# The Healing Paradox



## Chris_Nightwing (Jun 15, 2012)

No, not the title of a new Doctor Who episode, but further observations from playtesting that echo much of what has been said before, and form an idea.

The facts:

Many people dislike healing to full hitpoints overnight.
Though more complex systems may come in a module, hitpoints will remain the basic currency of 'how far am I from death?'.
Many people also dislike healing surges, which were developed to limit the amount of healing one could receive during any given day and to normalise healing spells across varying hitpoint totals.
Currently, self-healing can be achieved through the hitdice mechanic, and clerical healing stands apart from this.

Here's the issue. If players are not at, or close to, full hitpoints, they will use every renewable healing resource available to them (and sometimes non-renewable resources such as potions too). If characters do not heal fully overnight, then the next morning will be spent spending hitdice, and even worse, using up the cleric's spells as soon as possible - perhaps even forcing another rest.

Now, I don't want to see full healing overnight. I also don't want to see Clerics forced to burn everything into healing, because it's an easy source of renewable HP. I further don't want to see multiple rests taken in a row, unless the current storyline allows for this.

The only way I can see to get rid of these three effects is, in fact, to limit the amount of healing that one can receive during a single day. No matter how you put it, if you can be healed as much as you want, players will strive to do so. Please correct me if I am missing a way to resolve this that still uses hitpoints (any sort of wound system would absolutely work). The problem is that healing surges didn't go down well with me either. I'm trapped in a paradox and need help, how do we fix this?!


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## LostSoul (Jun 15, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> Now, I don't want to see full healing overnight. I also don't want to see Clerics forced to burn everything into healing, because it's an easy source of renewable HP. I further don't want to see multiple rests taken in a row, unless the current storyline allows for this.




1. Natural healing is slow and magical healing is rare.  You can't easily buy or make healing potions and Clerics never have enough spells to heal the entire party.
2. Clerics have healing spells and other spells.  The slots are separate.
3. You gain XP for something other than killing monsters.  Wandering monsters are common and dangerous.

You wouldn't have full healing overnight; the Cleric can cast spells other than healing; and resting up or pushing on becomes a choice with costs.  

The last point is key.  Let's say that you only get XP for rescuing the prisoners.  You've delved deep into the dungeon but haven't yet found them; your map suggests where they may be.  You're low on HP and spells.  If you head back to rest you'll have your HP and spells back, but you'll have to face encounters that are all risk, no reward - you might even end up in a worse situation.  If you push on you might not have the resources left to succeed.

I'd like to see the system make Time a valuable resource, but I doubt that will happen.


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## Leatherhead (Jun 15, 2012)

Ritual healing would solve all those problems.

Just saying.


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## delericho (Jun 15, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> The only way I can see to get rid of these three effects is, in fact, to limit the amount of healing that one can receive during a single day.




Even that doesn't help - if the PCs reach their maximum, they'll still endeavour to take a second Extended Rest, and so continue with the healing.

How about this: when a character first takes damage in combat, he becomes Bloodied. A character who is not Bloodied cannot be healed, and receiving any amount of healing removes the Bloodied condition.

When the character takes a short rest, they may use charges from a healer's kit to spend Hit Dice to heal. Whether they do so or not, the Bloodied condition is removed at the end of the rest.

When the character takes an Extended rest, they regain all of their Hit Dice, and if Bloodied may additionally roll a single Hit Die (to represent overnight healing). When they waken, they lose the Bloodied condition.

Between adventures, characters regain their full hit points.

--

The other option is simply to make all healing non-renewable resources. So there are no Cleric spells that grant healing - healing magic is all ritual-based and has some associated cost (or there are potions, scrolls, or whatever). But even under this model, you would probably have to remove overnight healing entirely, or else there's a good chance the party will just make camp for a week while they recover!

(Besides, that's almost certainly too radical a change to the Cleric to ever be considered.)


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## Yora (Jun 15, 2012)

I really would like to see a solution in the final rules that is similar to how things are handled in the Dragon Age games, which you could say is quite similar to a Vitality/Wound system.

Hit Point damage is exhaustion and minor scratches that are easily regenerated and don't cause any actual impediments.
But in Dragon Age, every time a character drops to 0 hit points and is knocked out, he also gets a serious Injury that does not go away that easily and causes actual penalties to the characters ability to fight.

A simple system could be "Keep everything as in the playtest rules, but when a character falls below 1 hit point, he suffers a serious injury that applies a -1 penalty to all rolls". These injuries would require a skilled healer and extensive rest to heal, or much more powerful healing magic than a simple cure spell.
Of course, this could still be elaborated on or get refined, but I think that's a good approach. It also makes sense from a narrative point of view, because when you look at fiction, the protagonists get injured only very rarely and then it's usually something quite serious. But in D&D you are expected to get hit point damage in every single encounter, several times per day.


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## Pickles JG (Jun 15, 2012)

Leatherhead said:


> Ritual healing would solve all those problems.
> 
> Just saying.





I do not understand this, please elaborate. (seriously not snark)


I have bought into the conclusion OP has - healing has to be limited by the day (or other period) & you have to refesh this easily or the other consequences arise which are to me less palatable. No paradox just "healing surges"

TBH I think 4e did not go far enough in making these game/story conceits so that "rests" are sometimes under the GMs purview to allow. They should be more explicitly scenes & acts rather than time periods.


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## Jack99 (Jun 15, 2012)

Yora said:


> A simple system could be "Keep everything as in the playtest rules, but when a character falls below 1 hit point, he suffers a serious injury that applies a -1 penalty to all rolls". These injuries would require a skilled healer and extensive rest to heal, or much more powerful healing magic than a cure spell




Sounds like a death spiral. Not very DND-like.


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## Leatherhead (Jun 15, 2012)

Pickles JG said:


> I do not understand this, please elaborate. (seriously not snark)




OK.



Chris_Nightwing said:


> Now, I don't want to see full healing overnight. I also don't want to see Clerics forced to burn everything into healing, because it's an easy source of renewable HP. I further don't want to see multiple rests taken in a row, unless the current storyline allows for this.




Rituals require time and effort, it's not simply "getting a good nights sleep." 

You can adjust the exact time and components required (so you dictate the cost), the frequency the ritual can be performed at (like say once a day at dawn or whatever time frame is appropriate to the god to prevent multiple rests) and the amount of HP healed (up to max or a percentage thereof).

Finally, rituals are independent of spell slots. Clerics could use the ritual to heal, and still have all of their spell slots dedicated to combat.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Jun 15, 2012)

LostSoul said:


> 1. Natural healing is slow and magical healing is rare.  You can't easily buy or make healing potions and Clerics never have enough spells to heal the entire party.
> 2. Clerics have healing spells and other spells.  The slots are separate.
> 3. You gain XP for something other than killing monsters.  Wandering monsters are common and dangerous.




I definitely thought about mentioning point 2. Healing should be more 'lay on hands' than 'prepare spells/convert them to healing'. Point 3 though, is the best - you're right about adjusting expectations of players. More than once has a decision been made to rest because the monsters will wait for them, or even worse, more random encounters means more XP! Adventuring should be about achieving goals as efficiently as possible, and monsters should be barriers to these goals, rarely the goals themselves.



delericho said:


> How about this <SNIP>
> 
> The other option is simply to make all healing non-renewable resources. So there are no Cleric spells that grant healing - healing magic is all ritual-based and has some associated cost (or there are potions, scrolls, or whatever). But even under this model, you would probably have to remove overnight healing entirely, or else there's a good chance the party will just make camp for a week while they recover!




I really like your suggestion of a bloodied condition - having to spend a die to be healable, but then you can receive as much healing as you like works mechanically, though the flavour is a bit tricky.

Ritual healing is interesting. It puts a cost on recovering HP, which makes an adventure a war of attrition (see above also) - I like this. Heal your party just enough to get to that next goal, be it treasure room or princess to rescue. Don't waste your gold.


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## Minigiant (Jun 15, 2012)

I think the solution is 2 Maximum HP values.

Your Optimal HP is all of your HP with all your HD at the Maximum. It takes a week of rest with no adventuring to get to Maximum HP. You can't heal to it any other way except for maybe a Very High level spell of Heal skill check (or both).

Your Bloodied/Rolled Maximum HP is the Max HP with your HD rolled. Potions, spells healing kits, and rest of less than a week cannot bring you higher than Bloodied/Rolled Max HP.

So when the adventure starts, you are at Optimal. From then on, you cannot heal higher than Bloodied. You have get ALL THE WAY back to camp and rest for a week to get to Optimal HP.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 15, 2012)

Jack99 said:


> Sounds like a death spiral. Not very DND-like.



Not if hit points were restored as usual but the wound penalty/conditions remained until healed. If you were severely enough injured, then you might cap hit points at half or something. To my mind while certainly for an advanced rule module, this is the best way of nullifying the majority of issues with hit points/damage/healing, preventing death spirals, maintaining the broadest range of definitions/uses for hit points while still "feeling" like D&D.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Herschel (Jun 15, 2012)

LostSoul said:


> 1. Natural healing is slow and magical healing is rare. You can't easily buy or make healing potions and Clerics never have enough spells to heal the entire party.
> 2. Clerics have healing spells and other spells. The slots are separate.
> 3. You gain XP for something other than killing monsters. Wandering monsters are common and dangerous.




This is a deal-breaker fo many players though. Many players want to "go gonzo" at times and your suggestion says "too bad, you play my way or not at all!" One of the DnD tropes is "Stop the invading forces" and your system is way too limiting to be able to handle, big, protracted battle groups.


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## TwoSix (Jun 15, 2012)

Minigiant said:


> I think the solution is 2 Maximum HP values.
> 
> Your Optimal HP is all of your HP with all your HD at the Maximum. It takes a week of rest with no adventuring to get to Maximum HP. You can't heal to it any other way except for maybe a Very High level spell of Heal skill check (or both).
> 
> ...




I can't XP you right now, but I like this idea quite a bit.


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## Frostmarrow (Jun 15, 2012)

Yes, maxing out healing will halt players progress in wait for more healing. What if max was a floating concept? I remember an anectdote where a gamer said they used to roll hit points every day. They rationalized with comments like "I'm feeling exceptionally strong today" or "I might have come down with something as my hit points aren't all that great today".

So my suggestion is: *Roll hit points every day. Subtract half your damage.*

Example I: I have 5d8+5 HD. I also have 13 damage. I roll 34 hit points and subtract 6, (7 hp are healed in the process). This leaves me with 28 (max) hp until the next extended rest.

Example II: I have 2d4+2 hit points and no damage. I roll 4 hp. Obviously I'm feeling queasy all day. Better stay in the rear.

Example III: I have 3d10 hit points and 17 damage. I roll 6 hp and subtract 8. At -2 max hp I'm bedridden for the day and my guess is we'll be camping here.


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## Frostmarrow (Jun 15, 2012)

Potion of Healing: heal 1d8 damage
Potion of Heroism: gain 1d4 hitpoints

See? A natural divide between wound closure and peppy talk. 
Warlords in the morning and Clerics in the evening. If you roll bad you will like to hear encouraging words so your hit points go up. Before you go to bed you will want your wounds tended so your damage goes down. Untended wounds will tax you tomorrow.


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## Zaukrie (Jun 15, 2012)

Go back to camp and rest for a week....not sure how that is fun. If you go the serious wound route every time you get to zero, don't you just run away every time you get close and heal back up?won't that lead to more 15 minute days?

Sent using Tapatalk 2


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## Meeki (Jun 15, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> The only way I can see to get rid of these three effects is, in fact, to limit the amount of healing that one can receive during a single day.




IMO, directly limiting healing seems counter intuitive to what you want to achieve. Limiting the amount someone can be healed is going to promote multiple rests in a row to an extreme. If the story doesn't allow this, it will force the party to expend resources to find ways to heals; whether it be through expendables, if they exist, or figuring out ways to ensure additional rests. Essentially, turning part of the game into resource management, and that is no fun IMO.

I played in a 3.5 game that went from lvl 3 to lvl 29 over a few years. Our healing was limited and traditional resting was difficult, especially at higher levels. However, at higher levels, we spent so much out of game time sitting around looking for items, spells, allies, etc... to ensure we had a place to rest or expendables to heal. Again, turning multiple sessions into managing inventory. Not to say the DM didn't try to make it fun for us to do so, but it was rather boring for me as a rogue'ish type. On top of that it just prompted the DM to modify his encounters to make sure they were challenging and drained our resources appropriately; further escalating the issue. 

While my example is anecdotal and based on previous editions it does show that a problem exists in simply limiting healing without taking into account how it influences the party.

IMO, what the real, underlying issue is, is how to make the game challenging and deadlier to the players without just throwing deadly encounters that assume the PC's are healed to full; all while keeping the game fun. This may be simplified, but it's what I think is the style of gaming to what you are alluding. 

An idea that I would like to see is to have two hp tracks. The normal HP track, which can only be healed through natural rest, and a temporary HP track, upon which temps of one other source can stack. The temporary HP track could be diminished to something like 1/2 the max normal HP track, or con score or something like that. The point it that it's diminished. 

Once the temp stack is gone, further damage goes to the normal HP stack, which is much more difficult to heal. Healing spells, burning hit dice, etc... all short term healing goes into the temp stack, which is capped at 1/2 the normal hp track max or whatever you want to use.  Maybe have one other source of temp hp stack on the temp hp stack, but, like temp hp normally, does not allow healing beyond the max of the temp track. (sorry if I am confusing things)

I woud love to take the idea of ritual healing, done out of combat, to heal the normal hp track. Rituals in 4e are a great idea, IMO.

I think this suggestions solves most of the issues addressed by assuming and allowing the following:


PC's start the day with a "total" amount of HP greater than usual
Healing is naturally limited as the day goes on since after temps are gone the normal HP is eaten into
Expendables can still be used, and clerics can be healing bots if they would like but no longer need to max out healing spells since the temp hp track is capped

One issue that still exists is the amount of healing that clerics need to do might not change much. Allowing expendables, though, could allieve some pressure on the cleric and other healing classes. 

Also, I would love it if clerics could sack spell slots for healing spells, which are cast as free actions or something like that. Allowing the cleric to still do something else, as in 4e. That is one aspect of 4e I really like.

What do people think about this idea?


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## Crazy Jerome (Jun 15, 2012)

The reason this is such a tough issue is that there is no such thing as a "pretend death spiral." 

If you accept the D&D conceit that the characters are (or on their way to becoming) these heroes that shrug off all kinds of damage every adventure, pick themselves up, and keep going--then you can't have a real death spiral.  You can wear them out eventually, but "eventually" implies time to do so.  Limited resources (gold, healing, etc.) are tools to make time matter in different ways.

Thus the "operational play" of early D&D which has explicitly accepted that D&D conceit--and thus gone to a great deal of trouble to make time matter.

OTOH, if you decide you want to wear them down without needing that time, but so that they can still keep going while hampered, then they have to be hampered in some way that is not tied to time.  This implies an *actual* death spiral mechanic of some kind.  You can't really get there with illusionism, unless you have a group that is the type to enjoy a scare from a ghost story -- e..g through atmosphere alone.

If operational play doesn't appeal, I'd look for other ways, tools, resources, etc. to make time matter, in a manner that does appeal.  Alternately, you can accept that a death spiral is required, abandon a key D&D conceit, and thus therefore your change will be an option for a different style of play (with all that implies).  On the plus side, Next is probably the first edition of D&D with the structure to support such an option without breaking the game for those who do like that conceit.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jun 15, 2012)

One possible death spiral structure which might be more acceptable in D&D is to basically divide damage effects and healing into two broad categories:

Normal hit point damage is easy come, easy go.  You take it all the time, and you get it back very easily and cheaply.  Certain magic may work, but it is readily available and doesn't eat into other resources.  Some of it may take time to use, but the scale is more tactical than strategic.
Death spiral damage is relatively rare, but hard to fix.  It takes magic or a lot of time to do it, and the magic is expensive--expensive enough that you might hesitate to use it.
In such a system, spells like "cure light wounds" are used to take away a bit of whatever the death spiral effect is.  If you are getting cumulative -1 penalties to checks as you get wounds, the "cure light wounds" spell will take one of these off, at the expense of not having that spell, and probably some kind of gold cost too.  Meanwhile, potions come in both versions--one that works a lot like CLW and costs a fortune, and some others that are almost as cheap as wine and bring back hit points.

The balancing act comes around the idea that healing magic and/or dedicated expensive resources is used to stave off the death spiral for a time and/or mititgate it.  This is what allows you to keep going, and can gradually be worn down.  Meanwhile, you can top off hit points easily, but it's possible for you to get into a tactical situation where you can't get back to full.  For example, the cleric may have an "at-will" hit point restorer that does 1d4 per hour, or something like that.


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## Li Shenron (Jun 15, 2012)

Well, if we're going to have 2 different "HP pools", one healing slowly and one healing quickly, at such point I would prefer a wound system...

I don't know maybe something like, each time you drop below 0 (or if you want it more often, each time you suffer a critical hit and/or massive damage) you get ability damage. Traditionally, ability damage needs higher level magic than HP to be healed, and since it affects checks and saves, it feels quite like a wound system.

But right now my main idea for 5e is to just stick to the core rules, and try to space adventuring days using travel or waiting for events: if there are usually 3-4 days or more between days with encounters, then it doesn't actually matter if the PCs healed all at once or gradually. (And in those few cases when you really for some reason don't want them healed, you disturb their nightly rest).


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## hayek (Jun 15, 2012)

Zaukrie said:


> If you go the serious wound route every time you get to zero, don't you just run away every time you get close and heal back up?won't that lead to more 15 minute days?




Agreed, but I think the issue is that -1 to all attacks/checks is too severe a penalty for a wound. Players will always go out of their way to rest if possible with that penalty. How about this:

every time you drop below 0 you get a wound.

if you have a wound, every time you make an attack/check, roll a d12 along with the d20. if you roll a 1 on the d12 you get -1 to your d20 roll... if you have 2 wounds, and you roll a 2 on the d12 you get -2 to the d20 roll, and so on...

this gives the benefits of:
1. there's some flavor to the wound and you know it's there because you're always rolling that d12, but it's not a severe enough penalty to make you want to rest immediately whenever you get one - a -1 every now and then isn't really going to effect things, but it occassionally will allow for a memorable moment when that wound made you pull up your sword arm just a little too soon and miss...

2. opens up cool mechanics to interact with it - Grizzled Veteran feat = +1 to all d12 wound rolls. Barbarian Rage = while raging, you don't have to make any wound rolls. etc...


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## samursus (Jun 15, 2012)

Of  all the interesting ideas I have read, the one that appeals to me the most is using a *Ritual-based healing magic only*.  Seems simplest to implement, and while not being a traditional D&D trope, easily fits in most literature-based fantasy settings IMO.  

It would be a big change from Clerics popping CLW's all the time, but it could further separate the Cleric from the "healbot by default" role.  Sure, Clerics would be best at said rituals, but their actual spell slots could be used independently of their healing abilities.  

Perhaps they could still maintain some battlefield heals at higher levels?


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## Meeki (Jun 15, 2012)

Except that you move healing from in-combat to lots of time spent out of combat healing via rituals. Rituals don't fix the "issues", merely move healing to out of combat. Players will still horde components to cast the ritual.

Wound systems are way too much bookwork but if you like that sort of thing it could work. I doubt 5e would have it in, it's not very D&D.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jun 15, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> I don't know maybe something like, each time you drop below 0 (or if you want it more often, each time you suffer a critical hit and/or massive damage) you get ability damage. Traditionally, ability damage needs higher level magic than HP to be healed, and since it affects checks and saves, it feels quite like a wound system.






hayek said:


> Agreed, but I think the issue is that -1 to all attacks/checks is too severe a penalty for a wound. Players will always go out of their way to rest if possible with that penalty.




A random ability score, single point of damage to the score, option is not a bad way to handle it, since that turns the -1 penalty to everything into a -1 penalty to some things, every other point of damgae to a given score. Keep it rare enough, and that might work.

However, to really make that work, you need that division I discussed earlier, where curing the ability score damage is possible and reasonable using limited resources (spell slots, rituals with gold, etc.) for awhile, so that a party can continue to roll along with little to no effective penalties for awhile. Then when resources run out, it starts to hurt more and more, slowly. 

So the question becomes, can "cure light wounds" be turned into a real "cure light wounds" that has nothing to do with hit points, and thus is a more strategic use of a 1st level spell? Or alternately, can you make the effect of that name more robust to make it really sing on the hit point front, while providing other options for the ability score damage?

Also, I think there has to be ways to take said "wound" damage besides getting to zero hit points, unless hit points are radically scaled down (though that is not necessarily a bad route, either).


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## Derren (Jun 15, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> Here's the issue. If players are not at, or close to, full hitpoints, they will use every renewable healing resource available to them (and sometimes non-renewable resources such as potions too). If characters do not heal fully overnight, then the next morning will be spent spending hitdice, and even worse, using up the cleric's spells as soon as possible - perhaps even forcing another rest.
> 
> Now, I don't want to see full healing overnight. I also don't want to see Clerics forced to burn everything into healing, because it's an easy source of renewable HP. I further don't want to see multiple rests taken in a row, unless the current storyline allows for this.




Easy solution, create living dungeons and worlds. When you do then the PCs, while still being able to take multiple rests, don't have time to do so in most cases as time still goes on and events are moving.

Many people are expecting the system to prevent 15 minute days when in fact its the DM who allows them to happen.


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## Li Shenron (Jun 15, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> A random ability score, single point of damage to the score, option is not a bad way to handle it, since that turns the -1 penalty to everything into a -1 penalty to some things, every other point of damgae to a given score. Keep it rare enough, and that might work.




I was thinking 1d6 damage to one ability score if used when dropping to 0 (1 single damage point makes more sense if used with critical hits, but the it means almost every day you'll get some of this damage, too often for my tastes). Note that it has to be generally higher than 1 if the healing rate is 1/day as in 3ed, otherwise again it woudn't last after the first night!

This assumes that we're talking about a gaming group that _wants_ wounds to carry over to the next day(s), right? 

So the rarity in this case (the one where you get ability damaged only when dropping to or below 0) is related exactly to how often you drop to 0, which can be generally quite low, maybe once every few sessions.


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## Wexter (Jun 15, 2012)

"Push on or rest up?" - That's the question every party and player will be facing and what I believe is the crux of the problem. The main issue is that there's no compelling gameplay reason to push on.  There's often *story* reasons, but I believe there should be gameplay reasons as well.

Resting up:  In essence this means recovering resources.  Usually encompasses healing, spells, ammunition, surges, or any per-day ability.  As the party runs low on resources, it's perfectly natural to want to recover them.  No matter how brutal the recovery process is (1 hp per day), one can simply announce 'resting until healed' and there we are back at 100% be it in a night or month.

Pushing on: There really is no benefit to pushing on in any edition I've ever seen except 4e.  Here we have action points every 2 encounters.  "Well, we're low on dailies, but we've got action points... Should we push on?"  Not exactly a balanced set of options but at least there's something on the other end of the scale for once.

I'm not saying D&D needs action points.  But I will say D&D needs a reward system to balance the resource systems.  There's quite a few different ways of doing it aside from action points. Key to this being that the reward expires on rest (or in less than a day.)  
Potions: If they spoil/expire in a day (or less), but last through the day, you can hand out some nice rewards for finding them.
Class/theme/feats: Get some features in that reward success.  Such as: (Barbarian) Whenever you land a killing blow, you're envigorated for the rest of the day (+1 damage - stacks up to x times).  Rogue: Whenever you land a critical hit, your sneak attack damage increases by 1d6 for the rest of the day.
Morale:  After a successful encounter, the party's morale raises (roll a charisma check).  Everyone hi-fives  and regains a daily resource.

Ok, not the greatest set of ideas.  But the point that players ought to be rewarded for pushing on, I think frames the healing question in a whole new light.

Fighter: "I'm low on HP, but I've built up a nice bonus to AC."
Cleric: "Almost out of spells, but have +3 glory of Pelor."
Rogue: "I've got 4 stacks of Murder!  All out of tricks."
Wizard: "I ate all my rations.  Should we keep going?"

Now the party isn't simply weaker for being low on HP/Healing.  Riskier? Sure. But not necessarily weaker.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jun 15, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> This assumes that we're talking about a gaming group that _wants_ wounds to carry over to the next day(s), right?




We are probably talking somewhat at cross purposes, but I'd say that's only half of it.  I also assume that the gaming group wants wounds to carry over for some time, but without immediately and severly putting pressure on the players to hole up and rest, or retreat.  The idea is to press on through the wounds for some time, until the pressure gets to be too much.  You need a finer control for that, since every group has their own set of limits--and these will also vary by the situation at hand.



> So the rarity in this case (the one where you get ability damaged only when dropping to or below 0) is related exactly to how often you drop to 0, which can be generally quite low, maybe once every few sessions.




If it doesn't happen very much, and when it does happen it is so severe as to immediately prompt dealing with it--it isn't really much of a threat.  Thus, I'd put such a system more in the realm of that illusionism that I mentioned early--atmosphere, not reality.  If the players are walking around with this feeling that, "what we are doing is risky, because we could get knocked down to zero and then take 1d6 to a key stat," but in practice it doesn't mean they spend much time adventuring with an actual penalty, then it seems to me like a lot of mechanical hoop jumping for mere atmosphere. But then, I'm not one that generally appreciates such mechanics--more dreaded in theory than practice. 

That's a lot like an AD&D wizard spellbook that never gets stolen because the DM doesn't have the heart to mess with the wizard player that way.  One of the keys to making such mechanics hurt is to make them not hurt so much that people will go to great lengths to avoid them.


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## LostSoul (Jun 15, 2012)

Derren said:


> Easy solution, create living dungeons and worlds. When you do then the PCs, while still being able to take multiple rests, don't have time to do so in most cases as time still goes on and events are moving.
> 
> Many people are expecting the system to prevent 15 minute days when in fact its the DM who allows them to happen.




While I agree with you, I think that if you have something as vital to the game as resource recovery, you should provide the DM with some help via the system as to when or how to assign costs to recovery.

This makes me think of a blog post from Zak S. a while ago - about thinking of the system as another player at the table.  The DM can assign costs to recovery, the players can choose when to rest & recover; what about that other guy?  He could at least provide some input! 

Here's the post: Playing D&D With Porn Stars: The Game Is A Player


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## Stalker0 (Jun 15, 2012)

The basic issue isn't around healing. It's the simple fact that mechanically there is no downside to resting. Now DMs can create reasons, but at the core Players are encouraged to be at max hps.

The fix is mechanical penalties for resting. If you take for example the 4e action point idea but made it so you started with 5 at the start of the adventure and lost one with each extended rest. It's one simple example you could use a variety of ideas. The key is that resting has a penalty so it becomes an actual choice


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## Arbanax (Jun 15, 2012)

Without seeking to be ignorant, or downplay this discussion, personally I don't know what the problem is.  If the DM makes the final ruling (esp in DnDNext) go ahead and have a more gritty game, with harder to come by healing.  But for most people as Wexter and indeed others have said, 



Wexter said:


> "Push on or rest up?" - That's the question every party and player will be facing and what I believe is the crux of the problem.




Id' rather not press the pause button every time the heroes retreat for healing for several months or finding ways of letting the story go on despite this.  After all its is about the heroes - isn't that why we play?  In addition because players get attached to their PC's and in a grittier harder to come by healing type game, I imagine most will stop at nothing to retreat from danger to stay healthy.  

In my limited experience, most gamers I've known, would say, "we've come to play, lets get on with it."  They don't have time for months of micro managing wounds and healing between dungeons.  But there is nothing to stop people doing it there way?   

Without wishing to be disparaging, I really don't understand the angst over this issue, do it you way and in addition lets have room for the people like me who'd also want something like the current system as well.  

Peace 

Ab


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## Derren (Jun 15, 2012)

Arbanax said:


> Id' rather not press the pause button every time the heroes retreat for healing for several months or finding ways of letting the story go on despite this.




Then don't.
Let the players deal with those things.


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## Li Shenron (Jun 15, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> If it doesn't happen very much, and when it does happen it is so severe as to immediately prompt dealing with it--it isn't really much of a threat.  Thus, I'd put such a system more in the realm of that illusionism that I mentioned early--atmosphere, not reality.  If the players are walking around with this feeling that, "what we are doing is risky, because we could get knocked down to zero and then take 1d6 to a key stat," but in practice it doesn't mean they spend much time adventuring with an actual penalty, then it seems to me like a lot of mechanical hoop jumping for mere atmosphere. But then, I'm not one that generally appreciates such mechanics--more dreaded in theory than practice.
> 
> That's a lot like an AD&D wizard spellbook that never gets stolen because the DM doesn't have the heart to mess with the wizard player that way.  One of the keys to making such mechanics hurt is to make them not hurt so much that people will go to great lengths to avoid them.




