What if you had full HP every fight? (updated)

[tedcahill2]

So I'm thinking of a house rule that would see hit points be a per encounter resource, but add a supplemental health pool that represents actual harm to your character and not the abstraction of hit points.

As soon as the players have a chance to rest after an encounter, let's say 10 minutes, their hit points would refill entirely.

Now I know that many people think using CR to determine appropriate combat challenges is garbage, but let's assume for a moment that CR does it's job. The book say, I believe, that when using the CR encounter tables it represents an encounter that would exhaust about 1/5 of a parties daily resources. So four 1/4 CR kobolds should consume approximately 20% of the daily resources that four level 1 adventurers have.

If characters start every encounter with full hit points, how would you suggest I determine the correct CR of monsters to use to make sure they're still challenged? I know if I go up in CR # too much the AC and hit bonuses won't scale right for the level of the party, so is adding more creatures my only option?

Edit: thanks for the feedback, seems I was overthinking this a bit. I want to explain the rest of my thought to make sure opinions don’t changed.

So in addition to hit points that always refill players would have a separate vitality pool that represent actual damage taken. I was thinking of do this a few ways, 1) everyone has a set number of vitality points, 10, and your CON modifier determines how many points you can lose before being injured or 2) you have a number of vitality point equal to your CON score and you are injured when half your vitality is gone.

“Injuries” would be small penalties representing the damage you’ve take.

Magical healing cannot heal vitality or injuries.

Critical hits and “self inflicted” damage is dealt directly to vitality, by passing hit points. So if you are thrown off a cliff you take hit point damage, but if you jump off the cliff yourself you take vitality damage.

Vitality effectively gives playing additional hit points to go through before dying, but it comes with its own suite of drawbacks in the form of injuries. Should hit points be lowered in anyway to account for the additional vitality points you get?

[Mike Miller]

You won't need to change CRs if you replenish HP. Just provide one extra encounter per day. Maybe even two.

[Lord Shark]

So I'm thinking of a house rule that would see hit points be a per encounter resource, but add a supplemental health pool that represents actual harm to your character and not the abstraction of hit points.

It sounds like you're heading in the direction of the 3.5 Reserve Points variant rule (in which PCs have a pool of Reserve Points they use to refill their hit points in between battles). Which, in turn, led to 4E's Healing Surges, 13th Age's Recoveries, and similar variants.

[Kurald Galain]

As soon as the players have a chance to rest after an encounter, let's say 10 minutes, their hit points would refill entirely.
So basically, exactly the same thing as when the party has a healing wand, channel cleric, or lesser vigor. I think many parties already play that way, so this wouldn't actually change anything :smallamused:

[Jack_Simth]

So basically, exactly the same thing as when the party has a healing wand, channel cleric, or lesser vigor. I think many parties already play that way, so this wouldn't actually change anything :smallamused:

Right. Many parties fully replenish their hp between fights anyway. Whether that is by wands of cure light wounds, wands of lesser vigor, spontaneous conversion, or any other method.

So all this is likely to change is less consumable item expenses.

[tedcahill2]

It sounds like you're heading in the direction of the 3.5 Reserve Points variant rule (in which PCs have a pool of Reserve Points they use to refill their hit points in between battles). Which, in turn, led to 4E's Healing Surges, 13th Age's Recoveries, and similar variants.

The one in Unearth Arcana, or another variant of the same name?

[tedcahill2]

So basically, exactly the same thing as when the party has a healing wand, channel cleric, or lesser vigor. I think many parties already play that way, so this wouldn't actually change anything :smallamused:


Right. Many parties fully replenish their hp between fights anyway. Whether that is by wands of cure light wounds, wands of lesser vigor, spontaneous conversion, or any other method.

So all this is likely to change is less consumable item expenses.

F--- me you're right. I'm totally over thinking this.

[DarkSoul]

From a DM perspective it just means you don't have to pull your punches so much in later encounters.

[flappeercraft]

I feel like it wouldn't alter balance too much. Although it depends on the game. If no one is playing a cleric or healing capable class then everyone just gets a massive buff. If you have consumables like potions or wands its just saving consumables and if you have fast healin then its pointless. In your average game though I feel like it would not unbalance too much, just make sure that there are more encounters per day and you're fine.

[heavyfuel]

Considering how cheap out of combat healing is, I say there's absolutely no difference in actual gameplay. Players might have a couple hundred extra GP to spend, but that's pretty irrelevant overall

[tedcahill2]

Thanks for all the great feedback. I edited some thing onto the end of my OP, does everything said so far still apply?

[Jack_Simth]

Thanks for all the great feedback. I edited some thing onto the end of my OP, does everything said so far still apply?
Have you heard of something called a "Death Spiral"? Basically, in applying penalties for getting hurt - especially ones that can't be cured by magic between fights - it's made more likely that the character will get hurt again (whether that's in the next fight, or in the next round). Which, in turn, makes it even more likely that the character will be injured again.

[tedcahill2]

Have you heard of something called a "Death Spiral"? Basically, in applying penalties for getting hurt - especially ones that can't be cured by magic between fights - it's made more likely that the character will get hurt again (whether that's in the next fight, or in the next round). Which, in turn, makes it even more likely that the character will be injured again.

I'm aware of death spirals, and I'm not really worried about them. Combat wise, you start every fight at full health and only get injured when you lose all your HP and then some. So it's basically a system where you're injured instead of killed. Also, a -1 or -2 here and there really don't affect that much when you have the linear distribution of the d20 system. The reason I want self inflicted damage to go through hit points is so playing stop leaping off 100 ft ledges just because they have the hit points to survive it.