What happens when we turn the healing off?

[TheOneHawk]

Specifically in Pathfinder, but 3.5 is close enough in this regard that it works as well. What happens when you delete healing magic? Obviously there's a couple classes who would need some of their abilities slightly retuned (Lay on Hands, Channel Positive Energy) but other than that... what happens?

Heal skill is suddenly a lot more useful, especially if you edit it to allow skilled healers to grant temporary HP to wounded allies with a good check, representing staunching a wound and splinting a fracture secure so they can keep fighting a bit longer until they can get to safety. Wounded party members would have to take more downtime to properly heal up between adventures. Getting hit in combat is suddenly a much bigger deal. If the setting is supposed to be relatively dark, I think this could be an overall positive thing. Thoughts?

[Arutema]

Given how slow natural healing works in 3.5/PF, it all depends how many combats per month (yes, month.) you expect in the campaign.

I could see it potentially working in a Kingmaker-style game of politics, intrigue, and kingdom-building with occasional combat, but not in your typical dungeon crawl.

[Venger]

why would you want to do this? all it'll do is rigorously enforce the 15 minute adventuring day, something people on the boards whine about all the time.

as-is, if I get hurt badly in the first encounter of the day, I'll kiss my booboos with lesser vigor and go out to kill some more people and take their stuff.

without any healing at all, I'm going to plop down in my sleeping bag for a couple of days until I get all my health back. I advise against this as strenuously as humanly possible.

if you want a low-magic game, D&D is probably not the right system for the story you want to tell.

[Honest Tiefling]

"Aw shucks. We need another fighter. Let's go 'recruit' another at the tavern..."

"I really wish you'd stop strapping commoners to your armor to take the blows. They all smell of almonds!"

Would negative energy be affected? If not, undead rule supreme!

[Venger]

"Aw shucks. We need another fighter. Let's go 'recruit' another at the tavern..."

"I really wish you'd stop strapping commoners to your armor to take the blows. They all smell of almonds!"

Would negative energy be affected? Then undead rule supreme!

yeah, you're gonna get a meat grinder if your pcs are dropping like flies. not much point in getting attached if your guy's just going to die at the first sign of trouble.

also, there are a huge amount of spells that give you HP besides just cure x. it would require an extensive overhaul of the system to remove every vampiric touch, doom scarabs, healing sting, etc.

are you banning dread necromancers? dragon shamans? there's a whole lot of stuff you'd be boxing out here.

[Karl Aegis]

Without access to healing magic I would dedicate all of my resources to obliterating any opponent that came within casting range. It's high level rocket tag, but we start at level 1. I can't risk anyone randomly stabbing me and taking my coins because I thought some random kid was "safe enough to not kill".

[Venger]

Without access to healing magic I would dedicate all of my resources to obliterating any opponent that came within casting range. It's high level rocket tag, but we start at level 1. I can't risk anyone randomly stabbing me and taking my coins because I thought some random kid was "safe enough to not kill".
I would also feel it necessary to become immune to HP damage as soon as possible rather than delaying it til later or just not doing it at all.

[TheOneHawk]

Given how slow natural healing works in 3.5/PF, it all depends how many combats per month (yes, month.) you expect in the campaign.

I could see it potentially working in a Kingmaker-style game of politics, intrigue, and kingdom-building with occasional combat, but not in your typical dungeon crawl.

I was planning on reworking the natural healing a bit. My first thought was just adding CON mod to daily recovery and allowing that to be multiplied appropriately by heal checks. As written, yeah, it's nasty slow.


why would you want to do this? all it'll do is rigorously enforce the 15 minute adventuring day, something people on the boards whine about all the time.

as-is, if I get hurt badly in the first encounter of the day, I'll kiss my booboos with lesser vigor and go out to kill some more people and take their stuff.

without any healing at all, I'm going to plop down in my sleeping bag for a couple of days until I get all my health back. I advise against this as strenuously as humanly possible.

if you want a low-magic game, D&D is probably not the right system for the story you want to tell.

There's ways to make sure people can't do that. If they have time limits, they need to patch up their wounds and keep moving. It would heavily emphasize stealth and caution. I have no interest in this being a low magic game whatsoever, simply considering removing magic's ability to heal.


"Aw shucks. We need another fighter. Let's go 'recruit' another at the tavern..."

"I really wish you'd stop strapping commoners to your armor to take the blows. They all smell of almonds!"

Would negative energy be affected? If not, undead rule supreme!

The commoner image made me laugh, not gonna lie. Anyways, this was for a game I'm considering where there would be something of a pool of PC's for the players to pick from for each mission. I have no idea if it would work or not, but that's the current idea. So if your big tough fighter took one hit too many and needed a week off, you could have the teams Paladin join in for a mission. Also yeah, undead would be strong. Part of the point.


yeah, you're gonna get a meat grinder if your pcs are dropping like flies. not much point in getting attached if your guy's just going to die at the first sign of trouble.

also, there are a huge amount of spells that give you HP besides just cure x. it would require an extensive overhaul of the system to remove every vampiric touch, doom scarabs, healing sting, etc.

are you banning dread necromancers? dragon shamans? there's a whole lot of stuff you'd be boxing out here.

The system is Pathfinder, so that removes a chunk of that to begin with. To a certain extent, yeah, this would be a lethal game, but there would be more time allowed for rest and recovery than normal to allow healing to take place. Temporary HP from magic would also be acceptable, IE Vampiric Touch.


I would also feel it necessary to become immune to HP damage as soon as possible rather than delaying it til later or just not doing it at all.

Is... that even possible in Pathfinder?

[badgerman]

I was planning on reworking the natural healing a bit. My first thought was just adding CON mod to daily recovery and allowing that to be multiplied appropriately by heal checks. As written, yeah, it's nasty slow.


I remember a homebrewed alternative.
It was about handling every damage that is not bringing you below 0 HP as nonlethal damage.
The idea is that a fight leads to a final blow. The process is nonlethal the blow is.
This version helps you to recover much faster after an encounter.

[MyrPsychologist]

I think removing the capacity for self healing through magic is going to have a few impacts on the way the game is played:

1. It will slow the game down. If people are very low on HP they aren't going out into the wild to certainly die. Personally, I don't find the moments where the party is in town doing nothing to be particularly fun and in this case an individual is going to be on bed rest as they try to heal, so don't even expect them to do much in the filler episode around the town.

2. It will shift the classes that are played. People are less likely to play lower tiered classes and classes that can't protect themselves when there is no recovery mechanism. Why play a fighter if you're only going to take massive damage and have to recoup constantly when you could just play a party of extremely OP tier 1 casters and wreck combat before it begins?