Uhm... I don't understand if incomplete healing is wanted because of atmosphere/realism or because people actually like having the extra challenge. I was rather assuming the first, but I'm not sure... 

The OP pointed out that the PCs normally can just cast all their remaining healing spells at the end of the day and then some on the next day, or in the worst case take a day off and heal everyone. This is for groups that clearly do not like continuining the adventure with a disadvantage. To such a group I just suggest to go ahead with the full-healing nightly rest.

But I think there are also many groups which would like damage to be somehow "lingering on" in the following days, but clearly they don't want to feel stupid by purposefully not using healing spells that they could - so _this _is the actualy problem even if you do not use the full-healing nightly rest.

I suggested ability damage because it is less easy to heal, however typically (at least in 3ed) it just means to delay the problem to later levels, at which point also all ability damage can be healed with one spell. But maybe it is also more acceptable to heal easily at high level.

Anyway, the idea is not really like the spellbook case: that is _very_ DM's initiative-dependent, while this ability damage would just kick in automatically when meeting the trigger.


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## Stormonu (Jun 15, 2012)

In all the games I've run that I can remember, when the party stops to rest they have enough spells, resources or whatnot to be back up to full the next morning - or since they've stopped to rest in the first place, if they can't heal in one night they have plenty of time to hole up that they can fast-forward until they are fully healed.  Either case, regaining full hp for a single night's rest wouldn't negatively affect my game as that pretty much happens already.

However, as others have mentioned, hit points are poor measure of lasting wounds; a low-level PC whose taken 20 hp of damage is in far worse shape than a high level PC whose taken the same damage, but under slowed healing rules those minor nicks and scratches on the high level PC would take longer to heal than the "near-death" experience the low level PC had.

If folks are concerned with simulating long lasting wounds, they need to look at a non-hp solution to emulate it, probably by inflicting conditions or vulnerabilities to future wounds - both being systems that, on the surface, will seem very un-D&D.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jun 15, 2012)

Stalker0 said:


> The basic issue isn't around healing. It's the simple fact that mechanically there is no downside to resting. Now DMs can create reasons, but at the core Players are encouraged to be at max hps.
> 
> The fix is mechanical penalties for resting. If you take for example the 4e action point idea but made it so you started with 5 at the start of the adventure and lost one with each extended rest. It's one simple example you could use a variety of ideas. The key is that resting has a penalty so it becomes an actual choice






Li Shenron said:


> Uhm... I don't understand if incomplete healing is wanted because of atmosphere/realism or because people actually like having the extra challenge. I was rather assuming the first, but I'm not sure ...
> 
> Anyway, the idea is not really like the spellbook case: that is _very_ DM's initiative-dependent, while this ability damage would just kick in automatically when meeting the trigger.




This is part of that cross purposes I mentioned eariler. The spell book example is mechanically unlike what we are discussing, but it is another example of a drawback that often does not actually happen, and thus doesn't often apply. 

What Stalker0 suggested is one of the few things that can bridge this gap, in that it has direct influence on both players and characters in the world.

If you really screw over the *characters* (in the game world)--lot of hit point damage, steal their spell books, do significant ability score damage, drain levels, break magic items, and so forth--then the players will have their characters react however they those characters are geared: anguish, determination, fear, irritation, etc. If what they are currently doing is important to them, they'll push on as long as they think they have a chance--and maybe beyond that point.

You do all that exact same stuff to the *players* (by monkeying with their characters), and it depends on how invested the players are in those characters, and in what way, how they will react.

For some players, you need to give the *player* a reason to push on. For some players, you need to give the *character* a reason to push on. Sometimes, you really need both. Sometimes you need a strong reason, and sometimes any old reason will do (more a thin rationale than a reason). 

So I wasn't disagreeing with ability score damage, but noting that 1d6 ability score damage when you hit zero hit points is primarily aimed at motivating characters, not players. Because doing that kind of relatively rare, relatively strong hit on a character is like stealing a spellbook. It's apt to prompt the players to nullify the problem, rather than push on in spite of it.

There are exceptions, of course. That's why I mentioned that you need fine control. What motivates Joe to buckle down and have Mr. Fighter press on may be the exact same thing that motivates Jane to have Ms. Wizard go fix the current drawback before pressing on. 


I'm primarily coming at this from the "player psychology" perspective. Consider this, even though it is blurring these lines, I think it does illustrate the different well enough. Let's say you want a dragon fight. You aren't going to force it, but you'd like for it to happen. (Nevermind the issue of whether you should or not. Hypothetically, you want it, and your players aren't completely opposed to such things.) You can go one of two ways, or blend them, depending on your group:

You rachet up the drama of the situation so that the characters are gonna fight that dragon if at all possible. You make them care to fight it, even if they "know" it is a TPK. The tougher you make the dragon, short of it being able to 1-round TPK, the higher the drama and tension.
You tempt the players to tangle with the dragon by making it tough, but not too tough, and likely to have a dragon's treasure, something else they want, etc. The tougher you make the dragon, the more you *discourage* the players from doing what you want.
Now with a guy like me, same as with a lot of people, who plays with the same group nearly all the time, and knows them well, I can hit a sweet spot in the middle, where I'm racheting drama but keeping an upper lid on the toughness, so that I get some of the benefits of both. The line is different with every player. But the point is that you can't just pursue one motivation full bore without eventually having a counter-productive motivation on the other side.

Too much focus on the "atmosphere of grit" at the expense of real drawbacks is all focus on character motivation, not player motivation. With most players, there is a point where continuing to pursue the atmosphere is counter-productive to the result you want.


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## Kraydak (Jun 15, 2012)

Being deep in enemy territory, low on health, and needing multiple Cleric spell loads to heal up (do you dare cast all the heals before resting again?) is interesting times!  Even minor wandering monster encounters can slow the recovery significantly, raising tension.


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## Scribble (Jun 15, 2012)

Mmmm Healing Paraduxx...

Oh wait... that's not what you said.


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## Quickleaf (Jun 15, 2012)

Why not do what both [MENTION=5889]Stalker0[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION] suggest?

In the DMG present a secti


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## Uller (Jun 16, 2012)

I can't believe how much of the playtest conversation this topic has taken.  It's gotta be pushing 100 pages on all the various threads.

I don't think WotC is going to do anything complex.  The focus of 5e seems to be on a game that keeps moving forward.   Having long healing times, wound systems etc tend to act as a brake on the game.  It's like basic macro-economics...if you make something more expensive, you'll have less of it.  If adventuring exacts a toll on PCs (forcing them to rest for more than a few days to get back to full hp/spells) then they will delay adventuring.

For my part, the only thing I don't like about the current 5e rules is that you go from 1 hp to full instantly after 8 hours of rest.  There needs to be a hp per unit time rate that can be easily changed.  My plan is something like this:  Same rules for when you can start a long rest (only one per 24 hours and you must have 1 hp to begin).  For every 2 hours of complete rest you get back one quarter of your max HD that you can immediately spend or save for use in a future short rest.  It is rounded down but you always get at least 1 HD.  During periods of moderate activity (walking/riding), you gain 1/4 of your HD every 8 hours that can be used immediately or saved for short rests.  

So let's say the 3rd level fighter (32 max hp, 3 HD) is at 2 hp and 0 HD.  He rested 2 hours ago.  So he cannot begin to rest until 14 hours have passed...however he gets HD back at the "moderate activity" rate during that time. So after 8 hours he gets 1d12.  He uses it...after 6 more hours he starts his complete rest...So every 2 hours he can gain back 1d12 HP for a max of 8 hours (4d12)...then he goes back to the slower rate again through the day.

Something like that...maybe something simpler...But a rate of healing and a chance to roll for how many hp you get.   If 5e does something like that people can easily make the time periods longer.


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## RigaMortus2 (Jun 16, 2012)

If hit points represent physical damage as well as exhaustion/luck, healing should do the same.  So how about this.

Using mundane healing, including an extended rest, you can only heal up to half your max hit points.  To top off, you'll need to use magical resources to go from full to max?


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## LostSoul (Jun 16, 2012)

You know how in the playtest Caves of Chaos it says that new monsters show up after 1d4 weeks?

What if that were 3 days?

What if it included reinforcements for weakened caves?

What if you didn't get XP for killing the new monsters?

I think healing to full overnight would be okay in that case.  As it stands I think the currency in the playtest doesn't work.


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## Gorgoroth (Jun 16, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> That's a lot like an AD&D wizard spellbook that never gets stolen because the DM doesn't have the heart to mess with the wizard player that way.  One of the keys to making such mechanics hurt is to make them not hurt so much that people will go to great lengths to avoid them.




Having played a wizard where this happened once (and was a major pain, but I stole another wizard's spellbook afterwards) : Mind meld ritual to re-write all your spells down, "resurrect previously cast spells", Mind-To-Pen. This is a good time for ritual magic to come into play. Same thing for a fighter who gets a nasty wound or a torn ligament : a very complex cleric ritual in town, incense and chanting in the church and all that jazz.


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## rounser (Jun 16, 2012)

Just power up magical healing.  It's not rocket surgery.

Traditionally:
Fireball and lightning bolt do 1d6/level.  To many opponents at once.
Cure wounds do not scale by level, with the exception of heal, and affect a single ally, leading to metagame problems.

Hmm.

This precedent seems to have led to all sorts of hand-wringingly awful mechanical workarounds, when the problem could be solved by something as simple as "cure serious wounds restores half lost hit points to an area of effect" or "cure serious wounds restores 1d10 hp/level to all allies in range".

Solves multiple problems - no need for suspension-of-disbelief destroying mechanics or shout healing class concepts, gives the cleric back his spells, improves in-combat survivability (because the monsters generally won't have access to healing spells) etc.

Hmm...


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## LostSoul (Jun 16, 2012)

rounser said:


> Solves multiple problems - no need for suspension-of-disbelief destroying mechanics or shout healing class concepts, gives the cleric back his spells, improves in-combat survivability (because the monsters generally won't have access to healing spells) etc.




Doesn't solve the "full healing overnight" problem, though.


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## Gorgoroth (Jun 16, 2012)

*.*

I like the idea that you heal half your wounds overnight. That way it could take a few days' rest to get back to full, but you'll still want some clericy goodness to top you up in the morning so you can fight the good fight

I don't like healing to full overnight without magic, but neither do I like the cleric being a healbot and spending most of his daily resources to keep the fighter standing with his bags of HP.

Don't have any strong feelings about HD, variable healing yet...could work. There's gotta be a balance between realism and expedited / fun play...maybe a scale where DMs can explicitly set the grittyness factor for their campaign.


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## rounser (Jun 16, 2012)

LostSoul said:


> Doesn't solve the "full healing overnight" problem, though.



The idea was to point out that it appears that there are simple, much more palatable alternatives.  That they could ditch suspension-of-disbelief challenged mechanics like that _for_ powered up magical healing.  Full regain of hit points on a rest is, for me, a "creates far more problems than it solves" fix, when supe-ing up magical healing may be all that's required.

If the 5E designers don't resolve this issue, then that's their choice.


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## LostSoul (Jun 16, 2012)

rounser said:


> You ditch suspension-of-disbelief challenged mechanics like that _for_ powered up magical healing.  Full regain of hit points on a rest is a "creates more problems than it solves" fix, when supe-ing up magical healing may be all that's required.




I don't understand.  If you're saying that _natural_ healing overnight is a suspension-of-disbelief challenged mechanic, I agree.  (Or shout-based healing, for that matter.)  The colour is off.  But in terms of how you play the game, how does increasing the potency of magical healing keep one from regaining all HP overnight?  You get into what I consider the worst feature of 4E - the ability to refresh all (well, most) of your character's resources after an Extended Rest.

edit: In response to your edit.



rounser said:


> The idea was to point out that it appears that there are simple, much more palatable alternatives. That they could ditch suspension-of-disbelief challenged mechanics like that for powered up magical healing. Full regain of hit points on a rest is, for me, a "creates far more problems than it solves" fix, when supe-ing up magical healing may be all that's required.
> 
> If the 5E designers don't resolve this issue, then that's their choice.




Okay, I see where you're coming from.  Like I say above, that does get rid of suspension-of-disbelief destroying mechanics, but it doesn't resolve the "full healing overnight" problem - which is, as far as I understand it, not simply a suspension-of-disbelief problem, but one of challenge and strategic play.  (Challenges are reduced because healing is easy, assuming no changes to monsters in the playtest; strategic play is still weak because of the "optimal solution" of full healing overnight.  Those two are related, but not the same: if monsters were tougher, you'd have encounter-based challenge but miss out on a certain strategic play because the optimal solution still exists.)


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## rounser (Jun 16, 2012)

LostSoul said:


> I don't understand.  If you're saying that _natural_ healing overnight is a suspension-of-disbelief challenged mechanic, I agree.  (Or shout-based healing, for that matter.)  The colour is off.  But in terms of how you play the game, how does increasing the potency of magical healing keep one from regaining all HP overnight?  You get into what I consider the worst feature of 4E - the ability to refresh all (well, most) of your character's resources after an Extended Rest.



It doesn't solve it - if they don't ditch the full overnight healing mechanic then it's still there.  But if you significantly power up healing magic, then you can achieve much the same desired result (everyone near full hp, more of the time) without the silliness factor that comes with full overnight hp regain.

Which removes the need for the full overnight heal mechanic in the first place.  Which means in theory they can ditch it.  So do A instead of B, not in addition to.  Make sense?


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 16, 2012)

A 'wound' system would be ideal for an optional 'gritty' module.  In normal play, characters take hp damage and heal it up very quickly, usually being at or near full hps at the start of any meaningful fight, and recovering completely after an extended rest (which might not be a day if campaign pacing is atypical).  Curses, Diseases, serious wounds and the like might exist, but they'd be specific to the danger that inflicts them, and take time and/or skill checks and/or saves and/or rituals to get rid of.

As a bolt-on module, you could have automatic rules for 'wounds,' to represent impairing wounds.  You might take a 'light' wound when bloodied, a 'serious' wound when dropped, and a 'critical' wound if dropped without being bloodied first, CdG'd, or hit while dropped.  The same mechanisms that let you recover from 'afflictions' work on 'wounds,' wounds are just a lot more common with the module in use.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Jun 16, 2012)

Lots of interesting discussions, and my mind has come round to a couple of conclusions:

Players will not push forward with low hitpoints, because it risks death. They will push forward with minor penalties however, because they still have their hitpoint buffer before death. A wound system of some kind sounds like it would better incentivise pushing forward, albeit slightly less effectively. The simplest thing I can come up with off the top of my head is a hit threshold: take more than X damage in a single hit and get a wound that applies a -1 to attacks/checks/saves based off of a specific ability. Then I would be happy for a rest to restore all HP and 1 wound.

For cleric spells, I think that restoration of HP would be best done in parallel with other spells (more lay on hands than junk a spell slot for CLW). Healing of actual wounds would be a tactical choice - do you get rid of that -1 on a set of attacks/checks/saves or just cast bless to negate it (and provide a bonus to everyone else) in the short-term?


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## chaochou (Jun 16, 2012)

Wexter said:


> "Push on or rest up?" - That's the question every party and player will be facing and what I believe is the crux of the problem. The main issue is that there's no compelling gameplay reason to push on.  There's often *story* reasons, but I believe there should be gameplay reasons as well.




I agree with your whole post. I see a lot of posts talking about tweaking healing rules this way and that - I see almost no discussion of what it is that motivates players to 'push on'.

I don't think there's any debate that a tension between risk and reward is a desirable thing. You can change the healing rules all you like to alter the risks. But where's the reward? What is a player balancing that risk against?

All these healing tweaks do is attempt to force players to accept higher levels of risk, while providing no compensating reward. Wounds, injury and healing mechanics do not provide motivation - they act as a limiter on it.
 [MENTION=6695556]Wexter[/MENTION] proposed giving characters class-based benefits based on achieving criticals or sneak attacks, etc. I thought that looked a good suggestion. It addresses, at some level, the motivation to keep going.

Another alternative is to tie character growth and progression (in D&Ds case, that's XP) into player-defined goals and beliefs. This is the mechanism used in the Burning Wheel.


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## Fanaelialae (Jun 16, 2012)

I agree with those saying that an incentive to press on is a better approach to the issue. Certainly you can encourage the PCs using in-game carrots and/or sticks, but story approaches aren't always appropriate (the often mentioned delve into a long abandoned tomb filled with undead guardians).

Giving PCs a +1 "well rested" bonus to all rolls after spending a night (or week, if you prefer) in comfortable surroundings is one such approach. Obviously, that bonus is lost when the PCs rest elsewhere, encouraging them to press on for as long as possible on the first adventure day. It has the drawback of only working the first day (once the PCs rest in uncomfortable surroundings, any incentive to press on is lost).

A method that would work across multiple days is a diminishing xp bonus (which could also be explained as a bonus for being well rested). Perhaps on the first day of adventuring, the PCs gain a +25% xp bonus, which is lost at a rate of -5% for each day they rest. For exceptionally long adventures (Undermountain) you might add waypoints that restore 5% of that bonus when first reached (which might be explained as the restorative properties of a holy shrine, or simply the excitement of reaching the stairs leading down into the next level of the dungeon). Such waypoints would also work for the +1 bonus above.

(5% increments might be a bit finicky for some, but you could pretty easily change the above to working in 10% increments.)

Personally, I'd much rather use a carrot (well rested bonus), than a stick (deadly wandering monster encounters in the night). The former gives players a reason to push on (because who doesn't want an extra 25% xp!?) while the latter may actually do the reverse (so that they'll have the resources to handle those extra encounters).

As to the fully rested issue, I'd recommend looking at it as a matter of percentages. After all, one of the things that really irked me in earlier editions was how a low level, sickly wizard would bounce back from death's door much faster than a high level, tough fighter (when left to heal naturally). If you have them heal based on a percentage of total hp, that problem is solved. Then it's simply a matter of how long you want someone to need to heal naturally from death's door. 2 days = 50% hp. 10 days = 10% hp. If you don't like a fixed healing time, randomize it using dice. (Regdar has 110 hp total and you want him to heal to full after 10 days, on average. Simply allow him to heal 2d10 hp per night.) I think percentage based healing is the way to go.


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## Ridley's Cohort (Jun 16, 2012)

rounser said:


> The idea was to point out that it appears that there are simple, much more palatable alternatives. That they could ditch suspension-of-disbelief challenged mechanics like that for powered up magical healing. Full regain of hit points on a rest is, for me, a "creates far more problems than it solves" fix, when supe-ing up magical healing may be all that's required.




I would bet my bottom dollar that the designers are looking at it from a very different direction.

The main point is to allow the players to play the characters they want to play, without being tied by the apron strings to the cleric class.  Choosing a cleric should be an interesting choice with fun pros and cons, not a concession to a entirely phoney sense of realism that the DM is supposed beat into the players with a big stick.

For all that many complained about the easy availability of healing in 3e (it was a notable style change, to be sure), the designers seem absolutely certain this is the right way to go.  Look at 3e.  Look at 4e.  Look at proto-5e.  There is a lot of tweaking, but we are only going further in this direction.

The reason is not difficult to logic out: a lot gaming groups out there only have 3-4 regular players plus the DM.  Under those conditions forcing one of the players to play the cleric is a drag.  Or forcing somebody to play the NPC cleric -- it is the same basic lameness.

So while increasing the efficacy of healing spells is a reasonable house rule for those who strongly prefer a common earlier style of play, it would actually _increase the problem from the designers point of view_.  They do not want a vast difference between parties with and without a cleric because it is a tremendous balance headache for both designers and DMs.


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## slobo777 (Jun 16, 2012)

LostSoul said:


> The last point is key.  Let's say that you only get XP for rescuing the prisoners.  You've delved deep into the dungeon but haven't yet found them; your map suggests where they may be.  You're low on HP and spells.  If you head back to rest you'll have your HP and spells back, but you'll have to face encounters that are all risk, no reward - you might even end up in a worse situation.  If you push on you might not have the resources left to succeed.
> 
> I'd like to see the system make Time a valuable resource, but I doubt that will happen.




It can be very unclimatic to have a lose-by-plot-device due to running out of time.

If the DM presents a Sophie's Choice of "push on, at lower power" versus "rest now, but risk losing the race to win", then many players I know will choose to rest and trust that the DM would not go for the lame ending of "well you rested an extra night, which made all the encounters easy, but you lost the adventure." 

At best, a DM may ad-lib and adjust the encounters to sometimes force the players hand (no choice to rest), or re-balance difficulty after a rest (bad guys partially complete their objective, and the last 2 encounters are boosted). You got to mix and match these approaches (and more) to avoid a 1-giant-encounter-per-day game - well, unless that is both DM And players get to like those.


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## Derren (Jun 16, 2012)

slobo777 said:


> If the DM presents a Sophie's Choice of "push on, at lower power" versus "rest now, but risk losing the race to win", then many players I know will choose to rest and trust that the DM would not go for the lame ending of "well you rested an extra night, which made all the encounters easy, but you lost the adventure."




As you said yourself, the problem is the DM, not the rules. So the DM has to fix it.


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## Zero Cochrane (Jun 16, 2012)

An idea for healing in 5th edition D&D:

I wanted to come up with a way for a character to recover from damage without needing to use a daily resource, such as the Healing Surges of 4th edition D&D.

The following method allows a character to recover from injuries quickly, but not  completely.  Damage that occurs during combat is no more or less deadly  when using these rules. However, injuries can still carry over from one  combat to the next until a character has sufficient time (or magic) to  fully recover.  The only resources expended are those which accelerate  healing (such as healing spells and potions), and a character never has  to worry about running out of healing surges.  With every new injury, he  has the ability to recovery partially, but not completely.

The rules:
Injury is tracked in two simple ways.  A character has Hit Points, which start at his maximum (uninjured value), and Damage Points, which start at zero and are accumulated.
Whenever a character takes damage, it is added to his Damage Points.
If the character's Damage Points ever exceed his current hit points, then the character gains the dying condition and may expire if not helped.
When the character takes a short rest, he recovers some of his vigour -- half the Damage Points are subtracted from his Hit Points, and his Damage Points drop to zero.
If the character is healed a number of points, say with a spell or potion, then the healing is applied to both the Damage Points and the Hit Points -- Damage Points get reduced (minimum zero), and the same number is added to his current Hit Points (up to his normal maximum).
An alternative version of healing may be equivalent to a short rest, as described above.
Natural healing occurs after a short rest has occurred (when the character has zero Damage Points and less than maximum Hit Points).  A character naturally heals 1 hit point per day for each character level.

For example, suppose a Fighter is uninjured and starts combat with his full 63 Hit Points and 0 Damage Points.  After sustaining a couple hits, he has accumulated 16 Damage Points.  He still has 63 Hit Points, however.  After winning the fight, he takes a short rest.  His Hit Points drop to 63-(16/2)=55, and his Damage Points drop to 0.  As you can see, he has partially recovered from his injuries, but has been weakened to an extent.  During a second combat encounter, if he is badly injured, and his Damage Points exceed his current 55 Hit Points, he may die.  If he imbibes a healing potion that heals 5 points, then his Damage Points are reduced by 5 points and his Hit Points are increased by 5 points.  Thus, a character who needs healing badly gets more benefit than one who is at maximum Hit Points or has accumulated no Damage Points.
To maximize magical healing benefits, a character may choose to use magical healing after combat but before he begins his short rest.

Thus healing still has its limits, yet effectively becomes an Encounter ability.

--


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## rounser (Jun 16, 2012)

Ridley's Cohort said:


> I would bet my bottom dollar that the designers are looking at it from a very different direction.
> 
> The main point is to allow the players to play the characters they want to play, without being tied by the apron strings to the cleric class.  Choosing a cleric should be an interesting choice with fun pros and cons, not a concession to a entirely phoney sense of realism that the DM is supposed beat into the players with a big stick.



Yes, I understand this.  The desire to make the cleric optional has been responsible for a lot of arguably bad mechanics and non-archetypes, including healing surges, shout-healing "warlords" etc.  When do we get to say the cure is worse than the disease?

The result of trying to make the cleric optional via wonky classes and supered up natural healing is IMO a big old pile of not-D&D.  Maybe, instead of trying to take an angle grinder to this part of D&D again, and leaving mess everywhere, they should just say "well shucks guys, balanced parties need a cleric just  like they need a fighter-type", then make healing potions and other healing magic items cheap, readily available and much more effective and call it a day.  Most parties need a thief/rogue too.  Heck, you could give paladins a 1 hp per round at will lay on hands, and have clerics retain an in-combat healing niche.  There are options that don't require wonky non-magical mechanics and classes, which is where WOTC seems currently happy to say "done" at.

Just how much of the cleric's unpopularity can be traced back to having most of their spells continually vampired away by the party's need for cures?  Supe up the cures, a lot.  Maybe even make an at-will heal of 1 hp per round.  The cleric may be passé, but the solutions to the cleric that we've seen so far IMO stink a lot more.

Actually, scratch the at-will 1hp/round healing idea, everyone would be walking around at full hp after every encounter, which would suck.  But it does show that there are other options available to them.

Ah, who cares - warlords are back to make a mess of healing conceptually again in 5E, so this is all irrelevant.


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## Alarian (Jun 17, 2012)

To get rid of the cleric being forced into taking nothing but healing, we house ruled a few changes for clerics.  

First, a cleric can take no more then 1/2 his given level slots (rounded down) as healing.  So if he can have six 1st level spells, only three can be healing.

Second, we doubled the amount of healing each spell did, so, a Cure Light wounds heals for 2d8 instead of 1d8.

These two rules made a big difference for us, and allowed the cleric to take other spells he found more useful and interesting.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 17, 2012)

rounser said:


> Yes, I understand this.  The desire to make the cleric optional has been responsible for a lot of arguably bad mechanics and non-archetypes, including healing surges, shout-healing "warlords" etc.



What's arguably bad about the healing surge mechanic, itself?  Other than that you simply don't like them or they're different from what D&D had in the past, that is?

As for the warlord archetype, "shout healing" is probably more prevalent in heroic fantasy and cinema than the D&D cleric.  I mean, seriously, a guy in full armor with a mace who stands behind you and heals you as you get beat up?  Name one character that behaves like a D&D cleric from any pre-D&D source. 

D&D hit points and healing have always been very unrealistic and counter-genre, but they do make the game a lot more playable than more 'realistic' or 'genre-faithful' games that include impairing wounds, limited healing, and the like.

Healing surges at least take the Cleric out of the absurd 'band aid' role, eliminate player-manufacturable wands and potions of unlimitted hp recovery, and instead put healing as a resource in the hands of each character.  That greatly enhances balance and playability.  It only strains credulity if you have a problem with hit points, themselves (which a lot of folks always have, I'll readily admit).  The idea that individuals have personal limits to their recuperative abilities, even with outside aid is actually quite realistic.




> The result of trying to make the cleric optional via wonky classes and supered up natural healing is IMO a big old pile of not-D&D.



If you want to define D&D by it's flaws, then, yes, any improvement is not D&D.  Giving everyone BAB and multiple attacks is a big steaming pile of not-AD&D, for instance.  Clerics able to cast spells at 1st level?  That is such a load of not-0D&D.



> Maybe, instead of trying to take an angle grinder to this part of D&D again, and leaving mess everywhere, they should just say "well shucks guys, balanced parties need a cleric just  like they need a fighter-type"



Putting aside that a party could often get by fine without a fighter (say, at higher level, when your Iron Golem makes a great blocker and is healed with the same fireballs that kill your enemies; or in 3e with an Animal Companion or summoned critter or self-buffing cleric taking his place), why is that remotely desireable?  Because that's how it's always been?




> Just how much of the cleric's unpopularity can be traced back to having most of their spells continually vampired away by the party's need for cures?



A fair chunk of it.  The only other candidate is people being put off by the religious angle.



> Supe up the cures, a lot.



3e tried that.  It made cure spells more powerful and let Clerics cast them spontaneously.  It made CLW Wands cheap and even cheaper to make.  The result, without his spell power 'vampired' away with healing, the Cleric was utterly broken.  CoDzilla was born.


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## rounser (Jun 17, 2012)

Don't have the patience to enter into a "what's wrong with healing surges" debate with you, especially when it's a well beaten dead horse.  Google disassociated mechanics, then rethink your idea that the backlash against 4E was based on being sticklers for tradition, rather than people seeing blatantly gamist mechanics and saying "yuck".

As far as 3E clerics go, cure spells were still underpowered.  The importance of CLW wands is a reflection of that, not a cause - cleric wasn't enough, party started making or buying wands as well.  Codzilla is irrelevant - a result of the game bribing people with combat ability to play the cleric, which was a flawed approach.

