D&D 5E Healing in 5E

[evilbob]

Not sure if anyone has touched on this yet but it seems like we might be back to "healing is a trap" in 5.0, just like 3.x.

In other words: if your Cure Wounds heals 1d8 +3, that means you're healing 4.5 + 3 = 7.5 on average as a 1st level spell. If monsters can do 8 or more damage on a hit - and many of them do - you're only losing ground when healing. (It gets even worse when there are more monsters that do that much damage at a time at once.) It's better to use your action to kill a monster instead.

The Life domain adds 3 to that spell, and definitely extends its usefulness much further - which is great because that's what that domain is all about. In fact, with this domain even Healing Word can heal for 8.5 on average and it's a bonus action, which is awesome. That's definitely something a cleric would want to do during a turn. It becomes a far better spell than Cure Wounds at low level (and since it has a huge range, it replaces Spare the Dying whenever possible).

Generally though - and I've not seen it in play yet - the math makes me think that healing as an action in combat will usually be a sub-optimal choice. Maybe not as bad as 3.x, but nothing like 4.0, where in-combat healing was a crucial part of the round-to-round mechanics.

 

[FadedC]

I found that the most effective minions in 4E were ones with ranged attacks. They could stand away from each other and only die one at a time, and they often did enough damage (especially if they were from monster compendium) to be scary and encourage the players to target them and be happy when they died. I'd still only use them with bigger monsters.

Other than that the only minions I liked were ones that caused status effects or which had some kind of effect when they died. Even then if they had to go into melee and group up they usually died too quickly to be useful.

Overall I found the DM had to be artful with his use of minions to make them effective. I was happy when I used them well, but I won't miss them either.

 

[KarinsDad]

Not sure if anyone has touched on this yet but it seems like we might be back to "healing is a trap" in 5.0, just like 3.x.

In other words: if your Cure Wounds heals 1d8 +3, that means you're healing 4.5 + 3 = 7.5 on average as a 1st level spell. If monsters can do 8 or more damage on a hit - and many of them do - you're only losing ground when healing. (It gets even worse when there are more monsters that do that much damage at a time at once.) It's better to use your action to kill a monster instead.

The Life domain adds 3 to that spell, and definitely extends its usefulness much further - which is great because that's what that domain is all about. In fact, with this domain even Healing Word can heal for 8.5 on average and it's a bonus action, which is awesome. That's definitely something a cleric would want to do during a turn. It becomes a far better spell than Cure Wounds at low level (and since it has a huge range, it replaces Spare the Dying whenever possible).

Generally though - and I've not seen it in play yet - the math makes me think that healing as an action in combat will usually be a sub-optimal choice. Maybe not as bad as 3.x, but nothing like 4.0, where in-combat healing was a crucial part of the round-to-round mechanics.

I think healing will become less of a trap at higher levels when PCs heal more with higher level spells.

For example, 6th level 5E monsters appear to hit for about 10 hit points of damage. A second level Cure Wounds spell will typically heal that back up. A third level Cure Wounds will heal up about 5 more points. It starts becoming an issue of healing up the best fighting PCs vs. having the healer do a melee attack. At higher levels, healing starts becoming a better option (e.g. at 6th level, Clerics minorly heal themselves with Blessed Healer when they heal another PC). Spells like Mass Heal also become available.


I am contemplating a house rule that Healing Word can be used once per encounter without using up a spell slot for Clerics (possibly with a restriction that it can only be used on a PC who was damaged this encounter). I think that since Wizards get some of their spell slots back once a day with a short rest, that Clerics should get a compensation for that to offset the low level "healing is a trap" of Cure Wounds.

 

[Tormyr]

Not sure if anyone has touched on this yet but it seems like we might be back to "healing is a trap" in 5.0, just like 3.x.

In other words: if your Cure Wounds heals 1d8 +3, that means you're healing 4.5 + 3 = 7.5 on average as a 1st level spell. If monsters can do 8 or more damage on a hit - and many of them do - you're only losing ground when healing. (It gets even worse when there are more monsters that do that much damage at a time at once.) It's better to use your action to kill a monster instead.

The Life domain adds 3 to that spell, and definitely extends its usefulness much further - which is great because that's what that domain is all about. In fact, with this domain even Healing Word can heal for 8.5 on average and it's a bonus action, which is awesome. That's definitely something a cleric would want to do during a turn. It becomes a far better spell than Cure Wounds at low level (and since it has a huge range, it replaces Spare the Dying whenever possible).

Generally though - and I've not seen it in play yet - the math makes me think that healing as an action in combat will usually be a sub-optimal choice. Maybe not as bad as 3.x, but nothing like 4.0, where in-combat healing was a crucial part of the round-to-round mechanics.

