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I'm using a quite 'drastic' houserule. I would like discussion on how it would fit into official 2E:
'Hit point damage represents fatigue and shallow wounds. By resting for 30 minutes, your hit points restore to their maximum. A character trained in medicine with a healer's kit reduces this to 20 minutes. An expert to 15. A master to 10, and a legendary character to 5.'
The reasoning is: Out of combat healing has never been engaging. Throughout PF1, healing out of combat has been a small gold expenditure, and busywork tracking charges. The problem wasn't characters having full HP every encounter. It was the busywork. The gold expenditure didn't matter for most of the campaign. This rule lets PF2 play like PF1 did (full HP in most combats) without punishing healers by eating all their spell slots, slaughtering verisimilitude by running back to town constantly, or wasting our time with PF1 style wands.
A maximum number of times this can happen via a maximum 'rest time', which would result in higher medicine giving you a greater number of 'fatigue resets' might be appropriate.
For magical healers. It moves their healing ability to shine in combat instead of out, and lets them focus on other aspects of their character. It also means that if a party's only healer dies/leaves, it is not almost required that a new character be a healer, which can be a terrible experience.
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I can see such a rule impacting on class/build balance quite a bit.
If damage is healed "for free" with just 20mins of downtime, more aggressive builds will suddenly shine even more compared to more defensive ones. Since killing the baddies, even while taking lots of damage, would be better than trying to stave off damage.
So, unless you build all your encounters as potentially (and high potential at that) of being fatal/tpk, it will make the "most damage" builds optimal.
This is only true in the most basic DPS-offs. Enemies that inflict long-term status effects can still require defensive abilities, and defensive abilities can reduce the need to spend non-HP resources such as Spell Points, Resonance, and Spell Slots. Besides this, it assumes combat is about reducing each other's HP, rather than other objectives such as chases or defending objectives.
It affects the balance, certainly, but I don't feel it breaks it beyond the level that TTRPGs tend to be 'broken' and imperfectly balanced.
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Totally agree - there's no reason for magical healing to be required in between encounters. Magical healing should be something extraordinary and impressive, bringing people back from the brink of death during combat. Currently, in PF1, magical healing is pretty much viewed as first-aid treatment for the most part.
I really dislike the view of the classic MMO "holy trinity", where a healer is required. Having a character dedicated to healing should feel like an actual boon to have in deadly situations, not like you're meeting the base requirements to stay alive and play the game.
If someone wants to play a healer - great! That means your martials can be a bit reckless, knowing you have their back. Maybe the casters skimp out on defensive spells and contribute more to the battle, because you can keep them alive. Everyone gets to have fun, without the healer feeling like an after-combat first-aid kit.
But if no one wants to be the healer, that should be okay too. And no matter how careful and optimized you are, the dice will inevitably get you hit. You should not be punished for that - especially not severely enough to get your character killed. Not just because you were at half HP at the boss battle after a bunch of goblins got lucky hits on you.
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Medicine
Treat Injuries (trained only, requires healer’s kit)
You can spend 10 minutes treating an ally’s recent injuries. Attempt a Medicine check with a Hard DC for the ally’s level.
Success: the ally regains up to 10% of his total hp.
Critical success: the ally regains up to 25% of his total hp.
Failure: the ally regains no hp.
Critical failure: the ally regains no hp, and is bolstered against any attempt to Treat Injuries for that damage (treat his current hp as his maximum hp for any further attempt during the day). Magical healing can increase this limit.
If you are Expert, Master, or Legendary, you increase the amount of hp healed on a success to 25%, 50%, and 75% respectively, and on a critical success to 50%, 75%, or 100%.
Something like this? I could dig it. Still requires safety and time to work, so magical healing is good for critical time-sensitive situations, and Battle Medic still has a place for mid-fight healing too... Perhaps could even help moving Channel Energy into a spell point power.
That's a less drastic implementation, but I'd definitely be happy with it.
