Healing without clerics or potions in D&D

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Healing without clerics or potions in D&D

Post by OgreBattle »

I hate the idea that every adventuring party needs a priest or bandoleer of potions (and I also hate how that leaked into vidyagames and now every MMO has healbot as a class...). I liked the idea of healing surges in 4e, and reserve hitpoints in 3e sounded neat but I never did play with them.

I remember reading here that 4e surges had a horrible flaw about them but I forgot what it was about. So anyways what's a good way to do non-magical healing in D&D type games to hit a sweet spot where you don't simply sleep for a week to recover hitpoints, but you also have a feeling of dwindling character resources as you advance through fights?

Off the top of my head I figure something like...

-At 1/2 hp a character is bloodied.
-Hitpoints lost before a character gets bloodied are recovered after a 3 minute rest (hitpoints while bloodied are recovered slower, lets call them vital points)
-bandages/herbs can recover a small amount of VP but don't stack (putting more bandages on a bandage doesn't make the wound close faster)
-a night's rest recovers some amount of VP

Are in-combat healing surges an inherently bad idea though? Like a healing surge that recovers a quarter of your hitpoints (but vitalpoint damage remains), so people would use them to refill their hitpoints and avoid getting bloodied.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Tue Sep 16, 2014 6:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Username17 »

This is where the needs of the game run face first into the needs of the story. Characters need to not be bed ridden for eight weeks every time they break a leg because they are needed in the next scene. But injuries need to be 'real' and not cosmetic and transient effects if the narrative is to have any weight.

Games like Call of Cthulhu where a battle takes your character out for weeks are basically unplayable, but games like 4e D&D where injuries vanish between scenes are rightfully mocked as being 'cartoonish.' Clearly a middle ground needs to be found.

And the thing is that a middle ground was found - in the early 70s. If injuries take a long time to heal unless you wave healing magic at the problem, and the player characters have healing magic, then the needs of game and story are both satisfied. There is much to quibble about the implementation, people don't really like playing Gygaxian healbots, nor do people like being told that they can't make a party without a Cleric. But to be honest, 3rd edition sort of stumbled into a solution to that as well - Clerical heal spells are kind of ass, but any character with a level in ranger, druid, bard, cleric or paladin can activate the heal sticks that people use out of combat. So you don't miss the 'main healer' and fully half the classes can play medic when it's necessary for someone to do that between action scenes.

-Username17
ishy
Duke
Posts: 2404
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2011 2:59 pm

Post by ishy »

The problem with a system like that, is any fight that any fight that only takes away hit points feels non-threatening.
While if you lose a number of vital points, starting any fight feels like you're risking your character.

DMs also want you to feel some attrition in a model like that, thus are more likely to focus fire.

It just doesn't do attrition very well. Then again, hit-point attrition is something that only works on low levels (when you're fighting lots of things weaker than you, say goblins) and should imho be something you out-level anyway.
Gary Gygax wrote:The player’s path to role-playing mastery begins with a thorough understanding of the rules of the game
Bigode wrote:I wouldn't normally make that blanket of a suggestion, but you seem to deserve it: scroll through the entire forum, read anything that looks interesting in term of design experience, then come back.
User avatar
deaddmwalking
Prince
Posts: 3463
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 11:33 am

Post by deaddmwalking »

In Unearthed Arcana, it suggested Wound Points (WP) and Vitality Points (VP).

Most damage comes off your VP first, then overflows into your WP. WP damage takes a long time to heal (outside of magical healing). VP recovers very quickly.

Then it's up to you regarding whether any effects go straight to WP (like maybe critical hit damage).

If there is a negative effect for taking wound damage (such as fatigue or even exhaustion), the urgency of in-combat healing is encouraged - you're not 'at full effectiveness' at 0 hit points as you are in standard 3.x. If you don't want that at all, you probably want to leave off any riders and just deal with the slow/fast healing.

