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kvisr
2013-02-21, 10:54 AM
So, I played a lot of AD&D in the '80s and last year managed to get the band back together. Our outstanding DM of the time no longer has the time or really the inclination to run a campaign so this role fell on my shoulders as the only person willing to trawl through the books and learn the v3.5 rules. The Band of Blunderers are learning on the job as it were. While not ideal we're enjoying ourselves so it works out okay.

As a primer I converted the Return to the Keep on the Borderlands module which we've just about finished. I was a much better player than I am a DM but I'm kinda getting into my stride now and wanted to pad the world out in an effort to engage the Blunderers more in the fantasy and less in the mechanics. I had grandiose ideas of creating my own world but as the enormity of the task dawned on me I've taken the cowards way out and plumed for the Forgotten Realms campaign world. Thinking with my DMs hat on this has brought me to a quandary.

I guess I've never really been happy with the proliferation of magic in D&D as it's just not like that in the high fantasy stories I read. My original idea was to fashion my world after the lands of Earthsea but seeing as I've now decided to go with FR and kowtowing to the advice of the DMG not to go down the medieval route I'm finding it hard to balance in my mind certain aspects of magic. So here I find myself to curry some advice from those far more experienced at DMing than me.

Healing. How do you justify healing magic and the day to day life of Joe normal? I mean, there I am ploughing my field and all of a sudden the darn think slips and lops off my arm. In my mind this should be a huge issue to poor old Joe and his family but if all he has to do is wander to the nearest cleric for a cure light/serious/whatever where's the drama? Sure there's a monitory consideration but essentially there's so much magic slopping about in the world that I can't see anybody really getting that hurt. And what about disease? With cure disease and cure wounds magic being low level surely the idea of disease as a force of nature must be pretty moot. Why even bother to learn the healing skill? I guess what I'm getting at is that with magic so freely available every commoner can look forward to dying of old age after a care free life devoid of disease or pain.

Any advice on how to present it is welcome as this really sticks in my throat. Tried a forum search but as you can imagine 'magic managing advice' comes back with a high number of hits. Point me in the direction of a thread if it's already been done to death.

BRC
2013-02-21, 11:00 AM
Cure Disease is a fairly high level spell. Way beyond the means of a Commoner to access, and it's not much use during an epidemic, since it removes the disease without providing any immunity to re-infection.

Your average commoner village may have a local priest of 3rd level tops. That's more than good enough to heal up Farmer Joe after he hurts himself in the field, and maybe patch up the local militia after a scrap with some bandits, but it's hardly going to mean nobody dies.

mjlush
2013-02-21, 11:32 AM
Any advice on how to present it is welcome as this really sticks in my throat. Tried a forum search but as you can imagine 'magic managing advice' comes back with a high number of hits. Point me in the direction of a thread if it's already been done to death.

As BRC pointed out the easy way to regulate the amount of magic in the campaign is to limit the number of casters available to NPC's.

I just thought I'd chime in to suggest that limiting the amount of healing to the Characters will have a very detrimental effect to a D&D campaign.

Some game systems (GURPS for example) are more or less founded on the idea that wounds are serious and you can get through a fight without getting wounded (enough armor, dodge and parry can reduce incoming damage to zero)

OTHO in D&D you have at least a 5% chance per round per opponent of taking some damage and there is not a lot a player can do to stop that it happens the moment the opposition fight back. Without magical healing to patch them up the party are going to get very very risk averse and spend a lot of time resting up and healing and not having exciting adventures

OverdrivePrime
2013-02-21, 11:54 AM
I'm with you, kvisr (though I didn't start on AD&D until '91).

I feel like magic should be special and awe-inspiring. Not every hamlet and village should have an actual cleric capable of casting magic. There might be a druid out there in the woods somewhere, scaring the pants off loggers and protecting the fey, but this person should be legendary. Out in the sticks, magic should be rare and should freak out the common folk. Maybe there's a wandering cleric who can perform small miracles (like 2nd level spells), or a high level ranger who's put the region under his protection, but these folks aren't someone you run to every time you stub your toe, or have a bad growing season. This magic isn't to be trifled with. Wise commoners might understand that magic is a tool, just like a sword, armor, or a plow, but it's not a tool they're particularly comfortable with, nor are they very comfortable with its practitioners. If someone's baby is terribly sick, they might send someone to take the 2-day trek the nearest substantial town and try to convince Abbess Healemup to send someone to call upon the blessings of Pelor to save the baby. Maybe.


