D&D 5E breaking the healing rules with goodberries

[Pickles III]

I don't necessarily share your fear, but there is a fix I really like: goodberry is a full day's food, so a given character can only benefit from 1 goodberry per day (they just can't eat any more).

I like this because it encourages distributing the berries and helps a druid fill their role as a master of exploration (10 people, no food requirements, VERY effective, even if you chuck some horses in there). The hp top-up becomes a way to revive a KO'd ally, but the primary use of the spell is in supplying food for the party, not healing HP.

Or practically useless if you have not tracked rations in 30 years. But then I find "exploration" tedious.
I don't think it really needs fixing & even the stupid interaction just makes it very good rather then broken as [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] showed with prayer of healing. Plus limiting it would stop a running gag I have had for the last 15 years.

Controversy noted. You might be right, but consider the following:

1.) Skeletons are already really good at killing things, and they scale up. It's not exactly improbable than any given killing blow might be struck by a skeleton or a conjured elemental. You could wind up with a necromancer who's regaining 15 HP a round (if he refreshes his skeletons using Animate Dead V) during any large-scale combat, with no concentration cost. That's enough to make necro-tanking attractive.

2.) Grim Harvest works whenever you kill a non-undead/construct creature. It doesn't have to be a creature which is capable of challenging you. You could have your skeletons kill 8 wolves (from Conjure Animals) to regain 120 HP. Or just kill 8 chickens, costing a grand total of 8 cp and zero spell points. It's even thematic for necromancy to ritually sacrifice things in order to suck out their life.

3.) Grim Harvest is already non-worthless due to point #2. You can use it to heal via Vampiric Touch, either in combat (5d6/2 per hit plus 15 HP per kill) or out of combat, for 120 HP for 5 SP.

4.) If you spend a spell slot to create a wight with Create Undead IX, and order it to hang back with a cageful of chickens and sacrifice a chicken whenever you're injured, you'd regain 27 HP per round. And you could arguably keep this up indefinitely with no spell slot cost by just dominating the wight with Command Undead instead of re-casting Create Undead every day.

5.) Even if you didn't have chickens, #4 would let you self-heal 216 HP for 6 SP (36 HP per SP, 50% better than Greatberry) by conjuring mephits with Conjure Minor Elemental. And if you don't need all 216 HP at once, you can use them as scouts in the meantime.

6.) Imagine the multi-classing combos. Grim Harvest wouldn't just work for pure necromancers--it would also be awesome for tank-optimized characters like barbarian/necromancers and fighter/necromancers. Even oathbreaker paladin/necromancers, as if those guys aren't scary enough already.

7.) Since Grim Harvest functions once per turn, and skeletons take their own turns, the "once per turn" limitation effectively goes away. You could potentially regain 25 HP on eight of the twenty turns in a round, for 200 HP/round regeneration. It doesn't even require you to be conscious, so your skeletal minions can bring you back from death's door!

I found Crawford's take on Goodberry surprising but I'd be even more surprised if he thought Grim Harvest were supposed to work this way with Animate Dead/Conjure Elemental. It would instantly go from mostly-flavorful-sometimes-useful ability to brokenly-good must-have-for-all-supervillains. And I'm only 50% joking about the latter.

You might be right too & lol

I do think the bag o' rats (chicken) take on Grim Harvest is not going to fly with many DMs - it did not even cross my mind it might be legal as that sort of thing has been frowned upon, a lot.

 

[Li Shenron]

This sage ruling only breaks the theory in the game that "you shall (on average) lose hp between fights". It does not actually break i.e. spoil the game itself.

You got infinite healing between fights. SO WHAT? You still:

- have to survive each of those fights

- suffer stuff that doesn't lower your HP

- have to deal with all other dailies running out

- have to actually find more fights!!!

- can't clean up the abyss, it's infinite baby, har har (Orcus laughs)

And yet the gaming world is full of people who still claim that D&D has always been inherently flawed BECAUSE you have to stop to regain health...

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I do think the bag o' rats (chicken) take on Grim Harvest is not going to fly with many DMs - it did not even cross my mind it might be legal as that sort of thing has been frowned upon, a lot.

Even if your DM limits it to creatures of CR 1/4 and above, I think the skelly combo would still be brokenly good.

One thing this discussion has made me realize is that Grim Harvest isn't bad with spells that create environmental hazards, e.g. Evard's Black Tentacles. Each creature that you kill with that spell dies on a different turn, so if you chuck EBT on a group of 8 orcs, you can regain 64 HP from it. In other words, it is useful for more than just Vampiric Touch.

 

[Celtavian]

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.

Once again, that is your campaign. My group hasn't. We haven't need to bind creatures to win battles. We have been under zero pressure to bring additional allies. There I no interest in hiring mercenaries. The martials are min-maxed with a few magic items, they rip encounters are apart. Caster magic is often employed for crowd control or AoE damage depending on the need. Our groups have a good combination of ranged and melee power. So gold hasn't come up in any of our three campaigns. In fact, the players grouse a little about not having much to do with their gold. Sometimes they don't even write it down. Though I have been writing it down with casters just in case I do need to summon stuff. I haven't needed to, so I haven't bothered.

