[Proposal] - Healing's Word back as Divine Power

KarinsDad · Dec 6, 2010

CaBaNa said:
In that case the question is, has Pacifist Healer been unbalancing in practice as is? We've got several examples with DM's and players to ask. So far River has been the main example, my character Pok has been traveling with him, and I haven't seen any encounters reduced to triviality due to his presence.

That may just be due to r1's ability as DM though...

I've seen it unbalanced in actual play. This encounter went from challenging to a trivial mopup with the use of a single power:

Knoepf 26/40
Hasifar 0/41 prone, bloodied and unconscious
Artemus -2/39 prone, bloodied and unconscious
Boruuk 20/51 prone, bloodied
Tirial 11/45 bloodied

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5062389-post121.html

Knoepf 26/40
Hasifar 26/41 prone
Artemus 25/39 prone
Boruuk 48/51 prone
Tirial 38/45

The party was in desperate shape. But with a single prayer, the Pacifist Healer Knoepf healed 106 hit points or 10 healing surges worth of healing. In 3E terms, that's the equivalent of a Mass Cure Serious Wounds for a 4th level PC. In 4E terms, that's stronger than casting 4 6th level Cure Serious Wounds spells simultaneously, or stronger than casting a 22nd level Mass Cure Serious Wounds.

You don't consider that giving 4th level PCs the ability to cast 22nd level prayers as broken?

Granted, not all of this healing comes from Pacifist Healer. Only 32 points or 30% came from Pacifist Healer, the rest came from Healer's Mercy and the plethora of healing bonus items and feats that healing type Clerics accumulate.

River has two powers that can do this. His group is never really challenged unless River goes unconsious or is stunned.

Iron Sky · Dec 6, 2010

In the first 4e campaign I ran, we had a pacifist healer for a while. Granted, this was before the nerf, but I found that the only way I could challenge my PCs to neutralize the cleric in some way, otherwise, the healing he added would be as much as 2-3 times their surge value, often bringing them from near-death to full in a single heal.

The party also complained that fights started taking too long: almost no risk and -20 or 25% party damage (cleric dealing no damage) meant the fights took a couple rounds longer to finish.

I disliked them as a DM and the players ended up disliking them as well. I eventually let the cleric completely rebuild his character as a laser cleric with a healing focus instead and everyone was much happier.

H.M.Gimlord · Dec 6, 2010

Seeing as a day has gone by, and there is a great deal of debate, I'm going to change my vote to NO. This will, at least, keep the discussion going without automatically accepting it tomorrow. That way the deciding vote will have the benefit of this discussion's history.

Ozymandias79 · Dec 13, 2010

Calling @covaithe , @garyh , @TwoHeadsBarking and @Lord Sessadore

JoeNotCharles · Dec 13, 2010

Now that I've played through a fight as a Pacifist Healer, I have a counter-proposal:

1. Return the Divine keyword to Healing Word.
2. Give the Essentials Druid a new power named Healing Word but with the Primal rather than Divine keyword. (I believe this works well with the language in - uh, PHB2 was it? - that says elements count as the same source "if they have the same name". The two Healing Word's count as "the same" for the purposes of feats and things affecting Healing Word, even though they have different keywords.)
3. Add a clause to Pacifist Healer saying it does not apply to powers that can be used more than once per encounter.

Mewness · Dec 15, 2010

JoeNotCharles said:
3. Add a clause to Pacifist Healer saying it does not apply to powers that can be used more than once per encounter.

That will cause weirdness with hybrid leaders, who can have two different healing powers, each of which is usable only once per encounter.

I think the only real issue with the errata as they stand that it seems silly for healing word not to have the divine keyword, and I don't think it's worth making house rules over this issue: the keyword is just a bit of mechanical business. Nobody's actually saying that the healing can't come from the gods because it doesn't have the keyword, and nothing is stopping players from fluffing their powers however they like.

DMDanW · Jan 13, 2011

So just wondering is this proposal going anywhere? I play a Pacifist Healer and would like to know if this is going to be approved (fingers crossed) or if I have to nerf him down to be as useless a healer as every other cleric (and thereby removing any reason to actually play a pacifist healer)

Ozymandias79 · May 25, 2011

Good News! I have just listened to the official DnD podcast and they do say that the intent IS that pacific healer and beatific healer should work together with the clerics healing word