In cities, the rarity diminishes considerably, as cities are where powerful people gather - for more knowledge, to work the most good (or ill) on the greatest concentration of people, but still, it isn't just worked out in the street. Magic is not some cheap parlor trick. It is literally harnessing the poorly-understood machinery of the universe to perform something that warps reality a bit. It's kind of a big deal.

And it's expensive. Spellcasters have a vested interest in limiting how often they use their magic for mundane (not life-or-death, or gathering more power) tasks. The cost to pay even an acolyte cleric to cast "Bless Water (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blessWater.htm)" is more than most people make in a year. You're not going to drop half a year's income to get someone to cast 'cure light wounds'. Common people make money in coppers per day, not gold. And even a "Cure Minor Wounds" to heal 1 hit point and get someone to stop dying is a couple weeks pay for most people.

Obviously if someone's dying and there's a cleric nearby, most good people are going to pay (and good clerics would waive the fee).

But then again we get into rarity. Here on the forums we talk about the Tippyverse or Tippyverse-lite worlds where magic has been taken to its ultimate logical conclusion and basically has created a Star Trek-ish world based entirely on magical technology.

Most of us would prefer not to run a game in that kind of environment. Adventurers who cast magic are rare!. The training to not kill yourself casting magic is long, boring and hard. In my world, most sorcerers die sometime around puberty when they accidentally cast shocking grasp in an awkward and unguarded moment. Or they're murdered by superstitious townsfolk who know in their hearts that nothing good comes from consorting with magicians. Most priests, even high-ranking priests, are just that. Clerics require special training. Wizards require special training. Most Paladins and Rangers are either warriors or experts and don't cast magic. The rare few with PC class levels are heroes, and if they live past level 5, tend to be featured in songs and legends.

These people with several PC class levels are figures of awe - not only do they fight like angels and demons, they can wield magic as well! Clerics and druids are figures of unquestionable divine power - people whose faith is so incredibly potent that they can call upon the will of the gods (or nature itself) to change the world around them. Common people treat them like modern Americans would treat a president who also happens to be an accomplished quantum physicist and 8th dan karate fighter - you're glad he's on your side, but aren't going to bother him (or even go near him) unless you have a problem that only he can solve. Sorcerers and Wizards are terrifying and avoided whenever possible. Common folk assume that they've made dark pacts and are unpredictable in the extreme. The sorcerer in the tower in the middle of the forest would probably be just as likely to offer you a drink (of poison) as they would be to burn your whole village to ash in the blink of an eye.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that most people in my game world have heard of someone who casts magic, and might even have seen a magic weapon at some point in their lives, but it's not something they're comfortable with or used to.

Parties of adventurers are generally avoided because in addition to the most dangerous warrior for 200 miles in any direction, they've also got a lady who makes no noise when she walks and can charm the pants off of even the sternest sheriff, and they've got a guy has the ear of the god of thunder and uses that power to turn zombies to power. And then, worst of all, they've got some spooky lady in dark robes who can whisper a few words and make you her slave, or wave her hands and kill everyone in the street with lightning.

Setting up a world like this also makes it really special when your players find a new magic suit of armor, or uncover a buried spellbook. It also keeps the power of spellcasting characters in check a bit if they have to work for their power, rather than stopping in at the hamlet's magic shop to pick up six new spells to add to their spellbook, or adding a metamagic rod to their collection of six. This helps the non-magical characters (fighter, rogue, dear god why do you have a monk) feel like they can continue to contribute well past level 10, rather than just knowing they can sit back and watch the cleric whip out a magic rod and a staff and solo the entire dungeon.

Rhynn
2013-02-21, 12:08 PM
IMO there's no reason to assume magic is consistently and easily available. You don't have to go with the DMG's class and level distributions. You can just say that clerics - people performing miracles for their deities - are actually really pretty rare. Most priests are experts (or even commoners). Say, in all of Waterdeep, there might only be a dozen 5th+ level clerics, and not very many below it. This way, demand for magic will far exceed the supply. A peasant who gets hurt in the field needs to travel - injured - to the nearest market town, at least. Large cities barely have enough clerics to keep the rulers and filthy rich from dying of the plague.

