D&D 5E (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[TwoSix]

200% is patently ridiculous from a verisimilitude perspective. This is also why I rejected 4e.

There is no verisimilitude for hit points. There are simply different sets of narrations to accept or reject.

 

[Emerikol]

I disagree. I can't speak to your experience, but that is not our experience. In my group there no character with healing spells: 2 Fighters, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard. They have made it to level 15 with just HD healing.

I do agree with this though. We called them heroic surges in 4e and you could spend them on more than healing (recharging powers, more speed, etc.). We eventually modified HD usage to do basically the same thing in 5e.

I agree the game has not been remotely hard since at least 2e unless the DM went out of their way to make it hard. I haven't played 5e but I've seen the rules and I've seen the discussions. 3e and 4e were not hard either.

 

[Emerikol]

There is no verisimilitude for hit points. There are simply different sets of narrations to accept or reject.

Perhaps so. For me I can't play that way and enjoy the game at all.

 

[pemerton]

200% is patently ridiculous from a verisimilitude perspective.

I don't understand this. Hit points are some sort of abstract indicator of a character's staying power in combat. How is it ridiculous, from the point of view of verisimilitude, to be able to recover X amount rather than Y amount by drawing on one's heroic resolve?

I mean, suppose that, in AD&D, you divided every PC's hit points by 3, but created a mechanic that allowed a PC to recover their hp to full by resting, provided they're not at negative hp. This would make individual combats more dangerous. And would change the pacing of recovery slightly. But how would it make the game less verisimilitudinous?

And that's all 4e healing surges are - hit points gated behind a recovery mechanic.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

For my groups I seriously doubt this would be true. We played without any hit dice and just basic cleric healing. And I don't think they made 5e harder.

"We removed the small source of healing, but kept the big source, so I don't think much would change." Yeah...I agree with that. Hit dice are mostly pointless. Being forced to use only hit dice would have been outright lethal for literally every party I've ever played in.

200% is patently ridiculous from a verisimilitude perspective. This is also why I rejected 4e.

I don't understand why. Healing surges are inherently more like actual healing than spells are. They literally represent your body's ability to preserve homeostasis, and the fact that those resources are not always accessible to you. Yes, you can potentially take that much damage. But if you take more than 100% too fast? You are going down and only the intervention of others can realistically save you. (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.)

My point is that I don't like the whole 4e notion of healing which in some ways carried forward into 5e. I'm never going to play that way. I agree though with you I wouldn't have unlimited healing wands like they did in 3e. That was not true in 1e, 2e.

Again, I don't understand why it's a problem. This is literally, actually more like real human response to injury: if you can prevent the patient going into shock, you can usually save them, even from extremely serious wounds (we're talking limb-blown-off wounds here, which is something D&D has never handled well.) An individual person can only tap a small amount of that consciously, which is represented by the 4e Second Wind (anyone could use it; it used up your Standard action, gave you a defense bonus until the start of your next turn, and let you spend one healing surge)...which is only usable once per combat. So a person without the support of someone trained in keeping others alive (a Leader, a Paladin, someone with a medkit) or a healing potion (which was a very inefficient means of healing) literally cannot regain more than ~25% of their HP in a single fight.

Healing surges are the most realistic, as in actually like the living breathing people we are IRL, healing rules D&D has ever had. The only even vaguely unrealistic aspect of them is that, being Larger Than Life heroes, you can survive more total daily punishment than a real person could. But that's always been true of D&D characters from the very beginning; Gygax himself wrote about how hit points could not possibly be purely physical because a fighting-man goes from barely surviving two sword strikes to taking more injuries than a prime warhorse and shrugging them off like it's no big deal.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Healing surges were a good mechanic. The possible verisimilitude issue is not related to the surges directly, it is related to how rapidly they recharge, which is the exact same issue that exist with the daily recovery of the HP in 5e.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I disagree. I can't speak to your experience, but that is not our experience. In my group there no character with healing spells: 2 Fighters, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard. They have made it to level 15 with just HD healing.

Then color me genuinely, thoroughly shocked. I have no idea how you've managed to survive. That group 100% would have TPK'd at least once in LMoP and twice in Phandelver and Below with how things have gone for the current group I'm in where I'm the only healer (Fighter/Rogue, Monk, Barbarian, and my Celestial Warlock.) My ability to heal people at range and/or revivify has directly prevented at least two deaths thus far (and failed to prevent one other, sadly; RIP Ryven, gone before your time), and even with all that, we've been downing healing potions like fish drink water.

 

[dave2008]

I agree the game has not been remotely hard since at least 2e unless the DM went out of their way to make it hard. I haven't played 5e but I've seen the rules and I've seen the discussions. 3e and 4e were not hard either.

IMO, a game is what you make it. It is very easy to make 5e hard if you want to play that way.

 

[dave2008]

Then color me genuinely, thoroughly shocked. I have no idea how you've managed to survive. That group 100% would have TPK'd at least once in LMoP and twice in Phandelver and Below with how things have gone for the current group I'm in where I'm the only healer (Fighter/Rogue, Monk, Barbarian, and my Celestial Warlock.) My ability to heal people at range and/or revivify has directly prevented at least two deaths thus far (and failed to prevent one other, sadly; RIP Ryven, gone before your time), and even with all that, we've been downing healing potions like fish drink water.

Sounds awesome!

My group is old school and doesn't typically get in fights they can't win and run if they need too. Also, we don't play published adventures so I can't tell you how they faired in LMoP or any published adventure.

 

[Ashrym]

Then color me genuinely, thoroughly shocked. I have no idea how you've managed to survive. That group 100% would have TPK'd at least once in LMoP and twice in Phandelver and Below with how things have gone for the current group I'm in where I'm the only healer (Fighter/Rogue, Monk, Barbarian, and my Celestial Warlock.) My ability to heal people at range and/or revivify has directly prevented at least two deaths thus far (and failed to prevent one other, sadly; RIP Ryven, gone before your time), and even with all that, we've been downing healing potions like fish drink water.

It looks to me like you're heavy on martial combat and light on crowd control compared to the other group.

IME preventing damage > healing damage, but I often carry healing spells for emergencies, which is one of the reasons I like bards or druids who are useful for both CC and healing.

Spending hit dice on a short rest is a lot of healing, though, getting back to why healing spells needed a boost to become more relevant.