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

[tetrasodium]

Just to interject, minions didn't do the same damage as full creatures. And really, at a certain point, shouldn't regular goblins be able to be dispatched in one hit?

Maybe because I'm old, I never had a problem with minions- when I started playing the game, Kobolds had 1-4 hit points, and Fighters got 1 attack per level against such creatures, so I never had an expectation that a horde of them would remain dangerous at higher levels.

If anything, the fact that you stopped encountering weaker creatures at a certain point was the weird thing to me in those days.

Now, if you want to keep using goblins, kobolds, or what have you at higher levels, and make them credible threats, sure, making level 20 goblins might seem odd. But at the same time, keeping Goblins relevant threats to level 20 characters seems just as odd- these are characters capable of tangling with ancient dragons, powerful extraplanar beings, and liches- shouldn't they be above goblins at that point?

higher CR monsters aren't dangerous either& a big part of the reason can be traced back to monsters being neutered by bounded accuracy on top of everything that enables wackamole healing

 

[James Gasik]

higher CR monsters aren't dangerous either& a big part of the reason can be traced back to monsters being neutered by bounded accuracy on top of everything that enables wackamole healing

I hear that a lot, and I'm curious. Just opening my Monster Manual randomly, I'm looking at the Goristro, a CR 17 demon.

Resistant to cold, fire, lightning (I'll ignore the nonmagical weapon damage. I'll also ignore the immunity to poison). It has advantage on all spell and magic saves. It has 310 hit points.

So he can move 15 feet and gore someone for 14d10+7 damage. Or it can make three attacks at +13 to hit for a combined 6d8+3d10+21.

Why isn't it dangerous? I really want to know because I sure wouldn't want to fight this thing.

I'm going to assume the answer is "spells" since, despite being resistant to most offensive spell damage, it doesn't look well suited to avoid being crowd controlled. But taking the ~83 damage from it's charge on round 1 doesn't sound like something most people can just ignore either, let alone it's probably ~63 damage per turn.

I guess if it's encountered as a solo creature, it's going to get action economied to death, but a couple of these could theoretically flatten your Cleric in one turn, right?

 

[MoonSong]

What I liked about 4e Healing:

Healing surges were required for almost all healing. So there was a limit to how much a person could be healed with magic, forcing people to not be reckless. Every encounter got you a certain number of heals to work with as a Leader, which granted a little bonus healing and can even be modified to grant minor tactical boosts.

These heals were ranged, so you weren't required to be a melee character to heal your party, and it was a lot easier to keep other characters in your healing range.

If things got out of hand, you could easily have a big daily team heal in reserve, like the Warlord's Stand the Fallen, which also came with a fairly hefty attack, allowing you to win faster and lose slower.

In 5e, healing just makes you lose slower, which adds to combat length, as has been previously discussed.

All of that was precisely what I didn't like about 4e. It was the begining of the end for dedicated healers. All of my problems with 5e healing started with 4e.

 

[James Gasik]

All of that was precisely what I didn't like about 4e. It was the begining of the end for dedicated healers. All of my problems with 5e healing started with 4e.

That's interesting. I played through Scales of War with a dedicated healer, a Pacifist Cleric, and their healing was invaluable in combat, so I never thought a dedicated healer wasn't a thing you could be in that edition.

 

[MoonSong]

That's interesting. I played through Scales of War with a dedicated healer, a Pacifist Cleric, and their healing was invaluable in combat, so I never thought a dedicated healer wasn't a thing you could be in that edition.

4e was the start of several things that are wrong in 5e (healing to full overnight, healing as a secondary action, ranged healing, widespread selfhealing among the party) And Pacifist Healer wasn't really pacifist (it was only restricted to not hurt bloodied creatures) and not much of a healer (it's role in battle was more of a controller with healing as a side effect) Regardless, having your healing ability tied to your killing ability was/is hard to swallow. 4e changed the dynamics from the "buff, heal, stay out of the way" of older editions and replaced them with "attack, attack, attack, don't give up your attack or the rest of the party will get angry that you aren't contributing enough".

Now, Lazylord, uff I really dig them to this day. Lazylord dynamics made up for the loss in fun. And well, I once played a heavily multiclassed paladin as a leader and it was quite fun too. The build did include pacifist healer though (and I didn't have any way to trigger it). And she died because she couldn't do a crucial athletics check... Fun times.

 

[tetrasodium]

I hear that a lot, and I'm curious. Just opening my Monster Manual randomly, I'm looking at the Goristro, a CR 17 demon.

Resistant to cold, fire, lightning (I'll ignore the nonmagical weapon damage. I'll also ignore the immunity to poison). It has advantage on all spell and magic saves. It has 310 hit points.

So he can move 15 feet and gore someone for 14d10+7 damage. Or it can make three attacks at +13 to hit for a combined 6d8+3d10+21.

Why isn't it dangerous? I really want to know because I sure wouldn't want to fight this thing.

I'm going to assume the answer is "spells" since, despite being resistant to most offensive spell damage, it doesn't look well suited to avoid being crowd controlled. But taking the ~83 damage from it's charge on round 1 doesn't sound like something most people can just ignore either, let alone it's probably ~63 damage per turn.

I guess if it's encountered as a solo creature, it's going to get action economied to death, but a couple of these could theoretically flatten your Cleric in one turn, right?