Another_Poet
2013-02-21, 12:12 PM
In addition to the (excellent) advice from BRC and mjlush above, I have some tweaks that can help get the flavor you want without crippling the party.

D&D adventures require healing, but here are some options I use to make it more gritty.


Not all diseases can be cured by Cure Disease. In my games, cancer is incurable by magical means.
A severed limb cannot be re-attached with Cure X Wounds. This requires Greater Restoration.
Magical healing does not remove scars. Once, a beggar covered in horrible burns approached the party. The Druid looked horrified and asked why a cleric hadn't treated him. The beggar shrugged mournfully. "He did!"


In addition, think of the sheer number of people to treat in a medieval fantasy world. Even if every parish priest was a spell-casting Cleric (unlikely) and all devoted their time to running healing clinics (unlikely) they could not keep up with demand.

Finally, it may help to conceptualize HP loss not as actual, bleeding, guts-falling-out wounds but as a loss of stamina. When the orc scores a hit with his greatsword it means the fighter's life was in jeopardy and it took every ounce of his effort, skill and luck to keep from being cut open. Thus he is at 2/20 hp. Viewed this way, Cure Light Wounds (which you may want to rename) is essentially refreshing his energy level, removing bruises and nicks, and giving him the will to keep on fighting.

Kaveman26
2013-02-21, 12:18 PM
Bear in mind also, this is a gaming system, not a reality emulator. Some aspects of the system are going to create paradox, and extremely ironic or illogical situations.

That is where you as DM are akin to an Old Testament God. If you want healing to be sparse and truly magical, it's within your grasp to do so. If you want temples with clerics in every one horse town and hamlet you can do that too. The trick is finding the balance that works for you and for your players. If they feel like every possible encounter will leave them crippled for days at a time that stagnates the game. If they feel like they can spit in a dragon's face because Brother Whathisface can just raise dead/heal them from the local pub then you have the opposite.

Chambers
2013-02-21, 09:30 PM
I guess what I'm getting at is that with magic so freely available every commoner can look forward to dying of old age after a care free life devoid of disease or pain.

Getting others to cast spells for you is expensive. Check out this chart (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spellcastingAndServices). Most Commoners aren't going to have the gold needed to have those really helpful curative spells cast for them. Sure, some churches will provide minor and emergency healing for free but that's not guaranteed.

There's also a note at the bottom of where you can expect to find spellcasters capable of casting those spells. Using their rough guidelines even a Large Town might not have a Cleric capable of Removing Disease. Regenerating Joe-Who-Lives-In-A-Village's severed limb is probably out of the question.

Grundy
2013-02-21, 10:44 PM
The short answer is that 3.5 has real issues with magic. There's probably a limited effect that healing magic could have on a population, since it's just not enough to stop diseases on a population level (just the upper classes). But you'd think that every church, shrine, guard post and road crossing would be stocked with enough potions of CLW or even Cure minor wounds to keep the mortality rates down some.
Then there's arcane magic, and the fact that anyone with an 11 int qualifies for it, and there's no other qualifications stated anywhere. Now, there's an implied money issue (sort of) and the apprenticeship issue, but that's frankly a paper shield. In that case, every reasonably wealthy should be composed of about 38% arcane casters, even if it's only 1st level. It's a huge advantage to be able to cast spells, even just first level spells. So that would naturally lead to a caste system based on magic.

What I try to do is not think about it too much. It just ruins my enjoyment of a perfectly good adventure. Like if I think about the tactical sense of a nice tall castle with open courtyards, parapets and walls in a world with many flying creatures and spell casters. Or why there aren't items of continuous flame all over the place from millennia of spell casters and their patrons who want clean safe light. Magic items never die. Street lights, billboards, lit city walls, all that.
I'll stop now, or at least stop typing:smallwink:

Rhynn
2013-02-22, 01:46 AM
Getting others to cast spells for you is expensive. Check out this chart (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spellcastingAndServices). Most Commoners aren't going to have the gold needed to have those really helpful curative spells cast for them. Sure, some churches will provide minor and emergency healing for free but that's not guaranteed.

