5e Healing Sucks: How Do We Fix That?

[Witty Username]

For some reason it's really common for people to linger on using Cure Wounds or something like that and just upcasting it. Cure Wounds' job isn't to be your one-stop healing spell for all 20 levels.

Alright, let's to a mild thought experiment, name 1 spell with the following criteria:
Of 5th level or lower
-casting time of 1 action or 1 bonus action
-is not a concentration spell
- heals more to a single creature, than Cure Wounds using a 5th level slot

There happens to be exactly 1 spell that fits this requirement, your hint, it is on the wizard list.

Now this may seem heavily restrictive, but for comparison, name a spell with the following criteria:
-Of 5th level or lower
-casting time of 1 action or bonus action
-is not a concentration spell
- deals more damage to a single creature than chromatic Orb using a 5th level slot

[Goobahfish]

In my game I added this house rule: When you are reduced to 0 hit points and not outright killed you gain 1 level of exhaustion. This exhaustion is removed when you finish a long or short rest at full HP.
Then I added the exhaustion rules verbatim from the experts UA playtest (each level of exhaustion = -1 to d20 tests and spell DCs, at level 10 you die, recover 1 per long rest).

So I think this solutions solves the wrong problem?

Apart from creating a death-spiral kind of mechanic, it only provides a secondary incentive to avoid being 'near zero' exchanging it for 'enough above zero'.

As mentioned in another thread, I separated out two kinds of HP, Stamina and Vitality. Stamina is recovered after every short rest, is healed by healing magic and potions. Vitality is only healed through bed-rest. Spells which do affect vitality increase the effectiveness of bed-rest.

Stamina is always lost first, Vitality second and Vitality can go negative. Having negative vitality makes you roll for injuries which are either semi-permanent or permanent.

Effect #1. Once you reach the 'zero stamina' point, players get nervous about losing vitality as it is hard to recover.
Effect #2. Even if you lose vitality, if you rest, you are good to go for another fight (usually) or at least reasonably OK.
Effect #3. Players often start fights 'not on full HP'.
Effect #4. No one wants to yo-yo.
Effect #5. No obvious death-spiral. Losing vitality is 'bad' but it isn't fatal. If your negative vitality plus positive stamina gets you above zero, you will wake up after the fight.

It has worked pretty well so far. The main problem I see with 5e healing is that it is either unlimited (i.e., infinite spells => infinite health) or non-existent (zero spells => zero healing). So the main resource management ends up being around spell slots rather than actual HP?

[Kane0]

As mentioned in another thread, I separated out two kinds of HP, Stamina and Vitality. Stamina is recovered after every short rest, is healed by healing magic and potions. Vitality is only healed through bed-rest. Spells which do affect vitality increase the effectiveness of bed-rest.

Small hiccup, Cure Wounds and related become misleadingly-named (like Chill Touch) as they no longer in fact address injuries but rather fatigue.

[Dork_Forge]

Alright, let's to a mild thought experiment, name 1 spell with the following criteria:
Of 5th level or lower
-casting time of 1 action or 1 bonus action
-is not a concentration spell
- heals more to a single creature, than Cure Wounds using a 5th level slot

There happens to be exactly 1 spell that fits this requirement, your hint, it is on the wizard list.

Now this may seem heavily restrictive, but for comparison, name a spell with the following criteria:
-Of 5th level or lower
-casting time of 1 action or bonus action
-is not a concentration spell
- deals more damage to a single creature than chromatic Orb using a 5th level slot

So your response to "Cure Wounds' job isn't to be your one-stop healing spell for all 20 levels." is to arbitrarily choose a level and apply a bunch of restrictions?

You're looking for a single target nova heal spell and making the false equivalence of comparing to damaging spells. However, big surge healing is not what most healing spells are about. Most are about spreading healing around, or over time healing. Aura of Vitality can stem a PC's hit point loss enough to survive what would normally kill them, but that wouldn't count because you've set arbitrary limitations.

But here's the thing, the higher the level you are the more hit points you have, the more hitpoints you have the more buffer you have to act preemptively with healing. Even then, an upcast Cure Wounds heals enough to shrug off a couple of blows, if not more. Most things you fight won't do damage in massive chunks.

So what about healing then, what about times when you need more than that? Well ignoring the fact that you arbitrarily picked the level before Heal becomes available, this is what classes and subclasses are for.

What heals more than an upcast Cure Wounds? The same darn thing cast by a:

- Life Cleric

- Fire Druid

- Stars Druid

- Shepherd Druid

- Alchemist Artificer

Or if you want to achieve greater healing to a single target in a turn then:

- Paladin Lay on Hands dumps

- Celestial Warlock double heal

- Dreams Druid double heal

Overall a fairly large list, that was just on the top of my head, but illustrates pretty well that the buck for healing doesn't stop with spell lists. I'll reiterate my point from earlier, a good healer didn't just pick x spell, they have a feature to make it better.

---

A slight aside but I think this is most certainly relevant:

The design of the game clearly indicates that the general scaling for healing, which isn't supported by other features, is that the raw number goes up minorly, but you get more bang for your buck. This is either by hitting multiple creatures (any of the Mass spells, Prayer of Healing, Peace Cleric CD etc.) or giving you a pool to divide out, sometimes across multiple actions (Life Cleric, Lay on Hands, Aura of Vitality). It isn't until 11th level, I'm sure it's a coincidence that is also a tier change, that the game decides to throw out a nova heal option, in recognition of the severe levels of damage that are possible from creatures you will more likely face from then on.

[Witty Username]

You're looking for a single target nova heal spell and making the false equivalence of comparing to damaging spells. However, big surge healing is not what most healing spells are about. Most are about spreading healing around, or over time healing. Aura of Vitality can stem a PC's hit point loss enough to survive what would normally kill them, but that wouldn't count because you've set arbitrary limitations.

Spreading healing around requires multiple party members to be taking damage which makes it situational (generally dependent on encounter type and positioning, with from my standpoint the usual being damage pooling on 1 to 2 characters that form the frontline), and over time healing requires, well, time, which makes it difficult to rely on in combat as most encounters can easily do damage in excess of the healing ticks. 7 hp (an average aura of Vitality tick), will in alot of cases not even block an outright kill by CR 5+ enemies, and usually our goal with healing would be to be to prevent dropping to 0, not kills, which will only matter if given time to accrue, which isn’t usually the case for encounters where healing is warranted. And that is assuming you can maintain concentration, which if you are burning one of your top slots on healing, doesn't bode well. Outside of combat, they do matter from a recovery standpoint, which is how I think of them.

Generally, in combat, you only want a 1 action or 1 bonus action investment, and that investment to keep the target from dropping, or dying. And in that context, healing spells are worth, about 1 attack for an on CR threat, currently, sometimes 2 for some multi attack lines. Until 11th level, where heal is closer to a full action, sometimes 2.

