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5e, Heal Thyself! Is Healing Too Weak in D&D?
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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8609634" data-attributes="member: 6877472"><p>Yeah I would personally be happy if a fully upcast Cure Wounds could negate one enemy turn with a little extra healing on top. When you think about action economy if you give up your action to negate one enemy's action, that's not really a good deal (which is why nobody at any table I played in during 3.X or Pathfinder ever bothered to counterspell enemies- yes, I could give up my fireball to counter his fireball, or I could just cast my fireball- note that now, such things are reduced to a reaction, allowing you to do everything else you might want to in a turn).</p><p></p><p>In my 2e games, the Cleric healed at every opportunity, because there wasn't really any other choice- hit points weren't coming back any other way any time soon. In 3e games, however, everything was suddenly doing more damage than in 2e, so that wasn't going to cut it, and players found other things to do rather than cast cure spells.</p><p></p><p>I mean, when Orcs go from doing 1-8 to 1d12+3, and your cure light wounds goes from 1d8 to 1d8+1, you start to see an imbalance. And of course, once players <strong>did</strong> find other things to do besides heal, we got all the complaints about the Cleric class in 3e- Clerics using magic to turn themselves into engines of destruction.</p><p></p><p>(The same thing happens on the Wizard side- 5d6 fireballs stop feeling great when an Ogre, for example, goes from 4d8+1 hit points to 4d8+11. So Wizards found something better to do, and boom, we have God Wizards turning combats into exercises in futility.)</p><p></p><p>So my frustration with 5e healing is pretty much the same thing all over again. When the system says "doing X is less effective, find a way to do Y". I don't <strong>want</strong> to do Y! I want to play a Cleric that focuses on making my party better, not turn into a point defense system! I'm supposed to be a force multiplier for my party, not a roving damage zone that pops people up to 1 hit point so they can keep acting like fools!</p><p></p><p>Because personally, I think some players are too laissez-faire about whether or not their characters are at risk! "Oh it's ok if the monster goes all out on my Rogue this turn, I get some damage in, there's no way it can kill me, and the Cleric can just Healing Word me so I can do it again next turn". </p><p></p><p>And all the arguments about how this is perfectly fine make me laugh, since I've been hearing complaints about the way this works since the edition started!...hell actually before, because in 4e, the same complaints existed, but at least there, Healing Word healed more than a token amount of hit points and didn't have funky rules preventing you from doing whatever else you wanted to that turn!</p><p></p><p>ASIDE: the rules for bonus action spells are absurd and I honestly don't understand the point. What in the world is busted about casting Healing Word or Spiritual Weapon and another levelled spell anyways? If the problem is Quickened Spell, fix that, it's not like a lot of people are happy about the Sorcerer class to begin with!</p><p></p><p>As for temporary hit points, if you have a great source of them, that's fantastic, and I love "pre-healing". Unfortunately, even though Aid is more efficient by far than an upcast Cure Wounds, players don't get excited about getting 5 temporary hit points when you get more from a friggin' Feat!</p><p></p><p>TLDR: being a healer is a thankless job. 5e reinforces this thanklessness by making players not really care too much about their hit points. Healing and damage mitigation efforts are largely dismissed by people I've played with. Playing Clerics in a completely alien way (which used to be the source of a lot of complaints by DM's) is now the new normal. So in the edition that's supposed to be a return to older values, traditional Cleric players are told "you're doing it wrong", and a lot of people don't care, because they're too busy griping about how "easy mode" the game is.</p><p></p><p>ALSO: being told "you can change it" only matters if you're the one who <strong>can</strong> change things!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 8609634, member: 6877472"] Yeah I would personally be happy if a fully upcast Cure Wounds could negate one enemy turn with a little extra healing on top. When you think about action economy if you give up your action to negate one enemy's action, that's not really a good deal (which is why nobody at any table I played in during 3.X or Pathfinder ever bothered to counterspell enemies- yes, I could give up my fireball to counter his fireball, or I could just cast my fireball- note that now, such things are reduced to a reaction, allowing you to do everything else you might want to in a turn). In my 2e games, the Cleric healed at every opportunity, because there wasn't really any other choice- hit points weren't coming back any other way any time soon. In 3e games, however, everything was suddenly doing more damage than in 2e, so that wasn't going to cut it, and players found other things to do rather than cast cure spells. I mean, when Orcs go from doing 1-8 to 1d12+3, and your cure light wounds goes from 1d8 to 1d8+1, you start to see an imbalance. And of course, once players [B]did[/B] find other things to do besides heal, we got all the complaints about the Cleric class in 3e- Clerics using magic to turn themselves into engines of destruction. (The same thing happens on the Wizard side- 5d6 fireballs stop feeling great when an Ogre, for example, goes from 4d8+1 hit points to 4d8+11. So Wizards found something better to do, and boom, we have God Wizards turning combats into exercises in futility.) So my frustration with 5e healing is pretty much the same thing all over again. When the system says "doing X is less effective, find a way to do Y". I don't [B]want[/B] to do Y! I want to play a Cleric that focuses on making my party better, not turn into a point defense system! I'm supposed to be a force multiplier for my party, not a roving damage zone that pops people up to 1 hit point so they can keep acting like fools! Because personally, I think some players are too laissez-faire about whether or not their characters are at risk! "Oh it's ok if the monster goes all out on my Rogue this turn, I get some damage in, there's no way it can kill me, and the Cleric can just Healing Word me so I can do it again next turn". And all the arguments about how this is perfectly fine make me laugh, since I've been hearing complaints about the way this works since the edition started!...hell actually before, because in 4e, the same complaints existed, but at least there, Healing Word healed more than a token amount of hit points and didn't have funky rules preventing you from doing whatever else you wanted to that turn! ASIDE: the rules for bonus action spells are absurd and I honestly don't understand the point. What in the world is busted about casting Healing Word or Spiritual Weapon and another levelled spell anyways? If the problem is Quickened Spell, fix that, it's not like a lot of people are happy about the Sorcerer class to begin with! As for temporary hit points, if you have a great source of them, that's fantastic, and I love "pre-healing". Unfortunately, even though Aid is more efficient by far than an upcast Cure Wounds, players don't get excited about getting 5 temporary hit points when you get more from a friggin' Feat! TLDR: being a healer is a thankless job. 5e reinforces this thanklessness by making players not really care too much about their hit points. Healing and damage mitigation efforts are largely dismissed by people I've played with. Playing Clerics in a completely alien way (which used to be the source of a lot of complaints by DM's) is now the new normal. So in the edition that's supposed to be a return to older values, traditional Cleric players are told "you're doing it wrong", and a lot of people don't care, because they're too busy griping about how "easy mode" the game is. ALSO: being told "you can change it" only matters if you're the one who [B]can[/B] change things! [/QUOTE]
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