Sleep is magic

[7heprofessor]

My group has been playing 5E since the starter set came out, and we still haven't been able to get over the fact that a Long Rest completely heals PCs. Sure, you only get 1/2 your Hit Dice back, but from levels 1-4 this has not been an issue at all. We ran through all of LMoP and it was never once an issue that some of us might not have gotten all of our HD back.

I'm now running HotDQ and the group has made it to Scene 2. The end of Scene 1 has a nasty battle that is designed to leave one of the PCs unconscious. My party bound his wounds, and then took a Long Rest in the infirmary. The next morning, he pops up, strips all the bandages off of himself and saunters out of the keep without a scratch...

This battle was epic. The Paladin of the group was exhausted from fighting all night, but after some buffs from the party strode out into the fading darkness to battle the mighty Cyanwrath. Cyanwrath missed his first four attacks! The Paladin landed a couple nice hits, but then was ultimately dropped by two mighty hits from the massive half-dragon. An awesome duel like that should not be shrugged off by taking a nap!

This broke some of the group's immersion, once again. They were so pumped for the fight, and dude held his own for a while, but then the groans and eyerolls came out when the Paladin woke up perfectly fine the next day. The Player smoothly justified it by reminding the group he's from Calimshan where "everyone's got a little something in their blood," but the joke has truly stuck in my group that "sleep is magic."

Whenever they get low in HP, someone tosses out a joke about "feeling a little sleepy." I heavily narrate combat, and sometimes describe grievous wounds when the damage is high enough to knock a PC out, but inevitably someone quips, "he'll be fine in the morning!" There's nothing more irritating (at the moment) than having a Guard Drake chomp into the Cleric's shoulder dropping him unconscious and the party knowing all they have to do is take a nap!

Ultimately, I know I can houserule whatever I want, and we can justify it in our minds that HP=/=Blood or Wound Points or Fatigue or something.
But really I just want to know how does this community feel about auto-full-heal-overnight? Does it suit most of your gaming styles? Have you house-ruled something different? What are your thoughts on this?

[Dinozavar]

Hey man, don't bum out. You seem to take the game very seriosly, RP-wise and I commend you for that. That being said, HP means hit points, not health points. It is an abstract term to represent how much punishment your characther can take. That includes health and mental durability. The Vicious Mockery, spell for example doesn't rip into your skin, it damages your mental fortitude. Being on low HP, means you're tired and/or bruised and/or hit with not much of a deep wound. A grisly wound, is ok, and point out to your players, that the only reason they survived this, and can keep on fighting without repercussion is because they are heroes.

So as an advice, go easy on the big wounds. And don't be afraid to talk with your players and house rules effects if you all feel it would deepen the mood.

[CrusaderJoe]

Hey man, don't bum out. You seem to take the game very seriosly, RP-wise and I commend you for that. That being said, HP means hit points, not health points. It is an abstract term to represent how much punishment your characther can take. That includes health and mental durability. The Vicious Mockery, spell for example doesn't rip into your skin, it damages your mental fortitude. Being on low HP, means you're tired and/or bruised and/or hit with not much of a deep wound. A grisly wound, is ok, and point out to your players, that the only reason they survived this, and can keep on fighting without repercussion is because they are heroes.

So as an advice, go easy on the big wounds. And don't be afraid to talk with your players and house rules effects if you all feel it would deepen the mood.

This needed bolded.

HP has never been just about physical wounds. A good night's rest will go a long way to making you feel better after working out or playing sports.

Its kinda funny, when I explain HP in D&D to my athletic friends they get it right off the bat. When I tried explaining it to others they don't believe or can't grasp the idea that HP isn't just about "meat".

One would think it would be the other way around.

[pibby]

If your group really does like the idea that HP = health then perhaps you might like to pick up a DMG and take a look at their alternative rest rules. I don't have the book myself but I did take a glance at it and remembering that there was a rule where you don't get all your HP back automatically after a long rest.

[Oscredwin]

It was like that in 4E too. In 3.X you would have had someone wave a magic stick over everyone after every fight ("come over here and poke me with a stick a few times"). In 2E healing was harder, you had to have a one player dedicate their entire character to doing the healing (and thus being bored all the other times).

What you might want is the grittier rest where a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is a week.

[Once a Fool]

The DMG has a few resting and/or healing variants.

Given your concerns, I recommend dropping the overnight hp healing, but keeping the half HD recovery. This will force HD or spells to be used to heal those hp back, which will either result in more time spent healing, or less adventuring capability the next day.

[7heprofessor]

Thanks for the responses so far guys. I'll definitely check out the Variant rules in the DMG.

Just to be clear, we're all well aware that HP =/= Health Points, but the game in its base state doesn't support any kind of "wounds" save for something lethal. By the current system, your character is right as rain or dead...no in-between. We don't want every battle to demand a week of rest, but we definitely would like something that brings a little bit of realism into our fantasy.

We'll see what the DMG has to offer, but I'm more interested in hearing what your experiences have been with this in 5E?

[Once a Fool]

We'll see what the DMG has to offer, but I'm more interested in hearing what your experiences have been with this in 5E?

I actually give my players extra ways to mitigate damage, anyway (like spending HD to mitigate the damage from a blow through sheer exertion/badassery/luck, or choosing to have their armor/shield/weapon take the damage--and likely be destroyed). As long as resources are being spent, it's good with me.

These take on some of the non-meat duty of hp (both narratively and mechanically), but also mean that the PCs tend end a day with less overall damage. Also that HD can easily get used up quicker than they can be regained--but that can happen anyway.

All of that to say, I don't really have a problem with the full-hp overnight thing.

[Mellack]

Some of the variant rules might help you, but the biggest problem I see is the disconnect between how hp function and your narration. I am not trying to suggest you are playing wrong or anything like that. However, you say you know hp=/=meat, but yet you describe the blows as such. When the pally goes down, you do not need to suggest he just had a sword plunge through him. Perhaps instead say how it rung off his helmet, knocking him unconscious (which could also easily cause death, ie death saves.) It is then easy to say the next morning they have recovered enough to fight effectively (full hp), but they still have a bruise and a headache.

[RedMage125]

Thanks for the responses so far guys. I'll definitely check out the Variant rules in the DMG.

Just to be clear, we're all well aware that HP =/= Health Points, but the game in its base state doesn't support any kind of "wounds" save for something lethal. By the current system, your character is right as rain or dead...no in-between. We don't want every battle to demand a week of rest, but we definitely would like something that brings a little bit of realism into our fantasy.

We'll see what the DMG has to offer, but I'm more interested in hearing what your experiences have been with this in 5E?

What I do as a DM is rule that when a player or monster is above half hit points, they have not been hurt. At half, they're getting tired/worn down and they may have a few scratches/bruises. A critical hit, however, is always an actual blow (even if it's just to the shoulder or something).

Hit points are also about inspiration and morale, which is why Warlords worked in 4e, and why the Inspiring Leader feat works in 5e. Unless you went to sleep with 0 hit points and needed medical care, a long rest simply refreshes your body and mind, making you more able to face potential dangers the next day.

So I have no issue at all, narrative-wise, with long rests restoring full hp.

Re: your paladin example. If he was unconscious and received no healing before the long rest started, then it took him 1d4 hours to recover 1 hit point, and his actual Long Rest didn't start until he had that 1 hit point. The problem can be solved by applying some healing before the long rest starts.

[Once a Fool]

The thing is, hp damage does equal meat damage (otherwise, what is a cure spell curing?). It's just that the amount of hp a creature has determines the magnitude of that meat-damage.

This is where the abstraction comes in. The more hp you have after getting hit, the more that hit was just a scratch or bruise.

In other words, the attack's effects remain consistent, but the recipient's effects vary based on skill, attrition, luck, and physique.

[Mellack]

The thing is, hp damage does equal meat damage (otherwise, what is a cure spell curing?).

A cure spell could be curing the fatigue, aches, and body bruises. It could be salving the stresses and despair from your mind. It could even be giving you the god's blessing to boost your luck. If ihp is always at least part meat, then vicious mockery actually causes bleeding wounds to open up?

[7heprofessor]

I actually give my players extra ways to mitigate damage, anyway (like spending HD to mitigate the damage from a blow through sheer exertion/badassery/luck, or choosing to have their armor/shield/weapon take the damage--and likely be destroyed). As long as resources are being spent, it's good with me.

These take on some of the non-meat duty of hp (both narratively and mechanically), but also mean that the PCs tend end a day with less overall damage. Also that HD can easily get used up quicker than they can be regained--but that can happen anyway.

All of that to say, I don't really have a problem with the full-hp overnight thing.

Definitely some good ideas having the PC's gear soak up some of the damage. I've done similar things in the past, but only to narrative effect, nothing mechanical. I like the game system mostly as-is, and seek to house-rule as little as possible.


Some of the variant rules might help you, but the biggest problem I see is the disconnect between how hp function and your narration. I am not trying to suggest you are playing wrong or anything like that. However, you say you know hp=/=meat, but yet you describe the blows as such. When the pally goes down, you do not need to suggest he just had a sword plunge through him. Perhaps instead say how it rung off his helmet, knocking him unconscious (which could also easily cause death, ie death saves.) It is then easy to say the next morning they have recovered enough to fight effectively (full hp), but they still have a bruise and a headache.

I do describe the blows as such, you're right. That's also how I describe the wounds the PCs inflict upon their enemies. It makes for a much better story when there's blood involved!

Think about it, if every single attack ever only bruised the targets, or caused minor aches and pains, not an ounce of blood would be shed in a D&D game unless someone died. In a world where you're constantly putting yourself in danger willingly, it's just not possible to avoid shedding a little blood. Now, I'm not saying every paper cut I've had debilitated me for days, but I did nearly chop my fingers off once, and the stitches made my left hand mostly useless for a short while. This is just not represented in D&D, and in most cases that's a good thing. After all, you're heroes!

That said, I'm not interested in grinding the game to a halt, mandating Ride-long rest periods after every battle.

[Once a Fool]

If ihp is always at least part meat, then vicious mockery actually causes bleeding wounds to open up?

Of course it does! It's a magical slap to the face! :D

More seriously, though, I'm AFB, at the moment; does vicious mockery deal psychic damage? Because psychic damage would be an obvious exception.

