D&D 5E (2014) breaking the healing rules with goodberries

[Mistwell]

double

 

[Mistwell]

Double

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You know, you can get up to 1368 HP worth of Mephits out of a single cast of Conjure Minor Elementals VIII, and you can also get 576 HP worth of wolves out of Conjure Animals V + Speak With Animals (ritual) + Inspiring Leader.

And you can stack the Healer feat on top of that, as Mistwell says.

5E tries to be a game that's about attrition, but it's easy for PCs to turn that into a game where the things that are ablating are easily restored. Ranged PCs can turn distance into effective HP and restore that distance either in combat with things like Cunning Action or out of combat by just walking. Healer PCs can turn gold into HP. Inspired Leaders turn time into HP. Fighters also turn time into HP (Second Wind). Conjurors turn animals into HP. Necromancers turn corpses and weapons into HP. Paladins turn AC into more effective HP. Shadow Monks turn ki into surprise (Pass Without Trace almost guarantees surprise to a small party) which is effectively HP (enemy misses one full round of attacks).

That's why I say that attrition doesn't really work in 5E. Maybe they wanted it to work with their "6-8 encounters per day" guidelines, but in practice the only encounters which actually threaten the party are bursty[1]. I'm okay with that BTW, not complaining--it's just a thing to be aware of.

[1] Obviously you could throw a whole bunch of proactively bursty encounters at the party in one day, like having a clan of demons pursue them and every hour a few more demons find them, and that would make them harder than just a single bursty encounter. But my point is that you can't just follow the DMG guidelines and give them 8 Medium/Hard encounters that stay within the XP daily budget and expect to challenge them. So it's not that attrition doesn't work, it's just that the slope of the attrition curve is way milder than 5E designers apparently expected, so parties don't ablate significantly over the course of a standard "adventuring day" worth of encounters.

 

[Pickles III]

So are you throwing more than 6-9 encounters at them between long rests, or less?

How often do you allow short rests?

Really in the edition of DMs empowerment I have to use 6/9 encounter per day or the game breaks?
That's an awful lot outside of a huge dungeon. (Ido not like huge dungeons they do not feature in the sortof stories i like to read watch or play in. )

Almost all the 5e I have played has been adventurers league and those adventures never have as many as 6 encounters, mostly its 3-4 and you often get a rest.

Mind you I don't allow short rests, I let the PCs decide if resting is needed expedient and safe.

We have always used the rolling goodberry trick since 3e. Usually the druid and DM agree a reasonable baseline casting eg at l3 I use 3 level one slots and keep a one and two twos back for nighttime emergencies.

I do think the ruling is dumb but not game breaking and it follows the RAW. If Crawford started changing this and essentially issuing errata then there would be just as much moaning. And I can ignore the rules as I like. Except of course since I,? play AL I can't doh!

 

[Pickles III]

You know, you can get up to 1368 HP worth of Mephits out of a single cast of Conjure Minor Elementals VIII, and you can also get 576 HP worth of wolves out of Conjure Animals V + Speak With Animals (ritual) + Inspiring Leader.

And you can stack the Healer feat on top of that, as Mistwell says.

Conjuring swarms of low level things is pretty much broken, at least broken enough for me to stop DMing.

 

[steeldragons]

To my understanding, Sage Advice is no more "official" than Unearthed Arcana. Is that right? Am I missing something?

Why/how does this become a long thread issue because someone said something they'd do in their game...that obviously breaks the game.

If you don't want the game broken and/or suspect/know you have players that will willfully seek to "break" the game...then don't use this ruling/material....same as any other material...printed or spoken anywhere about the game.

When did playing D&D mean the LOSS of individual creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision-making skills?

Individual Creativity: I don't like this ruling. I can come up with something "better" [i.e. more appropriate for the kind of game I want to run/play]. I'm using something else.

