D&D 4E What do you like about 4e healing?

[Cadfan]

Likes:

1. Healing scales with base hit points.

I LOVE THIS. It fixes the problem of high hit point characters sucking down your healing. And it makes fragile characters actually fragile- if you spend your healing spell giving 15 hit points to the wizard, he's just going to lose them again if you don't get him out of the line of fire. But if you give the same spell to the fighter and grant him 25 hit points, between the higher number and his superior defenses, you've solidly reinforced your team.

3. Healers need not sacrifice attacks.

This one is less important to me, but its important. Standing in one place and healing is boring. There needs to be something else going on. Attacking is one possibility. It isn't the only possibility, mind you. If healing spells had riders that were as important or more important than the hit points they granted, that would do it too. Like one spell gives an armor bonus, another teleports the target next to you, etc. But as it stands, this is better than the old school version of running from fallen ally to fallen ally, putting them back on their feet while taking opportunity attacks. I did that for 8 levels in 3e. It got... old. I eventually learned about the wonders of the Spiritual Weapon spell, and got to attack AND heal. Improved things a lot.

4. Common rest cycle for hit points, spells, and abilities.

No real reason not to have this. I'm not sure what's added by having a variety of rest cycles.

6. All PCs can restore their own hit points.

I wouldn't like it if all PCs could massively restore their own hit points, but Second Wind is a small, useful little extra. Its like when you have a big chore you need to get done, and you don't really want to do it, and you've been putting it off, and then you find out that your spouse did half of it for you just to be nice.

Dislikes:

2: Soft cap on hit points healed per day.

I guess people need it for realism but it never felt like it made things that much more interesting.

4. Non-magical hit point recovery.

I'm ok with this in limited quantities. And its not really that big of a dislike. But... I wouldn't have minded if the warlord's healing had been in the form of temporary hit points. It would have been an interesting twist, and still have gotten you where you wanted to go as long as you were smart about it. Which is the warlord's job, right?

 

[Someone]

For me, the main appeal is that it's easy to decouple from any implied mythology. I don't dislike per se the standard AD&D implied setting, but I hardly can see the need to use it in every campaing and more frequently than not when I design a new setting 3e rules usually got in the way.

I mean that old healing spells were almost exclusively divine stuff and used "positive energy" that was baseline harmful to the undead. If I wanted to make a less conventional campaing, or perhaps I should say a more conventional setting were there's no clear distinction between arcane and divine magic and the positive energy plane doens't exist I have to tinker with the rules and consider implications. In 4e is much more simple: power effects are much easier to reskin, and eliminating batches of classes (like "no divine classes in this setting") don't limit the group capabilities in such a brutal way than in previous editions.

The idea of making the amount healed dependant on total hit points rather than the spell is something I also wanted long ago before 4e. It helps cement the idea that someone with 30 out of 100 hit points is as severely wounded as someone with 3 out of 10 hit points (which is a good thing IMO), where in previous editions a "moderate wound" would be something like 13 hit points on average. Did that mean that a fighter with 130 hit points was able to sustain 10 moderate wounds before dying, but a 1st level fighter would drop with a single moderate wound?

 

[vagabundo]

I pretty much like all of it. I would change how the healing works per power source, like Martial healing gives temp hit points - basically a morale boost - they can become normal hitpoints after combat only if someone succeeds on a heal check.

Other than that I like the healing system.

 

[Recidivism]

Most of the features of 4E's healing are good. The major problems I have with 4E healing is:

-It's unusual how after-battle healing works, and I really despise how players end a fight and then want to use the Leader's healing powers to boost surges.

-I would like a somewhat grittier system with more long term consequences. Right now 4E is consequence-free.

-I feel like healing comes a little too easily in battle, although I think this particular problem has a lot more to do with balancing and power creep in WotC's product output than the 'core' system. Restricting choices to 4E PHB brings back what I feel is the intent of the system, where there's some back and forth with a fight (important to keep things interesting) but tough choices to make within the action economy on how to use your actions.

-While I like that Leader characters can play a style other than healbots, the ease with which a Leader can heal in a lot of ways makes it feel inconsequential. I think I'd prefer healing to be a bit more challenging to use. (At least a move action, or as a rider action on a standard action, requires you to be adjacent for strong heals, etc.)

 

[Kannik]

Above all else, what I liked about 4e healing is that, for the first time, it actually embodied and embraced what Hit Points have always been about:

Each character has a varying number of hit points, just as monsters do. These hit points represent how much damage (actual or potential) the character can withstand before being killed. A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors. A typical man-at-arms can take about 5 hit points of damage before being killed. let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution, for a total of 85 hit points. This is the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment. The same holds true to a lesser extent for clerics, thieves, and the other classes. Thus, the majority of hit points are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.

Right from the get go hit points = a whole host of factors, of which a smaller and smaller portion actually represent any type of physical injury or hardiness. With martial, bardic and other types of healing the HP mechanic was more fully explored.

