All wounds are not alike, part 3a: The Healing Imperative (Now Updated!)
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In the first two parts of this series we examined alternative approaches to the simulation of injuries that were written cold, without the benefit of actual use in play. In this third and final part, I will describe a third – but this is an update on a variation that I have actually used (and use) in one of my campaigns, Shards Of Divinity. The updates will represent the benefit of hindsight and actual playtesting.
I started work on the third and final part of this series expecting it to be a big article, but the size has proven to be TOO big for one post. After some hurried rescheduling, I’ve divided it in two – the first half today, and the second half for this Thursday. I would normally rewrite the article to separate the two parts more completely, but attempts to do so in this case were less than successful. So, unfortunately, part 1 will start lines of discussion that won’t be completed until later this week. Sorry about that…
Although I hadn’t noted it when first drafting the series, it worked out that the first variant lowered the fantasy element in favor of a more gritty, reality-based environment, the second was relatively neutral in that respect, and this is something of a high-fantasy concept.
In practice, the Healing Imperative approach, also referred to as the Differential Damage approach, shares a number of concepts with the earlier alternatives, as you’ll see when we get into specifics. But I wanted to start this article by drawing the reader’s attention to a couple of larger issues. In particular, I wanted to emphasize how changing the damage handling system even minimally alters the look and feel of combat within the game, and of its consequences, and by extension, alters the atmosphere of the campaign.
Of course, this is only part of the story of distinguishing one campaign from another; you need the encounters and adventures that you design to do their share as well, and we could argue about which is the dominant factor until the turn of the century without settling anything. With everything working in harmony, these small differences compound and synergize and deliver a gaming experience that is both memorable and unique.
The point that I want to make is that the standard rules are just that, a common standard that is functional and capable of delivering most of the unique flavor of a campaign to the players, but their very ubiquity and generic capability blunts the final all-important few percentage points of distinctiveness.
The Flavor Experiment
I once ran an experiment, taking the one basic and generic adventure and running it using three or four different game systems; while the plot didn’t change, the mindset that the players carried into the game did and that made a major difference.
Part of the concept of this experiment grew out of discussions with a fellow-GM about convention adventure modules and how different players could take the same basic adventure and make it completely different by virtue of their different play styles, and how two GMs could take the same adventure and put completely different spins on it because of their own GMing style. I wanted to minimize these variables to focus on the consequences of changing only the rules system, so for the most part the same set of players were used throughout. The results were compromised, to some extent, by additional GMing experience and (more importantly) by contamination from player foreknowledge – an experience that eventually played a key role in the methods I devised for creating mysteries, described in my recent articles The Butler Did It and The Jar Of Jam and The Wounded Monarch which provides examples of the techniques described in the first article.
The point is that the same adventure will seem completely different in tone and dynamics when it is played with different game systems – the systems I used were AD&D, Rolemaster, Tunnels & Trolls, and Chivalry & Sorcery. Plans to repeat the experiment with Empire Of The Petal Throne and GURPS Fantasy fell apart when I didn’t have the time to learn those rules systems or the finances to seek out copies of the rules, but by then the principle results were well-established. Those results have formed the foundations of my perception of House Rules as a necessary medium for the actualizing of campaign concepts into game mechanics ever since.
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The Healing Foundation
Which brings us to the core subject of this article – the “Healing Imperative” variant on the d20 damage-handling game mechanic. The key difference between this and earlier systems is that instead of making the differential between different wound types a function of the character’s total hit point capacity, it distinguishes types of injury by the amount of damage inflicted in a single blow – making it more akin to the “internal injury threshold” mechanics presented in part one, which were based (in part) on this variant system.
Rather than basing the point of distinction between types of wounds on the total damage inflicted, this goes to the source – the healing spells themselves. But before we can get into that in detail, we first have to address a strange anomaly in the effects of these spells:
The Inconsistency Of Cure [X] Wounds
When you compare the healing effects of the different clerical spells available, some strange anomalies present themselves. Compare them in the following table:
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This is obviously the way the designers thought of the spells when they were designing them, it’s a nice orderly progression and looks very rational on the page.