Again - 3E offered a flat healing amount per spell.  Affected one person, didn't scale with level (with the exception of Heal).  What is needed to fix clerics is the healing equivalent of a fireball - multiple recipients, healing x per caster level (or equivalent).  Then you'd be getting somewhere.

4E's gamist healing was not the answer, and a continuation of 4E's attitude towards healing into 5E is asking for trouble.


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## Herschel (Jun 17, 2012)

Alarian said:


> To get rid of the cleric being forced into taking nothing but healing, we house ruled a few changes for clerics.
> 
> First, a cleric can take no more then 1/2 his given level slots (rounded down) as healing. So if he can have six 1st level spells, only three can be healing.
> 
> ...




That's....really weird. The solution to needing more healing is to limit it? I always houseruled Clerics could take whichever spells they wanted and could "convert"/"expend" them as same-level healing spells as needed.


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## Fanaelialae (Jun 17, 2012)

Derren said:


> As you said yourself, the problem is the DM, not the rules. So the DM has to fix it.




That's not an acceptable solution, IMO, because not every campaign is structured in the same way.

For example, I'm currently playing in a survival horror style game. There are no overarching goals or deadlines; we're basically exploring and trying to survive long enough to figure out what the heck's going on (the closest comparison for this game is Silent Hill). While our enemies are numerous, deadly, and extremely belligerent, they aren't geniuses who can predict our every move.

There are certainly times when we can't rest (camping out in the middle of the street would be suicide) but as it's a sandbox game, we often rest when we locate a position that is relatively secure (easily barricaded or well hidden). Our DM isn't going to contrive a magical reason to stop us from resting if we do so sooner than he might like. Nor, IMO, should he. If he did, resting would become a game of "guess what the DM is thinking". That's not the game I come to play.

The rules should be geared so that DMs aren't forced to come up with contrivances and work-arounds for why and how PCs should be denied rest. The existence of such rules doesn't preclude the DM from being able to use wandering monsters or repopulating dungeons (or any of the other old tricks), but proper rules would remove the _need_ to do so even when inappropriate.


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## Ridley's Cohort (Jun 17, 2012)

I am with Tony Vargas on this one.

"Shake it off, and *get in there*, and *FIGHT!!!*" is a ubiquitous healing mechanic in heroic genres. 

What some like to denigrate as "gamist" is what every action movie fan and every heroic comic book fan habitually thinks of as "awesome" and "dramatic".  

It is the old-style D&D healing which is clumsy and suspension-of-disbelief crushing by common standards.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 17, 2012)

rounser said:


> Don't have the patience to enter into a "what's wrong with healing surges" debate with you, especially when it's a well beaten dead horse.



Well, and because there's really nothing wrong with them.  

Actually, there is something wrong with healing surges, and Vancian casting, and AEDU.  Daily resources.  Daily resources dictate pacing, which limits the kinds of campaigns the DM can run, presents players with metagame incentives, and restricts the kinds of 'stories' you can collectively tell (if you're into RPGs as collective storytelling).  

Aside from that, though, there's nothing wrong with surge mechanics that wouldn't require fixing a lot of other stuff, too.  Getting rid of surges could be advisable as part of a design shift to encounter-balancing or adventure-based resources management.  

5e doesn't show any inclination in that direction, so should probably at least keep HD, if not bring them closer in function to surges.  In particular, keeping party healing resources separate from the Cleric's spell resources.





> Google disassociated mechanics, then rethink your idea that the backlash against 4E was based on being sticklers for tradition, rather than people seeing blatantly gamist mechanics and saying "yuck".



A cleric using Vancian mechanics to cast Cure "Light" Wounds on his mortally-wounded (1 hp away from actual death, say), companion, over and over again until he's perfectly fine (possibly going and 'resting' another whole day to memorize some more of them because he rolled a couple '1's on his d8s) /isn't/ gamist and verisimilitude-busting?  

The only thing that makes the old Clerical healing seem tolerable is familiarity.  At least, it's the only rationale I feel comfortable attributing to someone I'm having a polite discussion with.



> As far as 3E clerics go, cure spells were still underpowered.  The importance of CLW wands is a reflection of that, not a cause - cleric wasn't enough, party started making or buying wands as well.  Codzilla is irrelevant - a result of the game bribing people with combat ability to play the cleric, which was a flawed approach.



It's the approach you just advocated.  And, just upping clerical healing spells isn't going to fix it.  The problem is having healing traded off for other spells of the cleric.  Healing is a whole-party resource, making one character bear that whole burden is imbalancing.  If you make healing so potent that the cleric needs few spells to fully heal his party, then when he does devote his spells to healing their staying power goes over the top.  If you make healing require much of the cleric's spells, but give him other abilities to compensate, then when there are other sources of healing (like a second or third cleric, or those WoCLW), and spells can be devoted to non-healing applications, the cleric becomes over powered.  It's just not a workable paradigm.  

Healing Surges are.  Hit Dice, if they acted as an ultimate healing limit, like healing surges did, could be, just at a level that'd make for shorter adventuring 'days' due to lack of healing. 



> Again - 3E offered a flat healing amount per spell.  Affected one person, didn't scale with level (with the exception of Heal).



The various Cure...Wounds spells did add your level, and did have 'Mass' versions.

So, yeah, it's all been tried.  Nothing worked.  Healing surges did.  Maybe they worked a little too well or seemed aesthetically unpleasing to some people, but they were a functional mechanic.


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## Authweight (Jun 17, 2012)

I agree Tony, healing surges were a pretty excellent mechanic. They made healers useful without letting healers seriously affect the length of the adventuring day, which is a remarkable feat really. Healing is still really good, because it keeps you up and fighting in a combat, but the total amount you can heal in a day is fundamentally capped, and is fully accessible to everyone over the course of an adventuring day regardless of whether or not they have a dedicated healer.

Now, some people may find them overly gamey or unrealistic. But I think every reasonable person will agree that the healing surge mechanic did exactly what it was designed to do in an elegant, easy to understand way.


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## Derren (Jun 17, 2012)

Fanaelialae said:


> For example, I'm currently playing in a survival horror style game.




And in a survival horror game you do not track supplies like water and food which limits the time the PCs can loiter around and instead force them to go out into the scary world to explore?


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## jadrax (Jun 17, 2012)

Wexter said:


> "Push on or rest up?" - That's the question every party and player will be facing and what I believe is the crux of the problem. The main issue is that there's no compelling gameplay reason to push on.  There's often *story* reasons, but I believe there should be gameplay reasons as well.




I think its more than that tbh, its not just that their are not mechanical reasons for pushing on, it is that they are severe mechanical reasons not to.

Even if you are pressed for time, and have the rescue the princess in the next 5 hours... pushing on with no spells and 17 hit points between you is pretty much a stupid decision to make because you will almost certainly both fail to rescue the princess and also die in the process.


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## Fanaelialae (Jun 17, 2012)

Derren said:


> And in a survival horror game you do not track supplies like water and food which limits the time the PCs can loiter around and instead force them to go out into the scary world to explore?




Sure we do, but because having a cleric would go against the style of the game (turn undead would be flat out broken), the DM instead increased the healing rate. We're not always 100% full after a night's rest, but it generally heals us to at least 90%. Sure, we probably wouldn't want to hole up for a week due to the need for supplies, but the _rules_ of this campaign make it such that doing so would be completely pointless anyway.


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## Aenghus (Jun 17, 2012)

There are strong opinions on this topic.

In the recent Reddit Q&A session AMA: Mike Mearls, head of D&D Research and Design at WotC : rpg said there were loud voices calling for a less effective extended rest.



> The feedback on long rests has primarily been that they are far too forgiving. It feels lame that the party can be on the edge of death, sleep for eight hours, and bounce back up to full strength.




He also said that 



> 5.Healing is definitely going to get a number of dials to let DMs tweak it to fit their games. You can imagine a range that starts with "Festering wounds and missing limbs" on one end and has "Sleep cures all ills" on the other.




Because I definitely see hp damage as mostly cuts and scratches, and want an extended rest to heal all hp. It's not going away as an option.


In my experience, players whose PCs are low in hp (or other resources such as spells, but hp in particular) get very cagey and will prefer resting up or retreating to pressing on, and not continue with the adventure till they are mostly healed up. It's starting to look like the default healing model will involve a healbot or other magic or lots of rest and downtime. (Im personally excluding the "force PCs to press on while weak" option as I don't advocate suicidal PC tactics).

The issue with the "default" style of play is making it acessible to the largest group of people's tastes possible. The designers need to avoid the healbot problem somehow, while keeping PC fatality rates ,especially at low level , under control. I think they need to avoid lots of rest time as well - I find new players get very impatient with PCs confined to bedrest for multiple days, and don't see the need to enforce such rules, myself.


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## Uller (Jun 17, 2012)

Aenghus said:


> There are strong opinions on this topic.
> 
> In the recent Reddit Q&A session AMA: Mike Mearls, head of D&D Research and Design at WotC : rpg said there were loud voices calling for a less effective extended rest.




It sounds like WotC has it under control.  Everyone who wants longer healing times can have it.  Everyone one who wants shorter times can have it.  You just have to get your group to agree to a rate that makes sense for the type of game you are playing.

For me:  90% of the time the party hits some good breaking point in the adventure, they return to some sanctuary to rest and refit for time X (it doesn't matter how long...a day...two days, maybe 3), the NPCs and monsters make moves to react to the results of what the PCs have done and the adventure resumes.  Healing times matter naught.   If the PCs take longer than a week or so, the adventure is effectively over.  The villains will surely have either moved on, set up much tougher defenses or maybe even gone on the offensive.

Occasionally some finer granularity for heal time (and time to regain spells and what not) matters.  Maybe they decided to rest in some place not so safe or maybe they only want to rest for half a day or whatever because of time pressure built into the adventure...but that's almost always an outlier in every game I've ever played or DMed.  So...I don't really care what WotC does on this. 

I think they SHOULD keep the heal times generally short to keep the game accessible to the most people.


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## Uller (Jun 17, 2012)

Derren said:


> As you said yourself, the problem is the DM, not the rules. So the DM has to fix it.




You're right...When the players see a rule that encourages them to have a 15 minute adventuring week rather than a 15 minute adventuring day and and that causes the DM to have to impose consequences that are lame, clearly it's the DM's fault and not the system.


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## Derren (Jun 17, 2012)

Uller said:


> You're right...When the players see a rule that encourages them to have a 15 minute adventuring week rather than a 15 minute adventuring day and and that causes the DM to have to impose consequences that are lame, clearly it's the DM's fault and not the system.




So a living world is lame compared to a random collection of dungeon rooms where time stands still unless the PCs do something?

A rule to prevent longer adventuring days is only needed when you play a boardgame or simple H&S game. But if you play a real RPG game there are nearly always setting reasons why you shouldn't take too long. And when the PCs still rest after every encounter, that is there decision.


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## Fanaelialae (Jun 17, 2012)

Derren said:


> And when the PCs still rest after every encounter, that is there decision.




IMO, that is where you are wrong. The ruleset can easily make that decision for the characters. For example, back when I played 3e, I played in a campaign where we had an unoptimized (but interesting) party and a DM who was of the school of thought that every encounter must be a challenge.

We rested after virtually every encounter not because we wanted to (I've played with these guys before and since, and given the option they will press on as far as is sensible and sometimes a little beyond), but because to do otherwise would have been suicidal. 

Now, I'll grant you, if a level 5 party that faces a single goblin decides to rest because the wizard cast a magic missile, that's on them. (Personally, I've never seen such a thing.)

Typically IME, players decide to rest because they don't believe they have the resources to press on. That's not on the players. A choice of failure by time constraints (resting) vs failure via suicide (pressing on without any resources) is not a real choice at all. It's the system that determines how many resources the players are allotted and how quickly those are recovered. Therefore, it often hinges upon the system rather than the players.


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## Fifth Element (Jun 17, 2012)

Ridley's Cohort said:


> It is the old-style D&D healing which is clumsy and suspension-of-disbelief crushing by common standards.



This needs to be said more often. To me it was always something that had to be tolerated in order to enjoy the rest of the game. Clerical healing is kludgy and I find it very gamist.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 17, 2012)

The issue with 15 minute workdays and overnight healing is just a specific case of the problem with daily resources and pacing.  

Different DMs and players want stories with different pacing.  Some would like to have dozens of deadly encounters per day, others might want weeks to pass between encounters.  If the game uses 'days' to recover resources, it forces pacing around days.  In the long-term campaign, every encounter faces a full-resources party.  The game isn't balanced around that, characters with daily powers become overpowered relative their daily-less companions, and encounters are underpowered for their intended level.  

Resources should be moved from 'days' to a soft re-set based on desired campaign pacing.  Maybe something like the 'milestone.'   Every 4th encounter, you re-charge low-usage abilities (like Vancian spells) - or every 5th or 6th, whatever the design pegs as the balance point.  Or, maybe something more 'story' oriented, like "chapters," with re-charging happening in the "denouement."


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## Ridley's Cohort (Jun 17, 2012)

The "I DM a living world" argument cuts both ways.

The amount of bloodletting even a lazy party typically dishes out every day is so huge that it is not necessarily sensible for the survivors to do much about it (otherwise than just flee for the hills).  Replacement monsters would not be expected to just respawn for the party's inconvenience at a high enough rate to matter.

The most likely to be effective countertactics would be to coordinate a deadly ambush or hunt down the resting party.  The threat of both tactics argues for the party avoiding being weak as much as possible, as they always have to have enough resources for at least one (or two) more nasty pitched battle held in reserve.


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## pemerton (Jun 18, 2012)

RigaMortus2 said:


> If hit points represent physical damage as well as exhaustion/luck, healing should do the same.  So how about this.
> 
> Using mundane healing, including an extended rest, you can only heal up to half your max hit points.  To top off, you'll need to use magical resources to go from full to max?



I don't see how this would deal with the OP's issue - it seems to make resting, to recover magical resources, more attractive. It also ties healing to gold (which presumably can be used to buy magical resources, as per 3E, or per the clerical spell casting list in the AD&D DMG), which makes balancing treasure harder rather than easier.



Chris_Nightwing said:


> Players will not push forward with low hitpoints, because it risks death. They will push forward with minor penalties however, because they still have their hitpoint buffer before death.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



But why would we not just rest, recover that -1 penalty from resting, _and_ memorise the Bless spell to get a further +1 buff?

In other words, where does the reason to keep going come from?



Wexter said:


> "Push on or rest up?" - That's the question every party and player will be facing and what I believe is the crux of the problem. The main issue is that there's no compelling gameplay reason to push on.  There's often *story* reasons, but I believe there should be gameplay reasons as well.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



With my 4e group, I've found that action points, _plus_ daily item abilities, plus some magic items keyed to milestones (eg the paladin has Meliorating Armour: +1 to AC per milestone) help reinforce the story reasons for pushing on. They are not enough on their own.



chaochou said:


> Another alternative is to tie character growth and progression (in D&Ds case, that's XP) into player-defined goals and beliefs. This is the mechanism used in the Burning Wheel.



Burning Wheel has another interesting mechanic that is relevant here: the "reward" for pushing on when wounded is that DCs become (relatively) harder to hit - because of wound penalties - and in that system you _need_ to tackle (without necessarily succeeding at) hard DCs or you won't advance. So being wounded actually facilitates advancement at the same time that it makes failure more likley.

A further feature of Burning Wheel that helps make this work is that "failure" doesn't generally mean character death. It means unexpected complications, that the _PC_ did not desire but that the _player_ can probably derive enjoyment from.

Part of what creates the pressure towards healing in D&D, in my view, is not just the relative lack of reward for pushing on, but that the consequences of failure are generally so brutal. I think that if D&Dnext revisits the issue of consequences for failure, it could help address many issues: healing; making players more willing to use a range of stats in action resolution; making balancing PCs across the 3 pillars more viable; combining with flatter math to make more story elements more viable at more levels.

But there is no sign in the playtest that they are looking at this issue of consequences. The stakes in the Cave of Chaos still seem to be "succeed or die".


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## pemerton (Jun 18, 2012)

Derren said:


> So a living world is lame compared to a random collection of dungeon rooms where time stands still unless the PCs do something?
> 
> A rule to prevent longer adventuring days is only needed when you play a boardgame or simple H&S game. But if you play a real RPG game there are nearly always setting reasons why you shouldn't take too long.



Derren, you are fond of deriding those whose play experience is different from yours as hack-and-slashers etc, but your assertion doesn't make it so.

First, there is a fairly traditional D&D set-up - investigate and loot the long-lost tomb - in which "living world" is not going to make a big difference over a timescale of days or even weeks (maybe over months or years caves erode, new monsters move in, new hauntings arise, etc).

Second, even when dealing with living, reactive enemies, a day or two is often neither here nor there. Suppose that Han and Luke had taken an extra two days to rescue Leia - would it have made a big difference? Instead of being held prisoner for N days, she's held prisoner for N+2.

Upthread, [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] canvassed a respawn time for the Caves of Chaos of 1d3 days. Mechanically that might work, but within the context of a living world, where are those extra bodies coming from? Why do the Caves of Chaos inhabitants not just sit on their "respawners" for a week or two and then conquer the world?

Within the confines of a genuine living world, as opposed to a very tightly constructed RPG scenario, I think that it is actually quite hard to make time matter to within a day or two (as opposed perhaps to weeks or months).

Which suggests a much more obvious solution, for those who _do_ want time to matter within a living world - make the recovery period (for spells, hit points, surges etc) a week, or a month, rather than a day. Then the PCs _will_ have to tackle the adventure on a single set of resources. (This still won't give LostSoul what he wants, though, of making resource recovery a strategic decision. I think that requires shorter timelines, and other factors to be at stake, of the sort [MENTION=6695556]Wexter[/MENTION] talked about.)



Ridley's Cohort said:


> The amount of bloodletting even a lazy party typically dishes out every day is so huge that it is not necessarily sensible for the survivors to do much about it (otherwise than just flee for the hills).  Replacement monsters would not be expected to just respawn for the party's inconvenience at a high enough rate to matter.



Yes.

Fairly recently, I ran a pretty typical set of encounters for my 4e group: fight some cultists, track them down to their headquarters and fight some more cultists, clean up in time for the dinner at the Baron's place where more cultists attack and are fought off, then go to the (now dead) cult leaders' house where wererats and bodyguards have to be fought off.

In D&D terms, this is a fairly typical adventuring day: 4 encounters. But because it was taking place in an urban environment, the bodycount felt more "real". Including the NPCs that the cultists killed, at the end of the day around 30 or so people had died in a town of about 5000 inhabitants. That is carnage on a pretty grand scale!

As a GM, my rationale for running the scenario at such a hectic pace is the recovery dynamics of 4e (ie the game is more interesting when the players have to make choices about resource use, which means I want the scenario to unfold within a given rest period); within the story, I based the hectic action around a prophecy and an astrological event. 

But it's hardly the case that, had the scenario been slowed down (eg because I had put the pacing into the hands of the players, and they had in turn stopped to rest), that the cultists would have been able to recruit new members at the rate they were being killed off.

At best they might have fled.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 18, 2012)

Some great ideas being thrown around.

One thing I would caution when people are thinking of new healing ideas, you have to be careful not to rely on mechanics that may very well be optional to a group's experience.

For example, I've heard a few ideas regarding using XP as a way to better reinforce "pushing on". However, XP is a lot more optional than some would think. Some groups give XP very different than the standard methods, heck many groups (mine included) don't use it at all!

Since healing is a core aspect of the dnd experience (in some way shape or form depending on your dial preference), then it needs to interface with only the most core aspects of the game.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jun 18, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Burning Wheel has another interesting mechanic that is relevant here: the "reward" for pushing on when wounded is that DCs become (relatively) harder to hit - because of wound penalties - and in that system you _need_ to tackle (without necessarily succeeding at) hard DCs or you won't advance. So being wounded actually facilitates advancement at the same time that it makes failure more likley.






Stalker0 said:


> For example, I've heard a few ideas regarding using XP as a way to better reinforce "pushing on". However, XP is a lot more optional than some would think. Some groups give XP very different than the standard methods, heck many groups (mine included) don't use it at all!




I've long thought that part of the problem in D&D is a reward cycle that insufficiently takes into account feedback from the players. Not "feedback" in the sense of the DM listening to them (which ought to happen in any case), but feedback in that as the situation changes, the party is encouraged to do more of what the game is about, albeit in different ways. Part of the reason is that you need a scale that can gradually move.

Hit points are supposed to function as such a feedback loop--and can in AD&D operational play once you get outside of low levels. Hit points, and way to get them back, are finite. But you want to not turn back until necessary, because time spent getting to and from the "dungeon" and/or dealing with wandering monsters is time not spent gaining treasure. So if you think about a big dungeon that requires multiple trips, when to turn back is more about efficiency than immediate death. You are tempted to push on, but you've also got a point at which pushing on is *increasingly* a bad idea.

So we've talked about various death spirals. And some of us have talked in the past about how you can't make the Burning Wheel mechanism work in D&D very well, because there really isn't any incentive for risking failure. And then if you try to do some kind of "more XP or treasure when you push on" mechanic, it often gets unwieldly.

So how about combining a death spiral wound system with bonuses to some positive thing? Let's say "fate points" for this example, and leave exactly what they do for later discussion. Suffice for now to say that having them is unmistakenly a good thing, but you only get them when you are suffering from the wounds (from the death spiral or otherwise). The more you suffer from the wounds, the more you are likely to get fate points. And critically, these fate points don't reset at the end of an adventure. They are a special kind of reward explicitly for pushing on in the face fo the death spiral--and they help you in ways that deal with being in a rough spot--whether you got there by pushing on or stumbled into it later.

Both the death spiral wound system and the fate point system can be modules, and work independently. Use the death spiral wound system by itself, you make the game more gritty and tough. Use the fate point system by itself, and you inject a minor player agency option that doesn't fire very much, because the players are seldom "wounded". Use them together, and you get something that changes the core game to keep it about the same tone, but rewards pressing on in the face of danger.


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## pemerton (Jun 18, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> some of us have talked in the past about how you can't make the Burning Wheel mechanism work in D&D very well, because there really isn't any incentive for risking failure.



Like I said upthread, I really think that this is _such_ a sticking point for so much of what D&Dnext is trying to achieve - not just healing, for example, but it's idea of "fiction engaging" stat checks as the default action resolution mechanic - that I think it should be tackled head on.

That said, it seems more likely than not that it won't be.



Crazy Jerome said:


> So how about combining a death spiral wound system with bonuses to some positive thing?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The more you suffer from the wounds, the more you are likely to get fate points. And critically, these fate points don't reset at the end of an adventure. They are a special kind of reward explicitly for pushing on in the face fo the death spiral--and they help you in ways that deal with being in a rough spot--whether you got there by pushing on or stumbled into it later.



This is interesting.

The easiest version of Fate Points is as a +X bonus to any d20 roll, or to AC against one attack (+3 is probably a nice bonus).

Alternatively, if you want them to be of use _only_ when in a tough spot, you might say that they can be used only to grant a +X bonus to AC (+4 might be a nice number) or to negate disadvantage on one d20 roll, or to negate up to -X of penalties (again, up to -4 of penalties might be a good number).

Then the question is, how are they earned? For succeeding at a certain sort of check while wounded? For _attempting_ a certain sort of check while wounded? Or some other way?


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## Ridley's Cohort (Jun 18, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Part of what creates the pressure towards healing in D&D, in my view, is not just the relative lack of reward for pushing on, but that the consequences of failure are generally so brutal. I think that if D&Dnext revisits the issue of consequences for failure, it could help address many issues: healing; making players more willing to use a range of stats in action resolution; making balancing PCs across the 3 pillars more viable; combining with flatter math to make more story elements more viable at more levels.




That is tough one.

BW's engine is built around dramatic and narrative logic, so failures can simply be plot detours.  By its nature, one is likely to love it or hate because it is strongly geared towards specific styles of roleplaying.

D&D is at it core a war game with enough mechanical flexibility to allow for many kinds of roleplaying.  The default logic baked into the game is "failure = death".  Getting away from there requires building a lot of infrastructure from scratch.  This screams "module" because many old time players would despise it for many obvious reasons.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 18, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Second, even when dealing with living, reactive enemies, a day or two is often neither here nor there. Suppose that Han and Luke had taken an extra two days to rescue Leia - would it have made a big difference? Instead of being held prisoner for N days, she's held prisoner for N+2.



Actually, in the movie, according to C3PO, she's "scheduled to be terminated."  [sblock]7:50 into the clip:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDGDazSOVJk&feature=related]Star Wars IV-A New Hope (Part 5/8) - YouTube[/ame][/sblock]

Missing those two days would reshape the next couple movies. You're right, of course -a day or two is often neither here nor there. Sometimes, though, that day or two makes a huge difference. I like downtime in my games (travel time, recovery, etc.) because of the setting evolution (living world) and in-game pacing that it produces.


pemerton said:


> Within the confines of a genuine living world, as opposed to a very tightly constructed RPG scenario, I think that it is actually quite hard to make time matter to within a day or two (as opposed perhaps to weeks or months).



I agree with this. Oftentimes, it doesn't matter too much. I just like the collective effect of 2 days here, 5 days there, 2 weeks here, 5 days there, etc. It adds up, and it makes a difference.

Individually, it may not make a big difference a lot of the time. I mean, sometimes it will, and it can be huge (see your Star Wars example as a great way to show that), but it could very often go unnoticed.


pemerton said:


> Which suggests a much more obvious solution, for those who _do_ want time to matter within a living world - make the recovery period (for spells, hit points, surges etc) a week, or a month, rather than a day. Then the PCs _will_ have to tackle the adventure on a single set of resources.



I could see this. That's why I do support dials on recovery time. I think the best way to handle it might be to present multiple options for recover time (HP and non-HP included), and let people choose, rather than having a default. I know I like slower recovery for the in-game pacing and setting evolution it naturally produces. As always, play what you like


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## Stalker0 (Jun 18, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> So how about combining a death spiral wound system with bonuses to some positive thing? Let's say "fate points" for this example, and leave exactly what they do for later discussion. Suffice for now to say that having them is unmistakenly a good thing, but you only get them when you are suffering from the wounds (from the death spiral or otherwise). The more you suffer from the wounds, the more you are likely to get fate points.




I had written about a similar system using 4e's action point system.

Regardless of the mechanic, I came to the same conclusion. If you expect mechanics to encourage a player to play while hurt, then mechanically he has to feel as badass or even more badass when wounded than he does normally.


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## pemerton (Jun 18, 2012)

Ridley's Cohort said:


> That is tough one.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> D&D is at it core a war game with enough mechanical flexibility to allow for many kinds of roleplaying.  The default logic baked into the game is "failure = death".  Getting away from there requires building a lot of infrastructure from scratch.  This screams "module" because many old time players would despise it for many obvious reasons.



I think you're right that a lot of old time players would despise it for the obvious reasons.

But I'm not sure that it needs a lot of infranstructure to be baked in. Quite a bit can be done just in terms of advice on scenario design and action resolution. (Attempts of this sort, albeit somewhat half-hearted, were made in 4e in relation to skill challenges.)


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## Crazy Jerome (Jun 18, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Then the question is, how are they earned? For succeeding at a certain sort of check while wounded? For _attempting_ a certain sort of check while wounded? Or some other way?




My rough draft goes this way, because I'd like the wounds and fate points to work well and seemlessly together, but also work independently:

Wounds cause damage to ability scores (as discussed earlier in this topic).
Fate points are earned by failing certain ability score checks badly, when it really matters.
Maybe "fate points" would really be "karma points" in such a system.  You get them when things go bad, and then you get to use them to turn later, worse things into less bad things.  

Note that as written, this means that you can also gain points by having a bad stat and then trying to use it.  Doesn't really matter if you got the bad stat from assigning it, rolling for stats, getting wounded, magically drained, etc.  It's just that when used, the wounds will be the most common reason why points get earned.

To keep it somewhat reasonable on handling time, you need some kind of filter on getting points, so that they can be ignored on most rolls:

Roll a 1 or 2 on a d20 check.
Fail the check by 15.
Get hurt and/or pick up some bad condition or circumstance.
Meet all three, get a fate point.  The first one is in there to cull out a lot of rolls, with brute force.  The second one is in there to discourage fishing for fate points on the moderate rolls that make up the heart of a game.  The last one is where the DM gets to say you get the point or not.  You might not for failing badly to jump over a pit when you only take 2 points of damge.  You might qualify when the botched dipomacy check means the duchess hates you now.  

