D&D 5E Xanathar's Healing Spirit is 10d6 healing to the whole party out of combat?

[5ekyu]

Maybe you see a different set of events unplaying over those 10m as better or worse but if you can set aside your "win my point" goggles for a moment, surely you can see a major impact and difference in how things play out between the spirit solution (1 action cast then everybody active but can be mostly quiet for 1m) and the prayer solution (10m active casting) in many different ways in the gameplay circumstance involved.

Cant you?

I can imagine quite a few, esp with spellcasters on the other side and on their home ground.

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[Ovinomancer]

The first thing the goblins do when they have a potential intruder is to turn over all their furniture to use as fortifications and fall back to a bridge choke point. I guess they doing all that just in case you know? No verified imminent threat is known to be still present. In fact they are soo in the dark about what's going on they send a small band outside to search for the intruders that may have fled. And to top it all off they do all this within 10 minutes after being awoken just in case the intruder is still present. I guess these are just some really cautious goblins. Now there's nothing wrong with that mind you. It's still realistic and plausible.

In your rush to question me and show I did unreasonable things, you undermined your own argument. Tell me, oh great questioner, if the goblins had no idea what was happening, what woke them up?

See, maybe before you try so hard to disprove a scenario you should consider that the facts as presented don't line up with your assumptions. I can see some area for confusion given I said the sentries had been quietly dispatched, but really, did you stop to wonder what had happened that hurt the party enough to start this whole conversation? You recall, right? That the party had taken damage? What might have caused that that might also alert the goblins in the nearby caves as to a bad situation already inside their camp? And, also, tell me if you think that the goblins have nothing to fear in the typical D&D world, or are they often low man on the danger totem pole?

Answers to rhetorical questions:
A fight.
A fight.
No.
They did.
A fight.
They have a lot to fear.

 

[Zmajdusa]

Not saying I wouldn't let PCs set stuff on fire and use tactics. I've given PCs these options as a DM several times, though it was Pathfinder. I'm just saying that cantrips mean you don't have to smash anything, create bonfire and control flame from the same person could easily start a fire and spread it quickly. A couple of flasks of oil and a fire damage cantrip can do something similar. Burning hands also sets things on fire. So setting up the flames takes moments, not minutes, but the caltrops may require a few turns to do, depending on the size of the exits.

 

[Zmajdusa]

Though, now that I think about it, Prayer of Healing should definitely not have a 10 minute cast time, that is 1/6 of a short rest. Wouldn't a short rest be the better idea than expending a second level spell slot? Then of course you have Goodberry and Life Clerics, which you can do at level 1 if you are a variant human.

 

[FrogReaver]

Maybe you see a different set of events unplaying over those 10m as better or worse but if you can set aside your "win my point" goggles for a moment, surely you can see a major impact and difference in how things play out between the spirit solution (1 action cast then everybody active but can be mostly quiet for 1m) and the prayer solution (10m active casting) in many different ways in the gameplay circumstance involved.

Cant you?

I can imagine quite a few, esp with spellcasters on the other side and on their home ground.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

All the pokes and prods aside. Yes it's highly possible that 10 minutes of preparation can quickly change the dynamics of a fight. The actions of those goblins highlight that scenario even though In most of the games I play 10 minutes would Not be a tremendous disadvantage over 1 minute.

Perhaps the biggest issue with prayer of healing is the threat something could attack you and interrupt it given its 10 minute duration. That I would think is the more seen scenario than enemies falling back and super fortifying themselves after 10 minutes. In fact that reason alone would make healing spirit hands down better than prayer of healing even if they healed the same amount.

 

[5ekyu]

All the pokes and prods aside. Yes it's highly possible that 10 minutes of preparation can quickly change the dynamics of a fight. The actions of those goblins highlight that scenario even though In most of the games I play 10 minutes would Not be a tremendous disadvantage over 1 minute.

Perhaps the biggest issue with prayer of healing is the threat something could attack you and interrupt it given its 10 minute duration. That I would think is the more seen scenario than enemies falling back and super fortifying themselves after 10 minutes. In fact that reason alone would make healing spirit hands down better than prayer of healing even if they healed the same amount.

Even if the interruption does not occur the possibility would make it such that HS would be chosen\preferred over PoH.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not saying I wouldn't let PCs set stuff on fire and use tactics. I've given PCs these options as a DM several times, though it was Pathfinder. I'm just saying that cantrips mean you don't have to smash anything, create bonfire and control flame from the same person could easily start a fire and spread it quickly. A couple of flasks of oil and a fire damage cantrip can do something similar. Burning hands also sets things on fire. So setting up the flames takes moments, not minutes, but the caltrops may require a few turns to do, depending on the size of the exits.

You do know that wood generally doesn't meet the definition of flammable, right? It'll burn, sure, but not easily.

 

[Ovinomancer]

All the pokes and prods aside. Yes it's highly possible that 10 minutes of preparation can quickly change the dynamics of a fight. The actions of those goblins highlight that scenario even though In most of the games I play 10 minutes would Not be a tremendous disadvantage over 1 minute.

Perhaps the biggest issue with prayer of healing is the threat something could attack you and interrupt it given its 10 minute duration. That I would think is the more seen scenario than enemies falling back and super fortifying themselves after 10 minutes. In fact that reason alone would make healing spirit hands down better than prayer of healing even if they healed the same amount.

Again, your clearly never dug a foxhole.

And since when does using a chokepoint in a cave while stuffing a table and some chairs into another tunnel to block it up count as "super fortified"?

Are you really so incredulous over the dynamic changes to player decisions in my games? Do you usually have the creatures that inhabit the lairs your players invade just kick back and wait for the dying to start again while the party takes a powder?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Though, now that I think about it, Prayer of Healing should definitely not have a 10 minute cast time, that is 1/6 of a short rest. Wouldn't a short rest be the better idea than expending a second level spell slot? Then of course you have Goodberry and Life Clerics, which you can do at level 1 if you are a variant human.

Goodberry with the Life bonus was never intended. It was an oversight. Healing spells aren't supposed to be that efficient.

Prayer of Healing works because a 10 minute cast time is meaningful, which is why it's allowed to be as good as it is. It acknowledges that time constraints are supposed to exist, but that you won't always have time for a full hour, so you can spend 10 minutes to get an effect which is hopefully good enough. The alternative to casting Prayer of Healing is to just cast Cure Wounds on everyone, and you can do that in less than a minute, so there needs to be a trade-off between efficient slot usage and convenient casting time; if you could get the benefits of Prayer of Healing in just one minute, then there would be no reason to ever throw out a bunch of Cure Wounds when you were in a hurry after a fight.

 

[Stalker0]

Though, now that I think about it, Prayer of Healing should definitely not have a 10 minute cast time, that is 1/6 of a short rest. Wouldn't a short rest be the better idea than expending a second level spell slot?

Assuming an 16 in the casting stat (and no life cleric bonuses or anything special), prayer of healing heals 12 damage, up to 6 creatures. But lets assume a "normal" party of 4 characters, or 48 healing. On average, a character's hitdice (a d8) restores 4.5 health on a roll. So about 10 hitdice worth of healing.

So 1 2nd level spell = 10 hitdice of healing. Note that at 3rd level, a party of 4 has 12 hitdice total, so this is the vast majority of their innate healing. If we bump it up to 7th level lets say, that is ~35% of their hitdie reserves.


Now different parties have different compositions, so the numbers aren't perfect. But I think it answers the question that in some cases, it is absolutely better to burn 1 spell instead of a big portion of your parties healing reserves.