Magic Healing Grants Temprary HP: Consequences?

[wayfare]

Hey All:

I am trying to make the Heal skill good at...Healing again, but magic is always going to have the edge in raw ammount of healing offered. So I thought this little fix might help.

Spells that cure damage instead grant temporary HP equal to the damage they would heal.

The Heal skill has some new functions

Treat Injury: As an extended action, you can attempt to restore an allies health. Resoring 1 hit die worth of health is a DC 15 check. Every additional hit die you heal increases the DC by 5. If the target is below 50% of his total hp, the DC increases by 5.
Each check you make takes 10 minutes of effort.

Are there any serious consequences to making this change?

[Network]

The frenzied berserk may have problems once he goes into the three digits negative. Also, since they are temporary hp, the PCs won't be really healed. They will have to heal themselves immediately before a fight.

On the other side, if these temporary hit points allowed to exceed the cap, PCs may break it easily, especially on the first fight of the day.

[DracoDei]

This promotes the "Five Minute Work-day" I should think. You can nova healing spells before starting the adventuring day. Also, the "Below 50%" thing seems to work backwards.

What is an "extended action"? Are you using Pathfinder, or 3.5? Maybe you are translating back to English from a translated rulebook?

I guess if it is a full-round action, that could make it useful in-battle... if the enemy ever gets through the nova-ed temporary hitpoints.

[wayfare]

This promotes the "Five Minute Work-day" I should think. You can nova healing spells before starting the adventuring day. Also, the "Below 50%" thing seems to work backwards.

What is an "extended action"? Are you using Pathfinder, or 3.5? Maybe you are translating back to English from a translated rulebook?

I guess if it is a full-round action, that could make it useful in-battle... if the enemy ever gets through the nova-ed temporary hitpoints.

Sorry, its leftover from writing nWoD stuff.

I didn't think Temporary HP worked that way -- i thought it didn't stack if it was from the same source? Honestly, it probably shouldn't stack at all.

[Vadskye]

Temporary hit points don't stack by RAW, and I don't see why this house rule would change that. So "healing novas" aren't a problem.

I like this in theory. However, it has some problems. For one, some healing spells (Heal) are way too powerful in this system. Normally, the usefulness of a big healing spell is limited by the hit points of the person you cast it on. With this system, it isn't; if you Heal someone with only 50 hit points, they still go up to 170+ hit points. That's too good. That also brings up a second point: weak classes see a very significant gain in their ability to survive thanks to these temporary hit points, while the people who actually take hits a lot (and have a lot of hit points) don't see as much gain. Third, what are the duration on these temporary hit points? All day? That needs to be decided.

Both of the first two problems could be solved by capping the total amount of temporary hit points a class can receive from healing spells by some amount tied to its normal hit points. How about (stealing from Team Fortress 2, of all things) you can't exceed 150% of your normal hit points?

Also, the hit die mechanics are pretty much unique to D&D Next; are you trying to integrate that whole healing system into 3.5? If so, you should make that explicit.

[DracoDei]

Sorry, its leftover from writing nWoD stuff.
Great, but what sort of an action do you actually mean? Full-Round? Something that takes 5ish minutes?

In any case give an exact amount of time either move/standard/full-round, a number of rounds greater than 1, or a number of minutes or hours. Actually there are other options, but...


I didn't think Temporary HP worked that way -- i thought it didn't stack if it was from the same source? Honestly, it probably shouldn't stack at all.


Temporary hit points don't stack by RAW, and I don't see why this house rule would change that. So "healing novas" aren't a problem.
My mistake.

Both of the first two problems could be solved by capping the total amount of temporary hit points a class can receive from healing spells by some amount tied to its normal hit points. How about (stealing from Team Fortress 2, of all things) you can't exceed 150% of your normal hit points?
I was going to say 200% but whichever.



Incidently, I haven't fully instituted it, I have several ideas you might want to use (PLEASE tell me how it works out if you do). Basically my Grace-Gift (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=247637) class gets some ways of being less than totally useless with the Heal skill, albeit mostly in a strictly secondary way to the cleric's spells. The specific abilities you want to look at are: "Lifesaver", "Master of the Healing-Ward", "Hands of the Healer", and under my "To add later" stuff you will find the following table (spoilered for size)
Accelerate Natural Healing(Ex):

If you forgo the use of the Lifesaver class feature, you may achieve improved results.
{table=head]Roll|First Aid or Caltrop|Spike Stones or Spike Growth|Long-term Care OR Disease (Final needed Success)|Poison|Disease (Needing 1 or more further successes)

<DC|Failure|Failure|Failure|Failure|Failure|Failure |Failure|Failure|Failure|Failure

DC|Ordinary Success|Ordinary Success|Ordinary Success|Ordinary Success|Ordinary Success|Ordinary Success|Ordinary Success|

DC+5|Move OR Standard*|5 minutes|4 / 12 hours|Undo 1 point of damage from a failed initial save or halve duration of special effect from a failed initial save|Special Retry starting in 12 hours**

DC+10|Move OR Standard OR Swift*|3 minutes|3 / 8 hours|Undo 2 points of ability score damage or 1 point of drain from a failed initial save, or reduce duration of special effect from a failed initial save to 1/3rd|Special Retry starting in 8 hours**

