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for this discussion we have to believe that hitpoints are not just a grand total of cuts and bruises one can take. If that was so, then a Fighter crit with a scythe, and taking 70 of his 95 hitpoints would still be able to fight with his neck cut open like a pez dispenser. hipoints are also ones ability to make more severe blows less deadly (a ogre club swing that would have broken his ribs into his heart gets turned into a hairline fracture due to the Characters experience.
so lets have to characters equally wounded, the same nasty stab wound to the gut, both are down to half of their maximum hitpoints, the sorcerer is 6/12 and the Fighter is 12/24. the third level cleric cast a cure light wounds on both and rolls average, 7hps. on the sorcerer the wound totally vanishes, but for some reason the wound is still open on the Fighter, even though the same amount of positive energy passes though him. Is the Fighter naturally resistant to healing? or what?
By no means is this a fix, but it sure helps. instead of the 1d8 that healing spells usually use, you get die equal to your hitdie. so a cure critical wounds heals 4d6+7 to a wizard, and heals the Barbarian for 4d12+7.
Hmmm.... I understand your thinking about this, Sneaksy, and I'm inclined to aggree with you. But the numbercrunching and philosophy behind them numbers, well... that's just not me.
One could always house-rule the thing ;-)
The problem of this method arises when you are facing a multiclass character; sure, you could use the average among the HD of the character (a Wizard 5/Fighter 5 can use d8s), but it becomes extremely difficult if the HD are not evenly distributed (a Wizard 7/Fighter 3 still uses d6s, or d8s? and what about a Sorcerer 3/Rogue 2/ Barbarian 5 ?)
You idea has some merit (it is credible), but unfortunately can lead to more bookkeeping and general slowdown (IMHO).
Just my 2c.
for this discussion we have to believe that hitpoints are not just a grand total of cuts and bruises one can take. If that was so, then a Fighter crit with a scythe, and taking 70 of his 95 hitpoints would still be able to fight with his neck cut open like a pez dispenser. hipoints are also ones ability to make more severe blows less deadly (a ogre club swing that would have broken his ribs into his heart gets turned into a hairline fracture due to the Characters experience.
so lets have to characters equally wounded, the same nasty stab wound to the gut, both are down to half of their maximum hitpoints, the sorcerer is 6/12 and the Fighter is 12/24. the third level cleric cast a cure light wounds on both and rolls average, 7hps. on the sorcerer the wound totally vanishes, but for some reason the wound is still open on the Fighter, even though the same amount of positive energy passes though him. Is the Fighter naturally resistant to healing? or what?
By no means is this a fix, but it sure helps. instead of the 1d8 that healing spells usually use, you get die equal to your hitdie. so a cure critical wounds heals 4d6+7 to a wizard, and heals the Barbarian for 4d12+7.
I think the confusion here stems from the premise that an equal percentage HP loss means that equal punishment has been suffered. I would reason that the sorcerer and fighter in your example, having suffered the same wound (imagine: same die rolls-in your example, the dice are different. The fighter is at half, despite having suffered twice as much damage, because he is badder), would not have equal hit points. The sorcerer, who isn't as durable, would be more seriously hurt by a 6 HP loss (which happens to put him at at half HP), while the fighter would be at 18 HP, or 3/4 full. Because he is tougher, it would take 3 more such hits to bring him down, while the sorceror would be felled by just one more.
I undertand the sentiment here, and I agree that HP are not just a sum total of what kind of a beating you can take and not die. (I do also believe that a fighter can in fact survive more serious wounds that a sorceror: He's not just 'tougher' (that's a Con score thing), he also can take more pain before stopping.)
However, your fix doesn't properly deal with the relevance of level (a 20th level character heals much smaller wounds of CLW than a 1st level character does), or non-humanoid creatures like Rhinos and whales, where their large HD and HP counts do just ocrrespond to a large amount of mass and ability to take a beating.
HP are by necessity an abstraction: ANY system to deal with them will be flawed, so we might as well go with the simple one.
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In the star wars game, any wound point damage (Con) also made you have to Fort Save or instantly fall unconscious. Save or fail, you where fatigued. Healing could either be applied to Wounds or Vitality. I Want to say is healed Wound Damage at 1 H.P. per Die, so a 2d8+3 CMW would either heal 2 Wound Points, or normal 2d8+3 Vitality Points.
Anything that deals special extra damage like Sneak Attack instead deals 1 point of Wound Damage, not +4d6, or whatever. Crits are all x2 and go directly to Wounds. If you run out of Vitality, you start taking Wound Damage regardless of the source.
I have one level of fighter and 19 of wizard. Do I gain the better dice ?
I understand your concern, but I don't think it can be addressed by changing cure dice type. It would need to change how healing works in general.
Maybe this helps people "envision" the mechanics behind healing. Bear with any rule-legality type arguments, this is a flavor/fluff description that uses the rules terminology to make it easier to understand.
