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Healing in Next

Started by Bedrockbrendan, June 10, 2012, 07:59:38 PM

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Kord's Boon

Quote from: JasperAK;548645HD or Hit Dice are what my characters roll when they advance a level to determine their Hit Points. What is this nonsense about HD being tied to daily healing?

P.S. I have been rethinking the whole problem with rolling low on Hit Dice and may try rerolling all Hit Dice at each level gain. I think I heard someone else on here has tried something like that.

If you roll your, HP on hit dice then it's not a big leap of imagination to also use it to represent some fraction of stored vitality and/or natural healing. In addition I would find it convenient to push dice at my players for them to use, especially new players (ie. here's a d8 for your damage, 2d20 for your rolls, and 1d10 for recovering hit points). Then I can collect them as the game progresses or give them out as they rest. Less looking at your sheet (relative to 4e healing surges) and more rolling dice. I can't really see the downside.

More to the point using the hit dice for natural healing seems to me a good middle ground. Characters have extra vitality, effectively a little less then then their HP total in reserve, but not so much as to muck up long term adventure strategy of planing, or a single battle. It's much better then a character getting his or her 'second wind' every 5 minutes or having an upwards of 3 times their already inflated HP totals on call, which is guaranteed by the system.

As for 'rolling at each level, take the highest' I recommend it, it's fun and can help out a character who's falling behind, and push back characters who rolled really really well. Normalizes the totals without removing the tension, or the penalty/reward of the rolls.
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thedungeondelver

I still don't like the resting system however for 5e, for Cure Light Wounds (and others) I wouldn't hate a system where you roll your actual class HD to see how many HP the spell gives back, versus a d8.
THE DELVERS DUNGEON


Mcbobbo sums it up nicely.

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Marleycat

Quote from: thedungeondelver;548828I still don't like the resting system however for 5e, for Cure Light Wounds (and others) I wouldn't hate a system where you roll your actual class HD to see how many HP the spell gives back, versus a d8.

I can work with that easily. Why can't the overnight heal work similarly?  Like heal up to your HD random roll? Or your character level? Something, anything but video game refresh.
Don\'t mess with cats we kill wizards in one blow.;)

Kord's Boon

Quote from: Marleycat;548918Like heal up to your HD random roll?

Consensus seems to be...

(consensus, what the hell)

That recovering all healing resources on a full rest (without magical assistance) is too much. Why we can't agree on a default method, and an integrated option to make it old-school or  new-school is beyond me.
"[We are all] victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people." - Sir Charles Chaplin

Marleycat

Quote from: Kord's Boon;548941Consensus seems to be...

(consensus, what the hell)

That recovering all healing resources on a full rest (without magical assistance) is too much. Why we can't agree on a default method, and an integrated option to make it old-school or  new-school is beyond me.

I'm flexible on the issue personally I'm fine with either heal up to HD or character level + Con bonus with each long rest.
Don\'t mess with cats we kill wizards in one blow.;)

thedungeondelver

The long rest versus short rest etc. is a semantic quagmire and it needs to go, ASAP.

You either cast healing spells and move on, find an abandoned room, spike the doors and camp out and hope for the best, or go back to town.

This "short rest, long rest, sleep" jazz has to go.
THE DELVERS DUNGEON


Mcbobbo sums it up nicely.

Quote
Astrophysicists are reassessing Einsteinian relativity because the 28 billion l

jibbajibba

Quote from: thedungeondelver;549064The long rest versus short rest etc. is a semantic quagmire and it needs to go, ASAP.

You either cast healing spells and move on, find an abandoned room, spike the doors and camp out and hope for the best, or go back to town.

This "short rest, long rest, sleep" jazz has to go.

The rest concept is as old as D&D. Clerics take a long rest and they pray and recovery their spells, wizards take a long rest and they study to recover their spells, daily powers, like lay on hands, druid polymorph and all that jazz recover after a long rest. So the concepts were in the game from the get go.

HP are problematic.
They are complex to explain because they are abstract.
When you try to explain them logically the result is that healing becomes a problem. If you take a newbie and you say HP represent how much damage you can take. they reply so when I have 30 HP i can take more damage than a Shire horse. To which we reply well no HP are a mix of skill luck etc and the ability to turn a hit that would kill a normal man into more of a cut or graze. Okay so they should heal quickly. Ah well yes but ....
And so on and so on .

