I’m not overly worried about being a “Killer GM”. I generally presume that my players want a challenge, and that they are willing to accept the logical consequences of their own actions.

But if you want to avoid that dilemma, there are various tricks you can use to discourage players from resting too often: dungeon entrances which are difficult to exit (such as a steep slide), an arch-villain with access to advanced scrying magics, or a time-sensitive goal (just make sure to give players some indication that their goal is time-sensitive, or else you may face accusations of unfairness when they find that the princess has died of dehydration in the Blue Dragon’s lair).

Of course I don’t expect the players to ooh and aah over imaginary spells that, as you say, get cast repeatedly. But I do expect their characters to show some appreciation to the cleric and/or his deity for saving them from a weeks- or months-long convalescence. Even more so if they’re currently fighting for their lives in a monster-infested dungeon.

Imagine if you were to break your ankle again, but this time, a guy said some magic words and made it all better instantly. Even if it’s happened a hundred times before, you’re still going to appreciate the hell out of it because the alternative sucks so much.

But in a world where convalescence from any injury lasts a few minutes at worst, you probably wouldn’t care all that much. If that’s how your game system is set up, cool, whatever works for you and your group. But such a system is less immersive than one which has a stronger grounding in reality. Again, immersion may not matter to you and that’s fine, but as you can tell, it’s a big deal to me. 😛

In any event, I look forward to the upcoming article.

I also dislike the idea of the 15-minute adventuring day, not only for the tactical considerations you mention, but also out of pity for the poor GM. He will either have to handwave the situation by having the monsters conveniently forget the PCs’ first incursion, or be accused of being a Killer GM when the monsters do the logical thing and reinforce their positions. Neither is an attractive option to me.

Do you honestly have players experience or characters express wonderment the first, second, or twentieth time that a character casts cure wounds? Maybe you do – I don’t know your life – and if so, please unpack that a bit as part of your group’s gaming culture. Other than cantrips, it’s a top competitor for the most common spell in the game, and completely replaces any player contact with the natural healing system in editions of D&D that don’t have healing surge/Hit Die healing.

I don’t anticipate persuading you of anything, because that is not really how the internet works, but I am working even now on the article about hit points, natural healing, death, and dying in the many editions of D&D, and in D&D-adjacent games. In this article, I’ll also present a rules block for lasting Wounds, as a way to handle the recklessness that you mention.

The full-hardcover book supplement “Legend of the Five Rings – Rokugan, Oriental Adventures Campaign Setting” was one of several books published after 3.0’s OA to expand upon the details in OA, but this one was the key book to purchase, since it explored those cool details OA couldn’t focus on as it had to do more than JUST set up Rokugan.

One of the new base classes in the book is the Inkyo, or Enlightened Monk. This is a variant Monk who was once a Samurai, but reached the age of forty and thus has retired to a monastery. The class serves as a bit of a re-write of the Monk for Rokugan, including having proficiency with ALL simple weapons, as well as light armor. They get improved unarmed strike, but rather than a focus on martial training like the standard monk, they are more focused on fit mind and have a bunch of abilities related to the concept of void and allowing them to suppress elemental attacks and gather void points to improve various abilities (almost like spending ki or psi points, but not quite).

In pencil and paper games, I’m generally less worried about realism in my healing system, but I do think it’s important that healing is not so convenient that players don’t care about taking damage. Players should have some incentive to be conservative with their depletable resources (HP, gold, spell slots). They shouldn’t be encouraged to burn through everything as fast as possible, confident in the knowledge that they can take a long rest whenever they like. That kind of play gets boring very quickly.

And a lot of those higher level AOE spells (like Wall of Fire) can really slow down play. If those kinds of spells are being used all the time, encounters take way too long to resolve.

Attempting to model specific wounds in D&D’s super-abstract hit point system invariably leads to headaches, so I won’t try to guess how much damage a broken ankle represents. Instead, I would probably rule it as a negative condition (maybe exhaustion, in 3e parlance) that persists until the bones are properly knitted. But that’s neither here nor there.

The point isn’t to perfectly simulate real life, but if a game system doesn’t have some grounding in reality, there’s no basis by which to measure the fantastic elements of the system. You need the mundane to appreciate the magical.

I think it’s incorrect to say it’s vital to player enjoyment that the natural healing rules never get used. People take enjoyment from different things, obviously. But I would venture to say it’s vital to player immersion that those rules at least make a token effort to reflect their real-life equivalent, to preserve the sense of wonderment that should come from being magically healed.

Of course, how much you value that immersion is up to you and leads back to enjoyment. For my money, I find that systems which allow fast natural healing play like video games—just piddle around for a few minutes and you’ll be good as new, to be as reckless as you please because there are no long-term consequences for doing so. That’s not the experience I’m looking for in a pencil-and-paper game. Your mileage may vary.

Judging by my one experience with a broken ankle, even 3.x’s slow rules aren’t slow enough to carry off any argument to realism. The more – sorry, I can’t stop the scare quotes – “realistic” model accomplishes is creating a much greater demand for magical healing, with a host of not-really desirable knock-on effects.

To put that another way, the natural healing rules are such that it’s vital to player enjoyment that they never get used. The whole explanation of my view here runs too long for a comment, so it may be an article that I write for Tribality soonish.

Like, say, real life natural healing?

Consider our Will saving throws promptly failed!