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View Full Version : Balance without healing magic (3.5)



akma
2010-10-14, 11:08 AM
I thought about a camapign setting in which I don`t want healing magic to be available. Not only there wouldn`t be any healers, there wouldn`t be any magical items that heal. There isn`t realy a good reason for it, it`s just a part of how I imagined the world.
How would the game balance change? What should I consider?

Starbuck_II
2010-10-14, 11:13 AM
I thought about a camapign setting in which I don`t want healing magic to be available. Not only there wouldn`t be any healers, there wouldn`t be any magical items that heal. There isn`t realy a good reason for it, it`s just a part of how I imagined the world.
How would the game balance change? What should I consider?

Be prepared for extreme downtime after any big battle.

Is fast heal still available?
Are you trying to make game more Gritty?

Quirp
2010-10-14, 11:15 AM
This would make live for all characters harder, but melee classes would be especially nerfed, since the only resource they can run low of are their hitpoints. It would make for a grittier game, but high level spells that let you avoid damage become even better.

Nich_Critic
2010-10-14, 11:15 AM
Everything gets a lot more lethal. Expect more TPK's, as players wanting to do anything are probably not going to be max health.

It's a general consensus that healing in battle is a fairly weak use for an action, so individual encounters are probably not going to be affected much, but the sum of several encounters per day is going to be tougher then usual if there's no way to heal up between them. You're likely to end up with players resting for weeks after a major combat, just to get back where they were.

Are you also planning on removing status fixers, like restoration, remove disease, neutralize poison and the like? If so, then this will further magnify the effect. Ability damage takes a long time to cure off by natural means.

Aron Times
2010-10-14, 11:24 AM
You might want to import the healing surge mechanic from 4e if you want to remove magical healing.

Basically, each class gets x + con modifier healing surges per day. Once per encounter, as a standard action, a character can use Second Wind to spend a healing surge and heal 1/4 of his total HP, in addition to getting +2 to all defenses (+2 to AC and +2 to saves in 3.5). Out of combat, characters can freely spend healing surges to heal themselves back to full.

At first it seems like characters are unstoppable, but the healing surge mechanic actually works as a limit on healing. My swordmage below, Nurzhan, only has 8 healing surges, which is more than most characters. This means that he can heal back to full from 0 HP twice a day. Powers that heal without using healing surges are rare in 4e, and are almost always dailies, so once he runs out of healing surges, he's running on fumes and won't last much longer.

The way I'd adapt this to 3.5 is to grant healing surges to each class equal to its HD + con modifier. For example, a fighter gets 10 + con mod healing surges, while wizards get 4 + con mod healing surges. Remember that they can only spend one healing surge per fight, and it requires them to use their standard action.

This will allow your players to last longer without having unlimited healing magic available.

lsfreak
2010-10-14, 11:47 AM
Let the Heal skill actually, you know, heal.

Quick Fix: A standard action to give temporary hit points, up the character's normal maximum, with a fairly simply check. I.e. DC5 gives the target the healer's level in temporary hit points, plus an additional level's worth for every 10 points of the check. Base DC raises by 5 each use unless there's an hour of non-strenuous activity taken by the subject.

Bandage: A full-round action to actually heal, up to a maximum of half their hit points. I.e. DC5 heal check heals 2hp, plus 2hp for every additional 5 of the check. Base DC raises by 5 per use without an hour of non-strenuous activity.

Battlefield surgery: Takes 10 minutes. DC10 heals hit point damage equal to whatever the check rolled -10. Every 10 points can instead go to a single point of ability damage. DC goes up by 10 each use until the character has had both a full-days rest and has healed all hit point damage and ability damage.

That keeps things a bit rougher than normal, with longer downtime, without being nearly as problematic as just taking out healing. If you use a wound system, then quick-fix becomes vitality healing, bandage becomes vitality + limited wound healing, battlefield surgery because heavy vitality healing + some wound healing.

thompur
2010-10-14, 11:51 AM
I am planning something similar, although not quite so extreme, for my campaign. One thing I'm doing to partially compensate is to boost the Heal skill. Once per character per encounter that results in damage, allow a Heal check to restore HP. I haven't decided the rate, but I was thinking DC10 Heal check restores 1hp+1 per 5pts above 10 e.g. a Heal check of 15 would restore 2 hp, 20/3, 25/4 etc. I will also create feats that let the healer do more, like increased hp's restored, revive characters that have been dead less than a minute. Also make Herbalism and Alchemy more powerful in regards to treating and curing poisons and diseases. I figure a world without access to magical healing will, by neccessity, develope 'mundane' ways to deal with healing and medicine.