The problem with that is explaining why the clerics of a good-aligned deity of healing, for instance, would ever prepare new spells without having first expended every single spell they have/can to heal and help people, payment or no. They win nothing by hoarding the spells.

kvisr
2013-02-22, 04:53 AM
Thanks for the responses everyone. It's greatly appreciated.

Conceptually I hadn't made the distinction between 'Remove' and 'Cure' disease in that way which goes some way to justifying it. However, after reading some of the responses I went back to the Silver Marches source book which I'm currently working through. Understand, I'm not quoting for the sake of argument I'm just trying to reconcile the FR source with how I think magic should be a wondrous thing so the party enjoy the game without becoming 'risk adverse' (great term btw).

Newfort, classed as a hamlet with a population of 138 has a 5 lvl cleric. So right there you have some chap that's able to remove disease and cure pretty much what ails you. The argument that cost is a factor for the common man doesn't hold up in this case because the whole population are common men and if nobody in the hamlet was able to afford the services of the cleric then wouldn't he just move on to somewhere where they can?

I also fully appreciate that the combat mechanics of D&D are intentionally broad to keep the pace of the game up. Having played systems such as Phoenix Command where combat was divided into half second actions and we tracked the trajectory of single bullets from automatic weapons with pen a paper I have to say that a weekend of gameplay to cover 30 seconds of combat, while very realistic, is just tediously undoable without computers. Nowadays with D&D I just adlib location damage like losing an arm/finger/eye for dramatic effect or if the situation requires it for some reason.

Overdrive and others pretty much captured the tone of what I perceive a world of magic and heroes should be and I suppose his comment regarding a 'Tippyverse' should therefore be applied to the Forgotten Worlds source as it stands which is a shame as I really don't have the time to build my own world this detailed. I guess I could just thin out the magic as Rhynn suggests but dealing with the Grundy like contradictions (The continuous flame comment cracked a smile) ...is going to be a headache as places such as Silverymoon are going to take a heck of a lot of reworking..

So do I preserver with FR (which I've recently spent money on) or abandon it for something else. :/

Like I said, I was a much better player than I am a DM. ;)

Vitruviansquid
2013-02-22, 05:44 AM
Why not add some drawbacks to the most common, exploitative magics?

For instance, say any kind of magical healing, whether it's disease removal, sealing wounds, or whatever, demands a huge strain on the target. This strain is mostly ignorable by player characters, as anyone with class levels is assumed to have the constitution, willpower, or pure grit to tough it out, but Joe Schmoe Commoner will be in bed for weeks, if not months, after any major healing. For any non-debilitating wound, he'd probably rather tough it out with traditional healing rather than get magical healing, and for anything that is debilitating, the traditional healing would result in a shorter recovery time anyways.

Magically created materials, like food and water, are often poor substitutes for the real deal. Magical food isn't nutritionally balanced on its own, trying to create too much magical water or fire causes angry elementals to show up, and so on.

Chambers
2013-02-22, 06:09 AM
Forgotten Realms is not a Tippyverse; calling it such really shows a misunderstanding of what a TV is.

NichG
2013-02-22, 06:35 AM
There is a thing you have to be careful of if you do rare magic, like having most communities have no one above Lv3. That is that around Lv8 or Lv9, there is absolutely nothing in the humanoid world that can really stand up to an adventuring party of PCs 'on the spot'. That is to say, it becomes very easy for PCs to, say, break into and steal from all the shops in a city. Or take over a city with merely their own might. It also gets weird if, say, you have a city with no casters above Lv5, but they're selling magic rings in the shops (which'd normally require caster level 12 at least to make...).

It looks very hamhanded if, say, the average guard in a metropolis is Lv7 but most communities don't have even a Lv3 magic user. That said, this can be reasonable if you establish that NPC skill at magic in particular in lacking, but not skill in general. That is to say, a given community will simple have _no_ clerics or wizards, but if by chance they did then they might well have a Lv7 or Lv9 one or whatever. Either way, its something to be aware of.

My advice would be, let the PCs utterly dominate the power landscape, but at the same time make it so that gold is just less linked to power. The PCs can sack a city for 1.5 million gp or something, but they can't just go to a shop and offload that for magic items instantly. This does make PC casters more asymmetrically powerful than before, so one must also implement a counter to this.

