Advice: Overpowered Abilities

[abirdcall]

I must say, you are very impressive.

I travel a fair bit and have the privilege to visit conventions all around the country; from Vegas to Toronto to New Jersey. I see maybe 300 new and unique people to game with each year, but one as yourself, to know the desires (or norm) of almost 15 million players, that it simply amazing.

/bye

Playing with 300 different people each year is nothing. It tells you nothing about the different experiences of 5e gamers. 300 might as well be 5 when we're talking about a total of 15 million.

You know convention gaming well, that doesn't mean you know RPG gaming well.

15 million.

That's a lot of people.

 

[smbakeresq]

Nothing that restores HP is immune to having an extra encounter to erase those HP.

 

[5ekyu]

To the poster of the original question :

When i Gm its almost always for campaign games in settings. I really dont do Al at all and also rarely do pick-up table GMing. So, i have no problem with banning or adjusting anything that is clearly out of whack with the setting and other aspects of the game we are trying to play. if it causes a significant enough warping of the game style and "reasonable" its gone. Honestly i have found most often just a simple ban is easier to handle for both me and the players than a series of trial and error educated guess try to make it work back somehow Humpty Dumpty after the fall BS. Clean break. Move on.

IF it gets in play however, its a unanimous decision to cut it out or change it.

Exception: levels 1-4 in my games are "intro levels" where players are allowed to adjust change retro redo etc. The game effectively starts at 5th using 1st-4th as warm-up try different things. So we will *sometimes* allow questionable stuff then for a test to see if it does what we expect. But a final decision is made by 5th.

Healing Spirit does not exist in my games and wont. then again neither do healing pots on demand that restore hit points on their own*. Helps us get the gameplay feel we want in the setting.

* The healing pots in my game allow you to spend your own HD without a short rest. Cheap ones allow 1HD. So they just speed up your healing without short rests but your character HD and limits determine your recovery and limits. All HD recover at long rest but HP do not. NET RESULT the gold for HP sink does not happen.

 

[Retreater]

I think part of the imbalance was due to the player's misinterpretation of the effect (as I understand it). I let her interpretation stand so as to not slow down the game in rules discussion. I will still allow the spell in question as long as it's handled according to my understanding of the spell - just to give it one more shot.

(And I didn't want to turn this thread into a discussion of the validity of the spell in question, but it was Healing Spirit. The players' interpretation was that the spell could be moved around on the caster's turn and heal everyone it touched as a part of the movement. My understanding is that the spirit can be moved, but it only heals when a character moves into the space - not when the spirit moves through a character.)

 

[abirdcall]

As far as healing spirit..Healer feat is level + 4+ d6 as an action per rest. At the level you would get Healing Spirit that average would be 10.5, or 42 for a group of 4, and costs no resources. For 2 rests it’s 84 in healing and costs just the healing kit.

It costs a feat which is huge. Healing Spirit is 35 each for a total of 140. It can also be used in combat and then if the caster still has concentration, spend the next 5-6 rounds after combat healing everyone to max.

Inspiring Leader heals you before your even hurt for approximately the same amount. Save your spell slots.

This also costs a feat. Do you think a feat is worth less than a level 2 spell slot? It's not even close. Inspiring Leader is very good, temp hp are great, but it is still a feat. which is a huge cost.

Why is it so important to have a 2nd level spell heal 140+ HP in the game? Why can't we just not? Or just limit its use to the reasonable 1 heal per round. It is worded like the damage spells, only the problem is that creatures don't want to enter the area of the damage spells so that isn't an issue. WotC should have caught that and changed it to avoid this abuse, they didn't so there it is. That doesn't mean everyone is forced to play like that.

Nothing that restores HP is immune to having an extra encounter to erase those HP.

Are you suggesting having a new encounter for every level 2 slot they have?

Isn't just not allowing that spell to do that the simpler solution?

 

[abirdcall]

I think part of the imbalance was due to the player's misinterpretation of the effect (as I understand it). I let her interpretation stand so as to not slow down the game in rules discussion. I will still allow the spell in question as long as it's handled according to my understanding of the spell - just to give it one more shot.

(And I didn't want to turn this thread into a discussion of the validity of the spell in question, but it was Healing Spirit. The players' interpretation was that the spell could be moved around on the caster's turn and heal everyone it touched as a part of the movement. My understanding is that the spirit can be moved, but it only heals when a character moves into the space - not when the spirit moves through a character.)

Yes, you are right.

Just like other spells such as Moonbeam. If the caster could move Moonbeam around and hit every enemy creature it would be grossly overpowered.

Her interpretation would also be a needlessly complicated spell. Simpler would be to just write a spell where the caster chooses a bunch of targets. I think it is best to approach these sorts of things with that mindset rather than looking for chances for abuse.

 

[smbakeresq]

For those who find out of combat healing so trivially easy, why even bother tracking it at all? All PCs have maximum HP after every combat. Done.

For "fun" I played a few AL sessions after Xanathar's came out where I played my Ranger and we also had a Druid (both of us level 5) so she could take Healing Spirit. We had a maximum size party, which I think is seven.

Just to see how Healing Spirit affected play, no one really tried in combat to optimize attacks or defense. No one really thought about what to do, they just attacked. Mostly the most basic attack and quickly rolled dice. One result was combat ended quicker (which is a good thing) as people didn't think about what to do. On the other hand, we did take more damage. But it didn't matter in the slightest as we had enough Healing Spirits to bring everyone back to max HP. No one spent any HD.

It was a really boring two sessions. The combat was probably the most pointless combat I've had playing D&D.

That’s not the spells fault, that’s encounters that are not challenging enough for the group and/or not enough encounters.

With any group I run 4-6 encounters per short rest minimum, not all combat. Usually 1-2 will include a damaging trap or a combat with a hazard, like a heat metal hallway (forcing armor off) followed by an immediate encounter without armor to spice things up. Great fun and was head with arrow shooters in a room of insubstantial creatures. A glue spray trap that hardens on non-metal surfaces (acts as slow spell until you peel that leather or robe off) was hilarious with naked PC running about wearing nothing but a spell component pouch.

 

[smbakeresq]

Yes, you are right.

Just like other spells such as Moonbeam. If the caster could move Moonbeam around and hit every enemy creature it would be grossly overpowered.

Her interpretation would also be a needlessly complicated spell. Simpler would be to just write a spell where the caster chooses a bunch of targets. I think it is best to approach these sorts of things with that mindset rather than looking for chances for abuse.

If the enemy is intelligent why in the world would they not recognize the affect and then try to get he caster, including taking opportunity attacks to do so?

Force those concentration checks.

 

[abirdcall]

If the enemy is intelligent why in the world would they not recognize the affect and then try to get he caster, including taking opportunity attacks to do so?

Force those concentration checks.

What are you arguing?

That all conceivable concentration spells are balanced because concentration?

 

[Oofta]

Heat Metal isn’t overpowered, it’s great fun. Every single PC I use it against thinks it’s a dirty rotten trick to penalize them for wearing armor and being under affects of Bless spell. It is of course.

Nothing says "don't bother building a strength based character based on the classic knight in D&D" than heat metal. Barbarians or dex based everything FTW!