D&D 5E 5e, Heal Thyself! Is Healing Too Weak in D&D?

[FrozenNorth]

Yeah I would personally be happy if a fully upcast Cure Wounds could negate one enemy turn with a little extra healing on top. When you think about action economy if you give up your action to negate one enemy's action, that's not really a good deal

That is incorrect. If there are 4 of you and one enemy, giving up your action to cancel the enemy’s action is a great deal. The break even point is when there are 4 of you and 4 of them.

Of course, if you are in a 4-on-4 situation, your high-level heals are probably outpacing their damage.

Suppose you are 4 5th level adventurers. You are fighting 4 CR 2 ogres. On average, your 2nd level and 3rd level heals are handily outpacing their damage. Your heals always hit. Their attacks don’t.

In fact, against AC 16, if the cleric has 16 Wis, your 1st level heals are keeping pace with the ogre’s hits, given that he needs at least a 10 to hit the player.

 

[Mannahnin]

This is another thread that reminds me of how I'm an outlier because most of the arguments for different positions don't match my experience or playstyle.

Both of my current 5E D&D groups do plenty of in-combat healing and post-combat patching up (without risking a short rest). The fact that there is no cleric in either group may be skewing this (in past editions my groups always had at least one and usually multiple clerics or multi-classed clerics).

I'm in a similar boat. I do regularly see in-combat healing in my 5E group.

Sometimes it's situational- depending on the initiative order for a given fight, putting a Cure Wounds (probably leveled up) into a character while they're still on their feet may be more effective than waiting for them to go down and use Healing Word, because they'd lose a turn.

Healing certainly doesn't always equal monster damage, but I don't think it genuinely needs to, a lot of the time. If you're fighting a group of monsters roughly equivalent or greater in number than the PCs, yes, it probably should. If you're up against one or two big monsters, OTOH, expecting a single healer's action to completely negate a round of attacks from one of them is probably an unreasonable expectation.

In the RotFM game I'm playing in we have a Twilight Cleric, and both the healing and the damage mitigation from Twilight Sanctuary are frequently invaluable. I'm also often glad to have temp HP from Armor of Agathys on my Hexblade, but that one's usually best cast before combat. I've done it in combat when the situation was right, though.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I for one am happy that we have left the days of:
Player 1: “Ok, who wants to be the cleric? No one? C’mon guys, someone has to heal? Fine, I’ll do it, but I get first pick of characters next time…”

Across all my groups, there have been exceeding few players that want to play clerics…

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I mean if you have fun with a thing, it's "good" for you. But I hear a lot of gripes from my friends who play it about how GW handles the property, to the point I often ask them "so why do you play it again?"

I get blank stares, and then someone usually calls me a Heretic, and I have to get out of melee range so all they can do is fire flashlight lasers at me.f

Enough flashlights can still take down a Bloodthirster. My crowning 40k2e achievement.

 

[Willie the Duck]

And why haven't any of you people who don't like the healing rules in 5E just changed them for your table? The game has been out for 8 years. Have you all just been suffering in silence this entire time? That seems to have been... unnecessary.

Quite possibly people have, for the most part. That doesn't mean we aren't going to pick apart the topic down to the bones. It's a Snarf thread. I don't think it a personal insult to say that most of them boil down to looking at one or another little brass spring in the whole Rube Goldberg machine and overanalyzing what the tensile strength is, why it might have been chosen, and what might happen if you replaced it with a steel one.

And also... so the game doesn't allow you to play every single concept you can think of in an optimal way. Some ways cannot be optimized without adjusting rules. Some ways can't really be done at all without new concepts or re-writes. This should not be a shock to anyone, and is the entire reason games like Champions / Hero System were created... in order to give players the ability to build almost any single concept they could think of in an RPG and have it be pretty balanced across the entire spectrum of the gameplay.

I dispute the notion that C/HS are in any real way balanced, not that it can readily do all things. However, you are right -- any given edition of D&D can't facilitate all things (certainly not make all things equally worthwhile endeavors). That's why people are picking apart what about 5e makes things conducive to this playstyle and not that one.

 

[Manbearcat]

Two things-

First, the key qualifier is, "For me ..." In discussing the various knobs to twiddle, for me that is they way to approach it.

Second is your approach (explicitly referring to 4e)- I think the post I was referring to (FitztheRuke) mentioned various ways to tinker with the system, including changing the monsters, etc. Without putting too fine a point on it, 5e is not built up in the same way as 4e; while you could, theoretically, use the same approach ... if you wanted to make combat meaningful and consequential while greatly increasing healing (with both full hit points before every scene AND meaningful in-combat healing), you'd really have to re-think monsters and combat from the ground up (IMO), which is beyond the scope of most people. At a certain point, you'd be better off just playing 4e than modifying 5e if that was your goal.

