D&D 5E On the healing options in the 5e DMG

[Emerikol]

Oh goody, it's the gritty-vs-high-fantasy-arguments-over-non-magical healing phase of the new edition! At least it should be calmer water after this.

Not intentionally but yes perhaps it can't be avoided.

I believe there are people who want exactly the same recovery rate that 5e offers who do not want any of the recovery to be because of natural means. Wanting to avoid natural recovery (except for the very slow approach of 1e,2e,and 3e), is not linked to wanting to slow down all recovery.

The true gritty people want it all slowed down I agree. Not every person who hates non-magical rapid healing though is a pro-gritty person.

 

[Emerikol]

There have been actual beheadings in NFL football? I had no idea!

You got me on that one. Bad use of the term.

 

[Joe Liker]

No, unlike many other situations the healer needed/not needed is a discrete question. either the party needs a healer -in which case playing a healbot is superfun for players like me and super awful for players like the one you describe- or not needed -in which case playing a healbot is superfluous at best and actively hurting the party at worst-. Generous self healing clearly makes a healer not needed -of course you can benefit from a PC that sometimes heals, but that is not a healer, though it makes it less of a burden for people who don't want to play healers-, it doesn't bring this flexibility you claim. This is an issue each table has to handle and is an either/or issue. There is no true middle ground here.

This has not been my experience in 5e at all. I've found that healers are always welcome, but seldom necessary. (This is less true at level 1, but level 1 is exceptional in many, many ways.)

People like having the assurance that someone will be able to get them back in the fight if they go down, but healing your still-conscious companions is seldom the most efficient use of your action. Your time is nearly always better spent buffing or attacking rather than shoring up hit points. In many cases, casting healing spells only serves to prolong the battle.

The best time to heal is during a short rest. Again, a healer is very useful in this capacity, so people are happy to have one. But the show does not stop without a healer. You can spend Hit Dice and get by just fine. It's debatable whether the healer allows you to have more encounters in a day because if the healer were to spend his spell slots making enemies die faster, you wouldn't need to spend as many Hit Dice during downtime (which means a non-healing class could have been just as useful).

@CapnZapp Another way to signal that you don't want to be a healbot is to not prepare healing spells. Of course, before the campaign even begins, you might want to mention you are doing this. Or you could be a bard and not even learn any healing spells -- that way, you still have Song of Rest to help with recovery, but no one can expect you to use your spell slots on it.

 

[Lanefan]

Another sentiment is:

I sure would like to play a Cleric. Her combination of robust melee combined with cool magical powers sounds super neat.

But no. If I play a Cleric the game engine itself will expect, nay require, me to spend my actions on buffing and healing.

Uh...er...with a normal Cleric buffing and healing *are* the cool magical powers! And you can stick your nose into combat as well and be somewhat useful there...and patch yourself up afterwards too.

Never mind the rest of the party is going to want to make sure you stay upright.

I don't see any lose here.

Lan-"playing a full Cleric for the first time in ages and quite enjoying it"-efan

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Uh...er...with a normal Cleric buffing and healing *are* the cool magical powers! And you can stick your nose into combat as well and be somewhat useful there...and patch yourself up afterwards too.

Never mind the rest of the party is going to want to make sure you stay upright.

I don't see any lose here.

Lan-"playing a full Cleric for the first time in ages and quite enjoying it"-efan

I can't speak for 5e yet, but I will say in 2e,3e,and 3.5 I saw a lot of arguments over "Don't prep/cast that we need you for healing" it was only 4e that ever gave us clerics that didn't do so... and better yet whole games with 0 religion because our healers where warlords...

the worst reminder of this whole thing is that I just ran a 1 off game for some friends based on an argument here on the boards and when I posted the results one of the first things I was told was it didn't count cause I didn't have a full cleric, because everyone know you need one...

 

[RotGrub]

I really don't mind playing in a game that depends on divine magic via a cleric. That's how I've always played and the game works perfectly.

I also think that removing the default resting rules makes divine magic seem far more powerful. There is something more fantastic about a world in which clerics can actually heal serious injuries.

This all reminds me of a great book that Monte Cook's wrote called A Magical Medieval Society.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

All that Grimm & Gritty (and other slower Healing Rules) does, is to focus more on magical instead of natural healing. So Clerics, Bards, etc. are even more important .. is that really that a good thing?

In the current Pathfinder game in which I am playing, I wanted to play the healer (because I like being the healer). Pathfinder also more-or-less requires a Cleric (or Oracle), because it's the only class that can cast Raise Dead and Restoration. (I went with Oracle, because I'm not a fan of Vancian casting.)

