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

[Vaalingrade]

Of course, something has been accomplished, it will have given you one more round to get the killing blow in, or to run away, or even to occupy the boss one more round so that your friends can get away. And that's, for me, more than good enough for a bonus action.

Because of how initiative works, that's not a given or even highly likely. The cleric casts Sad Healing, you get 6HP and get up. The orc goes and deals 10 damage, putting you back down. On your turn, you just get to make a death save and best case you do nothing, or best case, an ill-considered house rule to stop 'pop-up healing' (really a thiny veiled excuse to increase lethality) make it so this is strike 3 and you die.

The cleric could have picked their nose for similar effect and might have at least grossed the orc out.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

In the later playtest healing used to be a bit stronger (or I allowed to spend a hit die whenever you are healed, it was a long time ago) and we had a healing cleric. Fights were definitely unfun, because as a DM I could not do real damage to my PCs. Even as of now, a dedicated healer can keep the party alive, but it drags out combat too much in my opinion. So if everyone deals damage and HPs are going down continuously, fights are more interesting.

 

[James Gasik]

So healing is boring, is the answer. We want combats won faster.

And then, why does it have to be black and white like this ? Why can't you be satisfied with healing now and then, when it's better for the situation ? Why create a one-trick pony that can only heal ? Why does everything always have to be optimised ? How is that more fun than a balanced character with more options ?

Well if you read some of the other posts, the going sentiment seems to be "we want combats to be faster, which is why healing shouldn't be good". If people want combats to go faster, then "optimal" actions would be best, no?

 

[Lyxen]

Because of how initiative works, that's not a given or even highly likely. The cleric casts Sad Healing, you get 6HP and get up. The orc goes and deals 10 damage, putting you back down. On your turn, you just get to make a death save and best case you do nothing, or best case, an ill-considered house rule to stop 'pop-up healing' (really a thiny veiled excuse to increase lethality) make it so this is strike 3 and you die.

The cleric could have picked their nose for similar effect and might have at least grossed the orc out.

First, nothing says the orc will act before you. Second, nothing says he will hit. Even with 5e AC, the probability of the above is probably less than 25%. And even then, you will have taken a blow that might have downed someone else in your party. And EVEN THEN, it will have reset your death saves.

So no, for a measly level 1 bonus spell, quite a lot has been accomplished, I would say.

 

[Lyxen]

So healing is boring, is the answer. We want combats won faster.

Well if you read some of the other posts, the going sentiment seems to be "we want combats to be faster, which is why healing shouldn't be good". If people want combats to go faster, then "optimal" actions would be best, no?

I think I'm probably the first one here to have mentioned the "faster combat", but that does not mean that everything needs to be optimal either, and even optimal options are actually absolutely secondary to situation, tactics and luck of the dice anyway...

 

[Guest 7034872]

Fundamentally, natural healing is never a problem in 5e. Under the basic 5e rules, every time your character completes a long rest, you get all your hit points back. All of them.

I really was taken aback by this the first time I played 5e (I skipped all of 2e-4e, so I was in for quite a shock).

Next, we have the remnants of of healing surges in 5e with hit dice. Every short rest, a character can "self heal" an amount equal to their hit dice (with constitution bonus). Once you expend those hit dice, you can't use them again, but you recover half of them on a long rest.

Thank you, Snarf. I've long wondered where this odd feature came from and never did quite figure it out. Now I know.

Does this remnant not seem strange, though? If 5e's regular out-of-combat healing is already so strong (which I say it is), why did they keep this option in there? Was there someone in WotC who said, "Well, if we don't keep this healing surge option, we'll have PCs dropping like flies," and really meant it? Here's how strong I've noticed out-of-combat healing to be in 5e: our party habitually hits any available magic shops for healing potions and buffs, assuming they've the scratch for it. And every once in a while things'll get so hairy in combat that they'll drink some potions, yes. But never--not even once--have I seen anyone in our party use the hit dice option in a short rest. It just hasn't happened. We just get our Tiny Hut up and running, take a long rest, and come out of there fresh as daisies.

I'm inclined to call 5e's out-of-combat healing over-generous, if anything.

