# Hit points & long rests: please consider?



## Kzach (May 25, 2012)

This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.

I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points. I would ask that those reading this look at my arguments and try to view the matter from a holistic rather than personal viewpoint.

I completely understand people who say they dislike the mechanic. What I disagree with is on the fundamental nature of injury in D&D. I feel that those who oppose the mechanic don't agree with the statements made about injury and the goals of the injury system. Disagreeing with it is your prerogative, of course, and I wouldn't want to tell anyone how to run their games. What I'm asking people to consider is the way in which D&D has always MEANT to be run, from its very inception and throughout every edition. This is what the long rest mechanic is designed to represent.

So before people say it's a horrible mechanic and they want to get rid of it, I'd propose that they consider that to change it is inconsequential to their own games. It's little more than a hand wave. But the tradition and impression of the game on new players is important and should be kept intact regardless of personal preference.

To this end I would like to refer people to Mike Mearl's stated team design objectives when creating the mechanic:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Hit Points, Our Old Friend)



> A creature with more than half its maximum hit points has nothing more than the superficial signs of injury. There might be a few tears in its armor or clothes, or it could have a dent in its shield, and it has not yet suffered any serious physical harm beyond a scrape, light cut, or bruise. Anyone looking at the creature likely doesn't notice that it has been involved in a fight.
> 
> A creature with less than half its maximum hit points has suffered a few noticeable cuts or bruises. A casual inspection or quick look reveals that the creature has taken a few hits, so it is noticeably injured.
> 
> A creature that is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points has suffered a direct hit—enough to knock it unconscious. The attack that dropped it caused a serious injury that might crack bones and cause heavy, ongoing bleeding.




EDIT: Sorry, I wasn't clear.

What I meant was that hit points have always been 'luck, skill, near misses' until you got to 0 hit points.

Remember that taking a 'long rest' only works if you're already on at least 1 hit point. So if you're 0 or lower, it won't work. It requires 2d6 hours to get to 1 hit point from stabilised and it requires three successful death saves (irrespective of the fact that death saves are a low DC) to become stabilised. Either that, or you need magical or mundane healing of some type which burns a HD.


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## Lanefan (May 25, 2012)

Kzach said:


> This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.



I'm already considering it, and I'm afraid it won't be pretty.



> I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points. I would ask that those reading this look at my arguments and try to view the matter from a holistic rather than personal viewpoint.
> 
> I completely understand people who say they dislike the mechanic. What I disagree with is on the fundamental nature of injury in D&D. I feel that those who oppose the mechanic don't agree with the statements made about injury and the goals of the injury system. Disagreeing with it is your prerogative, of course, and I wouldn't want to tell anyone how to run their games. What I'm asking people to consider is the way in which D&D has always MEANT to be run, from its very inception and throughout every edition. This is what the long rest mechanic is designed to represent.



Not every edition.  In 1e an overnight rest got you back 1 h.p.; it took something like a week in town to recover everything.  Hit points were way harder to rest back even though the philosophy behind what they represented may, as you say, have been similar.



> To this end I would like to refer people to Mike Mearl's stated team design objectives when creating the mechanic:
> 
> Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Hit Points, Our Old Friend)



The disagreement comes from whether it should be relatively easy or not to recover those hit points - whatever they represent - by simply resting.  I say it should take either time or magic, and by 'time' I mean more than one night's rest.

Lan-"still pulling for a body-point fatigue-point system"efan


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## Kzach (May 25, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Not every edition.  In 1e an overnight rest got you back 1 h.p.; it took something like a week in town to recover everything.  Hit points were way harder to rest back even though the philosophy behind what they represented may, as you say, have been similar.




Sorry, I wasn't clear.

What I meant was that hit points have always been 'luck, skill, near misses' until you got to 0 hit points.

Remember that taking a 'long rest' only works if you're already on at least 1 hit point. So if you're 0 or lower, it won't work. It requires 2d6 hours to get to 1 hit point from stabilised and it requires three successful death saves (irrespective of the fact that death saves are a low DC) to become stabilised. Either that, or you need magical or mundane healing of some type which burns a HD.


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## FinalSonicX (May 25, 2012)

I think the overnight healing should be changed so that it doesn't heal players back to full - make it require a longer amount of time while still remaining reasonable (a month is way too long but a week is acceptable I think). Make the overnight healing an optional rule listed with the advice that this will make it so that play progresses more quickly in-game for those who care less about tracking the progression of time.

The reason that I say this is that it's very rare for my to see a piece of fiction where a hero is dropped and somehow recovers after a night's sleep. Imagine a siege scenario where an attempt is made to break the siege by the party. They go out and have a huge battle and nearly die so they retreat into the castle. Now they think they have a better idea of how to go about their tactics next time - so they hop in bed and sleep 8 hours and they're good to go tomorrow! It doesn't "feel" right to me - our heroes can be heroic even if it takes a few days of rest after a particularly tough day of battling. I don't see the gains from making players heal fully after a day.

My question is - why is it unreasonable to say "we rest for 4 days" as the default for the rules and get back into the game? The exact number of days you rest doesn't matter in terms of actual playtime - but it does give a sense of time progression - like the world is moving around you.


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## babomb (May 25, 2012)

You tell that to an American Football player. I've never seen any of them get reduced to 0 HP (unconscious and bleeding out). Less than 50%, probably, but not 0. Yet sometimes they take injuries that take weeks to recover fully. Sometimes an injury ends their season, or even career, and that's AFTER surgery. Even when a player isn't injured enough to sit out a game, his performance often drops as the season drags on, because his body's being battered week after week.

This is a heroic fantasy game, so I'm not suggesting the PCs ought to have to sit out a year because of a concussion or torn ACL. But I don't think a week in the absence of magical healing is too much for a character literally one punch from being KOed.

My preferred rule would be a long rest gets you 1 HD back, which you may spend immediately. I would settle for a long rest gets you all HP if you're at less than max or 1 HD if you're at max.


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## delericho (May 25, 2012)

Kzach said:


> This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.
> 
> I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points.




Fair enough. I'm not.



> What I'm asking people to consider is the way in which D&D has always MEANT to be run, from its very inception and throughout every edition. This is what the long rest mechanic is designed to represent.




Unfortunately, the original designers are no longer around to ask their opinion. However, given that neither OD&D, BECMI D&D, nor 1st Edition AD&D featured healing at anything close to the 4e/5e rate, I would dispute your assertion that it was always meant to be that way.



> So before people say it's a horrible mechanic and they want to get rid of it, I'd propose that they consider that to change it is inconsequential to their own games. It's little more than a hand wave.




The converse is also true - in all pre-4e editions, introducing a house rule that an overnight sleep heals all injuries is likewise trivial.



> But the tradition and impression of the game on new players is important and should be kept intact regardless of personal preference.




That's fair. But is it _really_ the right impression that characters can suffer horrific, debilitating injuries, taking them to the very edge of death, and then bounce back overnight as if nothing had ever happened?



> To this end I would like to refer people to Mike Mearl's stated team design objectives when creating the mechanic:
> 
> Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Hit Points, Our Old Friend)




The problem is with the edge case, specifically where a character was reduced to 0 hit points, and so takes a serious injury, is then healed to 1 hit point through mundane means (so he doesn't die), and then sleeps overnight and is absolutely fine.

Now, I haven't yet seen the playtest materials, so it's possible that they've introduced some sort of persistent "Wounded" condition that debilitates such a character for a time. In which case, fair enough. But without it, I'll remain opposed to the notion that an overnight rest heals all damage.


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## delericho (May 25, 2012)

babomb said:


> You tell that to an American Football player. I've never seen any of them get reduced to 0 HP (unconscious and bleeding out). Less than 50%, probably, but not 0. Yet sometimes they take injuries that take weeks to recover fully.




Heck, even sportsmen who _don't_ get injured don't recover fully after an overnight rest - they simply can't play match after match, day after day after day, because the exhaustion gets to them.

Indeed, in most sports, despite the players playing relatively few times in the year, fatigue is _still_ a significant factor across the length of the season.

(And so, there's actually some considerable justification for an overnight rest restoring some fraction of lost hit points/powers, and for it restoring a progressively smaller fraction as the adventure wears on - if nothing else, that should cut down on the 15-minute adventuring day, because suddenly taking that rest means that everything going forward gets that bit harder.)



> This is a heroic fantasy game, so I'm not suggesting the PCs ought to have to sit out a year because of a concussion or torn ACL. But I don't think a week in the absence of magical healing is too much for a character literally one punch from being KOed.




It is, genuinely, a tricky question. Because if a couple of bad rolls take a PC out of the game, and then it takes a long time to heal, then that can lead to that player just not having any fun for a considerable length of real-time - either because his character is out of action, or because he has to take extreme care to protect him from further damage. In extreme cases, it can simply end the adventure, which may or may not be something the group is willing to see happen.

So I'm inclined to have healing be pretty generous, even unrealistically so. I just feel that having an overnight rest healing everything swings that pendulum too far the other way.



> My preferred rule would be a long rest gets you 1 HD back, which you may spend immediately. I would settle for a long rest gets you all HP if you're at less than max or 1 HD if you're at max.




It would depend on how many hit points the characters have, and how big the hit dice. However, if a Fighter had, say, 60 hit points and were using d10 hit dice, then I'd be inclined on the first overnight rest to give maybe 8 dice - enough to restore him to full on a decent roll, or enough for several smaller heals during the day.

On the second overnight rest, though, that would get reduced to 6 dice, then to 4, and thereafter to 2. Or something like that. (It would then reset "between adventures" - if the character spends a few days in downtime, takes a holiday, or just goes on a massive three-day pub crawl.)

But those are, of course, numbers I've just pulled out of the air - I haven't given the matter a lot of thought, and it would of course depend on how the rest of the system is set up.


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## Brix (May 25, 2012)

Actually I like the system. Nothing is more ennerving than a weeks rest period in a time critical adventure.
I'd keep it as is.
Maybe as an option you can rule that after the character suffered a critical hit, this damage is not reverted after a long rest periode. This kind of damage would need some special treatment.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

I'm with Kzach. Having characters out of a town siege adventure because they received a crit on the first day sounds like pretty bad game design to me.
As does the idea to absolutely need a magic heal bot to avoid such a fate.
Long healing times are might be realistic or good in fiction, with the pace controlled along with all story elements and combats by the same person, but not in a game of chance using dices.


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## Li Shenron (May 25, 2012)

Kzach said:


> This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.
> 
> I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points. I would ask that those reading this look at my arguments and try to view the matter from a holistic rather than personal viewpoint.




Sorry, no.

We've had plenty of discussions in multiple threads in the past months, and it is OK to have one more. But now that we are playtesting, I personally think we should NOT throw pleads at each other to support our pet peeves or favourite ideas (I have plenty of my own, I'm not criticizing you for having your own!).

Most importantly, now it's time to _playtest_ which means *play* the damn thing  Of course some speculation of long-range consequences of these rule drafts is inevitable, but we are thousands of playtesting groups running the same adventure with the same pregens, so we'd better just stick with our test results and provide feedback based on direct experience. 

Which means to me... let's play and gouge our feelings rather than think too much. 

Happy playtesting!


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> ...
> 
> Most importantly, now it's time to _playtest_ which means *play* the damn thing  Of course some speculation of long-range consequences of these rule drafts is inevitable, but we are thousands of playtesting groups running the same adventure with the same pregens, so we'd better just stick with our test results and provide feedback based on direct experience.
> 
> ...




I would, but I got no RL players who want to sign in. My kids are to young to sign up. Online is forbidden.

So, by the OTA, the only thing I may do is complaining without getting into the actual mechanics.


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## Li Shenron (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> I would, but I got no RL players who want to sign in. My kids are to young to sign up. Online is forbidden.
> 
> So, by the OTA, the only thing I may do is complaining without getting into the actual mechanics.




You can complain but _after_ playing  

If you don't have even one player, playtest the combat rules by setting up the fights between the PCs and the monsters in the adventure. As long as you play the battle fair, I don't even think you need players to test the combat rules... it is mostly the exploration and interaction phases which require the players to be unaware of what awaits them.

Of course it's possible that WotC won't officially accept your feedback in such case... but you can still write in their forums and columns. What I mean is, that now it's not the time to voice against something in the draft rules _unless_ we've actually tested them in practice.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

Can I complain that the Greataxe of the fighter and the one in the guide use a different dice? I hate to such mechanical failures of a company that doesn't allow me to play with my kids


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## Li Shenron (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Can I complain that the Greataxe of the fighter and the one in the guide use a different dice? I hate to such mechanical failures of a company that doesn't allow me to play with my kids




Yes. I think that complaining about the playtesting _material_ is in order 

BTW I didn't notice that...


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## seregil (May 25, 2012)

Sorry, but no.

I do NOT like that a full nights rest means you regain all your hit points.

It makes no sense and it breaks the game.

It makes no sense because...

if I am at 1 hp, it is safe to assume that I am covered in cuts, bruises and various other wounds. In 4E, the condition was called 'bloody' and in my mind, it means EXACTLY that: you were covered in blood. Yours.

The first half of you HP might be 'luck, skill, near misses' and whatever, but eventually, HP also meant PHYSICAL damage. Surely, we don't only have 1 HP of physical 'life' (at any level) and everything else is 'luck, skill, near misses'?

So, no, nothing short of magical healing should restore you to full hp without a LONG wait. You will NOT heal a three inch gash on your arm in 24 hours, sorry, In fact, you will PROBABLY die of infection within a couple weeks unless you DO something other than sitting around and waiting.


It breaks the game because ...

there is no longer any consequence to screwing up. The sense of danger isn't there anymore. One of my favorite aspects of previous editions was the feeling that my PC was being hunted, that he needed to be careful or he would be squished like the insignificant bug that he was. With this rule, he somehow heals up to full every night, thereby loosing that 'hunted' feeling. He's not scared anymore. He heals his sucking chest wounds in 24 hours.

If anything goes wrong, he just needs to hole up and wait until the next day.

So, no, sorry. My feedback will clearly state that this mechanic should be removed.

If you think otherwise, say so in your feedback and let the designers work it out. That is the entire POINT of the playtest.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

Great how people discuss getting back to fully operational after some cuts and bruises (that is HP between half max and 1) is totally unrealistic, even than using fantasy herb medicine and a healer's kit, but regaining all magical might to throw balls of flames or resurrect the dead should be regained on daily base...


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## Herremann the Wise (May 25, 2012)

On the one hand, you are correct. If you view damage leaving a character unbloodied as near misses, luck or skill to avoid or turn, and damage leading to the bloodied state as a gash, deep bruise or similar, then it makes perfect sense to recover this quickly; the wounds are still there a day later but they are not going to affect your character's performance. We're not talking being in prime footballing form, we're talking fit enough to survive. Bandage up that nasty gash and you'll be fine. As explained and as given, this is all fair and reasonable if you follow the interpretation we are given (and not the one or ones we may have used previously).

However, where the problem arises is when a character hits zero or below. This is the sword in the gut, the broken leg or such forth. And this damage should not be quickly healed except through magic. I'm still working out exactly what happens here but I'm sensing the rules allow an easy progression from stabilized to 1hp and *THIS *is where the real issue lies for me; and where I will be looking for an advanced module to pick up the slack.

My preference would be for a wound to be incurred that has an effect upon the character until it is healed (disadvantage for all dex checks, -4 to strength checks, movement capped at 10 ft. etc.). The wound may still allow for hit points to be fully restored (or it may cap it at half hit points if somewhat nastier). The important thing here is that the character can still adventure but with a particular penalty until healed or until the party uses precious magical healing resources on the character. They will have enough hit points to keep them going but they are going to have to be cautious; the group encouraged to be smart first rather than swords first. Of course a wound may be serious enough that hit points cannot be restored until it is healed to a particular point.

I think the important point here is that there is lots of room to bolt on the desired mechanics to suit *my * style of game (and yours too). From this perspective, I think I'm happy with the core they are providing.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Holy Bovine (May 25, 2012)

delericho said:


> That's fair. But is it _really_ the right impression that characters can suffer horrific, debilitating injuries, taking them to the very edge of death, and then bounce back overnight as if nothing had ever happened?




Since when does losing hit points lead to 'horrific, debilitating injuries'?  Not in any version of the game I've played in the last 30 years.



> The problem is with the edge case, specifically where a character was reduced to 0 hit points, and so takes a serious injury, is then healed to 1 hit point through mundane means (so he doesn't die), and then sleeps overnight and is absolutely fine.
> 
> Now, I haven't yet seen the playtest materials, so it's possible that they've introduced some sort of persistent "Wounded" condition that debilitates such a character for a time. In which case, fair enough. But without it, I'll remain opposed to the notion that an overnight rest heals all damage.




Again none of this is in any edition of the game I've read or played - not even 1E.  Where are these persistent wounds/serious injuries you keep mentioning?


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## Holy Bovine (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Can I complain that the Greataxe of the fighter and the one in the guide use a different dice? I hate to such mechanical failures of a company that doesn't allow me to play with my kids




I will bet that this is a 'hidden' feature of the 'Slayer' build the fighter is based on.  It wouldn't surprise me if he gets to up the damage die of any one weapon he chooses (in this case 1d12 goes to 2d6 upping average damage from 6.5 to 7)


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## IronWolf (May 25, 2012)

I do think a long rest should be longer than a single night. I am good with a more rapid return of hit points for a single night of long rest, but as the amount of hit points increase I guess I have a harder time buying that one is going to recover all of their hit points in a single night of rest without magical aide.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

I wouldn't bet on this. But it is certainly possible.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

IronWolf said:


> I do think a long rest should be longer than a single night. I am good with a more rapid return of hit points for a single night of long rest, but as the amount of hit points increase I guess I have a harder time buying that one is going to recover all of their hit points in a single night of rest without magical aide.



But what the HP stand for is not changed by their increase. A fighter with 82 HP still shows no sign of injury after loosing 40 HP. Why would he need multiple nights to "heal"?


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## infax (May 25, 2012)

You point is well taken [MENTION=56189]Kzach[/MENTION]. The core healing mechanic will have a significant impact on the feel of the game for new players. I believe, however, that new players should be exposed to a slower healing mechanic.

Even taking into consideration that luck, fatigue and morale are a big part of healing points, I do not believe that a character who goes too low on hit points would recover fatigue and morale to full after a night's rest. Who can say at what speed one recovers luck - still, someone would have to be pretty lucky to escape with his life from being crushed by an ogre's massive club which was aimed squarely at one's chest two or three days in a row!

Still, I believe that allowing a character to recover HP with Hit Dice after a long rest would be generous enough. After a night's rest, a character maybe fully functional again, albeit something is still amiss. So, the character may have a gash down his arm after the previous day's fight in which he was reduced below half his HP. He rolls HD and is back to full HP, so he shrugs off the damage and can fight pretty well again, but he is still aware that his body has its limits and he can't keep going on forever like that before stopping and recovering properly (this is represented by reduced HD).

Recovering 1HD per night of full rest would seem generous enough for me.

[MENTION=59043]Walking Dad[/MENTION] 's point is good, however. I would prefer that spells also not be recovered on a daily basis either. The daily rhythm for recovery is really immersion-breaking for me. I would suggest recovering spells (and HP) at a much slower rate, maybe 20% per long rest. But that would probably piss off too many players expecting tradition. I'm not even sure a rule like that will see the light of day in a module. So, most likely, parties will still rely heavily on a healer of some sort (previously a cleric and now a character with herbalism which is very potent on itself).


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## Puggins (May 25, 2012)

There's clearly room for compromise here.  I think most people would agree that regaining everything in one night isn't absolutely necessary for maintaining dramatic tension, and that most would also agree that regaining 1-4 hp a night is also unnecessary to reflect pseudo-reality.

How about a full night's rest gets you back all your hit dice, but you must spend them to get to half hit points.  Once you do, the remainder (the luck/skill ones) are fully healed by the night rest.

Example: Ironwolf the fighter has 80hp and 10d12 hit dice.   She is forced down to 20hp at the end of the day.  After a night's rest, she has to roll d12's until she gets to 40.  It takes her 4 dice rolls to get there.  She wakes up with 80hp and 6d12 hit dice available, and will need further rest to recover from the previous days' trials.

Heck, also penalize a drop below 0hp by immediately taking away one hit dice.

Just one example.  There's plenty of creative space here to reflect both sides to a certain extent.


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## IronWolf (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> But what the HP stand for is not changed by their increase. A fighter with 82 HP still shows no sign of injury after loosing 40 HP. Why would he need multiple nights to "heal"?




Because I am not sure how a person recovers hit points at rate of 40 hit points per night.  Or as we scale upwards an even greater number of hit points per night.  

Furthering your example, so now the fighter with 82 hit points is down 72 hit points. He still should recover all of them, guaranteed? I mean now he has cuts and bruises and is noticeably injured. Overnight he goes to having no signs of cuts or bruises that are visible?

I would rather see the hit dice mechanic played out a bit more for long rests a little more. Where a long rest might get you a good chunk of hit points back (possibly all of them if you roll really well) but it wouldn't be guaranteed.

So I am not against accelerated healing for a long rest that is defined as a single night's rest. Just not a big fan of guaranteed back to full health in one night's rest. I think there is room for an in-between here.


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## The Red King (May 25, 2012)

Kzach said:


> This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.
> 
> I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points. I would ask that those reading this look at my arguments and try to view the matter from a holistic rather than personal viewpoint.
> 
> ...




So you are saying that hit points are meant to be just bumps and bruises from that dragon's breath weapon, but that final fall down a flight of stairs for 3 hitpoints is what killed the powerful fighter?  


Really?


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## seregil (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Great how people discuss getting back to fully operational after some cuts and bruises (that is HP between half max and 1) is totally unrealistic, even than using fantasy herb medicine and a healer's kit, but regaining all magical might to throw balls of flames or resurrect the dead should be regained on daily base...



  The difference is that when you use the kit, you are using an ability, albeit a mundane one.

When you use herbs, you using a resources.

So, theoretically, you can run out or fail.

Mind you, I am not against some sort of rest= healing.

I would propose that natural healing can heal you from 50% to 100%, but if you are below 50%, simple rest is not enough.

Not perfect, but better, imo, than poof! you ok!.


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## Jeff Carlsen (May 25, 2012)

Herman the Wise's idea mixed with what IronWolf just said strikes me as the right combination for a more believable natural healing.

If you drop below 0 hit points, you are wounded and unconscious. You wake up with 1 hit point in 2d6 hours, but gain disadvantage to pretty much everything while you are wounded. Wounds take time to heal (say, 2d6 days, or based on an optional injury chart.) While wounded, you are disadvantaged on most rolls and take movement penalties.

A long rest doesn't recover any hit points directly, but recovers hit dice, which may be rolled immediately. This way, perhaps an injured character will roll well and recover most or all of his hit points, but he'll be low on hit dice for the next day.

Something like this is what I would prefer, but I'd be willing to accept it as an optional rule.


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## Kzach (May 25, 2012)

seregil said:


> Surely, we don't only have 1 HP of physical 'life' (at any level) and everything else is 'luck, skill, near misses'?






The Red King said:


> So you are saying that hit points are meant to be just bumps and bruises from that dragon's breath weapon, but that final fall down a flight of stairs for 3 hitpoints is what killed the powerful fighter?




You're both coming at it from the wrong direction. You're interpreting hit points to have a direct correlation to an amount of damage and although the system does give that impression, it's a false impression from years of poorly worded phrases such as 'hit points' and 'damage'.

The fact is that the only 'hit point' that matters in terms of actual, physical injury to the character, is the very last hit point. In this sense, every character has only one REAL hit point.

How they get to a point where their actual life and actual physical injury are a risk is what all the other hit points represent. They're the buffer between death and Die Hard beat downs.

So whether it was a cat scratch or falling down a flight of stairs is irrelevant. The damage that tipped your character from 1 hit point to 0 hit points is the only one that matters. The cat nicked an artery in the leg, the fall cracked the spine, etc.

And even then, it doesn't matter so much that the PC (and it should be also considered that this is for PC's who are, in all aspects, special considerations above and beyond the norm) took an injury or how life threatening it was because ultimately a few bandages, a bit of rest and they're back in business. So it wasn't really all that life-threatening after all. It was a close call, a bit scary, but it wasn't the life-ending sword through the gut that spilled the intestines out onto the muddy ground at their feet. That blow is the one that takes them from 0 to minus Con + Level.



Herremann the Wise said:


> However, where the problem arises is when a character hits zero or below. This is the sword in the gut, the broken leg or such forth. And this damage should not be quickly healed except through magic. I'm still working out exactly what happens here but I'm sensing the rules allow an easy progression from stabilized to 1hp and *THIS *is where the real issue lies for me; and where I will be looking for an advanced module to pick up the slack.



Again I think you're misinterpreting what an injury actually is in D&D. The 'sword in the gut' is an injury that takes your character to the very brink of death and the very brink of death in this system is somewhere between 0 and minus Con + Level.

If your fighter has 80 hit points, then everything between 80 and 1 is luck, skill, minor cuts, scrapes, bruises, etc. Sword in the gut would be something along the lines of -10 or so hit points where they've got a genuine chance of dying. Anything before that simply ISN'T a sword in the gut type of wound. And if you're playing it that every blow is some sort of devastating effect then that's fine, that's your game, but it IS NOT how the hit point system is intended to work and if you're not using it how it's intended to work, then OF COURSE you're going to have problems with it.

Adapt it, by all means, change it to how you want it to work, but the core concept of hit points has always remained the same from day 1 of D&D and I believe it should remain that way in the core rules. Have alternate, modular rules for lingering wounds, etc. but make the modular and not part of the basic, core system.

It should also be noted that the core system in the playtest doesn't allow you to take a 'long rest' if you're below 1 hit point.


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## Neonchameleon (May 25, 2012)

I'm in favour of the same houserule I use for 4e.

Long rests heal everything.  They just take the best part of a week somewhere safe rather than a night camped out in the middle of nowhere.  What this means, however, is that the wizard also only regains spells with a week with a library or lab rather than camped out in the middle of nowhere.  I consider this an improvement - not everyone does.


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## KidSnide (May 25, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> On the one hand, you are correct. If you view damage leaving a character unbloodied as near misses, luck or skill to avoid or turn, and damage leading to the bloodied state as a gash, deep bruise or similar, then it makes perfect sense to recover this quickly; the wounds are still there a day later but they are not going to affect your character's performance. We're not talking being in prime footballing form, we're talking fit enough to survive. Bandage up that nasty gash and you'll be fine. As explained and as given, this is all fair and reasonable if you follow the interpretation we are given (and not the one or ones we may have used previously).
> 
> However, where the problem arises is when a character hits zero or below. This is the sword in the gut, the broken leg or such forth. And this damage should not be quickly healed except through magic. I'm still working out exactly what happens here but I'm sensing the rules allow an easy progression from stabilized to 1hp and *THIS *is where the real issue lies for me; and where I will be looking for an advanced module to pick up the slack.




I agree.  One of the things I dislike about the hp rules is that dropping below zero can actually be an advantage.  If I'm at 2 hp and the cleric only has a d6 or a 1d8+1 to give me, I'd rather take the next 10 point hit and get healed from -8 rather than get healed down and dropped on the next hit anyway.  That's even more true now that having to stand up doesn't forfeit a whole move action.  

I'd like to see dropping below 0 to have its own penalty (at least in an advanced module), even if you are quickly healed up afterwards.  I tend to think that a point or two of Con damage would be the easiest to do.  It reduces the characters durability and the effect of their healing dice, but still allows them to "adventure wounded" if that's what the party needs to do.

Also, as an aesthetic matter, I think an overnight rest is too fast for a "total reset."  I would prefer rules that required a week (or more at the DM's option) for a total reset to full capacity and overnight provides a more limited recovery.

-KS


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## Kzach (May 25, 2012)

KidSnide said:


> I'd like to see dropping below 0 to have its own penalty (at least in an advanced module), even if you are quickly healed up afterwards.




I absolutely support an alternate rule as a modular option however what I'm trying to argue is that the basic, core system should remain pretty much as it is now.


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## Stalker0 (May 25, 2012)

I am fine with 4e's system, but I actually don't think the rest to full mechanic works with the flavor they have developed.

they went out of their way to say "Above half health its all little bangs and scraps, but at below half health you are really hurt". but the rest to full suggests that is not really true.


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## drothgery (May 25, 2012)

Except in the oddball party without a good healer (traditionally a cleric), resting two days will almost always get everyone in the party back to full HPs no matter what overnight healing does. I don't see an advantage in extending a one night rest to a two night rest (or one night rest and the next day is a 15-min adventuring day because the cleric spent half of his spells on healing before breakfast).


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## KesselZero (May 25, 2012)

There's a lot of debate here about what HP represent. I think this somewhat misses the mark regarding the long-rest healing rule. Hopefully we can all agree that to a certain extent the very idea of hit points is a necessary game artifice. Because of that, there can never be a solid answer to how HP _must_ be regained, because they mean something different to each player. Some argue that you can't heal all your cuts in a night; others argue that there's no right or wrong way of measuring how much luck or fate or destiny you can get back; etc. etc.

So I think we should instead focus on how HP recovery affects how the game actually _plays_. A game where PCs start totally fresh every day and a game where they get 1 HP back per day will play very, very differently. In the Caves of Chaos, a party that heals fully every day will be able to clear out entire tribes much faster since the poor monsters will hardly get a chance to set traps, call reinforcements, etc. and will be up against a full-functioning team of adventurers during every sortie. A party that heals more slowly will find that they must make a tough decision-- do we rest for a week and heal up if it means that our enemies will also be more rested, more prepared, more numerous?