1. Terminology. If abstract points represent luck, stamina and dodging blows, don't name them "hit points". "Dodge points", "hero points" or "determination points" would be much better. Also, if there are no wounds involved, no "healing surges", "healing words" etc. It's confusing and it puts people in different mindset than they should be. Making a fallen ally stand up and fight by calling commands is ok; "healing" them this way is absurd.

Given that Hit Points is tradition, and they have always represented "all of the above" in terms of what they represent, I think the name for them is unlikely to change, even given the confusion it creates.

It's interesting, really -- earlier editions of AD&D did indeed limit most large/rapid healing capabilities to the divine caster classes. Only divine magic healing could increase PCs health quickly. Because of this what may have resulted is a clash of what we as gamers made up in our minds about this latter fact (it must be actual damage healed by divine provenance), verses what HP has always been described as (a combination of many factors).

HPs never changed, they just became thought of a particular way in many D&D groups, divorced from their actual definition in the game. (Ironically even as it meant that HP, seen through the lens as as purely physical damage capacity, could actually break verisimilitude as fighters would take sword hit after sword hit after sword hit after arrow hit after fireball after... ) So called “shouting someone to health” (which is actually replenishing their morale, drive, endurance, mental acuity, thusly skill, etc), even in the terms of the first edition of AD&D, works because it isn't shouting health, it's shouting hit points (which are more than just health).

What I would alter in DDN is to fix the unconscious/death saves below 0 and inspiring word conundrum, for at some point physical damage is taken and then that would need more than words of encouragement. Two quick ways I could see to do that is either a) to say your CON value in HP is your actual physical damage capacity, those HPs are always taken last, and thus from 0 to CON you would need bandaging/divine/something special to heal them or b) say that from 0 to -CON you are dazed and semi-conscious, if you get to -CON then you are unconscious and dying (needing bandage/divine/etc) and before then all healing works on you. Or something even more elegant.

2. Lack of lasting injuries.

I don't know if I want lasting injuries per se, but I would like an option for some lingering effect for exhausting all of your reserves after an adventuring day. (and I wrote some rules to this effect for 4e under my RPGNow imprint, so I'm biased in that want )

peace,

Kannik

 

[OnlineDM]

Mark me down as another big fan of "Healers need not sacrifice attacks". Maybe it's too "gamist" for some folks, but I think it makes the cleric type of class more fun to play. The others, I don't care about so much one way or the other.

 

[Lanefan]

Count me as another "none of the above"; but then I prefer a play style that forces adventurers to shut down and rest sometimes, even in mid-adventure; or to have to choose sometimes between A) resting and perhaps letting the dungeon restock and-or the plot get away and B) pressing on at less than full h.p.

That said, I do like herbal healing as a minor add-on; with Rangers and Druids being best at it. We've had a system in place for this for about 28-odd years now.

Lanefan

 

[MortalPlague]

The minor-action healing made clerics fun to play. In my experience, one of the biggest issues with people playing a cleric in previous editions was that they had to give up all their attacking in favor of healing the group. It made it very frustrating. Why would people want to go back to giving up your whole turn to heal the party?

 

[FireLance]

Count me as another "none of the above"; but then I prefer a play style that forces adventurers to shut down and rest sometimes, even in mid-adventure; or to have to choose sometimes between A) resting and perhaps letting the dungeon restock and-or the plot get away and B) pressing on at less than full h.p.

And yet a soft cap on hit points healed per day does not appeal to you? Or is your preference for an external cap (in terms of healing spells, potions, etc.) rather than an internal one?

 

[Viking Bastard]

I like 4e healing, for the most part, and could probably check all options, but I don't really care about 2, 5 or 6, as such. They're nice, but whatever.

What I do care about are the following:

1. Healing scales with base hit points
3. Healers need not sacrifice attacks
4. Common rest cycle for hit points, spells and abilities

Of these, number 4 is by far the most important. I like to be able to beat the party into a pulp in an encounter, but then just carry on.

I suspect I'd be perfectly happy with a Second Wind mechanic coupled with "You replenish X% of your HP on a Short Rest."

 

[Henry]

I like the soft cap on healing per day. I think the issue many folk have is a "second wind" or a non-magical use of a healing surge.

I don't even have a problem with second wind -- I just dislike the dynamic of multiple healing surges being used in combat; I've thought before of house-ruling it so that you can only each use ONE healing surge in combat, whether it be by spell or mundane. That way, you get your ONE healing shot to stay alive, but combat doesn't get drug out by "oops, I'm bloody -- now I'm not -- OOPS, bloody again -- now I'm not -- OOPS, bloody again..." and between the cleric and the warlord in the group you don't have a half-dozen discretionary healing words, etc. floating around.

Then, make the healing utilities like cure light, etc. the only other way to heal. What happens is that combat goes a lot faster, and you don't get quite so much of the "I got hit for 73 points of damage -- but look, it was only a flesh wound."

