D&D 5E Best in-combat healer

[Blue]

Life Cleric 1/Lore Bard X w/ Inspiring Leader.

This looks really promising, can you walk me through it. This only lags 1 level behind on learning new spells, and you have magical secrets to pick up missing healing, but what makes it a better in-combat healer then just the straight life cleric?

(Note I'm asking mainly because that was the thrust of the post - bards definitely tickle my "support" bones and would also be a lot of fun to play.)

 

[Yunru]

This looks really promising, can you walk me through it. This only lags 1 level behind on learning new spells, and you have magical secrets to pick up missing healing, but what makes it a better in-combat healer then just the straight life cleric?

(Note I'm asking mainly because that was the thrust of the post - bards definitely tickle my "support" bones and would also be a lot of fun to play.)

It's a combination of Magical Secrets allowing you to pick the best spells from any list (at a guess, Paladin will have some really nice ones as the only other wy to get them is taking twice as mny Paladin levels), and your casting stat mtching Inspiring Leader's. There's also the side benefit of more support outside of healing, especially in the realms of TempHP.

 

[ppaladin123]

The question was specifically about in-combat healing.

Goodberry giving 1 (or 4 with Life cleric) per action at 5-14th level is not worth it. (And the spell is very specific that it's an action to eat a single one, you can't stick a handful of them in your mouth.)

Aura of Vitality is 2d6 per round without a way to upcast. 7HP for a bonus action is slightly better then goodberry, btu also pretty much worthless for in-combat healing at those levels.

Sorry, neither of these fit the need at all. Were you thinking about out-of-combat healing?

Goodberry aside, I am not sure how AoV is bad. At 8th level your typical fighter/paladin is going to have about 64 HP and your typical bard/cleric is going to be around 56 HP. As a bonus action you (with life cleric) can heal an average of 7+5=12 HP every round for 10 rounds. That is a significant chunk (~20 %) of a character's HP every round for one spell slot and without eating up your action every turn (which you can use to help kill things faster/disable enemies so they don't hurt your party as much or cast cure wounds). Healing word with an 18 charisma (and life cleric), up-slotted to 3rd level will get you 3d4 +4+5 =roughly 16.5 HP but only once. Cure wounds will give you more but will eat your standard action.

It seems like a much more efficient way to heal both in terms of HP given out and action economy. Obviously it is great outside of combat too.

 

[Blue]

Goodberry aside, I am not sure how AoV is bad. At 8th level your typical fighter/paladin is going to have about 64 HP and your typical bard/cleric is going to be around 56 HP. As a bonus action you (with life cleric) can heal an average of 7+5=12 HP every round for 10 rounds. That is a significant chunk (~20 %) of a character's HP every round for one spell slot and without eating up your action every turn (which you can use to help kill things faster/disable enemies so they don't hurt your party as much or cast cure wounds). Healing word with an 18 charisma (and life cleric), up-slotted to 3rd level will get you 3d4 +4+5 =roughly 16.5 HP but only once. Cure wounds will give you more but will eat your standard action.

It seems like a much more efficient way to heal both in terms of HP given out and action economy. Obviously it is great outside of combat too.

You had specifically called out lore bard so I hadn't factored life cleric into it. Thanks for the update.

Okay, it'll take an action to cast and then a bonus action each round (including the first) to use. Assuming 5 rounds of actions after someone gets hurt, that's (7+6)*5=65 points of healing. Really good for a 3rd level slot.

A life cleric with a 3rd level slot doing Mass Healing Word gets a little less than half that (31.25), though with a much better action economy of no actions and only a single bonus action.

So comparing to two of those Aura of Vitality has double the slot economy but loses on action economy, taking an action and taking 3 more bonus actions. But as I put out, I am looking over a whole day (of 4 hard combats plus a short rest), and that slot economy heavily trumps since it will allow this to be up for most/all of the combats in a day.

Okay, you convinced me. I'd be even happier if you could upcast it and it would scale, but it's really efficient at healing a reasonable chunk for that level.

(And since we're talking lore bard, using up bonus action doesn't kill your ability to use Inspiration since Cutting Words is a reaction. Though wish it wasn't concentration so I could also bless or something.)

