Question about Fast Healing/Regeneration

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

How good at they really? At what level does it become a serious option for a DM to allow a character to get a way to get fast healing or regeneration?

If a class (Just roll with it please) granted Fast Healing 1 at level 5, is that too much? What if this built to a Regeneration 5 at level 20 is that too much?

How much Fast Healing or Regeneration is too much and at what levels?

I have never had Fast Healing of Regeneration so I have never had to do this, but I was curious. Also this is for both PCs and for Baddies, is it fair to throw a monster with Fast Healing 1 at a party at level 5?

[ngilop]

its perfectly fine for you to toss a monster or 2 with fast healing 1 (or even 2) at the heroes at low levels.

If fought things with DR 5/cold iron and fast healing 2 at level 3 before and it added one or if we got unlucky 2 extra rounds to the combat.

for the heroes though fast healing/regeneration is a bit more tricky.

I have re visited some of the old under powered and less flavorful PrC and for me giving fast healing 1 is something I granted at 10-15 level.

for heroes fast healing 1 is all the will ever need, its not really meant for in combat healing but to be full HP in between combats or other dangerous situations. oh no im donw to 3/24 HP just wait a couple minutes and POW back to full HP

[Nettlekid]

Fast Healing and Regeneration are superficially similar, but they're like apples and oranges. They work totally differently and there's no use comparing them.

Fast Healing is useful in one of two ways. If you have Fast Healing 1, or any small number, then you'll start every battle with full HP as you heal in the downtime, which is pretty cool. That's the best use of Fast Healing, I think. The other case would be if you had Fast Healing 20 or something high, passively healing you a lot every round in combat. At mid levels that would make you very tanky, but it would still be too little at high levels unless you were somehow stalling really well. An equivalent amount of DR would work better. Overall, a little bit of Fast Healing is worth much more than none, and lots of Fast Healing is worth only a little more than a little.

Regeneration is kind of similar, but take what I just said and amplify it. The amount of your Regeneration doesn't matter at all. Regeneration 1, 5, 20, who cares. The important thing is what it resists. Since it's pretty easy (with a bit of effort) to become immune to nonlethal damage, Regeneration is a key tool in immune-to-damage builds. Even if you aren't immune to nonlethal, an enemy would have to have SOMETHING which bypasses your Regeneration (or a vial of Trollbane) to take you out permanently, which means that no matter what, you'll be durable. Anything which grants Regeneration (the Flux Adept PrC, the Shriver magical location, etc) is very powerful indeed.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Edit: Ok that makes sense

So say I somehow awarded Fast healing 5 at level 5, FH 10 at level 10 and up to Fast Healing 20 at level 20. Is that too much?

Or Regeneration 5/Decapitation or something is that to much, does that mean he can only be killed via a decap?

So Fast healing 2 is ok for low opponents?

See I am curious about that because I like to have foes do hit and runs that harass the party, Orcs might stand and fight but Goblins or something would really do hit and runs.

[Nettlekid]

Edit: Ok that makes sense

So say I somehow awarded Fast healing 5 at level 5, FH 10 at level 10 and up to Fast Healing 20 at level 20. Is that too much?

Or Regeneration 5/Decapitation or something is that to much, does that mean he can only be killed via a decap?

So Fast healing 2 is ok for low opponents?

See I am curious about that because I like to have foes do hit and runs that harass the party, Orcs might stand and fight but Goblins or something would really do hit and runs.

That Fast Healing progression is fine. At level 5 it'll feel like quite a lot even in battle, and at level 20 it'll be appreciated but probably feel like not super awesome, so that's fine.

That's not how Regeneration works (usually, I mean I guess you could make up something that works that way, but since there are no called shots in D&D unless you make up a rule for it then it'll never actually come up except against Vorpal weapons. For Decapitation, I'd use a custom special rule like Vampires have in their weaknesses.) Regeneration is like Regeneration 5/Fire and Acid, or Regeneration 10/Good. That means that all damage dealt by non-Fire and non-Acid or non-Good-aligned sources will turn into nonlethal damage when it's dealt (that's the important part) and then you heal 5 or 10 nonlethal damage each turn (not really that important.) So the rarer the type of damage which bypasses the Regeneration, the stronger the Regeneration is.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Ok but off topic would DR be better?

