Universal fast healing - effects?

[Cheiromancer]

I'm thinking of a campaign in which most characters get fast healing. Here's my thinking:

The warlock class proposed a different model of magic use; a spellcaster who doesn't run out of spells. The problem with the class is that it is tied down by the weaknesses of other characters in the party. When the cleric runs out of spells, everyone has to rest, because it is dangerous to go on without healing. The Dragon Shaman's (PHB II) aura of vitality helps, but not quite enough; going around at half hit points is too dangerous. And it's really not that popular a class.

One possibility is simply to ensure that wands of CLW are extremely plentiful, at least past the first few levels (at low levels these wands are too expensive to be realistic). But I figure that if I am going to allow characters to completely heal up between encounters, why not just give them fast healing? The fighting classes should get more fast healing than the spellcasters or skill users, I think. And normal people (commoners and low level NPC classes) shouldn't be especially hardy; this feature would mostly be for adventurers.

Anyway I was thinking of something like this:

1. All characters have fast healing equal to half their base Fort save (round down). Only count Fort saves due to class levels. NPC classes (warrior, adept, commoner, etc.) provide 1 point less of fast healing than would otherwise be the case (to a minimum of zero).

2. This fast healing does not function if you are below half your usual hit points.

3. Clerics and Druids get poor Fort saves in this system.

Examples:

1. Example: A fighter 1 has fast healing 1 (half of a +2 base fort save). This increases to fast healing 3 at level 8, and fast healing 6 at level 20. A warrior 3 doesn't have fast healing at all, but a warrior 4 does.

2. A fighter 1 with Con 16 has 13 hit points. He has fast healing 1 until he has 6 hit points or less. He can fight numerous low level opponents without fear- unless a lucky critical or a few bad rolls drops him too low. At 10th level this same fighter has 116 hit points; provided he stays above 57 hit points, he will have fast healing 3.

Reasoning:

I don't want to make the healing ability of clerics, paladins, druids, etc. completely useless. And so at low levels I deny fast healing to some classes, and I try to make it so that a bit of healing will be useful at any time (i.e. when a character drops below half, and/or when combat is especially fierce). As mentioned above, it is much like a campaign where wands of CLW are ubiquitous; there is no problem healing up between encounters, but healing is still useful within a combat, especially when there is a lot of damage floating around.

I think the automatic healing makes clerics and druids more powerful. They don't have to spend as much of their spells on healing, and so they should be reduced a bit in strength as a consequence. Dropping their Fort saves seems fair; it also reduces their fast healing according to these rules.

A mid to high level party of warlocks and warriors should be able to adventure much longer than standard characters. Spellcasters with reserve feats could be along too- they are especially useful when utility spells are needed, or the "big guns" have to be broken out.

Probably you'd have to give less experience in this system, since they'd be able to handle more encounters. Maybe a flat deduction of a standard encounter's worth of xp each day (to a minimum of 0). So if they rest after 1 encounter, they get nothing. 2 encounters work out to essentially 1/2 xp, and so on. Anything to discourage the "adventurer's day" when 1/2 an hour of adventuring is followed by 23 and 1/2 hours of rest.

I haven't thought about this for very long, so there are probably big problems with it.

Comments welcome.

 

[hong]

Sounds complicated. If all you want to do is reduce the need for healing, you could just use reserve points. Discourage people from playing minmaxed clerics if you do this.

 

[FireLance]

I think you can get pretty much the same effect with less bookkeeping during an encounter (adjusting hit points every round for fast healing) if you have the following rule: as long as you have at least half your hit points, you gain temporary hit points equal to half your full normal hit points at the start of an encounter.

 

[RangerWickett]

Here's a novel system. Perhaps too complicated.

You have normal hit points. Your hp total is x. From x to 1 you are fine. From 0 to -x you are disabled. Beyond -x to -2x you are dying. After -2x you are dead.

So if you have 20 hp, from 20 to 1 you're fine, then from 0 to -19 you are disabled. Then from -20 to -39 you are dying. At -40 you're dead.

Whenever you go from fine to disabled, you take a wound. You also take a wound whenever you go from disabled to dying. If you're wounded you take a penalty to all d20 rolls. The penalty is -1 for one wound, -2 for two wounds, -5 for three wounds, and -10 for four wounds. If you get five wounds, you are unconscious, even if you have a lot of hit points.

Whenever you have a minute of rest, your hp goes up to full. But you keep your wounds.