Kinda sorta swordsaged by Isfreak, mostly cuz I type real slow.:smallbiggrin:

Tengu_temp
2010-10-14, 11:54 AM
Without any means of fast out of combat healing casters dominate battles even further, since you need to rest after each fight anyway, so there's no reason not to go nova.

Loren
2010-10-14, 12:30 PM
over all, I'd say balance is basically destroyed.
As observed above, frontliners will have a difficult time surviving a normal day of adventuring, resulting in alot of down time. Casters can use this down time to research new spells and/or make magic items for fun and profit (depends some what on your exp cost rules). Since the adventuring day will be shorter the they might as well use the big guns early and often (which does extent the day some what).

Alternatively, you might start to see kamakazi characters depending on your group. If there is no penalty for rolling new characters the logical thing for a play to do is say, "we could wait a week to heal or I can just change the name on my character sheet and make a few adjustments and we can keep going."


If you're trying to increase the grit factor in your game I'd recommend applying injuries to you characters. I'd say that hp represent scratches, bruses, and "armour bites" (pinches from shifting armour plates). Losing hp hurts, but isn't really a big deal. If you drop to 0 hp you got injuries. I'd use some of the ideas in this thread http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/237400-keith-baker-using-d-d-4th-edition-disease-rules-simulate-injuries.html for dealing with the injuries (note that the thread was intended for 4e, but the concepts are easy to translate). By adjusting the dc's for improvement you could take control of the time needed to heal to match the grit factor you want. I'm not exactly sure how I'd go about assigning injuries yet(I'll start a homebrew thread on it as soon as I have a solid idea).

I also like the use of healing surges. I prevents parties from buying a wand of lesser vigor and have a massive supply of hp waiting to be used.

If you want to axe healing magic for thematic reasons you might want to axe other things too in order to restore balance. I'd be inclined to drop all primary casters (except maybe bards) as PC classes. I'd also wonder if these isn't a system better suited for modeling that world (warcraft RPG, GURPS? I don't know, I haven't tried many systems)

akma
2010-10-14, 02:00 PM
Well, as I half expected, the game balance is completly ruined without healing magic. I think I`ll use the healing surge alternative rule and still have healing magic banned.



Is fast heal still available?
Are you trying to make game more Gritty?

A. No fast healing.
B. No.

Person_Man
2010-10-14, 02:12 PM
I'm fond of the healing mechanic from most video games. When combat ends (or you just sit in cover long enough), you heal back to full hit points. Don't even bother with healing surges or other tedious resource management (potions, medkits, etc).

The point of a game is to have fun. If combat ends and players need to take a break from the plot or expend resources that could otherwise be spent on more interesting things (other spells, class abilities, treasure, etc) why not let them? Is it integral to your story or game world that the players suffer - cowering away from combat - especially melee? Do your players enjoy suffering and cowering, or is it just a personal issue you have (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/4/old-ways/)?

Diarmuid
2010-10-14, 02:25 PM
Is this the only change you would be making to your world?

Are there any other balancing factors you'd be working with?

IE: Is there any specific reason that magic can do just about anything other than heal wounds other than whim?

BeholderSlayer
2010-10-14, 03:05 PM
You could try coming up with rules for losing limbs and appendages in combat, I hear there's some good stuff in the Black Company d20. Then having somebody cast Regeneration might actually mean something other than gaining hit points. :smallcool:

Kobold-Bard
2010-10-14, 03:11 PM
Pendragon has this. You spend 3 moths healing after battles. Fun stuff :smallyuk:

lsfreak
2010-10-14, 03:24 PM
Well, as I half expected, the game balance is completly ruined without healing magic. I think I`ll use the healing surge alternative rule and still have healing magic banned.

A. No fast healing.
B. No.

I suppose one question would be, "why?"

One of the biggest issues with hit points is how you see them. The health system, as set up, is more along the lines of "the ability to continue turning lethal blows into glancing ones" than "how many times I can get stabbed." A character may not even take the smallest scratch until they drop below 0 hit points. In such a system, you could refluff magic a bit, saying that it's incapable of healing physical damage (no healing from 0 or below, no healing ability score damage), but is capable of restoring enemy to a person who is otherwise exhausted (heals hit points above 0). In this way, a character can 'heal' between battles, simply by revitalizing themselves, but magic cannot help lethal wounds. This also goes hand-in-hand with a gaming-style health meter, as Person Man mentioned, where you naturally regenerate health during rests.