But watch what happens when we compare the range of possible results for a given character level:
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Do you see the problem now? The 3.x spell system is predicated on the concept that 2nd level spells are more powerful than 1st level spells – so why is it possible for the 2nd level spell, Cure Moderate Wounds, to do less healing than a Cure Light Wounds (Caster Levels 3-5)? And the same problem holds true for the 3rd level spell, Cure Serious Wounds, relative to Cure Moderate Wounds (Caster Levels 5-13); and for the 4th level spell, Cure Critical Wounds, relative to Cure Serious Wounds (Caster Levels 7-20). Until a spell achieves its cap bonus and drops out of the running, the minimum effect of the more powerful spell is always 1 point less than that of the more powerful spell.
Similarly, until a spell achieves the cap, the average result of the more powerful spell is less than the maximum that the lower-level spell can achieve, and this difference grows with increasing spell level. This might be comparing apples and oranges – but statistics shows that the more dice are involved, the more likely it is that the result will be close to the average. That means that these comparisons are absolutely reflective of the likely outcomes.
Rationalizing Healing
Fixing the minimums is easy – we just need to add a progressive bonus to the amount of healing each spell. +2 to CMW, +4 to CSW, and +6 to CCW will fix that problem. Fixing the second problem is a little trickier; we need to increase the variability of the results without increasing the overall healing amounts very much. Instead of throwing more dice at the progression, a better answer would be to adjust the dice size with increasing spell levels, incorporate the progressive bonus, and then tweak the results as necessary to give a rational progression of minimums, averages, and maximums.
So, let’s try this:
- 1d4 for CMinW.
- 1d6 for CLW, +1d6 at levels 4, 7, and 10, and +1 every caster level from 2nd except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +6.
- 1d8+5 for CMW, +1d8 at levels 5, 8, and 11, and +1 at per caster level from 4th except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +12.
- 1d10+12 for CSW, +1d10 at levels 6, 9, 12, and 15, and +1 per caster level from 6th except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +23.
- 1d12+27 for CCW, +1d6 at levels 9, 15, and 21, +1d12 at levels 12, 18, 24, and 27, and +1 per caster level from 8th except those in which a dice is gained or transformed, to a maximum of +40.
Or, to put it into a table:
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This violates the nice, neat orderliness of the original table, but it should come closer to giving a rational progression of results. CLW now caps out at level 10 – it was level 9. CMW now caps at level 13, the same as it used to be. CSW now caps at level 20, the same as it used to do. CCW caps at level 27, also the same as it used to be. So there has been minimal change in that respect. In the critical caster level 7-20 range, there are (in general) more dice on the entries to the left than on the right – so lower level spells will deliver less healing but more reliability of result. Higher level spells appear have higher maximum results – but also greater variability. On average, healing results will have increased somewhat – but that will be counterbalanced by restricting the utility of individual spells, ie specifying that there are some injuries that can’t be healed so quickly, as will be seen in later sections. But there’s no way to check that this has solved the problems other than recalculating the minimums, averages, and maximums.
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Close examination of these results reveals five anomalous results:
- Caster Level 4, Cure Moderate Wounds does the same maximum healing as Cure Light Wounds. This is acceptable as the average result is still better for the higher level spell and the minimum much higher, so the supposedly more powerful spell actually IS still more powerful.
- Caster Level 5, Cure Serious Wounds does the same maximum healing as Cure Moderate Wounds. This is acceptable for exactly the same reasons as for the Caster Level 4 anomaly.
- At Caster Levels 15, 16, and 17, Cure Critical Wounds does the same maximum healing as Cure Serious Wounds. This is acceptable for the same reasons as for the previous anomalies.
This shows the degree of effort and complexity involved in ensuring that a fine-sounding principle or progression does not lead game designers to flawed ends.
