D&D (2024) Should healing word require hit dice?

[Umbran]

If you run a combat where the party has, say, a Bard and Cleric both with healing word, it is extremely difficult for the party to be in peril.

If you run a single combat yes, then it is hard.

As written, D&D has a significant resource management/attrition component. If you run only one combat, the PCs are always flush with spell slots. You have to be pushing the encounters per day to start seeing them have issues.

But that makes it clear it is less an issue with the spell, but of how many encounters they go through that eat spell slots between long rests.

 

[mellored]

If you run a single combat yes, then it is hard.

As written, D&D has a significant resource management/attrition component. If you run only one combat, the PCs are always flush with spell slots. You have to be pushing the encounters per day to start seeing them have issues.

But that makes it clear it is less an issue with the spell, but of how many encounters they go through that eat spell slots between long rests.

Depends on the level.
At level 1, your using your highest level slot to bring someone back from the brink of death. A high cost.

But by level 10, you can bring someone back from the brink of death 10+ times per day, and still blast off a big spell each encounter. You're not exactly afraid to drop anymore.

Though this has always been an issue with the way spellcasters level in DnD. And why I think the warlock is the best overall design, with slots that scale.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Because healing word is a bonus action that you can cast at a 60' range, and it doesn't just stabilize someone, it pops them right back into combat. It's not comparable.

I think OP's suggestion is a good start but doesn't go far enough. Healing word fundamentally changes encounter design in 5e because, as OP correctly points out, it makes the "whack-a-mole" strategy of only healing people when they drop to 0 HP the most efficient, effective way to heal, and drastically lowers the stakes in combat because rescue is usually just a bonus action away. And the caster still gets to take another action. It's almost a get-out-of-jail-free card.

If you run a combat where the party has, say, a Bard and Cleric both with healing word, it is extremely difficult for the party to be in peril. From a storytelling perspective, I think healing word lowers the stakes too much. I would like to see it nerfed in OneD&D, but instead they are doubling down by giving Bard's a new ability where they can effectively do healing word (more or less) as a reaction. So then a bard will be able to pick two members up and still take an action (and if they have the medicine skill, that action could be to pick up a third member).

Edit: something as consequential to the story as saving your bleeding out teammate should at least require your action, IMO. Not an afterthought.

Someone knocked out at the very least has to spend time standing up and picking up their dropped items.

If GMs actually start to enforce the rules that would make getting KOed a pain in the wazoo the players will go out of their way to avoid dead rounds....like actually healing before the KO.

It's the same as complaining about dark vision making torches, lanterns, and light spells unnecessary. Start enforcing the disadvantage to perception checks and suddenly the players are all stocking up on light sources.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Depends on the level.
At level 1, your using your highest level slot to bring someone back from the brink of death. A high cost.

But by level 10, you can bring someone back from the brink of death 10+ times per day, and still blast off a big spell each encounter. You're not exactly afraid to drop anymore.

Though this has always been an issue with the way spellcasters level in DnD. And why I think the warlock is the best overall design, with slots that scale.

A 10th level character standing up to fight again with 5-10 HP in the tank is a 10th level character asking to die.

Unless your bad guys never learn to finish off a downed opponent who keeps rising.

Rule#2 is double-tap after all.

 

[MarkB]

Someone knocked out at the very least has to spend time standing up and picking up their dropped items.

Half their speed and a free object interaction, unless they were holding two items. I've never seen the movement expenditure not enforced, but on the other hand I've rarely seen groups get tied up in the nitty-gritty of juggling with multiple items.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I would love to go back to 4e style but with HD over HS... so healing word is spend HD, and cure wounds is heal AS IF you spent a HD

 

[Horwath]

I would love to go back to 4e style but with HD over HS... so healing word is spend HD, and cure wounds is heal AS IF you spent a HD

I would rather see HS back.
Damage is chaotic, healing should be reliable.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I would rather see HS back.
Damage is chaotic, healing should be reliable.

I think there should be a space for both... even with those spells.

Cure wounds should be heal as if you spend a HD, and add caster stat as well... if you spend a higher slot heal as if you spent more HD.
Healing Word should be spend a HD and add your caster stat... if you use higher spell slots you can (If you spend that HD) add an extra 1d4hp per spell level over 1st

 

[Umbran]

But by level 10, you can bring someone back from the brink of death 10+ times per day, and still blast off a big spell each encounter. You're not exactly afraid to drop anymore.

Well, that's an interesting breakdown.
Ten castings of Healing Word will take up a 10th level cleric's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level spells for the day.
So, for the "big spell" you have three 4th level slots, and two 5th level. So, you're talking at best five encounters a day, and the cleric gets to cast one spell, and healing word, and cantrips, and that's it.

I question the theorycraft here, because it is focusing on what the numbers technically allow, instead of what players do. Who, playing a cleric, chooses this pattern in actual play?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I question the theorycraft here, because it is focusing on what the numbers technically allow, instead of what players do. Who, playing a cleric, chooses this pattern in actual play?

Worse than that, if they are playing like that, it's very likely not by choice on the part of the Cleric (or similar), it's because they have some deeply suicidal comrades who are managing to repeatedly rush in and get dropped. Really just dying all over the place.

It's certainly not something I've seen in actual play.

If anything the issue is more like because you rarely see more than 2-3 PCs down in an adventuring day (and even that'd usually be a bad day), it's usually possible to get them back up without costing too much. I think the "10+ times/day!" stuff is a bit of silly distraction.

EDIT - Wait. I have revise my comment - I have seen something like that, the Rogue we had played like that in 4E for a while - but in 4E, the Cleric could only do a healing surge heal 3x/combat - and eventually the Rogue managed to exceed that and had to spend the rest of the combat face down instead of murdering people and learned his lesson. Still I think it's rare.