3. The party is more likely to hire help. This may or may not be a bad thing. But if I was in a game with no magic healing I would certainly take the opportunity to hire a few fighters in every town I come across. Not because I think they will contribute a lot, but I wouldn't feel so bad about making the NPC fighter continue pushing forward at low HP and i certainly wouldn't care as much if they died. It would kind of be like the principle about why summon monster is good, only with people. and permanently in case of ambush.

4. The party will be less likely to take risks. Really, why attack things that you don't HAVE to fight in this circumstance when you can just wander into the forest and kill level 1 boars for xp?

5. Classes with non-combat abilities will get even more use. It certainly helps the wizard and alchemist to have some downtime where they can make disproportionate amounts of money. But planning and downtime can be a very dangerous tool in the hands of PCs. Don't underestimate it.

I think the better question is: What do you want this change to do? Are you going for realism? Are you trying to slow the pace? What is the intent for this change?

[PersonMan]

I remember a homebrewed alternative.
It was about handling every damage that is not bringing you below 0 HP as nonlethal damage.
The idea is that a fight leads to a final blow. The process is nonlethal the blow is.
This version helps you to recover much faster after an encounter.

One could also designate, say, 90% of one's HP pool as 'easily recovered' and say it represents ability to defend yourself and keep fighting, with only the last 10% being actual physical damage. After a fight, you recover 10% of your easily recovered HP per ten minutes. So if you run a gauntlet of fights, you'll run low, but if you fight then rest for an hour you'll be fine unless you got seriously hurt.

[Necroticplague]

Only magical healing, so nonmagical Fast healing is still good, right? Same with Regeneration? Simply slap either the Shadow or Feral template onto whatever you want to be. Now the exercise is moot because you full heal in between each combat anyway, no magic required. And auto-stabilize from the healing. Wait, not all the players like using templates? Looks like they get to eat the dust of those that do.

On a similar note, Crusader strikes/stances are still on the table (since those are EX, not SU), right? In that case, Martial Spirit stance, pound the ground between combats, full heals for everyone. Excercise is moot because everyone gets full-healed anyway.

[Darkweave31]

I remember a homebrewed alternative.
It was about handling every damage that is not bringing you below 0 HP as nonlethal damage.
The idea is that a fight leads to a final blow. The process is nonlethal the blow is.
This version helps you to recover much faster after an encounter.

Could work. I'd say crits still deal lethal damage... There's also the unearthed arcana variant that converts some damage to nonlethal based on armor bonus. Could help out front line characters.

But as has already been said, this would enforce short adventuring days and is bad for the traditional campaign. If combat is rare and dealing with injuries in the aftermath is a bigger part of it then it could work.

[nedz]

The same thing which happens with very low level parties sometimes — they take half a week out between fights.

[Curmudgeon]

You will have instantly made Healing Salve (Tome and Blood, page 72) a must-have alchemical commodity.

[TheOneHawk]

Lots of these problems are from 3.5 splat books. Pathfinder is the system of choice here. There are no templates, no crusader, etc.

What I was planning on doing with this is something like xcom. Basically, you have a pool of available pcs that you can take missions. If one gets hurt or killed, you grab a different sheet for the next mission if it can't wait for their recovery. This also wouldn't be a standard exploration campaign, it would have a specific goal with time being a factor and the location being fairly static.

[mostholycerebus]

You end up with a game like Legend of the Five Rings, where initative is the God stat, but in general players will look harder at non-combat solutions. Roleplay, social skills, finding allies.

Sadly, the d20 system is not optimized for that type of game.

[ShurikVch]

What's about the creatures who just don't heal naturally at all?

Also, wounds from Cursed Blade, vile damage and so on...

Oh, and Seething Eyebane spell will make a lot of permanently blind creatures

Also, this world will probably have vast communities of ghouls and ghasts, because there is nothing to heal Ghoul Fever...
Same about Slaadi and any other monsters who reproduce via transformational disease or parasite...

[Necromancy]

Actually did this in a hardcore game. Implement wounds and vigor for characters only. Remove all non potion heals.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/wounds-and-vigor

[Andreaz]

Specifically in Pathfinder, but 3.5 is close enough in this regard that it works as well. What happens when you delete healing magic? Obviously there's a couple classes who would need some of their abilities slightly retuned (Lay on Hands, Channel Positive Energy) but other than that... what happens?
To know what happens, we have to analyze how damage is dealt in the game. I'll look at some CRs to give an idea.
A budding, successful low level character (level 5~) can expect to take 15 to 40 damage per hit, plus crits, in encounters supposedly within his range of challenge. An easy encounter coule be, for example, a couple rabid wolves. The buggers attack at +2 for 1d6+1 with trip and have 14 ac and 13 hp. Mrs Level 5 Cleric walks around in breastplate +1, heavy shield and buffs for an ac 21 and attacks with a morning star at +7 for 1d8+3 damage.

On average she'll need 6 attacks to down them, and only if she doesn't get tripped. The two wolves will try to flank, hitting and tripping only after some 4 rounds. By the time she kills them, she took some 10 damage, a quarter of her 36-41 hp.

That was an easy encounter against a character that almost never gets hit. Anything remotely challenging will ensure no one fights more than once per week, month or trimester. Most characters with ample hp require entire weeks of full rest with daylong care to fully recover.

[TheOneHawk]

I like that wounds and vigor rule, I haven't seen that before. I'll probably be using that instead of hitpoints.

[Necroticplague]

Lots of these problems are from 3.5 splat books. Pathfinder is the system of choice here. There are no templates, no crusader, etc.

However, pathfinder has much more forgiving rules for monstrous PCs, so its a much better deal to play a monster with Fast Healing or Regeneration. Templates do exist in PF, several of which give Fast Healing. Noseferatue, Pennengalan, Blighted Fey, Shield Guardian, just to name a few. If negative energy damage is still around, Terror creature can just fill up using Wands of Inflict Minor Wounds.

[jiriku]

I think the biggest change you'll see is that players will rarely, if ever, seek to have more than one encounter per day. As others have mentioned, one per week is maybe more likely. As a result, classes that are able to burst out their best abilities in a single combat will be much more useful than those who are more consistent performers. Full casters, and especially psionic characters, can dump all their highest level spells into a fight and perform like champs. Martial characters, invocation users, and other classes that have repeated use of less-powerful abilities will never get the chance to show off their greater combat stamina, and will be much weaker in this environment. That's a challenge, since such classes are already on the low end of the power curve.




yeah, you're gonna get a meat grinder if your pcs are dropping like flies. not much point in getting attached if your guy's just going to die at the first sign of trouble.

This is unlikely. In-combat healing was never anything to write home about anyway.

[Taelas]

You'll get a lot of downtime.

A lot of downtime.

I really wouldn't do this.


This is unlikely. In-combat healing was never anything to write home about anyway.
This wouldn't be limited to in-combat healing.

[MyrPsychologist]

Lots of these problems are from 3.5 splat books. Pathfinder is the system of choice here. There are no templates, no crusader, etc.

