D&D Podcast: Blood of Gruumsh & Warlords

I actually finished the podcast this time, so that is a plus. I also finally picked up a set of Blood of Gruumsh earlier this week, and agree that the minis, in particular the ogre, are pretty good. Though I have yet to play Dungeon Command, I am strongly considering snagging a second set just to round out my horde hoard. I do, however, disagree with Mearls’s regarding everything warlords and hit points.

The warlord is one of my favorite 4th Edition classes. It was interesting, fun, new (or fairly new if you count the marshall from 3rd Edition’s Miniature’s Handbook), played well with tieflings (one of my favorite races), and had an absolutely awesome level 29 daily exploit (Defy Death) that I never got a chance to use. It was also a fully viable replacement for a cleric, which is very important for me in a game where formerly the only simple and reliable solution was basically a sorcerer-ized cleric.

Despite a limited access to maneuvers–currently capping at all of five at 10th-level–I am actually okay with warlord exploits existing as fighter maneuvers. After all up until Martial Power 2, where you could pick an archer-type class feature, the warlord was primarily a melee warrior that could dole out benefits to her allies.

What I am not okay with is it losing out on healing because of Mearls’s oddly narrow interpretation of how hit points work, by essentially making the argument that William Wallace shouting at someone to heal them does in fact not make sense.

Frankly this statement sounds awfully like the kind of argument that 4th Edition haters used to try and levy against the game several years ago. It did not make sense then, and unless 5th Edition is going to have some sort of injury system as part of the core hit point rules, it does not make sense now. What makes his whole argument even more bizarre, is that it differs greatly from how he tried to explain hit points and healing surges several years ago (which starts around the 11:50 mark).

Obviously William Wallace could and should not be able to regenerate people’s limbs no matter how much he shouts or encourages them, but since when have hit points represented solely physical trauma? For that matter when have hit point damage ever resulted in grievous injuries in the first place?

In every edition of Dungeons & Dragons characters are, by default, perfectly fine until they are reduced to 0 or less, so can characters function just fine while carrying their guts? I guess it just fixes itself after a few days of rest, even without serious medical attention. Will healing potions allow you to regrow lost limbs, since it is magical healing?

A more accurate question would be if, in a game where hit points represent a variety of very abstract things, from physical punishment, exhaustion, luck, combat prowess, mental stress, and more, often on an attack-by-attack basis, would you expect a guy to be able to restore them through some form of inspiring presence?

YES.

There should be other classes that can feasibly substitute for the cleric, which by itself should not be mandatory for play. The warlord is an excellent class, and I want it to be able to buff the rest of the party, as well as be able to heal them if the player wants to emphasize that. Maybe not to the degree that a cleric could, but at an acceptable baseline.

Magical healing should also not be required, especially since hit points have never consistently represented physical trauma. If the most basic rules cannot accommodate a party of adventures without magical healing, then the design team needs to address the definition of hit points and how they work so that players can more freely play what they want, without having to worry about houserules, optional rules, or DM handouts.

D&D Next: Heal Check

For the past few weeks Legends & Lore has brought up the issues of healing, first by asking if removing the cleric as a necessary element of play was something that they should be doing (Yes!), then by pitching an adjustable-yet-flat healing rate (No!).

Both 2nd and 3rd Edition have pretty much always assumed that you had a cleric, or someone else capable of casting cure etc wounds spells multiple times per day (which in 3rd Edition could be summed up as either a favored soul, or the stop-gap approach of “guy with lots of healing wands”). Otherwise you had to rely on natural healing which, to put it nicely, was slow: if you wanted to keep adventuring you got back one-a-day, but if you stayed in bed recovered either three per day in 2nd Edition (I think, might have been two), or one-per-level in 3rd.

The major downside, similar to wizards running out of spells, is that running out of healing magic effectively puts a stop to the adventuring day, unless you have access to a bunch of magic items that can heal you. I find it strange that for so long, the party was often reliant on one person to keep everyone up and running, especially when a single die roll could kill your character: I ran a short-lived Age of Worms campaign sans cleric, and my players did not enjoy burning through a huge chunk of cash for a wand that only the bard could use, which unfortunately required that she be conscious (which was a hard criteria to meet when you have an AC of 14 and only 8 hit points).

