D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[DarkCrisis]

Short of healing has made for more intricate game play from my experience.

Party rests but don’t get all their HP back and head back into the dungeon. Thieves scout. Flaming oils thrown. Archers laying down fire while the melees prepare for a charge etc. wizards using spells tactically for best results.

Vastly different then 5E where it’s just full HP let’s rush into the room and slaughter everything!

Heck 5E the fighter just triggered all the traps because he knew he wouldn’t die and could easily get healed. B/X they search for and disarm traps because again, healing isn’t taken for granted.


It’s diff play styles. Used to really despise how 5E powered everyone up BUT I’ve been reconsidering. There is room for both. My favorite old school novels like Dragonlance or Drizzt and fam is probably more 5E than 2E. Big Damn Heroes kicking butt vs towing the edge. Maybe 3E is a good middle ground… hmm

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm fine with in-combat healing in 5.0e (not switching to 5.5e) being non-optimal, but since it bugs one of my players, there is a house rule we're going to try:

Magical healing also grants you temp hp equal to the hp healed. They go away after 1 minute.

I'm also using a rule that you get a level of temp exhaustion (recovered on short rest) when you drop to zero hp.

Together I'm hoping these provide a better incentive to avoid letting characters drop to 0 before healing, and make in combat healing feel more impactful without directly improving out of combat healing.

 

[Horwath]

Using the alternative resting rules.

Short rest is a night in the dungeon.
Long rest is a week in town.

this will most of the time affect nothing in the game except narrative term.

PCs can handle certain amount of challenge per short/long rest.

it does not matter if Long rest is one hour or one year, except in world building.

DMs give options to take a rest, players may force a rest, everything else be damned.
As a DM you can play along with players and their rest rhythm or nuke the campaign.

 

[Horwath]

3.5e really had far more healing if focused on healing;

Healing domain sucked badly, you would exchange it for Healing devotion feat.

Healing Devotion – Feat – D&D Tools

Complete list of all D&D spells, rulebooks, feats, classes and more!

dndtools.net

at 5th level with decent Cha(12) that gave you 100HP worth of healing instead of that useless turn undead 95% of the time.

Touch of healing feat more or less doubled your effective down time healing as healing up to 50% just got free(might be a lot less, depending on how much damaged everyone finished the fight)

Touch of Healing – Feat – D&D Tools

Complete list of all D&D spells, rulebooks, feats, classes and more!

dndtools.net

and in the end as a dedicated healer you took the augment healing feat:

Augment Healing – Feat – D&D Tools

Complete list of all D&D spells, rulebooks, feats, classes and more!

dndtools.net

also for wand you did not take CLW but Lesser vigor, for downtime it's double effective, 11HP per use instead of 5,5HP.
A reliable 11HP.

as an alternative to wands, you could have the Healing belt item. Same price as 1st level wand.
Does less healing per day, but it's permanent.
Out heals CLW wand in 11 days and lesser vigor wand in 21 days.
and it can be used by anyone, not just a caster with those spells on the list.

 

[DarkCrisis]

One thing 3rd had that I’m surprised they didn’t reuse was clerics converting any spell to a cure spell on the fly.

I always liked that.

 

[mellored]

this will most of the time affect nothing in the game except narrative term.

What else did you want it to change?

If you can't justify 6 battles a day, certainly you can justify 6 battles year.

 

[Clint_L]

Love the OP. It's thoughtful, detailed, and puts forward a strong case. I don't know that the solution is that much like healing surges in 4e, but the core concept of capping overall healing by tying it to hit dice is very clever.

I also agree with the point that healing in 5e is usually a sucker's bet. If you math it out, in most cases the healer could have saved the party more HP by doing something else, such as killing or incapacitating an opponent. In 5e, healing usually only matters if it's a stonking big heal, like mass heal, or a little bonus action when someone is unconscious, like healing word.

I'm interested to see how 2024 changes that equation. In general, heals are a bit better and characters are a little tougher. What we found out during play testing is that mobs feel much, much weaker, and that will probably be true for most groups, at least until the new MM comes out.