[Kane0]

One of the reasons i like the 'tack on hit dice' solution is that it isnt strictly an improvement in terms of resource pools and expenditure while still allowing the amount healing to be better tailored to the situation. Well unless you are running only one or two combats that day, in which case it actually lets you use your hit dice when otherwise youd never get to since you have a no-shortrest workday.

[Dork_Forge]

Spreading healing around requires multiple party members to be taking damage which makes it situational (generally dependent on encounter type and positioning, with from my standpoint the usual being damage pooling on 1 to 2 characters that form the frontline), and over time healing requires, well, time, which makes it difficult to rely on in combat as most encounters can easily do damage in excess of the healing ticks. 7 hp (an average aura of Vitality tick), will in alot of cases not even block an outright kill by CR 5+ enemies, and usually our goal with healing would be to be to prevent dropping to 0, not kills, which will only matter if given time to accrue, which isn’t usually the case for encounters where healing is warranted. And that is assuming you can maintain concentration, which if you are burning one of your top slots on healing, doesn't bode well. Outside of combat, they do matter from a recovery standpoint, which is how I think of them.

I'm not really seeing system issues here, but I am seeing a particular type of table play...


Yes it depends on multiple people being injured, if a combat is threatening enough that healing is warranted at all, yet somehow the damage is solely confined to the 'frontline' then I can only ask what encounters are constantly creating that dynamic. That can only exist if a DM allows it, which means consistent terrain and monster behaviour that prevents attacking the 'back line' with no ambushes, ranged attacks, AoEs etc. Yes, if you're playing a game where one or two big meaty monsters are contempt to just wail on 1 or 2 characters whilst everyone else is unmolested, then you want nova healing. That should not be the norm, and even if it was, I've already pointed at nova healing to cater to it.

I'm not even sure what you're trying to say with some of this. If a creature you're fighting is capable of outright killing you with damage then healing doesn't matter because your hit point total wasn't high enough to survive a single hit.

But let's also be real clear here, whiterooms don't exist at tables. You are healing a character with their own abilities, sampling:

- Fighter? Second Wind
- Barbarian? Likely resistant, potentially additional defenses
- Rogue? Uncanny Dodge, potentially other defenses
- Paladin? They can take care of their own healing, and potentially other defenses
- Ranger? Self heal and potentially other defenses

You would bust out AoV in a tough fight where you're going to need to be bringing people up repeatedly, or you're actively topping up hit points to prevent them from getting into the dangerzone to begin with, which also assumes nothing but a naked spell.

You also seem to be saying that encounters that are more lethal aren't as likely to drag on? What?

Generally, in combat, you only want a 1 action or 1 bonus action investment, and that investment to keep the target from dropping, or dying. And in that context, healing spells are worth, about 1 attack for an on CR threat, currently, sometimes 2 for some multi attack lines. Until 11th level, where heal is closer to a full action, sometimes 2.

What on earth are you fighting regularly where Heal is only a full action worth of enemy damage? Seriously?

This feels like you come from a table culture of very few, very deadly fights, which if that's how your table rolls then fine, but that is an extreme case. You're also coming at this as spells only matter, despite being pointed to features that enhance their effectiveness.

The only thing you've really said about it is I think addressing the double heal tactic from Celestial Warlocks and Dream Druids, at which point it really doesn't matter what you want to do with your healing. What matters is that you have the potential to deal out the heals you need to.

So what about any of the other actual healers? Does a Life Cleric actually fall short to you? Does AoV still feel lackluster when the average is instead 12.5 per bonus action?

---

You seem to like 10th level as a comparison point, one of my tables (I run combats I know they can handle, which is beyond the CR tables and usually their own expectations) is currently that level and the amount of healing the group has on tap is disgusting, such as the Stars Druid who can heal (adjusting this to ignore boons) 3d8+10 = 23.5 with a 1st level Cure Wounds. Healing Word isn't far behind that, but she tends to prefer Cure Wounds for greater amounts of healing done. The party's HP max is around mid 80s-low 90s across the board, meaning that first level spell is in the region of 25% of their hit points. That's insane. She also has the option of casting AoV in the Chalice form to get bonus healing, then switch to the Dragon form for flight and near-unshakeable concentration, getting her action back for normal casting and attacks after the first turn.

Then there's the Sorcadin that's taken to Quickening Cure Wounds alongside Lay on Hands when the encounter calls for dumping some healing allowing a huge single target heal, or two decent sized heals. Or using Aid mid combat as a form of mass heal spell.

The Fighter can heal himself just fine with Second Wind and the Ranger/Rogue/Warlock has access to Cure Wounds and a flat 10 Healing Hands.

The party is far from optimised for healing, but the sheer amount of healing that they can bring to bear is staggering before any items or boons are taken into consideration.

The other party at 14th does just dandy too, the Barbarian Rogue loves getting topped off with a Healing Word or Mass Cure Wounds from the Bard(ish), with the hit points being near quadrupled through resistance and uncanny dodge.



Applying healing to actual parties looks very different than just averaging spells in isolation and if someone builds a healer, which is not the same as taking some healing spells, then they can do even more. Heck, if what they wanted to play anyway just happens to contain a boost to healing (like a fair few do) then they'll still be punching high. Random sample: A 5th level alchemist can bonus action cure wounds for 10.5 whilst still using their action to attack. Given that a d8 character with a +2 Con at that level has 36 HP, that's a good chunk of their max for very little investment.

Any conversation about healing that doesn't actually talk about healers is missing the mark.

[Witty Username]

You need to remember the guaranteed use of healing vs those other options, but also that healing needs to co-exist with them. If you find no issue currently because of those other options, then increasing healing would just stack on top of that to make the game even easier?

This is misunderstanding the scope of the problem, and a bit how spells are used. This isn't, for me, healing needs support to function, it's that healing oscillates between useless (doesn't heal remotely enough) and unnecessary (didn't take meaningful damage). The difference between say the healing impact healing spirit new, and the damage mitigation impact of a spike growth spell isn't small. Now I could use both, but I can't because they are both concentration. And this isn't the only spell with this in play, just about every spell in the game represents higher mitigation than all healing spells (with the possible exception of mass heal), even if it is simply dealing damage to end the combat faster.

You mentioned death spirals with pop up healing, but I personally have found that is a problem inherent to healing in general. If you are spending actions on healing only for enemies to deal in excess to that damage by enough to down them anyway, nothing was accomplished. Pop-up healing has this problem the least, as it always adds 1 attack to this calculation.

-
I will admit my table uses primarily deadly encounters, about 4 per long rest, sometimes less sometimes more.
We did try 6 medium to hard encounters per long rest for a bit but we gave up after we stopped taking damage.

