Adding healing to 3.5+

[Grasharm]

In another thread

Honestly, while it contributes significantly to the realism, and I've never actually not forced my players to heal by conventional means, what is the actual difference if the HP did restore to max at the end of an encounter or chain thereof? Maybe that's a little dramatic, but at the very least, if the characters fully healed after resting, I wouldn't have any problem with that. Because it really is just a hindrance, much like forcing players to eat meals, take potty breaks, wash themselves (and their clothes), dry themselves off after precipitation (if you have rain at all in your campaign), keep precise track of the size and weight of their loot (including gold) for purposes of encumbrance, and perform any number of other menial tasks that slow down the game. Our sessions last roughly between 5-7 hours which includes 2 or sometimes 3 combat scenarios and the rest is spent dealing with the aftermath. Depending on the DM, it can take us up to 3 months to finish a single chapter of an adventure path, when it should take about a month with weekly sessions. I'm not saying it's not a valid gameplay style, but I fully support any steps towards speeding up the out-of-combat mechanics.


This got me thinking about the impact of this kind of thing. I mean I may hate 4th ed but it runs okay and everyone has a little healing in the way of healing surges. So I open the floor to this exploratory committee... I mean forum.

[Waker]

So are you just asking for options to speed up healing in the game?
-Apply a scaling Fast Healing mechanic. The number healed varies by class and level. Can be augmented by feats.
-Heal checks actually heal you! 1/day a character can gain HP from being treated. Amount healed is dependent on HD and check result. As an example, hitting a DC 15 heals 1hp/HD, DC 25 2hp/HD...
-HP do not represent actual wounds in combat, rather they are more a representation of fatigue. Characters reaching 0HP are knocked out. After combat ends, all characters are returned to full health.

And I don't feel like coming up with anything else.

[Chilingsworth]

You could give everyone the Second Wind feat (Minatures Handbook) as a bonus feat.

1/Encounter: heal yourself an amount equal to your HD+con bonus as a move action.

My dm does that, it comes in handy occasionally. He also lets us use it when unconcious, but that might not be to your taste.

[Jack_Simth]

This got me thinking about the impact of this kind of thing. I mean I may hate 4th ed but it runs okay and everyone has a little healing in the way of healing surges. So I open the floor to this exploratory committee... I mean forum.
Full HP healing upon waking from a full night's rest isn't going to change the game much past level two or three; neither would full HP healing after a battle past the same level threshhold ... because that pretty much already happens anyway. See, after about level two or three, wands of Cure Light Wounds - or better, Lesser Vigor (Spell Compendium) - make healing rather inexpensive. Cure Light Wounds from a wand heals an average of 5.5 hp per charge, and lesser vigor heals a flat 11 hp per charge... and at 50 charges to a wand, for 750 gp per wand, that's 2.7272... gp/hp for the wand of cure light wounds, and 1.3636... gp/hp for the wand of lesser vigor (half that if you craft them yourself). There is a slight drain on player resources due to wands getting used up, but they're cheap enough that it's quite sensible to use them to top off after every battle. And most parties do (after about level two or three). So in practice, the biggest changes to the game will be at very low levels (when you can't readily afford wands for this sort of thing), and at higher levels all you'll see is slightly more player wealth invested into permanent things.

[Grasharm]

I'm not looking to actually do anything I just want to see what the community thinks as I'm still forming ideas and opinions and I think this could be something that I might want to try in one of my games at some point.

The biggest problem I can see with giving everyone a little healing is clerics. They are already one of the best classes in the game and if they don't have to burn off spells to heal others that means they have more spells to do crazy cleric crap with.

But that can just be bad blood on my part. I tend to play wizards and hate it when the cleric blasts a large group that I can barely scratch since they have a bunch of energy resist and immunity but holy damage from holy smite/word does not get reduced. Then I start buffing the cleric looks at my mage and says, "Isn't that cute. Here this is how you buff." Then backs it up then pats me on the head and strides into battle because he's in full plate and has a shield and d8 hd while I go cry in a corner muttering to myself, "I'm a great and powerful mage. I harness energies that others can barely comprehend through study and dedication. He's just a cheater cheating off his gods test answers", over and over again.

[Waker]

They don't burn off healing spells as it is unless they are preventing certain death. Out of combat healing is done almost entirely done via wands in many adventuring parties because of their efficiency (not to mention that even the bard or rogue can fill in as a "healer").
In combat healing wouldn't be affected unless you really made the healing surge or second wind or whatever you call it that powerful.

As for your comment about mages vs clerics. Mages have far more utility time magic than clerics do, not to mention they generally have better BFC spells. Not saying that the clerics, druids or whatever divine casters can't contribute but they don't have nearly as many options.

[Chilingsworth]

But clerics already don't have to use their spells for healing.

They can

a. use wands to heal between battles

b. defeat encounters before they get to hurting the party in any significant way.

OR

c. focus on defeating foes and use the rest of the party as (ultimately disposable) ablative armor. (Granted, prettymuch evil clerics only and it would eventually cause problems. But it is a theoretical option. Also, parties where the cleric had this philosophy would presumably compensate by investing in wands themselves if the cleric didn't.)

