An elegant solution to unfun combat healing
There is another solution to relieve the cleric from his healing chore... But the designers won't use it, obviously, and, if they did, they would be (unjustly) crucified.
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Time.
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In real world, with mundane means, you need more than 3 seconds (a standard action) to treat an injury or stabilize a character (and usualy more than 1 minute to die from a bleeding wound that can be stabilized). In most fiction, magical healing is not instantaneous, neither. It usualy require calm, some decent amount of time, and often some material components.
If healing was to be completely removed from combat (or nearly removed from combat), then cleric would use their other cool ability without remorse. And then, after the combat ends, they would be able to save their dying comrades.
There would be another benefit : if you need 10 rounds to cas a "cure light wound" spell, then you can perfectly use the classical "argh...." scene, when the wounded NPC is able to make a speach to the PC before dying. With the current rules, it's impossible, unless the cleric runs out of spells, scrolls, healing potions and wands, and has a bad "heal" score.
...
Time.
....
In real world, with mundane means, you need more than 3 seconds (a standard action) to treat an injury or stabilize a character (and usualy more than 1 minute to die from a bleeding wound that can be stabilized). In most fiction, magical healing is not instantaneous, neither. It usualy require calm, some decent amount of time, and often some material components.
If healing was to be completely removed from combat (or nearly removed from combat), then cleric would use their other cool ability without remorse. And then, after the combat ends, they would be able to save their dying comrades.
There would be another benefit : if you need 10 rounds to cas a "cure light wound" spell, then you can perfectly use the classical "argh...." scene, when the wounded NPC is able to make a speach to the PC before dying. With the current rules, it's impossible, unless the cleric runs out of spells, scrolls, healing potions and wands, and has a bad "heal" score.
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RangerWickett
Legend
My preference would be no in-combat healing. Your hit points should get you through combat, and if you run out, you're out of combat. Magical healing should be for things like curing disease and poison, restoring limbs, and fixing grievous wounds that would normally take days to heal.
So when you run out of hit points, you're out of speed and stamina to avoid being hurt. You should stop fighting or else you're liable to be hurt for real. Someone could cut off your arm, disembowel you, or pluck out your eye. Better to fall down and crawl to safety than to risk death.
Healing should heal wounds, and I don't want hit points to represent wounds, but rather stamina and luck and such.
So when you run out of hit points, you're out of speed and stamina to avoid being hurt. You should stop fighting or else you're liable to be hurt for real. Someone could cut off your arm, disembowel you, or pluck out your eye. Better to fall down and crawl to safety than to risk death.
Healing should heal wounds, and I don't want hit points to represent wounds, but rather stamina and luck and such.
I love RangerWicket's reply, but I don't see it happening.
Another option, in addition to those listed above, would be HoT spells. Now I am the first person to cry foul when a tabletop game tries too hard to be an MMO, but the concept is good enough... Rather than having temporary hitpoints or preset hit point thresholds (which might work but seems too "safe" to me), a caster would spend one action on one round casting a spell that would then heal a bit each round (unless the target is fully healed, at which point the healing is useless but continues to occur). This way the caster is stopping to heal once every few rounds, and can otherwise go about his or her business.
Another option, in addition to those listed above, would be HoT spells. Now I am the first person to cry foul when a tabletop game tries too hard to be an MMO, but the concept is good enough... Rather than having temporary hitpoints or preset hit point thresholds (which might work but seems too "safe" to me), a caster would spend one action on one round casting a spell that would then heal a bit each round (unless the target is fully healed, at which point the healing is useless but continues to occur). This way the caster is stopping to heal once every few rounds, and can otherwise go about his or her business.
Eagle Prince
First Post
There is a sample encounter vs a dragon on the D&D website, and one of the last things to happen is the cleric gets a crit on the dragon, which lets him heal the wizard. Sounds like orc mischief to me.
Lonely Tylenol
First Post
It looks to me like a smite attack that gives off a wave of positive energy that heals anyone who has the smiting god's favour (read: allies). It also looks like the sort of thing that the cleric isn't going to do every round.Henry said:Darn, Numion beat me to it.Fortunate fate is a cool spell - Heal without the cleric present.
I honestly don't like the "I'll heal AND do something cool" myself, and this is coming from a regular player of a cleric. It's never made any kind of plausible sense to me to heal from watching an attack, and its aesthetic leaves me a bit cold. I'm soon to play a character that does this very thing, but from an objective view I can't make a plausible reason for it. Renewed vigor? Why not temporary hit points, or a temp CON boost?
FungiMuncher
First Post
Delta said:
These are some awesome ideas. However, it also seems that the basic assumptions of the game would be strained, and probably a lot of work to adjust. Encounter balance seems to be dependent upon speedy casting by a dedicated healer.
Though, putting in the effort designing a new edition certainly sounds like an opportunity to try these ideas out. I guess it all depends upon the actual effort required, and how much of a sacred cow it is.
Garboshnik
First Post
In my last campaign I made all of the healing spells X points/ rounds or the full effect but only temporary HP (like from a Barbarian's rage). This was done to address the extreme see-saw nature of player HP totals at higher levels which made it much more difficult to make excitingly close encounters.
Response from the players was mixed; most of them (in particular the monk) thought that it put them out of fights too fast, but I think that more caution in play style would have alleviated the problem. I would certainly say that it worked better at high than low levels. It did make adventuring without a cleric feasible which is something I was really shooting for.
Long story short: I hope that Heal and Mass Heal do not make it to the new edition!
Response from the players was mixed; most of them (in particular the monk) thought that it put them out of fights too fast, but I think that more caution in play style would have alleviated the problem. I would certainly say that it worked better at high than low levels. It did make adventuring without a cleric feasible which is something I was really shooting for.
Long story short: I hope that Heal and Mass Heal do not make it to the new edition!
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