D&D 5E Whack-a-mole gaming or being healed from 0 hp

[CapnZapp]

And giving up actions to grant 1 HP to a PC is a pretty difficult tactical decision.

Not for the Cleric with Healing Word it isn't...

More in general, yes, giving up an action to heal a downed ally is a cost.

It's just a cost I feel is too cheap.

Not so much because [insert fancy words here] (like "verisimilitude" or "simulate actual unconsciousness"), but because I can't stand the way power gamers have (correctly) identified being downed as a great way to soak large amounts of damage.

Being hit with 50 damage when you have 1 either crushes you (when you're low level) or wastes 49 points (when your max hp is 50+), since even a 1 hp Lay on Hands brings you back to full combat capacity (lacking only 15 feet of movement or so).

Minmaxers simply find a way to grant all party members ranged bonus action heals (such as Healing Word) and then the game of whack-a-mole can begin.

I'm not having it, and no, just asking my placers nicely to not use a cheese tactics isn't going to cut it. I want a game where obvious cheese like this simply Do. Not. Work.

 

[CapnZapp]

Even without healing magic, an enemy at zero HP may take up to five rounds to stabilize, die, or revive to full activity with 1 HP. Chances of revival were about 18% when I did the math. That's frequent enough to justify double-tapping fallen foes to make sure they stay down--not to mention the possibility of playing possum!

Thanks, but perhaps I need to clarify:

I don't like "double-tapping" to be a general thing in my D&D game.

This isn't a matter of playing right or wrong. I simply want the lighter feel that goes with a game where the winning side doesn't hate their fallen foes and don't particularly care whether they die or live. (This doesn't mean I'm running a carebear game where nobody dies; it just means your goal is to survive the fight and that you reach that goal by winning the fight. Your goal isn't really to kill your foes, even if everybody understands that is what happens when the knives and fireballs come out)

This, and to allow especially sadistic foes (and only them) to show their mustache-twirling evilness by doing exactly that what you suggest everybody should do.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think we're in agreement, then. The default healing rules are poor, and we know this because the only way to work around them is for the entire opposed side to ready their actions.

By changing the default healing behavior - such as in my example, where a healed creature remains an unconscious non-combatant - there is no longer any incentive for the other side to ready actions to kill the character before it can be healed. It would take an especially vicious foe to finish someone off in the middle of the fight, since doing so would be a tactical mistake.

Perhaps I misunderstood you then. Yes, we are both here in this thread because of how easy it is to heal a fallen foe back to full combat effectiveness, and how this logically leads to monsters "double-tapping" downed heroes to make sure they stay down.

I would say lots of posters get me wrong. They think I am making things more difficult for the players, since a 1d4 hp heal no longer suffices.

In reality, it is trivial for me to attack downed heroes to kill them off. And then you need much more than a 10 or 20 hp heal; you need a fricking revivify spell at the very least!

What isn't on the table, however, is to play the game naïvely, to play it on I'm too young to die mode where monsters blithely play whack-a-mole and never really get anywhere.

Cheers,
Zapp

PS. Saelorn, let me just add that when I talked about ready actions, I didn't have this particular rule in mind. No ready action shenanigans are really needed. Simply have your monsters keep attacking downed foes using their regular actions.

Sure, sometimes the player lucks out and their Cleric is next in initiative order, but more generally, it should be sufficiently commonplace to see a handful of monster actions between the attack that downed the hero and a player action that can do something about it.

That threat alone should be enough for anyone to see the wisdom in my proposed change. The change isn't "you need 10 or 20 more healing to rescue a fallen friend".

The real change is "you no longer need Raise Dead to rescue a fallen friend"

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think in-combat healing is one of those gamist things that you just have to accept for the sake of the game. It's no fun being the player whose character has gone down at the beginning of the fight, meaning you just have to sit there and watch everyone else play. In-combat healing, as much as it might not "make sense" or whatever, means that that player gets to jump back into the action and continue having fun like everyone else.

