Idea-- Heroic Healing (Hit Dice as Vitality Points)

[Grod_The_Giant]

So probably my least favorite aspect of D&D is hit points. Having spent a while with games like Fate and M&M, going back to 5e leaves me grumpy about the need for healing. Especially since 5e has so little consequence to losing HP-- there's no wounds or anything of the like, you just fight at full power as long as you're not actively unconscious, at which point a single blip of a healing spell brings you back. So anyway, here's my thoughts on making health a bit more interesting.


You recover all lost hit points during a Short Rest, along with one Hit Die
Add a new action: Recover: Expend a charge of a Healer's Kit to spend as many Hit Dice as you'd like, which works as normal. If you're Proficient in Heal, you add your Proficiency Bonus to the amount you heal. Afterwards, attacks against you have Advantage until the start of your next turn. You may also use a Recover action on another character's behalf-- they spend their own hit dice, but attacks against both of you have Advantage until the start of that character's turn.
Lose one Hit Die whenever you take a critical hit, damage equal to or greater than half your maximum hit points, when you are reduced to zero hit points, or when you fail a Death Save?.
If you would be forced to lose a Hit Die and have no remaining Hit Dice, instead take a level of Exhaustion, representing a serious wound.
Any healing effect restores one Hit Die for every 10 hit points it cures. The Lesser Restoration spell removes one level of Exhaustion, and Greater Restoration removes up to three. During a Long Rest, a DC 15 Heal check lets you recover from two levels of Exhaustion instead of one.


What do you all think? I'm not sure if "on a failed Death Save" is too punitive.

[pwykersotz]

Interesting system. :smallsmile:

I'm not sure I would have Hit Dice be healed automatically per 10 points healed, I would probably rather have it be that it requires 10 points of healing to restore a hit die, and the person healing would choose how to allocate it. But maybe that's too gritty for the intent.

Edit: On a failed death save might cause some doubling, since damage taken while at 0 is already a crit, invoking both penalties. I'd probably just have it be on crit and call it good.

[Slipperychicken]

If I cared that much about punishing players for getting savaged in combat, I'd convert over the mortal wounds table from ACKS. Any time you get to 0 hit points and survive, you get to roll on it, with an array of variables including how far under zero you were (i.e. how much damage you took in excess of what brought him to 0), how potent and timely the treatment was that brought you back up, and the constitution of the downed character. If you roll decently and have competent healing, you're unlikely to suffer a really crippling malus (a lot of them are stuff like "you see something spooky before you recover" or "1d6 of your teeth were knocked out"), but that risk is still there.

Here's the table. Most of it is fairly straightforward to convert, like healing specialty either being medicine proficiency or the healer feat. When someone who is at 0hp receives healing, one rolls a d20 modified by the stuff at the bottom (result determines left column), along with a d6 that is not modified (which determines the top row). To see what happens, you look where those two values intersect.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3683/13902423664_45fb2e6569_o.jpg

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm not sure I would have Hit Dice be healed automatically per 10 points healed, I would probably rather have it be that it requires 10 points of healing to restore a hit die, and the person healing would choose how to allocate it. But maybe that's too gritty for the intent.
Hmm... Yeah, I concur. It'd be good for a grittier variant, though.


Edit: On a failed death save might cause some doubling, since damage taken while at 0 is already a crit, invoking both penalties. I'd probably just have it be on crit and call it good.
Huh? Damage when at 0? I'm not familiar with the rule, but does it ever come up?


If I cared that much about punishing players for getting savaged in combat,
It's not about being gritty and savaging players. The idea is to drive in the nature of hit points as luck instead of meat. To let hp recover pretty much automatically (so you don't need someone to keep burning spell slots on healing) without totally removing attrition or consequence.

[pwykersotz]

Huh? Damage when at 0? I'm not familiar with the rule, but does it ever come up?

When you hit 0hp, you fall unconcious.
When you are unconscious, attacks within 5ft are automatically criticals if they hit.
Criticals cause 2 failed death saves.

I don't know if it comes up in practice at other tables. At mine I don't have crits deal 2 death saves because of this chain effect. I feel it's too quick.