Infinite Healing Bad?

[Starsinger]

Okay.. It's "conventional wisdom" that unlimited out of combat healing is bad, because then PCs have full HP all the time. On the one hand I can sorta understand that. On the other hand how is that different from the current "We step into the rope trick/magnificent mansion, cleric loads up on cure spells, we heal up, spend an extra night, and are ready to adventure again in a few days." Infinite healing would infact, encourage casters to run out of spells instead of relying on casters taking 8 hour naps after every encounter.

So the question is.. would unlimited healing really be that bad?

[Emperor Demonking]

Yeah, it strongly encourages clerics to become super warriors, over shadowing melee characters.

[Starsinger]

Yeah, it strongly encourages clerics to become super warriors, over shadowing melee characters.

But don't cleric stock up on cheap wands of cure light wounds (since you can afford like 20 of them by time you're level 4...), so they can spend their spell slots not healing to do exactly that anyways?

[Ne0]

Which is why I love low-magic settings.
Wands suddenly become artifacts. :smallbiggrin:

[Emperor Demonking]

But don't cleric stock up on cheap wands of cure light wounds (since you can afford like 20 of them by time you're level 4...), so they can spend their spell slots not healing to do exactly that anyways?

Yeah, but there's something wrong about doing it in my opinion. You make them all about overshadowing.

[Sebastian]

the problem is not exactly with infinite healing, the problem, (for how I see it, of course) is with the whole 3e setup, where at the end of the combat either every member of the group is dead or everyone will be fine in a really short time (how much short the time depend on what level the party is)
After a certain level an average equiped party can go from almost TPK to 100% strength in 24 hour, more or less (just the time for the cleric to prepare the right spells). Infinite healing it is just the logical conseguence of that. If you have no problem with that, you should have no problem with the infinite healing, too.

[Morty]

The problem, as I see it, is that in 3.x players have to stop and rest for few hours, and not all players are metagaming to an extent of spending two days on healing. With infinite healing, players can just go forward and fight without stopping until they get utterly exhausted, as they're able to heal up for free after every fight.

[Emperor Demonking]

After a certain level an average equiped party can go from almost TPK to 100% strength in 24 hour, more or less (just the time for the cleric to prepare the right spells). Infinite healing it is just the logical conseguence of that. If you have no problem with that, you should have no problem with the infinite healing, too.

No as if it takes two days to heal that's two days while the villians are doing thier plan so you have to make a choice.

[bluish_wolf]

Yeah, it strongly encourages clerics to become super warriors, over shadowing melee characters.

If you had infinite healing, you would likely just remove the cleric and druid classes.

[Jack Zander]

If you had infinite healing, you would likely just remove the cleric and druid classes.

...

Are you being serious?

Do you know what you just said?

[Cuddly]

...

Are you being serious?

Do you know what you just said?

1. Does any sane DM allow dinosaur druids in their campaigns?
2. Does anyone allow DMM?

Without DMM, clerics are significantly less powerful, since their major buff, Divine Power, lasts rounds. Once you can cast a quickened 4th level spell, you're playing at a very high level.

[Sebastian]

No as if it takes two days to heal that's two days while the villians are doing thier plan so you have to make a choice.

Yeah, but how many times your DM can have his villains works on a strict timeline before it gets ridicolous?

[Sebastian]

The problem, as I see it, is that in 3.x players have to stop and rest for few hours, and not all players are metagaming to an extent of spending two days on healing. With infinite healing, players can just go forward and fight without stopping until they get utterly exhausted, as they're able to heal up for free after every fight.

Then why just not remove healing altogether? at the end of combat who is still alive is back at full hitpoints, BAM!! just like that. No potions, no wands no spells...

Actually that could even be a good idea.

[mostlyharmful]

HP loss is a low level problem, with all the wands of lesser vigor and belts of healing outside core it turns into a very low level problem. If the party concedes that the divine casters aren't expected to pay for it all and it comes out of group money it can take a whole lot of fights for a well built party to run low on that particular resource. My experiance has always been that in-combat HP is a far more important factor than out of combat healing up, since it's the incombat stuff that dictates if a PC and thus a party wins or dies. Once out of the low levels spell slots rapidly become what gets exhausted first, with unexpected status conditions being the next most common stumbling bloc. If a party gets healed up between fights it doesn't really matter except against successive waves of low level mooks which aren't any fun to fight anyway.