I'd suggest making it so there are two types of currency: gold, and 'magic tokens'. Magic Tokens here are a virtual currency - they correspond to the accumulation of miscellaneous magic items when PCs loot 'high magic' environments (as opposed to low magic environments like a city in this picture). Replace about 50%-75% of treasure finds in high magic places with their equivalent value in tokens. A PC can at any time exchange their accumulated magic tokens for magic items from whatever sources are allowed - this just means that they had found this item before in some random loot and didn't recognize it for what it was until that point.

Firest Kathon
2013-02-22, 07:28 AM
I fully understand that you want magic to be rare and wonderful (I like that myself), but then I think Forgotten Realms is the wrong setting for you. In FR, it's quite as likely that the guy coming along the road is a 15th-level wizard as that he's a 1st-level commoner (I'm exaggerating, of course...). Of course, there's nothing stopping you from chaging that setting, or choosing another one where magic is less common - I'm sure there's a lot of people on this forum who can give advice on that.

kvisr
2013-02-22, 09:33 AM
Forgotten Realms is not a Tippyverse; calling it such really shows a misunderstanding of what a TV is.

Apologies and I'm absolutely willing to accept that I got the wrong end of the stick though understandable really seeing as the first time I'd heard the term was what? ....four posts previously.

Synovia
2013-02-22, 09:45 AM
OTHO in D&D you have at least a 5% chance per round per opponent of taking some damage and there is not a lot a player can do to stop that it happens the moment the opposition fight back. Without magical healing to patch them up the party are going to get very very risk averse and spend a lot of time resting up and healing and not having exciting adventures

Hit Point Damage in D&D does not mean blood. Its a combination of blood, luck, and stamina being spent.

Chambers
2013-02-22, 10:04 AM
Apologies and I'm absolutely willing to accept that I got the wrong end of the stick though understandable really seeing as the first time I'd heard the term was what? ....four posts previously.

Oh, no need to apologize. I may have come off as cross; not intended as it was a quick post from my phone.

kvisr
2013-02-22, 10:59 AM
So this is where I'm at.

After pondering the various suggestions above I think I'm going to stick with FR just for the convenience and just thin it out a bit. I've played the rare setting myself and it does make you reticent to get into a battle especially if they come back to back. You spend more time running away from such things rather than bolding going as a hero should. This tends to bog down the progression of the adventure.

Not sure I like the tokens idea though the players dominating the setting? I'm kind of split on this one as I feel Conan or Ged were the most dangerous beings for miles around. It's kind of what made them heroes in the first place. I think this is a problem for D&D in general. The heroes in the literature where simply high level from the outset and tended to skip over the endless hours of dungeon bashing or spend a couple of chapters in mage school to obtain such heights.

I'm going to try thinning out the character class NPCs in FR in general and switching them to pure NPC classes wherever possible. Leaders have character classes everybody else not. Generals are fighters and armies are warriors. The captain of the town watch might be a higher lvl warrior but he's not a fighter as in the sense of a hero. There's nothing like a magic shop where you can buy magic items but you might be able to pick up the odd one here and there from the curios shoppe. Not sure how I'm going to rationalise this one but I like the idea of real clerics being rare even in the clergy. If your supply of CLW potions are more limited and you have to rely heavily on your clerics spell slots then this should ramp up the danger element a bit more. Cure potions would only then be used in dire emergencies when the cleric is dry for the day. Maybe the item creation feats are just harder to obtain.

I liked the greater restoration for lost body parts. Jo farmer is probably going to survive losing an arm but he'd have to go on an adventure to regrow it. Lastly, the disease issue. The only way I can think of having a world where disease is real and something to be feared by the common man is to up the spell lvl of remove disease ...and neutralise poison for that matter. I seem to recall we used to spend endless game hours looking for NPCs that could restore lvls, damaged attributes and wotnot. I don't think I ever saw a raise dead in all the years I was regularly playing. Reincarnation seemed to be available but who wants to come back as a heroic chihuahua.

Lastly I'm going to try not to rationalise it too much as therein lies madness.

Jay R
2013-02-22, 11:01 AM
One more important tool: willing suspension of disbelief.

D&D is a game system, and if you look hard enough, you can find inconsistencies. No world can run that way. So stop looking that hard.

The solution to many questions is not to ask them.


If you're wondering how he eats and breathes, And other science facts,
Then repeat to yourself 'It's just a show, I should really just relax.'

