I've read plenty of stuff about possible fixes to yoyo healing (waiting for a player to drop to 0 HP then healing them back up for a turn only to have them downed again) as an optimal strategy.
There doesn't seem to be a clear consensus though and some say that its not really much of a problem to begin with. I'm hoping to get some feedback from people who have tried solutions and if there is any indication that One D&D may address the issue.
I've heard adding a level of exhaustion per time being brought to 0. I've heard not resetting death saves on being brought back up. I've heard simply playing monsters differently, making them attack downed PCs. I've heard of injury tables and negative health. What, if anything actually makes the game better?
Simply adding penalties to going down isn't enough to discourage yoyo healing, that only punishes martials for being in melee...
The reason why yoyo healing is optimal is because healing in general is too weak to actually prevent allies from going down. What is the point of a PC using their action and a spell slot recovering 8 HP just for their target to take 18 damage and go down before your next turn?
So in order to actually prevent this strategy from being used you need to buff healing.
Simply adding penalties to going down isn't enough to discourage yoyo healing, that only punishes martials for being in melee...
The reason why yoyo healing is optimal is because healing in general is too weak to actually prevent allies from going down. What is the point of a PC using their action and a spell slot recovering 8 HP just for their target to take 18 damage and go down before your next turn?
So in order to actually prevent this strategy from being used you need to buff healing.
Yes, this is sort of the arguments I've heard against trying many of the "fixes". And that buffing healing isn't ideal because the designers want to stay away from the designated healer role.
Still, the mechanic of letting a player drop to 0 again and again doesn't sit well. It feels off. Is there nothing to be done?
I don't know maybe its a mechanic we have to live with if we want the other things? Perhaps there is some sort of RP justification along the lines of HP being more about luck, energy, etc. rather than physical damage?
Simply adding penalties to going down isn't enough to discourage yoyo healing, that only punishes martials for being in melee...
The reason why yoyo healing is optimal is because healing in general is too weak to actually prevent allies from going down. What is the point of a PC using their action and a spell slot recovering 8 HP just for their target to take 18 damage and go down before your next turn?
So in order to actually prevent this strategy from being used you need to buff healing.
Yes, this is sort of the arguments I've heard against trying many of the "fixes". And that buffing healing isn't ideal because the designers want to stay away from the designated healer role.
Still, the mechanic of letting a player drop to 0 again and again doesn't sit well. It feels off. Is there nothing to be done?
I don't know maybe its a mechanic we have to live with if we want the other things? Perhaps there is some sort of RP justification along the lines of HP being more about luck, energy, etc. rather than physical damage?
Parties basically already need 2 sources of healing because having a down party member is an average of 3.5 hours of an adventuring day just gone. First they are unconscious at 0 for 1d4 hours, then they recover 1 HP and wake up, but now will require a short rest to hopefully recover above half.
To avoid designated healers, you can buff potions and make them more available (let them be a bonus action, double the healing or something, and half the cost). Now everyone can heal and a "healer" only saves money as opposed to being required.
As for penalties to going down, maybe a sort of temporary injury that reduces their max HP by a small % for each time they went down and 1 is removed per long rest. That incentivises not going down while not making it more likely for them to go down again in the same battle (like exhaustion does).
So have a designated healer, just heal sensibly. Play tactically, use your abilities wisely. Focus fire on single targets, prioritise your targets, use crowd control. Dominate the battlefield and win by fighting cleverly. If your response to every encounter is charge and hit the nearest thing then your party will suffer and need a lot of healing.
I have no problem with yoyo healing because its an optimization strategy that assumes minimizing rests as best practice. For groups that want that, it introduces the element of tension which is really the effect you would want minimizing rests to produce. There's a knife edge and you are riding it. And for anyone else, you just pace yourselves and take short rests.
Consider that PCs are at full ability until they reach 0 HP.
So 0 HP is representing them finally running out of combat energy - a small heal will get them up, but only until the next hit comes in.
I kind of like that. Its more like utter exhaustion than being at death's door. Explains how taking damage fails a death save and melee attacks auto crit.
Probably doesn't explain how failing 3 death saves causes death though. So exhausted you have a heart attack?
One of the houserule in my GREYHAWK campaign is that whenever a creature is dying, it gains 1 level of Exhaustion. This encourage characters to use healing before dying, rather than after, and tend to impact the yoyo effect and scale it down.
