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

[Fenris-77]

I'm the person who was debating with Snarfy-poo (said lovingly) in another thread that caused this. I wasn't the one who used the word anemic, but we did go back and forth a bunch. There is was very much about in-combat healing. I understand he's expanded it here, and I don't have any complaints with out-of-combat healing, or the general survivability and lack-of-downtime for characters in 5e.

But the ways the various knobs are tweaked is:
1. Weak in-combat healing so combats don't last too long.
2. Heal-from-zero to stand up characters who have dropped. A good thing, but it masks how weak healing is beacuse if characters actually went negative the healing would be too little to do this reliably with the same resources used now.
3. HPs not interacting with death except in the Immediate Death rules which are very hard to trigger because unlike everything else they don't treat HPs are cumulative. This also masks how weak healing is.

In other words, I think we both find the end result acceptable.

But I do find that the healing is weak, and at least one of the methods of masking that I find a bonus (heal-from-zero) to allow players the least boredom, regularly gets brought up on ENworld and elsewhere as problematic. Even in this very thread we have a person mentioning that they give exhaustion at zero, so the practical effects of that rule isn't universally well received. But if we removed that rule and associated death with cumulative damage again, we would really see how weak 5e healing is.

I am not advocating changing it, I like how it all hangs together. But in-combat healing is weak, likely intentionally to keep combat length down, and propped up with other rules to make it give the results the designers wanted.

Where does the proliferation of temporary HP abilities fit into this discussion? There's rather a lot of them. There's also rather a lot of abilities that heal via damage or other effect as a secondary benefit and not as the prime result of an action. There's also rather more damage prevention in 5E than there has been in any other edition. Prevention, in this context, is essentially the same as healing provided it doesn't come at the cost of an action, and perhaps not even at the cost of a bonus action although I suspect that's where this convo gets interesting.

 

[tetrasodium]

Where does the proliferation of temporary HP abilities fit into this discussion? There's rather a lot of them. There's also rather a lot of abilities that heal via damage or other effect as a secondary benefit and not as the prime result of an action. There's also rather more damage prevention in 5E than there has been in any other edition. Prevention, in this context, is essentially the same as healing provided it doesn't come at the cost of an action, and perhaps not even at the cost of a bonus action although I suspect that's where this convo gets interesting.

Artillerist defender turret & maybe um.... Twilight(?) cleric have very respectable thp outputs but having all damage beyond zero simply go away makes it still rather hollow

 

[Fenris-77]

Artillerist defender turret & maybe um.... Twilight(?) cleric have very respectable thp outputs but having all damage beyond zero simply go away makes it still rather hollow

Let's set some context perhaps. In a fully optimized white-room reading, yes, I agree with your take. However, many tables, maybe even most tables, aren't optimized like that, which makes those temp HP far more useful.

 

[Horwath]

Lets us not forget: hour long short rests.

yeah, this is awful in 5E design.

5min short rests were few good thing about 4E.

Make short rests short again.

 

[Fenris-77]

yeah, this is awful in 5E design.

5min short rests were few good thing about 4E.

Make short rests short again.

Everyone is free to do this. The RAW isn't a handcuff except at like Cons and stuff.

 

[tetrasodium]

Let's set some context perhaps. In a fully optimized white-room reading, yes, I agree with your take. However, many tables, maybe even most tables, aren't optimized like that, which makes those temp HP far more useful.

I was speaking from my experience running as a player Artillerist & gming for both of those. The Artillerist thp spam is so inconsequential that I've seen players not even willing to wait for the turrets to catch up on the grid before moving on to taking damage from webbed opponents who were slzeeo threat across the grid map.

It's not that they are too good, it's that there is not really much need for players to care. Ultimately changing that is a very non trivial problem

 

[Voadam]

Not silly at all, it is the most important measurement of the matter. How a character spends their actions in combat is telling. In combat, an action and equal resources should be on-par. If an action spent healing is always inferior to an action spent doing something else, there is no call for healing. Which is the case in 5e. The only time healing in 5e is not inferior is when it also saves an action - e.g. brings up a downed character.

