Tony Vargas
Legend
So, ever since 2e, when the Druid started getting Cure..Wounds spells at the same levels as the Cleric, "you need a 'Cleric' in D&D" has meant "you need a caster with access to healing spells." Which, all those but the first, are.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)
You have read the section of the DMG on designing encounters, no?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, ...
Not technically untrue, but you can't use a first level spell slot to summon a 5th PC.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.
That second's kinda a 'yes' answer to the original question: asserting that healing is too weak. If every character's action is always better spent doing damage to the enemy rather than healing themselves or an ally, then yeah, healing would have to much 'stronger' to make it a meaningful or even viable option.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
(The first, OTOH, gets back to combats being 'too easy...')
So, yeah, it's an assumption that, either due to the DM dialing combats way up, or taking the - seemingly almost unprecedented - option of actually running 6-8 encounters between long rests, combats are actually challenging, and engaging in fierce battles with huge monsters could, in fact, get someone killed. At least, some of the time. A stretch, I know.
But, what you're assuming in saying you needn't "depend on a healer in combat" in 5e, is that both those things are absolutely never true, not for any character in any group in any circumstance at any table where D&D is played, anywhere in the world, ever.
Because the reality of it is really pretty simple - healers, characters who can provide in-combat healing, typically through spellcasting, are what you depend on in 5e. Magic items aren't assumed and you can't depend on the DM to drop specific numbers of them nor prescribed wealth/level to buy them with, and HD, the main non-healer source of healing, simply can't be accessed in combat.
Yeah, that one goes way back, based on the abstract way hps work, and is quite naïve, really. Simple, true in the most basic sense, but first reduces the challenge of combat to a simple damage-trading game, the DPR-only race to 0 hps.the best healing is by giving the monsters the "dead" condition, which reduces their damage output to zero.
If you're wondering why the game seem 'too easy' or even 'boring,' that is why.
Y'always fight in doorways?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.
But, seriously, that's just a variation on whack-a-mole. Get the enemy to 'waste' damage. In this case, by preventing the most obvious and basic (and easy to implement) tactic under the abstraction of hps: focus fire.
This is a 5e thread.Do note I am speaking specifically of 5E.
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