Author Topic: Healing in D&D sucks.  (Read 26515 times)

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veekie

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #140 on: February 08, 2009, 04:18:21 PM »
Um, Chemus, mind detailing the whole hp as spell points thing? I have a rough idea what you mean, but clarification might help.

The concentration check thing seems a fine idea, other than how easy it is to whore a skill check. Maybe a CL check tied to the spell level instead?

Quote
Paralysis, Petrification, Death are the major issues that need to be dealt with. Paralysis is stunned (or dazed, since so few creatures are immune to daze) for one round, then a second save or be paralyzed. Petrification is paralyzed for one round first (which in turn is stunned/dazed for one round). Death is dazed/stunned for one or more rounds first, then save again. In all cases if the heal-type spells are applied, they remove the stun/daze and mitigate the paralysis effect to stunned/dazed, and allow additional saving throws for death/petrification. Perhaps the heals could also remove temporary blindness/deafness (permanent versions being beyond their scope...).
Don't forget mind control(from Command, to Charm to Dominate) and sensory control(Miss chance, Blinding, illusions maybe), but these seem to replace death effects with Lose effects(action loss, especially multi rounds), and generally work to delay the effects rather than counteract them.

I was thinking something more along the lines of Entangled->Slowed ->Stunned/Paralysed(academic difference, the only thing thats really different there is the typical duration) with successive successful attacks, so the first hit inflicts a significant, but not crippling effect, the second a devastating, but recoverable effect, the third 'kills' by inflicting a Game Over condition, not necessarily death.
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Chemus

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #141 on: February 08, 2009, 07:12:35 PM »
HP == Spellpoints is pretty much the Spellpoint Variant: Vitalizing (from UA, in SRD here), but the spellpoint total is the caster's HP total. This makes low level casters have more spellpoints, but fewer SP at higher levels. In fact, just using the rules presented under vitalizing, but replacing all instances of 'Spellpoints' with 'Hit Points' does most of what I am talking about. One change that I propose is that all Save DC's and Caster Levels for spells should then be taken from the number of HP spent on them (DC = 10+ 1/2 HP spent, CL = HP spent).

Then we have to actually make exhausted and fatigued matter... to casters since they're likely to be affected by it. veekie's idea about a CL check is good, but I'd like to see if we can make a Concentration check a valid test.

[direction shift] Rather than fatigued and exhausted, if you're under, say 50% HP, you're Sickened, and perhaps w/o the Endurance feat, you're Nauseated at < 25% HP?

I haven't seen any creature that has immunity to being Sickened or Nauseated, only immunity those forms of it that come from a disease poison or necromancy effect. This is not a poison or disease effect, so a lich can be sickened, a golem can be sickened, etc.

How about it? [/direction shift]
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EjoThims

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #142 on: February 08, 2009, 10:54:02 PM »
Doesn't really increase the NEED for healing so much as it's viability though, assuming Save or Die/Lose become Save or Suck(and making it so that multiple save or sucks stack into a lose/die). And of course with sensible forms of suckage.

Actually yes, that system requires you to have healing, as SoD/SoS are still combat enders without healing being applied.

Paralysis, Petrification, Death are the major issues that need to be dealt with. Paralysis is stunned (or dazed, since so few creatures are immune to daze) for one round, then a second save or be paralyzed. Petrification is paralyzed for one round first (which in turn is stunned/dazed for one round). Death is dazed/stunned for one or more rounds first, then save again. In all cases if the heal-type spells are applied, they remove the stun/daze and mitigate the paralysis effect to stunned/dazed, and allow additional saving throws for death/petrification. Perhaps the heals could also remove temporary blindness/deafness (permanent versions being beyond their scope...).

This still makes healing a requirement to make HP meaningful. Otherwise SoD/SoS are still single action combat enders.

Chemus

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #143 on: February 08, 2009, 10:59:56 PM »
Being dazed or stunned is not being helpless, so the enemy can't kill you do death with a coup de grace. Having a second or third save for petrification/death might be helpful. These things would happen w/o a healer, but a healer might mitigate/fix the problems they pose. Plus the cleric would possibly need to perform a support role on occasion.
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EjoThims

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #144 on: February 08, 2009, 11:08:20 PM »
Being dazed or stunned is not being helpless

Chemus

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #145 on: February 08, 2009, 11:12:50 PM »
How is nerfing those effects worse that the current paradigm? If healing is able to mitigate or remove these effects when they were harder to remove previously, why is that bad? The healer may be more necessary, but he's just more capable than he was at fixing people. I don't see how that sucks worse than 3.5 standard.
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EjoThims

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #146 on: February 08, 2009, 11:19:23 PM »
I don't see how that sucks worse than 3.5 standard.

It's not, but it's no better to my mind.

The healing itself still isn't worth it. This idea is not an effective fix for healing in 3.5.

