D&D 4th Edition RulesAsk questions about 4th-Edition rules and the like in here. General discussion about 4E or any other game belongs in General RPG Discussion, above.
I think it sounds a touch tactically demanding... forcing the party to cling to it... creating any circumstances where they dont want to do that seems like a reasonable response from the DM and npc's.
So clerics now have a connect to the unicorn force not just swordmages... eh
Have you tried moving the enemies away from it? Forcing the party to spread out? It's not exactly a subtle effect, and requires some modicum of cooperation and/or terrain advantage to truly abuse.
AoEs/auras that cause ongoing damage are a good counter as well. Healing 10 per turn isn't so bad when you're being hit with an AoE or an Aura that damages the entire party just for being beside the spirit. The party'd end up taking less damage by spreading out, defeating the brokenness of this ability.
When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify his encounters in order to deal with a specific power, it's a pretty good sign the power is broken
When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify his encounters in order to deal with a specific power, it's a pretty good sign the power is broken
When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify encounters in order to deal with his party, that's a sign he's actually tailoring his adventures to the players, and that their characters actually matter to his game world, and it allows the players to still use their fun abilities without you having to cry 'It's broken, waaaaa' and hit it with the nerf stick.
There's two schools of thought on this. Mine, personally, is that abilities that seem strong have weaknesses, and making encounters where said weaknesses are exploited are fair game. By the same token, making encounters where said strong powers 'save the day' for the party is also fair game. The idea of this is to create experiences and good adventuring times, not to perfectly balance the system out as tho it were some competitive MMO.
The system as you run it only needs to be balanced between the players actually playing, and the monsters they come up against. Anything else is superfluous.
When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify encounters in order to deal with his party, that's a sign he's actually tailoring his adventures to the players, and that their characters actually matter to his game world, and it allows the players to still use their fun abilities without you having to cry 'It's broken, waaaaa' and hit it with the nerf stick.
There's two schools of thought on this. Mine, personally, is that abilities that seem strong have weaknesses, and making encounters where said weaknesses are exploited are fair game. By the same token, making encounters where said strong powers 'save the day' for the party is also fair game. The idea of this is to create experiences and good adventuring times, not to perfectly balance the system out as tho it were some competitive MMO.
The system as you run it only needs to be balanced between the players actually playing, and the monsters they come up against. Anything else is superfluous.
I guess that just depends on how you define "broken". If fighters had a feat that permanently gave them double hit points and an extra standard action every round, the DM could very easily adjust his adventures to compensate for that - just send in extra monsters! The adventures could still be lots of fun. Nevertheless, by my definition, that feat would be broken.
Agreed. But we're not talking about adding monsters. We're talking about using existing monsters in ways that enhance the play experience for that ability.
I find myself agreeing with Dracosuave's position (in this and other threads). The word broken gets thrown around way too much. I hate houseruling and nerfing things because of a percieved unbalance. I would prefer to see it in play a few times and *then* judge it's balance. In the case of this power, it is surely a good power, but even simple tactics can counter it. My last tongue-in-cheek post about killing the cleric may have been in jest, but it is a valid strategy. Change the focus of the monsters, forcing the cleric to move the zone if he wants to make the healing effective. Take away his actions so he has to chose what he wants to do. Scatter the party so they can't all benefit (or better yet, take advantage of it and blast the hell out of them, hopefully with some debilitating condition as a rider).
And really, it is a daily utility. Usable once per day. Give it a shot, and if you still have a problem in your game, talk with the player about changing it.
Yeah Draco is pretty smooth and easy to agree with.
There were people arguing that they had to add more ranged adversaries just because of BRV ( a realistic change IMHO - ranged weaponry rules in real life and the damage is usually nerfed in games - perhaps to make up for having too high of hit chance)
... since I have to design my encounters for 2 and 3 players instead of 5 and 6, I am wondering what the fuss is.. I have to change mine all the time to adjust to my player set and with 4e the way it is even with standard numbers if your players are more or less strategic I suspect you will have to adjust... its why we have a DM... to make intelligent adjustments which maintain the fun, instead of a program.
In real life effective area attacks were the reason people quit clumping up (they clumped to exploit cooperative defenses like shield walls - not healing spirits unless you count the bottle of rum...)
Actually they probably started not clumping because ranged attacks worked better against clumps too (effective area attacks just put the nail in the coffin), another reason ranged weapons rule.
Last edited by Garthanos; 7th August 2009 at 08:31 AM..
Well in our game it is just plain stupid - one encounter a day we basically walk out with full hit points at no healing surge cost. Its overpowered. It should be more limited. Right now its sort of brain dead to choose this power at the appropriate level and that's not how powers should be.
We'll be nerfing it or banning it. Like so that it triggers once a round only...
That sounds good; I know the cleric in my game will want it (fits her character's spiritual allies theme as well as her love of healing), making the healing a immediate reaction sounds good.
