D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[tetrasodium]

Except that with linear hit points and exponential treasure rewards, that cost became less and less significant as you gained levels.

In any case, this was just to point out that, for earlier editions, looking only to the healing available through the casters' own spell slots did not tell the whole story.

No not really.. you are assuming video game style bottomless wand vendors too. Eventually the group's hp growth needed to step up to things like some amount∆ of things like CMW wands or the gm just said "no the town only had N of them available". Similar soft caps eventually kicked in against Bob's excessive recklessness even if someone in the party was crafting them.

∆because CLW wands eventually stopped cutting it for in combat needs and simple matters of availability kicked in for our of combat needs

 

[Daztur]

On a more motivations-of-play note: I have been reading Peterson's new edition of Playing At the World and thinking about the way D&D was rooted in wargaming. Whereas I believe one observes in the latter part of the half-century arc an almost paradigmatic shift in motivations (away from wargaming). If so, then concern for wargamerish attritional challenge may be lessened as a priority for design.

Well the issue here is that WotC may not care about wargamerish attritional challenge but wargamerish attritional challenge cares about them.

What I mean by that is that 5.*e is based around having six or so encounters per long rest and a lot of the game just doesn't work right if you only have 1-2, as that allows the players to go full nova during most every fight (which causes a lot of issues) and having few fights per long rest utterly screws over classes that can't nova well like rogues.

And if you're going to have 6 or so encounters per long rest it's pretty hard to set up anything BUT an attritional challenge. What other options are there?

WotC would probably be better off changing their assumptions and making the game work better if there are a lot fewer encounters per long rest but pretty hard to change that now without scrapping backwards compatibility.

 

[mellored]

And if you're going to have 6 or so encounters per long rest it's pretty hard to set up anything BUT an attritional challenge. What other options are there?

Using the alternative resting rules.

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

 

[Krachek]

The DnD designers don’t make that much math!

 

[Daztur]

Using the alternative resting rules.

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

Yes, but that's still an attritional challenge just stretched over two in-game days.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, but that's still an attritional challenge just stretched over two in-game days.

That's an issue because ... why? I've been using the optional rules for years, it works well for my preferred pacing.

I have no issue with the change, for the most part in combat healing for anything other than bringing someone back from 0 is, for the most part, a waste of time following the 2014 rules. It's why drinking a healing potion as a bonus action is so popular.

I'm going to actually see how it affects my game or if it does when we actually use the rules. Until then I will continue to adjust the difficulty level of encounters to the point where we want it to be. Because D&D is, and always has been, as difficult as the DM and group decide it should be.

 

[TiQuinn]

I think whether it’s a problem comes down to the play style that you mentioned. For me and my friends when I was playing 2e, we noticed that:

1) We always needed a cleric.
2) Playing the cleric felt like drawing the short straw because you were the healer - you couldn’t do your cool spells because you needed to hold healing in reserve.
3) Our style of play was already trending away from dungeon exploring and attrition to more heroic play. If we were caught in a place where we had expended our resources, we’d beat feet back to town unscathed, rest however long that took, and picked up where we left off. Fighting for your survival while in retreat was a one-off thing - repeatedly doing it felt like a deficiency in the game to us.

So come 5e, and with a different set of players but still the same emphasis on heroic play, the change became “make it to the next rest and skip the healing because what’s the point?” I almost feel like the game the way we play it could abandon healing spells altogether and make it all about short and long rests but that’d probably be too much of a sacred cow.

 

[Oofta]

I think whether it’s a problem comes down to the play style that you mentioned. For me and my friends when I was playing 2e, we noticed that:

1) We always needed a cleric.
2) Playing the cleric felt like drawing the short straw because you were the healer - you couldn’t do your cool spells because you needed to hold healing in reserve.
3) Our style of play was already trending away from dungeon exploring and attrition to more heroic play. If we were caught in a place where we had expended our resources, we’d beat feet back to town unscathed, rest however long that took, and picked up where we left off. Fighting for your survival while in retreat was a one-off thing - repeatedly doing it felt like a deficiency in the game to us.

So come 5e, and with a different set of players but still the same emphasis on heroic play, the change became “make it to the next rest and skip the healing because what’s the point?” I almost feel like the game the way we play it could abandon healing spells altogether and make it all about short and long rests but that’d probably be too much of a sacred cow.

I have a group that doesn't have a healer other than a Way of Mercy monk in case someone drops to 0. On the other hand they do burn through a lot of healing potions because I don't back off on difficulty.

But one of the things I liked about 4E is that my cleric felt like they could be more than just a healbot, they could be decent at support and heal when needed. While I don't want to go back to that, I still see people feeling like someone "has to" play a cleric with the 2014 rules. We'll see how well it works in practice when we actually start playing.

 

[tetrasodium]

I love the cognitive dissonance that rears it's head every time someone blithely tosses out the not at all gritty not at all realism dmg variant as if a slight change to the narrative will correct the massive problems rearing their heads when the game drops below six to eight medium to hard encounters per adventuring day once the players have already decided to go whole hog on 5mwd "rest>nova>repeat" type play play. 5e did away with all of the secondary subsystems and "ask your gm if you can get that rest" type clauses in favor of resting mechanicsthst are effectively "tell your GM when you complete a rest unless they are a monster with a term like adversarial dm killer em or whatever who stops you from taking what is yours"

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I love the cognitive dissonance that rears it's head every time someone blithely tosses out the not at all gritty not at all realism dmg variant as if a slight change to the narrative will correct the massive problems rearing their heads when the game drops below six to eight medium to hard encounters per adventuring day once the players have already decided to go whole hog on 5mwd "rest>nova>repeat" type play play. 5e did away with all of the secondary subsystems and "ask your gm if you can get that rest" type clauses in favor of resting mechanicsthst are effectively "tell your GM when you complete a rest unless they are a monster with a term like adversarial dm killer em or whatever who stops you from taking what is yours"

Because it is hella easier to get more encounters between long rests that way. It is hard to have narrative consequences for resting for a day; it is way easier to have them for resting for a week, especially with an additional requirement of a safe haven. Then long rest basically become "abandon mission" if you have not accomplished your goals before you take it.