You mentioned that being at the top of your game at age 20 was unrealistic. I mentioned that if you did not like that, then for your character to age to lets say 50 in a game that meets on average once a week you would need to play a campaign about 10 years. Though if we want to further examine that statement realize that the average life span of a human in medevil times was probably around 30(give or take depending on how rich you were). So being a 20 year old bad ass is not too unrealistic, even in this very realistic game of slaying dragons. .
Actually the average of 30 for medieval man is due to the high infant mortality rate..up to 4 in 5 children didnt live till 5 years of age. Once you got past childhood life expectancy was fairly good. I'll dredge up some figures if you want them
Actually the average of 30 for medieval man is due to the high infant mortality rate..up to 4 in 5 children didnt live till 5 years of age. Once you got past childhood life expectancy was fairly good. I'll dredge up some figures if you want them
You mentioned that being at the top of your game at age 20 was unrealistic. I mentioned that if you did not like that, then for your character to age to lets say 50 in a game that meets on average once a week you would need to play a campaign about 10 years. Though if we want to further examine that statement realize that the average life span of a human in medevil times was probably around 30(give or take depending on how rich you were). So being a 20 year old bad ass is not too unrealistic, even in this very realistic game of slaying dragons. .
Same here, i think that if you discount infant mortality the average life span in the medieval times goes to about 50 years.
Although in a fantasy setting that would be a little higher because of availability of remove disease.
There's some data here on noble life expectancy in the Middle Ages. Peasants would off course not have the same life span but I doubt it was as short as 30 on average. I would take an educated guess at 37-40 for yeomen and 33-35 for serfs.
Pregnancy seems to have been the most dangerous activity for women.
However with magical healing being available at village witch level in a fantasy situation I would add 10 to 12 years to those figures for Golarion.
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Wands just seem... weak.
Even the most EVIL DRAMA POWER wand is still a 'stick*'.
An EVIL DRAMA POWER stick, granted..
..but still a stick.
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I have no idea why this should annoy me so..
..I find the 'tool belt/box' of wands vibe to jar.
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Now, some mon mention Hermes and his healing stick - great!
..but one god-like association is good, many becomes mundane.
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The role of healer is still important even with wands of CLW; afterall, HP damage, while the most common type of damage, is far from the only kind of damage, and a healer (regardless of the actual mechanical class) will have access to the spells/abilities/training required to deal with those other afflictions.
Ok, this might sound strange...
What if natural healing healed Base Attack Bonus + Con modifier (min of 1) per day?
It would mean the fighter types heal faster than the wizard types (which making level + Con modifer wouldn't) and make natural healing a bit more pracitcal.
Hnn. Will consider this. I was also considering having characters recover their Con score after a night of rest, but that seemed to be a bit much.
System working as intended. Doesn't mean you have to like it, doesn't mean you can't change it, but that's the way pre-4th ed is supposed to work.
I'm curious as to how you can appeal to how its supposed to work when that's not how it works thanks to the wands.
It actually strengthens the fighter if the party can keep going for four encounters, as they maintain staying power moreso than most casters. The party may WANT to stop when the wizard is out of spells but they HAVE to stop when the cleric is dry on healing.
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How is that any different from the bard managing rounds of Inspire Courage for the whole party? Or any other caster managing party buffs such as Bull's Strength or Bless or anything else that the fighter can't manage "on his own?" If the caster panics and blows his only haste on what turns out to be a cakewalk encounter, should I let him have his spells back, too?
Those are all things a fighter WANTS. Hit points are something he NEEDS.
How is that any different from the bard managing rounds of Inspire Courage for the whole party? Or any other caster managing party buffs such as Bull's Strength or Bless or anything else that the fighter can't manage "on his own?" If the caster panics and blows his only haste on what turns out to be a cakewalk encounter, should I let him have his spells back, too?
Are you kidding me?
Here's the problem though, its the cleric managing the fighters hit points, not anyone managing their OWN resources. That's bad because if the cleric screws up the fighter pays for it, and if the fighter is an idiot and gets massive attacks of opportunity the cleric needs to blow more spells to keep him up instead of doing something fun.
System working as intended. Doesn't mean you have to like it, doesn't mean you can't change it, but that's the way pre-4th ed is supposed to work.