- Mystery Science Theater Theme Song

Mighty_Chicken
2013-02-22, 11:10 AM
If you don't like high fantasy I highly suggest you a look at E6 (http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/E6_(3.5e_Sourcebook)). It's basically reducing the max level to 6. It is safe to say that a 6 level wizard would be more powerful than most wizards we know from fiction and mithology.


Poet is right about magical healing: D&D doesn't work without it. But you can just say HPs represent stamina, luck, blessing and bruises most part of the time.


Or you can use the Vitality and Wound points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) system. In this system, besides Vitality points (that are just like HPs), characters have Wound Points (that the same as their Con score). PCs only lose WPs after all their VP are lost, or under critical hits. VPs heal very fast - at least one per hour - and WP take days to recover.

With this system, you could take out, limit, or tweak magical healing. For example: magical 'healing' only heals VP.



I'm also organizing my own low-magic campaign. I'm thinking of ways to hinder magic even to PCs - I think that even if hindered, it keeps being powerful if it is unique and rare, but the rarity and limits won't let the story fly too far away from grittyness and a sort of "realism" in how society would work.

Anything that is rare, if useful, is more important. I'm thinking of making grimoiry pages to be very hard to find. So the nations who have wider magic libraries have more powerful wizards (which of course, need to be sponsored by the kingdom because researching magic alone is too expensive). This adds the problem that it makes individuals too powerful, and individuals can change sides. So there could be rules against wizards having their own grimoires. Or even game rules to make spell learning harder.

What I mean is that adding more rules to magic is cool. But your players may not like it.

Yora
2013-02-22, 12:39 PM
The best way to reign in D&D 3rd Edition and Pathfinder is to simply crop the game down to 10 level instead of 20/20+.
That already weeds out the whole mess a lot without making any actual changes that affect most PCs directly. There is still lots of really powerful magic, but everything becomes a lot more compact and easier to analyze and work with for any further adjustments.

If you want to go even lower but still have the option to expand characters further by adding more abilities, E6 is the way to go.

In most campaigns PCs rarely reach 10th level or even surpass it, so the real impact is much more in the setting than the characters.

kvisr
2013-02-22, 02:10 PM
If you don't like high fantasy I highly suggest you a look at E6 (http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/E6_(3.5e_Sourcebook)). It's basically reducing the max level to 6.

I'd never get that to fly with The Band of Blunderers. These guys are getting old now and they'd probably have a stroke or something if I suggested the levels maxed out at 6. :smallbiggrin:

mjlush
2013-02-22, 06:02 PM
Hit Point Damage in D&D does not mean blood. Its a combination of blood, luck, and stamina being spent.

It does not matter what a hit point is, all the matters is that if you run out of them you die. My point it that there is no way a PC in combat can avoid lousing hitpoints. If the kobald rolls a 20, Conan will take 1d4 damage with a 5% chance of a crit. When you get right down to it D&D combat is a battle of attrition. Other systems allow you to use tactics to avoid getting hit (GURPS for example get you self a 14 parry and you can block 93% of 'successful' attacks.. the skill is to make sure that 93% always applies)

Getting back to D&D... without magical healing the healing rate is 1 hp per level per nights rest, if someone has the heal skill it doubles the rate. The upshot of this is when a party gets down to about half hitpoints they will hole up for several days to recover.

Consider a 10th level con 18 fighter that's (5.5 +4) x 10 =95 hitpoints at 50% hitpoint
it will take him 5 nights to fully recover or 3 nights if someone has the heal skill

Oddly the recovery time does not change with level and high con actually makes you take longer to recover (a 10th level con 10 fighter with 55 hitpoints at 50% damage
takes 2 or 3 days to get up to full hitpoints). Even if he is 1hp off KO he still gets better as fast as the mildly roughed up con 18 fighter.

It gets stranger... a 10th lvl mage with con 10 (~20hp) on 50% hp takes 1 night without any help. How about a 10th lvl mage with 8 con (10hp) he will recover overnight from near death without any help from someone with heal.

By the rules a sickly mage heals back to full capacity five times faster than the toughest fighter.

Why does this madness still lurk in the rules? Because natural healing is only ever used in the "lets strip the PC to their underwear and put them well outside their comfort zone" adventures.

