Clerical healing not stepping on clerical fun (also, an edition with no healers)

[Aberzanzorax]

Forked from: http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/325522-playtest-update.html

For clerics, we're looking at moving healing out of the spell list and making it easy to cast a healing spell and do something such as attack during your turn. We hope that this move lets clerics feel like they have more options than just patching up the rest of the party, while they can also prepare spells such as bless or cause fear with the chance to actually use them, rather than cash them out for healing.

What if the game were structured around parties not needing a healer?

What if standard play involved more caution regarding getting into fights, and more caution about not getting hurt? Healing is generally "natural healing" with the heal skill really being useful to enhance natural healing to a smallish, but meaningful degree. What if 5e tossed the standard "well, we need a healer...who's gonna play the healer?" idea? I'd be sort of excited about players venturing into a dungeon and....actually being worn down over time. Note that I'm not suggesting a mechanic of "everybody heals a lot, all the time, including in combat." I'm suggesting healing is basically not something that happens apart from natural rest.

Ramifications for the cleric become pretty cool in such a game as that. First, clerics don't have to be even ABLE to heal. In D&D clerics/priests are servants of many gods, many of which don't care about undead or about healing per se. If the game got rid of healing beyond natural healing (as standard adventuring), then clerics could truly become domain/sphere/deity focused.

So then, what about clerics who DO heal?
Make it cool, but make it comparable to cleric powers for those that do not. In other words...in this scenario, where healing is not a core daily assumption, but an EXTRA, a small amount of healing can make a big difference. Remove healing from the core cleric spell list and make it a limited domain power (e.g. can cure up to the cleric's level in a day, points distributed as the cleric likes). Then, the healing cleric can give a powerful boost in combat...or he can keep a party going for slightly longer (say 10%ish) than a party without a cleric in those long dungeon delves. So one cleric might pick the powers of undead destruction, healing, and sun/fire. Another cleric might pick war/battle, tactics, and fury. The first cleric would get turn undead, the ability to heal, and some burning power. The second cleric would get martial training, some sort of party buff, and perhaps rage. Healing would be simply one small power commensurate with those of other domains/spheres.

Most importantly, if this healing is a nice boost, but not too nice, it remains meaningful, but also doesn't force a cleric player to choose the healing domain, doesn't allow a cleric to lose cool stuff even if he does have the healing domain (because he can't swap out combat spells for more healing), and doesn't force anyone in the party to play a healer class. By making healing optional, it makes it exciting again, rather than a "necessary chore".







Another option, more middleground, is to make healing a "class choice" rather than tying it to domains and gods. What if, similar to 3e's "rogue talents/powers" that they get at level 10...clerics can choose some limited amount of healing from a list of other powers (turn undead, the ability to wear armor, invoking their god's wrath, etc).


Separately, I DO NOT think it necessary (or good) for clerics to be able to attack AND cast a healing spell in the same turn. Healing should be a choice, not an "add on of, oh yeah, you also heal". I also think "free extra healing" would lead to longer combats where hit points go down, then up, then down, then up...until the cleric was out of healing. That doesn't sound good to me. I'd like for healing to be a mystical gift from the gods, not "oh, by the way, you heal some points of damage as an afterthought." The rarer it becomes...the more fun it will be to actually do.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Broken into a separate post because it's somewhat a separate thought and to avoid tl;dr.


So how do we design a game with no magical healing? I like @Kamikaze Midget 's ideas about longer rests (man, now that he's a mod, that feels like sucking up...but I liked it before he was a mod, I swear! ). What if healing was broken into:

1. After combat patchups.
2. A night of rest.
3. A week of rest.

1. After combat patchups would be heal checks (available to those untrained, but naturally better for those with skill in it). Only damage caused during that combat could be healed (no sillyness about damage from prior fights getting healed because of more battle). Perhaps a heal check, taking 1 minute of bandaging/cauterizing/etc. could heal up to a maximum of the person's level in hp? (e.g. a level 1 fighter could benefit from 1 point of healing, while a level 10 fighter could benefit from 10 points).

This would also address the scaling issue of why healing is comparably less powerful for more powerful characters. It would also address more severe wounds versus less severe wounds in the sense that a single battle that dropped a level 10 fighter from 100 hit points to 50 would leave him healed (at best) to 60...while several shorter, less dangerous fights, each dropping him 10 or less points could keep him at max hp all day long. In my opinion...that moves toward realism.

Complications: Players would need to keep track of "current wounds" for each fight as a separate pool (though only for the current fight, not every fight over the course of the day). Would need heal check mechanics (maybe the healing check roll = the number of hp restored -10?).

2. Overnight rests. Players would automatically heal their level+con modifier, no heal check required, not dependent upon number of battles or most recent injuries or anything. If in a safe, comfortable location (an inn, a portable hole; basically anywhere meant for sleeping where they wouldn't post watches) or if cared for overnight by a healer making a successful heal check(who would not benefit from overnight healing) players heal double that (double level+con). This leaves the very real possibility that players might start the next day injured if they had substantial injuries, or uninjured if not.