If you feel it's worthwhile, you could rule that VP don't heal until WP are fully restored. Thus, if you get beaten down to a single hit point, you'd recover your WP slowly, and as soon as they're full, you'll be back to full VP the next day.
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

Part of me wants to mention Green Ronin's SIFRP, but that runs on a different HP paradigm entirely, so isn't a great deal of use if you're specifically on about D&D. You have a small pool of HP (ranging from 12 to 21 for serious combatants, maybe as much as 28 if you're minmaxing for HP alone), most people can reliably regen 2 HP per full round action, you are dropped when HP hits 0, and "important" people such as PCs can reduce incoming damage by taking Injuries (which impose a small penalty and take 1 day each to heal) or ignore the damage from a single attack completely by taking a Wound (which impose a much larger penalty and take a week each to heal). So, all in all, probably less good than reserve points or just "having a dildo of Cure Light Wounds and a guy with UMD or the right spell on his list".
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
mlangsdorf
Master
Posts: 256
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:12 pm

Post by mlangsdorf »

At a first pass, the suggested system seems workable. If hit points are explicitly morale/fatigue and not actual wounds, then surges as second winds/rising determination work okay.

One thing I'd recommend is making the threshold for "vital damage" start occurring when a character is at 1/4 HP, not 1/2. That gives people more of a buffer before they start taking permanent damage.
User avatar
RobbyPants
King
Posts: 5201
Joined: Wed Aug 06, 2008 6:11 pm

Post by RobbyPants »

I ran a one-on-one game with someone where I simply converted half the damage (round up) to non-lethal damage. The obvious downside is you have to divide by two every time someone takes damage. The benefit was that HP would still get hit each fight, but about half the damage was removed very quickly. It also had the side effect of making healing magic (roughly) twice as effective, because it heals a like amount of normal and nonlethal damage.

Another odd effect (and I generally see it as a downside) is that targets are always KOed and never killed unless you hit them for an insane amount of damage.
User avatar
GnomeWorks
Master
Posts: 281
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 12:19 am

Post by GnomeWorks »

I don't mind the need for a group to have a healer.

I do mind that in D&D, it always (with 4e as an exception) has to have religious flavor.

Give me warlords or arcane casters with access to healing. There should be more variety in class choice for healers than "religion guy."
Seerow
Duke
Posts: 1103
Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2011 2:46 pm

Post by Seerow »

In Unearthed Arcana, it suggested Wound Points (WP) and Vitality Points (VP).

Most damage comes off your VP first, then overflows into your WP. WP damage takes a long time to heal (outside of magical healing). VP recovers very quickly.

Then it's up to you regarding whether any effects go straight to WP (like maybe critical hit damage).

The UA WP system's biggest problem is the way WP is handled, IMO. I mean if you have 100 HP and 10 WP, but a crit goes straight to WP, that typically means a crit just makes you dead. Very rarely do you get damage that applies to wounds without outright killing you. So the net effect is making health in general even less important. On the plus side it turns crit fishing into a pretty viable deal for Fighters, rack up a bunch of attacks with a high threat range and you're easily killing 3-5 level appropriate creatures per round by ignoring their 500 VP and just critting away their wounds.



Personally I prefer a variant of the wounds system where characters have fewer wound points (like 3-5 + con mod, or something to that effect), and any time you take a hit that would inflict wounds, it deals a single wound point. You might have special exceptions, but for the most part this gives characters some degree of attrition with wounds without making taking any wound damage an instant death sentence.

From there retrofit on something similar to healing surges, but only let it heal VP, and wounds require time or magic.

Between the VP, WP, and Surges, you have several sliding scales to adjust how lethal/non-lethal you want the game to be. Want a grittier game? Healing magic is practically non-existant, WP takes weeks to recover, and you have relatively few surges that recover slowly (like 4 surges recovering 1 every day or two). Want a more heroic fantasy closer to 4e style game? Healing magic is plentiful, WP cures at a point a day (or faster), and you get 8-12 healing surges that recover over night.