What I was planning on doing with this is something like xcom. Basically, you have a pool of available pcs that you can take missions. If one gets hurt or killed, you grab a different sheet for the next mission if it can't wait for their recovery. This also wouldn't be a standard exploration campaign, it would have a specific goal with time being a factor and the location being fairly static.

Well. There is an xcom board game and it is pretty terrific if you want to try this concept out.

But i foresee the problem with a setup like that being it's very "kick in the door and fight the monster" esque and not really conducive to roleplaying. If you have a stack of sheets then why really grow attached to the characters you have? The story becomes murky and less defined and more about the constant slaughter of monsters. And if it's time it sounds more and more like an invitation for munchkin type characters that are decked out to be ungodly tier 1 killing machines.

[icefractal]

It would significantly encourage using classes that can engage their foes without being engaged in return. Ranged attacks are decent. Summoning is the bomb. Melee is to be avoided. Being a stealth character that snipes from hiding or drops cloud spells while invisible is the way to go; being a "tank" is a good way to end up dead.

Also, more downtime, because when people do get hurt, it takes them a while to recover. Putting time pressure only goes so far - if the PCs get injured enough, then "push on through it" isn't even a choice - your options are rest or die.

Those aren't necessarily problems, if you want that as the style of the game. Just make sure to tell people before they make characters, because it's a pretty huge change to priorities.

[Honest Tiefling]

I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned commoner murder. Sure, you get less loot, but they sure do put up a whole lot less fuss.

I must ask the OP, what is the purpose of the rotating character thing? If you want a rotating character roster...Why not just do it? People don't need to be bedridden to do so, and plenty of players either find that their first concept isn't meshing well with the party, or that it isn't as fun as they'd hoped, or just plain doesn't gel. Why not...Just let them pick who they want to pick without changes to healing? Those who find the most fun in a single character will happily do so, while giving others more freedom to pick. If you need an excuse, give them a ship, fortress, air ship or whatever. The extra PCs are hanging around that, defending it, so there's a reason not to send the entire crew down to investigate stuff.

[atemu1234]

Your meat-shields will need meat-shields.

[Hrugner]

It depends on how you handled it. Judging by people's responses here they'd try to find a work around to heal anyway, or some way to avoid HP being an issue at all. As a DM, assuming the PCs played nice and didn't try to avoid the intent of no healing, you would rarely if ever have your party at full strength. You'd have to adjust CRs down, cut down on adventuring time, place less lethal foes and play your NPCs more like PCs who expect to fight several times a day and need to hold back a bit.

I don't really think Pathfinder is the best system for a game where healing isn't normal, maybe look at GURPS so you have more robust non-combat options and balance as well as a better system for playing while still damaged.

I've played and run games with no healers and everyone playing low tier classes and they are very cool, but you spend a lot of time coming up with rules on how to handle players working out new ways to operate within the game itself. I think this is a better solution than just removing healing, the top tier classes rely less on healing anyway so you just bump up the effective power of the top tier classes. Removing top tier classes and any healing other than daily recovery from rest would give you a game play experience similar to what you're looking for.

[Venger]

There's ways to make sure people can't do that. If they have time limits, they need to patch up their wounds and keep moving. It would heavily emphasize stealth and caution. I have no interest in this being a low magic game whatsoever, simply considering removing magic's ability to heal.
an artificial ticking clock won't make PCs kill themselves more regularly, they'll just ignore more plothooks.


The commoner image made me laugh, not gonna lie. Anyways, this was for a game I'm considering where there would be something of a pool of PC's for the players to pick from for each mission. I have no idea if it would work or not, but that's the current idea. So if your big tough fighter took one hit too many and needed a week off, you could have the teams Paladin join in for a mission. Also yeah, undead would be strong. Part of the point.

oh, well, if you want people swapping out their characters after every encounter like an RPG video game then why not just do that rather than mess with healing magic?

if negative energy healing still works, then the party's just gonna go tomb-tainted. if you're playing PF, all they'll need is someone with cure minor, or a dread necromancer.


The system is Pathfinder, so that removes a chunk of that to begin with. To a certain extent, yeah, this would be a lethal game, but there would be more time allowed for rest and recovery than normal to allow healing to take place. Temporary HP from magic would also be acceptable, IE Vampiric Touch.

Is... that even possible in Pathfinder?
not really, but whatever. if vampiric touch and its ilk are allowed, then I'd just do that (drain summons, etc) sure, it's not hard, just gain regeneration and immunity to nonlethal and you can no longer be killed by hp damage. other stuff still gets you unless you take precautions of course (disintegrate and such)


I think removing the capacity for self healing through magic is going to have a few impacts on the way the game is played:

1. It will slow the game down. If people are very low on HP they aren't going out into the wild to certainly die. Personally, I don't find the moments where the party is in town doing nothing to be particularly fun and in this case an individual is going to be on bed rest as they try to heal, so don't even expect them to do much in the filler episode around the town.
agreed. and to avoid this, you'll just fast forward through downtime (e.g. after you take a week off and you're back in the dungeon) so why do it at all?


2. It will shift the classes that are played. People are less likely to play lower tiered classes and classes that can't protect themselves when there is no recovery mechanism. Why play a fighter if you're only going to take massive damage and have to recoup constantly when you could just play a party of extremely OP tier 1 casters and wreck combat before it begins?
this is the more significant effect. if you are savvy enough to DM an all-wizard party, go for it, but if you're used to low-op games, the party is going to curbstomp things very quickly, especially since a 15 minute adventuring day is being strictly enforced.

this is gonna be exacerbated by the ability to switch to a new character whenever you reach a savepoint. after a few frustrated attempts to play a mundane, even the most stubborn player's gonna switch to a T1 under these rules


3. The party is more likely to hire help. This may or may not be a bad thing. But if I was in a game with no magic healing I would certainly take the opportunity to hire a few fighters in every town I come across. Not because I think they will contribute a lot, but I wouldn't feel so bad about making the NPC fighter continue pushing forward at low HP and i certainly wouldn't care as much if they died. It would kind of be like the principle about why summon monster is good, only with people. and permanently in case of ambush.

hirelings are a ripoff since they're so darn expensive, but your basic point is true. people will use stuff like summons/planar allies/etc


4. The party will be less likely to take risks. Really, why attack things that you don't HAVE to fight in this circumstance when you can just wander into the forest and kill level 1 boars for xp?
well, at a certain point, things a lot lower than your CR don't give you xp anymore.


5. Classes with non-combat abilities will get even more use. It certainly helps the wizard and alchemist to have some downtime where they can make disproportionate amounts of money. But planning and downtime can be a very dangerous tool in the hands of PCs. Don't underestimate it.

