Skjaldbakka wrote: Indeed. It also messes with my sense of verisimilitude (sp?). But the entire hit point mechanic messes with verisimilitude. I mean, sometimes losing hit points means you're wounded, sometimes it just means you've lost some mojo. Arguably, its unrealistic to say that characters never suffer wounds that last more than an hour or so. But on the other hand, why can't a character sit down and commune with the gods for an hour or so to get back all his mojo?
Since hit points are an abstraction, I've never seen much of a problem with unlimited between-encounter "healing."
Starfinder Superscriber
In the last full campaign I ran, one of the clerics of Gond decided that he would create a minor magic item of cure minor wounds that allowed the spell to be cast unlimited times a day. Price on that was I want to say around 25 xp to create it, and while it did mean that my party burned less in potions and spells outside of fights, it in no way stopped the game from getting out of hand. It took time for them to use this dohicky, and that time was easy as a DM to control. They knew that if they were chasing a person down that they shouldn't stop to try and heal fully, and when they were in dungeons of my own creation it's easy to have wandering monsters.
I guess my point is unlimited 1 hp/rnd healing isn't that bad outside of combat, won't be used in combat, and won't over balance the game. I'm still allowing the spell to my cleric.
Draco Bahamut wrote: Intead of poking your party members with a stick you prefer to poke them with your finger ? How that is better ? The stick costs 750 gold. As another post above already points out, the "unlimited" healing of a Wand of Cure Light Wounds is mitigated by a monetary cost. Furthermore when those 50 charges run out, the players will have to spend another 750 gold to get more "unlimited" healing.
Also the DM can limit the availability of a happystick if he wants things to get a little tense. "Sorry, we're all sold out of them. That's a popular item with you adventurer types." or "Um, we're just simple farmers... we don't have a magic shop. I hear they got one in the Big City over the hill... just a week's travel from here."
So yeah, I'm fine with Cure Minor Wounds getting left out. But I suppose I could be persuaded to change my view if there was a material component to cast it... say something like 1gp per casting.
Marko Westerlund wrote: The Problem with cheap healing that The Black Bard proposes, is that it'll only replace happysticks. Happysticks aren't used in combat after first few levels, so players will opt for the most cost effective method of healing available.
In mathematical terms, a charge from a wand of cure light wounds heals 1d8+1 hp for 15gp, or one hp for 2.727gp on average
A charge from a wand of lesser vigor heals 11 hp for 15gp, or one hp for 1.363 gp.
A charge from a wand of The Black Bard's restore health would restore 40 hit points for 15 gp, or one hp for 0,375 gp.
This route will only lessen the problem, but the problem stays.
I find Wraith's concern about world balance questionable. Firstly, every cleric who channels positive energy already can heal vast amounts of common folk. Secondly, I don't think commoners deal with hit point damage that often. They have to deal with diseases and exhaustion from hard labour, perhaps the threat of injury and/or death from local bandits, but actual injury shouldn't be that common a problem.
you never lived in a rural area I take it. Farming is still physically very dangerous today let alone when it was all done by hand. Most jobs that commoners would do are extremly dangerous and they would be injuried often. Untreated injury would become infected and they would die.
Dropping something on your toe in the middle ages likly meant your death.
That said I still think the unlimited healing changing the game arguement is flawed. The problem already exist. Healing is easy enought to obtain that people should be hurt. Raised dead is cheap enought that anyone from a rich (even middle class) or noble family should never die until old age.
I mean by any common sense even peasant would have family members raised. They would just be indebt to the locl church for years.
Moondarq wrote: Draco Bahamut wrote: Intead of poking your party members with a stick you prefer to poke them with your finger ? How that is better ? The stick costs 750 gold. As another post above already points out, the "unlimited" healing of a Wand of Cure Light Wounds is mitigated by a monetary cost. Furthermore when those 50 charges run out, the players will have to spend another 750 gold to get more "unlimited" healing.
Also the DM can limit the availability of a happystick if he wants things to get a little tense. "Sorry, we're all sold out of them. That's a popular item with you adventurer types." or "Um, we're just simple farmers... we don't have a magic shop. I hear they got one in the Big City over the hill... just a week's travel from here."
So yeah, I'm fine with Cure Minor Wounds getting left out. But I suppose I could be persuaded to change my view if there was a material component to cast it... say something like 1gp per casting. The abuse of the gold limit is always funny.
