Coidzor
2014-10-13, 02:44 AM
Or would that be gp per hp ratio?
How I got onto this subject:
So I was fiddling around with some houserules to help speed up and streamline out of combat healing, specifically having spells cast during rest to cure HP damage count as if they were auto-maximized to cut down on spells cast as well as to simplify the math and cut down on rolling. And then I had to decide if I'd let that apply to items or just the actual spell slots/prepared spells of characters, and while I haven't quite decided for scrolls, wands, rods, or belts of healing, I just shruged and said, "sure why not?" with potions, since they already provide too little bang for anyone's buck.
Then I decided that potions were so bad off that just having them always heal the max hp they could without rolling would be better, leading to the three potions curing 9, 19, and 29 hp respectively due to minimum caster levels. I found it an amusing quality that they all incremented by 10, but eventually having them end in 9 started to grate on me so I decided to just increase them each by 1 to get 10, 20, and 30 hp healed by the three potions of the cure X wounds line.
I was also trying to decrease the price of CLW potions at least to put them within the grasp of starting 1st level characters at char gen, and then one thing led to another after several attempts at halving the prices of that particular line of potions or reducing them to one-fifth of the price, and I settled at just mulitplying the HP value they each healed by 3 gp to get 10 hp healed for 30 gp by a CLW potion, 20 hp for 60 gp by a CMW potion, and 30 hp for 9- gp by a CSW potion.
At that point I stopped to make sure I hadn't made things so potions now undercut wands of Cure Light Wounds or Lesser Vigor, but IIRC CLW wands are about 2.7 gp per hp and lesser vigor has a lower ratio than that. Then I stopped to wonder if that was really such a bad thing aside from the logistical concerns of hauling an equivalent hp's worth of potions versus a single wand or small number of them.
So what do you all think?
Base RAW is that CLW potions are 50 gp and heal, on average, 5.5 hp, 50:5.5 or about 10 gp per hp healed(~5.56 if one rolls an 8, 25 if one rolls a 1), and it only gets worse from there as the CL or spell level of the potion increases. Anyone can use them, but they're cumbersome in terms of action economy and can cause one to eat an AoO or two when one least can afford such due to being in need of healing in the first place.
A wand of cure light wound heals 275 hp on average and costs 750 for ~2.73 gp per hp healed over the life of the wand, and lesser vigor heals 550 hp for the same price of wand leading to ~1.36 gp per hp healed for the wand's lifespan. Restricted to UMD or use by a class with the spell on its class spell list, but that's a non-barrier in 99% of parties even if it's not every character.
Is the relative ability to use either of those worth the cost for healing gap? Worth some gap but not to the extent that it currently stands? Worth no gap? Or should the gap actually exist in favor of potions, in order to reflect the greater ease of hauling around a stick versus 20-30 bottles?
A belt of healing, on the other hand, also costs 750 gp like the two gold standard healing wands, but has a finite amount of healing per diem instead of in total, which makes pricing it based upon the lifespan of the item pretty much impossible unless one knows exactly how many days with hp damage there will be in a given campaign, leading to... the rate of healing per gp being the metric there? Or perhaps it's too qualitiatively diifferent to really draw a comparison between gp cost and hp healed in the way one can between potions and scrolls and wands.
How I got onto this subject:
So I was fiddling around with some houserules to help speed up and streamline out of combat healing, specifically having spells cast during rest to cure HP damage count as if they were auto-maximized to cut down on spells cast as well as to simplify the math and cut down on rolling. And then I had to decide if I'd let that apply to items or just the actual spell slots/prepared spells of characters, and while I haven't quite decided for scrolls, wands, rods, or belts of healing, I just shruged and said, "sure why not?" with potions, since they already provide too little bang for anyone's buck.
Then I decided that potions were so bad off that just having them always heal the max hp they could without rolling would be better, leading to the three potions curing 9, 19, and 29 hp respectively due to minimum caster levels. I found it an amusing quality that they all incremented by 10, but eventually having them end in 9 started to grate on me so I decided to just increase them each by 1 to get 10, 20, and 30 hp healed by the three potions of the cure X wounds line.
I was also trying to decrease the price of CLW potions at least to put them within the grasp of starting 1st level characters at char gen, and then one thing led to another after several attempts at halving the prices of that particular line of potions or reducing them to one-fifth of the price, and I settled at just mulitplying the HP value they each healed by 3 gp to get 10 hp healed for 30 gp by a CLW potion, 20 hp for 60 gp by a CMW potion, and 30 hp for 9- gp by a CSW potion.
At that point I stopped to make sure I hadn't made things so potions now undercut wands of Cure Light Wounds or Lesser Vigor, but IIRC CLW wands are about 2.7 gp per hp and lesser vigor has a lower ratio than that. Then I stopped to wonder if that was really such a bad thing aside from the logistical concerns of hauling an equivalent hp's worth of potions versus a single wand or small number of them.
So what do you all think?
Base RAW is that CLW potions are 50 gp and heal, on average, 5.5 hp, 50:5.5 or about 10 gp per hp healed(~5.56 if one rolls an 8, 25 if one rolls a 1), and it only gets worse from there as the CL or spell level of the potion increases. Anyone can use them, but they're cumbersome in terms of action economy and can cause one to eat an AoO or two when one least can afford such due to being in need of healing in the first place.
A wand of cure light wound heals 275 hp on average and costs 750 for ~2.73 gp per hp healed over the life of the wand, and lesser vigor heals 550 hp for the same price of wand leading to ~1.36 gp per hp healed for the wand's lifespan. Restricted to UMD or use by a class with the spell on its class spell list, but that's a non-barrier in 99% of parties even if it's not every character.
Is the relative ability to use either of those worth the cost for healing gap? Worth some gap but not to the extent that it currently stands? Worth no gap? Or should the gap actually exist in favor of potions, in order to reflect the greater ease of hauling around a stick versus 20-30 bottles?
A belt of healing, on the other hand, also costs 750 gp like the two gold standard healing wands, but has a finite amount of healing per diem instead of in total, which makes pricing it based upon the lifespan of the item pretty much impossible unless one knows exactly how many days with hp damage there will be in a given campaign, leading to... the rate of healing per gp being the metric there? Or perhaps it's too qualitiatively diifferent to really draw a comparison between gp cost and hp healed in the way one can between potions and scrolls and wands.