D&D 5E Excluding Healing Spirit, is 5e Healing too weak?

[Giltonio_Santos]

I think it is, but this is by design. Strong healing turns combats slower, and 5e aims for fast combats.

 

[NotAYakk]

The biggest downside for me, by far, was how they were tied to individual characters.

Play an assassin skulking in the shadows? Or a master bowman, picking off foes from afar? Or a spellcaster with crappy AC?

Too bad - the party's most valuable resource is healing surges, and if you don't step forward and accept your fair share of incoming damage, your healing surges would go unused, and you can't afford that kind of waste.

Uncoupling healing from surges, so that the fighter can drink every Healing Potion there is, with the Rogue, Ranger and Wizard drinking none, was among the best decisions 5E took.

It wasn't that "using healing surges was valueable", it was "small amounts of damage to you are free".

So is "fooling foes to run after you into the darkness" and wasting their turns. Or doing damage beyond engage range. Or having abilities that also nullify attacks on your allies.

The same is true in 5e -- your HD mean that you taking a bit of damage over a day is "free" as soon as there is a short rest.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think it is, but this is by design. Strong healing turns combats slower, and 5e aims for fast combats.

I mean, that's sorta true: powerful healing turns a TPK into a long slog, for instance.
And AD&D/3e/5e Cure..Wounds style healing that eats up an action that could be used for offense slows combat by that one action worth of offense.
But, 4e/5e Healing Word style healing could, if powerful enough, allow more challenging combats (harder-hitting monsters, sense of danger some players get from losing hps fast), without making them slower, so long as they don't also consume offensive resources and don't restrict the attacks you can make with your regular actions. Unfortunately, 5e's healing word is anemic, consumes slots that could be used for offense, and restricts your action to plinking with a single weapon attack or cantrip.

What 5e means by fast combats isn't TPKs (though that can certainly happen at 1st level), but what people keep complaining about as 'too easy' combats - that don't do much beyond very incremental attrition that'd add up to a challenge after 5 or so such combats....
….OK, that and taking versatility/choice away from melee types.

The biggest downside for me, by far, was how they were tied to individual characters.
- the party's most valuable resource is healing surges, and

On a very long adventuring day, surges could, in theory, become a valuable 'party resource.' And, an over-optimized fighter could (again, mostly in theory, I can say I've seen it happen once or twice in 10 years of weekly play) be too good at defending, and end up tapped out of surges while everyone else was more or less fine.

...but,...

- if you don't step forward and accept your fair share of incoming damage, your healing surges would go unused, and you can't afford that kind of waste.

As amusingly heroic as that may have been, there were powers, items, and a trivial 1st-level ritual, that let you share out surges with a little inefficiency, so it was largely a moot point. You could have everyone 'stepping up' now and then, if you liked the drama of that dynamic.... or not.

The main point of surges being an individual resource was that they were separate from attack powers - spell lots - of the support classes, so there was no issue with Band-Aid Clerics losing all their awesome to heal the party nor, conversely, CoDzillas, shirking their healing responsibilities to cast like wizards or self-buff into faux-fighters.

Play an assassin skulking in the shadows? Or a master bowman, picking off foes from afar? Or a spellcaster with crappy AC?
Too bad

Not that anyone had too crappy a given defense, but strikers & controllers had significantly lower hps than defenders, and fewer surges, as well, precisely because they didn't need them so much.
That's in contrast with playing a d10 HD fighter as a 'master bowman' who picks up foes from afar.


Uncoupling Healing from spell slots, was one of many solid improvements 4e made. 5e backed off from, but not completely, it at least left a couple of silo'd healing resources, in HD, Paladins' Lay on Hands, and the like. It helps, but it still added back the fraught choices - design, DM-side, and player-side - among using spell slots to keep allies fighting, vs tactical/strategic uses, vs abuse & dominating play.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Also magic healing was so cheap and plentiful the impatience to get back into the fray soon meant you adventure on a pace you no longer can sustain with mundane rest.

I mean, the wealth-by-level chart and the prices in the magic item table certainly conspired to suggest that healing should be cheap.

Coming at it from 2E, though, there was no way that magic item shops (or crafting) were going to show up anywhere near our campaigns. We just made sure to have a healer in the party, and that was more than sufficient to balance out the encounter guidelines.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The same is true in 5e -- your HD mean that you taking a bit of damage over a day is "free" as soon as there is a short rest.

A level 14 fighter with 140hp can take ~140hp worth of damage in a fight, spend no other resources, and still be back at full after a short rest. That isn't "a bit of damage"; that's enough damage to kill a young green dragon.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So what do people think? Are the other healing spells too weak in general?

From a narrative perspective, healing magic is beyond trivial in 5E. There's nothing that you can do with any amount of cure spells which can't be outdone with a long rest.

Fireball can incinerate a troll down to ashes. Cure Wounds can ... alleviate minor scratches? It's a joke.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah you can argue the 4e incarnation is a bit too much, but I think the mechanic in the abstract could easily have been adjusted for a more gritty version, like your own.

I just feel that the HDs in 5e just aren't as... involved in other aspect of the rules as healing surges were. Like, we got no way to lose them and there's no feat to improve them or anything. They're just there for one thing and that's it.

