Beyond Reserve Points: Temporary Hit Points

The classic D&D party assumes that there is a healer in the group, usually a Cleric. Sometimes, however, no one wants to fill this niche -- turns spent healing a companion usually means turns that's not hitting, blasting, or backstabbing monsters. It's rare to find a player  that gets his or her thrills from healing.

There have been some "patches" around this dilemma. Some groups acquire a cohort whose job it is to heal the rest of the group. Others stock up on potions and wands of cure light wounds as well as maxing out their ranks of Use Magic Device. Personally, I even had a previous blog entry that dealt with maximizing the party's healing efficiency.

Of course another solution is to tweak the rules itself. Without creating too much confusion and house rules muck, Reserve Points are an excellent way to give players access to healing without relying on healing spells. As much as I like Reserve Points, it isn't perfect. It only effectively gives you twice as much hit points per day. It also limits the number of encounters your party can face. What happens when you've depleted all your Reserve Points and most of your hit points? You're still stuck staying at the inn, spending several days recovering both your hit points and your Reserve Points. Mike Mearls's Iron Heroes has a partial solution to this by extending the uses of the Heal skill. But what if you have a high-action game, one that has at least four encounters in a day and your party doesn't have access to healing magic?

My solution isn't original. I honestly got some of it from one of the message boards at EnWorld and extrapolated the rest from the basic gist. Basically, characters begin each encounter with temporary hit points equal to his current hit points. When he runs out of temporary hit points, the excess damage goes to his hit points but that character remains unconscious for the rest of of the encounter unless he somehow manages to acquire temporary hit points again (via a spell or some other rules tweak).

For example: Rob is a 1st-level Fighter and he has 12 hp. At the start of the encounter, he has 12 temporary hit points. The group encounters some orcs and over the course of the battle he is hit three times. The first deals 5 damage, bring down his temporary hit points to 7. The second deals 6 damage, bringing his temporary hit points to 1. At this point, he is still functioning perfectly. The third time he is struck he is inflicted with 3 points of damage. His temporary hit points is now 0 and he reduces his hit points by 2, bringing it down to 10 hp. At this point, he falls unconscious. At the end of the encounter, he is woken up by his companions and is still at 10 hp. Later on, they meet a pack of goblins and a new combat encounter begins. This time, Rob starts out with 10 temporary hit points, reflecting his current hit points which is at 10.

A character is staggered when his nonlethal damage is equal to his current temporary hit points. In all other respects, the rules for nonlethal damage remains the same. Hit points are recovered at the normal rate while temporary hit points are "refreshed" at the start of each encounter. If your players have access to magical healing, whether as a spell or supernatural ability (i.e. Paladin's Lay on Hands), you may want to limit it to heal temporary hit points rather than a character's actual hit points.

Applying such rule tweaks has several advantages at low levels:

1. Players can have more combat encounters without necessarily having access to healing magic, more so than using the Reserve Points rules. It is not without cost however. The more encounters the party encounters, the less likely they'll withstand the next. A character might begin the encounter with 12 hit points but face the next with 10, and then the one after that with 4.
2. As a GM, you don't need to hold back on the dice with the fear that you'll kill characters. They might go down in a fight but that doesn't mean they'll die. They effectively have twice as much hit points and the rule that they go down when they exhaust their temporary hit points means that there's little chance that they'll abuse the temporary hit points rule (i.e. continuing the fight because they still have hit points even if they're out of temporary hit points).
3. Characters can fall unconscious without being useless for the rest of the day. When characters do go down in a fight, that doesn't necessarily mean that'll be their last fight for the day (unless they are incredibly reckless).

Of course this rules tweak is not without its disadvantages:

1. Disparity at high levels. The advantages gained from Temporary Hit Points are lost at high levels. Combat are reduced to one of two encounters: encounters that aren't lethal enough that they never penetrate a character's actual hit points (a possibility when your hit points reach three digits) or encounters so lethal that it's actually capable of bringing down your hit points to single digits (you're down to 1 virtual hit point and the next attack deals 50+ damage in one blow) that leaves you virtually useless for the next few days.
2. Much like Reserve Points, it doesn't solve the problem of recovering hit points during combat without access to magic. What happens when a character goes down? He may be up for the next combat encounter but that character is certainly out of commission for the current one, even if it was due to simple misfortune on dice rolls (i.e. a critical hit, a failed save).
3. At higher levels, this system still doesn't address a support which only a Cleric can provide: recovering ability damage/drain, "curing" paralysis and diseases, recovering negative levels, reviving a dead character, etc.

Of course this is just a starting ground. Experienced GMs might tweak these rules a bit. You might allow healing magic to actually heal hit points, giving them a bigger bang for your buck. If you find the current Temporary Hit Points rules too generous, you might just award players with temporary hit points equal to half their current hit points, and don't let them go unconscious once they've exhausted their temporary hit points. If you have the time, you might even work on existing game mechanics, such as Feats that might give you extra temporary hit points, Skills and Skill Tricks that let you recover hit points during and outside of combat, or even allow Action Points to bestow additional temporary hit points.

Feats:

Virtual Toughness [General]

When it comes to combat, you are tougher than usual.

Benefit: At the beginning of each encounter, you gain an additional number of temporary hit points equal to half your level, rounded down (minimum 1).

Special: A Fighter may select Virtual Toughness as a bonus feat.

Surge of Energy [General]

In dire circumstances, you receive a sudden burst of strength.

Benefit: You can spend an action point to gain an additional 10 temporary hit points that lasts until the end of your next turn. Activating this ability is an immediate action.

Skill Trick:

Reviving Hands [Manipulation]

You can revive someone who has fallen in combat.

Prerequisite: Heal 5 ranks.

Benefit: If you succeed on a Heal check against DC 15, you can bestow upon another character whose temporary hit points is equal to 0 (but whose hit points is not less than 0) an additional number of temporary hit points equal to your heal check minus fifteen.