D&D 5E breaking the healing rules with goodberries

GMforPowergamers · Aug 22, 2015

OK, so sage advice now lets a life cleric add there bonus (2+spell level) to good berry.

here is my fear. You take a Druid 1/Cleric 1 (so 2nd level multi class chart) 3 1st level spells

Each casting is 10 berries that each heal 4hp. Now I assume at this level few adventure days end with the caster having a lot of slots left for casting. However you do start the first day with 3.

SO around 8 or 9pm the night before you cast 3 good berry spells. you go into the dungeon with 30 berries each with 4hp so 120hp of reserve healing on top of what else you have.

As you go up in levels though, this gets bigger, lets look at total multi class level 5... 4/3/2
so anyday you don't have 9 spells to cast, you could still make a reseve casting (so at this point it is more then possible to almost always have atleast 1 casting) how ever that first night out again you have huge reserves...

40 berries worth 4hp each(160), 30 berries worth 5hp each(150), and 20 berries worth 6hp each(120). so your bushel of berries is worth 430hps...

in my experience (so pure antidote) the higher level you get the more likely you are to prep. So that 430 pile could easily come up at least one day at 5th level...

remember the key part of this is come 8hrs of rest later (so about 7am maybe 8am... if your adventurers are at all like me maybe 9:30 am) you will be up and ready with a full suit of spells, but the berries last until bedtime...

just to bring this to obsurd levels I am doing out 10th level

4/3/3/3/2

so
40 berries worth 4hp each(160), 30 berries worth 5hp each(150), 30 berries worth 6 each (180), 30 berries with 7hp each (210), and 20 berries worth 8hp each (160)
that basket of berries is then worth 860hp...

remember with these there is no reason not to take 1-2 minutes to catch your breath every fight and go into every fight full or almost full hp... the hit point attrition game is totally squid.

now I know what your saying, that is a crazy power game to make a better healer... but now bring it back down to normal goodberries....
1 hp per no matter the level...

a 1st level druid can walk around the first day with 20hp in reserve... at 2nd level 30hp, at 5th level 90hp in berries, and at 10th level 150hp of back up healing... AND still have it's full allotment of spells to use. Now the issue gets smaller here (difference between 150hp of berries and 860hp) but it is fundamentally the same...

If good berries lasted 1hr per level the earliest this would come up would be 1 hour into your day at 9th level... and even then not much I would say 15+ level...

so just for ha has lets look at a 1st level cleric of life 19th level druid (or any mix of those really as long as you have at least 1 and 1)

40 berries worth 4hp each(160), 30 berries worth 5hp each(150), 30 berries worth 6 each (180), 30 berries with 7hp each (210), and 30 berries worth 8hp each (240) 20 berries worth 9hp each (180), 20 berries worth 10hp each (200) 10 berries worth 11hp(110), and 10 berries worth 12hp (120). so a crate of berries worth 1,550hp...

heck by that point I don't even want to think about it... and how much more effective are those berries then a straight 20th level druid dropping his whole spell on berry craziness... well that would be 220hp... so the difference is 1,330hp.

keterys · Aug 22, 2015

They're not terribly applicable during combat, so it's really just gaming out of combat healing. Out of combat healing is very cheap. Depending on the adventure type and style, it may not even be all that useful.

I'm pretty darn sure this isn't the intended result, but I'm also not sure it's worth worrying too much about. There are certainly levels where having the ability you're missing by a level, whether it's channel divinity or shapechange, or whatever, would be just as useful if not more so.

For example, I'm more worried about the balance of a shapeshifting druid 2 than a goodberrying life cleric 1 / druid 1.

If you want to run a campaign that centers around attrition and a player wants to play this combination, ask them not to, or rule it doesn't work that way. Or, examine whether your players are stating that _they_ don't want an attrition based campaign.

P.S. Don't have my book - can someone confirm that a life cleric's spell level bonus applies with the level of the spell slot used, and not the level of the spell cast? Goodberry doesn't scale with level, so usually there's no difference between it being 1st level or 9th level, so I'm curious.

HardcoreDandDGirl · Aug 22, 2015

This is actually a new issue. Previous editions had limits on the spell. In 3.5 (srd link http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Goodberry) it was 2d4 berries and it maxed at 8hp per character. They did last 1 day per level, but the max per day used meant they could only be so stock piled. I think that was a much saner limit. Even your 9th level berries are worth 12hp each, so 8 berries would still only be 96hp per day.
2nd edition was the same 1 day + 1 day per caster level but a max of 8 berries per person.
I don’t have the 4e druid in front of me, but I wonder about it.