I think the better question is: What do you want this change to do? Are you going for realism? Are you trying to slow the pace? What is the intent for this change?

artificers will become even more powerful. yeah, same questions here.


Only magical healing, so nonmagical Fast healing is still good, right? Same with Regeneration? Simply slap either the Shadow or Feral template onto whatever you want to be. Now the exercise is moot because you full heal in between each combat anyway, no magic required. And auto-stabilize from the healing. Wait, not all the players like using templates? Looks like they get to eat the dust of those that do.

On a similar note, Crusader strikes/stances are still on the table (since those are EX, not SU), right? In that case, Martial Spirit stance, pound the ground between combats, full heals for everyone. Excercise is moot because everyone gets full-healed anyway.

yeah, it'll force everyone to play higher power stuff. if you want your players to full heal after each combat, just say that they do that.


But as has already been said, this would enforce short adventuring days and is bad for the traditional campaign. If combat is rare and dealing with injuries in the aftermath is a bigger part of it then it could work.

yeah, the game's theoretically balanced around 4 combats/day. if your players are just fighting once a week or so (or any less than once a day really) then T1s will be able to nova without thought to wasting resources and outshine weaker classes much worse than they already do


You end up with a game like Legend of the Five Rings, where initative is the God stat, but in general players will look harder at non-combat solutions. Roleplay, social skills, finding allies.

Sadly, the d20 system is not optimized for that type of game.

not really, no. if that's the kind of story you want to tell, a more freeform system is probably a better fit.


I think the biggest change you'll see is that players will rarely, if ever, seek to have more than one encounter per day. As others have mentioned, one per week is maybe more likely. As a result, classes that are able to burst out their best abilities in a single combat will be much more useful than those who are more consistent performers. Full casters, and especially psionic characters, can dump all their highest level spells into a fight and perform like champs. Martial characters, invocation users, and other classes that have repeated use of less-powerful abilities will never get the chance to show off their greater combat stamina, and will be much weaker in this environment. That's a challenge, since such classes are already on the low end of the power curve.

This is unlikely. In-combat healing was never anything to write home about anyway.



I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned commoner murder. Sure, you get less loot, but they sure do put up a whole lot less fuss.

I must ask the OP, what is the purpose of the rotating character thing? If you want a rotating character roster...Why not just do it? People don't need to be bedridden to do so, and plenty of players either find that their first concept isn't meshing well with the party, or that it isn't as fun as they'd hoped, or just plain doesn't gel. Why not...Just let them pick who they want to pick without changes to healing? Those who find the most fun in a single character will happily do so, while giving others more freedom to pick. If you need an excuse, give them a ship, fortress, air ship or whatever. The extra PCs are hanging around that, defending it, so there's a reason not to send the entire crew down to investigate stuff.
why do people keep saying this? not just here, but in other threads. if a monster is 8 or more levels below you, you don't reap any xp from it. past lowish levels, you can't kill commoners for xp. it wouldn't do anything.

yeah, seconding this.

[Grinner]

The Wounds/Vitality alternative rule is still a thing, right? Because that would give you the lethality you're looking for without the more problematic aspects of non-magical healing, although it would introduce additional complexity to combat.

[Honest Tiefling]

why do people keep saying this? not just here, but in other threads. if a monster is 8 or more levels below you, you don't reap any xp from it. past lowish levels, you can't kill commoners for xp. it wouldn't do anything.

Because fashionable clothes don't buy themselves, you know. There's more to life then experience, there's cozy inn rooms for instance!

[Tvtyrant]

I use a "critical hits do normal amounts of damage but it is con damage" rule for E6 to make combat more lethal. Hit Points aren't considered wounds at all, they are just a way of registering exhaustion. When you drop to 1/2 health you are fatigued, 1/3 and you are exhausted. Magical healing only heals tiredness and a very tiny amount of real wounds through lesser restoration.

[The Evil DM]

I have done this before within the context of a game that went for about 1 year. It was early in my gaming career while I was collecting concepts for my setting and I got together with my players about playing a game with no magical healing.

I figure I will give you an account of what actually happened rather than what might happened and how to bend rules to get around the restriction. I am also keeping this account system independent because the effects on the system.

That said, much of the theoretical content above is accurate, but I think a real account might be helpful to you as well.

here goes.

When you remove magical healing from the game you dramatically increase the fatality level. - Obvious -
More capable players who really think about the setting and what they do within it become very sensitive to the fatality level. Unfortunately, players who frequently play suicidal murderers will continue to do so and be very unhappy.

If you do restrict healing magic be prepared for many questions about why? What allows a cleric to summon the finger of his god to strike down his enemies but the cleric cannot tend to a wound with a cure spell.

In the campaign I ran the players went through a first group of characters very quickly. It took them some time to adjust their tactics to the new conditions. The second round of characters had a very different feel. The players made big changes to their behaviors. Most players don't consider loss of HP as a consequence.

No longer did they just blindly kick in doors and charge the room. Stealth, Ambush, and maneuvering for supreme position over an enemy became their focus. They loathed getting into a fight because they didn't want to get saddled with down time. In some ways the players behaved more like they might in real life when faced with a potential death situation. There was a lot more negotiating and role play with NPCs.

The poster's above are correct where they state the whole system needs to be overhauled. Healing magic pervades everything. Are you only talking about HP healing or what about cure disease, or blindness? It is not easy but it can be an interesting experiment to see just how the game changes.

[Hrugner]

Evil DM covers much of what I saw. Venger's mention of people avoiding plot hooks is also a big problem, your PCs won't charge into a burning city or collapsing ruins anymore; they will find many ways to reduce dungeons to rubble from outside, kill everything inside and sift through it for treasure.

One unexpected side effect was a low priority on Constitution. People couldn't recover from damage so you'd rarely be at full, and you play to take as little damage as possible. Sure you can survive a hit better, but your much better off throwing those points into dex or wisdom and avoiding the damage all together.

[Andreaz]

No longer did they just blindly kick in doors and charge the room. Stealth, Ambush, and maneuvering for supreme position over an enemy became their focus. They loathed getting into a fight because they didn't want to get saddled with down time. In some ways the players behaved more like they might in real life when faced with a potential death situation. There was a lot more negotiating and role play with NPCs.Please remember, however, that this is being forced on the players. They can adapt and learn to enjoy it, as it's more often a broadening of perspectives than meta-railroading.
Players already interested in those things will do them, healing or not. And of course there will be players interested in charging headlong no matter how difficult healing is.

[Darth Ultron]

Specifically in Pathfinder, but 3.5 is close enough in this regard that it works as well. What happens when you delete healing magic? Obviously there's a couple classes who would need some of their abilities slightly retuned (Lay on Hands, Channel Positive Energy) but other than that... what happens?

Thoughts?

You get a very different game play. Much more like 0/1/2 E D&D. After all, way back when clerics did not have the silly ''convert spells into healing''. They had to pick and choose healing spells.