Reality Check
The numbers shown for healing are much higher than those of the old system. Here’s a direct, spell-by-spell comparison, at caster level 12 (chosen randomly):
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To see how reasonable these are, let’s consider the likely number of hit points that a character of 12th level will have (various classes). The panels in green highlight the values that have been found to be most probable for each class, through experience of the priorities for each class.
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So a revised CCW is barely able to fully heal a fairly typical 12th-level Wizard with an average result. For most classes, it would require two such spells to fully heal a character who was near-death – perhaps a CCW and a CSW might suffice. For many classes, even a maximum result on the CCW would not be enough. Even though the CCW is twice as effective (on average) as it used to be, it is not a cure-all.
It should also be remembered that a cleric who has access to CCW is not that far away from having access to the most powerful healing spell in the game, Heal. So a spell that can heal a little more than half a character’s hit points is not all that far out of line – though it is far more powerful than the original version of that spell.
Unfortunately, it was at this point that I ran out of time. Calculating and recalculating and re-recalculating the tables above simply chewed up too many hourglass sands – there’s more work in them than there seems! So these results will be put to good use later this week in Part 3b…
Tuesday Update:
RaptorKing has suggested (refer comments at the bottom of the post) that what the designers actually meant for the table of results to be is as shown below, something I find both plausible and unsettling (there’s something odd about accruing bonuses for a spell you can’t cast yet).
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While this disposes of the first set of anomalies quite comfortably, it does nothing for the second. Because the more powerful spells always have more dice, they are more likely to yield a result close to the average than the supposedly weaker spells to their left on the table.
With the +1 per caster level the same for all caster levels, it becomes easy to compare the possible results:
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You read that right – only 53.7% of the time is 4d8+number better than 3d8+number. Heck, 4d8+number is better than 1d8+number only 96.2% of the time!
The same two basic problems remain: there is too much overlap in the results (curable with a bigger bonus) and there is less variability in the higher-level spells than in the lower level spells.
And that means that the fundamental solution remains – the modified tables for healing results that I presented earlier.
Mike’s notes
For those interested in peeking behind the curtain (I do, as often as possible) to see how the figures in table above were derived, I’m including a PDF of my working, warts and all… Oh, and if you’re wondering why I went to all this trouble, it’s because I was afraid that my error may have undermined the whole foundations of the alternative damage system, leaving the second part of this article moot. As it happens, those fears were unfounded…
- All Wounds Are Not Alike – Part 1: Alternative Damage rules for 3.x
- All Wounds Are Not Alike Part 2: Bone-breaking damage for 3.x
- All wounds are not alike, part 3a: The Healing Imperative (Now Updated!)
- All wounds are not alike, part 3b: The Healing Imperative (cont)
- All Wounds Are Not Alike IV – Accelerated Healing
- All Wounds Are Not Alike V: Narcotic Healing (part 1)
- All Wounds Are Not Alike V: Narcotic Healing (part 2)
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August 6th, 2012 at 11:20 am
I’m pretty sure the Cure [X] spells add the caster level wholesale, not the caster level over the minimum required to cast the spell. Cure Moderate Wounds, for instance, should be 5/12/19 at third level when it become available, and therefore heals more than Cure Light Wounds at all levels, as it should be. The same should go for the other spells; before hitting the level cap, each spell should heal 1d8 more than the previous spell, making them 1/4/8 points of healing better than the next-lowest spell when first castable.
August 6th, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Good Catch! Where were you when I started getting strange results while writing this article? I might have gotten the whole thing finished in time! So that makes most of this post – and the last two days work – wasted. Oh well, it just goes to prove that we all make mistakes, no matter what your level of experience is.
The funny thing, of course, is that I checked both the 3.5 PHB and Pathfinder core rules while writing it…
August 6th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Other than the minor spell-wording/math error pointed out above, this looks like it could be a really cool mod for 3.x healing. Any opportunity to roll a d12 is a good one, eh? However, I do worry that it might lead to some game mechanic imbalances.