[Sullivan]

There is a variant rule for long and short rests in the DMG p. 267 that suggest a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is a week (7 days). I don't use this, but I have been using a table to determine persistent injuries that happen when a pc goes down. That way a pc can pop right up, but their knee just ant right for a little while, they have a nice new scar, a crippled limb, ... you get the idea.

[Mellack]

Making a long rest take a week certainly does give that slower healing to allow a more meat-based game. The trade-off is that it makes the story slower paced. You can't rush off after the orcs that attacked the town, you have to wait a week to heal before following. Probably more realistic, but does dampen that heroes feeling a tad.

[EvanescentHero]

I was probably having BadWrongFun™, but in 3.P my groups always houseruled that a full night's rest healed you to full anyway, so I'm glad that's the default rule in 5e. That being said, I fully intend to have lasting effects if something notable happens in a fight--getting critted isn't something I want my players to just shrug off--so I'm also glad to see the table of lasting effects and serious wounds in the DMG.

[Joe the Rat]

Two tools to play with:

Hit Dice. These come back slower than hit points. You're paying for the ability to fight (recovered hit points) by pushing your body's reserves (system stress, blood capacity, minor injuries just waiting to get worse). If you slow HD recovery further, HD becomes your effective meat. You come up ready to go, but your body can't take much more punishment.

Fatigue. That wonderful six-step chart that ends in death, and recovers one step at a time per long rest. It's rather generic, but using it as a wound level (by whatever system you use to decide a wound has happened) will give you the lingering effects until they are healed. Restoration just got a whole lot more important: It becomes your bone-setting and organ-de-rupturing magic.

[draken50]

Yeah see, I don't mind "meat" damage in that regard and use healing from resting different than healing from magic. Resting allows the players to "play through" the injury ect.

I've narrated "As the adrenaline from the fight wears off a throbbing from where the monster bit you the day before becomes more prevalent, aggravated by the renewed activity." and the like to have the players roleplay injuries that they have sustained without punishing them mechanically. My players seem to like it as fighting through your wounds may seem more "heroic" than never taking them in the first place.

[mephnick]

The best feeling in the world after a hard soccer game is taking a hot bath, grabbing some good food, a beer and passing out for the night. You're still a bit sore the next day, but unless you broke a rib (say a low hp wound) you're pretty much good to go the next day assuming you're a decent athlete. Plus, these guys are heroes!

[rhouck]

Making a long rest take a week certainly does give that slower healing to allow a more meat-based game. The trade-off is that it makes the story slower paced. You can't rush off after the orcs that attacked the town, you have to wait a week to heal before following. Probably more realistic, but does dampen that heroes feeling a tad.

Though I would keep in mind that it also affects far more than just healing, as plenty of other abilities (e.g., spells, rage, lay on hands, etc.) key off of long rests. Especially since that variant rule skews the balance between short rests and long rests, since with the "normal" rules you are likely to have 1-2 short rests per long rest, whereas the "gritty realism" variant would make it 7+ short rests per long rest. I personally don't think that section of the DMG is particularly well thought out, for that reason.

And if you change just the healing rules to be slower, then you end up like old editions of the game where magical healing is basically mandatory for a party. Personally, I think it's a suspension of belief that makes the game more fun (that you can heal overnight), but you (OP) can certainly experiment with slowing down healing.

Perhaps only allow hit points to be recovered by expending hit dice (a la the short rest mechanic), but leave everything else about how long and short rests work the same? I still think you are going to run into days where you players just go "ok, we sleep, recover spells, cast them all to heal, now we sleep again to recover spells", so it may prove just to be an artificial in-game time sink that has little actual improvement to play.

[Safety Sword]

Making a long rest take a week certainly does give that slower healing to allow a more meat-based game. The trade-off is that it makes the story slower paced. You can't rush off after the orcs that attacked the town, you have to wait a week to heal before following. Probably more realistic, but does dampen that heroes feeling a tad.

This would be fine, except that if you're running HotDQ the timing is pretty much set out for you. If after the spoilered section in the OP you were to take a one week rest the entire 3rd Act would be missed and you'd be behind the 8-ball on trying to make timing for the 4th!

[CrusaderJoe]

The best feeling in the world after a hard soccer game is taking a hot bath, grabbing some good food, a beer and passing out for the night. You're still a bit sore the next day, but unless you broke a rib (say a low hp wound) you're pretty much good to go the next day assuming you're a decent athlete. Plus, these guys are heroes!

People need to start remembering this and start thinking of D&D in more of a movie than a videogame or real life.

Take Die Hard (any) for example. The crap Bruce Willis goes through would leave people battered, broken, concussed, and dead... But he just walks away. One night's sleep and he's good to go again.

People accept this but people playing D&D can't accept it?

Anyways...

Keep the HP system the same and use injuries and system shock if you want a gritier game. Less HP doesn't make it a good grity system. I'm not sure if injury/system shock will work, but limiting healing doesn't work.

[Shining Wrath]

There's also the critical existence failure paradigm to consider.

Barbarian with 100 HP takes 10 blows for 10 HP and one for 9, he fights as well as he ever did. And then he stubs his toe, takes 1 HP of damage, and he's down, unconscious, making death saving throws.

I submit that's more "magical" than recovering full HP with a good night's sleep.

If it breaks immersion at your table, use a DMG variant.

[Person_Man]

Honestly, this has pretty much always been the case with D&D once you get beyond low levels. And the alternatives aren't that much better.

Do you prefer that players use healing spells? If so, great. But now a player is basically required to play a Cleric, Druid, or Bard, and players will have a strong incentive to take two days to heal instead of one. First day to get your spells back so that you can heal everyone, second day to get your spells back so you can actually go and adventure. (This is basically how it worked in 1st and 2nd edition).

Does drinking a potions or using wands to make you feel better more immersive for you? If so, great. But now you need to hand out a constant stream of potions and wands or treasure and a place to buy them, plus players now have an additional form of mandatory book keeping in order to keep track of them. (This is basically the way it worked in 3rd edition).

Do you want a condition track or wound point system of some kind. If so, great. But now players are strongly incentivized to avoid any damage (ie, sniping, kiting, summons, avoiding combat altogether, etc), you now have a new metagame introduced into the system related to the condition track or wounds, players have an additional set of annoying penalties to track during combat, and combat itself can become very un-fun for any player once they're wounded. (This is how it worked in Star Wars Saga Edition).

Do you want to just require Extended Rests (maybe several days or weeks) instead of Long Rests to heal hit points? If so, great. But as described above, if there are players with magical healing, you're really just extending it out to 2 days instead of one night. And if there aren't players with magical healing, any time a player gets below a certain hit point threshold, adventuring (ie, the plot) basically ends for days or weeks while characters recover. So you fight 1-5ish combats, go back to town to rest for X days, go back and fight 1-5 combats, go back to town and rest, rinse an repeat. (This is usually how it works in various survival/horror games, and they generally make it very difficult to rest and regain your hit points anywhere, because that's the point).

So if you prefer some other method, then go with it, but just be ready for the consequences.

[Seerow]

What about a slightly different take on a wound system? I agree with Person Man that the standard death spiral mechanics where having more wounds translates to penalties to hit/ac/whatever else are undesirable... but what about something like this?

1) When you take a critical hit or are dropped below 0 hp, you take a wound. (These are the hits where you describe a seriously damaging attack that will last a while)

2) For every wound you take, your maximum HP is reduced by X. (I'd go with something like 1/2HD round up or something like that. A noticeable but small amount).

3) Wounds recover naturally at a rate of 1 per X days (adjust to taste for desired natural recovery times)

4) A Cure Wounds spell removes 1 wound per spell level.



So basically having a wound is like having some level appropriate hp damage that takes longer to heal naturally. Not enough to seriously cripple a character unless you get a bunch of them, but enough to be noticable, and after acquiring 3-4 of them start to be worried (especially for lower base hp characters).

[MaxWilson]

Ultimately, I know I can houserule whatever I want, and we can justify it in our minds that HP=/=Blood or Wound Points or Fatigue or something.
But really I just want to know how does this community feel about auto-full-heal-overnight? Does it suit most of your gaming styles? Have you house-ruled something different? What are your thoughts on this?

I've incorporated it into the physics of my game world. Not only the PCs, but everyone, knows that most non-fatal injuries heal over the course of a day. If they heard about real-world broken legs that take months to heal, they'd be shocked. Lampshaded here (http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2014/12/adventure-journal-from-chapter-2.html).


The goblins were taken completely by surprise. Eladriel hammered two of them into unconsciousness with staff and elbow, then winded the third with a brutal kick to the solar plexus. Crossbow bolts thudded into wood and sod, none striking flesh. A wolf somewhere howled and fled. The remaining goblin pulled out a sword and, laughing savagely, drove it past El's guard and into her lower kidney. A wolf leaped at El's throat and came away with a mouthful of blood--she had ducked, but not enough, although she did keep her feet. Then her quarterstaff thunked into the goblin's temple, and her elbow hammered the wolf to the ground just as Vlad's quarrel took it in the ribs.

Then all was still.

El sagged in exhaustion, feeling her wounds. A moment later, Jack and Vlad appeared out of the forest growth. "Can you take care of these?" she asked, gesturing to the goblinoids. "Also, I think we should stop for lunch."

Emphasis added. Some of this is bravado (she's a tough kid), but it's also true: a blow to the kidney hurts a lot in D&D but also quickly heals in a matter of hours, and that's just how everyone knows it is.

They also know that it's nearly impossible to sever body parts without killing the creature first. If they heard about real-world injuries that can cut off your hand or your foot while you are still alive they would be squicked.

Thus the "common knowledge" of the game world corresponds to the actual physics of the game world. I don't love the result but at least it's consistent, and it stays out of the players' way. House-ruling realistic injuries would benefit nobody except my own sense of aesthetics.

[Laserlight]

Perhaps "2/3 of your HP is HP, and 1/3 is meat", or something like that?

If you're at full 15 health, for example, and take 3 damage, either a) it comes off the top, and you're using up your luck rather than taking wounds, but when you're down to 5hp it's all going to start hurting, or b) you take 2 points of easy-healing HP damage and 1 point of "this'll take a week to heal".