The modern hack and slashers doing 100d100 damage with a crazy bunch of feats, abilities, and rule interpretations don't fair too well without a ''healbot''. They will lose a lot of characters if you have a lethal game.

The more classic hack ans slashers will be fine as they are not so action crazy.

And other types of players are not effected too much.

[Anlashok]

The modern hack and slashers doing 100d100 damage with a crazy bunch of feats, abilities, and rule interpretations don't fair too well without a ''healbot''.
"healbots" are pretty crappy in 3.5/PF (and 4e for that matter) though.

[Lorddenorstrus]

Yeah I've gotta agree in combat healbots are fairly garbage.. It's better to top off after the combat because you shouldn't be going to that near death wow I need a heal every round of combat... So healing should rather instead be thought of as a way to just go from X to 100% health after combats. And depending on the amount of spells your buffers had to burn you might be stuck waiting for them to renew spells before continuing an adventure regardless.. So removing heal spells all you're telling me is rather than 8 hours or so of down time between spells refreshing you want like weeks to months of downtime? That's entirely pointless.

[General Sajaru]

Just to reiterate, 3.5 is not the system to eliminate healing magic in. Hit points are "armor" and dodging and skill in combat all mixed into one and set at semi-arbitrary values. You'd have to re-tool much of the system to make it more realistic, and a lot of spells, feats, class features, and abilities would face a similar need for revision. If you're just trying to make people swap out characters, I'd suggest something like "if you lose more than X% of your hit points during a mission, you have to rest for the next one." Not because you're busy healing the slow way, but because it's just as arbitrary a rule as removing all healing.

[TheOneHawk]

Ok, I really, really don't get the whole 'everyone will 15 minute adventuring day and just nova' thing. First off, that happens anyways, and secondly there's a LOT of ways to stop players from doing that. The game isn't in a vacuum, for one. Enemies move. If you're infiltrating a military base at night and get spotted and kill a couple guards before they raise the alarm but one of you got stabbed, you can't just rest until you're healed because you're in an enemy base. If you leave, they'll know they just got attacked and security will be way up next time you come back, plus you'll have failed in your mission because someone got slightly wounded. I'm not planning this for a kick in the door dungeon crawl where the players travel the countryside in search of loot.

Thanks for the insight, Evil DM. Basically what I'm trying to gain here is PC's having to recover if they get heavily wounded, rather than being completely A-OK six seconds later. What would happen if cure spells gave temporary HP instead of actual healing?

[Honest Tiefling]

You could make the healing more effective, but take several minutes. So while they can pop them off to heal up, they get to barricade the door for 10 minutes while hoping no one finds them. In combat healing is a mess anyway.

[Hecuba]

Having tried this a couple on times, my impressions are thus:

This is only really viable if you are looking at a game with a lot of in world downtime.
Even with significant downtime, the game will be a lot more lethal (which is presumably the goal).
Unless you are applying this only to healing HP damage, things like ability damage/d r ain and level drain become much bigger deals. You will likely need to homebrew tools to deal with them.
There are some nice alchemical items and spells in 3.5 that improve natural healing rates rather than healing outright. You might consider using them or adapting them for your purposes. Some are listed below. There are also some that deal with poison, though I don't have that list handy. To my understanding, PF expanded both sets.


Spells/SU Abilities that increase natural healing rate (Mostly Bard)

Healing Hymn
Summon Elysian Thrush
Healthful Rest



Magic Items that do the same

Magic Bedroll
Dukar Hand Coral



Alchemical Items

Restful Candle
Bitterleaf Oil



Feats

Long-Term Care

[Venger]

Ok, I really, really don't get the whole 'everyone will 15 minute adventuring day and just nova' thing. First off, that happens anyways, and secondly there's a LOT of ways to stop players from doing that. The game isn't in a vacuum, for one. Enemies move. If you're infiltrating a military base at night and get spotted and kill a couple guards before they raise the alarm but one of you got stabbed, you can't just rest until you're healed because you're in an enemy base. If you leave, they'll know they just got attacked and security will be way up next time you come back, plus you'll have failed in your mission because someone got slightly wounded. I'm not planning this for a kick in the door dungeon crawl where the players travel the countryside in search of loot.

no one is saying "15 minute adventuring days never happen with the printed rules in play." the point we'e trying to impress upon you is that this'll exacerbate this problem. if every combat leaves you unable to continue, then you're not gonna go on and seek out another encounter because you will die. you'll just cool your heels in the wizard's rope trick, toast marshmallows, tell ghost stories, and adventure some more next week.

right, I'm not saying it is what I'm saying is that they will be unable to progress at all if they have a mission like that. if your party is badly wounded and beating a ticking clock, they will die.



Thanks for the insight, Evil DM. Basically what I'm trying to gain here is PC's having to recover if they get heavily wounded, rather than being completely A-OK six seconds later. What would happen if cure spells gave temporary HP instead of actual healing?

well, one thing you'd need to do is adjust the duration of almost every spell of the variety you want to ban. conj (healing) are all instantaneous, so you'd need to set a balanced time limit for how long you wanted all these temp hp to last.


You could make the healing more effective, but take several minutes. So while they can pop them off to heal up, they get to barricade the door for 10 minutes while hoping no one finds them. In combat healing is a mess anyway.
well, if you're doing this, as has been mentioned above, why not just say everyone resets to full hp after each fight? that seems to be what you're after.

[Hrugner]

It would be a pretty dull sort of game if players managed to control whenever they had an encounter. I'm not really sure where the idea come from that players can blow their load all at once and be safe. Aside from rope trick, which requires a generous reading of the rules not to be simply dispelled, most other escapes leave you open to being tracked down over your eight hours of rest(or spell recovery delay if you don't need to sleep much).

[ryu]

It would be a pretty dull sort of game if players managed to control whenever they had an encounter. I'm not really sure where the idea come from that players can blow their load all at once and be safe. Aside from rope trick, which requires a generous reading of the rules not to be simply dispelled, most other escapes leave you open to being tracked down over your eight hours of rest(or spell recovery delay if you don't need to sleep much).

Did you know there's an item that reduces the eight hours of rest required to one? How about the fact that it's a fairly cheap magical sleeping bag available at low level? If the party does want to do exactly this sort of thing the game has things baked right in to facilitate that I'm almost certain the developers didn't intend.

[Hrugner]

Did you know there's an item that reduces the eight hours of rest required to one? How about the fact that it's a fairly cheap magical sleeping bag available at low level? If the party does want to do exactly this sort of thing the game has things baked right in to facilitate that I'm almost certain the developers didn't intend.