[A.Sondergaard]

Yeah, but how many times your DM can have his villains works on a strict timeline before it gets ridicolous?Pffft...that I don't have to worry about my nemesis eventually achieving his goal is "ridicolous."

[mostlyharmful]

Pffft...that I don't have to worry about my nemesis eventually achieving his goal is "ridicolous."

That you must also have a nemesis and never be proactive in any way is also ridiculous, that all enemies encountered will have timetables of days rather than weeks/months/years is likewise bizarre.

[Cuddly]

That you must also have a nemesis and never be proactive in any way is also ridiculous, that all enemies encountered will have timetables of days rather than weeks/months/years is likewise bizarre.

The D&D universe is frighteningly bizarre. This, is after all, the multiverse of owlbears and pentaradial lions that defecate while spinning.

[Sebastian]

Pffft...that I don't have to worry about my nemesis eventually achieving his goal is "ridicolous."

"Eventually" don't mean that you can't take 2 days to heal yourself.
and what if you don't have a nemesi? or if not all your adventures are based around your nemesi, even if you have one. Not everyone games are based around a saturday morning cartoon, the gi-joes must defeat the cobra every week, but my PCs don't always have to, some week they could just go loot a lost city's treasures without even have to meet the Cobras or the team rocket.

[A.Sondergaard]

That you don't necessarily have any sort of timetable implies that whatever you're doing can wait for you to be at 100%, which implies that infinite out of combat healing is worthless, since you can just do it the "au naturale" way, or magical way(cast/rest til you're full on HP and spells) making this argument pointless.

some week they could just go loot a lost city's treasures without even have to meet the Cobras or the team rocket.We like to call those filler.

On topic, yeah, every game doesn't have to be story driven, if you wanna rope trick or hide in a mansion in the middle of the dungeon, or cast town portal, because the dungeon isn't going to go anywhere, fine, but not everyone's game plays out like Diablo. But if you wanna do that, again, you don't really even need the gloves of cure minor wounds at will.

I suppose I should actually respond to the OP, while I'm at it. Like I've already illustrated, the worth/cheesiness of infinite out-of-combat healing is really dependent on the style of game. It serves best when you're storming the enemy's stronghold, and you just know he's on the other side of that door, but your groups already taken a beating, and he'll escape if you don't get him now. If the game's focuses more on dungeon delving/exploration, at most, it'll make for less naps or trips to town.

In short, it'll depend on the pacing of your game. If it's a fairly fast paced story, it'll be a huge boon to the group. If it's a dungeon crawl, it's a handy accessory.

[Emperor Demonking]

"Eventually" don't mean that you can't take 2 days to heal yourself.
and what if you don't have a nemesi? or if not all your adventures are based around your nemesi, even if you have one. Not everyone games are based around a saturday morning cartoon, the gi-joes must defeat the cobra every week, but my PCs don't always have to, some week they could just go loot a lost city's treasures without even have to meet the Cobras or the team rocket.

Having a majorvillian with goals isn't just saturday cartoons. Its pretty much every fantasy novel ever written.

[Satyr]

I always found that the normal healing rules are too fast for my taste. It ruins the feeling that a fight is something dangerous. An even faster or simpler regeneration rules would be even more devastating for the game's its tension.

[Sebastian]

Having a majorvillian with goals isn't just saturday cartoons. Its pretty much every fantasy novel ever written.

The problem remain the same.That you need two days to be back at full strength, no matter what are your starting conditions, it is too fast (the problem is not just with helaing, but with 3,x as a whole). If you have no problem with that then you should have no problem with infinite healing, too. But you would also be better removing all healing magic and just say that between combats all hit points are automatically restored. you have the same results with less book-keeping.

[Emperor Demonking]

Not really, on one hand we have only rest when you run out of spells and on the other hand we have the current approach of giving a choice.

[A.Sondergaard]

But you would also be better removing all healing magic and just say that between combats all hit points are automatically restored. you have the same results with less book-keeping.Yeah, but then all the encounters would have to be carefully balanced so that people don't die too frequently in combat, because there's no healing magic. Which, the CR system of 3.5 wasn't really designed for...

[Idea Man]

If we're worried about dying, make all damage the equivalent of subdual damage. Players won't die unless the bad guys kill them on purpose, instead of being the norm. 7th Sea is like that, and it can be fun, but it's not to my taste for D&D. The subdual option also means you could justify HP per hour instead of day, speeding healing without the need of magic.