DR 5/- at level five be too much? At level 20 DR 20/- to much?

I know DR is generally better, so I was very curious.

[Techwarrior]

Ok but off topic would DR be better?

DR 5/- at level five be too much? At level 20 DR 20/- to much?

I know DR is generally better, so I was very curious.

As a reference, the maneuver Stone Bones grants DR 5/- for a round at level 1. By level five you're looking to trade it away, if you didn't trade it out at level 4.

Similarly, at level 5 you could have DR 4/Cold Iron as a Warlock with the Fey Heritage feats. It's really nice, but any serious damage based threat doesn't care. Fact is though, you take four damage per hit.

In my experience, continuous DR is only useful, but not overpowered, at about one point per level.

As noted by others, Fast Healing and Regeneration are completely different. I haven't had much experience with PC's with those abilities though, so can't give advice.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Well I was curious because say a PC had DR 20/- and Fast Healing 20 at level 20 would that be too much, as you would have to be dealt over 40 points of damage to even take any. So 41 points of damage this turn? Well you took 1.. which is healed next round.

Or Regeneration 20/Acid would be even that much more dangerous as if its anything but an acid based weapon your just take non-lethal damage and still ignore 20 points of it.

[TuggyNE]

Ok but off topic would DR be better?

DR 5/- at level five be too much? At level 20 DR 20/- to much?

I know DR is generally better, so I was very curious.

DR x/- serves a different purpose; it's more effective in combat against weapons than fast healing, useless against spells and most powers, and useless for recovering out of combat. That's probably why it is, if anything, rather easier to acquire.

[Reshy]

If you can manage to get Fast Healing and Regeneration though they compliment each other. Regeneration can only heal non-lethal damage, not actual damage. Fast healing can allow the regenerating creature to regenerate from 'real' damage faster than their natural healing rate. Albeit fast healing still removes non-lethal first. Adding Damage reduction on evasion on top of it makes them nearly invulnerable though, if the DR is a different material from the regeneration.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

So if you had Regeneration 20/Adamantine and DR 20/Adamantine you would be very durable against virtually anything that was not Adamantine?

[sleepyphoenixx]

Well I was curious because say a PC had DR 20/- and Fast Healing 20 at level 20 would that be too much, as you would have to be dealt over 40 points of damage to even take any. So 41 points of damage this turn? Well you took 1.. which is healed next round.

Or Regeneration 20/Acid would be even that much more dangerous as if its anything but an acid based weapon your just take non-lethal damage and still ignore 20 points of it.

Keep in mind that DR only works against physical damage. There's very few monsters that are a serious threat at CR 20 that don't have some way to get around it. Those that do usually do a lot of damage per hit.
And any regeneration can be negated by Trollbane.

[Techwarrior]

Well I was curious because say a PC had DR 20/- and Fast Healing 20 at level 20 would that be too much, as you would have to be dealt over 40 points of damage to even take any. So 41 points of damage this turn? Well you took 1.. which is healed next round.

Or Regeneration 20/Acid would be even that much more dangerous as if its anything but an acid based weapon your just take non-lethal damage and still ignore 20 points of it.

A well built Rogue of that level can be rocking 100+ damage a hit with their off hand. And that's honestly with +1 weapons and off the top of my head.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Well I was curious because I wouldn't mind characters who are harder to hurt or maybe some baddies who can take a beating by the good guys without feeling like their made of tissue paper.

So your saying DR 40/-, Fast Healing 40 or Regeneration 40 would be better at that level?

[Techwarrior]

It wouldn't be unreasonable at my tables with appropriate resources. The thing is, what's reasonable is very table dependent. How much damage do your PC's normally do? I try to negate no more than one PC's round of full attacks per round. At my old table, if I did much more than that they couldn't beat the NPC, since the party of four could usually only get two PC's dealing good damage a round.

[Deophaun]

So say I somehow awarded Fast healing 5 at level 5, FH 10 at level 10 and up to Fast Healing 20 at level 20. Is that too much?
Take any fast healing you're giving, and double it. Because that's how much fast healing your characters will get as soon as they realize healthful rest affects it.

