I like the idea of limited self healing as it helps the flow of the game. If after every fight the party has to rest for 8 hrs nothing would ever get done or every subsequent fight gets more and more deadly, especially if the adventure has time constraints. It should not be during combat, that is the clerics job or get potions. The Playtest idea is great but may need further scaling if it works out too powerful.
I feel very strongly that the level of healing generally being discussed trashes the 4th wall. Magic allows for a lot of leeway in modelling, but without magic, healing should take place at a rate akin to reality- or at least no better than a typical action film. I hope you create an optional modular rule doing this, because for those gamers that left at the introduction of 4th ed, I think this is probably the largest issue. Imagine in real life (doesn't matter if you are the toughest person...
View full commentI feel very strongly that the level of healing generally being discussed trashes the 4th wall. Magic allows for a lot of leeway in modelling, but without magic, healing should take place at a rate akin to reality- or at least no better than a typical action film. I hope you create an optional modular rule doing this, because for those gamers that left at the introduction of 4th ed, I think this is probably the largest issue. Imagine in real life (doesn't matter if you are the toughest person on earth or a wimpy couch potato), getting beaten down to "one hit point," taking a 10 minute rest to apply antibiotic, band-aids, etc., and being all better, then having the beating immediately resume and again lowering you to 1 hp. This time you go to bed for 6 hours, take a couple hours to shower, relax, and eat breakfast before going back for more of the same, again taking 10 minutes to apply some quick first aid before driving off to work, fit as a fiddle.
Obviously the characters are heroic and the rules will be more generous than real life, but when the above example is actually the one where you didn't get really luck when rolling your hit dice for healing, the system threatens to become more board-game than RPG. Sorry if that was a bit scathing, but I like SO MUCH of the playtesting material that the bad bits stand out even more.
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