A game with full overnight healing will also have far fewer PC deaths and TPKs, for obvious reasons. If you play in a style that prefers PCs only die at dramatic moments, or is more focused on long-term character development, this option may make sense for your group. If you play a game that's more about regular people going up against impossible odds, a more dangerous low-healing game would likely give you a fuller sense of accomplishment when you do survive.

Finally, I would argue that overnight healing will increase (or continue) the prevalance of the "15-minute workday." Not only will your casters get all their spells back, but your fighters will get all their HP back. This strongly incentivizes going all out in a single combat then retreating to heal up, day after day. Perhaps this will give your foes time to prepare for your return, but there is only so much a tribe of kobolds can achieve in a day, and anyway that method of balance works mainly in sandbox-dungeon games such as the Caves of Chaos, and less well in story-oriented games where events tend to move at the speed of plot no matter what.

These are the issues that are more important to me than what exactly HP represent. It doesn't much matter to me at what rate a hero regains his luck. What matters is what style of play the game will support.

As an aside, I believe it would be easier to have low healing be the default and have high healing be a house rule or optional module. It seems to me (and I will readily admit that I've not tested this theory much) that it would be easier to balance monsters against low-healing PCs and then have the option to make survival easier through maxed healing than it would be to balance monsters assuming max healing then take that away from the players. It's not exactly the same, but I once tried to run a game of 4e where the players rolled for their stats. It was a bloodbath, because the game is balanced for a certain level of optimization.


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## SageofMusic (May 25, 2012)

It seems a lot of people don't like it because you'll be able to seemingly heal after every encounter. I'll just say this: if you can find safety in a dungeon after every encounter, there's something seriously wrong with your DM. If you're fighting a bunch of orcs in a castle that they recently took over, you aren't going to stop in one room, sleep, then go into the next one fully rested. You're going to be fighting, and in the middle of the fight some other orcs will be alerted, maybe a couple will escape to regroup, but there won't be a time where you can sit down and sleep for 8 hours. If you did, you can be damned sure enemies will attack you in the night. 

Remember that PCs are not like normal people. They are stronger, faster, smarter, and better in nearly every way. The rules state that above half hit points, you have absolutely no signs of injury. You are simply being tired out from parrying, dodging, and generally moving around and fighting. At below half hit points, you have a few bruises and cuts because you're becoming slower, but nothing serious. When you hit 0 hp, that was the final straw. You were too tired, too worn out to dodge that last blow and it caught you in the head, or the chest, or the leg. These are the wounds that matter, and they either require large amounts of time to heal, a healing kit (essentially bandages) or magic. 

Let's take a look at someone like Drizzt, who has been brought up before. Obviously a character of his power would have large amount of hit points, but this isn't because he's extremely tough. In fact, its the exact opposite. He's a freaking elf, he can barely handle small cuts. Yet he has lots of hit points. Why? Because even when you "hit" him, you aren't actually hitting him. You're putting him off balance, making him parry your blow in an ineffective way, making him dodge in a greater way than he normally would. 

So in essence, having full health regen on a rest makes sense for two reasons: It's mechanically more fun, and mechanically more balanced. Sure it's slightly unrealistic, but the whole basis for the game is unrealistic.


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## Faraer (May 25, 2012)

To be able to heal all your hurts with a night's sleep feels to me like a weird power of a supernatural hero from Celtic myth -- just too much of a genre clash with most kinds of D&D fantasy and their influences.


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## delericho (May 25, 2012)

Holy Bovine said:


> Since when does losing hit points lead to 'horrific, debilitating injuries'?  Not in any version of the game I've played in the last 30 years.




That was, admittedly, hyperbole. Nonetheless, a character brought below 0 hit points is seriously enough wounded that he will die without attention.

That sounds like something it will take more than a quick bandage and 8 hours of sleep to fix.



> Again none of this is in any edition of the game I've read or played - not even 1E.  Where are these persistent wounds/serious injuries you keep mentioning?




Mearls' article. See the bit about the fighter getting bitten by the spider down to negative hit points.

Look, I've played 4e, which had this same rule in place. I'm sure it plays just fine - it did in 4e. But, as with a great many things in 4e, it's a rule that exists to make the _game_ work, in defiance of even the barest nod to realism.

So fair enough - if they go with it, that's their prerogative. And it is not, by itself, a deal-breaker, or anything of the sort. But I would _prefer_ it to be changed, and I do consider it a _strike against_ 5e as written.


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## synthapse (May 25, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> I'm still working out exactly what happens here but I'm sensing the rules allow an easy progression from stabilized to 1hp and *THIS *is where the real issue lies for me; and where I will be looking for an advanced module to pick up the slack.




I guess this depends on your definition of "easy"-- the rules state that (without magic) it takes 2d6 hours to go from 0 HP to 1 HP, and that's before you can rest at all.  It puts a premium on magical healing, and makes 0 HP significant.

Example: let's take the playtest fighter at 3rd level.  At the start of the day, he's got 3HD worth of personal healing, so he's feeling pretty good about himself.  Unfortunately, the DM's dice don't share that feeling; in the first combat encounter, he gets crited three times and ends the fight at -3 HP.

For the purposes of the example, let's say he has no friendly clerics or healing potions.  The rogue uses a healing kit to stabilize him, so now he's at zero.  Everyone else takes 10 minutes to use their HD to heal, but even though he has 3 HD like everyone else, he still has to wait 2d6 hours before he can use them, and then he's only a 1 HP-- then he can use another use of the healing kit and spend as many HD as he wants.

 If this had happened later in the day, and he had no HD left, then he's effectively waiting 2D6+8 hours to get back to full-- as few as 10 hours, granted, but as many as 20.  I personally feel that 2d6 hours may be generous (2d4 +4 may be better), but I feel that it's a good step in the direction of making natural healing take a while, without unduly burdening the narrative of the game.


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## Neonchameleon (May 25, 2012)

SageofMusic said:


> It seems a lot of people don't like it because you'll be able to seemingly heal after every encounter. I'll just say this: if you can find safety in a dungeon after every encounter, there's something seriously wrong with your DM.




Three key words there.  "In a dungeon." The problem here isn't with the dungeon.  It's that this sort of narrative ties games to the dungeon.  If you're going politicking you can probably have your full spell load out every day.  And your full hit point loadout.  Hell, if you're defending a villiage from undead as part of a siege you can almost certainly set a bunker up to sleep in - it, after all, makes such a difference.

It's a balance method that _only_ works for dungeoncrawls.  Which is why the 15 minute adventuring day really started to show up only after D&D moved a lot of adventuring out of the dungeon.


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## Nebulous (May 25, 2012)

it looks like this is going to be a heated issue no matter what.  I'm in the camp that healing fully in a matter of hours is sort of ridiculous. It makes the idea of even having doctors, medicine, clerics, magical healing or bandages just....obsolete.   Time is the only friend you need!  Which is fine in a video game but i don't care for that kind of abstraction in an rpg.


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## SageofMusic (May 25, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Three key words there.  "In a dungeon." The problem here isn't with the dungeon.  It's that this sort of narrative ties games to the dungeon.  If you're going politicking you can probably have your full spell load out every day.  And your full hit point loadout.  Hell, if you're defending a villiage from undead as part of a siege you can almost certainly set a bunker up to sleep in - it, after all, makes such a difference.




There's definitely work arounds for this too. For instance, how much of an advantage will the undead have when your party leaves? If they were doing most of the protecting for the village, it will likely be overrun in the 6-8 hours it takes to sleep. However, if the PCs have set up a defense that is so good (placing NPCs at strategic points, setting traps, building better walls and reinforcements) then I'd definitely allow them to rest once or twice. 

I think the problem here is the problem with all bad D&D sessions: they're usually caused by a bad DM. A good DM with full-heal mechanics in place will think of a way to disrupt the party just enough so that they're on edge, but not enough to kill them. A bad DM will either swarm the party so that they don't have enough time to heal, or become complacent and allow them to heal fully after every encounter. 



> It's a balance method that _only_ works for dungeoncrawls.  Which is why the 15 minute adventuring day really started to show up only after D&D moved a lot of adventuring out of the dungeon.




I'm curious as to how the mechanics moved a lot of adventuring out of the dungeon. It seems to me that's an area reserved exclusively for the DM.


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## Storminator (May 25, 2012)

Kzach said:


> This is a request to the greater D&D playing population to please consider the feedback you're going to give in regards to this mechanic.




I agree with you completely on the rule. I completely disagree on the idea of modifying the feedback. People shouldn't base their feedback on their perception of what other people like. There's too much error and assumption there. If everyone just says what they like, the developers will get an honest appraisal of their work, and can modify it or not in an appropriate way. 

I'd hate for people to start giving misleading feedback and have the developers start assuming the feedback is misleading.

PS


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## Kinak (May 25, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I'm in favour of the same houserule I use for 4e.
> 
> Long rests heal everything.  They just take the best part of a week somewhere safe rather than a night camped out in the middle of nowhere.  What this means, however, is that the wizard also only regains spells with a week with a library or lab rather than camped out in the middle of nowhere.  I consider this an improvement - not everyone does.



Yeah, the length of a long rest seems like the easiest dial for this. It also doesn't throw the game out of whack in relation to caster power.

And it really drives home the importance of a home base, which is nice. Go to your lab to get spells back, go to the temple to pray, and so forth.

Cheers!
Kinak


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## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Great how people discuss getting back to fully operational after some cuts and bruises (that is HP between half max and 1) is totally unrealistic, even than using fantasy herb medicine and a healer's kit, but regaining all magical might to throw balls of flames or resurrect the dead should be regained on daily base...




There's an important principle to fantasy fiction that many people miss.  The post above is a classic example of missing it.

You use the mundane to make the extraordinary stand out in contrast.

In 5E, the mundane is more extraordinary than the magical.  The best a magical miracle from the gods can do is heal 13 HP.  Take a nap for 6 hours?  Unlimited HP are instantly restored.


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## Plissken (May 25, 2012)

I like the mechanic the way it is - but probably because I view HP to be nothing more than light cuts, knicks and bruisers until at 0 hp. Just to clear up a misunderstanding by some people who posted here - you cannot use a long rest more than once in a 24 hour period, therefore you cannot heal up full HP after every encounter. Most gaming groups I've been in use a long rest once per 24 hours to regain abilities and get back some HP, where the cleric usually get chars back to near full health.


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## synthapse (May 25, 2012)

nnms said:


> There's an important principle to fantasy fiction that many people miss.  The post above is a classic example of missing it.
> 
> You use the mundane to make the extraordinary stand out in contrast.
> 
> In 5E, the mundane is more extraordinary than the magical.  The best a magical miracle from the gods can do is heal 13 HP.  Take a nap for 6 hours?  Unlimited HP are instantly restored.




Yet you also miss his point, that the "magical miracle from the gods" are handed out twice a day to the most basic of his clergy... thus slightly devaluing the term "miracle".

And, a single HP from the gods can do what it takes a normal hero 2-12 hours to recover, depending on how hurt she is...


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## MichaelSomething (May 25, 2012)

I think it's safe to assume that there will be multiple HP/recovery modules you can select from to set the pace/style of the game to what you like.

Or at least there SHOULD be!


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## Kzach (May 25, 2012)

nnms said:


> In 5E, the mundane is more extraordinary than the magical.  The best a magical miracle from the gods can do is heal 13 HP.  Take a nap for 6 hours?  Unlimited HP are instantly restored.




For someone so uninterested in 5e, you sure seem to like denigrating it a lot.

Those 'magical miracles' are far more miraculous than you seem to realise. They get you up and going at the click of some fingers. But yet again, people like you seem to misunderstand the entire concept of hit points.

Here's a very basic sentence to convey what seems to be a very difficult to understand concept: the ONLY time when your character is close to death is when they're at or below 0 hit points and they're rolling Death Saving throws with a very small risk of losing more hit points and dying at minus Con + Level. EVERY other instance of damage is INSIGNIFICANT.

I can understand not LIKING that concept but what I can't grasp is how people can't GRASP that concept. People arguing against 'rapid healing' seem caught up in this notion that ALL damage is SIGNIFICANT damage when it simply isn't. Getting 'hit', doesn't mean you've got a gaping wound in your chest and you're spurting blood twenty feet into the air. Hell, it doesn't even mean that when your character's Constitution plus Level equals 20 and your character is at -19 hit points. When you're at -20 hit points, THAT is when your character's guts are strewn about the floor or their pectoral artery is spraying the roof with their blood. Until then, just about every injury is basically insignificant.


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## El Mahdi (May 25, 2012)

Kzach said:


> ...snippy snip snip...




I Agree completely.  For the base system, I think it's just about perfect.

I know I'll likely want something like a Vitality or Condition Track type mechanic as a module, but for the base system I think they've got it just about perfect.


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## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Kzach said:


> For someone so uninterested in 5e, you sure seem to like denigrating it a lot.




Umm.  Maybe I am not interested in it because it contains elements I dislike?  Maybe my playtest contributions will help WotC get me back as a customer with a final product I like (through modularity in this case, see the last paragraph of this post).



> Those 'magical miracles' are far more miraculous than you seem to realise. They get you up and going at the click of some fingers. But yet again, people like you seem to misunderstand the entire concept of hit points.




I knew when I added that extra paragraph onto the post that people would glom onto the words I used and my example and totally ignore the principle that can serve to strengthen the fiction.

Realism is important in fantasy because it serves as a point of contrast for the fantastic.

Absolute rule that all fiction must do this?  No.  Useful technique that some people like in their RPG fiction?  Sure.



> Here's a very basic sentence to convey what seems to be a very difficult to understand concept: the ONLY time when your character is close to death is when they're at or below 0 hit points and they're rolling Death Saving throws with a very small risk of losing more hit points and dying at minus Con + Level. EVERY other instance of damage is INSIGNIFICANT.




Totally get that.  But even insignificant cuts and bruises don't heal in six hours. 



> I can understand not LIKING that concept but what I can't grasp is how people can't GRASP that concept. People arguing against 'rapid healing' seem caught up in this notion that ALL damage is SIGNIFICANT damage when it simply isn't.




They do grasp it.  Telling yourself they don't is probably your mechanism to deflect their criticisms.

It is useful to accent the fantastic by being consistent with the mundane as a point of contrast.

Even insignificant wounds don't heal in 6-8 hours.  Having it be so is inconsistent with our experience of the mundane.  This lessens the contrast with the fantastic and therefore damages the fiction's integrity.  This ties back into the whole suspension of disbelief thing.

You may not have the integrity of the fiction as a priority in your play, but other people do.  Instead of trying to convince yourself that they're somehow not grasping something, why not accept where their criticism is coming from?  It's okay to prioritize gameplay over fictional concerns.  But it's not a universally help approach to RPGs.

*This is exactly the type of thing that should have been modular from the word go.  Even at the initial playtest level.  *The people who stopped being WotC's customers because of this design approach in 4E aren't going to stop caring about it just because it's 5E now.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

Originally Posted by *Walking Dad* 

 
_Great  how people discuss getting back to fully operational after some cuts  and bruises (that is HP between half max and 1) is totally unrealistic,  even than using fantasy herb medicine and a healer's kit, but regaining  all magical might to throw balls of flames or resurrect the dead should  be regained on daily base..._



nnms said:


> There's an important principle to fantasy fiction that many people miss.  The post above is a classic example of missing it.
> 
> You use the mundane to make the extraordinary stand out in contrast.
> 
> In 5E, the mundane is more extraordinary than the magical.  The best a magical miracle from the gods can do is heal 13 HP.  Take a nap for 6 hours?  Unlimited HP are instantly restored.




Which fantasy fiction? And you missed something. Healing 13 HP is what a low level priest does. High level priests resurrect the dead.

But I know that some of the best selling D&D fiction is about a drow ranger. And in those books, the heroes are seldom hurt beyond a one days rest. They got bruises and everything and keep going. Do I read the wrong D&D fiction? About which are you talking about?


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## Steely_Dan (May 25, 2012)

I do not like characters gaining all HP loss from one night's kip, maybe if Hit Dice played into it, so if you were a 10th level Cleric, you would heal 10d8 HP after a full night's rest.


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## IronWolf (May 25, 2012)

Steely_Dan said:


> I do not like characters gaining all HP loss from one night's kip, maybe if Hit Dice played into it, so if you were a 10th level Cleric, you would heal 10d8 HP after a full night's rest.




Yes, something more akin to this seems like the compromise I would be looking for. A night's rest is still a great chance to get a good chunk of HP back, but isn't a sure thing.


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## Neonchameleon (May 25, 2012)

SageofMusic said:


> There's definitely work arounds for this too. For instance, how much of an advantage will the undead have when your party leaves? If they were doing most of the protecting for the village, it will likely be overrun in the 6-8 hours it takes to sleep.




And just _what_ makes you think that the PCs are all going to sleep at the same time?  Rather than in watches?



> I think the problem here is the problem with all bad D&D sessions: they're usually caused by a bad DM.




I think the problem here is that it fails one of the fundamental rules of good design.



> A bad DM will either swarm the party so that they don't have enough time to heal, or become complacent and allow them to heal fully after every encounter.




To do this you'd better have 4e level balance mechanics.  Because a new DM is going to have problems threading the needle.  Or he's going to have to keep coming up with excuses to launch yet another attack after four hours.  Rules which make the extended rests take an extended amount of time don't force a new DM to navigate between Scylla and Chrybdis here and therefore don't encourage the DM to DM badly.



> I'm curious as to how the mechanics moved a lot of adventuring out of the dungeon. It seems to me that's an area reserved exclusively for the DM.




It wasn't the mechanics.  It was the design of adventures.  Dungeon-stomps are a limited type of roleplaying.  Yes, you can have an excellent game that involves dungeons.  But you can have an excellent campaign without an actual dungeon to be seen.  If it's either-or then I'd rather have no dungeons to just dungeons (I actually prefer a mix).


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## Steely_Dan (May 25, 2012)

IronWolf said:


> Yes, something more akin to this seems like the compromise I would be looking for. A night's rest is still a great chance to get a good chunk of HP back, but isn't a sure thing.




Exactly, 10 to 80 HP recovery a night (healing is variable, as we all know).

A sort of compromise between 3rd and 4th Ed.


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## Mishihari Lord (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Great how people discuss getting back to fully operational after some cuts and bruises (that is HP between half max and 1) is totally unrealistic, even than using fantasy herb medicine and a healer's kit, but regaining all magical might to throw balls of flames or resurrect the dead should be regained on daily base...




This type of argument gets used frequently, and it's never a good one.  Fantasy games should be realistic except in the specific places where they are meant to be fantastic.  

Realism lets us use our real world common sense to figure out what to do.  Take that away and the game world loses a lot of depth because all we have to base decisions on are the rules, and no matter how good they are they don't match the depth of real life.


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## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> But I know that some of the best selling D&D fiction is about a drow ranger. And in those books, the heroes are seldom hurt beyond a one days rest. They got bruises and everything and keep going. Do I read the wrong D&D fiction? About which are you talking about?




I'm talking about the general principle of not violating people's suspension of disbelief.  R. A. Salvatore does a pretty good job of describing his combats and injuries in a way that does not do this.

But his works are a product of a certain time and a certain rules design ethos of the Lorraine Williams era of TSR.  Some of us prefer the fiction that originally inspired D&D and is better represented by the rules design ethos of Arnensen, Gygax, Mentzer, etc.,.

When it comes to the fiction produced by playing Dungeons & Dragons, some people find things like "sleep for six hours and you're at full capacity" to be rather jarring and breaking of one's suspension of disbelief.  It also makes fiction where a character is felled by a blow because their injury prevented them from blocking it impossible if the injury happened one sleep ago.  Or fiction where an injured party is pursued over multiple days.  If they can manage to whole up for an 8 hour period, they turn from running and go back into super hero mode at full capacity.


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## nnms (May 25, 2012)

WotC talked about 5E being about getting back players who stopped being their customers because they liked games WotC doesn't sell anymore.  It's about uniting the editions.  You've heard the hype.

4E's healing mechanics were incredibly divisive back in 2008.  Having the same ones present again doesn't match with WotC's own stated design goal of building bridges to customer's they have alienated in the past.

This would have been the perfect chance to demonstrate the much vaunted modularity.  But they blew it and just rehashed a 4E mechanic.

Hopefully the next playtest package update will contain a method of healing that is more palatable to the players they alienated with 4E's hit points/healing surge/extended rest mechanics.

Modularity is exactly for this type of situation.


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## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Mishihari Lord said:


> This type of argument gets used frequently, and it's never a good one.  Fantasy games should be realistic except in the specific places where they are meant to be fantastic.
> 
> Realism lets us use our real world common sense to figure out what to do.  Take that away and the game world loses a lot of depth because all we have to base decisions on are the rules, and no matter how good they are they don't match the depth of real life.




Well said.  I was only talking about the use of realism as a point of contrast with the fantastic, but you've brought up another very interesting point.

If you can't rely on your sense of what is real or plausible when engaging with RPG fiction, you can't bring the depth of the real world to your decision making.  This renders the experience far more shallow and fake feeling for those who are sensitive to such things.


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## underfoot007ct (May 25, 2012)

nnms said:


> I'm talking about the general principle of not violating people's suspension of disbelief.  R. A. Salvatore does a pretty good job of describing his combats and injuries in a way that does not do this.
> 
> But his works are a product of a certain time and a certain rules design ethos of the Lorraine Williams era of TSR.  Some of us prefer the fiction that originally inspired D&D and is better represented by the rules design ethos of Arnensen, Gygax, Mentzer, etc.,.
> 
> When it comes to the fiction produced by playing Dungeons & Dragons, some people find things like "sleep for six hours and you're at full capacity" to be rather jarring and breaking of one's suspension of disbelief.  It also makes fiction where a character is felled by a blow because their injury prevented them from blocking it impossible if the injury happened one sleep ago.  Or fiction where an injured party is pursued over multiple days.  If they can manage to whole up for an 8 hour period, they turn from running and go back into super hero mode at full capacity.




If you have such a difficult time with the "suspension of disbelief" over regaining full HP. Please explain how you can accept regaining spells overnight. Even accepting spells,dragon, & even magic, that is not "jarring"?
So waking up reinvigorated is unbelievable, yet beholder & ghouls are fine??

I have not read   R. A. Salvatore, nor do I have any interest to do so. I just want to play a "fantasy" RPG, not a simulate of REAL combat.

I think that is just being TOO selective of what you are claiming is difficult to accept. Also, when did being at normal (full hp) capacity turn in to "super Hero" mode?


----------



## nnms (May 25, 2012)

underfoot007ct said:


> If you have such a difficult time with the "suspension of disbelief" over regaining full HP. Please explain how you can accept regaining spells overnight. Even accepting spells,dragon, & even magic, that is not "jarring"?
> So waking up reinvigorated is unbelievable, yet beholder & ghouls are fine??




Ugh. 

The whole point is that they are not realistic.  They are fantastic.  I enjoy them as fantastic.

Having the non-fantastic stuff be realistic, plausible and in keeping with real work expectations serves to highlight the fantastic nature of these elements.

Enjoying these things without going "but that makes no sense" is enough of an ask without also asking me to suspend going "but that makes no sense" for the mundane things as well.  And then add on top of that the fact that I can no longer make decisions based on the mundane functioning like the real world and instead can only base them off of the rules.



> Also, when did being at normal (full hp) capacity turn in to "super Hero" mode?




If a group is running because they are injured and their resources are expended and suddenly that situation is undone, the fictional basis for a protracted escape is undone.  They can then go "Let our powers combine!" and turn around and face what caused them to run because the situation that made it a threat (low on HP and resources) is now gone.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

Mishihari Lord said:


> This type of argument gets used frequently, and it's never a good one.  Fantasy games should be realistic except in the specific places where they are meant to be fantastic.
> 
> Realism lets us use our real world common sense to figure out what to do.  Take that away and the game world loses a lot of depth because all we have to base decisions on are the rules, and no matter how good they are they don't match the depth of real life.



But a group game should also be balanced to give each player the same chance to affect the game, right?
What is realistic about the typical fantasy world? Landmasses? Climate? Astrometry? Genetics? Economy?
Why is it so unrealistic that in world with dragons and magic people heal a bit faster? Or why has the DM describe every wound as a terribly scarring event?

Is there a (realistic) reason why magic refreshes on a daily basis?


----------



## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

nnms said:


> I'm talking about the general principle of not violating people's suspension of disbelief.  R. A. Salvatore does a pretty good job of describing his combats and injuries in a way that does not do this.
> 
> But his works are a product of a certain time and a certain rules design ethos of the Lorraine Williams era of TSR.  Some of us prefer the fiction that originally inspired D&D and is better represented by the rules design ethos of Arnensen, Gygax, Mentzer, etc.,.
> 
> When it comes to the fiction produced by playing Dungeons & Dragons, some people find things like "sleep for six hours and you're at full capacity" to be rather jarring and breaking of one's suspension of disbelief.  It also makes fiction where a character is felled by a blow because their injury prevented them from blocking it impossible if the injury happened one sleep ago.  Or fiction where an injured party is pursued over multiple days.  If they can manage to whole up for an 8 hour period, they turn from running and go back into super hero mode at full capacity.



Suspension of disbelief varies widely. And you cannot do any of your fiction examples in a group a bit experienced and having a cleric.

I like Howard for example, and Conan doesn't lies down after every wound for some days or waits for a priest to heal him.


----------



## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> What is realistic about the typical fantasy world?




All the stuff that is not specifically there to be fantastic.



> Why is it so unrealistic that in world with dragons and magic people heal a bit faster?




If it's part of the fantastic, then just make it so.  Put in a paragraph about every character being like Wolverine and having mutant healing factor.



> Or why has the DM describe every wound as a terribly scarring event?




Not every wound.  Just the ability to do it at all without it also meaning that the recipient is both unconscious and dying.  A axe hit that does the best possible damage should be able to be described as actually connecting.  In 4E and 5E, it can't be as it instantly goes away with a nap.



> Is there a (realistic) reason why magic refreshes on a daily basis?




Why would something that is intentionally supposed to be fantastic need to be realistic?

The whole point that I apparently have failed to communicate is that mundane things being realistic while fantastic things being fantastic allows a great level of contrast to accentuate the fantastic.  The whole point of mundane things being plausible is to make the fantastic even more potent.  And, to be able to make decisions based on normal expectations of plausibility rather than have to make decisions out of rules constructs.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

nnms said:


> WotC talked about 5E being about getting back players who stopped being their customers because they liked games WotC doesn't sell anymore.  It's about uniting the editions.  You've heard the hype.
> 
> 4E's healing mechanics were incredibly divisive back in 2008.  Having the same ones present again doesn't match with WotC's own stated design goal of building bridges to customer's they have alienated in the past.



So your solution would be alienating the customers they currently have???



> This would have been the perfect chance to demonstrate the much vaunted modularity.  But they blew it and just rehashed a 4E mechanic.



I think showing an option first that is similar to the current edition isn't the worst idea...


> Hopefully the next playtest package update will contain a method of healing that is more palatable to the players they alienated with 4E's hit points/healing surge/extended rest mechanics.



And if they started with that option, the current D&D fans would wait for their option.



> Modularity is exactly for this type of situation.



Agreed, but maybe not possible to show all options in the first playtest.


----------



## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Suspension of disbelief varies widely.




Which is why I said this is a perfect opportunity for Wizards to show off the whole modularity/appeal to everyone thing they've been hyping.

But they didn't.  They just rehashed a 4E mechanic that lots of people have had a problem with for the last 4 years.



> And you cannot do any of your fiction examples in a group a bit experienced and having a cleric.




But you can do it at low levels just fine-- well, unless everyone has mutant healing factor.



> I like Howard for example, and Conan doesn't lies down after every wound for some days or waits for a priest to heal him.




When he is seriously injured, the whole tone of the story changes.  Brazen courage turns to caution and cunning.  There's lots of examples of things like that in lots of fiction.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

nnms said:


> Ugh.
> 
> The whole point is that they are not realistic.  They are fantastic.  I enjoy them as fantastic.
> 
> ...



Isn't this the argument for quadratic wizards/linear fighters, which so many dislike?

And how often do players act according how things work in the real world and how often of things they had seen in the movie.
(Example: Hit the charmed guy on the head with a blunt weapon. There cannot be any lasting injury.)

Or my favorite Pf example: Blunt arrows for fighting skeletons, that do as much damage as sharp ones...


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## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> So your solution would be alienating the customers they currently have???




Modularity.



> And if they started with that option, the current D&D fans would wait for their option.
> ...
> Agreed, but maybe not possible to show all options in the first playtest.




Perhaps when Wotc is attempting to build bridges to people WotC has lost as customers, it would be prudent to do so right from the start.  At the very least, for the most prominent objections to their previous product.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

nnms said:


> ...
> But you can do it at low levels just fine-- well, unless everyone has mutant healing factor.
> ...



No mutant healing factor. Different opinions on what HP stand for (they are not health or wound points). And just don't let them rest the required time if you want to hunt them down.

For a fiction example for mutant healing, see Rambo. Sewing the own arm and it is as good as new.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

nnms said:


> ...
> 
> Perhaps when Wotc is attempting to build bridges to people WotC has lost as customers, it would be prudent to do so right from the start.  At the very least, for the most prominent objections to their previous product.



