D&D 5E Cleric-dependant parties

[Savage Wombat]

I'm looking for opinions from actual play here -

How well does it look like a party can do without a cleric in 5th ed?

Is the druid/bard/paladin an adequate substitute?

Can you get by with no healing except hit dice and healing potions?

 

[Kobold Stew]

I'm looking for opinions from actual play here -

How well does it look like a party can do without a cleric in 5th ed?

Is the druid/bard/paladin an adequate substitute?

Can you get by with no healing except hit dice and healing potions?

Druid is certainly an adequate substitute; I've not played with just a paladin or a bard, but I expect it would be fine.

Without any healing classes would require a group to be cautious, but I think it's doable, especially if someone can brew healing potions with an herbalism kit.

 

[Mistwell]

Bard is a full caster and gets the key curing spells. Should be fine if the Bard is willing to play that role.

 

[Crothian]

Also, the party has to realize if healing is a little less that they need to play a bit smarter. Character can attack at range and stay out of harms way or sneak around to get surprise so they don't get injured as easily.

 

[drjones]

Dunno if this qualifies but my players just remade their characters and are going cleric-less with a Bard and Ranger who is kinda specced as a medic.

Will it work? Not sure yet. They have two fighters as well so they should be moderately tough and have some 'free' healing.

 

[Lawngnome4hire]

A paladin by itself won't be enough for most adventures. You'd most likely need to tweek them to lessen the need for healing or add other ways for the party to heal themselves. A bard or druid should be able to fill that role if they're willing to step out of their usual role. Add a paladin to a bard or druid will make it a lot easier on them also.

 

[keterys]

At low level, the cleric is kinda awful at healing anyways, so you can do perfectly fine with something else. In one group I DMed with a wizard with the Healer feat, and two clerics, the wizard did the most healing by far.

Higher levels has always been a big question: once you start messing around with spells like Restoration and Heal, not having them available can get painful.

 

[Lalato]

We played without a healer. It works, but it's much more difficult. Players didn't quite grasp that they couldn't just brazenly walk into a lair and just kick butt. TPK was only avoided with lucky death saves.

One player is multi-classing to Cleric. Should make things a little less deadly, but we'll see how it goes.

 

[Mandragola]

So far I've only DM'ed the first two chapters of the starter set but there's a standard "healbot" cleric with life domain in that, which is probably as good a healer as you can be at the start.

With a 1st level party you'll probably find that only a small proportion of the total healing comes from the cleric (or whoever) casting cure light wounds. They can only do it twice a day. Things like a fighter's second wind, potions and healing during a short rest will do more across the group than that.

On the other hand the cleric (or whoever) will do other stuff a lot more. Our cleric bashed stuff with her warhammer quite a lot and let off cantrips. A druid would throw fire at stuff, bash stuff with a shillythingy or turn into a bear and chew on things. A bard can fight, shoot and even be the party scout (in which case he should be discouraged from singing or playing a trumpet).

So you're not just expected to take a 5-foot step and cast a curing spell each round, or channel. You get to be way more active - maybe even using proper spell slots for stuff other than healing the party!

 

[GX.Sigma]

It feels like the game was designed with the assumption that no one is playing a healer. Healing potions are dirt cheap, and the entire "dying" system (including death saves, the medicine skill, healer's kits, etc.) only makes sense in a party without a healer.