__________________ "I took a risk... and I ended up in the bag of holding" -the player of Ian Whitefire (deceased)
This is the problem I have with the whole divine power book. Lots of powers that heal without spending healing surges. Why have the surge system at all if it can be easily bypassed with stuff like spirit of healing, life transference and other powers like that.
Also, consider what happens when the cleric uses beacon of hope and then this? Beacon of hope adds another +5 to healing powers.
Thing is, surgeless healing has a habit of using up standard actions.
Now, I have a theory from playing a lot of turn based RPGs, and it applies to table top. If all you are doing is healing, you are losing the battle. You need to do damage to win. If you deal no damage, you cannot win. (damage doesn't have to be hit points, it can be status effects that make the enemy surrender, etc)
Standard action healing -has- to be strong and powerful in order to counteract the fact that the monsters have also just lived longer.
Think of it this way, let's say your cleric does 10 damage per round on average. Now let's say the cleric heals a party member with his standard action. The cleric -also- just prevented 10 damage to the monsters.
Now, let's say that's with 5 40 hp foes, that turns out to be the equivalent of handing one of those monsters a free healing surge.
And if that ability only healed one healing surge, with no bonus added to it, then you've basicly traded 1 healing surge for the party for one healing surge for the monster.
This is only optimal if you're already ahead on the damage race. If you are behind (and you should be if you're breaking out daily use healing) then you've actually -costed- your party more than you've helped it.
So standard action healing -has- to be awesome otherwise it's a trap.
I don't really agree with the standard action healing comment.
PC's have less hp than the opposition. They also do more damage with their best powers and especially when used by the strikers or AoE users.
Any damage the PC's take is going to hurt them more than the opponents.
Clerics are not going to do a whole lot of damage, save for some AoE's and couple of dailies. The damage they don't do during a healing action is not going to be much, and they will have enough turns to use their really damaging attacks in any case.
Also, in general I think it is a poor idea to include a lot of surgeless healing in the game - not really caring about the minor action or standard action to use. To make surgeless healing with standard actions is still a poor design choice - why make surgeless healing at all? Or why not limit it to actually low figures or to daily powers, so that healing surges do not lose meaning as a resource to be guarded.
I don't like the directions that these surgeless heals allow the PC's to take. As long as they can survive without using dailies (normal encounters), they can just go forward with barely a scratch on their surge totals.
Agreed. But we're not talking about adding monsters. We're talking about using existing monsters in ways that enhance the play experience for that ability.
A very large difference in scope.
For purposes of this argument, we are assuming that Spirit of Healing really is much more potent that the average utility power, under average circumstances. Therefore, in order for the DM to balance out the power by adjusting his encounters, he has to do everything in his power to frustrate the players when they attempt to use Spirit of Healing, in order to make it as ineffective as possible so it ends up, on average, being no better than a normal utility power. As both a player and a DM, I don't enjoy this sort of "arms race". I feel that it decreases the play experience rather than increasing it. I would prefer to have a normal power that I am allowed to use to its full extent, rather than a mighty power that the GM rarely lets me use effectively.
Admittedly, though, if you are more "old school" you might enjoy trying to out-think the DM's attempts to screw you over.
I don't really agree with the standard action healing comment.
PC's have less hp than the opposition. They also do more damage with their best powers and especially when used by the strikers or AoE users.
Any damage the PC's take is going to hurt them more than the opponents.
Agreed. My notes on battles played indicate that the monsters take at least twice as much damage as the players (usually even more than that). Not only do the have more hit points each, but the monsters end the battle with no hit points left, while the players still have hit points left over. There are certainly disadvantages to passively healing rather than actively dealing damage. But with the efficiency ratio so far in favor of healing, overall I'm not sure whether a point of damage is better or worse than a point of healing.
In many types of adventures, healing surges don't meaningfully limit the players, they will just rest when they run out. But if you really try to make use of the healing surge mechanic (as I do) by putting the players on a clock, then "healing surges spent per battle" becomes a key measure of encounter success, and large amounts of surgeless healing is just awesome. If, as has been reported on this thread, you can pick one battle per day with favorable circumstances and use Spirit of Healing to end the battle with no permanent damage, that would be a better result than if the power doubled the entire party's damage for the whole encounter!
When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify encounters in order to deal with his party, that's a sign he's actually tailoring his adventures to the players, and that their characters actually matter to his game world, and it allows the players to still use their fun abilities without you having to cry 'It's broken, waaaaa' and hit it with the nerf stick.
How would you deal with this without metagaming?
I think a monster is unlikely to recognize a rare cleric ability, even if it's a very intelligent monster.
It's sort of like using invisibility in a world like Shadowrun (where magic is widely known) or Dark Matter (where it isn't). In the first, you'd expect opponents to figure it out and throw flour or whatever at the invisible opponent. In Dark Matter, it'll take them a long time just to realize there's magic afoot.
I think in the latter setting, if opponents often seem to know how to deal with a rare technique, that is metagaming, and it's not fair to the player to indirectly nerf their ability that way. You're better off being up front about weakening the ability, IMO.
