Ryujin
Legend
Given my experiences DMing a group with a Pacifist Cleric I'd definitely like to see the surgeless healing just go away, but replenishing surges with magic would have much the same effect as surgeless healing, IMHO.
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D&D 5E What needs to be fixed in 5E?
- Thread starter KarinsDad
- Start date
Given my experiences DMing a group with a Pacifist Cleric I'd definitely like to see the surgeless healing just go away, but replenishing surges with magic would have much the same effect as surgeless healing, IMHO.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
No, as replenishing surges would be no help during a fight... so you don´t screw the balance in combat, but allow the group to prolong the adventuring day instead.
Instead of separate hp systems, I would love the Bloodied condition to be removed from HP percentage and the bloodied condition is made more dangerous to carry than in 4e. Simply healing back over 50% doesn't remove it.
Bloodied characters would be susceptible to all the scary stuff of the old days. Martial characters could do their high damage gut stab attack all fight long.
Healers of each power source would deal with Hit points and the bloodied condition differently. Divine healer removed bloodied and heal hit points easily. Martial leaders would struggle with the bloodied condition and their party's hit point will swing up and down with all the bonus range they take. Same with natural rest healing. Removing bloodied the natural way takes a lot of time or a high Heal skill roll.
With the strengthening of bloodied, a lot of those little penalties and bonuses could be removed. The special interactions would be written into class features, attacks, and spell directly and thus be easier to remember as they happen more frequently.
Bloodied characters would be susceptible to all the scary stuff of the old days. Martial characters could do their high damage gut stab attack all fight long.
Healers of each power source would deal with Hit points and the bloodied condition differently. Divine healer removed bloodied and heal hit points easily. Martial leaders would struggle with the bloodied condition and their party's hit point will swing up and down with all the bonus range they take. Same with natural rest healing. Removing bloodied the natural way takes a lot of time or a high Heal skill roll.
With the strengthening of bloodied, a lot of those little penalties and bonuses could be removed. The special interactions would be written into class features, attacks, and spell directly and thus be easier to remember as they happen more frequently.
Ryujin
Legend
My experience has been, both as DM and player, that healing surges are rarely the limiting factor on the adventuring day. It's usually Dailies and other limited resources. I can only recall a single case in which we were so low on surges, that we had stop stop adventuring 'early.'
As a matter of fact with this Pacifist, I'm having trouble getting them to spend surges at all. They go from 1/4 hits to full, with one surge, in most cases. I've even come to add the creature's magic item level equivalent in d6, to critical damage, to try and offset this.
KidSnide
Adventurer
Sure, there's nothing wrong with having implements allow different effects. It's just arbitrary. (Unlike weapons, where the connection between certain powers and certain weapons is more obvious.) What type of spells are associated with wands? What about staffs? Tomes? Orbs? Rods?
I have no doubt that you can design some sensible groupings, but my guess is that most sensible groupings will be at least somewhat school-based. (For example, in 4e Tomes are associated with Conjuration powers and Orbs are (more loosely) associated with Enchantment/Illusion/Divination.)
And I don't see why most arcane spells couldn't be given a school keyword? Nearly every 3.x spell was associated with a school.
-KS
Nahat Anoj
First Post
I do think heavy armor needs something to make it better than light armor. Personally, I think the most straightforward fix is to just let heavy armor grant a higher AC bonus than other armors and just add an attribute accordingly. So what if a fighter's AC is higher than the rogues - that's why being trained in and owning heavy armor is great. The rogue can have various reroll abilities to wriggle his way out of danger.
The all are great ideas. One idea I had was that heavy armor has a Str requirement, but you just add Dex as usual. If you don't meet the Str requirement or aren't trained for it, then you can't use all (any?) of your Dex bonus.
I think it would also be handy if there was a Parry/Block defense that was based Str and/or Con (it may or may not require a shield). The default would be that this defense would work for melee attacks, but there could be feats that let you use it for ranged attacks.
doctorhook
Legend
Keep these things:
- Clearly defined roles for classes!
- Dedicated slots for Utility powers! (Heroes of Neverwinter reminded me what it was like to have to choose between an attack and a utility; hardly anyone ever chooses the utility.)
- Condensed skill list! (It's concise and free of redundancies.)
- 4E's default pantheon! (20 deities with minimal overlap, lameness, and unpronounceability. Let's save the mess that is Gygax' pantheon for Greyhawk, shall we? That thing scares off new people.)
- World-axis cosmology! (Elemental Chaos, Astral Sea, Feywild, and Shadowfell; it's got room for all of the old stuff, but removes the need for explanation of what happens on a given plane without necessitating tears of boredom.)
- Nentir Vale-esque default setting! (It's small enough to fit into almost any campaign, and it's loaded with plot hooks and tie-ins. Small region + tons of ongoing support = a rich and versatile setting for a first campaign.)
- Add dedicated Utility feat slots! (This way people will actually choose feats like Linguist, Skill Focus, and Ritual Caster on their own.)
