What would change with % based healing?

[snakeman830]

I've seen comments on these boards that stood out from most of the "healing sucks" comments.  They basically said that it didn't make sense that characters get harder to heal to full as they advance in level and that a Fighter is harder to heal than an equal level Wizard.  At 0hp, everyone is basically in the same condition, so healing them up to full should take an equal amount of power, right?

Now, the person who brought this up went on to say that everyone should have roughly equal points and reduce damage differently, but I'd rather take fixing this problem in another direction.  What if Cure spells and the like healed based on a percentage of the target's maximum hp?

For example, what if Cure Light Wounds healed 20% of the target's maximum, Moderate healed 25%, Serious healed 33%, and Critical healed 50%?  How much would change?

Right off the bat, I see their value at low levels dropping immensely, but I feel that putting a minimum amount healed on each spell would be able to offset that, such as 5hp on Light through 20hp on Critical.  While once again this makes less sense in that the Cure spell rapidly heals a smaller percentage of the total, the window is much, much smaller (maybe one or two levels, in most cases).

[StreamOfTheSky]

I don't like your percentages, but otherwise, I would rather like that.

I would also implement with it a rule that all HD are maximized to ensure the high HD characters actually benefit more from this, and not the d4 HD wizard who is SAD and thus could afford an 18 int and con and ends up with more hp than the 12 con fighter that had bad luck w/ rolls (I've seen it happen).

Because this sort of system siginificantly increases the value of having a big wad of hp, more so than it already is.  So enforcing more "niche protection" for the melees's ability to "have lots of hp" would be necessary.

Biggest issue with this is how broken it could get for monsters with hundreds of hp and tons of HD.  They...kinda muck every rule mechanic up.

[snakeman830]

I picked the percentages off of 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2.  Cure Critical should be curing critical wounds (half your max HP would probably count), but really, these percentages are still up in the air.  For now, Heal and Mass Heal would probably remain unchanged, but their healing rates are good (on this scale) anyway until well into epic, plus they both do a lot more than just heal hp.

It could indeed get funky with monsters, but I don't see many good ways to make these spells really worthwhile for PC's and not muck around on monsters.

[Garryl]

The same wound becomes easier and easier to heal in this way, based not on the healing spell's caster, but on the recipient.

[snakeman830]

The same wound becomes easier and easier to heal in this way, based not on the healing spell's caster, but on the recipient.

Except that in the game world, it's not the same wound.  The high HP guy avoided a more serious injury than the low HP guy did, even if in game mechanics, the attacks did the same amount of damage.

[Halinn]

CLW wands would be better than lesser vigor wands after the first few levels. Combat healing might be high enough numbers to matter.

I think there ought to still be some caster effect to the spells, to offset CLW wands. Maybe a minimum amount healed based on CL? 1/2/3/4 per caster level, depending on which spell you used, perhaps.

[DonQuixote]

Biggest issue with this is how broken it could get for monsters with hundreds of hp and tons of HD.  They...kinda muck every rule mechanic up.

I think there ought to still be some caster effect to the spells, to offset CLW wands. Maybe a minimum amount healed based on CL? 1/2/3/4 per caster level, depending on which spell you used, perhaps.

Two birds with one stone: The spell cures a maximum of (8+Wisdom modifier) hit points per caster level.  A level one cleric casting cure light wounds just doesn't have the divine oomph to stitch up 20% of the level twenty barbarian's life total.

[snakeman830]

Biggest issue with this is how broken it could get for monsters with hundreds of hp and tons of HD.  They...kinda muck every rule mechanic up.

I think there ought to still be some caster effect to the spells, to offset CLW wands. Maybe a minimum amount healed based on CL? 1/2/3/4 per caster level, depending on which spell you used, perhaps.

Two birds with one stone: The spell cures a maximum of (8+Wisdom modifier) hit points per caster level.  A level one cleric casting cure light wounds just doesn't have the divine oomph to stitch up 20% of the level twenty barbarian's life total.

You're thinking of hit points as concrete, though, when in the game world, there's no such thing.  What the spell is doing is healing up the actual wounds, not how we represent them.

[SneeR]

Two birds with one stone: The spell cures a maximum of (8+Wisdom modifier) hit points per caster level.  A level one cleric casting cure light wounds just doesn't have the divine oomph to stitch up 20% of the level twenty barbarian's life total.

This. +1 and so much more.

Also, percentages suck in the middle of combat. 50%? fine. 25% even? Whatever.
33%? WHAT ARE SMOKING? Figuring that out mid-combat would disrupt flow big time, especially considering how many people don't write down info like "33% my max hp=X" on their character sheet...

Basing it as a set amount of healing per caster level is fantastic. Let's say ([spell level x 2]+[WIS mod])x[caster level]. Now a lvl 20 cleric can patch up a lvl 1 barbarian with a cure minor, but a lvl 1 cleric won't be the backup that keep epic characters alive.

[Summerstorm]

Hm... one could change the healing dice according to the target. (You get caster level- with cap - as a fixed bonus).

So a Cure Serious Wounds cast by a Lvl 10 Cleric would heal a wizard for 3d4+10... and a barbarian 3d12+10... but of course... WHICH HD count for that? People rarely have just one kind of dice. Well i guess one could say: "The one you have most of, earlier levels weighted in more", or something

[Endarire]

My approach is to have one spell, cure wounds, which scales with CL.  In my system, where everything has more HP in general, 2d8+2 HP healed per CL is adequate.  Certain class features augment this.