Then again I don't recall you saying you run with a min-maxing group. Your encounters are unusual. Then again I haven't heard you say your players needed to do any of the above, so much as something they like to do. If something isn't required, in general my players don't do it. They might be referred to as minimalist players as in players that want to use the least amount of resources to do the job, so they can continue to go as long as possible without resting.

 

[Celtavian]

1.) You wouldn't want to combine with Beacon of Hope, because it's more effective to just cast Prayer of Healing twice.

2.) The durations are incompatible anyway. Beacon of Hope lasts one minute, but it takes ten minutes to cast Prayer of Healing.

3.) Any spell with a casting time longer than 1 action requires your concentration throughout the entire casting time. Prayer of Healing does require your concentration for that reason. See PHB 202, Longer Casting Time.

That's right. Didn't recall that. That's why weren't combining the two. I knew there was a reason I was overlooking.

 

[Celtavian]

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.

Personally, I think Crawford's ruling was intended to turn goodberry into prayer of healing for a druid. Druid's lacked an intermediate heal like prayer of healing. I think 5E prefers more healers than just the cleric. In a standard game where the players aren't looking to exploit, goodberry with a level of life cleric provides an intermediate heal to the druid that will provide them with a prayer of healing like option for out of combat healing. For two 1st level slots, you can get 80 points of non-combat healing spread out as you wish. That's about the same as a party of five healing healing 13 points each with prayer of healing.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Then again I don't recall you saying you run with a min-maxing group. Your encounters are unusual. Then again I haven't heard you say your players needed to do any of the above, so much as something they like to do. If something isn't required, in general my players don't do it. They might be referred to as minimalist players as in players that want to use the least amount of resources to do the job, so they can continue to go as long as possible without resting.

It's kind of a combination. My players aren't min-maxers at heart, but I am a natural wargamer/powergamer, so I am in a good position to design tactical puzzles where a straightforward approach of "walk up and hit it until it stops moving" isn't really going to get the job done but the encounter is still very beatable. In other words, pedagogical encounters designed to teach players how to powergame a little, such as a bunch of vampire spawns with missile weapons holed in in a manor while the sun is shining outside, so that the vampires will kill you to death with missile weapons + regen if you just hold the range open, and they will kill you to death through straight melee if you bust into the house with swords drawn and try to fight them there, but you can defeat them fairly easily if you grapple them and drag them into the sunlight. That one went pretty well and was lots of fun for the players. I have no requirement that you must follow the approach I'm trying to "teach", and some great fun has been had with players thinking waaaay outside the box, but I do try to ensure that "interesting" encounters aren't feasibly solvable by straightforward application of melee weapons to target.

E.g. I would solve your "invulnerable paladin" problem with a batch of three Stone Giants on a plateau 60' high. One giant would grapple/prone the paladin at +12 to Athletics and drag him over to the cliff while the other two beat on him with clubs, and then then next round they'd punt him right off the edge of the cliff. I don't care that the encounter is "too hard" by DMG standards because I also know exactly how the PCs could prevent the stone giants from winning--actually there are several ways, starting with "use a scout to detect the stone giants in advance"--and figuring out how to do that is why we play the game.

In short, I find die-rolling intrinsically boring compared to intelligence-gathering and decision-making, and I run my game accordingly, which means "real" combats are infrequent but "hard enough that you have to play smart or else you'll die." If you prefer a more casual, easy game that focuses more on the excitement of hitting/missing/critting, that's fine. YMMV.

 

[Bupp]

What this boils down to for me is that if I had a player that wanted to do this multiclass combo (or any of the other tricks mentioned) that were specifically to use a loophole or to exploit a rule, I would explain to them that as a result I would have to adjust the encounter guidelines in some way (CRs, XP budgets, numbers of encounters, ect.) to account for this.

There is usually better uses of leveling up than to take a 1 level dip in a class to exploit a rule that I would somehow end up accounting for and negating or evening out that exploit.

 

[Celtavian]

It's kind of a combination. My players aren't min-maxers at heart, but I am a natural wargamer/powergamer, so I am in a good position to design tactical puzzles where a straightforward approach of "walk up and hit it until it stops moving" isn't really going to get the job done but the encounter is still very beatable. In other words, pedagogical encounters designed to teach players how to powergame a little, such as a bunch of vampire spawns with missile weapons holed in in a manor while the sun is shining outside, so that the vampires will kill you to death with missile weapons + regen if you just hold the range open, and they will kill you to death through straight melee if you bust into the house with swords drawn and try to fight them there, but you can defeat them fairly easily if you grapple them and drag them into the sunlight. That one went pretty well and was lots of fun for the players. I have no requirement that you must follow the approach I'm trying to "teach", and some great fun has been had with players thinking waaaay outside the box, but I do try to ensure that "interesting" encounters aren't feasibly solvable by straightforward application of melee weapons to target.