Making new bridges shouldn't be on the cost of destroying the ones you currently have. I for one am glad the playtest doesn't look lie "4e was the devil". They are still trying to fix the same problems they tried to fix with 4e. It is good to see them not ignoring them all for old times sake.


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## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Isn't this the argument for quadratic wizards/linear fighters, which so many dislike?




Not necessarily.  Just because magic is not mundane doesn't mean it dominates.

In previous editions of the game, I'm a fan of levels one through around 10.  For 3.x/PF I like 6 and lower.  I stopped playing 3.x when the campaign I was in hit 7-9 and my diviner became a combat god.  Not a fan.

The quadratic wizards/linear fighters issue seems to be handled quite well in the little we have of 5E.  Well, maybe the fighter could have been designed better as reports are coming back that he lags behind in some cases.



> And how often do players act according how things work in the real world and how often of things they had seen in the movie.
> (Example: Hit the charmed guy on the head with a blunt weapon. There cannot be any lasting injury.)




I'm sorry movies and tv shows have misinformed people about concussions and brain damage?



> Or my favorite Pf example: Blunt arrows for fighting skeletons, that do as much damage as sharp ones...




This is a perfect example of making decisions based on rules rather than expectations of mundane consistency.


----------



## Phaezen (May 25, 2012)

If you don't like long rest healing all HP, Mike just tweeted this

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/206129402579394560



> Final old school suggestion - long rest gives back level + Con mod hit points.


----------



## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

Phaezen said:


> If you don't like long rest healing all HP, Mike just tweeted this
> 
> https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/206129402579394560



An easy solution. I can live with it as one of many ways to handle it..


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## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> No mutant healing factor. Different opinions on what HP stand for (they are not health or wound points). And just don't let them rest the required time if you want to hunt them down.




I tried that once in 4E.  I had to keep a chase going without a 5 minute rest or they got back the bulk of their powers and all their HP.  I'm glad 5E doesn't have so much refreshing every short rest.



> For a fiction example for mutant healing, see Rambo. Sewing the own arm and it is as good as new.




I think this is a perfect example of genre expectation differences.  I don't want D&D play that is like a 80s action movie.



Walking Dad said:


> Making new bridges shouldn't be on the cost of destroying the ones you currently have. I for one am glad the playtest doesn't look lie "4e was the devil". They are still trying to fix the same problems they tried to fix with 4e. It is good to see them not ignoring them all for old times sake.




I don't know how many times I have to say it.  Modularity.

For a project that has the stated goal of pan-edition appeal, they sure neglected their best tool of getting there in this playtest.


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## Walking Dad (May 25, 2012)

But modularity isn't helping for getting a good playtest, as I already said. The more is the same for each group, the better.


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## darjr (May 25, 2012)

Phaezen said:


> If you don't like long rest healing all HP, Mike just tweeted this
> 
> https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/206129402579394560






			
				mearls said:
			
		

> Final old school suggestion - long rest gives back level + Con mod hit points.




 @mearls I like this idea. I might even steal it for my current games.


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## nnms (May 25, 2012)

Why can't different groups try different rates of HP refresh and report back on it?

There's already a modular option to play old school and ignore themes and background.  So already you have an option for things being different for different playtesters.


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## Agamon (May 25, 2012)

nnms said:


> If a group is running because they are injured and their resources are expended and suddenly that situation is undone, the fictional basis for a protracted escape is undone.  They can then go "Let our powers combine!" and turn around and face what caused them to run because the situation that made it a threat (low on HP and resources) is now gone.




What's good for the goose is great for the gander.  The party retreats to heal back to full overnight?  So did big baddie.  And he has friends now that he's been able to regroup.  

My players rarely feel like super heroes.  Even when playing supers, lol.

All this does is allow an adventure to continue rather than stall out.  If we need to be realistic, maybe a PC should have to stop to take a leak during a chase if he drank too much at the tavern.

Keep the base system as is.  PCs don't get badly hurt.  They just don't.  They're good to go or they're dead.  Then add complexity and more realism with injuries and such as modules.  This just makes sense, doesn't it?


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## Agamon (May 25, 2012)

darjr said:


> @mearls I like this idea. I might even steal it for my current games.




Wait, I thought we weren't supposed to mess with the rules, just use them as is to playtest them.

I'm much more reluctant to break that rule than the silly lawyer-esque "no online" rule.


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## Meophist (May 25, 2012)

Phaezen said:


> If you don't like long rest healing all HP, Mike just tweeted this
> 
> https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/206129402579394560



An 8 CON character at level 1 won't be able to heal any HP at all on their own.


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## darjr (May 25, 2012)

I like the idea. I'd still play the playtest as written.


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## darjr (May 25, 2012)

Meophist said:


> An 8 CON character at level 1 won't be able to heal any HP at all on their own.




good point.

Add that everyone gets at least 1 hitpoint.


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## variant (May 25, 2012)

You could house rule the dying mechanics.

Instead of being knocked unconscious at reaching 0 hit points, as long as you don't drop below  your Constitution score in negative hit points and make a saving throw,  you are conscious but are considered wounded which means you have  disadvantage on attacks and move at half speed. If you fail at your  saving throw, you take 1d6 damage.

Once you go below your Constitution score and fail a saving throw, you are knocked unconscious.


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## SageofMusic (May 25, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> And just _what_ makes you think that the PCs are all going to sleep at the same time?  Rather than in watches?




I would definitely expect the PCs to do that, but how does that change my argument? If the PCs are the only thing blasting the undead back, how is only one character going to hold them back? If my PCs were exploiting the "full heal", then I would have the undead launch a larger assault in order to knock them off balance. There are numerous ways around the "problem" of having people heal once a day over an 8 hour period. Remember, it has to be continuous. If it's broken in any way they have to make up all the lost time. 





> I think the problem here is that it fails one of the fundamental rules of good design.




Which is what? It seems to me that a lot of people like one way and a lot of people like the other way. If it failed a fundamental rule of good design, you would think that everyone would hate it because it's _broken._





> To do this you'd better have 4e level balance mechanics.  Because a new DM is going to have problems threading the needle.  Or he's going to have to keep coming up with excuses to launch yet another attack after four hours.  Rules which make the extended rests take an extended amount of time don't force a new DM to navigate between Scylla and Chrybdis here and therefore don't encourage the DM to DM badly.




DMs have been threading the needle for over 20 years before 4e came out, so how is this any different? I've always allowed for full healing when they rest for a full day. If I don't want them resting, I keep them on their toes. It's really not the difficult. 



> It wasn't the mechanics.  It was the design of adventures.  Dungeon-stomps are a limited type of roleplaying.  Yes, you can have an excellent game that involves dungeons.  But you can have an excellent campaign without an actual dungeon to be seen.  If it's either-or then I'd rather have no dungeons to just dungeons (I actually prefer a mix).




Ok, then it isn't a problem of D&D at all. It's a problem of the pre-made adventure designers. I've never used a pre-made adventure. Therefore, I've had a good mix of outside and inside adventures. 

Remember that all of D&D, every bit, is simply a base ruleset. Everything else rests on the DM. If you don't like full healing, then don't allow it, make up your own rules. I don't particularly like magic items. Therefore in 3.5 and 4e, I lower the power of high level enemies because of the deficiencies of PCs with no magic items.


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## darjr (May 25, 2012)

And it looks like the HD and over night healing were part of a module put into the playtest.



			
				mearls said:
			
		

> We sort of hid the first rules module in the current playtest - remove  themes and/or backgrounds and hit dice = old school style game.




https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/206126172025794561

Heads up was from [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION]


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## nnms (May 26, 2012)

Not necessarily.  If you remove all the stuff he mentioned, you still have sleep = full hp.

And why hide something that you touted as a feature to entice people with the idea that they can get the type of play they want from 5e by using it?


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## Kzach (May 26, 2012)

*Friendly warning, lets not start making this personal. Keep comments about what is discussed, and not about the people making them.

--Stalker0*


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## Stalker0 (May 26, 2012)

underfoot007ct said:


> If you have such a difficult time with the "suspension of disbelief" over regaining full HP. Please explain how you can accept regaining spells overnight. Even accepting spells,dragon, & even magic, that is not "jarring"?




Because Spells and Dragons get something healing doesn't get.....fantasy.

Because we have no spells and dragon in the real world, we don't place any real world expectations on them. They do what they do. If magic refreshes in 24 hours, then it refreshes in 24 hours.

But injury and healing....oh we all have had our share of that. We know how long it takes for a wound to heal. So we place some of these expectations on how they work for the characters we pretend to be. Now because it is imagination, we allow some tolerance....but the tolerance only goes so far, and when it breaks is when "suspension of disbelief" occurs.


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## Kzach (May 26, 2012)

What I find most amusing about the whole 'realism' thing is that if you TRULY wanted realism then you wouldn't be playing D&D. But hey, let's run with it.

Every cut deep enough to break through the fat layers is potentially lethal. Infection will set in very quickly if not dealt with right away. Any bruise deep enough to affect internal organs or bones again carries with it the chance of infection but will also probably cause internal bleeding which can't be healed by anything short of magic. Then there are broken bones. Broken bones are adventure-career ending injuries. Without magical healing, bones will not set properly in a medieval setting and so the character will be permanently gimped, not to mention be out of action for at least 3-6 months depending on the severity.

Then there are all the real life-threatening wounds. A stab in the gut is pretty much a death sentence without magical healing. Even a small dagger in the gut is basically life-ending, and that's assuming it doesn't hit any arteries on the way in and doesn't hit the live or kidneys, just the intestines. Game over, friend.


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## merchantsteve (May 26, 2012)

I am thinking about this 'module' for healing.

If you are not bloodied - a full night's rest restores you to full HP.
If you are bloodied - roll 1 hit die to recover that many HP after a full night's rest. If under the care of a person with the healing skill, you have advantage.

Healing Potions: In combat, you may be sloshing the thing around and spilling some of it. You roll the healing as normal. If taking a short rest, you have advantage when you take the potion.

I think this bridges the 'realism' vs. 'full-healing' problem without being burdensome. The bloodied threshold takes on meaning in regards to recovery. Real wounds take time to recover while scratches and bruises do not.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> What I find most amusing about the whole 'realism' thing is that if you TRULY wanted realism then you wouldn't be playing D&D. But hey, let's run with it.
> 
> Every cut deep enough to break through the fat layers is potentially lethal. Infection will set in very quickly if not dealt with right away. Any bruise deep enough to affect internal organs or bones again carries with it the chance of infection but will also probably cause internal bleeding which can't be healed by anything short of magic. Then there are broken bones. Broken bones are adventure-career ending injuries. Without magical healing, bones will not set properly in a medieval setting and so the character will be permanently gimped, not to mention be out of action for at least 3-6 months depending on the severity.
> 
> Then there are all the real life-threatening wounds. A stab in the gut is pretty much a death sentence without magical healing. Even a small dagger in the gut is basically life-ending, and that's assuming it doesn't hit any arteries on the way in and doesn't hit the live or kidneys, just the intestines. Game over, friend.



Congratulations! You've just made the case for slow natural healing, with magical expenses to offset the slow rate of the body's ability to fix itself.

Seriously, I couldn't have argued the case for core rules with slow natural healing any better than you did right here.


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## Kzach (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Congratulations! You've just made the case for slow natural healing, with magical expenses to offset the slow rate of the body's ability to fix itself.
> 
> Seriously, I couldn't have argued the case for core rules with slow natural healing any better than you did right here.




Excellent!

Now all we have to agree on is that it's ridiculous to assume that any wound the character takes is anything worse than a minor injury on the above scale because otherwise, they WOULD be out of action permanently.

Characters simply are NOT taking massive, life-threatening wounds. If they were, then games would be very short and very boring.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Excellent!
> 
> Now all we have to agree on is that it's ridiculous to assume that any wound the character takes is anything worse than a minor injury on the above scale because otherwise, they WOULD be out of action permanently.
> 
> Characters simply are NOT taking massive, life-threatening wounds. If they were, then games would be very short and very boring.



Sadly, that won't happen. I think when you get knocked to very low hit points, you are suffering from a debilitating wound or several minor wounds, which adds up to the same thing. And that is why we have magical healers.

It's a fundamental difference in preferences, I suppose.

I've now seen several proposed house rules that center around bloodied and restoration of hit points, with the common thread being that if you are bloodied, your natural healing is very very slow. And if you are not bloodied (that is, your HP are above half) you get all your HP replenished to full. *That* would actually be acceptable to me, and I think it's an interesting idea. It's certainly more in line with the Legends and Lore from the other day. And I think that is probably a fairly solid middle compromise.


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## Sir Robilar (May 26, 2012)

Didn't see this thread so I'm reposting what I wrote in the Long Rest Poll thread. Sorry!


"I would have less of a problem with the mechanic if it was harder to get a character from the state of being knocked down and unconscious to back on his feet and kickin'.

The playtest document states that you have to have at least 1 hit point to take any rest, long or short. A healer's kit won't help to give the character that one hit point since it only stabilizes the unconscious. However - as per the playtest's RAW - If you don't apply magical healing to a stabilized character, he will get 1 hp after 2d6 hours. This is where Mearl's explanation of hit points and the rules don't fit together nicely, since characters self-regenerate a severe wound by themselves after 2d6 hours of lying on the ground.

So, my proposal: Get rid of this 2d6-hours rule. Instead, make it MUCH harder for a character to get to that 1 hp with mere mundane means, as this simulates the treatment of a severe wound. It could be something like a DC 15 heal (Wisdom) check + the use of a Healer's Kit + 2d6 hours of rest. If the check fails, repeat.

Then, when the character is back on his feet again, he merely needs to recover from the exhausting treatment and trauma -> he gets complete recovery of hp's and HD after the next complete rest.

What do you think?"


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## merchantsteve (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Sadly, that won't happen. I think when you get knocked to very low hit points, you are suffering from a debilitating wound or several minor wounds, which adds up to the same thing. And that is why we have magical healers.
> 
> It's a fundamental difference in preferences, I suppose.
> 
> I've now seen several proposed house rules that center around bloodied and restoration of hit points, with the common thread being that if you are bloodied, your natural healing is very very slow. And if you are not bloodied (that is, your HP are above half) you get all your HP replenished to full. *That* would actually be acceptable to me, and I think it's an interesting idea. It's certainly more in line with the Legends and Lore from the other day. And I think that is probably a fairly solid middle compromise.



I am thankful you see the "bloodied" threshold a reasonable compromise. My only concern is that whatever the final mechanic is, it is based on principles already defined as 'core'. If hit dice are in, then make them have meaning - use them in healing. If advantages and disadvantages are central to the game, then give them a role in healing. Heck, if exploding die rolls get added at some point, then make sure healing uses them.


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## Kzach (May 26, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> The playtest document states that you have to have at least 1 hit point to take any rest, long or short. A healer's kit won't help to give the character that one hit point since it only stabilizes the unconscious. However - as per the playtest's RAW - If you don't apply magical healing to a stabilized character, he will get 1 hp after 2d6 hours. This is where Mearl's explanation of hit points and the rules don't fit together nicely, since characters self-regenerate a severe wound by themselves after 2d6 hours of lying on the ground.




You're forgetting Death Saves.

In order to stabilise, you first have to succeed at three Death Saves. Every Death Save you fail in-between those success, you lose 1d6 hit points. Get to Con + Level minus hit points, and your character is dead.

So let's have some fun!

1st-level character with 10 Constitution goes to 0 hit points. Every round he rolls to see if he can stabilise or not. If he reaches 11 negative hit points before he rolls 10 or higher three times, he dies.

Well darn, he survived! Close though, got to negative 9 hit points before finally stabilising. Now he has to wait 2d6 hours before he gets 1 hit point. THEN he can rest IF he hasn't already done a long rest in the last 24 hours. So for 10 hours after the combat, the character was touch-and-go, but ultimately the wound just wasn't that bad and he pulled through. Now with a good night's sleep, he'll be up and about in the morning.


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## Sir Robilar (May 26, 2012)

No, haven't forgotten about them. Everything regarding death saves stays the same in my proposal. I'm not talking about Stabilising but what happens after you have stabilised when you want to come back to positive hit points (regaining that 1 hp you need to be able to do a short or long rest).


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## Kzach (May 26, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> No, haven't forgotten about them. Everything regarding death saves stays the same in my proposal. I'm not talking about Stabilising but what happens after you have stabilised when you want to come back to positive hit points (regaining that 1 hp you need to be able to do a short or long rest).




But I think you're underestimating what 'stabilised' means. Stabilised essentially means that the wound is NOT life-threatening. Wounds are a fluid thing. Just because the character went down, doesn't mean he took a fatal wound. It just means he took a POTENTIALLY fatal wound. So that stab to the gut might've looked bad when he went down, but ultimately it ended up just being a flesh wound.


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## Sir Robilar (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> But I think you're underestimating what 'stabilised' means. Stabilised essentially means that the wound is NOT life-threatening. Wounds are a fluid thing. Just because the character went down, doesn't mean he took a fatal wound. It just means he took a POTENTIALLY fatal wound. So that stab to the gut might've looked bad when he went down, but ultimately it ended up just being a flesh wound.




But this creates a weird meta-game situation where you only know that you were struck a life-threatening wound when you're already dead. Which makes it hard to explain what happens in-game.

In my understanding of the rules you make a _death_ save when your body is fighting death's approach, so: you are in a serious, life-threatening situation, not just the potential of one.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> But I think you're underestimating what 'stabilised' means. Stabilised essentially means that the wound is NOT life-threatening. Wounds are a fluid thing. Just because the character went down, doesn't mean he took a fatal wound. It just means he took a POTENTIALLY fatal wound. So that stab to the gut might've looked bad when he went down, but ultimately it ended up just being a flesh wound.



I think I'd like to see something that affects a stable character that doesn't get attended to slip back into death saving throws at a penalty. It's not a situation that I think would come up frequently. Say a character saves 3 times and stabilizes, but is left behind or his unconscious body dragged off to some lair. Without medical attention within an hour, his stable condition has a chance to fall back into dying, with the % chance increasing for every hour still left untreated. You know, septic shock from an untreated wound...

This is just something that sprang to mind unbidden. It would very, very rarely be experienced, and it would definitely not be some sort of core assumption at all. 

/I now return you to your topic.


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## merchantsteve (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> You're forgetting Death Saves.
> 
> In order to stabilise, you first have to succeed at three Death Saves. Every Death Save you fail in-between those success, you lose 1d6 hit points. Get to Con + Level minus hit points, and your character is dead.
> 
> ...



With my change using the 'bloodied' vs 'unbloodied' metric, it would take that fighter a lot more time to heal fully (sans magic). Also, my advantage concept would make healing in a hospital/inn/house much faster than when travelling on the road.
I like the 3 times succeeds better than the three strikes you die that 4e had.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> So for 10 hours after the combat, the character was touch-and-go, but ultimately the wound just wasn't that bad and he pulled through. Now with a good night's sleep, he'll be up and about in the morning.




Wait, wait, that doesn't bother you? He was nearly dying for 10 full hours, and the next morning he's walking around like nothing at all is wrong?


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## merchantsteve (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I think I'd like to see something that affects a stable character that doesn't get attended to slip back into death saving throws at a penalty. It's not a situation that I think would come up frequently. Say a character saves 3 times and stabilizes, but is left behind or his unconscious body dragged off to some lair. Without medical attention within an hour, his stable condition has a chance to fall back into dying, with the % chance increasing for every hour still left untreated. You know, septic shock from an untreated wound...
> 
> This is just something that sprang to mind unbidden. It would very, very rarely be experienced, and it would definitely not be some sort of core assumption at all.
> 
> /I now return you to your topic.



using my bloodied/unbloodied idea, a diasadvantage (like improper care) would most likely lengthen the healing (not a slip into death again, but potential slower healing is just as bad). Also, if a PC was left behind, his chances of meeting doom from a wandering monster is pretty high. That is a lot easier to do than adding a 'slip back to dying' mechanic.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

merchantsteve said:


> using my bloodied/unbloodied idea, a diasadvantage (like improper care) would most likely lengthen the healing (not a slip into death again, but potential slower healing is just as bad). Also, if a PC was left behind, his chances of meeting doom from a wandering monster is pretty high. That is a lot easier to do than adding a 'slip back to dying' mechanic.




True. I was just spitballing, really. It was just a rough idea that sprang to mind. I probably wouldn't use it, and I think a situation like that has actually never come up in a game I've played or run (that's why we have magical healing after all).


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## merchantsteve (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> True. I was just spitballing, really. It was just a rough idea that sprang to mind. I probably wouldn't use it, and I think a situation like that has actually never come up in a game I've played or run (that's why we have magical healing after all).



My aim is not to pick apart the rules, but take some of the innovations that have merit and use them to shore up some weak elements. I've been playing D&D for 30+ years and this iteration has some really likeable elements. I think this advantage/disadvantage concept has some legs. As a DM, I am all for simple characterization of a situation and the mechanic delivers (well, at least for me!)


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## VictorC (May 26, 2012)

I think you should only get some thing like your level and/of your con modifier back after a night of sleep. However, you should get all your hit dice/your hit die back. 

I think using your (newly refreshed) hit dice, magic and potions are more than fair. While at the same time not taking too long to naturally regain your hp.


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## Jack99 (May 26, 2012)

If you base overnight healing on CON, we will get a situation where wizards heal up much quicker than fighters. I think we want to avoid that.

As an alternative to what Mearls suggested, why not base overnight healing on The HD mechanic. I would go with a long rest healing 1HD + 1 HD/lvl (without spending any). If you want even more gritty/hardcore/oldschool, you could keep it at 1 HD per long rest, or compromise and choose 1 HD + 1 HD/4 lvls.


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## MichaelSomething (May 26, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> But this creates a weird meta-game situation where you only know that you were struck a life-threatening wound when you're already dead. Which makes it hard to explain what happens in-game.




Docuk: Man, I thought that wound killed you!
Joaoc: It didn't...
Docuk: But how?
Joaoc: I guess you were wrong.


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## nnms (May 26, 2012)

[MENTION=56189]Kzach[/MENTION] - As for the whole "realism" thing, it's not about wanting pure realism.  It's about expecting the non fantastical to function in a plausible way.  Different genres have different levels of plausibility.  Action movies like Rambo have a totally different level of injury related plausibility than a gritty WW2 series like Band of Brothers or the Pacific.

When it comes to the feel of their D&D, some people want Rambo, some people want The Pacific.

Absolutely perfect opportunity to show off modular design.


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## Arkenos (May 26, 2012)

I use the healing rules Mike tweeted about for years :

Each PC heal his level worth of hp + his con modifier (with a minimum of 1) after each long rest. 

So a 1st lvl character with 14 hp et 10 con (+0) will heal 1 hp/day (2 weeks to fully recover from being down)
A 1st lvl character with 20 hp and 17 con (+3) will heal 4 hp/day (5 days to fully heal back)
High con PC will heal faster but it still take days.

A level 10 fighter with 85 hp and 17 con (+3) will heal 13 hp/day (6-7 days to fully heal back).
While it doesn't perfectly scale, this rule still work fairly well at higher levels, even though high lvl PC don't typically use natural healing anyway.

It's not perfect but it's a good compromise between "instaheal bruise/luck/exhaustion overnight" and very long realistic healing. 

(sorry for my english, not my 1st language)


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## GX.Sigma (May 26, 2012)

Mike's tweet makes me happy. Along with [I think Jeremy?]'s comment in the podcast, it communicates that the D&DN team equates "embracing the game" with "houseruling the heck out of it until it becomes your perfect version of D&D." That's kind of the point of the modular design and DM empowerment: if there's something you don't like about the system, it's very easy to change it. Don't wait for a module, just do it. (Modules are basically just pre-packaged, "official" houserules.)


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## Walking Dad (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Wait, wait, that doesn't bother you? He was nearly dying for 10 full hours, and the next morning he's walking around like nothing at all is wrong?



It doesn't bother me more than him being dead for 3 days and up again if nothing happens after the cleric cast a raise dead spell.

Are you arguing about that you want characters suffer from their wounds for a longer time, or is your point you want the cleric a healer role be mandatory?

I'm personally more bothered with "magic can do all, its magic, you stupid fighter" than an increased healing rate to make the cleric not mandatory.

If you play with a healing cleric around, you will hardly notice a difference in the recuperation times. And if not, healing for weeks when the fluff says you don't look even wounded is... bad.

But they can perfectly well introduce a rule for slow healing. But I want the other rules for a no-cleric group, too.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

[MENTION=59043]Walking Dad[/MENTION] - chalk it all up to completely opposite playstyles and desires then. Magical healing is something I believe in. Do I think a magical healer should be mandatory? Of course not. You can play a party of four fighter or four wizards, but don't expect to get up and keep fighting without some magical healing.

Many pro-mundane healing folks discuss how PCs are beyond normal: that they are, in fact, superhuman. I'm not going to pretend to represent people who don't like superhuman natural healing factors (everyone is effectively Wolverine!), but I honestly prefer characters that are flawed, humans who rise above not because they've got a mutant healing gene but because they are determined to make a difference (for good or evil--though no one really thinks of themselves as evil) in the world.

So, are you unwilling to look at some of the compromise proposals that DO meet the fluff? The "healing from bloodied takes awhile, but healing HP from above bloodied recharge after a night's rest"? Is that not a halfway point you're willing to meet at? I mean, because if you aren't willing to meet halfway, then any further discussion is an exercise in futility.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

I think one of the things this discussion is missing is a trivial 4e houserule option.  Spells and healing are on the same timer but it's the timer that matters, and one that can be changed.

If you want Rambo then yes you have overnight healing - and overnight spell recovery.  If you want Fantasy F**king Vietnam then recovery of hit points takes a week somewhere safe.  As does recovery of prepared spells.

I'd far rather offer the "Everyone happy" dial than a straight compromise.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I think one of the things this discussion is missing is a trivial 4e houserule option.  Spells and healing are on the same timer but it's the timer that matters, and one that can be changed.
> 
> If you want Rambo then yes you have overnight healing - and overnight spell recovery.  If you want Fantasy F**king Vietnam then recovery of hit points takes a week somewhere safe.  As does recovery of prepared spells.
> 
> I'd far rather offer the "Everyone happy" dial than a straight compromise.



Slowed recovery of spells does not make me happy. That nerfs casters to the point that they are effectively worthless. And I hardly think looking for slowed natural HP recovery means I want Fantasy Vietnam. So take the strawman out and burn him somewhere else.


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## triqui (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Sadly, that won't happen. I think when you get knocked to very low hit points, you are suffering from a debilitating wound or several minor wounds, which adds up to the same thing. And that is why we have magical healers.
> 
> It's a fundamental difference in preferences, I suppose.




That also means magic healing is mandatory, and all groups *have* to have a magic Healer. If in a group of 4, nobody wants to play the healer, some one *HAS* to bite the bullet and play a character they despise. 

I don't think it's a good idea. A middle-ground compromise is needed somehow.


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## Jack99 (May 26, 2012)

As Mearls noted to the Escapist (today?), the HD mechanic is completely dissociated from the rest of the rules, so they are easy to change/remove. They know that it might be an issue for a lot of people.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Slowed recovery of spells does not make me happy. That nerfs casters to the point that they are effectively worthless. And I hardly think looking for slowed natural HP recovery means I want Fantasy Vietnam. So take the strawman out and burn him somewhere else.



But casters aren't worthless.  They are simply now playing an actual resource management game alongside the fighters - you just have to be careful about how to use them.  And even the cantrips are quite nice.  The spells, however, are "I win" buttons on a regular basis.  Where regular to you means "Every day"

In Gygaxian D&D there was no resting in the dungeon.  If you even tried you'd be flattened by the wandering monsters.

The normal excuse made for the fighters being weaker is that they can keep going all day (only as long as they aren't taking hits).

Shorter me: I strongly disagree that restricting the spellcasters's level of awesome to being on the same clock as the fighter makes them effectively worthless.  I further believe that releasing the need for magical healing from a party member (which, after all, is only absolutely necessary because of the different recovery rates) only does good things to the game.


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## eamon (May 26, 2012)

I'd like to see a wound/vitality system: Most hitpoints are healed easily on your own; if you don't win or retreat from battle before getting a real wound, then that wound will be much harder to heal.  The system can be very simple too, and nicely makes "bloodied" a more solid in-game concept.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> But casters aren't worthless.  They are simply now playing an actual resource management game alongside the fighters - you just have to be careful about how to use them.  And even the cantrips are quite nice.  The spells, however, are "I win" buttons on a regular basis.  Where regular to you means "Every day"



I'm sure you believe that. I don't. A caster without spells is a liability, not an asset, and they already have an extremely limited resource management (spells refreshing in a day), so limiting it further makes them unwanted hangers-on. It makes every wizard a Raistlin. I like Raistlin, but until he is imbued with Fistandantilus, he's nothing but a liability and a problem for the rest of the Heroes of the Lance.



> Shorter me: I strongly disagree that restricting the spellcasters's level of awesome to being on the same clock as the fighter makes them effectively worthless.  I further believe that releasing the need for magical healing from a party member (which, after all, is only absolutely necessary because of the different recovery rates) only does good things to the game.



And I am of the completely opposite opinions on both of those, without a doubt. First, a fighter can swing an axe every turn in every encounter for a full week. A wizard can't do that if his spells only refresh once a week. Second, mundane Wolverine-style magical healing breaks immersion and turns regular Joe the town misfit who turns to a life of adventure into SuperJoe the caped crusader. That is definitely not a good thing in the game.

