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.
This is where I'm at, too. I have played around with doing it using 5e exhaustion, but it always seemed a little too heavy a penalty. With the playtest rules, if it happens once or twice, it's mostly a mild hindrance, but each time it increments, the party needs to think more about either finishing the fight or changing tactics--maybe even an exit strategy.
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.
I almost added this to my houserules, but then I stopped to consider the effect it might have on short rests - namely, making them unnecessary. This would bode ill for my Warlock player! So I'm not adding it as yet!
I almost added this to my houserules, but then I stopped to consider the effect it might have on short rests - namely, making them unnecessary. This would bode ill for my Warlock player! So I'm not adding it as yet!
It doesn't make short rests unnecessary. A couple reasons, one of which you sorta mention.
1. Many classes get uses of features back after a short rest. So they are all still quite motivated to rest. Like your warlock, they'll want short rests even if they're not needing hp.
2. They still can heal from SRs if they have the time and skip having to spend the spells on healing. There are times when they're in a hurry and patch each other up with spells, but more often they still opt to SR heal if they can afford the time to do so.
3. A day is long and SRs sorta just happen. No one stays nonstop active for the entirety of the day. If the party is hanging out or socializing or even just shopping or just lightly meandering, or taking a lunch break etc, these are all just incidental short rests. Just sprinkle these in whenever appropriate without needing your players to make declaration of intent. Maybe just a style of DMing thing, but I can't stand games where like 12 hours go by and the players are like "yo did we get a SR in" and the DM is like "No you didn't say in advance you were taking a SR". Like c'mon. Sprinkle them in throughout the day. Unless you're in a chain gang breaking rocks all day, give your characters their breaks yo.
Anywho. TLDR: Speaking from practical experience, they still take short rests. But I'm maybe liberal with granting them.
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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.
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.
This right here. Yo-yo healing will always occur if it's that or a wasted spell slot. Until they add negative HP or stop Healing spells from being nearly useless to prevent people from dropping, yo-yo healing will be part of the way the game is played.
Not sure if this has been suggested as a possible fix, but what if certain healing spells also awarded a temporary Damage Threshold to the target? That way, they can be brought back up from 0 HP and the enemies might not be able to widdle them down to 0 again before you each get another turn. A heavy hitter focused on the target could likely still get that job done if thats where its focus lies, but it reduces the chances of a couple minions tapping the ally for 1 damage and downing them again. It would also make healing a target before they drop to 0 more tempting in combat, as it may be tactically advantageous to "shield" an ally before they take on the brunt of enemy forces
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All battles are won long before the fighting starts.
No, pretty sure they're won at about the time the fighting ends.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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All battles are won long before the fighting starts.
For the vast majority of battles the probable winner is known before the start of combat (hint: if you use anything close to the recommended rules for encounters, that will be the PCs), but that doesn't mean tactics in combat are meaningless.
All battles are won long before the fighting starts.
For the vast majority of battles the probable winner is known before the start of combat (hint: if you use anything close to the recommended rules for encounters, that will be the PCs), but that doesn't mean tactics in combat are meaningless.
I agree strongly and disagree strongly with different parts of this.
I agree you can have a pretty good idea who is going to win in advance. Thats just statistics and probabilities at play.
Where I disagree is that is always going to be the PCs if you use the default CR and encounter system. That system's not balanced. I could slap something together that is all but guaranteed to TPK a party and it'll fall well within expected CR/encounter parameters. Could also do the opposite, and design an encounter the game says will murder the party, and it'll actually be a cakewalk for them. The encounter rules are bunk.
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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.
Where I disagree is that is always going to be the PCs if you use the default CR and encounter system. That system's not balanced. I could slap something together that is all but guaranteed to TPK a party and it'll fall well within expected CR/encounter parameters.
There are creatures with very dubious CR, usually because they can take people out without doing damage, but as long as you use relatively normal monsters, and don't set up a situation that gives the monsters a heavy advantage (which is supposed to be part of evaluating encounter difficulty) it's very difficult to seriously challenge PCs of even moderate level for less than around 150% of the minimum deadly encounter budget.
i think multiplying heals by 4 should do the trick if you don't want yoyo's every round. it would make it closer to every other round (or more since people might use heals lol), which is way more fun.
i think multiplying heals by 4 should do the trick if you don't want yoyo's every round. it would make it closer to every other round (or more since people might use heals lol), which is way more fun.
