Morale Healing?

[philotomy]

In my view, hit points are not merely physical toughness, but also include factors like luck, endurance, skill, and fighting spirit; they're an indicator of your total fighting capability.

Previews of the upcoming edition of D&D have mentioned that some classes will be able to heal allies by performing actions appropriate to their class. For example, a fighter might be able to heal his allies by damaging his enemies.

At first, I dismissed this with a snort. However, on reflection, the concept is far from antithetical to the concepts behind hit points. In fact, it makes sense that a charismatic fighter who is doing well 'for the team' could rally flagging spirits and inspire his comrades. So I'm considering something like this, although I haven't made any decisions, yet.

As I mentioned, it does seem to fit with the concept of hit points being more than just physical toughness. On the other hand, it seems to encroach on the Cleric's 'sphere or influence,' which isn't good in a class/archetype arrangement. However, you could also view it as lightening what many players see as 'the Cleric's burden.' That is, the Cleric typically has to use his precious spell slots for cure magic, instead of other useful and interesting spells. He's the medic. Looked at like this, 'morale healing' wouldn't be encroaching on the Cleric's territory, but rather giving the Cleric the opportunity to broaden his flexibility.

(Note that AD&D addressed the 'typecast medic/cleric' issue by giving the Cleric more spells: spells at 1st level, bonus spells for Wis, etc. However, IMO that approach makes the Cleric's spell casting abilities quite potent, and I prefer to have Cleric's as a 'second class' caster, just as they are also a 'second class' fighter.)

What do you think? What if Fighting Men had a class ability to heal a small amount of damage? Hate the very idea? Might work? How would you implement such a thing, assuming you'd give it a shot, at all? Would you tie to to Cha? Would you make it 'once per day,' 'once per combat,' or something else? Just brainstorming.

[WSmith]

I can't say I care for the idea, because of taking away the main staple for the cleric, unless it was something a 1d4 HP and only once per battle . However, I would not be opposed to a charismatic fighter somehow inspiring courage cause of something, (maybe a natural roll of 20, I dunno) which could heal a few points and/or provide a bonus to morale for ally NPCs. You could even make the "healed" HP last until 1d4 rounds after the battle, at which time the disappear. Perhaps only a fighting man with a CHA 17 or 18 has this ability. I guess it would work as long as it is not overdone.

[Finarvyn]

I never think of Hit Points in terms of morale, but I do think about HP in terms of mostly short-term injuries and exhaustion. That's why I allow my players to "bind wounds" and non-magically heal up to 1d4 after each battle.

[dwayanu]

I can see that, but think it should be a quite small effect (perhaps 1 or 2 points per affray) and reserved for really notable actions -- not something to take for granted.

The "resource management" aspect of hit points (and more broadly of time) is to me a key part of D&D/AD&D campaigning. It can take considerable time for a high-level character to regain full potency. BTB (Vol. 3), one HP is recovered per two full days of rest. "Cure Light Wounds" restores an average of 4.5 points (9 days' healing) per casting, a benison that ought to come at some financial or other telling price. An adventuring Cleric has some incentive to heal himself (thus increasing his own rate of XP-yielding activity) before tending to other PCs.

I'm reminded of the response a while back from someone unacquainted with the AD&D rule making it time-consuming for a high-level spellcaster to get back to full magical strength. "Why would that be desireable?!"

The answer, of course, is in the nature of the game proposed. Gygax had in mind a challenge requiring skill in long-term planning -- strategy -- not just scenario-by-scenario tactics.

[foster1941]

Non-physical hit points, like abstracted "to hit" rolls, are a post-hoc rationalization trying to make "sense" out of a game-construct in a way that looks good on the page but falls apart under too-close scrutiny (healing and large creatures in the former case, touch and missile attacks in the latter) so I choose not to think about it too much. "Morale healing" fits within the rationalized explanation of what "hit points" represent, but doesn't fit with their actual in-game function which, like it or not, is actual physical damage -- D&D has a separate mechanic for morale, and while combining the two into something more wholly abstract (as seen in a game like HeroQuest, where an effecive maneuver or taunt might inflict just as much "damage" as a sword-blow and "running out of hit points" might well mean that the character's morale has failed, and not that he has been physically killed) is intriguing and might make for an interesting game, that's not how the D&D system is set up. It's not realistic, it's not logical, but it's how the game is set up (and it does make for a fun game...): as characters gain levels they become physically tougher and harder to kill -- a mid-level character can take as much damage as a warhorse, and a high level character as much damage as a T. Rex.

