Spirit of Healing

[Thanee]

The Spirit of Healing is just a minor action though (it does cost additional minor actions to sustain it, however).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Rothe_]

I don't really agree with the standard action healing comment.
PC's have less hp than the opposition. They also do more damage with their best powers and especially when used by the strikers or AoE users.
Any damage the PC's take is going to hurt them more than the opponents.
Clerics are not going to do a whole lot of damage, save for some AoE's and couple of dailies. The damage they don't do during a healing action is not going to be much, and they will have enough turns to use their really damaging attacks in any case.

Also, in general I think it is a poor idea to include a lot of surgeless healing in the game - not really caring about the minor action or standard action to use. To make surgeless healing with standard actions is still a poor design choice - why make surgeless healing at all? Or why not limit it to actually low figures or to daily powers, so that healing surges do not lose meaning as a resource to be guarded.

I don't like the directions that these surgeless heals allow the PC's to take. As long as they can survive without using dailies (normal encounters), they can just go forward with barely a scratch on their surge totals.

 

[ChristopherA]

Agreed. But we're not talking about adding monsters. We're talking about using existing monsters in ways that enhance the play experience for that ability.

A very large difference in scope.

For purposes of this argument, we are assuming that Spirit of Healing really is much more potent that the average utility power, under average circumstances. Therefore, in order for the DM to balance out the power by adjusting his encounters, he has to do everything in his power to frustrate the players when they attempt to use Spirit of Healing, in order to make it as ineffective as possible so it ends up, on average, being no better than a normal utility power. As both a player and a DM, I don't enjoy this sort of "arms race". I feel that it decreases the play experience rather than increasing it. I would prefer to have a normal power that I am allowed to use to its full extent, rather than a mighty power that the GM rarely lets me use effectively.

Admittedly, though, if you are more "old school" you might enjoy trying to out-think the DM's attempts to screw you over.



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[ChristopherA]

I don't really agree with the standard action healing comment.
PC's have less hp than the opposition. They also do more damage with their best powers and especially when used by the strikers or AoE users.
Any damage the PC's take is going to hurt them more than the opponents.

Agreed. My notes on battles played indicate that the monsters take at least twice as much damage as the players (usually even more than that). Not only do the have more hit points each, but the monsters end the battle with no hit points left, while the players still have hit points left over. There are certainly disadvantages to passively healing rather than actively dealing damage. But with the efficiency ratio so far in favor of healing, overall I'm not sure whether a point of damage is better or worse than a point of healing.

In many types of adventures, healing surges don't meaningfully limit the players, they will just rest when they run out. But if you really try to make use of the healing surge mechanic (as I do) by putting the players on a clock, then "healing surges spent per battle" becomes a key measure of encounter success, and large amounts of surgeless healing is just awesome. If, as has been reported on this thread, you can pick one battle per day with favorable circumstances and use Spirit of Healing to end the battle with no permanent damage, that would be a better result than if the power doubled the entire party's damage for the whole encounter!



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[(Psi)SeveredHead]

When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify encounters in order to deal with his party, that's a sign he's actually tailoring his adventures to the players, and that their characters actually matter to his game world, and it allows the players to still use their fun abilities without you having to cry 'It's broken, waaaaa' and hit it with the nerf stick.

How would you deal with this without metagaming?

I think a monster is unlikely to recognize a rare cleric ability, even if it's a very intelligent monster.

It's sort of like using invisibility in a world like Shadowrun (where magic is widely known) or Dark Matter (where it isn't). In the first, you'd expect opponents to figure it out and throw flour or whatever at the invisible opponent. In Dark Matter, it'll take them a long time just to realize there's magic afoot.

I think in the latter setting, if opponents often seem to know how to deal with a rare technique, that is metagaming, and it's not fair to the player to indirectly nerf their ability that way. You're better off being up front about weakening the ability, IMO.

 

[Jhaelen]

I'm actually more worried about the multiple new ways to get high resistances and resist all. Unfortunately there are many monsters dealing only one kind of damage that are completely negated by these abilities.

Why care about healing if noone is taking damage any more?

I also dislike the opposite: The many ways to lower or ignore resistances or even add vulnerabilities. These abilities eliminate design space. PCs no longer have to think about what energy types to use. There's no longer different situations where one might be better than the other. Just take feat X and energy type Y will always be the best choice - boring!

 

[DracoSuave]

How would you deal with this without metagaming?

I think a monster is unlikely to recognize a rare cleric ability, even if it's a very intelligent monster.