Healing is a magical effect upon the body, coming from an outside source. The body's natural defenses automatically resist this, much like it would any other foreign invading force.
The relative fortitude of a mage and a fighter are often quite proportionate to their relative hit points. The mage is less adept at resisting such a force at play on his body, and as such more of his woulds are healed. The fighters body resists quite well, and so less of his wounds (relatively) are healed. Thus does 1d8+1 healing now make sense relative to d4 (or d6) hp and d10 hp.
Now at 20th level, the relatively weak force of a cure light wounds is almost completely repelled by the fighter, and even the mage has experienced enough to have his body naturally resist this energy to a high degree. Much more powerful magic, of course, can have a more significant effect upon his system, the same as how a high level inflict has a greater effect than a low level one.
Thus does 1d8+1 vrs 5d8+20 make sense relative to 20d4 (or 20d6) and 20d10, respectively.
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I have one level of fighter and 19 of wizard. Do I gain the better dice ?
I understand your concern, but I don't think it can be addressed by changing cure dice type. It would need to change how healing works in general.
I would advise that cure spells return a PERCENTAGE of ones health, but that is to drastic of a change for this playtest. (i personally dislike level dip multiclassing, I say 1d6 for you Fighter 1/Wizard 19!)I will be working on the multiclass problem (either need a max hitpoints to die size chart or....)
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I would advise that cure spells return a PERCENTAGE of ones health, but that is to drastic of a change for this playtest. (i personally dislike level dip multiclassing, I say 1d6 for you Fighter 1/Wizard 19!)I will be working on the multiclass problem (either need a max hitpoints to die size chart or....)I have one level of fighter and 19 of wizard. Do I gain the better dice ?
I understand your concern, but I don't think it can be addressed by changing cure dice type. It would need to change how healing works in general.
Simple solution for multi-class. GReatest number of die type sets typing. have 2d10+3d6= d6 heals
19d6+1d10= d6 healsComplex solution would bve you have 3d10+3d6 = d8 heals. (using averages.) (10x3)+(6x3)=48 divide by 6=8 (d8)
works for a 20th level character of mixed dice also
5d6+5d12+4d8+6d10
30+60+48+60=198
/20=9.9
d10 heals.
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Sneaksy...so under a percentage system, light=25% medium=50% severe=75% and heal=90% something like that?
Hmmm.... I understand your thinking about this, Sneaksy, and I'm inclined to aggree with you. But the numbercrunching and philosophy behind them numbers, well... that's just not me.
One could always house-rule the thing ;-)
I have this same sort of issue with Hit Points. I trying out a house rule next game that works like this.
Using the Constitution starting hit points I've kept as actual physical health. So a constitution of 16 is give 16 hit point but they are kept sort of separate.
So take a first level fighter with 1D10 and 16 Con. they have 16+10 for hit points before dropping. The Class level hit points represent battle luck, endurance and skill in avoiding damage. So a hit that causes 8 damage comes off the total but doesn't drop the character into that constitution stat hit points. This means the fighter entirely avoided the blow but it taxed them. Another hit does 6 damage dropping the 12 hit points where 4 is going into the constitution. Now their luck just ran out in battle and the knife cut them.
Now there is penalties for being wounded like this. I take the constitution score and divide it by 4. For 15 that's' 4/8/12/16. At each number there is a cumulative -1 to hit, damage, ac, skills, and -5 movement. So in this example. the fighter has taken 14 point damage reducing them to 12 hit points. That applies a -2 penalty. Any healing that raises the hit points above that threshold removes the penalty. As well I when wounded like they characters only heal 1 hp per day of rest. Once above their con stat in HP the regular rate of healing comes back.
Only tangentially related, but the lone cleric in my group (and myself) have found the lack of scaling with level to be the biggest problem. Considering this was brought up without much time for me to think before a session, I threw a band-aid on it that seemed reasonable at the time; For every 5 HD, a Cure X Wounds spell would heal a percentage of the roll on each subsequent rounds. (This also applies to Breath of Life, as I'd long ago decided to mess around with calling that Cure Mortal Wounds, knowing the implication with the cleric classes spontaneous casting as worded)
I believe the original proposal was that at 5 HD, it healed whatever was rolled then 25% of that on the following round and at 10 HD, original amount / 50% on the following round / 25% on the round after that. Considering the characters are 11th level, I didn't worry about scaling higher at the time. Unfortunately, we didn't get to test it much in-battle during that session. (critical hit on an Empowered Searing Light killed the poor mid-boss in one hit - second time this has happened I might add - and an equally lucky barrage from the ranger took out the big wizard threat that was the boss. Curse Multishot.)
I don't have the numbers with me, but I think when I worked it out, number-wise, the averages and maxes scaled along at a modest fraction of Heal. Obviously the extra kicking in as regen in subsequent rounds becomes something else to keep track of, which is something my group is fairly decent with, but would probably be some trouble for others.