D&D 5E 2/18/13 L&L column

[DEFCON 1]

I'm genuinely surprised that people actually think that having a cleric in the party that allows a group to go from 4 encounters to 5 encounters in a day must ipso facto mean the cleric is more powerful than the other classes in the party. Because you all seem to be missing the very real issue that it's not that the cleric is more powerful... but that the other classes become less powerful when they fall unconscious.

You could mathematically make all four classes completely balanced in terms of damage doing and damage soaking (in whatever proportions you want). But as soon as one of those characters falls unconscious... that character loses its potential. It can no longer soak damage or deal damage. Every round that PC is out of the fight... it's effectiveness DROPS within the group.

So every single group composition is NEVER going to be equal in terms of being able to get through a certain number of encounters... not because certain classes are more powerful than others... but because group composition will dictate how many LOST ROUNDS of combat they will suffer based on PCs falling unconscious.

So a group having a cleric (with magical healing) will of course be able to do more... because they are the only one of the four Basic classes that can raise someone from unconsciousness in a fight-- thereby reducing the number of LOST ROUNDS of combat the party will get.

So for example, if you have two parties... the first with one of each of the Core Four, the second with fighter, two rogues and wizard... and they both get into the same exact fight against the same exact monster. Then at some point, the first rogue of the party gets hit with a critical and falls unconscious.

In Party #1, the cleric (which remember, is mathematically balanced against rogue #2) immediately heals the unconscious rogue who jumps up, withdraws from combat with like three hit points, and then spends the rest of the fight at range doing ranged damage (thereby helping get the fight over faster.)

In Party #2, the rogue goes unconscious and never gets up. Therefore, the party LOSES whatever extra damage he did at rangefor party #1, therefore their fight goes on longer, therefore the fighter and second rogue soak more damage from the monster, and therefore at the end of the fight party #2 has less resources than party #1 (even though both parties are completely balanced). As a result... Party #2 might have to rest, whereas Party #1 might decide to move on for another encounter.

THAT'S what having a cleric gets you. The opportunity to do more encounters in a day because you lose less man-rounds to unconsciousness. So then the big balancing issue becomes... how MANY man-rounds will the "non-cleric" party lose, and are they still able to remain fairly viable in that configuration? If the answer is 'Yes'... then we're good. A party with a cleric might do 5 encounters before resting, one without might only do 4. And THAT'S OKAY.

 

[Li Shenron]

[/B]
See, I'll disagree here. I think in an ideal design a party of 4 should be inclined to cover, say 4 level-appropriate encounters in a day. If the party has a Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric it's functional rate should be 4 encounters. If the party has 2 Fighters and 2 Wizards it's functional rate should be 4 encounters. If the party has 4 Clerics it's functional rate should still be 4 encounters.

While it sounds logical, I don't think it really necessarily is. The game should be playable and reasonably enjoyable by all those groups, but it doesn't mean that 4 encounters are a must. In fact, there is no reason why they should be.

The game should not care whether that pacing is achieved by making the HP totals go back up after they went down (cleric healing) or preventing those totals from going down (parry, dodge, deflect, AC boosts, temp HP, or killing monsters extra-fast).

Well in that case then the game also wouldn't care if that pacing is achieved by using slightly weaker monsters.

 

[Ratskinner]

If the party resources are better/bigger with one cleric, then it stands to reason that they will be better/bigger still with two - or an entire party of clerics. This certainly worked with 3.x, and was arguably functional with earlier editions, too (although, there, you might want to hire in "specialists" for when the DM sets up deliberate "impossible without a whatever" scenarios).

That was certainly something I experienced during the "Skills and Powers" time of 2e. Three parties in a row with nothing but (mostly Elven) Speciality Clerics from an array of deities permitting "dipping" of other class abilities.

I'm with @Kamikaze Midget and co. on this one - if parties with and without particular characters can take a different number of "standard" encounters on before they need to recharge, it's a pretty clear indication that the parties are of different power levels. That has, ley's say, "unfortunate" consequences for optimal play (i.e. there will be such a thing, and it will be homogeneous).

What if those encounters were much more "horrific slogs" than they would have been if the cleric had been some other class?

I guess what I'm feeling is that (under traditional D&D mindset) "healing" is a resource the cleric transfers to other players who, in turn, translate it into their own mechanical effectiveness. (This gives the cleric disproportionate utility to "mundane" party members, since healing doesn't replenish spells.) If this was all the cleric did, it would be easy: The cleric can heal one fighter's worth of HP/rest (about 5d8 + 5 every 4 levels, old-school)!* However, that's not all the cleric does. Especially after about 2.5e, the cleric is also a second-string fighter, but also a second-string wizard. So, in one way, the solutions could be simply to write encounters without much presumption of healing capacity, and drastically reduce clerical healing capacity (probably take it out of spells).

[ranty]
Is healing really such an immensely powerfully disinteresting but necessary force in the game that we need CoDzilla to bribe people into playing it? What makes it that way? What could we change about the game to make this less so? Why does the fraction of players who like to play old-school clerics seem small compared to other classes?

I think it goes beyond the mechanical balance of healing and into fundamental issues of character/player motivation. I suspect that its about feeling "in control" of your own character. "Being the healer" means your primary function is to be at the beck and call of the other characters, and you're the jerk if you aren't. Find a way beyond or around that, and you can make this balance issue go away.
[/ranty]

Frex, if I'm right about reducing the amount of healing, maybe a "Healer" specialty is the only place extraordinary healing is available (translate the spell names into feat names). In the basic game, that specialty is attached to the Cleric. In Standard and Advanced games, you can attach it to other classes. So a Warlord-lite might be a Fighter with the Healer specialty (with the true Warlord getting the action-boosty stuff). In this case the Cleric class would be the ready-made gish, and the cloistered cleric is just a re-fluffed Wizard with the Healing Specialty.