And I see all this anti-magical healing stuff and think it's a load of garbage. No one forces you to play a cleric anymore than every party requires a wizard or a rogue. Just because you don't want to play a magical healer doesn't mean that everyone should be a superhero with mutant healing factors.

Or do you feel like everyone should be able to cast Magic Missiles and Fireballs since only wizards can do that? Maybe every fighter should be able to shoot magical bolts of light, heal himself, find every trap, talk every princess into bed, and singlehandedly kill the dragon?

It's a silly argument.

EDIT - Yes, it's hyperbolic, but the "But now every party requires a Healer" is just as ridiculous as "But now every party requires a rogue" or "Every party requires a blaster." I don't see people complaining about that. If people want to survive in a group, it DOES need to be well-rounded. A party of one of each character should heal faster, and move through the game better than a party of just fighters. Frankly, if you don't want a healer in your group, don't play one and just be prepared to not heal as fast. It's a trade-off, and it should be such. Just as not having a trap-finder means you're way more likely to blunder into traps or not having a wizard means your ability to control the battlefield is highly unlikely or not having a fighter means your squishies are going to get hit.

Long story short, I'll be house-ruling out Wolverine-style hit point recovery immediately upon purchase of D&DNext (assuming it's still in there) or, unlikely, just not purchasing D&DNext to begin with. This is why I'm participating in the playtest--to provide feedback for what it will take for me to buy the next version of D&D. So far I like just about everything else about the game except for mundane healing as written. That's not enough to make me give up completely, but it is enough to make me house-rule it, AND to provide my playtest feedback about it hoping they change it.


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## molepunch (May 26, 2012)

If a character can perform at full capacity at 1 HP I certainly have no problems with his regaining to full after a short rest. I frankly don't see any immersion-breaking shrapnel in there at all.

Now, if 1 HP meant he had a significant wound and a short rest healed all that, then yeah it's a little silly.

As far as we know, 1 HP meant the former, correct?


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I'm sure you believe that. I don't. A caster without spells is a liability, not an asset,




1: In Pathfinder and 5e there is _no such thing as a caster without spells_.  (Nor is there in 4e).
2: If a caster is without spells it means they've either screwed up or been a huge asset.
3: A cleric without spells can still hold the battle line - he certainly isn't a liability.
4: A fighter without hit points is as much of a liability as a caster without spells.



> First, a fighter can swing an axe every turn in every encounter for a full week.




This assumes that he is swinging at practice dummies.  Because practice dummies don't hit back.  A fighter on the other hand runs out of hit points.



> A wizard can't do that if his spells only refresh once a week.




On the other hand the fighter can't rewrite the laws of reality ever.  Advantage: Wizard.  Who can keep using his cantrips as long as the fighter keeps swinging his sword.


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## eamon (May 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> On the other hand the fighter can't rewrite the laws of reality ever.  Advantage: Wizard.  Who can keep using his cantrips as long as the fighter keeps swinging his sword.



Fighters in D&D have used magic _extensively _in all editions I've ever played.  Technically they didn't cast it, but it doesn't matter for balance whether it's from an item, a buff, an NPC or whatever...  Forcing a class to be nothing more than a mundane dude with a stick and then arguing that it's unfair for anyone else to do more than that is the worst way to make this game fun, not to mention rather off-topic.

If you insist your fighter's too weak, _that's_ probably the problem that should be fixed, rather than reducing everything else in the game to that level.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> On the other hand the fighter can't rewrite the laws of reality ever.



Except when he magically Wolverine's himself completely healed after sleeping one night.

I don't think we'll see eye-to-eye. Which is sad, since I'm even willing to meet at a halfway point for hit point refreshing, a proposal I've seen suggested at least a few different times by a few different people that actually matches Mearls own statements about what hitpoints mean. Healing HP > Bloodied happens overnight. Healing HP < Bloodied takes longer. I like that enough that it's going into my suggestions for when Wizards asks for playtest feedback.

You're unwilling to budge at all and appear to be insisting that everyone should just suck it up, agree with mutant healing factors and full HP every night, and, worst, to not provide honest feedback to the playtest. As such, it's not worth engaging in a discussion with you anymore. I'll provide my feedback to Wizards that fast-healing is immersion breaking, doesn't work for me, and is something that I will be changing immediately upon release for all D&D games I play with this ruleset.


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## RigaMortus2 (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> EDIT: Sorry, I wasn't clear.
> 
> What I meant was that hit points have always been 'luck, skill, near misses' until you got to 0 hit points.




But D&D goes against the whole "luck and skill" thing, which it is trying to argue for.  A hit is not always a hit, and a miss is not always a miss (look at attacks which still deal damage on a miss).

If a 60 hit point Fighter falls 60 feet and takes 25 points of damage, did he really take that damage?  Wouldn't his legs be broken?  Wouldn't he be at the very lease bruised and bloodied?  Not according to the rule above.  Yet, if a 10 hit point Fighther falls the same distance, and also takes 25 points of damage, they are dead.  Doesn't make sense as Mearls is trying to rationalize "luck and skill".  Damage is damage...

If an NPC shoots an arrow at a Fighter and hits their AC, but does nominal damage, you can say "it wasn't really a hit, the Fighter dodged out of way in time, and the "damage" you take represents luck or skill".  But now add poison to that arrow, and the Fighter now has to make a Fort save vs poison, then obviously he DID get hit, it wasn't him using luck or skill to avoid the shot.  

Also, how do you describe Sneak Attack?  That is precision damage.  It spells out in the description that you are striking the vitals of a creature.  So if a Rogue deals 1d4 dagger damage and +2d6 sneak attack damage, but only takes off like 10% of hit points from a full health opponent...  Did he REALLY hit the opponent, or did the opponent use luck and skill to avoid the attack (but they still take off x hit points)?  Well, it HAS to be a real hit, right?  After all, you are hitting a vital spot, you are rolling sneak attack damage.  That goes right against the whole arguement of a hit not always really a hit.



Kzach said:


> Remember that taking a 'long rest' only works if you're already on at least 1 hit point. So if you're 0 or lower, it won't work. It requires 2d6 hours to get to 1 hit point from stabilised and it requires three successful death saves (irrespective of the fact that death saves are a low DC) to become stabilised. Either that, or you need magical or mundane healing of some type which burns a HD.




All that being said, this I like ^^^


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## DMKastmaria (May 26, 2012)

molepunch said:


> If a character can perform at full capacity at 1 HP I certainly have no problems with his regaining to full after a short rest. I frankly don't see any immersion-breaking shrapnel in there at all.
> 
> Now, if 1 HP meant he had a significant wound and a short rest healed all that, then yeah it's a little silly.
> 
> As far as we know, 1 HP meant the former, correct?




The issue here, is that it cancels the ability to model being moderately to seriously wounded, while still conscious and capable of fighting. 

Unless, a PC can recover from a serious (though not deadly) wound in just one night.


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## RigaMortus2 (May 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> This assumes that he is swinging at practice dummies.  Because practice dummies don't hit back.  A fighter on the other hand runs out of hit points.




As does a Wizard.  Both have the same resource here (hit points), so you can't really use that as a comparrison.

What they differ in is attack type/style.  One swings a mundane weapon round after round, the other uses spells which will eventually run out.  Thats the point.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> You're unwilling to budge at all and appear to be insisting that everyone should just suck it up, agree with mutant healing factors and full HP every night, and, worst, to not provide honest feedback to the playtest. As such, it's not worth engaging in a discussion with you anymore. I'll provide my feedback to Wizards that fast-healing is immersion breaking, doesn't work for me, and is something that I will be changing immediately upon release for all D&D games I play with this ruleset.




You are misreading me.  I run _4e_ and we don't have mutant healing in my games either.  Well, some - but not really more so than previous D&D editions.

I've offered a compromise that I am prepared to accept.  And that compromise is that _wizards and clerics recharge their spells slowly_.  They don't get mutant magic every day.  A further compromise is that despite your assertion, wizards are not useless when "out of spells" - it's built into the rules that they have a handful at will.  (Including three combat spells in the case of the playtest wizard).

If you are balancing along a time period, as Vancian casting must, you need to homogenise the time period for resource management.  The fighter can't be swung _at_ all day - an important component of fighting on the front line.

I've offered a compromise.  I am more than happy to compromise mutant healing.  In fact I _don't want_ mutant healing.  I just see mutant healing as a necessity for play balance if the wizards and clerics are on a daily cycle.  I only need mutant healing because you are completely unwilling to compromise on wizard and cleric casting being given to them _every day_ despite it being strictly false in any edition later than 3.5 that the wizard can run out of magic.

Mutant healing _is_ the compromise we have because you are unwilling to compromise your spellcasters and somehow the spellcasters must get 100% of their ability back every night.  It's a compromise that makes us both unhappy.

I'm willing to budge.  I've said what my price is.  You however insist that everyone should agree that wizards get to be awesome every day when fighters run out of resources.  I merely insist that everyone gets to return their awesomeness at an equal rate.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

RigaMortus2 said:


> As does a Wizard.  Both have the same resource here (hit points), so you can't really use that as a comparrison.




A wizard isn't expected to use their hit points in combat - they should be avoiding the front lines, and if a wizard is taking more than trivial damage something is going wrong.  A fighter is expected to go toe to toe with the enemy and you can't do that wthout them attacking you.  



> What they differ in is attack type/style.  One swings a mundane weapon round after round, the other uses spells which will eventually run out.  Thats the point.




A wizard never runs out of cantrips.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

RigaMortus2 said:


> But D&D goes against the whole "luck and skill" thing, which it is trying to argue for.  A hit is not always a hit, and a miss is not always a miss (look at attacks which still deal damage on a miss).




D&D has always been on the luck and skill thing from 1e right the way through to 3,5. PF, and 4e.
Originally Posted by *AD&D DMG, p.82* 
_It  is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of  ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability  to sustain physical damage takes place. *It is preposterous to state such  an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword  thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a  hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being  slain! *Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both  the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as  indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such  areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the  "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen  events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections  and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual  ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the  immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)._​ Originally Posted by *AD&D DMG, p.82*
_Consider  a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This  character would have an average of 5% hit points per die, plus a  constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each  hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual  physical harm - *the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter  through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's  exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability* which caused movement  to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained  40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a  number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long  period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical  peak of 95 hit points._​ _

_
*Originally Posted by 3.5 SRD*

*(and unsurprisingly identical to the PF SRD)
*

*What Hit Points Represent*

_ 	Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take  physical punishment and keep going, *and the ability to turn a serious  blow into a less serious one.*_ ​


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## eamon (May 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> A wizard isn't expected to use their hit points in combat - they should be avoiding the front lines, and if a wizard is taking more than trivial damage something is going wrong.  A fighter is expected to go toe to toe with the enemy and you can't do that wthout them attacking you.



That's not a realistic assumption.  The wizard will get attacked; they're an attractive target.  When he's attacked, he'll be hit more frequently due to much lower AC, and when hit, since his hit dice aren't even half that of the fighters the consequences will be more severe.

In any case, if it turns out that with slow healing a fighter never gets his chance to shine and it's all about the wizards, then I'm all for some balancing act.  But that's not actually the case yet, is it?  Let's make a decent rule, _then_ see if can't be balanced.  And in that light, Mercutio01's suggestion is very reasonable: some quickly-healing "endurance" hit points, some serious "wounds" hit points.  Even better; fighters and wizards could then well have nearly identical "wound" hit points, but as levels rise, fighters get the more interesting "endurance" points via the hit-dice mechanic to a far greater extent.  Nice side effect: the higher the level, the more "epic" a party gets and the more easily it can shrug off hits.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

molepunch said:


> If a character can perform at full capacity at 1 HP I certainly have no problems with his regaining to full after a short rest. I frankly don't see any immersion-breaking shrapnel in there at all.
> 
> Now, if 1 HP meant he had a significant wound and a short rest healed all that, then yeah it's a little silly.
> 
> As far as we know, 1 HP meant the former, correct?



Here's an analogy for where I think we're coming from.

You seem think that my idea of a fighter with 1 HP is Monty Python's Black Knight. He's missing limbs and potentially disemboweled and just dismissing the dismemberment as a flesh wound. He's bleeding profusely and screaming "Come back here so I can bite your legs off."

I think he's more like Rocky Balboa in round 10. He's beat to hell, but isn't missing limbs and isn't shrugging it off. he's just fighting through it, but any hit might be the one to drop him down. I think he's huffing and wheezing and just barely keeping his feet, but still able to fight.

Now, in reverse, I still see Rocky Balboa after the fight. It's going to take either magic or a really long time before he's ready to fight again.



I think you see the fighter as Spider-Man. He never gets hit, every "hit" is really just Spidey dancing away at the last second, and when he finally wraps up the enemies in his web and takes a break, he's back to full health.



My heroes are gutsy every-men who step up to the plate when necessary. They're Rocky Balboa. They're Conan. They might have more skills or more strength than their peers, but what really sets them apart is their determination and guts. If they're any superhero, they're Batman Year One. The games I like to play and stories I like to read are not great people doing great things. They're normal people doing great things. It's not Hercules fighting the Nemean Lion (at least not until epic levels). It's Spartacus rising up from slave to rebel leader. It's not Superman bringing justice to Metropolis. It's Musashi Miyamoto on his way to becoming the greatest swordsman that ever lived. It doesn't start with "The Book of Five Rings." It ends with it.

I want "The Black Company," "The Name of the Wind," "Watership Down," and "Seven Samurai," not Justice League Neverwinter. That's what end-game/epic levels are for.


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## Agamon (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Except when he magically Wolverine's himself completely healed after sleeping one night.
> 
> I don't think we'll see eye-to-eye. Which is sad, since I'm even willing to meet at a halfway point for hit point refreshing, a proposal I've seen suggested at least a few different times by a few different people that actually matches Mearls own statements about what hitpoints mean. Healing HP > Bloodied happens overnight. Healing HP < Bloodied takes longer. I like that enough that it's going into my suggestions for when Wizards asks for playtest feedback.
> 
> You're unwilling to budge at all and appear to be insisting that everyone should just suck it up, agree with mutant healing factors and full HP every night, and, worst, to not provide honest feedback to the playtest. As such, it's not worth engaging in a discussion with you anymore. I'll provide my feedback to Wizards that fast-healing is immersion breaking, doesn't work for me, and is something that I will be changing immediately upon release for all D&D games I play with this ruleset.




There is an assumption that it has to be one way or the other here. The modularity of DDN will allow people to have their cake and eat it too. Compromise is unnecessary. A simple core rule along with a more complex and realistic modular rule is far better than the compromise of a half-assed complex core rule that is more difficult add modularity to.

Discussion is useful to root out potential problems, but if you need to argue until you're blue in the face, maybe both sides have a good point, and we have a good case for setting up a module to aid appeasing both sides.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses...Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique)...actual  physical harm...However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a *long period of rest and recuperation*...the ability to take physical punishment and keep going...



Why is it that everyone so in favor of Hit Points representing luck always ignores these parts?

Hit points cut both ways, but healing does not. The insistence on non-magical healing invariably points only to the luck part of the HP. It never addresses, or even acknowledges the legitimate point of view, that hit points ALSO represent physical damage.

Look, if you want hit points to only ever mean luck, then have at it in your houserules. You incessant chatter that hit points should always be able to be healed mundanely and that hits are not physical damage is every bit as much of a "house-rule" as you seem to think that physical damage is. 

But don't pretend that physical damage is absent from the definition of hit points. Or that mundane healing doesn't just completely ignore physical damage.

On top of that, reread that emphasized bit right there. Yeah, that bit that says "long period of rest and recuperation." That is exactly what I've been arguing in support of. That bit of actual rules advice.


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## GMforPowergamers (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Here's an analogy for where I think we're coming from.
> 
> You seem think that my idea of a fighter with 1 HP is Monty Python's Black Knight. He's missing limbs and potentially disemboweled and just dismissing the dismemberment as a flesh wound. He's bleeding profusely and screaming "Come back here so I can bite your legs off."
> 
> ...




What about John Mclean?

 everyman... beeat to piss, but he is still fighting at 100% no matter what. He gets a min or tow to wrap his bloody feat, steal a smoke, and make a wise crack... then he is back in it. Mid dungeon (well tower, or plane or city) he takes a break then comes back just as hard as ever.

See I agree with you AND want hps back.

1hp or 20hp or 100 hp on a 20th level fighter with 144hp total doesn't give him any negatives... like MClean, not like rocky who is obviusly not throwing 100%

I would be fine with every ext rest you get to roll full HD to regain hp THEN recharge all HD. Then have models with Half and a fourth HD...


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## Elodan (May 26, 2012)

I think this is one of those cases where one side is not going to convert the other to his/her way of thinking.

I'm wondering if the core rules can't have either a couple of options listed under a topic or the good ole optional rules sidebars under the topic.

Example:

_Full Rest_
General description

Option 1:
Recover all hit points

Option 2:
Roll total # of HD and recover total rolled plus Con mod

Option 3:
Recover level + Con mod (min 1)

Sidebar option is to pick a default and then have the other options are alternates in the sidebar.  Granted, no matter what option you pick as the default, you're going to tick someone off but I really don't see what it could hurt to include some options in the core book.

I'd personally like to the options approach for some of the more 'controversial' rules where you've got a good split down the middle and no one wants to compromise.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

GMforPowergamers said:


> I would be fine with every ext rest you get to roll full HD to regain hp THEN recharge all HD. Then have models with Half and a fourth HD...



I like John McClain, but I don't think he's fighting at full power by the end anymore than you think Rocky's punches are landing with the same strength behind them. And that rule would be fine with me, too.



Elodan said:


> I think this is one of those cases where one side is not going to convert the other to his/her way of thinking.
> 
> I'm wondering if the core rules can't have either a couple of options listed under a topic or the good ole optional rules sidebars under the topic.
> <snip>
> I'd personally like to the options approach for some of the more 'controversial' rules where you've got a good split down the middle and no one wants to compromise.



I think you're right on the money there. And, as I've said before, this isn't like a game-changer for me It's just not something I like at all. I'm not going to shun the game if what's in the playtest is the only option. I'm just not going to ever use it as is.


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## Stalker0 (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> My heroes are gutsy every-men who step up to the plate when necessary. They're Rocky Balboa. They're Conan. They might have more skills or more strength than their peers, but what really sets them apart is their determination and guts.




Here is my counterpoint. I recognize that flavorwise, people like the idea of a gritty world where wounds take a while to heal or at least are somewhat realistic.

My question though: how often does it come up in a typical game? I can tell you that the parties I DMed and played in under 3e had no issues guzzling healing points and hitting themselves with Lesser Vigor Wands (because really, CLW wands are so last season).


Currently the healing rules are modular enough that they can be altered to the taste of the DM running the world. He can make the healing rules more gritty or less. So the question is....where should the default baseline be set?

My answer....where the majority of people play their games. 

So....where do most people play? Do people commonly have their characters rest normally....or are they almost entirely relying on magical healing? If its the latter, than the baseline should be stronger nonmagical healing....and let those who want their gritty game tweak to taste.


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## gweinel (May 26, 2012)

Today i finally managed to get the playtest material and i have to say that the thing that really turned me off was the short and long rest and in general the healing mechanic. 
There is no need to argue with the ppl who like the rule. It is fine for me.

But my gaming style does not come in line with this rule. It breaks my gaming immersion. The sad thing is that the healing part is so vital feature in the game, so hard-coded, that i think even house-ruled will take too much effort to change the flow of the game and the pace of the encounters. 

Regardless of how fine is the game or not, a lesson that i learned from 4th edition, is that the healing surge feature was spoiling my gaming experience. I am not gonna sit down and invest in game that has hard-coded my main objection of 4e (although i ll playtest the material with my gaming group). The healing is hugely tied to the flow of the game. A core pace like that is simply not included in gaming style.


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## Kzach (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Except when he magically Wolverine's himself completely healed after sleeping one night.




Healed from what?

Again, nobody seems to be able to understand that the character simply never got injured significantly. Going below zero does not mean the character's guts were strewn all over the floor. It means that the chest wound ended up being a minor graze despite the scare it gave everyone at the outset after the fighter initially collapsed.

Stop describing every 'hit' as a hit and stop describing being knocked unconscious (0 or below) as a devastatingly massive injury and the problem is solved. Everyone seems to like making it hard for themselves by describing such 'injuries' as being severe and life-threatening when the system clearly says that's not the case. People create this problem for themselves and then blame the system for it.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Stalker0 said:


> So....where do most people play? Do people commonly have their characters rest normally....or are they almost entirely relying on magical healing? If its the latter, than the baseline should be stronger nonmagical healing....and let those who want their gritty game tweak to taste.



Why is "relying on magical healing" equate to "stronger non-magical healing"? What is the rationale there?



Kzach said:


> Healed from what?
> 
> Again, nobody seems to be able to understand that the character simply never got injured significantly. Going below zero does not mean the character's guts were strewn all over the floor. It means that the chest wound ended up being a minor graze despite the scare it gave everyone at the outset after the fighter initially collapsed.
> 
> Stop describing every 'hit' as a hit and stop describing being knocked unconscious (0 or below) as a devastatingly massive injury and the problem is solved. Everyone seems to like making it hard for themselves by describing such 'injuries' as being severe and life-threatening when the system clearly says that's not the case. People create this problem for themselves and then blame the system for it.



So, the answer is for me to play the game I've been playing for 30 years in a different manner? Why not just tell me to go play a different game?

What do you mean don't describe every hit as a "hit"? WTF is a "hit" then when I roll an attack check that "hits"?

The SYSTEM itself describes hits as "hits" and says that hit points represent physical damage. And when you roll an attack that hits, you do "damage." EVEN the lead designer and the creator of D&D have said that hit points represent some portion of physical damage.

You mean to tell me you don't ever play a game where a hit roll actually hits a character? If that's the case, then your game is the outlier, even among the natural healing fanatics I've seen here and everywhere else.

What you're telling me is that I need to ignore the system, the system's rules, and the system's advice and house rule everything to run a game the way you prefer, and not in accordance with the actual text of every edition of the game, including 4E?

Take that advice and keep it to yourself, because it's neither helpful nor correct. Keep your "BADWRONGFUN" crap in your own head.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Why is it that everyone so in favor of Hit Points representing luck always ignores these parts?




Because hit points to me do not and have never felt like physical damage.  I cut my RP teeth on GURPS.  In GURPS when I get hit by an orc with an axe, I know about it.  I'm taking shock penalties.  Where he hits matters even if I'm a pretty powerful adventurer.

In D&D if I'm a fifth level fighter in any edition, an orc can hit me as hard as he likes with an axe.  I might say ow.  I might play up the hit professional-wrestling style.  But ultimately, despite the strength of the orc _I am not even slowed_.  I'm just going to smack the orc back.  If the orc had critted me in an even slightly realistic system like GURPS or Rolemaster (and that was my second RPG - Rolemaster or rather its lite version MERP) I'd be looking at brains coming out of the ruins of my head.

There is literally no way I can understand an orc attacking an unarmoured or lightly armoured man with an axe, doing the maximum possible physical damage he can, and that man being still standing.  Unless hit points are largely a meta-resource.

Literally the only hit point loss that to me feels like serious damage as a PC in D&D is a hit that knocks me the wrong side of 0hp.  The rest might be nasty bruises, but they certainly aren't being hit by an orc with an axe.

I therefore can't reconcile the combination of "Hit points as physical damage" with the intentionally cinematic system set up by gygax for swashbuckling fights and greater endurance.  So I consider the luck to be the overwhelmingly dominant part until it goes below 0hp



> Hit points cut both ways, but healing does not. The insistence on non-magical healing invariably points only to the luck part of the HP. It never addresses, or even acknowledges the legitimate point of view, that hit points ALSO represent physical damage.



So a dual pool of hp would work?  One that's depleted first and restores overnight?



> You incessant chatter that hit points should always be able to be healed mundanely and that hits are not physical damage is every bit as much of a "house-rule" as you seem to think that physical damage is.



Talking about 'incessant chatter' works better when you aren't actually mischaracterising my position.  Which is that D&D is a game that needs to be balanced.  And one of the balance systems is that everyone should be on the same recharge - I want the wizards hit but will accept a boost to recovery for the really high magic worlds and wizards you want.  You have continually evaded this point.  Further I consider that the overwhelming majority of hp are luck and skill - see my orc for an illustration why.  I don't think damage is just physical damage - but it only starts feeling like primarily physical damage the wrong side of 0hp.  This is an interpretation of the rules that works and doesn't contradict them.

And long periods of recuperation is _what I have in my games_.  However the balance point for this is apparently anathema to you.  You want your magical people to be automatically infused with magic every day but it is somehow anathema to speed up recovery times for fighters when there is that much magic flying around _and when fighter toughness is already magical - able to take a hit to the chest from an orc with an axe without slowing_.


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## the Jester (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> I'll state it flat out: I am on the side that approves of a long rest regaining all hit points. I would ask that those reading this look at my arguments and try to view the matter from a holistic rather than personal viewpoint.
> 
> I completely understand people who say they dislike the mechanic. *What I disagree with is on the fundamental nature of injury in D&D.*




Sounds like you are arguing from your personal viewpoint to me.



Kzach said:


> I feel that those who oppose the mechanic don't agree with the statements made about injury and the goals of the injury system. Disagreeing with it is your prerogative, of course, and I wouldn't want to tell anyone how to run their games. What I'm asking people to consider is the way in which D&D has always MEANT to be run, from its very inception and throughout every edition.




First of all, you are arguing for the way healing was MEANT to be run _in 4e only._ No other edition- _especially_ the versions of the game closest to its very inception- has ever promoted "full healing on rest" before 4e.



Kzach said:


> So before people say it's a horrible mechanic and they want to get rid of it, I'd propose that they consider that to change it is inconsequential to their own games. It's little more than a hand wave. But the tradition and impression of the game on new players is important and should be kept intact regardless of personal preference.




What, the tradition that old players have of recovering 1 hp per day? After all, that is the longest-standing traditional form of long-term healing by rest in D&D- it's the version that was official longest, that has been played longest and that strikes many, many gamers as least "gamist" and most "simulationist".

You say changing it is inconsequential. We're talking about a playtest to form the rules. Deciding that it sucks for my game during the playtest allows me to give feedback to the designer and development groups that I don't like that style of healing and that the game ought to include slower, more simulationist options for healing. I would say it's easier to handwave the full-heal-with-rest than it is to create a system for less-than-full-healing-with-rest, so why don't _you_ make the change to _your_ game and just say, "Every long rest, you're back to full" instead of making me come up with a "Every long rest, you regain... er... your con modifier plus a HD of hps? Wait, maybe just your level in hps? Or...."

The _effects_ of full-heal-with-rest are most definitely _not_ inconsequential for my game. The pace of the campaign is dramatically impacted by it.



Kzach said:


> What I meant was that hit points have always been 'luck, skill, near misses' until you got to 0 hit points.




That's factually incorrect. They've always represented luck, skill and near misses _for some of your hit points,_ but every edition has made it explicitly clear that some part of your hp total also measures your phyiscal ability to take punishment.



Kzach said:


> Remember that taking a 'long rest' only works if you're already on at least 1 hit point. So if you're 0 or lower, it won't work. It requires 2d6 hours to get to 1 hit point from stabilised and it requires three successful death saves (irrespective of the fact that death saves are a low DC) to become stabilised. Either that, or you need magical or mundane healing of some type which burns a HD.




In other words, if you don't die in combat, you're pretty much always up to full by the next day. The "long rest only if at least 1 hp" clause is effectively meaningless except inasmuch as it dictates timing.



Kzach said:


> Healed from what?
> 
> Again, nobody seems to be able to understand that the character simply never got injured significantly.




That is not how most of us run the game, nor is it how the game has actually been written, ever. The game has always assumed that hit points represent physical vitality as well as the other bits (luck etc). In fact, early versions suggest that a character knocked below 0 hps might come out of it with a horrible scar or other "this was a serious injury" reminder.

Again, I fear you are arguing from personal viewpoint rather than objectively from the way the game is actually written.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 26, 2012)

Stalker0 said:


> Here is my counterpoint. I recognize that flavorwise, people like the idea of a gritty world where wounds take a while to heal or at least are somewhat realistic.
> 
> My question though: how often does it come up in a typical game? I can tell you that the parties I DMed and played in under 3e had no issues guzzling healing points and hitting themselves with Lesser Vigor Wands (because really, CLW wands are so last season).




But you have mentioned the main thing that people want. Sure you get to heal fast with the above but you have to spend magic resources to do it. I would rather stock up on potions than to have a built in mechanic that makes me either seem like Wolverine or the idea of combat not actually landing a blow until you are at 0 hp. 

Also, I don't want my PC to be like the main character out of a movie. I want to be Conan but without the plot armor and super regeneration, unless I get it from an ability or a spell.


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## Stalker0 (May 26, 2012)

the Jester said:


> Sounds like you are arguing from your personal viewpoint to me.




Unfortunately that is what makes this issue so difficult....we all are.

We all have preconceptions on how the mechanic should work flavorwise, and we want the mechanics that represent that flavor. And there is no cake and eat it too scenario here, unless we bring a lot of cakes.

Which is why I think WOTC ultimate solution is their dial system.


The first step which they have already done is completely split the nonmagical healing from the magical healing bits. That way we can tweak the nonmagical healing without affecting the rest of the system.