[Malifice]

I use the rule that players recover no HP on a long rest, and instead only recover half HD (which can then be spent as normal). Also; betting reduced to 0 hit points causes a level of exhaustion upon waking.

I also use the lingering injuries table in the DMG, however with the following trigger:

'If you are ever reduced to 0 HP and not killed outright, you may instead choose to remain on 1 hit point, however you must roll on the lingering injuries chart and accept the result. You may only use this option once per short rest.'

I'm considering allowing players to use the above rule to instead mitigate a critical hit (making it a normal hit) once per short rest also.

Gives me lingering injuries and wound effects, but makes them an entirely player 'opt in' - and lets me use the rules to simulate critical hits in such a way as to not disadvantage the players.

It works a treat.

[Theodoxus]

I've incorporated it into the physics of my game world. Not only the PCs, but everyone, knows that most non-fatal injuries heal over the course of a day. If they heard about real-world broken legs that take months to heal, they'd be shocked. Lampshaded here (http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2014/12/adventure-journal-from-chapter-2.html).



Emphasis added. Some of this is bravado (she's a tough kid), but it's also true: a blow to the kidney hurts a lot in D&D but also quickly heals in a matter of hours, and that's just how everyone knows it is.

They also know that it's nearly impossible to sever body parts without killing the creature first. If they heard about real-world injuries that can cut off your hand or your foot while you are still alive they would be squicked.

Thus the "common knowledge" of the game world corresponds to the actual physics of the game world. I don't love the result but at least it's consistent, and it stays out of the players' way. House-ruling realistic injuries would benefit nobody except my own sense of aesthetics.

Yup. this. Just like in World of Warcraft, you auto resurrect and no one bats an eye (though NPCs die off with remarkable regularity and no one is around with a quick res?) In D&D magicland, you're alive until you're dead. There is no pain; no injury, just alive and kicking, and then you're unconscious and eventually dead.

Why people insist on normative realistics in a game is beyond me. Do you roll for injuries when playing Chutes and Ladders? Do you cringe when your checker is Kinged? Do you RP your Chess battles? Do you fight to be the Car in Monopoly because you can run over the Hat and take it out of the game?

If I wanted to roleplay a realistic fighting game with injuries and ablative blood loss - I'd play something else. I like D&D for the simplistic rules. Healing overnight to alleviate the two day Heal cycle is a feature, not a bug.

[jkat718]

If you have the DMG, then a combination of the Injuries and Massive Damage variants (pp. 272 and 273, respectively) could work for you. Alter Injuries to have a level of exhaustion added, rather than the listed effects. Then, when Massive Damage would occur, roll on the Injuries table. Allow healing only on a Long rest, but remove the exhaustion level after a short rest.

[Doug Lampert]

Yup. this. Just like in World of Warcraft, you auto resurrect and no one bats an eye (though NPCs die off with remarkable regularity and no one is around with a quick res?) In D&D magicland, you're alive until you're dead. There is no pain; no injury, just alive and kicking, and then you're unconscious and eventually dead.

Why people insist on normative realistics in a game is beyond me. Do you roll for injuries when playing Chutes and Ladders? Do you cringe when your checker is Kinged? Do you RP your Chess battles? Do you fight to be the Car in Monopoly because you can run over the Hat and take it out of the game?

If I wanted to roleplay a realistic fighting game with injuries and ablative blood loss - I'd play something else. I like D&D for the simplistic rules. Healing overnight to alleviate the two day Heal cycle is a feature, not a bug.

An important added point is that the FBI and military have done various studies of wound effects.

It looks like: "You're more or less fine till you fall over" is MORE REALISTIC than various penalty systems. Adrenaline is a thing and most people with most wounds suffer relatively little impairment till they go into shock.

Long term wounds (and long term fatigue) are both things in the real world, but in D&D land they simply force a bit more emphasis on healing (aka the two day cycle mentioned above).

So HP work for realism except in the lack of long term effects, and HP with instant recovery works more or less the game world is LIKELY to work in actual game play given fairly rapid and effective healing magic.

I don't like overnight recovery, but that's largely because of the pacing effects, if I were currently DMing 5th edition I'd simply go with a longer time needed for a long rest and leave HP recovery as is.

HP are far from the least realistic thing in D&D land and they're quite useful as a game mechanism.

[RedMage125]

A cure spell could be curing the fatigue, aches, and body bruises. It could be salving the stresses and despair from your mind. It could even be giving you the god's blessing to boost your luck. If ihp is always at least part meat, then vicious mockery actually causes bleeding wounds to open up?

This. So much. Thank you.

Hit Points are not only energy/fatigue but also morale. This is what allowed Warlord healing in 4e to work.

Hit Points =/= meat, and have not, for any edition of D&D of which I am familiar. In 3.x, they did not equal meat, you can check your 3.5e PHB, page 145, under "Injury and Death". I seem to recall something that another poster copy/pasted from an earlier edition, too (perhaps 1e AD&D?) that said that hit points were an abstraction and not actual wounds, either, but I am AFB, and do not remember where it came from atm.

I do think the "wound" system Seerow suggested would do a lot to "fix" this issue, from a narra6tive perspective. I like it a lot as a theory, but there's one major issue:

This is a game.

Do we need absolute simulationism? 2e had some very in-depth rules, especially optional rules, that added a great deal of realism. For example, Chain Mail, which gave an AC of 5, was 2 points of AC WORSE against bludgeoning weapons, and 2 points better against slashing weapons. This to reflect of the flexible nature of chainmail would protect much less from a warhammer than from a sword. Was this more realistic? Certainly. Is it bogging down the game with unnecessary additional rules? Also yes. Same with the wound thing Seerow suggested. While I love the theory of it (I really do), it introduces a new level of bookkeeping that is entirely unnecessary.

At some point, we need to accept that some of the mechanics in the game are streamlined to make gameplay flow better. Sometimes, it's just better to have rules that make the game fun to play and can function quickly to allow the session to keep moving. Discussions like this can be fun exercises out of game (God knows I enjoy them, else I would not be on the forums at all half the time). But for those of us behind the DM Screen, part of our job is to keep the game moving and fun for our players. Additional rules may satisfy our sense of "narrative realism", but do they make the game more fun for our players?

Before you go about incorporating a houserule that directly affects the amount of bookkeeping your players (and you, yourself) will have to do, make sure you bring up the idea to your players beforehand and see how everyone feels about it. If you have anal-retentive, detail-oriented players that would love the idea of incorporating this kind of system, accepting the job of the extra bookkeeping, then more power to you. I think I'd like it (but I'm kind of anal-retentive and detail-oriented myself), but I can immediately think of 9 D&D players I have played with over the years that I am absolutely sure would hate it.

Hit Points are meant to be an abstraction. This has been true of the D&D game for AT LEAST 15 of the game's 40 year history that I can confirm. In my opinion, it's better to accept this and move on, rather than worry about niggling details that make other rules and mechanics less fun*. At some point, we, as DMs need to decide which is more important, the absolute consistency of rules to our sense of realism, or the fun of the people playing at our table?

*Lycanthropy, for example. If your skin was not actually pierced by a werewolf's bite attack, how did it transmit the curse to you? There are other examples, to be sure, but that's the one that springs to mind because my players recently ran into a werewolf.

[Tvtyrant]

My group deals with it the following way:

On a crit roll on the permanent injuries chart but it only lasts until the end of the next long rest (so a limb coming off is instead cut to the bone).

On a down you go down 2 ranks on the exhaustion chart.

On a crit which drops someone below 0 it leaves an actual permanent injury.

[Knaight]

People need to start remembering this and start thinking of D&D in more of a movie than a videogame or real life.

Take Die Hard (any) for example. The crap Bruce Willis goes through would leave people battered, broken, concussed, and dead... But he just walks away. One night's sleep and he's good to go again.

People accept this but people playing D&D can't accept it?

If D&D were trying to be an action movie simulator, which it isn't, this sort of thing would be fine. Action movie simulators can have lots of things that otherwise seem out of place, and I've seen some be so blatant about it it wrapped around to endearing (Fudge Firefight, an unofficial variant combat system, had a knack which explicitly let a character jump through a plate glass window, draw fire from everyone in the room, and not get hit once. It's glorious). It pulls just as much from literature and similar though, and old wounds that still cause problems are a well established trope. More recent wounds that impede fights only a little later (a few days, maybe a few weeks) are even more established. Then there's the matter of poisons.

[Tenmujiin]

The system I use when DMing was the result of my misreading the rules and deciding I prefered the result over the standard rules. When I read the PHB I missed the line about fully healing on a long rest and so only ever gave my players 1/2 their HD back with them automatically using any that would be wasted. The result is that a long rest is still a good way to get back large amounts of hp thanks to the 1/2 HD and spell refresh but wounds can still last beyond a night's rest.

[kaoskonfety]

Tossing this around in my head I'm seeing the issue from the stance:

- in the past (1st to 3rd ed, never really tucked into 4th) there would be a dedicated or solid back up healer of some description in most parties
- before a "long rest" you blow most to all of your spell slots patching up the PC's and tuck into a good nights rest
- Party is totally healed in the same interval but magic did it so no one questions it

The new recovery rules eliminate the magic bit so the players are back to questioning it?

quick options:
- Go back to an older or pick a slower system for HP recovery in general and some sort of wounds system - if they want the realism power to them, there are alot of choices
- declare it IS magic (fluff wise) - some healing ritual that takes 10+ min to cast and requires the target to take a long rest for the effects (regeneration to full HP's) to take effect, for ease/ access allow any caster to have it (including ritual caster, magic initiate and sure the healer, feats) or its something adventurers just learn from the guild/old mentors/ what have you

[Balor777]

Make all healing spells be also casted at rituals(duration needed in minutes: 5+spell slot used) healing for double or triple hp the normal spell does.
But still burning the spell slot.It works VERY nice and because it still burns the spell it creates some very nice strategy evovling the healer(Will he make it through this fight?I have only one Cure wounds left..Should i do it now or later so that it will be more effective?)
You see this way Magic is our ticket to realism!
Its strange isnt it?

