Battle Standard of Healing and Healer's Brooch: overpowered healing?

[keterys]

I grant that item powers can be used by players, and thus could be considered to be using a power. Still, the only time you use the power of the standard is when you plant it in the ground. Using the item power "creates a zone of healing energy". It is not a "power that enables you or an ally to regain hit points" as specified by the Healer's Brooch, because creating the zone doesn't heal anyone directly.

Nor does Vigorous Cadence or Stirring Shout - do you not have healing bonuses apply to those? How about Consecrated Ground or Spirit of Healing?

Even if you did interpret it as a healing power

For reference, you have to - it has the 'Healing' tag right next to Power.

You aren't using the item power every time the standard is triggered. You could be dead, and it would still work when your buddy used his second wind.

Yep - you just use it that once. And then you 'add the brooch’s enhancement bonus to the hit points gained.' from that power. Which is 1, every time someone spends a surge. Making it 2.

If it helps, and it never seems to, here's a CS response on how it does work.

Now, if you feel that this shouldn't work because it's bad design, that's totally cool - it's already been submitted for potential errata. Further, the entire topic of stacking healing bonuses has been submitted for errata, which I marked as high priority since it always creates arguments on forums, and cited battle standard as working oddly with, but you can chip in an additional reply of your opinion if those aren't sufficient.

Either way, I think I'm going to add on a bit to add language to make battle standards explicitly not stack.

 

[KarinsDad]

Either way, I think I'm going to add on a bit to add language to make battle standards explicitly not stack.

You should make that "zones don't stack". That would take care of both Battle Standards and the next abusable zone stack that isn't damage or penalties.

 

[keterys]

Can you think of any others? Is the suggestion more accurately 'Identical zones do not stack' such that you don't have two Consecrated Grounds or whatever out at thet same time, or is there something wrong with different zones with similar purposes stacking in some fashion?

Like if someone had a daily zone that healed people for a few damage at the start of their turn, and someone else had a different daily zone that healed for a few damage at the start of their turn, are you arguing those shouldn't stack? Or that someone in a hunger of hadar and wall of flame shouldn't take both?

 

[KarinsDad]

Can you think of any others? Is the suggestion more accurately 'Identical zones do not stack' such that you don't have two Consecrated Grounds or whatever out at thet same time, or is there something wrong with different zones with similar purposes stacking in some fashion?

Like if someone had a daily zone that healed people for a few damage at the start of their turn, and someone else had a different daily zone that healed for a few damage at the start of their turn, are you arguing those shouldn't stack? Or that someone in a hunger of hadar and wall of flame shouldn't take both?

Hunger of Hadar and Wall of Fire (I assume you meant that) stack according to the rules because Hunger of Hadar is a zone, and Wall of Fire is an area.

If zones overlap and impose penalties to the same roll or score, creatures in the overlapping area are subject to the worst penalty; the penalties are not cumulative. Similarly, a target in the overlapping area takes damage from whichever zone deals the most damage, regardless of damage type.

Although this uses the word area, it is in the Zone section of the rules discussing zone "overlapping area", not Area effects.

The rules should, however, be consistent. Hunger of Hadar and Wall of Fire as two overlapping "areas" should not stack because two damaging overlapping zones do not stack. IMO.

The rules should also deal with time. Damage when entering the zone or starting in the zone like Hunger of Hadar is different than damage at other times, like Stinging Cloud at the end of the turn. There are, TMK, no explicit rules on this. One could use the rule above to only have the greater damage apply (which becomes a bookkeeping chore, was Johnny attacked earlier in the turn?), or one could say "the other damage is not occurring at this time, so only the one occurring is the one occurring now" and have both zones affect the creature.


Getting back to your other question, I think that the any healing zone effect should not stack. What is so special about healing compared to damage? If two powers heal (at the same time as per above), then only the greater healing should apply, just like the damage and penalty rules. The issue that comes up is powers that heal at the start/end of the caster's turn. I am not aware of any such powers, but I suspect that they might eventually exist. Most zones are "when a creature starts his turn, or ends his turn, or is hit", or some precise moment in time, not one dependent on the turn of the PC (which with two PCs, would have two different points in time).

The thing about healing in 4E is that it is now way out of control. The Cleric in our group increased her healing by about 50% once Divine Power came out (and she did not even take Astral Seal or Healer's Mercy). Items, Feats, and interacting Healing Powers are all over the place now.


Having said that, I think that there are too many different synergies (e.g. All Soul's Ball and Soulshock Field both allow a healing surge when an enemy goes to zero hit points, but one allows one surge and the other allows one surge per ally; "Hey, my zone didn't do anything") that can happen, so I do think that the easiest to adjudicate rule is to prevent two identical zones from stacking. Any rule more detailed than that might start getting more difficult to adjudicate consistently.