This is extremely important. Its easy to say "Just change the rule", but we want rules changes to be easy to do. The more integrated a rule is throughout the system....the greater the impact. In this case, since these rules only affect nonmagical recovery....and doesn't have any impact on combat itself....the rule is pretty self-contained.

Now they just need to offer the "standard" options:

1) High Fantasy: Can heal to full after each short and long rest.
2) Fantasy: The playtest version.
3) Gritty Fantasy: Can heal maximum 1/3 level HD per short rest (minimum 1).
4) Dark Gritty Fantasy: Heals 1 HD per long rest (no short rest recovery).


Not every mechanic in 5e is as divisive as healing and requires this kind of dial treatment. But there are a few where the only way for everyone to win is for everyone to get their slice of the pie.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Stalker0 said:


> Unfortunately that is what makes this issue so difficult....we all are.
> 
> We all have preconceptions on how the mechanic should work flavorwise, and we want the mechanics that represent that flavor. And there is no cake and eat it too scenario here, unless we bring a lot of cakes.
> 
> Which is why I think WOTC ultimate solution is their dial system.




I think this really is the only answer. What I'd like to see lies somewhere between your 2 and 3. I have no problems with the hit dice mechanic (unlike the very real ones I had with healing surges). It's all to do with the mundane hit point refresh rate.


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## Meophist (May 26, 2012)

I'm alright with having a bunch of effective non-magical healing. I do think, however, that the idea a dying person can go back to being at full health within 24 hours without any sort of help stretches believability. I like the idea of resource management, both in the short(in battle), medium(across a day), and long(adventure) term areas. As it is, it seems like the only real long-term resource is money/items. I prefer a bit more than that.

I think, a long rest should be something like, free use of your Hit Dice, and then recovery of Hit Dice equal to half your level rounded up.

At the current moment, the magic-classes only have so many spells a day, but it seems like the number can inflate quite a bit over time. I'm not against the idea of limiting the spell preparation if this happens; something like only being able to prepare four spells a day. That way, even magic classes may need several days to get to full strength. This can happen without losing effectiveness within a day.

The lack of long-term resources is my current concern.


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## Stalker0 (May 26, 2012)

One thing I haven't heard anyone mention is that the kept the 4e rule that any healing from negatives immediately puts you to 0 hp.

How do people generally feel about that rule?


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## ForeverSlayer (May 26, 2012)

Stalker0 said:


> One thing I haven't heard anyone mention is that the kept the 4e rule that any healing from negatives immediately puts you to 0 hp.
> 
> How do people generally feel about that rule?




I think I actually mentioned that in my thread and I don't agree with it.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

I actually sort of agreed with that bit from 4E. Negative hit points means you are actively dying. You're in shock, bleeding out, and laying in the dirt/muck/blood/waste filth/etc. This means 0 HP = not dying = stable. Any kind of healing means patching up wounds. In the case of magical healing, it's a potion that's wending its way through your blood stream and mending wounds from the inside out, or a prayer granted by a god that is working through that god's grace (or what have you). It brings you to 0 first (stabilizes), and then starts closing wounds. In the case of mundane healing, it's a cauterized cut, or an ace bandage around a sprain, or a healing poultice or medicinal concoction (aspirin, for instance).


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## Meophist (May 26, 2012)

Stalker0 said:


> One thing I haven't heard anyone mention is that the kept the 4e rule that any healing from negatives immediately puts you to 0 hp.
> 
> How do people generally feel about that rule?



I don't really have any problems with that. Aside from healing automatically bringing you up to that level.


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## DEFCON 1 (May 26, 2012)

I just hope everyone realizes that we'll never get to the various "dials" and get them correct until the very first dial gets set and works right.

So even if you don't like this first bit of fluff and its connection with hit points... just play and test it as-is anyway so that they can make sure the mechanics work.  Because the sooner they can get past this first set of rules, the sooner they can start introducing the other dials for you.  The foundation has to be solid before you can start futzing with everything else.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

Oh, looking at other threads, [MENTION=10095]The Little Raven[/MENTION] has just added much more about the way hit points were according to Gygax

Bringing some material across to this thread:
Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61*_As has been detailed,* hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large,* as far as characters (and some other creatures as well) are concerned._​ Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61* 
_Damage scored to characters or certain monsters *is actually not substantially physical*  - a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are  considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the  magical protections._​ Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 81* 
_For  those who wonder why poison does either killing damage (usually) or no  harm whatsoever, recall the justification for character hit points. That  is, *damage is not octually sustained* - at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases.
_​


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## ForeverSlayer (May 26, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Oh, looking at other threads,  @The Little Raven  has just added much more about the way hit points were according to Gygax
> 
> Bringing some material across to this thread:Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61*_As has been detailed,* hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large,* as far as characters (and some other creatures as well) are concerned._​Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61*
> _Damage scored to characters or certain monsters *is actually not substantially physical*  - a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are  considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the  magical protections._​Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 81*
> ...




Everyone has pretty much already acknowledged that hit points have always been abstract but not to the point that they have now. Gary said they were a combo of physical damage and other things. 

What D&D never had before 4th edition was a mechanic that took advantage of the so called "exhaustion" part of hit points, AKA Healing Surges. 

If you look at the spells they talk about the closing of wounds and making people feel better.


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## Kzach (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> EVEN the lead designer and the creator of D&D have said that hit points represent some portion of physical damage.




Some PORTION. Not, "OMG HE JUST HAD HIS HEAD CHOPPED OFF!"



the Jester said:


> Again, I fear you are arguing from personal viewpoint rather than objectively from the way the game is actually written.



Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

I'm defending the way it IS; I'm not the one here trying to argue how it SHOULD be. You're on the side of having ALTERNATE rules. And that's fine. That's how you want to play your game. I have no problem with that whatsoever. My issue is that I believe that the DEFAULT way of doing things, the very core of the system, should remain as it is and that modular options should be presented for people like yourself who want a grittier system.

Think about that, please. You're saying I'm arguing from a personal viewpoint and not objectively from how the game is written, and yet I'm trying to keep the mechanics UNCHANGED.

What's more is that what I'm asking gives everyone what they want. I get the core system to remain intact, and how it has always been (as Neonchameleon has pointed out), and you get your modular rules so that you can play the game the way you want. Why argue against that?


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Some PORTION. Not, "OMG HE JUST HAD HIS HEAD CHOPPED OFF!"



Reductio ad absurdum much? No one narrates a head being chopped off unless that is literal death to the character. But a wound that drops a character below 0 is absolutely a hit that does real damage. If it wasn't, then there wouldn't be death saving throws. There wouldn't be mechanics for stabiliziing (ie not bleeding to death).

What portion of HP are you conceding are actual damage? So far your ONLY argument has been that I must change the way I've played D&D since I started gaming, a way that is backed up by the rules (some portion of hit points are physical damage, after all). So, what portion of hit points are actual damage? Is it 1 hp? You seem to be arguing that even those hits are just scratches, so honestly: what portion of Hit Points are actually physical damage? Remember that the rules say there is a portion thereof, and that every edition of D&D ever written says something along the same lines.

You might be content to ignore the terms and actual rules and advice of the game to house rule that every hit is actually a near miss, but that's all it is: A house rule. It's not RAW. It's not RAI. It's not supported by the actual terminology of the game since 1974 (hit, miss, damage: these are terms that actually mean something), and it's not supported even by the playtest rules we're discussing.

What the rules do say is that your method of play is as valid as mine, not that I'm having badwrongfun because I actually use the rules as written and narrate that some hits do damage. So kindly quit trying to do the one-true-way garbage. If you'd even stoop so low as to acknowledge the legitimacy of the view point of a lot of gamers that "A hit is a hit," you might come off better.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> What portion of HP are you conceding are actual damage?




Just jumping in, I'll let E. Gary Gygax answer that with a quote I've already posted.
Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61*
_Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical   - *a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are   considered *- it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the   magical protections._​


> So far your ONLY argument has been that I must change the way I've played D&D since I started gaming, a way that is backed up by the rules (some portion of hit points are physical damage, after all).




No it isn't.  See above.  "A mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are considered" - the proportion of hit points being physical changes drastically, and the actual rules of D&D stated this as both RAW and RAI.  My argument is that this is the only way that hit points make any sense at all.  I think [MENTION=56189]Kzach[/MENTION] is onthe same page.


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## The Little Raven (May 26, 2012)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Gary said they were a combo of physical damage and other things.




Gary was very explicit in the many passages I quoted that hit points were far more "other things" than physical damage. And Gary also suggests that if the DM is going to track hit points to keep things secret from the players, it be described in terms of fatigue.



			
				AD&D 1e PHB said:
			
		

> Your character's class will determine which sort of die you will roll to determine hit points. In some campaigns the referee will keep this total secret, informing players only that they feel *"strong", "fatigued" or "very weak",* thus indicating waning hit points.




Note that he doesn't recommend the usage of "injured," "wounded," "hurt," or descriptive terms that apply to physical damage.

You are almost obsessively fixated on the description of healing spells as your sole justification for hit points and completely ignoring the multitude of explanation and advice he gives that runs entirely counter to your point. Fireball, despite talking about fire, isn't the source for the actual rules about how fire functions in the game, and Cure Light Wounds is not the source for the actual rules about how hit points function in the game.


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## Mercutio01 (May 26, 2012)

Originally Posted by AD&D 1e PHB said:
			
		

> 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*



Gary isn't arguing 50%/50%, sure. But he's arguing 35%/65% based on his own words there.



			
				Originally Posted by AD&D 1e PHB said:
			
		

> Rest also restores hit points, for it *gives the body a chance to heal itself* and regain the stamina or force which adds the skill, luck, and magical hit points.






			
				Originally Posted by AD&D 1e DMG said:
			
		

> It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? *Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses-* and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. *Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique)* and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).






> Hit Points - The number of points of damage a creature can sustain before death (or optionally, coma), *reflecting the creature’s physical endurance*, fighting experience, skill, or luck.




Just because you can cherry pick stuff doesn't make your case, because I can cherry pick stuff right back.


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## Gold Roger (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Some PORTION. Not, "OMG HE JUST HAD HIS HEAD CHOPPED OFF!"
> 
> 
> Mirror, mirror, on the wall...
> ...




We are asked to say how we want things to be for the game to apeal to us.

That said, the full healing over night as default have cascading implications for the entire game and contradictions with other stated parts of the hp and healing system we where presented with. Notably a healing kit expendure is needed for the only non-magical healing possible outside of a long rest.

Also, I don't think I'm the only one for whom even recovering the non injury aspects of HP fully with one nights sleep just breaks suspension of disbelieve (and it's pretty hard to break for me). Having a mechanic as default that breaks suspension of disbelieve for a large portion of customers is not a good idea.

The current long rest option should be the optional piece. And I personally believe it will be and is in the playtest just because it isn't important for the elements the team actually focuses for this playtest.


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## the Jester (May 26, 2012)

Kzach said:


> I'm defending the way it IS; I'm not the one here trying to argue how it SHOULD be.




Given that the game is somewhere around 10% finished according to Mearls and that the whole point of the playtest is to figure out how it should be, I'm not convinced that there's anything to this argument.

I do agree that the best approach is a dial system for speed/ease of healing.


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## Neonchameleon (May 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Gary isn't arguing 50%/50%, sure. But he's arguing 35%/65% based on his own words there.




If hit points amongst other things represent fatigue and stamina (as The Little Raven has already shown) then the constitution is also at least part stamina.  So no he isn't.  He just says that "a certain amount of these hit points" and doesn't quantify.



> Originally Posted by *Originally Posted by AD&D 1e PHB, page 34*
> _Rest also restores hit points, for it gives the body a chance to heal itself *and regain the stamina or force which adds the skill, luck, and magical hit points.*_





Rebolding mine.  When a long distance runner undertakes a serious distance race they are advised to rest for_ one day per mile of race_.  It takes a lot of rest to restore stamina properly.

In the rare cases where damage is actually more than scratches (contrary to the DMG as quoted) resting does give the body a chance to heal - but this is only one case.  Given the sheer endurance required for long term fighting, recovery of stamina up to full strength is not trivial.  



> Originally Posted by *Originally Posted by AD&D 1e DMG, page 81*
> _It  is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of  ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability  to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such  an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword  thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a  hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being  slain! Why then the increase in hit points? *Because these reflect  both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage -  as indicated by constitution bonuses-* and a commensurate increase in  such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the  "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen  events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections  and/or divine protection. *Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique)* and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)._



_

You think exhaustion isn't physical punishment???
_

And the point about constitution bonusses does indicate that tougher characters can withstand more damage.  This doesn't mean that the entire constitution bonus is of necessity physical damage.



> Hit Points - The number of points of damage a creature can sustain before death (or optionally, coma), *reflecting the creature’s physical endurance*, fighting experience, skill, or luck.




Endurance reflects stamina at least as much as durability.  You aren't helping your cause.



> Just because you can cherry pick stuff doesn't make your case, because I can cherry pick stuff right back.




And when most of them appear to be based on misunderstandings and blowing individual words out of a list into huge cases as opposed to the plain meaning of an unambiguous paragraph, your cherry picking won't help you much.  Your only even remotely clear point is that constitution bonusses indicate that tougher characters can withstand more damage.  Of course they can.

Your self-admitted cherry picking just gives you things that are normally contradicted and certainly mitigated by the rest of the text you are quoting.  My paragraph (or rather The Little Raven's paragraph) is clear and unambiguous.

And [MENTION=33904]Gold Roger[/MENTION], to emphasise something I said earlier in the thread, I hope that they will deliberately point out the length of rest as a dial you can control as DM.  Instant overnight recovery of hit points leads to a Michael Bay type action movie.  But then so does instant overnight recovery of spells - Gandalf cast maybe six spells in the whole of Lord of the Rings.  Extend it to a week and it doesn't turn into Michael Bay on either count.


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## Mercutio01 (May 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> IAnd when most of them appear to be based on misunderstandings and blowing individual words out of a list into huge cases as opposed to the plain meaning of an unambiguous paragraph, your cherry picking won't help you much.  Your only even remotely clear point is that constitution bonusses indicate that tougher characters can withstand more damage.  Of course they can.



Now I know you're full of crap. You're blowing individual words out of a list and changing an ambiguous paragraph to phrase your personal opinion to pretend it is somehow unambiguous.



> Your self-admitted cherry picking just gives you things that are normally contradicted and certainly mitigated by the rest of the text you are quoting.  My paragraph (or rather The Little Raven's paragraph) is clear and unambiguous.



That's garbage. Your own cherry picking does exactly the same thing. You want all hit points to never represent damage, so you pick phrases that support your cause while simultaneously ignoring the ones that say damage = physical damage.

Here are some more cherry-picked definitions from other editions (AD&D, RC, 2E) - 







> AD&D PHB Pg 105 Damage - If any creature reaches 0 or negative hit points, it is dead.
> 
> AD&D PHB Pg 105 Healing - There are numerous ways to restore lost hit points. The most mundane is by resting and allowing time to do the job. For each day of rest, 1 hit point of damage is restored.
> 
> ...




You want to talk about undercutting your own arguments, you keep insisting that hit points don't represent actually being hit, and yet you have not even addressed the actual terms we use. To wit: Hit points (points from being hit), damage (physical evidence of being hit), and healing (the act of the body being repaired from physical damage).

Once again your preference is not more valid than mine, and we can go back and forth with quoted bits that support each of our own preferences until kingdom come, so stop trying to convince me that you are by cherry picking pieces and deliberately ignoring information even in the same sentences that contradict you.


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## Kzach (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Reductio ad absurdum much? No one narrates a head being chopped off unless that is literal death to the character. But a wound that drops a character below 0 is absolutely a hit that does real damage.



Yah, 'cause you're not doing the same.

A wound that drops a character to 0 or below, as I've said several times now, is POTENTIALLY life-threatening. The situation, however, is fluid. If he fails the rolls and doesn't stabilise, then guess what? It really was a life-threatening injury. But if he passes then guess what? It wasn't as bad as it looked.



Mercutio01 said:


> So far your ONLY argument has been that I must change the way I've played D&D since I started gaming, a way that is backed up by the rules (some portion of hit points are physical damage, after all).



Then you fail at reading comprehension.

I've advocated, again several times now and quite clearly, that how you want to play the game is just fine by me, do it however you want. What I'm asking is that you accept the core system unchanged and use whatever modular rules that come out later on, or your own house rules for all I care.


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## triqui (May 27, 2012)

I'd rather have an extended rest giving back your hit dice. So if you have hit dice "left", you can spend them right before the extended rest. If you don't, you just recover them.


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## Mercutio01 (May 27, 2012)

Kzach said:


> I've advocated, again several times now and quite clearly, that how you want to play the game is just fine by me, do it however you want. What I'm asking is that you accept the core system unchanged and use whatever modular rules that come out later on, or your own house rules for all I care.



Why? Why should I accept the core system unchanged? How come you can't accept the core system that has slower mundane healing with a modular rule to speed up healing? What gives you the right to determine what the rules look like or to tell me that I should just suck it up? How come you can't suck it up and accept my viewpoint?

That crap goes both ways, you know. Only 1 edition in almost 40 years of game history has had mundane healing the way you like it. 34 years of previous history did it my way, so what makes your preference the right one and mine the wrong one?

Frankly, I think Stalker0 has the only legitimate way to address both of us. ALL hit point rules are covered by optional dials.


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## Kzach (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Why should I accept the core system unchanged?



Because that's how it's always been. Perhaps there's a disconnect here and it's my fault for listing the 'long rest' aspect in the title, but I'm not arguing about fast healing, I'm arguing about not altering hit points to represent physical wounds in the core system. Long rests are part of that because they assume the fundamentals of hit points have always been represented by more than physical injury.



Mercutio01 said:


> How come you can't accept the core system that has slower mundane healing with a modular rule to speed up healing?



Because that goes against the notion that hit points aren't always physical injury. Slow healing only serves to slow down play which is unfun for most people and not something I want to see new players subjected to. With an optional/modular rule to slow down healing, new players can later choose to enforce suffering on themselves but don't have to endure it when they first start.

I should also point out that this will be my last post in this thread. I'm repeating myself almost every post and after 12 pages, I think that we're only going in circles at this point.


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## Mercutio01 (May 27, 2012)

Kzach said:


> Because that's how it's always been. Perhaps there's a disconnect here and it's my fault for listing the 'long rest' aspect in the title, but I'm not arguing about fast healing, I'm arguing about not altering hit points to represent physical wounds in the core system. Long rests are part of that because they assume the fundamentals of hit points have always been represented by more than physical injury.



The argument is that hit points do represent physical wounds in the core system, at least some portion of those hit points. That's all I've been arguing all along. That's where we get terms like hit points, damage, bloodied, and healing. There is some measure of those things that are physical wounds. And that's how it's actually always been. Even if we only accept a 35% of HP are physical (since Gygax suggested that the Con mod portion of HP was actual physical embodiment), that's at least the last ~5/~10/~15 hit points (depending on total HP) that are actual wounds.




> Because that goes against the notion that hit points aren't always physical injury. Slow healing only serves to slow down play which is unfun for most people and not something I want to see new players subjected to. With an optional/modular rule to slow down healing, new players can later choose to enforce suffering on themselves but don't have to endure it when they first start.



Slow healing was status quo for every edition until 4E. I'd argue that most people do not find slow healing to be unfun, since other editions of D&D, in aggregate, are more popular than the current edition.

The argument about new players, though? That I totally understand. I'm totally onboard with introducing new players with a faster mechanic. I hope there's a red box edition which does everything the easiest most basic level possible.

Which is exactly why I think Stalker0's idea of listing everything as an option and a style of game associated with that option.


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## I'm A Banana (May 27, 2012)

Kzach said:
			
		

> The situation, however, is fluid. If he fails the rolls and doesn't stabilise, then guess what? It really was a life-threatening injury. But if he passes then guess what? It wasn't as bad as it looked.




I don't think that's acceptable for a lot of people. The reason is psychological more than anything.

See, the DM is in a position of trust at the table. "What the DM says goes," "The DM is god," "The DM can kill you if he wants," etc. So when the DM describes an injury, the description they give should be a fairly accurate portrayal of the actual injury. To, at some later date, take it back, to say that's not what really happened, to say, "Yep! The DM gave you false information," is violating that position of trust.

It's sort of like, if the DM said at one point that the shopkeeper in town hates your PC, and then later says, "Well, he didn't REALLY hate you, I guess all those times he called you a piker, you were just hearing things."

Or if the DM says at one point that the bridge over the chasm is out, and then later says, "Well, it wasn't REALLY out, it just looked like it from your vantage point."

Now, a player's ability can act on the reality presented by the DM and change it -- that wound is a deadly wound, but the player can still not die from a deadly wound, through luck, skill, toughness, and general awesome-sauce. But that's not something that changes _the wound_, it's something that changes _the character_. 

A character knocked to 0 hp doesn't suffer the mechanical results of that state because _they are deluded_ (unless, I guess, it's an illusion), they suffer the mechanical results of that state because _that is the effect_. If they can get back up it is because they are adventurer-tough, not because they were wrong about their information. 

In a game that operates so much on the mechanism of trust, you can't have "takebacks" be a core rule element.


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## Walking Dad (May 27, 2012)

I just noted that "intoxicated" gives you damage reduction. Is this helping for the discussion what HP represent?

BTW, I'm not interested how it was before or what Gygax wanted HP to be. I want a system what I like. And anything that says that magic is better because is cannot be compared with reality, I dislike. D&D never worked like reality. And magic has not to be regained on a daily base. Give me one good reason it has to be. "It always was this way" is NOT a good reason.


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## Walking Dad (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> ... (since Gygax suggested that the Con mod portion of HP was actual physical embodiment)...



No he didn't:
_and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)._



> Slow healing was status quo for every edition until 4E. I'd argue that most people do not find slow healing to be unfun, since other editions of D&D, in aggregate, are more popular than the current edition.



Says who? I only know that 4e is less popular than the trading card games from its publisher. And I don't know of any list including the money get from the monthly subscriptions to DDI. Pathfinder is no D&D edition. So which edition is so immensely popular?

BTW, slow healing was never popular. Quick magical healing was.


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## JRRNeiklot (May 27, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> BTW, I'm not interested how it was before or what Gygax wanted HP to be. I want a system what I like. And anything that says that magic is better because is cannot be compared with reality, I dislike. D&D never worked like reality. And magic has not to be regained on a daily base. Give me one good reason it has to be. "It always was this way" is NOT a good reason.




It doesn't HAVE to be.  And cars don't HAVE to have round wheels, even though they always have.  But they work better if they're round.


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## Walking Dad (May 27, 2012)

No, it doesn't. I know other RPGs, that use mana points and variants that don't recharge faster than HP. And if daily recharges would work so great, there would be no discussion here.
The analogy with a basic geometric shape is flawed.


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## Mercutio01 (May 27, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> I just noted that "intoxicated" gives you damage reduction. Is this helping for the discussion what HP represent?
> 
> BTW, I'm not interested how it was before or what Gygax wanted HP to be. I want a system what I like. And anything that says that magic is better because is cannot be compared with reality, I dislike. D&D never worked like reality. And magic has not to be regained on a daily base. Give me one good reason it has to be. "It always was this way" is NOT a good reason.






Walking Dad said:


> No he didn't:
> _and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)._



Yes, he did:
_Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses-_ and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection.​That means that bracketed bit in the middle there--you know, the one set off by hyphens--is a dependent clause that is attached to the piece before it. Thus, physical ability to represent damage is indicated by the Con bonus.



> Says who? I only know that 4e is less popular than the trading card games from its publisher. And I don't know of any list including the money get from the monthly subscriptions to DDI. Pathfinder is no D&D edition. So which edition is so immensely popular?




Says all available data which shows Pathfinder gaining more marketshare than 4E. Even assuming it has slightly less than 4E (which the data doesn't support), when you add in all the players of OSR games, that adds up to more people than are playing 4E. And the admonition that Pathfinder is no D&D edition is ridiculous. It may not have the name, but it is as clearly D&D as you can possibly get without the name.



> BTW, slow healing was never popular. Quick magical healing was.



Yes. And that required expenditure of magic and/or money and/or awarded treasure/loot. It wasn't free. I have zero problem with the cleric making potions or casting spells and having the gods literally intercede in the world to stitch up wounds. It literally required the expenditure of in-game currency. It wasn't a freebie.


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## Tovec (May 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> D&D has always been on the luck and skill thing from 1e right the way through to 3,5. PF, and 4e.Originally Posted by *AD&D DMG, p.82*
> _It  is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of  ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability  to sustain physical damage takes place. *It is preposterous to state such  an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword  thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a  hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being  slain! *Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both  the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as  indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such  areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the  "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen  events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections  and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual  ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the  immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)._​Originally Posted by *AD&D DMG, p.82*
> _Consider  a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This  character would have an average of 5% hit points per die, plus a  constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each  hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual  physical harm - *the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter  through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's  exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability* which caused movement  to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained  40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a  number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long  period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical  peak of 95 hit points._​*Originally Posted by 3.5 SRD*
> 
> ...



If you read the quotes you will quickly see that HP aren't the same in 1e as in 3.5 and PF. Certainly it is said in those AD&D quotes that HP work a certain way. All it says, per the SRD, in 3.5 and PF is that HP are the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. That isn't the same as saying that the blow didn't occur or that it was dodged, parried, a near miss, etc. It is akin to saying that the stab in the gut didn't kill you, but it still occurred.



Neonchameleon said:


> A wizard isn't expected to use their hit points in combat - they should be avoiding the front lines, and if a wizard is taking more than trivial damage something is going wrong.  A fighter is expected to go toe to toe with the enemy and you can't do that wthout them attacking you.
> 
> 
> 
> A wizard never runs out of cantrips.



What about a fighter with a bow? Problem solved.

Also, you have nailed my problem with cantrips, both in 5e and PF.



GMforPowergamers said:


> What about John Mclean?



Actually I've rewatched the die hard movies and come to the realization that John Mclean must have died at some point in the first one. It is IMPOSSIBLE to not be dead after the amount of damage he suffered in each movie. He gets shot like 18 times in each film and just keeps on coming. He isn't human, he's a terminator.



Stalker0 said:


> Here is my counterpoint. I recognize that flavorwise, people like the idea of a gritty world where wounds take a while to heal or at least are somewhat realistic.
> 
> My question though: how often does it come up in a typical game? I can tell you that the parties I DMed and played in under 3e had no issues guzzling healing points and hitting themselves with Lesser Vigor Wands (because really, CLW wands are so last season).
> 
> ...




It is hard to argue against modularity and a "dial" for the game, but I am clearly not the only one who feels that the dial should exist in EVERY playtest, not just the last one. Otherwise people who don't like the full HP on a nights rest are going to be disappointed (to say the least).

As far as your first question, how often does this come up? Not too often I'll grant. But then again the issue of CLW wands never came up in our games either. However, I always found it appropriate that IF a party member fell below 0 and there was no cleric in the party that they could either get a temple-cleric to heal him up, or spend a couple weeks until he was out of bed.

[tangent] I've long argued that long rests, not a day but weeks or months instead, are something that haven't been addressed and by the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons should finally be worked on. There are countless issues that arise when time is no longer measured in rounds but in hours and days. How often does a wizard get his spells and how often can he use them to create things is just one example. These are all issues I would love to see them raise and work on. Sadly I don't see it happening, but I wish it would. [/tangent]



Neonchameleon said:


> Because hit points to me do not and have never felt like physical damage.  I cut my RP teeth on GURPS.  In GURPS when I get hit by an orc with an axe, I know about it.  I'm taking shock penalties.  Where he hits matters even if I'm a pretty powerful adventurer.
> 
> In D&D if I'm a fifth level fighter in any edition, an orc can hit me as hard as he likes with an axe.  I might say ow.  I might play up the hit professional-wrestling style.  But ultimately, despite the strength of the orc _I am not even slowed_.  I'm just going to smack the orc back.  If the orc had critted me in an even slightly realistic system like GURPS or Rolemaster (and that was my second RPG - Rolemaster or rather its lite version MERP) I'd be looking at brains coming out of the ruins of my head.
> 
> ...




Thank you for bringing up GURPS and the issue of taking an axe hit to the chest, it raised a curious point I want to discuss.

Wouldn't MOST of the issues you describe above be solved by them reducing the overall number of HP? For that matter wouldn't reducing the number of HP solve the dragon-fire and cliff-falling issues as well?
What if a 10th level fighter had closer to 30 HP instead of 80 or 100. That fall dealing 25 damage would kill a lower level fighter who has 10, 15 or 20 HP but it would allow a 10th level fighter with 30 HP to JUST walk away from the fall. If he had been damaged by goblins before jumping he would be as dead as those lower level fighters too.

The problem raised be 5e is that the top half of your HP are superficial, the bottom half are slightly more substantial and that below 0 you are really in trouble. What if the distance was much closer to tread. If that goblin doing 3 damage was less significant but the orc who did 10 meant something.

They also need to come up with a GOOD form of fatigue, rest and recovery which deviates entirely from the terms we know right now. Come up with a system where the party DOES feel exhausted after journeying all day and no matter how many HP they have they aren't going to fight as well as being fresh. Have a system where a bad nights sleep doesn't just hurt your HP recovery but also means you are sore and perhaps can't assault the dungeon as well today. None of these things are adequately explained in any edition of DnD I've ever seen, especially not well explained by the -2 (or whatever it is) for "fatigue" in recent editions.