3. Weeklong rests. All hit points restored.



With those rules, frequent, relatively small injuries would keep the adventurers going strong, and out of combat healing would be tied to actual healing. However, larger injuries would stay with players until nightfall...and severe larger injuries over time would add up...not being fully healed upon waking daily.

Combined with a healing cleric from my OP, those severe injuries could close after combats (or during combats) more readily, and players could go slightly longer over the course of several days...but not excessively so. If the healing domain power was that the cleric could magically heal his level in hp per day (or level +wisdom mod, maybe?), that would only provide the equivalent of one full night's rest to one player (possibly spread out among many players).


It's my hope that this setup would both remove the need for the 15 minute adventuring day (as related to healing anyway) and also allow for players to be worn down by excessive adventuring (ideally in a good way). Small fights and minimal injuries would not impact players, but substantial fights would wear them down...and not just for one night, potentially for longer.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Forked from: http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/325522-playtest-update.html

What if the game were structured around parties not needing a healer?

All I can say is "welcome to 4e". Previous editions rely on clerical healing so much because the cleric recharges his healing significantly faster than other PCs recharge their hit points. Put the cleric's spells and the party hit points on the same recharge cycle and the healing will be a nice panic button but it won't be true that the party will need the cleric to heal. And 5e appears to have done this with the oft-derided healing overnight.

(Me, I like healing and recovering major spells to only take place in a place of safety - the week of rest to recharge for both hit points and 'daily' spells and have houseruled 4e accordingly).

 

[Aberzanzorax]

All I can say is "welcome to 4e".

<snip>

(Me, I like healing and recovering major spells to only take place in a place of safety - the week of rest to recharge for both hit points and 'daily' spells and have houseruled 4e accordingly).

Yep, I agree, I'm stealing some from 4e here...in true 5e fashion, as I liked some of what 4e brought to healing, but hated some of it as well. So I'm trying to combine what I liked (lack of reliance on a cleric or specified "healer") but remove what I didn't (overall healing being less simulationist and more specifically: an artificial limitation on amount of healing received via a certain number of healing surges as well as self healing during combat without magic).


I, too, like healing and recovery to take place in a place of safety. That's why I suggest the short rest (similar to 4e's 5 minute rest to recover encounter powers) for bandaging. I do have several important differences that make my suggestions different from 4e's, however (you can't non-magically heal back up from 1 hp to full being an important one). I do think that serious healing should take longer and require saftey and rest...and I've tried to model that.

I should say, though, that my second post is merely an example of one way to attempt it. It's not meant to be "these should be the mechanics" as much as "here is a way to do it that would be a bit more sensible than 'healing surges' as discrete, but artifical, bursts of healing that can be cashed in."

 

[I'm A Banana]

All I can say is "welcome to 4e".

Not quite. Though 4e is a HUGE step in the right direction, parties still kind of need someone to fill a Leader role, even if it's not a cleric. In order to have an edition where no healers are required (essential, I think, for a modular game), we need to make the Leader role superfluous, too.

So what we need to do is make the step to bake-in a healing ability as an inherent ability for any character.

I think the first step -- already being done -- is to make combats fast and furious. If you're not spending 8-10 rounds whittling away your opponent, and combine that with the 4e idea of a "short rest" that can heal some HP, you don't necessarily need a mid-combat heal. A mid-combat heal can be a rarer, more special thing, necessary only for more epic combats, the domain of specific character abilities rather than enshrined in clerical magic.

I think Second Wind is solid, at least for tough-guy martial characters (Fighters, Barbarians, whatever). And three resting nodes (post-encounter (5 minute), post-day (overnight), and post-adventure (weekly)) are really useful divisions.

This interfaces a little with the view of HP. Fate can recharge a LOT faster than meat. So if we view half of your HP as fate, you heal maybe 1/4 HP with a 5-minute rest (once or twice per day) 1/2 hp with an overnight rest (once or twice per week), and all HP with a weekly rest (also resets your other scales). That's a little mechanics-heavy, but something similar might work.

Oh, and here's the bit talked about in the OP. Rest assured, those who do not favor it will be permabanned.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Not quite. Though 4e is a HUGE step in the right direction, parties still kind of need someone to fill a Leader role, even if it's not a cleric. In order to have an edition where no healers are required (essential, I think, for a modular game), we need to make the Leader role superfluous, too.

I speak from experience as a DM when I say that a party with three strikers and a high damage controller (Hunter) is more than viable. As are other parties with no leaders.

 

[Mengu]

Actually 4e started out where you could play without a healer perfectly fine. If you played without a healer and went with by the book encounters, combat was fast and dangerous, second wind, and a few self healing tools like comeback strike were all you needed in a pinch to get back into the fight. Monsters not doing too much damage also meant you could conserve surges during short rests, and go into a fight with a few hit points down, and still be fine.