I also think the game is just moving away from attritional play, in general. As the style has shifted to more of a story focus there tends to be an emphasis on having fewer fights with higher stakes rather than a bunch of low stakes encounters leading up to the climax. This is what we see in actual play shows, for example, but it's also how my own games play out. In fact, the first thing I do when adapting an adventure for my table, as I am currently doing with Vecna: Eve of Ruin, is cut a bunch of the minor battles and beef up the big ones. So that has a lot of implications for how healing works over an adventuring day.

 

[Daztur]

I love the cognitive dissonance that rears it's head every time someone blithely tosses out the not at all gritty not at all realism dmg variant as if a slight change to the narrative will correct the massive problems rearing their heads when the game drops below six to eight medium to hard encounters per adventuring day once the players have already decided to go whole hog on 5mwd "rest>nova>repeat" type play play. 5e did away with all of the secondary subsystems and "ask your gm if you can get that rest" type clauses in favor of resting mechanicsthst are effectively "tell your GM when you complete a rest unless they are a monster with a term like adversarial dm killer em or whatever who stops you from taking what is yours"

The Five Minute Adventuring Day is a common trap for DMs to fall into and it can REALLY suck the fun out of a game. The some ways I've seen of dealing with it include:

1. Traditional dungeon crawls. If the treasure is deep in the dungeon and you can't take long rests in the dungeon the DM can sit back and let the players deal with the conundrum of knowing that delving deeper gives them more treasure but also more encounters and that if they retreat from the dungeon after each fight they'll never get squat for treasure. This works especially well with GP = XP advancement rules. The main problem with this in 5e is you often end a session in the dungeon which is a real pain in the ass if real world issues mean a slightly different roster of players each session.

2. "You're on a boat and can only take a long rest at a friendly port" plenty easy to screw with the boat and make it hard to get to a friendly port. I've had a lot of success with boat-based 5e games.

3. If you can't beat them join them. 4e works fine if there's just 1-2 big fights per long rest. 5e emphatically does not. I think this is probably the single biggest problem with 5e design in terms of the rules not matching the way the median player plays it (as opposed to 5e not matching my personal tastes).

 

[Daztur]

I may go back and look at that rule because 4e is the ruleset I’m the least familiar with.

The issue is a tough nut to crack, I definitely agree.

4e Healing surges were basically 5e Hit Dice on steroids. They each healed 1/4 of your max HPs. Just like 5e Hit Dice you couldn't spend them at will in combat but unlike 5e Hit Dice there were a whole slew of powers that let someone spend a Healing Surge during a fight. Tapping into your Healing Surges accounted for the vast bulk of in-combat healing. When you were out of Healing Surges it was VERY difficult to heal, which got rid of 3.*e's Fistful of CLW Wands problem.

For example Healing Word was a cleric power and when you used it on an ally they could spend one of their Healing Surges on themselves +1d6 (at levels 1-5, it scaled mildly). Since 4e PCs had big gobs of HPs even at first level the +1d6 didn't amount to much.

The two main problems people had with Healing Surges:
1. Simulations complaints about non-magical healing. No different than 5e Hit Dice here as both allow people to heal a lot non-magically out of combat. I don't agree with this complaint at all.

2. 4e PCs get a loooooooooot of Healing Surges. This meant that people could refill their HPs multiple times over and made attrition gameplay take forereeeeever. This is a valid comaint but easily fixed by giving everyone fewer Healing Surges.

Healing Surges are faaaaaar faaaaaaaaar and away my favorite 4e mechanic. I don't much like 4e in general but I love the intent behind healing surges (providing a hard limit to healing).

Agreed. It would likely result in a game I don't want to play, but it would I think be a better game for what WotC wants to accomplish design-wise in the long run.

Yeah, if I were in charge of 6e and trying to make it as popular as popular my #1 goal would be: "make the wheels not fall off if there are only 1-2 fights per session."

If I were in charge of 6e and trying to make it as fun as possible for me personally my top priorities would be veeeeery different.

Definitely agree on 1, but I agree less on 2. I think that's one of the principles we're slowly seeing emerge. To be fair, we won't really know until the DMG and MM are released as well, though, so I may stand corrected.

I don't quite follow you here. Are you disagreeing with my idea that 5.*e doesn't work well if there are only a few fights per long rest?

