D&D 5E Those who come from earlier editions, why are you okay with 5E healing (or are you)?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not really, at least, not with exactly those options, as presented, because the 3rd option really is no different from the 2nd in kind, just in degree. You change the meaning of hps and change the rules to reflect that change. Also, 3.1 and 3.2 prettymuch contradict eachother.

I might break down 1 & 2 more like this:

1. You don't change the hp system.
a. You ignore what hp mean or represent, describing or visualizing the results of combat however you see fit in the moment, and not worrying about possibly needing to revise or ret-con it mid-narrative to make sense of it.
b. You think about what hp mean or represent, and try to describe or visualize them consistently, and live with the fact you probably won't always succeed.
2. You change the system.
a. Tweak it slightly: change the length or timing of rests, change recovery of HD.
b. Add significantly: add exhaustion or lingering wounds for coming back from 0 or for crits or whatever.
c. Break it to fix it: radically change the rate of healing, but not other things recovered on a rest, do away with HD, etc.
d. Overhaul from the ground up: possibly choose something other than hps.

Personally, I'd go for (1.a), with a rule of thumb something like: anything that brings you closer to defeat could be modeled as losing hp, anything that brings you back from that precipice could be modeled as restoring them. Restoring hps needn't map to un-doing the source of hp loss, it could merely be compensating for it.

Oh, and then you can tweak healing so it's proportional, like a heal is good for 25 percent! And you could make it an internal character resource that gets depleted! We could really improve 5e and make, wait... Wasn't there rules like that one? Nah, who would be silly enough to go back to the old way!? It would be great if we started working on it!
ROFLMAO

 

[Lanefan]

This isn't specifically against you, @Charlaquin , it's more against the terrible design philosophy you've brought to light.... (and yes I know I'm late to the party again... )

I think the idea that every rule should be analyzed in terms of setting implications has largely fallen out of favor in modern RPG design, which is much more focused on game impact. The rules by which the game is played need not be treated like physical laws of the setting.

This is true.

It's also utterly pathetic. Why even bother with a setting if the characters being played aren't part of it?

Further, how does this allow one to play Joe Farmboy as a character (or hireling)? Does something about Joe change the moment he leaves the farm and takes up a sword? Also, how does this work for retired adventurers - does 10th-level-Fighter Joe suddenly lose his mighty overnight healing abilities the moment he lays down his sword and takes up farming again?

I wouldn’t really call this house ruling. 5e is written with the expectation that the DM will make rulings like these to cover situations the rules don’t. Again, the idea of rules-as-physics-engine has pretty much gone the way of the dodo in modern RPG design.

To which I can only say: fight the system if you have to and reverse this.

I'm not saying that you need to go all 3e on this, with commoner classes and so forth; but make it consistent for gawd's sake! Absent magical healing, an adventurer heals just the same as a farmer, which means that if adventurers can fully recover overnight then so can farmers...which is fine in itself as at least it's consistent but did anyone think through what this means for how the off-stage game world functions? I rather doubt it...

 

[Azzy]

This isn't specifically against you, @Charlaquin , it's more against the terrible design philosophy you've brought to light.... (and yes I know I'm late to the party again... )
This is true.

It's also utterly pathetic. Why even bother with a setting if the characters being played aren't part of it?

Why read fiction when the protagonists and main antagonists are treated differently from the side characters?

 

[Charlaquin]

This isn't specifically against you, @Charlaquin , it's more against the terrible design philosophy you've brought to light.... (and yes I know I'm late to the party again... )

This is true.

It's also utterly pathetic. Why even bother with a setting if the characters being played aren't part of it?

The characters are a part of the setting. Nothing about designing precludes the characters’ existence in the setting. The game rules should define how the game is played. There is no need for them to define the setting.

Further, how does this allow one to play Joe Farmboy as a character (or hireling)?

How does it prevent that?

Does something about Joe change the moment he leaves the farm and takes up a sword?

No.

Also, how does this work for retired adventurers - does 10th-level-Fighter Joe suddenly lose his mighty overnight healing abilities the moment he lays down his sword and takes up farming again?