I prefer the option of wearing down the PCs, so I don't have to go over the top to threaten them (at higher levels, anyway; everything is threatening at lower levels), especially on a timeline. After all, what are all those resources they aquire for, if not to use them? :smallamused:

[Kyeudo]

Infinite Healing already exists in 3.5 and it has yet to break the game. A 4th? level Binder can bind Buer and have a healing touch at will that cures 1 hp per round or can be used for more major healing every 5 rounds. Sure it takes a while to charge up to full hp, but its possible to be back at full hp in less than an hour.

[horseboy]

Having a majorvillian with goals isn't just saturday cartoons. Its pretty much every fantasy novel ever written.

Stock phrase for stock plot: "Flash, Flash, I love you! But we only have 24 hours to save the Earth!"

OP: I don't know. Isn't there a rumor of something about how everybody can heal themselves some each day? I'm seeing not so much a "infinite healing" but each character can be healed each day, with clerics "buffing" your recovery. Then again, I could just be projecting again.:smallwink:

[bugsysservant]

Infinite Healing already exists in 3.5 and it has yet to break the game. A 4th? level Binder can bind Buer and have a healing touch at will that cures 1 hp per round or can be used for more major healing every 5 rounds. Sure it takes a while to charge up to full hp, but its possible to be back at full hp in less than an hour.

Yeah, but that such a slow process that it just limits any buff with a duration less than hours per level. Now, you can be healed fully but still rest because you need to regain spells. It's about the same anyway.

@OP: I support the potential for infinite healing. Without it the game just slows down. However, there should be some form of limiting factor so that if you really want to put the group under pressure, it's possible without stripping away class features.

[ghost_warlock]

One idea I had (or, actually, stole from Final Fantasy Tactics) for making in-combat healing important enough that healer-types, and others, will want to keep it on hand, but still allow "infinite" healing outside of combat, would be to use some sort of Death Clock effect.

Essentially, if a party member falls in combat, your party has X number of rounds (3 in FFT) to bring him/her back to a positive number of hit points before he/she dies. Note that I said positive hp, not just the 1 hp of healing core requires to stop bleeding.

This is somewhat more brutal than standard D&D, where characters can make rolls to stabilize and stop losing hp each round while they lie there or simply receive 1 hp of curing to accomplish the same. Also, in standard D&D a character that is defeated may get better on his/her own in time if he/she rolls well on the various rolls to stabilize. Not so with this variant - a character that isn't brought back up in X rounds is toast.

Once combat is over, characters left standing are fully healed (but spell slots are still expended). Any characters that died will have to be raised, resurrected, or reincarnated as per usual.

This will take the focus off of resting to heal damage but still making healing spells essential to any party that expects to take some heavy damage. Because a couple last-second cures may mean the difference between victory, TPK, or at least having to spend a few thousand gp to bring back a dead friend, the party having a couple wands of CLW or even other equipment capable of applying quick healing wouldn't neccessarily be unbalancing.

[Frosty]

I used to give my players a wand of onfinite cure light wounds, but recently I changed it to 20 charges per day. Not quite infinite healing, but enough to the cleric doesn't have to spend a ridiculous amount of resources on healing. They tend to take a lot of damage because my fights are hard :smallbiggrin:

[Sleet]

I don't have a problem with it in principle. I once GMed an entire campaign where HP were restored at CL per minute of rest; the most I can say is that it didn't obviously break anything, and nobody played a cleric. I don't know what unintended consequences it might have had in the hands of more skilled munchkins that we were, however. :smallwink:

[Proven_Paradox]

My solution to this is to simply give the players harder combats. My goal is for serious combats to make someone to go into negative hit points, but for no one to die. A thin line, I know, but I've gotten pretty good at treading it. Typically my monsters are doing enough damage that the cleric NEEDS to be running around healing people, or someone dies. After combat, I don't mind them brining out wands of minor vigor if the players are all looking nervous and saying "Damn, that was close."

That said, I play with players who don't abuse the rules most of the time. Most of the casters I've played with were blaster oriented, and most of the clerics I've played with spend about 20% of their resources on being better healers -at least-. Thing is, save-or-dies tend to not work well in my games because of what I said above; harder encounters mean better saves on the enemies. As most, that Hideous Laughter spell will take out the mook. The BBEG? He can probably (and legitimately, without fudging) resist it. Still useful, 'cause that mook was giving flanking bonuses to the enemy rogue and causing some nasty damage himself, but it's not going to break the combat.

