D&D 5E Healing 101

[Psikerlord#]

I have resorted to hitting PCs while they are down to threaten/scare them.

Standard healing in 5e is easy mode, and the devs have said as much.

Ime the easiest way to make suffering hp damage more meaningful and involve proper opportunity cost is to (I) use the slow healing rules and (ii) either track -ve HP, or use the injuries table (or some variant).

You want to make dropping to zero hp scary and a real setback... rather than the silly healing bonus with whack-a-mole side effect that the standard death and dying rules promote.

 

[Zardnaar]

You forgot the sorceror who if built right is a great healer and by far the most flexible.

Take a Favoured Soul with the life domain, cure plus metamagic right of the box. Quicken Cure Spell in Combat, twin Cure or Raise Dead spell out of combat.

And a Paladin is better then .50 at least out of combat, healing spells, lay-on-hands, Cleansing Circle (doesn't heal damage, but can heal conditions caused by spells), plus those in her aura take less damage to begin with. The Paladin can share spells with thier mount as well boosting the amount of healing they can do (sharing a cure spell). And admittedly a Fey Knight at level 20 gets really got at healing for 1 minute with a capstone ability that grants regeneration and being about to cast cure as a bonus action.

Favoured Soul is not a core class and I don't think it is that good at healing and it is likely to get errated in any event. I would rather have the Sorcerer quickening bless or destructive waves.

 

[Zardnaar]

You overrate Life Clerics. Preserve Life isn't that useful generally except as a panic button in combat, but Aura of Vitality beats it by a factor of x2 or more. That alone makes Lore Bards with Aura of Vitality superior to Life Clerics. You could call it 2.5 for Life Cleric 1/Lore Bard X, 1.5 for Lore Bard, and 1.0 for Life Cleric or Paladin.

THe Lore Bard cleric takes a while to comeonline- level 7 which is 1/3rd of the game where the life cleric IMHO beats it. THe Cleric/Druid healer comes lonline at level 2 by comparison although it is not quite as good at healing as the Bard/Cleric level 7+.

 

[MoonSong]

Favoured Soul is not a core class and I don't think it is that good at healing and it is likely to get errated in any event. I would rather have the Sorcerer quickening bless or destructive waves.

-but weren't you an "Only Basic is Core" dm?

And even if Favored Soul is so noncore, Sorcerer/Bard can do basically all of the same things. Twinned and Quickened heals.

 

[PnPgamer]

Why do people praise aura of vitality? Could someone elaborate? It seems "meh" to me.

 

[mellored]

Why do people praise aura of vitality? Could someone elaborate? It seems "meh" to me.

2d6 hit points.
* 10 round
= 20d6 (70) hit points.

If you add in life cleric..
2d6+3 hit points
* 10 rounds
= 20d6+30 (100) hit points

And that's spread around as needed. You can give someone 5 heals and someone else 1.

Cure wounds, at level 3 and 20 Wis would be
4d6+5 (19) hit points

Mass cure wounds as a level 5 spell is 3d8+5 * 5 allies = 92.5
Heal, as a level 6 spell heals 70 hit points (and conditions).


The only downside to arua of vitality is concentration. But that's not an issue out of battle where you can take time. It should really be limited to 30 seconds.

 

[iserith]

If you excel at it the DM can not really challenge you in any way, not enough of it and you are in trouble.

I think there are many ways to challenge players that aren't necessarily about reducing hit points to zero. For example, I prefer to prepare challenges that are about threatening the PCs' goals and objectives - knocking someone down to 0 hit points is just a "bonus." As a result, I don't concern myself with the party's ability to heal itself for the most part. Bear in mind that there are exploration and social interaction challenges as well.

The rest of your post is interesting, so have some XP.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I have always put forth that for each alignment variation from the caster, there should be a penalty to healing, the greater the variation the greater the penalty.

 

[Zardnaar]

2d6 hit points.
* 10 round
= 20d6 (70) hit points.

If you add in life cleric..
2d6+3 hit points
* 10 rounds
= 20d6+30 (100) hit points

And that's spread around as needed. You can give someone 5 heals and someone else 1.

Cure wounds, at level 3 and 20 Wis would be
4d6+5 (19) hit points

Mass cure wounds as a level 5 spell is 3d8+5 * 5 allies = 92.5
Heal, as a level 6 spell heals 70 hit points (and conditions).


The only downside to arua of vitality is concentration. But that's not an issue out of battle where you can take time. It should really be limited to 30 seconds.

2d6+5 healing as a bonus action. Heals more hit points on average than the actual heal spell.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think there are many ways to challenge players that aren't necessarily about reducing hit points to zero. For example, I prefer to prepare challenges that are about threatening the PCs' goals and objectives - knocking someone down to 0 hit points is just a "bonus." As a result, I don't concern myself with the party's ability to heal itself for the most part. Bear in mind that there are exploration and social interaction challenges as well.

The rest of your post is interesting, so have some XP.

There are and we do the social/exploration thing as well as last session was sandbox with only 3 fights maybe. In combat though there is a Oath of the Ancients Paladin which makes spell effects and saves a lot less useful, I think one of the bards will also take circle of power.