Automatically healing to full at the end of the fight (for free) causes weird edge cases with non-combat resolution, especially running away. It encourages groups to run away, then immediately re-engage for the free heal.
What solution would you like?
The original attrition proposal had players choose to take up to 2 levels of exhaustion, healing half their max life for each level taken. This is nice because it leaves lasting consequences even if you run away, although it does cause weird issues with framing and theming (it's very OSR, and it makes exhaustion the resource that Actually Matters:tm:)
If we did do this, we'd almost certainly cut essence tap, since it currently serves this role.
What alternative(s) have you considered?
Do nothing. Leaves some weirdness for running away, but it's simple and fits the theming.
Don't heal, and instead have players opt to use essence tap out of combat (probably better actually)
Include some other consequence for running away from a fight (lose some other resource, just gain exhaustion, don't heal in that case specifically, etc.)
Additional context
This was inspired by maybe wanting to remove Essence Tap. In the current system, it's the only way to heal during fights, and one of the main ways that you gain exhaustion by "pushing yourself"
After sleeping on it, I think having some other consequence for running away makes more sense. Maybe trigger the exhaustion penalty automatically in that case?
What problem does the current design create?
Automatically healing to full at the end of the fight (for free) causes weird edge cases with non-combat resolution, especially running away. It encourages groups to run away, then immediately re-engage for the free heal.
What solution would you like?
The original attrition proposal had players choose to take up to 2 levels of exhaustion, healing half their max life for each level taken. This is nice because it leaves lasting consequences even if you run away, although it does cause weird issues with framing and theming (it's very OSR, and it makes exhaustion the resource that Actually Matters:tm:)
If we did do this, we'd almost certainly cut essence tap, since it currently serves this role.
What alternative(s) have you considered?
Additional context
This was inspired by maybe wanting to remove Essence Tap. In the current system, it's the only way to heal during fights, and one of the main ways that you gain exhaustion by "pushing yourself"