[DonQuixote]

You're thinking of hit points as concrete, though, when in the game world, there's no such thing.  What the spell is doing is healing up the actual wounds, not how we represent them.

I've always viewed hit points more as a measure of how much damage you can take before falling over, rather than your body's ability to not be wounded.  Say that Steve the first-level melee character can be stabbed three times before passing out.  When he reaches level twenty, Steve can be stabbed sixty times before passing out.  That's not because he's not being stabbed--it's because he's conditioned himself to move past the pain.  Steve can keep fighting without worrying about things, but--at the end of the day--Bob the discount cleric still has to deal with sixty stab wounds.

[veekie]

^^
That breaks down when you consider the hit points of a high level character against say...a packed dirt wall.

This does have some issues at lower levels though, you'd be hard pressed to heal anything at all.

[Bauglir]

Hm... one could change the healing dice according to the target. (You get caster level- with cap - as a fixed bonus).

So a Cure Serious Wounds cast by a Lvl 10 Cleric would heal a wizard for 3d4+10... and a barbarian 3d12+10... but of course... WHICH HD count for that? People rarely have just one kind of dice. Well i guess one could say: "The one you have most of, earlier levels weighted in more", or something

I think we had this exact concept the last time this came up. My suggestion had some issues, but if you want to go this route, you could start there.

[SneeR]

Basing it on Hit Die falls apart with multiclass characters. Can't base it on their most recent level, either, because Barbarian 5/Wizard 1 will get made for rolling d4s. Nor vice versa.

[RobbyPants]

I like the idea of having the HP healed scale with the person getting healed. My only complaint about percent-based healing is the extra math involved. Granted, you could write down the relevant percentages on your character sheet for reference, which works so long as your Con doesn't change. That being said, I worked on some modified spell rules, and handled the Cure spells as follows:

Cure Critical Wounds:
Heals 4d8 + 4 points per caster level or hit die of the recipient, whichever is greater (no cap).

Cure Light Wounds:
Heals 1d8 + 1 point per caster level or hit die of the recipient, whichever is greater (no cap).

Cure Light Wounds, Mass (and related spells):
Heals the normal amount of the single-target version of the spell, but to medium range (100' + 10 per caster level). Any targets withing a 20' radius can be healed (or harmed if undead).

Cure Moderate Wounds:
Heals 2d8 + 2 points per caster level or hit die of the recipient, whichever is greater (no cap).

Cure Serious Wounds:
Heals 3d8 + 3 points per caster level or hit die of the recipient, whichever is greater (no cap).

The idea is to heal more so you might consider using an action for it. It's not perfect, but I think it's quicker to adjudicate.

[Unbeliever]

One of the few good ideas I thought 4E (and Star Wars Saga before it) had was this healing surge notion.  I just don't like their implementation or the resource management aspect of it.

Each healing effect could have something like "the target heals their 'healing surge' amount +X" (which is what most of the 4E ones were like, I think).  So, any healing effect would have 2 component, 1 based on the target, 1 based on the caster.  The healing surge amount would be written on your sheet, so it wouldn't bog down play.   

The only thing is that this might be a headache to implement, and figuring out the right numbers would be a pain, too.  But, that's a common issue.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I think CLW should only be 10% or so, and the increases should in gereal get better between spells as you go higher in level.  Is what I meant when I said I didn't like your example percentages.

I think with the minimum healed part, this is pretty workable.  Rather than a CL impact, I'd actually rather implement the Heal skill to a) finally give it a purpose and b) allow someone w/ maxed heal ranks and a CLW wand to be way better at healing than a cleric 20 w/ no heal ranks also using CLW.  Of course the cleric 20 won't care, but whatever.

Maybe Heal DC 20 adds +5% to what any healing spell heals, and another +5% for every 10 points you exceed DC 20?  So if you were using CLW (which for now we'll say heals 10% as a base) and made a Heal check of 32, you would heal the target 20% of his max hp.  Out of combat, you can just take 10 to make the figuring go much quicker, of course.  Maybe that would be good?


Other problem I realized: How do these changes interact w/ using cure/inflict offensively against undead/living creatures, respectively?  Are these getting a big power boost, or sticking to the normal xd8+y damages?

[veekie]

One possible idea is that the Cure spells themselves heal STATIC amounts, but when used in conjunction with a heal check, they cure a %+ their base static amounts.

[RobbyPants]

I think CLW should only be 10% or so, and the increases should in gereal get better between spells as you go higher in level.  Is what I meant when I said I didn't like your example percentages.

When I first tried this years ago, I was using UA's spell point mechanic, so I simply used the SP ratios for the spells to dictate the percentages:

• CLW = 10%
• CMW = 30%
• CSW = 50%
• CCW = 70%

That way, you get the same amount of healing per SP spent, regardless. It's a bit moot for a Vancian system, though.

Other problem I realized: How do these changes interact w/ using cure/inflict offensively against undead/living creatures, respectively?  Are these getting a big power boost, or sticking to the normal xd8+y damages?

Well, do note it's both a touch attack to hit them and Will save for half. You're getting into SoD territory around 5th or 6th level spells. A 4th level touch spell that takes a significant % of HP with a Will save for half damage doesn't seem too crazy.