Note also that you could use both wounds and fate points in a game, and the players could choose to not push on much.  That's ok, as the point of a feedback system is to let the players find their level of comfort.  Playing cautious means you don't get fate points to handle things when you slip up.  So you continue to play cautious.  Playing loose means you do get points, but you'll need them.  Somewhere in the middle is probably optimum for most groups.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Jun 18, 2012)

pemerton said:


> But why would we not just rest, recover that -1 penalty from resting, _and_ memorise the Bless spell to get a further +1 buff?
> 
> In other words, where does the reason to keep going come from?




For me, the only reasons to continue to risk your character's life are dramatic or personal. Mechanical benefits rarely pass the sniff test for me, and as you said, don't provide enough incentive on their own. Tying in something serious such as XP might make players feel like they have to keep going.

I was more looking for acceptable penalties, the sort that players would feel are annoying, but not enough to give up on. Not having enough HP (I'd say the psychological threshold is about 2/3rds) and you can see their attitude to combat and within combat changes right away. A penalty to hit annoys them, but they keep going. Being easier to hit? That might be too much.


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## Lalato (Jun 18, 2012)

Have you worked through the math?  A penalty to hit is pretty severe and will likely result in enemies getting an extra round or two.  Which means more opportunities for those enemies to cause damage.  Which means your players will likely end up resting sooner.  Which means you get no benefit out of it whatsoever... except longer combats, that are potentially more deadly.  And players forced to rest because they really can't go on.

The best outcome you can hope for is that players keep pushing on, but avoid combats.  This is a great outcome, but it's not obvious by handing out penalties.  A better way to do this is to make sure your players understand that they can get XP for avoiding the encounter instead of engaging in it.

I mean... if the players come up with a great plan to avoid combat and they succeed... reward them as if they beat the encounter.  It's a very different game, then, but hey... at least they pushed on just like you wanted. 

As for the healing paradox... I'll never understand why it makes such a difference to people whether healing happens quickly or slowly... but I think the real problem is DMs that kind of force their players to enter into combat instead of letting their players be rewarded for avoiding them.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 18, 2012)

Lalato said:


> As for the healing paradox... I'll never understand why it makes such a difference to people whether healing happens quickly or slowly...



It's a campaign/story pacing issue.  That makes it a win-lose, though.  If healing is handled one way, it dictates pacing.  So, another point were 'modularity' becomes key - the problem is how to keep it all working smoothly.  Right now, Healing is embedded in classes and themes, making it hard for the DM to pick rate of healing that'll give him the pacing he wants without banning or house-ruling player options, a module to do so would have to include detailed changes in general and specific rules.  If healing were pulled into a single sub-system, modules could alter or swap it out more easily.  



> but I think the real problem is DMs that kind of force their players to enter into combat instead of letting their players be rewarded for avoiding them.



The idea of rewarding exp for avoiding a combat is nothing new.  4e doesn, I'm pretty sure 3e did, and AD&D at least intimated some award might be appropriate.   When I ran AD&D, I gave half experience for avoiding a monster.  If you later killed it, you got the other half.  If you later avoided it again, you got 1/4....


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## Crazy Jerome (Jun 19, 2012)

Ideally, D&D would be mostly neutral about combat.  I say only "mostly," because if it is going to err, it needs to assume that combat is at least somewhat acceptable.  The risks of combat are great enough that you need a reward inline with those risks. 

That is, the problem with the operational play postively rewarding you for avoiding combat is ... some people *like* combat.    So it's tricky to hit this fine line where combat has some advantages and disadvantages to it.  If you fight the dragon, kill it, and take his treasure, you get one set of rewards.  If you outsmart the dragon and take his treasure, you get a slightly different set of rewards.  If you avoid the dragon altogether, that has something else attached to it.  

So it's difficult enough to get the rewards right (for a wide range of playstyles) when the party is all healed up and loaded for dire bear.  Most DMs can get some sense from the players on how they want to work it, and make it happen.  Throw in enough damage and other depleted resources, the calculus changes.


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## Lalato (Jun 19, 2012)

I enjoy combat.  I just think that if you emphasize it too much it becomes the solution to every problem.  And if there is no reward for avoiding it, then it becomes the only real way to advance in the game.

I think that avoiding combat when  you're at full HP is just as valid as avoiding it when you're at 1 HP.  The main issue is that most adventures (home brew or published) give the players few options outside of killing monsters and taking their stuff.  If you're low on resources/hp, tough...  you still have to fight the BBEG or save the princess and potentially "die".


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 19, 2012)

I like hit points as a "per encounter" resource, and healing surges or hit dice as daily recovery resource, but would like to add some kind of wound system.

When you are reduced to 0 hit points or less, you take a wound. Choose from a list or roll some dice. The wound is first just a note that doesn't do anything directly. Wounds recover slowly. YOu may have a maximum number of wounds before you end up in some real trouble (say, can no longer recover hit points beyond half). 
When you become bloodied by an attack, one of your wounds "activate" and the associated penalties apply. And this happens every time you are bloodied (or dropped to 0 hit points?). So in a long battle with a lot of hit point yo-yoing, you'll look really battered and feel terrible with lots of penalties. 

Problem is that such a system is not necessarily simple, since you need several wound types. That's something I don't like. But maybe one can boil it down to something simple.

Maybe a somewhat less complex version is possible.

Every time you are reduced to 0 hit points, you take an injury. There are the following injury steps: 


Uninjured
Lightly Injured
Activation: You take disadvantage on your next attack or ability check.
Critical Hit: You take disadvantage on your next attack or ability check.
 
Moderate Injured
Activation: You are knocked prone. You also take a -10 ft penalty while bloodied.
Critical Hit: You are knocked prone.
 
Seriously Injured
Activation: You lose your next action. You also take a -10 ft penalty while bloodied (for a total of -20 ft from the moderate injury).
Critical Hit: You lose your next action.
 
Critically Injured
Activation: You cannot recover hit points above half your hit points.
Critical Hit: If you still have hit points after the attack is resolved, your hit points are reduced to 0 but you are stable. You take no additional injury if this effect is applied (but you take an injury if the triggering attack already reduced you to 0 hit points or less, as normal.)
 
Deadly Injured
Activation: You cannot recover any hit points (but you can still be stabilized from any healing you receive).
 

Gaining Injury: Whenever you are reduced to 0 hit points or less, your injury state worsens by one step.
Activating Injuries: Whenever you are bloodied by an attack, each wound becomes active and remains active until you are no longer bloodied.

Recovery: It takes 3 days of long rest to recover one injury level. 
Some magical healing and rituals can speed up this process. 

Cure XXX spells and potions improve your injury condition by one step if the XXX is at least equal of your injury level. (So you need a Cure Light Wound spell to remove a light injury, and a Cure Serious spells would lessen a serious injuryto a moderate injury).
The Heal Ritual (xhours casting time, y gold piece per injury level and character level) removes all injuries.
Note: _This system is somewhat different than the original one I mentioned at the beginning of the post -w ith injury levels instead of specific injuries (say, broken arm or serious burn), it didnd't seem to make sense to have only one wound "active" and I simply made all conditions apply. Even in this form, it's still fairly complex and looks more like a module than a core rule. What I like is that there are some obvious dials - you can speed up or slow down natural healing, you can impose further or lesser limits on spells, and you can adjust the price of the healing ritual - down to a level where it becomes trivial or up to a level where it's almost impossible to do.
At the same time, the conditions are not _that_ nasty, until you get in the serious low areas of injuries. As long as you got some way to cure light wounds, you are not that likely to stack up much injuries, and if you stack them up, bloodied becomes a little more special and criticals a little nastier - but not overwhelmingly so, I think, at least until you are criticallly injured.
_


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## Chris_Nightwing (Jun 19, 2012)

Lalato said:


> Have you worked through the math?  A penalty to hit is pretty severe and will likely result in enemies getting an extra round or two.  Which means more opportunities for those enemies to cause damage.  Which means your players will likely end up resting sooner.  Which means you get no benefit out of it whatsoever... except longer combats, that are potentially more deadly.  And players forced to rest because they really can't go on.




Ok, so a -1 penalty to hit is going to have different effects depending on how likely you were to hit to begin with. If you hit 10% of the time then you'll increase the number of combat rounds by 50% on average. More realistically, if you hit 50% of the time you increase the number of combat rounds by 10%, or say you hit 25% of the time, that's a 20% increase. If combat lasts ten rounds (which is unlikely) then that might be 1 or 2 more chances for the enemies to attack you - this isn't a large increase in damage output.

Players love bonuses to hit because then they can attempt trickier things - bigger spells and attacks. Penalties to hit usually result in them doing mundane attacks and avoiding the chance of losing something big. So, it will affect their playstyle based on what sort of combat actions they have available - a Wizard might wait to gain advantage before blasting off an acid arrow with a -1 penalty.


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## Roland55 (Jun 19, 2012)

This is a very interesting Thread.

Please ... keep it up, folks.


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## Uller (Jun 20, 2012)

Roland55 said:


> This is a very interesting Thread.
> 
> Please ... keep it up, folks.




Sure...it's all very interesting as long as WotC understands that there are many many players who have stopped talking because there are only so many ways you can say you like things as they are. Not tha it matters that much to me.  If 5e comes with rules that require 3+ days to heal, I'll happily ignore them...

I actually hate the idea of "rests" being required to heal...I've been exhausted, battered and bruised in my life...I didn't have to lie in bed to get better.  I don't like a mechanic that overly encourages the PCs to hide under a rock for more than a few hours...If I was designing the game, I'd go with something like this:

HP are recovered at a rate of (level + Con Mod)(minimum 1) per time period X of no strenuous activity (fighting, forced march, carrying heavy loads, etc).   You can travel, explore, interact with towns folk, etc and still recover hp and HD.

HD are recovered at a rate of one fourth max HD (round up) per time X of no strenuous activity.  These HD can be converted immediately into hp if desired.

A period of at least 8 hours of complete rest in a day will allow you to double the healing for a single time period.  Hiding in a dungeon or camping out in the wild DOES NOT COUNT.

If you are reduced to 0 hp, you cannot begin to regain hp/HD until you have passed an endurance check at the end of a time period.  This check can be aided by someone trained in healing (to give you advantage).  Complete rest gives advantage.  Being knocked below 0 hp multiple times gives disadvantage.

I'd go with a time period of 6 hours.  So a 5th level fighter with 14 Con and a max of 44 hp (and 5d12 HD) is reduced to 2 hp and 0 HD...

After 6 hours of light travel, dungeon exploration, camping, etc he is at (average) 22 hp, 0HD...
12 hours: 42 hp 0HD
18 hours: 44 hp 2d12 HD
24 hours 44 hp 4d12 HD
36 hours 44 hp 5d12 HD....

A 7th level wizard with 8 Con, 22 hp and 7d4 HD that is reduced to 2 hp and 0 HD:
1 X period: 13 hp, 0HD
2 X period: 19 hp, 2d4 HD
3 X period: 22 hp, 4d4 HD
4 X period: 22 hp, 6d4 HD
5 X period: 22 hp, 7d4 HD...or about 36 hours for fully recovering(if time=6 hours), a little quicker if you get a full rest.

What do I base this on?  

To me, D&D is an heroic action adventure game...my expectations is a game that feels like an action adventure movie.  The perfect example is a James Bond or Indiana Jones movie...(Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a perfect example of an iconic D&D adventure).  The heroes are frequently beaten within an inch of their lives...there is a feeling they are very much on death's door.  The scene ends, the next scene there is some RP style interactions (talking to the village shaman about the stolen sacred stones and the kidnapped children) and then we're right back into fights, traps, puzzles...the heroes never seem like they are functioning at anything less than full hp from one scene to the next.

Call it H&S if you like (as opposed to "real RPGs").  

I understand others want something a bit more grim. The rules should support that too.  WotC is talking about dials...I look forward to seeing what they are...


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## Warbringer (Jun 20, 2012)

Tony Vargas said:


> It's a campaign/story pacing ....




... Are specifically it's an adventure pacing issue. If their is no story consequence to the players sitting around, ok, there's no consequence. If there is a pacing issue, like temple of elemental, or red hand, or any " ended event" in the story arch, then there is a dramatic shift... Less dramatic shifts are the caravan the heroes are guarding has to get to town for best prices,or their shares are worthless ..( perfect storm)... Or the dragon eats the princess, the bad guys make away with the gold, or sleeping beauty never wakes...

But, dms should not punish the heroes just because they don't push on, and the core rules can be written because the players will complain about not having full resources every time they want to take on a challenge...

A sensible rule, hit dice pool plus a penalty for falling under 0, creates a baseline of bad injuries suck longer than a single long rest.... Modules then step up healing-> no penalty-> full hits per dice -> full hits plus dice.... Or the other way, -> pool after 0 hits is recoverd 1 dice per day, or you regain only 1 hip point per dice until healed ..... Etc


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## Lalato (Jun 20, 2012)

I'm curious... what kind of story can't be told with the overnight rest mechanic?


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## Stacie GmrGrl (Jun 20, 2012)

Why not just have the Medicine skill, or skill equivalent, heal Hit Points? It's been a part of Fantasy Craft and it works very well. 

I really think the writers should peruse the many other d20 games out there.


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## pemerton (Jun 20, 2012)

Lalato said:


> I'm curious... what kind of story can't be told with the overnight rest mechanic?



Maybe one in which a given group of individuals gets into more than (say) 5 fights in the same day?


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 20, 2012)

Lalato said:


> I'm curious... what kind of story can't be told with the overnight rest mechanic?



I think a better question might be: based on the type of story you want to see the mechanics naturally support, which HP style best helps achieve that goal?

The answer, to me, is longer HP recovery. It provides the story option to press on even after many encounters (in the event that the players roll very well and do not take much HP damage or use many resources), as well as needing to rest after one encounter (and having days or more pass because of longer recovery time).

With that method, the recovery mechanics of the game have solid support for both extremes of the narrative paths: pushing through many encounters, or only getting through one. Long recovery gives me story options without me being heavy-handed about it, which is my preference as a more sandbox-y GM. For example, if the PCs rest because they're low on HP, and it takes a few days, then the princess might get executed (see pemerton's Star Wars comparison), or the ally who's been tracking them (with very valuable aid or information) might catch up.

Now, if I'm more heavy-handed, I can say that either of these happen, anyways. "You arrive too late, she's been executed" or "in the night, near daybreak, an ally appears." Both can still happen. But, it's in a style I don't like as much. I like saying "this world event will happen in 13 days", and seeing how the players handle that when travel takes 10 days, and being jumped might set them back even more. It helps with the tension, and it gives me a solid view of what's going on in the world: if they arrive on day 12, the event will happen the next day, and preparations are possibly well underway; depending on the event, though, arriving on day 10 may mean that they beat somebody there, and can set up an ambush, gain support, look for information, or whatever.

The mechanics of long HP recovery let the story unfold in more ways, in my opinion. Can all the same stories unfold? I don't know (I'm not sure if you can have a party be delayed by licking its wounds for days when you have complete overnight healing). Regardless of that, is there a big difference to the in-game pacing that will result of such a change? To this sandbox-GM, yes. There's a big difference. As always, play what you like


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## Lalato (Jun 20, 2012)

JamesonCourage said:


> good stuff snipped for brevity




But doesn't that simply assume that the PCs have no access to magical healing? In my experience, the PCs usually have access to magical healing such that one night or day of rest is all that is needed anyway.  Being down HP is rarely a setback in a long journey (unless that long journey is through the tomb of horrors, where the PCs won't be able to find a place to rest anyway).

In your example, a 10 day journey where the PCs are attacked on day 5, gives them ample time to use magic to heal up while still traveling.  Heck, even if they lose HP on day 10, they still have time to setup their ambush while recovering the HP.  Nothing seems to change by having a longer healing mechanic in this example.

Now, if you're playing in a campaign with little to no magical healing, then I can definitely see where the argument for longer "natural" healing can be made.  I've played in games like that, and they can be fun when done right, but more often then not, they end in TPKs.  If the group is OK with that, then I'm all for it.  But this style of low-magic game hasn't been the default for D&D in a very long time.

I don't personally believe TPKs are a problem.  I consider them to be more of a learning tool.  If a party dies due to a TPK because they were low on healing resources and decided to rush into a fight anyway, the players should learn the lesson that maybe avoiding the fight is a better course of action.  Or if they're going to get into a fight, maybe gaining some kind of advantage via ambush or something else would be better.  Unfortunately, avoiding the fight or gaining an advantage like ambush requires a DM that is amenable to that sort of thing.  Not all DMs are.

Anyway, good discussion.  I'm still not sure I see daylight on the pacing thing if we're talking about a default setting with available magical healing.  Other than the grim & gritty low magic campaign, are there any other types of stories where the pacing would be truly hampered by overnight rest?

And for the record, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind... I'm truly curious to learn about others experiences with regard to the types of stories they tell through D&D.  I think we've sort of identified a type of story that can't be told with overnight healing (grim & gritty low magic campaign).  Are there others?


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 20, 2012)

Lalato said:


> But doesn't that simply assume that the PCs have no access to magical healing? In my experience, the PCs usually have access to magical healing such that one night or day of rest is all that is needed anyway.  Being down HP is rarely a setback in a long journey (unless that long journey is through the tomb of horrors, where the PCs won't be able to find a place to rest anyway).



Depends. Sometimes, it's good enough to heal and move on the next day. Other times, it might take two days worth of healing, and then another night's rest to regain spells (making it three days). Those two days can make a difference, from my experience, even if I prefer longer rest times (as is usually experienced in my RPG).


Lalato said:


> In your example, a 10 day journey where the PCs are attacked on day 5, gives them ample time to use magic to heal up while still traveling.  Heck, even if they lose HP on day 10, they still have time to setup their ambush while recovering the HP.  Nothing seems to change by having a longer healing mechanic in this example.



Well, I'd "quibble" that it wasn't my example. It was 10 days to get to a 13 day place, where healing time was longer, and the difference between day 10, 12, 13, and 14 was apparent (10 = able to investigate or set up an ambush; 12 = showing up during preparations; 13 = showing up at the last minute, hopefully in time; 14 = too late).

In this example, healing time makes a big difference in _how the story plays out_, which is a style I prefer much more than _making the story the most interesting it can be_. That might seem really odd, but I find that dynamic mechanics with many possible narrative paths make for really interesting stories, and as a sandbox-oriented GM, I personally prefer mechanics that fulfill this goal. To this end, potentially long heal times help more than overnight heal times, since the former can produce either overnight rests (little damage or resources used) or long healing times (great damage or most resources used).


Lalato said:


> Now, if you're playing in a campaign with little to no magical healing, then I can definitely see where the argument for longer "natural" healing can be made.  I've played in games like that, and they can be fun when done right, but more often then not, they end in TPKs.  If the group is OK with that, then I'm all for it.  But this style of low-magic game hasn't been the default for D&D in a very long time.



Really, though, this seems like a tangent of your question that I answered:  "what kind of story can't be told with the overnight rest mechanic?"


Lalato said:


> Anyway, good discussion.  I'm still not sure I see daylight on the pacing thing if we're talking about a default setting with available magical healing.  Other than the grim & gritty low magic campaign, are there any other types of stories where the pacing would be truly hampered by overnight rest?



Well, you should probably know that, to me, "overnight rest" includes the use of magic. Because, as a pacing issue, it's effectively the same (as you're trying to point out to me, I think). That's why I prefer longer recovery time on spells (something my RPG also has). But, hey, I like grim and gritty 

As far as a story being hampered by overnight healing? Again, look at any story where even a single day would make a difference (again, pemerton's reference to Star Wars and Luke/Han rescuing Leia). In a game where heal time recovery plays a larger role, the story might _unfold_ differently due to those mechanics. For example, say Obi-Wan is incapacitated by Alderaan exploding, and couldn't disarm the tractor beam. Even if Leia is rescued, they can't get away (well, they probably would, so they could be tracked, but it might be even _more_ suspicious). And if they didn't get away, or go straight to the Rebel base, or whatever, it'd change the story.

If you're simply seeing if the story can remain the same as far as large brush strokes go? It can probably be pretty similar. Again, though, to a guy like me, who likes to see the story unfold based on the mechanics playing out naturally, longer healing times make a big difference. But this extends to other aspects, too (like hit charts, and the like), and don't necessarily represent what I think should be the default for D&D. As far as healing goes, I think it should default to "here is the dial, and here's what each setting might mean." But that's me. As always, play what you like


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 20, 2012)

Lalato said:


> And for the record, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind... I'm truly curious to learn about others experiences with regard to the types of stories they tell through D&D.  I think we've sort of identified a type of story that can't be told with overnight healing (grim & gritty low magic campaign).  Are there others?



If magic lets you heal over-night or even faster, it's over-night healing, too.  So what if you want a longer-paced story /with/ magic?  Magic would have to face some limit on how much it could heal over that period.  Magical healing is thus unavoidably part of the issue.  Then there's encounter balance and class balance...

D&D assumes attrition over the course of a day to introduce resource management issues challenges and balance both classes and encounters.   If the day has the right amount of challenges, using up the right amount of resources, it'll feel like a legitimate heroic adventure - like the heroes are over-matched (they're not, really, mechanically, but they'll have moments when they feel that way) but win through.   The problem is, some stories just don't call for that many encounters in a single day.  Some call for more, some for encounters days apart.  The game fails to deal with those stories because the attrition is too great or non-existant, and without that it's not challenging enough or too deadly or large imbalances become evident among the classes.

Tying healing and other resource-recovery to story would be a solution, but, obviously, it's "too narrativist."


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## Lalato (Jun 20, 2012)

JamesonCourage said:


> Well, you should probably know that, to me, "overnight rest" includes the use of magic. Because, as a pacing issue, it's effectively the same (as you're trying to point out to me, I think). That's why I prefer longer recovery time on spells (something my RPG also has). But, hey, I like grim and gritty




I think this is an important point.  If one really has a problem with the overnight rest mechanic, it would logically follow that one would have a problem with overnight spell recovery.  That is, if one likes grim and gritty.  Some folks seem to be OK with quick magic recovery, but still have a problem with quick HP recovery... and this position makes much less sense to me.



JamesonCourage said:


> As far as a story being hampered by overnight healing? Again, look at any story where even a single day would make a difference (again, pemerton's reference to Star Wars and Luke/Han rescuing Leia). In a game where heal time recovery plays a larger role, the story might _unfold_ differently due to those mechanics. For example, say Obi-Wan is incapacitated by Alderaan exploding, and couldn't disarm the tractor beam. Even if Leia is rescued, they can't get away (well, they probably would, so they could be tracked, but it might be even _more_ suspicious). And if they didn't get away, or go straight to the Rebel base, or whatever, it'd change the story.
> 
> If you're simply seeing if the story can remain the same as far as large brush strokes go? It can probably be pretty similar. Again, though, to a guy like me, who likes to see the story unfold based on the mechanics playing out naturally, longer healing times make a big difference. But this extends to other aspects, too (like hit charts, and the like), and don't necessarily represent what I think should be the default for D&D. As far as healing goes, I think it should default to "here is the dial, and here's what each setting might mean." But that's me. As always, play what you like




I think we're closer in agreement than you think.  If your game has a significant resource recovery aspect to it, then all resources should have a dial that can be tuned from 1 to 11 (because all dials should go to 11... heh). 

I think the default for D&D should probably be in the middle.  A solid 5.5 on the dial.  Unfortunately, I think people will argue incessantly about what that 5.5 should be.  But I think there is probably some happy medium between super easy resource recovery and nightmare mode grim & gritty.  For me, the 5.5 on healing includes a limit on the number of times a person can receive healing in a given day (like the healing surge mechanic from 4e), but leaves room for a good chunk of straight HP recovery from an overnight rest.  Personally, I wouldn't mind if the 5.5 only gave you half your max HP for an overnight rest.  If I wanted to make it full HP, I would just turn the dial down a little.  If I wanted to make it one quarter max HP, I would turn the dial up a little.  I would probably never play at 11, but that's just me.



Tony Vargas said:


> Tying healing and other resource-recovery to story would be a solution, but, obviously, it's "too narrativist."




I agree that such a system probably wouldn't fly as the default for D&D, but as implied above, I'm definitely not opposed to a dial setting that makes this possible.  I'm just not sure that if my default is 5.5... where a story-based resource recovery would fall.  Up or down the dial?  I guess it depends on the group/DM and how they look at it.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 20, 2012)

If you want to tell a story about dogged survival in the face of dangerous threats, HP work best when they are not a per-encounter or per-day resource. As a long-term resource, they are something you can see whittled away over the course of a session or an adventure, something you carefully shepherd and nurture, something that provides a slow burn, a methodical, desperate escalating of danger, of slowly increasing tension.

Going to sleep and feeling all better in the morning doesn't capture that feel very easily.

For me, I think the distinction between Extended and Short rests is valuable, and I don't see many problems with 5e healing that can't be solved with a time-shift. Without further alteration, it slightly changes when you recover spells (now it takes a week to get those back), but a smart designer can preserve the daily-recovery spells and balance it with weekly-recovery HP.


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## Lalato (Jun 21, 2012)

I definitely believe that so long as you have daily recovery of healing spells, and available potions or other items that aid healing, and unlimited healing potential, you cannot have a game of survival the way it is being described.  You have to actively remove these things from the game in order to have that kind of grim and gritty story.

I'm in a 4e campaign where the PCs often find themselves with 2 or less surges (sometimes 0 surges) and have to continue because they are in a place where extended rests are impossible.  In fact, the PCs found themselves in a situation like that after the last session (and two PCs died in the last battle... down to 3... Yikes).

Unfortunately, there is very little hope left to make it through, but they don't really have a choice. They have to keep pushing to get out of the situation they're in or become Mindflayer dinner.  And nobody wants to become Mindflayer dinner.

The main difference here is that at this point... they can't even gain more HP since they're down so low on surges.  So they're going to have to come up with some interesting plans to avoid any other combats... because they have to really manage all their remaining HP related resources in order to make it out alive.

Anyway, I mention this to note that just because there is overnight healing doesn't mean that you can't have tension from lack of HP.  You can have plenty of it... it just comes from slightly different circumstances.

I agree that if you want that same tension over the course of days, just limiting max HP recovery (a la healing surges) doesn't work... but I also think that default D&D with freely available healing, and the potential to heal to full regardless of how much "action" a PC has seen in the last 24 hours is less likely to result in the desired grim and gritty outcome.  You have to impose some other elements to get that outcome... lower magical healing access, slower HP recovery, max out HP recovery between long rests, environmental issues which make long rests impossible or less useful, etc.

You don't have to use all of the options, but I think "natural" healing vs. "magical" healing isn't the main issue.  It's part of it, but there is a lot more to it than just that.  Unfortunately, many people focus on this one aspect and ignore all the other things they can use to arrive at the grim and gritty outcome they're looking for.

Me, myself, and I? I think overnight rest works fine for most situations. For those few other situations/campaigns... I would look at the whole universe of dials that could be turned to make it have the level of grittiness I'm after.

At this point I'm just rambling so I'll just stop.  Good discussion folks.  Be sure to give your feedback to WotC if you're doing the playtest.


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## pemerton (Jun 21, 2012)

Tony Vargas said:


> If magic lets you heal over-night or even faster, it's over-night healing, too.  So what if you want a longer-paced story /with/ magic?  Magic would have to face some limit on how much it could heal over that period.



In Rolemaster, a lot of healing magic only increase the rate of recovery, but does not heal instantaneously (at least until epic levels).

In Burning Wheel, healing magic adds a bonus to recovery checks, and a good recovery check can in turn reduce the rate of natural healing.

But instantaneous magical healing is such a staple of D&D that I would be surprised to see 5e do it differently.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> For me, I think the distinction between Extended and Short rests is valuable, and I don't see many problems with 5e healing that can't be solved with a time-shift. Without further alteration, it slightly changes when you recover spells (now it takes a week to get those back), but a smart designer can preserve the daily-recovery spells and balance it with weekly-recovery HP.



Given that Vancian spells are almost certain to give instantaneous healing, I think that they have to be on the same cycle as natural healing to ensure reasonable balance.

The blog you link to about balancing Vancian casting assumes that an "adventure" will contain a certain number of challenges within it - which is a fairly tight balance constraint (tighter than anything in 3E or 4e encounter design, I think) - and also relies on the adventure "recharging" if not completed in a single run. That second thing is also a reasonably tight constraint, this time on story rather than mechanical balance.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 21, 2012)

Lalato said:


> I definitely believe that so long as you have daily recovery of healing spells, and available potions or other items that aid healing, and unlimited healing potential, you cannot have a game of survival the way it is being described.  You have to actively remove these things from the game in order to have that kind of grim and gritty story.



Removing consumables in an extended survival scenario shouldn't be an issue, just make it extended enough with not chance to replenish them.  