And if you multi class with a class that has different hit die it just gets to be a pain to track how many of each die you have. If you just get to track one quarter of your HP then your healing surge will average out if you go from a high HP dice class to a low HP dice class ya know?

I agree with all of this. I really wish they did more with Healing Surges

Woah, no. The number of surges was based on class, as few as 6, as many as 10 or so. Your CON mod added to the number of surges. Not your level, which added to your hps, and thereby surge value.

The 1/4 'or more' came from leader-role class's powers (significant - optimized could double your surge at high levels), or (much smaller bonuses) feats, racial perk, or item. So, about 1/4 for most purposes - particularly between-combat healing.

Was that it? I didn't play much 4e (one 2 year campaign, a failed campaign, and then a few month campaign. I was running the last two) so my memory is fuzzy and I was AFB.

Not at all, really. Surges were a hit-point-restoring resource, not hit points. A character with 3x the hit points would be a very different animal from a character with 8 surges. In any given combat, you could access 1 surge via Second Wind (a standard action, so not taken lightly), and the party's support 'leader role' character could trigger 2 or more, depending on level & build choices, in support of the whole party. So even a 1st combat of the day could be quite a challenge, even drop PCs, while still leaving them able to recover and be ready for the next challenge.

The main effect of surges was not 'more hps' but silo'ing hit point recovery as a daily resource from attack/defenses/utilities as daily resources, and limiting access to that resource, both per-encounter, and per day. It not only made classes with surge-triggers more interesting to play than the old (and new again) Band-aid Cleric without any risk of them turning into CoDzilla, it removed the kinds of systematic abuses of low-cost healing (wands/potions) we saw it 3e, as well.

One of the reasons the 5MWD wasn't the issue in 4e it was in other editions, 5e especially, and why 3-5 encounters/day was a pretty good target (though you could go much higher), vs 5e's needing to stick to 6-8 to remain at all functional in terms of both encounter & class balance.

Yes and sort of.

I definetly felt the difference you are talking about, the sorcerer I was running had mostly close bursts, and our Defender was scared of getting hit so they did ranged at-will attacks from the back line (yeah, for two years. It was really bad when he missed a session and we saw how he was supposed to be playing all along) and so I understand that there is a big difference in your HP vs "recovered potential". I died a lot.

But, we also rarely used more than 2 or 3 surges a day, and we got to Epic level, so we ended up having a lot of surges worth a lot of hp, and we were barely scratching the surface. It never felt like we were threatened because we couldn't get low enough on resources to be even close (except for me, but no one else seemed to be having any issues and some I don't think almost ever used surges)

And, it was the realization that you have to potentially get through all of that additional resources of healing that stuck with me. 4e characters just had so much effective health, it was insane to me at the time.

The biggest downside for me, by far, was how they were tied to individual characters.

Play an assassin skulking in the shadows? Or a master bowman, picking off foes from afar? Or a spellcaster with crappy AC?

Too bad - the party's most valuable resource is healing surges, and if you don't step forward and accept your fair share of incoming damage, your healing surges would go unused, and you can't afford that kind of waste.

Uncoupling healing from surges, so that the fighter can drink every Healing Potion there is, with the Rogue, Ranger and Wizard drinking none, was among the best decisions 5E took.

I can see that as well. Having some healing that comes from outside certainly allows for people to go longer.

 

[Undrave]

The biggest downside for me, by far, was how they were tied to individual characters.

Play an assassin skulking in the shadows? Or a master bowman, picking off foes from afar? Or a spellcaster with crappy AC?

Too bad - the party's most valuable resource is healing surges, and if you don't step forward and accept your fair share of incoming damage, your healing surges would go unused, and you can't afford that kind of waste.

Uncoupling healing from surges, so that the fighter can drink every Healing Potion there is, with the Rogue, Ranger and Wizard drinking none, was among the best decisions 5E took.

But Defenders had the most number of Healing Surges.

If I recall the Artificer had ways to shuffle Surges around.

 

[NotAYakk]

But Defenders had the most number of Healing Surges.

If I recall the Artificer had ways to shuffle Surges around.

So imagine your character concept was "in combat I hide, then at the right moment I pop out and kill, then hide again. Getting hit is something I don't do."

4e never successfully made that viable. Similarly, an archer who desperately runs away whenever someone gets close, is less effective than one that mixes up tactically with the battle.

The ranger archer build was more LotR legolas than a piece of artillery.

Baiting foes to go after you, then using your healing surges and "aha you came after me" powers, was the expected playstyle.

 

[CapnZapp]

It wasn't that "using healing surges was valueable", it was "small amounts of damage to you are free".

So is "fooling foes to run after you into the darkness" and wasting their turns. Or doing damage beyond engage range. Or having abilities that also nullify attacks on your allies.

The same is true in 5e -- your HD mean that you taking a bit of damage over a day is "free" as soon as there is a short rest.

I honestly have no idea what that means, and if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me. So I won't make a direct reply.

What I do know, however, is that my point was quite the opposite of "the same is true in 5e [as in 4e]". My point was that healing surges in 4E sucked, and that they don't in 5E.