D&D 5E barbarian damage reduction and combat healing economy

Tony Vargas said:

Bounded Accuracy presumably renders it unlikely you'd have only-hit-on-20 attacks. IIRC, 5e crits don't happen on a 20 when you only hit on a natural 20, but I could be thinking of one of the playtest packets...

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This.

Although I do believe that rule didn't make the final cut. Easy enough to house rule though.

With bounded accuracy, only being able to hit on a nat 1 or only being able to hit on a nat 20 are outliers. Possible, but pretty rare (typically only when facing very low level enemies with very high level characters). In 3e, modifiers could balloon so rapidly that this situation was far from uncommon.

Tony Vargas said:

Bounded Accuracy presumably renders it unlikely you'd have only-hit-on-20 attacks. IIRC, 5e crits don't happen on a 20 when you only hit on a natural 20, but I could be thinking of one of the playtest packets...

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Without the confirmation roll, though, you still have high-AC characters who suffer a disproportionate number of critical hits. If you would get hit on a roll of 17+, then 25% of all hits you take are going to be critical hits. Contrast with the same situation in 3.5, where only 5% of the hits you take would be critical ones.

Saelorn said:

The major problem with the (optional) AD&D presentation of critical hits was that, for a character who can only be hit on a 20, every single hit that got through was a critical hit. They fixed this in 3E, with the confirmation roll, but somehow forgot about the original problem when they got around to designing 5E.

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Or it was intentional. Having to "confirm" critical hits was one of my least favorite rules in 3E, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

Saelorn said:

Without the confirmation roll, though, you still have high-AC characters who suffer a disproportionate number of critical hits. If you would get hit on a roll of 17+, then 25% of all hits you take are going to be critical hits. Contrast with the same situation in 3.5, where only 5% of the hits you take would be critical ones.

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It's only an issue if you look at it from a proportional perspective. Another way to look at it is that everyone, regardless of AC, takes the same number of critical hits (because it's 5% for everyone). While that's arguably not hyper-realistic, I consider it perfectly functional. And hyper-realism doesn't seem to be one of 5Es design goals (IMO). From a gamist standpoint, its potentially a good thing, because someone who doesn't get hit often will at least still take the occasional crit (thereby still offering risk and challenge).

Fanaelialae said:

It's only an issue if you look at it from a proportional perspective. Another way to look at it is that everyone, regardless of AC, takes the same number of critical hits (because it's 5% for everyone). While that's arguably not hyper-realistic, I consider it perfectly functional. And hyper-realism doesn't seem to be one of 5Es design goals (IMO). From a gamist standpoint, its potentially a good thing, because someone who doesn't get hit often will at least still take the occasional crit (thereby still offering risk and challenge).

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And that is why AC is a poor first line of defense compared to AC + mobility (Mobile feat = almost immune to melee) or AC + spells (Shield + Blur = easily AC 26 with disadvantage to attackers).

Saelorn said:

The major problem with the (optional) AD&D presentation of critical hits was that, for a character who can only be hit on a 20, every single hit that got through was a critical hit. They fixed this in 3E, with the confirmation roll, but somehow forgot about the original problem when they got around to designing 5E.

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I never saw that as a problem, since IRL a crit would be a hit to eg the face of an armoured opponent. D&D crits aren't very damaging anyway, certainly not in 5e. I think I like 4e max-damage crits the best, though.

Hemlock said:

And that is why AC is a poor first line of defense compared to AC + mobility (Mobile feat = almost immune to melee) or AC + spells (Shield + Blur = easily AC 26 with disadvantage to attackers).

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I don't think Mobility is much of an issue. If you're moving in 20' and then moving away 20' you need an ally to interpose. If the monster dashes up to you each round while you retreat 40' on your turn, the DM needs to reassess his tactics. It also doesn't protect you from ranged attacks. It is nice for a rogue or other skirmisher, who can jump in on the fighter's target and still move out of range, but its no perfect defense, and Cunning Action pretty much gives them the ability to do that already (in which case Mobility just spares them the bonus action).

Yeah, you can make yourself pretty close to invulnerable with the right spells. Of course, due to the limited number of spell slots in 5e, as well as the short duration of most defensive buffs, it's more a trick to use for a special occasion or in an emergency. Assuming half a dozen fights a day, each of which lasts 3 rounds (somewhat dubious since this caster probably isn't contributing much to offense), a full caster would have to be at least 11th level to maintain Blur and Shield on every round of every fight. An EK is incapable of that, even at 20th level. Admittedly not as much of an issue if you only have one fight a day, but D&D casters have always excelled in that scenario (even a 1e 1st level Mage with his single Sleep spell, assuming he was lucky enough to have it).

