D&D 5E Does “Whack-A-Mole” Healing really happen in games?

[Leatherhead]

You're approaching it from a weird angle. A better idea would be to buff healing, so it gives something more than "ok, you now can withstand whole one more attack, good luck"

I am going to disagree with this.

The amount of healing you would need to give out in order to make that a viable strategy would result in healing being practically mandatory (because you would need to up the Monster Damage to compensate for their reduced threats). Which isn't that fun for most people and leads to bad group dynamics where someone is regulated to the healer role despite their interests in the game.

 

[Dausuul]

You're approaching it from a weird angle. A better idea would be to buff healing, so it gives something more than "ok, you now can withstand whole one more attack, good luck"

This. Exactly.

As written, in-combat healing is a) bad strategy and b) not fun. Everyone else gets to kill monsters, shape the battlefield, manipulate enemies. You get to... pour water into a bucket with a hole in it. To add insult to injury--literally--the hole is usually bigger than your water jug.

I wonder what would happen if healing word were exempted from the bonus action casting rule (so you could cast another leveled spell on the same turn)?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's worth noting "a few seconds," depending on whether you're using the typical meaning of the term (more than 1 but less than ~10) is generally less than a combat round (6 seconds), and certainly no more than two. Taking 4 rounds before you're fully recovered would be 24 seconds, well over what most people would think of as "a few seconds."

 

[loverdrive]

The characters don’t know how many hit points they have nor do they know how much damage the hill giant does.

Except they do. HP and damage aren't just some numbers, they represent things inside game world -- and the characters certainly know that a burst of vitality that a healing spell can give to the fighter isn't going to be enough to help them withstand a mighty blow of a hill giant and keep fighting, but the same burst is going to send natural healing powers of the body already fighting for survival into overdrive and get the mofo back on his feet.

Any decision that’s not based purely in character is meta gaming and outlawed at my table.

Ok, here comes the thread derailment.

There are tons of things outside of characters knowledge that can and should be taken into account when making decisions. Characters don't know about the genre, the theme of the game, they don't know difference between their Want and Need -- so all the things one need in order to play an actually good game.

 

[loverdrive]

I am going to disagree with this.

The amount of healing you would need to give out in order to make that a viable strategy would result in healing being practically mandatory (because you would need to up the Monster Damage to compensate for their reduced threats). Which isn't that fun for most people and leads to bad group dynamics where someone is regulated to the healer role despite their interests in the game.

Yup, that's why I wouldn't do it. I understand the reasoning for whack-a-mole healing and I see no problem in it.

The amount of healing you would need to give out in order to make that a viable strategy would result in healing being practically mandatory (because you would need to up the Monster Damage to compensate for their reduced threats).

I don't really want to run the math, but I don't think monsters would need more damage to compensate -- that would just return us back to square one.

 

[Asisreo]

You're approaching it from a weird angle. A better idea would be to buff healing, so it gives something more than "ok, you now can withstand whole one more attack, good luck"

Healing is more powerful than players will realize because they focus on Cure Wounds and Healing Word. But those are 1st-level spells with 1st-level benefits.

The 2nd-level healing spell—Prayer of Healing—isn't fast at a 10min casting time, but if you cast it out of combat in the middle of the adventuring day, you can heal roughly 8d8+12 or 48 HP with the second level spell. Its very efficient and should give quite a bit of HP to withstand more than 1-2 attacks since it heal roughly 12 HP. Remember, this is level 3-4 not 6-7. A wizard only has about 17HP in total anyways.

Beacon of Hope is good. It takes concentration and clerics try to cling to Spirit Guardians like their life depends on it but they turn Cure Wounds and Healing Word as in-combat viable spells at second level. Cure Wounds now heals 20HP and Healing Word heals 12 when cast at second level. Very high healing and it also buffs Wisdom saves and death saves which is very useful in itself.

High-level Healing is broken. Regenerate lets a character yo-yo heal automatically and also heals a total of over 600HP accumulated over 10hp/min intervals.

Mase Heal needs no introduction as the best healing spells which can effectively double a team's HP, in a part of the game where the single set of group HP is more than enough already.

Also, healing is better because AC increases its effectiveness.

 

[Argyle King]

People probably do this strategy but they probably don't realize how ineffective and inefficient it is.

You really don't want to wait until a party member goes down, especially during certain initiative circumstances.

For example, if it goes monster, fighter, cleric and the monster knocks the fighter to 0, the fighter lost his entire turn and the cleric can spend his action to cast a cantrip or make the attack action at best. This is horrible action economy and the monster can easily knock the fighter out again next turn to reduce the party's action economy further.

If its monster, cleric, fighter and the monster takes out the fighter, its much more tolerable action economy but its still a less efficient than if the cleric just healed the fighter to close-to-full so subsequent rounds aren't spent casting cantrips and healing and spent putting better pressure on the monster.

I disagree.

You mention losing the fighter's turn.

If the monster is still threatening the location of the fighter, a cleric taking a turn to heal means losing the cleric's damage output (effectively losing a turn) while also failing to negate the threat. This means a possible net loss of 2 turns, rather than the fighter's 1 turn.

For similar reasons (if forced into a choice of one or the other,) modern combat troops are taught to negate/eliminate a threat rather than having a medic (for an example) run out to start triage on someone wounded by an enemy.

