How do DM's handle (or not) more HP pcs?

[gooddragon1]

I thought to myself, if a crusader really wanted to they could heal good chunks of HP to the party round after round. Wouldn't a DM then just hit the party harder? So then why not play with less healing capacity and more of other things instead?

Sort of the question: Where's the balance of healing you should look for in party composition?
Another question: Do DM's tend to scale against healing if you include more of it?

Just wondering.

[exelsisxax]

Because that crusader would be crap as a result. In-combat healing is one of the least useful things you can do on your turn. Dead opponents stop being threats - but you did nothing to that end. It's not really even a numbers question. If healing spells and abilities of highest available level healed ANY PC to full, they would still suck. CLW could heal 400, and it would still be a relatively bad thing to use a turn on.

Why? Because the boss confirmed a crit, and you're dead. You don't heal from dead. D&D is rather rocket-tag, everything hits hard, nothing mitigates damage meaningfully, and your only defense is evasion. The DM doesn't care that PCs can heal to full with 1 spell. All he has to do is adjust opponents to your optimization level and wait for lucky max damage rolls or crits, and you die - try not to tempt him.

[DarkSoul]

To answer your questions from a DM's point of view:



I don't look for a specific balance of healing in the party. If no one wants any healing ability, that's fine. They can spend gold on potions, and I might throw a little extra their way if they have to rely on consumables.
I would say yes, if a party has enough healing ability to effectively give everyone 10-20% more hit points, then if I was holding back for some reason, I won't do that so much. If I wasn't holding back then yes, the encounters will get deadlier.


I think that having SOME healing ability is important for a party, because it allows for the last minute saves before someone dies, and allows the DM to turn up the tension in an encounter to the point where at least a few actions need to be spent on healing, or the party will die. I think that a character that can heal who absolutely refuses to do so when necessary is a hindrance to the group.

[Quertus]

Well, I'm a ****, and don't child proof my world for weaklings custom tailor encounters to the party. If the party is lacking in healing, that's their problem; if they have plenty, that's their good.

As a player, I like lots of healing. The game has enough rocket tag already - no reason to increase the odds of getting one-shotted by being at less than max HP at the start of an encounter. :smalltongue:

That having been said, even being a troll didn't stop one of my characters from being KO'd in the surprise round, pretty much every encounter.

[gooddragon1]

So then it depends on the DM. Some may adjust for it and others let you sink or swim. For that second case I've felt that a 1 level dip in dragon shaman for the heal up to half aura would be useful, but I never really can tell.

[Powerdork]

Because that crusader would be crap as a result. In-combat healing is one of the least useful things you can do on your turn. Dead opponents stop being threats - but you did nothing to that end.

Except that all Crusader healing maneuvers are "hit a thing, heal an ally", except for Aura of Triumph, which is "all allies near you who hit a thing heal themselves". So, all those maneuvers do something to that end.

[Fizban]

But don't you know that anything less then absolute maximum damage is useless?

Anyway, Crusaders don't really heal all that much, just enough to draw things out. The longer the fight goes and the more attacks are wasted chewing through crusader heals, the more time the PCs have to kill it with other things.

You want something more annoying, try an actual healbot. Augment Healing+ Imbued Healing (with Healing Domain)= a crap ton more hp per spell (and that's not even counting potential buffs). Crusader does 15-20hp with the 3rd level manuever, this guy does 25-30 with Cure Mod, 15-20 with an immediate action Close Wounds, and Healing Signet at 3rd does 15-20 for the whole party out to lol range. Makes an otherwise average party much more annoying as you basically have to one-shot them or it's not happening- until they run out of slots anyway. But if they aren't paying attention. . .

So the counter to unlimited hp healing is not attacking hp. Use those save or lose, mind control, gaze attacks, ability damage and energy drain. Not enough to invalidate the crusader/healbot but increasing their frequency will keep the party feeling threatened.

[Ualaa]

The majority of adventures (or adventure paths) are build in relation to the power of the characters. So things are scaled. You start off at level one, and are fighting Goblins and maybe Bandits. By the time your characters are fifth level, you're not dealing with things that are a threat to the city that you're in, and they're a challenge for the increased capability of your characters. When you hit 10th level, you're dealing with things that are a threat to your country, which at 10th level is a good challenge for you.

If I build an adventure, it is typically tailored to the party. Sure something is occasionally really hard or really easy, but for the most part a high accuracy combat guy might need a 6+ to hit while a super slugger guy who has traded accuracy for damage might need a 13+ to hit but hit for twice as much, and the caster guy who is stuck in melee by mistake might need a 17+ to hit. Those numbers might be pretty consistent as we're going up, with a little fluctuation.



On the other end of the spectrum...

A few places use a status-quo system, where the mob here is level eleven and it doesn't matter if you're level three (and dead in six seconds) or you're level nineteen (and have a very easy time of the fight) when you explore the room. First edition adventures were frequently status-quo, as are many of the nastier dungeons by Frog God Games (like Rappan Athuk, Slumbering Tsar or Lost City of Barakus).