The DC for a trained arcana check to recognize a conjuration or zone is 15+half level of effect. In this case it's 18.

I think that if the monster is trained in Arcana, they get a shot at it. It's allowed in the rules. Whether this is plausible or not is based on the individual monster.

However, if the monster is intellegent, he's gonna be smart enough to see 'That guy used an ability, and healing happens over here whenever they hit me. Let's see about not being over there.'

Simple logic, you know.

 

[guindone]

I appreciate the discussions this thread has caused.

To those of you who say this only trivializes one encounter:
Well that's one encounter too many. It's just not the right attitude to have regarding powers... Powers should be helpful, good and useful but shouldn't change the balance of the party so utterly.

To those of you who say that we should just houserule it to our liking:
Well that's not really addressing the fact that Wizards is really not thinking these power through. I hate having my faith in the balancing process these people go through thrown out of the window so often. I wish they would take some extra time and think out the problems with their powers. Yes, obviously, we will likely houserule it but I don't like having a system that is broken if not houseruled and I don't like having to tell a player that this power as printed that he chose is not going to play that way.

To those of you who say that the gm can change his encounters/monster behaviour:
Well, I guess it is valid to say that every time this power is cast the enemies have to focus fire and down the cleric... but this seems like the opposite of a fun encounter for the players. The other suggestion that monsters should move tactically say away from the spirit or something just plain doesn't work. Our party is very capable of killing the monsters at range and further, the spirit can be moved by the cleric so that's not much of a hinderance. The amount of healing pumped out by this thing is plenty enough to trivialize the damage of some sort of static effect counter-cast by an enemy (which was a suggestion by someone else).

So I remain unimpressed with this power, in that I believe it to be too good. Such a thing should never have been created by Wizards and published in its current form.

 

[Miphon]

I appreciate the discussions this thread has caused.

To those of you who say this only trivializes one encounter:
Well that's one encounter too many. It's just not the right attitude to have regarding powers... Powers should be helpful, good and useful but shouldn't change the balance of the party so utterly.

To those of you who say that we should just houserule it to our liking:
Well that's not really addressing the fact that Wizards is really not thinking these power through. I hate having my faith in the balancing process these people go through thrown out of the window so often. I wish they would take some extra time and think out the problems with their powers. Yes, obviously, we will likely houserule it but I don't like having a system that is broken if not houseruled and I don't like having to tell a player that this power as printed that he chose is not going to play that way.

To those of you who say that the gm can change his encounters/monster behaviour:
Well, I guess it is valid to say that every time this power is cast the enemies have to focus fire and down the cleric... but this seems like the opposite of a fun encounter for the players. The other suggestion that monsters should move tactically say away from the spirit or something just plain doesn't work. Our party is very capable of killing the monsters at range and further, the spirit can be moved by the cleric so that's not much of a hinderance. The amount of healing pumped out by this thing is plenty enough to trivialize the damage of some sort of static effect counter-cast by an enemy (which was a suggestion by someone else).

So I remain unimpressed with this power, in that I believe it to be too good. Such a thing should never have been created by Wizards and published in its current form.

Obviously you have already made up your mind on this, but I would assume that if it's as broken as you think, then WotC will (eventually) issue errata for it.

But IMO, it is a very conditional ability. The cleric's allies must be within one square of the conjuration, and then they must actually hit their opponent to receive the benefit it provides. Sure it's a nice amount of healing, but if a PC is the target of a focused fire beat-down, then it's not going to keep them up by itself.

 

[DracoSuave]

For purposes of this argument, we are assuming that Spirit of Healing really is much more potent that the average utility power, under average circumstances. Therefore, in order for the DM to balance out the power by adjusting his encounters, he has to do everything in his power to frustrate the players when they attempt to use Spirit of Healing, in order to make it as ineffective as possible so it ends up, on average, being no better than a normal utility power. As both a player and a DM, I don't enjoy this sort of "arms race".

For the purposes of this argument, I'm not assuming anything except that DMs use normal encounter design to match the player's capabilities, to allow certain ones to shine and win the day throughout the game.

In otherwords, by the guidelines of the DMG.

This ability is situational, against certain types of monsters it doesn't really work out so well, but against others it shines. So, every so often you put in monsters it doesn't work out well against (PROTIP: Other powers get used at this time that shine) and every so often you set up an encounter where, if they have this ability, they win the day so they can go 'Look. The cleric won the day!'.

Everyone should have their moment, and you should be setting those up. This is how it's been since 1e, and is DMing advice that's been around in almost every roleplaying game that -has- a 'How to DM Section' for years.