EDIT:



- declare it IS magic (fluff wise) - some healing ritual that takes 10+ min to cast and requires the target to take a long rest for the effects (regeneration to full HP's) to take effect, for ease/ access allow any caster to have it (including ritual caster, magic initiate and sure the healer, feats) or its something adventurers just learn from the guild/old mentors/ what have you

We had almost the same idea haha!I just red your post.
I must assure you it works very nice.

[Argothair]

What if instead of short rests v. long rests, you use nervous rests v. safe rests? If you are camping out in the middle of a dungeon, there's a limit to how 'restful' the experience can really be -- you might be able to bandage some wounds or consult your spellbook, but you're not going to feel truly rested no matter how many hours you spend snoozing on an oozy stone floor with cockroaches and rats skittering over your legs. On the other hand, even just a couple of hours back in civilization can give you a chance to take a bath, eat a hot meal, take a nap on a real bed, get some professional medical attention, and consult an expert about the new spells you want to prepare.

That way the DM doesn't have to hijack the pace of the campaign to fit an artificial 1 hour / 8 hour bracket for short and long rests -- you can take a 'short rest' basically anytime you're out of immediate danger, but to take a long rest you need to return to a friendly town or other haven. You won't be tempted to spend a whole day resting to recover your healing spells and another day resting to recover combat spells, because if you make it back to town you can get your HP and your spells back as quickly as the plot requires, but if you don't make it back to town then you're not going to get more than a modest resource boost no matter how long you hang around in the swamp with your deck of cards and light reading material.

[Balor777]

No matter how different HP is? from flesh, cure wounds is called "wounds" for a reason
A bruse is a bruse a brokne bone is a broken bone, a stone thrown at your barbarrian by a stone Giant that deals 30% of his max hp as damage
IS flesh.I will allways vote against this morale idea.
If morale is part of what we call HP, why intimidate doeasnt cause damage?
Why fear doesnt cause damage too?
The only source of this dmage is psychic damage from 2-3 spells on the entire game.
Why dont you suffer damage when you are the only guy left alive from the party fighting this Demon?

As i said many times there is physical shock condition that make people die from things he could
handle if these "effects/damage" were not all at the same time.

Imo all the problems like this can be solved with a simple rule i used at 5e.
Divide the casting way of healing spells:
1)Battle healing
2)Non-battle healing
-Battle healing works as described at the PH spell chapter.
-Non battle healing is a much more accurate/pitched magic healing procedure that is much more efficient resulting at 2 or 3 times the healing the normal
spell does.Duration must be high.I used 2 minutes +1 minute per spell level used.It SHOULD tho still burn the slot.
Its works very smoothly.

[7heprofessor]

Warning: long post inc.


There is a variant rule for long and short rests in the DMG p. 267 that suggest a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is a week (7 days). I don't use this, but I have been using a table to determine persistent injuries that happen when a pc goes down. That way a pc can pop right up, but their knee just ant right for a little while, they have a nice new scar, a crippled limb, ... you get the idea.

Thanks to you and others for pointing this option out. I do feel that a week (which is 7 days in Greyhawk, but 10 days Faerun) would be too long. I don’t like inst-full-heal, but I don’t want to grind the game to a halt.


Making a long rest take a week certainly does give that slower healing to allow a more meat-based game. The trade-off is that it makes the story slower paced. You can't rush off after the orcs that attacked the town, you have to wait a week to heal before following. Probably more realistic, but does dampen that heroes feeling a tad.
Agreed. My Players like a faster-paced game that moves from one scene to the next, but they also enjoy consequences for both poor choices and bad luck. With the current Long Rest rules, I don’t feel like they have a healthy respect for death, and that is something that breeds attachment to a character, which then leads to a richer role-playing experience.

I was probably having BadWrongFun™, but in 3.P my groups always houseruled that a full night's rest healed you to full anyway, so I'm glad that's the default rule in 5e. That being said, I fully intend to have lasting effects if something notable happens in a fight--getting critted isn't something I want my players to just shrug off--so I'm also glad to see the table of lasting effects and serious wounds in the DMG.

I don’t think you can ever really have BadWrongFun in D&D…that said, why do you feel lasting effects are important? Why is a crit something your PC shouldn’t just shrug off?
Note that I agree, I’m just interested in knowing what you base this perspective off of.


The best feeling in the world after a hard soccer game is taking a hot bath, grabbing some good food, a beer and passing out for the night. You're still a bit sore the next day, but unless you broke a rib (say a low hp wound) you're pretty much good to go the next day assuming you're a decent athlete. Plus, these guys are heroes!

I’m not going to go into all of the details about just how different from soccer fighting people really is, but suffice to say I’ve been in my fair share, and when you get the $417 kicked out of you, you are most certainly NOT fine the next day. My side hurt from for at least three days after a bout I decidedly lost, making running and other (*ahem*) rigorous movement basically impossible.
Now, I do agree that the PCs are heroes, and can withstand much more punishment than I can, but that doesn’t make them immortal or incapable of feeling pain and suffering.


And if you change just the healing rules to be slower, then you end up like old editions of the game where magical healing is basically mandatory for a party. Personally, I think it's a suspension of belief that makes the game more fun (that you can heal overnight), but you (OP) can certainly experiment with slowing down healing.

I’ve played every edition of D&D save the original, and at no point was anyone mandated to be Mr. Healbot. It was nice to have in a dungeon (almost essential in some of Gygax’s penned modules), but outside of that it was far from necessary. Now, the system essentially invalidates the Healer role outside of combat.


This would be fine, except that if you're running HotDQ the timing is pretty much set out for you. If after the spoilered section in the OP you were to take a one week rest the entire 3rd Act would be missed and you'd be behind the 8-ball on trying to make timing for the 4th!

The adventure was actually written with a few clauses that speak to the timing that help this situation. Luckily, I’m also a slightly talented improviser, and can simply slow down the BBEG’s trek to WherevertheHell, and allow the time spent resting to be used for character-building.


People need to start remembering this and start thinking of D&D in more of a movie than a videogame or real life.
Take Die Hard (any) for example. The crap Bruce Willis goes through would leave people battered, broken, concussed, and dead... But he just walks away. One night's sleep and he's good to go again. People accept this but people playing D&D can't accept it? Anyways...
Keep the HP system the same and use injuries and system shock if you want a gritier game. Less HP doesn't make it a good grity system. I'm not sure if injury/system shock will work, but limiting healing doesn't work.

I think of D&D more like a novel than I do a movie. Standalone movies have little-to-no character development, and are usually too straightforward to accommodate the collective storytelling nature of D&D. I agree that the PCs should be the heroes of the story, and should definitely be able to handle supernatural amounts of punishment, but heroes in stories are very often grievously wounded, and these wounds often return to haunt the hero at the most inopportune time. Severe wounds can serve as a plot device, motivation for the party to do a certain quest, or character development opportunities.



Do you prefer that players use healing spells? If so, great. But now a player is basically required to play a Cleric, Druid, or Bard, and players will have a strong incentive to take two days to heal instead of one. First day to get your spells back so that you can heal everyone, second day to get your spells back so you can actually go and adventure. (This is basically how it worked in 1st and 2nd edition).
Does drinking a potions or using wands to make you feel better more immersive for you? If so, great. But now you need to hand out a constant stream of potions and wands or treasure and a place to buy them, plus players now have an additional form of mandatory book keeping in order to keep track of them. (This is basically the way it worked in 3rd edition).
Do you want a condition track or wound point system of some kind. If so, great. But now players are strongly incentivized to avoid any damage (ie, sniping, kiting, summons, avoiding combat altogether, etc), you now have a new metagame introduced into the system related to the condition track or wounds, players have an additional set of annoying penalties to track during combat, and combat itself can become very un-fun for any player once they're wounded. (This is how it worked in Star Wars Saga Edition).
Do you want to just require Extended Rests (maybe several days or weeks) instead of Long Rests to heal hit points? If so, great. But as described above, if there are players with magical healing, you're really just extending it out to 2 days instead of one night. And if there aren't players with magical healing, any time a player gets below a certain hit point threshold, adventuring (ie, the plot) basically ends for days or weeks while characters recover. So you fight 1-5ish combats, go back to town to rest for X days, go back and fight 1-5 combats, go back to town and rest, rinse an repeat. (This is usually how it works in various survival/horror games, and they generally make it very difficult to rest and regain your hit points anywhere, because that's the point).
So if you prefer some other method, then go with it, but just be ready for the consequences.

You have many excellent points in this post, and I appreciate you taking the time to share your insights on it. I hadn’t considered some of the consequences you highlighted, most metagame introduced by incorporating a Wound Point system of some kind.
You’ve given me a lot to think about with these points, but I’m still interested in hearing how your group handles it. Have you ever been a DM? If so, how did you feel the pacing of the current system translated into gameplay?


What about a slightly different take on a wound system? I agree with Person Man that the standard death spiral mechanics where having more wounds translates to penalties to hit/ac/whatever else are undesirable... but what about something like this?
1) When you take a critical hit or are dropped below 0 hp, you take a wound. (These are the hits where you describe a seriously damaging attack that will last a while)
2) For every wound you take, your maximum HP is reduced by X. (I'd go with something like 1/2HD round up or something like that. A noticeable but small amount).
3) Wounds recover naturally at a rate of 1 per X days (adjust to taste for desired natural recovery times)
4) A Cure Wounds spell removes 1 wound per spell level.
So basically having a wound is like having some level appropriate hp damage that takes longer to heal naturally. Not enough to seriously cripple a character unless you get a bunch of them, but enough to be noticable, and after acquiring 3-4 of them start to be worried (especially for lower base hp characters).

Systems like this exist, and they all have their quirks. Now, that’s not to say they’re bad, but it is introducing a new mechanic into a game that was not balanced around it. I would prefer to shy away from additional mechanics, and instead alter the existing ones. Having another modifier to track is not always interesting to Players and DMs alike.


I've incorporated it into the physics of my game world. Not only the PCs, but everyone, knows that most non-fatal injuries heal over the course of a day. If they heard about real-world broken legs that take months to heal, they'd be shocked. Lampshaded here.