The flow of combat is not something that exclusively depends on encounter design, party composition matters as well, I will admit my playgroup trends more towards damage dealing and battle control options.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Applying healing to actual parties looks very different than just averaging spells in isolation and if someone builds a healer, which is not the same as taking some healing spells, then they can do even more. Heck, if what they wanted to play anyway just happens to contain a boost to healing (like a fair few do) then they'll still be punching high. Random sample: A 5th level alchemist can bonus action cure wounds for 10.5 whilst still using their action to attack. Given that a d8 character with a +2 Con at that level has 36 HP, that's a good chunk of their max for very little investment.

Any conversation about healing that doesn't actually talk about healers is missing the mark.

I agree with this. If basic healing is powerful enough to do the job, then healers are either completely unnecessary or busted strong. Basic, unmodified healing spells should be pretty weak. Just like basic, unmodified weapon attacks shouldn't be anything to write home about. TO actually do major damage, you need to have features that improve them. Whether by adding damage or by adding attacks. A basic healing spell, similarly, should be something for emergencies or for minor needs. Not a "keep the party up against major foes" power. At least without features that amp them up or provide other means.

[Rerem115]

Combat healing always walks a funny line. The best way to heal your allies is to stop them from taking damage in the first place, and the best way to do that is - usually - knock the enemy out of the fight. So, in combat healing has to be resource-competitive, either with recharges or actions, with killing or disabling enemies.

Pop-up healing is an extension of that; it's hard to be more efficient than giving an ally a whole new turn for a single action/bonus action. If you want healing to be used before allies hit zero, there has to be similar efficiency. Things like the Mercy Monk weaving heals and disables into their attack rotation, Beast Barbarians chomping away for a handful of HP each turn just for attacking, or Artificers continuously generating Temp HP and then smacking someone with their action.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Combat healing always walks a funny line. The best way to heal your allies is to stop them from taking damage in the first place, and the best way to do that is - usually - knock the enemy out of the fight. So, in combat healing has to be resource-competitive, either with recharges or actions, with killing or disabling enemies.

Pop-up healing is an extension of that; it's hard to be more efficient than giving an ally a whole new turn for a single action/bonus action. If you want healing to be used before allies hit zero, there has to be similar efficiency. Things like the Mercy Monk weaving heals and disables into their attack rotation, Beast Barbarians chomping away for a handful of HP each turn just for attacking, or Artificers continuously generating Temp HP and then smacking someone with their action.

Except that using pop-up healing only often leads to lost actions. Because unless the healer goes after all monsters (and the KO'd person isn't dead) AND before the KO'd person, then the KO'd person will lose a turn. And a lost turn is way more than a "lost" action. And possible death from enemy attacks (which takes basically nothing once you're downed) is even worse than that.

[Mastikator]

So I think this solutions solves the wrong problem?

Apart from creating a death-spiral kind of mechanic, it only provides a secondary incentive to avoid being 'near zero' exchanging it for 'enough above zero'.

As mentioned in another thread, I separated out two kinds of HP, Stamina and Vitality. Stamina is recovered after every short rest, is healed by healing magic and potions. Vitality is only healed through bed-rest. Spells which do affect vitality increase the effectiveness of bed-rest.

Stamina is always lost first, Vitality second and Vitality can go negative. Having negative vitality makes you roll for injuries which are either semi-permanent or permanent.

Effect #1. Once you reach the 'zero stamina' point, players get nervous about losing vitality as it is hard to recover.
Effect #2. Even if you lose vitality, if you rest, you are good to go for another fight (usually) or at least reasonably OK.
Effect #3. Players often start fights 'not on full HP'.
Effect #4. No one wants to yo-yo.
Effect #5. No obvious death-spiral. Losing vitality is 'bad' but it isn't fatal. If your negative vitality plus positive stamina gets you above zero, you will wake up after the fight.

It has worked pretty well so far. The main problem I see with 5e healing is that it is either unlimited (i.e., infinite spells => infinite health) or non-existent (zero spells => zero healing). So the main resource management ends up being around spell slots rather than actual HP?

What other problems are there? IMO healing in D&D5e works perfectly fine aside from 0 hp healing word yoyoing.

My goal with my house rule of imposing 1 level of exhaustion when revived from 0 hp with magic is to

• slightly punish reaching 0 hp
• encourage healing before hitpoints gets too low
• when 0 hp is reached, take a short rest and spend hit dice to heal fully

I really don't want to use permanent injury as a DM, I think it is contrary to the spirit of D&D 5e. For a grittier system I use permanent injury. D&D is supposed to be heroic, yes heroes sometimes get their ass kicked very hard, but they always come out of it in once piece.

Edit- also thank you for taking my reply seriously lol, appreciate

[Witty Username]

You would bust out AoV in a tough fight where you're going to need to be bringing people up repeatedly, or you're actively topping up hit points to prevent them from getting into the dangerzone to begin with, which also assumes nothing but a naked spell.

You also seem to be saying that encounters that are more lethal aren't as likely to drag on? What?



What on earth are you fighting regularly where Heal is only a full action worth of enemy damage? Seriously?

If we are fighting a red dragon, that happens to crit on its bite or get a solid roll on its fire-breathing, yeah definitely. But that is CR 10 creatures, you're probably not going to encounter them until Tier 4. - my laptop is broken so I don't have blue.

Encounters aren't likely to drag past you being dead, no. Recall that encounters at level10+ can do upwards of 40-50 damage a round, without being deadly. That barbarian is still going to take a bunch of damage when stunned by a mind flayer (average damage 55 on that brain extract), by 11+, I would expect it possible to fight 2-3 of them. (Looks like that 3 is deadly by the book, possibly hard if you have 5-6 people). Average 7 (even a 11, if you happen to be a life cleric) hp a turn will often vanish in the noise of random rolls. And this is competing with other spells, bless to shore up saves, entangle to disrupt melee attacks and grant advantage. Or damage options, that mind flayer only has 71 hp, generally less than PC hp at that level from the sound of it, and they don't have those pesky defensive options PCs have. A casting of spirit guardians, could shave 1, possibly 2 rounds off this combat. That's like 220 points healing against these mind flayers. Nah I would rather heal 33 over 3 rounds.

It sounds like a bunch of characters have a multitude of defensive options and don't need healing in that case. If we prioritize ending fights and inparing our opponents we may not need healing all, in fact attempting to use it may be detrimental to the party in the long term. Take that dragon above, a restraining spell to ground it, or defensive spells to reduce its damage (even something like bless can put in alot of work in an encounter like this) or straight damage to cut its effective turns and we can leverage this to great effect. Leaving it to its own devices and concentrating on nothing but healing, is not a way that is going to last 6 combats a day.

