Is the Healer Specialty Too Powerful?

[Falling Icicle]

I am concerned by the Healer specialty. The Herbalist feat is fine. My concerns are with the Healer's Touch feat. This feat maximizes, for free, all healing the character does, whether it is with spells, potions or anything else. Perhaps most powerful of all, by spending a healer's kit he maximizes all hit dice rolled to heal for the entire party whenever they rest.

Wow. Just wow.

What I fear most is not just that this feat is too good, what I fear is that it is so good that it is a must have. Almost every group is going to demand that someone in the party, most likely the cleric, take this feat. It's just that good. Nobody wants to waste money on healing potions that might only heal 1 hit point, not when they can get a maximized potion, guaranteed to heal 8 hit points, for half the market price. Likewise, no party is going to want to spend all that time resting to recover when they might roll 1's on their hit dice, not when they can have a person with this feat in the party guaranteeing the maximum possible result.

Either this feat is too powerful, or regular healing is too random/weak. Or maybe it's both. Even though I don't like playing the party's designated healer, when I make a 5e cleric, this specialty is too tempting to pass up. It's a guarantee that I'll never waste a daily spell (not to mention my turn), like Healing Word, to heal 1 whopping hit point.

 

[Teataine]

For me it falls somewhere on the line between "Gee, I'm sure glad we have a Healer in the party." and "Someone MUST be a Healer."

But perhaps you're right. Bumping the die size up one step might be a better way to do it. If your HD is d8, you roll d10s instead when treated by a healer.

 

[Li Shenron]

Maximized healing is slightly less than double healing. A bit like having two Cleric PCs instead of one in the party.

With the current "long rest resets HP completely" rules, this ability (and any other HP healing ability) has the effect of doubling the number of encounters the party can have in a day (also of course of allowing tougher encounters since spells and potions can be used while fighting), usually something less since you'll have other daily resources depleted during encounters, making the party want to rest even before HP themselves are getting too low.

Overall I think it's a pretty powerful ability during combat, but I am less concerned of the use between combat. A gaming group that likes fast adventures with lots of fights in succession should actually be encouraged to take this kind of feat. But a group where the DM scatters encounters across more days can ignore this feat for something more fun or useful.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Maximized healing is slightly less than double healing. A bit like having two Cleric PCs instead of one in the party.

Well, it does mean that the onus on healing isn't solely on the Cleric anymore if other classes can take up the mantle. Personally, I like the idea of a healing Ranger. I'll have to wait and see if it becomes a viable class to play as we get more information.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I am personally glad it is not a cleric class feature.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Step-up the hit die size instead of maximising them. It's a nice effect, consistent with other rules ideas and not too powerful.

OR

Each hit dice spent heals a minimum of the healer's Wisdom modifier. Also a nice effect, no other rules follow this though, and the power level is a bit higher.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I read it as being underpowered. It lets you craft items quickly (something players rarely do) and maximizes healing dice when the system lets you recover hit points ridiculously fast anyway. The only way it's good is if you use a lot of healing during combat.

 

[nightwalker450]

I don't know about it's power. But I will say it seems strange to have a feat that more or less removes an entire subset of dice rolling (imagine a feat that lets you roll 20 on any skill checks, or max damage all the time). Why do we have hit dice if this feat is in there, its almost guaranteed that someone in the party will have it.

I'm a 4e player, so I don't mean this as a bad thing... But this feat replaces hit dice with surge value. That type of modularity should be a module, not a feat.

So how about the feat allowing people to reroll the healing, or set a minimum of half the die size? I don't want it to use stats, because then that limits it to more specific classes.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I don't know about it's power. But I will say it seems strange to have a feat that more or less removes an entire subset of dice rolling (imagine a feat that lets you roll 20 on any skill checks, or max damage all the time). Why do we have hit dice if this feat is in there, its almost guaranteed that someone in the party will have it.

I was thinking the same thing. In light of this feat, I don't get why they don't just do away with random healing entirely. Nothing is more frustrating than taking your entire turn to heal someone and then rolling a 1. At the very least, casters should add their ability modifier to all healing spells.

 

[r0gershrubber]

Maybe healing dice could be "advantaged"; roll the dice twice and take the higher total.