Unless 10th-level-Fighter Joe is a PC, how he heals isn’t really relevant.

To which I can only say: fight the system if you have to and reverse this.

Why? The system works. Well.

I'm not saying that you need to go all 3e on this, with commoner classes and so forth; but make it consistent for gawd's sake! Absent magical healing, an adventurer heals just the same as a farmer, which means that if adventurers can fully recover overnight then so can farmers...which is fine in itself as at least it's consistent but did anyone think through what this means for how the off-stage game world functions? I rather doubt it...

Again, unless those farmers are going on adventures, how quickly they regain HP doesn’t really matter, as it won’t come up in the game. Additionally, HP is neither the only, nor the best way to represent injury, and many better ways can’t be reversed with just a long rest.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes. Hit points are an abstraction. This is to circumvent the tiresome "who's going to play the cleric?" routine that was so prevalent in earlier editions,

You're the third or fourth or sixth person to bring this up, that nobody wanted to play the Cleric; and it's not always true. The Cleric in those games is supposed to be first and foremost a support class rather than a front-and-centre class, and believe it or not some people like playing the support class.

As long as you have at least one HP, you can climb a cliff, run a marathon, or whatever physical excretion or activity you desire with no hindrance at all.

Yes, this has always been a systemic problem without a simple fix. But it is a bug, not a feature.

 

[Lanefan]

No. In D&D damage is not absolute. HP are not "meat points". That's why they grow, and why a high-level Halfing has the same number as a moderately sized red dragon! That's not really a subject for debate.

Even though it should be - and, given the amount of discussion that arises every time the subject is broached, clearly is.

If you want a system with absolute damage, they are out there, and they are not 5E (or any other kind of D&D or close D&D relative).

One can get a fair amount of the way there by modifying any of 0e-1e-2e such that armour gives damage reduction and h.p. don't increase with level anywhere near as fast as RAW would have them.

Further, you continue to fail to address the gigantic problem you create by asserting they are meat points and that damage is absolute, which is that until you hit 0 HP, there are 0 consequences.

They're partly meat points (for various reasons including poison they have to be), and that you can still fully function at 1 h.p. having lost 76 h.p. is and always has been a glaring hole in the rules.

Again, there are plenty of systems where this isn't true. If this aesthetic/gameplay element of D&D is something you cannot accept, which it appears to be, I would suggest running one of those instead.

No, I'll just kitbash D&D.

The fall problem is also pretty hilarious with the "damage is absolute" thing, given an elephant can walk away from any distance of fall on average, which er, doesn't seem very plausible (less plausible than a human by far, I'd suggest).

Falling damage has always been another glaring hole in the rules, though it's much more easily solved than some others.

Again, no, they're actively making an effort to make a mess of it. Claiming someone is "impaled" on a spike, which strongly suggests it's gone in one side of the body/limb and out the other, in a fairly solid way, is going out of your way to mis-portray what has actually happened in most cases.

My example was a 50 HP character taking 20 damage from a spike trap. He's not even "bloodied" in a 4E sense (something 5E doesn't have as a set concept but clearly has a notion of). He's probably winded, battered/bruised, alarmed and has sprains/strains from falling among the spikes, none of which went through him. Maybe some broke on his armour or whatever. But impaled? Is not a legitimate interpretation, and is not "trying to make sense" of anything. It's trying to misinterpret it in order to make HP into meat points. Whereas if he was on 14 HP, and took 20 damage from spikes, I'd say it was legit to say he was impaled (though probably only by one of them if he was still able to make death saves).

It's not that 5E's rules are impossible to improve on, but it's not like vast change is needed. The main issue seems to be the same issue I saw in 2E in 1989 - some people think HP are "meat points".

Some of that stems from a simple desire to narrate a hit differently from a miss. Otherwise you end up with:

Miss: "The blow glances off your shield for no damage."
Hit: "The blow glances off your shield for 7 damage."