For existing benchmarks, at level 8, I can have a druid with Aberration Wild Shape turn into a Rukanyr, and, using enhance wild shape, this druid will have fast healing 5 (effective 10, because healthful rest, which druid can absolutely cast). A fighter can, with two feats, gain fast healing 2 at level 9, or with three, fast healing 4 (Combat Vigor). However, this will only last 10 rounds after his first successful attack in an encounter, so not that special, and we certainly cannot have the fighter stepping on the druid's toes.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

I want baddies that can take a beating and kind of shrug off some low hit rolls. If the damage dealers roll poorly I kind of want the baddies to laugh off their feeble strikes even if they hit. It adds danger to the scene when the baddies wounds begin to stitch themselves back together, Or the baddie picks up the severed arm the fighter cut off and reattaches it. It would be very cool for the feel of the battle.

Also for players who might get this, they feel more hearty and capable of taking a beating without feeling like they must wear full plate to survive.

[sleepyphoenixx]

How much is too much depends on your groups optimization level. Low-op fighters and rogues are barely functioning even with low levels of DR or fast healing. Optimized melee will shred through DR 20/- like paper.
Take a look at how much damage your melee do on an average full attack. If they have no way to get through the DR/FH then it's probably a little much, especially if it's DR/-.
Unless that's the entire point of the fight, but those should be used sparingly.

[Andezzar]

Or Regeneration 5/Decapitation or something is that to much, does that mean he can only be killed via a decap?The problem with that type of regeneration is that there are very few ways to actually decapitate an opponent. Only two options come to mind: one is and expensive magic item (vorpal weapon) the other only applies to a single monster (hydra). Better go with the more traditional bypass of either an elemental damage type or a certain material.

[Orran]

A well built Rogue of that level can be rocking 100+ damage a hit with their off hand. And that's honestly with +1 weapons and off the top of my head.

Nitpick: for a rogue to be dealing SA damage they need to be doing a minimum of one damage after DR, so in this case with DR/20, that could cause some issues. You can get around this with alchemists fire or acid flasks.

[Andezzar]

Nitpick: for a rogue to be dealing SA damage they need to be doing a minimum of one damage after DR, so in this case with DR/20, that could cause some issues. You can get around this with alchemists fire or acid flasks.Just to be clear, for the rogue to damage a creature with DR 20 the rogue needs to deal 21 damage in total, not 21 damage before the damage of the sneak attack.

[TuggyNE]

Nitpick: for a rogue to be dealing SA damage they need to be doing a minimum of one damage after DR, so in this case with DR/20, that could cause some issues.

I've heard of this before, but never seen the rules for it; the closest is this clause that doesn't really fit:
Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk’s stunning, and injury type disease.

[NoACWarrior]

I've heard of this before, but never seen the rules for it; the closest is this clause that doesn't really fit:

I thought SA was a special attack. I do know its precision damage.

[Techwarrior]

I've heard it stated as well, but couldn't figure out how. While we're throwing up citations, let me refer to Sneak Attack, which is not a special effect, but bonus damage.


Sneak Attack

If a rogue can catch an opponent when he is unable to defend himself effectively from her attack, she can strike a vital spot for extra damage.

The rogue’s attack deals extra damage any time her target would be denied a Dexterity bonus to AC (whether the target actually has a Dexterity bonus or not), or when the rogue flanks her target. This extra damage is 1d6 at 1st level, and it increases by 1d6 every two rogue levels thereafter. Should the rogue score a critical hit with a sneak attack, this extra damage is not multiplied.


This is the relevant, and more complete, quote from the Dungeon Master's Guide on Damage Reduction.

Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk’s stunning, and injury type disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack (such as fire damage from a fire elemental), or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact. Attacks that deal no damage because of the target’s damage reduction do not disrupt spells.

I still don't see where anything in either citation suggests that a Rogue's extra damage is applied after DR, if you pierce it. That's just a little too strange for me to just accept.

[TuggyNE]

I thought SA was a special attack. I do know its precision damage.

"Special attack" and "special effect" are two very different phrases that have essentially no rules relation.