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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5803940" data-attributes="member: 3424">I think there is a more fundamental question that needs to be addressed, namely: what is the role of healing in D&D?It is entirely possible to run a D&D campaign with just natural healing. The PCs would just need to be more cautious (perhaps retreating when any character is reduced to less than 25% of hit points to lower the chance of character death) and spend more time resting between adventures. So what does healing actually add? In my view:1. Generic safety net. This allows characters to take more risks because they are now better able to stave off death.2. Targeted resilience. Healing can mitigate the effects of bad luck (at least, in the form of higher than expected hit point loss) on any single character, so that the party as a whole is able to adventure for longer.3. Reduced downtime. Here the concerns are more narrative-based than mechanical, although it might have a material impact on challenges that are reactive or have a deadline. Otherwise, it is simply a matter of resting a day or resting a week or more.4. Short-term tension. This point is probably somewhat controversial, since it is most obvious in 4e. The "hit point yo-yo", in which characters have their hit points reduced close to 0 (or even dropping below that) during an encounter and then being restored close to full after each fight, creates more tension in each fight than the numerically equivalent approach of (say) quadrupling each character's number of hit points and having them fight four fights without any healing in between. In the latter case, tension would naturally be lower (or at least, different) in the first few fights since the PCs are likely to have substantial hit point buffers.So IMO, healing isn't strictly speaking necessary in any edition of D&D. However, if you choose to go without healing, you would have to go without the elements listed above in your games.</blockquote>

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