On another, but related, note, this idea of the cleric as de facto "healing mule" is something that seems to have arisen, or at least settled into conventional wisdom, during the dozen or so years I was away from D&D (c. 1991-2003) -- back in the 80s, in both my home-campaigns and RPGA/tournament play, this wasn't something I ever saw -- sure the cleric would always take at least 1 or 2 cure spells, but those were always combined with assorted combat and utility spells -- light, sanctuary, bless, etc. -- and there certainly wasn't an attitude that the cleric somehow "owed it" to the other players to constantly heal them and do little or nothing else. Back then we didn't count on healing from the cleric -- if we got some, great, that was a bonus -- but the idea was that at low levels you'd do everything you could to avoid losing your hit points in the first place and even at higher levels you'd use your hit points as a buffer -- if you've got 40 hp that means you're allowed to take ~30 hp worth of risks. In the last campaign I played in (AD&D, FWIW) we had 2 clerics in the party, me and another guy, and a house rule in place that you could swap out higher level slots for lower level spells, so the other cleric-player almost invariably spent all of his spell slots, 1st and 2nd level, on CLW spells -- at 4th level he'd usually carry CLWx7 and nothing else. I, on the other hand, used to diversify -- I'd take one or two CLW spells but I'd also take sanctuary, find traps, hold person, silence 15' radius, and other spells as seemed appropriate -- and the other players got annoyed and acted like I was "wasting" my spell-slots and screwing over the party by doing so. When did this attitude become so prevalent? There are several things like this -- "culture shock" moments between the way I always played D&D in the 80s and think the game should be played and the current conventional wisdom -- and they confuse and annoy me because, frankly, I think my way of playing is more fun (it's definitely more fun for me, but I think it would be more fun on average for most people) and I wonder why it's fallen so far out of fashion and been so thoroughly replaced by what I view as a broken, dysfunctional, and generally un-fun approach to play. Are computer games (both old solo-play games and, more recently, MMOs) perhaps to blame? (This is obviously a tangent from this thread, so if anyone wishes to discuss this noton further feel free to start up a new thread...)

[sham]

Interesting topic. I agree with Philotomy's post, and have recently been influenced by the notion of Shock Recovery as a way to assume that those extra hit points gained from experience are not actually reflective of physical tissue damage.

It's an idea I'd need to ponder on further. The end result was I decided against tinkering with one of D&D's most basic game conventions, that being hit points and damage, at this time.

In the end, I think Foster makes a good point. This seems like a good idea on paper. Who knows if I'll actually translate it into something resembling D&D though.

PS - Thanks for directing me here Phil!

[coffee]

Nov 11, 2007 15:23:11 GMT -6 foster1941 said:

On another, but related, note, this idea of the cleric as de facto "healing mule" is something that seems to have arisen, or at least settled into conventional wisdom, during the dozen or so years I was away from D&D (c. 1991-2003) -- back in the 80s, in both my home-campaigns and RPGA/tournament play, this wasn't something I ever saw -- sure the cleric would always take at least 1 or 2 cure spells, but those were always combined with assorted combat and utility spells -- light, sanctuary, bless, etc. -- and there certainly wasn't an attitude that the cleric somehow "owed it" to the other players to constantly heal them and do little or nothing else.

Really? I envy you. I started with AD&D in the early 80's and this is exactly how we played. Nobody wanted to play the cleric. In melee, cries of 'Cleric' sounded around the battlefield much like cries of 'medic' in the modern world.

We didn't have any swappable spell levels, so the 2nd and 3rd level spells were still used. Also, they turned undead. But mostly healing, yeah.

That's why, in my OD&D games, I enforce the casting time of Cure Light Wounds (it says 'during the course of one full turn') and don't include any intermediary healing spells. I want clerics to be men of faith first, and healers a distant second.


Getting back to the point of the whole thread, I think it sounds like a good idea. I'd like to hear how it works in practice, though, before I try it.

[kormydigar]

First of all, thanks Phil for your musings page that inspired me to dust off OD&D.

I don't like the idea of other classes healing and the proliferation of healing magic in general and it doesn't have really anything to do with the physical vs. morale argument.

