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.

[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?

[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.

[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