Possible Healing Alterations

[MisterSlanky]

I was an idiot and posted this in the wrong forum. I've deleted it and moved it here.

So I got around to reading the Pathfinder book last night, and I'm generally pretty impressed.

One of the things I like is that healing has become less of a hindrance to the entire party. Besides having more hit points, Clerics really get to focus on healing in a non-spellcasting mode which for players hopefully make things a little more dynamic and less "I waste my last 3rd level spell on Cure Serious Wounds". I also like that bards are a little more healing support oriented.

But I've still got a little bit of concern.

1) Is the suggestion for removing Cure Minor Wounds really necessary?

I appreciate and understand the idea that D&D 3.5 is a resource management game, but I just wonder if removing this spell doesn't keep us in the "one hour workday" idea a little too readily. I was wondering if anybody had any ideas of possibly changing the implementation to something a little more middle-ground. I've had the following idea but I don't know if it's really all that appropriate. What if, cure minor wounds was a continuous spell that needed to be maintained a number of rounds equal to the number of hit points to be healed. Breaking concentration causes the spell to fail and no hit points to be regained. Consider a level 5 group with 4 characters after a major battle. It is absolutely not out of the question that within the group there are 100 points of damage to be healed. With this idea it would still take 10 minutes of downtime to heal up a party.

I know it's not perfect, but I was wondering if anybody has thought about this.

2) What if we turn the druid shapechange ability into the ability to grant your ally fast healing? Say fast-healing equal to your level for 5 rounds, or some such?

I'm just thinking because I'd like to implement Pathfinder rules, but with my small gaming group, I'd like to give them some other options beyond more-or-less forcing a cleric or bard in the party (like what normally happens).

[MisterSlanky]

Of course the whole CMW issue has been discussed to no end in another thread I just noticed; however, it still does leave my question about fast-healing for druids.

[Frank Timar]

MisterSlanky wrote:

1) Is the suggestion for removing Cure Minor Wounds really necessary?

...What if, cure minor wounds was a continuous spell that needed to be maintained a number of rounds equal to the number of hit points to be healed...

I see 2 issues with the proposal. 1) There are no guidelines or rules for maintaining concentration for extended periods of time, so unless a new fight broke out what would cause the concentration to break? 2) Unless you are saying it builds healing 1hp/round but does not apply it until the cleric stops how is that an issue? Fighter A has 17 hps damage, the cleric casts Cure minor wounds for 10 rounds when he is interupted, 9 rounds of healing have passed, there was no healing on round 10, what prevents him from resuming on round 11 for another 8 rounds?

MisterSlanky wrote:

I'm just thinking because I'd like to implement Pathfinder rules, but with my small gaming group, I'd like to give them some other options beyond more-or-less forcing a cleric or bard in the party (like what normally...

I have had the same issue, but worse, my group didn't have a cleric. My solution went towards a more mundane path. I set up rules that allowed the Heal skill to convert a portion of the damage suffered to subdual damage, allowing heroes to recover at a rate of hitpoints/ hour instead of Hitpoints/day. It also amplified the effect of Cure wounds spells if performed after the medical treatment since part of the damage was now subdual.

The treatment had to be started within 10 minutes of taking the injuries, a check was made every 10 minutes, each check could convert 10 hp damage to subdual damage, and there was a cap of only 1/2 the total damage could be converted. This allowed my players to rest a couple hours then get back to work, definately worse for wear, but not out of commision.