I have played almost every edition of this game and the capacities to heal have increased with every new version of the rules. Consequently, (or perhaps its the other way) combat rules have become more and more drawn out and detailed to the nth degree. Hit points slowly morphed from a measure of how long one could last in a combat to simply becoming a combat resource to manage. While this may sound like semantics there is a subtle difference that becomes more apparent as healing becomes more abundant.

Ease of recovery has a good bit of influence on the decision to engage in combat in the first place. I was not gaming in the 1974-77 period so I don't know how typical games ran at that time. With unmodified rules I am willing to guess that there was more thinking about the consequences of combat than in modern games (or much higher death rates).

The most recent incarnation of the game (4th Ed) is the culmination of the HP as a resource idea to a level of making it practically a "per battle" resource. To me this is putting too much focus on fighting for a roleplaying game. If the players realize that fighting will actually injure the characters to a point where they cannot be all "fixed up" instantly with magical band aids then they will begin to find creative ways to deal with problems.

It becomes very important for the DM to encourage this style of problem solving and not punish it by reducing XP because a combat was cleverly avoided rather than fought. If player see that clever strategy and using thier wits gains them actual in game rewards then they will be much more inclined to keep using them.

[edsan]

Phil, I just wanted to let you know I read your approach to damage and hit points in your site and liked it so much my group is now using it in my OEPT game and we adapted the Save vs. Shock house ruling around it.

[hackman]

I have to admit that I was intrigued by the idea of some self healing, especially if it gives the party or group confidence to push on. But on the other hand, I remember playing a cleric and being chastised for having a spell such as neutralize poison? I kind of like the idea of 1d4 hp per day maybe? But I do like the idea of it's tough and you need to find all sorts of ways to get around the challenges of a dungeon or lair etc. I just always felt with clerics especially that there were a lot of useful spells and that diversifying the spell selection was the way to go. I've also thought of house ruling that clerics and mu's cannot memorize any spell more than once to force diversity. In that case though I think that a dm needs to create challenges that tap that diversity of spells.

[James Maliszewski]

Nov 11, 2007 15:23:11 GMT -6 foster1941 said:

Non-physical hit points, like abstracted "to hit" rolls, are a post-hoc rationalization trying to make "sense" out of a game-construct in a way that looks good on the page but falls apart under too-close scrutiny (healing and large creatures in the former case, touch and missile attacks in the latter) so I choose not to think about it too much.

That's my problem with the idea too. It's one thing, I think, to mutter and hand wave a bit when someone asks, "So what do hit points represent anyway?" but I think it goes too far into incoherence once you take those mutterings and develop them into something systematic like this. The same is true of Armor Class, in my opinion. You can see all the mischief that resulted from people trying to rationalize AC and what it really represents. Ugh.

My preference is to avoid extensions of many mechanical elements in OD&D, because doing so will ultimately result in drawing back the curtain and discovering the Wizard is just a charlatan. The biggest mistakes in the post-3LBB development of D&D have been on this plane and you can see where it all leads. So, while I can certainly understand the desire to go this route, it's a slippery slope to oblivion and, like the introduction of skills, will result in the deconstruction of the game.

[sham]

As I posted earlier, for the most part I agree with this sentiment. Foster made a valid point that it seems to be a logical idea in principle. Once you cross that threshold in the pursuit of melee realism, as James pointed out in echoing Foster's sentiment, you run the risk of sliding down a slippery slope.

In Solstice, I've actually gone for an even more abstract combat model. Given that each melee round is a full minute, I've done away with tactical bonuses altogether, and instituted a fully fluid AC for combatants.

I did institute the ability to Stanch Wounds, ala the Bind Wounds idea gleaned from the Ready Ref Sheets. I think this is enough to satisfy my notion of shock recovery or morale healing in D&D.

[trollman]

Having just read some Conan stuff, I think "morale" healing makes a lot of sense. How often do you see heroes wading into battle, where a hero starts laying the smack down on the baddies, and it invigorates his army?

This isn't morale in the sense of deciding to fight or run, but in the sense of inspiring and reinvigorating their troops. Kind of like a good half-time talk by the coach that re-energizes his team to go out there, ignore their bruises, and seize the victory.

I think this sort of thing would only work in a low magic, or at least a low healing campaign, however. If you have clerics, healing potions, etc., then this would get a bit much.

I have been tossing around the idea of a low magic to magic-free game, and I think something like this would probably be needed in that case.