This is what we've been doing up until now. Everyone in the world knows that Sleep Is Magic. Bob the NPC fell off his ladder trying to pick apples and broke his head open on a root. Bob crawls home and catches some Z’s knowing that he’ll be fine after a Long Rest.
It adds a new dynamic to the world to know that non-fatal wounds don’t have any lasting consequences. What this has led to is a large number of dare-devils and people trying ridiculous things that “normal people” wouldn't imagine trying; because normal people worry about breaking arms and losing eyes and whatnot.


I use the rule that players recover no HP on a long rest, and instead only recover half HD (which can then be spent as normal). Also; betting reduced to 0 hit points causes a level of exhaustion upon waking.

How has this worked for you so far? Has anyone complained that they have to rest too many days before they can go on another adventure? Also, if I use Cure Wounds on my Fighter friend that got knocked out by the Ogre, and he wakes up mid-combat, does he still get a level of fatigue?


Why people insist on normative realistics in a game is beyond me. Do you roll for injuries when playing Chutes and Ladders? Do you cringe when your checker is Kinged? Do you RP your Chess battles? Do you fight to be the Car in Monopoly because you can run over the Hat and take it out of the game?
If I wanted to roleplay a realistic fighting game with injuries and ablative blood loss - I'd play something else. I like D&D for the simplistic rules. Healing overnight to alleviate the two day Heal cycle is a feature, not a bug.

D&D is all about immersive, collaborative storytelling. You play the role of a character, and sometimes bad things happen to that character. It is easier to portray a role if things happen to it that you can understand and relate to. When the goal of the game is to have fun playing a role, the more immersed in that role you can become, the more fun the game will be. We don’t roll for injuries in Chutes and Ladders because it isn't a Role-Playing Game. It’s a board game where the consequences are pre-determined and are reflected by positioning on the board. There is no need to incorporate anything else, because it doesn't serve a purpose in the game. D&D has HP, death, and resurrection for a reason: because they serve a purpose in telling a story. If that story never involved anyone getting really hurt, it would make the heroes’ success less impressive.


I don't like overnight recovery, but that's largely because of the pacing effects, if I were currently DMing 5th edition I'd simply go with a longer time needed for a long rest and leave HP recovery as is.

HP are far from the least realistic thing in D&D land and they're quite useful as a game mechanism.

HP are a very useful tool in D&D and are a resource that can effectively be spent like gold pieces and Actions. Giving too many HP to a PC in too short of a time leads to a false sense of bravado, and unrealistic expectations. Unfortunately, this has been built into the game, so it’s now the norm that people should be able to get up after being knocked the &^@# out and be just fine. I like a short HP-regen, but I can’t quite find the sweet spot yet.


…At some point, we need to accept that some of the mechanics in the game are streamlined to make gameplay flow better. Sometimes, it's just better to have rules that make the game fun to play and can function quickly to allow the session to keep moving. Discussions like this can be fun exercises out of game (God knows I enjoy them, else I would not be on the forums at all half the time). But for those of us behind the DM Screen, part of our job is to keep the game moving and fun for our players. Additional rules may satisfy our sense of "narrative realism", but do they make the game more fun for our players?

And at some point we have to be willing to accept that the Designers made a mistake, and erred too much on the side of Action-Hero Adventure Land and not enough on the Rags to Riches Commoner Hero trope. Ultimately, my goal to make the game more fun for my Players and me, and we’re having trouble swallowing the insta-heal pill. Granted, we’ve pushed through this awkward rule and modified the world to simply be a place where Sleep Is Magic.


The system I use when DMing was the result of my misreading the rules and deciding I prefered the result over the standard rules. When I read the PHB I missed the line about fully healing on a long rest and so only ever gave my players 1/2 their HD back with them automatically using any that would be wasted. The result is that a long rest is still a good way to get back large amounts of hp thanks to the 1/2 HD and spell refresh but wounds can still last beyond a night's rest.

How has this been working out for you? Do you think it slows the game down needlessly? Have your Players said anything?


If D&D were trying to be an action movie simulator, which it isn't, this sort of thing would be fine. Action movie simulators can have lots of things that otherwise seem out of place, and I've seen some be so blatant about it it wrapped around to endearing (Fudge Firefight, an unofficial variant combat system, had a knack which explicitly let a character jump through a plate glass window, draw fire from everyone in the room, and not get hit once. It's glorious). It pulls just as much from literature and similar though, and old wounds that still cause problems are a well established trope. More recent wounds that impede fights only a little later (a few days, maybe a few weeks) are even more established. Then there's the matter of poisons.

QFT

[RedMage125]

No matter how different HP is? from flesh, cure wounds is called "wounds" for a reason
A bruse is a bruse a brokne bone is a broken bone, a stone thrown at your barbarrian by a stone Giant that deals 30% of his max hp as damage
IS flesh.I will allways vote against this morale idea.
If morale is part of what we call HP, why intimidate doeasnt cause damage?
Why fear doesnt cause damage too?
The only source of this dmage is psychic damage from 2-3 spells on the entire game.
Why dont you suffer damage when you are the only guy left alive from the party fighting this Demon?
Using HP as meat means that by level 5, pretty much every adventurer's skiin is just a networking pattern of scars. Those that live to 20 probably don't have an inch of non-scarred skin.

And not everyone likes to imagine their character that way.

Now, on "HP as morale". I said morale was PART of it. In that inspirational/motivational catalysts can cause a surge of adrenaline that give one the ability to keep going despite exhaustion/injury.

If HP is strictly Meat with you, how do you explain the Inspiring Leader feat?


As i said many times there is physical shock condition that make people die from things he could
handle if these "effects/damage" were not all at the same time.
Death from System Shock is an optional rule in the DMG...


Imo all the problems like this can be solved with a simple rule i used at 5e.
Divide the casting way of healing spells:
1)Battle healing
2)Non-battle healing
-Battle healing works as described at the PH spell chapter.
-Non battle healing is a much more accurate/pitched magic healing procedure that is much more efficient resulting at 2 or 3 times the healing the normal
spell does.Duration must be high.I used 2 minutes +1 minute per spell level used.It SHOULD tho still burn the slot.
Its works very smoothly.
Now that's interesting, because the group I run seems to be low on healing ability. They seem to burn through potions, and the cleric's healing always seems to roll low, even out of combat. Oddly, encounters seem to be too easy most of the time, even ones that the XP budget says should be "hard". Then along comes a "medium" encounter, and their dice turn on them and we end up with 2 party members dropped to 0, and most of the others in single-digits.

I just may poach this idea.

[EvanescentHero]

I don’t think you can ever really have BadWrongFun in D&D…that said, why do you feel lasting effects are important? Why is a crit something your PC shouldn’t just shrug off?
Note that I agree, I’m just interested in knowing what you base this perspective off of.

A critical hit implies to me that you hit some vital part or landed a worse wound than normal. Basically, there's gotta be a reason the hit you landed is dealing extra damage, and I think that even though the characters we play are heroes--exemplary and exceptional denizens of the world--a hit that manages to do that extra damage should linger. I would probably apply this to a character that was dropped to 0 as well, although that depends where their HP was before the hit, and it would probably be a lesser effect.

[7heprofessor]

A critical hit implies to me that you hit some vital part or landed a worse wound than normal. Basically, there's gotta be a reason the hit you landed is dealing extra damage, and I think that even though the characters we play are heroes--exemplary and exceptional denizens of the world--a hit that manages to do that extra damage should linger. I would probably apply this to a character that was dropped to 0 as well, although that depends where their HP was before the hit, and it would probably be a lesser effect.

I'm definitely checking out the Lingering Wound variant in the DMG later.

But to your point, if HP =/= meat, then there is no real "extra damage" happening. The Crit is just sapping more fatigue/energy/motivation/inspiration...isn't it?

[Shining Wrath]

No matter how different HP is? from flesh, cure wounds is called "wounds" for a reason
A bruse is a bruse a brokne bone is a broken bone, a stone thrown at your barbarrian by a stone Giant that deals 30% of his max hp as damage
IS flesh.I will allways vote against this morale idea.
If morale is part of what we call HP, why intimidate doeasnt cause damage?
Why fear doesnt cause damage too?
The only source of this dmage is psychic damage from 2-3 spells on the entire game.
Why dont you suffer damage when you are the only guy left alive from the party fighting this Demon?

As i said many times there is physical shock condition that make people die from things he could
handle if these "effects/damage" were not all at the same time.

Imo all the problems like this can be solved with a simple rule i used at 5e.
Divide the casting way of healing spells:
1)Battle healing
2)Non-battle healing
-Battle healing works as described at the PH spell chapter.
-Non battle healing is a much more accurate/pitched magic healing procedure that is much more efficient resulting at 2 or 3 times the healing the normal
spell does.Duration must be high.I used 2 minutes +1 minute per spell level used.It SHOULD tho still burn the slot.
Its works very smoothly.

What HP are is not well-defined. What they are not, most clearly, is simple flesh. Otherwise the toughest mortal ever tops out in single digits for HP, considering immensely hard-to-kill real creatures like brown bears and crocodiles are typically in the teens.

Either limit your level 20 barbarian to 10 HP, or accept they aren't just flesh. And if they aren't just flesh, then stuff heals rapidly.

[EvanescentHero]

I'm definitely checking out the Lingering Wound variant in the DMG later.

But to your point, if HP =/= meat, then there is no real "extra damage" happening. The Crit is just sapping more fatigue/energy/motivation/inspiration...isn't it?

It's a basic but simple rule set, and one I'm surprised I could never find in 3.P. I'm glad they included it this time!

I would argue that a crit does do at least some "meat" damage, simply because as I mentioned, I see a critical hit as an attack that hits a critical area. It's why some creatures are or were immune to crits--they had no vital spots to strike. So to me, you can't have a crit without dealing real damage, and if you hit a vital area, it makes sense to me that no matter how tough you are, it's still going to be a problem.

[RedMage125]

And at some point we have to be willing to accept that the Designers made a mistake, and erred too much on the side of Action-Hero Adventure Land and not enough on the Rags to Riches Commoner Hero trope. Ultimately, my goal to make the game more fun for my Players and me, and we’re having trouble swallowing the insta-heal pill. Granted, we’ve pushed through this awkward rule and modified the world to simply be a place where Sleep Is Magic.