And it's entirely possible the very use of the word "damage" might be at fault, as damage is usually defined as (and most certainly implies) something being physically harmed or broken or even destroyed.

 

[Lanefan]

Why read fiction when the protagonists and main antagonists are treated differently from the side characters?

I always assume that they're not, and if-when it becomes apparent that they are my enjoyment of the story becomes significantly less.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Even though it should be - and, given the amount of discussion that arises every time the subject is broached, clearly is.

No matter how clear/simple/straightforward* something may be, it can be rendered 'controversial' by enough people complaining about it, loudly and persistently enough.

One can get a fair amount of the way there by modifying any of 0e-1e-2e such that armour gives damage reduction and h.p. don't increase with level anywhere near as fast as RAW would have them.

One could also play GURPS. Or simply walk into Mordor.

They're partly meat points (for various reasons including poison they have to be), and that you can still fully function at 1 h.p. having lost 76 h.p. is and always has been a glaring hole in the rules.

It's a glaring hole in certain interpretations of what the rules are modeling. Each interpretation has it's own glaring holes.

Some of that stems from a simple desire to narrate a hit differently from a miss. Otherwise you end up with:

Miss: "The blow glances off your shield for no damage."
Hit: "The blow glances off your shield for 7 damage."

Or just from calling it a 'hit' instead of 'a successful attack' or something, for that matter.

And it's entirely possible the very use of the word "damage" might be at fault, as damage is usually defined as (and most certainly implies) something being physically harmed or broken or even destroyed.

As in "what is your damage?"






* not that hps are at all clear.

 

[Lanefan]

The characters are a part of the setting. Nothing about designing precludes the characters’ existence in the setting. The game rules should define how the game is played. There is no need for them to define the setting.

The game rules ARE the setting! They have to be, otherwise all you've got is an inconsistent mess.

How does it prevent that?

Joe the farmboy heals like a peasant one night but the next day takes up a sword and starts adventuring, so the next night Joe the adventurer heals like an adventurer. Which means that yes, something about Joe changes the moment he leaves the farm.

Unless 10th-level-Fighter Joe is a PC, how he heals isn’t really relevant.

OK, let's say he's a retired PC. (not that it should matter in the least!)

Also, don't forget that not all adventurers are PCs! There's party NPCs, other adventuring parties (be they friend, foe or neither), etc., etc.

Why? The system works. Well.

As a game purely in the game-first sense, perhaps; but I've got a computer if that's what I want. As a device for producing both a setting and a fiction consistent with itself this aspect of the system barely works at all (in any edition; though 4e-5e are a bit worse than the rest).

Again, unless those farmers are going on adventures, how quickly they regain HP doesn’t really matter, as it won’t come up in the game.

Whether it comes up in the run of play or not is absolutely irrelevant; it's still going on in the background...or at least for the sake of consistency and believability the players have to think it is; and the easiest way to achieve that is to make it so.

Additionally, HP is neither the only, nor the best way to represent injury, and many better ways can’t be reversed with just a long rest.

True, though as h.p. are always what you lose when something hurts you one would think they'd also be the go-to mechanism to represent injury.

 

[Charlaquin]

You're the third or fourth or sixth person to bring this up, that nobody wanted to play the Cleric; and it's not always true. The Cleric in those games is supposed to be first and foremost a support class rather than a front-and-centre class, and believe it or not some people like playing the support class.

The problem isn’t the cleric being a support class, it’s the support class being essential. Yes, lots of people do enjoy playing support classes, but lots of people don’t, and not every group had the former among their players. And even players who do like to play support classes sometimes like to play something else from time to time. Not every group has problems finding someone willing to play a cleric, but enough do that it’s a problem worth addressing.

Yes, this has always been a systemic problem without a simple fix. But it is a bug, not a feature.

I’m not convinced the designers would agree. If it was indeed a bug, it could have been fixed by now. There are lots of RPG systems that don’t have this problem. If the D&D designers thought it was a problem, there are solutions out there they could have employed, so the fact that they still haven’t seems to indicate that they don’t think it’s a problem.