However, if you did have a leader, things became too easy, and risk of losing was diminished significantly. DM's remedied this by increasing the challenge. Then combat started taking too long. To remedy that, they changed up monsters so monsters did a lot more damage, so lower level monsters would still be significant threats, and killing them would take less time.

This seemed to work, but now, if you don't have a healer, bouncing back from a monster nova is extremely difficult if not impossible. So we went back to needing healers. Also with monsters doing more damage, people feel they have to heal up to full after every encounter because otherwise you might not survive the next monster nova, so surges are being wasted which can be remedied by healers, but it can still shorten the adventuring day.

The lesson here is, the deadlier you want the system to be, the more you're requiring the presence of healers. Ideally groups should be encouraged but not required to have healers. I can think of a few gamist ways to achieve this goal, but not sure how we can get there in a way which will satisfy simulationists, with only the hit point system as the relevant expendable resource.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Actually 4e started out where you could play without a healer perfectly fine. If you played without a healer and went with by the book encounters, combat was fast and dangerous, second wind, and a few self healing tools like comeback strike were all you needed in a pinch to get back into the fight. Monsters not doing too much damage also meant you could conserve surges during short rests, and go into a fight with a few hit points down, and still be fine.

However, if you did have a leader, things became too easy, and risk of losing was diminished significantly. DM's remedied this by increasing the challenge. Then combat started taking too long. To remedy that, they changed up monsters so monsters did a lot more damage, so lower level monsters would still be significant threats, and killing them would take less time.

This seemed to work, but now, if you don't have a healer, bouncing back from a monster nova is extremely difficult if not impossible. So we went back to needing healers. Also with monsters doing more damage, people feel they have to heal up to full after every encounter because otherwise you might not survive the next monster nova, so surges are being wasted which can be remedied by healers, but it can still shorten the adventuring day.

The lesson here is, the deadlier you want the system to be, the more you're requiring the presence of healers. Ideally groups should be encouraged but not required to have healers. I can think of a few gamist ways to achieve this goal, but not sure how we can get there in a way which will satisfy simulationists, with only the hit point system as the relevant expendable resource.

I read your post, and found myself nodding my head.

However, I have a different lesson that I take home from it.

What if "healer" was more of a "tiny bonus in healing" rather than a larger "entire class is based around the phenomenon"?


It seems you're saying 4e worked well with no leader/healer... but was too easy with one...so the game evolved to make it so it was of appropriate difficulty if you had one (and too hard if you didn't).

I'd agree with that.


So what if the solution is not to change the game around the existence of healers, but to nerf the crap out of healers? What if healing was just "once a day I can provide a cure light wounds...and what if that was a substantial thing (akin to a fighter's daily because it was so rare?)


In my opinion, that'd make clerics still "healers", it'd make healing cool (because it'd be rare and also "clutch" in some instances), and it would allow people to play clerics and do more than "just healing".

 

[I'm A Banana]

What if healing was just "once a day I can provide a cure light wounds...and what if that was a substantial thing (akin to a fighter's daily because it was so rare?)

This is totally possible when you look at combats as very quick things. The reason healing is kind of "necessary" in a game is because in a combat-as-sport kind of game, where getting into fights is at least half the fun, it's important to have a back-and-forth tug over a longer period of time. Healing is the way you accomplish that, the way the characters come back from the brink of defeat and outlast their foes.

If each combat goes fast, and is OK with one side dominating and quickly ending it, in-combat healing becomes de-emphasized, making it easier to exist without a healbot, as long as you can recover some HP in between encounters (which could also be overnight in a short-rests-as-nightly/long-rests-as-weekly model).

I speak from experience as a DM when I say that a party with three strikers and a high damage controller (Hunter) is more than viable. As are other parties with no leaders.

I speak from experience as a DM and a player when I say that a party that doesn't have a leader suffers dearly for that fact.

But since anecdotal evidence isn't, I can point to 4e's idea that a balanced party is 5 characters, one from each role +1 as bit of non-anecdotal evidence some dedicated healer was an assumed part of the game's design.

Making a game where healers are unnecessary means making a game where the Leader role is entirely optional, too. More so than it was in 4e, given its assumption. Since 5e seems to be going in a role-less direction, it's a pretty good indication that they're keeping this in mind.

And I think quick combats + short rests = a pretty good solution. A problem does come in getting the "right amount" of healing from a short rest, and making sure the rest takes up the "right amount" of time and effort to accomplish what they mechanically accomplish, but that's not an entirely impossible dial to set. Just gotta make sure to set it by default to somewhere comfortably in the middle.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What if the game was structured around parties not needing a healer? What if standard play involved more caution regarding getting into fights, and more caution about not getting hurt?

Well, it "wouldn't be D&D," obviously. Seriously, though, a /lot/ of games have made combat riskier and/or not provided practical/easy healing mechanics. Those games of course play very differently from D&D. D&D has at times tended toward the paranoid and un-heroic, and 2e/3e/4e all moved away from that, and games that make combat a poor last choice, tend that way, as well. They punish action and heroism - which is very realistic, of course, or heroism wouldn't be rare and heroic IRL.