In addition to healing hit point damage, the cure wound spells affect your wounds:

• The cure minor wounds spell serves only to stabilize dying people.
• Cure light wounds can reduce your wounds by one step, but only if you have two wounds or fewer.
• Cure moderate wounds can reduce your wounds by two steps, but only if you have three wounds or fewer.
• Cure serious wounds can reduce your wounds by three steps, but only if you have four wounds or fewer.
• Cure critical wounds can reduce your wound by four steps.
• Heal can remove all wounds, and immediately heals 10 hp/level.

Hm. There would be ways to heal otherwise, but I don't feel like coming up with them.

 

[Spatzimaus]

In our homebrew, we use a different spellcasting system. One of the upshots of this is that a mid-level caster can cast low-level stuff for "free". Effectively, a level 3-7 caster can cast cantrips freely, 8-11 can cast 1st level spells, 12-15 can cast 2nd, etc. (It's not quite so explicitly stated, it's just how the math works out.) Since there are cure spells at all levels, this means that there's never any real lack of healing during downtime. Sure, it might take a few minutes to cure light wounds fifty times, but as long as you have those minutes, you're set for the next fight.

The effect is similar to fast healing; it's not enough to really impact the combats themselves, but between combats you'll always fully heal. It makes for a very different game, and it's not something you should do lightly, but it doesn't ruin the game. In a lot of ways it's more fun; as long as your party isn't caster-heavy, you can pretty much plow through an area in one day of massive fighting. Of course, if you're the DM, you need to account for this.

 

[Hussar]

Perhaps another option is to make the fast healing only work outside of combat. Give fast healing 1 to all PC's that only functions when not fighting. This keeps the clerics in the game because this won't stop people from getting killed in combat, but, it means that you don't have to worry about blowing a bunch of spells after a combat is over.

I know that with the Truenamer cohort I had recently in my game, it worked much the same way. Since you can effectively take 20 on a truenamer check (while the rules say no, there is no penalty for failure, so you can keep rolling all day long if you like - or just take 20 ), the truenamer fast healed the entire party after each combat. Granted, in this method, you can't do it more than three or four combats a day, but, it certainly made things go a lot smoother and faster to just say, "Ok, you guys are all healed" after every combat.

 

[XCorvis]

What's your reasoning behind wanting to give everyone fast healing? Is it streamlining? Because the increased bookkeeping for every creature on every round of combat is going to kill you. Also, because it occurs during the fight, it changes the balance of the game, though it depends greatly on what you're fighting.

Reserve points were mentioned earlier. They are for out-of-combat healing. Here's a link:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/reservePoints.htm

The advantage of reserve points is it doesn't change the balance of the fight - it just lets you have more of them in a row. Combat healing is still the same but clerics don't need to blow as many spells on patching up afterwards.

 

[Cheiromancer]

I don't see much difference between having reserve points and just doubling your hit points. Well, I guess if you double your hit points there is no chance of you falling unconscious (or dying) when you use up half of them. But still.

Say in the standard rules a cleric-less party can go through 4 encounters before they are so wounded they have to rest. Say it takes 4 days rest for them to get back up to full. Then they could have another 4 encounters and take another 4 days to rest. 8 encounters in 8 days.

With reserve points (unless I am misunderstanding them) they could have 8 encounters before they are so wounded they have to rest; there just needs to be a decent interval between encounters. However, to get full hit points back would take 4 days, and then another 4 days to get back the reserve hit points (Am I wrong? The example in the SRD talks about magical healing rather than natural healing. I assume natural healing works the same way; otherwise they would have said so.) This still results in 8 encounters over 8 days, which is not a big improvement.

The effect I'm trying for is to help eliminate the "adventurer's day" where they rest for 23 hours out of 24. Let alone the "adventurer's week" where the party spends 4 days out of 5 healing their wounds naturally. And it also helps reduce the dependence by fighting characters on clerics and items. If a party doesn't have someone to devote themselves to being a medic, I don't see why they should have to adopt the adventurer's week as the alternative.

I haven't playtested this, but I doubt that it would be much of a hardship as far as book-keeping goes. A person's rate of fast healing would only change when they level. Otherwise it is much like having a Dragon Shaman in the party.

I don't want to eliminate the cleric and healing items (potions, wands, etc) entirely. But I hope it is clear that with this kind of system a little extra healing (applied at the right time) would go a long way. If a character drops a little below half after two encounters, one CLW might be enough to bring him up again; fast healing will heal him to full for the next encounter. The characters still have to be careful and manage resources, but they could survive just fine with only a secondary healer (like a ranger, paladin or bard) rather than a cleric.