Now I personally think the old method was totally daft. 1hp per day just makes no sense as it means low level characters with low hit points recover much faster than high level charcters. the 3rd Edition rule of recovering Level HP per day is a much better fit becuase it implies you recover a certain % of your HP per day a far better approximation to reality.

Now the step from that to you recover a HD of HP per day is a very small one and the step from that to you recover your level in HD per day is also a small one.
So its easy to see how you get to where 4e went or how 5e is looking.

I have stated my preference several times and I have play tested it and it works.

To reiterate -
Players get an additional 6 HP. This represents their 0 level HP. Then at 1st level they gain HD + con bonus hp and they continue to do that for each level (upto some threshold probably)
The 0 level component of their HP represents their Physical, the rest is their Skill.
Now just like in the 5 e rules you get level HD per day to spend in a short rest to regain HP.
Just like in 5e a long over night 8 hrs + rest recovers all your HPs
UNLESS you have passed the threshold and your current HP are now in that physical portion, ie less than 6.
At that point you stop gaining HP and take on a new status of wounded.
A wounded character recovers 1hp per day until they are no longer wounded.

Now its not perfect. There are a few issues round high con recovering faster and heal spells need a tweak (I would run it as a CLW heals 1 hp to a wounded character). But it clears up the physical /non-physical split and it removes the need for magical healing to be ubiquitous to allow the game to run smoothly.
It can be adapted easily to make recovery slower as well:
  • Restrict Healing to 1HD per day + level HD for a sleep
  • Restrict healing in a day to 1HD and overnight to Level HP
  • etc etc
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beejazz

Quote from: BedrockBrendanI think HD and one night heals are popular enough they can just keep them as an optional ad on rule for less lethal campaigns. But otherwise have natural healing take days to weeks, go back to divine healing as the norm and do what worked for decades.

For D&D, people are pretty much going to be pissed whatever they do. Like I'm bothered because I actually want something more short-term on the hp pace, but I want something a little less dissociated than what they've shown.

The funny thing is 5e healing as shown is a lot like what I was working on for my game. But my game has (sometimes) harder to heal wounds and other factors that are a little different. It also doesn't limit the number of short rests per day (I still don't understand why there's not more rage on that one).

_____


In my case, in-combat healing (which is at will) heals much less than attacks hurt you, and is touch range. It heals you 1/HD to a max of 1/3 your max hp total, and removes specific wounds like bleeding and staggering.

Ritual healing can be used when you have the time, rolls your HD to a max of 2/3 hit points and heals bigger wounds like knockouts or broken limbs.

Then some healing has a location component so you have to go back to town. It takes you to full hp and heals even severed limbs.

That's just magic healing though. Mundane healing is more like one casting of ritual healing for a night's rest (doesn't heal a broken limb though), and location component healing for a week's rest (doesn't heal a severed limb though).

Warlords get ranged healing options that don't do shit for wounds, and tend not to be as effective as ritual and up, and druids, barbarians, and trolls get some self-healing options.

estar

Quote from: thedungeondelver;548263Grey-box the entire healing system in 5e, deflate the goddamn hit points, problem solved.

Agreed

thedungeondelver

Quote from: estar;549130Agreed

I know, right?  As far as I'm concerned, that and the creeping special-snowflakeitis in 5e are the biggest hitches for me.  Oh and magic, but that's maybe getting better.  Depends on how many control knobs they put on Magic.
THE DELVERS DUNGEON


Mcbobbo sums it up nicely.

Quote
Astrophysicists are reassessing Einsteinian relativity because the 28 billion l

RPGPundit

Quote from: Kord's Boon;548618How about a table? You like tables right?

This is not so much an issue of 'complexity' but rather a philosophy of: 'we ought not have to deal with the fiddly little math bits at all' right?

Yes, and it isn't so much my policy as it is the dominant mentality in modern RPG design.

Also, no, a table wouldn't fly, not for something like hit points; having to refer to a table every time you're injured wouldn't fly either.

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