I believe I addressed this. IF your players are fine with the extra bookkeeping workload, then by all means, implement such a plan. My main point was that my advice from one DM to another is to discuss it with them first, because you don't want to implement new complications and houserules that make the game less fun for the people playing at your table. If they're down for it, then more power to you, let us know how it pans out.


It's a basic but simple rule set, and one I'm surprised I could never find in 3.P. I'm glad they included it this time!

I would argue that a crit does do at least some "meat" damage, simply because as I mentioned, I see a critical hit as an attack that hits a critical area. It's why some creatures are or were immune to crits--they had no vital spots to strike. So to me, you can't have a crit without dealing real damage, and if you hit a vital area, it makes sense to me that no matter how tough you are, it's still going to be a problem.
I do the same. Otherwise, the attack is not "critical" in the sense that it is more urgent or vital.


What HP are is not well-defined. What they are not, most clearly, is simple flesh. Otherwise the toughest mortal ever tops out in single digits for HP, considering immensely hard-to-kill real creatures like brown bears and crocodiles are typically in the teens.

Either limit your level 20 barbarian to 10 HP, or accept they aren't just flesh. And if they aren't just flesh, then stuff heals rapidly.

Reminds me of how the Star Wars RPG did it. With "vitality points" that work like HP, and "wound points" equal to ones CON score. After vitality is depleted, wounds start accruing, and crits deal some damage directly to wounds.

[Yoroichi]

My group plays with a variation of the wound points system.

Your total life points are your constitution score (wound points) + your Hit points. Only the wound points represent meat damage.

A critical hit does not get multiplied but is subtracted from the wound(constitution) score bypassing hit points. If you have suffered damage to your wounds, you get half speed, and disadvantage on everything. If you drop to 0 wound points you start with death saves.

This system can be very punishing with bounded accuracy, but it really is fun :D

[kaoskonfety]

What HP are is not well-defined. What they are not, most clearly, is simple flesh. Otherwise the toughest mortal ever tops out in single digits for HP, considering immensely hard-to-kill real creatures like brown bears and crocodiles are typically in the teens.

Either limit your level 20 barbarian to 10 HP, or accept they aren't just flesh. And if they aren't just flesh, then stuff heals rapidly.

With a knife and the will to use, as a relatively untrained person I can kill :
a typical man on the street? - likely yes, might be a bit of a fight - single digit hp, unarmed
A black bear? - maybe, if i'm quick and quite lucky - low double digit hp higher damage out put than me
A grizzly bear? - probably not - double digit hp, solid damage output
a high level karate master? - almost certainly not - unclear, dodge/parry "AC" and low double digit HP or high HP representing said parry/dodge?

When training for combat, you get tougher. You tence for punches that would hamburger your organs and instead bruise, you take the blow on your forearm rather than your chin, you learn how to take a fall, you break bones enough that breaking a small one is a serious inconvenience that slows you but you are still up fighting and not on the ground screaming. None of this heals over night, but you are still standing.
Can a knife kill you dead if its unexpected? Yes. Do we WANT to model this in our high fantasy... well if I feel the need there are a pile of systems that do, but since we are playing D&D I assume we don't?

The OP is attempting to reconcile "We are tough as nails heros that barely made it out alive" with "I"m fine in the morning". Whatever HP's are being able to take a hit feels to me like it NEEDS to be at least a solid part of it. At the very least that last hit point has to be "someone got you".

So are you nimbly bimbly or did you recently survive being impaled by a triceratops? We generally run a middle ground (Fluff wise), the first half of your HP as bruising, exhaustion cuts and scrapes, the second half is wounding, scarring, fractures. When you hit 0 someone tagged you solidly, with a battle axe. Go lie down. Why are you fine in the morning? Cause having the healer spend a days worth of spell slots healing your broken butt is kinda boring but totally possible and because the rules say you are fine. So I guess over the long rest the healer fixes you up... no healer um... crud?

Having a vague recollection of "you recover 1 HP per day of rest, 2 if attended by a trainer healer" from 1st ed. on a 50HP+ fighter was CRAP, but it made you *feel* you had taken hits that would slay a dozen stout men outright. After you fought the dragon everyone went back to the inn and took it easy and over the next couple days, the cleric got you back on your feet weaving miracles and the townsfolk would spread tales of your awesome.

The closest I recall seeing to "HP is not meat" done 'well' for DND-esque game was in the D20 Star Wars. HP was explicitly a fatigue value, your CON score was your "wounds". "Hits" in combat were explicitly near misses that tired you out, defections of your armor, ducking behind cover or whatnot. When you ran out of HP or were "critically hit" it went straight to "wounds" and you went down pretty dang fast. This was to deliberately showcase they type of dueling common in the movies and kept combat lethal and very random (you could 'pull the blow' on anything that killed the guy and say... chop off their hand... yes the whole thing was pretty fanboy-tastic) - you didn't just make fights happen at a whim, some strong goon with a knife might stab you dead, heavy blasters stayed a threat all the way up, who cares what level you are. HP recovered fast and there was a small pile of ways to do it, wounds healed slow, generally required medical attention and getting dropped to zero was bad news and likely short term coma country. It had its merits.

[Morty]

If any of the designers had ever put as much effort into writing D&D's hit point system as people put now trying to make some sense of it, it would be a shining example of stellar design.

[kaoskonfety]

If any of the designers had ever put as much effort into writing D&D's hit point system as people put now trying to make some sense of it, it would be a shining example of stellar design.

I assume they did have some of these conversations - but at the end of the day they don't have room in a rule book to explain the full rationale(s) of the system if it does not affect said system, so most of it was left on the cutting room floor.

It's D&D, you have hit points, when they run out you fall down, you heal them via X and Y and sometimes Z. They really couldn't drop the HP mechanic, its pretty ingrained.

They made quite a bit of room for 'fluff' and story in the book. I'm not expecting them to dig into all of the possible discussions we could have on all for the possible topics their rules generate over a few hundred pages.

Thats our job over tens of thousands of pages!

[Alcino]

Maybe you'd like this.


Vitality and Wounds system for 5E

Instead of HP, player characters have vitality and wounds.

Vitality is a measure of combativity, luck, awareness, etc. Each level including 1st, gain half max hit die (so 3 to 6) plus Con mod. Running out of Vitality has no direct consequence.

Wounds count the amount of bodily damage you have sustained; every time you take Wound damage, write down the damage separately (for reasons explained later). When your total Wounds reach your Con score, refer to the usual 0-HP dying rules.

Option: for Vit, instead gain max hit die value at odd levels and Con mod at even levels (reduces high-level Vitality and dependency on Con).
Option: add proficiency bonus to Wound limit, so that it grows slightly with levels.
Note: characters start with about 8 more "total HP", but end up with about 12 less at max level.

Damage

When taking damage, use up your Vitality first, as you would HP. When you're out of Vitality, all extra damage goes to your Wounds.

However, there is a "massive damage" rule: you have a Vitality Threshold equal to your max hit die + your level. Any time you take damage higher than that threshold from a single non-magical source, any damage over your Vitality threshold goes directly to your Wounds. Obviously, the effect is negligible at low level, and I'm not entirely sold on the exact mechanics.

When Wound damage is taken, it can have additional effects if the damage obviously impairs bodily function. Most attacks do not cause additional effects, but fall damage, for example, can cripple movement until that particular Wound is healed.

Note: Critical Hits function normally, they do NOT bypass Vitality. (This is very important for balance.)

Healing

It would be pretty hard to cover everything, so here's the gist of it:
- "Non-magical" healing, mainly Hit Dice, can only refill Vitality.
- "Magical" healing, mainly that granted by spells, can compensate for Wounds; excess healing goes to Vitality.

Option: A "magical healer" trained in Medecine adds his proficiency bonus to all dice-based healing he gives.
Note: Temporary HP is unaffected by the Vitality/Wound changes, but it can be renamed "temporary Vitality".

Enemies and NPCs

Whenever interesting, other characters and monsters can have their HP split into Vitality and Wounds, keeping the same "total HP". As a rule of thumb, the Wounds part would be Con score + number of hit dice, but only if it's not higher than normal HP; low-HP creatures thus never have Vitality.

[Garimeth]

What about a slightly different take on a wound system? I agree with Person Man that the standard death spiral mechanics where having more wounds translates to penalties to hit/ac/whatever else are undesirable... but what about something like this?

1) When you take a critical hit or are dropped below 0 hp, you take a wound. (These are the hits where you describe a seriously damaging attack that will last a while)

2) For every wound you take, your maximum HP is reduced by X. (I'd go with something like 1/2HD round up or something like that. A noticeable but small amount).

3) Wounds recover naturally at a rate of 1 per X days (adjust to taste for desired natural recovery times)

4) A Cure Wounds spell removes 1 wound per spell level.



So basically having a wound is like having some level appropriate hp damage that takes longer to heal naturally. Not enough to seriously cripple a character unless you get a bunch of them, but enough to be noticable, and after acquiring 3-4 of them start to be worried (especially for lower base hp characters).

See we do something like this for our 13th Age campaign (which is a d20 variant) I think it would work well in 5e too. my wounds list would look like this:

-2 to a stat
-1 AC and/or saves
Max HP Reduction

I'd let the Player choose their wound as they feel is appropriate for their injury. (I got hit in the head with a mace, I have -2 wisdom ), and I'd make the wound last a few days.

Also, I want to second the toning up the "superficial" damage. Watch an MMA fight or a boxing match, there are alot of hits that land and are just not effectual. In my combats you haven't drawn blood til they are below have HP unless you get a crit, and I didn't even play 4e.

You gotta do what works for your table, but I've found this works for mine.

[This be Richard]

A somewhat simplified -- but less thorough -- version of the Vitality/Wounds system might go like this:

Total Points
All Hit Points at first level become Wound Points. You never get more WP except by increasing your Constitution modifier.
All HP from levels after the first become Vitality Points.
This way, the amount of effective HP the players have never goes above or below what they'd have normally.

Damage

All damage is applied to Vitality Points first, then Wound Points when all Vitality Points are gone.
Running out of Vitality Points has no immediate effect aside from rendering your Wound Points vulnerable.
Running out of Wound Points has the same effect as running out of HP normally would.
For simplicity, there is no way to cause Wound Point damage while Vitality Points remain.

