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

[Chaosmancer]

I'm responding honestly to the question asked by the OP. Ever since I started playing (in 2E), the game has worked a certain way, and I'm not happy about the radical departure in more recent years.

I couldn't care one whit about anything that happened prior to 2E. If you say that you never took it seriously, then good for you, but it's also irrelevant. That's not my game, I never played it, and it has absolutely zero bearing on the game I actually care about.

If everything except your own experience is irrelevant then you cannot make any claims whatsoever to change the minds of people. Because their experience is equally valid.

And, I believe it was you who said:

Rationalization is not a useful tool here. Whatever answer it leads you to, it's not useful beyond the level of a mere game. It certainly can't generate a meaningful narrative, the way a traditional RPG would, because the ultimate answer for why anything happens, will always just be that "it's a game".

It was a response to that idea where I brought up the "traditional RPG" in the old modules that are the most famous, pointing out that narrative consistency has rarely been a strong point in DnD's past. And now your response is "those modules don't matter, I am only considering my own experience from 2E on and nothing else."

Well, I don't know what houserules you've been running for the last thirty years, so I cannot speak to your experiences. I do not know what adventures you ran, so I cannot use the risk vs reward scenarios involved to talk to you. I know nothing of your expeirence, and since you will accept no evidence beyond your own expeirence, there seems to be nothing more to say to you at all.

If you want to argue about how severe a hit really is, well... you can't reconcile being beaten into unconsciousness and six seconds from bleeding out, with being good as new with zero scratches the next morning. It isn't a nebulous or amorphous state; it's an impossible and self-contradictory state.

You also can't reconcile the fact that a person who has lost 149 hp and still has 1 hp left, has suffered no detriments to their fighting ability whatsoever.

But, while the narrative might not be reflected in the mechanics, it is a far easier game to play if you don't have incremental penalties at every 10% of health lost to keep track of.

But, it still seems to be working well enough that people can play, enjoy, and make stories out of the game.

 

[oriaxx77]

Sure, but on the flipside, you can't give every single adventure a time constraint either; that gets repetitive.

But my main point is that my players don't like doing things while they're not at full strength, so they're going to take the time to rest, whatever that time is. Whether it's overnight or a week, it won't change their playstyle.

Sometimes players have to work to acquire full strength, and it gives more opportunity to play and more variety in encounters.

 

[Monayuris]

I'm a classic B/X guy. 5E is a decent game, but yeah I'm in the healing is way overpowered camp.

I think too much access to healing takes away from the 'campaign' / realism of the game.

5E is definitely more suited to high fantasy / high heroics (like low level Marvel comics superheroes). That is the game's strong suit. By default, 5E is not going to give you a gritty simulationist game. It is high octane power fantasy at its core.

If you don't want that level of power, then a different game is a better choice. So, in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with 5E's healing, it just may not be suitable for the style of game some people want to run. On the other hand, it may be perfect for other people's style.

It is definitely not suitable for my own personal style of play. But different people want different things.

 

[Lanefan]

Fortunately for those that don't like the quick pace of 5e's natural healing, the rules can easily be modified to taste. Either by using one of the healing options in the DMG, or by importing your chosen edition's method wholesale. Do what you need to tailor the game to your group's tastes.

You're absolutely right with what you say here: you can always kitbash it into what you want.

My problem with 5e's approach isn't that it can't be kitbashed, but that a) it sets an IMO very poor default expectation for new players and DMs that this is how rest and recovery work in the game, b) most new DMs aren't going to know enough to even think to kitbash it (or, should they try, will likely be done in by unintended knock-on effects such as class imbalance), and c) that the suggested optional rules in the DMG don't actually improve anything but instead just stretch the same issues out over a longer in-game time.

 

[Lanefan]

You also can't reconcile the fact that a person who has lost 149 hp and still has 1 hp left, has suffered no detriments to their fighting ability whatsoever.

Agreed, and this has bugged me since about forever.

But, while the narrative might not be reflected in the mechanics, it is a far easier game to play if you don't have incremental penalties at every 10% of health lost to keep track of.

Incremental penalties every 10% is overkill, but either a modified version of 4e's 'bloodied' or some version of a wound-vitality or body-fatigue hit point system can allow for the narrative to make more sense while not adding too much complication.

But, it still seems to be working well enough that people can play, enjoy, and make stories out of the game.

It does, but is that because of the system or in spite of it?

 

[Azzy]

You're absolutely right with what you say here: you can always kitbash it into what you want.

My problem with 5e's approach isn't that it can't be kitbashed, but that a) it sets an IMO very poor default expectation for new players and DMs that this is how rest and recovery work in the game, b) most new DMs aren't going to know enough to even think to kitbash it (or, should they try, will likely be done in by unintended knock-on effects such as class imbalance), and c) that the suggested optional rules in the DMG don't actually improve anything but instead just stretch the same issues out over a longer in-game time.

So, this is an ideological issue for you in wanting new players/DMs to follow your preferences rather than the other way. I just can't sympathize for you on this—how other people play is none of your concern.

 

[Umbran]

So, this is an ideological issue for you in wanting new players/DMs to follow your preferences rather than the other way. I just can't sympathize for you on this—how other people play is none of your concern.

I have to agree. "I don't like fast healing, so nobody should learn on a fast healing platform first," is not a compelling argument.

And, to be honest, the idea that folks cannot figure out that different games will have different expectations is not supported by how many different games, with different expectations exist and flourish.

 

[Arilyn]

If there's going to be more realistic, slower healing, then I think there needs to be more realistic story details, like far fewer combats. As long as the bedrock of D&D is numerous combat encounters in a day, then the game is going to continue to have fast healing as simply a practical choice for the majority of players. Goes with armour that doesn't actually reduce damage, feeling no pain and gaining huge amounts of hp as you gain levels. These changes would veer too far from mainstream D&D, however.

D&D feels a lot like video game play because video games emulated D&D tropes. Even in the old days, D&D wasn't exactly gritty. Dying a lot just made you pull another character out of the binder. New players aren't looking for a new style of play, exactly. More like wanting the old style to work more smoothly. The various editions of D&D are just that, smoothing over the kludgy bits, shedding the tedious bits and helping ensure characters can actually survive past the first few rooms of the dungeon.

The actual bones of the game, slaying monsters, gaining treasure and power are still there. But as many posters have said, changing healing is easy.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It does, but is that because of the system or in spite of it?

That is a thorny question.

Do you like a cake because of the eggs in it or in spite of them? It is incredibly hard to pull out a system as deeply ingrained in the game as "Hit Points" and decide whether that aspect is hurting or helping the experience.

I can tell you this, no other system I play at the table uses HP. They all do something different, so for me, HP is integral to the experience of DnD. Different systems are for different games. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

 

[Lanefan]

I just can't sympathize for you on this—how other people play is none of your concern.

How other people play may not be any of my concern, but how the game is designed is a concern of everyone who plays it.