Author Topic: Variant - Healing Surges  (Read 2415 times)

Offline Garryl

  • DnD Handbook Writer
  • ****
  • Posts: 4503
    • View Profile
Variant - Healing Surges
« on: July 07, 2017, 02:24:33 PM »
Healing Surges variant
I'm interested in the concept of healing surges. It's a nice idea, to free hit point recovery from the shackles of magic and seems to promote a more heroic play style (instead of taking days of bed rest or chewing on the CLW stick). 4E did and gave it the name (subsequently back-ported to 3.5 by several different homebrewers), and 3.5 itself was no slouch and tried something similar with UA's reserve points. Here's my shot at it.

In the end, what does this all mean? In the short term, it means that characters have a fair bit more stamina over the course of the day, or at least don't have to spend 750g on a wand of cure light wounds or lesser vigor. You should have enough healing surges to keep you going throughout one or two adventuring days, even at low levels (even first level characters will generally have between 2 and 6 healing surges, and are generally healing a greater proportion of their hit points due to rounding and the more favorable CL + Con formula). A character who goes down early in the fight (without dying, of course), will generally have most of his healing surges left, so he can be brought back easily with a DC 20 Heal check (not gravely wounded, just knocked out). Meanwhile, later on after multiple battles, that same hit point loss is a lot more serious, possibly requiring major surgery for the character to be brought back without magic or lots of bed rest.

That's the other thing. Healing surges replenish at a relatively slow rate, even though you can store up a fair number of them. You're still only getting back 1 healing surge per character per day when you're off adventuring (and only get 8 hours of rest), or 4 with someone who has invested ranks in Heal around and a full day's rest. For short adventures, characters will be full of vim and vigor, coming back easily even after hard fights. After a while, the battles will begin to take their toll, and characters won't bounce back quite as easily as their healing surges deplete faster than they are replenished.

Finally, surge feats bring a new resource mechanic to bear. Mundane characters can get some useful abilities, and even spellcasters can get in on the action (although generally not as well, since most spellcasters have poor Fort saves... Clerics/Druids excepted).

This variant would also work better if death comes a little further than -10. Dying at -10 or -1/4 your max HP (whichever is better) would give some opportunity to actually use those second wind while unconscious rules. Going all the way down to -1/2 max HP, or even full -max HP would do so even more, while also reinforcing the idea that running out of hit points doesn't mean you're on the brink of death, but running out of healing surges does. Any character with 4 or more healing surges (most adventurers at least by level 6, since who takes a Con score less than 14?) has as many or more hit points stored up in healing surges as in actual hit points.



Healing Surges
Healing surges represent the depths of your stamina and your ability to recover from extreme exertion and injury. Healing surges are most commonly used with the second wind action, enabling you to heal damage you have suffered.

The maximum number of healing surges you can have at any one time is equal to your base Fortitude save bonus + your Constitution modifier, minimum 1 healing surge. If your maximum healing surges are reduced, such as through Constitution damage or negative levels, you lose any remaining healing surges in excess of your new maximum. You do not, however, gain additional healing surges when your maximum increases.

Although you cannot normally spend more healing surges than you have, some effects may reduce your remaining healing surges below 0. While at negative healing surges, you are fatigued. If your negative healing surges are in excess of your normal maximum healing surges, you are instead exhausted.

Creatures that do not heal naturally, such as most constructs and unintelligent undead, do not receive healing surges.

Rest and Recovery
Under this variant, you do not regain hit points normally through rest. Instead, you regain healing surges, which you can immediately spend to recover hit points through a second wind. Instead of the normal recover of 1 hit point per level and 1 point of damage to each ability score that you gain from 8 hours of rest, you recover 1 healing surge. Proportionately larger recoveries (such as for extended bed rest or with treatment and a successful Heal check) cause you to recover proportionately more healing surges. Any other benefits you may gain from rest apply normally.

Some effects and abilities cause you to recover from damage as though you had rested. This healing is likewise converted to healing surges, and enables you to take a second wind. (The druid's wild shape would be an example of this, except that this is a buff the ability doesn't need so it's been altered for this variant.)

