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Too Much Healing Going On?
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<blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8036163" data-attributes="member: 87792"><p>What healing is too much depends on your play style. I've said in the past and I'll say again the second biggest change ever made to D&D was 3.0 making the Wand of Cure Light Wounds easily buyable or even makeable by your average adventuring party. (The biggest change, of course, was the removal of XP for GP leading to a much more hack and slash play style as you no longer got most of your XP from loot). </p><p></p><p>Having enough healing to bring your party back to full HP every fight is just how things have been for the past 20 years. oD&D was very much balanced around an attritional "test your luck" playstyle where the question was always "Will I have enough hp (or, at low level, hirelings) left to make it home safely" and although the slings and arrows of outrageous kobolds weren't individually quite so threatening they were expected and intended to add up over the course of a dungeon delve. </p><p></p><p>3.0 made a mistake by adding item creation rules that lead to a first level wand of Cure Light Wounds costing a mere 750GP (or less than a third of the price of a +1 sword counting the Masterwork Weapon cost) and had an average of 275 hp. This made healing readily available both relatively cheaply and in massive quantities almost by mistake meaning that any encounter that only reduces some of the PCs hit points to about half just isn't scary and the only thing that really matters short of death is whether you can bait out spells. So you need to actively threaten the party with every encounter. </p><p></p><p>4e provided a relatively hard cap on healing so attrition actually mattered again (there is <em>some</em> magical healing that doesn't spend surges including the Cure Wounds daily ability but it's rare). 5e took off the cap, with a lot of magical healing - but lowered the PC backup hit points from about twice their starting amount but slightly under the starting amount. And (thank goodness) didn't bring back the wand of CLW.</p><p></p><p>Although both 4e and 5e have theoretically limited healing both assume that (like 3.0 and 3.5) the default is that the PCs go into every fight at full health. An average 5e PC has the endurance to be taken to 0hp every day and stand back up again at pretty near full hp even before magic adds more hp; a 4e one can do it twice but gets a whole lot less magic to help (and normally will have spent some of those surges in the fight so aren't likely to do it fully twice).</p><p></p><p>So ridiculous amounts of trickle (rather than burst) healing have been the D&D default for 20 years now. It makes encounter design mean that you should be going almost full force or having the bad guys run, and baiting out the spells is a triumph.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Neonchameleon, post: 8036163, member: 87792"] What healing is too much depends on your play style. I've said in the past and I'll say again the second biggest change ever made to D&D was 3.0 making the Wand of Cure Light Wounds easily buyable or even makeable by your average adventuring party. (The biggest change, of course, was the removal of XP for GP leading to a much more hack and slash play style as you no longer got most of your XP from loot). Having enough healing to bring your party back to full HP every fight is just how things have been for the past 20 years. oD&D was very much balanced around an attritional "test your luck" playstyle where the question was always "Will I have enough hp (or, at low level, hirelings) left to make it home safely" and although the slings and arrows of outrageous kobolds weren't individually quite so threatening they were expected and intended to add up over the course of a dungeon delve. 3.0 made a mistake by adding item creation rules that lead to a first level wand of Cure Light Wounds costing a mere 750GP (or less than a third of the price of a +1 sword counting the Masterwork Weapon cost) and had an average of 275 hp. This made healing readily available both relatively cheaply and in massive quantities almost by mistake meaning that any encounter that only reduces some of the PCs hit points to about half just isn't scary and the only thing that really matters short of death is whether you can bait out spells. So you need to actively threaten the party with every encounter. 4e provided a relatively hard cap on healing so attrition actually mattered again (there is [I]some[/I] magical healing that doesn't spend surges including the Cure Wounds daily ability but it's rare). 5e took off the cap, with a lot of magical healing - but lowered the PC backup hit points from about twice their starting amount but slightly under the starting amount. And (thank goodness) didn't bring back the wand of CLW. Although both 4e and 5e have theoretically limited healing both assume that (like 3.0 and 3.5) the default is that the PCs go into every fight at full health. An average 5e PC has the endurance to be taken to 0hp every day and stand back up again at pretty near full hp even before magic adds more hp; a 4e one can do it twice but gets a whole lot less magic to help (and normally will have spent some of those surges in the fight so aren't likely to do it fully twice). So ridiculous amounts of trickle (rather than burst) healing have been the D&D default for 20 years now. It makes encounter design mean that you should be going almost full force or having the bad guys run, and baiting out the spells is a triumph. [/QUOTE]
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