DEFCON 1 said:


> I just hope everyone realizes that we'll never get to the various "dials" and get them correct until the very first dial gets set and works right.
> 
> So even if you don't like this first bit of fluff and its connection with hit points... just play and test it as-is anyway so that they can make sure the mechanics work.  Because the sooner they can get past this first set of rules, the sooner they can start introducing the other dials for you.  The foundation has to be solid before you can start futzing with everything else.




If a specific dial doesn't work for you why shouldn't you let the designers know that? I spent too long last time hoping they would change something to more my liking. I gave feedback, certainly, but things never got better. It led to me not investing in the game then and if WotC doesn't listen to feedback and incorporate it carefully into the new models of the game then they aren't going to get me to invest in 5e either.


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## Walking Dad (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Yes, he did:_Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses-_ and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection.​That means that bracketed bit in the middle there--you know, the one set off by hyphens--is a dependent clause that is attached to the piece before it. Thus, physical ability to represent damage is indicated by the Con bonus.



Alright, the old books just contradict itself a lot. Good source...




> Says all available data which shows Pathfinder gaining more marketshare than 4E. Even assuming it has slightly less than 4E (which the data doesn't support), when you add in all the players of OSR games, that adds up to more people than are playing 4E. And the admonition that Pathfinder is no D&D edition is ridiculous. It may not have the name, but it is as clearly D&D as you can possibly get without the name.



The available data isn't showing the money they get from DDI.
Adding multiple editions together (OSR) is ridiculous for determining popularity.
BTW, there is no indication that the regeneration of HP (or spells) are a deciding factor for a games popularity.



> Yes. And that required expenditure of magic and/or money and/or awarded treasure/loot. It wasn't free. I have zero problem with the cleric making potions or casting spells and having the gods literally intercede in the world to stitch up wounds. It literally required the expenditure of in-game currency. It wasn't a freebie.



Casting spells a spending a resource you regain every day. Compare this to the required times to regain HP discussed here.
Would you allow fast mundane regeneration for expending gold for a non-magical healing kit? I would cost resources and would be no freebie. Just "mundane".


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## Mercutio01 (May 27, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Casting spells a spending a resource you regain every day. Compare this to the required times to regain HP discussed here.



Yes, so if you cast those spells to heal someone, you are then out those spells until your next long rest.



> Would you allow fast mundane regeneration for expending gold for a non-magical healing kit? I would cost resources and would be no freebie. Just "mundane".



Maybe/maybe not, but leaning towards maybe not. That said, that's a flavor thing and far easier to just house rule without impacting the mechanical implications of the game.

So the long rest mechanic would look like this?

Long Rest
After a long rest, regain full Hit Points. This requires the expenditure of one healing kit. You also regain all your Hit Dice.

I might be able to get behind that. Maybe.


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## The Little Raven (May 27, 2012)

Tovec said:


> If you read the quotes you will quickly see that HP aren't the same in 1e as in 3.5 and PF. Certainly it is said in those AD&D quotes that HP work a certain way. All it says, per the SRD, in 3.5 and PF is that *HP are the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one*. That isn't the same as saying that the blow didn't occur or that it was dodged, parried, a near miss, etc. It is akin to saying that the stab in the gut didn't kill you, but it still occurred.






> the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability




The 1e example you quoted fits the exact definition for 3.5 Hit Points. Substitute the words "sword thrust to the heart" for the words "serious blow" (since I'm pretty sure getting stabbed in the heart is a serious blow) and the words "less serious blow" for the words "graze" (getting graze by a sword is less serious than stabbed in the heart by one).

3.5: Hit Points are the ability to turn a [serious blow] into a [less serious blow].
1e: Hit Points are the ability to turn [a sword thrust to the heart] into a [graze].


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## triqui (May 27, 2012)

The question is not how much time will take for the PC to heal. They'll heal in one night. Either with mundane insta-healing, or using a cheap Cure Light Wounds Wand, depending on the edition.. The debate is if that healing should be magical or non-magical, that's what people don't agree. Some people value the verosimilitude that magical healing gives, compared to mundane healing, and some other people value more the fact they don't want to have a specific character from a specific class (one that can use CLW wands). 

That's the whole issue, and I doubt there's an easy solution, as both sides are "right" (or "wrong"), since it's a matter of taste.


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## Walking Dad (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Yes, so if you cast those spells to heal someone, you are then out those spells until your next long rest.



Which would be another gamist reason for a non-magical healing option. That said, spending all spells on healing will allow the group to reenter the game faster than to use it for anything else. For what would you want to use the spells instead? If you don't want to split the group you have to wait for the slowest recuperating member.



> Maybe/maybe not, but leaning towards maybe not. That said, that's a flavor thing and far easier to just house rule without impacting the mechanical implications of the game.
> 
> So the long rest mechanic would look like this?
> 
> ...



I hardly doubt either option (slow or fast natural healing) will have a strong effect on most games (with most games I mean games with magical healing available). At least since 3e, healing wands are a very popular magic item to avoid loosing the days to rest or using up spells between fights.

Since I live with "slow healing" since 2nd edition (to young to played it before), I can tolerate it for one more edition.


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## The Little Raven (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> That means that bracketed bit in the middle there--you know, the one set off by hyphens--is a dependent clause that is attached to the piece before it. Thus, physical ability to represent damage is indicated by the Con bonus.




I noticed that you cut out the sentence right after that one, which further clarifies the relationship between Constitution and ability to take physical damage.



> Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by
> constitution bonuses - and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).




According to this taken _as a whole_, Constitution is _partially_ ability to withstand physical damage (physique) and _partially_ skill/luck/whatever (fitness).

Now, let's break it down using some numbers. Here are the assumptions made in the following breakdowns:

Average hit points.
Constitution 18.
Equal weight given to physique and fitness as defined above.

[sblock]
Cleric
Class: 4.5 per level.
Con (18): 2 per level.
Physical Hit Points: 1 per level.
% of Physical Hit Points: 15%.
Summary: More

Fighter
Class: 5.5 per level.
Con (18): 4 per level.
Physical Hit Points: 2 per level.
% of Physical Hit Points: 21%.

Thief
Class: 3.5 per level.
Con (18): 2 per level.
Physical Hit Points: 1 per level.
% of Physical Hit Points: 18%.

Wizard
Class: 2.5 per level.
Con (18): 2 per level.
Physical Hit Points: 1 per level.
% of Physical Hit Points: 22%.
[/sblock]


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## Neonchameleon (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Now I know you're full of crap. You're blowing individual words out of a list and changing an ambiguous paragraph to phrase your personal opinion to pretend it is somehow unambiguous.




Pray tell, which part of the following is ambiguous?

Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61*
_Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical   - *a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are   considered *- it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the   magical protections._​


> That's garbage. Your own cherry picking does exactly the same thing. You want all hit points to never represent damage, so you pick phrases that support your cause while simultaneously ignoring the ones that say damage = physical damage.




But they don't.  They say that _physical damage is one component of hit points._  This is not the same as hit points = physical damage.  And when you use the p61 text I am quoting for the _third_ time in this thread, what you get to is that the physical damage component is the _final_ component of hit points.  You take the physical damage after you run out of skill, luck, and fatigue.



> Here are some more cherry-picked definitions from other editions (AD&D, RC, 2E) -
> 
> AD&D PHB Pg 105 Damage - If any creature reaches 0 or negative hit points, it is dead.
> 
> ...




Well you've just clearly illustrated one of the many reasons I consider 2e to be a weak edition that coasts through on the work of Gygax and not understanding how it works.  2e changed the definition of hit points from 1e - and many other little details (such as relegating XP for GP).  I hadn't seen that one before, thanks.

The rest of those quotes are either ambiguous or (as in the case of the AD&D PHB quotes) irrelevant about whether hit points are raw physcial damage or a mix of damage, fatigue, luck, etc.  And yes, you need a long period of rest to recover fatigue - see my quote about runners.



> You want to talk about undercutting your own arguments, you keep insisting that hit points don't represent actually being hit, and yet you have not even addressed the actual terms we use. To wit: Hit points (points from being hit), damage (physical evidence of being hit), and healing (the act of the body being repaired from physical damage).




I keep insisting that hit points are ultimately if you want any degree of realism in your game at all the way E. Gary Gygax defined them and I have quoted above in this post.  Barely parried scratches until the last one or two hits.  Either that or the whole thing runs under Holywood Physics and you take damage like John McClane.  In which case I don't see why you strain at the lack of resting.

And you still haven't answered my orc example - how anyone can survive the actual direct damage done by an orc rolling maximum damage or a critical hit with an axe without being incapacitated.



> stop trying to convince me that you are by cherry picking pieces and deliberately ignoring information even in the same sentences that contradict you.




And once more you are point blank lying about what I am saying and doing.  PC Hit points are, as defined very clearly by Gygax, a mixture of things including damage, fatigue, luck.  And as equally clearly defined by Gygax it's only the finishing blows that are fully taken as physical damage - the rest are "a mere nick or scratch".

1e was very clearly the way I'm describing it.  2e changed the rationale without changing the mechanics, leaving fighters who make John McClane look fragile.  3e fudged between the two - taking something close to the Gygaxian definition but never producing anything that quantified what was what.  And 4e embraced holywood physics rather than pretending it was a dirty secret.


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## Mercutio01 (May 27, 2012)

The Little Raven said:


> I noticed that you cut out the sentence right after that one, which further clarifies the relationship between Constitution and ability to take physical damage.



We've now shown contradictory pieces of Gygaxian prose from several different locations in the same book. At this point, Gygax has done more to confuse the issue than clear it up because he was wishy washy on a clear definition (see my comment way earlier in the thread about Mearls definition being the first clear one in the game's history). 

First, how on earth are you calculating Con 18 as only giving 2 HP per level? Con 18 would give HP per level, so you'll have to double all your Physical HP per level, and also incorporate all the initial HP from starting out (which always represent physical damage. At least, they do if you consider Gygax's prose about the 1st level fighter who dies after one hit.

Next, now you're going to argue percentages? Cool with me. At least you're willing to admit that some hits will be actual honest-to-god hits that do honest-to-god damage. That's a step in the right direction. that means that  ~30% of hit points for all the characters except the fighter (whose stats don't change) are actual physical damage.


@WalkingDad - You're right. That's a gamist reason for non-magical healing, thus a reason for me to not like non-magical healing. I don't need or want gamist healing, which is why I keep stating the point that it breaks D&D's verisimilitude _for me_ and others who think like me. I'm not a hardcore simulationist, as I don't really like wound/vigor systems or save/stun systems for D&D (they're fine for Star Wars or superhero games), but I also don't accept pure gamist reasons for hit points.


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## Mercutio01 (May 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61*
> _Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical   - *a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are   considered *- it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the   magical protections._​



It's not. But it's contradicted in other places even on the same page. One cherry-picked quote might be unambiguous. I've demonstrated that I can cherry-pick quotes, too. This is like the people who cherry pick pieces of religious works to insist on one reading, but not accepting the others which change context or add ambiguity. If you choose to use that one, and only that one, quote to drive all of your opinion on hit pionts, then of course you'll come to that conclusion. But if you take in all the text on hit points Gygax (and other creators who had as much to do with D&D as he did), it's a far looser picture. Even just taking the great Gygax at his word and his word alone, in the aggregate it's way more open to interpretation than that one quote.



> And you still haven't answered my orc example - how anyone can survive the actual direct damage done by an orc rolling maximum damage or a critical hit with an axe without being incapacitated.



Because a portion of those hit points is not physical.



> And once more you are point blank lying about what I am saying and doing.



Lying is a strong word. You sure you want to use that? I'm not even stretching the truth. 


> PC Hit points are, as defined very clearly by Gygax, a mixture of things including damage, fatigue, luck.  And as equally clearly defined by Gygax it's only the finishing blows that are fully taken as physical damage - the rest are "a mere nick or scratch".



Clear in one quote. Not clear in a dozen others. Why is that quote the right one, and the others not? What makes that one phrase, which is only used in that particular place, the definitive, when he described it differently himself, including on the same page? Is it because that's the one you personally have chosen for your own games?



> And 4e embraced holywood physics rather than pretending it was a dirty secret.



Yes, it did. And I don't like it. Thus, I don't like its presence in D&DNext either.


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## Tovec (May 27, 2012)

The Little Raven said:


> The 1e example you quoted fits the exact definition for 3.5 Hit Points. Substitute the words "sword thrust to the heart" for the words "serious blow" (since I'm pretty sure getting stabbed in the heart is a serious blow) and the words "less serious blow" for the words "graze" (getting graze by a sword is less serious than stabbed in the heart by one).
> 
> 3.5: Hit Points are the ability to turn a [serious blow] into a [less serious blow].
> 1e: Hit Points are the ability to turn [a sword thrust to the heart] into a [graze].




WHICH IS NOT THE SAME.

Again, 1e turns a stab THROUGH THE HEART into a light graze. 3.5 turns a STAB IN THE CHEST ... into a STAB IN THE CHEST THAT DOESN'T KILL YOU. See the difference? One is changing what the effect actually was, the other it isn't it just changes the severity. Besides, the only way you get anything close to a stab in the heart in 3.5 (which still wouldn't happen this way but w/e) is by a crit. Not a regular attack, which is what I have been describing all along.

The words in the sentences might be the same but the intention and the way the rules work in those editions are not.

Moreover, this is flavour text to describe how the game is supposed to work. It is not however how the game actually works. As said earlier, if every attack (that were above bloodied) were dodged, parried or somehow missed - then how do you explain poison, falling damage and alike?


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## Eridanis (May 27, 2012)

Let's keep this discussion polite. Please don't be tempted to resort to personal attacks.


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## Neonchameleon (May 27, 2012)

Tovec said:


> If you read the quotes you will quickly see that HP aren't the same in 1e as in 3.5 and PF. Certainly it is said in those AD&D quotes that HP work a certain way.




Actually, AD&D 1e and AD&D 2e work in completely opposite ways.  3.0, 3.5, and PF fudge and duck the question.



> What about a fighter with a bow? Problem solved.




A fighter with a bow is only doing half the job he should be - that heavy armour proficiency isn't for nothing.  It's about the equivalent of a wizard relying on cantrips 



> Actually I've rewatched the die hard movies and come to the realization that John Mclean must have died at some point in the first one. It is IMPOSSIBLE to not be dead after the amount of damage he suffered in each movie. He gets shot like 18 times in each film and just keeps on coming. He isn't human, he's a terminator.




Which is how I feel about the 2e hit point rules 



> Thank you for bringing up GURPS and the issue of taking an axe hit to the chest, it raised a curious point I want to discuss.
> 
> Wouldn't MOST of the issues you describe above be solved by them reducing the overall number of HP?




If they then added a shock mechanic, yes.  But you'd have to reduce them low enough to radically change the nature of D&D IMO



Mercutio01 said:


> Says all available data which shows Pathfinder gaining more marketshare than 4E.




Given how few *books for 4e WoTC puts out* of course PF does. [/rant]  Before the 4e release schedule dropped to utterly anaemic, 4e was beating pathfinder with about half the releases.  But part of the anaemic release cycle is that 4e is almost a completed game.  I can see room for a grand total of about two playerside books (a Unearthed Arcana equivalent, the Urban Adventurer's Handbook).  But it's a done game.  Still, it's lasted longer than 3.0 did and probably than 3.5.  (And yes, I consider them separate editions - if you're changing the shape of a horse, that's some pretty big changes).


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## Neonchameleon (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> It's not. But it's contradicted in other places even on the same page. One cherry-picked quote might be unambiguous. I've demonstrated that I can cherry-pick quotes, too.




You'e demonstrated that you can cherry pick quotes from AD&D that are ambiguous.  You've given me nothing unambiguous from 1e.  There's a huge difference here.

2e I'll grant is unambiguous.

Which means that my claim is that the definition of hit points changed between 1e and 2e.



> Clear in one quote. Not clear in a dozen others. Why is that quote the right one, and the others not?




Um... because it's the clear one?  Because it's the one that specifically deals with the issue and when used as a lens doesn't contradict anything else?  Because it was what he said to clarify _exactly that point?_



Tovec said:


> WHICH IS NOT THE SAME.
> 
> Again, 1e turns a stab THROUGH THE HEART into a light graze. 3.5 turns a STAB IN THE CHEST ... into a STAB IN THE CHEST THAT DOESN'T KILL YOU. See the difference? One is changing what the effect actually was, the other it isn't it just changes the severity.




I'd disagree.  1e changes a stab through the heart into a light graze.  3.X just mumbles something and tries not to make obvious that there are two conflicting definitions.



> then how do you explain poison,




The point of poison is that it will take effect _even on a graze_.



> falling damage and alike?




It takes stamina to roll with a fall.  But I agree that falling damage is the elephant in the room for the 1e definition of hit points.  And the 2e escalating toughness definition of hit points.  Both fail in different ways.


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## Lanefan (May 27, 2012)

Can I just raise my hand here and point out that *you guys are arguing about the wrong thing!*

Instead of arguing about what hit points represent:



			
				AD&D DMG said:
			
		

> Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5% hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment.



The discussion should revolve around this: 







> However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points.



What defines "a long period of rest and recuperation"?

To me the answer is much longer than one night.

And yes, in my game people are not always at the peak of health when they set off in the morning.

================
And on a few other topics...
================

*On any healing when below 0 auto-getting you up to 0:* No.  It should stabilize you, yes; but at whatever h.p. amount the spell or effect leaves you at.  So if the cure gets you up to -4 you're stable there...for a while, then if not tended further you'll start bleeding out again.

*On fixed-rate overnight healing:* Bad idea.  As someone already pointed out, any sort of fixed rate (e.g. Con bonus + level) is going to heal a wizard much faster than a fighter.  The answer is to base the heal rate on a flat percentage of your normal maximum, so everyone recovers at roughly the same rate.

Lanefan


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## The Little Raven (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> We've now shown contradictory pieces of Gygaxian prose from several different locations in the same book. At this point, Gygax has done more to confuse the issue than clear it up because he was wishy washy on a clear definition (see my comment way earlier in the thread about Mearls definition being the first clear one in the game's history).




Nothing contradicts. Hit points are an abstract representation of the combination (A) your ability to withstand physical damage, (B) the skill involved in avoiding serious physical damage, (C) protection from supernatural sources, and (D) luck. He then clarifies, several times, that withstanding physical damage itself is probably the smallest part of the abstraction that is hit points, because it's silly to assume that just by leveling up, a dude becomes more resistant to stabs in the heart.



> First, how on earth are you calculating Con 18 as only giving 2 HP per level? Con 18 would give HP per level, so you'll have to double all your Physical HP per level, and also incorporate all the initial HP from starting out (which always represent physical damage. At least, they do if you consider Gygax's prose about the 1st level fighter who dies after one hit.




I'm calculating it with the AD&D 1e Player's Handbook, which states on page 12 that only Fighters get a +3 or +4 bonus to hit points per level for Constitution, and all other classes get a +2 maximum.

If 2 hit points is physical damage, then one "real" hit is pretty likely to kill the fighter given the average damage values.



> Next, now you're going to argue percentages? Cool with me. At least you're willing to admit that some hits will be actual honest-to-god hits that do honest-to-god damage. That's a step in the right direction. that means that  ~30% of hit points for all the characters except the fighter (whose stats don't change) are actual physical damage.




ForeverSlayer claimed that 1e (Gygax) made the split between hit points being physical/metaphysical was a 50/50 split. So, I looked in the actual 1e books that Gygax wrote and found that this was not the case if you compile all of the information and break it down methodically and logically. He meanders and he's bad at organizing an instructive text, but all the information is there and it doesn't contradict anything.



> Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both *the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses*_(1)_ - and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which  warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, *constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)*_(2)_.




Here's my methodology:

Hit Points = Hit Die + Constitution modifier (fact)
_(1)_ tells us that your ability to actually withstand comes from your Constitution bonus since it explicitly interjects that it is indicated by the Constitution bonus, with no indicatition that it is represented by Hit Dice. (fact)
_(2)_ tells us that the bonus to hit points from Constitution is composed of both the ability to withstand physical damage and the ability to avoid physical damage through sixth sense/luck/so on. (fact)

None of that is contradictory in any way. And here are my assumptions based on those facts.

(A) Hit Dice are not mentioned as the ability to withstand physical damage when Constitution is explicitly mentioned because they do not represent that, they represent the skill/luck/divine protection/etc that hit points also represent. There is nothing else in the 1e books about Hit Dice that counter this assumption.

(B) Since Constitution bonus hit points are composed of 2 disparate elements, and for the majority of characters the maximum bonus they can get each time they gain hit points is 2, then each of those factors (physique and fitness) must be worth 1 hit point for those characters. If you wished, you could adjust the fighter's Constitution bonus to be weighted to one side or the other if you wished, but it's just as reasonable to assume they hold equal weight.

Thus, my conclusion: Constitution hit points are the sole source of physical damage hit points, but Constitution hit points are not exclusively physical damage hit points.


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## Mercutio01 (May 27, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> You'e demonstrated that you can cherry pick quotes from AD&D that are ambiguous.  You've given me nothing unambiguous from 1e.  There's a huge difference here.
> 
> 2e I'll grant is unambiguous.
> 
> ...



And then contradicted later on. Again, people argue this crap about religious texts all the time. They cherry pick the one rule that they say is clear as day and completely unambiguous, and ignore the rest. That's what you've done. Besides, if we're really going to be pedantic about it, use the hit points rules from OD&Dil, since that's where it actually all started. 1E was a modification from the original, which was in turn a modification from Chainmail. Let's leave Chainmail out since it's not a roleplaying game but rather a tabletop fantasy wargame. OD&D has 1 hit doing 1d6, and 1 level grants 1d6 hit points plus maybe a constitution modifier. Obviously the intent here was that hit points meant actual damage. The higher the roll on the damage dice, the more grievous the wound, the more likely the death of the character. It's clear and unambiguous. It only becomes ambiguous with 1E.

But since that doesn't fit the narrative, let's ignore it and pretend that the one cherry-picked quote which is never repeated in the book is the *onetrueway*.


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## Wiseblood (May 27, 2012)

I would prefer a more hard core approach within the rules as the default. 1/4 to 1/2 hit Dice per long rest. The returning of full HP would be fine by me. Changing it to easier or harder is fairly easy to suit the taste of a table.


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## The Little Raven (May 27, 2012)

Tovec said:


> WHICH IS NOT THE SAME.




So, your argument is that turning a sword thrust to the chest into a graze is not an example of turning a serious blow into a less serious blow.


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## Neonchameleon (May 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> And then contradicted later on.




You keep saying this.  You have yet to present one single clear and unambiguous contradiction - the closest you've got is hit point bonusses.



> Again, people argue this crap about religious texts all the time. They cherry pick the one rule that they say is clear as day and completely unambiguous, and ignore the rest.




Look in a mirror.  And one of the reasons there's such arguments about religious texts is that most of them have a multitude of authors.  1e has a pretty clear authorial voice.  



> That's what you've done. Besides, if we're really going to be pedantic about it, use the hit points rules from OD&Dil, since that's where it actually all started. 1E was a modification from the original, which was in turn a modification from Chainmail. Let's leave Chainmail out since it's not a roleplaying game but rather a tabletop fantasy wargame. OD&D has 1 hit doing 1d6, and 1 level grants 1d6 hit points plus maybe a constitution modifier. Obviously the intent here was that hit points meant actual damage. The higher the roll on the damage dice, the more grievous the wound, the more likely the death of the character. It's clear and unambiguous. It only becomes ambiguous with 1E.




Don't give me your paraphrase.  Give me the text please.  And I'd say it becomes _unambiguous_ with 1e.  Everything is consistent with the idea that hit points are the way Gygax described them.



> But since that doesn't fit the narrative, let's ignore it and pretend that the one cherry-picked quote which is never repeated in the book is the *onetrueway*.




As you have precisely _no_ cherry picked texts that hold up your end - all of them being utterly ambiguous, and there being a clear authoral voice to AD&D, I think there is one true way that the one mind produced.  And that others later disagreed with.  I believe that a common house rule in 1e got made the official rule in 2e.

I'm not saying that the 1e rules are the one true way.  I'm saying that the 1e rulebook says what it does and isn't self-contradictory.  It's occasionally ambiguous - but even people who are clear in their own minds can be ambiguous in speech some times and clear that up in other places.


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## darjr (May 27, 2012)

I think I've had an epiphany. I don't like the overnight full hp healing. But I think my issue with it is more fundamental than the specific mechanic or what HP represent. It goes to how D&D is expected to be played by WotC designers.

I want to have games without a cleric required, but I don't want mechanics to replace that cleric, I want to play games in a different way than if the party had a cleric or lots of mundane overnight healing.

I want to, sometimes, play a game of nothing but rogues instead of a balanced party BECAUSE I want to play that game differently than I would in a balanced party with a cleric or it's standin healing mechanic. I want adventures that support that flexibility and a game that does, not one that goes out of it's way to support that balanced party style of play.

In AD&D if you had a party of rogues those players played B2 differently than players of a balanced party. I think that WotC is still stuck with an idea of how people should play, and that play style requires either a cleric or this overnight healing mechanic. And that isn't what I want. It's part of the issue I had with 4e and early wotc 4e adventures. It was fun, but eventually not satisfying.


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## Tovec (May 27, 2012)

The Little Raven said:


> So, your argument is that turning a sword thrust to the chest into a graze is not an example of turning a serious blow into a less serious blow.




I gave the best comparison I could using your examples, if you still don't understand my meaning I suggest we just drop it.


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## Walking Dad (May 27, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> ...
> 
> And yes, in my game people are not always at the peak of health when they set off in the morning.



Which system/edition? In most, your healer isn't doing his job right. Or is "not always" the same as "rarely"?



> ================
> And on a few other topics...
> ================
> 
> *On any healing when below 0 auto-getting you up to 0:* No.  It should stabilize you, yes; but at whatever h.p. amount the spell or effect leaves you at.  So if the cure gets you up to -4 you're stable there...for a while, then if not tended further you'll start bleeding out again.



??? don't understand your need to make healed characters unstable again? The first preference depend on your definition and use of HP (the time until the character expires or really blood lost and wounds continuing to open.



> *On fixed-rate overnight healing:* Bad idea.  As someone already pointed out, any sort of fixed rate (e.g. Con bonus + level) is going to heal a wizard much faster than a fighter.  The answer is to base the heal rate on a flat percentage of your normal maximum, so everyone recovers at roughly the same rate.
> 
> Lanefan



How is a fixed healing time based on con and HD heal the wizard faster? Because he took less damage???


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## nnms (May 27, 2012)

Stalker0 said:


> One thing I haven't heard anyone mention is that the kept the 4e rule that any healing from negatives immediately puts you to 0 hp.
> 
> How do people generally feel about that rule?




I'm fine when it's magic, because magic can do whatever.

I'm not fine when it's not magical.  I don't like a warlord shouting "It's not so bad!" and then having to retroactively re-narrate the injury that caused the dying in the first place into one that actually wasn't that bad.


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## Walking Dad (May 27, 2012)

nnms said:


> I'm fine when it's magic, because magic can do whatever.
> 
> ...



This is my most hated sentence in all D&D discussions...
It is the excuse to not limit the power of magic, instead as the freedom to lower its power to achieve a balance between magical and non-magical characters. (I like gaming balance in games. Never destroyed the fun for me, made anyone a worse DM or reduced the role-playing possibilities.)


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## nnms (May 27, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> This is my most hated sentence in all D&D discussions...
> It is the excuse to not limit the power of magic, instead as the freedom to lower its power to achieve a balance between magical and non-magical characters. (I like gaming balance in games. Never destroyed the fun for me, made anyone a worse DM or reduced the role-playing possibilities.)




That's *not at all* what I'm talking about.  You're totally reading things into what I am posting.

All I am saying is that given that magic is a bending of reality, I can accept a reality bent by magic where any wound is healed by a given spell (perhaps cure light wounds) from -10 or -5 or 0 back to 7 HP.  I am not saying that magic healing should be unlimited power.

When it's a warlord using inspiring word and saying "it's not so bad! get up!" then I better not have described the attack that caused the dying state because it just got changed to "it's not so bad."

See what I'm getting at?


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## Walking Dad (May 27, 2012)

Then stop describing you dying all the time 

seriously, I can see your problem, but it isn't big enough for me to sacrifice play balance for it. Differing priorities.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 27, 2012)

nnms said:


> That's *not at all* what I'm talking about.  You're totally reading things into what I am posting.
> 
> All I am saying is that given that magic is a bending of reality, I can accept a reality bent by magic where any wound is healed by a given spell (perhaps cure light wounds) from -10 or -5 or 0 back to 7 HP.  I am not saying that magic healing should be unlimited power.
> 
> ...




I understand completely! In 4th edition you actually needed to wait and describe how you went down until after you were either healed by the cleric or told to walk it off by the warlord. I sure as hell don't want that now.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 27, 2012)

Here is a way I think it should be handled. 

I think everyone should have some sort of medical training or a PC can take a background to have this sort of training. By taking a standard action, they can help bandage or apply a non magical salve or potion to help the person regain a certain amount of HP during the fight. Now of course these methods shouldn't ever give you more healing than with magic. Make these non magic items of healing a part of the standard adventuring gear. I love this type of resource management, especially when it comes to equipment. 

I like the idea of having to actually prepare to go out on an adventure. I don't like having everything built in.


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## Lanefan (May 27, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Which system/edition? In most, your healer isn't doing his job right. Or is "not always" the same as "rarely"?