[Dausuul]

I've played in a campaign with infinite healing (I was a dread necromancer, and the entire party had Tomb-Tainted Soul). It didn't result in horrible breakage. Warrior types got stronger relative to casters, since they never ran out of hit points; but that's not a bad thing.

[Saph]

Bear in mind that not having infinite healing doesn't necessarily make the game particularly fun. It means in practice that the most sensible tactic for the PCs is usually to go in, fight one or two battles, then withdraw and rest for 24 hours. There's little motivation to press ahead, because with each extra injury the party becomes weaker and less likely to survive the next encounter. Resource management becomes a much bigger part of the game, which most people don't find very heroic or exciting.

The extreme end of this spectrum are games where you have natural healing only. In these games PCs will generally withdraw and rest for a week after fights, if they want to live anyway.

- Saph

[Satyr]

Bear in mind that not having infinite healing doesn't necessarily make the game particularly fun. It means in practice that the most sensible tactic for the PCs is usually to go in, fight one or two battles, then withdraw and rest for 24 hours. There's little motivation to press ahead, because with each extra injury the party becomes weaker and less likely to survive the next encounter. Resource management becomes a much bigger part of the game, which most people don't find very heroic or exciting.

I disagree. Too easy healing - and to an equal amount the large amounts of hitpoints - kill the tension of fights because the danger is gone. The risk of injuries is marginalized and therefore becomes less interesting. The more risk and dangerous a battle feels like, the more tension can be build up.
If you want to make attles more interesting, limit heeling, introduce penalties for injuries and reduce the total number of hitpoints. It's the best you can do to beef up battles.

[Saph]

I disagree. Too easy healing - and to an equal amount the large amounts of hitpoints - kill the tension of fights because the danger is gone. The risk of injuries is marginalized and therefore becomes less interesting. The more risk and dangerous a battle feels like, the more tension can be build up.

This last is true, but I'm not sure you understood what I was trying to say. Having limited between-battle healing doesn't make the first battle of the day any riskier or more dangerous - it makes the second, third, and fourth ones riskier and more dangerous.

Now, you may say that this is good, but what you're actually encouraging the PCs to do is to have as few battles each day as possible - fight once, maybe twice, then withdraw to heal and recover spells.

I played a second-level one-off game once where the PCs had almost no healing - there was a multiclassed cleric/fighter with a couple of CLWs a day and that was it. The result was that the PCs had no way to recover from injury, so by the time we reached the boss, one PC was down and the other three were on half hitpoints. The boss killed the party easily. With hindsight, the smart thing to do would have been to refuse to fight more than one battle per day, and retreat whenever we'd taken more than a few trivial injuries. Is that really how you want the PCs to play?

- Saph

[Starsinger]

So then, Saph, you agree with me that between battle healing doesn't matter, it's the crucial in battle healing that should be limited to increase tension?

[Thrythlind]

Remember, D&D in its base form caters mostly to beginner roleplayers. It is sort of an entryway from computerized RPGs (movies with buttons) into table top gaming.

Those of us who are old experts all know that any system can be tweaked with house rules to make it more or less realistic, but the beginners are used to: go to the inn to save and recover HP and MP. Or camp in a safe room and do the same.

As to the question of whether infinite healing is a bad thing or not, that all depends on how much your group tolerates downtime.

[Saph]

So then, Saph, you agree with me that between battle healing doesn't matter, it's the crucial in battle healing that should be limited to increase tension?

Well, if in-battle healing isn't limited somehow, it's be pretty hard for either side to win battles, right? :P

But basically yes, I agree with you. I don't think out-of-battle healing is a problem, because it allows the PCs to keep on going and fighting, rather than do the 'fight five minutes, sleep 24 hours' routine. It also helps meleers keep up with casters at mid-levels, because their major resource (their HP) can be replenished between combats, while the casters have to wait till next day.

In-combat healing is a very different thing, but note that in-combat healing is actually quite difficult, since you have so little time. Clerics are the only ones that can do it consistently and efficiently.

