Ok Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm hoping we can have a constructive conversation about creating a balanced mechanic for regeneration.

Regeneration is clearly a very powerful ability, so I want to make this cool, but not OP.

I'm using Aasimar's Healing Hands trait as a starting point.  Healing Hands has several mechanics:

1. As an action
2. You can touch a creature (heal self or others)
3. Cause it to regain HP = your level
4. Once per long rest

Here are some thoughts on regeneration:

1. It is automatic and forced. (you cannot decide to not regenerate)
2. Self-heal only.
3. Larger pool of points (2x level?)
4. Slower usage (constitution modifier, minimum 1)
5. Used at start of turn unless you have taken cold, fire, or necrotic damage since your last turn.
6. You recover your regeneration pool at the end of a long rest.

Reasoning:

• Having a tiny heal limited to a tiny pool doesn't make sense to me
• Being unable to heal others is a pretty big limitation
• Being forced to use the points you have if you are below max ensures a constant draw on the points, and therefore should help prevent shenanigans.
• Damage types listed that prevent using your regen at the start of your turn are fairly common.

Examples at level 10:

An aasimar could heal anyone in their party by 10 hp for an action.
A [race with regen and a constitution of 12] would have to heal itself 1hp/round for 20 rounds.
A [regen race with constitution of 16] would have to heal itself 3hp/round for 6 rounds, and then 2hp on the 7th round.

This doesn't feel OP to me, given how low the heals are, and that it can be prevented with some pretty common damage types, but I am not a shenanigan expert and I welcome constructive criticism.

Outstanding questions:

• Should they only be forced to use it during combat? ie, while resting you can use HD instead of your regen points?
• Clearly this trait would need to be weighted with any other traits the race has, but in terms of it's balance with Healing Hands, what are your opinions?

To answer your Outstanding Questions, it depends on the implementation of this. Say in a dungeon my Regenerating Race character (using the level 10 con 12 example above.)springs a trap and takes 5 poison damage. Does my character go back to full and then continue to have 15 uses left?

Suggestion: Why not make the Con modifier the max? If you have a constitution of 16, you can regain up to 3 hp minimum of 1.

To ask my own questions:

Will I truly remember to use this every turn?

Why those three damage types? Trolls and revenants only have two specific damage types and cold and necrotic damage are neither of them.

Quote from Astromancer >>

To answer your Outstanding Questions, it depends on the implementation of this. Say in a dungeon my Regenerating Race character (using the level 10 con 12 example above.)springs a trap and takes 5 poison damage. Does my character go back to full and then continue to have 15 uses left?

Suggestion: Why not make the Con modifier the max? If you have a constitution of 16, you can regain up to 3 hp minimum of 1.

To ask my own questions:

Will I truly remember to use this every turn?

Why those three damage types? Trolls and revenants only have two specific damage types and cold and necrotic damage are neither of them.

 

 With the trap, that's a good question.  If not in combat I was wondering whether I allow hit die or not.  So not sure how to rule that.  But assuming no rest, yes, you'd regen up to max and have left over points.

IMO If constitution was the maximuim pool, then it wouldn't scale like, at all.  It would be super OP at low levels and next to unimportant at high levels.

Maybe I didn't communicate clearly before but the constitution modifier has always been what I thought the regen rate would be. vegepygmy is a regen creature that I tailored this after, hence the damage types

In or out of combat it should be the same mechanic. It's already complicated, making it more so seems unnecessary.

I ddon't think it would be OP. Say you have a constitution of 16, allowing you to regain 1 hp now, saving the hit points for when they mattered. This may cause some shenanigans but I think players enjoy that agency.

When I say "will I remember to do this every turn", I am actually asking about playability. Think about spells like heroism. Heroism gives temporary hit points every round. It is an incredibly easy thing to forget about. Now you have to keep track of a similar ability almost every turn. How often do you think this ability be forgotten about?

If you watch Mike Mearls' Happy Hour, you know that in the 5e playtest something testers hated was combat being long and arduous. This certainly adds a level of complexity that might not go over well.

I would say that two restricting damage types is enough, one of which is fire and the other is thematic to the race.

Simplicity is a good point. I think I'll follow your advice and kill must spend but still limit it to the Constitution modifier as I still want it to be the heal over time effect I was looking for (rather than a massive heal when you feel like it).

Is this balanced,w ould you say? https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/430095-a-wound-no-more

I think it being a pool that's like level+con modx2 and you healing con mod at the start of each turn would be balanced and really cool. correct me if I'm wrong of course.

personally, the regen being a thing tied to the race and thus always active and available from level one makes is to me seem like something that would become second nature to check up on, as opposed to a temporary spell effect that may not be used often.

I like this, it is something I would have liked on one of my characters (I did add something like this to one character using Hero Lab actually, it was a set amount of 5 hp.) I have never actually used it in a campaign and he had other features that made him unbalanced anyway like being a weretiger and I think under certain rules he got hp back after shifting forms, having a faster regeneration just seemed right.) 

applying it could be easy to forget, but at the same time when it is build right in from the beginning and happens every round then might be easy to remember too, especially if it is something simple like healing up to your con modifier every round. I think yours set up is fairly reasonable. I do think cold and necrotic are good picks for slowing down the ability. (actually I think Fire and Lightning would be effective in that regard too, but putting too many would void any reason to have it).

I would probably forget the pool and just have the character regenerate points up to a maximum of their Con modifier each round. I am sure I don't need to say why that doesn't work.  

It has my approval. And I would love to use it on a character.