While I have yet to use any of these rules and not sure if maybe others have but I figured I would post this here for the hell of it. One thing that sort of bothers me is how the healing system is setup. From spells to potions to rests both long and short. They just don't seem to be right and out of balance so I came up with a few ideas to fix it.
1.) Healing potions. Healing potions should give max healing for each potion type. I find that potions costs are rather on the high end already and I always feel ripped off when buying them. For me, I like the idea of the potions falling under two categories. Good/High-end potions = Potions that were made correctly and Poor Quality/Poorly made potions that were made not so well. Having good/high-end potions healing max while having poor quality potions healing the dice rolled amount. This allows for fun RP for the DM to play different styles of shopkeeps. From the honest ones with good products to the shady ones who might try to pull a fast one at the party.
2.) Short and long rests. This one is simple and makes for a bit more realism and RP protentional. Sleeping in a bed or on the ground to resting for an hour by a campfire to heal up just seems a bit weird and empty to me so that is why I think players should have to buy bandages to help tend to their fresh wounds. No bandages mean no healing and restoring hit points. Treating wounds as a serious threat should be an important thing for the players and to not be tending to their wounds in some manner and leaving it to hit dice or simply a plain empty long rest without doing so just bothers me. I know that it is implied but spending the coin and taking the time to care for one's wounds or someone else I feel would help bring out the RP even more.
3.)Short rests. Going with a short rest, it just does not seem right to me that within a span of one hour that someone could from getting a sword plunged through their chest and have just one HP left, then take a short rest to heal up fully like nothing happened using hit dice. Unless magic healing spell or healing potion is used it just seems way out of place to me for something like that to happen unless they are Deadpool or wolverine and have a healing factor like them. For that my rule for short rests is that players can only heal for half of their total health. Doing so will make sure the party has either an active healer or are spending their coin on health potions. It can be fun feeling the hurt after that big battle. Example: A player character with a max of 100 hit points has 1 hit point and takes a short rest to heal up to a max of 51 hit points. If the player character has a total of 51 hit points they heal up to their max health of 100.
4.) Healing spells. During combat, things can get crazy and things happen fast. Spells that are cast normally and with ease now might have a harder time doing so when fighting for their life. During combat, healing spells heal for the dice amount rolled while out of combat they heal for max amount. Out of combat the spell caster has time to make sure they are casting the spell correctly and pulling in the full arcane energy for the spell allowing for a perfect spell casting.
Treat like a working day, you get one short rest (a one hour lunch break) and one long rest (you having 8 hours of sleep/down time). You can take as many short/long rests as you like but only one of each counts towards healing with hit dice/recovering spell slots/random charges/points etc.
Location damage:
If you want to get into some really complicated aspect you could do what some Live Action Role play systems do which is split the body into 6 areas (Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Torso Left Leg, Right Leg), each location has 1/3 of the character total HP, when you roll to hit you roll a d6 to see where the blow landed, roll damage as normal and deduct it from the total HP and the locations HP, when the location reaches zero HP it is considered broken, if a location reaches minus double its HP it is severed. That way as a DM you can keep track of injuries as you go along, assign penalties to movement for leg injuries, penalties to hit or damage for arm injuries and if the torso/head reach zero then the player falls unconscious and rolls death saves to see if they stabilize, if head or torso reaches the "severed" stage then the character is dead. It can make for some truly traumatic combat as anyone going into heal someone else get a vivid description from the DM about the injuries the character has, also makes for some good role play possibilities from the players as you tell them their a weapon blow lands on their arm/leg and the hear a sickening crack of bone and their arm is now broken and they can't use it until they are healed.
You could also use a similar tactic for players hitting your boss monsters or BBEG's to give the satisfaction of seeing a weapon blow break that evil clerics shield arm and see their shield now hang limply to their side.
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2.) Short and long rests. This one is simple and makes for a bit more realism and RP protentional. Sleeping in a bed or on the ground to resting for an hour by a campfire to heal up just seems a bit weird and empty to me so that is why I think players should have to buy bandages to help tend to their fresh wounds. No bandages mean no healing and restoring hit points. Treating wounds as a serious threat should be an important thing for the players and to not be tending to their wounds in some manner and leaving it to hit dice or simply a plain empty long rest without doing so just bothers me. I know that it is implied but spending the coin and taking the time to care for one's wounds or someone else I feel would help bring out the RP even more.
3.) Short rests. Going with a short rest, it just does not seem right to me that within a span of one hour that someone could from getting a sword plunged through their chest and have just one HP left, then take a short rest to heal up fully like nothing happened using hit dice. Unless magic healing spell or healing potion is used it just seems way out of place to me for something like that to happen unless they are Deadpool or wolverine and have a healing factor like them. For that my rule for short rests is that players can only heal for half of their total health. Doing so will make sure the party has either an active healer or are spending their coin on health potions. It can be fun feeling the hurt after that big battle.
Example: A player character with a max of 100 hit points has 1 hit point and takes a short rest to heal up to a max of 51 hit points. If the player character has a total of 51 hit points they heal up to their max health of 100.
4.) Healing spells. During combat, things can get crazy and things happen fast. Spells that are cast normally and with ease now might have a harder time doing so when fighting for their life. During combat, healing spells heal for the dice amount rolled while out of combat they heal for max amount. Out of combat the spell caster has time to make sure they are casting the spell correctly and pulling in the full arcane energy for the spell allowing for a perfect spell casting.
A couple of things I've tinkered with...
Rests periods:
Treat like a working day, you get one short rest (a one hour lunch break) and one long rest (you having 8 hours of sleep/down time). You can take as many short/long rests as you like but only one of each counts towards healing with hit dice/recovering spell slots/random charges/points etc.
Location damage:
If you want to get into some really complicated aspect you could do what some Live Action Role play systems do which is split the body into 6 areas (Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Torso Left Leg, Right Leg), each location has 1/3 of the character total HP, when you roll to hit you roll a d6 to see where the blow landed, roll damage as normal and deduct it from the total HP and the locations HP, when the location reaches zero HP it is considered broken, if a location reaches minus double its HP it is severed. That way as a DM you can keep track of injuries as you go along, assign penalties to movement for leg injuries, penalties to hit or damage for arm injuries and if the torso/head reach zero then the player falls unconscious and rolls death saves to see if they stabilize, if head or torso reaches the "severed" stage then the character is dead. It can make for some truly traumatic combat as anyone going into heal someone else get a vivid description from the DM about the injuries the character has, also makes for some good role play possibilities from the players as you tell them their a weapon blow lands on their arm/leg and the hear a sickening crack of bone and their arm is now broken and they can't use it until they are healed.
You could also use a similar tactic for players hitting your boss monsters or BBEG's to give the satisfaction of seeing a weapon blow break that evil clerics shield arm and see their shield now hang limply to their side.