D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[Tony Vargas]

Cool.

Personally I found it (systematic use of WoCLW) a little jarring and un-genre-worthy at first, but it was just too effective to sweep under the run. Without it, we probably would have had even shorter 'days,' and caster disparities would have set in even sooner. :shrug:

No more so than in the 4E games I've been playing for the last several years.

So, quite a lot of 5MWD's then? ;P

(Sorry, the 5MWD was one of my pet peeves that 4e /didn't/ fix, just half-compensated for... While I liked having the class-balance half of the problem cleaned up, it's root cause was still there.)

Another factor with end-of-the-day healing is how wounded people get. If you have a party of mostly melee-types who grind the enemy down with toe-to-toe damage trading, you'll have more need of healing each day than if you have a party weighted more towards overwhelming charge damage, ranged attacking and SoDs. Probably fewer casters with healing, too.

Nope, but sometimes when everyone is just agreeing with everyone else on a "how something is" it's good to be reminded that that may not be the case.

Fair enough. RPGs are, by their nature, such open-ended games that you can't ever really get away from such variation, so I tend to think of it as a given. But, I guess it doesn't hurt. Too often someone pipes up with "well that never happened to my group!" as if it were some sort of refutation, though...

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, it's pretty easy for a 3rd Ed Party to be at full HP going into every combat it seems (my experience DMing), not so much in 1st/2nd Ed.

Healing should obviously be campaign specific (many options/variants).

Well, I think a lot of that has to do with the "math" of the monsters in each edition. You could go through an AD&D encounter and reasonably not take much damage. PC AC's were generally pretty high, monster attacks were very poor (compared to 3e anyway) and monster damage output was very, very low.

In 3e, going into a combat with less than full HP, against a CR = Par creature had a pretty high chance of PC death.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I did not see it have the effect of getting PCs to full hit points after every fight. The encounters didn't happen in a vacuum - there often just wasn't time. 1d8+1 per round just isn't much when multiple PCs are down. I'm curious, was it common for a party to carry a large number of WoCLWs in the games you were in?

In 1 minute, 1 wand of CLW can heal over 50 hp. And if it's less than a minute between separate fights, I'd consider it to be the same fight with the bad guys getting reinforcements (so would both the 4e rules with the 5 minute short rests and the 1e rules with 10 minute turns).

I think holds up pretty good now days and is even more common online. People seem to gravitate to the things they agree with - in fact people can find sites that pretty much cater to any particular view point with out having to bother with dissenting views.

If I didn't want dissenting views I wouldn't be on enworld!

 

[Argyle King]

Just a thought...


You didn't even need a cleric to use a Wand of Cure Light Wounds in 3rd Edition. A tactic I used (and one I resurrected during a recent Pathfinder game) was to max out the Use Magic Device skill of my sorcerer. It's pretty sweet being a full arcane caster and being able to bluff magic items into working for you on top of that. With Charisma being a primary stat for the sorcerer, it's pretty easy to get to the point where the DM doesn't even make you bother to roll for an item like a WoCLW.

 

[D'karr]

Just a thought...


You didn't even need a cleric to use a Wand of Cure Light Wounds in 3rd Edition.

Yep. Rogue <- here. Maxing out Use Magic Device was customary for exactly the same reason, better than spending points in Use Rope <- WTF?

 

[slobo777]

Yep. Rogue <- here. Maxing out Use Magic Device was customary for exactly the same reason, better than spending points in Use Rope <- WTF?

In my groups, Use Rope ended up far more important than Use Magic Item!

It's probably a hold-over from very old school play styles, but it was very common practice back in the day to solve dungeon problems with mundane equipment. Iron spikes, 10' poles, silvered mirrors. And the most common part of the toolkit - 50'of rope.

I think that's where the unusual-looking skill cropped up in 3E. Whether or not you tied the prisoners well, or had roped yourselves together for safe spelunking/mountaineering, or whether your rope-and-pulley solution for disabling a trap would work, cropped up so often in some games that the separate skill for modelling and resolving these seemed like a good choice no doubt to the 3E designers. Of course you could push all of these to auto-success or inside some other skill (disable traps), but there was probably something going on inside the designer's heads - maybe just memories of learning knot types at Scout camp

 

[Ahnehnois]

In my groups, Use Rope ended up far more important than Use Magic Item!

IME virtually no one takes either of those skills. Charged and use-limited magic items are complicated, weak, and not cost-effective (healing wands being pretty much the lone exception, and even then being of limited use at best). Use Rope is a niche skill, if you're going to be in places that facilitate it.

Personally, I find that Spot/Listen and Knowledge skills outweigh everything else.

 

[Neonchameleon]

IME virtually no one takes either of those skills. Charged and use-limited magic items are complicated, weak, and not cost-effective (healing wands being pretty much the lone exception, and even then being of limited use at best). Use Rope is a niche skill, if you're going to be in places that facilitate it.

From what I recall you saying, you don't often have people scribe scrolls either. Let alone wander around with a dozen scrolls in the back of their spellbook for all the useful little utility spells like Spiderclimb and Knock that you will want only rarely but will be incredibly useful when you use them.

Personally, I find that Spot/Listen and Knowledge skills outweigh everything else.

Spot/Listen, certainly. Knowledge - depends on the campaign.

 

[Ahnehnois]

From what I recall you saying, you don't often have people scribe scrolls either. Let alone wander around with a dozen scrolls in the back of their spellbook for all the useful little utility spells like Spiderclimb and Knock that you will want only rarely but will be incredibly useful when you use them.

You apparently have an excellent recollection of my posts; this is not something I've addressed recently. But yes, my wizards almost always trade Scribe Scroll for something else. XP costs are anathema to my players, and my campaigns typically don't allow a lot of down time for item creation. We also tend to trade DMing responsibilities and spend a significant portion of our time playing shorter-than-campaign games that don't allow down time either. At this point, I'd just comp the XP costs, but I still don't think they'd do it. Moreover, I have a small (3 PC) group these days that all tend to slightly prefer nonmagic characters. The current party (one monk, one ranger, one monstrous character with a bit of rogue) can't even identify magic items, let alone create them.

Item creation in 3e is definitely one place where styles diverge big time. What doesn't diverge are the item CL and DC rules, which essentially mean that only utility spells are useful in item form.

Spot/Listen, certainly. Knowledge - depends on the campaign.

Obviously. IMC, knowledge skills are extremely important. YMMV.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Well, I think a lot of that has to do with the "math" of the monsters in each edition. You could go through an AD&D encounter and reasonably not take much damage. PC AC's were generally pretty high, monster attacks were very poor (compared to 3e anyway) and monster damage output was very, very low.

In 3e, going into a combat with less than full HP, against a CR = Par creature had a pretty high chance of PC death.

True, 3rd Ed can become "He who goes first, wins".

i definitely do not like characters auto-healing to full over after an extended rest, but again, that should be a choice, some people dig it (I like that they provided 3 options in the latest play-test).