It would be nice to put the brakes on zone healing though.

 

[Zinovia]

Identical zones don't stack. Different ones do. You could have a zone that slows, and drop a zone that does fire damage on top of it, and both effects would work. Likewise with beneficial zones. Two of the same don't add together, but different ones would each apply their effects.

As for the Battle Standard, my group has one. We don't have a cleric or any other character that adds bonuses to it, but it's proven useful when a couple characters were down - one heal to someone in range pops the other up to 1hp from negatives.

It's interesting that CS says they stack. I can see interpreting RAW that way, but it is horribly broken - as is most surgeless healing if you allow bonuses to be added to the effects every time. Why use surges at all when you can get 8 or more points of free healing from all these different effects? It's unbalancing the core mechanics.

So whatever the rules as written, my rule is they don't stack. My current group has a taclord and a fighter/mc cleric for leader types, and we're not especially short on healing. I can't imagine how crazy it would get with multiple leaders creating these kinds of surge-free heals. Ugh.

 

[keterys]

It's interesting that CS says they stack. I can see interpreting RAW that way, but it is horribly broken - as is most surgeless healing if you allow bonuses to be added to the effects every time. Why use surges at all when you can get 8 or more points of free healing from all these different effects? It's unbalancing the core mechanics.

In this particular case, the 'why' is easily answered: because you have to use surges in order to trigger the healing at all

It's also worth note that it does take up valuable item slots with the healing bonuses, so there is a real cost, even if that cost might be considered to be insufficient.

In the particular instance where someone could heal folks for 8 when a surge is spent, that implies a mid-Paragon or higher character, where surges are in the 20-40 ballpark. So you do gain the ability for one character to burn 20-40 hp worth of 'healing' to heal... 20-40 hp. Having actually burned some of my own surges in order to heal someone who was out of surges (or very low), I've done things like burned 4 surges to save them from 1 (at healing 6 per surge). This isn't exactly game breaking.

Stacking twenty of them so you heal 120 to everyone with one surge? Okay, sure, that's more problematic and way beyond the pale of what I'd allow or encourage as a DM. I'm not sure it's game breaking, since frankly it just extends the adventuring day - which means less dailies per combat, more combats per day, less action points per combat average, more different daily magic item uses and less nova-ing... all of which sound like good things.

 

[Wonderland666]

I don't understand your Problem with the Healing Banner:
Okay it can only be removed by a CHARAKTER and has a high damage Res, so it stands where it has been plugged.
I think no party will waste 20 Standardaktions to get 20 HB in Combat. This would be a funny mission, but it sucks.

No DM should have a Problem if the Party gets cheep healing during a Short rest. Because, all they can do with that are more Encounters per day.
Problems is only continous cheap healing in Combat.
Compare that with making an Extended rest, an you see:
- You gain 1 Aktion point after an E.R and after a Milestone. So you could get more Aktionpoints total with more encounters, but you are still limited to spend only one Action Point per Encounter (=No effekt)
- You regain the use of the Daily item powers after a Milestone. But only 1/2/3 times a day and no use of your class Daily powers or already used-Daily-item powers (like you did after en Extended rest)
- and finaly after an E.R. you can identify 1 Item.

And in Combat?:
You normaly will only have 1 Banner. That cost a Standard-Aktion. Thats not overpowered by the costs and the Restrictions:
You can prevent a Char from dying, but without any additional healing he is in fact a minion with (1-3 Hps). As a DM the best encounter you can give to your PCs is: The last PC standing kills the Monsterking an the other heros survive very close to death. (A TPK nomaly stopps your campaign :-( ) . Okay, this is true for all countrys but Japan, where the last PC has to do a suicide attack......

 

[Turtlejay]

Um, I'm not Japanese, but I could see that being a little offensive. . .

The Banner requires a Standard action to plant, but afterwards the healing done happens with *no* action. That one standard action can, with the right cheese applied, be the best spent action of the game. I think that is the problem some folks have with this item.

I had one. I used it a couple times. It is mostly useful for keeping dying allies up. Especially if they are taking ongoing damage, this could be a lifesaver.

Jay

 

[Wonderland666]

well the question is if i use healing word with banner and Healers brooch. does the target benefit twice from the brooch? ( 1 from the healing word, 1 from the healing surge spent, that the rest of the party in the zone gets?)

 

[KarinsDad]

well the question is if i use healing word with banner and Healers brooch. does the target benefit twice from the brooch? ( 1 from the healing word, 1 from the healing surge spent, that the rest of the party in the zone gets?)

Yes the target does.

The Standard does not add healing to other healing. It adds it's own healing. So the target of Healing Word gets two healings: one for Healing Word with the Brooch bonus and one for the Standard with the Brooch bonus. Two sources of healing, not one.