I'm not sure how it works in 3.5 as it's been awhile, but in pathfinder there's an 8 hour delay before you can refill a spent spell slot. You can rest for that one hour, but if you do so immediately after having cast the spell it won't do you much good.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/magic.html
"Recent Casting Limit/Rest Interruptions: If a wizard has cast spells recently, the drain on his resources reduces his capacity to prepare new spells. When he prepares spells for the coming day, all the spells he has cast within the last 8 hours count against his daily limit."

[Venger]

Did you know there's an item that reduces the eight hours of rest required to one? How about the fact that it's a fairly cheap magical sleeping bag available at low level? If the party does want to do exactly this sort of thing the game has things baked right in to facilitate that I'm almost certain the developers didn't intend.

heward's fortifying bedroll from complete mage is the one you're talking about.

at 3k, it's not exactly cheap, but it's a reasonable expenditure at mid lvls for your party's caster.

remember, spls cast in the last 8 hours still count against you, so it won't let you entirely recover your load.

I was with you until you talked about the elusive magic of intent. heward's bedroll does one thing. it lets you rest in 1 hour. why else would it exist? it's fine if you believe it's not balanced because of Reasons, but saying it's being misused doesn't make sense to me.

[ryu]

heward's fortifying bedroll from complete mage is the one you're talking about.

at 3k, it's not exactly cheap, but it's a reasonable expenditure at mid lvls for your party's caster.

remember, spls cast in the last 8 hours still count against you, so it won't let you entirely recover your load.

I was with you until you talked about the elusive magic of intent. heward's bedroll does one thing. it lets you rest in 1 hour. why else would it exist? it's fine if you believe it's not balanced because of Reasons, but saying it's being misused doesn't make sense to me.

You seem to be equating the idea of designer intent with my opinion of an item's balance. Stop that. For examples of why do I need to go over the absolute debacle that was the druid playtest? The one where the person playing almost literally never used any of the class features? No I don't mean used them poorly, or otherwise not up to potential. I meant literally didn't cast a single spell, wildshape, or even really make the companion do things in combat. It was embarrassing.

As for the second half of your last paragraph you pretty clearly deeply underestimate my sheer anti-confidence in WotC's ability to comprehend what they just wrote.

[Venger]

You seem to be equating the idea of designer intent with my opinion of an item's balance. Stop that.

you seem to have detected hostile intent in my post. my apologies if it came off that way. I didn't mean to say your views were wrong, I just didn't understand what you were talking about. let me rephrase:

in your opinion, what is the discrepancy between the intent of the writers creating the bedroll which allows you to gain benefits of sleep in 1 hour and players using the bedroll to gain the benefits of sleep in 1 hour? in my views, the intent and the practice seem to be identical.

I don't understand your first sentence. I don't want to misrepresent your points or react incorrectly, so would you be so kind as to rephrase it?



For examples of why do I need to go over the absolute debacle that was the druid playtest? The one where the person playing almost literally never used any of the class features? No I don't mean used them poorly, or otherwise not up to potential. I meant literally didn't cast a single spell, wildshape, or even really make the companion do things in combat. It was embarrassing.

uh... no, I'm good. everyone knows about vyena's playtester playing the druid like a warrior like some kind of scrub. I don't see how it has anything to do with what we're talking about, though.


As for the second half of your last paragraph you pretty clearly deeply underestimate my sheer anti-confidence in WotC's ability to comprehend what they just wrote.
I also know that the writers/designers of this game have no idea how it works, like everyone else does. what I don't understand is where in my post I argue with you about this.

do you mean that despite the bedroll being used for its intended purpose, you think it's an unbalanced item for its cost, like a thought bottle?

again, not trying to be combative, I just want to avoid talking past each other

[ryu]

you seem to have detected hostile intent in my post. my apologies if it came off that way. I didn't mean to say your views were wrong, I just didn't understand what you were talking about. let me rephrase:

in your opinion, what is the discrepancy between the intent of the writers creating the bedroll which allows you to gain benefits of sleep in 1 hour and players using the bedroll to gain the benefits of sleep in 1 hour? in my views, the intent and the practice seem to be identical.

I don't understand your first sentence. I don't want to misrepresent your points or react incorrectly, so would you be so kind as to rephrase it?




uh... no, I'm good. everyone knows about vyena's playtester playing the druid like a warrior like some kind of scrub. I don't see how it has anything to do with what we're talking about, though.


I also know that the writers/designers of this game have no idea how it works, like everyone else does. what I don't understand is where in my post I argue with you about this.

do you mean that despite the bedroll being used for its intended purpose, you think it's an unbalanced item for its cost, like a thought bottle?

again, not trying to be combative, I just want to avoid talking past each other

My point is that even assuming the designers understood what the item's function was, which isn't a given, they likely don't understand the implications of what that function can actually be used to do. Sorta like how the vast majority of low level and even most high level spells have bluntly obvious intended functionality, but the devs didn't account for almost any of them when building settings, or setting rules. There's a difference between knowing what something does and know what something does.

That said I also find the core intent of the devs to be openly nonsensical, poorly written, over-narrow, and an active weakening of the system as a whole when taken even slightly seriously. Dev intent has absolutely nothing to do with balance in general let alone my preferred balance point. Any time I even bring it up I'm usually mocking the sheer shortsightedness of it. Incidentally this is also why I got a bit snippy. Conflating my views with dev intent is literally one of the things I emphatically reject on a basic level.

[Hrugner]

So is there a way to get around that eight hour delay after casting a spell? The bedroll mentions specifically that it doesn't circumvent that limitation.

Aside from having a time adjusted plane to port to of course.

[Venger]

My point is that even assuming the designers understood what the item's function was, which isn't a given, they likely don't understand the implications of what that function can actually be used to do. Sorta like how the vast majority of low level and even most high level spells have bluntly obvious intended functionality, but the devs didn't account for almost any of them when building settings, or setting rules. There's a difference between knowing what something does and know what something does.

That said I also find the core intent of the devs to be openly nonsensical, poorly written, over-narrow, and an active weakening of the system as a whole when taken even slightly seriously. Dev intent has absolutely nothing to do with balance in general let alone my preferred balance point. Any time I even bring it up I'm usually mocking the sheer shortsightedness of it. Incidentally this is also why I got a bit snippy. Conflating my views with dev intent is literally one of the things I emphatically reject on a basic level.

oh, I understand. so you mean something like major creation being able to replicate black lotus. it's plainly what the spell was intended to do, but the designers just failed to think about it for even one second.

so your objection is that the designers thought that this would just let your guy... sleep 8 hours less and didn't think about its effects on the 15 minute adventuring day or the like.

I agree completely.

I agree their intent is separate from actual game balance since they don't know anything about balance. that's cool. sorry I pissed you off, I wasn't trying to be argumentative.



So is there a way to get around that eight hour delay after casting a spell? The bedroll mentions specifically that it doesn't circumvent that limitation.