Critical Thinking: This ruling is easily abused by players so inclined. It creates mathematical unfairness and "breaks" the game. I don't want that happening in my game. I'm not using this rule interpretation.

Problem Solving: I have players who like to abuse the rules. I don't want to kick them out or give up my game. But I don't want this ruling in/breaking my game. I'm not using this rule interpretation.

Decision Making: This looks broken to me. I'm not using it.

Don't use what was said in Sage Advice. End of thread. Moving on. Next [ACTUAL] problem, please.

 

[Mistwell]

To my understanding, Sage Advice is no more "official" than "Unearthed Arcana". Is that right? Am I missing something?

Well, and it's all based on an optional rule to begin with (multiclassing).

 

[Sacrosanct]

I don't really think this is that much of a problem. I mean, do people know players who are jumping on this life cleric/druid bandwagon or are they continuing to level their druid or their cleric? I know that if I had a cleric or druid I would in all likelihood keep leveling them up in the same class, I wouldn't level dip just for this. I'm not saying that everyone wouldn't, I'm sure there are some people who jump at the chance to boost certain aspects of a character, I just don't think that every player playing a healer is going to.

I'm late to this, but thank God someone else noticed this. You know the biggest problem I have with the Naysayers and Handwringers who always get worked up over things like this? They never think of actual play in actual gaming groups.

Will this Sage Advice (which is optional by the way) suddenly make every gaming group have at least one player who chooses to pay a life cleric/druid just to get the added goodberry benefit? I highly doubt it. Therefore, it's a perceived "game breaking" rule that will probably never even come up. And even if there is a life cleric out there, this hardly breaks the game.

So my advice is to don't get worked up over things that probably won't ever affect your game. Especially an optional rule. All it does is give me the impression that you're the type of person who has to find a reason to complain about everything.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I do think the ruling is dumb but not game breaking and it follows the RAW.

My problem with the Goodberry ruling is that it doesn't follow the RAW.

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

(Duration: Instantaneous) Up to ten berries appear in your hand and are infused with magic for the duration. A creature can use its action to eat one berry. Eating a berry restores 1 hit point, and the berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day. The berries lose their potency if they have not been consumed within 24 hours of the casting of this spell.

Disciple of Life adds extra HP when you heal someone with a spell. Goodberry does not heal anyone. It creates berries. (Permanent berries BTW. They're still there after 24 hours, they're just not super-nourishing any more.) The berries are such that creatures than thereafter heal themselves by eating a berry, but you're not healing anyone by casting the spell.

Ridiculous consequence #1: If you interpret "creating a magical object which can do X" as triggering abilities which say that "Y happens when X", then yes, Goodberry becomes strong--but the far bigger problem is that Animate Dead also creates things, and the Grim Harvest ability would then restore 9 HP (or more) to the necromancer who created a skeleton every time the skeleton kills something. It's not even temp HP, it is actual HP restoration. That is brokenly good, and that's the precedent Crawford's ruling is setting. (Similar issues could arise with True Polymorph, Conjure Animals, etc.)

Ridiculous consequence #2: Disciple of Life uses the same language as Blessed Healer (also a Life Cleric feature), which restores HP when you cast a spell that restores HP to a creature other than yourself. If Goodberry can trigger Disciple of Life, it can trigger Blessed Healer, which either means that you get the HP when you cast Goodberry (even if you eat all the berries yourself? but that breaks RAW) or every time someone eats a berry, you yourself regain 4 HP (which is just goofy).

Crawford's reading of Disciple of Life is insupportable. Goodberry is not a healing spell and does not trigger Disciple of Life.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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.

But you can buy spell components for Greater Restoration and Planar Binding, and you can buy service via Planar Ally. And you can buy poisons, and hire hobgoblin mercenaries.

Or even just regular human mercenaries--and then you can use gold to pay for their funerals and death benefits! (The nice thing about animated skeletons is they leave behind no widows.)

I've found gold to be incredibly useful in 5E, due in large part to bounded accuracy.