Correcting for the math error, ye olde CCW cast by a 12th level Cleric will heal at most just under half of your average 12th level Figher’s hit points. Using the new method you outline above, a slightly better effect (by two or three HP) can be achieved with the same spell on average. This allows players to escape imminent peril with relative ease.
Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it could have a pretty severe impact on how dangerous combat is. It’s worth considering how this will effect your players’ perception of combat before it is implemented. I worry that my players would learn that they needn’t hesitate before diving into combat rather than trying to find a more creative solution because their wounds can be healed so easily.
Speaking of which, how did it effect combat in your Shards of Divinity game? (Of course, if this is something you intend to answer in Part B, please ignore me!)
August 7th, 2012 at 12:56 am
@The Maltese Taco: All your questions will be answered in part B – but the Differentiated Healing system makes combat more lethal, not less! There is madness to my method, as a friend of mine used to say…
August 7th, 2012 at 1:01 am
@Raptorking: Having spent the day analyzing the correction, I’ve now updated the article to correct the error and look at the real situation a little more closely – with some disturbing results. Of course, the calculations shown don’t take into account the caps, but so long as neither side of the comparison is held back by a spell maximum, they are valid.
Mike recently posted..All wounds are not alike, part 3a: The Healing Imperative (Now Updated!)
August 7th, 2012 at 11:48 am
One of my big issues is that I like simpler rules. Things like “1d6 for CLW, +1d6 at levels 4, 7, and 10, and +1 every caster level from 2nd except those in which a dice is gained, to a maximum of +6.” get very difficult to figure out in your head.
I also would like to point out that it’s not an absolute that higher level spells have a bigger effect. At fifth level, Shocking Grasp does exactly the same damage as Fireball and more than Scorching Ray. At seventh level, Cone of Cold does as much as Fireball and Scorching Ray beats both of them on average. You also aren’t assured of getting more damage as a higher level caster. Most damage spells give you flat dice with no adder. It’s possible for a first level caster to roll better than a fifth level caster.
August 7th, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Why not make healing rates proportional to total HP or wounds taken?
August 7th, 2012 at 4:08 pm
@Adam: No reason per se not to do so, Adam – and as you’ll see in the second part of this article, you’re closer to the mark than you probably realise, in terms of this danage-handling variant.
Having said that, take another look at the comparison table of average character hit points at 12th level. Assuming that you want the most powerful healing spell short of Heal to achieve less than 100% healing, the logical thing to do would be to assign them intervals of 20%, or perhaps 10%, or even 5%. So Cure Light Wounds would be 20% (or 10% or 5%) of total HP or total damage taken, Cure Moderate Wounds would be 40% (or 20% or 10%), and so on. With a 12th level Wizard having potentially only 18 Hit Points, that means that a CLW would only confer a couple of points of recovery, or less.
But the biggest drawback of the idea is that you would have to calculate it every time, and specify how to round fractions, and that’s the sort of approach that most players and GMs dislike intensely.
August 7th, 2012 at 3:52 pm
@Philo: Your comment raises two issues. The first is both simpler and harder to answer. Simple rules are good, but there are times when slightly more complex rules have to be weighed in terms of the additional benefits they confer. The ultimate in simplicity would be “there’s only one stat, and roll less than that to succeed at anything” – but I don’t think anyone would argue very successfuly in favor of that. That means that there has to be an assessment of relative value in any rule that is more complex than that baseline – an assessment that I freely admit you and the other readers of the article can’t carry out because you’ve only seen half of it so far.
Discussing the change in terms of its own merits, I would argue that it’s not all that necessary to figure out in your head, since the amount of healing the spell confers needs to be worked out only when a character gains a caster level and written on the character sheet. The question is whether or not that additional effort is rewarded with sufficient merit, and that – in isolation of the rest of the combat handling system – is an individual judgement each GM must make.
The second point you raise is more troubling, but more easily countered. Spell design is a complex art with many variables to be factored in – range, saving throw, damage (where appliccable), area of effect, and so on. So it’s difficult to compare one with another in terms of a single variable – damage inflicted – and determine what precedent it sets. Area effects are different to cones which are different to Rays.