[Jack_Simth]

I'm not looking to actually do anything I just want to see what the community thinks as I'm still forming ideas and opinions and I think this could be something that I might want to try in one of my games at some point.

... how is that not planning to do something with it?

The biggest problem I can see with giving everyone a little healing is clerics. They are already one of the best classes in the game and if they don't have to burn off spells to heal others that means they have more spells to do crazy cleric crap with.
Interestingly enough, a well built cleric doesn't generally make use of their ability to spontaneously cure. At high levels, they keep a couple of Heal spells handy. At low to mid levels, they may keep a couple spells handy for when someone falls into the negatives. For the most part, though, if you're building a cleric well, you don't cast healing spells to heal damage after combat - you invoke healing wands.

The reason?

At level 1, the 1d8+1 you get from Cure Light Wounds averages 5.5 hp of damage. That Falchion-wielding stock Warrior-1 orc (CR 1/2, your party should be facing at least two of them at a time) deals 2d4+4 up close and 1d6+3 at range... which averages 11 and 6.5 damage, respectively. You spend your action and don't even negate a single hit from an opponent that you should be facing two of. Hitting the orc with your mace is a better use of your combat actions.

At level 5, the 3d8+5 you get from a Cure Serious Wounds averages 18.5 hp ... and your CR 5 Large Air Elemental is attacking twice for 2d6+2 (so an average of 32 damage). Again: Healing doesn't keep up with damage dealing, and you're better off attacking the air elemental than you are fixing up the damage.

At level 10, that Empowered Cure Serious Wounds averages 35.25 hp of healing. Meanwhile, that Beblith hits for 2d6+9, and twice more for 2d4+4... meaning an average round damage of 38... and ability damage, too. You're still behind. Much better to just kill the thing.

Oh yes: and all of these numbers are from before taking Power Attack, special abilities, or other feats into account (I'm also discounting miss chances from AC or other sources... mostly because of how attack bonus scaling works).

But that can just be bad blood on my part. I tend to play wizards and hate it when the cleric blasts a large group that I can barely scratch since they have a bunch of energy resist and immunity but holy damage from holy smite/word does not get reduced. Then I start buffing the cleric looks at my mage and says, "Isn't that cute. Here this is how you buff." Then backs it up then pats me on the head and strides into battle because he's in full plate and has a shield and d8 hd while I go cry in a corner muttering to myself, "I'm a great and powerful mage. I harness energies that others can barely comprehend through study and dedication. He's just a cheater cheating off his gods test answers", over and over again.What you've got appears to be an optimization discrepancy problem. It's not a matter of the chassis being bad - the Wizard has a much better selection of spells to choose from than does the cleric - it's how you're choosing to use them. You might, for instance, want to look up the Orb line from Spell Compendium.

[NinjaInTheRye]

The poster Evil Lincoln on the Paizo forums has a Strain-Injury system that works well. Link (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jcp6udyHU-cURn5u7MzunsOfrCruk0ywDkvmdVk0fGQ/edit?pli=1)

Basically HP damage represents the strain of dodging or blocking a well aimed attack, you can just say you're taking a few minutes after a battle to rest and tend to your equipment and minor scrapes and get all your HP back.

The exceptions are HP damage from Critical Hits, failed saves, and any attack that puts your HP below 0. Those are considered actual injuries and have to be healed up the normal way.

[Godskook]

See belts of potionade in my signature as a method I introduced to help with such things.

[molten_dragon]

I've played in several games where the PCs had some way to get free out of combat healing (a crusader, or someone had the trollblooded feat, or a dread necro with tomb-tainted soul, etc.) and I've never found it to be a huge problem. I just make the encounters slightly harder to account for the fact that everyone has full hit points at the beginning of each encounter.


The biggest problem I can see with giving everyone a little healing is clerics. They are already one of the best classes in the game and if they don't have to burn off spells to heal others that means they have more spells to do crazy cleric crap with.

Most decently-built clerics probably won't do a ton of healing anyway. The occasional cure spell (or heal at higher levels) might get used to save a character's life, but beyond that you don't see them used a ton at mid to high levels, unless the player is new and doesn't know to do anything but heal with his cleric.

[Keneth]

So the general consensus seems to be that free out-of-combat healing doesn't really change much. At best, it frees up some of the players' WBL, which can easily be accounted for.

Of course in a gritty hyper-realistic game, it may not be appropriate, but otherwise it just absolves the players from keeping track of wand charges.

[Spuddles]

I played in some small groups without a ready access to healing magic, so we just built characters that had some amount of fast healing.

In combat it didn't amount to much, and out of combat we slowly topped off. It wasn't that big of a deal and didn't really change the feel of the game. We could be a little more wasteful with HP resources in taking falling damage, etc., but in combat our fast healing 2 wasn't even close to the amount of damage we could take if we wren't playing smart.

Depending on the campaign, I think it's perfectly fine. A level 2 part can easily afford a wand of lesser vigor, it just depends on whether your DM is a dink or not.

Some campaigns, though, I think having a bunch of invincible, fearless supermen might run contrary to the feel/type of campaign.