E.g. I would solve your "invulnerable paladin" problem with a batch of three Stone Giants on a plateau 60' high. One giant would grapple/prone the paladin at +12 to Athletics and drag him over to the cliff while the other two beat on him with clubs, and then then next round they'd punt him right off the edge of the cliff. I don't care that the encounter is "too hard" by DMG standards because I also know exactly how the PCs could prevent the stone giants from winning--actually there are several ways, starting with "use a scout to detect the stone giants in advance"--and figuring out how to do that is why we play the game.

In short, I find die-rolling intrinsically boring compared to intelligence-gathering and decision-making, and I run my game accordingly, which means "real" combats are infrequent but "hard enough that you have to play smart or else you'll die." If you prefer a more casual, easy game that focuses more on the excitement of hitting/missing/critting, that's fine. YMMV.

I have already stated there is no invulnerable paladin problem. Someone else stated that and you provided solutions I did not need. I have always known that as a DM you can kill your players at any point in time with various tactics. That is not the goal of a DM. Never has been. So providing ways to challenge a party is only helpful to new DMs that don't know what can be done. That is not me. I've been doing this a long, long time and can kill any party at any point in time with tactical play. For me it is walking the line between challenging play and not killing the party that is the trick. That's why I increase the difficulty slow because in the past I've designed encounters I thought the party could handle that ended up killing them. I learned over time it is better to find out what they can take through a trial and error process that tends to error on the side of caution.

I stated to you my problem quite clearly which was AC variation amongst the group which allowed damage numbers to be very high against some party members and lower against others creating a problem with encounter design that I am trying to refine as I learn this system. I do not need outside help since others do not know how I run encounters and what I'm looking to do. When an AC allows for substantially higher damager numbers against one target than another, you're going to have problem balancing the encounter. For example, if a monster does 4d12+4 with three attacks. One guy has an AC where only one of those attacks will hit on average and another guy has an AC that will be hit by two and the lower AC guy has 3/4s of the hit points of the higher AC guy, that creates an encounter imbalance unless you as a DM focus fire on the higher AC guy. If you choose to hit the lower AC guy, he's going down hard and quick and the higher AC guy will be left standing alone. If he requires support to survive from the lower AC guy, then you might have a wipe. In that instance the AC variation is causing the damage spike because the gap is wide enough to double the damage against the lower AC target. So you have to plan encounters a bit differently to take the lower AC guys squishiness into account. Given I come from 3E/Pathfinder, I'm not accustomed to things working in this fashion because as I stated casters and squishier characters had other means to defend themselves that worked other than AC. Not always the case in 5E.

My players would not let you put them on a cliff 60 feet up with three stone giants unless you forced them to do it. Maybe that is what you do with your players: force them into situations they can't avoid. My players scout first. Decide the best place to engage. Draw the enemy to that point. That is their standard modus operandi. Yes. you can create encounters where the party gets spotted beforehand. They face those encounters sometimes. That is a new problem for them to solve. My job is to put them into situations they can solve without killing them, while at the same time creating the possibility of death. My job is not to view the players as enemies to be "solved." Players are too limited to have any power to challenge a DM that wants to kill them. Thus I've never understood "killer DMs" or DMs that look at beating players as a challenge.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I stated to you my problem quite clearly which was AC variation amongst the group which allowed damage numbers to be very high against some party members and lower against others creating a problem with encounter design that I am trying to refine as I learn this system. I do not need outside help since others do not know how I run encounters and what I'm looking to do. When an AC allows for substantially higher damager numbers against one target than another, you're going to have problem balancing the encounter. For example, if a monster does 4d12+4 with three attacks. One guy has an AC where only one of those attacks will hit on average and another guy has an AC that will be hit by two and the lower AC guy has 3/4s of the hit points of the higher AC guy, that creates an encounter imbalance unless you as a DM focus fire on the higher AC guy. If you choose to hit the lower AC guy, he's going down hard and quick and the higher AC guy will be left standing alone. If he requires support to survive from the lower AC guy, then you might have a wipe. In that instance the AC variation is causing the damage spike because the gap is wide enough to double the damage against the lower AC target. So you have to plan encounters a bit differently to take the lower AC guys squishiness into account.

Right, whereas in my approach, you (the DM) don't have to plan differently at all--it's all on the players to approach the encounter differently, and the giants will kill them without hesitation if they approach it both aggressively and stupidly. (There's where karma helps--that "without hesitation" doesn't have to destroy months of investment in a PC even when it's an unambiguous "you lose, you're dead.") Leveraging the damage gap into an encounter win is the players' job, not the DM's job. This might involve illusions, surprise, taunting, or just simple geometry.

Clearly we have different approaches, and you like to put more of a burden on the DM to make the encounter easier for the PCs. And that is okay--you can play your magic elf game in whatever way makes you happy. (I do find it a little surprising that you see it as your job to protect your veteran players from tough tactical situations, whereas I'm throwing tough tactical problems at my newbish players and watching them struggle then thrive--from the way you describe your group I'd expect it to be the other way around, with you throwing tough opponents at your group that strain their creativity and/or force a tactical retreat. But YMMV I guess. I hypothesize that this difference has a lot to do with our different play agendas, where you want to play out heroes saving the world and I want to play out a world for PCs to interact with in interesting ways.)