- Saph

[Satyr]

I regularly play Harnmaster. There is quite a good chance to die from an injuries days after the battle because the wound got infected.
I think Harnmaster has one of the best (and most brutal) combat system among the RPG's known to me.
When every hit becomes a threat, the game becomes much more interesting. When every injury can be life threatening and healing magic is something special, the game becomes more interesting. One of the major problems of D&D is the banalisation of magic - it becomes too normal, too normal and nothing special anymore. And that is a great way to kill the tension. This is essecialy true for healing magic, because it does not only marginalize magic, it also marginaalize battles and injuries.

[random11]

Yeah, but how many times your DM can have his villains works on a strict timeline before it gets ridicolous?

If you look at it in a realistic, non computer-rpg-game point of view, most quests have deadlines, even if it doesn't explicitly say so in the description.

When a village is attacked, they need help NOW, not in two days.
If a magical cave is discovered, the heroes are not the only ones who hear about it. Maybe they are lucky enough to get a few days head start.
When someone hires heroes, it is likely that he will hire several groups.
Add time lines of ships, caravans, and any other means of transportation, and you'll find that the heroes can usually REALLY rest only between adventures.

[Serpentine]

Stock phrase for stock plot: "Flash, Flash, I love you! But we only have 24 hours to save the Earth!"Actually, it's 14 hours :smallwink:

I've never heard of "infinite healing". In our game, though, instead of the stock 3 HP or whatever regained with rest we regain our character level plus constitution modifier. Makes sense to us...

[Saph]

I regularly play Harnmaster. There is quite a good chance to die from an injuries days after the battle because the wound got infected.

If you want to play this way (on the far end of 'realistic'), that's perfectly okay, but you have to realise that D&D isn't particularly well-suited for it.

If you play with realistic injury rules, then one injury means that the fight's over. Soldiers in real life do not keep fighting once they've been shot. They get med-evaced and are out of the battle for days, weeks, or months, if not permanently. (People who do keep fighting when wounded are usually extraordinarily a) brave b) stupid c) desperate d) insane e) all of the above.)

So if you play this way, you can't complain when the rogue who got stabbed with a dagger says after the fight "Okay, that's it for me. I'm heading back to the temple. See you in a week or so."

- Saph

[Satyr]

It's not a question of realism, but of making the game more interesting. If a more realistic approach creates more tension and furthers the game, it is the right thing to do. If a complete unrealistic approach furthers the game as well in other cases, it is also the right thing to do.
In a battle, the more realistic approach creates more tension and therefore it is good for the game. That's all.

[Eldritch_Ent]

Of course, there's such a thing as too much tension, or too high a mortality rate... "I stepped on a thorn on the way there." "Do you stop and rest, or keep marching?" "Keep marching." "The wound gets infected and your foot has to be amputated."

Replace with wound, fireball, or other such thing as neccesary.


Really what I'm trying to say is, just because you like it doesn't mean other people will. Fast healing 1 is fine for some people's campaigns, whereas some want natural healing only. Your bread and butter is someone else's Mustard and Cracker.

[Saph]

It's not a question of realism, but of making the game more interesting. If a more realistic approach creates more tension and furthers the game, it is the right thing to do. If a complete unrealistic approach furthers the game as well in other cases, it is also the right thing to do.
In a battle, the more realistic approach creates more tension and therefore it is good for the game. That's all.

But how does encouraging the PCs to withdraw after every battle (and penalising them with possible death if they don't) 'make the game more interesting'? You still haven't explained this - you're only talking about what happens in battle, not what happens after.

- Saph

[Graxis]

House-rule it to your liking or to compliment the campaign setting.

When did everyone that plays D&D get to be such a rules-monger? When Wizards starts publishing books that are carved in stone, then I'll stop bending the rules to my liking.

[A.Sondergaard]

I'd have to go with Saph on that. I don't see where the tension comes from if the only way to advance is to go back to town after every battle, or having to tend specific wounds over an abstract HP system. Unless you're implying that you don't actually allow such time to get back to full every time? I could see that making the game a bit more exciting.
House-rule it to your liking or to compliment the campaign setting.

When did everyone that plays D&D get to be such a rules-monger? When Wizards starts publishing books that are carved in stone, then I'll stop bending the rules to my liking.Technically, infinite non-combat healing would already be a house-rule...which...is exactly what we were discussing, no?