That was kind of the point of the post- 5e is not balanced in such a way that this is an option, and would require extensive work to make it that way.

Ok, I looked at FitztheRuke's post. The area I didn't see addressed as a dial was action economy. I would look at Bonus Actions and Immediate Actions as areas that could do some work here.

Ok, so your statement of "For me, if you want to really privilege in-combat healing more, I think the first step is to dramatically lower the ability of characters to have innate and massive out-of-combat healing" wasn't an axiom about design possibilities within D&D or TTRPGs generally, it was about 5e in particular with respect to your perception of (a) the consequences to 5e's balance and (b) the workload required to rejigger that balance?

Have I got you right?

Can you maybe talk more about 3 things:

1) What are you referring to by balance here. Are you talking about some notion of class/build parity (qualitative or quantitative)? Are you talking about niche protection? Are you talking about table time allotment and/or the impact on the arc of combat (eg more consequential in-combat healing will yield a "rally arc" and/or increase table time on combat)? (Are you talking about Adventuring Day pacing (already a fraught subject in 5e)? Are you talking about the impact on orthodox D&D scenarios (particularly Team PC vs Obstacles and climax vs anticlimax)?

2) After you've laid out your concerns for 5e balance in (1), what is precisely your fear (outside of the overhead required to rejigger the numbers/align resource suites) of making in-combat healing more consequential? For instance, what sort of paradigm shift would emerge from someone hacking 5e's engine in such a way. Is it simply that the drift toward 4e would be so substantial (your last sentence of your 2nd paragraph seems to imply that) that you may as well just play 4e? What if someone says to that "I don't want to deal with the AEDU resource scheme, all the Forced Movement, all the Terrain/Hazards interaction, all the mobility incentives/requirements, all the diversity and synergy and scope of Team Monster + battlefield array....I just want to keep playing 5e yet have some legitimately consequential healing that I can deploy on a per encounter basis to (a) thematically change the shape of our play and (b) to stimulate me tactically...I think that is doable without a massive drift toward all that 4e entails."

3) Do you think 5e is so meticulously balanced around your conception of (1) above that fiddling about with it is going to be House of Cards-ey? I feel like that would be a pretty controversial take so I'm not sure you feel that way but I'm curious given your response above.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Ok, I looked at FitztheRuke's post. The area I didn't see addressed as a dial was action economy. I would look at Bonus Actions and Immediate Actions as areas that could do some work here.

Ok, so your statement of "For me, if you want to really privilege in-combat healing more, I think the first step is to dramatically lower the ability of characters to have innate and massive out-of-combat healing" wasn't an axiom about design possibilities within D&D or TTRPGs generally, it was about 5e in particular with respect to your perception of (a) the consequences to 5e's balance and (b) the workload required to rejigger that balance?

Have I got you right?

Yes. It was a comment about 5e specifically, and about (from my perspective) the most likely means to privilege in-combat healing.

This is with the assumption that by "in-combat healing" we are talking about the use of spells and other class abilities to allow in-combat healing, and not simply adopting addition "surge rules" as in the optional rules within the DMG.

Can you maybe talk more about 3 things:

1) What are you referring to by balance here. Are you talking about some notion of class/build parity (qualitative or quantitative)? Are you talking about niche protection? Are you talking about table time allotment and/or the impact on the arc of combat (eg more consequential in-combat healing will yield a "rally arc" and/or increase table time on combat)? (Are you talking about Adventuring Day pacing (already a fraught subject in 5e)? Are you talking about the impact on orthodox D&D scenarios (particularly Team PC vs Obstacles and climax vs anticlimax)?

Of the topics mentioned, I would lean toward the notion that it would disrupt the resource economy in 5e, particularly as it relates to combat.

I don't think class/build parity would matter much, tbh, and I don't think niche protection is much of a thing in 5e at this point.

Where I do see the issue is that 5e is still tied to the resource economy of the adventure day; while the short rest mechanic breaks that up somewhat, it appears that they are moving away from that in more recent books. So I would put this under the rubric of the "adventuring day." The combats mostly rely on iterations of an attrition model, and tension in combat (to the extent it is generated in 5e) would be dissipated by increasing the amount of healing to equal the amount of damage during combat.

As it is, the tension/release is generated, for the most part, by "getting through" the combat and then healing up.