Healing
Wound Points can be recovered with magical healing (Potions, Spells, Lay On Hands, etc).
In the absence of magical healing, Wound Points recover at a rate of 1 per long rest or 2 per long rest with a successful Medicine check.
Wound Points are not restored by long rests or the expenditure of Hit Dice.
Vitality Points can be recovered in all of the ways HP is normally restored.
Vitality Points may only be recovered by a character with full Wound Points.
Temporary Hit Points function as normal.



It's not perfect.
Having a larger share of your effective HP be Wound Points is a disadvantage that tankier characters might take issue with, for instance.
It still allows for the two-long-rest recovery you get with healers resting, spamming spells, then resting again to get their slots back before adventuring.

But. Since you only need enough magical healing to patch up the Wound Points before you can sleep your way back to full health, there's a much better chance that you can get your party back up and ready to adventure again with just one long rest without making the sleep itself do anything magical... while still leaving some meat in the game to take damage before the character suddenly drops at 0 HP.


I suppose an even simpler way to get a similar effect would be to just say "sleeping and hit dice can't heal your last ten HP."

[Seerow]

See we do something like this for our 13th Age campaign (which is a d20 variant) I think it would work well in 5e too. my wounds list would look like this:

-2 to a stat
-1 AC and/or saves
Max HP Reduction

I'd let the Player choose their wound as they feel is appropriate for their injury. (I got hit in the head with a mace, I have -2 wisdom ), and I'd make the wound last a few days.

Also, I want to second the toning up the "superficial" damage. Watch an MMA fight or a boxing match, there are alot of hits that land and are just not effectual. In my combats you haven't drawn blood til they are below have HP unless you get a crit, and I didn't even play 4e.

You gotta do what works for your table, but I've found this works for mine.

I was going to complain that AC/Stat penalties are way too harsh, but as long as you're letting the player choose which penalty they take, then whatever. If the player is willing to take a harsher penalty on themselves to fit the RP, more power to them.

As a general rule though I would stick with just max hp reduction, because having mechanics like reduction to hit/damage or AC/Saves quickly brings players to the point where they actually can't contribute without getting healed to full. The reason I liked the slight reduction to max hp is because it is something that is noticeable, but not debilitating until you have accumulated a lot of wounds.

[Theodoxus]

On top of that, max HP redux is a lot easier to track than making ad hoc in combat reductions on the fly to attributes (and less so AC, but it's still annoying... "Does a 19 hit you?" "Uh... no... oh wait, yeah, I took a crit earlier") A personal pet peeve of mine is players retconning their own replies because they forgot a critical (no pun intended) calculation.

I like Wounds/Vitality, in nearly every incarnation. My players though find it confusing (I've used some pretty convoluted systems in the past) - so they typically nix it.

My only real complaint is sometimes a sword hit is going to shave off some meat... I like that Massive Damage ruling; better than crits always hitting Wounds, as that's too lethal. This still allows crits to be crits - sometimes you roll two 1's... nice Vit strike. Sometimes you knock it out of the park with double box cars - here comes some Wound damage, bub!

[RedMage125]

My only real complaint is sometimes a sword hit is going to shave off some meat... I like that Massive Damage ruling; better than crits always hitting Wounds, as that's too lethal. This still allows crits to be crits - sometimes you roll two 1's... nice Vit strike. Sometimes you knock it out of the park with double box cars - here comes some Wound damage, bub!

I think the 2 1's example perfectly highlights why having crits be actual "meat strikes" works. You get hit with a crit from a longsword and he rolls 2 1's. That's still gonna add up to about 5 damage. From a narrative perspective, you are now bleeding from what is probably a very shallow cut. The difference between that and a "regular hit" that did 10 damage is the fluff we've been discussing. The crit actually involved the blade contacting your skin, the regular hit did not.

[Theodoxus]

I think the 2 1's example perfectly highlights why having crits be actual "meat strikes" works. You get hit with a crit from a longsword and he rolls 2 1's. That's still gonna add up to about 5 damage. From a narrative perspective, you are now bleeding from what is probably a very shallow cut. The difference between that and a "regular hit" that did 10 damage is the fluff we've been discussing. The crit actually involved the blade contacting your skin, the regular hit did not.

I can see it that way, but I also see it as just because you rolled a 20 doesn't have to mean it was an awesome strike. 5th Ed is less about crit fishing, but given a 20 crits (or less if you're a Champion) and Advantage is fairly common, having crits always Wound makes combat more lethal than I want - or more importantly, than my players want.

A wicked crit with a greatsword can be an instant kill, even at 20 and full Vitality (it's happened twice in games I've run) - and it's really hard to simply play that off as 'uh, I mean, I knock him unconscious' - yeah, well, his decapitated body is certainly unconscious...

If that's how you want to run it, that's fine - I would just hazard bringing confirmations back to crits, to mitigate the instant kill somewhat.

[Alcino]

A wicked crit with a greatsword can be an instant kill, even at 20 and full Vitality (it's happened twice in games I've run) - and it's really hard to simply play that off as 'uh, I mean, I knock him unconscious' - yeah, well, his decapitated body is certainly unconscious...

I'd go even further: not only is every crit a possible insta-kill, but non-insta-kill crits are mostly worthless, as they deal no more damage than a regular hit. Quite anti-climactic.

[Garimeth]

I was going to complain that AC/Stat penalties are way too harsh, but as long as you're letting the player choose which penalty they take, then whatever. If the player is willing to take a harsher penalty on themselves to fit the RP, more power to them.

As a general rule though I would stick with just max hp reduction, because having mechanics like reduction to hit/damage or AC/Saves quickly brings players to the point where they actually can't contribute without getting healed to full. The reason I liked the slight reduction to max hp is because it is something that is noticeable, but not debilitating until you have accumulated a lot of wounds.

You may be right, I haven't actually tested this in 5e yet. BA makes that -1 much more harsh.

[7heprofessor]

There are some really excellent ideas presented in this thread, and I'd like to thank everyone for weighing in.

After presenting some of these variants to my group, we decided that while the current system is kind of lame, it's by far the simplest, smoothest way to run the game. One of my players mentioned that the Rules System as a whole, and modules specifically, are balanced around the Full-HP regen of a Long Rest. The Designers used this as a benchmark from which to calculate the restoration of other abilities as well. Consider that there aren't any Class Features or Abilities that require more than a Long Rest to regenerate. Why should HP be different than the Arcane Power flowing throug

In light of that, I want to caution anyone that is contemplating adding any of the variants presented that use numerical penalties. The system may not be flexible enough to allow for even something as seemingly minuscule as -1 to AC to go unnoticed. Also bear in mind that any variant system is going to be tilted against the PCs. DMs simply roll more dice than Players do. Just a word of caution is all.

Ultimately, I'm still probably going to narrate grievous wounds being dealt when there are Crits and possibly when PCs drop; because losing a hand should be a thing in this game.

[Morty]

I assume they did have some of these conversations

You give them far more credit than I do, then.

[comk59]

IMHO, this is one thing that w40k rpgs (and possibly WHF rpgs, need to check those out) handles beautifully, with the Wound, Fatigue, and Critical damage systems.
Unfortunately, this does leave your characters fragile, which isn't everyone's cup of tea. Still, especially when you consider the source material, its pretty close to real life. Assuming real life was set in the year 40,000

[rhouck]

I’ve played every edition of D&D save the original, and at no point was anyone mandated to be Mr. Healbot. It was nice to have in a dungeon (almost essential in some of Gygax’s penned modules), but outside of that it was far from necessary. Now, the system essentially invalidates the Healer role outside of combat.

Whether you need Mr. Healbot is near-100% determined by the pacing of the adventure. If you were able to sit and rest up as long as you needed whenever and were never on a timetable... then sure, magical healing doesn't matter (and by magical healing, I include potions, etc.).

But I would be impressed if, for example, you can play through many of the episodes of HotDQ without a healer/healing potions AND using (for example) 2e's healing rate of 1 hp per day of rest (3/day of bed rest, 21+Con bonus/week of bed rest) and no sissy rolling of HD to recover hp on short rests. The adventures simply aren't written to allow the party to sit around and rest up for a week or two to gain back their hp (and you certainly shouldn't be allowed to do that mid-dungeon crawl).

5e allows for less downtime needed at the expense of realism. A party (without healing) can undertake more combats over a given time period in 5e than they could in 1e/2e/etc.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the new system "essentially invalidates the Healer role outside of combat", however. Having a healer allows a party to push through more encounters prior to needing a long rest (e.g., my life cleric made a big difference in parts of HotDQ), since there are great out-of-combat spells like Prayer of Healing. That utility, combined with in-combat healing like healing word, makes having a healer still very useful 5e -- albeit just not game-breaking without. The party/DM just has to adjust their pacing to fit available healing.

[Vogonjeltz]

Ultimately, I know I can houserule whatever I want, and we can justify it in our minds that HP=/=Blood or Wound Points or Fatigue or something.
But really I just want to know how does this community feel about auto-full-heal-overnight? Does it suit most of your gaming styles? Have you house-ruled something different? What are your thoughts on this?

Maybe something is being lost in translation here, but if I understand you correctly this is what you are saying occurred:

Paladin reduced to 0 hp.
Party stabilizes Paladin, but does not heal him.
Paladin claims to be up on his feat the next day.

If I'm not misunderstanding step 2, then step 3 is incorrect.

A stable creature that isn't healed regains 1 hit point after 1d4 hours. (PHB 198)
A character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits. (PHB 186)

So, assuming I'm reading that right, your Paladin should still be more or less out of action absent any other source of healing.

[7heprofessor]

Maybe something is being lost in translation here, but if I understand you correctly this is what you are saying occurred:

Paladin reduced to 0 hp.
Party stabilizes Paladin, but does not heal him.
Paladin claims to be up on his feat the next day.

If I'm not misunderstanding step 2, then step 3 is incorrect.

A stable creature that isn't healed regains 1 hit point after 1d4 hours. (PHB 198)
A character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits. (PHB 186)

So, assuming I'm reading that right, your Paladin should still be more or less out of action absent any other source of healing.

Your assumptions are all correct, including step 3. The Paladin gained 1 HP 2 hours later, then began his own Long Rest. He woke up a couple hours after everyone else.

Without time constraints, the "A character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits. (PHB 186)" is basically a useless rule.

