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Halflings are the 7th most popular 5e race
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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9025264" data-attributes="member: 6877472"><p>Given how anemic healing is compared to incoming monster damage, as annoying as the trend is, it's pretty easy to see why it can happen.</p><p></p><p>Cure Wounds is a hard spell to use, since you have to be in melee range of the target to cast it. So unless everyone stays relatively close together, it might not even be possible to tag someone with it. But let's look at a fairly typical scenario.</p><p></p><p>In a game I'm playing at the moment, we have a level 4 Ranger with a 15 Constitution. Let's say he has 39 hit points. He's fighting a CR 5 Bulette which can hit for 4d12+4 piercing damage. An average hit brings him to 9 hit points.</p><p></p><p>The level 4 (non-Life) Cleric can rush up to heal him with an upcast Cure Wounds for 2d8+4. The average result of this is 13, bringing our Ranger to 22. The Bulette attacks and if it hits, he goes to 0.</p><p></p><p>Or he could attempt to Withdraw or Dodge instead of attacking, and the Bulette can attack the Cleric, who has, say, 34 hit points and is now at 4. Or he could use his standard action to drink a potion and get 7 hit points, putting him at 29...an average Bullette hit puts him to 0.</p><p></p><p>The other way of doing things is you wait for the Ranger to hit 0, which takes 2 turns for the Bulette to do since attacking him when he's down is 2 failed death saves; heal him before his turn comes up and he'll be fine.</p><p></p><p>Your spell is still only giving him 13 hit points instead of putting him at 22, but given the Bulette's damage, it's academic. At this point you might as well have your Cleric stay away from the Bulette and keep throwing level 1 Healing Words at the Ranger for 1d4+4 to bring him up to make his attacks on the thing while spamming Toll the Dead or something.</p><p></p><p>The Ranger could die outright to a lucky critical (max damage here is 100 points!), but there's nothing you can do about that; anyone in your party would instantly die to that, after all.</p><p></p><p>And the only real cost to being knocked down and healed to 0 is prone, which only takes half your movement to recover from, and then you can do anything you were going to do on your turn anyways.</p><p></p><p>And if you survive the fight, well, the Cleric may not have had to use up all their level 2 slots, and the Ranger has 4 Hit Dice to work with (though that means he's going to have to be extra cautious tomorrow).</p><p></p><p>And it's because out of combat healing is so plentiful that in combat healing is so terrible, apparently (I had a fun thread about this last year wondering why healing can't be better).</p><p></p><p>I hate that this is the paradigm, and that all the solutions people dream up for it is to further punish players for going to 0 hit points, like "gain a level of fatigue", etc.., when the real problem is, monsters deal a ton of damage and for most levels of play, nobody has the resources to do much about it.</p><p></p><p>Anyways, I apologize for the derail of the thread.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 9025264, member: 6877472"] Given how anemic healing is compared to incoming monster damage, as annoying as the trend is, it's pretty easy to see why it can happen. Cure Wounds is a hard spell to use, since you have to be in melee range of the target to cast it. So unless everyone stays relatively close together, it might not even be possible to tag someone with it. But let's look at a fairly typical scenario. In a game I'm playing at the moment, we have a level 4 Ranger with a 15 Constitution. Let's say he has 39 hit points. He's fighting a CR 5 Bulette which can hit for 4d12+4 piercing damage. An average hit brings him to 9 hit points. The level 4 (non-Life) Cleric can rush up to heal him with an upcast Cure Wounds for 2d8+4. The average result of this is 13, bringing our Ranger to 22. The Bulette attacks and if it hits, he goes to 0. Or he could attempt to Withdraw or Dodge instead of attacking, and the Bulette can attack the Cleric, who has, say, 34 hit points and is now at 4. Or he could use his standard action to drink a potion and get 7 hit points, putting him at 29...an average Bullette hit puts him to 0. The other way of doing things is you wait for the Ranger to hit 0, which takes 2 turns for the Bulette to do since attacking him when he's down is 2 failed death saves; heal him before his turn comes up and he'll be fine. Your spell is still only giving him 13 hit points instead of putting him at 22, but given the Bulette's damage, it's academic. At this point you might as well have your Cleric stay away from the Bulette and keep throwing level 1 Healing Words at the Ranger for 1d4+4 to bring him up to make his attacks on the thing while spamming Toll the Dead or something. The Ranger could die outright to a lucky critical (max damage here is 100 points!), but there's nothing you can do about that; anyone in your party would instantly die to that, after all. And the only real cost to being knocked down and healed to 0 is prone, which only takes half your movement to recover from, and then you can do anything you were going to do on your turn anyways. And if you survive the fight, well, the Cleric may not have had to use up all their level 2 slots, and the Ranger has 4 Hit Dice to work with (though that means he's going to have to be extra cautious tomorrow). And it's because out of combat healing is so plentiful that in combat healing is so terrible, apparently (I had a fun thread about this last year wondering why healing can't be better). I hate that this is the paradigm, and that all the solutions people dream up for it is to further punish players for going to 0 hit points, like "gain a level of fatigue", etc.., when the real problem is, monsters deal a ton of damage and for most levels of play, nobody has the resources to do much about it. Anyways, I apologize for the derail of the thread. [/QUOTE]
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