I think the healing powercreep is an extension of the change in the way the game is played. Combat in earlier editions was brutal, and could often be avoided or won before initiative was even rolled ("combat as war"). Modern gaming assumes combat is the default method for overcoming enemies, with encounters being balanced against the party's level and abilities ("combat as sport"). This requires there to be a lot more healing in the game, since combat will drain away HP and the game wants the party to win.

Yes, 5.5e is moving towards Combat as Sport (away from the more compromise 5e) in a number of ways.

The biggest problem for 5.5e here is that it has a number of failings as a Combat as Sport game. I'm sure 4e fans will tell you that 5.5e still lacks the tactical complexity but I think the bigger problem is pacing.

CaW generally works best with a running series of skirmishes, a lot of short sharp fights that the PCs need to get through fast (or dodge around) so that they can get to their goal before they run out of resources.

CaS tends to work better with fewer bigger more tactical fights. CaS wants balanced fights and the more fights that a party had in one day the harder it is to balance the later fights as if the party gets lucky and curbstomps early fights then they have too many resources for later fights and those become too easy (and the other way round if the PCs get unlucky in the first fights). The main problem with 5.*e is that the wheels fall off if you have fewer bigger more tactical fights. This is a real problem for 5.*e if you play it more CaS, a problem 4e didn't have.

 

[Daztur]

Short of healing has made for more intricate game play from my experience.

Party rests but don’t get all their HP back and head back into the dungeon. Thieves scout. Flaming oils thrown. Archers laying down fire while the melees prepare for a charge etc. wizards using spells tactically for best results.

Vastly different then 5E where it’s just full HP let’s rush into the room and slaughter everything!

Heck 5E the fighter just triggered all the traps because he knew he wouldn’t die and could easily get healed. B/X they search for and disarm traps because again, healing isn’t taken for granted.


It’s diff play styles. Used to really despise how 5E powered everyone up BUT I’ve been reconsidering. There is room for both. My favorite old school novels like Dragonlance or Drizzt and fam is probably more 5E than 2E. Big Damn Heroes kicking butt vs towing the edge. Maybe 3E is a good middle ground… hmm

Yup, classic Combat as War vs. Combat as Sport. 5e was a messy compromise between them but 5.5e is moving towards Combat as Sport. The problem is that some of 5e's bones still have that compromise hardcoded into them pretty deep, beyond the ability of 5.5e to change without removing backwards compatibility.

CaW has pacing more like a heist movie with the players trying to sneak past or otherwise avoid (but fight if they have no choice) a whole series of challenges).

CaS has pacing more like an action movie where the big damn heroes kick down the door and have a big fight. However, action movies tend to have only a few big fights (unless they're John Wick) as each fight should be a big fun set piece. However, 5e's design assumptions lean more towards a longer series of fights and work against having a few big epic set piece fights in a way that, say, 4e's rules didn't.

I'm fine with in-combat healing in 5.0e (not switching to 5.5e) being non-optimal, but since it bugs one of my players, there is a house rule we're going to try:

Magical healing also grants you temp hp equal to the hp healed. They go away after 1 minute.

I'm also using a rule that you get a level of temp exhaustion (recovered on short rest) when you drop to zero hp.

Together I'm hoping these provide a better incentive to avoid letting characters drop to 0 before healing, and make in combat healing feel more impactful without directly improving out of combat healing.

That's workable. Have played with getting KOed gives you exhaustion, it helped a lot as players constantly popping in and out of consciousness gets pretty silly after a while.

this will most of the time affect nothing in the game except narrative term.

PCs can handle certain amount of challenge per short/long rest.

it does not matter if Long rest is one hour or one year, except in world building.

DMs give options to take a rest, players may force a rest, everything else be damned.
As a DM you can play along with players and their rest rhythm or nuke the campaign.

As a DM I often like it if the rest rhythm is determined by the PCs. However, there are consequences to everything. Retreat out of the dungeon to rest every time you get into a fight? Good luck delving deep enough to ever get any treasure that way. Sail back to port after your first battle with pirates? You're not going to ever get to the other side of the ocean that way...

One thing 3rd had that I’m surprised they didn’t reuse was clerics converting any spell to a cure spell on the fly.

I always liked that.

Due to Vancian magic being dead all casters in 5e can convert any spell they know to any other spell they know on the fly.