D&D 5E Maybe I'm just tired?

MoonSong · Nov 18, 2012

(Psi)SeveredHead said:
Minor action healing is controversial? Do people want to give up their whole turn to heal?

I do. Healing as a minor action cheapens healing. And the psychologic impact of it to a dedicate healer nothing is also important. If you are a healer and healing is only MINOR then you no longer feel useful by doing just healing, if healing is a minor action, you don't get to enjoy being a healer, healing as a minor action removes all drama and excitement to it.

In previous editions:

A party member falls, cue the rushing and sense of urgency to get to him, shield him from further damage and then heal him with a touch.

In 4e:

A party member falls, you hit a random mook and he suddenly is fine and ready to keep going/you shut out his wounds. If you wanted to say, run to him and use cure light wounds on him you automatically receive a glare of hate across the table "how you dare delaying combat to heal? Use Healing strike/Whatever power that heals with a hit" and that's assuming they even let you have that power to begin with.

Gorgoroth · Nov 18, 2012

..

that sounds good but I like to play clerics who can also fight. I played a dwarf healer specialist in Pathfinder for six months and it nagged me to no end that depending on what the other (perhaps reckless) players did, such as provoking AoOs unnecesserily, would mean in practice I lost my turn since I had to heal them. It takes away choice for the cleric, and forces them to be a healbot. Some may like that, but I don't. Maybe for major heals to get you back up on your feet, but if I run past you to chop the enemy with my axe, I should be able to touch you with my finger tip along the way and give you a few HP without such a huge impact.

If I wanted to play a battle cleric in PF or 3.0, I couldn't, 4e was a DEFINITE improvement there, with minor action heals. 5e seems to have some balance. I detested wanting to pick Weapon Focus (axe) but realizing I only ever swung in combat 1/3 rounds because of other people's decisions. Meaning my feats were diluted by factors outside my control, making them worthless to take. Choices should be viable. If I can attack with my axe most rounds, and do some minor healing here and there, then suddenly I CAN focus on being a battle cleric, and putting my feat choices where I want.

Let others who dabble as secondary healers have to spend their entire action to heal their comrades, not the guy who's trained at it. Let's face it, clerics, at least battle clerics are tough and need to be able to fight AND heal. I'd be very ammenable to healing as part of another action only for minor or lesser heals. Drive-by healing, as it were. I think that's the way it already works, if I'm not mistaken. There should be no proviso for a full "Heal" spell being cast AND attacking, at least until level 6 when the equivalent fighter gets his second attack. That's a good compromise. Battle clerics at 6th can do both of their subroles at the same time, at the same level as a fighter gets his boost to plain old attacking.

Greg K · Nov 18, 2012

(Psi)SeveredHead said:
Minor action healing is controversial? Do people want to give up their whole turn to heal?

Yes. I don't like the minor action healing an noted my dislike in the questionaire.

Tequila Sunrise · Nov 18, 2012

Grydan said:
Do I hope the end result is a system that does more that I like than the system I currently use, and which does the same for my current batch of players? Absolutely. But if it turns out not to be that system? Meh. I hope whoever likes the end result enjoys it, and I'll look forward to seeing what new iteration they come out with another ~5 years down the line.

Yup!

Personally, I've pretty much already lost interest in 5e, so I'm happy to let others inflict standard-action healing on themselves and whatever other regressions 5e makes. The scariest part is that some future DM of mine might prefer 5e and I'll have a choice between playing it, DMing my preferred edition, or not gaming at all.

But I'm running that risk already, and it ain't all that scary.

Storminator · Nov 18, 2012

From what I see now, I'm not leaving 4e for a DDN game. There's waaaay too much love for 4e in my group.

But I could use a fast and simple D&D for my non-serious gaming needs. DDN might give me that. I'm going to give it a spin this weekend and see how it goes.

PS

Blackbrrd · Nov 18, 2012

Gorgoroth said:
that sounds good but I like to play clerics who can also fight. I played a dwarf healer specialist in Pathfinder for six months and it nagged me to no end that depending on what the other (perhaps reckless) players did, such as provoking AoOs unnecesserily, would mean in practice I lost my turn since I had to heal them. It takes away choice for the cleric, and forces them to be a healbot. Some may like that, but I don't. Maybe for major heals to get you back up on your feet, but if I run past you to chop the enemy with my axe, I should be able to touch you with my finger tip along the way and give you a few HP without such a huge impact.
...

I played a Cleric/Solamnic Knight in 3.5 with only one level of missing from full casting. He was primarily melee focused. I am guessing I spent most of my time in melee and also did some buffing, blasting or healing. Maybe something like 40/20/20/20. Usually I focused on one thing each combat. Buffing/Melee or Healing/melee or Blasting.