Multiply heals by 4? Might as well just add in a rule that you instantly win if you have a Life Cleric.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
i think multiplying heals by 4 should do the trick if you don't want yoyo's every round. it would make it closer to every other round (or more since people might use heals lol), which is way more fun.
i think multiplying heals by 4 should do the trick if you don't want yoyo's every round. it would make it closer to every other round (or more since people might use heals lol), which is way more fun.
Multiply heals by 4? Might as well just add in a rule that you instantly win if you have a Life Cleric.
life cleric essentially doubles the healing, so they wouldnt need this buff as much as others. my thinking is for low levels where average damage is around 15 and average heal is around 6, you would get 1.5 rounds from a 4x heal (not super broken). for higher levels with access to 3rd lvl slots, then you are looking at dmg averages closer to 25, with average heals of 9 (unless you get close and risk losing your healer or use a 3rd lvl slot, which is painful when you only have 2), which buys you around 1.5 rounds (again, pretty good balance). life cleric would get around 8 heals at early levels, giving 2.1 rounds (which is sustainable with lvl 1 slots); at higher levels you get 12 hp, which becomes 48, which is 1.9 rounds (but using lvl 2 slots is not as sustainable since there are great utility options at that level. the desin intent seems to be to give around 0.25-0.5 rounds of health per heal, which would required at least 2 healers to keep a tank up (unless bear totem emerald dragonborn or something)
i think multiplying heals by 4 should do the trick if you don't want yoyo's every round. it would make it closer to every other round (or more since people might use heals lol), which is way more fun.
Multiply heals by 4? Might as well just add in a rule that you instantly win if you have a Life Cleric.
life cleric essentially doubles the healing, so they wouldnt need this buff as much as others. my thinking is for low levels where average damage is around 15 and average heal is around 6, you would get 1.5 rounds from a 4x heal (not super broken). for higher levels with access to 3rd lvl slots, then you are looking at dmg averages closer to 25, with average heals of 9 (unless you get close and risk losing your healer or use a 3rd lvl slot, which is painful when you only have 2), which buys you around 1.5 rounds (again, pretty good balance). life cleric would get around 8 heals at early levels, giving 2.1 rounds (which is sustainable with lvl 1 slots); at higher levels you get 12 hp, which becomes 48, which is 1.9 rounds (but using lvl 2 slots is not as sustainable since there are great utility options at that level. the desin intent seems to be to give around 0.25-0.5 rounds of health per heal, which would required at least 2 healers to keep a tank up (unless bear totem emerald dragonborn or something)
Being able to keep up (and, despite threats, actively greatly improve the current hit points of) a tank which is being fully attacked while using nothing but first level spell slots is a funny idea of "balance."
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
i think multiplying heals by 4 should do the trick if you don't want yoyo's every round. it would make it closer to every other round (or more since people might use heals lol), which is way more fun.
This is where I'm at, too. I have played around with doing it using 5e exhaustion, but it always seemed a little too heavy a penalty. With the playtest rules, if it happens once or twice, it's mostly a mild hindrance, but each time it increments, the party needs to think more about either finishing the fight or changing tactics--maybe even an exit strategy.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I almost added this to my houserules, but then I stopped to consider the effect it might have on short rests - namely, making them unnecessary. This would bode ill for my Warlock player! So I'm not adding it as yet!
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It doesn't make short rests unnecessary. A couple reasons, one of which you sorta mention.
1. Many classes get uses of features back after a short rest. So they are all still quite motivated to rest. Like your warlock, they'll want short rests even if they're not needing hp.
2. They still can heal from SRs if they have the time and skip having to spend the spells on healing. There are times when they're in a hurry and patch each other up with spells, but more often they still opt to SR heal if they can afford the time to do so.
