Are these homebrew injury healing spells of the appropriate level and cost?

Question

I've introduced a homebrew Lingering Injury system to my D&D 5e campaign. The system is relatively simple but does require the addition of some spells to heal from the injuries.

This question is about the balance of the new homebrew injury healing spells rather than the system itself (which I will be refining through playtesting). However I have included an overview of the system to provide context for the spells.

Lingering Injuries System

When a character is reduced to 0 hitpoints they must make a Constitution saving throw. DC is equal to 10 or half the damage taken whichever is greater. On a fail, they suffer a Lingering Injury and must roll on the table below to determine the injury.

First roll a d20 to determine the severity of injury.

d20 Result	Injury Table
1	Roll on Critical Injury Table and subtract 20 from the result
2-6	Roll on Critical Injury Table
7-13	Roll on Moderate Injury Table
14-19	Roll on Minor Injury Table
20	Roll on Minor Injury Table and add 20 to the result

Players then roll on one of three d100 tables to determine the exact injury. The severity of the effects are as follows:

Minor Injury

Low impact effects that can all be recovered on a long rest.

• Examples: Status effects, conditions, disadvantage on skills checks, minor penalty to speed, etc.
• Worst Case: One point of exhaustion

Moderate Injury

Similar level of impact as Minor Injuries, but not guaranteed to heal on a long rest.

• Examples: Conditions, disadvantage on skills checks, disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws, larger penalty to speed.
• Worst Case: Disadvantage on all rolls until healed.

Major Injury

Serious effects that will majorly limit characters unless quickly resolved.

• Examples: Loss of limbs, Reduced ability scores, Permanent Conditions, Reduced Max Hitpoints
• Worst Case: Death

The Spells

To balance this system I am added the following spells as a means to heal these injuries. My focus is on if these spells are of the appropriate level and cost compared to the severity of the injuries and other similar spells (e.g. Restoration).

Heal Minor Injury

1st Level Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Touch

Target: Creature you touch

Components: V S

Duration: Instantaneous

Classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger

You touch a creature and cure them of a minor injury afflicting them. The injury can be any effect from the Minor Injury Table.

Heal Moderate Injury

3rd Level Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Touch

Target: Creature you touch

Components: V S M (A piece of cloth to serve as a bandage)

Duration: Instantaneous

Classes: Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger

You touch a creature and cure them of a moderate injury afflicting them. The injury can be any effect from the moderate or minor Injury tables.

Heal Major Injury

5th Level Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Touch

Target: Creature you touch

Components: V S M (A piece of cloth to serve as a bandage, Diamond Dust worth at least 50gp which the spell consumes)

Duration: Instantaneous

Classes: Cleric, Paladin, Ranger

You touch a creature and cure them of a major injury afflicting them. The injury can be any effect from the major, moderate or minor Injury tables. This spell cannot restore a creature to life, but it can heal the injuries of a recently deceased creature.

The goal is for these spells to be accessible but not trivialise the injury system. I also don't want to entirely replace the existing healing and restoration spells.

I understand there is an opportunity cost to taking these spells due to the limited number of prepared/known spells for the various casters. However I am willing to modify rules if that becomes an issue.

Are these spells of the appropriate level and cost compared to the severity of the injuries and other similar spells?

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Note: I am not looking for a critique of the system or whether you feel these spells are a good addition to the game or not. I just want to know if they are appropriate leveled. I'm using this system in a survival/exploration game with a number of homebrew rules.

Answer 1

I'm not sure this system achieves your goals. I'll cut right to the chase; the balance of this system hinges entirely on how often players go down. This system effectively adds a spell slot tax to players going down. If players rarely go down (as is the norm in my experience) the system won't affect the game at all. If they go down a lot, then the costs quickly snowball - now the party that is already losing fights has even less resources.

The second issue is that until the end of tier 2 you have essentially no choice but to live with major/critical injuries. This potentially means the party has to leave the dungeon and retreat whenever someone goes down. To me this is a huge issue in t1/2 play. In t3 play the system will either fade to irrelevancy or remain crippling. In mid t3 resurrection may completely replace major heal injury.

Comparing to other resurrection and healing spells, I don't see any problem with the levels or functionality of the spells. But the game impact this system will have is extremely concerning.