I don't think there will be much of a trap here from the standpoint that you are not guaranteed to be hit, but healing always works. If the cleric chooses to attack instead of heal and misses, then you have really​ lost ground. And besides, sometimes the cleric is needed to just keep the party on their feet for one more round.

 

[Dausuul]

Every edition of D&D has been more about fighting than it has been about scouting and avoiding.

That is certainly not the case. 1E strongly encouraged scouting and avoiding. The bulk of your XP came from treasure found rather than monsters defeated, and combat was incredibly dangerous. If you could find a way to sneak in and nick the treasure without ever meeting a monster, that was a perfect adventure (at least from a rules-incentives point of view).

2E was the edition that made monster-battling the primary source of XP.

 

[Emerikol]

So in a narrow hallway the fighter goes down and another defender style class steps forward to take his place. Since the odds of the guy in front of the new defender hitting is not 100%, the optimal choice is to heal the guy who just went down. If he is in front of you it is cure wounds. If not then healing word. Also the cost of raise dead is non-trivial so a down guy is a priority.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So in a narrow hallway the fighter goes down and another defender style class steps forward to take his place. Since the odds of the guy in front of the new defender hitting is not 100%, the optimal choice is to heal the guy who just went down. If he is in front of you it is cure wounds. If not then healing word. Also the cost of raise dead is non-trivial so a down guy is a priority.

Sure, but healing pre-emptively at low-levels is indeed kinda a trap. It may actually be better, depending on initiative and so on, to wait for someone to drop.

 

[KarinsDad]

I don't think there will be much of a trap here from the standpoint that you are not guaranteed to be hit, but healing always works. If the cleric chooses to attack instead of heal and misses, then you have really​ lost ground. And besides, sometimes the cleric is needed to just keep the party on their feet for one more round.

Although there is some truth to what you say, the trap idea is valid as well. A cleric will often have +3 or +4 to hit versus ACs of 10 to 12, at least at lower levels. Unless a PC is eventually knocked unconscious, from an action economy POV, hitting 55% to 75% of the time for some damage is often better than healing, especially if the cleric can attack a foe that is already wounded. If a PC is about to go down, then it is also often better to heal after the PC goes unconscious then it is to heal before the PC goes unconscious. The three main exceptions to this are 1) the cleric is the one seriously injured, 2) the foes are doing a lot of damage with their attacks and a PC with very few hit points remaining has a high chance of being killed if the cleric waits, and 3) the monster attacking a seriously injured PC has an initiative shortly after the cleric where there is a chance that the unconscious PC will get hit while down by another foe(s) at least once.

But as a general rule, if the cleric waits until PCs go unconscious before he heals, then the party gets free bonus healing equal to how many points below zero a given attack effectively would have done. For example, a PC at 6 hit points gets hit for 10 points of damage, he goes to 0, not -4. If healed for 10, he is at 10 hit points. If healed before he went unconscious, then he is at 6 hit points (going to 16 and getting hit for 10). There are definitely many times when immediate healing is the suboptimal choice.

Waiting until a PC goes unconscious also risks the action economy issue of the unconscious PC's turn coming up before the cleric's turn in initiative order.

 

[Cybit]

It's funny, because no one wanted to play the cleric out of the group of kids I was running initially, and so one of them finally relented and did so. Once that player realized he controlled the life and death of his fellow party members (mind you, these are 10-12 year olds), the next session, EVERYONE wanted to be healers.

Btw, the first cleric retired off of all the money he made the first session charging other players for healing. I was going to step in, but all of the players were totally on board with the idea of him charging, and then charging the cleric for protection money, etc. 11-12 year olds would basically make the most terrifying Mafia ever.

If you are going with the expected leveling rate (levels 1 & 2 being one session each), the healing isn't really much of an issue as long as there is at least one class that can heal. Currently that's only the cleric, but I am assuming more classes will have this ability in the PH. It takes 2-3 shots of monsters to drop a beefier player, 1-2 shots to drop the wizard, but they can usually be stabilized OK. Mind you, a solid single shot will drop a monster, so the first level or so tends to be very tense and brutal fights; which fwiw, the kids enjoy immensely.

 

[Teataine]

Action economy > Hit Points
Guaranteed increase in HP > % chance of HP loss

Preemptive healing might not be as usefull, but if your fighter is down (or almost down), healing him means he now has ~8 HP. Depending on the damage output and attack bonus of the monster and whether the fighter still has Second Wind and Action Surge (or whatever the final names of those abilities are), the fighter might survive another 1-3 rounds, making a bunch of attacks. Or if you heal a fallen wizard he might get to release that Sleep spell next turn, taking out a room full of bad guys.

If the cleric doesn't heal the fallen fighter he can attack and have a ~50% chance of dealing some inferior damage.

Of course it's a contextual choice informed by the initiative order, number of enemies left, positioning, remaining HP of the monster etc. It might not always be the best. But I can envision a number of situations in which a well-placed healing spell will save the day.