[RPG] How does basic healing work

dnd-5ehealing

Reading through the D&D 5e Player's Handbook I see that there are two types of healing:

  1. Resting (long and short rests)
  2. Magical (potions and spells)

Are there any other types of healing available to players? For example, in other RPGs (such as Dragon Age) there is a healing skill — is there anything like that in D&D 5e? Are there any ways to heal other than the two kinds of rests, healing potions, and healing spells?

Best Answer

There are several basic means of healing:

  • Short rest - you can spend hit dice (or "HD," short for "hit point dice"—c.f. Player's Handbook page 12) here and get back HP. This is sort of your battle field patch up type healing.

  • Long rest - Restores all your HP and half your level in HD. This is sort of your natural bed rest type healing.

  • Magical healing - potions/spells etc

  • Non-magical healing. This is a bit trickier, and can only be accessed by a character with the healer feat. If you use this you gain a small amount of HP back when you are treated with a healer's kit (and it expends a use of the kit).

That's pretty much it, outside of some other adventure specific things (for instance there was a barrel of spirits in the starter set that would restore 1 hp if you had a drink). There are some other class features (second wind etc), that allow specific classes to heal, but that's the limit of what's available to the general populace.

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