It's saying 'let's create a spell that gets rid of status effects, then make status effects scale up so that we have more time to use the spell, and then tack on healing, to make healing useful.' And that's wrong.

All it does is make that status effect negating spell useful. The healing done will still not scale comparably with DD, nor HP, and HP will still be meaningless to 90% of casters, both in their offense and their defense.

Chemus

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #147 on: February 08, 2009, 11:26:22 PM »
HP will still be meaningless to 90% of casters, both in their offense and their defense.

That's where I was going with the HP as spellpoints system I'm pimping. As for the SoD/SoS, I'm looking to nerf them on their own since they negate HP in and of themselves.

To fix healing, like I said earlier, either give the spell a set percentage of the recipient's HP for what it heals, or make the spell persist for more rounds.
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EjoThims

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #148 on: February 08, 2009, 11:46:36 PM »
That's where I was going with the HP as spellpoints system I'm pimping. As for the SoD/SoS, I'm looking to nerf them on their own since they negate HP in and of themselves.

The fix has to be comprehensive. To make healing work, you have to make HP work and fix it's scaling versus DD. To make HP work, you have to make HP matter defensively and offensively, and to do that you have to nerf/remove SoS/SoD, fix and/or spread non-HP based defenses, and fix healing without making it required.

To fix healing, like I said earlier, either give the spell a set percentage of the recipient's HP for what it heals, or make the spell persist for more rounds.

A HoT won't matter versus DD bursts that outdo the entirety of the spell's boost in even one round, much less over it's duration, and % based healing is bad unless it's based off current health (preferably X00% of current+X, with no temp hp conversion. For example: at a 500%+30 spell cast on a target with 10 hp heals 80 hp). Otherwise the same spell benefits the ones capable of casting it less than the ones who need it cast the most, and you end up with a healbot scenario, once more making healing required, which again, makes it still suck, just on the other extreme. This has the side affect of the spell being able to heal the most at mid % of total HP, but be most fair at low % of total HP, which gives it good synergy with HoTs.

veekie

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #149 on: February 09, 2009, 12:15:24 AM »
Quote
To make HP work, you have to make HP matter defensively and offensively, and to do that you have to nerf/remove SoS/SoD, fix and/or spread non-HP based defenses, and fix healing without making it required.
Well, that was what I was going for, maybe I phrased things badly. Basically, instead of becoming fight enders, SoDs should now offer room for recovery, in that like hp, you need to take multiple hits to end it.

Personally, I figure most existing status effects are inadequate for the penalties for having X% damage, while not all SoDs/SoLs can be broken down neatly into existing statuses either. For some reason, the existing ones are in the majority, meleer screwers, except for action denials, which are essentially SoLs, with the right duration.

First, fix SoD/Ls, then we can derive appropriate drawbacks to hp damage.
The mind transcends the body.
It's also a little cold because of that.
Please get it a blanket.

I wish I could read your mind,
I can barely read mine.

"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. At 2:15, it begins rolling up characters."

[spoiler]
"Just what do you think the moon up in the sky is? Everyone sees that big, round shiny thing and thinks there must be something round up there, right? That's just silly. The truth is much more awesome than that. You can almost never see the real Moon, and its appearance is death to humans. You can only see the Moon when it's reflected in things. And the things it reflects in, like water or glass, can all be broken, right? Since the moon you see in the sky is just being reflected in the heavens, if you tear open the heavens it's easy to break it~"
-Ibuki Suika, on overkill

To sumbolaion diakoneto moi, basilisk ouranionon.
Epigenentheto, apoleia keraune hos timeis pteirei.
Hekatonkatis kai khiliakis astrapsato.
Khiliarkhou Astrape!
[/spoiler]

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EjoThims

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #150 on: February 09, 2009, 12:25:32 AM »
Basically, instead of becoming fight enders, SoDs should now offer room for recovery, in that like hp, you need to take multiple hits to end it.

Ah, from the way you had phrased it, I thought you meant that one spell cast still has the same end result, but it takes X rounds to actually happen.

That would be a meaningless change that didn't actually solve anything except in caster vs caster fights and would enhance the dependency on a healbot in a party.

But now it sounds like what you meant was that casting the same spell X times would have the same end result as one casting currently does? That would be much better (though I still think in the end more powerful than DD unless it required so many castings as to be inefficient), as even though it bypasses HP damage, it becomes comparable to the time involved in whittling at HP.

Chemus

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #151 on: February 09, 2009, 12:53:17 AM »
From 2e, HP have scaled up, while DD has not. SoD was still better than DD, but damage was a better option in earlier editions.

Critters have more HP, especially at high levels, in 3.5 than they did in previous editions. Fixing that might help DD to be a fight ender, and dealing 'plain' weapon damage to be more pertinent.

