Health shouldn't regenerate by itself if you don't do anything, agreed.

But should you heal when you use the wait menu or sleep on a bed? Yes, but it shouldn't be always 100% heal though. The best would be if sleeping on a bed would heal you faster while waiting would heal you slower.

Don't know how is this unRPG-ish, you need to rest after battle in nearly all RPG I've played...

Uh, no? Unless the healing rate is seriously like 1hp a game hour.


Neither Skyrim, nor any other TES game was an FPS, and hell, this feature doesn't even belong in FPS. The only kind of game where health-regeneration makes sense is in Cover-based shooters.

It's bad enough having your HP heal from waiting. In Oblivion, healing was just a matter of getting 3ft away from an enemy and waiting for 1 hour. Didn't matter if you were missing 2 or 502hp, it'd heal you right quick! Virtually pissing on the Restoration and Alchemy skill, for anything other than creating poison or repairing damaged attributes.

More so in Skyrim, than any other entry, do I believe healing has to be very carefully balanced to maintain the sense of brutal ruggedness and urgency of the world. A dragon is a lot less scary when you can just ride into battle with 150 potions and punch it to death (Bioshock Big Daddy fights come to mind). Personally, my favorite part of Fallout: New Vegas's hardcoe mode, was how you could no longer spam stimpacks to instant health, making you really think about fights and what you bring into them. It was still possible to get hyper-regeneration if you were prepared (Lots of food, a few super stims too, ect) but it was much, much harder to stimpack abuse in that game, which is one of the reasons why I love it so much.

To coincide, hardcoe mode would force you to use a first aid every time you were hit. If you did you would heal and if not you would lose health over time. The more health lost the more resources you would have to use to mend the wounds.

No auto health regeneration, we don't need to make the game any easier. Sleeping, Restoration, Potions, and an auto Health Regeneration in sunlight perk is acceptable but not the wait 1 hour from Oblivion or any other form of health Regeneration.

Did we not play oblivion? Did we not all notice that it gave you unlimited healing? The game already has regenerating health. It just requires you to shuffle your spells around after every battle.

Both Daggerfall and Battlespire had regenerating health as a possible advantage, but choosing it screwed your level up speed severely and the effect itself was very slow. In order to counter the slow leveling speed, you had to choose some major disadvantages to go along with it. I'm not completely against regenerating health, but it should be as slow as it was in Battlespire (VERY... as in too slow for the casual gamer to actually take any real advantage of it). Regeneration speed as fast as Crysis or Medal of Honor would ruin this game, IMHO.


edit: actually, in Battlespire, it may have just removed the starting points you had to distribute among skills and such... severely... I know it reduced you level up speed in Daggerfall, though.

Lots of stuff in this thread that kinda frustrates me.
Heal until 50% (or whatever) is a bad idea IMO. Worked for some FPSs, but meh... not realistic and doesn't add much fun. Just go hide for 30 seconds.
Health Regen definitely should not be fast enough to have a noticeable impact in a fight. (Exception : Troll kin or its equivalent if included)

For me, regen should be in because of the "wait for health" system in place since well before Morrowind. But like someone above said before, why should clicking on the wait button suddenly grant magical healing properties?
Waiting for 1hr is an issue that definitely needs to be addressed. Either there should be no healing over time or (preferably IMO) waiting Regen should = Regen in game.
Realistically speaking, healing naturally would take 6+ months for a broken bone (until you could use it confidently. Full recovery could be as long as 2 years.) This obviously is not plausible for game-play reasons.
I think a decent compromise would be full HP regen in about 24 hours (+/-- for Endurance), waiting or wandering. Which fits snugly with MW's 16hr⁺ wait time (IIRC)
This means you would get full hp after several hours of RL time. NPCs (especially bandits, and animals) should migrate from room to room, as well as dungeon to dungeon (Radient AI could be very cool). So waiting in a dungeon might lead to unexpected encounters and waiting in a dungeon you have not cleared would be a little reckless. This would fix the "wait anywhere for free health" exploit. This is not balance breaking and adds room for RP and planning. It makes things like road side inns have a purpose besides expected eye candy. And scouting for inns in the area before dungeon diving would have interesting long term impact to how you play. A bit like finding the hospitals in a new city after you move.

Ideally, there should be a medical skill (or herbalism or put it in alchemy or whatever) that compliments the alternatives to Healing that already exist.
Why should bringing a bedroll grant health? Is it THAT much more comfy that the ground?

I'm not a fan of perks, but if it must be in than so be it. But I would rather see perks make regen more effective than grant it outright.

Troll kin. Why was this such a puny ability in OB? It should either be free health (albeit fairly slowly) or slightly more health in exchange for magic over time (a la constant effect toggle-able spell)

Some people have brought up the argument that if you were wounded severely, you would LOSE health rather than gain it over time. Simple answer: yes.
But no.
If you wanted to do that, it would make more sense to add a hidden stat (like hp, but not on the HUD) that is your body's blood content. And add bleeding to EVERY hit (blunts cause internal bleeding!) Perks, weapon upgrades, specialty weapons, animal weapons, poisons, magic, skills, etc could add extra bleeding. If Blood is full, then regen. If low, then no regen. If very low, lose hp. If 0, then death imminent without intervention (Like the "deadly poison" effect from OB).
Would make vampires slightly more interesting.
If you wanted to be realistic. You would add organs and organ damage and organ damage effects. So a relatively small wound to the heart would be fatal, even if your 'HP' was full.