3.5 Regeneration and Fast Healing

[fbmf]

Is there a "DON'T DO IT THE GAME WILL BREAK!!" reason these two powers can't be combined. What is the thinking behind keeping them separate?

Why can't trolls just get back real grown up hit points every round as opposed to converting to subdual damage?

Game On,
fbmf

[Username17]

Is there a "DON'T DO IT THE GAME WILL BREAK!!" reason these two powers can't be combined. What is the thinking behind keeping them separate?

Why can't trolls just get back real grown up hit points every round as opposed to converting to subdual damage?

Game On,
fbmf

Fast Healing gives you real grown up hit points. Regeneration converts damage to nonlethal and then removes nonlethal.

This is so that Fast Healing will not bring you back from deadly injury and Regeneration will. This means that Fast Healing is mostly a concern as far as accounting goes, but Regeneration is a real major game changer. Since of course, until you come up with something that will negate the Regeneration you cannot win in any long term sense. But Fast Healing is just like your opponent had a few more hit points in the battle and makes their hit points cost less in healing maintenance if they happen to be on team adventurer.

All in all, I'm not super happy with the way regeneration works in 3.5, because it creates puzzle monsters and doesn't work the way people think it should. I mean, you don't fight trolls with your flaming torch, because that is retarded. You fight them with a sword, and then you get the little "puzzle solved" music playing at the end if you have a torch. That's anticlimactic and not the way people feel like it's supposed to work - which ends up hurting the verisimilitude of the entire encounter.

-Username17

[Echoes]

Is there a "DON'T DO IT THE GAME WILL BREAK!!" reason these two powers can't be combined. What is the thinking behind keeping them separate?

Why can't trolls just get back real grown up hit points every round as opposed to converting to subdual damage?

Game On,
fbmf

Err, where does it say they can't be combined? Neither the MM nor the Rules Compendium say anything about not being able to have both fast healing and regeneration. The only restriction that I can see is that you have to have a Con score to have regeneration.

As far as potentially broken effects, it would make the troll or whatever harder to kill because it would heal fire/acid/whatever damage with fast healing, but you could still kill it. It doesn't cause any weird rules interactions or anything, if that's what you're asking.

[fbmf]

Well, shit. I re read my OP and realized my wording was seriously not what I meant to ask. Let's try again:

I want to remove Regeneration and substitute in Fast Healing.

I want to beat down trolls with my sword and then set them on fire before they can heal themselves to keep them dead.

Limbs being lopped off happens so rarely in 3E I seriously do not care about them being re-graft-able with Regeneration.

Game On,
fbmf

[Username17]

If you replace regeneration with fast healing, you will beat down trolls with swords and then they will be dead, because that is the difference between fast healing and regeneration.

-Username17

[fbmf]

So far so good, but Fast Healing works as long as you are not below -9, right?

Game On,
fbmf

[TOZ]

fbmf, you might look at the PF rules on regeneration. They sound like what you're looking for. It's effectively fast healing that turns off if you hit them with fire or whatever.

[CatharzGodfoot]

fbmf, you might look at the PF rules on regeneration. They sound like what you're looking for. It's effectively fast healing that turns off if you hit them with fire or whatever.

Wow, an example of PF actually making things better!

[hogarth]

fbmf, you might look at the PF rules on regeneration. They sound like what you're looking for. It's effectively fast healing that turns off if you hit them with fire or whatever.

Well, fast healing + unkillability. But it certainly satisfies the "finish them off with fire" criterion.

On the other hand, it means that Pathfinder trolls can heal back acid/fire damage just as easily as any other damage, which is a slightly different flavour from the usual D&D troll (where acid/fire is "permanent" damage).

[Username17]

fbmf, you might look at the PF rules on regeneration. They sound like what you're looking for. It's effectively fast healing that turns off if you hit them with fire or whatever.

Wow, an example of PF actually making things better!

I wish. The PF regeneration rules cause fire damage to suspend a troll's regeneration for 1 round. So Trolls still regenerate fire wounds, they just skip one round. So a troll essentially has negative five points of fire resistance that kicks in a maximum of once per round.

Then regeneration also gives you an carte blanch immunity to death, unless it gets suspended by the special damage type. So a Troll does not die from wail of the banshee (and thus is not affected at all), unless it took a single point of fire damage the round before. But anything other than damage or death is unaffected. So power word kill is completely worthless, but powerword stun has full effect.

There was a good idea buried in there somewhere, but the end result is simply retarded.

-Username17

[Echoes]

So far so good, but Fast Healing works as long as you are not below -9, right?

Game On,
fbmf

Fast healing restores the listed amount of hp each round unless one of two conditions are met: you're either a) dead or b) at full health. If you don't die from negative hp (frenzied berserker, delay death, etc) you could be at -1000 hp and still heal every round.

[hogarth]

So a Troll does not die from wail of the banshee (and thus is not affected at all), unless it took a single point of fire damage the round before.