Ex.: in 2e classes stopped gaining hit dice and Con bonuses at 9th to 10th level, and gained a set bonus of +1 to +3 per level. So average HP for a fighter with a +5 HP bonus from Con. (requiring an 18 con, and only greater than +2 was ONLY available to Fighters, paladins, and rangers) was about 82 HP, with max being 123. A great wyrm red dragon had an average of 103 HP, with a max of 184. The Tarrasque had 300 HP (specifically called out). Not over 9000!..er 700.

That is one reason DD sucks, fighters suck and Healing doesn't help. HP are more than they were, while spells mostly stayed the 'same.'
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veekie

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #152 on: February 09, 2009, 01:07:23 AM »
Basically, instead of becoming fight enders, SoDs should now offer room for recovery, in that like hp, you need to take multiple hits to end it.

Ah, from the way you had phrased it, I thought you meant that one spell cast still has the same end result, but it takes X rounds to actually happen.

That would be a meaningless change that didn't actually solve anything except in caster vs caster fights and would enhance the dependency on a healbot in a party.

But now it sounds like what you meant was that casting the same spell X times would have the same end result as one casting currently does? That would be much better (though I still think in the end more powerful than DD unless it required so many castings as to be inefficient), as even though it bypasses HP damage, it becomes comparable to the time involved in whittling at HP.
Yep, each casting inflicts some penalties, but doesn't finish it outright, not with one spell. Of course, this reduces spell efficiency, but I reckon, 2-3 hits should do the trick, with a slight increase in spell availability to counteract that. Adding a "Fails save by 10 or more" condition to inflict the 1 hit KO effect can be used to make them just as good at nailing mooks as melee.

Chemus, the problem isn't the numbers really, if so it'd have been easy to fix. Fighters can deal enough damage to kill enemies in one round, the problem is that they MUST deal enough damage to kill enemies in one round, or effectively wasted their time. Healing doesn't help because the only important damage is the sort that brought you down to 0 -> -10. Anything more and you're looking at a Revivify, anything less and you shouldn't bother.

On that note, if we're attaching penalties to hp loss after fixing SoDs to be incremental, some form of damage reduction availability for PCs would be necessary or we'd often skip right past the 75% point to the 50% and 25% point on a hit. Especially on the front liners we're trying to not bone.
The mind transcends the body.
It's also a little cold because of that.
Please get it a blanket.

I wish I could read your mind,
I can barely read mine.

"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. At 2:15, it begins rolling up characters."

[spoiler]
"Just what do you think the moon up in the sky is? Everyone sees that big, round shiny thing and thinks there must be something round up there, right? That's just silly. The truth is much more awesome than that. You can almost never see the real Moon, and its appearance is death to humans. You can only see the Moon when it's reflected in things. And the things it reflects in, like water or glass, can all be broken, right? Since the moon you see in the sky is just being reflected in the heavens, if you tear open the heavens it's easy to break it~"
-Ibuki Suika, on overkill

To sumbolaion diakoneto moi, basilisk ouranionon.
Epigenentheto, apoleia keraune hos timeis pteirei.
Hekatonkatis kai khiliakis astrapsato.
Khiliarkhou Astrape!
[/spoiler]

There is no higher price than 'free'.

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Chemus

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #153 on: February 09, 2009, 02:41:15 AM »
Necessitating multiple castings means that spells need to be easier to come by one the fly. Either you memorize a list and may cast any spell on that list up to X per spell level, or you go for spellpoints, or you go for at will casting
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veekie

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Re: Healing in D&D sucks.
« Reply #154 on: February 09, 2009, 02:48:35 AM »
Or, you could make it so that multiple spells share the same statuses, and any one of them can 'upsize' a status effect down it's chain. There aren't THAT many ways SoD/SoLs work.

EDIT: and the intermediate effects themselves are also of value, if not fight enders. They are basically a debuff.
« Last Edit: February 09, 2009, 02:51:20 AM by veekie »
The mind transcends the body.
It's also a little cold because of that.
Please get it a blanket.

I wish I could read your mind,
I can barely read mine.

"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. At 2:15, it begins rolling up characters."

[spoiler]
"Just what do you think the moon up in the sky is? Everyone sees that big, round shiny thing and thinks there must be something round up there, right? That's just silly. The truth is much more awesome than that. You can almost never see the real Moon, and its appearance is death to humans. You can only see the Moon when it's reflected in things. And the things it reflects in, like water or glass, can all be broken, right? Since the moon you see in the sky is just being reflected in the heavens, if you tear open the heavens it's easy to break it~"
-Ibuki Suika, on overkill

To sumbolaion diakoneto moi, basilisk ouranionon.
Epigenentheto, apoleia keraune hos timeis pteirei.
Hekatonkatis kai khiliakis astrapsato.
Khiliarkhou Astrape!
[/spoiler]

There is no higher price than 'free'.

"I won't die. I've been ordered not to die."