Grundy
2013-02-22, 06:43 PM
I think you're on the right track by limiting NPCs with adventurer levels. You can also just knock everybody in the world down a peg or two. Either take off X number of levels, Min 1, or divide levels by 2 or 3.
I'd resist the temptation to raise curing spells level, just because then you'll throw a dire rat (or something) at the party without really thinking about it, and it'll be a Total Party Kill.
Maybe just make natural healing better. Instead of getting back lvl/day HP, make it 2xlvl/day. Then the clerics aren't as important, the pace of the game kicks up a notch, and you don't need to tailor each spell and creature every time you introduce it.

Limiting the magic your PCs find is simple. Before you play next time, give fair warning- "I'm going to really limit magic in this campaign, so don't go by what the books say." Then only give the PCs and NPCs what you want in the campaign. You can make item creation feats tougher by adding a couple of levels to the minimum needed to take the feat. Also double (or whatever) the cost, especially XP to make an item.

This is all totally off the cuff, but I suspect that if you implemented all these measures, you'd have a system with very rare and super-nerfed magic, but only on the level of society.

The disadvantage is that it makes all spell casters, especially PCs, way more powerful, and the caster PCs will quickly outpace the non-caster PCs (even faster than usual in 3.5) because the non-casters won't have magic items to help them keep up. Also, you'll have to keep a close eye on monsters as your party advances. Some of them with spells, or SLAs, will be way tougher than in a normal campaign.

Mighty_Chicken
2013-02-22, 08:46 PM
without magical healing the healing rate is 1 hp per level per nights rest, if someone has the heal skill it doubles the rate. The upshot of this is when a party gets down to about half hitpoints they will hole up for several days to recover.

Consider a 10th level con 18 fighter that's (5.5 +4) x 10 =95 hitpoints at 50% hitpoint
it will take him 5 nights to fully recover or 3 nights if someone has the heal skill



You know it doesn't need to be like that, right?

- He could use Vitality Points alternate rule (hitpoints heal 1 per hour, naturally)

- He could house rule that up to 50% of a PC's health heals itself naturally (either during sleep, 1hp per hour, whatever)

- He could homebrew some healing abilities to each mundane class. If a big part of hit points are luck and stamina, I don't think it would be lore-breaking. For example, I made a house rule once (never made to use it) that Barbarians could heal themselves and possibly an adjacent ally if he scored a crit or successed on a Intimadate test (because it would make them feel bigger and meaner); a bard could heal with music because it motivates; a monk could use Heal and Stunning Fist to cure a character with negative hit points; rangers could store some healing fruits, and so on. Even in low-magic campaigns, you can give each mundane class a weak, unique healing ability.

Actually, there are many possibilities. It's up to him really.

mjlush
2013-02-23, 07:47 AM
You know it doesn't need to be like that, right?

Yes but it pays to make the rules make sense.



- He could use Vitality Points alternate rule (hitpoints heal 1 per hour, naturally)


That still turns out to be a little bit mad, consider a 10th level fighter (con 18) 95hp and mage con 10 with 20hp. Both are down to 1hp. After 19 hours the mage is up to full hp had a nights sleep and is fully ready to rumble.. the fighter has another 3 days to wait before he is fully fit.

Part of the problem is the con mod is not being taken into account it still leaves that's a bit better the fighter and the mage both take 19 hours to heal up.. but if both have an 18 con (!) the mage now on 60hp is back to full strength in 12 hours.. Give them some 1st level fighters with con 10 (6hp) and there beck to full strength in 5 hours while the tough fighter sits there huffing and puffing for another 14 hours...

This is perhaps an acceptable system but it does not feel very heroic



- He could house rule that up to 50% of a PC's health heals itself naturally (either during sleep, 1hp per hour, whatever)


50% hitpoint recovery is a better option, but but it still means that everyone if fully recovered after two days ... it would be perhaps better to figure constitution into the equation say something like "recover con% hit points every hour/day/week" which would make the con 10 recover in 10 whatevers and a con 18 in 6. It would be easy enough to tweek the system perhaps add wisdom modifier to represent luck.



- He could homebrew some healing abilities to each mundane class. If a big part of hit points are luck and stamina, I don't think it would be lore-breaking. For example, I made a house rule once (never made to use it) that Barbarians could heal themselves and possibly an adjacent ally if he scored a crit or successed on a Intimadate test (because it would make them feel bigger and meaner); a bard could heal with music because it motivates; a monk could use Heal and Stunning Fist to cure a character with negative hit points; rangers could store some healing fruits, and so on. Even in low-magic campaigns, you can give each mundane class a weak, unique healing ability.


