D&D 5E The Fighter/Martial Problem (In Depth Ponderings)

[TwoSix]

I'm not super sold on the healing word approach as the best option, but I do think that a game with action efficient healing is generally worse off than one without. Having effective healing requires you to have larger HP pools and longer combats.

Definitely generally true, although you could also necessitate in-combat healing by scaling up the amount of damage and the size of the heals.

Say, an 5 member average party with 50 HP, and a "tank" class with 70 HP. And they're versus 3 ogres, who have a 90% hit rate (but only 70% against the tank) and a damage range of 30-50 HP per attack. The "cleric" can also do a per action heal of between 30-40 HP a turn.

It definitely wouldn't "feel" like D&D, but it would lead to relatively fast combats (assuming that the ogres drop recently fast as well) where action efficient healing was not only feasible but a near-necessity.

 

[FrogReaver]

Definitely generally true, although you could also necessitate in-combat healing by scaling up the amount of damage and the size of the heals.

Say, an 5 member average party with 50 HP, and a "tank" class with 70 HP. And they're versus 3 ogres, who have a 90% hit rate (but only 70% against the tank) and a damage range of 30-50 HP per attack. The "cleric" can also do a per action heal of between 30-40 HP a turn.

It definitely wouldn't "feel" like D&D, but it would lead to relatively fast combats (assuming that the ogres drop recently fast as well) where action efficient healing was not only feasible but a near-necessity.

Yea. It’s just the further you go in that direction the more necessary healers are.

 

[FrozenNorth]

• Wizards - Web (but plenty of others). Web is just so effective and it's only a 2nd level slot. (Heck, speaking of narrow doorways and hallways web is great there too, also grease in a small space can be hilariously effective and is only a level 1 slot).

Web is somewhat broken. In virtually all other cases, breaking out of being restrained is an Athletics check. Except for Web it’s a Strength check. So even a 5th level caster (DC 15) is pretty effective at webbing even a higher level creature with high Strength.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not super sold on the healing word approach as the best option, but I do think that a game with action efficient healing is generally worse off than one without. Having effective healing requires you to have larger HP pools and longer combats.

Imagine a simple system where enemies hit for 1 damage. In order to be efficient, your healing action needs to heal for >1 damage, say 1.5-2. In order to actually capitalize on that efficiency, you need the enemy to hit your party member twice, which means you need HP pools of at least 3, if not 4 or 5 in order to allow sufficient padding for the timing to work out.

And that's before you get into the thornier damage question, where that action could instead have been spent doing damage to the enemy, which requires the action be even more efficient, which requires even more HP padding, and even more total actions per combat. I just don't think it's generally worth it in most turn-based combat systems outside of edge cases like someone actually going down or limited action-less healing (which probably ought to generally be self-healing, so you can silo it by class).

I really dislike Healing Word. You should have to be adjacent to someone to heal them, and I feel it should take an action.

 

[TwoSix]

Yea. It’s just the further you go in that direction the more necessary healers are.

Oh, for sure. I prefer healers not being necessary, but I know others who totally think they should be.

 

[James Gasik]

I look at it this way- the cost of victory is resources saved. The value of every action is in how many resources it ultimately saves the party from spending.

If you can kill enemies faster, you use up less resources (such as hit points). But if killing enemies faster consumes a valuable resource (like fireball), then it's value isn't in how much damage it did, but how many hit points it saved your party from losing.

If the merit of a spell slot is how many hit points it prevented you from losing, then it becomes easy to see that healing spells are simply broken from a design standpoint. Using the example of an enemy with multiattack (I'll pick a brown bear for this), we have two attacks for 8 damage and one for 11.

Slowing the Bear makes it easier to kill and reduces it's average damage to 11 from 27. Paralyzing the Bear, even for 1 turn, protects you from 27 damage (and making it even easier to kill!).

Yet a level 3 Cure Wounds, even used by a Life Cleric with 18 Wisdom, only prevents 22.5 damage for 1 round. It requires you to be in melee range of the enemy, putting yourself in harm's way.

I don't see how anyone can say that better healing spells would be broken, or "require" healing classes, when they are so inefficient compared with other methods of preventing resource loss to a party- but as I said above, that ship has sailed, attacked by pirates, and lost at sea, lol.

 

[M_Natas]

I look at it this way- the cost of victory is resources saved. The value of every action is in how many resources it ultimately saves the party from spending.

If you can kill enemies faster, you use up less resources (such as hit points). But if killing enemies faster consumes a valuable resource (like fireball), then it's value isn't in how much damage it did, but how many hit points it saved your party from losing.

If the merit of a spell slot is how many hit points it prevented you from losing, then it becomes easy to see that healing spells are simply broken from a design standpoint. Using the example of an enemy with multiattack (I'll pick a brown bear for this), we have two attacks for 8 damage and one for 11.

