D&D 5E (2014) Excluding Healing Spirit, is 5e Healing too weak?

[Azzy]

Not in my experience.

 

[dave2008]

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

No idea really, my group plays without a cleric or a paladin. One group has a druid, but that is it. If you don't have easy healing you just play differently. 5e works fine, for us, without a dedicate magic healer.

 

[Zardnaar]

No idea really, my group plays without a cleric or a paladin. One group has a druid, but that is it. If you don't have easy healing you just play differently. 5e works fine, for us, without a dedicate magic healer.

Might be part of the problem when you do get a dedicated healer it this spell.

It's just so much better than the other healing spells.

 

[Retreater]

What about the way combats and classes are, well, 'tuned?'

Classes have a lot of resources that could be used in a single combat, if it were to go long. BA means numbers tell heavily. Encounter guidelines (& class balance, incidentally) are designed around long, 6-8 encounter days. The result: any challenge is likely only felt on the final encounters of a given day, previous encounters seem 'easy' (even if you're hoarding resources for use later, because you know they're there), and, if the day is too short, all the encounters seem easy. Lead with a hard enough encounter to feel really challenging and resources will be unloaded on it, leaving the party tapped out to the point they'll want to recharge.

Balancing around the 'day' seems to be a significant part of the issue.

True, that might've been the original idea, but "6-8 Encounters per day" is impractical and unrealistic. You can't get through that many fights in a session, maybe 3-4 if you do little roleplaying and exploration. Then you have to remember and keep track of all spent resources from session-to-session (in my groups' case, a month's wait or more). And if you're doing anything besides a dungeon crawl, it's not realistic that parties will face that many fights in an actual adventuring day. You'll get a couple rolls on a random encounter chart in a wilderness trek - so maybe 1-2 fights. You'll get 1 fight maximum if you're in a city.

I think the better (more realistic) way to have scaled D&D's resources is against a 2 encounter day.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I have brought up my concerns with healing spirit to my party before, and their universal response has been "its the only good healing spell in the game, all other healing is just way too weak".

I think a lot of players are overestimating the power of healing spirit, especially if you take the strict reading that it can't heal unconscious or paralysed creatures without the use of the caster's bonus action (and also disallowing anyone else to get healing for a round).

It is also a concentration spell, which I wonder if people are disregarding. A ranger casting this has to give up hunter's mark. A druid casting it has to end barkskin or enhance ability. If a character is using it in a combat then they won't be using hold person or heat metal or conjure animals.

Out of combat it can get everyone in the party almost up to full HP. So what? So can a pile of healing potions.

 

[Tony Vargas]

True, that might've been the original idea, but "6-8 Encounters per day" is impractical and unrealistic.

True, and, really, it's kinda by design intent.

5e had to get back to familiar class and (especially) spell progressions, that was clearly non-negotiable, so the 5e design greatly increased daily spells, from 1, at first, to 4 at 20th, to 2 at first, 9 by 5th and 16 by 11th, topping out 22. To even bring that close to a comparable limitation, then, they really needed to have much longer days as the game progressed, maybe something like 1-3 encounters at 1st level, 7-12 at 5th, 13-18 at 11th, and topping out at 20-25 encounters/day. But, y'know, sweat spots and all, they settled on 6-8. It makes the game a bit deadly at 1st level, decent starting around 3rd, "too easy" sometime thereafter, depending on the group, and non-functional at very high level.
Which evokes the classic game as it existed from it's earliest beginnings through 3.5, which was, also, very much the whole point of 5e.

You can't get through that many fights in a session, maybe 3-4 if you do little roleplaying and exploration. Then you have to remember and keep track of all spent resources from session-to-session (in my groups' case, a month's wait or more). And if you're doing anything besides a dungeon crawl, it's not realistic that parties will face that many fights in an actual adventuring day. You'll get a couple rolls on a random encounter chart in a wilderness trek - so maybe 1-2 fights. You'll get 1 fight maximum if you're in a city.

I think the better (more realistic) way to have scaled D&D's resources is against a 2 encounter day.

Tracking resource use across sessions doesn't strike me as impractical, but I suppose anything could be too much trouble for some groups, and you & yours may routinely do something I find too much of a hassle, as well. ::
But, the expected 'day' does strain credulity under many circumstances. I like to kludge it by simply disallowing rests - on various pretexts to match the situation - to fit the pacing to the story.

But, whatever the reason for not sufficiently stressing the party's resources, it does explain why the game feels too easy. Because, the way you're playing it, it is.

One solution is to re-balance it around encounters. It's not a complicated undertaking, but it's extensive.

For every long-rest-recharge resource, divide the number of uses by 8, round accordingly (so 1-4 uses you don't get it; 5-12 you get 1/encounter, etc - you can group slots together to get 5+, you have to decide whether you go with lowest or highest slot in the group, I'd say lowest, to be safe), for short-rest recharge, divide by 2.

Remove HD and restore all hps between encounters.

 

[Retreater]

I've tried a method of "you get a rest when I say you get a rest," usually when it was story-appropriate and after 3-5ish encounters (this was recent, but we were playing 4e). The players revolted. "But this is a daily power - and it's a new day." "But we slept overnight, so it counts as a long rest." "How can I know how to pace myself if I don't know when I'll be able to rest?"
So it seems like the only thing one can do is to delay getting the powers back or to make encounters challenging enough to drain the equivalent resources of 2-3 encounters.
It's odd that more people aren't experiencing issues with this (or they aren't talking about it). The other DMs who have DMed for me seem to be okay with one encounter per day, going nova, and not challenging their parties at all.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've tried a method of "you get a rest when I say you get a rest," usually when it was story-appropriate and after 3-5ish encounters (this was recent, but we were playing 4e). The players revolted. "But this is a daily power - and it's a new day." "But we slept overnight, so it counts as a long rest." "How can I know how to pace myself if I don't know when I'll be able to rest?"
So it seems like the only thing one can do is to delay getting the powers back or to make encounters challenging enough to drain the equivalent resources of 2-3 encounters.
It's odd that more people aren't experiencing issues with this (or they aren't talking about it). The other DMs who have DMed for me seem to be okay with one encounter per day, going nova, and not challenging their parties at all.

I've noticed this with new players. By new I mean late 3E onwards and new to 5E.

I'll set week 1st encounter monk drops 4/6 ki points wants a short rest straight away.

Well wave 2 is incoming, next week will be all combat this week was 1 combat.

 

[Stormonu]

1E/2E was too little and made it unfun to play Clerics as that's all they did. 3E had too much healing magic. I feel like 5E has it just right.

Or as I find myself telling my wife (who is playing a Paladin) - if you kill the creatures first (with a smite), you won't need to save your spell slots for healing.

 

[RobJN]

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

Obviously, your PCs have too many hit points.