2) After you've laid out your concerns for 5e balance in (1), what is precisely your fear (outside of the overhead required to rejigger the numbers/align resource suites) of making in-combat healing more consequential? For instance, what sort of paradigm shift would emerge from someone hacking 5e's engine in such a way. Is it simply that the drift toward 4e would be so substantial (your last sentence of your 2nd paragraph seems to imply that) that you may as well just play 4e? What if someone says to that "I don't want to deal with the AEDU resource scheme, all the Forced Movement, all the Terrain/Hazards interaction, all the mobility incentives/requirements, all the diversity and synergy and scope of Team Monster + battlefield array....I just want to keep playing 5e yet have some legitimately consequential healing that I can deploy on a per encounter basis to (a) thematically change the shape of our play and (b) to stimulate me tactically...I think that is doable without a massive drift toward all that 4e entails."

I don't have any real concerns on that. If someone wants to put in the time and effort, good for them! That said, I think it would be a fair amount of time and effort for decreasing rewards. I think it would certainly be possible, but would involve (for example) changing other mechanics in fundamental ways- removing death saves (and/or whac-a-mole) or greatly increasing the power of monsters. If they do it, awesome sauce!

3) Do you think 5e is so meticulously balanced around your conception of (1) above that fiddling about with it is going to be House of Cards-ey? I feel like that would be a pretty controversial take so I'm not sure you feel that way but I'm curious given your response above.

Ooohhh. No. I don't think 5e is meticulously balanced. At all. Which is why you can screw around with it so much. In fact, I think that it would be quite possible to just say, by fiat, that healing spells do more healing and have a go at it.

But ... I do think that this was a deliberate design choice, and because of the resource management and attrition model used, it will likely have more effects than first considered.

 

[Lyxen]

I'm sorry if I come as intolerant. But I'm anything but.

My apologies, it was not my intention that my advice of tolerance for other styles of play would be construed as you being "intolerant".

I have zero room to be nitpicky and I have to take what I can. At the same time, I'm a bit tired of always having to settle for the second or third closest thing to what I want.

I think we come from different eras, for an example of what we went through, have a look at this post. There were very few choices at the time, and sometimes you ended up playing not what you wanted at all but what the group needed. And this without any of the details or choices available today, and no other supplement etc.

I guess it taught us (at least it taught me) that the game is more important than personal wishes. If you really want to play the game, technical details are secondary to having a role and playing with people.

Back in the 3.5 era, I would have loved to find a DM that allowed Races of Dragon and Knowstones, but never did. Right now, I would love to find a DM that allowed me to play an En5ider Noble -you know, just the class that I happened to design-, but instead would settle for a group that just let me play a cleric or divine soul without wanting to dictate what I do or how I do it, yet the best I can expect is to find a game that will last more than a couple sessions. Just finding a DM that will take instead of random blast everything powegamer is an achievement on itself.

I think on this, what I would do is drop my personal wishes and just appreciate the game being run for what it is. Coming with a sour face and reluctantly is for me the best way to ensure that not only you will not enjoy the game, but that you will make it not as good for other players and for the DM. This is a vicious circle.

On the contrary, when I was faced with situations where I wanted to play but with people that I did not know and whom I thought might have different aspirations about the game was come with double the enthusiasm, appreciating every other player and especially the DM for what they did. This is positive reinforcement, and showed my appreciation, and in turn allowed me to get positive reinforcement back. Do this, and you will have a greater chance to make friends and get continuing games. This is what I did in particular when I moved overseas and found groups to play with. It did not work each time, but it worked well enough for me.

 

[CleverNickName]

I never minded playing a cleric...even in B/X, when the cleric had to use blunt weapons and had to cast certain spells in reverse. At least a cleric felt like a cleric, instead of the same fighter/wizard as everyone else (except you went to church once).

 

[tetrasodium]

"Prevention is healing" is a bit of a topic. Is Shield of Faith healing since you get hit less? Is Bless as it increases your saves? Is massive damage healing as foes who are dead don't take actions? (Which brings back to is Bless healing a second time.)

My focus was on healing-as-healing. I like how in 5e everything comes together - that produces a game I enjoy playing. That does not mean Healing is on-par if it wasn't propped up by other rules and subsystems.

There's an active thread right now about the Twilight Cleric being OP. A big part of that is that the economy of tHP granting is too good. How did we get there from a design viewpoint? That's pretty straightforward.

Temp HP aren't protected by the heal-from-zero rule AND tHP have the additional limitation that they don't stack. So in order for actions & resources to be worthwhile to spend on tHP during a combat, tHP need to be inherently on-par with other actions. And we can see that yes, in general the abilities that give them out in-combat (as opposed to long-lasting ones that are more equivalent to out-of-combat healing) are generally better than healing using the same action and resources.

Twilight cleric & artillerist still have spells like healing word & such to go with death saves. They feel OP to a lot of folks because of the same reasons that it's a difficult problem for a lone GM to fix if death saves damage beyond zero & default healing rules/abilities/spells are still present.