This means that every single character, every single day, has the possibility of recovering twice their hit points. Put another way- every single character, every single day, effectively has three times their hit points when it comes to combat. Now, I'm not trying to mislead you- if you use all your hit dice on one day, you only get half of them the next. If you roll poorly for the hit dice healing, then you don't get the full amount. But we can see the dramatic difference with prior systems (except 4e) here- healing is not something that is external to the character, and is necessarily required to be supplemented by magic; instead, every single character, prior to any use of spells or class abilities or magic items has a massive reservoir of innate healing.

Yep. Seems quite generous to me.

FOR DISCUSSION- I think healing in 5e is just fine, along with in-combat healing. Please feel free to tell me why you think I am wrong, or, conversely, tell me why I'm right along with a note explaining how you got to be so awesome.

I'm not awesome: I just blindly stumble onto a consensus view every once in a while and people jump to the inference that perhaps I'm not entirely mad.

 

[J-H]

This is a long post with a bunch of replies already.
As someone who DM's a combat-heavy campaign with hard combats for a large party (5-6) from level 3 to about 15 with a Life Cleric, and with a "if you hit 0 you get 1 level of exhaustion" houserule... no. In-combat healing is very effective, especially with a life cleric (bonus healing, self-healing, etc.). It's like having 50-100 extra hit points over the course of a fight, and was often the difference between "welp, I'm down" vs "I hit him again."

 

[Vaalingrade]

First, nothing says the orc will act before you.

But nothing says it won't. It is literally a roll of the dice.

Second, nothing says he will hit.

He's very likely to. Again, roll of the dice.

And even then, you will have taken a blow that might have downed someone else in your party.

Or.

Oooor, I could have taken that blow and not gone right back down, wasting my time playing a game where I get to simulate napping.

And EVEN THEN, it will have reset your death saves.

Or again, with competent healing, I could have not gone back to dying instantly.

 

[James Gasik]

This is a long post with a bunch of replies already.
As someone who DM's a combat-heavy campaign with hard combats for a large party (5-6) from level 3 to about 15 with a Life Cleric, and with a "if you hit 0 you get 1 level of exhaustion" houserule... no. In-combat healing is very effective, especially with a life cleric (bonus healing, self-healing, etc.). It's like having 50-100 extra hit points over the course of a fight, and was often the difference between "welp, I'm down" vs "I hit him again."

What about non-Life Clerics? I mean, what if you decided, I don't know, to play an Arcana Cleric and your party expects you to keep their hit points out of "critical hit drops me to 0" range?

I know my opinion is the outlier here, but I have always found it quite frustrating to be told "lol, just keep them at 1 hit point, and they'll be fine after combat".

Because you get a short rest after every fight? Let alone a 10 minute break?

 

[Staffan]

I can see where folks are coming from, particularly regarding clerics. The first "flavor text" describing the cleric is "Arms and eyes upraised toward the sun and a prayer on his lips, an elf begins to glow with an inner light that spills out to heal his battle-worn companions." They are described as "Healers and Warriors". It is not strange that someone would play a cleric and expect that their job would be similar to a holy priest in World of Warcraft, who spend most of their in-combat time putting their blue bar into their tank's green bar, and it would be logical for that someone to be disappointed to realize that it's far better for them to spend in-combat actions and resources taking out their opponents and thus healing indirectly by making the fight end faster.

But as has been pointed out, out-of-combat healing is pretty strong in 5e (though I'd argue that you have access to 2.5x your max hp over the course of a full day, not 3x, with the remaining .5x being an extra emergency reserve). I think that if you want in-combat healing to be useful, you need to overhaul the game in one of two fashions:

1. The WOW method, which is fully encounter-based. Very few non-consumable resources take more than a few minutes to recover. That means you can turn incoming damage up far enough that every encounter is potentially lethal, and the healer needs to spend their actions and resources healing those who take damage. This is dangerous though, because as @Willie the Duck notes, amping up both damage and healing makes things swingier, meaning it's easy to go from "tough fight" to "TPK". This is particularly so given D&D's round-and-turn-based structure. In WOW, if the tank (or some other party member) takes a big chunk of damage, the healer can react immediately and go with one of their bigger heals. In D&D, it's very possible for other enemies to get a chance to act before the healer can do anything, and maybe bring the tank down.
2. The 4e method, where healing is a daily resource for the person healed, and combat healing is mostly about allowing access to that resource mid-fight instead of only between fights. This would still allow attrition over the course of a day, but the "risky" scenario would be more "I'm down to one healing surge" rather than "I'm down to 30 hp."