I rather think these are rebranded magical healing... this is not a bad thing D&D needs a 'magical' healing system, as I've pointed out before the only way to avoid taking damage is
to completely prevent the opposition hitting back.



Actually, there are many possibilities. It's up to him really.

There are plenty of options but he does need to be aware that the rate of hit point recovery governs the rate the characters will progress through the campaign and also how risk averse they are.

NichG
2013-02-23, 09:52 AM
Really if the differential healing rates are bugging you, just do:

All characters heal a percentage of their MaxHP per day equal to their Constitution score.

Make that per hour or per week or whatever to attain the level of grit desired.

Alejandro
2013-02-23, 10:12 AM
It's best not to analyze things like this too closely. At the end, it's still a game for fun. Besides, it isn't just magic. You can take a regular person in a village and a 6th level fighter, and hit them both in the head with a hammer. The regular person almost always dies, but the 6th level fighter, despite being biologically identical, will take many, many blows to die.

mjlush
2013-02-23, 10:17 AM
Really if the differential healing rates are bugging you, just do:

All characters heal a percentage of their MaxHP per day equal to their Constitution score.

Make that per hour or per week or whatever to attain the level of grit desired.

you mean like I said in my post?

mjlush
2013-02-23, 10:26 AM
It's best not to analyze things like this too closely. At the end, it's still a game for fun. Besides, it isn't just magic. You can take a regular person in a village and a 6th level fighter, and hit them both in the head with a hammer. The regular person almost always dies, but the 6th level fighter, despite being biologically identical, will take many, many blows to die.

I agree it does not pay to analyze exactly hit a hitpoint is. But I think it does pay to at least smoke test the rules and if the rules say things like having an 18 con means that you take longer to fully heal compaired to someone with con of 3. its probably time to break out the houserules (that is assuming the natural healing rules ever get used)

NichG
2013-02-23, 10:48 AM
you mean like I said in my post?

Wow, I completely missed that. Sorry! So yeah, like you said in your post.

mjlush
2013-02-23, 01:33 PM
Wow, I completely missed that. Sorry! So yeah, like you said in your post.

Well I was a bit TL:DR :smile:

Omegonthesane
2013-02-24, 05:06 AM
I agree it does not pay to analyze exactly hit a hitpoint is. But I think it does pay to at least smoke test the rules and if the rules say things like having an 18 con means that you take longer to fully heal compaired to someone with con of 3. its probably time to break out the houserules (that is assuming the natural healing rules ever get used)

Alternately, if it makes you feel any better about the perceived absurdity - yes, the 120 HP fighter takes longer than the 20 HP wizard (numbers extracted from rear orifice) to heal from 1 HP to full, but he's taken wounds that would have killed the wizard outright three times over and then maimed him for good measure. It isn't shameful to need a little break after that.

mjlush
2013-02-24, 05:32 AM
Alternately, if it makes you feel any better about the perceived absurdity - yes, the 120 HP fighter takes longer than the 20 HP wizard (numbers extracted from rear orifice) to heal from 1 HP to full, but he's taken wounds that would have killed the wizard outright three times over and then maimed him for good measure. It isn't shameful to need a little break after that.

Were getting into the scary "what is a hitpoint land?" here, bit I'll press on. If the wounds are so severe why does it only take 6 days for him to fully recover (3 if he has a healer). The standard answer appears to be that hitpoints don't represent actual damage but their ability to avoid damage (ie skill, stamina and luck) which makes sense hitpoint damage has no effect on a character until they get to 0 hp then they reduced to crawling around. So natural healing is basically catching their breath and rubbing sore limbs.

NichG
2013-02-24, 08:29 AM
Alternately, people are just that much tougher in D&D land. They can fight like nothing's wrong with a broken arm that heals in 6 days. Magic infuses the land, and everyone is benefiting from it at some level. Thats why even a 'mundane' like the Fighter can get to Lv20 and be basically incapable of dying from any fall, no matter how high, or can survive lying on a funeral pyre for 4 minutes (e.g. 40d4 ~ 100 damage).