It's kind of a pointless jump to go from cr1/4 goblins to a semi-named CR17 monster that MM53 describes as "formidable siege engine engines" "as if there is nothing in between. What's worse is that with AC19 a level 17 fighter with 20 strength & a +1 greatsword hits on an seven, that's not a high bar. for an almost guaranteed (2d6+6)*3=39 revery round at no cost. GWM/GWF would bring that to a possible 59 every round all day long from a single player & action surge could again double it.... three fighters could kill it in one or two rounds with action surge. You haven't shown that "higher CR monsters" are dangerous, just that there are monsters that can be used to effectively declare rocks fall on a low level party.
edit: also the gore with a 15ft move only works once unless the monster eats an AoO from everyone in melee

 

[Helldritch]

For me, the minions of 4ed are the prototype of the bounded accuracy we got in 5ed. They were a great way to have easily killable opponents that were not main protagonists and they would more of a nuisance than a real threat. However, they were a threat that you could not ignore for long.

Minions always reminded me of that scene in Excalibure where Lancelot kills enemies by the score while screaming Arthur! They were a threat, but they could not be ignored. Bounded accuracy gave us the same as minions. We can now have the :"Flee! You fools!" That I love so much in the Lord of the Ring. Is bounded accuracy better than minions? Of course it is. But minions were not bad. They were a step toward the right direction.

As for the solo monsters, even I had a homebrew for them and it worked for any level and any group. I shared it on this forum too. So far people using it in my area prefer it to the mythical, but combining the two makes for truly memorable encounters.

 

[James Gasik]

It's kind of a pointless jump to go from cr1/4 goblins to a semi-named CR17 monster that MM53 describes as "formidable siege engine engines" "as if there is nothing in between. What's worse is that with AC19 a level 17 fighter with 20 strength & a +1 greatsword hits on an seven, that's not a high bar. for an almost guaranteed (2d6+6)*3=39 revery round at no cost. GWM/GWF would bring that to a possible 59 every round all day long from a single player & action surge could again double it.... three fighters could kill it in one or two rounds with action surge. You haven't shown that "higher CR monsters" are dangerous, just that there are monsters that can be used to effectively declare rocks fall on a low level party.
edit: also the gore with a 15ft move only works once unless the monster eats an AoO from everyone in melee

Well lore wise, Goristros are just a type of demon, but is there a better example? I thought just grabbing a dragon, which is designed to deal with a party by itself was a bit much, let alone a CR 20.

My question is simply "are high level monsters really not dangerous"? The ones I've seen certainly look dangerous, so I don't know what the exact problem is, that makes people say that they aren't.

I've only played up til level 11, and I saw some plenty tough battles.

 

[Helldritch]

The Gorgistro is not even scary for a group of tenth level characters.

Unless the gorgistro gets the jump on the group here is how it will turn out ...
The cleric will cast bless on the fighter barb, the ranger battlemaster and the arcane trickster. The two wizards will cast haste, one on the barb the other on the ranger. Barb attacks with advantage, use great weapon master and hits probably two out of three attack. If a crit lands, a fourth attack will be made. At about 25 points of damage per attack, the Gorgistro is down 75 hp. Action surge and bang 75 hp less again. Our Gorgistro lost 150hp.

The rogue with psiblade will do around 50 hp of damage, more on a crit. 200 hp have been lost by the Gorgistro.

The ranger does the same thing using his bow with his sharp shooter feat and uses one of his four attacks (yeah... a gloomstalker) to make the rogue strikes again. The gorgistro loses a 100 hp again and is now at a total of 300hp lost. The ranger action surge and probably does around an other 50 hp of damage. I assume as with the barb that one attack will miss... In the first round of combat our gorgristro lost 350hp of damage...

Depending on where it's initiative landed, the demon might get to 63 points of damage to the barb/champion that will reduce it by half for 32 shared between him and the cleric so a total.

If the ranger does not use sharp shooter, we remove around 40 to 50 points of damage. Leaving the gorgistro to live an other round but it might not get to attack...

This is with a 10th level group. That Gorgistro should be terrifying but it isn't. A higher level group would just laugh. That is 7 characters working together not all group are at that number. I have 6 players with one NPC. The second group might laugh even harder as all of them are a level higher. The Gorgistro, if alone, would be toasted even faster.

This is why a lot of us have made houserules to boost what should be solo terrors.

 

[tetrasodium]

Well lore wise, Goristros are just a type of demon, but is there a better example? I thought just grabbing a dragon, which is designed to deal with a party by itself was a bit much, let alone a CR 20.

My question is simply "are high level monsters really not dangerous"? The ones I've seen certainly look dangerous, so I don't know what the exact problem is, that makes people say that they aren't.

I've only played up til level 11, and I saw some plenty tough battles.

That last line is probably a bit of the disconnect in communication. When I pointed out how 3 level 17 fighters could roflstomp that CR17 solo monster you noted in 1-2 rounds, I didn't didn't include the use of any abilities gained beyond level 11 other than proficiency increases. That's important because 11 is when fighters get their third attack. It's so bad that the 7 to hit at level 17 jumps to an 8 from 13-16 & a 9 from 9-12. If flanking is being used that's a 7 8 or 9 rolled with advantage.

Things are ok at very low levels like tier1 & some of tier2, but high tier2 starts falling apart & the bolts fly off with greater frequency each level as soon as you hit tier3 simply because the PCs continue getting stronger while gaining better gear even though the monsters are all tuned to lower tier adventurers with weaker abilities & weaker gear.

Thanks to damage beyond zero going away wackamole healing & trivialized(fast/easy/safe) overly generous out of combat recovery options the party doesn't really even need to be concerned about hp depletion or resource consumption used in that round or two.

Spoiler: 5e's Level Tiers

Tier 1 - level 1-4
Tier 2 - Level 5-10
Tier 3 - Level 11-16
Tier 4 - Level 17-20