There are other ways to deal with those issues, though. The most obvious is to merely not have it so that anyone can go down at the start of a fight which might otherwise take hours to resolve; and one of the stated goals of 5E is for combat to simply not take that long. If you remove the ability to revive a downed target, then that's also a way of making combat go more quickly, so even if a PC does drop, it won't be for very long.

Just about the longest fight you can have, in 5E, is one where both sides are keeping the whole party active through the methods described in this thread. And while you do at least have every player participating the whole time, it takes a lot longer before everyone can move on with the game.

 

[werecorpse]

The Healer feat can restore you to 1 HP as often as you have healing kit supplies. That is at-will to a first approximation, given how cheap kits are.

Is that right? I thought healing kit usage meant you stayed at 0 and therefore unconscious but were stabilised.

My suggestion to address the whack a mole feeling is that until the end of your first round after being unconscious all rolls are at disadvantage.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think in-combat healing is one of those gamist things that you just have to accept for the sake of the game. It's no fun being the player whose character has gone down at the beginning of the fight, meaning you just have to sit there and watch everyone else play. In-combat healing, as much as it might not "make sense" or whatever, means that that player gets to jump back into the action and continue having fun like everyone else.

In the past, I've played games where reviving a fallen character is pretty hard. I remember one time when I was DMing a SWSE game, for instance, when a PC went down and, knowing that his character was going to be out for the rest of the fight, which occurred close to the end of the session, the player decided to just go home early rather than hang around and watch everyone else continue to play.

So I'm willing to accept this kind of thing for the sake of keeping every engaged. That's why I like my lingering injuries on 0 hp rule. It doesn't change the way in-combat healing works, but it also doesn't make it so dropping and being revived is without *any* consequence.

Again, to clarify: I'm not among those against in-combat healing.

I just don't want 0 hp to be the best spot - by far - to do it.

Glad you enjoy your lingering wounds, but being downed too often happens without you having done something wrong, so I'm not about to add insult to injury here.

I just want to shift the spot where you do in-combat healing to when the ally is still standing.

That, and to avoid having to have my monsters all apply the "double-tapping" strategy that naturally follows, a strategy that easily turns the hope for cheese-cheap Healing Words into super-expensive Revivifies and Raise Deads...

 

[pukunui]

The most obvious is to merely not have it so that anyone can go down at the start of a fight

How might one go about doing that, especially in an edition where combat can be quite swingy?

If you remove the ability to revive a downed target, then that's also a way of making combat go more quickly, so even if a PC does drop, it won't be for very long.

I would argue that the opposite is true, at least from the players' perspective. The more PCs that are in the fight, the quicker it will go. The fewer there are, the longer it will take for them to beat the enemy ... unless, of course, the enemy beats them first.

That, and to avoid having to have my monsters all apply the "double-tapping" strategy ...

But why do you feel that you *have* to have them do that? Why not just accept that having PCs bounce back up quickly is part of the game and roll with it?

Glad you enjoy your lingering wounds, but being downed too often happens without you having done something wrong, so I'm not about to add insult to injury here.

How is it adding "insult to injury"? It's a system that works well enough in other games, like the aforementioned Dragon Age. It's even one of the suggested options in the DMG for using the lingering injuries mechanic. I think it makes more sense that being "taken out" in physical combat would result in a lingering wound of some kind than some of the other ideas being bandied about in this thread do.

I just want to shift the spot where you do in-combat healing to when the ally is still standing.

Then instead of mucking about with adding negative hit points and the like, why not just make it so healing word can't be used on someone who is dying? You could make it so the target of healing word has to be able to hear you as well as you being able to see them, and if they're dying, then you could say that they're effectively deafened and therefore can't hear you. That way healing word would only work on someone who is "still standing".

 

[Leatherhead]

Again, to clarify:...I just want to shift the spot where you do in-combat healing to when the ally is still standing.

If that is all you want, just make it so all the healing options grant Temporary HP instead of real HP.
Temp HP doesn't work on targets with 0 or less, so they will need some other method to stabilize.