[Graxis]

Yeah, ya got me :smallbiggrin:

[Starsinger]

I'd have to go with Saph on that. I don't see where the tension comes from if the only way to advance is to go back to town after every battle, or having to tend specific wounds over an abstract HP system. Unless you're implying that you don't actually allow such time to get back to full every time? I could see that making the game a bit more exciting.

I don't really see damage being permament until you get three weeks worth of downtime to recover being exciting.

[Saph]

Technically, infinite non-combat healing would already be a house-rule...which...is exactly what we were discussing, no?

Actually, it's pretty easy to get effectively-infinite healing in a standard D&D game already. A Wand of Cure Light Wounds heals an average of 275 HP over 50 charges. A Wand of Lesser Vigour (from the Spell Compendium) does a total of 550. At 750 gold, each is easy to afford and use if you split the cost between the party. So as long as you're not totally out of cash or magic item access, you can regain full HP after every fight.

So no houserules needed. I'm just saying that I think this is, on the whole, a good thing rather than a bad one.

- Saph

[Dausuul]

Actually, it's pretty easy to get effectively-infinite healing in a standard D&D game already. A Wand of Cure Light Wounds heals an average of 275 HP over 50 charges. A Wand of Lesser Vigour (from the Spell Compendium) does a total of 550. At 750 gold, each is easy to afford and use if you split the cost between the party. So as long as you're not totally out of cash or magic item access, you can regain full HP after every fight.

So no houserules needed. I'm just saying that I think this is, on the whole, a good thing rather than a bad one.

- Saph

Actually, it is possible to get literally-infinite healing. As I mentioned above, a dread necromancer (Heroes of Horror) and a party consisting entirely of undead or people with Tomb-Tainted Soul (Libris Mortis) can heal up after every battle. Very handy since it works at any level, even the very low levels where a 750 gp wand is a substantial outlay.

Or you could use the Innate Spell feat (Complete Arcane) to get cure minor wounds usable at will as a spell-like ability, at the cost of an 8th-level spell slot. Personally, I'd rather have the feat and the 8th-level spell slot, but if you really want unlimited healing...

I'm sure there are other options as well.

[Draz74]

When did everyone that plays D&D get to be such a rules-monger? When Wizards starts publishing books that are carved in stone, then I'll stop bending the rules to my liking.

When the Internet came into the picture. A million people of geographic diversity discussing D&D together need a common framework of assumptions that they can base their discussions on, or else those discussions have no point; and unfortunately the rules-as-written are a much easier common framework to work from than any reasonable assumptions about what campaign styles, DM styles, and houserule styles people will play with. :smalltongue:

[Emperor Demonking]

Actually, it is possible to get literally-infinite healing. As I mentioned above, a dread necromancer (Heroes of Horror) and a party consisting entirely of undead or people with Tomb-Tainted Soul (Libris Mortis) can heal up after every battle. Very handy since it works at any level, even the very low levels where a 750 gp wand is a substantial outlay.


Actually unless your elans or similar that isn't infinite healing.

[tyckspoon]

Actually unless your elans or similar that isn't infinite healing.

Eh? Maybe you're thinking of some other combination.. Tomb-Tainted Souls (or undead) are healed by negative energy. Dread Necromancers have an at-will negative energy touch attack. Free unlimited out-of-combat healing for all.

[bingo_bob]

He means that eventually, you die of old age. Technically, it isn't infinite even then.

[Dausuul]

He means that eventually, you die of old age.

Well, if you're going the negative energy route, you can turn your whole party into necropolitans. Except the dread necromancer, of course, who will eventually turn into a lich. So there. :smallwink:

[Kantolin]

Something I'd like to particularly note is this:


If you play with realistic injury rules, then one injury means that the fight's over. Soldiers in real life do not keep fighting once they've been shot.

This is very true. If the world setting is based on total reality, then when you are shot, that's quite it for fighting for you - and possibly forever.

Therefore, it's akin to going through a battle which you barely manage to survive, and decreeing that you're going back to town for a week / a month / forever because there's you can't really fight any longer. This would not, then, be metagaming or anything - it's the way your world works.

So I agree with Saph - if the goal is for your party to survive, then you end up doing more retreating the less healing you have out of combat, and your resting lasts longer. This seems to be more of an accurate model about the way people work, rather than some form of metagaming or the like.

I suppose less healing would lead to more 'We are not at our full strength, but must move on so we can fight the boss!' moments, but especially in D&D, those tend to result in being significantly less dramtaic than most when one side is not at full strength but the other side is not - especially against significant bosses, who tend to be stronger than the party.