 

[mellored]

You need to add in the non-spell factors as well.

Life clerics channel divinity adds a bunch. And I'm not sure if you count cutting words as "healing" or not.

 

[kalani]

Personally, I find damage prevention is superior to in-combat healing, and as such I lean heavily on things like shield, and counter spell. In-combat healing is a panic button if you need to get someone back in the fight so that the party doesn't lose action economy by losing an entire character's turn of actions. Sacrificing one action (or bonus action) to keep someone in the fight is all in-combat healing should be used for.

As such, when it comes to in-combat healing, I favor spells that don't require concentration, and preferably use a bonus action (healing word, mass healing word and the like). With that being said, a Life Cleric 1-2/Lore Bard X is able to accomplish all these goals by picking up counter spell at 6th level (the best damage prevention spell in the game IMO, as countering a single fireball can prevent an average of 14-28 damage to each affected character, and often exceeds the benefits of heal). It does have its limits though. Lightning bolt and other long-range spells cannot be countered easily, as the spell has a range of 60, and requires line of sight (so invisible spellcasters, or being blinded will prevent you from using CS).

As far as in-combat healing goes, you can't really do much better for your action than the Life Cleric's 2nd level Channel divinity.

Personally, while I like aura of vitality, I find that there is way too much competition for my 6th level magical secrets. As is, I would like to have all of the following spells from just wizard and cleric alone, and this makes it very difficult to decide what to choose: shield, spirit guardians, mass healing word, counter spell, and revivify. Fortunately for me, Hypnotic Pattern is on the Bard List, so I don't have to worry about that competing for the same spell choice, although I will eventually want to upgrade it to wall of force later.

Regarding Feats: Inspiring Leader is a good choice, as is my personal favorite: Lucky. The Lucky feat is often under appreciated, and used poorly. I have found its best value is to be used on a high-AC tank (AC 20+ with the shield spell is ideal), as it can easily turn hits into misses on such a character. You don't know how frustrating it is for a DM to hit such a character, when shield makes most enemies unable to hit you without a crit, and then Lucky turns most crits into misses. Between the three, that means you can normally only be hit by an attack roll 1/400 times while you have Luck dice remaining.

The only downside I can think of with aLife Cleric 1-2/Lore Bard X is the fact that none of the bardic spell foci are one-handed (all instruments in the PHB require two hands from what I can tell). As such, it makes it incredibly difficult to use a shield with such a build, which is a loss of 2-4 AC (assuming a magical shield at some point). The upside to this is that you can always take tavern brawler and become proficient with your instrument of the bards allowing you to double as a grapple bard/healer.

 

[Blue]

Personally, I find damage prevention is superior to in-combat healing, and as such I lean heavily on things like shield, and counter spell. In-combat healing is a panic button if you need to get someone back in the fight so that the party doesn't lose action economy by losing an entire character's turn of actions. Sacrificing one action (or bonus action) to keep someone in the fight is all in-combat healing should be used for.

I used to believe as you and have been proven wrong in actual play. I still believe it's the case in 95%+ adventuring parties, those without a well build healer and a player who is interested in being that support role - it can be rather unrewarding in terms of spotlight if your fellow players aren't appreciative. But this post is specifically about exploring that corner case, where you can keep up with heavy damage and making sure multiple people don't go down in one round because that would lead to a lot of actions lost.

BTW, I'm also good for avoiding damage in the first place. Assume that will be included in the "support" part and outside the scope of this post.

 

[Blue]

You need to add in the non-spell factors as well.

Life clerics channel divinity adds a bunch. And I'm not sure if you count cutting words as "healing" or not.

Channel Divinity is great if you are staying pure cleric - it's an action so only doing it with 2 levels of life cleric is meh, but doing it at full character level is a really big boost. And it recharges (like all CDs) with a short rest.

Cutting words - damage prevention - is definitely part of the support I was thinking about. But I need to draw a line somewhere to having a meaningful conversation. Is Bless damage prevention because it kills faster? Well, yes, you could say so. So for this post I'm more focusing on just the healing parts, but be assured that preventing it (and [MENTION=88085]kalani[/MENTION] had some great suggestions along those lines) is part of the concept.