[KyleG]

What determines each pool of hp?

So I think this solutions solves the wrong problem?

Apart from creating a death-spiral kind of mechanic, it only provides a secondary incentive to avoid being 'near zero' exchanging it for 'enough above zero'.

As mentioned in another thread, I separated out two kinds of HP, Stamina and Vitality. Stamina is recovered after every short rest, is healed by healing magic and potions. Vitality is only healed through bed-rest. Spells which do affect vitality increase the effectiveness of bed-rest.

Stamina is always lost first, Vitality second and Vitality can go negative. Having negative vitality makes you roll for injuries which are either semi-permanent or permanent.

Effect #1. Once you reach the 'zero stamina' point, players get nervous about losing vitality as it is hard to recover.
Effect #2. Even if you lose vitality, if you rest, you are good to go for another fight (usually) or at least reasonably OK.
Effect #3. Players often start fights 'not on full HP'.
Effect #4. No one wants to yo-yo.
Effect #5. No obvious death-spiral. Losing vitality is 'bad' but it isn't fatal. If your negative vitality plus positive stamina gets you above zero, you will wake up after the fight.

It has worked pretty well so far. The main problem I see with 5e healing is that it is either unlimited (i.e., infinite spells => infinite health) or non-existent (zero spells => zero healing). So the main resource management ends up being around spell slots rather than actual HP?

[Pex]

What other problems are there? IMO healing in D&D5e works perfectly fine aside from 0 hp healing word yoyoing.

My goal with my house rule of imposing 1 level of exhaustion when revived from 0 hp with magic is to

• slightly punish reaching 0 hp
• encourage healing before hitpoints gets too low
• when 0 hp is reached, take a short rest and spend hit dice to heal fully

I really don't want to use permanent injury as a DM, I think it is contrary to the spirit of D&D 5e. For a grittier system I use permanent injury. D&D is supposed to be heroic, yes heroes sometimes get their ass kicked very hard, but they always come out of it in once piece.

Edit- also thank you for taking my reply seriously lol, appreciate

One exhaustion level is not a "slight" punishment. It cannot be removed on a short rest so taking one doesn't matter. It's disadvantage to all ability checks for the rest of the game day until the next long rest. If the next long rest is 3 real world hours from now the player will have a miserable game night.

[Dork_Forge]

This is misunderstanding the scope of the problem, and a bit how spells are used. This isn't, for me, healing needs support to function, it's that healing oscillates between useless (doesn't heal remotely enough) and unnecessary (didn't take meaningful damage). The difference between say the healing impact healing spirit new, and the damage mitigation impact of a spike growth spell isn't small. Now I could use both, but I can't because they are both concentration. And this isn't the only spell with this in play, just about every spell in the game represents higher mitigation than all healing spells (with the possible exception of mass heal), even if it is simply dealing damage to end the combat faster.

This approach treats any HP recovery that isn't lost to damage as meaningless, which it isn't. 1) it saves you Hit Dice on short rests 2) PCs/players aren't going to inherently know when the day becomes 'safe' and I know I certainly wouldn't want to tolerate a stab wound because I didn't think I'd get stabbed again.

You're also taking it as healing vs control/damage. That is dependent on your party and how things are going. If the monsters win initiative and start hurting the party, then you're going to have a greater incentive to heal, same with if your party has a lower average HP max.

You mentioned death spirals with pop up healing, but I personally have found that is a problem inherent to healing in general. If you are spending actions on healing only for enemies to deal in excess to that damage by enough to down them anyway, nothing was accomplished. Pop-up healing has this problem the least, as it always adds 1 attack to this calculation.

What you're describing is a niche case. Getting so damaged that it not only wipes out the healing, but your remaining HP total is either bad luck (crit/high roll), or a poor tactical decision. If you're proactively healing someone it should be because it has a decent chance of actually keeping them up when paired with their current HP and any defenses.

If you mean pop up healing adds 1 attack to the party side, that assumes favorable initiative, if you mean it takes an attack away from team monster, then you're assuming no AOEs, damage auras etc.

-

I will admit my table uses primarily deadly encounters, about 4 per long rest, sometimes less sometimes more.
We did try 6 medium to hard encounters per long rest for a bit but we gave up after we stopped taking damage.

The flow of combat is not something that exclusively depends on encounter design, party composition matters as well, I will admit my playgroup trends more towards damage dealing and battle control options.

Yeah, I'm having trouble grasping what your table is like where you lean towards deadly combats, but consistently keep damage on the frontline. Do you have any examples? (TBH that sounds like a failure as a DM, but I might just be misunderstanding)

I agree with this. If basic healing is powerful enough to do the job, then healers are either completely unnecessary or busted strong. Basic, unmodified healing spells should be pretty weak. Just like basic, unmodified weapon attacks shouldn't be anything to write home about. TO actually do major damage, you need to have features that improve them. Whether by adding damage or by adding attacks. A basic healing spell, similarly, should be something for emergencies or for minor needs. Not a "keep the party up against major foes" power. At least without features that amp them up or provide other means.

Exactly, when the floor is all you need the specialists are either too much or irrelevant.

Combat healing always walks a funny line. The best way to heal your allies is to stop them from taking damage in the first place, and the best way to do that is - usually - knock the enemy out of the fight. So, in combat healing has to be resource-competitive, either with recharges or actions, with killing or disabling enemies.

That's not healing, and whilst I get why people talk about this stuff it's like someone talking about blasting and the answer being 'control is better.' Like, that's not what's being discussed, and in this case getting damaged is inevitable, if you're never in a position where you need healing then... what's the point of damage being there in the first place?

Pop-up healing is an extension of that; it's hard to be more efficient than giving an ally a whole new turn for a single action/bonus action. If you want healing to be used before allies hit zero, there has to be similar efficiency. Things like the Mercy Monk weaving heals and disables into their attack rotation, Beast Barbarians chomping away for a handful of HP each turn just for attacking, or Artificers continuously generating Temp HP and then smacking someone with their action.

That assumes that they'll get to take their turn with minimum HP, and that they don't lose anything from going down. In reality there are plenty of cases where a PC going down costs them concentration or a use of a special ability, perhaps one they can't use again.

If we are fighting a red dragon, that happens to crit on its bite or get a solid roll on its fire-breathing, yeah definitely. But that is CR 10 creatures, you're probably not going to encounter them until Tier 4. - my laptop is broken so I don't have blue.

I'm going to assume you meant to blue the until Tier 4 part?

So I guess you're talking about a young red, in which case the average crit of a bite is 35. The breath is an average of 56, so high end would be 70 and above.