Another issue is the expectation that you will have access to healing magic, regardless of what kind of cleric you were wanting to play, which was lessened when 3rd Edition allowed clerics to swap out spells for healing magic as long as you were either Good, or Neutral and opted to channel positive energy (and even more so in 4th, where every cleric had access to a few encounter-based heals). For some clerics–Healing, Protection, even War–I can buy it, but what about those that want to worship a trickster, or a god of knowledge or crafting? Why do they have automatic access to healing magic?

For several reasons 4th Edition made it very possible to adventure without having a cleric–or really, any kind of healing class–on hand. The biggest step was by giving every character access to a measure of self-healing in the form of healing surges. The amount that each character had access to depended on your class and Constitution modifier, but since they always restored a quarter of your total hit points, fighter-types tended to have more, and benefit more from them.

Another, more controversial change, was that a long rest topped you off in every regard: hit points, healing surges, and per-day abilities. For better or worse this meant that, aside from the odd disease, that after a good night’s sleep you were ready to head back into the dungeon. Finally, there were plenty of other, equally serviceable classes that could substitute for a cleric, each with their own theme and playstyle.

As of the eight playtest packet, the default healing rules in 5th Edition are kind of in the middle: you get a number of Hit Dice equal to your level, which vary depending on your class and Constitution modifier, so at the least fighters tend to recover more hit points than wizards. While you regain everything after a long rest, you do not get many (again, the number equals your level), so most of your healing depends on how many healing spells the cleric has access to.

I think that the best approach is to build a system where there is no assumed healer or access to certain magic items, but the party can keep on adventuring without having to spend several days taking it easy. By not requiring players to pick certain abilities within certain classes, it provides a lot of freedom on both sides of the screen: Dungeon Masters can run low-or-no magic campaigns, hand out the items they want in high magic campaigns, and worry less about time-sensitive adventure objectives. Cleric players can worship and pray for whatever spells they want, without having to worry about making the wrong choice or running out of certain spells.

3rd Edition’s Unearthed Arcana has a lot of hit point sub-systems that can be mined, in particular Vitality and Wound Points: though more complex than just having a single pool of hit points, you could make effects that apply to only one pool. Vitality points would be based on your class and represent how hit points can let you evade blows, or turn an otherwise lethal blow into a minor wound, while Wound points would be derived from your Constitution score and represent your overall physical toughness.

The refocus action (and warlord powers) might only restore Vitality points, and they could completely fill up after combat is over as part of the whole short rest routine. Wound points would recover more slowly (at an hourly or daily rate, ideally based in some way on your Constitution), but could be restored using magic, or maybe on a limited basis using healing items and skills.

I have said before that being able to make a useful fighter/wizard early on is part of my litmus test for liking a Dungeons & Dragons game. Being able to make a viable adventuring party using any iteration of the hit point and healing rules is another. I get that they want to make the “basic” setting of the game, well, basic, but I think that people can handle fairly simple mechanics like Hit Dice/healing surges/reserve points. At the least I would like one set of healing rules that lets the party get away without a cleric, but does not see a massive power boost by the inclusion of one.

Legends & Lore: Druids And More Healing

The druid, as well as some unnamed classes (hopefully the warlord and a still-interesting sorcerer), might be available in the near future.

I only played a druid in 2nd Edition once, and for only a single session, so I cannot really comment on it except that I found the Neutral-only alignment (as well as 2nd Edition’s interpretation of it) and limited number of druids of certain levels to be silly restrictions.

3rd Edition freed this up a bit, but the druid became a veritable power-house early on due to her ability to transform into a variety of animal forms that allowed her to outclass the fighter, while still casting spells.

4th Edition removed the druid’s animal companion (which was restored in the sentinel, a druid sub-class), but let you wildshape at the start, whenever you felt like it. The class also had access to a mix of nature-oriented magic (which required you to be in human form), and some animal-form special attacks, making the class pretty flexible and complex.

My main criticism was that there were some odd limitations to what you could do in an animal form in the name of balance, namely not having to movement modes of the animal form (ie flying, climbing, and swimming), and, if I recall correctly, being unable to pick up objects even if you were, say, a monkey.

