Healing Potions (4e style)

[Baptor]

OK.

I am adopting the "healing surges" rule from the DMG for my games. In addition, I want to retool the healing potions. I don't like the various pots of various strength.

What I'd like to do is develop a potion similar to the Healing Pots in 4e. The basic premise of those were they allowed you to burn a healing surge during combat (normally after your one second wind you could not).

Since healing surge already lets you heal in combat once per rest, how might we do this?

Suggestions:

1. A healing pot lets you burn more surges between rests. Issue: Since a single surge is half your hit dice, this would really mean only one more surge and well that's it. Not very useful IMO.

2. A healing pot is an extra free surge. So it would heal you 1/2 your healing dice but expend no actual dice. Issue: useful, but perhaps overpowered? How would you even price this thing?

Other suggestions?

[T.G. Oskar]

I didn't read the part on Healing Surges that clearly when I had the chance, but the first impression I got was that Healing Surges allowed you to expend your Hit Dice outside of a Short Rest, so you're limited to your total Hit Dice. Thus, forcing to turn Healing Potions into expenditures of Hit Dice may be shooting your players in the foot; at 1st level, they only have one Hit Die, and by 20th level they only get up to 20 Hit Dice, and all of that will be spread through the Healing Surges.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong on that one.

[Baptor]

I didn't read the part on Healing Surges that clearly when I had the chance, but the first impression I got was that Healing Surges allowed you to expend your Hit Dice outside of a Short Rest, so you're limited to your total Hit Dice. Thus, forcing to turn Healing Potions into expenditures of Hit Dice may be shooting your players in the foot; at 1st level, they only have one Hit Die, and by 20th level they only get up to 20 Hit Dice, and all of that will be spread through the Healing Surges.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong on that one.

This is a good point. We tried this out last session and while the mechanics worked well enough it also seemed a bit grittier than I'd wished. They are a group of only 2 and I am wanting to give them things to shore up the lack of extra players. Perhaps doubling their healing dice?

[Sidmen]

Perhaps you could simply have them maximize the healing dice spent when drinking the potion? That way you don't fiddle with how many hit dice they have to spend, but double their effective healing power.

[Baptor]

Perhaps you could simply have them maximize the healing dice spent when drinking the potion? That way you don't fiddle with how many hit dice they have to spend, but double their effective healing power.

I'm glad you suggested this. This was an idea we were kicking around. Glad to know its something someone else was thinking as well!