Aside from having a time adjusted plane to port to of course.
(reads first half)
oh, well a fast-time--
(reads second half)
no.

there are a bunch of ways to cast NI spells, obviating the need for resting, but I don't think that's what you're after.

[ryu]

I was talking purely about ending the vulnerability of sleep as a meaningful weakness. The methods for recharging spells quickly or simply making them last so long you don't care much about what you've cast in the last eight hours is an entirely different barrel.

[Venger]

I was talking purely about ending the vulnerability of sleep as a meaningful weakness. The methods for recharging spells quickly or simply making them last so long you don't care much about what you've cast in the last eight hours is an entirely different barrel.

but spells are the only reason casters need to sleep at all. otherwise they could just stay up 24/7 like the mundanes. I've never heard of sleep being a meaningful weakness, even if your dm bans rope trick. do you mean like monsters accosting you while you're asleep and don't have spells?

[Lerondiel]

Ok, I really, really don't get the whole 'everyone will 15 minute adventuring day and just nova' thing. First off, that happens anyways, and secondly there's a LOT of ways to stop players from doing that. The game isn't in a vacuum, for one. Enemies move. If you're infiltrating a military base at night and get spotted and kill a couple guards before they raise the alarm but one of you got stabbed, you can't just rest until you're healed because you're in an enemy base. If you leave, they'll know they just got attacked and security will be way up next time you come back, plus you'll have failed in your mission because someone got slightly wounded. I'm not planning this for a kick in the door dungeon crawl where the players travel the countryside in search of loot.

Thanks for the insight, Evil DM. Basically what I'm trying to gain here is PC's having to recover if they get heavily wounded, rather than being completely A-OK six seconds later. What would happen if cure spells gave temporary HP instead of actual healing?


The best thing coming out of all these comments is a feel for how your players might respond emotionally and mechanically to the rule change.

You know them pretty well I assume. Some will enjoy it as a challenge and take it in the spirit you intend it. Others will try and beat it with work-arounds, while others will want to riot.

Best idea is to run the concept past them to make sure there's the interest before you go to a lot of work.

[ryu]

but spells are the only reason casters need to sleep at all. otherwise they could just stay up 24/7 like the mundanes. I've never heard of sleep being a meaningful weakness, even if your dm bans rope trick. do you mean like monsters accosting you while you're asleep and don't have spells?

Standard clock for sleeping holds that you sleep for eight of every twenty-four hours. In any baseline competent adventuring party there should always be escape resources left open to get out of dodge even at the end of the day. Ambushes can occur at any time if the enemy is lucky enough to have gotten around your divinations. Which sounds more problematic to you? The standard vulnerability period where everyone gets eight hours of sleep in shifts usually with only one or two people awake at a time tops, or the standard party taking turns passing around the sleeping bag while inside the rope trick with all but one person constantly on watch to transport everyone away over the course of seconds?

My group is extremely high OP, and extremely paranoid to the point where a peaceful night's sleep is a luxury rather than a given. This is especially true at relatively low levels before the best defenses come online.

[Venger]

Standard clock for sleeping holds that you sleep for eight of every twenty-four hours. In any baseline competent adventuring party there should always be escape resources left open to get out of dodge even at the end of the day. Ambushes can occur at any time if the enemy is lucky enough to have gotten around your divinations. Which sounds more problematic to you? The standard vulnerability period where everyone gets eight hours of sleep in shifts usually with only one or two people awake at a time tops, or the standard party taking turns passing around the sleeping bag while inside the rope trick with all but one person constantly on watch to transport everyone away over the course of seconds?

My group is extremely high OP, and extremely paranoid to the point where a peaceful night's sleep is a luxury rather than a given. This is especially true at relatively low levels before the best defenses come online.

but if you do the second, where is the threat coming from?

I wouldn't say my experience is tippy-like in its lethality, but I definitely understand what you mean. when you can't do all this stuff, sleep is definitely a problem for casters.

[dextercorvia]

Having tried this a couple on times, my impressions are thus:

This is only really viable if you are looking at a game with a lot of in world downtime.
Even with significant downtime, the game will be a lot more lethal (which is presumably the goal).
Unless you are applying this only to healing HP damage, things like ability damage/d r ain and level drain become much bigger deals. You will likely need to homebrew tools to deal with them.
There are some nice alchemical items and spells in 3.5 that improve natural healing rates rather than healing outright. You might consider using them or adapting them for your purposes. Some are listed below. There are also some that deal with poison, though I don't have that list handy. To my understanding, PF expanded both sets.


Spells/SU Abilities that increase natural healing rate (Mostly Bard)

Healing Hymn
Summon Elysian Thrush
Healthful Rest



Magic Items that do the same

Magic Bedroll
Dukar Hand Coral



Alchemical Items

Restful Candle
Bitterleaf Oil



Feats

Long-Term Care


This is a nice list, and I will point out that it works really nicely with a Bard in the party as most of those things stack. So, if you rest for 8 hours in your Magic Bedrolls under the effects of an Elysian Thrush and Healthful Rest after a bard (who is providing you long term care) sings a Hymn of Healing:

You treat it like 24 hours bed rest (4 pts per character level thanks to Hymn of healing and Long term care),
which doubles twice (tripling since this is D&D), so 12 HP per character level, and
you get an addition CL HP from the bedroll.

So, with someone that can provide this routine (1st level spell, 2nd level spell, Bardic Music, and an easy skill check), you heal 13*Character level (that is roughly 2.5 Mass Heal spells, right?) per 8 hours rest. I don't think you need to sit out for weeks if you plan for it. That is without any houserules you might make to increase the effectiveness of natural healing, or the heal skill.

[ryu]

but if you do the second, where is the threat coming from?

I wouldn't say my experience is tippy-like in its lethality, but I definitely understand what you mean. when you can't do all this stuff, sleep is definitely a problem for casters.

Considering that's the mid level strat where things have methods of detecting even a well-concealed rope trick? The caster division of whichever high power we managed to piss off on the way to mid levels of course. There is always at least one.

[RolkFlameraven]

This really does seem like XCOM as a game though that might just be because 2 is coming out in Nov.

I'm also guessing this is 'pure' PF as PoW brings back crusader like healing with silver crane and a Vitolist isn't technically using magic.

As others have shone at higher levels 'long term care' can get some big numbers but you would need to port a few of them into PF to do so. Lower levels might have some nasty turn over though, but rookies are rookies right?

[dextercorvia]

Even in pure pathfinder (and I'm no expert), a Vitalist can rearrange natural healing from long term care so it all goes to the characters that need it most. Buddy McWizard who took 0 damage yesterday? Yeah, I'm going to redirect 4x his Character level in natural healing to Frontline the Barbarian. Can be done with ability damage, as well.

So, in that case, you want as many creatures in your collective as possible, so don't forget familiars and psicrystals as they are less likely to take damage.