Despite this, the 4th Edition druid was my favorite incarnation because it felt unique and played very differently from the other classes, eventually got a swarm-druid in Primal Power, and I loved the druid seasons in the Essentials line.

While I am fully expecting a 3rd Edition clone, complete with per-day spells and wildshaping, alignment restrictions, and so on, what I would like to see is a druid that can adopt something like an animal totem, terrain type, or season (maybe find a way to mesh these all), with a focus on nature magic and wildshaping. Animal companions can be relegated to a rules module or feat tree (which I think is where they are going with this, anyway).

What I would like to avoid are certain global features like immunity to poison, timeless body, and other stuff that we got with the monk.

I liked the inclusion of roles in 4th Edition (or rather, the greater acknowledgement of them). I also liked that the roles were more accurate: a fighter could actually protect her allies. To me it provided an easy way, at a glance, to convey what the class was by default intended to be good at, greatly speeding up the process of finding a class that suited your play-style and/or filling a perceived gap in your party.

It is unfortunate that some players took this to mean that the game was enforcing a specific play-style, or “pigeon-holing” a class, despite many bleeding into one or more other roles (such as the fighter and striker, or the paladin and leader). I think that, ultimately, roles do more good than bad, as long as they accurately depict the class they are applied to.

I am not a fan of the proposed flat-rate healing, even if this is just the simplest standard. By having every character, regardless of Hit Dice or Constitution, heal at the exact same rate, you make weaker characters heal up faster than the tougher ones, which does not make a lot of sense. At the least, I think that making the rate depend on your Hit Dice and/or Constitution modifier would make more sense and still be pretty simple, but would settle for the current per-day Hit Dice rules because even there you have fighters with more staying power.

I also do not want to have to shift to another set of rules just because someone does not want to play a cleric. What about if there is none in a group, but someone rolls one later; do we just shift gears back and forth? I get that cleric as the primary, if not only, source of healing has been around for some three editions, but 4th Edition took a major step in the right direction by providing numerous other, different, viable options, without making it necessary.

4th Edition did a really good job of making it so that you did not need a healer, and that is the baseline that you should work with: make classes with access to healing useful, but not necessary.

Legends & Lore: Clerics And Healing

“Our goal has been to remove cleric as a necessary element of adventuring. Does that approach make sense given our modular design?”

Yes. Absolutely yes. 

Not everyone likes playing a cleric, and not very group likes feeling like that they have to have one. I always felt that this was especially true in 3rd Edition, where the only two classes with easy access to healing magic were the cleric and favored soul, but then fell that I was lucky in that one of my players was pretty much always willing to play one.

Some people claim that you do not technically need a cleric, that potions and wands of cure light wounds, along with a healthy mass of ranks in Use Magic Device, are a suitable workaround, but I have to wonder where they are getting all of the money to pay for this: a minimum level wand of cure light wounds costs 750 gp, which according to the wealth-by-level guidelines in Dungeon Master’s Guide, eats up three-quarters of a characters expected gains for 1st-level.

While each use also requires that you make a skill check, your run-of-the-mill rogue making a Use Magic Device check with a Charisma of 12 has a 75% chance of making it, and an 85% chance after the first use. The major downside is that if you roll a natural 1, you cannot use it again for 24 hours (which can put a major damper in your adventuring schedule). Potions are exempt from a skill check, but cost 50 gp a pop, which is just over three times what a wand-charge costs, and cap out at 3rd-level spells.

All of these are reasons that I love 4th Edition so much: you do not need a cleric (or really any leader/healing character at all), or have to carefully budget your adventuring allowance on specific items. Everyone is pretty much free to build the character they want, pick the powers they want, buy the items that they want, and the game gets along just fine. Another thing is that I loved how 4th Edition provided a variety of perfectly valid healing classes (such as the oh-so popular warlord), each with their own feel and style, so that even if you preferred leaders there was more than just two fairly similar choices.

