor of "resourceless" & we still see the impact of that tentpole all the way up to modern editions. Fighters had the most ability to use weapons, especially various flavors of swords that were often difficult to impossible for many other classes. Rogues used daggers because they had abilities to make those daggers worth using that other classes tended to lack. Barbarians tended to use stuff like 2handed axes while clerics used maces, lots of those still exist with flavorful abilities super relevant to them. Casters like the wizard could use crossbows & a magic crossbow was awful for most classes but totally better than nonmagical ones when the situation didn't justify eating into their limited supply of wands & scrolls. --NONE-- of that remains true & there are multiple design choices working to ensure it can't matter without a cascade of houserule fixes... but the echo is still so obvious that people who started with 5e that it's even a frequently seen complaint that there aren't enough magic $SpecificNotSwords. Through providing those magic weapons & other magical gear in justified group specific moderation stacked against monster math that required or expected it those "resourceless"classes had their primary tentpole of power.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why?

Sure, maybe for thematics, but it was a nice limit on how much beating a character can take in a day, divine intervention or not.

And cleric with daily powers(cure spells) did not use HS, but various encounter powers did.
So valuable spell; no healing surge
cheap spell: uses healing surge


or that all saying: help yourself and gods will help you.

Because it made more logical sense to them than the 4e alternative. I certainly understand that argument. Not everyone sees the game as mechanics first.