More importantly, game designers are human beings who can make mistakes, and spell effectiveness is ultimately grounded in the design theories of the authors and the circumstances surrounding its use in playtesting. Isolated examples can be the result of error and misjudgement as much as general principles.
So the arguement that you raise in your second paragraph needs to be taken cautiously. That said, the spells in question, which populate the suite of Healing Spells, have no other variables to contemplate due to their particular circumstances and hence are a better grounding for a general principle. It seems clear that most people would expect 4d8 to be better than 3d8, 3d8 to be better than 2d8, and 2d8 to be better than 1d8. That this is not necessarily the case is counterintuitive – and then raises the issue of which guideline to follow: the general principle of a higher spell being ‘better’ than a lower level spell, or a possibly flawed implementation of that principle which just happens to be enshrined in the existing game mechanics. In other words, is a change merited to adjust the rules to match the percieved intent of the designers, or is it better to live with the rules as written even if they are a flawed implementation of that intent? What’s more important: the spirit of the rules or the letter of the law?
That’s another question that would not receive anything approaching universal agreement amongst GMs. Some would argue one way, and some another – and I would expect to be able to extrapolate the GMs general feeling about House Rules from his or her response to that point of philosophy. Personally, I’m in the House Rules camp, because I’ve seen too many advantages derive from House Rules; but I fully accept that others are more rules purists than I am, and that their position is just as valid for them as mine is for me.
Which brings me to the following point: For reasons that won’t become clear until part 2 of the article, it is absolutely essential to this particular damage handling variant that there be less potential for overlap in results and more variability in higher level spells. That was the primary objective of changing the effects of the healing spells, but that was not the reason they were changed originally in the campaign (and they weren’t changed as substantially or with such complexity as here, with the change being less successful as a result); I changed the healing spells because it seemed appropriate to do so, under the general principle of higher level spells being more effective than lower level spells, all other attributes being equal, and then found inspiration in the results for the basis of the damage variant system that is the point of the articles.
In terms of defending the general principle of spells increasing in power with spell level, you’re wrong I’m afraid. To quote from the PHB, page 174, the section on spell levels:
All other attributes being equal, then, a lower level spell should be less effective than a higher level one, and vice-versa. It follows that in the case of the specific examples you cite, either all things are not equal, or the rules are inherantly contradictory, either through error or by design in the case of a specific exception. Since the authors have not explicitly spelt out the thinking behind any such exceptions, we are forced to assume that there aren’t any intentionally included – so we’re either comparing oranges and mandarins, or we’re looking at a mistake. There have never been any of those in an RPG of the size and complexity of D&D, have there?
Mike recently posted..All wounds are not alike, part 3a: The Healing Imperative (Now Updated!)
August 8th, 2012 at 8:54 am
Zeno’s paradox is a reason not to do a percentage of damage taken. You’d always need multiple spells to fix even minor wounds.
Healing as a percentage of total hp only needs to be calculated once. This was the basis of 4e’s healing surges. It had the advantage that a poor roll wouldn’t waste a use of a power. In a 3.5 game we had a terribly hard day when the cleric couldn’t roll over a 2 on any of his healing spells and the GM kept rolling crits. That time the 5-minute workday wasn’t our fault.
August 8th, 2012 at 9:08 am
Zeno’s paradox can be overcome by rounding fractions of healing up. Your story of the Clerics’s bad day brought an evil chuckle from under my GMing Hat, though. :)
August 8th, 2012 at 11:25 am
It can be reduced, but not eliminated. If CLW cures 20% of your existing damage, then it would take 5 castings to cure 5 points of damage. Rounding up to higher numbers would shift the problem higher, but never eliminate it. I much prefer the percentage of total hit points as the base.