I think 4th Edition had the right of it by not requiring certain abilities of certain classes to heal, but instead having certain classes enhance existing healing resources, as well as giving you the option for additional healing on the side. This not only avoids the issue of the party having to stop because the cleric ran out of healing magic, or the issue of needing a cleric at all, but also the issue of clerics worshiping trickster or knowledge gods but still having access to healing magic.

Another issue is how clerics and healing will play with alternate hit point/healing modules. If a cleric can magically heal wounds, does it downplay or even negate the impact of prolonged injuries? How much harder is it in a game with slower natural healing and no cleric at all?

What I would do is to design the game with the assumption that no one is playing the cleric or has access to specific items. The Hit Dice mechanic is a good start, but might be too limited as you only get one per day at 1st-level (though we did pretty well in my roomie’s Skyrim playtest campaign). I actually liked the second experimental rule, where you gradually regain hit points up to your cap unless you are bloodied, in which case you only fill up halfway. I think it reinforced an early idea about how the first half of your hit points is mostly minor nicks and scratches (if any), while the second half was more noteworthy wounds.

Dragon Age had a mechanic where a healing kit restored a random amount of hit points, but you could only do it once per fight. Actually…it might have just been a thing where you rolled your healing amount after each fight automatically. Anyway, maybe allow healing kits to restore a small amount of hit points, which you can increase by spending Hit Dice on top of it?

Of course, I might be misreading the whole thing. Maybe Mearls is just saying that they want to make cleric-esque healing the standard, as in magical and/or on a per-day basis. In that case I still contest that it creates issues of pacing and necessity, but at the least might mean that we will see a variety of viable healing classes (such as, again, warlord). I mean, when the only really viable healer option is cleric, saying that people “rolled with it” in the past is not exactly a helpful observation.

DDN Blog: Resilient Heroes

It’s good to see that the vast majority are in favor to at least some form of limited self-healing. Personally I had grown tired of relying on the casters to keep the game going last edition, and 4th Edition made it easier–I would daresay possible–to manage without a healer at all, or at least without having to burn through cash stocking up on healing potions and wands (the latter of which required characters to spend ranks on Use Magic Device).

The thing is that if hit points do not–and never did–simulate physical trauma, then there is no reason to severely cripple their “natural” recovery rate. 2nd Edition did this at 1 point per day, though 3rd Edition allowed you to get away with 1 per level, so long as you got a full day’s rest. A Heal check might have been involved, as well.

Healing surges provide a nice, solid mechanic for giving players an idea of how much more punishment they can endure, as well as providing a resource that could feasibly be used for other things, such as fueling rituals and/or abilities. For example, what if sorcerers got at-will spells, but no encounter or daily magic, and instead had to spend healing surges. This could work for other spellcasters, representing them becoming exhausted. It would also work for martial types.

Some players claim that healing surges can strip out the drama of a situation, since players can crawl out of a pile of rubble and “magically full-heal”, but this does not seem much different from just having a cleric spam cure whatever wounds until the character is topped off (or drinking a bunch of potions). Heck, give her a few levels and she can just conjure up free food and water, and also instantaneously alleviate ability score damage and level drain (assuming the characters did not burn cash on items that can do all that, anyway).

Things that might help is preventing characters from using all the surges that they want. After a battle characters might be able to spend just one, or could only spend enough to get to a certain percentage (say, bloodied value or 3/4s or something). An extended rest would allow them to exceed this amount, but to avoid a lengthy nap resetting all their stats to full, you could also cap the recovery rate. So, fighters might get 4 + Con modifier back, wizards 2 + Con modifier, or characters might only get back their Con modifier (so tough characters still recover faster). This way characters would still want to be stingy with their hit points and not just blow through surges willy nilly.

There could also be rules for extended injuries, so characters could suffer penalties for taking critical hits (perhaps in lieu of extra damage, similar to that mechanic in Dresden Files that lets you keep going, but at a cost). Things that healing surges cannot fix. I think this would work for grittier games, even going so far as specifying what sort of injuries that curing spells can fix (something I remember from 2nd Edition). The balancing act would be making it so that an injury is cumbersome, but not adventure-stopping. I would also like to avoid the whole ability damage fiasco of 3rd Edition; just give me flat penalties so I do not have to go back and re-factor my attacks, damage, skills, etc.