D&D 5E (2014) What if healing spells only created Temp HP?

[cbwjm]

What would happen if all magical healing and healing potions did not increase hitpoints, but only created temp HP? I can think of a few impacts:

• Clerics, Paladins and Druids might think of using spells to buff characters before they go into a fight
• If a character is downed, magical healing will not get them up for the fight
• D&D as a society would have less cleric types healing people of cuts, bruises and other physical ailments
• Allowing a PC to have only one "lot" of temp HP puts a cap on buffing, and strongly encourages upcasting/using higher level heal spells
• Might affect player psychology and PC behaviour going into a fight with a large temp HP pool
• Might still be used in combat
• Makes magical healing less appealing overall

The inevitable question for all these posts is "why?" which apart from just for fun, I think the intention behind this would be:
To make magical healing less immersion breaking (for me), and to change the incentive from clerics to being healbots to being precombat buffers.

I like the idea of a cleric or paladin conducting a rite before a battle and buffing up the party, or a druid conducting some kind of ritual to do the same. It both feels more thematic to me, and also I'm hoping it would disincentives the choice that many healing classes have to either get to act on their turn, or to heal someone else in the party. For some players that's not a problem, for others, it feels like a tax.

Secondly, and this is my personal preference, i'd like to see mundane healing get more focus. I like the idea of a cut down healer's feat where a use of a healers kit and a successful medicine check could restore 1d6 hitpoints flat with the same caveat that a PC/creature can only beneft from this healing once per rest. The healer feat would still be a boon because of the +4+hit dice bonus to healing, as well as being able to restore a dying creature to 1 hitpoint which would with the above ruling make this the only way to get someone back in the fight in the middle of combat. This to me opens up more possibilities for any character to being a healer and I like that.

I suspect some of you would not like this at all. But whether you do or you don't, I'd be interested in your thoughts as to what you think it'd change.

This could be pretty cool. It would largely solve the yoyo healing thing everyone goes on about, might even make some fights more deadly because of it since it won't be easy to get people back up during the fight.

 

[MoonSong]

I don't know anyone who actually plays a 5e cleric as a healbot. Considering that,I don't really think it is necessary.

I do play healbots.

 

[Tonguez]

Yeah IMC magic only restores HP it doesnt mend wounds - so anyone who doesnt also get some First Aid skill will contiunue to bleed out or be infected or be dead from drowning.

 

[p_johnston]

I could also see this lowering the amount of fights a group is able to get into between rests (which could be good or bad depending on campaign type).

So in my experience it's typically only one or two people who end up getting really beaten up (unless something goes wrong). With healing spells as is the party can concentrate most of its healing onto the people who are taking the most damage. If spells don't actually heal HP the only real healing the available is HD leaving half of the parties effective healing stuck with people who likely don't need it. This effectively means that once the tank/s run out of HD the adventure day has to end. Both because the temp HP from a cure wounds will very rapidly fall behind what a characters expected HP is and the fact that once someone falls down without any HD left they are unconscious for 1 to 4 hours.

In short right now adventureing days end when the Tank/s are out of HD, and ALL the healers run out of healing spells. With them being temp the adventuring day ends when the Tank/s are out of HD.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah IMC magic only restores HP it doesnt mend wounds - so anyone who doesnt also get some First Aid skill will contiunue to bleed out or be infected or be dead from drowning.

(Emphasis mine.) This is interesting.

If you accept the idea of hit points at 0 indicates serious injury, bleeding, etc. maybe just make is so healing magic and potions only work as long as you have at least 1 hp. Until 0 hp, all other damage is minor, or just uses skill or luck to avoid the damage. It makes things like poison an issue, but that has always been the case using hp in D&D.

This would make getting 1 hp back part of the Healer Feat or recovering with time, etc. I'll have to think more about the ramifications...

 

[Flamestrike]

The biggest problem is Temporary HP dont stack, and they dont bring a PC on 0 HP back to consciousness (meaning they continue to bleed out).

 

[dave2008]

The biggest problem is Temporary HP dont stack, and they dont bring a PC on 0 HP back to consciousness (meaning they continue to bleed out).

I think the OP sees those as benefits, not problems.

 

[Flamestrike]

I think the OP sees those as benefits, not problems.

So you wind up with a game, with everyone constantly dying all the time?

Cant see how that's a benefit.

 

[Dausuul]

So you wind up with a game, with everyone constantly dying all the time?

You can have a party with no magical healing at all and they won't be "dying all the time."

So... no.

 

[Stalker0]

So I can see two ways to go about this:

1) Temp HP as a "buffer", that extends your hitpoints. Effectively an energy shield for all intensive purposes. The main question here is...how much buffer can various spells grant. Does CLW give 1d8 + wis temp hp.... can I cast two or three casts of the spell to get triple the hp?

In flavor context, in this model regular people would rarely utilize clerics, unless the job they were undertaking was particularly difficult or dangerous.

2) Temp HP as a "temporary stitch". Kind of like that fix a flat substance you put in a car tire to keep it going for a while, in other words a temporary "hold off" of the damage taken. This model might be better served with a new damage type (similar to subdual). Effectively a healing spell converts damage into "delayed damage". Delayed Damage doesn't effect a character until the magic wears off, and then the delayed damage becomes regular damage again....with any and all consequences.

This works more closely to traditional healing (aka you only apply the effect as the result of injury, not as a buff before the injury) while at the same time still allowing for regular injuries to require a good amount of time to heal.

In this model, people would go to the cleric for a "patch". Mr Farmer broke his leg, and the cleric is keeping the leg workable so the farmer can still work...but the leg will still require a longer time to heal. In this version, people would need to go to the cleric more regularly than the base model to maintain a similar benefit.