Short Rest Hit Die

Quote from sethtucker1 >>

I don't disagree with you, and didn't realize I was posting in the "wrong" forum; I was just establishing that it would narrative sense to me if you were still allowed to gain your CON modifier (if positive) on a short rest, since it's still an opportunity to get a reprieve from combat/action.

And I only posted here because of the topic associated with a Google search on the idea; not because I thought I was posting in a homebrew or RAW space.

 Your hit dice represent how much energy/health/whatever you want to call it you can recover. If you're out of hit dice, you're getting too fatigued to recover quickly. I hope that makes at least some sense.

One of the sort of unwritten design rules for 5e and 5.5e is "No Free Healing". Pretty much anything that can restore HP requires you to spend some kind of limited resource, whether it's Hit Point Dice, spell slots, a pool of dice or HP that recharge on a Long Rest, whatever. This seems to be pretty important for balancing purposes, or at least the designers of the game think it is.

Quote from sethtucker1 >>

I don't disagree with you, and didn't realize I was posting in the "wrong" forum; I was just establishing that it would make narrative sense to me if you were still allowed to gain your CON modifier (if positive) on a short rest, since it's still an opportunity to get a reprieve from combat/action.

And I only posted here because of the topic associated with a Google search on the idea; not because I thought I was posting in a homebrew or RAW space.

It's not really a matter of "wrong" forum. It's just a matter of that this forum will give you the RAW/RAI interpretation of the rules. It is always best to understand that before making changes. After that, changes to the rules tend to be better received in the Homebrew & House Rules forum. At your table, you are free to do as you like, of course. If you want to house rule that a Short Rest gives you Constitution Modifier Hit Points for free, you have to consider things like:

• Constitution modifiers theoretically range from -5 to +10
• Is there a minimum recovery (0 or 1 HP)?
• Is this a benefit only if you don't spend one or more hit dice or does it stack?
• Adventure Milestones sometimes give the benefit of a Short Rest without necessarily spending the time for one.

I don't think it's a change that's necessary unless you are extraordinarily deadly in your encounters, but if you want to make it a house rule, you can try in the other forum to refine it.

I mean, 1-5 isn't really a meaningful amount of healing after level 2 or 3 in any case, so I'm not sure it'd make for much of a buffer even in a regular campaign, let alone a particularly deadly one.

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

I mean, 1-5 isn't really a meaningful amount of healing after level 2 or 3 in any case, so I'm not sure it'd make for much of a buffer even in a regular campaign, let alone a particularly deadly one.

In general, yes, the only reason I say particularly deadly is not that the free healing is huge or anything, but rather that to benefit the players, they would likely need to be taking multiple Short Rests during the day and regularly burning through all their Hit Dice. Then ... maybe? If you regularly have Hit Dice at the end of the day, there's definitely no need for the change. Either way, like I said before, this would be better discussed in the Homebrew and House Rules forum.

By the time a creature has a CR of 1, it's averaging a DPR of around 10, so if you're being run so ragged you exhaust your Hit Die, I wouldn't expect CON mod/Short Rest to make up the difference.

Quote from sethtucker1 >>

I've been wondering about why, if a character either chooses (or can't) spend HD during a short rest, they don't regain their Constitution modifier's worth of HP still?  I mean, the modifier is still there, regardless of whether they spend HD or not.

Why 1—because the rules say so

Why 2—the rules say so because if you didn't tie short rest healing to a limited resource (hit point die), you could just heal fully every short rest