 

[CapnZapp]

But why do you feel that you *have* to have them do that? Why not just accept that having PCs bounce back up quickly is part of the game and roll with it?

Good question. It's not just because bouncing back ISN'T part of the game unless the DM holds back on using the rules (whether because she's a soft carebear or simply doesn't see how easy it is to double-tap fallen heroes).

I feel quickly bouncing back is a cheesy notion, or more specifically: how whack-a-mole strategy is pure cheese.

Furthermore, I don't like the vindictive turn the game takes if you take the rules to their logical conclusion; i.e. double-tapping. I don't want a game where you actively want to kill the heroes just because the rules don't make them stay down one bit. It only justifies the player characters into becoming even more murderhobo (if they actively try to kill us, then we have no qualms with killing them)

How is it adding "insult to injury"? It's a system that works well enough in other games, like the aforementioned Dragon Age. It's even one of the suggested options in the DMG for using the lingering injuries mechanic. I think it makes more sense that being "taken out" in physical combat would result in a lingering wound of some kind than some of the other ideas being bandied about in this thread do.

D&D isn't those other games.

I believe that you will get downed on a semi-regular basis, and since there's usually very little you can do about it, I refuse to penalize this even further.

More generally: lingering injuries is solving a different problem.

Your problem is "being downed does not carry enough of a consequence". That is a fine problem to tackle, but I'm not the one having it.

My problem is "better to hold off healing until he's going down, since we then get rid of some damage". My problem is whack-a-mole. Nothing about lingering injuries make you want to stop healing the fallen. Nothing about penalizing the PC that takes damage chnges the fact that surplus damage disappears at 0 hp.

Then instead of mucking about with adding negative hit points and the like, why not just make it so healing word can't be used on someone who is dying? You could make it so the target of healing word has to be able to hear you as well as you being able to see them, and if they're dying, then you could say that they're effectively deafened and therefore can't hear you. That way healing word would only work on someone who is "still standing".

First off, there's nothing complicated or "mucking about" with negative hit points. In my opinion, it is a very easy and straight-forward mechanism.

Secondly, I don't want to create exceptions for specific spells. That, if anything, would be "mucking about" in my world. Why would a d4 healing word not work when a 1 hp Lay on Hand does? Why would a Healing Potion work even when you roll a one, when a healing word won't work even for a Life Cleric using a level nine slot restoring dozens and dozens of hit points? (And so on, I'm being rhetoric)

Drawing the line at -10 instead of 0 treats all healing equally, which is a trait I happen to appreciate.

But good luck with your campaign and your lingering wounds!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Thanks, but perhaps I need to clarify:

I don't like "double-tapping" to be a general thing in my D&D game.

This isn't a matter of playing right or wrong. I simply want the lighter feel that goes with a game where the winning side doesn't hate their fallen foes and don't particularly care whether they die or live.

Sure. I understand, and that is why at my table, rolling a 20 on death checks does not restore you to 1 HP.

In context, that post was pointing out that fixing magical healing is not enough to prevent popups. You need to modify the death check rules at the same time.

Note: double-tapping, for enemies who want the PCs dead, is still a good strategy even without popup heals. One of my players got in a fight with a hobgoblin around 8th level or so. The hobgoblin had a bow and a horse, the paladin had a greatsword and was on foot, so she was basically dead meat... but after the third arrow hit her, she flopped to the ground, and a couple of Deception checks later, the hobgoblin showed up to loot the body (she'd heard him talking with another hobgoblin previous about the fine quality of her greatsword and armor), and then she flipped back over, surprised him, and hit him with her sword. (She didn't kill him, but she did take his horse.) In a completely rational world where all hobgoblins were tactical battlecomputers he would have at least given her corpse a good whack with his sword just in case, because anybody could play possum. And if the "possum" is a wizard, overlooking him could be devastating.

Hopefully your players don't cotton on to this kind of strategy.