I'm actually more worried about the multiple new ways to get high resistances and resist all. Unfortunately there are many monsters dealing only one kind of damage that are completely negated by these abilities.
Why care about healing if noone is taking damage any more?
I also dislike the opposite: The many ways to lower or ignore resistances or even add vulnerabilities. These abilities eliminate design space. PCs no longer have to think about what energy types to use. There's no longer different situations where one might be better than the other. Just take feat X and energy type Y will always be the best choice - boring!
I think a monster is unlikely to recognize a rare cleric ability, even if it's a very intelligent monster.
The DC for a trained arcana check to recognize a conjuration or zone is 15+half level of effect. In this case it's 18.
I think that if the monster is trained in Arcana, they get a shot at it. It's allowed in the rules. Whether this is plausible or not is based on the individual monster.
However, if the monster is intellegent, he's gonna be smart enough to see 'That guy used an ability, and healing happens over here whenever they hit me. Let's see about not being over there.'
I appreciate the discussions this thread has caused.
To those of you who say this only trivializes one encounter:
Well that's one encounter too many. It's just not the right attitude to have regarding powers... Powers should be helpful, good and useful but shouldn't change the balance of the party so utterly.
To those of you who say that we should just houserule it to our liking:
Well that's not really addressing the fact that Wizards is really not thinking these power through. I hate having my faith in the balancing process these people go through thrown out of the window so often. I wish they would take some extra time and think out the problems with their powers. Yes, obviously, we will likely houserule it but I don't like having a system that is broken if not houseruled and I don't like having to tell a player that this power as printed that he chose is not going to play that way.
To those of you who say that the gm can change his encounters/monster behaviour:
Well, I guess it is valid to say that every time this power is cast the enemies have to focus fire and down the cleric... but this seems like the opposite of a fun encounter for the players. The other suggestion that monsters should move tactically say away from the spirit or something just plain doesn't work. Our party is very capable of killing the monsters at range and further, the spirit can be moved by the cleric so that's not much of a hinderance. The amount of healing pumped out by this thing is plenty enough to trivialize the damage of some sort of static effect counter-cast by an enemy (which was a suggestion by someone else).
So I remain unimpressed with this power, in that I believe it to be too good. Such a thing should never have been created by Wizards and published in its current form.
I appreciate the discussions this thread has caused.
To those of you who say this only trivializes one encounter:
Well that's one encounter too many. It's just not the right attitude to have regarding powers... Powers should be helpful, good and useful but shouldn't change the balance of the party so utterly.
To those of you who say that we should just houserule it to our liking:
Well that's not really addressing the fact that Wizards is really not thinking these power through. I hate having my faith in the balancing process these people go through thrown out of the window so often. I wish they would take some extra time and think out the problems with their powers. Yes, obviously, we will likely houserule it but I don't like having a system that is broken if not houseruled and I don't like having to tell a player that this power as printed that he chose is not going to play that way.
To those of you who say that the gm can change his encounters/monster behaviour:
Well, I guess it is valid to say that every time this power is cast the enemies have to focus fire and down the cleric... but this seems like the opposite of a fun encounter for the players. The other suggestion that monsters should move tactically say away from the spirit or something just plain doesn't work. Our party is very capable of killing the monsters at range and further, the spirit can be moved by the cleric so that's not much of a hinderance. The amount of healing pumped out by this thing is plenty enough to trivialize the damage of some sort of static effect counter-cast by an enemy (which was a suggestion by someone else).
So I remain unimpressed with this power, in that I believe it to be too good. Such a thing should never have been created by Wizards and published in its current form.
Obviously you have already made up your mind on this, but I would assume that if it's as broken as you think, then WotC will (eventually) issue errata for it.
But IMO, it is a very conditional ability. The cleric's allies must be within one square of the conjuration, and then they must actually hit their opponent to receive the benefit it provides. Sure it's a nice amount of healing, but if a PC is the target of a focused fire beat-down, then it's not going to keep them up by itself.
For purposes of this argument, we are assuming that Spirit of Healing really is much more potent that the average utility power, under average circumstances. Therefore, in order for the DM to balance out the power by adjusting his encounters, he has to do everything in his power to frustrate the players when they attempt to use Spirit of Healing, in order to make it as ineffective as possible so it ends up, on average, being no better than a normal utility power. As both a player and a DM, I don't enjoy this sort of "arms race".
For the purposes of this argument, I'm not assuming anything except that DMs use normal encounter design to match the player's capabilities, to allow certain ones to shine and win the day throughout the game.
In otherwords, by the guidelines of the DMG.
This ability is situational, against certain types of monsters it doesn't really work out so well, but against others it shines. So, every so often you put in monsters it doesn't work out well against (PROTIP: Other powers get used at this time that shine) and every so often you set up an encounter where, if they have this ability, they win the day so they can go 'Look. The cleric won the day!'.
Everyone should have their moment, and you should be setting those up. This is how it's been since 1e, and is DMing advice that's been around in almost every roleplaying game that -has- a 'How to DM Section' for years.
Linear Mode
And yet another word from our sponsors