With the character setup I never felt like a healbot and I had a lot of flexibility. Healing in combat would usually prolong the combat and the resources we spent, so it was usually only used if ambushed or if somebody did something stupid. I played in a large level range, from 1 to 18 and as I gained levels the flexibility of the character grew.

What I liked the most about the character was the strategic choices I had to make. I had to assess the battle and try to estimate the opponents. If it was a hard fight and I needed to heal, there was no reason to buff myself, but it would be a good idea to buff the party. If it looked like it would be a long fight, going with self-buffing would be a good idea. Sometimes it would be smart to just blow some high level spell slots on blade barrier or flame strike so I would have to use so much magic on healing.

Making choices that really affect how the fight works is part of the fun of combat. 4e with it's 2-3 "Healing Word's" per "Leader" takes a bit away from that. You end up just using them on the character that gets hit the most, there isn't any other minor action that is even close in power. The same goes with encounter powers, you usually just use them early on to get the first mob down as fast as possible.

I would rather have a wider assortment of at-will powers/spells at the cost of encounter powers. One way to make this a bit more interesting could be to have different ways of gaining/spending additonal expertise dice. As it is now, I feel that the manuvers are not varied enough. Deadly Strike is kind of the base-line damage wise and no situational maneuver does more damage than it. Something I think is a bit boring.

Gorgoroth · Nov 18, 2012

.

Out of curiosity to see what the current state was, I re-downloaded the latest playtest (which I had deleted out of disgust over the asinine two-weapon fighting disgrace) and see, to my surprise, that the cleric works pretty much how I'd like him to, i.e.

Words of power, like Bless or the Cure spells, or Divine Favor, are very handy and some minor ones are castable at-will depending on your deity, meaning you can heal a bit and attack in the same round (but not move in between). So it's meant to be useful to stick the cleric up front in battle, be able to heal himself (or adjacent allies) and keep fighting. It really seems like Battle Cleric can be built similar to your paladin, very defendery.

Looking forward to seeing what the actual paladin will be like now.

cavalier973 · Nov 18, 2012

shidaku said:
My biggest fear with Next is that it will actually allow me to summon demons and justify all those whackjobs who call it satanic. Or, ya know, open up a portal and allow the Old Ones entrance to our universe(assuming they aren't here already).

See, I thought that a good idea for a D&D television series would be that changing the rules caused a glitch in the space/time continuum and opening a portal that allows all manner of beasties to enter our world.

The main characters in the series would have the overarching quest to capture six creatures that escaped from the D&D realm and return them, thus allowing everything to return to normal.

Spoiler:

The "six creatures" would turn out to be the characters from the D&D cartoon series

ZombieRoboNinja · Nov 19, 2012

KaiiLurker said:
In 4e:

A party member falls, you hit a random mook and he suddenly is fine and ready to keep going/you shut out his wounds. If you wanted to say, run to him and use cure light wounds on him you automatically receive a glare of hate across the table "how you dare delaying combat to heal? Use Healing strike/Whatever power that heals with a hit" and that's assuming they even let you have that power to begin with.

Heh, that sounds like a somewhat whiny group!

This seems like a situation where it'd be easy to satisfy both sides: let the "basic" heals accessible to most or all clerics be "minor actions" (in scare quotes because they're not called that anymore), and let those with a healing domain access more powerful standard-action spells.

The trick is that the more "powerful" spells probably couldn't just restore a bunch more HP, because then either the "healbot" cleric would be mandatory or it would be unnecessary. But they COULD incorporate preventative healing (like temp HP), healing over multiple rounds, or significant buffs tied to healing. The Cleric of Moradin smashes a goblin in the face while healing you for 15hp, and the Cleric of (insert healing god here) takes the time to cast a powerful blessing that heals you for 15hp AND gives you resistance to all damage for a round. Meanwhile, the Cleric of Pelor's heal creates a scorching burst around you that sears your foes.

In other words... bring back Channel Divinity from the second playtest, and every domain/god gets a representative healing effect from it?

pemerton · Nov 19, 2012

Blackbrrd said:
The same goes with encounter powers, you usually just use them early on to get the first mob down as fast as possible.

That depends a lot on build.

The ranger in my game mostly uses Twin Strikes, with encounter powers dedicated to various immediate actions.

The fighter's encounter powers are mostly AoEs.

And the sorcerer often leads with Radiant Starfall (1st level AoE that, with Admixture plus Resounding Thunder and Mark of Storms is a burst 2 that slides its targets). His encounter powers tend to be controlling bursts that he uses in a tactically superior situation, and he often saves his Demonsoul Bolts until he has a clearer sense of where the real danger is going to come from.