Dead enemies cease to have combat ability.

Edit: Additionally, there are other things to consider in the context of D&D.

Standing up a PC while they're still in danger means that they again become a target. Now, as a target close to 0, the PC is in danger of insta-death rules if hit and driven into the negatives.

Also, being that a healed PC becomes stabilized, the downside to waiting to heal is often less than the downside of the cleric spending several turns healing the ally.

Hypothetically, the DM could start to target the downed PC, but that still leads to an overall net benefit to the PCs because it means the enemy is effectively wasting a turn to hurt someone who can pop right back up after healing -meaning the enemy has 0 damage output against the rest of the party, while taking a round of damage from the party.

There may be cases in which standing up the downed PC is tactically better (such as healing the paladin so they can get up and do radiant damage to a foe weak to it). In those cases, healing the PC is the better option. However, in a vacuum (and absent specific circumstances which would indicate otherwise,) I would argue that it's better action economy and more tactically sound to mitigate the threat before turning to healing.

 

[Asisreo]

I disagree.

You mention losing the fighter's turn.

If the monster is still threatening the location of the fighter, a cleric taking a turn to heal means losing the cleric's damage output (effectively losing a turn) while also failing to negate the threat. This means a possible net loss of 2 turns, rather than the fighter's 1 turn.

For similar reasons (if forced into a choice of one or the other,) modern combat troops are taught to negate/eliminate a threat rather than having a medic (for an example) run out to start triage on someone wounded by an enemy.

Dead enemies cease to have combat ability.

Edit: Additionally, there are other things to consider in the context of D&D.

Standing up a PC while they're still in danger means that they again become a target. Now, as a target close to 0, the PC is in danger of insta-death rules if hit and driven into the negatives.

Also, being that a healed PC becomes stabilized, the downside to waiting to heal is often less than the downside of the cleric spending several turns healing the ally.

Hypothetically, the DM could start to target the downed PC, but that still leads to an overall net benefit to the PCs because it means the enemy is effectively wasting a turn to hurt someone who can pop right back up after healing -meaning the enemy has 0 damage output against the rest of the party, while taking a round of damage from the party.

There may be cases in which standing up the downed PC is tactically better (such as healing the paladin so they can get up and do radiant damage to a foe weak to it). In those cases, healing the PC is the better option. However, in a vacuum (and absent specific circumstances which would indicate otherwise,) I would argue that it's better action economy and more tactically sound to mitigate the threat before turning to healing.

Are you sure you disagree? Sounds like you agree with what I'm saying about Yo-yo healing being an inefficient tactic.

Because everything you said is correct and it furthers my point rather than disprove it.

 

[tetrasodium]

I disagree.

You mention losing the fighter's turn.

If the monster is still threatening the location of the fighter, a cleric taking a turn to heal means losing the cleric's damage output (effectively losing a turn) while also failing to negate the threat. This means a possible net loss of 2 turns, rather than the fighter's 1 turn.

For similar reasons (if forced into a choice of one or the other,) modern combat troops are taught to negate/eliminate a threat rather than having a medic (for an example) run out to start triage on someone wounded by an enemy.

Dead enemies cease to have combat ability.

Edit: Additionally, there are other things to consider in the context of D&D.

Standing up a PC while they're still in danger means that they again become a target. Now, as a target close to 0, the PC is in danger of insta-death rules if hit and driven into the negatives.

Also, being that a healed PC becomes stabilized, the downside to waiting to heal is often less than the downside of the cleric spending several turns healing the ally.

Hypothetically, the DM could start to target the downed PC, but that still leads to an overall net benefit to the PCs because it means the enemy is effectively wasting a turn to hurt someone who can pop right back up after healing -meaning the enemy has 0 damage output against the rest of the party, while taking a round of damage from the party.

There may be cases in which standing up the downed PC is tactically better (such as healing the paladin so they can get up and do radiant damage to a foe weak to it). In those cases, healing the PC is the better option. However, in a vacuum (and absent specific circumstances which would indicate otherwise,) I would argue that it's better action economy and more tactically sound to mitigate the threat before turning to healing.

Your off by quite a bit there. I'm not sure you looked at the healing word spell either as the mechanics of that spell don't cost the cleric their damage.

The only time it would cost the fighter 7 in your example is if the initiative order was monster>fighter>cleric... Luckily for the fighter healing word is limited to the spell lists of clerc druid bard & one alchemist archetype making it something that can only be cast by four popular classes with the ability to heal.

 

[Rune]

Hypothetically, the DM could start to target the downed PC, but that still leads to an overall net benefit to the PCs because it means the enemy is effectively wasting a turn to hurt someone who can pop right back up after healing -meaning the enemy has 0 damage output against the rest of the party, while taking a round of damage from the party.

That doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Attacking an unconscious PC from 5 ft away means two failed death saves on the spot. The vast majority of monsters have melee multiattacks. If the fallen PC can be targeted by an attacker, the other PCs can’t afford to forgo healing. And if they won’t get a chance to heal them in time, they can’t afford to let it get that far.

Permanently removing one PC from the field is always going to be good news for the enemy. If they have the intelligence or instincts to recognize it.