D&D 5E House rule idea for healing to avoid "whack-a-mole"

[Xaelvaen]

Before the rules strangely encouraged you to hold off healing until your ally drops (hopefully wasting lots of damage) and then bringing her back up with, say, a quick and convenient Healing Word or - even more strange - a single point of Lay on Hands.

You know, I had never even thought that before (and luckily neither had my players) that it would be a great way to shave off damage by intentionally letting someone hit 0 before healing. That is a very interesting 'hole' in the system, thanks for pointing that out. My players always do their best to not let allies go down - then again, we also don't use cyclic initiative, so there's that chance a player loses a turn at 0 before they get healed, so the prevention of 0 is a bit more important I suppose.

 

[Uller]

No, you still start racking up death saves at zero or negative hp.

The only difference is that you actually track hp down to -10. Any damage in excess of bringing you to -10 is still wasted.

If you have 4 hp and are hit for 7 damage, you're at -3, not 0. If you're then healed five points, you're at +2, not +5.

Nothing else changes. The only thing that changes is that a single point of healing is not guaranteed to bring you back in the fight even if you just took gobs and gobs of damage.

This small change has huge implications.

Before the rules strangely encouraged you to hold off healing until your ally drops (hopefully wasting lots of damage) and then bringing her back up with, say, a quick and convenient Healing Word or - even more strange - a single point of Lay on Hands. Getting dropped wasn't nearly enough to make you stay down, so I couldn't in good conscience have monsters keep doing only that, or the game felt like running in "kiddie mode" where there is no actual danger. The PHB rules naturally leads to monsters making sure to kill off downed heroes before switching to attack a "fresh" hero, which I find exceedingly bad for the game.

I see.

I don't think this is what I'm going for. It makes healing less effective for downed PCs and still encourages using 1-action, leveled up healing spells which is the opposite of what I want. What I'm hoping for is to end up with something that encourages a PC sitting at 5 hp to quaff a healing potion and spend two of his own HD to keep himself up or for the cleric or paly to spend a bonus action to let the damaged PC spend some HD to keep them from going down in the first place (and make it actually effective for that).

 

[robus]

... We just finished ToA...

This must be some kind of record?! The mind boggles...!

 

[Xaelvaen]

This must be some kind of record?! The mind boggles...!

Don't be too boggled. One of my players used the Death Curse in his backstory - his grand master at his monastery had been resurrected in the past, so he was dwindling even faster than the main quest giver. The group, rather liking this venerable (although low-leveled) man, pushed very hard to stay on track. They didn't piddle about here and there. Had basically all neutral and lawful good in the party, so it was pretty cohesive in those regards.

I don't mind, though - it just leaves me a ton of stuff left over from the book to drop into other campaigns.

EDIT: We also all have matching days off, so we just kinda binge-play for 2 days a week

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

I am only speaking for me, but this would completely turn me off playing a healer. I played over a decade of AD&D 2nd with this and clerics ended up having little to no agency - they just spent their actions on other characters. I didn't even play a cleric during all of 3.x. 4e having the ability to heal your allies and yet still have an action to be proactive was a paradigm shift.

I'm glad you found something that works with your table. Heck, it might even work at my table depending on the player. But for me it would stop any wish to play a healer.

Which isn't a problem, because the game runs perfectly fine with a healer at all

 

[Stalker0]

I will say that one thing I miss from 4e was the "free heals" for the clerics and other "leader types".

It gave a way for the party to have some heals but for a cleric to not feel committed to healing. I wish the 5e cleric had gotten something similar.

 

[Xaelvaen]

I will say that one thing I miss from 4e was the "free heals" for the clerics and other "leader types".

It gave a way for the party to have some heals but for a cleric to not feel committed to healing. I wish the 5e cleric had gotten something similar.

Somewhere around here I linked a Cleric cantrip I made; ranged spell attack to deal 1d6 (+1d6 at 5/11/17) radiant damage, and the next target that hit it gained 3/5/7/9 THP. It isn't quite the same as the easy-going healing of 4E, but it has kept the Cleric from being nothing but a heal dump from time to time. And it's far from overpowered with monster damage output.

 

[CapnZapp]

You guys really ought to create a Cleric that never casts more than a single heal in any given combat. It should open your eyes to how 5th edition no longer requires a combat medic.

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[WayOfTheFourElements]

You guys really ought to create a Cleric that never casts more than a single heal in any given combat. It should open your eyes to how 5th edition no longer requires a combat medic.

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Exactly. I even give clerics in my game the ability to choose "spells known" instead of preparing spells each day to make it clear to the rest of the table that they are not a healer. So far, only one tempest cleric has taken it up, but through his six months of play, no one expected him to toss out a single healing spell because the spells simply weren't on his list.

 

[CapnZapp]

Well, I was more thinking of how old hands need to be "deprogrammed" from thinking just because a Cleric CAN cast a Healing spell doesn't mean he SHOULD.

Therefore I suggest your Cleric does prepare a Healing spell, only he only uses it when he himself deems it necessary, and that the other players help him keep in mind how a spell that kills enemies is often more effective healing anyway - a dead enemy is an enemy inflicting zero damage, after all!

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