If you want to disincentivize yoyo healing have the first heal of any kind at 0 hp simply stabilize the character (no more death saves, but still at 0). The second heal would be the one that actually regains hp
If it takes two heals and two actions (spell, potion, paladin ability, whatever) to get a character back up and in the fight, it pushes the incentive toward keeping them upright
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
If you want to disincentivize yoyo healing have the first heal of any kind at 0 hp simply stabilize the character (no more death saves, but still at 0). The second heal would be the one that actually regains hp
If it takes two heals and two actions (spell, potion, paladin ability, whatever) to get a character back up and in the fight, it pushes the incentive toward keeping them upright
Except the current healing spells aren't good enough to keep people above 0.
Our main group has a Grave Cleric and she frequently uses bigger heals mid fight to keep us Martials on our feet and hammering at the foe. Rarely will she stand back and let someone hit the ground (even if it would be more "efficient" use of spell slots to do so.
Most of the healing issues tie directly to the player using them, really. Why, at level 6 and beyond, anyone bothers to heal an ally for 8 HP I don't understand. Maybe that tactic would help some parties, but to me, it's often a wasted spell, as in many cases, initiative order will allow a foe to again drop the healed party member with a glancing blow, meaning they are at 0, healed for 8, then knocked back to 0 before their turn. Or, worse yet, try to escape the situation and get dropped by an OA.
D&D healing is a long way off from MMORPG healing and it should be. Tactical use is better and the lack of RUSHRUSHRUSH in D&D combat means you DO have a moment to consider what might be best to do.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Our main group has a Grave Cleric and she frequently uses bigger heals mid fight to keep us Martials on our feet and hammering at the foe. Rarely will she stand back and let someone hit the ground (even if it would be more "efficient" use of spell slots to do so.
Most of the healing issues tie directly to the player using them, really. Why, at level 6 and beyond, anyone bothers to heal an ally for 8 HP I don't understand. Maybe that tactic would help some parties, but to me, it's often a wasted spell, as in many cases, initiative order will allow a foe to again drop the healed party member with a glancing blow, meaning they are at 0, healed for 8, then knocked back to 0 before their turn. Or, worse yet, try to escape the situation and get dropped by an OA.
D&D healing is a long way off from MMORPG healing and it should be. Tactical use is better and the lack of RUSHRUSHRUSH in D&D combat means you DO have a moment to consider what might be best to do.
It depends on the party makeup too. If you only have one main healer, optimizing their healing makes sense
On the other hand, I was in a party once with three bards and a druid (I was the druid, and stars druid at that so got extra healing in my chalice form), and we fired healing words back and forth all the time when we had nothing better to do with our bonus actions. It added up, and we rarely had to yoyo
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
One of the houserule in my GREYHAWK campaign is that whenever a creature is dying, it gains 1 level of Exhaustion. This encourage characters to use healing before dying, rather than after, and tend to impact the yoyo effect and scale it down.
I think a level of exhaustion when you go down is a much better idea with the new exhaustion rules in the One D&D playtest.
I have my own set of rules for dying in 5e which I am polishing up, and will be using for my campaign (alas, we were greatly rushed in our last session, the only session in which a character has dropped to 0, so I made the executive decision to use the normal rules for that session).
Basic premise is that being dropped to 0hp does not stop you from acting, but it does mean that if you act, you are taking death saves at disadvantage. Healing doesn't heal you when you're at 0hp, it instead gives a modifier to your next death save.
Regarding the issue being ineffective healing, I think the issue is ineffective use of healing, and lack of danger sense. Players say "I have 5hp, better charge into combat now!" rather than "Oh wow, if I die now that's a real problem!". The healing should be being used earlier, so you're not bringing someone from 1hp to 9hp, you're bringing someone from 25hp to 33. If the monster is hitting 20 damage, then players should be thinking to heal each other before they drop into the "one-hit-kill" zone, not when they're already so deep in that zone that healing them won't get them out!
The main reason yoyo healing is a thing is because negative hit points are not a thing. Suppose you have a target with 10 hp, attacks doing 20 damage, and 5 points of healing.
If you heal first, they go up to 15 hp, get hit, and drop to zero anyway, so your healing was useless.
If you heal second, they get hit, drop to zero, and then reset to 5 hp when you heal them.
If negative hit points were a thing, healing downed targets would still be valuable, but you'd want to use big heals, not a first level healing word.
I have never really noticed a problem with yoyo healing in combat. If it happens a lot you need a better strategy.
But all that aside I can see nothing wrong with giving a point of exhaustion each time someone is reduced to 0. As long as its the new exhaustion rules. (the old were harsh)
There used to be rules for negative hit point, you could always home brew something.
I fixed the yoyo healing in my games with a two pronged approach.