*When was the last time you saw a cleric with that sparse of a healing capacity?

 

[Klaus]

Let's go to a very basic image.

Considering a Basic Game, *regardless* of the party compisition, which better describes the party's hp loss throughout the day:

1) Downhill slope. The party starts at full hit points, loses them throughout the day and ends the day with few hit points.

2) Downhill slope with few small spikes. The party starts at full hit points, loses some, regains some, loses more, regain some, and still ends the day with few hit points.

3) Up-and-Down. The party starts with full hit points, loses some, goes back to full, loses some, goes back to full, loses some, and ends the day with few hit points.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Let's go to a very basic image.

Considering a Basic Game, *regardless* of the party compisition, which better describes the party's hp loss throughout the day:

1) Downhill slope. The party starts at full hit points, loses them throughout the day and ends the day with few hit points.

2) Downhill slope with few small spikes. The party starts at full hit points, loses some, regains some, loses more, regain some, and still ends the day with few hit points.

3) Up-and-Down. The party starts with full hit points, loses some, goes back to full, loses some, goes back to full, loses some, and ends the day with few hit points.

i dont think you ught to structure every day around hp loss. Each day is different. I think generally what you ought to see is as the pcs progress into any talk, their hp will diminish and they will eventually need to take a break to recover themselves. But magical intervention could alter the course of that prior to a break. Really i would much prefer a flavor first approach on this one.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Let's go to a very basic image.

Considering a Basic Game, *regardless* of the party compisition, which better describes the party's hp loss throughout the day:

1) Downhill slope. The party starts at full hit points, loses them throughout the day and ends the day with few hit points.

2) Downhill slope with few small spikes. The party starts at full hit points, loses some, regains some, loses more, regain some, and still ends the day with few hit points.

3) Up-and-Down. The party starts with full hit points, loses some, goes back to full, loses some, goes back to full, loses some, and ends the day with few hit points.

Personally, I think the kinds of classes you can play can affect this -- it doesn't need to be consistent for every game. Take a fighter and a cleric, you'll probably have a bumpy descent. Take a rogue and a cleric, it'll be more up-and-down. A party full of fighters might only have a slow decline without certain items.

So a group having a cleric (with magical healing) will of course be able to do more... because they are the only one of the four Basic classes that can raise someone from unconsciousness in a fight-- thereby reducing the number of LOST ROUNDS of combat the party will get.

You're assuming that those lost rounds aren't taken into account when getting the right HP to Damage to AC to Attack Bonus ratios. But they are. In a hypothetical world, a class that has 1/2 the HP of a normal character would last half as long, but each round they get would accomplish twice as much. The typical numbers are less swingy than that, of course, and you can see that in action -- d4 HP and charm as domination are practically things of the past, because of the designers trimming the edges of the bell curve.

 

[Klaus]

i dont think you ught to structure every day around hp loss. Each day is different. I think generally what you ought to see is as the pcs progress into any talk, their hp will diminish and they will eventually need to take a break to recover themselves. But magical intervention could alter the course of that prior to a break. Really i would much prefer a flavor first approach on this one.

We are talking healing. Healing requires damage, which is hit point loss, the one resource that is constant in all classes and creatures.

 

[Klaus]

Personally, I think the kinds of classes you can play can affect this

Well, that's the point of the question. What do you expect a party's hp loss to be like, thoughout the adventuring day, *before* factoring in classes.

1e, 2e and 3e were a Downhill Slope. HP lost didn't return at any one point during the day.

4e was more Up-And-Down. The number of surges available usually meant that the PCs would enter the next fight at full health, even without a leader.

5e seems to be going for Downhill-With-Spikes, since the number of Hit Dice and their random nature don't allow for a full healing between combats.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, that's the point of the question. What do you expect a party's hp loss to be like, thoughout the adventuring day, *before* factoring in classes.

1e, 2e and 3e were a Downhill Slope. HP lost didn't return at any one point during the day.

4e was more Up-And-Down. The number of surges available usually meant that the PCs would enter the next fight at full health, even without a leader.

5e seems to be going for Downhill-With-Spikes, since the number of Hit Dice and their random nature don't allow for a full healing between combats.

It looks like in this article, mearls is floating the idea that it might just be downhill (for the basic game) -- HD may move to an optional rule.

For me personally, I'm good either way. They each have their own uses: the downhill slide encourages planning and works on slowly mounting pressure; the up-and-down is more dramatic and narrative; the down-with-spikes is mostly the downhill slide, but with a bit of dramatic resurgence....

For D&D, I typically expect the downhill slide. Resource management has been a key part of D&D-style play since the dawn. I get that not everyone wants or likes that, though, and I know sometimes I'm more in the mood for the dramatic arc than for the survivalist mindset.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It looks like in this article, mearls is floating the idea that it might just be downhill (for the basic game) -- HD may move to an optional rule.

This is my reading as well. He is basically saying they will go back to the pre-4E model of healing and damage. Obviously how one reacts to that will be dependant on one's attitude toward 4E. If you felt it addressed real problems, you are likely to resist what Mearls says. If you are like me and feel 4E was fixing problems most people didnt have, and that the solution mucked with your sense of setting, then you will welcome it. At the end of the day though, because it is going to be a modular system, this is little more than a presentation issue. All three healing options Klaus listed will probably be doable in the system with the right modules.