Adopting a wound system plays into this as well. Healing magic could heal vitality points, but not wounds. It'll be grittier than a normal campaign, but not a whole lot worse than a standard wound system.

Eldariel
2010-10-14, 03:26 PM
Just use Vitality Points/Wound Points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) system. We're running a no-magic game with it and it works fine. Basically, you rarely take real damage meaning you can usually keep adventuring just fine, but when you take real (WP) damage, it won't heal easy.

akma
2010-10-14, 03:31 PM
I suppose one question would be, "why?"


I`m going to ban clerics and druids from that specific campaign setting (I might change my mind), and having bards as the best healers just seems too bizzare.

lsfreak
2010-10-14, 03:35 PM
I`m going to ban clerics and druids from that specific campaign setting (I might change my mind), and having bards as the best healers just seems too bizzare.

Refluff it as giving energy to allies; bards already do that. When you view hit points as physical and mental stamina to continue dodging and parrying, not as sword-proof-ness, it still makes sense. This fits in with crusaders very well too. Combine it with several other suggestions - video-game-like out of combat healing, skill changes, healing surges, and/or wound system - and I'd think it should work fine.

Person_Man
2010-10-14, 04:24 PM
I`m going to ban clerics and druids from that specific campaign setting (I might change my mind), and having bards as the best healers just seems too bizzare.

Have you considered the unintended consequences of your choice? If there are no Clerics or Druids (and presumably no Archivists, Spirit Shaman, etc) or healing magic items, then melee combat becomes very deadly. Thus players will avoid it. Do you want to have a party of nothing but Batman Wizards who cast Greater Invisibility, Summon, use Solid Fog, etc? If so, then fine. But do you really need to punish Tier 3-6 classes even more then normal?

What do you hope to gain from banning healing?

Ailurus
2010-10-14, 06:03 PM
I`m going to ban clerics and druids from that specific campaign setting (I might change my mind), and having bards as the best healers just seems too bizzare.

If that's your world's fluff, that's cool, but that's probably going to have a larger impact than just cutting out magical healing.

Just from core, you're going to - likely - have to ban paladins as well, and nerf rangers and bards. That's half of the core classes gone or chopped down. And if you dig into splatbooks there's a whole lot of other classes getting hit, even non-spellcasting classes like Crusaders.

Are you banning them due to not having a diety system (which will end up killing a huge proportion of classes by the time you're done by it), or are you singling out clerics and druids for balance reasons (in which case, don't hit healing magic but just cut out primary casters or something)

Endarire
2010-10-14, 06:08 PM
In this system, Crusaders and people with healing maneuvers & stances become awesome.

"Wanna spar?"
"Dude, I'm about to die!"
"I can heal you every time I hit."
"Sold!"

Brawls-a-lot
2010-10-15, 10:56 PM
I am looking at a similar idea for my campaign. It is a low magic campaign and none of my players want to play a healing class. The approach I'm looking at involves armor providing both armor class and damage reduction. This way, your frontline guys can take damage, but a portion won't get through. The better the armor, the greater the damage reduction. I might also add some fighter-based feats that enhance an armor's given damage reduction, much like weapon specialization. Haven't worked out the scaling yet, but we'll see. Basically, it reinforces the squishiness of the squishies, putting an emphasis on staying out of melee. I will also include a limited healing mechanic, based on the heal skill and herbalism to increase the rate of out-of-combat healing and include some (very limited) religious-based healing.

ericgrau
2010-10-15, 11:06 PM
Casters still get hurt and as said in-battle healing isn't that important. So the real difference will be between battles and after multiple battles. Although in-battle healing does have a major use for saving people's lives. Even though your overall party effectiveness goes down, making sure someone lives at the expense of everyone else is more important. Except when the monsters might win (i.e., possible TPK). So even though the party's chance of winning fights may stay the same or even go up, expect a lot more player deaths. So that begs the question, is there resurrection? If not you might want to make fights a lot easier. Even though the PCs will win easily the mere threat of even 1 dying is significant. Another option is for the lack of healing to make everyone much more afraid, so that people flee, surrender and even offering your opponent the chance to surrender.

Andion Isurand
2010-10-15, 11:17 PM
Everyone will clamor for the Silthilar Blood Graft to gain Fast Healing 2.