August 9th, 2012 at 8:47 am
Like Raptorking, I was rather surprised that you’d assumed “+1 per level” meant “+1 per level over the level required to cast the spell” (if it bothers you to think about getting a bonus for spells you haven’t learned yet, think of the base healing as having a flat bonus that makes up the difference).
Although It’s interesting to observe that n+1 d8 only gives a higher result than nd8 about half the time for large n (not itself that surprising, since as the size of n increases, n and n+1 become relatively much closer) I’m not sure that’s the flaw you make it out to be.
I find that a good principle for RPGs is that randomness favours the players’ enemies, while predictability favours the players. In this sense, a higher probability of achieving an average result is actually an *advantage* for higher-level spells, because it means you’ve got more information on which to make your tactical decisions.
To put it another way, there are two ways to compare healing spells. The first is “does this spell reliably heal more” and the second is “does this spell heal more reliably”.
Dan H recently posted..Parkour Murder Simulator pt II: Characters and Actions
August 9th, 2012 at 9:19 am
I don’t know that I’d call it an assumption, Dan – I’m fairly good at spotting those and ensuring that they are on solid ground. It was simply the way I read the entries – as doing a base level of healing which was subsequently modified. Nevertheless, both you and Raptorking were completely correct and quite right to bring the misinterpretation to my attention.
The other point you raise is very interesting – that reliability can be as great an improvement as an increase in potential achievement. It’s a point that I have never seen raised before, and one that deserves some careful consideration. My ethos has always been the opposite – that low levels are small but reliable, while higher levels contain the potential to go over the top and achieve something spectacular. That’s certainly the way it works for fighter classes, and – in order to maintain some semblance of class balance within the game – it should also be true of the other character classes, in my opinion.
Another way of looking at it is that the healing equation consists of two parts, as do combat damage and attack rolls – a relatively fixed baseline and a degree of variation above that. This baseline reflects and contains all the modifiers, while the variable part remains just that; being able to be certain of a certain minimum result is just as valid a planning tool, tactically, as being more certain of the variable part of the equation.
Even granting that there is something in what you’ve suggested, I still think that having a minimum result that is only one point better than that of a spell received two character levels earlier is not enough of an improvement. It might obey the letter of the principle espoused, but it violates the spirit of it.
Not that this is an either/or situation. Both our ends could be achieved simply by adding +4 to the benefit delivered by CMW, +8 to the benefits of CSW, and +12 to CCW. This would not only deliver the increased reliability of more dice, but improve the baseline so that each spell, at minimum, did the average of the spell that came before it.
However, this would not work in terms of the alternate damage-handling system that is the reason for including the revised Healing effects in the article, as part 2 (which I have just posted) should make clear; the gaps between wound types would be too small.
August 9th, 2012 at 10:06 am
Hmmm… a thought experiment would be interesting. Two healing spells of the samle level. One does 1d12+caster level. One does 1d4+4+caster level.
At 5th level youd have:
d12: 6/11.5/17
d4 : 10/11.5/13
Both have the same average. The d4 does more minimum healing, the d12 does more maximum healing. I’ll bet the d4 would be chosen more often.
August 9th, 2012 at 11:23 am
Sorry, my bad phrasing, I meant “assume” in the sense of “interpret” (as in “you assumed it meant X, I assumed it meant Y”).
I think it’s certainly true that the D&D healing spell progression is underwhelming (You think this is bad, I’m running 2nd Ed, where it’s only “Cure Light” or “Cure Critical” and the difference is just 1D8 vs 2D8).
Here we run up against my ignorance of high-level D&D, but I’d always thought that the game got less swingy in general at high levels, even for fighter-types. At first level you have a good chance of one-shotting, and of being one-shot by, most enemies, and that fades away a lot as you level up.
I think the problem with the Cure line isn’t so much that they break the pattern established by the other classes as that they *keep* the pattern established by the other classes, or more specifically the pattern established by other classes with their passive abilities. Rogues, for example, get an extra 1D6 Sneak Attack every two levels, and I suspect that you’ll find similar principles apply there (a 10D6 Sneak Attack will only have about a 50% chance of being better than a 9D6 Sneak Attack). The difference, though, is that a Rogue just always uses their full Sneak Attack pool. They’re never asked to choose between using the +7D6 version and the +8D6 version.
