D&D General Was there ever a time healing as a percentage and not a die amount?

[The Crimson Binome]

I looked into it in my house rules for a while because it logically makes sense, but the problem with it is that it tends to make healing way too good in the long run.

You can do it, but it tends to require caveats, which are clunky in the long-run.

If you set up a basic paradigm where a level 1 spell heals 10% and a level 9 spell heals 90%, then level 1 spells are terrible at healing level 1 characters and amazing at healing level 20 characters, while you need a fairly high level spell in order to do anything to a low-level character. You can get around this by instituting maximums and minimums - say, cure II heals 20% of max HP, with a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 30 - but that's a lot of complexity.

For whatever reason, percentile healing shows up a lot in video games that are too lazy to introduce multiple tiers of healing items. The Tales series is notorious for this, where an apple gel remains the most effective healing item until the very last boss fight. The only thing that keeps healing remotely balanced is the hard cap of 15 apple gels at a time.

 

[cbwjm]

I'm not sure, but I seem to recall something like this as well. Maybe there was a healing spell variant somewhere in 2e/3e that did this written up in dragon magazine or one of the numerous 3e supplements. Otherwise, like it has been mentioned, 4e did this with healing surges, each one counting as 25% of your total health pool.

Not quite true.

"heal all hit points of damage suffered due to wounds or injury, save 1 to 4 (d4)." 1e heal spell.

Maybe they meant back, right before 3e, heal restored 100% of hit points.

 

[Horwath]

Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

So true.

Funny thing is, healing surges were one of the good mechanics of 4E.

 

[Arnwolf666]

So true.

Funny thing is, healing surges were one of the good mechanics of 4E.

Agrees

 

[Fanaelialae]

You can do it, but it tends to require caveats, which are clunky in the long-run.

If you set up a basic paradigm where a level 1 spell heals 10% and a level 9 spell heals 90%, then level 1 spells are terrible at healing level 1 characters and amazing at healing level 20 characters, while you need a fairly high level spell in order to do anything to a low-level character. You can get around this by instituting maximums and minimums - say, cure II heals 20% of max HP, with a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 30 - but that's a lot of complexity.

For whatever reason, percentile healing shows up a lot in video games that are too lazy to introduce multiple tiers of healing items. The Tales series is notorious for this, where an apple gel remains the most effective healing item until the very last boss fight. The only thing that keeps healing remotely balanced is the hard cap of 15 apple gels at a time.

I'd argue that's more an outcome of poorly considered implementations of percentage based healing mechanics, as opposed to percentage based mechanics themselves.

For example, one could easily imagine a system where a 1st level spell heals 50%, and every additional spell level adds 5%. That's probably overcorrecting in the other direction (the level 1 spell is too strong compared to the 9th level spell) but there's probably a sweet spot between the two. Another (potentially complementary) approach is to take a page from earlier editions and not have healing spells at 1st level. Maybe 1st level spells can only grant temporary hp or otherwise prevent damage, but cannot alleviate it once it has occurred. Another potential approach is to have high level healing be better. To use my previous example, if a 1st level spell can heal 50% but requires a limited resource (such as healing surges), while a higher level spell also heals 50% but uses less (or none) of that resource, the higher level spell is better despite healing the same amount.

 

[Tony Vargas]

For example, one could easily imagine a system where a 1st level spell heals 50%, and every additional spell level adds 5%.

Or that doesn't feel the need to have a different, incrementally superior healing spell at each spell level (1e didn't). Or that doesn't use 9 levels of spells.
I mean, in the Dying Earth, there were essentially two levels of spells.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

For example, one could easily imagine a system where a 1st level spell heals 50%, and every additional spell level adds 5%. That's probably overcorrecting in the other direction (the level 1 spell is too strong compared to the 9th level spell) but there's probably a sweet spot between the two.