Our current group just finished session 70 (tonight) in Rappan Athuk (Pathfinder version). The place is definitely status-quo. We're using much stronger than average characters... Gestalt rules (but fractional BAB/Saves, as per Unearthed Arcana 3.x), Mythic Rank 2, Advanced Race Guide -- min/max your own race on a point buy.

That said, despite some sick characters, some places are easy and other places are hard. There are almost always hints as to the power level of the typical mob for a given level. Lower down in the dungeon is harder. The main entrance starts harder and scales upwards faster than the secondary entrances.
If you make a knowledge check, and get a lot of information on a creature with an adjusted roll of 30 you can gauge it to be around CR 5 or 10; if on that same knowledge check you don't get any information at all, that is telling you the mob is at least CR 26... as you get information based on multiples of 5 over the CR of the mob.

Rappan Athuk will sometimes have a lot of say CR 6-8 mobs on a level, and then have an apex predator who is CR 15. If you were having difficulties with the CR 6 guys, but could take them... and then you find a lair of something, and there are dozens of corpses freshly mangled by something... it is probably a lot tougher than you are. Although players won't necessarily come to that conclusion.

For this style of a dungeon, the players dictate where they go. I'm letting the dice fall where they may.

I'm playing the mobs as intelligently as their stats indicate. So when there is an ooze thing, tough or weak, it generally goes after the closest thing to it. A smarter creature like an animal may go after the first thing to hit it, unless something hits it extremely hard. A much smarter creature may realize the human in armor is hard to hit and doesn't hit for much, while the guy in leather is easy to hit and hits hard, so it decides to ignore the one in plate and turn on the one in leather. If the mobs come in groups as a typical occurrence, they will go for flanks and approach from different directions when they can. If you run into a group of Drow, they'll know to take out the opposing (PC's) wizards and psions ahead of the meat shields.

If a player has a build where he's got 190 hit points, I don't adjust things to hit him harder. That said, at the same time we had a guy with 83 hit points. The party average was probably 120 for everyone else. I didn't adjust things to hit the low guy for less either.

Through 70 sessions of play, our players are on:
A - character #07.
B - character #09.
C - character #15.
D - character #17.
E - character #27.

[Zombimode]

I thought to myself, if a crusader really wanted to they could heal good chunks of HP to the party round after round. Wouldn't a DM then just hit the party harder? So then why not play with less healing capacity and more of other things instead?

Sort of the question: Where's the balance of healing you should look for in party composition?
Another question: Do DM's tend to scale against healing if you include more of it?



Well, you have discovered one of the reasons why it is bad of DMs to adapt the challenges the PCs are facing to the abilities they are bringing. It carries the risk of invalidating the players choices.

[Someone Else DM]

Another question: Do DM's tend to scale against healing if you include more of it?

Just wondering.

The short answer...Absolutely we do!

I don't do it as a "gotcha" or to trivialize the player's abilities. As noted in previous posts, a certain amount of tension is desired during combat. If the build led to a walk-through of the campaign it would be no fun for anyone. Can you honestly say that you would want to play through a campaign where there were very few (if any) circumstances where there was mortal danger from melee attacks?

The cautionary tale for me would be twofold:

1. Scaling up so much, that during combat the PC spends most/all of his time/actions healing. A lack of interest and excitement in the character and campaign could quickly follow.

2. My players would be keen to my actions and the tension in the room would not be for the whether the BBEG will kill the PC's because of the scaling, but rather will the PC's kill the DM for scaling up the encounters :smallwink: I have found that people tend to get angry when they feel they have been hoodwinked, cheesed, or otherwise put out by the waving of the "DM wand of whatever I want to happen".

Usually these types of builds are done to optimize the party though. As long as the build provides fun, enjoyment, and memorable play for the players, there is usually no need to adjust on the fly (not that I have never given another 5 HP to a monster to keep the fight going for one more round...).

IMHO I don't believe the Crusader would provide too much of an issue. There are many healbot threads here, check em out. I would link them for you, but I don't have enough posts yet :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallsigh:

[Ualaa]

If I'm doing a tailored campaign... where the challenges in this area are fairly equivalent to the ability of the characters, then there is scaling but not necessarily in direct relation to a given build.

If the party is all level five, and it should be a challenging fight, then maybe it is two level 8 guys or a level 10 guy. If the party is barely optimized, the monsters don't need to be that hard to push the group and maybe 2x8 or 1x10 is too much. Conversely, if the party is very optimized then maybe it needs to be 4x level 5s that are in their face supported by 4x level 8s that are attacking from range and trying to play the kiting game to make things a bit harder/more challenging.

If one guy is super good at a given aspect, then they should generally shine at that aspect since that is where they've invested their build tools (stats, feats, gold, etc). If they've got phenomenal archery, or massive healing, or can drop most things on a charge with an encounter power that they open with often, let them shine with it.

I, and I assume most other DMs, are going to balance against the capabilities of the entire group rather than focus on making one player's choices invalid or poor. That is assuming the players are at a fairly even (close enough) level in relation to each other.

[jdizzlean]

the dm should, and mine does, simply tailor the encounter to what he wants to do anyways. As stated above, it's better to hit something w/ a stick, then apply a band-aid to a friend unless it's a dire circumstance like death.