If anything, more healing strikes me as more fun than less healing.

[Kioran]

The Dragen shaman´s Draconic Vigor is, as far as I am concerned, a much better solution than truyl infinite Healing - constant healing with a little catch. PCs are supposed (at least in my campaigns) to be a little drained after a few encounters - that´s when they consider the Warrior 6 a worthy boss for their lvl 3 party, or the CR 14 Dragon for an ECL 13 party. I just don´t like going over the top too much, and you´d practically have too to challenge a party that is almost constantly at least at 80%.......

[Satyr]

But how does encouraging the PCs to withdraw after every battle (and penalising them with possible death if they don't) 'make the game more interesting'? You still haven't explained this - you're only talking about what happens in battle, not what happens after.

It forces the PC's to chose their battles more wisely and not rush like idiots into every fight. Suddenly, tactics and strategy becomes significant.
No, limited healing has no influence on the game outside of battles.

[Fuzzy_Juan]

I have always found that it is combat healing that makes the difference and healing between encounters is just a function of time and available resources measured against how messed up everyone is. Since a decent level party will have a virtually infinite supply of food/water and is capable of retreating into extradimensional spaces that can't be found...the only thing that changes with infinite healing is the time a party takes between encounters. And that is game time, not real time...you get the same amount of real time, but have to speed through game time. Most quests aren't too worried about timelines, so however long a party takes to do whatever is fine...occasionally there is some sort of time limit, and in that case parties try their best to stay away from encounters and get the job done as fast as possible.

Though really, if the party is just gonna say "ok, we stay in the mansion 2 days to heal and then restudy spells before returning to the dungeon" and then it hapens...why not just say "ok, we heal, rest for a few minutes to refresh our per encounter powers while keeping lookout and then continue"

No real difference in real world time, but in game it has been maybe 10 minutes and not 2-3 days.

[Premier]

Though really, if the party is just gonna say "ok, we stay in the mansion 2 days to heal and then restudy spells before returning to the dungeon" and then it hapens...why not just say "ok, we heal, rest for a few minutes to refresh our per encounter powers while keeping lookout and then continue"

No real difference in real world time, but in game it has been maybe 10 minutes and not 2-3 days.

Because unless the DM is running a dumb-down CRPG-like game, there's going to be a huge difference between 10 minutes and 2-3 days of gametime. Look:

10 minutes passed: "You get up and move on."

2-3 days passed: "You exit the Mansion and move on. The enemies have followed the trail of corpses you've left behind and even though they couldn't find your exact location, they cordoned off the general area you're in with heavy guards and barricaded checkpoints. Traps have been installed everywhere. All spellcasters in the dungeon have converged on your location and are roaming this sector with escorts, summoned monsters and a battle-oriented spell loadout. Runners have been sent to the camp of an allied orc tribe, and now they have a hundred warriors on the way as reinforcements."

[Fuzzy_Juan]

and how do they know you just didn't teleport out? Are they seriously going to maintain that level of alert for 2-3 days with no concrete proof that the party is still in their midst?

Besides...unless you are in the world's largest dungeon, most parties don't exactly camp in a completely unknown region especially when there are more than just mindless beasts about. Not unless any major threats have been delt with and tracks covered. Noone i know of would ever try to camp out in the middle of a raid on a tribe of intelligent creatures or in the middle of a castle siege when you have just sneaked in.

If you do, then you fully expect there to be guards in place and the alert raised...but if you are willing to risk that you got messed up nice and proper and NEED the rest regardless of the circumstances.

[Tormsskull]

I would say it is bad for my playstyle. I like to set up multi-encounter situations where while the group may choose to simply obilterate the first encounter by going balls-to-the-wall, they will then suffer dearly later on.

I think balancing the classes based on what they can do in 1 combat is incredibly short-sighted. 3.x is of course bad based on the way it handles spells/spell recovery, but if you don't have players that are trying to bend/break the rules, its usually not a problem IME.

Truth be told, though, I've found myself much more interested in Iron Heroes recently than D&D though.

[Premier]

and how do they know you just didn't teleport out? Are they seriously going to maintain that level of alert for 2-3 days with no concrete proof that the party is still in their midst?

I think you might have missed my point. They could just teleport - or even walk - out, the same principle would still apply: they've stirred up the hornet's nest, so they can expect a prepared reception when they come back.