By comparison, you expect a new level of spellcasting to give you wholly new abilities, when the Cure tree just gives you more of the same.
I would point out that it’s a little bit misleading to compare the minimum values. While it’s true that “Cure [Adjective] Wounds” only has a minimum cure one point higher than “Cure [Next Adjective Down] Wounds” you also need to consider the fact that you are fully eight times less likely to roll the minimum value. This is most noticeable with Cure Light vs Cure Moderate. A Cure Light has a one in eight chance of healing one point of damage (plus level bonuses), and a one in four chance of healing two points of damage or less. By comparison, a Cure Moderate Wounds has only a one in sixty-four chance of healing two points of damage.
I wonder if part of the problem here isn’t the fact that unlike many magical effects (teleportation, summoning, AoE, and so on) the need for healing in the game remains relatively consistent throughout. From level 1 to level 20, the party Cleric needs to be able to heal a character from 0 to full with the spells they have available, and that doesn’t become any more or less the case as you level up.
Dan H recently posted..Parkour Murder Simulator pt II: Characters and Actions
August 9th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
@Dan H: I know exactly what you mean when you talk about the 2e experience.
I don’t think it’s that the healing spells follow the same progression so much as that they are capped. Consider a fireball for example (Mage spell, not clerical, but still…) – it goes up by 1d6 a time (to a cap, but still…) In contrast, clerics are decidedly short-changed. Same with, as you point out, the rogue’s sneak attack.
But you’re right about the Cure tree just giving you more of the same, and that’s something the alternative damage resolution system – of which this is part – is trying to change.
Finally, it’s astonishing how much characters can ramp up in 3.x at higher levels. A PC in a former game of mine (started at 5th level, worked his way up to 70-somethingth level) was an archer who reached the point of being able to do 169 HP of damage in a round – without a critical. Against damage capabilities of three digits per round, a cleric’s paltry 4d8+20 healing (with a cure critical) is really inadequate.
@Philo Pharynx: I think the exact opposite – but again, with no real data. But I’ll ask my players next time I see them!
Mike recently posted..All wounds are not alike, part 3b: The Healing Imperative (cont)
August 9th, 2012 at 4:39 pm
A potentially more radical solution (although one which doesn’t include the other features of your variant damage system) would be to ditch the Cure line entirely and either (a) make everybody rely on non-magical healing (nasty, but this would underscore some of the other features you seem to be interested in, like lasting injuries) or (b) give Clerics an additional “Heal” ability which could just heal a flat D8 points of damage for – say – every two levels a number of times per day.
Dan H recently posted..Parkour Murder Simulator pt II: Characters and Actions
August 9th, 2012 at 8:00 pm
I’ve contemplated far more radical approaches than that – like giving the cleric unlimited healing, but for every 10 pts they heal, they use up one d8 of their own hit points. Or simply including a Feat in the game that adds a d8 to the healing spells cast by the cleric, or one that gives the cleric bonus spells as though they were one WIS point higher – both of which could be taken repeatedly. I’ve also thought about a feat that permits the recipient to state that every healing spell does an extra d8 of healing for them alone. But game balance is a tricky thing to tinker with, and not all of these solutions work in that respect.
Most of my games tend to be high fantasy, because I go after the big questions like “How does magic work” and “How do the gods get their power” and “Where do Gods come from” – it just so happened that for this particular campaign I wanted something a little grittier without disturbing the High-Fantasy content.
I’m afraid that your second solution falls foul of the game balance consideration, while your first removes too much of the “high fantasy” element.
It’s probably worth remembering that it was the dictates of the damage handling system that mandated a correction to Healing; it was never intended to stand in isolation.
Mike recently posted..All wounds are not alike, part 3b: The Healing Imperative (cont)
January 24th, 2014 at 12:50 am
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