From there, though, the system has to work with you.  If you re-charged abilities based on milestones instead of long rests, for instance, you could have a very intense day with many encounters, and characters wouldn't be reduced to duking out virtually all of them with at-wills.  You could even have a really intense series of fights with no short rests and not worry about everyone being down to grinding with at-wills only.  Conversely, in an extended few-encounter travel scenario, you'd still have to manage your "dailies" because they don't come back every calender day.  The use of powers follows the pace of the adventures.

Healing is even more problematic.  Since 'natural healing' is the last of last resorts for adventurers, 'realistic' healing could be pegged at being very slow, with extraordinary or supernatural (martial or magical) abilities speeding it up when circumstances permit.  Combined with the above, that could peg the rate of healing to the pace of the campaign, even if it varied greatly over time.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 21, 2012)

pemerton said:
			
		

> Given that Vancian spells are almost certain to give instantaneous healing, I think that they have to be on the same cycle as natural healing to ensure reasonable balance.




I don't know what "on the same cycle" really means, or what your criteria for "reasonable balance" may be, so...okay. 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> The blog you link to about balancing Vancian casting assumes that an "adventure" will contain a certain number of challenges within it - which is a fairly tight balance constraint (tighter than anything in 3E or 4e encounter design, I think) - and also relies on the adventure "recharging" if not completed in a single run. That second thing is also a reasonably tight constraint, this time on story rather than mechanical balance.




The first point isn't really a constraint as much as it is a guideline, or a target number. It doesn't say THIS MUST BE, it says this is what the game assumes. And since the numbers were directly derived from 4e, it is EXACTLY as tight as 4e. 

And as for the time thing, I can only repeat what I've said elsewhere: a challenge that doesn't react to your interference (that isn't dynamic) isn't really a challenge. If the challenge is to unlock the door and the rogue can just sit there trying Open Lock rolls until the door opens, it's not a real challenge. If the challenge is a skill challenge that never lets you end it in failure, it's not a real challenge. If the challenge is a dungeon that just sits there and waits for you to patiently clear it out, it's not a real challenge. If the villain sits in his castle and just waits for the protagonists to come slay him, it's not a very good story.

At any rate, the point was to show that you can have spells that heal your HP restored every day without necessarily having magic cure ALL your HP on a given day (a la 3e) if magic is more limited. As of the playtest rules, if you time-shifted HP recovery but kept the same spell recharge rate, 2d8 hp isn't going to give anyone back all of their HP in one night. It's not an intractable problem. Whether or not you want to solve it is mostly a matter of want, not need.


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## pemerton (Jun 21, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> I don't know what "on the same cycle" really means



Weekly, daily, per-5-minutes, etc.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> And since the numbers were directly derived from 4e, it is EXACTLY as tight as 4e.



4e (at least prior to Essentials) doesn't make or need any assumptions about how many encounters can be dealt with in a given period between extended rests. It depends on how well the players manage their healing surges and daily powers, and how well they exploit the action points and daily item usages they accrue along the way.

The blog itself posits 2-3 encounters between rests, which bears no relation to my own experiences with 4e at all, either using the original damage numbers up to about level 8 or the new damage numbers since then.

Recently, the PCs in my game took on the following sequence of encounters without an extended rest:

*Comp 2 L14 skill challenge (as a result of which each PC lost one encounter power until their next extended rest);

*L17 combat;

*L15 combat;

*L7 combat;

*L13 combat;

*L15 combat;

*Comp 1 L14 skill challenge;

*L16 combat;

*L14 combat;

*L13 combat;

*Comp 1 L15 skill challenge;

*L16 combat (the L15 solo was defeated by being pushed over a bridge down a waterfall);

*L15 combat (the solo returned later in the night, having survived the fall and climbed back up).​
The PCs started this day at 14th level, and finished it at 15th.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> If the challenge is a dungeon that just sits there and waits for you to patiently clear it out, it's not a real challenge.



Isn't this the Tomb of Horrors? Which many (not me, I'll admit) regard as the most classic of all D&D challenges.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> If the challenge is to unlock the door and the rogue can just sit there trying Open Lock rolls until the door opens, it's not a real challenge. If the challenge is a skill challenge that never lets you end it in failure, it's not a real challenge.



I'm familiar with "Let it Ride" approaches. The question is, how are they implemented? And how do they relate to what you're advocating, which is not "Let it Ride" but rather "success N only counts if success N+1 is also achieved within a finite period of time"?

For example, what story element explains how the lock got re-locked if the PCs go away and then come back tomorrow? Or if they spend the night camping in the room with the now-unlocked (but iron-spiked) door?

If the scenario is some sort of political intrigue in a world in which diplomatic communication is at the speed of horses, then the odd day here or there is not going to make a difference, is it?


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 21, 2012)

pemerton said:
			
		

> Weekly, daily, per-5-minutes, etc.




Ah. Then yes, I don't believe healing powers need to pop back necessarily on the same cycle as all of your HPs. The necessary requirement for doing that is that you pay attention to how much your healing powers can heal the party. As of 5e's current playtest rules, it's pretty clear that if HP didn't all come back at the end of the day, that two clerics spending all of their magic might be able to heal one character up to full, meaning it could still take a few days to get the party up to full.

Not that I'd necessarily advocate for not changing the spells as they exist now, just that it shows how limited healing power can "speed up" the time taken to get to full hp without necessarily making it the same as healing everything overnight. 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> 4e (at least prior to Essentials) doesn't make or need any assumptions about how many encounters can be dealt with in a given period between extended rests.




Page 104, 4e DMG.

It's not a hard-and-fast limit, but it is an expected average. It is the time frame in which the mechanics actually take place, at any rate: action points recharge after 2 encounters. This point is not arbitrary. It is based on expected rates of monster damage vs. PC HP and healing surges. 

This was also taken into account in the _Dungeon Delve_ book: 3 encounters per delve is not an arbitrary number. 

4e characters ARE good survivors, and smart tactics and varying encounter vs. player types (especially throwing in risks that don't drain surges) and party member numbers are going to vary that rate, because that rate isn't stone-set, it's a guideline.

The PC's in your game seem like they should be gaining a level every day! Depending on how you use quest XP, at LUNCH!  But in principle, the balance works for "days" of any length, as long as you know about how long your "day" is (and given math, you should). 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> Isn't this the Tomb of Horrors? Which many (not me, I'll admit) regard as the most classic of all D&D challenges.




It's a specific kind of D&D challenge featuring deathtraps, originally done in a convention setting. Using nigh-instant-death in your design and having a rotating player base meant that the goals of the design were different from your typical at-home D&D session: more like _NetHack_ then like _Xenoblade Chronicles_.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> For example, what story element explains how the lock got re-locked if the PCs go away and then come back tomorrow? Or if they spend the night camping in the room with the now-unlocked (but iron-spiked) door?




Well, in the first case, you could have whatever lives in the dungeon locks the door.

In the second case, it's a problem that they're camping for a week without consequence in the dungeon in the first place, but if for some reason they can, you can introduce some other challenge. 

Don't think about "recharge" too literally. It doesn't dictate that this specific lock necessarily be available to unlock again, it just wants to manifest an equivalent obstacle, to keep the challenge between extended rests the same. So if they rest in this room with a now-unlocked door, you can introduce a locked door somewhere else in the dungeon. Or you can stick an extra goblin in the patrol. Or you can make the dwarf captive a little closer to death (requiring another Heal check to stabilize them). Or you can give the goblin chief a little more HP. 

As long as you have a rough idea of how many dice rolls it takes to get the PC's from full to nearly-dead, you have a handy measure of how you can balance any differently-recharging resource.


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## pemerton (Jun 21, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Page 104, 4e DMG.
> 
> It's not a hard-and-fast limit, but it is an expected average. It is the time frame in which the mechanics actually take place, at any rate: action points recharge after 2 encounters. This point is not arbitrary. It is based on expected rates of monster damage vs. PC HP and healing surges.
> 
> This was also taken into account in the _Dungeon Delve_ book: 3 encounters per delve is not an arbitrary number.



 I've just re-read p 104. It talks about the ratio of encounters to levels - which obviously is mathematically tight - but says nothing about the ratio of encounters to rests (other than that a hard encounter may precipitate a need for a rest - which is pretty obvious, given the definition of "hard encounter").



Kamikaze Midget said:


> 4e characters ARE good survivors, and smart tactics and varying encounter vs. player types (especially throwing in risks that don't drain surges) and party member numbers are going to vary that rate



I think it's pretty vital to the game that the rate be highly variable in response to PC builds, encounter design and play.

If tactical choices don't make a difference to how things unfold, they cease to be a viable vehicle for exercising meaningful choice.

But anyway, here's my quick calculation for 10th level: two-thirds chance to hit for 18 hp per hit (monsters vs PCs). So 12 hp per monster per round. Let's say 5+4+3+2+1 = 15 monster-rounds over the course of the combat. Which is 36 hp taken per PC (for a 5 PC party). Which is 2 surges worth.

I would think a party would have to be pretty shaky, pretty poor at control, or lacking defenders, to not be able to handle more than 3 of those, given that the typical defender will have 10+ surges.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> The PC's in your game seem like they should be gaining a level every day! Depending on how you use quest XP, at LUNCH



15 levels gained in about two months of ingame time.

I find rapid advancement is a feature of any D&D-ish game using the XP rules as written in combination with the received approach to scenario design (ie many conflicts co-located in space and time).

A game like Runquest, Pendragon or Burning Wheel is interesting for the way it builds longer timelines into the mechanics.


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## Stacie GmrGrl (Jun 21, 2012)

Why not have it spend when a caster prepares some spells, they can prepare some of them as per encounter/scene spells and others as per day spells? Then, if the Cleric chooses, her Cure Light Wounds spell can be a scene based spell, not just a daily spell.

Maybe this edition will have Feats that will turn daily spells into encounter, or even at will , spells. Sure, you have to choose the spell at the time of picking the feat, but why not.

They could also take the Channel Energy Mechanic from Pathfinder from the Cleric...that really helped, IMO, with the 15 minute adventuring day problem.

D&D is the only game I have ever played that has this 15 minute adventuring day problem, and part of it is because spells are a daily resource. It's also why I stopped playing the game. Even in the few 4e games I played, it continued in some groups...but it was because some people used their Daily Powers, and once they were used they wanted to rest. Totally Lame.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 21, 2012)

pemerton said:
			
		

> I've just re-read p 104. It talks about the ratio of encounters to levels - which obviously is mathematically tight - but says nothing about the ratio of encounters to rests (other than that a hard encounter may precipitate a need for a rest - which is pretty obvious, given the definition of "hard encounter").




10 encounters per level divided into 3 on-level encounters at a time (+1 quest). 

Again, it's not a hard number. It's what it might look like. Since players dictate when they actually rest, the DM doesn't directly control it, but the math helps achieve it anyway. 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> I think it's pretty vital to the game that the rate be highly variable in response to PC builds, encounter design and play.
> 
> If tactical choices don't make a difference to how things unfold, they cease to be a viable vehicle for exercising meaningful choice.




I don't think we really disagree on that, fundamentally (I'd say it's more vital that PC _actions_ vary the rate, but whatevs). Smarter play should let you tackle more stuff at once. This remains true: having a guideline only means that there's a baseline to measure your success or struggle against. FWIW, it seems that 5e is going for quite a bit looser balance than 4e has, so that number is probably designed to swing a lot farther. 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> But anyway, here's my quick calculation for 10th level: two-thirds chance to hit for 18 hp per hit (monsters vs PCs). So 12 hp per monster per round. Let's say 5+4+3+2+1 = 15 monster-rounds over the course of the combat. Which is 36 hp taken per PC (for a 5 PC party). Which is 2 surges worth.
> 
> I would think a party would have to be pretty shaky, pretty poor at control, or lacking defenders, to not be able to handle more than 3 of those, given that the typical defender will have 10+ surges.




Keep in mind that that's a minimum. It assumes evenly distributed attacks, AC's, defenses, die rolls, etc. And two surges is perfectly in line with the 5-7 surges the low-surge characters get (e.g.: "We rest when one of us needs to."). A Defender is going to tend to get hit more often anyway, and the higher surge quantities are a way of ensuring that the Defender doesn't often need to rest before the party Wizard does (10 surges over 3 encounters makes sense if every combat has you spending 3 or 4 because you keep getting pummeled, taking hits meant for the squishier members of the party who remain full of surges). 

2-3 combats very closely matches my experience with the game, and the RAW's assumption, so I am not entirely sure what makes your party so exceptionally wonderful at surviving, except for perhaps that you have players who are very good at combat strategy or exploiting synergies or certain rituals (like the one that lets you share healing surges across the whole party). But if you do, they probably SHOULD be able to get the reward of slicing through more encounters before they have to rest -- they're good at that!  I mean, you did 13 encounters between extended rests. That means that your encounters weren't even threatening enough that the PC's had to spend a healing surge in many of them! You totally thwarted the 4e assumed pace of "First, the monsters kick our butt, then, we recover and ultimately triumph." With ~30 minute combats, you're looking at about 6-7 hours of play, no? All without an extended rest? That is either very good PC tactics, or very poor monster tactics!

But even your impressively mutant rate of advancement and encounter scything isn't a problem to balance for in the suggestion in the blog. All it means is that you slice through more "adventures" at once, or harder "adventures" that involve longer struggles. Just like how now you breeze through multiple "days" worth of encounters without breaking a sweat. The baseline isn't invalid just because your method is different. How much your game diverges from the baseline can tell you what you need to modify to keep the "balance" on par. I don't really know how you can do 13 on-level encounters in one day in 4e -- I'm not a big strategery kind of player or DM -- but however you do it, I'm sure 4e bends enough to accept it, even if it assumes a different rate of resting than you use. Your party is very good at plowing through encounters: they get more die rolls between full recharges.


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## tomBitonti (Jun 21, 2012)

*How many encounters, how many are straight up fights?*

I think this eventually turns into a question of encounter management.  There are two sides to this (at least):

1) How frequently does the DM throw fights at the players?

2) How hard do the players work to keep potential encounters from turning into straight up fights?

The question (2) seems to conflict with the current frequent mode of play, which is to "open door" and "roll initiative".

There is a whole different style which would be run more like:

GM: A network of corridors evidently extends from the central chamber that you found.  A cursory glance seems to show no recent activity.

Players: Right.  Lets setup a defensive spot, right here, with a palisade to each of the tunnels.  Lets get a light down each of those tunnels, and send the spotters ahead to scout them out, but don't go out of sight!  Get the ranger to do a careful scan for activity, and get the mage to see if there are any magical emanations.

GM: The left-most passage is clear for quite a while, then bends out of sight.

Players: Let's leave that alone for now.

GM: The middle passage looks like it has a cross branch that might join up with the right passage.  There seems to be a very faint disturbance in the dust.  Maybe there is an occasional wind that stirs it up.

GM: There is a definite aura about fifty feet down the right package.  Unless you go down there and study it, you won't be able to tell what it is in more detail.  There seem to be doorways just beyond the connecting passage in both the middle and right passages.

Players: We take the right passage.  The scout moves carefully ahead, scanning for traps, and takes position at the T.  The fighter puts up his shield and makes a defensive position while the mage studies the magical emanation.

All done very carefully, with a sense of a single slip-up possibly leading to a player death.  Hit point loss, other than a trivial few, would represent a player already one mistake away from their death.

TomB


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## pemerton (Jun 21, 2012)

Stacie GmrGrl said:


> D&D is the only game I have ever played that has this 15 minute adventuring day problem, and part of it is because spells are a daily resource.



Rolemaster has the same problem for the same reason.


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## jadrax (Jun 21, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Rolemaster has the same problem for the same reason.




Only if you don't get a Spell Multiplier for some reason.


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> And two surges is perfectly in line with the 5-7 surges the low-surge characters get (e.g.: "We rest when one of us needs to."). A Defender is going to tend to get hit more often anyway, and the higher surge quantities are a way of ensuring that the Defender doesn't often need to rest before the party Wizard does (10 surges over 3 encounters makes sense if every combat has you spending 3 or 4 because you keep getting pummeled, taking hits meant for the squishier members of the party who remain full of surges).



I find the surge distribution across PCs can be quite variable. If the players are in control, the defenders will take it all. If the GM is in control (due to numbers, surprise, mobility etc) then the squishies can find themselves sucking it up.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> 2-3 combats very closely matches my experience with the game, and the RAW's assumption, so I am not entirely sure what makes your party so exceptionally wonderful at surviving, except for perhaps that you have players who are very good at combat strategy or exploiting synergies or certain rituals (like the one that lets you share healing surges across the whole party).



The only surge shifting they have is 4x/day paladin lay on hands. 



Kamikaze Midget said:


> I mean, you did 13 encounters between extended rests. That means that your encounters weren't even threatening enough that the PC's had to spend a healing surge in many of them!
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I make it 10 encounters within +/-1 of the PCs level.

And every one of them will have required surge expenditure, but not by every PC in the party. As you can read here and here, the last five encounters (four of which involved combat) took place with the PCs having only about 10 surges across the whole party. Rationing healing and surge use was a significant part of those encounters.

On tactics more generally, my players are fairly astute (historically my group has had a strong contingent of wargamers and M:tG champions, and even though composition has changed over the years the tactical tradition continues). But they are not psychopathic about it, and they are not crazy focus firers. But they are very good at control - a wizard (now invoker), a polearm fighter, a sorcerer with strong secondary control, and a CHA-paladin who has some secondary control/debuff also. (But no Expertise feats in my group.)

My monsters tactics are variable. Several of the indicated encounters involve waves of attackers. But I don't particularly hold back.

It seems that experiences of 4e are very varied. Some find it a TPK-machine. Some (eg [MENTION=58416]Johnny3D3D[/MENTION]) find it a walkover. I think my group is in the middle.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> You totally thwarted the 4e assumed pace of "First, the monsters kick our butt, then, we recover and ultimately triumph."



Not at all. There was a lot of pressure on the PCs, with the 4e pace. That's the one thing I find 4e reliably delivers. And when the party is facing Calastryx with 10 or so healing surges between them, that pressure is really on!


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

jadrax said:


> Only if you don't get a Spell Multiplier for some reason.



That depends a bit on level. Once the PCs are casting spells above 10th level, they can work through even a x3 multiplier pretty quicky in my experience.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 22, 2012)

Lalato said:


> I think this is an important point.  If one really has a problem with the overnight rest mechanic, it would logically follow that one would have a problem with overnight spell recovery.  That is, if one likes grim and gritty.  Some folks seem to be OK with quick magic recovery, but still have a problem with quick HP recovery... and this position makes much less sense to me.



I think that issue comes down to less "story" or "pacing" issues, and more "immersion" oriented issues. That is, those people (from my experience) tend to like HP recovering slowly (as they tend to see it as physical wounds), and magic can recover quickly just fine (since it's magic), which allows for the PCs to heal and push on (a pacing mechanic they prefer).


Lalato said:


> I think we're closer in agreement than you think.  If your game has a significant resource recovery aspect to it, then all resources should have a dial that can be tuned from 1 to 11 (because all dials should go to 11... heh).
> 
> I think the default for D&D should probably be in the middle.  A solid 5.5 on the dial.  Unfortunately, I think people will argue incessantly about what that 5.5 should be.  But I think there is probably some happy medium between super easy resource recovery and nightmare mode grim & gritty.  For me, the 5.5 on healing includes a limit on the number of times a person can receive healing in a given day (like the healing surge mechanic from 4e), but leaves room for a good chunk of straight HP recovery from an overnight rest.  Personally, I wouldn't mind if the 5.5 only gave you half your max HP for an overnight rest.  If I wanted to make it full HP, I would just turn the dial down a little.  If I wanted to make it one quarter max HP, I would turn the dial up a little.  I would probably never play at 11, but that's just me.



The middle is better than either extreme, in my view, but I'd still rather the dial be presented (with explanations of the effects of choosing any notch on the dial), rather than preset. But that's just my preference.

As far as a cap on healing? Well, my RPG uses a cap, in a way. All damage healed with basic healing magic is converted to nonlethal. Any creature can only have 20 nonlethal on it, and then all nonlethal it would take is converted to lethal. So, if a creature has 25 damage on it, basic healing magic can only heal 20 damage (leaving 5 damage on it) until the creature recovers. The conceptual idea is that damage is being lessened (from lethal to nonlethal), but that a creature's body can only take so much nonlethal before it starts to become lethal (people beating someone to death, for example).

This worked for my players right away, and they're a very immersion-oriented group. I think a "cap" on healing can work (like in my game), especially if there are workarounds (specialized healing magic can cure damage without conversion, but the spell level is quite a bit higher).

At any rate, it'll be interesting to see what mechanic they give in their next released. I think they've stated that it'll be changed, so we'll see. As always, play what you like


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 22, 2012)

Late to the discussion; here's my 2¢:

1) Never seen the 15 minute workday in 35 years of playing D&D, in 3 states and 5 cities.  Not saying it doesn't happen, but to me that says its a playstyle thing, not a systemic thing.

I also find it alien hearing about players' single minded drive to reach max HP.

2) I actually like the 4Ed Healing Surge mechanic, but think it is overused.  I'd prefer 1 surge + bonus surges granted for having a high Con (and certain feats).  Self-healing beyond that and natural healing should all be via magic or other abilities.  Oh yeah- DITCH MAGICAL HEALING BASED ON SURGES!  Magical healing should be magical, not based on the wounded PC's personal injury status.  He's injured!  To a man, everyone in our group finds this unbelievably annoying & counterintuitive; I doubt we're alone.

3) I like healing via actual spells, Laying on Hands and Ritual Healing.  I'd also like to see more empathic healing- healing in which the healer exchanges his HP for the injured character's damage (albeit at an advantageous rate).




Of course, YMMV.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 22, 2012)

pemerton said:
			
		

> I find the surge distribution across PCs can be quite variable. If the players are in control, the defenders will take it all. If the GM is in control (due to numbers, surprise, mobility etc) then the squishies can find themselves sucking it up.




I believe that's the system working as intended.  

Still, you seem to have a very low rate of attrition. If each character even spent 1 healing surge during each encounter (not out of character for a lower-level encounter), you'd have your sorcerer running out by halfway through the day!

With some quick math, it looks like your 2/encounter/character figure works out to an average of *10 total surges per encounter* being depleted from the "average" party. It really doesn't seem like your party is hitting even half that, at least not early in the day! Your "two defenders" party would seem to be quite survivable even at that rate (though it doesn't look like you have a leader?).



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> It seems that experiences of 4e are very varied. Some find it a TPK-machine. Some (eg @Johnny3D3D ) find it a walkover. I think my group is in the middle.




It sounds to me like your PC's are finding it _significantly_ easier than any 4e group I've been a part of (and the general reaction of the groups I've been a part of is that the PC's are pretty dang robust -- I've seen exactly one legit character death (from a poorly-balanced minion monster in the DDI), and nothing even close to a TPK). 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> Not at all. There was a lot of pressure on the PCs, with the 4e pace. That's the one thing I find 4e reliably delivers. And when the party is facing Calastryx with 10 or so healing surges between them, that pressure is really on!



You say this, but then the numbers don't quite add up. Unless your Sorcerer has a Constitution of 26 (which is, I suppose, totally possible!), there's no way that character could be experiencing this pace in each encounter. The party as a whole might, but it looks like even taking a party average, your party is not being hit as hard as in any game I've been a part of. Even with two defenders, loosing 10 surges per combat should be putting a hurt on them after one or two combats. I don't imagine the party has 130 surges between them all!  

But even your experience, anomalous as it seems to me, doesn't escape the reach of that balance math. You might give your spellcasters more spells so they can do useful things more often, but ultimately, the numbers still work.


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## Gorgoroth (Jun 22, 2012)

*That's not my experience*

My experience in 4e is that less than half the total surge capacity is used. We never had the Comrades Succor ritual, which would have helped. But I don't like a resource that needs to be redistributed to keep things flowing.

The wizard in our group NEVER ran out of surges, in three years. Not once. I've seen more defenders dying than strikers who were acting completely and unabashedly reckless, and even then...we'd end up resting for the day as soon as the first guy had no surges left. So the idea that you use the surge mechanic to avoid a 15 minute work day is ludicrous to me (and for the record, I enjoyed 4e a lot in some ways), in other systems and editions we'd have comparatively way more things happen. So the tradeoff of an extra layer of HP-like mechanic, was more complexity while being able to achieve less in a day...not exactly a smashing success.

We had a healbot cleric in our group for the first four levels in 4e, and got rid of him because frankly we never needed him, or the extra healing. Seriously. We played until level 11 without a leader...then I re-specced my dragonborn ranger guy to a ranger|warlord hybrid to boost party initiative and cohesion and tactics...I actually needed the encounter heal power to save someone...what, once? from level 11 to 13. Only one time did having a free surge matter. We rarely even second-winded.

I played 4e with 4 different DMs, and no matter their drive to make things challenging...to us "balance" meant "easy mode". Where you have a D&D game where not only are clerics not necessary to survive "tough" dungeons full of undead, but you are better off with another tank or striker, well that's not balanced. 4e could have been balanced PROPERLY to D&D norms had the community had input on the errata process, like some kind of voting mechanic built-into their DDI builder. But no...the One Ring does not share power. All others must bow and kneel before it and despair...(until we ran away, far, far from Mordor back to the Shire)


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## Lalato (Jun 22, 2012)

I guess my 4e DM likes to give us nightmare mode.  We've had several character deaths and a few TPKs. Part of it, I'm sure, is that he loves to put the characters in situations where the odds are tough, and where extended rests aren't easy to come by.

I still recall my first 4e character who died in his very first encounter (different DM, different city, different part of the country).  It was a glorious death... lying in his own blood, counting down the death saves as the rest of the party ran away in defeat.

Every table plays the game differently.  That's a lesson I've learned in my 30+ years of D&D.


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## GhostBear (Jun 22, 2012)

I recently bought the Thieves' World source book for 3e. It is a lower-magic, dark, gritty fantasy setting. There is magical healing available, but all it does it convert lethal damage into nonlethal damage. You still have to rest in order to get up to full health.

So, it may keep you from dying, but once you take enough damage you're still out of the fight anyway. Plus, it gives the Healing skill a reason to exist. Once you have a cleric past 3rd or 4th level, the Healing skill is nearly useless in standard D&D.

Just thought I would toss this into the discussion for a different take on things.


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> DITCH MAGICAL HEALING BASED ON SURGES!  Magical healing should be magical, not based on the wounded PC's personal injury status.  He's injured!  To a man, everyone in our group finds this unbelievably annoying & counterintuitive; I doubt we're alone.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'd also like to see more empathic healing- healing in which the healer exchanges his HP for the injured character's damage (albeit at an advantageous rate).



The main form of empathic healing is the paladin's Lay on Hands (there are also items that allow the shuffling round of surges, but I find them a bit less thematically compelling than the paladin).

On the healing based on surges, magical healing _is_ surgeless: I refer you to the Cure X Wounds line of powers. The key to making the narrative work is to recognise that Healing Word is no different in its operation from Inspiring Word, except it is divine inspiration ("I speak the words of the deity") rather than mortal inspiration ("Come on, you can do it . . . for Gandalf!").

I don't know how _popular_ that narrative is, of the cleric as primarily a source of inspiration rather than of miraculous healing, but it is the only obvious way to meld the fiction and the mechanics.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 22, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I actually like the 4Ed Healing Surge mechanic, but think it is overused.  I'd prefer 1 surge + bonus surges granted for having a high Con (and certain feats).  Self-healing beyond that and natural healing should all be via magic or other abilities.  Oh yeah- DITCH MAGICAL HEALING BASED ON SURGES!  Magical healing should be magical, not based on the wounded PC's personal injury status.  He's injured!  To a man, everyone in our group finds this unbelievably annoying & counterintuitive; I doubt we're alone.



You are certainly not alone.  We play D&D long enough, we become acclamated to its weirdness.  Hit points are pretty weird, wildly abstract, not really representing damage, exactly, etc.  Armor that only keeps you from being hit, never makes a deadly hit into a bruising one, is pretty weird.  But we get used to it.

One of the things that's fantastically weird about D&D is magical healing independent of the person being healed.  A 90 hp fighter who takes 8 hps of damage is barely scratched, while a 1st level character who takes 8 hps might be dropped - yet good roll on a Cure Light Wounds spell will heal them both.  The same spell that completely heals a nearly-mortal wound for one guy barely heals a scratch for another.  How does that possibly make sense?

If a spell can heal a scratch, it should be able to heal a scratch, whether it's a 1 hp scratch on an 10 hp 1st-level character, or a 10 hp scratch on a 100-hp high-level character.  It's just absurd that it takes vast magical power to patch up your booboos just because you got 'em from a Pit Fiend instead of a Lemure.  