Basically you can tweak the knobs to get almost any style of play, the main constants are VP is more plentiful than WP, and healing surges recover much more quickly than WP.
Sakuya Izayoi
Knight
Posts: 395
Joined: Tue Nov 26, 2013 5:02 am

Post by Sakuya Izayoi »

I actually enjoy some of the "fluff" you get with MMORPG healing. Throwing around big globs of glowing green nature juice or energized watery essence or being surrounded by soothing balmy plants. Kinda gives you a taste for how all this Wolverine regeneration is actually happening.
radthemad4
Duke
Posts: 2073
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:20 pm

Post by radthemad4 »

What if you just decrease the DC's of Epic Heal (and maybe nix the no more than once a day thing)?
Epic Heal wrote:
The character can greatly speed a patient’s recovery of hit points.

Quicken recovery DC 50
Perfect recovery DC 100

Quicken Recovery

The character can allow a character to regain hit points in a single hour as if he or she had provided long-term care for a full day (2 or 3 hit points per level, based on activity). The character can quicken the recovery of up to six patients at a time. No character’s recovery can be quickened more than once per day (even by different healers).

Perfect Recovery

The character can allow a character to regain hit points in a single hour as if he or she had provided long-term care for a full week (2 or 3 hit points per level per day, based on activity). The character can use perfect recovery on up to six patients at a time. No character’s recovery can be perfected more than once per day, nor can perfect recovery and quicken recovery both be used on the same patient in the same day (even by different healers).
TheFlatline
Prince
Posts: 2606
Joined: Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:43 pm

Post by TheFlatline »

deaddmwalking wrote:In Unearthed Arcana, it suggested Wound Points (WP) and Vitality Points (VP).

Most damage comes off your VP first, then overflows into your WP. WP damage takes a long time to heal (outside of magical healing). VP recovers very quickly.

Then it's up to you regarding whether any effects go straight to WP (like maybe critical hit damage).

If there is a negative effect for taking wound damage (such as fatigue or even exhaustion), the urgency of in-combat healing is encouraged - you're not 'at full effectiveness' at 0 hit points as you are in standard 3.x. If you don't want that at all, you probably want to leave off any riders and just deal with the slow/fast healing.

If you feel it's worthwhile, you could rule that VP don't heal until WP are fully restored. Thus, if you get beaten down to a single hit point, you'd recover your WP slowly, and as soon as they're full, you'll be back to full VP the next day.
Wounds/Vitality found it's way into... christ I'm trying to remember here... Star Wars, D20 Modern I think, Spycraft, a few others too.

It works. It's an okay kludge. It still means that if you take actual wounds you're out of it for days/weeks though.
TheFlatline
Prince
Posts: 2606
Joined: Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:43 pm

Post by TheFlatline »

The Song of Ice & Fire RPG actually touched on the idea that your HP in physical combat was a combination of morale and physical health. At zero hit points (or any time before that) you could yield to your attacker, who had the option to let you go, kill/wound you (usually kill at that point) or take your opponent as a hostage for ransom or as prisoner. Usually if you were a noble and you didn't kill the person flat out they'd surrender.

That's heavily reinforced in the setting though. Not to say that D&D couldn't do that. I think the idea of the mind flayer kicking ass and taking the heroes hostage and ransoming them back is kind of funny.
User avatar
Wiseman
Duke
Posts: 1402
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 4:43 pm
Location: That one place
Contact:

Post by Wiseman »

Wasn't this already covered in other places?

Here's a guide on how to get by without a cleric or druid healer.
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2710.0

And here's a non-religion based healer.
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50559
Keys to the Contract: A crossover between Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kingdom Hearts.
Image
RadiantPhoenix wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".
The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".
hyzmarca wrote:Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.
K
King
Posts: 6487
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by K »

It's not hard to just make something else the actual "hit points" and make hit points into a resource that heals every battle.

For example, you could make all crits and hits at less than 0 HPs do negative levels or ability damage that can't be healed with magic. Then most combats would end up not stopping the day's adventure, but the sense of getting depleted is a thing.