 

[kalani]

I used to believe as you and have been proven wrong in actual play. I still believe it's the case in 95%+ adventuring parties, those without a well build healer and a player who is interested in being that support role - it can be rather unrewarding in terms of spotlight if your fellow players aren't appreciative. But this post is specifically about exploring that corner case, where you can keep up with heavy damage and making sure multiple people don't go down in one round because that would lead to a lot of actions lost.

BTW, I'm also good for avoiding damage in the first place. Assume that will be included in the "support" part and outside the scope of this post.

I have played two separate campaigns without a dedicated support healer, relying on secondary healing (usually paladins or bards), and other support effects. I have also played one campaign in which we had a dedicated life cleric. The first two were much more offensive (replacing the support role with another DPS/tank role), however I should add that many of our characters were also quite self sufficient... So in the right party, you don't need a support character.

For example, any mix of the following characters could get by fine without a dedicated healer.

Moon Druid with/without levels in Bear Barbarian (with is desirable, max 5 levels Barbarian); ideally takes Sentinel
High AC Wizard with/without lucky feat (with makes for an excellent front-line tank); ideally uses spells like counter spell, wall of force, & hypnotic pattern to shut down enemies
Bear Totem Barbarian
GWM Fighter, Barbarian, or Paladin w/wo polearm master
Grapple Lore Bard
Character with Sentinel
TWF or Archer Assassin, ideally if someone has commander's strike or another similar ability
Sharpshooter Battlemaster w/wo Crossbow Expert
Paladin/Sorcerer who exploits their increased spell slots with smite.
Fighter/Abjurer or Eldritch Knight - haste/buff builds.
I am sure there are other examples, but you get the idea.

It really depends on what your party makeup is, and how good your party's tactics are. Party's which use sophisticated tactics and which build off each others strategies can usually shutdown and defeat an enemy force without need of a support character.

In one of my campaigns, my 12th-13th level party went up against 10 Fire Giants, 12 Ogres, and 8 Hell Hounds in a single encounter (we accidentally alerted an entire garrison to our presence; this encounter was 2.7x the lethal encounter budget for a party of 7 L20 characters). Our party included my Cleric 1/Wizard 12 w Lucky and AC 23; a BM S&B Fighter with Sentinel and a Shield Guardian; a GWM Frenzy Barbarian; and 3 other equally self-sufficient characters I forget. We did not have a cleric or support character in the party, and despite this - clever use of terrain (the garrison itself) and spells (wall of force) allowed us to tank this encounter, killing everything but 4 giants before we were forced to flee. Had we had our Life Cleric (who was absent that day), we would have defeated this encounter soundly.

I have another character who is an absolute beast on the field (literally and figuratively) - a Moon Druid 3 / Bear Barbarian 5 with Sentinel, and Insignia of Claws (+1 natural weapons). This character had just acquired a Shield Guardian at the end of the last session I played the character, but for design purposes - this character was designed to be a party shield, but ended up being a high DPS character as well (making them a DPS Tank).

For example - while in Dire Wolf Form and raging, I have 37 HP (resist all except Psychic), Bite +6, 2d6+7? and trip; Pack Tactics; Extra Attack; AC 14; and Sentinel. This character teams up with a High AC S&B Battlemaster Fighter with Riposte (but not sentinel) to make a massive 25 foot front line. Standing behind the BM Fighter, was a PM Sentinel Human Bladelock, to stop anyone trying to get passed the Riposte Fighter. Yes, this group is vulnerable to AoE, but that is what a Counter Spell wizard is for Sadly, the BM Fighter wasn't a Gnome (as that would have made them even better, with resistance to mental spells).

 

[Blue]

Hmm, I said that it's completely possible to go without heavy in-combat healing and that's 95% of the cases, but I'd like to explore the corner case where they do design and add for it.

And you give a wall of text anecdotal evidence that the 95% exists. Which no one is debating.

At this point, it seems you are trying to prove that only your way is possible. That's derailing the thread.

If you would like to contribute to the thrust of this thread about proactive in-combat healers, please do so. If you want to threadcrap, please start your own thread.