Wrong -- in Pathfinder, Wail of the Banshee just does boring, old hit point damage, not instant death. So a troll would be damaged normally, although it wouldn't die.

[CatharzGodfoot]

fbmf, you might look at the PF rules on regeneration. They sound like what you're looking for. It's effectively fast healing that turns off if you hit them with fire or whatever.

Wow, an example of PF actually making things better!

I wish. The PF regeneration rules cause fire damage to suspend a troll's regeneration for 1 round. So Trolls still regenerate fire wounds, they just skip one round. So a troll essentially has negative five points of fire resistance that kicks in a maximum of once per round.

Then regeneration also gives you an carte blanch immunity to death, unless it gets suspended by the special damage type. So a Troll does not die from wail of the banshee (and thus is not affected at all), unless it took a single point of fire damage the round before. But anything other than damage or death is unaffected. So power word kill is completely worthless, but powerword stun has full effect.

There was a good idea buried in there somewhere, but the end result is simply retarded.

-Username17

Oh well, I guess it was too much to hope for...

[RobbyPants]

All in all, I'm not super happy with the way regeneration works in 3.5, because it creates puzzle monsters and doesn't work the way people think it should.

I'm curious: have you given any thought to how you'd handle 3.x regeneration?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Regeneration and fast healing are really two different, interrelated issues.

[*]Regeneration is not dying from hit point damage unless some condition is met, and effectively reforming of the body as part of the healing process.
[*]Fast healing is healing faster than normal.

And that's pretty much exactly how it should work. I suppose that you could have fast healing that won't heal certain types of damage (and that would model 3.5e as it currently exists just fine), but honestly that's way too much bookkeeping. In any cause, the most basic way to kill a regenerator is drowning.

[Username17]

Regeneration is thoroughly and inextricably linked with how resistances and vulnerabilities are handled. Fundamentally, regeneration is a pain in the ass, because it requires round by round accounting. But people want the sense of urgency that it provides. Unfortunately, the X damage/Hit or X damage/Round method of dealing with these things really doesn't work well. You end up not giving a rat's ass about burning trolls, because their regeneration works just as well on the spear holes you put in them earlier whether you burn them or not. It's dumb. Similarly, you don't end up liking attacks that are "partially fire" or whatever, because resistances get doubled and nothing else means fuck all.

If I were to do it from scratch, I'd probably have shit like Resistance and Regeneration be a binary state. If you have Fire Resistance, you take half damage from fire, and if any fire attack would do you your level or less in damage, you ignore it completely. If you have regeneration, you convert damage to nonlethal and remove 1/10th of your remaining hit points in nonlethal damage every round.

So if you burn a Troll for 20 points, they regeneration actually drops by 2 points per round. Still kind of a pain in the ass, but division by 10 is very very fast in our number system and you were keeping track of remaining hit points anyway.

-Username17

[tussock]

Isn't the point of regeneration that the monster isn't really dead when you kill it?

Anyhoo, if you're making Fire Resistance into half damage with a small buffer, make trolls take double damage from Fire and Acid, and have DR 5/Fire or Acid, like they have resistance to everything else, but without all the fuss.

Then, you know, if you don't burn the "corpse", it has full HP again an hour later when it gets back up. Or 5 minutes later. Same for Zombies, Vampires, whatever. Technicalities about having already killed it with fire need not apply: if you have fire, burn it some more.


And if Fire Resistance stays 10/Not Fire, Trolls can just be 10/Fire or Acid, plus the getting back up trick.

[RobbyPants]

So, what are you suggesting exactly? Non-fire/acid attacks to less damage, so you have incentive to use fire/acid, plus they have a "get back up if KOed ability"?

How do you draw the line of when they do and don't get back up?

[tussock]

I've seen a troll get back up in the game precisely once, as the PCs ran away from the other trolls. The monk took the time to zip around, put it down again, and set it on fire as they continued to run away. Comedy central.

So I don't think it matters. Either you control the field and they die properly, or you run away and they're at full health next time it matters.

You could set each respawn and killing effect appropriate to the creature's theme rather than as a timed combat thing, so vampires wake only in their coffin next nightfall unless you find and stake the body. Trolls could get up in a minute and spend some time on reduced HP wandering around sticking on errant body parts, with some mechanics for losing limbs again (also applicable to beholder's eyes, hydra's heads, slow zombies, and many other icky things).

Make some more puzzle monsters, some more urgent, some as a "whoops, you didn't bring any holy water, noob".


Then, you know, flametongue weapon counts as fire damage, can set things on fire as a standard action, and sheds light like a torch. No need for the fiddly +1d6, because it's already +10 when it matters.

[K]

I'd be tempted to abstract the whole thing and just make combat regeneration a big AC/Save bonus that gets bypassed by the right material/energy. The effect is the same that HPs that would be lost are not otherwise lost, but I don't have to add HPs to the totals every turn.

Out of combat regeneration is the tricky thing. I'm not entirely sure if you need it for just monsters, and I'm not entirely sure that just everyone shouldn't just have it. The second option would help the ten minute workday a bit.