DC+15|Free Action*|2 minutes|2 / 6 hours|Undo 3 points of ability score damage or 1 point of ability score drain from a failed initial save, or quarter duration of special effect from a failed initial save|Special Retry starting in 6 hours**

DC+20|Free Action*|1 minute|1.5 / 4 hours|Undo 4 points of ability score damage, 2 points of ability score drain from a failed initial save, or reduce duration of special effect from a failed initial save to 1/5th|Special Retry starting in 4 hours**

DC+25|Free Action*|5 rounds|1 / 3 hours|Undo 5 points of damage, 2 points of drain from a failed initial save, or reduce duration of special effect from a failed initial save to 1/6th|Special Retry starting in 3 hours**

DC+30|Free Action*|3 rounds|40 min / 2 hours|Undo 6 points of damage, 3 points of drain from a failed initial save, or reduce duration of special effect from a failed initial save to 1/8th|Special Retry starting in 2 hours**

DC+35|Free Action*|Full-Round|20 min / 1 hour|Undo 7 points of damage, 3 points of drain, or reduce duration of special effect from a failed initial save to 1/12th|Special Retry starting in 1 hour**

DC+40|Free Action*|Standard Action|10 min / 30 min|Undo 9 points of damage, 4 points of drain, or reduce duration of special effect from a failed initial save to 1/30th|Special Retry starting in 30 minutes**
[/table]
*Time changes are retroactive, but you must have a standard action to attempt.
**Special Retries for disease when there is no previous success are another treatment period, but failure inflicts no damage. Grace-Gift may use Master of the Healing Ward to overlap two treatments for one disease in this case.
((Need to define how <6 second durations for poison secondary effects turns into mere actions that must be sacrificed/pass before the effect goes away.))
I have a similar ability in the works for the supernatural stuff, but the turning of a copy of the above table into the table for that is just barely started, and I haven't formally added either to the class itself yet.

Actually, if you drop "Lifesaver" and make the rest of it house rules that may require level/skill-rank minimums to access (and maybe drop all the DC's including those in the PHB by 5 or 10) then that might fix your problem pretty well right there. Then again it might not.

[GunbladeKnight]

What about the ruling from the positive energy plane? Whenever a target's temporary hit points exceeds his/her maximum hit points, they are required to make a DC 20 fortitude save each round it exceeds their maximum hit points or explode in a violent burst of energy.

[wayfare]

@ Draco: I was thinking of something in the 5 to 10 minute range -- does that seem reasonable?

@GunBladeKnight: Lol, I love that rule! Most hillarious death ever! But I think thats an Elder Evils specific thing, right?

I was actually thinking of saying something like The amount of temporary HP you gain from a Healing spell cannot exceed your (Constitution + 10). WOuld that be too Draconian?

[DracoDei]

@ Draco: I was thinking of something in the 5 to 10 minute range -- does that seem reasonable?
Yes, that would be reasonable.

@GunBladeKnight: Lol, I love that rule! Most hillarious death ever! But I think thats an Elder Evils specific thing, right?
FWIW I have never heard of it referred to as such, and it is in the SRD.
Also, as soon as you have a +19 Fortitude save that isn't TOO dispel-vulnerable, you can shoot the moon... of course, by that time you probably should be allowed that. Maybe have it scale upwards by +5 for every 50% (or if you don't mind keeping a chart around +1 for every 10%) of normal hitpoints you go past the 200% mark that the positive energy plane involves.

I was actually thinking of saying something like The amount of temporary HP you gain from a Healing spell cannot exceed your (Constitution + 10). WOuld that be too Draconian?
Much too draconian. That makes anything above Cure Serious Wounds of very dubious value at best. I guess that could mean that the clerics shift over to the Cure X Wounds, Mass line at those sorts of levels. I would do it as a percentage of hitpoint... or, if you want to make lower levels more survivable, try making it "50% of normal hitpoint max OR Con score" for the number of temporary hitpoints you can carry at any one time.

[Vadskye]

Do you mean it can't exceed Con + 10 over your total HP? I wouldn't say it's too draconian, but it doesn't scale with level. Since hit points scale so strongly with level, it's better to tie it to the existing hit point values.

[GunbladeKnight]

@GunBladeKnight: Lol, I love that rule! Most hillarious death ever! But I think thats an Elder Evils specific thing, right?

Actually, it's from the Planar Handbook, so it would be positive energy plane specific if anything. And even if they have a +18 Fort, it still is dangerous to have that many temp hit points. It would be 50 rolls over 5 minutes, meaning they are likely to roll at least two 1's, causing them to explode with violent energy.

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

I think the problem of the Heal skill is being approached incorrectly. For one, Heal lets you deal with potentially deadly poisons, diseases, and parasites at high levels without having to waste daily spell resources.

Another option would be the Vitality Points/Wound Points variant. www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm Magical healing only heals a small amount of wound damage (especially at low levels), making the Heal skill a bit more useful in the long term if everyone in the party has taken some wound damage.

There's also the D20 Modern version of the Heal skill. http://d20moderndb.com/game-rules/d20-modern-srd/character-creation/skills/115-treat-injury This one lets you restore 1d4 hit points per target per day as first aid (which would work great with the above Wound Points variant). You can also spend a few hours each day to perform surgery for 1d6 hit points per level of the target, but it fatigues the target afterwards (which does not work well with the above variant but could easily be tweaked to work). This version also has different ways of helping with poison and disease.