OTOH, healing based on your surge value, which is based on your hp value clears that right up.  Cure Light Wounds heals your surge value, 1/4 of your total hps.  You get a nasty little gash from Irontooth at 1st level at ~1/4 your hps, that's a 'light wound,' and Cure Light Wounds heals it.  Get an identical injury from a Troll 10 levels later, and even though it's a lot more 'hit points,' the same spell heals the same injury.  And, yes, heals it without costing you a surge.  The classic healing spells (the Cure...Wounds series) are not limited by surges available to the subject.  It's just the new 'easy heal' "I don't have to be a box of bandaids anymore" healing word and the like that use the Surge Mechanic.  

5e should stick with healing magic healing proportionate to the subject's hit points.  It just makes more sense that way.  It's more internally consistent.


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Still, you seem to have a very low rate of attrition. If each character even spent 1 healing surge during each encounter (not out of character for a lower-level encounter), you'd have your sorcerer running out by halfway through the day!
> 
> With some quick math, it looks like your 2/encounter/character figure works out to an average of *10 total surges per encounter* being depleted from the "average" party. It really doesn't seem like your party is hitting even half that, at least not early in the day! Your "two defenders" party would seem to be quite survivable even at that rate (though it doesn't look like you have a leader?).



The leader is a hybrid archer ranger-cleric. Then there is a paladin (who has 4 LoH per day), a dwarf (minor second wind with Cloak of the Walking Wounded, plus cleric multi-class), a chaos sorcerer and (at the time) a wizard (since reborn as an invoker).

Party-wide healing surges:

*Fighter 14 (17 CON, Dwarven Durability, and also Toughness for more hp and hence higher surge value);

*Paladin 13 (16 CON);

*Ranger-Cleric 8 (15 CON);

*Sorcerer 7 (13 CON);

*Wizard 7 (12 CON).​
That's 49 in total. Now, having just recounted my encounter list, I see 9 significant combat encounters (plus a 7th level combat encounter - that was a negotiation with a trapped Yochlol that went badly for the Yochlol - and 3 skill challenges, only 1 of which would have inflicted damage, and that on only one PC, namely, the sorcerer).

Let's treat every PC's actual hit points as being worth another 3 surges (in fact, the ranger went into the final 2 combats at 3 hp, and in the final combat fell unconscious and had to be revived with one of the new-style healing potions that can grant surgeless healing in extremis - that's more than 3 surges, but I can't swear that every other PC was bloodied at the end of it). That's another 15, for 64 in total.

I can't remember all the surgeless healing from the ranger-cleric's power, but there were two surgeless surge-recovery items used: Dwarven Armour, and the Healing Star of Pelor (a home-made item converted from the d20 Eden Odyssey scenario "Wonders out of Time"). That brings it up to 66. Which, divided by 9 encounters, is more than 7 surges lost per encounter. That's close to three quarters of my "10 per encounter" calculation.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> It sounds to me like your PC's are finding it _significantly_ easier than any 4e group I've been a part of (and the general reaction of the groups I've been a part of is that the PC's are pretty dang robust -- I've seen exactly one legit character death (from a poorly-balanced minion monster in the DDI), and nothing even close to a TPK).



The wizard died recently (a necessar precondition to rebirth as an invoker) - you can read about it here.

As to whether my group has it easier or harder - as I said, there seems to be a wide spectrum of experience.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> You say this, but then the numbers don't quite add up. Unless your Sorcerer has a Constitution of 26 (which is, I suppose, totally possible!), there's no way that character could be experiencing this pace in each encounter.



On the contrary - the sorcerer feels it more than anyone but the fighter, I think, because he has a lot of close attacks (as a drow, he uses his Cloud of Darkness to make these viable). But he doesn't generally feel the pressure in terms of damage - he uses a range of interrupts and reactions - Dragonflame Mantle, Swift Escape, Narrow Escape and Slaad's Gambit - to mitigate attacks. It's only once these have all been soaked that the damage starts cutting in.

Other forms of damage mitigation - like powers that grant temporary hit points or damage reduction - are also used by the party.

That's one of the things I very much enjoy about 4e - it doesn't play exclusively as an attrition game (at least, not as my group plays it). Hit point and surge attrition is there, but there is a whole other layer of move and counter move which comes into play before damage is even a factor.

And even when it comes to damage mitigation by healing, there is a lot of scope for tactical play. In the fight against either Calastryx or the mooncalves (I can't remember now), the PCs had one daily item use left, two healing words left (fighter and ranger), one surge on the fighter, no surges on the ranger-cleric or sorcerer, and one surge on the wizard. The fighter had two healing daily item powers - dwarven armour, and symbol of shared healing. After quite a bit of deliberation and calculation, the fighter dwarven armoured and then healing worded himself, while the ranger then healing worded the wizard on the ranger's turn. If the symbol of shared healing had been used instead to bring up the wizard, the ranger's healing word could not have been used on the fighter until the ranger's turn, which would have been too late - because Calastryx was doing too much damage.

My group, at least, feels under pressure when survival turns on that degree of tactical accuracy. (It was a somewhat comparable _failure_ of tactical play a few sessions later that led to the wizard dying.)



Kamikaze Midget said:


> But even your experience, anomalous as it seems to me, doesn't escape the reach of that balance math. You might give your spellcasters more spells so they can do useful things more often, but ultimately, the numbers still work.



Which numbers? If I'm trying to balance (say) encounter powers against daily powers, how many encounters should I factor in between rests? The 9 that took place in the episode we're talking about? The 1 that took place in a more recent session (3 PCs vs 2 15th level rock hurler gargoyles, a 14th(?) level dire rat swarm, and a 13th (?) level solo troll - the wererats vacated the PC's new tower in response to a court order, but left behind some lodgers)?

Encounter powers that are balanced against the daily powers for the long day will be somewhat overshadowed by the daily power nova-ing that took place on the short day!

And it's not just a balance of mechanical effectiveness. It's also about a balance of choices and spotlight. Different suites of abilities with different recharge times make it less likely, I think, that every player will have a comparable range of choices in a wide variety of scenarios, and comparably many chances to make his/her PC's distinctive mark on the encounter.


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2012)

Gorgoroth said:


> The wizard in our group NEVER ran out of surges, in three years. Not once. I've seen more defenders dying than strikers who were acting completely and unabashedly reckless



Out of curiosity, did your GMs ever have the monsters walk away from the defenders to take on other foes? I do this all the time, in part because it's fun, and in part because the defenders are too hard to hit (a scale-armoured fighter with the +1 AC from Warpriest paragon path, and a paladin wearing Meliorating Plate).

Anyway, I personally don't find I have a lot of trouble tocking the sorcerer or the wizard. The ranger, with his longer range, seems more astute at keeping out of harm's way, and is the only PC regularly to have a significant pool of surges left when the others have all been drained.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 22, 2012)

So ~7 surges per encounter? Over nine actual encounters (your SC's don't drain surges, eh? Mostly narrative failures?)? Sounds like your party is pretty solid at defending themselves -- lots of little ticks to avoid getting damaged in the first place! And they seem to be low on healing (though both your fighter and your ranger have healing words?), which is further impressive. But they're high on Defenders (two of 'em!), so that probably helps in both longevity and less surges lost per battle. 

Which is all great and fine and awesome. Your players are solid tactical strategists, they are built to survive, and it looks like 4e accommodates their high-survival ideal quite nicely. And there's no reason a balanced vancian casting should disrupt that.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> Which numbers? If I'm trying to balance (say) encounter powers against daily powers, how many encounters should I factor in between rests? The 9 that took place in the episode we're talking about? The 1 that took place in a more recent session (3 PCs vs 2 15th level rock hurler gargoyles, a 14th(?) level dire rat swarm, and a 13th (?) level solo troll - the wererats vacated the PC's new tower in response to a court order, but left behind some lodgers)?




Because the number doesn't demand precision, you can take a rough median and go with that and be fine. If your party is regularly cutting through three times the number of encounters because they're solidly skilled like that, you up the number. If your party is regularly having one-encounter days because that's the pacing you prefer, you drop the number. The balance, after all, is in pursuit of the goal of keeping everyone entertained. 

And, of course, while you CAN balance Vancian casting, you might not care to. Some folks don't like Vancian casting for reasons having nothing to do with balance (such as problems with pacing, or a personal dislike of the word "slots," or that it doesn't match up with their preferred fiction, or whatever). Just because a balanced Vancian caster exists in the game doesn't mean your table won't prefer, say, an at-will based warlock, because of your table's own idiosyncrasies. 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> Encounter powers that are balanced against the daily powers for the long day will be somewhat overshadowed by the daily power nova-ing that took place on the short day!




That's fine. Just as it's fine that your players probably feature their encounter and at-will powers more than their daily powers during 9-encounter days. An encounter where everyone blows up and dominates is part of the variety.

If that's something you do a lot of, to avoid the supremacy of dailies, you might try rolling together several encounters into one to make it significant, or dropping the power of the daily abilities. Because there is a recognition of how many "successes" a given limited-resource is worth, it's pretty easy for a DM to slide that scale. 

The balance does not need to be on a razor's edge to meet its design goals, I feel.  Indeed, if it WERE, that would remove some significant variation. Your party is tough and resolute: they SHOULD cut through more encounters than usual! I wouldn't want to make a system that would make them loose that endurance in pursuit of precise balance. 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> And it's not just a balance of mechanical effectiveness. It's also about a balance of choices and spotlight. Different suites of abilities with different recharge times make it less likely, I think, that every player will have a comparable range of choices in a wide variety of scenarios, and comparably many chances to make his/her PC's distinctive mark on the encounter.




When an encounter only lasts 5 minutes, and the "adventuring day" only takes a half hour of table time, this is less of a concern than when the encounter lasts a half hour, and the "adventuring day' takes six hours of table time. You cycle a lot faster, and the "spotlight" tends to revolve much more quickly. 

The playtest has certainly borne this out for me. Different recharge rates haven't left anyone feeling "left out" so far, in part because the spotlight revolves so quickly.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 22, 2012)

> 5e should stick with healing magic healing proportionate to the subject's hit points. It just makes more sense that way. It's more internally consistent.




The way you formulated that IS consistent and logical...healing based on HS _VALUE_ is cool by me as long as the magic doesn't require the target to actually have an unused HS.


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## Stacie GmrGrl (Jun 22, 2012)

Why does D&D have this Healing Paradox when so many other RPGs do not, and why is it such a difficulty for some reason to fix it? 

That is something that has always puzzled me.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 22, 2012)

Stacie GmrGrl said:


> Why does D&D have this Healing Paradox when so many other RPGs do not, and why is it such a difficulty for some reason to fix it?



In genre, major characters rarely take serious/lasting wounds - when they do, it's part of the drama, the heroic struggle against adversity.  D&D models that with 'hit points' that act like ablative plot-armor, keeping you from taking serious wounds even though you reasonably should be.   Other games model the same thing by making PCs very hard to hit, or giving them defenses that reduce serious damage, or 'soak rolls, or various get-out-of-death-free cards that they can use up, and go on to model more serious wounds with wound penalties.

Another thing that happens in genre is that protagonists face large numbers of enemies that they can individually handle pretty well, but at some point decide "there's too many of them!" and try to get away.  I've never seen an RPG handle that really well, but D&D does partially pull it off with hps, because when your hps are low, even though you haven't been 'really' hurt, yet, you know you're in trouble.  Other games have a more 'brittle' form of plot armor, and by the time that lucky shot hits you or gets through your defenses, you're taking wound penalties, and getting away or rallying becomes very difficult (worst case, you end up in a death spiral, where the wound penalty makes you more vulnerable, so you get wounded again, which makes you more vulnerable...).

So, I'd say D&D has the weirdness of hps to model the weirdness of genre-convention that says protagonists don't die random un-dramatic deaths nor even take random un-dramatic wounds, commonly called 'plot armor' by fandom.

The healing paradox is that hit points are a dramatic-system model that become a managed resource, so players playing 'to win' are careful with them, and make decisions based on optimizing their chances of success.  Which means if there's unlimited healing available - whether that be by taking an extended rest, draining a magic wand that one of the PCs made at a steep discount, or whatever - they're going to use it.


I made the point on the last page that classic D&D healing was never that consistent or realistic in the first place, it's just become familiar.  Healing surges addressed both dramatic/genre-faithfulness and consistency/play-balance issues that had been with the game for a long time.  The only thing 'wrong' with it is that it's not familiar, it's not how healing had always been done before.  


Another problem D&D has always had - and still had in 4e - was trouble holding together in low-fantasy, low-magic, no-magic, or 'gritty' modes of play.  Hit points and the systematic, renewable nature of clerical healing were a huge part of that.  In a regular game, or even a low-magic (item) game that allowed casters, healing was a matter of cleric spells, long-term healing was a matter of the cleric taking a day or few to prep nothing but healing spells.  The extremely slow rates of 'natural healing' (even when no serious wounds were involved, as was the case if no one was dropped below 0) made non-magic modes of play impractical, and still failed to be 'gritty' since there was no way of modeling serious, long-term wounds, other than being terribly easy to kill due to low hps.

Taking the 4e model, and adding an optional 'wound tracking' system using the disease track as a model could have finally addressed that, as well.


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## Ridley's Cohort (Jun 23, 2012)

The Healing Paradox exists because it is a Sacred Cow to not add any complexity to the Hit Point system.  It is an easily solvable problem as game design issues go.  But it is an impossible problem to solve to everyone's satisfaction at zero cost.

There were once many D&D-like systems that had mechanical additions that addressed directly these criticisms of healing in a HP-based system.

For example, Chivalry & Sorcery (published 1977) divided your HP in roughly half Body Points and half Fatigue Points.  FPs ablate first (unless you suffered a critical hit) and could all come back very quickly with rest.  BPs come back at a more or less realistic rate.

One the down side, it added a bit of added complexity.  On the positive side it pretty much solves the main concerns of everyone.  Yes, it is possible to do some adventuring without a Cleric.  Yes, almost dying is a bad idea that will inconvenience you if you do not have healing magic handy.  Yes, crits can be a sudden nasty surprise, without necessarily having a death spiral mechanic.


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## Stacie GmrGrl (Jun 23, 2012)

Yeah... it really makes the game NOT fun.

Maybe this could be a Sacred Cow to get rid of... doubt it, but it would be neat if they did. But, I am probably a minority on this.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 23, 2012)

Stacie GmrGrl said:


> Why does D&D have this Healing Paradox when so many other RPGs do not, and why is it such a difficulty for some reason to fix it?
> 
> That is something that has always puzzled me.




Its simply dnds model, but other RPGs have their own issues.

For example, in Savage Worlds, every game I've been in the bennie supply made a huge difference in survivability. If the DM was stingie with bennies we would go down quick, more plentiful and we could take on much stronger fights.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 23, 2012)

Ridley's Cohort said:


> It is an easily solvable problem as game design issues go.




If you are attempting to solve it strictly from a mechanical standpoint I agree. But game design has to involve flavor concerns as well, and that is a much more difficult issue.

Creating a mechanic that works and that people like is a tough thing, as the 100+ pages of healing arguments on the forum demonstrates.


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## Campbell (Jun 24, 2012)

A core issue with D&D's combat system is that misses are not mechanically interesting. This is because D&D assumes passive defense so a character gives nothing up to avoid attacks. The benefit of this is that combat is quicker to resolve because individual attacks take far less time to resolve. The problem with it becomes that more attacks succeed than reasonably would which leads to hp occupying such a large conceptual space. It doesn't help that the game uses process simulation rules for the recovery of what is largely a meta resource. 

Other games separate out their process simulation from their meta resources.  Of course that brings issues of its own. Namely it slams the meta element directly in the players' faces. For some this is preferable, but it can distract some who prefer one to one correspondence between player and character decisions. Personally I find that correspondence in D&D pretty weak largely due to the nature of hit points partially representing character skill, fatigue, and luck. Player decisions based on how many hit points they have left seem a little nonsensical to me. "I can see my skill/luck is low. I need to sleep for a couple days or have this priest traveling with me restore my skill in battle."

To each their own though.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 24, 2012)

My solution to the paradox:

1) Retain the definition of hit points (luck, divine providence, skill, capacity to turn a serious blow into a less serious one, fatigue, morale, will to go on, toughness, etc.) but,

2) Strip out wounds and more serious forms of physical damage.

3) Hit points are easily and quickly restored, always acting as a buffer.

4) Wounds take longer to heal and are expected to be treated through mundane means (but because hit points are still restored, there is always a buffer there).

5) Wounds may also lightly penalize certain actions but there should be a mechanic where on rare occasions, any penalties can be momentarily ignored.

6) Divine healing that heals wounds typically takes time and can be expensive. It is a resource to be carefully managed and typically cannot be spammed.

Because of this, the adventuring expectation is that as long as the PCs are not incapacitated from their wounds, divine healing is not required. It is expected that from day to day, PCs are typically going to be carrying a couple of wound points worth of physical damage that is on the mend.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## fenriswolf456 (Jun 25, 2012)

Ridley's Cohort said:


> The Healing Paradox exists because it is a Sacred Cow to not add any complexity to the Hit Point system. It is an easily solvable problem as game design issues go. But it is an impossible problem to solve to everyone's satisfaction at zero cost.
> 
> There were once many D&D-like systems that had mechanical additions that addressed directly these criticisms of healing in a HP-based system.
> 
> ...




I could certainly get behind something like this. It would let criticals be more mechanically interesting than "just a lot of damage" and better reflect that a solid, deadly hit has been inflicted.

More importantly, I think it would be a good comprimise between the HP camps. One issue would be the initial ratio between Fatigue/Body points, though a dial could easily be implemented, as well as the growth of the two pools during levelling.

Something I'm going to ponder over, to see about including in my current campaign.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 25, 2012)

I wonder why folks are so quick to strip out and re-label "wounds."

Why not keep HP as a measure of wounds? Y'know, POINTS for representing HITS. Keep them low, and slow to recover.

Then, if you want a more narrative, plot-centric kind of game, you can double your HP and treat half of them as "plot armor" that recovers faster.

Why do HP need to be the plot armor? Why can't they be the wound system, with a different kind of plot armor as an add-on?


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 25, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Why do HP need to be the plot armor?




Because they always have been, and because D&D has never actually had a meaningful wound system (excepting in UA or something similar that I'm forgetting right now).

Thus, it makes sense to keep HP as what they've always been and add a new wound module for those who like that sort of thing.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 25, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
			
		

> Because they always have been,




What they "always have been" is two things. If you're going to separate those two things out from each other, why not keep wounds in the HP column and invent a new system for "plot armor?"

After all, HP damage has always been able to kill you. 



> because D&D has never actually had a meaningful wound system (excepting in UA or something similar that I'm forgetting right now).




That's part of the issue, though: people have played D&D using HP as more-or-less wounds just fine until (and even through) 4e. D&D *has* a wound system. It's called Hit Points. What D&D might not have is a good _plot armor_ system.

Another way to think of it: D&D needs a system to represent sword attacks that can kill you in order to be playable and recognizable as D&D. That's essential. D&D doesn't _need_ a system to represent plot armor. That's something that can be added on to increase survivability. 

Hypothetically.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 25, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> What they "always have been" is two things. If you're going to separate those two things out from each other, why not keep wounds in the HP column and invent a new system for "plot armor?"
> 
> After all, HP damage has always been able to kill you.




Yes, that's the result of running out of plot armor.  You are no longer part of the story; you die.



> That's part of the issue, though: people have played D&D using HP as more-or-less wounds just fine until (and even through) 4e. D&D *has* a wound system.




No, they haven't.  They may have thought they were doing so, but they were not.

Wounds impact your ability to perform actions.  Someone with a sprained ankle can't run as fast as he did before he sprained that ankle.  Someone with a broken arm cannot fight with that arm, and it takes *months*, not days, to heal back to full use of your arm (and, even then, you're more likely to break it again in the future).

Rolemaster has a wounds system - an attack from an axe can lop off your hand or your head.  D&D does not have a wounds system - the only way to lose a hand is via a Sword of Sharpness (which, as you'll note, does not interact with the HP mechanic); your head, a Vorpal sword (again, no interaction with HP mechanics).*  In D&D, taking HP damage doesn't wound you; it just makes it easier for you to be dead the next time someone or something deals HP damage to you.

So, if you want a comprehensive wound mechanic in your D&D, you need to add it in, because it was not there before.

* Alternatively, DM fiat can accomplish this in D&D, as well (e.g., "You spring the trap, and a scything blade slams down and cuts off your hand.").  This is hardly an example of _mechanical_ support, however.  And, again, it likely bypasses the HP mechanic entirely.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 25, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
			
		

> Yes, that's the result of running out of plot armor. You are no longer part of the story; you die.




So, why does Constitution add to your Plot Armor? Why not Charisma?

And why do you die so that you're dead and not just die so that you are "unconscious?" People who are central to stories don't just simply die. 

In other words: There's a lot of things that could be included in "Plot Armor" HP that aren't part of D&D HP. 



			
				Patryn of Elvenshae said:
			
		

> No, they haven't. They may have thought they were doing so, but they were not.




That's a big problem with your point right there: you think you know what other people need better than they do. 

I submit that you are sorely mistaken. That people who have been having fun using HP as mostly-wounds _were actually having fun like that_. Legitimately. Maybe even without your permission. 

It's not necessary that wounds mechanically affect a character's performance. These are heroic fantasy characters, after all: no, a sprained ankle doesn't hurt their ability to continue fighting. Yes, they can heal from a broken arm in days. They are heroic fantasy badasses who fight dragons and kill vampires, not normal people. The HP system not being a realistic simulation isn't a point against it being used as a wounds system because not everyone who wants HP to represent actual damage actually wants a realistic simulation of that damage. 

Wound systems don't need to do any of that.

They just need to draw a line between "I'm in fighting shape," and "I'm dying." 

Hey, guess what HP do?



			
				Patryn of Elvenshae said:
			
		

> So, if you want a comprehensive wound mechanic in your D&D, you need to add it in, because it was not there before.




Neither is a plot-armor system, since Constitution adds to your hit points and Charisma does not, and since falls and swords deal HP damage and being insulted and unlucky does not, and since death is a consequence of HP damage and not a consequence of story needs. 

HP does the work of both, so if you want one or the other, you're inserting something. The game _needs_ a way to risk death from encounters (HP). The game does not need plot armor/stamina/luck points/hero grit/fate peanuts. So why take hp to mean "fate peanuts" and not to mean "the dividing line between fighting and dying?"


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 25, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> So, why does Constitution add to your Plot Armor? Why not Charisma?




Good question!  Why does getting tired not cause HP damage?



> And why do you die so that you're dead and not just die so that you are "unconscious?" People who are central to stories don't just simply die.




Because the original goal was high lethality (it came from a war game).  And, in D&D, you get to come back into the story even after you're dead - but not unless you know some high-level priest types.

And people who are central to stories _die all the time_.  I can't believe you'd say that in a post-Song of Ice and Fire world.  

In other words: There's a lot of things that could be included in "Plot Armor" HP that aren't part of D&D HP. 



> That's a big problem with your point right there: you think you know what other people need better than they do.
> 
> I submit that you are sorely mistaken. That people who have been having fun using HP as mostly-wounds _were actually having fun like that. Legitimately. Maybe even without your permission.
> 
> It's not necessary that wounds mechanically affect a character's performance._



_

I posit that this is fundamentally incorrect.  If it does not affect your performance, then it was not a wound - mechanically speaking.  You can roleplay and describe all you want about your character being out-of-breath, or having a twisted ankle, or an arrow through his bicep, but unless those things are actually affecting the mechanics of the game, somehow, you are not mechanically wounded, and therefore the game is not using wound mechanics.




			no, a sprained ankle doesn't hurt their ability to continue fighting
		
Click to expand...



Then there is no mechanical wound present.  Period.

Etc._


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 25, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Then, if you want a more narrative, plot-centric kind of game, you can double your HP and treat half of them as "plot armor" that recovers faster.
> 
> Why do HP need to be the plot armor?



6 of one, half-dozen of the other.  Whether you take hps as they currently work - rising rapidly with level, recovering quickly (whether via clerical healing, regeneration, surges, extended rests or wands of cure light wounds), carrying no penalties - as 'plot armor' and add a 'wound' option.  Or take hit points, make them into a wound-tracking system - with penalties and healing more difficult - then tack on 'plot armor points' on top of them that recover faster and don't carry penalties.  Either way you end up with a wound-tracking system and a wound-avoiding system.


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## jrowland (Jun 26, 2012)

Interesting thread...my eyes started to bleed about page 10, but still a good read.

This thread reminds me of my favorite Christmas movie: Die Hard. John McClane takes a lickin' but he still kicks ass. The dude ran across broken glass, slicing his feet up pretty bad, but one short rest later he is good to go. Quick healing indeed.

But I am also reminded of Sir Henry Morton Stanley and his expeditions into the heart of Africa. The exploration side of D&D loves this sort of thing: Outfit the characters and move into the great unknown facing environmental hazards, monsters, and restless natives. The slow death of disease and poisons/toxins, the attrition of supplies, and lack of "civilized" habitation lead to a steady decline. In games terms, daily rejuvenation kills this concept.

From a gamist perspective, what we have here is a resource (hit points) that are absolutely necessary for continued play. When that resource is depleted to a point where the players only option to replenish them is a Long Rest, it _can_ break the verisimilitude/flow of the game. In order to "press on" as it were, there needs to be some way to replenish that resource "in-situ". We have clerics and magical healing, but is it enough to "press-on" for a whole chapter/adventure? Is it enough at all levels of play? Is a cleric necessary? I think the consensus is that its insufficient. So we have the OPs paradox ( or is it pair-o-docs?).

I personally hope the D&D Next allows one to "dial" this resource, not just game to game, but IN GAME as the story needs dictate. I don't expect such dial to be "core", but rather I should be able to dial, in my game, a John McClane assault against the terrorist in the tower in one adventure, and switch to a expedition into The Heart of Darkness for another.

I think Most recognize that a 2 resource is likely the most elegant solution. Truth is, D&D Next has it: Hit Points and Hit Dice. As an idea, and this of the top of my head, so not balanced, but allow a "surge" like heal at the end of a short rest: basically heal 1/4 Max HP without using a HD. This covers the proportion of HP that is considered "fatigue". This helps keep the party going without expending resources. You can still use HD if you need more, and of course magic healing. At the end of a long rest you automatically heal 1/2 Max HP. You also regain 1/2 of Max HD (min 1). This allows for *some* attrition to persist over night, but not so much as to make recovery too onerous. 

Here is where the dials come in: Because the numbers are some fraction of a total, DMs can modify according to taste. Lower or increase the fraction of healing. 

I think adding a "push-on" carrot helps too. For example, gain a "Fate" point for every "Nat 20" rolled on any check. "Fate" can be banked during a day, but resets to zero after a long rest. Spend "Fate" to
1) recover a spent spell (level = fate spent)
2) regain one HD per fate spent
3) Add damage to an attack (5hp per fate spent)
4) add hp to a healing spell (5hp per fate spent)
5) gain advantage on a roll (2 fate spent)
6) impose disadvantage on a roll (2 fate spent)
etc...

My 2 cp


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 26, 2012)

jrowland said:


> But I am also reminded of Sir Henry Morton Stanley and his expeditions into the heart of Africa. The exploration side of D&D loves this sort of thing: Outfit the characters and move into the great unknown facing environmental hazards, monsters, and restless natives. The slow death of disease and poisons/toxins, the attrition of supplies, and lack of "civilized" habitation lead to a steady decline. In games terms, daily rejuvenation kills this concept.




Why is it necessary to deplete hit points to achieve this, rather than, say, medical supplies and ammunition?  And why would diseases or poisons be tied to HP (since they haven't been before)?

This seems like something that the disease track from 4E / condition track from SW Saga Edition could do really well - and, eventually, you would run out of the medical supplies necessary to allow the non-magical healers to treat the party, meaning that their slide down the appropriate track would become nearly a foregone conclusion.  Sure, you're at 100 / 100 HP (for all the good it will do you), but you've lost 5 Hit Dice off the top and take a -5 penalty to all checks and saves and are treated as exhausted.

That gives you characters who are in a bad shape without requiring long-term HP attrition.

Of course, you *can* do it with HP attrition (D&D has for years, unless you have a cleric with you, of course), but I would rather open up the design space such that there are other, I hope better, ways to do it, as well.

Otherwise, interesting post!


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## Hussar (Jun 26, 2012)

KM - you asked why HP are adjusted by Con and not Cha.  Well, let's be honest here, in 1972 (ish) when they were designing D&D, the idea of HP as Plot Protection didn't exist.  The language for that idea wasn't part of the lexicon of game design.  No one thought of it in those terms.  You got HP from Con because Con measures how tough you are.  That it was contradictory to how HP were actually being defined didn't really matter - it's a game term and nothing more.