That's clear that an action spent on in-combat healing is inferior. What other metric can there be?

On par can be tough to measure and very situational.

Not doing as much healing as the monster does damage can still be worth doing the healing instead of taking an alternate action.

Say the rogue is the only party member with a silver weapon when fighting a werewolf. Even though the werewolf is clawing for more than you heal, keeping that silvered rogue sneak attack going an extra round or two by constantly healing them to keep them above 0 hp when their turn comes around could be more effective than attacking the werewolf yourself.

 

[Fenris-77]

I was speaking from my experience running as a player Artillerist & gming for both of those. The Artillerist thp spam is so inconsequential that I've seen players not even willing to wait for the turrets to catch up on the grid before moving on to taking damage from webbed opponents who were slzeeo threat across the grid map.

It's not that they are too good, it's that there is not really much need for players to care. Ultimately changing that is a very non trivial problem

Well, yeah, I agree, in the case of the Artillerist I'd rather sit at range and drop the cannon while spamming buffed cantrips. That's not a great example of temp HP though IMO. They're better as a secondary effect of something else. Not generally super useful as a primary effect, but somewhat useful as a ribbon.

 

[Stalker0]

So I don't consider out of combat healing really the discussion here when people talk about "weak healing". Now compared to 4e's short rest healing, and 3e if you used wands of CLW (which personally I never played in a group that didn't have them starting about 3rd level or so), 5e's out of combat is much weaker....but when I hear people gripe about healing its not about that.

The gripes are generally about in-combat healing (and I have heard them from my players as well).

If we look at the "sweet spot range" of levels 3-8, healing is roughly comparable to 3.5 spells, though 3.5 eeks out a bit. Unless your cleric is super focused on wisdom (and many clerics want at least some strength and con if they are also battling), then you might have a +3/+4 to your cure spells. So starting around 5th level, the 3.5 cleric will outheal a bit...but percentage wise its not a massive difference. also the 5e cleric gets a little of that back when they heal someone unconscious, as they always get to start at 0 instead of having to heal negatives. You could also argue the mass cure wounds spell in 5e is superior to the mass cure light wounds in 3.5....at least at moderate levels (at very high levels 3.5 overtakes).

So in terms of immediate in combat healing, I think the 5e healing spells seem to hold up. Now you could argue that because 5e clerics have fewer spell slots than 3e ones....that the amount of healing they can ultimately provide is a good bit less, and that is a legitimate point.

However, I personally don't think its the healing that's the real problem, at least when it comes to the cleric. Personally....I think the cleric is boring in 5e. It doesn't do any exciting things in combat, and most of the clerical spells frankly are just not that sexy. The 3.5 cleric was a god on the battlefield, the 5e one is a puppy in comparison. So I think its less that the healing is the problem, is that the healing is boring, the rest of the cleric is boring....and so the feeling of playing a cleric is just nowhere near as good as it was in 3.5.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Whoa there bro. Some of us enjoy 10 turns in a row of saying Yeah, I just keep lying here bleeding. That's where immersion happens.

Know what's really fun? When you get the magic necklace that auto-stabilizes you so you don't even get the joy of paying attention to when it's your turn because something interesting might happen to your dying body.

I find healing in 5e more boring than 4e. I loved that 4e gave each character a pool of inner healing available that scaled with level and that could be acceased by different means. It was a great design space in that it could allow different levels of healing by interacting with those HD.


At my table we find 5e in combat healing spells to be avoided. Most character have a healing potion on their belt for emergency aid by another but clerics are usually busy killing things to stop and heal others.

I tried to make combat healing worthwhile and have a hill dwarf cleric stacked to the gills with HP who has the healing spell that lets you trade self damage for healing others a large chunk and that one IS worthy of a spell slots and actions.

I think CLW should scale extra 2d8 per heightened level and then there would be a "classic healing feeling" option in the game.

Outside of combat in 5e I can't argue that healing is "hard". Hit Die go a long way with the CON bonuses added and short of exhaustion most negatives are easy to shed of you can make camp somewhere safe.