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out of combat healing must be addressed otherwise adventure day will be restricted to 1 or 2 encounters. I hate when players want to sleep as soon as the spell slots are spent or keep exiting/re-entering the dungeon.
It screws up the adventure as it forces me to have the villains to move or act or restock or respawn.
Resonance made it worse as you cannot even drink potions or use wands, which makes a group without healer impossible to handle and a group with a healer only possible to handle when the spell slots are not consumed, which forces clerics to only cast healing spells to not burn precious spell slots.
We need out of combat healing back in the game asap, being it with short rests or stamina system like Starfinder.
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I cannot overstate how much healers need to be optional bonuses instead of assumed requirements.
I love the idea of making out of combat healing a different beast entirely from in combat healing.
I also, as I've mentioned several times, think Clerics should be moved away from being pigeonholed into being healers. I think more classes should have effective in-combat healing options, and clerics should be not as immensely better than everyone else by default as they are now.
I would even go so far as to argue that an Alchemist should be a better healer than a Cleric unless the Cleric builds for it (healing domain, etc).
Solid out of combat healing would also make Resonance less problematic, while keeping the benefits that it offers (such as making more expensive wands actually viable).
EDIT: I love that idea for the Treat Injuries action, although I would make it based on dice instead of percentages; percentages are messy and don't feel like Pathfinder, and rolling dice is fun.
Battle Medic shouldn't be bolstered imo, but rather have a different kind of limitation, like a cap of how much healing it can get you in a day.
Maybe.
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Ed's rule seems solid, but I would like an ability to heal apart from medicine, especially with how abstract HP is.
Time Taken: 30 minutes.
Requirements: No dangerous or tiring activities during this time. During this time, you eat a meal. Maximum of three times per day.
You steady your nerves, settle your blood, focus your mind, and clean your scratches during a break. A cup of tea is recommended but not required.
Effect: You regain hit points equal to your Fortitude DC. If you are a Master of Fortitude, double this. If you are legendary at Fortitude, quadrouple it.
Recuperate seems pretty strong early on, but it looks like it falls off fairly quickly. I like that it relies on an already existing number, but at the same time it stinks of short rest (sorry).
As it is, there’s quite a few cases where it heals much more than a full rest, which I’m ok with, but... i’ll need to run some math to see f the two options can coexist.
Also, just for context, when I ran 5e I had my players get no healing from long rests. Use rest dice or whine until morning. Taking lots of damage SHOULD be a bad idea and SHOULD have consequences for the day after, even if you might show up full health anyways... just so you guys understand where I come from and why I consider my previous post little more than a draft.
More than combats, I've had trouble with exploration hazards having lasting meaningful damage. (Also had this issue in every other edition because they all had healing spam). I'm thinking that damage out-of-combat might result in some type of status condition, but I'm not sure how to go about this without making it too tough. If I get it right, it might be transferable to become the lasting compontent of combat damage.
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Out of combat healing is the least interesting part of just about any game. Injuries for narrative purpose is a different matter, but given the number of combats expected each day, I don't think that's what the rules should be striving for. If characters could use the Medicine skill to heal up to full with a bit of time invested, I don't see a significant problem with that.
In regards to the idea that it might force more offensive combat styles, that seems fine with me. Either make defensive abilities have a higher overall impact, or give them more utility: for example, making blocking for other people a baseline part of the shield, and increasing the amount of damage absorbed per hit.
I don't think this is a fight you're going to win. Paizo wants to eliminate two things:
1) Clearing out a dungeon or location with minimal rest in 20 minutes or less. They want to SLOW everything down. Your proposal supports that.
2) The unlimited adventuring day. Your proposal is contrary to that goal.
I'm not sure I want unlimited healing every day either. It's a little bit too 'World of Warcraft' for me and not realistic enough. I however would like too see better out of combat healing (without feats) using the Medicine skill though.
There is no right or wrong answer here, just personal preference, but I'm fairly sure this is not the type of game Paizo wants to make. There are always house rules though.