Why do some units in a war game get more hp than others?  Well, presumably, they're "tougher"  - a veteran unit can soak more damage than a green unit.  And that's about as far as the thinking went.

However, we're forty years later, a couple of million man hours of game play later, and thousands and thousands of pages of game design later.  The idea of "Plot Protection" is now part of the RPG lexicon.  We've learned a thing or two in the past couple of decades.  

Why keep HP as meat when HP as meat never really worked?  Protestations aside, it's so full of holes that it's ridiculous.  If there is never any mechanical effect of losing HP, other than losing HP themselves, then the only thing that HP represent are HP.  What is a HP?  Well, it's a fairly arbitrary number that we give characters to keep them fighting.

And that's all HP ever were.  Because it makes no sense to make them anything else.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 26, 2012)

I wouldn't have any issue with calling "wounds" or "wound points" hit points and coining another term for the ablative luck/fate/training/stamina points.

But I think Ridley's Cohort (I would really like to meet this Ridley guy, if his cohort is already that smart) has made the crucial point


> The Healing Paradox exists because it is a Sacred Cow to not add any  complexity to the Hit Point system.  It is an easily solvable problem as  game design issues go.  But it is an impossible problem to solve to  everyone's satisfaction at zero cost.




We can do all these nice things, but they will make damage and healing more complex, if not more complicated. ANd people don'T want this. D&D Next is not the edition to slay many sacred cows, and most likely not this one. At least not in the Core.

Maybe it's okay if the Core is inconsistent and wishy washy about hit points? It was okay for OD&D and AD&D, wasn't it? So yes, the Core may contain all these inconsistencies that are revealed on closer inspection. But if you care, there will be a rules module that does the wound point / vitality point or hit point / fate point split for you. Or the "hardcore" module where hit points are totally flesh points and there ain't any Warlords shouting you to full health. The core stays wishy-washy about what hit points really represent, but rules modules will give you the tools to expand.

Obviously, having several alternate modules to handle and fine-tune hit points, damage, health and injuries will open its own can of worms. D&D Next may become the most house-ruled and modded game system since... GURPS? D&D SRD?


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## pemerton (Jun 26, 2012)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> So, why does Constitution add to your Plot Armor? Why not Charisma?



Why not DEX (given that hit points represent dodging/mitigation abiity"? Because it's a somewhat unstable melange.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> And why do you die so that you're dead and not just die so that you are "unconscious?"



Well, this depends a bit on edition and options. The wounded state defaults to death only in pre-3E D&D, and in AD&D their are options to move away from that default.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> why take hp to mean "fate peanuts" and not to mean "the dividing line between fighting and dying?"





Kamikaze Midget said:


> HP damage has always been able to kill you.



As was pointed out upthread, losing plot armour can also be fatal. "Fate peanuts"  _are_ the dividing line between fighting and dying. When you run out of plot armour, then a hit will kill you. That's the very definition of plot armour (whether it takes the form of hit points, or HARP-style Fate Points that mitigate the results your PC would otherwise suffer, or whatever else).



Kamikaze Midget said:


> falls and swords deal HP damage and being insulted and unlucky does not



Huh? Being unlucky (ie having the GM roll hits against you) _does_ lead to hit point damage. Being insulted in a context where that makes you more likely to be killed can also reduce your hp (eg various categories of psychic damage in 4e, and hit point loss from the Ego Whip in AD&D), although sometimes D&D has instead modelled this by an AC penalty representing your enraged (and therefore less self-protecting) state.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> people have played D&D using HP as more-or-less wounds just fine until (and even through) 4e. D&D *has* a wound system. It's called Hit Points.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> D&D needs a system to represent sword attacks that can kill you in order to be playable and recognizable as D&D. That's essential. D&D doesn't _need_ a system to represent plot armor.



But D&D's system whereby swords kill you _is_ via the ablating away of plot armour. It's like the fights in REH Conan - dodging and "flesh wounds" until the fatal blow is struck. The wound system in D&D isn't hit point _depletion_, it's the binary state "hp >0 and therefore unwounded", "hp < 0 and therefore wounded, perhaps mortally".



Kamikaze Midget said:


> It's not necessary that wounds mechanically affect a character's performance.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...


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## jrowland (Jun 26, 2012)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> Why is it necessary to deplete hit points to achieve this, rather than, say, medical supplies and ammunition?  And why would diseases or poisons be tied to HP (since they haven't been before)?




To answer your question: It isn't necessary to deplete HP. My example was for illustrative purposes, for the _concept_ of attrition itself. Sir Henry's expeditions are a classic. I think you are arguing against the example rather than the concept of attrition. But if not:

For strategic attrition, yes supplies matter, but there is also tactical attrition. Escaping from the headhunters cooking pot and running through the jungle over many days with headhunters chasing you like game, HP attrition works. Holing up in the tree bole during the rainstorm might give you some respite (a few hp) but not the whole enchilada (full hp). If the story involves numerous skirmishes the character has to avoid/defeat, then being at "full strength" by RAW mechanics stretches believability.

DM fiat could dictate a lesser HP recovery (and I am fine with it), but for a lot of people, HP recovery is one aspect where DM fiat bristles. Imagine if it was HP loss rather than gain that was DM fiat!
DM: "The orc mook hits for 28 damage" 
player: "What?!?!? Thats more than its max damage!"
DM: "It fits the story better if it does more damage"

So having the rules reflect healing in a way that allows for attrition helps the DM-player contract


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 26, 2012)

pemerton said:


> What does it mean to say that hit point loss represents wounding when the game has no mechanic for debiliation, maiming, bloodstaining of clothes, infection, surgery, etc? How would the play of the game be different if hit point loss represented ablation of plot armour rather than "wounding" as you conceive of it? Not one jot, as far as I can tell.



It is different in the healing side of the equation. HP = meat doesn't allow for inspirational healing. Those types of non-magical healing are usually represented by temporary hit points, which disappear after a time, indicating their momentary inspiration effects rather than a permanent healing of the body.



pemerton said:


> I'm not sure what this proves. That "hp as meat" is the default way the game should be played, despite at least two editions (Gygaxian AD&D and 4e) explicitly denying this?



And there were several editions where HP was meat. *Appeal to tradition* doesn't work here



pemerton said:


> If hit points are wounds, _what is happening_ when a high level fighter is "hit" by 20 arrows from minion archers? Pincushioning? Dodging? (But in that case, hp aren't wounds, they're DEX.) Arrow cutting? (But in that case, hp aren't wounds, they're DEX.)



The 20 arrows variously scratch any bare skin (on the hand, maybe leaving a small line of red on the face?), or hit barely penetrate the armor leaving a small scratch or bruise (maybe the padding behind the armor manage to prevent the actual penetration of the arrow) behind, maybe the arrows hit the armor abd bend the metal back into the body which creates a small cut, or maybe the arrows hit a nonvital area like the thigh but not deeply enough to be a concern in battle.


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## pemerton (Jun 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> It is different in the healing side of the equation. HP = meat doesn't allow for inspirational healing. Those types of non-magical healing are usually represented by temporary hit points, which disappear after a time, indicating their momentary inspiration effects rather than a permanent healing of the body.



I can see how some mechanics are excluded. What I am wondering is what changes about the play of the game _other than_ the exlcusion of the mechanics. For example, suppose I'm playing AD&D with "hp as fate" and you're playing with "hp as meat" - how does the play of the game differ? I can't see any signicant difference. So why does the rulebook have to take a stand?



Mercutio01 said:


> And there were several editions where HP was meat. *Appeal to tradition* doesn't work here



I'm not arguing that hp is not meat. I'm arguing that it does not default to meat either.

My broader view is that I think it would be a significant change for D&D to suddenly change its mechanics to make "hp as meat" the default.



Mercutio01 said:


> The 20 arrows variously scratch any bare skin (on the hand, maybe leaving a small line of red on the face?), or hit barely penetrate the armor leaving a small scratch or bruise (maybe the padding behind the armor manage to prevent the actual penetration of the arrow) behind, maybe the arrows hit the armor abd bend the metal back into the body which creates a small cut, or maybe the arrows hit a nonvital area like the thigh but not deeply enough to be a concern in battle.



Why? Because the fighter is lucky? In which case, hp look like fate to me. Or because the fighter dodges them with great skill (turning what would otherwise be direct hits into almost-misses)? In which case, why CON and not DEX.

Is there another reason why the arrows almost miss the high level fighter, but not the low one, that I haven't thought of?


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 26, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Why? Because the fighter is lucky? In which case, hp look like fate to me. Or because the fighter dodges them with great skill (turning what would otherwise be direct hits into almost-misses)? In which case, why CON and not DEX.
> 
> Is there another reason why the arrows almost miss the high level fighter, but not the low one, that I haven't thought of?




Here is 3E's definition of hit points, and it's the one I like the best:
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._​
I've italicized the important part. The hit is still a hit, which is what I value in HP = Meat, but a killing stroke turns into a scratch strictly because the fighter is better trained in the art of combat (and this would be true of any class, imo). Simply through fighting more often in life-or-death situations, characters are able to fight better going forward. I liken it to martial arts training. One black-belt versus a white belt is a one-hit KO for the white belt. But by training over time, he learns blocks and counters. The bodies of the combatants still make contact (and blocking a kick or punch can hurt a lot), but the blow is turned aside enough to prevent a KO.

I don't really like Kamikaze Midget's solution for Fate points or whatever, but he does provide the dial which is something I can adjust. I fully expect, based on the latest Playtest Feedback post by Mearls, that something much like what KM proposes here might come into play in some fashion.

It is important to me that a hit roll actually means hit and that damage means damage. That's how I've played since I learned to play D&D. That's my playstyle preference.


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## Sadras (Jun 26, 2012)

We are never going to solve the problem without overhauling the entire public health system of DnD and distressing a large portion of the fanbase which D&DNext is supposed to unite. As many others have correctly stated before me, an optional Wound Module would serve the majority of the fanbase.

In our group's 4E campaign we have introduced such a Wound Module as we wanted to strive for a grittier system. One of our system mechanics is that Wounds can only be healed by non-surge Healing. i.e. Utility Powers of the Cleric, therefore generally no one else is able to cure Wounds but Priests/Clerics and everyone elses restores Vigour/Vitality/Hit Points. This seems to work for us and allows Churches/Temples as well as healing practitioners to become somewhat critical within our campaign. 

If 5E creates a Wound Module we like, or the base system is flexible for us to design and incorporate one in (which I think it does) then that is all I want and I believe that is what most players here would like to see.


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## pemerton (Jun 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Here is 3E's definition of hit points, and it's the one I like the best:
> 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._​
> I've italicized the important part. The hit is still a hit, which is what I value in HP = Meat, but a killing stroke turns into a scratch strictly because the fighter is better trained in the art of combat (and this would be true of any class, imo).



I hope it's not out of line for me to push just a little bit harder: "turning a serious blow into a less serious one" surely means dodging, parrying, arrow cutting or something similar.

Which makes me ask: why do we need a hp mechanism in addition to AC - because AC _also_ represents the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one?

I'm not expecting you to seriously answer that - I mean, that would be the opposite of flatter math, and the problems that scaling causes seems to be one of the less controversial issues around here - but to me it illustrates the odd place that hit points occupy in the game design.

(And why do hit points apply to falls, on this model - how does fighting skill turn a _fall_ into something less serious? Whereas hp as metagame/fate peanuts can handle this fine - in the extreme case, you landed on a pile of feathers!)

Anyway, relating this back to KM's posts a page or two upthread: hit point loss, on your model, signifies wounding, but unless I've misunderstood it there is no correlation between hp lost and wounds suffered - hit points aren't a _measure of_ wounds taken. For example, on your model the wound suffered when the first 6 hp are lost by a high level fighter is very different from the wound suffered when the last 6 hp are lost.

So I don't think your approach is "hp as wounds" in KM's sense - it's more "hp as fighting skill".

Correct me if I've misunderstood you!


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 26, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I hope it's not out of line for me to push just a little bit harder: "turning a serious blow into a less serious one" surely means dodging, parrying, arrow cutting or something similar.



Well, a dodge that didn't quite get completely out of the way, or experience in combat giving the fighter the presence of mind to turn sideways to battle rather than face forward.



> Which makes me ask: why do we need a hp mechanism in addition to AC - because AC _also_ represents the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one?



I don't see it as that. AC is the threshold it takes to actually make physical contact, not to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. Meeting or beating AC means you make physical contact, and HP/damage is a measure of how solid the contact is.



> (And why do hit points apply to falls, on this model - how does fighting skill turn a _fall_ into something less serious? Whereas hp as metagame/fate peanuts can handle this fine - in the extreme case, you landed on a pile of feathers!)



Yeah, that's one spot where HP completely fails at all levels: fate points, meat, skill, training, etc. Falling is a weird case that doesn't satisfy any model that I'm aware of (do Vitality/Wounds systems address falling better? I hadn't noticed any specifics dealing with it.).



> Anyway, relating this back to KM's posts a page or two upthread: hit point loss, on your model, signifies wounding, but unless I've misunderstood it there is no correlation between hp lost and wounds suffered - hit points aren't a _measure of_ wounds taken. For example, on your model the wound suffered when the first 6 hp are lost by a high level fighter is very different from the wound suffered when the last 6 hp are lost.



Well, sort of. The loss of HP themselves is indicative of wounds suffered. It doesn't apply penalties to attacks and skills, but the mere fact that you have less HP means that your ability to take further hits is lessened. One scratch can't kill you, but a severe-enough road rash (a lot of scratches) very well might.



> So I don't think your approach is "hp as wounds" in KM's sense - it's more "hp as fighting skill".
> 
> Correct me if I've misunderstood you!



I suppose if you had to boil it down, it's that I still adhere most to "HP is a mix" and every hit that does damage is also a mix. I think in all honesty, that's where I diverge with HP is Fate people. Every hit that does damage is represented by the loss of HP that is a mix of all the different elements. I don't see a tier with some HP only being fate points and some only being meat. I see a mix where each HP is representative of the entire mix of what makes up HP. Every 1 HP is simultaneously meat, fate, luck, skill, ability, training, etc. That means every hit is a hit, but it leaves me completely free to describe hits as everything from a scratch or bruise to an arrow to the knee to a hacked off limb (usually only applied to NPCs when they die -- like when you play the Fallout CRPG and have Bloody Mess checked).


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## Campbell (Jun 26, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I hope it's not out of line for me to push just a little bit harder: "turning a serious blow into a less serious one" surely means dodging, parrying, arrow cutting or something similar.
> 
> Which makes me ask: why do we need a hp mechanism in addition to AC - because AC _also_ represents the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one?
> 
> I'm not expecting you to seriously answer that - I mean, that would be the opposite of flatter math, and the problems that scaling causes seems to be one of the less controversial issues around here - but to me it illustrates the odd place that hit points occupy in the game design.




I don't think that it's necessary for hp to represent the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. Among traditional RPGs D&D is actually fairly unique in its level of abstraction. Even a superhero game like Mutants and Masterminds represents wounds directly. The issue is how do you make avoiding blows interesting and make missing not seem pointless? How about making multiple opponents scary to even a supremely skilled swordsman? Most games use a combination of having a more complex action economy that elicits some cost for avoiding attacks and the use of limited explicit meta game mechanics to add mechanical interest.

Note: I would be remiss if I didn't point out how odd I find it that AD&D is so abstract in its general combat mechanics (to the point of not even allowing explicit targeting in earlier versions) but highly specific in other parts (namely spell casting, wealth down to the last copper, tracking ammunition and food stuffs).


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## ren1999 (Jun 26, 2012)

How about experience points for killing monsters
and 
experience points for meeting a goal even avoiding killing monsters
and
completing skill challenges

that goal could be getting treasure or information
rescuing someone
negotiating something


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## jadrax (Jun 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I don't see it as that. AC is the threshold it takes to actually make physical contact, not to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. Meeting or beating AC means you make physical contact, and HP/damage is a measure of how solid the contact is.




This clearly cannot be the case because Armour adds to AC.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 26, 2012)

jadrax said:


> This clearly cannot be the case because Armour adds to AC.



Yeah, and when you hit, you bypass the armor, correct? It means that even with the armor on, you still make contact with the person under the armor. Whether it's something like hitting at a joint, breaking through a link in the mail, stabbing through the leather or padding, etc.

I'm not seeing the objection to the idea that AC is a threshold for making contact. And your point doesn't seem to negate mine at all. Am I missing something?


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## jadrax (Jun 26, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I'm not seeing the objection to the idea that AC is a threshold for making contact. And your point doesn't seem to negate mine at all. Am I missing something?




Ah, so you mean actual contact with flesh rather than just contact.

OK, I can kind of see where your are coming from here.


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## fenriswolf456 (Jun 26, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Which makes me ask: why do we need a hp mechanism in addition to AC - because AC _also_ represents the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one?




I've always considered it the attacker's skill/luck/fate to hit AC, while the defender's skill/luck/fate is wrapped up in HP.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 26, 2012)

jadrax said:


> Ah, so you mean actual contact with flesh rather than just contact.
> 
> OK, I can kind of see where your are coming from here.



Yeah, because I narrate some misses as being deflected off of armor or shields (like if it hits touch AC but not Armor) and generally a complete miss that doesn't even come close misses even the Touch AC.


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## pemerton (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Falling is a weird case that doesn't satisfy any model that I'm aware of (do Vitality/Wounds systems address falling better? I hadn't noticed any specifics dealing with it.).



Roger Musson, in "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive" (White Dwarf c 1980, the frst V/W system I know of) addressed fireballs and dragon breath (deliver Wounds unless you save), awareness (surprise, rear attacks, stones dropped on people, etc all deal automatic Wounds) and fatigue (moving a heavy rock might suck hp), etc. I don't think he discusses falling damage, but the implication of his sytem is that it should do Wound damage.



Mercutio01 said:


> I suppose if you had to boil it down, it's that I still adhere most to "HP is a mix" and every hit that does damage is also a mix. I think in all honesty, that's where I diverge with HP is Fate people. Every hit that does damage is represented by the loss of HP that is a mix of all the different elements. I don't see a tier with some HP only being fate points and some only being meat.



I agree with you that there are not tiers. Each hp is potentially a mix. But where I think I differ from you is that I think that any single hp, when lost, might be a mix, or just fate, or just physical injury, depending on context and consequence.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Roger Musson, in "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive" (White Dwarf c 1980, the frst V/W system I know of) addressed fireballs and dragon breath (deliver Wounds unless you save), awareness (surprise, rear attacks, stones dropped on people, etc all deal automatic Wounds) and fatigue (moving a heavy rock might suck hp), etc. I don't think he discusses falling damage, but the implication of his sytem is that it should do Wound damage.



Thanks. I'll have to look that one up to read about it. That sort of makes sense, really. I know falling damage is the one standout that I think everyone looks at askance.



> I agree with you that there are not tiers. Each hp is potentially a mix. But where I think I differ from you is that I think that any single hp, when lost, might be a mix, or just fate, or just physical injury, depending on context and consequence.



I think my perspective comes from the fact that really the first system I DMed was 2E (although I played 1E and BD&D) and that's where I think I probably internalized hits and damage, which stayed with me for all these years later, and that is potentially why my playstyle differs from yours.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 27, 2012)

jrowland said:


> To answer your question: It isn't necessary to deplete HP. My example was for illustrative purposes, for the _concept_ of attrition itself. Sir Henry's expeditions are a classic. I think you are arguing against the example rather than the concept of attrition.




Not so much arguing against the example, as taking it as a great example of strategic attrition that can be done well without relying on long-term HP attrition.



> For strategic attrition, yes supplies matter, but there is also tactical attrition. Escaping from the headhunters cooking pot and running through the jungle over many days with headhunters chasing you like game, HP attrition works. Holing up in the tree bole during the rainstorm might give you some respite (a few hp) but not the whole enchilada (full hp).




This seems, to me, to be elegantly captured in the 5E rules in the difference between a short rest (which allows you to spend Hit Dice, which are limited) and a long rest (which gives you all your HP back and all of your Hit Dice back).

I know [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has posted great examples of how, during an overland pursuit / travel (?) run as a skill challenge, he tied the party's ability to gain an extended rest while in the bush to their progress through the skill challenge.  It seems that a similar methodology would give a good result to the fleeing-from-cannibals challenge.

If you do well, you slip the pursuit long enough to gain an opportunity for a long rest; if you do not, you're constantly harried, never gaining the time and comfort needed, and you can only take a short rest.  Thus, we get tactical attrition, as well.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts!


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Jun 27, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I agree with you that there are not tiers. Each hp is potentially a mix. But where I think I differ from you is that I think that any single hp, when lost, might be a mix, or just fate, or just physical injury, depending on context and consequence.




This is how I've always run HP damage.


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## pemerton (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I think my perspective comes from the fact that really the first system I DMed was 2E (although I played 1E and BD&D) and that's where I think I probably internalized hits and damage, which stayed with me for all these years later, and that is potentially why my playstyle differs from yours.



I never thought too hard about it playing AD&D and B/X. But I was one who left AD&D for a more simulationist system (Rolemaster, in my case). I hated hp attrition combat in 3E when I played it a little. I came back to GMing D&D with 4e, and one thing I really liked about it was that it gave me a working hp system that was very different from "hp as meat" and that supported the sort of play I was interested in as an alternative to heavy simulation.


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## Hussar (Jun 27, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Here is 3E's definition of hit points, and it's the one I like the best:
> 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._​/snip.




Just a point here.

Isn't "the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one" precisely what Plot Armor is?  You mentioned earlier about many arrows hitting the target, denting armor and whatnot.  All effects that can be shaken off within a day.

So, what do you think Plot Armor means if not reducing the effect of a given hit?


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Mercutio01 said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



To me, the quote pretty clearly states that there is still a "hit" within the fiction, though. It says "and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one." A less serious what? A less serious blow. What is a blow? It's a connection. It can be a "glancing blow", but it's still a physical connection. With that in mind, I'd disagree with permerton's take on this potentially being "dodging" or "arrow cutting." And, I might disagree with your take on it, if you think it means "reducing the effect of a given hit" to the point of saying "the hit never happened."

Now, don't get me wrong, when I ran 3.X, I would say "you are barely able to knock the strike aside" at times, and have them mark HP off. So, I get this side of the conversation (so much so that I went with a HP (wound) / THP (fatigue/skill) split in hit points, where HP recovers after a long time, but THP recovers quickly).

However, I think that the language which describes hit point damage in 3.X is pretty clear. It's reducing a blow, yes, but it's not full-on Plot Armor. HP represents your ability to turn a hit that connects into a less serious hit, not your ability to land on a pile of feathers, completely dodge, get divine intervention, or the like (which means that certain effects have all sorts of weird interactions in 3.X, like falling damage, being immersed in lava, etc., unless you _really_ stress the "the ability to take physical punishment and keep going" aspect of hit points).

That HP model definitely has problems when it comes to having an extremely diverse narrative, and I understand the want for a more dynamic mechanic (HP is Plot Armor). Again, I don't know how much I like a "default" being chosen in 5e; maybe they should just go with "HP has meant these things over time: 
. Choose what works best for your group." The obvious problem following this, of course, is designing things that deal HP damage, and things that deal damage (falling, landing on lava) that can't deal with "HP as 3.X defines it" easily.

But hey, nobody said this is easy. That's why I support a split in HP (meat and non-meat), but I doubt that'll be the default. As always, play as what like


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## pemerton (Jun 27, 2012)

JamesonCourage said:


> I'd disagree with permerton's take on this potentially being "dodging" or "arrow cutting."



What does one call a dodge that doesn't quite work, but does manage to turn what otherwise would be a serious blow into a less-serious one? A near-dodge?


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 27, 2012)

pemerton said:


> What does one call a dodge that doesn't quite work, but does manage to turn what otherwise would be a serious blow into a less-serious one? A near-dodge?



Attempted dodge? I know that the dictionary describes it this way:


			
				http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Dodge said:
			
		

> dodge
> v. dodged, dodg·ing, dodg·es
> 1. To avoid (a blow, for example) by moving or shifting quickly aside.



To "dodge" would be to avoid the blow. If you didn't avoid the blow, you didn't successfully dodge. Just as a language thing, I think. So, a "failed dodge" might be the right term. "Though he failed to dodge the blow, he did turn a killing blow into nothing more than a shallow cut on his arm." Something like that. As always, play what you like


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## jrowland (Jun 27, 2012)

I would say to "Dodge a blow" is to run over the attacker with your Dodge Ram 1500. Justice, redneck-style.


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## Hussar (Jun 27, 2012)

Meh, I think we're splitting hairs pretty fine here.  A blow that is turned into a miss ("full plot protection") vs a blow that is turned into an inconsequential contact that causes no long term injury is a distinction that really doesn't matter at the end of the day, does it?

Both are entirely recoverable in a very short period of time.  It simply doesn't matter.  And if HP are turning serious blows into minor bruises and whatnot, can a character not be at full hp, even if he's got a black eye and some knicks and bruises?  Does full HP HAVE to mean that I'm completely healed?

Good grief, as I get older, I don't think I'm ever completely healed anymore.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Does full HP HAVE to mean that I'm completely healed.



For me? Yes.



Hussar said:


> Good grief, as I get older, I don't think I'm ever completely healed anymore.



Me neither. But my hit point total is probably less than it was 5 years ago, and definitely way less than it was 15 years ago. I think each year that I live under my max HP, my max HP drops.


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

Hussar said:
			
		

> A blow that is turned into a miss ("full plot protection") vs a blow that is turned into an inconsequential contact that causes no long term injury is a distinction that really doesn't matter at the end of the day, does it?




There's a lot of room in between "it connected and didn't kill you" and "it's inconsequential." 

ESPECIALLY for fantasy hero badasses who might be holding their intestines in one hand and hewing apart the legions of devils with the other and be pretty fine once they've had a few days to let their digestive tract readjust itself. 

So the distinction between a hit and a non-hit can be important for the feel of the world and the feel of the heroics, too.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> You mentioned earlier about many arrows hitting the target, denting armor and whatnot.  All effects that can be shaken off within a day.



Individually, sure. But all of those taken together? Not so much. Some of them can be shrugged off easier than others.



Hussar said:


> that causes no long term injury



I think your definition of "short-term" and mine must be different. A bruise still hurts tomorrow. A small cut still hurts tomorrow. But they're not long-term injuries (deep gashes, broken bones). One or two short-term injuries (ie a few hit points) can be shrugged off and patched up enough to not bother me tomorrow. But a handful of those or more are still going to affect me tomorrow. Case in point the example I used with my wife and her bike a few weeks ago. Her nose is still sensitive. I'd say she's pretty much completely healed, but all it would take is to tweak her nose lightly and she'd scream bloody murder. And it's weeks later now, with most of the rest of the wounds healed up (except her knee, which opened up again a few days after the stitches came out and still hurts a lot when she knocks it lightly against a table leg or a child mistakenly grabs the wrong one.

So, she's still not back to full HP (at least as far as I'd call it) whereas under 4E she would have been back to full HP the next day, fully functional in all areas.

Again, it's not precise process simulation, but to me, the loss of hit points equals a loss of ability and is itself a definition of a wound because now fewer wounds can be taken before death.

So, yeah, I'd say full HP means completely healthy. I've got a cold and a sneeze and the beginnings of a cough today. My HP are lower than they were yesterday.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 27, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Meh, I think we're splitting hairs pretty fine here.  A blow that is turned into a miss ("full plot protection") vs a blow that is turned into an inconsequential contact that causes no long term injury is a distinction that really doesn't matter at the end of the day, does it?



Except that the 3.5 passage didn't say "turned into an inconsequential contact" in its description. It _can_ mean that, or it can mean "a bad flesh wound that's a few inches deep near your shoulder, but you're pressing through it." Think Inigo Montoya's wounds at the hands of the Six-Fingered Man in their final confrontation. On the other hand, it can be described as "merely a nick" on it fits the 3.5 description fine, too. It's got _some_ versatility in it.

Inigo Montoya got stabbed three times (dagger to stomach, sword to shoulder, sword to arm), and not many people complain about getting pulled out of the movie. Getting flesh wounds in movie that heal in a week and a half (or are sore, but no longer a big deal) is passable in a lot of fantasy fiction, as is getting stabbed and pressing through it. People have said in the past "any mechanic that prevents _this_ from happening [referencing the above scene] is something I don't support." Well, the 3.5 take can allow for it (especially with some sort of dazed or nauseated effect on the dagger throw).


Hussar said:


> Both are entirely recoverable in a very short period of time.  It simply doesn't matter.  And if HP are turning serious blows into minor bruises and whatnot, can a character not be at full hp, even if he's got a black eye and some knicks and bruises?