Theoretically, HPs are just a bad representation of actual damage anyway because they are so unrealistic. The only reason that RPGs use them is because being wounded with penalties tends to end the adventure for most people anyway.
Seerow
Duke
Posts: 1103
Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2011 2:46 pm

Post by Seerow »

Theoretically, HPs are just a bad representation of actual damage anyway because they are so unrealistic. The only reason that RPGs use them is because being wounded with penalties tends to end the adventure for most people anyway.
I'm curious if there are penalties that could be applied that DO give the sense of impending desperation but DON'T make players just say "Okay let's go back to home base and rest up, try again tomorrow".

I mean, that pretty obviously drops out most direct combat modifiers. You don't want to go into a fight with -X to saves, hit, AC, etc. Has there been any successful systems with available resources tied to wounds? Like a Wizard who gets all of his spells back with a short rest, but if he's taken wounds he gets less for whatever reason?
User avatar
deaddmwalking
Prince
Posts: 3463
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 11:33 am

Post by deaddmwalking »

An advantage hit points offer is to easily segment threats by how damaging they are. The difference between 1d6+4 and 3d8+15 make the level of danger more easily apparent. If 'hits' do something like a negative level, you risk making low - level threats potentially more dangerous. This happens anytime your 'minimum damage' is more significant than 1 hit point (the absolute minimum damage D&D can track).
-This space intentionally left blank
User avatar
Neurosis
Duke
Posts: 1057
Joined: Thu Sep 02, 2010 3:28 pm
Location: Wouldn't you like to know?

Post by Neurosis »

I thought this thread was about non-magical healing in D&D, a topic I'm curious about.

Has any edition of D&D (going back to before there were skills or 'Heal' was one of them) had like basic first aid or wound mending, short of magic, be a thing? Was it ever possible in RAW (or a popular house rule) to have any medical attention a PC could do (short of magical healing) restore any non-zero amount of HP? I know even in 3.X (the edition I'm most familiar with) a Heal Check doesn't even have the power to immediately restore hit points under any circumstances.

(I recently played in a very "Beer and Pretzels" type original AD&D game at a convention and the DM was letting all characters of all types "bind wounds" to automatically restore 1d4 HP to another character, especially if someone was bleeding out. Everyone was talking about it like it was part of the rules, but upon actually reading through those ancient texts even more recently, I couldn't find any reference to it, so I'm starting to think it was mind caulk/house rules.)
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.
hogarth wrote:As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.
TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)
radthemad4
Duke
Posts: 2073
Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:20 pm

Post by radthemad4 »

Koumei allowed using a Heal check to recover a number of hitpoints equal to the check using a healer's kit in a game she was running recently. Closest thing to RAW hit point recovery via Heal seems to be 'Epic' Healing (see my post earlier in this thread)
ishy
Duke
Posts: 2404
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2011 2:59 pm

Post by ishy »

Seerow wrote:I'm curious if there are penalties that could be applied that DO give the sense of impending desperation but DON'T make players just say "Okay let's go back to home base and rest up, try again tomorrow".

I mean, that pretty obviously drops out most direct combat modifiers. You don't want to go into a fight with -X to saves, hit, AC, etc. Has there been any successful systems with available resources tied to wounds? Like a Wizard who gets all of his spells back with a short rest, but if he's taken wounds he gets less for whatever reason?
It depends on how deadly encounters are. If encounters are really hard, then any penalty whatsoever will cause me to hit town. If encounters are piss easy, I don't really care about minor penalties.
Though there might be some RP reasons to carry on anyway.
Gary Gygax wrote:The player’s path to role-playing mastery begins with a thorough understanding of the rules of the game
Bigode wrote:I wouldn't normally make that blanket of a suggestion, but you seem to deserve it: scroll through the entire forum, read anything that looks interesting in term of design experience, then come back.
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

A 2E Heal check can heal 1d3 damage. Whoopee.
User avatar
RobbyPants
King
Posts: 5201
Joined: Wed Aug 06, 2008 6:11 pm

Post by RobbyPants »

ishy wrote:It depends on how deadly encounters are. If encounters are really hard, then any penalty whatsoever will cause me to hit town. If encounters are piss easy, I don't really care about minor penalties.
Though there might be some RP reasons to carry on anyway.
That, and ultimately, any system you create that involves healing HP/removing penalties with rest will pretty much have time and importance as balancing factors.