To meet your design goals I suggest a redesign forcing players to interact with the system rather than treat it as a tax.

Answer 2

As others have mentioned, there is a problem with using spells

I forget where I read it, but early on in my DnD playing there was an article about changing rules. The argument went something like this:

DM: I've got this cool new concept. Instead of air, the world is nothing but carbon dioxide.
Player: But then how will we breathe?
DM: You'll all have special respirators.
Player: What about NPCs? And monsters? How will they breathe?
DM: All the people will have one. And the monsters have adapted.
Player: But what if mine breaks? Seems pretty easy considering all the fighting we do.
DM: They can't be broken. They just always work.
Player: If everyone has a respirator, that never fails, and we can always breathe normally, tell me again why we are getting rid of air?

So if you're going to modify the rules so that there is no "spell tax", why do you even need spells in the first place?

And as Non-human person pointed out due to some crappy rolls, a 1st level character could end up with a "Major Injury" by their first combat. It would really suck as a Fighter that in my first encounter that I could lose an arm and therefore lose access to shields and two-handed weapons. I'd just scrap that character and make a new one. Unless that's the campaign you're players signed up for...

Instead of spells...

Just use the Medicine skill (it could use some love anyways) and attach a cost of supplies/components (uses of a Healer Kit, create some unique healing remedies for your campaign¹) and DC appropriate to the level of the injury.

Also keep in mind that these spells do not cure any hit points.

Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.

So injuries are already factored into healing spells. But now the party may have to cast two different spells to heal the character. This makes it seem like a chore, not a heroic quest.

As a suggestion, you might add a short/long rest requirement to the injury healing process; the injury is attended to, but the character still needs a period of rest for it to fully heal. This would give the character a chance to use hit dice to heal during short rests. Or state that the character cannot use hit dice on a short rest until some other requirement is met.

For the injury level...

I would alter it based on tier of play. Only allow injuries that the players are equipped to handle. Or just outside of what they can currently handle but maybe through quest or NPC get resolved.

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¹ Which could end up being quests on to themselves. To heal the infection the character must drink water from a certain lake.

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And strictly speaking about the spells themselves

If we remove all context of the system and implementation, you have a problem in spell caster lists.

Two of the classes that can cast the spell are only half-casters

Heal Major Injury allows a number of classes to cast so it is not a big deal, and Heal Moderate Injury has a smaller but not impossible list. But the Heal Major Injury spell only allows Clerics, Paladins, and Rangers. Which means two out of three of the only classes that can cast the spell cannot do so until 17th level.

For perspective, at that point a Bard or Druid could have cast Regenerate, Resurrection, and/or True Resurrection and Wizards can cast Wish.

So without access to a Cleric, a character could have a debilitating injury for a huge portion of their life.

Answer 3

These feel like Heal Taxes

The issue here is that this seems to force the party to have a character that can cast these spells. Even the minor conditions could be debilitating. Most parties don't really need healers since failing multiple death saving throws is rare, and parties without revivify prioritize getting downed players up.

These spells are fine, but they become additional taxes that a cleric (or equivalent) must take and keep prepared. So you both narrow the character choices your players can make and also narrow the choices the designated healers can make in their spell selection.

Answer 4

It is impossible to balance these spells in the traditional manner

Many people have commented on how much of a tax this is etc, and I agree with them all, but your main point of reference with these spells should be the resurrection spells.

Consider the following:

Regeneration can grow back an ear but is a 7th level spell.

Revivify can't grow back the missing ear, but can bring you back from the dead

Balance was almost certainly not a consideration for these spells in the way that you are trying to balance your spells.

Revivify was most likely lowish level because the developers needed to give players a way to not lose their characters.

Regeneration is high level not because growing back an ear is super powerful, but because growing back an ear is effectively irrelevant, and the key part of the spell is regaining 1hp per turn for an hour and being effectively unkillable without specific actions beyond the norm.

So how would you measure these spells?

You need to ask your players questions like "If you lost a limb at level 2 would you be ok to wait until 5th level spells became available?". In that manner you agree the kind of game you want to play, and then balance isn't really a concern at all.

All these spells do is remove an inconvenience, how much that matters is a table discussion.