So your example for what you would possible be fighting regularly is a Young Red where CR is near enough equal to level. Not only that but then you go as far as to throw out a crit on the most damaging attack or a high roll on a Dex save for one of the most easily resisted damage types in the entire game?

The fact that you're giving a high-powered creature critting or rolling high on a high damage AoE kind of illustrates my point, that kind of damage output isn't really common, even in deadly games for that level range.

Encounters aren't likely to drag past you being dead, no. Recall that encounters at level10+ can do upwards of 40-50 damage a round, without being deadly. That barbarian is still going to take a bunch of damage when stunned by a mind flayer (average damage 55 on that brain extract), by 11+, I would expect it possible to fight 2-3 of them. (Looks like that 3 is deadly by the book, possibly hard if you have 5-6 people). Average 7 (even a 11, if you happen to be a life cleric) hp a turn will often vanish in the noise of random rolls. And this is competing with other spells, bless to shore up saves, entangle to disrupt melee attacks and grant advantage. Or damage options, that mind flayer only has 71 hp, generally less than PC hp at that level from the sound of it, and they don't have those pesky defensive options PCs have. A casting of spirit guardians, could shave 1, possibly 2 rounds off this combat. That's like 220 points healing against these mind flayers. Nah I would rather heal 33 over 3 rounds.

I don't even know what you're trying to achieve with these encounter examples. 3 Mind Flayers? That's deadly by rating for a party of 4 11th level PCs, in reality? Mind Blast is a huge AOE that targets a likely weak save for the Stunned condition. Combine that with three Dominate Monsters and you have a ridiculous encounter that is extremely likely to lead to a TPK unless the party is very lucky.

Even in your example you're talking about Extract Brain, where someone has already been stunned. But your answer is to toss more spells at it, a creature that has Magic Resistance?

Acting like Spirit Guardians would blender 3 Mindflayers and not end up in the Cleric casting it dying horribly is... optimistic at best. And considering that a PC that gets reduced to 0 gets their brain eaten (so... not revivifiable), arguably that's a bigger case to keep them topped up just in case, whilst maintaining a massive distance.

It sounds like a bunch of characters have a multitude of defensive options and don't need healing in that case. If we prioritize ending fights and inparing our opponents we may not need healing all, in fact attempting to use it may be detrimental to the party in the long term. Take that dragon above, a restraining spell to ground it, or defensive spells to reduce its damage (even something like bless can put in alot of work in an encounter like this) or straight damage to cut its effective turns and we can leverage this to great effect. Leaving it to its own devices and concentrating on nothing but healing, is not a way that is going to last 6 combats a day.

At what point have I said that the entire party should be healing nonstop? Unless the party is hit with a fire breath before they can even do anything there's no reason to even assume that would be the case from the off. In reality most parties are going to have multiple characters incapable of healing altogether, and you don't need to heal unless the situation calls for it...

You seem to be taking this as 'it's healing or nothing' which is absurd, you're not healing every turn, most characters won't be healing at all, and there are plenty of ways to heal whilst doing something else. I mean you listed a whole bunch of options that are not only able to work alongside healing, but might not even be an option for the character in question. I mean, what is a Cleric doing to restrain a dragon?

And finally: You don't need to heal in every combat of a 6 combat day. If you do, something is seriously wrong.

Do not mistake the argument 'healing is more than adequate, and can even be great in 5E' for 'your character should do nothing but heal bot.' Those are not the same, nor would the latter really work in a game like 5E.

I don't find the situations you're proposing common at all, at least not for a party that is actually going to survive, and you've not shown that healing is inadequate at all. You just keep engineering severe circumstances and pointing at spells alone, often underleveled ones, as if that proves your point. Spells are not what makes a healer, and if all you do is pick up a few spells and use them at bad times you're a terrible healer.

One exhaustion level is not a "slight" punishment. It cannot be removed on a short rest so taking one doesn't matter. It's disadvantage to all ability checks for the rest of the game day until the next long rest. If the next long rest is 3 real world hours from now the player will have a miserable game night.

You're really overselling this. Whilst some players might feel that way, it certainly isn't everyone. The reasons for this are mixed, such as succeeding despite disadvantage feels really good, or roleplaying your hindrance, but it's ultimately up to the type of player affected.

[Pex]

You're really overselling this. Whilst some players might feel that way, it certainly isn't everyone. The reasons for this are mixed, such as succeeding despite disadvantage feels really good, or roleplaying your hindrance, but it's ultimately up to the type of player affected.

I know it's true from experience, as the player affected and a party member of another player who was affected. It's the same reason Save or Suck spells and monster effects of the past have been changed to get another save at the end of your turn. Hindering players doing stuff for a significant amount of game time is not conducive to the fun of play. Players accept the chance of failure. An inconvenience for a short amount of time is game play. Having the deck stacked against you for a significant amount of time is frustration. Succeeding anyway with Disadvantage is cool, but the continuing having to roll with Disadvantage zaps the fun. Success actually becomes less joyful when you've been failing all day and another failure will happen a minute later, generically speaking.

In the proposed house rule what happens when the exhausted character drops again next combat? His exhaustion worsens, making him more miserable. All this does is force, not encourage, someone to be the healer. The DM might be happy, but now he's forcing the players to play the game his way instead of the way they want to. He's forcing their hand to take certain actions because otherwise in his eyes they're playing the game wrong for not healing enough. Let the players worry how they want to handle healing.

[Goobahfish]

Small hiccup, Cure Wounds and related become misleadingly-named (like Chill Touch) as they no longer in fact address injuries but rather fatigue.

Ha ha, this has always been an issue in D&D. What is HP? Were you actually injured? etc etc.

What other problems are there? IMO healing in D&D5e works perfectly fine aside from 0 hp healing word yoyoing.

My goal with my house rule of imposing 1 level of exhaustion when revived from 0 hp with magic is to

• slightly punish reaching 0 hp
• encourage healing before hitpoints gets too low
• when 0 hp is reached, take a short rest and spend hit dice to heal fully

Edit- also thank you for taking my reply seriously lol, appreciate

So, I think broadly, your rule is a good one in the 5e context (i.e., single simple house rule, pretty easy to remember etc).
The flaws in it (i.e. design trade-offs are):
#1: You have an extra tally to keep track of: Exhaustion level. This is already baked in to 5.1 so it probably shouldn't be too hard to deal with. However, it does mean that you need to be careful of characters who get 'normal exhaustion' and 'healing exhaustion' because if those two don't work identically, it will be huge hassle.
#2: More math. Any time you need to do a calculation at the table is a bad thing. If a player hasn't pre-calculated their to-hit (i.e., +6 rather than +[4 + 2]) I usually flog them. All numbers should be either 'on a dice' or 'a single easy to reference constant'. The new exhaustion mechanic veers dangerously into 'fiddly numbers' territory. "Oh, I forgot exhaustion... actually that was a fail" kind of stuff.
#3: The game is swingy. So, occasionally, despite their best efforts players will get knocked to zero just out of sheer bad luck. Monster double crits etc. Now you get exhaustion. Now your players are less... capable? This is a very dangerous kind of punishment as its behaviour is highly non-linear. The first exhaustion might be fine, but the second one might actually disrupt the game balance a lot. First exhaustion leads to failing a reflex save for double damage leading to more exhaustion. This leads to death-spiraling.
The benefits:
#1: It punishes yo-yoing. I think this is broadly a good thing, but it doesn't actually fix yo-yoing, just discourages it (which is why I think the rule is 'broadly' good).