However, one thing about the alternative in 3E style games does bug me -- I HATE HEALING STICKS. I'm more for healing magic to be a bit more rare like in 1E than in 3E, but I do think that 1E could have benefited from a 3E-style natural healing rule - being able to heal up in say 4 or 5 days, instead of a month, mainly because simulation is fine, but simulating a hospital stay is pretty boring from a real world standpoint for me.

 

[Hussar]

Henry - if you did that, wouldn't you have to reduce monster damage considerably as well? I mean, I look at the last combat that I ran, and the only reason that the ranger survived was because of several surges during combat. If PC's were limited to only one per combat, wouldn't that make combat very, very lethal to the PC's?

 

[nightwalker450]

I'm in favor of all except perhaps:
"Common rest cycle for hit points, spells and abilities"

For the most part I agree with it, but there should be something in place to represent critical injuries, or things that will take longer to heal from. This type of damage though shouldn't be the "norm" though, perhaps certain creatures are better at it (Dragons, definitely dragons). Or only when you are actually brought to 0 or less, or even just when you're critically hit. But I don't want the standard to be it takes weeks for you to heal... oh wait you have a (cleric/bag of wands/bag of potions) never mind.

 

[Mengu]

All of the above. But most important is not wasting actions on heals.

 

[Hassassin]

All of the above. But most important is not wasting actions on heals.

If it's seen as wasting, there are other things wrong with healing, IMO.

 

[nightwalker450]

If it's seen as wasting, there are other things wrong with healing, IMO.

It's not wasting, it just not fun. Cleric should have more choice in what they do, not just keeping their friends looking awesome. It's better to be able to heal your ally, and do something else productive, than have to decide between doing something awesome (and making the other player angry), or healing your ally.

 

[Hassassin]

It's not wasting, it just not fun. Cleric should have more choice in what they do, not just keeping their friends looking awesome. It's better to be able to heal your ally, and do something else productive, than have to decide between doing something awesome (and making the other player angry), or healing your ally.

That's my point: healing your ally should be awesome.

 

[Mengu]

That's my point: healing your ally should be awesome.

Sure, if it gives them a free attack when you heal them, it would be awesome. Otherwise, the healing needs to be as much as all the damage the PC took the previous round, plus all the damage he will take in the next round, so that you can do something awesome next round like a flame strike, instead of healing again. If healing is all you're doing every round, that's pretty boring. I expect there is a balance in there somewhere, to make standard action healing work fine, but free/minor action healing just works rather nicely once you get used to it.

This view could change, if healing suddenly becomes much less necessary in the system. If people's hit points last them for the duration of an encounter, without a particular need for healing (allowing us to play without a cleric normally), then standard action healing might be fine. It all depends on what else is going on with the system.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, (standard action) healing has to be pretty amazing (Heal, Mass Heal, a heal on a downed friend whose actions are better than yours, etc) to justify using it in combat when you could just use your action to end the combat faster. Particularly so when it also has to compete with a having fun factor.

And healing can't be pretty amazing if they want you to have the option of not having a cleric in the party. That's a tricky balance to manage, but if a group with a cleric is tossing around Heal spells and a group without a cleric is just falling down one by one. Well... failed goal, there.

4E healing actually addressed a number of problems. It'd be good if they considered each of the solutions and what's worth taking from them. It's not perfect, it's not even great. Certainly I'd have cheerfully accepted solutions like the "You can spend max 1 surge per combat"

But I still liked it better than healing post-combat with wands of cure light wounds or vigor. I'll be particularly disappointed in WotC manages to nail super fast combats, but we have to spend as long or longer on the combat as the healer slowly rolls d8s while people adjust their hp in a post-battle topping back up.

 

[Hassassin]

And healing can't be pretty amazing if they want you to have the option of not having a cleric in the party. That's a tricky balance to manage, but if a group with a cleric is tossing around Heal spells and a group without a cleric is just falling down one by one. Well... failed goal, there.

I don't see why (in-combat) healing cannot be both awesome and balanced in terms of how required it is. Healing spells basically cancel actions already taken by enemies, so can't they be evaluated like any other action removal abilities? Having a Wizard who stuns a monster or a Cleric who heals the damage it did could probably be balanced into viable alternatives.

But I still liked it better than healing post-combat with wands of cure light wounds or vigor. I'll be particularly disappointed in WotC manages to nail super fast combats, but we have to spend as long or longer on the combat as the healer slowly rolls d8s while people adjust their hp in a post-battle topping back up.

I'd like to see most healing happen post combat. No need to roll d8's, a percentage is fine. If in-combat healing is rare, it is more easily seen as a cool ability.

I'm not sure if you only meant wands of vigor, or also the spell itself. Vigor is basically a ritual of healing already, so it could be easily fluffed as such. Wands are an issue with the magic item system in general, and I wouldn't want to see them common, much less required.