Even though I'm set up as the healer, though, the healing just doesn't matter at all. Every other character has enough access to HP healing that the majority of my spell slots go unused. Every day. I don't get to really play the role I wanted, because the role has been devalued so much :-/

(That's tangential to why I really want slow healing, though. When I DM, I really want to be able to describe hits as causing injury, and I really hate needing to bring characters down from full every day.)

 

[Ningauble]

I think a big part of the problem with trying to find the perfect healing rate is that hit points represent a bunch of things. Per the PHB, they are a "combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck." Has anyone ever tried splitting up HP in to 2 categories- physical / mental and given them different healing rates?

I'm thinking of running a Gamma world type game based off 5E, and I'm thinking of doing just this (because depending on divine healing is not an option). I'm brainstorming as I write this, but here is what I'm thinking:

Take total HP- divide in 2. Half represent physical health, toughness (call it Health) and half represent mental stress, luck, energy (call it Vitality). Damage is applied to Vitality first. When that reaches 0, it is applied against Health.

Second Wind only recovers Vitality. During a short rest, HD can be spent to regain Vitality points only, not Health;with the exception that if a healer kit is used and there is a successful Medicine check, you can spend 1 HD to heal Health Points (this represents first aid).

During a Long Rest, all Vitality points are automatically regained, and HD must be spent to recover Health. At the end of the long rest, 1/2 HD are regained.

I've seen similar rules for other games. Edge of the Empire has Strain and Health, I believe. Anyone tried something like this with HP in D&D?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I've seen similar rules for other games. Edge of the Empire has Strain and Health, I believe. Anyone tried something like this with HP in D&D?

The biggest strength of the traditional HP system is its simplicity, and the more rules you add to it, the less simple it becomes.

While there have been attempts at modeling this soft/hard damage dichotomy, nothing has really caught on.

 

[MoonSong]

This has not been my experience in 5e at all. I've found that healers are always welcome, but seldom necessary. (This is less true at level 1, but level 1 is exceptional in many, many ways.)

People like having the assurance that someone will be able to get them back in the fight if they go down, but healing your still-conscious companions is seldom the most efficient use of your action. Your time is nearly always better spent buffing or attacking rather than shoring up hit points. In many cases, casting healing spells only serves to prolong the battle.

The best time to heal is during a short rest. Again, a healer is very useful in this capacity, so people are happy to have one. But the show does not stop without a healer. You can spend Hit Dice and get by just fine. It's debatable whether the healer allows you to have more encounters in a day because if the healer were to spend his spell slots making enemies die faster, you wouldn't need to spend as many Hit Dice during downtime (which means a non-healing class could have been just as useful).

You know you have just proven my argument right? If I'm not extending the party's day, I'm not actually being an effective healbot, as I was saying superfluous. But If I'm just causing people to get more hurt and making fights longer because I'm not causing "big bang pew pew magic", that is a sign I'm being harmful to the party.

@CapnZapp Another way to signal that you don't want to be a healbot is to not prepare healing spells. Of course, before the campaign even begins, you might want to mention you are doing this. Or you could be a bard and not even learn any healing spells -- that way, you still have Song of Rest to help with recovery, but no one can expect you to use your spell slots on it.

I agree with this, just like with a sorcerer, I always make sure to communicate the rest of the party I will never blast, not even with a cantrip.

I can't speak for 5e yet, but I will say in 2e,3e,and 3.5 I saw a lot of arguments over "Don't prep/cast that we need you for healing" it was only 4e that ever gave us clerics that didn't do so... and better yet whole games with 0 religion because our healers where warlords...

You will never hear this argument on any table I play the cleric at. But you can expect me to get very defensive whenever anyone else in the party even considers getting a healing potion or one of those dreaded wands of CLW.

In the current Pathfinder game in which I am playing, I wanted to play the healer (because I like being the healer). Pathfinder also more-or-less requires a Cleric (or Oracle), because it's the only class that can cast Raise Dead and Restoration. (I went with Oracle, because I'm not a fan of Vancian casting.)

Even though I'm set up as the healer, though, the healing just doesn't matter at all. Every other character has enough access to HP healing that the majority of my spell slots go unused. Every day. I don't get to really play the role I wanted, because the role has been devalued so much :-/

(That's tangential to why I really want slow healing, though. When I DM, I really want to be able to describe hits as causing injury, and I really hate needing to bring characters down from full every day.)

Yes, this is a saddening fact, every edition makes more and more to dilute the healer role. What happened to the times when "don't make the cleric angry at you" was the best survival advice you could get?