Gold limit of "random town" is 10,000gp lets say. The party then spends 400,000 gp on very specific magic items that are all close to or exactly 10,000gp. because for some strange reason the town always has exactly what the party needs. lol
I am actually thinking about giving magic stores in my next campaign inventory list before the party ever gets to them. they can buy what he has or they can go to the next stown. Of course in a big enought center they still likly can find anything they want.
Backwards Compatibility
simply put granting full healing between every encounter at no resource cost will totally throw out party balance (specifically at low levels) and would make many encounters broken.
It isn't between every encounter. If characters are in a hurry, they don't have time to heal themselves. If they aren't, they would use wands of cure light wounds anyway to heal up. Besides, in my model the "no reesource cost" is an illusion. Characters paid the resource cost by having less wealth than their level would allow them in 3e.
Regarding the dangers of farming. In real life, perhaps. In D&D, not so much. Dropping something on your toe is dangerous for a commoner even with unlimited cure minor wounds. A commoner has 1d4 hit points. A falling object that deals damage causes at least 1d6 points of damage. This will knock a commoner unconcious more often than not. If they're alone, they'll most likely bleed to death if unconcious. If they have someone to stabilize them, they might survive the injury.
At this point, if my idea is used, the commoners fetch a cleric or a druid to heal the injured person. Under Alpha 3 rules, the commoners sohuld drag the injured commoner to a church or a temple so he can be healed during the next sermon's positive energy channeling.
Now that hit point damage has been dealt with, we can assume the peasant has been diseased from his injury. This is the second deadly threat on his life from that falling object.
Now, the point of this is explanation is twofold. First, unlimited cure minor wounds does not affect the lethality of farming. Second, D&D is not a simulation of millde ages. The fact that D&D has magic means it does not even try to be.
Wow. I guess that unlimited cure minors would make having someone play a cleric even more of a necessity.
In 8 years of campaigning, stretching from 2e to today, I've seen one cure light wounds wand. I guess we tend to run resource-poor campaigns. Still, even in your campaign, 750 gp is a lot of money for low level adventurers to scrape together at one time in cash, or 1500 gp worth of items to sell.
And, yes, wars would change. There would be entire teams of medics whose sole job would be to fetch the wounded back to the Healing Station. Tactics would change, as holding a position away from the Healing Station in the back lines would be insanely costly. The flow of tactics would be to constantly retreat wounded squads back to the rear for them to be fully healed up. Holding a line to protect the clerics and allow for individual squads to retreat would be the only strategy for infantry troops.
In short, I think it would look a lot like WWI.
I have no story telling problems with the CLW wands. I always image my characters (and I think they image it too) taking a breather while the cleric heals them with a wand. Instead of thinking about it like a poke and they're all better, I image waving the wand over each wound suffered and its magically closing up.
Sometimes I put limits on what certain people can do while they're getting healed. I've had rouges raid treasure while the others were distracted by their healing needs. Its exciting and makes normal sense.
Unlimited CMW would take some of this imagination away from me. There's no rolling involved, there's no worry they'll run out. Even with a full wand of CLW none of my players have ever just waved off the healing process. The excitement or despair of a high or low d8 with every wave of the wand. CMW is just a quick calculation of the number of rounds it takes and they're off again.
I like and my player like the micromanaging of wealth sometimes. I've had complete rookies save up for items that never made sense but I never stole the joy of saving their money from them. Vets sometimes opted for a magical weapon instead of potions, and every time the SAW how their choices affected the game.
Just throwing this thought out there: If the adventures assume there's unlimited healing between encounters and the party didn't build that way, they're screwed
And that's just plain stupid. "I'm sorry Timmy, but everyone else made their characters and if you're not a cleric there's no way in hell you'll all survive?"
As is, everyone lives with their character's choices and whether they're good or bad is up for the game to play out. They went home without raiding the treasure? Maybe a group of treasure hunters is mid-raiding it when they get back and another fight breaks out. Maybe those prisoners have 1 more dead body, and one of them makes sure to mention "poor Louis went last night" These are just suggestions, but they make the world and the character's actions seem even more important.
Final thought: Its easier to houserule unlimited CMW than make it core and remove it from every adventure module made with that assumption.
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