I'm curious as to how you can appeal to how its supposed to work when that's not how it works thanks to the wands.
Are you now saying that cleric's don't manage the fighter's hitpoints? Cause I was agreeing with your assessment of how the system worked. I just wasn't agreeing with your dislike.
Are you now saying that cleric's don't manage the fighter's hitpoints?
Yes. With wands of CLW in the picture the fighters life is not something to be managed like the wizard's fireball (at least not between combats anyway) You keep your friend at full hit points so he stays alive and you don't need to devote your entire existence to doing so.
Cause I was agreeing with your assessment of how the system worked. I just wasn't agreeing with your dislike.
You're agreeing with my assessment of how the system WOULD work less the availability of wands of CLW. the system has wands of CLW, hence it doesn't work like that. A cleric can be his own person, not just a hit point reservoir for the party. If a fighter keeps getting smacked around, the cleric can ask him to buy a wand, and he'll use it for him free of charge.
I think part of the problem with 'happy sticks' is that they're more efficient than wands of moderate/serious/critical wounds, in a GP to HP ratio. no one is going to buy a wand of cure moderate if a wand of cure light is available.
Does anyone know how the wound/vitality mechanic changes this?
We used the Rules from Unearthed Arcana (3.5), where it was a 5:1 conversion, so yeah, wands of CLW were poor (read: Unreliable) at healing Wounds. We're switching to the UC system next session and they'll be more reliable at healing wounds, but they'll still be a poor solution. My Wizard will have 28 Wounds; if he's near death (3 wounds left) it would take 1/2 a wand to bring him back to full Wounds. Unfortunately, that's still cheapest solution other than straight up spells or Channeling. Clerics will still be more necessary as they effectively can heal (3+CHA Mod) x Dice Wounds per day without spending a dime, and often more if you spread that across multiple PCs.
One thing that will change, though is if people get a serious smack-down and you want to bring them back up in the same fight. You'll need a scroll or spell of Heal to do it in a hurry, even wands of CCW heal a puny 4 Wounds per shot (Heal spell = 11 Wounds minimum).
Regardless, the more fights/day your group will have, the more wands of CLW become a necessity. In fact, keeping your Vigor topped up is absolutely necessary exactly because healing Wounds is so inefficient. Fighters will have less Vigor than HP (no Con Bonus to Vigor) so they have a smaller buffer before they start taking real damage. The fact that you can regain full Vigor overnight won't matter to most groups, as you can always get ambushed in the night.
I definitely remember the wand of steam and vapor as usable by clerics in 1E, and there were naturally later add-ons as FR and Ed dumped tons of magic in to play.
Really, wands of clw in a campaign come down to play style. If your style is video game go go go, let 'em have 'em, just make sure the enemies have them, too. If you want them to manage hit points and not let hit points do a substitute for strategy, then don't allow them.
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Sidenote: One of my problems with wands is that you can make a wand of CLW faster then you can cast 50 CLW spells. You can't even justify it as a 'store' of spells now. At least in 1E when you recharged stuff, you had to cast the spell into the item to give it a charge!
==Aelryinth
In reading this thread (Yes, the whole thread), the anti-CLW wand arguers posed such lovely rhetoric that my ire rose in sympathy. "Ban dem' wands!" I shouted (inside voice), until I reminded myself I have witnessed no such abuse ruining storylines or sucking tension from finales.
"CLW wands ruin the atmosphere/setting" rides the coattails of the whole 'magicmart' issue in my mind. I don't see why buying a set of CLW wands stands out any more than buying a holy weapon does.
Note: In most of my homebrew campaigns, I tweak the 'magicmart' to fit the style of story we're playing.
As for experience, the first thing PCs in my group usually do, 'if' there is a market, is buy a CLW wand with their first winnings. The healing pays for the investment through more adventure/less enemy response. It's their core item, and it costs them dearly (no mw weapons, no upgrade to breastplates, et al). It takes many levels before the wands become 'cheap' (as most treasure isn't cash anyway), but that's when PCs need magic weapons vs. gargoyles and need armor vs. troll-rend. It takes awhile before wands can be stockpiled.
By then, these higher level PCs seldom have time to tap that stockpile to get back to full while adventuring (outdoors being an exception, with exceptional encounters countering that). PCs do throw out some bigger cures postbattle to speed up the healing process to face the incoming response. As in...