Fixing yo-yoing is kind of difficult because it would probably require negative HP (i.e., healing word is not enough, a buffer is required).

I really don't want to use permanent injury as a DM, I think it is contrary to the spirit of D&D 5e. For a grittier system I use permanent injury. D&D is supposed to be heroic, yes heroes sometimes get their ass kicked very hard, but they always come out of it in once piece.

So, the only reason I have serious injuries (and most of them are non-permanent), is because of Luke Skywalker. A hero has to be able to have their hand cut off. It has to be a thing.

Also, I'm more an advocate of three kinds of injury.
#1 Minor: Lasts until next long rest.
#2 Moderate: Lasts for a week.
#3 Major: You need some divine intervention to help with this.

What determines each pool of hp?

That is an interesting question. This is from a 'heavily modified to the point of not actually D&D game I play'. However, as a first pass, in 5e I would do it like this:
Everyone gets D4 + Con Vitality/level.
D6 classes get 1 Stamina/level
D8 classes get 2
D10 classes get 3
D12 classes get 4.

The idea here is that combat classes really can 'shrug off' injuries pretty effectively whereas wizards have a very small bank of HP before they start getting seriously hurt.

[PhoenixPhyre]

My biggest issue with penalties for being dropped to 0 is that it punishes people disproportionately. Those who have lots of tools to avoid damage (ie casters, ranged) are fine, but those who are designed to take that damage (ie heavy melee) or who have fewer tools to avoid it (ie melee skirmishers) take it on the chin. Which further incentivizes being one of the ranged guys.

As a comparison, FFXIV used to heavily use "vulnerability stacks" for standing in avoidable mechanics. Each stack meant you took more damage. But that just makes the healers work harder (and gave rise, in part, to the infamous "healers adjust" saying). Not the ones who ate the avoidable pain, who often did so intentionally to "greed" more damage. Note that almost all raid damage is avoidable unless you're a tank--there are raidwides, but those don't give vuln. Now, instead, they mostly use damage down effects. Get hit and you do less damage. Which directly hits at the most important part of a DPS's soul--the ego. And is thus way more effective at encouraging actually doing the mechanics.

Now the situation isn't quite comparable, as much less damage in D&D is avoidable. But the principle of punishing the people who did the wrong thing, not the ones who were doing what they were supposed to (in this case being in melee) applies.

Personally, I'm grateful that my players take being downed seriously both in-and-out of character. They don't game the pop-up healing or the death saves, they heal in combat where appropriate, and generally play like they're actual people instead of just chess pieces.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

But at 10th level, you've only got that one 50 pt lay on hands all day. 2nd level slots are, if not nothing, comparatively cheap.

Sorry to not get back to this sooner. Got busy.

Yes, at 10th level you only get 50 points all day. However that 50 points is more hp than the Cleric can heal with one action, so my players tend to save the Paly healing and keep it intact for in combat healing if needed. Other resources, like those cheap 2nd level slots you speak of, tend to get used out of combat. Is this just my group that finds the Paly's ability superior to the Cleric's in this regard?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Sorry to not get back to this sooner. Got busy.

Yes, at 10th level you only get 50 points all day. However that 50 points is more hp than the Cleric can heal with one action, so my players tend to save the Paly healing and keep it intact for in combat healing if needed. Other resources, like those cheap 2nd level slots you speak of, tend to get used out of combat. Is this just my group that finds the Paly's ability superior to the Cleric's in this regard?

Paladins do have a great burst heal. But very limited. Sure, if all you need is one burst heal a day and the paladin is up and around and in range, that's great. But if you need more, or the paladin is the one that's down...

[Segev]

Except that using pop-up healing only often leads to lost actions. Because unless the healer goes after all monsters (and the KO'd person isn't dead) AND before the KO'd person, then the KO'd person will lose a turn. And a lost turn is way more than a "lost" action. And possible death from enemy attacks (which takes basically nothing once you're downed) is even worse than that.

You're right, but pop-up healing is still more efficient than healing before they go down, in many cases. Let's take the very useful healing word: it heals at most 9 hp when cast from a 1st level spell slot.

If those nine hp do not make a difference in the number of hits it takes before the target goes down – which, as levels increase, becomes increasingly improbable – it is more or less a wasted spell slot and action to apply that healing. On the other hand, if the target is downed, even a roll of a 1 with a casting stat of 10 results in a whole extra attack being required to remove the target from the fight again.

That is why pop-up healing is considered superior to the alternative in most cases: healing will often be less than an attack's damage, and will often take more actions to use than it will cost the enemy in increased actions-to-down.

[Kane0]

My biggest issue with penalties for being dropped to 0 is that it punishes people disproportionately. Those who have lots of tools to avoid damage (ie casters, ranged) are fine, but those who are designed to take that damage (ie heavy melee) or who have fewer tools to avoid it (ie melee skirmishers) take it on the chin. Which further incentivizes being one of the ranged guys.

Incoming anecdote.

Last game I played, over the course of 13 levels it was the casters (one sorc, one lock) that got dropped and killed most often. The barbarian came in second, then a chunk of distance between us and the paladin and rogue.

Warlock died twice, sorcerer once, barbarian once, pally and rogue no deaths. Pally did get petrified once though, so that would count as a death.

Being at range in an of itself isnt much protection in a game with encounters that feature regular mobile, ranged and/or aoe threats.

[Dork_Forge]

I know it's true from experience, as the player affected and a party member of another player who was affected. It's the same reason Save or Suck spells and monster effects of the past have been changed to get another save at the end of your turn. Hindering players doing stuff for a significant amount of game time is not conducive to the fun of play. Players accept the chance of failure. An inconvenience for a short amount of time is game play. Having the deck stacked against you for a significant amount of time is frustration. Succeeding anyway with Disadvantage is cool, but the continuing having to roll with Disadvantage zaps the fun. Success actually becomes less joyful when you've been failing all day and another failure will happen a minute later, generically speaking.

All you're showing is that yourself and the other party member are the type of players that are bothered by it? I mean anecdotes certainly have their place, but this isn't proving anything?