My enemies go for kills often. If you're on the ground and it can attack you, it will. My monsters are evil and savage and it shows in their behavior. You risk actual death by being at 0 because something is going to finish the job.
I homebrew the heck out of healing. It isn't all that complex but, whenever someone recieves magical healing they can use their own HD to supplement the healing. On a dice per dice basic. Get healed by a L1 Healing word? You can also spend a HD. You gain HP based on both. Drink a Greater Healing potion for 4d4+4? You can also spend up to 4 HD and heal that too.
It makes the party able to somewhat effectively heal in combat and stay clear of super low HP, while burning a resource they were going to burn during a short rest anyway. It doesn't affect their long term staying power either since it is still limited by how many HD they normally have, just lets them use them in a more opportune time. And it incentivizes them to stay clear of low HP because enemies will absolutely take advantage of a low HP target and secure a kill. Yoyo healing in my games is super rare but now when it happens it is a moment of triumph because death was right around the corner.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
I fixed the yoyo healing in my games with a two pronged approach.
My enemies go for kills often. If you're on the ground and it can attack you, it will. My monsters are evil and savage and it shows in their behavior. You risk actual death by being at 0 because something is going to finish the job.
I homebrew the heck out of healing. It isn't all that complex but, whenever someone recieves magical healing they can use their own HD to supplement the healing. On a dice per dice basic. Get healed by a L1 Healing word? You can also spend a HD. You gain HP based on both. Drink a Greater Healing potion for 4d4+4? You can also spend up to 4 HD and heal that too.
It makes the party able to somewhat effectively heal in combat and stay clear of super low HP, while burning a resource they were going to burn during a short rest anyway. It doesn't affect their long term staying power either since it is still limited by how many HD they normally have, just lets them use them in a more opportune time. And it incentivizes them to stay clear of low HP because enemies will absolutely take advantage of a low HP target and secure a kill. Yoyo healing in my games is super rare but now when it happens it is a moment of triumph because death was right around the corner.
Smart and/or vicious enemies should go for the kill. Monsters only defending themselves or that might take prisoners (a ridiculous amount of evil intelligent monsters are slavers) are more likely to leave you alive at 0, but if they have reason to suspect you have healing magic they might confirm the kill of the first few to go down.
This is a pretty good house rule. It also enforces the trope of healing getting weaker the more you receive it in a short period.
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I've read plenty of stuff about possible fixes to yoyo healing (waiting for a player to drop to 0 HP then healing them back up for a turn only to have them downed again) as an optimal strategy.
There doesn't seem to be a clear consensus though and some say that its not really much of a problem to begin with. I'm hoping to get some feedback from people who have tried solutions and if there is any indication that One D&D may address the issue.
I've heard adding a level of exhaustion per time being brought to 0. I've heard not resetting death saves on being brought back up. I've heard simply playing monsters differently, making them attack downed PCs. I've heard of injury tables and negative health. What, if anything actually makes the game better?
Simply adding penalties to going down isn't enough to discourage yoyo healing, that only punishes martials for being in melee...
The reason why yoyo healing is optimal is because healing in general is too weak to actually prevent allies from going down. What is the point of a PC using their action and a spell slot recovering 8 HP just for their target to take 18 damage and go down before your next turn?
So in order to actually prevent this strategy from being used you need to buff healing.
Yes, this is sort of the arguments I've heard against trying many of the "fixes". And that buffing healing isn't ideal because the designers want to stay away from the designated healer role.
Still, the mechanic of letting a player drop to 0 again and again doesn't sit well. It feels off. Is there nothing to be done?
I don't know maybe its a mechanic we have to live with if we want the other things? Perhaps there is some sort of RP justification along the lines of HP being more about luck, energy, etc. rather than physical damage?
Parties basically already need 2 sources of healing because having a down party member is an average of 3.5 hours of an adventuring day just gone. First they are unconscious at 0 for 1d4 hours, then they recover 1 HP and wake up, but now will require a short rest to hopefully recover above half.
To avoid designated healers, you can buff potions and make them more available (let them be a bonus action, double the healing or something, and half the cost). Now everyone can heal and a "healer" only saves money as opposed to being required.
As for penalties to going down, maybe a sort of temporary injury that reduces their max HP by a small % for each time they went down and 1 is removed per long rest. That incentivises not going down while not making it more likely for them to go down again in the same battle (like exhaustion does).
Consider that PCs are at full ability until they reach 0 HP.
So 0 HP is representing them finally running out of combat energy - a small heal will get them up, but only until the next hit comes in.
So have a designated healer, just heal sensibly. Play tactically, use your abilities wisely. Focus fire on single targets, prioritise your targets, use crowd control. Dominate the battlefield and win by fighting cleverly. If your response to every encounter is charge and hit the nearest thing then your party will suffer and need a lot of healing.