It's a modified 1e system.  And the healers do what they can, but sometimes one of two factors rears its head: a) the healers don't have enough spells to get everyone all the way up to full, and-or b) one or more people in the party have recently been too badly hurt to be able to take cures for a while, above a fairly low threshold.

To explain: we use a body point-fatigue point system, and if you've recently been below 0 h.p. you cannot usually be cured above full b.p. (most people have 3-5 b.p., and f.p. are what you get as you level up) until some time has passed; the length of time depends on how far down you went and what was used to cure you.



> ??? don't understand your need to make healed characters unstable again? The first preference depend on your definition and use of HP (the time until the character expires or really blood lost and wounds continuing to open.



I think we all agree that below 0 is real actual damage, injury, etc. that will eventually be fatal if not treated.  Patching someone up from -8 to -4 does not fully count as "treated", and said victim will still eventually die if not further helped out; only it'll take longer due to temporary stabilizing caused by the patching up.

0 h.p. is the tipping point.  Above 0, you'll eventually recover on your own given enough time.  Below 0 you'll die on your own given enough time.  Right at 0 h.p. is saving throw territory.


> How is a fixed healing time based on con and HD heal the wizard faster? Because he took less damage???



I didn't say Con bonus and HD, I said Con bonus and level; and was referring to any other system as well where the amount recovered overnight is a flat number.

To clarify:

Wizard and Fighter are both 5th level.  They have the same Con bonus; let's say +1.  So, each will rest back 6 h.p. per night.  If no other healing is available, this happens:

Wizard goes to sleep at 7 h.p. out of 15.
Fighter goes to sleep at 18 h.p. out of 40.

Wizard wakes up at 13 of 15, pretty close to full.
Fighter wakes up at 24 of 40, still a fair way from peak condition.

After a second night the wizard will be fine while the fighter will still only be at 75%.  Any time they both lose the same fraction of their h.p. (both are at 1/2, both are at 1/4, etc.) the wizard will always recover faster; and this doesn't make sense.

BUT if you use a percentage of full h.p. as the heal rate instead, watch what happens:

Let's set the heal rate dial at 20%.  So, in the above example the wizard will get back 3 h.p. per night and the fighter will get 8; so after 3 rests they'll both be just nicely to full.  They rest up at the same rate relative to each other and relative to how many h.p. they were short as a fraction of their maximum and - assuming no other interference either good or ill - will recover to full h.p. in the same amount of time*.  If most h.p. are defined as something other than debilitating injury it only makes sense they'd be recovered at about the same relative rate by all involved.

* - or very close, depending on math-y things like rounding error.

Lanefan


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## nnms (May 27, 2012)

ForeverSlayer said:


> I understand completely! In 4th edition you actually needed to wait and describe how you went down until after you were either healed by the cleric or told to walk it off by the warlord. I sure as hell don't want that now.




Me neither.  In 4E, you really should avoid describing any hit of any kind in narrative terms because you don't know when a non-magical effect will undo your description and replace it with a "it wasn't so bad after all" retcon.



Walking Dad said:


> Then stop describing you dying all the time




I'm fairly certain "dying" is a game condition in 4E.  It's the game itself that produces the divorce between the rules and the fiction.



> seriously, I can see your problem, but it isn't big enough for me to sacrifice play balance for it. Differing priorities.




I don't think it's necessarily true that you need to sacrifice play balance to have consistent description in the game.  I think that's a false dichotomy.


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## Libramarian (May 27, 2012)

darjr said:


> I think I've had an epiphany. I don't like the overnight full hp healing. But I think my issue with it is more fundamental than the specific mechanic or what HP represent. It goes to how D&D is expected to be played by WotC designers.
> 
> I want to have games without a cleric required, but I don't want mechanics to replace that cleric, I want to play games in a different way than if the party had a cleric or lots of mundane overnight healing.
> 
> ...



Agree!

I think the WotC designers have this deeply ingrained notion that  the problem with D&D is the fun is too mercurial  and unreliable. So they try to quantize everything and design the system  to make sure it produces a "good D&D adventure". I think this is a mistake  because to me the important thing is how the adventure feels, rather  than how it "looks" (i.e. the transcript of events), and for the  adventure to feel right, the outcome has to be in doubt during play. The  more variety in how the adventure could turn out, the better. So for instance, I like the idea that the adventurers might not be able to save the princess tomorrow because their bodies just can't take the punishment. I like the idea of forcing them to choose between their own survival and saving the princess. That's awesome. Some people don't like that so they want the game system to make it impossible. I really think it's easier to houserule in the direction of making things easier for the players than harder though. The default game should skew hard, and then tell the DM to adjust to taste, not skew easy and tell the DM to make it hard. Too bad the designers don't see it that way.


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## Fifth Element (May 27, 2012)

darjr said:


> I think that WotC is still stuck with an idea of how people should play, and that play style requires either a cleric or this overnight healing mechanic.



How they "should" play, or how most groups do play most of the time? If it's the latter, I can't see it as a problem. And I'm not cynical enough to believe the first.



Libramarian said:


> I really think it's easier to houserule in the direction of making things easier for the players than harder though.



I don't think this makes any sense at all. It should be equally difficult/hard in either direction. For simplicity, say you have a set of easy rules and a set of hard rules. If the game is hard by default, the easy rules are the house rules. If the game is easy by default, the hard rules are the house rules. Why is switching from one to the other more difficult based on which direction you're going.


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## Mercutio01 (May 27, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> If the game is hard by default, the easy rules are the house rules. If the game is easy by default, the hard rules are the house rules. Why is switching from one to the other more difficult based on which direction you're going.




Provided that the math works and is easy to change on the fly by the DM, it should be fine in either direction, but that first part is the tricky piece of the puzzle.


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## Lanefan (May 27, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> If the game is hard by default, the easy rules are the house rules. If the game is easy by default, the hard rules are the house rules. Why is switching from one to the other more difficult based on which direction you're going.



Simple: with very rare exceptions the path of least resistance is to make things easier.

The DM has to put up with more direct resistance than the designers, thus I'd like the designers to tighten the dials all the way up and then tell us DMs how to loosen them off, and what the outcome might be from doing so.

Lanefan


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## Rogue Agent (May 27, 2012)

Kzach said:


> I feel that those who oppose the mechanic don't agree with the statements made about injury and the goals of the injury system.




I think it's important to understand that there are actually three separate issues people have with "long rest = everything gets reset". Thinking of them as _separate_ (albeit related) issues is crucial for productive discussion. Otherwise you just end up talking past each other.

(1) Hit point loss represents wounds. Serious wounds should not just automatically vanish overnight. Ergo, a complete hit point reset from a long rest doesn't make sense.

(2) In terms of game design, the "long rest = everything gets reset" encourages the My Precious Encounter(TM) method of adventure design, focusing the game exclusively on tactical-level play instead of a balance between tactical and strategic play.

(3) If the system doesn't feature automatic "long rest = everything gets reset", you can still achieve that by simply increasing the amount of healing resources available to the PCs. But if the system does feature automatic "long rest = everything gets reset", then the only way to fix it is to rewrite the actual rules.

For me, it's the last one that seals the deal: If you go with the balance found in pre-2008 versions of D&D, everybody can play the way they want to _without changing the rules_. If you go with the system you want, lots of people can only play the way they want by rewriting the rules.

It should be pretty much a no-brainer to figure out which one should be the published default.



ForeverSlayer said:


> I understand completely! In 4th edition you  actually needed to wait and describe how you went down until after you  were either healed by the cleric or told to walk it off by the warlord. I  sure as hell don't want that now.




Yup. It prevents you from roleplaying and forces you to only interact with the game mechanics.

Once you've used the mechanics, of course, you can improvise a little story about what the mechanics meant. But that's not the same thing.


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## nnms (May 27, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Simple: with very rare exceptions the path of least resistance is to make things easier.




Definitely.  

If you house rule too far in the "easier" direction, play continues and you revisit the house rules for future sessions.

If you house rule too far in the "harder" direction, you risk character death rates being super higher and TPKs beyond what you intended.  Play then stops or resets unless you do a heavy retcon.


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## SSquirrel (May 28, 2012)

Note, I read thru the first page of 6 (possibly more since I pulled this page up earlier tonite) and I'm just commenting around the general posts we're seeing.

Since when do we play a game of casting spells and killing dragons to be realistic?   Your fighter took an arrow in the knee, so now he can't rescue that princess.  Guess she's being fed to the dragon after all.  You all only had 2 days to do it and he'll need 2 days under the cleric's care w/no combat, more if you all get jumped by that band of trolls that has been spotted in the area.  You may as well try to get out of the kingdom now before the king finds out his daughter is doomed.

Somehow that seems a lot less fun to me.  I'm all in favor of the 4E way of doing health.  I don't want to sweat what I consider the small stuff, I want my friends and I to be about the business of doing our adventures, saving whoever needs to be saved, killing the giants, assaulting the tower of the wizard, whatever.  Oh yeah, I also fail to see how magic missile as an at will breaks the game, but that is a different thread.   I'm definitely in favor of a wizard spending his day casting magic and not hunkering down w/a freaking crossbow.  This expanded cantrip selection paired w/Vancian is different, but I haven't gotten to try it yet.  Still trying to put a new group together heh.  Have to see how it plays.  I'm one of the Anti-Vancian people, but giving me some actually useful things to do outside of the Vancian system I might be ok.

No I'm not new to the game, so 4E is not my only experience.  Basic on up for 24 years or so now.


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## Lanefan (May 28, 2012)

SSquirrel said:


> Your fighter took an arrow in the knee, so now he can't rescue that princess.  Guess she's being fed to the dragon after all.  You all only had 2 days to do it and he'll need 2 days under the cleric's care w/no combat, more if you all get jumped by that band of trolls that has been spotted in the area.  You may as well try to get out of the kingdom now before the king finds out his daughter is doomed.



That sounds like the start point of a grand campaign!   In fact, why not start right there - your first mission is not to rescue the princess but to get out of the kingdom before Important People realize you've already failed.

And to add to the fun your fighter's knee is a mess and will be until she can spend a few consecutive days not standing or walking or running on it...

Lan-"if I was starting a campaign right now I might just use this straight up"-efan


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## Walking Dad (May 28, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> That sounds like the start point of a grand campaign!   In fact, why not start right there - your first mission is not to rescue the princess but to get out of the kingdom before Important People realize you've already failed.
> 
> And to add to the fun your fighter's knee is a mess and will be until she can spend a few consecutive days not standing or walking or running on it...
> 
> Lan-"if I was starting a campaign right now I might just use this straight up"-efan



Not everyone wants to tell the same stories.

---

To the old hands around, was there often a time limit in the old adventures that use a system with a very slow recuperation time? Or were they most static/location based?


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## Stormonu (May 28, 2012)

I'd be fine if the base rules were "heal all HP overnight", but there were modules for extended injuries and options for reducing the amount of healing so that it might take a few days or weeks to get back to full health.

Basically, don't force everyone into Hard mode, but give the option to do so.


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## IronWolf (May 28, 2012)

SSquirrel said:


> Since when do we play a game of casting spells and killing dragons to be realistic?   Your fighter took an arrow in the knee, so now he can't rescue that princess.  Guess she's being fed to the dragon after all.  You all only had 2 days to do it and he'll need 2 days under the cleric's care w/no combat, more if you all get jumped by that band of trolls that has been spotted in the area.  You may as well try to get out of the kingdom now before the king finds out his daughter is doomed.




Some of us would prefer that there be some risk and the chance that we *not* succeed at our goal. I don't want saving the princess to be automatic, or killing all the giants to be a given or guaranteed success at assaulting the wizard's tower. I think those of us in that camp tend to dislike the heal all your hit points in one night approach.

If these are givens then there really isn't a need to do any real planning or even play out the encounters if I know I am going to succeed.



Walking Dad said:


> Not everyone wants to tell the same stories.




Agreed. Luckily for us they can easily handle this sticking point through a module. They can either leave it as written and then provide a "hard" mode through a module or they can tweak it to a compromise between the two under the default assumption and turn the dials up or down through another module. 

Several ways to handle it through the turning of dials. This seems one of the slightly easier ones address through the turning of the dials.


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## synthapse (May 28, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Not everyone wants to tell the same stories.





     This is key, but it's not just that, either-- not everyone wants to tell the same stories all the time.

     If I'm running an Eberron game, I want the HP system to run much like the playtest presents them.  If I'm running Dark Sun, I want tougher HP rules--and probably a starvation/dehydration module as well.  I strongly subscribe to the concept of different D&D for different people that 5E looks to support, largely because I want some variations between my own campaigns.

     For me, D&D has always been able to have a fluidity to the design, albeit often using varying quantities of houserules.  I am happy with the HP system as shown in the playtest, largely because I can see how easily it can be adjusted and modified to suit my taste for a particular game.


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## Walking Dad (May 28, 2012)

Very insightful.

I think the question should be:

*Is the HP system shown in the playtest a good system for adventures like the playtest* (dungeon hack / exploration), not your favorite campaign/type of adventure.
If it is a "yes" and this kind of adventure is the "core experience" for D&D, this should be the base/core rule, with other options presented with modules.

Like a gritty "my knee still hurts, is the princess already dead?" setting Lanefan described. But IMHO, I think the former is the more "base" experience and the later a (not worse or wrong) variant.


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## synthapse (May 28, 2012)

My experience is similar, but from the posts and polls on these forums, I feel that I may be in the minority.  

But if most people want less healing from a long rest, but system keeps the same structure (HD, short rest, long rest), I feel that I can play the game just as I want with little-to-no work.

Which makes me happy.


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## Neonchameleon (May 28, 2012)

synthapse said:


> My experience is similar, but from the posts and polls on these forums, I feel that I may be in the minority.
> 
> But if most people want less healing from a long rest, but system keeps the same structure (HD, short rest, long rest), I feel that I can play the game just as I want with little-to-no work.
> 
> Which makes me happy.



I don't want less healing from long rests.  I want long rests _further apart_.  At least whenever I run.


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## synthapse (May 28, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I don't want less healing from long rests.  I want long rests _further apart_.  At least whenever I run.




I guess I was thinking that returning a fraction of HP over a long rest would result in the same thing, but I think your solution may be more elegant-- simply allow a rules module to dictate the time of the long rest-- a day, a week, an hour, a month, or whatever.

But if spell recharging is still based on a day's time, then PC's should get something back for resting all night-- maybe just HD, or a fraction of HD, or something.


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## Zustiur (May 28, 2012)

triqui said:


> The question is not how much time will take for the PC to heal. They'll heal in one night. Either with mundane insta-healing, or using a cheap Cure Light Wounds Wand, depending on the edition..



 Here's hoping for slow-ish non-magical healing, with no craftable wands of healing.

Seriously though; play style is the key thing here.

Do you want to continue day after day in your high paced adventures, or do you want the injuries you sustain in your day to actually mean something?

It's much like the difference between starting as nobodies and starting as heroes. Do you have 1-10 HP and purely rolled stats, or 20+ HP and points buy?

I seem to recall reading both "fighting-man had d6 HP" and "don't bother giving your character a name until you reach 4th level" in discussions around original DND. Neither of those statements strike me as 'the characters are better than the common man'. Yet both statements do more to reflect the style of game that I run than the idea of having 20+ HP at 1st level and healing everything overnight do. 

On the other hand, I can totally see how the 4E-esk CONvalue+HD and Heal to full HP overnight thing can be fun.

In conclusion; I don't think there's really a right and wrong option here. I think it's more a case of, what options should be available, and which one is the default? I'd argue for something in the middle being the default, rather than one extreme or the other.


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## Walking Dad (May 28, 2012)

Zustiur said:


> ...
> 
> In conclusion; I don't think there's really a right and wrong option here. I think it's more a case of, what options should be available, and which one is the default? I'd argue for something in the middle being the default, rather than one extreme or the other.



I would argue the one working with the sample/first adventure as core and the other as options. The new players should enjoy their first voyage into adventure, regardless of preferred playstyles of old hands.


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## NotAYakk (May 28, 2012)

Rather than slow recovery of HP, have slow recovery of HD.  And pace spells to be recovered at the same pace.

*Long Rest*: After each long rest (no more than once per day), you can recover spells and hit dice.  To recover a hit die, make a constitution check with a bonus equal to a roll of the hit die in question against DC 20.  If you succeed at that check, you may attempt to recover another hit die.  If you fail, you may no longer attempt to recover hit dice this long rest.

(so an 8 con wizard rolls 1d20+1d4-1 against DC 20.  A 14 con fighter rolls 1d20+1d12+2 vs DC 20.  So a fighter has a DC ~14 using a secondary attribute to recover a hit die.)

If you are in a comfortable situation (an inn or better), you have advantage on this check.  If you are in a horrible situation (resting without shelter in a dank swamp), you have disadvantage on this check.

You may choose to expend a HD to gain HP and attempt to recover it immediately during your long rest.

To recover a spell slot, make your spellcasting attribute check against DC 15 plus the spells' level.  If you succeed, you can continue trying to recover spells until you fail.

If you have access to a good location to recover your spells (ie: a church to your god for a priest, or an arcane library or laboratory for a wizard), you have advantage on this check.  If you are in a horrible situation (resting without shelter in a dank swap), you have disadvantage on this check.

---

Probably too complex.  But I wanted high HD to be an advantage when you want to recover them...


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## Neonchameleon (May 28, 2012)

synthapse said:


> But if spell recharging is still based on a day's time, then PC's should get something back for resting all night-- maybe just HD, or a fraction of HD, or something.




That's part of the point.  It _isn't_ still based on a day's time.  Spell recharging is tied to the long rest with the recovery of hit points - a useful balancing method.  Which kills the 15 minute adventuring day stone cold dead IME - and forces people to be much more cautious about using up spells even at higher levels.  Otheriwse a 5th level wizard can cast more magic per day than Gandalf did in the whole LoTR.  And the wizard using a lab or tower to prepare spells is iconic and useful.  While the cleric and paladin go to the temple.


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## SSquirrel (May 28, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> That sounds like the start point of a grand campaign!
> 
> Lan-"if I was starting a campaign right now I might just use this straight up"-efan





Heh, I'm glad my failure of the quest became an idea you would like to run with.  Feel free to, just drop me a line and let me know how it goes heh.




IronWolf said:


> Some of us would prefer that there be some risk and the chance that we *not* succeed at our goal. I don't want saving the princess to be automatic, or killing all the giants to be a given or guaranteed success at assaulting the wizard's tower. I think those of us in that camp tend to dislike the heal all your hit points in one night approach.
> 
> If these are givens then there really isn't a need to do any real planning or even play out the encounters if I know I am going to succeed.




What did I say that makes any of it a given?  Have you seen how poorly I roll?!   There are still plenty of things that can go wrong and keep us from our goal.  It IS still possible for players to die in 4E.  I've seen TPKs.  I like games where the players feel like badasses a good chunk of the time.  I hated in 3E how my wizard would cast his few spells then have to sit back w/a crossbow and contribute very poorly to combat.  

Sometimes the adventure means they will be at the last encounter for the princess at the end of their day and if they have had to use more of their dailies already, it will certainly be a tougher fight for them.  If they were judicious in using those, things may go more smoothly for them.  




Walking Dad said:


> Like a gritty "my knee still hurts, is the princess already dead?" setting Lanefan described. But IMHO, I think the former is the more "base" experience and the later a (not worse or wrong) variant.




I described it, Lanefan expounded on it heh.


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## Tovec (May 28, 2012)

SSquirrel said:


> What did I say that makes any of it a given?  Have you seen how poorly I roll?!   There are still plenty of things that can go wrong and keep us from our goal.  It IS still possible for players to die in 4E.  I've seen TPKs.  I like games where the players feel like badasses a good chunk of the time.  I hated in 3E how my wizard would cast his few spells then have to sit back w/a crossbow and contribute very poorly to combat.
> 
> Sometimes the adventure means they will be at the last encounter for the princess at the end of their day and if they have had to use more of their dailies already, it will certainly be a tougher fight for them.  If they were judicious in using those, things may go more smoothly for them.




I have wildly different opinions compared to you but I respect your preference and won't fight it but...

How often were PCs killed, not just dropped to negatives, when it WASN'T a TPK? Similarly, how often were they dropped to negatives and not killed?


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## IronWolf (May 28, 2012)

SSquirrel said:


> What did I say that makes any of it a given?  Have you seen how poorly I roll?!   There are still plenty of things that can go wrong and keep us from our goal.  It IS still possible for players to die in 4E.  I've seen TPKs.  I like games where the players feel like badasses a good chunk of the time.  I hated in 3E how my wizard would cast his few spells then have to sit back w/a crossbow and contribute very poorly to combat.




Cool - Your last sentences just confirm we have different play styles. There isn't anything wrong with that! Hopefully the module system in D&D Next will be able to accommodate both of our play styles.


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## Tortoise (May 28, 2012)

Brix said:


> Actually I like the system. Nothing is more ennerving than a weeks rest period in a time critical adventure.
> QUOTE]
> 
> Food for thought: In a time critical adventure the pressure is on and the risks mount. There are decisions to be made. Are they pressing on despite the added risk of fatalities? Can they and will they hire or negotiate for assistance? Could a portion of the team make a strike at some part of the enemy infrastructure or supplies that will slow the roll toward trouble?
> ...


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## Lanefan (May 28, 2012)

Walking Dad said:


> Not everyone wants to tell the same stories.



Just like not everyone wants to run in the same setting or under the same rule-set, which is why this discussion even exists. 


> To the old hands around, was there often a time limit in the old adventures that use a system with a very slow recuperation time? Or were they most static/location based?



Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both, occasionally neither; all completely dependent on both the adventure module itself and-or how it was presented by each specific DM.

For example, take G1 Steading of the Hill Giants.  As written it's pretty much location-based; it might repopulate if you take too long but otherwise there's no preset time limit, and a party could keep nibbling at the edges for months if they so desired.  But to suit her story a DM might throw a princess in there, captured by raiders and given to the giants for safekeeping; and if the ransom isn't paid in 5 days the giants get a pretty snack...so now there's a hard time limit.

One of the strong points of those old adventures is in fact this variability: you can wrap any story you want around them.  I find newer adventures always seem to take more effort to run in any situation other than what the writer had in mind, mostly because they come with more story and setting baggage.  Pathfinder adventures, while otherwise often very good, are generally the worst for this.

Lanefan


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## synthapse (May 28, 2012)

Tovec said:


> How often were PCs killed, not just dropped to negatives, when it WASN'T a TPK? Similarly, how often were they dropped to negatives and not killed?




If you're looking for general feedback, I can share my personal experiences as well.

I ran 4E for a total of almost two years.  In that time, I killed 6 PCs, never with a TPK.  In every fight that mattered, at least one player was drinking from the Cup of Negative Hit Points, and in the best fights there would be two or more PCs in the dirt.

I ran 3E for almost the same amount of time, during which time I killed 3 PCs total, all in a 3 party TPK (during which time I greatly overestimated the party's ability to deal with a mind flayer and a life-leech otyugh).  I don't know how often I dropped PCs to negatives, but it wasn't often.

These results are hardly conclusive-- I'm not the kind of DM that enjoys killing player characters, as it tends to screw up my plots.  And in my 4E campaign, 5 of the 6 PC deaths came before 3rd level in a Dark Sun game, which tend to be nastier.

Due to great fortune, I was able to participate in the Friends and Family playtest, in which time I ran 4 sessions and killed 2 PCs, though one was killed due to spectacular levels of bad luck-- 3 consecutive natural 1s rolled on death saves, and taking 6, 6, and 5 points of damage with each failed save. 

I don't know if that helps your argument or not, but there ya go.


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## Walking Dad (May 28, 2012)

Tovec said:


> I have wildly different opinions compared to you but I respect your preference and won't fight it but...
> 
> How often were PCs killed, not just dropped to negatives, when it WASN'T a TPK? Similarly, how often were they dropped to negatives and not killed?



I play PbP and PbP Living Worlds/Organized Pay, and I have to say this varies more dramatically with the DM than the system in 3e & 4e. One ran a 4e at least 1 PC seemed to die at each encounter, but there was never a TPK. At least two others dropped into negatives but made it.


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## SSquirrel (May 29, 2012)

Tovec said:


> I have wildly different opinions compared to you but I respect your preference and won't fight it but...
> 
> How often were PCs killed, not just dropped to negatives, when it WASN'T a TPK? Similarly, how often were they dropped to negatives and not killed?






IronWolf said:


> Cool - Your last sentences just confirm we have different play styles. There isn't anything wrong with that! Hopefully the module system in D&D Next will be able to accommodate both of our play styles.





Yep I'm probably unlikely to agree on things w/either of you and that's all right. 

As far as PCs killed, the Dark Sun game I was in saw a few characters die over the course of a year and we probably had someone below zero nearly every adventure.  Some weeks it would be at least once per encounter.  I agree w/Walking Dad tho, it is something that will vary drastically between DMs and the kind of adventures they tend to run.

The game I played in where we were doing Revenge of the Giants, I don't think we ever had any deaths, but we certainly had many temporary dirt naps.  Sometimes it was even our Cleric heh.


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## Libramarian (May 31, 2012)

Fifth Element said:


> I don't think this makes any sense at all. It should be equally difficult/hard in either direction. For simplicity, say you have a set of easy rules and a set of hard rules. If the game is hard by default, the easy rules are the house rules. If the game is easy by default, the hard rules are the house rules. Why is switching from one to the other more difficult based on which direction you're going.



Houseruling from easy to hard sets the DM up as the bad guy and encourages rules lawyering and suspicion from the players. If you have an inherently hardass game, then the DM can challenge the players without slipping into an antagonistic role.


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## nnms (Jun 2, 2012)

Libramarian said:


> Houseruling from easy to hard sets the DM up as the bad guy and encourages rules lawyering and suspicion from the players. If you have an inherently hardass game, then the DM can challenge the players without slipping into an antagonistic role.




This is an excellent point.  I ran 4E on hard mode for a couple of years and while the regular group members were fine with it, when a new person who liked 4E came to join the game, I was told I wasn't being fair.


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## underfoot007ct (Jun 2, 2012)

Rogue Agent said:


> I think it's important to understand that there are actually three separate issues people have with "long rest = everything gets reset". Thinking of them as _separate_ (albeit related) issues is crucial for productive discussion. Otherwise you just end up talking past each other.
> 
> (1) Hit point loss represents wounds. Serious wounds should not just automatically vanish overnight. Ergo, a complete hit point reset from a long rest doesn't make sense.




So lets make sense then, if a serious wound would not heal in a single nights rest, then a week bed rest wouldn't make serious wound vanish either. A broken bone or stab to the chest needs much more than simple bed rest. You would need hospitalization, maybe for weeks. Without moderm care, infections would probably kill you. Then maybe weeks before you can adventure again. 

I have no interest in a RL simulations, but rather a FANTASY game. A fast, FUN, not bloated with loads healing rules. There ALWAYS going to be trade off between playability VS realism. 

So just how much realism & sense do we include.


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## Tovec (Jun 2, 2012)

underfoot007ct said:


> So lets make sense then, if a serious wound would not heal in a single nights rest, then a week bed rest wouldn't make serious wound vanish either. A broken bone or stab to the chest needs much more than simple bed rest. You would need hospitalization, maybe for weeks. Without moderm care, infections would probably kill you. Then maybe weeks before you can adventure again.
> 
> I have no interest in a RL simulations, but rather a FANTASY game. A fast, FUN, not bloated with loads healing rules. There ALWAYS going to be trade off between playability VS realism.
> 
> So just how much realism & sense do we include.




You are right on all counts. Especially that infections would kill you. That is why amputations are so common until fairly recently.

But as far as your comments that this is fantasy and not reality: Well, I can't think of any fantasy depictions where people lose limbs or have broken bones that don't fix overnight.. except probably all of them. In fact the only time where everything DOES fix over night would probably 4th and 5th edition, or in games like them. I'm completely okay with giving accelerated or non-realistic healing. What I object to is the feeling that just because we are playing a game that all expectations at lethality and long term care go out the window. I find that totally unacceptable. If it takes months to fix bones I can accept it taking only a couple of weeks but I want that to be the baseline instead of all injuries healing overnight.

Even if we go with Mearl's idea that the top half of HP represent minor, almost invisible damages and the bottom half representing deeper or more noticeable damage then we should take those kinds of considerations into account when assigning healing to those wounds.

Again, if it takes 3-6 days for a simple cut to disappear then I can understand it taking 1-2 days in game. If it is internal damages, such as bruises - as suggested, then I would expect a fair bit longer time table. It shouldn't be that you go to sleep and suddenly get all better assuming you had 1 HP left.


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## VannATLC (Jun 2, 2012)

I posted in this in a different thread, but I will be taking on rules that mean every time you reach 0 or below, you lose 1/8 from your maximum HP, and 1HD from your maximum.
These can be restored at a rate of 1HD per day, with a full day of bed-rest (A Long Rest will bring you to your new maximums)

There are healing rituals which take 4 hours and about 100gp to restore those HD, instead.

This is a modification of what I did with 4E and Healing Surges.

I'm not interested in applying penalties other than the missing HP, as I believe they are an abstracted enough resource to cover most areas you'd suffer penalties in.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 3, 2012)

nnms said:


> Me neither.  In 4E, you really should avoid describing any hit of any kind in narrative terms because you don't know when a non-magical effect will undo your description and replace it with a "it wasn't so bad after all" retcon.