3. A day is long and SRs sorta just happen. No one stays nonstop active for the entirety of the day. If the party is hanging out or socializing or even just shopping or just lightly meandering, or taking a lunch break etc, these are all just incidental short rests. Just sprinkle these in whenever appropriate without needing your players to make declaration of intent. Maybe just a style of DMing thing, but I can't stand games where like 12 hours go by and the players are like "yo did we get a SR in" and the DM is like "No you didn't say in advance you were taking a SR". Like c'mon. Sprinkle them in throughout the day. Unless you're in a chain gang breaking rocks all day, give your characters their breaks yo.
Anywho. TLDR: Speaking from practical experience, they still take short rests. But I'm maybe liberal with granting them.
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.
This right here. Yo-yo healing will always occur if it's that or a wasted spell slot. Until they add negative HP or stop Healing spells from being nearly useless to prevent people from dropping, yo-yo healing will be part of the way the game is played.
It is not I who am Mad, it is I who am Krazy!
Not sure if this has been suggested as a possible fix, but what if certain healing spells also awarded a temporary Damage Threshold to the target? That way, they can be brought back up from 0 HP and the enemies might not be able to widdle them down to 0 again before you each get another turn. A heavy hitter focused on the target could likely still get that job done if thats where its focus lies, but it reduces the chances of a couple minions tapping the ally for 1 damage and downing them again. It would also make healing a target before they drop to 0 more tempting in combat, as it may be tactically advantageous to "shield" an ally before they take on the brunt of enemy forces
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Instead of adjusting the healing ability of spells how about adjusting the fighting tactics?
Because the optimal tactics with yoyo healing are unappetizing?
Pretty much this, for me at least.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
All battles are won long before the fighting starts.
No, pretty sure they're won at about the time the fighting ends.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
For the vast majority of battles the probable winner is known before the start of combat (hint: if you use anything close to the recommended rules for encounters, that will be the PCs), but that doesn't mean tactics in combat are meaningless.
I agree strongly and disagree strongly with different parts of this.
I agree you can have a pretty good idea who is going to win in advance. Thats just statistics and probabilities at play.
Where I disagree is that is always going to be the PCs if you use the default CR and encounter system. That system's not balanced. I could slap something together that is all but guaranteed to TPK a party and it'll fall well within expected CR/encounter parameters. Could also do the opposite, and design an encounter the game says will murder the party, and it'll actually be a cakewalk for them. The encounter rules are bunk.
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.
Sun Tzu didn't have to deal with death saves.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
There are creatures with very dubious CR, usually because they can take people out without doing damage, but as long as you use relatively normal monsters, and don't set up a situation that gives the monsters a heavy advantage (which is supposed to be part of evaluating encounter difficulty) it's very difficult to seriously challenge PCs of even moderate level for less than around 150% of the minimum deadly encounter budget.
i think multiplying heals by 4 should do the trick if you don't want yoyo's every round. it would make it closer to every other round (or more since people might use heals lol), which is way more fun.
Multiply heals by 4? Might as well just add in a rule that you instantly win if you have a Life Cleric.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
Sounds like upcasting IMO.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
the least fun i've had playing dnd was trying to keep a monk with low ac up when face tanking.
life cleric essentially doubles the healing, so they wouldnt need this buff as much as others. my thinking is for low levels where average damage is around 15 and average heal is around 6, you would get 1.5 rounds from a 4x heal (not super broken). for higher levels with access to 3rd lvl slots, then you are looking at dmg averages closer to 25, with average heals of 9 (unless you get close and risk losing your healer or use a 3rd lvl slot, which is painful when you only have 2), which buys you around 1.5 rounds (again, pretty good balance). life cleric would get around 8 heals at early levels, giving 2.1 rounds (which is sustainable with lvl 1 slots); at higher levels you get 12 hp, which becomes 48, which is 1.9 rounds (but using lvl 2 slots is not as sustainable since there are great utility options at that level. the desin intent seems to be to give around 0.25-0.5 rounds of health per heal, which would required at least 2 healers to keep a tank up (unless bear totem emerald dragonborn or something)
Being able to keep up (and, despite threats, actively greatly improve the current hit points of) a tank which is being fully attacked while using nothing but first level spell slots is a funny idea of "balance."
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
The players when healing word recovers 26 HP: 🥰
The players when the troll regenerates 40 HP each round: 😭