Taking a second wind (see below) is normally a standard action. Whenever you regain a healing surge due to resting or effects that simulate the recuperative effects of rest, you can take a second wind. This does not take an action. If you regain multiple healing surges at once, you can take up to that many second winds. When you take a second wind in this way, you can only spend from the healing surges you were about to regain, and you spend those healing surges before considering whether they may be lost due to exceeding your maximum healing surges.

New Action: Second Wind
Taking a second wind is a standard action. You must spend 1 healing surge to take a second wind. Some effects allow you to take a second wind even if you don't have enough healing surges remaining, allowing you to spend healing surges you don't have, reducing your healing surges to a negative amount.

Taking a second wind immediately heals you for an amount of hit points equal to one quarter your maximum hit points, rounded up, or your character level + your Constitution bonus (if positive), whichever is greater. Like with magical healing, this also removes a like amount of nonlethal damage. In addition, you heal 1 point of damage to each of your ability scores.

New Action: Recuperate
While you are at 0 or fewer hit points, have nonlethal damage equal to or greater than your current hit points, or have one or more ability scores reduced to 0 through ability damage, and have been so for at least 1 minute, you can recuperate once per minute on your turn, even if you are unconscious or unable to act. Recuperating does not take an action.

Recuperating functions as a second wind. However, when you recuperate, the maximum healing you receive is limited. Recuperating will never provide more healing than is necessary to restore you to 1 hit point, nor will it remove more nonlethal damage than is necessary for your nonlethal damage to equal your hit point total - 1, nor will it heal more damage to any ability score than is necessary to restore that ability score to 1.

As with any healing, recuperating causes you to become stable and stop losing hit points if you were dying or disabled.

Negative Levels
Negative levels reduce your maximum healing surges. For each negative level you have, your maximum healing surges is reduced by 1, to a minimum of 1 healing surge. Negative levels also reduce the number of hit points you recover with a second wind by 1 (this replaces any change due to your reduced maximum hit points and level).



New Feats
(click to show/hide)



New Flaws and Traits
(click to show/hide)



New and Expanded Skill Uses
(click to show/hide)



New and Modified Class Features
(click to show/hide)



Alternative Class Features
(click to show/hide)



Change Log
(click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: June 24, 2020, 11:07:01 PM by Garryl »

Offline Nifft

  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 324
  • Bad At Lurking
    • View Profile
Re: Variant - Healing Surges
« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2017, 12:28:15 AM »
The functional vision for Healing Surges in 4e was that they were a silo. That means two things:

1/ You can't use them for non-healing things. This means you can't bend this resource pool towards doing more damage / killing the enemy.

2/ You can't use them all at-will. Your total daily healing is huge, but risks and tension exist round-to-round because that healing is locked up. You can't access most of it on your own -- the most efficient healing is either between combats (after a short rest), or triggered by someone else's power.


Feats like Life Burn are bad, since they conflict with both of those -- and it's not like Wizards need extra kill.


Anyway, before I tear into the rest of this, let me be sure -- are you trying to emulate the play benefits of the 4e Healing Surges, or are you aiming at a different goal?

Offline Garryl

  • DnD Handbook Writer
  • ****
  • Posts: 4503
    • View Profile
Re: Variant - Healing Surges
« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2017, 01:32:30 AM »
No, I am not trying to copy the play benefits of 4th edition's healing surges. They're designed for a very different system built from very different premises. What I am starting from is the basic concept of healing surges, or at least the most apparent part of the concept. Specifically, a way for characters to heal themselves on a practical time scale without having to rely on spells and magic items. It's intended to work within 3rd edition's framework, which includes much more readily accessible magical healing (including the potential for infinite out of combat healing as early as 1st level) and much more lethal combat than 4th. The sources of tension and the value of this sort of healing are vastly different.

I freely admit that Life Burn, Surge of Power, and Surging Blow, the feats that let you turn healing surges into non-heal/protection things, are a result of scope creep. Moreover, I haven't paid them as much attention for balance purposes as I normally do. The same is true in general for this variant as a whole, for various reasons, but it's even more true for those feats.

Speaking of balance, I am far less certain on any balance issues with this material than with most of my work. I largely made it on a whim a long time ago when I was less experienced, and I didn't exactly go over it with a fine-toothed comb when I reformatted and reposted it last month. Even so, it was still just an interesting idea that kind of grew into a playable rule set, rather than being built as such.