In a lot of ways it's more fun; as long as your party isn't caster-heavy, you can pretty much plow through an area in one day of massive fighting. Of course, if you're the DM, you need to account for this.

Plowing through an area in a short time would be fine, I think. Better than an adventurer's day. Gives it more of cinematic, action movie kind of feel. Or maybe too videogamy. Dunno.

Thanks for the comments everyone!

 

[Pyrex]

Here's a thought, instead of trying to track when & where they get their Fast Healing n (which may get large too fast for multiclass characters), give characters the ability to heal their Con mod in damage by expending a standard action.

That way it's use in combat is self-restricting, and with the exception of certain chase scenarios, healing out-of-combat will be quite quick.

 

[XCorvis]

I don't see much difference between having reserve points and just doubling your hit points. Well, I guess if you double your hit points there is no chance of you falling unconscious (or dying) when you use up half of them. But still.

Not quite. The reserve points only work outside of combat. You've got 10 hp and you loose 20 in combat, you're still dead. If you lost 10 and went to 0, once combat was over you could use your reserve points and return to 10 hp with 0 reserve. It doesn't make you stronger inside the combat, it's just free healing afterwards.

Say in the standard rules a cleric-less party can go through 4 encounters before they are so wounded they have to rest. Say it takes 4 days rest for them to get back up to full. Then they could have another 4 encounters and take another 4 days to rest. 8 encounters in 8 days.

With reserve points (unless I am misunderstanding them) they could have 8 encounters before they are so wounded they have to rest; there just needs to be a decent interval between encounters. However, to get full hit points back would take 4 days, and then another 4 days to get back the reserve hit points (Am I wrong? The example in the SRD talks about magical healing rather than natural healing. I assume natural healing works the same way; otherwise they would have said so.) This still results in 8 encounters over 8 days, which is not a big improvement.

I think that is correct, but will your party want to push that hard? HP aren't the only resources used up in fights. They'll still need to rememorize spells and buy more supplies.

The effect I'm trying for is to help eliminate the "adventurer's day" where they rest for 23 hours out of 24. Let alone the "adventurer's week" where the party spends 4 days out of 5 healing their wounds naturally. And it also helps reduce the dependence by fighting characters on clerics and items. If a party doesn't have someone to devote themselves to being a medic, I don't see why they should have to adopt the adventurer's week as the alternative.

I'm not too fond of that myself. Fortunately, one of us is usually willing (sometimes eager) to play a healer type. To me, it sounds like you want a way to make out-of-combat healing happen faster, especially for parties without healing specialists. Given that as your goal, are you sure you want to change in-combat healing? You might want to playtest that a bit. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but personally I'd try another solution. Some alternate ideas:

Give them an in-game source of free healing, like a deal with the local cleric. It won't be useful all the time, but if they stay in one area it can take care of a lot of the healing.
Eternal Wands, from Eberron, work like wands with no charges. They have a daily use (2/day). Similar items could be useful, especially with spells like Vigor (gives temporary fast healing).
Allow some way to convert lethal damage to non-lethal so that it can be healed faster. Healing spells recover the same amount of lethal and non-lethal damage, making them twice as effective. Natural healing also works much faster on non-lethal damage. I added an option to the Heal skill that does this, but it's quite small, intended for lower level characters.
Double (or triple) the natural healing rate. (With or without reserve points) Create items that increase it even more.
Give Fast Healing 1, but only OUT of combat. You can regenerate 100 hp in 10 minutes with fast healing 1.

I haven't playtested this, but I doubt that it would be much of a hardship as far as book-keeping goes. A person's rate of fast healing would only change when they level. Otherwise it is much like having a Dragon Shaman in the party.

It might not be an issue for your group, especially if they're used to having a Dragon Shaman around, but another group might have issues with it. It does add an extra step per character per action, and a lot of bookkeeping for the DM. I also think it will change the combat dynamics for your group. Again, you'll just have to playtest.

I don't want to eliminate the cleric and healing items (potions, wands, etc) entirely. But I hope it is clear that with this kind of system a little extra healing (applied at the right time) would go a long way. If a character drops a little below half after two encounters, one CLW might be enough to bring him up again; fast healing will heal him to full for the next encounter. The characters still have to be careful and manage resources, but they could survive just fine with only a secondary healer (like a ranger, paladin or bard) rather than a cleric.

The best way to keep the combat healer useful is to keep the bonus healing out of combat. I think your PCs will fight much more defensively with fast healing, so they can reap the benefits during combat. But that might be OK too.