D&D 5E Excluding Healing Spirit, is 5e Healing too weak?

[Ancalagon]

No.

Not having to rely on a healer is a feature, not a bug.

I concur.

I like that in 5e you don't need a cleric. It's nice to have, but it's not needed. If no one wants to play a cleric, it's aok! You can be the healer by

• taking the feat
• being a bard
• being a druid
• being a paladin
• being a sorcerer (with the right subclass)
• being a warlock (with the right pact)

And am I ever glad that the cure light wound wand spam is gone...

 

[CapnZapp]

You do have to rely on healers in combat, as HD are only useable out of combat, when you have a full hour to devote to a short rest.

No - you're assuming two things that are far from universally true:

• that a fully healed character's hit points aren't sufficient to last through the fight
• that a character's action is better spent on healing than killing

Both assumptions can be summarized thusly: the best healing is by giving the monsters the "dead" condition, which reduces their damage output to zero.

Too many gamers just blithely assume healing is an expected action to take during combat, failing to realize that a concerted effort at maximum offense is often a quicker and safer way to victory.

(A much more efficient way to "heal" is by rotating your party members, forcing the monsters to spread out their damage over every party member. The reason this is more effective is simply because it uses up movement while leaving everyone's action for attacks)

PS. Do note I am speaking specifically of 5E. In other games you can't easily ignore your defense. Pathfinder 2, for instance.

 

[CapnZapp]

All I can say is that 5e isn't nearly dangerous enough after 3rd level or so. So it's either healing is too powerful (which is where I'm leaning) - or maybe the monsters don't hit hard enough.

This.

 

[CapnZapp]

If you don't have easy healing you just play differently. 5e works fine, for us, without a dedicate magic healer.

And this.

 

[CapnZapp]

True, that might've been the original idea, but "6-8 Encounters per day" is impractical and unrealistic.

And especially this. Oh, so much this.

 

[dave2008]

The other DMs who have DMed for me seem to be okay with one encounter per day, going nova, and not challenging their parties at all.

There are lots of ways this can be handled differently (you have 1 encounter / day that is a challenge for example); but, I find my players rarely go nova, regardless of the number of encounters, because they don't know how many encounters we will have. Being unpredictable as a DM is a good thing.

 

[DEFCON 1]

5E healing isn't too weak, because every game has the easiest method for extensive healing-- adding a 5th PC.

And if you want healing to be overpowered? You have 6 PCs. Heaven forbid you play at a table with 7 or more PCs, because then you pretty much have to have every attack do Max Damage using several monsters whose CR is like 5 levels higher than the party (while still having every attack of their do Max Damage) to even attempt at making a fight somewhat threatening-- to like a single a PC that might have to actually roll a death save. Meanwhile the entire rest of the group are pretty much fine.

At 1st level a Cure Wounds is 1d8+Mod HP in healing... while adding a 5th PC gives you 10-15 of additional hit points for monsters to fight through. Put a party of 6 PCs at the table and the monsters are having to try and wade through an additional 20 to 30 HP that they weren't designed to fight effectively against. Who needs to waste spell slots on Cure spells when you can just hire another HP soak and give it a share of the treasure?

I wonder how many tables that say healing isn't strong enough just have one melee character up front soaking hit after hit after hit while the other four PCs hide out in the back never taking any damage... but they also can't heal that one tank fast enough to not have it almost die every fight? If the entire party would actually step up and take a bunch of hits themselves to spread out the HP loss... fights would get exponentially less deadly and the slowness of healing melts away.

 

[Horwath]

I concur.

I like that in 5e you don't need a cleric. It's nice to have, but it's not needed. If no one wants to play a cleric, it's aok! You can be the healer by

• taking the feat
• being a bard
• being a druid
• being a paladin
• being a sorcerer (with the right subclass)
• being a warlock (with the right pact)

And am I ever glad that the cure light wound wand spam is gone...

I call your wand of cure light wounds and raise you wand of lesser vigor. 11HP fixed per cast over 11 rounds.

coupled with Reserve feat Touch of healing you could have all HPs full after few mins out of combat at a dirt cheap cost.

 

[Undrave]

The problem with 5e healing is that HD are terrible replacements for healing surges.

For those not in the know, in 4e edition, in addition to their actual HP, PCs had a number of ‘Healing Surges’ that would fuel healing and inform how much a certain effect would help you recover. Each Healing Surge had a value equal to a ¼ of your max HP. The Cleric sends a Healing Word your way? You can spend a Healing Surge and you regain its value in HP and a bonus. Take a potion? It lets you spend a healing surge plus a small bonus. Better potion? TWO Healing Surges. Take a rest? Spend Healing Surges to recover their value in HP.

This had a number of advantages:

It meant that healing wasn’t just spending the healer’s resources, it also spent resources from the person receiving that healing. It, in turn, put a harder limit on the amount of healing that could be spent out during the day. You could have a full team of classes capable of healing and a Handy Haversack of healing potion and you would still not be able to go on forever. This had the bonus that strong healing effects just depleted those ressources fasters, being a trade off.

It’s a system that could easily have been adapted to make the game deadlier without making days shorter. Say you have a character with 20 HP and 6 HS, each worth 5 HP. That means that in the course of a day the PC in question can take 50 points of damage, BUT it means that a monsters only need to inflict 20 HP worth of damage to bring that character down. Additionally, PC would sometimes not spend a surge if it meant ‘overhealing’ and wasting part of it. You’d end up in a lot of situations with PCs not fully healed, so that danger could be greater. By playing around with the max HP and number of surges of PCs, you could dial a certain level of danger of your choosing.

And finally, it gave you a resource you could take away and have an actual impact for non-combat situation. Certain strenuous activities could cost healing surges, certain dangerous environment and traps could just skip the HP damage and just cost you a healing surge (basically, assumes you took damage and then spent a surge to avoid it). It basically gave you a measure of your PC’s exhaustion.

Heck, they could have made rituals cost healing surges, making them less ‘free’.

Healing Surges were brilliant and HD are an anemic attempt at the same mechanic with a legacy name, but they don’t actually do everything Surges could do and their potency is pathetic as a result. Plus you have to ROLL to use them? Bleh.

 

[NotAYakk]

You can bring "healing surges" back to 5e to some extent.

1. When you receive non-regeneration type healing, you can roll spend up to 1/2 of your max HD (round up) to heal as well.
2. When you roll a HD, you only lose HD that roll a 1 or 2. HD that roll higher than that are not expended.
3. Character HP are maximized at each level.
4. Monster damage is doubled.

With that, a level 12 Barbarian has 12d12 HD. When they roll 1/2 of their HD, they lose 1/12 of their max HD (1/6 of the dice they roll) and regain about 1/4 of their max HP. This aligns with a having 12 healing surges in 4e. Basically, dX classes have X healing surges, each of which heals 1/4 of your max HP.

Max HP per level doesn't quite double PC HP; double monster damage doubles threat.

Now, total HP per long rest goes way up if you can access those HD; with 5 minute work days things might not work well.