The 3.5 description is limiting in some areas, and can cause some verisimilitude issues (falling damage, getting shot by 10 guys in a firing squad and living, etc.). It has its problems. However, the description as presented can mean "you heal overnight" makes sense (you only got bruises or cuts), or "you don't heal overnight; it's going to take days" (you got stabbed three times, but powered through it). You can definitely prefer either one, and the description, as it stands, leaves room for either healing rate to make sense (based on the description of wounds given).

But, that just leads us back in circles again. To me, it's a campaign pacing issue as well, but this bleeds over to casting healing spells or teleportation access, etc. In the end, we're just talking about preference, and I prefer two split HP pools. I don't think it'll happen, but me saying "you parry the attack, but it was close" and still marking off some PC hit points definitely means that the 3.5 version of damage and HP wasn't perfect to me.


Hussar said:


> Does full HP HAVE to mean that I'm completely healed?



If you're significantly wounded (stabbed three times), then I prefer it. If that's not the case (the wounds were scratches and bruises), then I don't mind one way or the other, except when it comes to pacing. As always, play what you like


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## Hussar (Jun 28, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Individually, sure. But all of those taken together? Not so much. Some of them can be shrugged off easier than others.
> 
> I think your definition of "short-term" and mine must be different. A bruise still hurts tomorrow. A small cut still hurts tomorrow. But they're not long-term injuries (deep gashes, broken bones). One or two short-term injuries (ie a few hit points) can be shrugged off and patched up enough to not bother me tomorrow. But a handful of those or more are still going to affect me tomorrow. Case in point the example I used with my wife and her bike a few weeks ago. Her nose is still sensitive. I'd say she's pretty much completely healed, but all it would take is to tweak her nose lightly and she'd scream bloody murder. And it's weeks later now, with most of the rest of the wounds healed up (except her knee, which opened up again a few days after the stitches came out and still hurts a lot when she knocks it lightly against a table leg or a child mistakenly grabs the wrong one.
> 
> ...




But, no version of D&D actually does what your example does.  Weeks to heal something that isn't remotely life threatening?  No version of D&D does that.  In 3e, she'd be fully healed in a day, maybe three days.  By your definition, any D&D healing rate is way too fast.  If I have to be 100% recovered, no bruising or anything, no version of D&D should satisfy you. 

And, sure, there might be a difference between one day and three, but, none of them are remotely close to weeks.

And, having a cold doesn't actually lower HP.  What wound did you take?  What bruising?  Being sick as a dog bypasses HP and always has - disease and poison rules have nothing to do with HP.


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## Zireael (Jun 28, 2012)

Hussar said:


> And, having a cold doesn't actually lower HP.  What wound did you take?  What bruising?  Being sick as a dog bypasses HP and always has - disease and poison rules have nothing to do with HP.




What about being winded?


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## pemerton (Jun 28, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Case in point the example I used with my wife and her bike a few weeks ago. Her nose is still sensitive. I'd say she's pretty much completely healed, but all it would take is to tweak her nose lightly and she'd scream bloody murder. And it's weeks later now, with most of the rest of the wounds healed up (except her knee, which opened up again a few days after the stitches came out and still hurts a lot when she knocks it lightly against a table leg or a child mistakenly grabs the wrong one.
> 
> So, she's still not back to full HP (at least as far as I'd call it) whereas under 4E she would have been back to full HP the next day, fully functional in all areas.





Kamikaze Midget said:


> There's a lot of room in between "it connected and didn't kill you" and "it's inconsequential."
> 
> ESPECIALLY for fantasy hero badasses who might be holding their intestines in one hand and hewing apart the legions of devils with the other and be pretty fine once they've had a few days to let their digestive tract readjust itself.
> 
> So the distinction between a hit and a non-hit can be important for the feel of the world and the feel of the heroics, too.



This shows the narrative "space" that hit points have to cover. In Mercutio01's game, when you have a slight cold you're down hit points.

Whereas in KM's game when you're disembowelled you're still fully functional and better after a few days.

This is why, in my view, the core hp mechanics need to be utterly minimal, to make room for all these (and other variations). As soon as the core hp mechanics start telling us what sort of injury/debiliation/bad luck correlates to what sort of hp depletion, they will start to rule out some of these variatiosn that have grown up around the hp mechanic.


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## Mercutio01 (Jun 28, 2012)

pemerton said:


> This shows the narrative "space" that hit points have to cover. In Mercutio01's game, when you have a slight cold you're down hit points.



Not a lot of them, mind you. Maybe only 1 or 2. I was being sort of tongue-in-cheek about it, but my point really was that on any given day, for whatever reason, I won't necessarily be fighting at full strength. But that's real-world not game world. As for my wife being healed in three days in 3E, I did already say that I don't really like 3E's default healing either, so I really wish that crap would stop being bandied about like it's my bible on all things healing. It's not. Like I've said before, because 3E's healing rate was more than one day for full HP, I didn't really think about the actually mundane healing rate because it never really came into play. Characters would just seek out magical healing _because_ mundane healing took longer than a day. And I'm fine with that, even if I think 3E's rates are still too high. It's still longer than one day complete heals, which means no one waits for mundane healing unless there's no other option, in which case there are serious other problems heading their way.



> This is why, in my view, the core hp mechanics need to be utterly minimal, to make room for all these (and other variations). As soon as the core hp mechanics start telling us what sort of injury/debiliation/bad luck correlates to what sort of hp depletion, they will start to rule out some of these variatiosn that have grown up around the hp mechanic.



Despite our different views on what HP really means, I think we are in complete agreement over what we want to see from HP.


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## SageMinerve (Jun 28, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Rolemaster has the same problem (edit: 15 min adventuring day)  for the same reason.




Funnily enough, and exagerating a bit (but not that much), my problem with Rolemaster was to survive 15 minutes... seriously, how do you survive any severe critical? I remember one of my players having both ears taken out, each by an arrow critical hit; the first ear in the 1st fight of the adventure, and the last one in what turned out to be their last stand (there's only so many -25 (or whatever, don't remember the exact number) penalty to activity you can survive).

[/end thread sidetrack]


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## pemerton (Jun 28, 2012)

SageMinerve said:


> seriously, how do you survive any severe critical?



Low levels depend on luck. At mid-to-high levels, using healing magic (especially self-healing).


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## Hussar (Jun 29, 2012)

And, I think that this little aside about Rolemaster illustrates why some groups have a problem with very low level play where the PC's aren't very durable.  Most of the time, the DM has to play with kid gloves at the outset simply because whacking 1st level PC's is too easy.  And, sure, you can just roll up another one, but, that has all sorts of problems as well - detachment from the character/campaign being one - and it enforces a fairly specific playstyle - ie. the group probably shouldn't bother with much of a character until about 3rd level when a stray arrow won't kill your character outright.

There's nothing wrong with this playstyle, mind you.  I've certainly enjoyed it.  But, as D&D got more complex, particularly in the area of chargen, disposable characters becomes a bigger and bigger PITA.  And, to be honest, I want to play my character right at the beginning.  I don't want to wait ten or fifteen sessions before bothering to get attached to the character.  Not anymore at any rate.

Sure, we could simply start at 3rd level.  That's true.  Then again, those who want weaker characters can simply roll hit points.  It works either way.  Your 4e character gets X hp, instead of X+Con.  Done.  There, now I've got my weak 1st level character again.

These are pretty minor issues to be honest.  It's too easy to fix this to taste to really worry about IMO.


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## pemerton (Jun 29, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> Despite our different views on what HP really means, I think we are in complete agreement over what we want to see from HP.



I think so.


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## pemerton (Jun 29, 2012)

Hussar said:


> And, I think that this little aside about Rolemaster illustrates why some groups have a problem with very low level play where the PC's aren't very durable.  Most of the time, the DM has to play with kid gloves at the outset simply because whacking 1st level PC's is too easy.  And, sure, you can just roll up another one, but, that has all sorts of problems as well



In Rolemaster it actually creates a deep incoherence in the game (and I say this from the experience of GMing it lovingly for nearly 20 years): PCs in Rolemaster are complex mechanical creations that are a beauty to behold, and beg for a background to explain how they got to be how they are, and for a rich campaign setting in which to fully express their manifold abilities.

And then the combat system treats them like so much wheat before the scythe!

The best defence that can be made, I think, is that RM's PCs and action resolution mechanics are rich enough that it is possible to create viable and interesting situations in which combat is not the main game. So the PCs (and players') luck isn't being put to a mortal test in every situation.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 30, 2012)

Hussar said:


> A blow that is turned into a miss ("full plot protection") vs a blow that is turned into an inconsequential contact that causes no long term injury is a distinction that really doesn't matter at the end of the day, does it?





The only case where this might come up is secondary effects on the attack, such as poison, knockdown, level drain etc.

The question is, if that hp damage means I didn't take any "real" damage from the blow, then how did I get poisoned?


Personally, I can handwave these corner cases my self, but it is a sticking point for some.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 30, 2012)

Stalker0 said:


> The only case where this might come up is secondary effects on the attack, such as poison, knockdown, level drain etc.
> 
> The question is, if that hp damage means I didn't take any "real" damage from the blow, then how did I get poisoned?
> 
> ...



The ready answer I had for that question back in the 80s, when I was still trying to defend AD&D, was:  "make a poison/death save."

If you felt you needed to know whether the wound was 'real' or purely a psuedo-hit, you make that save.  Dovetails nicely, really.  If a poison doesn't give a same, it must be a 'contact' poison or something, and even though the weapon didn't break the skin, you still got exposed to it.  Not that far beyond the pale when you consider how toxic some mythological poisons, like that of the basilisk, could be.


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## Hussar (Jul 1, 2012)

In my mind, why does it have to be 100% all the same thing all the time?  A hit with a poisoned weapon breaks the skin.  A hit with a non-poisoned weapon might break the skin or might just dent your shield or might just make you step back and twist your ankle.

Heck, a hit with a poisoned weapon where you made your save is no different than a hit with a non-poisoned weapon.


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## pemerton (Jul 2, 2012)

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], next you'll be singing the praises of fortune-in-the-middle mechanics!


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## Hussar (Jul 2, 2012)

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], next you'll be singing the praises of fortune-in-the-middle mechanics!




Honestly, for me, I find fortune in the middle makes the most sense.  Or, perhaps a better way to put it, it's the most versatile.  If you put fortune at either end, then you can only have one explanation ever for any event.  To me, that's not what good resolution mechanics should do.  Good resolution mechanics should never dictate the fiction beforehand.

And, really, in my mind, D&D has always worked like this.  At least mostly.  You state an intent, you roll the dice, you get to the next step and roll the dice again to determine the outcome of that event.  That's how combat has always worked.  I can state, "I am going to stab him as hard as I can" all you like, but, until damage is rolled, you cannot really, with any certainty, say that that is what's going to happen.

In any skill check, you state your intent, then roll to actually attempt whatever it is you are trying to do.  And that die roll determines your level of success.  Frequently it doesn't even determine the entire event.  A climb skill check only allows you to move a certain speed up the wall. If you haven't reached the top, you need to check again to continue climbing and it's the dice that determine your actions, not any statement by the player.

So, no, I don't want the mechanics to say, absolutely, one way or the other.  If HP=Meat then you must resolve and narrate everything, one specific way.  If HP=Plot Protection, you must narrate everything in one specific way.  By leaving it vague and saying, "pick whichever you like and the table likes" you get the most flexiblity.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jul 2, 2012)

Hussar said:


> So, no, I don't want the mechanics to say, absolutely, one way or the other.  If HP=Meat then you must resolve and narrate everything, one specific way.  If HP=Plot Protection, you must narrate everything in one specific way.  By leaving it vague and saying, "pick whichever you like and the table likes" you get the most flexiblity.



Wouldn't it be nice though if the resolution mechanic that is suppose to resolve _something_, actually resolves something? Wouldn't it be good if the resolution mechanic separates these two aspects so the player and DM know an attack wounds the target or that a non-wounding attack is avoided by the target? Knowing one way or the other allows you the freedom within each of these situations to describe what you want. While describing a genuine wound might pin you down somewhat, the loss of non-wounding hit points/plot protection can be described any which way the player or DM feels is most appropriate. Separating the two (Wounds and Non-wounds) solves every single anomaly and problem hit points has had and would seemingly allow each side of this debate to play the style that they wish.

Just saying. Again.   

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## pemerton (Jul 2, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> Wouldn't it be nice though if the resolution mechanic that is suppose to resolve _something_, actually resolves something?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Just saying. Again.



In the same spirit, I'll quote (again) a key passage written by Ron Edwards, in his "Gamism - Step On Up" essay:

Gamist and Narrativist play have an interesting relationship, but it's hard to see or understand unless you have experience with solid non-Simulationist game play . . .

_f Simulationist-facilitating design is not involved, then the whole picture changes. Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things: 

*Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.

*Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion. 

*More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se. _​_

When you look at that list, you see all the features of 4e that generate so much hostility:

*Author stance to set up the "arena for conflict" (ie players make choices for their PCs not because they are "playing their PCs" but because they think this will produce an interesting situation for play), and more generally a downplaying of "exploring" the fanatsy world for its own sake. A simple example is that the game takes for granted that players won't have their PCs try to use their Decanter of Endless Water to make money in the desert).

*FitM, and the negotiation of the details of the fiction more generally in a casual fashion within parameters/constraints set by the mechanics, rather than reading them off the mechanics. This is exactly what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is talking about. 4e is very overt about this, and extends it to active abilities (powers etc) as well as the more traditional passive ones (hp, saves).​
It is not crucial to RPGing that the mechanics actually determine, at every point of play, what is happening in the fiction (or, in Herremman's words, that the action resolution mecahnics actually resolve something). It can be sufficient that the mechanics settle parameters for subsequent narration.

Some of these repeated proposal for simulationist "fixes" to 4e, and to FitM and similar mechanics more generally, seem to be motivated by a genuine surprise that anyone might prefer, at least sometimes, or for some RPGing purposes, a game that plays in the way that Edwards describes. But it is true.

A simple recent example from my 4e game: the dwarf PC was having his dwarven engineers and artisans reforge Whelm (a dwarven thrower hammer) as Overwhelm (a mordenkrad). I was resolving this as a skill challenge. The PC wizard had succeeded in containing the magical forces (Arcana success). The dwarf had made sure the engineers had the right equipment (Dungeoneering success) and he was keeping them focused on the task as the magical forces grew in intensity (Diplomacy success). He said prayers to Moradin, but these weren't enough (Religion failure). As I described the dwarven artisans having trouble getting a solid grip on the hammer head, so that they could beat it into shape, the player of the dwarf asked "Can I stick my hands in and hold it - making an Endurance check?" (his Endurance skill bonus is a lot better than his Religion bonus!). I answered that he could, though it would probably hurt his hands quite badly. So he did, he made the Endurance roll, with the dwarf steadying Whelm with his bare hands in the forge the artisans were able to get a firm grip with their tongs, and Whelm was reforged. (And the wizard used Remove Affliction to try to alleviate some of the damage from the burns.)

This is the sort of thing which is easy to do in a fortune-in-the-middle system in which the relationship between fictional content and mechanical outcomes is negotiated in a casual fashion using the system for inputs and constraints. Whereas resolving it in a simulationist system would be much harder, because apart from anything else they tend not to have well-developed systems for resolving non-humanly-possible but non-magical heroic action (there is no way this could be done in Rolemaster, Runequest or Burning Wheel without spellcasting, for example).

I'm not saying that this laid-back approach to resolution is everything. It depends, for example, upon a robust and shared sense of genre limitations around the table. 4e has a lot of features to help deliver this: D&D traditions, plus the default world, plus the tiers of play, etc. (So the player of the dwarf in this example would have accepted a "No, you can't do that!" answer back in heroic tier.)

But the fact that it's not the be-all-and-end-all doesn't make it anything less than a completely viable way of RPGing.

(As I posted in the other thread, a Wound/Vitality system has the additional weirdness that it keeps FitM and loose narration for part of the system - hp loss - but not the rest of the system - wounding. I don't really understand the reason for this sort of split personality - I want to go one way or the other.)_


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## Mercutio01 (Jul 2, 2012)

pemerton said:


> It is not crucial to RPGing that the mechanics actually determine, at every point of play, what is happening in the fiction (or, in Herremman's words, that the action resolution mecahnics actually _resolve_ something). It can be sufficient that the mechanics settle parameters for subsequent narration.



Can be, and is for some games. I don't like it in my D&D.



pemerton said:


> surprise that anyone might prefer, at least sometimes, or for some RPGing purposes, a game that plays in the way that Edwards describes. But it is true.



I do like those. But again, not in my D&D. I even really like Dungeon World (haven't had a chance to play it yet, though), but I approach it differently than I do D&D. I resent being forced to change my playstyle to play the same game I've been playing for 24 years. When I desire a change in playstyle, I will play a different game. I don't think that's so hard to grasp. And I don't get why that's so hard for 4E fans to understand.

The feel of the game is created in large part by the mechanics, and the mechanics of 4E changed so drastically from previous editions that the feel of the game also changed. So when I say that by playing 4E, I don't feel like I'm playing D&D, that's what I mean.

I play other games. I like to play other games. I enjoy reading about game design. I do not think that Forge theory necessarily is correct for all games. I can point to several games on my shelf where Forge theory application would change the game way too much to feel like the game on the title.


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## LostSoul (Jul 2, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Honestly, for me, I find fortune in the middle makes the most sense.  Or, perhaps a better way to put it, it's the most versatile.  If you put fortune at either end, then you can only have one explanation ever for any event.  To me, that's not what good resolution mechanics should do.  Good resolution mechanics should never dictate the fiction beforehand.




While I agree with your analysis, I don't agree with this.  Fortune at the End can produce different explanations for any Intent, based on success/failure of said actions, though that comes down to specific implementations of resolution systems.

What I'm really interested in, though, is _good_ mechanics.  I can't argue with your preferences; all I can do is share mine.  What I believe good resolution mechanics do is _change the situation._  I believe that, when you enter a conflict-charged situation, engaging with the mechanics should produce an interesting change to the situation without creating a conflict of interest for players.

(Leaving aside the aspect of creating a conflict-charged situation for the moment...)

The _interesting change_ is often the most difficult part to get right, because it relies on many different factors: suspension of disbelief, genre conventions, and others.  What good mechanics should do is allow players agency in how those factors tie into the reward system, and have the _interesting change_ reflect changes to the characters and how they interact with the game world; and furthermore, by those changes make the characters more interesting and their relationship to the game world more complex: i.e. a reward system.

I believe that engaging a resolution system should engage the players with the reward system; and a reward system should factor in how the game deals with suspension of disbelief, genre conventions, etc.  (And, of course, what the interesting material in the game world is; that is, Creative Agenda/GNS.)

The _conflict of interest for players_ is pretty well covered by the "Czege principle"; I'll let Eero take it for me here: 

...a proposition by Paul Czege that it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict. It’s not a theorem but rather an observation; where and how and why it holds true is an ongoing question of some particular interest.​
*

Now, all that said, when one considers a design with Fortune in the Middle or at the Beginning, I think you have to look at these things: how the Situation is set up (Characters + Setting, and how they interact); how player agency interacts with the resolution system; and how the reward system responds.

Either method can produce the results that I'm looking for: as long as you get players influencing the reward system through their choices (assuming you have a decent reward system!), FitM vs. FatE is a difference of technique; either one suits some designs and not others.

Fortune at the Beginning is an interesting aside: I'm thinking of Wandering Monsters + Reaction Rolls in B/X.  Monsters roam around, the mythic underworld is full of them; they don't have much treasure (so little XP) or much else to offer PCs.  The Reaction Roll offers PCs a way out of this _dangerous_ situation, since the Hostile result is rare; and, of course, players can reduce the number of Wandering Monster checks through efficient dungeon exploration.  This seems to set up a situation where the player's choices suddenly and radically change, and one where player choice can make the outcome work for the PCs (savvy diplomacy or e.g. leading unintelligent monsters into a fight with the monsters in another room) or lead to disaster (1d8 HP for Fighters!).

So what you have there is player agency leading to an interesting change in the situation, and player agency feeding back into the reward cycle.  Well done, and that's FitB.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jul 2, 2012)

pemerton said:


> But the fact that it's not the be-all-and-end-all doesn't make it anything less than a completely viable way of RPGing.



This is very important to highlight (I can't quite XP you again for a little while I think). While our current gaming preferences are on opposite ends of the spectrum (not entirely but I think you know what I mean), I fully support the passion you have for the style of game you enjoy and embrace. It kind of makes me think it would be a shame if the big 5e tent thing fails and many of the important voices on ENWorld such as yours slowly drift away. The shame would be magnified when you look back at all the time spent by people bickering on this forum over the past few years about such small things; rather than appreciating and celebrating the diversity of thought and ideas expressed. So in essence, the more you post the more I learn, and for this I thank you very much.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Hussar (Jul 2, 2012)

Herremann the Wise said:


> Wouldn't it be nice though if the resolution mechanic that is suppose to resolve _something_, actually resolves something? Wouldn't it be good if the resolution mechanic separates these two aspects so the player and DM know an attack wounds the target or that a non-wounding attack is avoided by the target? Knowing one way or the other allows you the freedom within each of these situations to describe what you want. While describing a genuine wound might pin you down somewhat, the loss of non-wounding hit points/plot protection can be described any which way the player or DM feels is most appropriate. Separating the two (Wounds and Non-wounds) solves every single anomaly and problem hit points has had and would seemingly allow each side of this debate to play the style that they wish.
> 
> Just saying. Again.
> 
> ...




Well, I guess at the end of the day, it depends on whether or not the practical issues are worth it.  Going with a wounds/vitality system adds complexity.  It does.  There's no way around that.  Is it worth the added complexity?  How much is that added complexity going to slow the game down?  

At the end of the day, does it really matter?  For my money, I'd leave them both in and not worry about it too much.  Those that want HP=meat can play it that way.  It's not like they didn't play it that way for decades anyway, even if there were problems.  For those that want the mix, well, again, it's not like anything's really changed.  HP are HP, despite playing dueling definitions across editions.

I'm very, very much not about process simulation.  I only care about the end result.  We've (probably) all played multiple editions of D&D without this really being an issue because whatever group we end up playing with likely share our predispositions (or are nice enough not to get too fussed about it) and we carry on.

I really do think that this whole issue has been blown WAY out of proportion.  No one ever really cared all that much for many years.  4e changed things a bit by adding in non-magical healing, but, really, if you want to play 4e with an earlier edition style HP, it only takes about a sentence or three to get there - remove warlords and change up the healing rates.  OTOH, changing 3e to a more 4e style of HP is also ludicrously easy - PC's heal X hp after every encounter and/or use healing wands.  Done.

Do we really, really need to fiddle with the mechanics here?  When fixing the issue to taste can be done in a sidebar in the DMG?


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## pemerton (Jul 2, 2012)

Mercutio01 said:


> I don't like it in my D&D.



That's fair enough, but I think D&D's always left room for it. In AD&D, you thrust and parry for a minute, then you get in your hit. Did you strike well? Did your opponent accidently trip in a pot hole and drop his/her guard? The abstractness of D&D's resolution mechanics seems to leave this sort of thing open to narration in a way that it wouldn't be in (say) Runequest.

That's one reason why I think introducing fumble rules into D&D is something of a big deal. Because that's starting to make it definite that a bad d20 roll = bad swordsmanship, as opposed perhaps to simply bad luck.

  [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], Wandering Monsters are an interesting example. Because for them to work as you describe, the players really have to buy into the premise of the game as expressd by the XP-for-gp reward system: that the PCs are mercenary adventures looting the underworld. It is very easy, in classic D&D play, to (inadvertently) change this reward system. If you have players who enjoy the game because they want to play out the activities of _heroes_ in the mythic underworld - and the game (I'm thinking now of Moldvay Basic) certainly doesn't discourage this, with its description of victory against the dragon tyrant in the foreword, and its modestly-stated preference for Lawful alignment - then the ostensible reward system of levelling up by collecting gold breaks down, and the real reward system becomes something more informal, like pleasure in playing out the heroic activities of the PCs, and then there is pressure (i) on the players to have their PCs tackle wandering monsters, who presumably are as wicked and nasty as the non-wandering ones, and (ii) on the GM, or perhaps the group as a whole, to bring the _formal _reward system into line with this new underlying premise (witness 2nd ed AD&D and later).

Reaction rolls are also interesting. As I posted on KM's FitM thread, these are frequently used to generate new fictional content. Consider a reaction roll of an innkeep when the PCs enter the inn.

On one approach, the GM already has worked out a personal history of the innkeeper, including that he hates mages, because 10 years ago the wizard's college forcibly conscripted the innkeeper's youngest son when he began to exhibit signs of "the gift". The PCs' party incudes an obvious wizard (robes, staff) and so the GM applies a penalty to the recation roll. No fortune in the midle here; it's at the end (although the players are probably unaward of much of the already-established fiction that informs the resolution).

But here's another way the same scene could go. The PCs walk into the inn. The GM has no notes on the inn or its keeper, and so rolls an unmodified reaction roll. The dice come up low - the innkeeer is unfriendly, even hostile! Why?, wonders the GM. And then invents a backstory to explain the innkeepers unfriendly reaction: ever since the wizard's college forcibly conscripted the innkeeper's youngest son - when he began to exhibit signs of "the gift" - the innkeeper has hated wizards and those who associate with them.

Often there is a unspoken assumption in discussions of GMing, world building etc that the first of these ways is the "right" way to play, and the second way, involving spontaneous creation of backstory by the GM, is a second-best. But I'm a big fan of a system that makes it easy to generate content spontaneously as in the second approach, in part because I think that this second approach helps resolve the question of how do we change the situation in ways that (i) are interesting and (ii) don't give rise to conflicts of interest. (As well as reaction rolls, I think something similar is at work in the successful adjudication of a 4e skill challenge - at least if the example of play in the Essentials book is meant to be taken as a guide - and also in the resolution of failed checks by reference to Intent in priority to Task in Burning Wheel.)

  [MENTION=11300]Herremann the Wise[/MENTION] - I get the sense that you like the _aesthetic_ of the wound/vitality split, but I'd be interested to hear you say a bit more about (i) what sort of play you see it pushing towards and underpinning, and (ii) why keep the _hit point_ component at all (and eg if hp are sometimes luck, why can't I get lucky even if I'm surprised critted - or to put it another way, does a wound/vitality split create some pressure to decrease the metagame component even of the hp side?).


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## LostSoul (Jul 2, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Wandering Monsters are an interesting example. Because for them to work as you describe, the players really have to buy into the premise of the game as expressd by the XP-for-gp reward system: that the PCs are mercenary adventures looting the underworld. It is very easy, in classic D&D play, to (inadvertently) change this reward system.




Good point!  That is precisely what we did back when I first started to play, in order to deliver on some of the promises of the game - specifically the intro in B/X.



pemerton said:


> Reaction rolls are also interesting. As I posted on KM's FitM thread, these are frequently used to generate new fictional content. Consider a reaction roll of an innkeep when the PCs enter the inn.




That's a good example.  I prefer DM-side mechanics that work that way because it keeps me "honest": given the authority granted to the DM, it's easy for me to unconsciously force play towards the way I imagined the situation playing out when I created it.  Reaction Rolls are one way that helps me act as "impartial arbiter", yet still allows for a wide range of creative input.  Those types of mechanics act to relieve the responsibility I have and make the game easier to run for me.

And now that I think about it, maybe Wandering Monster checks + Reaction Rolls are not Fortune at the Beginning.  I'm not really sure what that would look like - roll dice before you decide what you are rolling dice for?  So probably FitM.  Anyway, it's not a big deal.


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## pemerton (Jul 3, 2012)

LostSoul said:


> And now that I think about it, maybe Wandering Monster checks + Reaction Rolls are not Fortune at the Beginning.  I'm not really sure what that would look like - roll dice before you decide what you are rolling dice for?  So probably FitM.  Anyway, it's not a big deal.



I'm not sure either. I thought that WM + RR in the dungeon context is maybe about as clse to FatB as you're going to get. In my RR example I thought it was closer to FitM, because there is already an ingame situation unfolding (the PCs have entered an inn and hailed its keeper). As you say, I don't think precise categories are that important here.



LostSoul said:


> I prefer DM-side mechanics that work that way because it keeps me "honest": given the authority granted to the DM, it's easy for me to unconsciously force play towards the way I imagined the situation playing out when I created it.  Reaction Rolls are one way that helps me act as "impartial arbiter", yet still allows for a wide range of creative input.  Those types of mechanics act to relieve the responsibility I have and make the game easier to run for me.



Isn't this a special case of the general rationale for using dice for resolution - they frame input and create surprise while preserving the agency of the various participants?

In 4e there is no reaction roll mechanic, but the same sort of discipline on the GM can be generated by a player's successful roll on a skill check, or in the context of a skill challenge.


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