GMforPowergamers · Aug 22, 2015

keterys said:
They're not terribly applicable during combat, so it's really just gaming out of combat healing. Out of combat healing is very cheap. Depending on the adventure type and style, it may not even be all that useful.

yup... just to be sure we are all on the same page this is gaming out of combat healing so you can without taking the hour short rest heal in-between every encounter and extend your adventuring day and cut back on the attrition.

how cheap is healing out of combat?

I'm pretty darn sure this isn't the intended result,

yup... that is part of my issue.

P.S. Don't have my book - can someone confirm that a life cleric's spell level bonus applies with the level of the spell slot used, and not the level of the spell cast? Goodberry doesn't scale with level, so usually there's no difference between it being 1st level or 9th level, so I'm curious.

well here is an interesting question... let me type this out.

starting at 1st level, your healing spells are more effective. Whenever you use a spell of 1st level or higher to restore hit points to a creature, the creature regains additional hit points equal to 2 + the spell’s level.

so when you use a 9th level slot is it a 9th level spell?

Tony Vargas · Aug 22, 2015

HardcoreDandDGirl said:
I don’t have the 4e druid in front of me, but I wonder about it.

Goodberry was a late addition, but it was 1/day (fairly hard limit), 4 berries, 10 hps each and some alternate uses, available at 10th level. Any sort of non-surge healing was usually pretty limited in 4e.

keterys · Aug 22, 2015

Out of combat, you've got Prayer of Healing (cleric 2), the 3rd level paladin healing aura, healing potions, the Healer feat, short rests in general with or without Songs of Rest.

Again, don't have my book, but I believe Prayer of Healing is a 2nd level slot that heals, say, 2d8+4 to 6 targets. So the life cleric might be choosing between goodberry with a 2nd level slot for 50 or prayer of healing 102. And the non-life cleric is choosing between 10 and 78.

In many campaigns, healing outside of combat is easily taken care of with short rests and the occasional healing potion (most D&D campaigns end up handing out quite a few). In combat healing is still potentially important, of course. I knew a druid in one campaign who barely bothered with goodberries because she had so much gold that she instead just bought enough healing potions to not care.

Forged Fury · Aug 22, 2015

GMforPowergamers said:
so when you use a 9th level slot is it a 9th level spell?

Yup. First sentence under Casting A Spell At A Higher Level.

PHB said:
When a spellcaster casts a spell using a slot that is of a higher level than the spell, the spell assumes the higher level for that casting.

Bupp · Aug 22, 2015

keterys said:
Again, don't have my book, but I believe Prayer of Healing is a 2nd level slot that heals, say, 2d8+4 to 6 targets. So the life cleric might be choosing between goodberry with a 2nd level slot for 50 or prayer of healing 102. And the non-life cleric is choosing between 10 and 78.

I don't think this is the OP's issue. The druid is not going to cast goodberry instead of some other spell when healing is needed. At the end of the adventuring day, the druid can use any unused spell slots to cast goodberry before taking a long rest. With the goodberries lasting 24 hours, that's stocking up for the next day.

Also at issue is if the character wants to burn all of their spells slots the "long rest" before the night of a planned dungeon delve, stockpiling a huge amount.

Celtavian · Aug 22, 2015

And all it does at the end of the day is save money on healing potions, money no one uses since you can't buy magic items. This is an occasional tactic at best, best when starting a new adventure that does nothing but save you a bunch of useless coin on healing potions. It is not game breaking. Allowing the extension of the adventuring day isn't a big deal. If you don't like the fiction, that I understand. As far as worrying about out of combat healing, I find it completely irrelevant. My players have nothing to do with their gold other than role-play stuff and buy heal potions. The fiction is no more ridiculous if they are quaffing heal potions or eating berries. Either way it would look dumb as all get up in a film, though the berries would probably be more interesting to fantasy fans.

This is a complete non-issue unless you need the party to buy heal potions as a control on gold. As far as I'm concerned I would rather a player provide the out of combat healing via magical berries than stockpiling magical potions. I like the aesthetic of berries better.