I have no problem with yoyo healing because its an optimization strategy that assumes minimizing rests as best practice. For groups that want that, it introduces the element of tension which is really the effect you would want minimizing rests to produce. There's a knife edge and you are riding it. And for anyone else, you just pace yourselves and take short rests.
Most boring party role ever.
And you can't even employ MMORPG logic of only healing the tank, and letting DPS die who stand in the fire.
I kind of like that. Its more like utter exhaustion than being at death's door. Explains how taking damage fails a death save and melee attacks auto crit.
Probably doesn't explain how failing 3 death saves causes death though. So exhausted you have a heart attack?
One of the houserule in my GREYHAWK campaign is that whenever a creature is dying, it gains 1 level of Exhaustion. This encourage characters to use healing before dying, rather than after, and tend to impact the yoyo effect and scale it down.
If you want to disincentivize yoyo healing have the first heal of any kind at 0 hp simply stabilize the character (no more death saves, but still at 0). The second heal would be the one that actually regains hp
If it takes two heals and two actions (spell, potion, paladin ability, whatever) to get a character back up and in the fight, it pushes the incentive toward keeping them upright
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Except the current healing spells aren't good enough to keep people above 0.
Our main group has a Grave Cleric and she frequently uses bigger heals mid fight to keep us Martials on our feet and hammering at the foe. Rarely will she stand back and let someone hit the ground (even if it would be more "efficient" use of spell slots to do so.
Most of the healing issues tie directly to the player using them, really. Why, at level 6 and beyond, anyone bothers to heal an ally for 8 HP I don't understand. Maybe that tactic would help some parties, but to me, it's often a wasted spell, as in many cases, initiative order will allow a foe to again drop the healed party member with a glancing blow, meaning they are at 0, healed for 8, then knocked back to 0 before their turn. Or, worse yet, try to escape the situation and get dropped by an OA.
D&D healing is a long way off from MMORPG healing and it should be. Tactical use is better and the lack of RUSHRUSHRUSH in D&D combat means you DO have a moment to consider what might be best to do.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
It depends on the party makeup too. If you only have one main healer, optimizing their healing makes sense
On the other hand, I was in a party once with three bards and a druid (I was the druid, and stars druid at that so got extra healing in my chalice form), and we fired healing words back and forth all the time when we had nothing better to do with our bonus actions. It added up, and we rarely had to yoyo
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I think a level of exhaustion when you go down is a much better idea with the new exhaustion rules in the One D&D playtest.
I have my own set of rules for dying in 5e which I am polishing up, and will be using for my campaign (alas, we were greatly rushed in our last session, the only session in which a character has dropped to 0, so I made the executive decision to use the normal rules for that session).
Basic premise is that being dropped to 0hp does not stop you from acting, but it does mean that if you act, you are taking death saves at disadvantage. Healing doesn't heal you when you're at 0hp, it instead gives a modifier to your next death save.
Regarding the issue being ineffective healing, I think the issue is ineffective use of healing, and lack of danger sense. Players say "I have 5hp, better charge into combat now!" rather than "Oh wow, if I die now that's a real problem!". The healing should be being used earlier, so you're not bringing someone from 1hp to 9hp, you're bringing someone from 25hp to 33. If the monster is hitting 20 damage, then players should be thinking to heal each other before they drop into the "one-hit-kill" zone, not when they're already so deep in that zone that healing them won't get them out!
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The main reason yoyo healing is a thing is because negative hit points are not a thing. Suppose you have a target with 10 hp, attacks doing 20 damage, and 5 points of healing.
If negative hit points were a thing, healing downed targets would still be valuable, but you'd want to use big heals, not a first level healing word.
I have never really noticed a problem with yoyo healing in combat. If it happens a lot you need a better strategy.
But all that aside I can see nothing wrong with giving a point of exhaustion each time someone is reduced to 0. As long as its the new exhaustion rules. (the old were harsh)
There used to be rules for negative hit point, you could always home brew something.
I fixed the yoyo healing in my games with a two pronged approach.
It makes the party able to somewhat effectively heal in combat and stay clear of super low HP, while burning a resource they were going to burn during a short rest anyway. It doesn't affect their long term staying power either since it is still limited by how many HD they normally have, just lets them use them in a more opportune time. And it incentivizes them to stay clear of low HP because enemies will absolutely take advantage of a low HP target and secure a kill. Yoyo healing in my games is super rare but now when it happens it is a moment of triumph because death was right around the corner.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.