Counter anecdotes: One of my games recently went to hell where traveling landed two PCs with exhaustion, one didn't mind and RP'd into it, the other kind of minded but it was an annoyance at most. The other active game has a PC being repeatedly targeted by Dream (I think that's it) and stacked exhaustion far more than just once, in addition to running out of long rest resources and being unable to replenish them. Besides missing doing some stuff, he expressed that it was primarily just scary tension for his character.

Some players will be bothered, some won't. The player base isn't a monolith, and all players hating having a level of exhaustion as much as you portray is certainly not everyone, anecdotally it isn't even my norm.

In the proposed house rule what happens when the exhausted character drops again next combat? His exhaustion worsens, making him more miserable. All this does is force, not encourage, someone to be the healer. The DM might be happy, but now he's forcing the players to play the game his way instead of the way they want to. He's forcing their hand to take certain actions because otherwise in his eyes they're playing the game wrong for not healing enough. Let the players worry how they want to handle healing.

Not my rule, my version lets the first level go away on a short rest unless you stack higher. And I'm not buying the forcing them how to play thing, avoiding 'dying' is something everyone should want to do anyway, and personally when I run rules like this the players have bought into it for whatever personal reason.

You're right, but pop-up healing is still more efficient than healing before they go down, in many cases. Let's take the very useful healing word: it heals at most 9 hp when cast from a 1st level spell slot.

It doesn't bode well for your argument that you've chosen the weakest healing spell and are applying it poorly (1st level, unassisted cast for proactive healing beyond 8+).

However, since you went there, Healing Word heals at most 17 HP to a single character with a 1st level slot, you just have to actually be healer to get it that high (Circle of Wild Fire). Or a smaller, but more reliable, max of 12 and 14 for Life Clerics (with some self heal) and Alchemists respectively, and some AOE heals for the Shepherd Druid.

If those nine hp do not make a difference in the number of hits it takes before the target goes down – which, as levels increase, becomes increasingly improbable – it is more or less a wasted spell slot and action to apply that healing. On the other hand, if the target is downed, even a roll of a 1 with a casting stat of 10 results in a whole extra attack being required to remove the target from the fight again.

This ignores the risks of going down, and paints that you should be casting Healing Word unassisted as a top up as levels go up. That's a horrible idea, unless you're really desperate.

That is why pop-up healing is considered superior to the alternative in most cases: healing will often be less than an attack's damage, and will often take more actions to use than it will cost the enemy in increased actions-to-down.

I'm going to throw this out there: The main reason a wider audience considers pop up healing better is because some players prefer to prioritise doing more flashy stuff, like damage and control. Arguments to support pop up healing are usually incomplete and often hinge on 'what if' or 'what's likely' whilst ignoring the risks of going down in actual play and the RP point of view of allowing injured allies to potentially die.

[Mastikator]

So, I think broadly, your rule is a good one in the 5e context (i.e., single simple house rule, pretty easy to remember etc).
The flaws in it (i.e. design trade-offs are):
#1: You have an extra tally to keep track of: Exhaustion level. This is already baked in to 5.1 so it probably shouldn't be too hard to deal with. However, it does mean that you need to be careful of characters who get 'normal exhaustion' and 'healing exhaustion' because if those two don't work identically, it will be huge hassle.
#2: More math. Any time you need to do a calculation at the table is a bad thing. If a player hasn't pre-calculated their to-hit (i.e., +6 rather than +[4 + 2]) I usually flog them. All numbers should be either 'on a dice' or 'a single easy to reference constant'. The new exhaustion mechanic veers dangerously into 'fiddly numbers' territory. "Oh, I forgot exhaustion... actually that was a fail" kind of stuff.
#3: The game is swingy. So, occasionally, despite their best efforts players will get knocked to zero just out of sheer bad luck. Monster double crits etc. Now you get exhaustion. Now your players are less... capable? This is a very dangerous kind of punishment as its behaviour is highly non-linear. The first exhaustion might be fine, but the second one might actually disrupt the game balance a lot. First exhaustion leads to failing a reflex save for double damage leading to more exhaustion. This leads to death-spiraling.
The benefits:
#1: It punishes yo-yoing. I think this is broadly a good thing, but it doesn't actually fix yo-yoing, just discourages it (which is why I think the rule is 'broadly' good).

Fixing yo-yoing is kind of difficult because it would probably require negative HP (i.e., healing word is not enough, a buffer is required).

I give players tokens. White tokens represent inspiration, black tokens represent 0 hp exhaustion. Blue tokens represent normal exhaustion.. I mean they're actually poker chips I won at a christmas game a few years ago but who cares, they work really well as game tokens. I guess other people would have to buy beads or something, but finding tokens isn't hard.

The death spiral is definitely the intention here, I want players who yoyo on 0 hp to feel like they NEED to rest, to NEED to flee, to NEED to not engage in violence. And to need to use resources to fully heal up and rest. I mitigate it by allowing players to rest, if they choose to. I design dungeons and encounters with short rests in mind.

[Segev]

It doesn't bode well for your argument that you've chosen the weakest healing spell and are applying it poorly (1st level, unassisted cast for proactive healing beyond 8+).

However, since you went there, Healing Word heals at most 17 HP to a single character with a 1st level slot, you just have to actually be healer to get it that high (Circle of Wild Fire). Or a smaller, but more reliable, max of 12 and 14 for Life Clerics (with some self heal) and Alchemists respectively, and some AOE heals for the Shepherd Druid.



This ignores the risks of going down, and paints that you should be casting Healing Word unassisted as a top up as levels go up. That's a horrible idea, unless you're really desperate.



I'm going to throw this out there: The main reason a wider audience considers pop up healing better is because some players prefer to prioritise doing more flashy stuff, like damage and control. Arguments to support pop up healing are usually incomplete and often hinge on 'what if' or 'what's likely' whilst ignoring the risks of going down in actual play and the RP point of view of allowing injured allies to potentially die.

I chose the easiest pop-up healing spell.

I also chose the most efficient spell slot to spend on anything.

I assume by "unassisted," you mean "no specialized healing class features." Yes, I did assume that. That is by far the most common healing you will see, simply because not every party has a player who wants to be a dedicated healer. Healing word is, in fact, what my knowledge cleric 1/Illusionist wizear 6 uses in in combat if needed. Slithering up into melee range to use cure wounds is a foolish risk for an average of two more hp per spell slot level, and casting it at higher level will still not get my allies as much efficacy as casting a stronger buff or debuff or even damage AoE from that same higher-level spell slot.

I will further assume that "top-up" heaping is a typo for "pop-up healing;" if you meant something else, I am not sure what "top-up" healing is.