You can't just enter the villain's villa (uber-penta-alliteration point for me!) and expect your foes to wait for you to CLW up to full after battle (especially if an alarm went off). They'll rally their troops, throw some of their own buffs up, and smack you down with all their forces at once, unless you go out to intercept the nearer foes while your buffs are up. (sometimes, ironically, the same buffs you took only because you had the wand).
Dynamic adventures and/or reactive/proactive villains mean little CLW wand abuse. Just saying.
Anyway, I vote to leave CLW wands alone OR tweak the whole 'magicmart' of which is a modest subset.
Just saying.
Related sidebar:
I think the APs factor in CLW wands, as monsters often do non-h.p. damage/effects (ability/disease/et al) and monsters that deal h.p. damage(if not flavor/scenery) often need to be faced with full h.p. PCs in the front line.
Edit: And I do think attrition is still a valid DM tool, and perhaps my favorite. :)
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There's some data here on noble life expectancy in the Middle Ages. Peasants would off course not have the same life span but I doubt it was as short as 30 on average. I would take an educated guess at 37-40 for yeomen and 33-35 for serfs.
Pregnancy seems to have been the most dangerous activity for women.
However with magical healing being available at village witch level in a fantasy situation I would add 10 to 12 years to those figures for Golarion.
So my rough guess of 30 was not that far off. Sure add some for magical healing, but then take some away for the occasional dragon/magical/necromancer ect attack. Either way my arguement that being a 20 year old and at the top of your game when your life expectancy is lets call it 50, is not so far fetched.
Even today in less developed countries children mature a lot faster then here in the states. In Iraq it was common to see 12 year olds running much of the house/walking all day in the sun with an ak-47 on their back tending sheep.
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Personally as both a GM and a player I dislike the idea of starting each day with full HP, and definately dislike the idea that it is practically mandatory to start each encounter at full HP in order to survive.
I like the idea of playing in scenarios where the heroes are slowly wittled down in terms of resources, until they face the final fight not quite running on fumes, but at least at half efficiency.
However, I have been told on other forums that that is apparently not how D&D 3.5 should be played and it is expected to use wands of CLW to start at as close to full HP each encounter as possible.
This is actually one major thing I dislike about D&D4e but if it is indeed the expectation in Pathfinder that PCs will start with full HP each day and almost every enocunter then I wish that Paizo had done what WotC did with 4e and just make that a basic rule not tied to a specific magic item or class.
Personally I would restrict access to wands of CLW (basically ensuring the players would need to craft one themself and thus avoiding the problem until at least level 5 in D&D 3.5, not sure about PF).
The solution to balance this out for me seems to be to make sure encounters don't require each PC at full HP. According to the DMG an ecnounter with an EL equal to Averge Party Level (APL) should be expected to exhaust 20% of the party's resuorces.
So for me, I would have most encounters at APL-1 or -2 with the final battle being at APL+1 or APL+2 at most. With just 3 or 4 encounters per day at this rate you may be losing at most 50% HP per day.
Recovery with just the odd cure spell or laying on of hands may be sufficient with natural healing (with long term care you can recover about 20% of HP per night, double that if you use a whole day to recover). With PF you also have the option of Treat Deadly Wounds to recover more HP.
So on average you are losing about 30% HP per day maybe only 20% with the odd cure spell or channeling (perhaps in lieu of long term care). Therefore if the adventure lasts a few days you could be entering the final battle at about 20% to 30% HP, which means at APL+1 death is indeed possible, but victory is not out of reach either.
The 3.5 DMG actually suggest the following breakdown of encounters:
% of Total Encounters per Adventure / Description / Encounter Level
10% / Easy / Less than APL
20% / Easy if handled properly / APL
50% / Challenging / APL
15% / Very Difficult / APL +1 to APL +4
5% / Overpowering / APL +5
That could be doable over a longer adventure with 20 encounters if you allow for a couple of two day breaks.
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Personally as both a GM and a player I dislike the idea of starting each day with full HP, and definately dislike the idea that it is practically mandatory to start each encounter at full HP in order to survive.
I like the idea of playing in scenarios where the heroes are slowly wittled down in terms of resources, until they face the final fight not quite running on fumes, but at least at half efficiency.
Yep. Without this, there's no real risk from minor threats.