I think we can logically exclude the existence of a sweet spot. For any given starting point, if a level 1 spell is worth casting on a level 1 character, then it gives a disproportionate benefit to a level 20 character. If you decrease the percentage, to make it less powerful to high-level characters, then it becomes useless on low-level characters. If you increase the percentage, to make it more useful to low-level characters, then it becomes even more overpowered for high-level characters.

Another potential approach is to have high level healing be better. To use my previous example, if a 1st level spell can heal 50% but requires a limited resource (such as healing surges), while a higher level spell also heals 50% but uses less (or none) of that resource, the higher level spell is better despite healing the same amount.

I can see some potential in that approach, but I can't think of any good examples for it. Hit Dice are already free healing, so asking someone to spend that in order to fuel a Cure spell would make it pretty useless outside of niche purposes. Exhaustion, or other conditions that scale with level, might work... but if it's worth paying the cost for that benefit at level 1, then it doesn't suddenly become not worth that cost at higher levels. The same can be said for trying to vary the casting time.

I can see the merit in removing Cure spells at low levels entirely, but I honestly can't think of what spell level would be reasonable for a basic 50% heal effect. Maybe third? Even then, while a third level spell is a meaningful cost to a level 20 cleric, that's an awful lot to ask of a level 5 cleric.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think we can logically exclude the existence of a sweet spot. For any given starting point, if a level 1 spell is worth casting on a level 1 character, then it gives a disproportionate benefit to a level 20 character. If you decrease the percentage, to make it less powerful to high-level characters, then it becomes useless on low-level characters. If you increase the percentage, to make it more useful to low-level characters, then it becomes even more overpowered for high-level characters.

That's what the sweet spot is about. Finding the balance point between too-good at high levels and too-weak at low levels. Given that both those points exist on the line, there probably exists a point near the middle of that line where it is neither too good at high levels not too weak at low levels. That's the sweet spot.

I can see some potential in that approach, but I can't think of any good examples for it. Hit Dice are already free healing, so asking someone to spend that in order to fuel a Cure spell would make it pretty useless outside of niche purposes. Exhaustion, or other conditions that scale with level, might work... but if it's worth paying the cost for that benefit at level 1, then it doesn't suddenly become not worth that cost at higher levels. The same can be said for trying to vary the casting time.

I can see the merit in removing Cure spells at low levels entirely, but I honestly can't think of what spell level would be reasonable for a basic 50% heal effect. Maybe third? Even then, while a third level spell is a meaningful cost to a level 20 cleric, that's an awful lot to ask of a level 5 cleric.

I wasn't talking about 5e, but rather some hypothetical system that is designed with percentage based healing in mind. With 5e, you'd probably need to change so much, it would barely resemble the original game, since it wasn't really designed that way.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That's what the sweet spot is about. Finding the balance point between too-good at high levels and too-weak at low levels. Given that both those points exist on the line, there probably exists a point near the middle of that line where it is neither too good at high levels not too weak at low levels. That's the sweet spot.

I see what you're getting at, but I think we can use math to disprove the existence of such a sweet spot, at least as far as D&D is concerned. At the lowest point where the level 1 spell would still be useful to a level 1 character (let's say 25%, which is about 2hp), it's already overpowered when cast on a level 20 character (restoring 50hp is too good of an effect for a level 1 spell slot).

Given that our arbitrary starting point yields an unbalanced result, and we can't raise or lower that starting point without making it even less balanced for one of the groups, we can safely conclude that such a sweet spot doesn't exist.

I wasn't talking about 5e, but rather some hypothetical system that is designed with percentage based healing in mind. With 5e, you'd probably need to change so much, it would barely resemble the original game, since it wasn't really designed that way.

Ah, yes. It would be much easier to fit percentile healing into a game that was actually designed for it. At the very least, it would be helpful if your HP total didn't vary by a factor of twenty over the course of gameplay.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Not quite true.

"heal all hit points of damage suffered due to wounds or injury, save 1 to 4 (d4)." 1e heal spell.

And "harm" removed all but 1d4 hp from the target if I recall correctly.