Of course AC plus something else trumps just AC. Any "plus something else positive" will pretty much always beat the original by itself. That said, I wouldn't say that AC is a poor line of defense except by comparison. If your AC is high enough that you only get hit on a 20, then either you have my luck and constantly get crit anyway, or you only get hit/crit 1 in 20 attacks, at which point it's probably not enough damage for you to care about most of the time.

Fanaelialae said:

I haven't seen any issues with the barbarian so far. He can be notably tougher than the other warrior types, but in order to do so he has to give up significant offense (unless he happens to be getting advantage from another source than reckless). If he's maximizing his offense, then he's not much tougher than another warrior, just differently tough.

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Do note that this thread isn't about the barbarian. It's about damage resistance, and specifically how it effectively doubles the power of healing.

The barbarian is just a poster boy for resistance to damage.

The question is
1) does resistance to damage make in-combat healing too good?
and, if so,
2) how can you change resistance to damage in such a way the resistance itself isn't made worse, only healing it is?

I have no intention to nerf the barbarian. I'm asking if there's a way to give the barbarian his staying power through a mechanism that does not make it better/cheaper to heal him than the other party members?

Fanaelialae said:

I don't think Mobility is much of an issue. If you're moving in 20' and then moving away 20' you need an ally to interpose. If the monster dashes up to you each round while you retreat 40' on your turn, the DM needs to reassess his tactics. It also doesn't protect you from ranged attacks.

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Hence why I said "almost immune to melee". You put it on a ranged chassis like a monk or an archer fighter to make sure they can't get trapped in melee. As long as you end every turn 40 feet away from the nearest melee fighter you're probably fine.

Agree that Cunning Action also works--although you only get 30', which isn't quite enough to prevent you from getting attacked next round. So someone needs to Longstrider you to make this work, whereas Mobile has that extra 10' built in.

In any case, the point is that a 5% risk of crit is too high for my taste.

Assuming half a dozen fights a day, each of which lasts 3 rounds (somewhat dubious since this caster probably isn't contributing much to offense), a full caster would have to be at least 11th level to maintain Blur and Shield on every round of every fight. An EK is incapable of that, even at 20th level. Admittedly not as much of an issue if you only have one fight a day, but D&D casters have always excelled in that scenario (even a 1e 1st level Mage with his single Sleep spell, assuming he was lucky enough to have it).

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I was actually thinking more of a dragon running Blur + Shield against the PCs, but yeah, an Eldritch Knight fighting against several swarms of mooks would have to choose which fights he spends defense on, and either sit out the others (pew, pew from range) or take some hits. If he blows his 2nd and 3rd level slots on Blur, he can cast 4 Shield spells throughout the day (or Absorb Energy, which is arguably better) and still have his 4th level slot available for Counterspell. This is the scenario where Mobile shines: trying to win multiple tiny fights cheaply. (Any fight that ends in 3 rounds counts as "Tiny" in my book, or at least horrifically lopsided.)

CapnZapp said:

Do note that this thread isn't about the barbarian. It's about damage resistance, and specifically how it effectively doubles the power of healing.

The barbarian is just a poster boy for resistance to damage.

The question is
1) does resistance to damage make in-combat healing too good?
and, if so,
2) how can you change resistance to damage in such a way the resistance itself isn't made worse, only healing it is?

I have no intention to nerf the barbarian. I'm asking if there's a way to give the barbarian his staying power through a mechanism that does not make it better/cheaper to heal him than the other party members?

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That's the things though. As [MENTION=20564]Blue[/MENTION] demonstrated, assuming reckless, a barbarian is only better to heal on paper. While DR makes it so that he's effectively healed for double, reckless makes it so that he's hit about twice as often, making it a wash.

It's only an issue if he doesn't choose to go reckless. However, he loses out on a serious amount of offense in that instance, making it a trade off. The only time it's an issue is if he can gain advantage without using reckless. While there are various ways to do that, they all also have their drawbacks. For example, you could cast Foresight on the barbarian, but that's that caster's only 9th level spell for the day. So, again, a trade off.

IME (and admittedly, the highest level I've seen a barbarian played is 7th level) barbarian DR does not make combat healing too good. Although I'm of the opinion that prior to 11th level (and Heal), with the exception to healing at zero and corner cases, combat healing simply isn't worth it to begin with.