D&D General Baldur's Gate 3 will now be releasing August 3rd on PC and September 6th on PS5, increased level cap, race & class details and more

[DarkCrisis]

If you've played 5E, you should know that you don't need a dedicated healer most of the time - the game will probably give plenty of potions, and most of the HP recovery should be easy to do by taking a Short Rest between encounters.

I've played it all.

I suppose. Dedicated healers sure are useful though

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I suppose. Dedicated healers sure are useful though

They're situationally useful, depending on the makeup of your party and the types of encounters you're dealing with.

The issue 5E has is that most healing in combat is typically useless above about level 3-4 except for yoyoing, very much by design and intentionally, whether we like it or not. You can't add HP even anywhere near as fast as even one enemy can take them away. This is hugely different to most videogames which involve healing, where you can typically outmatch the ability of enemies to take HP away.

Heal changes that, but that's a 6th-level spell, and you at get 1 cast per Long Rest of that until level 19.

So the role healers serve in 5E is twofold:

1) Yoyoing frontliners or people with a lot of juice back up. They'll probably go down again, but if they have a high AC or manage to pull back and operate from range, maybe not.

2) Extending the endurance of the party. In general, a spell slot employed offensively is probably going to save you more HP in the longer run than healing after the fact, but that's not something you can rely on, so healing after the fact can help make up for failure to use spell slots offensively, or for non-combat or unexpected damage.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

If you've played 5E, you should know that you don't need a dedicated healer most of the time - the game will probably give plenty of potions, and most of the HP recovery should be easy to do by taking a Short Rest between encounters.

Short rests work differently in BG3 than in 5e. You can take max 2 per day, and always recover exactly half your max HP. No rolling or managing hit dice.

 

[Seramus]

Short rests work differently in BG3 than in 5e. You can take max 2 per day, and always recover exactly half your max HP. No rolling or managing hit dice.

Bards even get Song of Healing and Druids get nothing equivalent except saving money on cheap healing potions with Goodberry.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

There's also likely a lot of healing potions lying around. Mostly you just want Healing Word to bounce someone back up, yeah.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Only 8 companions? And some get introed later? And ONLY 4 party members? Does that mean if I don’t play a healer I have to use one of the only other 2 healers, both who don’t look interesting at all.

10 but two are mutually exclusive. The likely healers are Shadowheart (Cleric), Halsin (Druid) and Jaheira from BG1/2 (likely also Druid).

In addition there are 12 "mercenary"-type companions (who don't have full stories), one of each class in the game.

You can also multiclass or respec any companion freely, including out of their normal base class.

Shadowheart is generally considered one of the most interesting characters so I'm surprised you dislike her. She does claim to be evil though. Albeit in EA she doesn't do anything Evil, and disapproves of quite a few Evil actions soooooo...

I planned to go Bard but I’m worried I won’t have the healing I’ll need if I don’t take either the Druid or Cleric companions.

Based on Early Access Bards will be more than enough.

They've changed how Short Rests work AND Bards grant an extra Short Rest per long rest.

So in BG3 you normally get 2 Short Rests per Long Rest, and each restores 50% of your HP. Hit Dice are not tracked (nor exist at all mechanically).

So with a Bard, using no spells at all, you can recover 150% of the HP of the entire party in-between Long Rests. And Long Rests are generally easy to take.

The only real use for healing spells is thus yoyoing people in combat, which any healer, including Bard, is fine for.

BG1-2 gave you options (lots of companions) but this seems lacking in that area.

As noted you have 22 total people who can go with you, and you can respec any of them to any class, so BG3 has considerably more flexibility here.

Also why are all/most of the companies like morally grey in their descriptions?

Because they can potentially be influenced to be good or evil (except possibly Minsc), and the descriptions are hyping up the most dramatic thing about them, rather than focusing on their personal morals.

Breaking down initial leanings

Good:
Karlach
Wyll
Minsc
Halsin

Evil:
Shadowheart (though hmmmmm)
Lae'zel
Astarion
Minthara

Neutral:
Gale
Maybe Jaheira (but I think Good is more likely).

Either way, with the right arguments and situations (not merely "approval points" - indeed sometimes you may have to lose those to argue them round), you can apparently convince most companions to gradually better or worse people.

I feel like I’m being pigeonholed into playing a healer class.

You're not, trust me. The Short Rest change means out-of-combat healing is less important than 5E, and with a Bard, it becomes a joke.

Hope this helps. Happy to answer other questions.

 

[Ondath]

Short rests work differently in BG3 than in 5e. You can take max 2 per day, and always recover exactly half your max HP. No rolling or managing hit dice.

I only played the very early versions of the Early Access, and I can't remember if any hit die rolling was ever involved. Tbh, 2/day is the intended number of short rests you're supposed to take for every adventuring day (though 5E never explicitly spells that out), but I'm not sure how I feel about getting exactly half HP.

Solasta's implementation, which is fully faithful to the tabletop rules, was decent enough IMO.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I can understand why they felt 'now roll your hitdice one at a time, decide when you've healed enough, then repeat the process for all of your companions too, every short rest' is not the peak of gameplay.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I can understand why they felt 'now roll your hitdice one at a time, decide when you've healed enough, then repeat the process for all of your companions too, every short rest' is not the peak of gameplay.

Exactly. Solasta's implementation shows how terminally tedious it is. Solasta is absolutely unafraid to be boring or have outright bad gameplay in the name of sticking to the rules slavishly, which is kind of commendable.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

but I'm not sure how I feel about getting exactly half HP.

If you do the math, PCs burning all their HD will get 100% of their HP back, on average. So using half their HD on each of the two "recommended" short rests it absolutely makes mathematical sense for them to get 50% each time, doesn't it?

But wait you say, Long Rests only restore 50% of your HD. Correct. However, first off, 1D&D changed that a while back to 100% of your HD and no-one complained, and second off, barely anyone even remembers that, and it would be elaborate and confusing to mess with in an actual videogame. At that point you'd need to tracking things in a very complex and boring way, like, did the Fighter actually need that 50% HP restore? Or did he only use part of it?