No.  You should in 4e describe hits in precisely the same way that Gygax tells you to in 1e.
Originally Posted by *AD&D 1e DMG, page 61* 
_Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical  - a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are  considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the  magical protections._​ This gets round the issue of PCs being made of armour plate as describing hits as good solid hits that smash into the PC as hard as an orc can leads to.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 4, 2012)

DMKastmaria said:


> The issue here, is that it cancels the ability to model being moderately to seriously wounded, while still conscious and capable of fighting.




... except that [the base rules of] D&D has never, in any version, modeled this.

PCs are either completely competent, or they're unconscious (or dead).  There's no in-between state; a fighter at 1 HP out of 100 fights just as well as a fighter at 99 HP out of 100.  He takes no penalties to his attack rolls, damage rolls, speed, skill checks, Armor Class, ability to use items, etc.

He is not, in any meaningful sense, suffering a "moderate to serious wound."

A serious wound - a broken arm, a cut major blood vessel, a concussion - should have some measurable in-game effect if you are going to claim that D&D is "modeling" it.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 4, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Why is "relying on magical healing" equate to "stronger non-magical healing"? What is the rationale there?




If the baseline (e.g., what most people are currently playing) is that most parties are at 100% of their normal max hit points all the time anyway (because potions and wands or clerical healing are plentiful, for instance), then by making D&D Next just skip the intermediate step and have players heal to full anyway makes sense and reduces book-keeping.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 4, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> If the baseline (e.g., what most people are currently playing) is that most parties are at 100% of their normal max hit points all the time anyway (because potions and wands or clerical healing are plentiful, for instance), then by making D&D Next just skip the intermediate step and have players heal to full anyway makes sense and reduces book-keeping.




Honestly, if that's the baseline, I'm glad I don't play with the baseline folks. Also, as I've noted before, those at least require some investment, and this does not.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 4, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Honestly, if that's the baseline, I'm glad I don't play with the baseline folks. Also, as I've noted before, those at least require some investment, and this does not.




Did you play 3.0 or 3.5?*

If so, and if your players were reasonably on the ball, that should've been the baseline.  Healing wands are cheap and plentiful, so there's no reason not to have a lot of them, and non-item-healing is pretty plentiful as well (with spontaneous cures, druids, and bards).

* As in, without house-ruling away the magic item availability rules.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 4, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
			
		

> If the baseline (e.g., what most people are currently playing) is that most parties are at 100% of their normal max hit points all the time anyway (because potions and wands or clerical healing are plentiful, for instance), then by making D&D Next just skip the intermediate step and have players heal to full anyway makes sense and reduces book-keeping.




For me, the question is: was that a desirable situation to begin with?

I don't think it was. I think HP should be a long-term resource, not a short-term resource. It evokes a survival feel a lot more viscerally.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 4, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> Did you play 3.0 or 3.5?*
> 
> If so, and if your players were reasonably on the ball, that should've been the baseline.  Healing wands are cheap and plentiful, so there's no reason not to have a lot of them, and non-item-healing is pretty plentiful as well (with spontaneous cures, druids, and bards).
> 
> * As in, without house-ruling away the magic item availability rules.



Sure, but there was never more than one wand of CLW or so, and the healing from characters burned into casting resources.

As far as magic item availability rules, since most of the games I ran were outside of metropolitan areas, it didn't really matter if they could by a wand in (insert major game city) since the characters didn't tend to be in those places. Random thorp on the edge of civilization, even following the rules limited the availability of such things as wands and potions, just didn't have them.

And, again, those used resources. It wasn't a simple magical nap.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 4, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Sure, but there was never more than one wand of CLW or so, and the healing from characters burned into casting resources.
> 
> As far as magic item availability rules, since most of the games I ran were outside of metropolitan areas, it didn't really matter if they could by a wand in (insert major game city) since the characters didn't tend to be in those places.




Then there's a good chance your players were not reasonably on the ball, or you were not using the actual magic item availability rules.

A wand of cure light wounds only costs 750gp (375 if you wanted to spend a feat to make it yourself), and that's available in any town of even moderate size.  It's also a vanishingly small percentage of the party's wealth past level 3 or so.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 4, 2012)

It's probably been said already several times but:

Rather than making hps do double-duty as both luck/skill/fate/endurance and actual physical injury, break them up.

No, I don't mean another track of hit points that are harder to get back or more lethal, like stat damage or vitality or whatever.  If an attack does 24 hps and if you're out of hps it does 24 something else damage, that's really still hit points with a different name.

I mean a separate, optional system for tracking serious wounds.  So, if you're critically hit or dropped to taken to a specific negative hp value, or hit while at 0 hp or fewer or whatever else seems like an appropriate trigger to indicate 'real' damage, you take a 'wound.'   A wound wouldn't be a generic number like hp damage, but a function of the attack that wounded you.  A spear would cause deep, bleeding wounds, a mace broken bones and concussions, a mummy's touch disease, etc...

Each sort of wound, maybe based on damage type and a saving throw, or a special quality of the attack, would have a 'track,' imposing penalties until it heals, or risking greater penalties or death if not healed, treated or if re-opened by exertion.

That would add grit and realism to games that want it, without having to have multiple hit point systems that whipsaw game balance and dictate campaign pacing.


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## RigaMortus2 (Jun 4, 2012)

Sneak Attack is defined as striking a vital spot, such as jugular vein for example.  If a Rogue deals Sneak Attack damage, but only deals 10% damage to targets HP, then did he really hit?  Is it real damage or "luck" damage?  If it is NOT real physical damage, then he should also not be applying Sneak Attck damage since he obviously didn't hit his target, let alone a vital spot.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 4, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> Then there's a good chance your players were not reasonably on the ball, or you were not using the actual magic item availability rules.



So, pray tell, explain to me how I'm playing D&D wrong, or they are? There's nothing in any of the three core books that says all magic items are available in all places. In fact, until you get to a "small town" (population 901-2000), nothing smaller can have even one wand of CLW, and a small town can literally only have one on hand, and that's assuming it's got nothing else to sell, or that they'd be willing to part with it. I'd say I was using the rules exactly as written (and intended).



Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> A wand of cure light wounds only costs 750gp (375 if you wanted to spend a feat to make it yourself)



Sure, they can make it themselves, provided they have the feat, a workshop, tools, time, and the expenditure of experience points. I've got no problems with that.

Again, it's not just taking a long nap and mysteriously healing all hit points. It takes active investment and the expenditure of resources.

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] made the point that Hit Points should be a long-term resource, and I agree completely. And the only way they should be healed is through the expenditure of resources that diminishes the ability to use those resources somewhere else.


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## aco175 (Jun 5, 2012)

I'm coming into this arguement late, I skipped several of the in between pages going back and forth about what HP's actually are.  

I'm in favor of a faster mechanic to gain HP.  The simplest is to gain everything in one night.  It gets people back to playing faster.  I guess that I also mean getting back to fighting faster, since that it around 1/2 of my game night.  

I tend to find it rather boring to track a lot of the mundane items unless there is a need.  Food, water, arrows I mean if there is no reason other than to have teh character remember to buy more when you are in town and to check if they are too encoumbered, meh.  Now if they all just excaped into the desert from prison, then this becomes important.

Healing is similar when all the characters start rolling saying things like 'Let's see, I'm 3rd level so I have 3 dice and the cleric gives me one heal each day.'  Roll, roll, roll.  'My guy's ready in 3 days.'  'Did anything happen?'  

I would be in favor of something that is easy with realism under ease of use.  All your HP, maybe 1/2 your HP.  If you got back only 1/2 maybe some characters would be up to full and some still woulded.  I gather they could spend their hit dice to go to full or mostly full, but have nothing for the rest of the day.  I wonder how many groups would just brush over this next day ond have eneryone up to full.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

aco175 said:


> I wonder how many groups would just brush over this next day ond have eneryone up to full.



I would guess, based on this thread and many others like it, that many groups would skip over that. My group is not one of those. For one thing, when the crap hits the fan and the game begins to hit stride, time is frequently of the essence and things need to get done before catastrophic results occur. I take it that a lot of games and gamers don't seem to use ticking clocks for scenarios, but I usually do and the gamers I play with generally do as well.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> There's nothing in any of the three core books that says all magic items are available in all places. In fact, until you get to a "small town" (population 901-2000), nothing smaller can have even one wand of CLW, and a small town can literally only have one on hand, and that's assuming it's got nothing else to sell, or that they'd be willing to part with it. I'd say I was using the rules exactly as written (and intended).




That's not the way the rule works.

Yes, you need a small town (901 people) to get a GP limit of 800gp, but that means that anything of 800gp or less in value is generally available.  To find the total number available, it's 1/2 the GP limit multiplied by 1/10 of the population.  For the smallest large town, that's:

(800 gp / 2) * (901 / 10) = 400gp * 90 = 36,000 gp worth of any individual item.

36,000gp / (750gp / 1 wand of CLW) = 48 wands of CLW available in-town

You may not like the rule (and many people don't, and change it), but by default, out-of-combat magical healing in 3.XE was cheap and plentiful past the first couple levels (e.g., the expected wealth of a 4th-level character is something like 6k gp, so a normal party of 5 could spend about 6-7% of their net worth on full-price wands of CLW and get 150 charges of healing, or roughly 825 hit points worth of healing, on average).

Wands of lesser vigor are, of course, even more efficient (the same price gets you 1,650 hit points worth of healing).



> Sure, they can make it themselves, provided they have the feat, a workshop, tools, time, and the expenditure of experience points. I've got no problems with that.




It takes a feat, 375gp, a couple XP, and a day.  That's really it.  But, again, that just makes the magical out-of-combat healing even more efficient - making their own is not required to achieve the cheap-and-plentiful nature of 3.XE.



> Again, it's not just taking a long nap and mysteriously healing all hit points. It takes active investment and the expenditure of resources.




But the point is that it's a _trivial_ amount of resources, in 3.XE.  And, yes, buying a wand of CLW means you can't spend that 375gp/750gp somewhere else and you'll eventually run out - but, again, that's a miniscule amount of the party's overall wealth past the introductory levels, and you can buy an awful lot of healing by default.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I would guess, based on this thread and many others like it, that many groups would skip over that. My group is not one of those. For one thing, when the crap hits the fan and the game begins to hit stride, time is frequently of the essence and things need to get done before catastrophic results occur. I take it that a lot of games and gamers don't seem to use ticking clocks for scenarios, but I usually do and the gamers I play with generally do as well.




It's not that you can't use ticking clocks - they're fantastic devices to keep the plot moving - but, rather, that having a ticking clock in the background _all-the-time_ turns it from tense to trite.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> That's not the way the rule works.
> 
> Yes, you need a small town (901 people) to get a GP limit of 800gp, but that means that anything of 800gp or less in value is generally available.  To find the total number available, it's 1/2 the GP limit multiplied by 1/10 of the population.  For the smallest large town, that's:
> 
> ...



Learn something new every day. That's never how I read that. I read that as gross income in the town for all people, not how many of each item could be there. I guess I've been playing it wrong since 3.5 was introduced.



> Wands of lesser vigor are, of course, even more efficient (the same price gets you 1,650 hit points worth of healing).



True, but that's because Lesser Vigor is a broken spell, and from a supplement.



> It takes a feat, 375gp, a couple XP, and a day.  That's really it.  But, again, that just makes the magical out-of-combat healing even more efficient - making their own is not required to achieve the cheap-and-plentiful nature of 3.XE.
> 
> But the point is that it's a _trivial_ amount of resources, in 3.XE.  And, yes, buying a wand of CLW means you can't spend that 375gp/750gp somewhere else and you'll eventually run out - but, again, that's a miniscule amount of the party's overall wealth past the introductory levels, and you can buy an awful lot of healing by default.



And by that point you can also produce a lot of magical healing by default anyway. My gripe is not, and has never been against magical healing (except maybe that it's too easy to find). It's magic. My gripe has always been against the idea that hit points never represent a solid hit, that damage never means actual damage, and that healing never means actual healing, at least if I'm to go by everyone who likes naps that that restore all hit points.

Obviously I just play D&D different from fans of 4E. I hate mundane healing, and I particularly hate the redefinition of "hit" "damage" and "healing" to means "near miss" "loss of luck" and "catch a breath." And if that means that even Gygax got it wrong with 1E, then so be it.

I think people have the opinion that when I narrate a *hit*, I always describe the *damage* as being some life-threatening or crippling injury. But that's not the case. It's usually something like "opened a small cut along a forearm" or "that's going to be black and blue for awhile." And every game of D&D I've ever run or played since I was a kid was run the same way. And thus, magical healing that eases the pain or closes the wound makes sense, but taking a nap or having someone shout at you does not.

I like the Hit Die mechanic that DDN has going. You have to use a healing kit (expend a resource) and take a short rest (at least 10 minutes) and patch up any wounds (fluff that matches the events). I don't like the instant restoration of hit points after camping for the night.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> It's not that you can't use ticking clocks - they're fantastic devices to keep the plot moving - but, rather, that having a ticking clock in the background _all-the-time_ turns it from tense to trite.



Well, there you're reading something that I didn't indicate. For times when there isn't a ticking clock, of course I handwave away days (or even weeks or months or years, as the case may be).


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> My gripe has always been against the idea that hit points never represent a solid hit, that damage never means actual damage, and that healing never means actual healing, at least if I'm to go by everyone who likes naps that that restore all hit points.
> ...
> I think people have the opinion that when I narrate a *hit*, I always describe the *damage*  as being some life-threatening or crippling injury. But that's not the  case. It's usually something like "opened a small cut along a forearm"  or "that's going to be black and blue for awhile."




Quoted to point out that we are describing _exactly the same thing_ in _exactly the same way_.  However I consider the pain, and the fatigue from damage to get less over time.  A five minute break and stopping to bandage your wounds and put ice on them will make them less serious than the immediate few seconds just after you picked them up.  The cuts will stop bleeding.



> I hate mundane healing, and I particularly hate the redefinition of "hit" "damage" and "healing" to means "near miss" "loss of luck" and "catch a breath." And if that means that even Gygax got it wrong with 1E, then so be it.



It also includes scratch, as yours does.  What those of us who don't like hits as damage are arguing against isn't this.  If a hit is a hit then you aren't playing it that way.  You are playing it as we are.

But if you hate mundane healing, why do you think that a cut that's both bandaged and clotted is as dangerous to the person with the cut as one freely bleeding while the user is moving harshly and keeping it open?  If endurance factors in to hit points, why can't you catch your breath?  Why are boxers stronger and harder to knock down coming out of the break between rounds than they are going in?  There's more mundane healing.



> And every game of D&D I've ever run or played since I was a kid was run the same way. And thus, magical healing that eases the pain or closes the wound makes sense, but taking a nap or having someone shout at you does not.



OK.  We're going to do an experiment.  I get to hit you in the face.  Hard.  You tell me how painful it is then.  And how painful it is five minutes later.  Given that I expect you to be fighting back tears immediately after the hit and to just find it really annoying five minutes later, I want to know exactly _why_ you think taking a nap doesn't make it less serious.



> I like the Hit Die mechanic that DDN has going. You have to use a healing kit (expend a resource) and take a short rest (at least 10 minutes) and patch up any wounds (fluff that matches the events). I don't like the instant restoration of hit points after camping for the night.



So come play 4e!  Your damage still remains after a short rest.  You have still expended healing surges, which measure the total amount of punishment you've suffered across the day.  You need to expend your own internal resources to heal up - which is what healing surges are all about.  Hit points are closer to a shock value.  The jab a boxer takes at the end of the round is more likely to knock him to the floor than the one at the start of the next round _even if they are the same strength_.  This is because his hit points have had time to heal (something you think doesn't happen) - and he's spent a healing surge to make this happen.

Hit dice are just healing surges with a new coat of paint and slightly lower numbers.

And as for instant restoration after a night's rest, I houserule that out in 4e myself.  It does however do one good thing - puts hit points and spells onto the same recharge mechanic.

Edit: And your playing 3.5 "wrong" probably makes it a better game.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Quoted to point out that we are describing _exactly the same thing_ in _exactly the same way_.  However I consider the pain, and the fatigue from damage to get less over time.  A five minute break and stopping to bandage your wounds and put ice on them will make them less serious than the immediate few seconds just after you picked them up.  The cuts will stop bleeding.
> 
> It also includes scratch, as yours does.  What those of us who don't like hits as damage are arguing against isn't this.  If a hit is a hit then you aren't playing it that way.  You are playing it as we are.



I'm glad to see we're reaching some sort of common ground. But cuts, while they will stop bleeding, won't go away for awhile. And they have a significant chance of opening again.



> But if you hate mundane healing, why do you think that a cut that's both bandaged and clotted is as dangerous to the person with the cut as one freely bleeding while the user is moving harshly and keeping it open?  If endurance factors in to hit points, why can't you catch your breath?  Why are boxers stronger and harder to knock down coming out of the break between rounds than they are going in?  There's more mundane healing.



Those are hit dice (or healing surges used outside of combat, if talking 4E). Those uses don't really bother me, unless they heal the character back to full. That same boxer does fight better after resting for a minute, but is still not fighting as hard as he was at the start of round one.



> OK.  We're going to do an experiment.  I get to hit you in the face.  Hard.  You tell me how painful it is then.  And how painful it is five minutes later.  Given that I expect you to be fighting back tears immediately after the hit and to just find it really annoying five minutes later, I want to know exactly _why_ you think taking a nap doesn't make it less serious.



Because tomorrow when I wake up, there's the significant chance that my head will still hurt. And if someone hits me again in the face, it's going to hurt worse than the hit I took from you the day before.



> So come play 4e!  Your damage still remains after a short rest.  You have still expended healing surges, which measure the total amount of punishment you've suffered across the day.  You need to expend your own internal resources to heal up - which is what healing surges are all about.  Hit points are closer to a shock value.  The jab a boxer takes at the end of the round is more likely to knock him to the floor than the one at the start of the next round _even if they are the same strength_.  This is because his hit points have had time to heal (something you think doesn't happen) - and he's spent a healing surge to make this happen.
> 
> Hit dice are just healing surges with a new coat of paint and slightly lower numbers.
> 
> ...



If hit points and healing surges were my only problems, I'd have been playing for a lot longer. I did play for a year. I am currently in a 4E PBP that's fun and interesting. I'm not a total 4E hater, but I will note that it feels significantly more like a wargame than the Pathfinder game I play in via PBP (but not more than the 3.5 XCrawl game I run as a PBP--but that' sby virtue of the setting).


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I'm glad to see we're reaching some sort of common ground. But cuts, while they will stop bleeding, won't go away for awhile. And they have a significant chance of opening again.
> 
> Those are hit dice (or healing surges used outside of combat, if talking 4E). Those uses don't really bother me, unless they heal the character back to full. That same boxer does fight better after resting for a minute, but is still not fighting as hard as he was at the start of round one.




That he isn't.  He's certainly healed.  But as for fighting as hard, put the roar of the crowd behind him and he will almost certainly fight harder.  Morale matters.  The Warlord plays with morale.

As for the chance of cuts opening again, I take the assumption that being unbattered is the anomoly for most people who follow the lifestyle of an adventurer.  It might be interesting to have the "fresh" condition that takes more than a few days to recover to and some care. 



> Because tomorrow when I wake up, there's the significant chance that my head will still hurt. And if someone hits me again in the face, it's going to hurt worse than the hit I took from you the day before.




So you've recovered some hit points but not all through overnight mundane healing   The only reason for all hit points being recovered overnight is to put the fighter onto the same recovery track as the wizard which, from a gamist perspective is IMO necessary.  Gygax de facto did it as well with a "no resting in the dungeon" rule enforced by wandering monsters showing up if you tried.  I'm happy to move the healing as long as the spell recovery goes with it.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> That he isn't.  He's certainly healed.  But as for fighting as hard, put the roar of the crowd behind him and he will almost certainly fight harder.  Morale matters.  The Warlord plays with morale.



Yeah, I don't buy that. He might hit harder (a la the barbarian's rage), but he's more likely to be knocked out in round 2 than in round 1. The punishment builds over time.




> The only reason for all hit points being recovered overnight is to put the fighter onto the same recovery track as the wizard which, from a gamist perspective is IMO necessary.



Yes, and I don't like that.



> Gygax de facto did it as well with a "no resting in the dungeon" rule enforced by wandering monsters showing up if you tried.  I'm happy to move the healing as long as the spell recovery goes with it.



Except that didn't really happen, at least not in the actual play of the game (and definitely not in any of the CRPGs ever put out!). I think this is one point we just won't come to an agreement on. I see that you like it from a gamist perspective. I suppose I don't like it, also from a gamist perspective.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Yeah, I don't buy that. He might hit harder (a la the barbarian's rage), but he's more likely to be knocked out in round 2 than in round 3. The punishment builds over time.




The punishment does build over time.  Which is why both hit dice and healing surges are limited   In 4e recovering from a _knockdown_ will take four surges - you don't have too much left after that for most classes.



> Except that didn't really happen, at least not in the actual play of the game (and definitely not in any of the CRPGs ever put out!). I think this is one point we just won't come to an agreement on. I see that you like it from a gamist perspective. I suppose I don't like it, also from a gamist perspective.



Which didn't happen?  Resting in the dungeon?  I can assure you I've been in a game in which it did.  The DM and I both considered it worthy of a darwin award - three of the other PCs wondered why my PC insisted on setting traps worthy of a kobold.  And wandering monsters in the dungeon - Old Geezer (Mike Mornard) on RPG.net has specifically stated that one reason was to prevent resting.

When talking about the way D&D was originally played, we're talking about a group of players for whom different damage dice by weapon was introduced to prevent them all buying iron spikes as those were the cheapest weapons.  (Source again Mike Mornard.)


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Which didn't happen?  Resting in the dungeon?  I can assure you I've been in a game in which it did.  The DM and I both considered it worthy of a darwin award - three of the other PCs wondered why my PC insisted on setting traps worthy of a kobold.



No, the enforcement of no sleeping in a dungeon. Characters would barricade the door or use "rope trick" or Leomund spells and rest anyway.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> No, the enforcement of no sleeping in a dungeon. Characters would barricade the door or use "rope trick" or Leomund spells and rest anyway.



And then would find themselves in a siege situation, depending on the DM.  And from all Mornard's anecdotes (and others) Gygax really was the sort who would ruin rest in the dungeon.


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## Tovec (Jun 5, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> So you've recovered some hit points but not all through overnight mundane healing   The only reason for all hit points being recovered overnight is to put the fighter onto the same recovery track as the wizard which, from a gamist perspective is IMO necessary.  Gygax de facto did it as well with a "no resting in the dungeon" rule enforced by wandering monsters showing up if you tried.  I'm happy to move the healing as long as the spell recovery goes with it.




Or consider this. Wizard spell renewal is based on the semi-realistic HP recovery on a full nights rest.

Also, the no resting in a dungeon certainly does happen. I think there could quite possibly be a hard and fast rule that it does not work but far more than once it has happened in games I have been in.
Not having it happen actually makes a lot more sense than monsters just randomly showing up out of nowhere if you spend more than 30 minutes in a dungeon. Unless of course that dungeon has half the population of Maine or is the size of Nebraska.

Beyond that, consider that professional boxers are not trying to actually kill one another. They are trying to inflict enough pain that their opponent falls down. In terms of HP they could be attacking the enemy with either subdual or some sort of _pain _threshold, instead of trying to go for blood and kill them.

Just a random thought, nothing more to really say on the topic.

EDIT: I think that there should be a rule in 5e that says that you can only recoup HD or HP in a town or somewhere safe, warm, comfy, etc. Instead of just camping in the wilderness or a dungeon, as long as you do no get attacked.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Tovec said:


> Or consider this. Wizard spell renewal is based on the semi-realistic HP recovery on a full nights rest.



You're the first person I've seen trying to argue that overnight recovery of all HP is semi-realistic.



> Beyond that, consider that professional boxers are not trying to actually kill one another. They are trying to inflict enough pain that their opponent falls down. In terms of HP they could be attacking the enemy with either subdual or some sort of _pain _threshold, instead of trying to go for blood and kill them.



And yet there are physical wounds that appear (black eyes, broken noses, cuts, boxed ears) and boxers do die from time to time, and many of them suffer permanent even debilitating injuries. And none of them are ready to go for another fight the day after they finish one.



> EDIT: I think that there should be a rule in 5e that says that you can only recoup HD or HP in a town or somewhere safe, warm, comfy, etc. Instead of just camping in the wilderness or a dungeon, as long as you do no get attacked.



That's [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]'s basic position, as long as wizard spell recovery is also tied to that same mechanic. I disagree with his reasoning for the latter, but not the former.


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## Tovec (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> You're the first person I've seen trying to argue that overnight recovery of all HP is semi-realistic.



I don't actually disagree with you on these points. I was just saying  that I think magic refreshes on a night's sleep because HP does, not  that HP does because that's when magic does.



> And yet there are physical wounds that appear (black eyes, broken noses, cuts, boxed ears) and boxers do die from time to time, and many of them suffer permanent even debilitating injuries. And none of them are ready to go for another fight the day after they finish one.



Sadly yes this is true. And I do happen to agree that HP doesn't represent any aspect of fighting very well. My point is solely that in terms of DnD, they aren't actually trying to draw blood so that may pertain more to why boxers regaining stamina in a fight more resembles 4e's healing surges (and healing) than the HS and healing resemble reality.



> That's  @Neonchameleon 's basic position, as long as wizard spell recovery is also tied to that same mechanic. I disagree with his reasoning for the latter, but not the former.



The former being: That you should recover HP somewhere safe, etc?
And the latter being: That you shouldn't willy nilly as long as you aren't getting attacked?

I'm surprised you disagree at all with this last part. Are you saying that you agree that they should regain HP in safety, town, nice bed but disagree and say they should be able to recoup in the wilderness/dungeon too? I don't understand here.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 5, 2012)

Tovec said:


> The former being: That you should recover HP somewhere safe, etc?
> And the latter being: That you shouldn't willy nilly as long as you aren't getting attacked?
> 
> I'm surprised you disagree at all with this last part. Are you saying that you agree that they should regain HP in safety, town, nice bed but disagree and say they should be able to recoup in the wilderness/dungeon too? I don't understand here.



No. I mean that HP and spells should recover at the same rate. I do think I could go with a long rest in a safe place granting HP, but I don't think that spells should be forced into the same recovery time frame.

I'd still question if all HP came back naturally in one's night sleep, even if it's in a nice bed. I still see HP = abrasions/cuts/bruises, so full healing recovery in one night, no matter where, would break it for me, but I could see it as a bit faster. For example (just an example, not a deep thoughtful consideration), you heal and recover 1 HP per night as a standard, but in a comfortable bed you get HP = your current level.


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## Lanefan (Jun 5, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> No. I mean that HP and spells should recover at the same rate. I do think I could go with a long rest in a safe place granting HP, but I don't think that spells should be forced into the same recovery time frame.



Spells and hit points are vastly different things and absolutely do not need to be tied together in their recovery rates.



> I'd still question if all HP came back naturally in one's night sleep, even if it's in a nice bed. I still see HP = abrasions/cuts/bruises, so full healing recovery in one night, no matter where, would break it for me, but I could see it as a bit faster. For example (just an example, not a deep thoughtful consideration), you heal and recover 1 HP per night as a standard, but in a comfortable bed you get HP = your current level.



This is where we so desperately need a body/fatigue hit point system.

Fatigue points you can get back a certain amount with a good night's rest - in my game it's 10% of your total f.p. rounding up.  Body points are much slower to rest back, and more difficult to cure magically as well.

1e's method, where you only get 1 h.p. back per night, is a bit too slow.  4e's method, where you get 'em all back overnight, is way too fast.  But - as I've said many a time here already - this is just custom made for one of these "dials" they keep talking about.

Lanefan


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## Mishihari Lord (Jun 5, 2012)

darjr said:


> I want to have games without a cleric required, but I don't want mechanics to replace that cleric, I want to play games in a different way than if the party had a cleric or lots of mundane overnight healing.




That's really insightful.  Too bad XP is off 

I agree that parties with different compositions should use different strategies and tactics.  I'd prefer to tweak adventures for the party rather than make every composition play out the same.

Also, if the party can heal without the cleric the the cleric's kind of useless.  I see that as a problem.


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## Neonchameleon (Jun 6, 2012)

Lanefan said:


> Spells and hit points are vastly different things and absolutely do not need to be tied together in their recovery rates.




Spells are spells.  There is absolutely no in-world/simulationist reason the magic recovery system needs to be tied to the day rather than the phase of the moon, the sunspot cycle, or even the toss of a coin.  The daily refresh of spells is a strictly arbitrary rate and the only reason at all for the daily cycle is tradition.

There are however good reasons to tie it to hit point refreshing.  From a simulationist perspective given the amount the D&D novels I vaguely remember (it's been over a decade since I read one) talk about casters getting fatigued and it makes sense to tie this to bodily health and hit points.

From a narrativist perspective the episode is an effective model for pacing.  Harmonising the recharge rates allows much neater plotting and pacing of episodes.

And from a gamist perspective harmonising the recharge rates makes sense to make balance much easier.

In short, no you don't need to.  But the only good reason not to I can see is Tradition - and there are many good reasons from multiple perspectives to tie them together.


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## Steely_Dan (Jun 6, 2012)

Like starting HP, to campaign own.

I personally don't like healing all HP overnight, so I might implement roll your HD overnight, done.

Some may prefer faster (standard 4th and 5th Ed), or slower (3rd Ed: level in HP, or earlier/variant etc).

This seems like such a silly thing to debate, so easily "modular".


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