Add in the Unchained Skill use and you can toss around quite a bit of natural healing.

[Mendicant]

If you really want to get that XCOM roster feel, I think you might want to draw some inspiration from another roaster-mission game that's a bit closer to home: Darkest Dungeon. Specifically, instead of turning healing off, add some other resource, like stress, sanity or exhaustion, which needs to be handled before you can send a particular character back out into the meat grinder. The advantage here is control: there is no stress mechanic in Pathfinder, so there aren't any assumptions about it baked into the classes themselves.

With hit points, melee characters are specifically meant to take more hits, especially the Barbarian. Taking away their ability to heal after fights penalizes them in a way it does not penalize non-meleers. If you put in a stress system though, you can dole out stress more evenly--did you see the frontliner get critted? Everyone add some stress. Did you get subjected to a fear effect? Well, even if you saved, take some stress. Maybe you take stress/exaustion any time you get hit or as a function of spell casting, so it accumulates more evenly. If you do something like this, don't hook it into the rest of the system too much (for instance, keep it separate from Will saves, or you're back to favoring high-will classes). Just make sure that it accumulates relatively evenly and that it requires time off to get rid of.

Another thing that might not be a bad choice: shave off some of the the most powerful classes, and keep the levels low. Maybe e6 it. Both XCOM and Darkest have classes with a much narrower range of power and a much tighter lid on the number of abilities. I don't know your players, but I have several who can barely remember to use all of their one character's class abilities. Asking them to familiarize themselves with a roster's worth of 12th-level characters just wouldn't happen, or would be an unbearable slog, especially if those characters are drawn from the fiddlier classes with prepared casting and big spell lists. A gritty, high lethality commando-style game could be a lot of fun with a team of rogues, rangers, cavaliers and sorcerers. (Fighter can play pretty well at low levels too if you give him 6 skill ranks per level.) Level 3-4 characters are going to feel more like the powerful but very mortal warriors you have in XCOM and Darkest, and they wont take as long to write up or get used to.

If you do take away some of the top-tier stuff, keep that in mind when you build encounters. Incorporeal and flying stuff is going to be much, much harder to handle, for instance.

Finally, if you want to simulate longer recovery times from injury, maybe magical healing is temporary or incomplete. You can get all your HP back from those cure spells, but every time you take a crit or drop below 10% or your hitpoints, you acquire an injury that will eventually need bedrest to properly recover from. It doesn't slow you down now--that cure spell will keep you alive and your training and determination will let you gut out the pain for an adventuring day or two--but when you're back at base you'll need x number of days per injury. This way you can force some turnover without unduly penalizing characters who are meant to take more hits.

ETA:
One other thing. If you do keep the levels low, and especially if there's no easy healing, I'd reccommend some additional hit points at first level to keep death a little less swingy and arbitrary. My way of doing this has been to take on a full HD (and just the HD itself, don't double the Con bonus too) worth of hitpoints at first level. This gives a slight boost to the d10 and d12 guys, and gives first-level characters much longer adventuring days.

[jedipilot24]

In addition to the Injury and Vitality/Wound point variant rules from Unearthed Arcana, there's also Damage Conversion (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/damageConversion.htm) where armor converts lethal damage into nonlethal damage and Reserve Points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/reservePoints.htm) which give characters a limited ability to bounce back after taking damage.
You might also want to import from 4e Healing Surges and Short Rests (a variation of the latter is used in Trailblazer).

Also, the Heal skill is now very important.

[Darth Ultron]

Thanks for the insight, Evil DM. Basically what I'm trying to gain here is PC's having to recover if they get heavily wounded, rather than being completely A-OK six seconds later. What would happen if cure spells gave temporary HP instead of actual healing?

You could just go with.......the characters stay wounded all the time.

Again, this is much more like classic play.

In Ye Old Days, when on an adventure, the average character was lucky to stay about about half their HP total, just about all the time. So Rogar would start the adventure fully healed at say 20 hp. After the very first encounter, Rogar would be down to 11 hp....and do nothing. The game would just go on. Rogar's player would not be obsessed with the idea that they ''can't effectively play their character until he is at full hp every second of the game''. And sure Rogar would be on the look out for something like a healing potion to drink fast, but that would be done as part of the game. And sure, sometimes poor Rogar would have to adventure with something like two hit points. And it was rough and hard and very gritty...but it was fun.

[Scheming Wizard]

Its been my experience that combat dries up and suddenly the party starts sneaking around like solid snake. My sister and I played the wizard and the cleric for a large party of fighters, rogues, barbarians and rangers and one time we couldn't make it so they decided to play without us. As I heard it later on they got into a big fight early on got wounded pretty badly then crept around stealthily to avoid another fight. They ended up getting into another fight and they all died. So no healing could work if you want a non combat game focused on role play and intrigue or a stealth game focused on assassination. Your party won't be fighting dragons and titans though.

[kellbyb]

You could just go with.......the characters stay wounded all the time.

Again, this is much more like classic play.

In Ye Old Days, when on an adventure, the average character was lucky to stay about about half their HP total, just about all the time. So Rogar would start the adventure fully healed at say 20 hp. After the very first encounter, Rogar would be down to 11 hp....and do nothing. The game would just go on. Rogar's player would not be obsessed with the idea that they ''can't effectively play their character until he is at full hp every second of the game''. And sure Rogar would be on the look out for something like a healing potion to drink fast, but that would be done as part of the game. And sure, sometimes poor Rogar would have to adventure with something like two hit points. And it was rough and hard and very gritty...but it was fun.

In "ye old days", there was a fair chance of death in any given combat regardless of if you were at 20 health or 11. In newer editions, such a health differential make a substantial difference in someone's chance of survival. The game is now balanced around the idea that characters start each combat with full health, or very close to it.

Also, no one in their right mind would go out adventuring on 2 hp unless they very obviously wanted to roll up a new character. Even the noblest, most selfless of paladins would be justified in staying in town to recuperate, seeing that a lucky shot by some roadside bandits stands a very good chance of instantly killing him. I get that you like the old-school style of gameplay, but it's just one option. I prefer my characters to be a bit less disposable.

[TheOneHawk]

Finally, if you want to simulate longer recovery times from injury, maybe magical healing is temporary or incomplete. You can get all your HP back from those cure spells, but every time you take a crit or drop below 10% or your hitpoints, you acquire an injury that will eventually need bedrest to properly recover from. It doesn't slow you down now--that cure spell will keep you alive and your training and determination will let you gut out the pain for an adventuring day or two--but when you're back at base you'll need x number of days per injury. This way you can force some turnover without unduly penalizing characters who are meant to take more hits.

This is kind of what I was thinking recently. Drop below your Wounds threshold and you'll need some time off to really rebuild the strength in that arm you took a bone deep slash to, or whatever. Casters will drop below that point far more easily if enemies get to them, as well.