If you have a mission that must be done right now, you don't rest unless it's physically impossible to proceed. If there's no timeline on it, there's no reason not to rest after even the slightest set-back (apart from inconvenience of travel setting your threshold for when you leave).


Seerow wrote:Has there been any successful systems with available resources tied to wounds? Like a Wizard who gets all of his spells back with a short rest, but if he's taken wounds he gets less for whatever reason?
Even then, if time isn't a factor, it seems like the optimal solution is to just head back to town and wait longer to get everything back and remove those penalties. It just makes resting in dungeons less useful, which then makes traveling back to town more attractive.

Without some external reason to have to stay in the dungeon, I can't think of a way to mechanically incentivize it. That being said, I'd love it if someone thought of one.
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

RobbyPants wrote:
ishy wrote:It depends on how deadly encounters are. If encounters are really hard, then any penalty whatsoever will cause me to hit town. If encounters are piss easy, I don't really care about minor penalties.
Though there might be some RP reasons to carry on anyway.
That, and ultimately, any system you create that involves healing HP/removing penalties with rest will pretty much have time and importance as balancing factors.

If you have a mission that must be done right now, you don't rest unless it's physically impossible to proceed. If there's no timeline on it, there's no reason not to rest after even the slightest set-back (apart from inconvenience of travel setting your threshold for when you leave).


Seerow wrote:Has there been any successful systems with available resources tied to wounds? Like a Wizard who gets all of his spells back with a short rest, but if he's taken wounds he gets less for whatever reason?
Even then, if time isn't a factor, it seems like the optimal solution is to just head back to town and wait longer to get everything back and remove those penalties. It just makes resting in dungeons less useful, which then makes traveling back to town more attractive.

Without some external reason to have to stay in the dungeon, I can't think of a way to mechanically incentivize it. That being said, I'd love it if someone thought of one.
Is it a bad thing to make "time is short" simply part of basic adventuring assumptions? Much of Tome is predicated on the idea that a rules-as-written 13th level wizard in 3.5 with infinite time to prepare will always prevail as I recall.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
Blicero
Duke
Posts: 1131
Joined: Thu May 07, 2009 12:07 am

Post by Blicero »

RobbyPants wrote:
Even then, if time isn't a factor, it seems like the optimal solution is to just head back to town and wait longer to get everything back and remove those penalties. It just makes resting in dungeons less useful, which then makes traveling back to town more attractive.

Without some external reason to have to stay in the dungeon, I can't think of a way to mechanically incentivize it. That being said, I'd love it if someone thought of one.
If you're going into a dungeon with a specific goal in mind, and the dungeon has some sort of repopulation process set up, then there will be situations where it's more advantageous to stay in the dungeon and press on, and there will be situations where it's a better idea to leave, recover fully, and return. Having most dungeons repopulate over time is probably less artificial than mandating that every adventure has a time limit.
Out beyond the hull, mucoid strings of non-baryonic matter streamed past like Christ's blood in the firmament.
User avatar
RobbyPants
King
Posts: 5201
Joined: Wed Aug 06, 2008 6:11 pm

Post by RobbyPants »

Omegonthesane wrote: Is it a bad thing to make "time is short" simply part of basic adventuring assumptions? Much of Tome is predicated on the idea that a rules-as-written 13th level wizard in 3.5 with infinite time to prepare will always prevail as I recall.
No, I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying I don't see a way to handle the situation without putting time in there as some variable.

Blicero wrote: If you're going into a dungeon with a specific goal in mind, and the dungeon has some sort of repopulation process set up, then there will be situations where it's more advantageous to stay in the dungeon and press on, and there will be situations where it's a better idea to leave, recover fully, and return. Having most dungeons repopulate over time is probably less artificial than mandating that every adventure has a time limit.
Good point. It doesn't have to be a "time limit" per se, but in either case, time is a mitigating factor. It's effectively saying, if [rest period] goes by, then [something bad] happens. Of course, the players might not have all that information, too. How deep does that cave go? Can the guys get reinforcements?
Post Reply