- No more feat tax! (Fix the math instead!)
- Add powers selected from pools based on power source! (E.g.: Wizards would share almost all their powers with the Arcane power pool, while Warlocks would select some of their powers from that pool and gain the rest specifically from their pact.)
- Stop adding new concepts that just creep the numbers up! (Backgrounds increased everyone's favorite skills by +2; wtf, dudes? Who thought it was a good idea to eff with the math after the fact??)
- Essentials: Multiple power sources for classes that need them! (Rangers are Martial and Primal in Essentials, for example. Sorcerers could be Arcane and Elemental, for another. Also, different subclasses needn't share the exact same power sources, as long as they have one in common.)
- Essentials: Unified and distinct mechanics per power source! (Martial powers should modify basic attacks. Arcane powers should affect all creatures in their AoE, while Divine powers should be ally-friendly. Lots more examples.)
- Essentials: Simpler class design! (Too many options makes a class that much more difficult to balance. Essentials gave 4E classes an appropriate amount of choice without being crippling. Mages choose their spell school and Warpriests choose their domain; model future classes on this, but with an improved selection of schools and domains.)
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AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Yeah, magic adding to HS might work. One of the things I like about the HS mechanic though is it does put a pretty tight cap on things. You can exceed that somewhat in various ways, but you would lose that with your idea. It does give you a bigger distinction between magic healing and 'grit' like SW and non-magical healings. I don't have an issue with making them different, as long as things all work.
Some people will not like this idea at all, but I'm interested in investigating an hp system where, after you've had a chance to rest and catch your breath, *all* your hp's return to you after a fight. No surges or anything of the sort. I feel this system is the best for representing hps as a combination of "minor" physical hurts (although not for things as bad as sucking chest wounds and the like) and loss of intangibles like "luck," fatigue, fighting spirit, etc.
If you drop below 0 hps, you get "wounds" that, if not treated, prevent you from regaining max hitpoints. Perhaps with a "light wound" after a fight you'd only be able to regain up to 75% of your hps, while with a "serious wound" you'd only be able to regain up to 25% hp, or 50% with a persistent condition, or something else.
During battle, characters might be able to use Second Wind once, but otherwise they'll need other abilities/spells/powers to heal up. They'll have to wait until they've had a chance to rest in order to recover all their hitpoints.
Yes, this system is inspired from DA2. No, I don't care if that makes it videogamey.
I don't think it is any more or less videogamey than any other HP/HS system. None of them are super realistic, nor ever will be. Some decent mechanism for getting 'wounds' is not bad though. Magic healing could then remove wounds, and not do any direct HP restoration at all (though that would be the indirect effect). Non-magical healing could then just work pretty much like it does now, restoring 25% of your hit points per application. I think that would still give you the 'action heroes' thing, and allow for it to verge into gritty fairly easily (especially if you could add in say a critical hit system that can give wounds, etc for those who want bloody).
I suspect that our experiences are not all that different.
Are you telling me that the players that you have played with over the decades have all considered hit points to be "luck of the gods" and "magical protection" and other such stuff?
When running a game as DM, do you say when a first level PC takes 15 points of damage on a critical in 4E "The hobgoblin slashes Eleanor across the chest with his massive axe, making her cough up some blood." or some such?
Or do you say when a first level PC takes 15 points of damage on a critical in 4E "The hobgoblin slashes at Eleanor with his massive axe. She ducks under it, but her luck is about to run out."?
Are you honestly telling me that the second example here is what has narratively happened for decades in your games?
15 points of damage at first level will bloody (another damage implying term) most first level PCs and put them at serious risk of going unconscious.
Narratively in game and meta-game-wise in discussions out of game, I have never heard anyone talk about hits in D&D as anything other than actual hits or damage. I have never heard anyone talk about healing as anything other than healing. Not the loss and regaining of fatigue. Not luck. Not mystic protection.
This was just a out of game rational used to explain the mechanics of gaining hit points at higher level, but weapon damage typically did not go up much at all, for people bothered by the hit point concept.
I have never played with a single person (out of literally many hundreds of players over the years) who ever expressed the thought that the first 50 hit points of damage was being lucky and the last 5 hit points were actual damage. It has always been damage. Minor damage sometimes, but always damage. I've even been in games where being half damaged (i.e. bloodied in 4E terms) had a house ruled mechanics meaning and it was even called "half damaged".
In fact even in 4E, many of the players I've played with consider healing surges to be healing. They just hand wave away the logical inconsistencies and ignore them.
Wow. My experiences are totally different, especially now that monster damage has increased in the last year. Players tend to hoard Daily powers a little bit for when they really need them, so after 3 or so encounters, there is almost always a few PCs low on healing surges and it's the number one reason that the PCs hole up.
Course, our encounters are not very often N or lower in difficulty either. And, I've found that PCs burn through healing surges more so at Heroic levels than Paragon levels due to the extra temp hit points, damage resistance, surgeless healing, and stronger percentage-wise healing at Paragon.
