In another thread, someone posted the idea that healing was weak (or "anemic") in 5e. Which, I have to admit, is not only something I had never thought of before, but seemed like the type of thing that might be dreamed up during the fevered dreams brought up during the consumption of the rare Brazilian psychotropic, Ibogaine (I'm so sorry, Muskie).
After further refinement (and, perhaps, after the waves of Ibogaine withdrew such that I could leave Bat Country), I understood the actual objection to be more about the lack of combat healing in 5e. And this still befuddled my brain. Of the various things I think aren't quite right, healing in general, or even healing in combat, has never been one that I could imagine complaining about! That said, I am always open to the possibility that I am wrong (or, more importantly, that other people are wronger) so I thought I would put this conversation into another thread. Now, given that I have gone to the hassle of making this an entire thread, I am going to do what I always do- (1) put in unnecessary history (sorry, context), (2) talk too much, and (3) set up the thread for a conversation.
A. The Origins of Healing in D&D; A Brief Reminder of OD&D and AD&D Healing.
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In OD&D, the rule was simple if somewhat buried.
As noted previously, energy levels can only be regained by fresh experience, but common wounds can be healed with the passage of time (or the use of magics already explained). On the first day of complete rest no hit points will be regained, but every other day thereafter one hit point will be regained until the character is completely healed. This can take a long time.
LBB Book 3, p. 35.
This means that natural healing ... sucked. Again, six days of complete rest would restore three hit points. (Day 1 = 0, Day 2 = 1, Day 3 = 1, Day 4 = 2, Day 5 = 2, Day 6 = 3 etc.).
AD&D (1e) improved it ... somewhat. But not that much.
For each day of rest a character will regain 1 hit point, up to and including 7 days. However a character with a penalty for poor constitution must deduct weekly the penalty score from his or her days of healing, i.e., a -2 for a person means that 5 hit points healing per week is maximum, and the first two days of rest will restore no hit points. After the first week of continuous rest, characters with a bonus for high constitution add the bonus score to the number of hit points they recover due to resting, i.e., the second week of rest will restore 11 (7 + 4) hit points to a fighter character with an 18 constitution. Regardless of the number of hit points a character has, 4 weeks of continuous rest will restore any character to full strength.
DMG, p. 82.
So ... healing still sucked. However, ignoring possible constitution modifiers, you at least got a full hit point per day, and the promise of full restoration of hit points (for higher level character) at the end of .... FOUR WEEKS.
These origins, which ensured that natural healing was nearly useless, privileged magical healing from the very beginning of the game. It ensured that almost every party would require some source of healing in order to be effective- usually a cleric. It privileged magical healing.
Now, without going through the full rigmarole, we see that this original position was gradually shifted over time. 2e no longer required complete rest for healing, and if you did get complete rest you recovered 3hp/day. 3e bumped it up to scale with level, so the higher your level, the more hit points you recover (1hp/level per day). 3.5e marked one of the first notable shift in healing- no longer are you required to "rest" in general, but simply get sleep for eight hours in order to recover your hit points naturally.
Still, while there was an evolution in healing 1e through 3.5e, it remained the case that healing tended to require external and magical means in order to be effective. Whether it was the "healbot" cleric of AD&D or the "CLW" Wands of 3e, there was always way of getting that sweet, sweet healing.
4e, of course, was the seismic shift in the healing rules. 4e introduced the idea of healing surges - that individual characters could heal themselves. You no longer needed to depend on external magic (or the dedicated healbot); you were the master of your own healing. I mean ... you could get additional healing! But it wasn't required. Innate healing was now part of the game. Which brings us to 5e ....
B. 5e's Healing is More than Sufficient.
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Let's start with a few basics within the rules so that we know that we are all on the same page when it comes to the healing within 5e, because many of us take it for granted; that said, it is ubiquitous and builds on the 4e system.
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.
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.
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.
....that said, all of this is out-of-combat healing. What about in-combat healing? Does 5e have a problem with in-combat healing?
C. 5e's In-Combat Healing is More than Sufficient.
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An example that came up to show that in-combat healing was weak and/or broken is that cure wounds cures d8+ability, while inflict wounds does 3d10 damage. So let's put aside the fact that inflict wounds requires an attack roll; for now, I think it is perfectly fine to assume that healing and inflicting damage in combat are asymmetrical. Why?
Because they have to be.
Let me make sure that this isn't misunderstood- I don't think healing during combat should be, or should ever be, symmetrical with doing damage, and this isn't a bug of 5e, this is a feature. In fact, I would take the upper limit of "combat healing" to be mass cure wounds- it's a fifth level spell, it takes your action, and it heals everyone in the party (up to six targets) 3d8+your spellcasting modifier (assumedly, at this point, +4 or +5). Or, if this is too abstract, heal (at 6th level) does 60hp to one target.
Of course there are spells that do more damage! That should go without saying. The reason is ... because combat healing and damage must be asymmetric or the game gets badly out of balance.
In order to understand why, we have to look at a few aspects of 5e, and the "meta" of the game. Here are the issues-
1. The generous death save rules and ability to re-enter combat. Often referred to as the "whac-a-mole" problem, there isn't a strong need for full healing in combat. In prior editions, if you were downed, you were usually down for the count; you needed healing long before you hit zero hit points. That's no longer a major strategic concern in 5e.
2. Characters have a ton of hit points to begin with, and easily recharge between combats. Because the healing rules outside of combat are so generous, healing during combat is disfavored. Why waste a good spell to heal during combat when you know you can short rest or long rest right after the fight is done and get all those hit points back?
3. The healing outside of combat is so generous, it doesn't matter if you're fully healed in combat. This is a corollary to 2, but it almost always means that you just need "good enough" healing in combat since you have such innate powers of healing (and/or goodberries and other means of healing).
4. It generally makes a lot more sense to do damage than to heal, people will almost always prioritize doing damage than healing ... even if it's equal. This is the math thing- monsters are big bags of hit points. In fact, this is partly why damage is asymmetrical! But absent rare circumstances, you will always be better off killing the enemy quickly than healing. This is partly why healing that doesn't take an action (healing word) can be valuable.
These are some of the factors that tie into the most important issue- it becomes a real balance issue when there is too much in-combat healing. We want to think of 5e as a game of heroic combats and awesome narratives, but ... a lot of it is just resource management. It is exceedingly difficult to have parties regularly grind through "4-6 encounters" per long rest. The base game is predicated on the following when it comes to combats:
Monsters are giant bags of hit points. The party will wear down the hit points and triumph. They will take damage. After the combat, the party will heal up. Disturbing that balance by providing too much in-combat healing (and there already is A LOT OF OPTIONS FOR THAT!) begins to unbalance the encounters. As it is, most healing in combat requires choices in the action economy- between doing more damage to the giant bags of hit points, or doing less healing to a party member.
And increasing options and amounts of in-combat healing will become noticeable- as I think people begin to notice with some subclasses that provide additional temporary hit points or large amounts of in-combat healing as their class features.
Note- if you don't think that there is enough in combat healing, then the optional healing surge rules (DMG 266-67) should be used.
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.