For healing to matter in combat, it must increase the number of actions the target can take by at least one. Otherwise, it is better to use your own action for something that reduces enemy efficacy. Even if your target ally has better actions for enemy deprecation than you do, if your healing is not buying them at least one more action, you're waking your action.

Pop-up healing always buys them, if not another action, at least another hit they can absorb and force the enemy to try to make. The same is not true of healing when they have at least one hp left!

[Dork_Forge]

I rearranged your post slightly to clarify at the beginning.

I will further assume that "top-up" heaping is a typo for "pop-up healing;" if you meant something else, I am not sure what "top-up" healing is.

It wasn't a typo, I was talking about proactively healing when a target isn't at 0, pop up vs top up, which is what you seemed to be contrasting with the 'if 9 hp doesn't make a difference' bit.

I chose the easiest pop-up healing spell.

I also chose the most efficient spell slot to spend on anything.

You also chose the weakest spell at its lowest casting and then spoke about it as a bad choice to proactively heal someone with. Which... it is after the first few levels, I'm not sure anyone has advocated for slapping a bandaid on a stab wound.

I assume by "unassisted," you mean "no specialized healing class features." Yes, I did assume that. That is by far the most common healing you will see, simply because not every party has a player who wants to be a dedicated healer. Healing word is, in fact, what my knowledge cleric 1/Illusionist wizear 6 uses in in combat if needed. Slithering up into melee range to use cure wounds is a foolish risk for an average of two more hp per spell slot level, and casting it at higher level will still not get my allies as much efficacy as casting a stronger buff or debuff or even damage AoE from that same higher-level spell slot.

You understood correctly.

And I don't care if unassisted healing is the most commonly seen, it doesn't change the fact that you made the worst choice for a comparison between the two. And, again, talking about the state of healing by ignoring actual healers is pointless.

Just because your Cleric took Healing Word doesn't make them a healer, it just means they can heal. And, shockingly, a character who's healing is coming from a single level dip is a terrible example. You're healing like a 1st level character, of course that's good for little-else than pop up.

An aside: being within 5ft of an ally =/= being within melee range of a creature, and if you're primarily a Wizard then presumably you have a familiar that can deliver it.

For healing to matter in combat, it must increase the number of actions the target can take by at least one. Otherwise, it is better to use your own action for something that reduces enemy efficacy. Even if your target ally has better actions for enemy deprecation than you do, if your healing is not buying them at least one more action, you're waking your action.

No, it really doesn't. Even if they take just a single additional attack it was worth it, they don't need to eat an entire action. And if your aim is to keep your ally up, you shouldn't be relying on casting a 1st level Healing Word at 7th character level.

I'm also going to throw out there that a safety buffer is also valuable. Even if the healed hitpoints are never touched, there is a value to knowing you have a cushion, be it against unexpected surprises or bad luck (Crits, high damage rolls, bad saves, etc.).

Pop-up healing always buys them, if not another action, at least another hit they can absorb and force the enemy to try to make. The same is not true of healing when they have at least one hp left!

Except for when they're caught in an AOE or auto damage of some kind, where they'll likely have so little hit points that they'll go straight back down.

And, again, this is assuming that the PC going down has no limited resources triggered they may want to actually preserve.


TL:DR - 'My 7th level character using a 1st level Healing Word is only good for pop up healing' isn't a criticism of healing. It's just commentary on your character build, which is basically just a Wizard at heart.

I really don't get people's aversion to talking about actual healing features when talking about healing. How can you expect to be good at something you've made next to no investment in? And, why should uninvested healing be good? To steal PP's comparison, it's like expecting a melee attack to be a good idea when there's literally nothing enhancing it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Another thing about letting people fall to 0 is that it ends a crap ton of ongoing things. Concentrating? Yeah, it's gone. Rage? Yup, gone. Auras? Yeah, they're off. Etc. SO even after you pop them back up, they're much less effective than they were. And if they pop up, start another such effect, then go down again...tons of wasted resources.

[Pex]

All you're showing is that yourself and the other party member are the type of players that are bothered by it? I mean anecdotes certainly have their place, but this isn't proving anything?

Counter anecdotes: One of my games recently went to hell where traveling landed two PCs with exhaustion, one didn't mind and RP'd into it, the other kind of minded but it was an annoyance at most. The other active game has a PC being repeatedly targeted by Dream (I think that's it) and stacked exhaustion far more than just once, in addition to running out of long rest resources and being unable to replenish them. Besides missing doing some stuff, he expressed that it was primarily just scary tension for his character.

Some players will be bothered, some won't. The player base isn't a monolith, and all players hating having a level of exhaustion as much as you portray is certainly not everyone, anecdotally it isn't even my norm.


Not my rule, my version lets the first level go away on a short rest unless you stack higher. And I'm not buying the forcing them how to play thing, avoiding 'dying' is something everyone should want to do anyway, and personally when I run rules like this the players have bought into it for whatever personal reason.

It's not just one other player besides me. It's every time it happens. It's the difference about length of time. Exhaustion for real world twenty minutes of game time is an inconvenience, but you can play it through. Having it for real world hours of play gets tired (pun intended) real fast. When the Dragon Sorcerer who likes to cast his Fire Bolt and Fireball has to face fire resistant/immune creatures for a combat it's annoying but he plays through. When every combat of the adventure has fire resistant/immune creatures, there's a problem. It's the same principle.

You are forcing people to play your way when you deride pop-up healing as "gamey" so it needs to be avoided because you don't like it.

[Dork_Forge]

It's not just one other player besides me. It's every time it happens. It's the difference about length of time. Exhaustion for real world twenty minutes of game time is an inconvenience, but you can play it through. Having it for real world hours of play gets tired (pun intended) real fast. When the Dragon Sorcerer who likes to cast his Fire Bolt and Fireball has to face fire resistant/immune creatures for a combat it's annoying but he plays through. When every combat of the adventure has fire resistant/immune creatures, there's a problem. It's the same principle.

Pex, I don't care how many people you can point to, have you considered that you play with like-minded people to some degree? That not everyone minds that much? I've had players be some degree of exhausted for multiple 4+ hour session in a row, that is the context I'm coming from.

Personally it would entirely depend what mood I'm in, sometimes it'd bother me, others not, but it wouldn't ruin my character or my time.

And a single level of exhaustion, which is what it's likely to be, isn't destroying your every interaction with the game. Heck, two isn't doing that either.

You are forcing people to play your way when you deride pop-up healing as "gamey" so it needs to be avoided because you don't like it.

I can't force anyone to do anything, and when I DM such rules are with player buy-in. You can disagree with me, but don't claim I'm forcing anyone to do anything.

And I've never had to push any of these rules upon my ongoing games (nor would I), one group naturally doesn't like each other going down, the other did some pop up healing at first, then got past that when they had to keep doing it.