we tried estus!!!

 So I talked to my players about trying out estus-style healing and we've given it a shot for a few sessions, and it's fun so we're gonna stick with it for a bit. Here's how it works:

Players no longer track hit-dice and cannot use hit-dice to heal.

Instead, every player has six charges per day they can use to heal. I feel like this might be a bit high, but they're in epic levels so it seems to work. It takes an action to heal, and they get to roll all of their hit-dice together and heal that much. In our game, we're saying that this action simply means you're taking a moment to steal your resolve and get your head back in the game. 

So a level 10 barbarian/level 14 thief would roll 10d12+14d8 and get that many hitpoints back. It usually ends up being about 1/2 - 2/3 of a player's health.

 When they long rest, they get all their estus charges back and all their hit-points. If they sleep in the rough (like in a campsite or a dungeon), they get half their hitpoints, but still all their estus. They can't use estus if they can't take an action (like if they're unconscious or paralyzed), and other characters can't use their estus for their (like pouring a health potion into their mouth or casting a spell). 

The main feedback my players have is they say it feels like they can adventure for longer before taking a rest. They say that the main limiter for resting has been hitpoints, and that they tend to run out of hitpoints before running out of their other abilities, and that resting so soon kind of takes them out of the adventure when they'd rather keep adventuring. I think that sounds great.

It also interacts a little confusingly with fifth-edition abilities that key off a short rest. There are various class abilities that improve healing from hit-dice, or that require a short rest to recharge, and removing healing from a short rest either makes those class abilities a little confusing or nerfs them somewhat. For instance, bard has an ability that gives extra healing from a short rest, which seems pretty nerfed, since the bonus healing is now negligible compared to what self-healing provides. We've had to spend a moment here and there clarifying how other items work, for instance our wizard has a power that improves his hit-dice healing only during a short rest.

I'm not sure how this will interact with healing spells on a meta-game level. We still need healing spells to bring unconscious characters back into a fight, and it might be helpful bonus healing. Our bard has said he enjoys being a healer, so we'll see how that plays out.

The change incentivizes the use of powers that self-damage. Our barbarian has a magic lantern that shoots a fire laser and heals heavy damage every round it's used. Since hit-points were a scarce resource before, he literally never used it, but now he's been able to use it. It was fun but I wonder if it's balanced. On the other hand, he had never considered using the lantern before, and now he got to shoot screaming lines of fire at swarms of cursed bark totems.

It also makes any abilities that limit healing much more dangerous. Our barbarian also had a necklace that gave him a huge chunk of bonus hitpoints (like, +25%), but nerfed healing by 50%. This seemed okay back when the main source of healing was a short rest, but now that combat healing is more common, being able to heal for only 60 hitpoints instead of 120 is a big deal when you're surrounded by enemies dealing 40 damage a hit.

I've been playing around with more dangerous monsters now. I feel like I have a little more leeway to introduce some really fucked up enemies that can tear apart the group without completely breaking the flow of the game. Last session, they were chased by a team of knights into a random dungeon and found themselves in a statue-filled catacomb on the borders of Plastiboo's Shade Sanctum, I put like 20 completely silent damage resistant / magic resistant AC 34 grabby golems in there and let them sneak attacked in a tight corridor. 

Previously, the penalty for getting into trouble like that kind of felt too severe to me. Taking a chance and getting ganked and dying isn't that fun, in my opinion, but taking a chance and having to spend a bunch of estus to survive a shitty battle feels a lot more tractable. And after the players had spent almost all their estus and spells to survive, they had to decide how to get out, and felt empowered enough to make a mad dash past the golem group. One of the golems critted for 120 damage, which is exactly the kind of result I like -- the guys could have died, but they thought fast and escaped.

So we're gonna stick with it for now!