[Safety Sword]

Whether you need Mr. Healbot is near-100% determined by the pacing of the adventure. If you were able to sit and rest up as long as you needed whenever and were never on a timetable... then sure, magical healing doesn't matter (and by magical healing, I include potions, etc.).

But I would be impressed if, for example, you can play through many of the episodes of HotDQ without a healer/healing potions AND using (for example) 2e's healing rate of 1 hp per day of rest (3/day of bed rest, 21+Con bonus/week of bed rest) and no sissy rolling of HD to recover hp on short rests. The adventures simply aren't written to allow the party to sit around and rest up for a week or two to gain back their hp (and you certainly shouldn't be allowed to do that mid-dungeon crawl).

5e allows for less downtime needed at the expense of realism. A party (without healing) can undertake more combats over a given time period in 5e than they could in 1e/2e/etc.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the new system "essentially invalidates the Healer role outside of combat", however. Having a healer allows a party to push through more encounters prior to needing a long rest (e.g., my life cleric made a big difference in parts of HotDQ), since there are great out-of-combat spells like Prayer of Healing. That utility, combined with in-combat healing like healing word, makes having a healer still very useful 5e -- albeit just not game-breaking without. The party/DM just has to adjust their pacing to fit available healing.

Honestly speaking, you have to be a sensible DM. I run two different groups. One of my groups is made up of all first time players. The characters are a Barbarian, Paladin, Warlock and Sorcerer. No "healer". I have to allow for that.

My experienced player group consists of a Druid, Fighter, Wizard and Rogue. They are more tactically savvy, use their abilities at the right time and play "better" generally. Plus they have the option to heal damage.

I decided to run HotDQ with both groups and I have had to pace the adventures differently for each group.

I totally agree that the short and long rest mechanics are crucial to be able to run the adventure as written.

All in all what you said was essentially spot on. That was a very long way for me to say that...

[7heprofessor]

One of my players just pointed out a sidebar on pg 197 of the PHB that some of you might find interesting. It by no mean invalidates much of what was said here, but it's interesting to see what the Devs. conception is:



"D e s c r i b in g t h e E f f e c t s o f D am a g e
Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways.
When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit
point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When
you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs
of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you
to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or
other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious."

Either way...just my 2 cp

[RedMage125]

One of my players just pointed out a sidebar on pg 197 of the PHB that some of you might find interesting. It by no mean invalidates much of what was said here, but it's interesting to see what the Devs. conception is:



"D e s c r i b in g t h e E f f e c t s o f D am a g e
Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways.
When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit
point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When
you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs
of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you
to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or
other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious."

Either way...just my 2 cp

That's been mentioned. A lot of us just add to that that we also have crits be actual bodily damage as well.

[Psikerlord]

My group has been playing 5E since the starter set came out, and we still haven't been able to get over the fact that a Long Rest completely heals PCs. Sure, you only get 1/2 your Hit Dice back, but from levels 1-4 this has not been an issue at all. We ran through all of LMoP and it was never once an issue that some of us might not have gotten all of our HD back.

I'm now running HotDQ and the group has made it to Scene 2. The end of Scene 1 has a nasty battle that is designed to leave one of the PCs unconscious. My party bound his wounds, and then took a Long Rest in the infirmary. The next morning, he pops up, strips all the bandages off of himself and saunters out of the keep without a scratch...

This battle was epic. The Paladin of the group was exhausted from fighting all night, but after some buffs from the party strode out into the fading darkness to battle the mighty Cyanwrath. Cyanwrath missed his first four attacks! The Paladin landed a couple nice hits, but then was ultimately dropped by two mighty hits from the massive half-dragon. An awesome duel like that should not be shrugged off by taking a nap!

This broke some of the group's immersion, once again. They were so pumped for the fight, and dude held his own for a while, but then the groans and eyerolls came out when the Paladin woke up perfectly fine the next day. The Player smoothly justified it by reminding the group he's from Calimshan where "everyone's got a little something in their blood," but the joke has truly stuck in my group that "sleep is magic."

Whenever they get low in HP, someone tosses out a joke about "feeling a little sleepy." I heavily narrate combat, and sometimes describe grievous wounds when the damage is high enough to knock a PC out, but inevitably someone quips, "he'll be fine in the morning!" There's nothing more irritating (at the moment) than having a Guard Drake chomp into the Cleric's shoulder dropping him unconscious and the party knowing all they have to do is take a nap!

Ultimately, I know I can houserule whatever I want, and we can justify it in our minds that HP=/=Blood or Wound Points or Fatigue or something.
But really I just want to know how does this community feel about auto-full-heal-overnight? Does it suit most of your gaming styles? Have you house-ruled something different? What are your thoughts on this?
I use a more fleshed out version of the injuries table from DMG, PCs have to roll when they hit zero hp. This definitely helps with marking major wounds, and needing spells or significant time periods to cure most of them. This might be something you can try, certainly worked for us. Another option (or in addition) use the slow healing option from DMG (I think you only get HD back, no hps, so can take a while to get all your HPs back rather than simply overnight).

[Psikerlord]

- declare it IS magic (fluff wise) - some healing ritual that takes 10+ min to cast and requires the target to take a long rest for the effects (regeneration to full HP's) to take effect, for ease/ access allow any caster to have it (including ritual caster, magic initiate and sure the healer, feats) or its something adventurers just learn from the guild/old mentors/ what have youI really like this idea. Kinda the opposite of what they did. They started with big healing, and gave options to slow it down in DMG. I would have preferred your idea: start with slow healing (half HD back), but stick a long rest ritual in DMG or PHB that gives all your HP back, too.

[Psikerlord]

A somewhat simplified -- but less thorough -- version of the Vitality/Wounds system might go like this:

Total Points
All Hit Points at first level become Wound Points. You never get more WP except by increasing your Constitution modifier.
All HP from levels after the first become Vitality Points.
This way, the amount of effective HP the players have never goes above or below what they'd have normally.

Damage

All damage is applied to Vitality Points first, then Wound Points when all Vitality Points are gone.
Running out of Vitality Points has no immediate effect aside from rendering your Wound Points vulnerable.
Running out of Wound Points has the same effect as running out of HP normally would.
For simplicity, there is no way to cause Wound Point damage while Vitality Points remain.

Healing
Wound Points can be recovered with magical healing (Potions, Spells, Lay On Hands, etc).
In the absence of magical healing, Wound Points recover at a rate of 1 per long rest or 2 per long rest with a successful Medicine check.
Wound Points are not restored by long rests or the expenditure of Hit Dice.
Vitality Points can be recovered in all of the ways HP is normally restored.
Vitality Points may only be recovered by a character with full Wound Points.
Temporary Hit Points function as normal.



It's not perfect.
Having a larger share of your effective HP be Wound Points is a disadvantage that tankier characters might take issue with, for instance.
It still allows for the two-long-rest recovery you get with healers resting, spamming spells, then resting again to get their slots back before adventuring.

But. Since you only need enough magical healing to patch up the Wound Points before you can sleep your way back to full health, there's a much better chance that you can get your party back up and ready to adventure again with just one long rest without making the sleep itself do anything magical... while still leaving some meat in the game to take damage before the character suddenly drops at 0 HP.


I suppose an even simpler way to get a similar effect would be to just say "sleeping and hit dice can't heal your last ten HP."I quite like this idea too. You could take it further also, top half HP is vitality. Bottom half is wounds. Borrowing from 4e a touch, when you get past half hp you are "bloodied".

[Psikerlord]

There are some really excellent ideas presented in this thread, and I'd like to thank everyone for weighing in.

After presenting some of these variants to my group, we decided that while the current system is kind of lame, it's by far the simplest, smoothest way to run the game. One of my players mentioned that the Rules System as a whole, and modules specifically, are balanced around the Full-HP regen of a Long Rest. The Designers used this as a benchmark from which to calculate the restoration of other abilities as well. Consider that there aren't any Class Features or Abilities that require more than a Long Rest to regenerate. Why should HP be different than the Arcane Power flowing throug

In light of that, I want to caution anyone that is contemplating adding any of the variants presented that use numerical penalties. The system may not be flexible enough to allow for even something as seemingly minuscule as -1 to AC to go unnoticed. Also bear in mind that any variant system is going to be tilted against the PCs. DMs simply roll more dice than Players do. Just a word of caution is all.

Ultimately, I'm still probably going to narrate grievous wounds being dealt when there are Crits and possibly when PCs drop; because losing a hand should be a thing in this game.

With respect to penalties, I think the opposite is true. The basic hit rate is high in 5e due to BA, so losing a point or two is not a big deal. Especially if you also have magic weapons, and have access to adv (Eg if you use the flanking optional rule).

[Vogonjeltz]

Your assumptions are all correct, including step 3. The Paladin gained 1 HP 2 hours later, then began his own Long Rest. He woke up a couple hours after everyone else.

Without time constraints, the "A character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits. (PHB 186)" is basically a useless rule.

Well, there's the 24 hour rule for long rests as well, so this rest had to occur at least 24 hours after the last long rest. As a consequence, the rest of the party had to be down for 10 consecutive hours and they couldn't start until 24 hours after the previous long rest.

So, the time requirements to get this done were, at a minimum, 9 hours (assuming the Paladin got 1 hp back after 1 hour and then immediately began a long rest they were eligible for. The high end would be if they were injured after a long rest, then they are basically out of action for 24 hours. This also puts their long rest out of synchronization with the rest of the party, unless the party is willing to hold their long rest till after the Paladin regained a hit point.

That's a huge amount of time doing nothing at all, so I guess it doesn't bother me terribly. Plus if you're super concerned, maybe there are wandering monsters wherever they decided to camp out? If not, maybe they had to treck back to a safe location, which could be dangerous in and of itself.


One of my players just pointed out a sidebar on pg 197 of the PHB that some of you might find interesting. It by no mean invalidates much of what was said here, but it's interesting to see what the Devs. conception is:

Yeah, so basically they get a concussion (knocked out) and wake up some hours later. Then he gets a good nights rest and is feeling much better in the morning. I believe there's also a table for lingering injury in the DMG, if you want to penalize them or simulate getting almost killed. It's on page 272, before the part about massive damage on the next page.