And yes, after finding, say, 20-25% of their ranks massacred and no enemy bodies, they probably will keep up a high level of alertness for much more than 2-3 days.

As a minor metagaming point, if adventurers all over the world are going to use these spells so extensively, then the baddies will eventually catch on to it and amend their plans accordingly. So even if they don't literally stand around those three suspect rooms for a week, they'll still prepare traps, alarms and the like.

[horseboy]

and how do they know you just didn't teleport out? Are they seriously going to maintain that level of alert for 2-3 days with no concrete proof that the party is still in their midst?

Besides...unless you are in the world's largest dungeon, most parties don't exactly camp in a completely unknown region especially when there are more than just mindless beasts about. Not unless any major threats have been delt with and tracks covered. Noone i know of would ever try to camp out in the middle of a raid on a tribe of intelligent creatures or in the middle of a castle siege when you have just sneaked in.

If you do, then you fully expect there to be guards in place and the alert raised...but if you are willing to risk that you got messed up nice and proper and NEED the rest regardless of the circumstances.

Or, for that matter, that they're even in a dungeon? Heaven forbid your characters play outside. :smallwink:

[Zeful]

Yeah, but how many times your DM can have his villains works on a strict timeline before it gets ridiculous?

Except you don't really need a strict timeline when players start using nova tactics. Even a vague outline of what the villian is capable of doing in the time given to him/her by the players could be doom for the players. PCs looking for an artefact to beat the BBEG? Some two-bit thief stole it. Going to help a town attacked by goblins? It's cinders when they arrive. Going to investigate into a slavery ring? Only witness is dead. Going to fight the BBEG? His mooks are better equipped, his tower more impervious, his strategies, perfect. I could go on with a list of consiquences that happen when the PCs decide that 1 encounter a day is enough, and how many of my examples sound ridiculous?

And just to stay on topic, I think infinite healing is bad, it makes the players careless, after all why worry about Hp when you'll be healed after the battle anyway? Oh wait, you had 12 hp left the orc shaman hit you for 50, nap time.

[Felius]

Except you don't really need a strict timeline when players start using nova tactics. Even a vague outline of what the villian is capable of doing in the time given to him/her by the players could be doom for the players. PCs looking for an artefact to beat the BBEG? Some two-bit thief stole it. Going to help a town attacked by goblins? It's cinders when they arrive. Going to investigate into a slavery ring? Only witness is dead. Going to fight the BBEG? His mooks are better equipped, his tower more impervious, his strategies, perfect. I could go on with a list of consiquences that happen when the PCs decide that 1 encounter a day is enough, and how many of my examples sound ridiculous?

And just to stay on topic, I think infinite healing is bad, it makes the players careless, after all why worry about Hp when you'll be healed after the battle anyway? Oh wait, you had 12 hp left the orc shaman hit you for 50, nap time.

Many of them will seem forced and made just for annoy the players. Common, the artefact the characters needed to pass through the tomb of horrors to get, stole by a two bit thief?

Deadlines can work for some things, but for others, will feel like if you just want to annoy your players.

[horseboy]

Many of them will seem forced and made just for annoy the players. Common, the artefact the characters needed to pass through the tomb of horrors to get, stole by a two bit thief?

Deadlines can work for some things, but for others, will feel like if you just want to annoy your players.
Not to mention villains have their own lives. Maybe he sent out an extra scouting group to hold them up over night so that he could see his little girl's ballet recital, or better yet, his older daughter's wedding. Maybe the caravan bringing in the part he needed got way laid (I'm a big fan of irony) and he needs to delay them. Just because things are going poorly for the players doesn't mean that the BBEG is going smoothly.

[Zeful]

Many of them will seem forced and made just for annoy the players. Common, the artefact the characters needed to pass through the tomb of horrors to get, stole by a two bit thief?

Deadlines can work for some things, but for others, will feel like if you just want to annoy your players.

It's my belief that in D&D the world moves on with the players, things happen with or without them. So if they spend 2/3s of their time hiding in a rope trick so the wizard can regain his spells. Then I expect things to happen. A powerful artefact that can kill the BBEG, he's going to want it destroyed. A villain is going to use the time the PC's give him to prepare his defences, further his schemes. Granted two days might not mean much but if the PCs heal every two out of three days, they're going to be left in the dust