Slowing the Bear makes it easier to kill and reduces it's average damage to 11 from 27. Paralyzing the Bear, even for 1 turn, protects you from 27 damage (and making it even easier to kill!).

Yet a level 3 Cure Wounds, even used by a Life Cleric with 18 Wisdom, only prevents 22.5 damage for 1 round. It requires you to be in melee range of the enemy, putting yourself in harm's way.

I don't see how anyone can say that better healing spells would be broken, or "require" healing classes, when they are so inefficient compared with other methods of preventing resource loss to a party- but as I said above, that ship has sailed, attacked by pirates, and lost at sea, lol.

The problem is also two fold. Other methods of preventing damage are better than healing, yes, but healing insid e combat also is useless when you want to retain your damage output.
Characters are as efficient at 100% HP as if they were at 1% of their HP.
But because healing is usually less than the damage a creature makes, it also makes no sense to waste a healing spell on somebody with 1% HP to get him up to 8%, because the next attack will do 10% damage, bringing him to 0 anyway.
So the only useful use of healing in Combat is to bring a character back from 0 HP.

We could bring back the bloody condition or be even more gradual, like:
Bloddy: When you are below 50% HP you have disadvantage on ability checks.
Very Bloddy: When you are below 40% HP, your speed is halved.
Extremley Bloddy: When you are below 30% you have disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws.
Ultra Bloddy: When you are below 20% you only can take an action or bonus action or reaction per turn.
ULTRA EXTREM BLODDY: When you are below 10% your speed is reduced to 0.

Now it makes sense to heal, because we have several thresholds of worsening conditions.
At the moment the only threshold for any effect is 0 HP.

Of course with such conditions the chance of a death spiral gets higher.

 

[ECMO3]

I think feats favor casters. Multiclassing definitely does.

I don't think I agree with this, a martial can get Cantrips and the Shield spell from a 1-level dip, and you can add Sorcerer or Warlock subclass abilities. There are very few martial buildslevel 3-20 that would not be better with a level of Cleric, Wizard, Sorcerer or Hexblade Warlock at every level except 5.

Full casters on the other hand pay a high price for multiclassing into anything other than another full caster, and even if you are multiclassing into another full caster you are still losing your highest level spells, with some combos your highest two levels of spells.

Martials can delay extra attack by taking a dip, but the only character level that generally matters is 5th level, and you can mitigate that to a degree with the blade cantrips. A full caster on the other hand that dips a level is out her highest level spell every odd level, if she dips a non-caster she is out a level worth of slots as well.

Right now I am playing a character that is a Damphir 3rd level Long Death Monk/1st Level Death Cleric. Next level she is going to take a level in Shadow Sorcerer, getting the Blade cantrips exactly when they scale up as well as shield, Absorb Elements and Strength of the Grave. I think at 5th level this multiclass will be more powerful than she would be as a straight 5th level Monk with 5 Ki, Extra Attack and Stunning Strike.

 

[ECMO3]

The problem is also two fold. Other methods of preventing damage are better than healing, yes, but healing insid e combat also is useless when you want to retain your damage output.
Characters are as efficient at 100% HP as if they were at 1% of their HP.
But because healing is usually less than the damage a creature makes, it also makes no sense to waste a healing spell on somebody with 1% HP to get him up to 8%, because the next attack will do 10% damage, bringing him to 0 anyway.
So the only useful use of healing in Combat is to bring a character back from 0 HP.

We could bring back the bloody condition or be even more gradual, like:
Bloddy: When you are below 50% HP you have disadvantage on ability checks.
Very Bloddy: When you are below 40% HP, your speed is halved.
Extremley Bloddy: When you are below 30% you have disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws.
Ultra Bloddy: When you are below 20% you only can take an action or bonus action or reaction per turn.
ULTRA EXTREM BLODDY: When you are below 10% your speed is reduced to 0.

Now it makes sense to heal, because we have several thresholds of worsening conditions.
At the moment the only threshold for any effect is 0 HP.

Of course with such conditions the chance of a death spiral gets higher.

I think that is a lot of math to keep track of in game and I don't think most players are going to want to do that.

Martials also tend to get attacked and hit more than non-martials, and they generally need more mobility/movement than casters to employ their weapons effectively. As a result I think these changes would actually make the gap between martials and casters greater.

 

[M_Natas]

I think that is a lot of math to keep track of in game and I don't think most players are going to want to do that. Martials also tend to get attacked and hit more than non-martials, and they generally need more mobility/movement than casters to employ their weapons effectively

As a result I think these changes would actually make the gap between martials and casters greater.

It is just an quick a d dirty example of what could be done.
You just need one or more wounded threshholds above 0 HP that have mechanical consequence or healing above 0 HP during battle is meaningless.