D&D 5E Warlord Healing

[jayoungr]

So I was thinking about the Star Wars Saga Edition Noble recently. The interesting thing about SWSE is that it has no resurrection and virtually no in-combat healing. One reason this works is because of Force Points: each character gets a certain number per level that they can spend on various cool stunts, and one of the things they can be used for is to cheat death. You can spend a Force Point to declare that your character is not dead, only knocked unconscious, when he/she would otherwise die. I believe there is a similar optional rule in the DMG for 5E.

If players had the option to be "just knocked out" in 5E, would that make a damage-mitigation-only option viable for a Warlord?

 

[ZzarkLinux]

I voted that the Warlord must have true in-combat healing. Because hitpoints are not exclusive to magic, nor exclusive to the cleric.

If players had the option to be "just knocked out" in 5E, would that make a damage-mitigation-only option viable for a Warlord?

Are those the same as Fate Points? I don't follow other systems that much.

I'm not sure players will get that option. I played a Meatpoints 3.5 game, and also a Plotpoints 4.0 game. In both systems, the DM decided what 0 health implies. The player never decided that. I've always accepted that it was "DM agency", even for a 4e fan like myself.

Maybe others have had different experiences than me.

 

[jayoungr]

Are those the same as Fate Points? I don't follow other systems that much.

Ehhhh, kinda-sorta. Broadly.

I'm not sure players will get that option.

It could be built into the hypothetical Warlord class. I looked up the optional rule for Hero Points in the DMG, and they are not too different; players get 5+half level hero points per level, and you can spend one to turn a failed death save into a success. We could say that any party with a Warlord in it will always get Hero Points and that instead of using up one per death save, you can spend one to stabilize yourself when knocked to 0. That would mean that even groups who habitually use Hero Points would gain by having a Warlord in the party.

 

[mellored]

It seems that most people want the warlord to grant HP so they can bring back unconscious people. So IMO, something like...

Stand the fallen. An ally in reach regains 1 HP and gains temporary hit points equal to your warlord level. A creature can only benefit from this once per short rest.

 

[jayoungr]

It seems that most people want the warlord to grant HP so they can bring back unconscious people.

Yeah, I know. I was just wondering whether we could do without that if we knew that the unconscious people had a way not to die. I mean, SWSE manages without in-combat healing at a distance (the only way to do it is with a medpac, which requires contact); I was trying to figure out whether that model could work in 5E.

 

[mellored]

Yeah, I know. I was just wondering whether we could do without that if we knew that the unconscious people had a way not to die. I mean, SWSE manages without in-combat healing at a distance (the only way to do it is with a medpac, which requires contact); I was trying to figure out whether that model could work in 5E.

People already don't die much. Barring further incident, you get 3 turns to be stabilized, and can possibly do it yourself. It takes a lot of bad rolls, or a vicious DM, to die in 5e.

It's fairly easy to be knocked out though.

 

[jayoungr]

Okay, so I'll probably be running SWSE sometime soon. I'm going to pay attention and try to figure out what's different about combat between it and 5E. Because SWSE has no way to heal or stand someone up from unconscious at range in combat, and it's not a problem.

 

[Lord Twig]

From the SRD:

Damage and Healing

Injury and the risk of death are constant companions of those who explore fantasy gaming worlds. The thrust of a sword, a well-placed arrow, or a blast of flame from a fireball spell all have the potential to damage, or even kill, the hardiest of creatures.

Hit Points

Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck. Creatures with more hit points are more difficult to kill. Those with fewer hit points are more fragile.

A creature’s current hit points (usually just called hit points) can be any number from the creature’s hit point maximum down to 0. This number changes frequently as a creature takes damage or receives healing.

Whenever a creature takes damage, that damage is subtracted from its hit points. The loss of hit points has no effect on a creature’s capabilities until the creature drops to 0 hit points.

How exactly does a Warlord heal damage from a sword thrust or an arrow to the knee? It didn't really hit and just made you tired because you had to dodge it?

Or how about if a black dragon breathes acid on you? You dodged and now you are tired? What if you are resistant to acid? How did that help if you weren't actually burned?

If you are at 0 and the Warlord shouts at you, you get better because the wound wasn't actually that bad I guess? But if he doesn't shout at you or you fail your death save, then you were actually cut to ribbons and bleed out.

It seems that in order for the Warlord to work you need to have Schrödinger's Hit Points. You are both cut and not cut. (Or burned or poisoned or frozen or whatever.) You don't actually know if you are physically wounded or not until the Warlord decides if he wants to heal you or not. If he heals you then you weren't actually cut, if the Cleric heals you, then you were.

Or you could just drop non-magical healing and you don't have to worry about it.

As for non-magical healing being already in the game. Most of that is handled "off screen" as it were. You rest, screen fades to black, and an hour later you are a little better. Rest all night and you are back to full health. For those of us that like to have some semblance of a reason why some one that has been stabbed, bludgeoned, burned, poisoned and zapped with necrotic energy is suddenly better, we assume that some magic has been used.

In my own games I just don't allow full healing over night at all. You can use your Hit Dice to take care of the non-physical "mental durability" part of Hit Points, but when you are out the rest of the damage is physical and requires magic healing or time to heal.

 

[Bluenose]

How exactly does a Warlord heal damage from a sword thrust or an arrow to the knee? It didn't really hit and just made you tired because you had to dodge it?

Well, the alternative involves taking a whole series of arrows to the knee and sword thrusts to the arms and mace blows to the head, and carrying on running and swinging weapons and looking around with no problem at all - until suddenly you fall over and start dying. Because that's certainly a realistic model of physical injury that the warlord is perverting.

 

[Lord Twig]

Well, the alternative involves taking a whole series of arrows to the knee and sword thrusts to the arms and mace blows to the head, and carrying on running and swinging weapons and looking around with no problem at all - until suddenly you fall over and start dying. Because that's certainly a realistic model of physical injury that the warlord is perverting.

That's one alternative. However the extremes on either side do not make much sense. Luckily that is not what the rules state, as I quoted above. Hit Points, as an abstraction of health and capacity to take damage represent both physical and mental durability.

So when the black dragon breathes acid on you, and you take damage, you get acid burned. If you are resistant to acid, you aren't burned as bad. In both cases, although you are burned, it is not enough to incapacitate you, but it does erode your mental durability (spirit, will to live, luck, etc, etc,).

Likewise if you are "hit" with a sword and take damage, you are cut (the physical part), but again, not enough to completely disable you. And again the non-physical part is eroded.

Finally you inhale poison gas. The damage is finally too much and you fall down. What damage did you take? Well you took acid, slashing and poison damage. So you are burned, cut and poisoned. How does a Warlord heal that?

You can argue that he can restore the mental durability part through inspiration (somehow, still don't see it), but it is not going to fix the physical part. The only way for Warlord healing to work is if none of the damage is physical. And that just doesn't seem very likely.