Healing during a short rest with leader healing

[davethegame]

I think this question has now come up in every 4e game I've played:

When the characters take a short rest between combat and spend healing surges, leaders can use their healing powers to help, right? As long as the PCs have enough time to, say, use Healing Word twice, wait 5 minutes, use it twice, repeat until healed, they will, right?

How are people handling this in your games? I had a particularly difficult combat in my last game where everyone was low on HP, but there was still more of a dungeon to explore so they knew they needed to heal up. It would have taken too long to roll all those d6s (7 person party) so I just said everyone could use their healing surges plus the average result of healing word.

Just curious how everyone is handling this, since it seems like an odd quirk of the healing surge system that comes up all the time.

 

[shadowguidex]

I'm ruling that the cleric can use whatever healing words are remaining from the previous encounter, and afterwards he must also rest and cannot continue to utilize this. 4E has gone out of its way to eliminate ridiculous over-inflation of this sort of bookkeeping. It annoyed me on the very first session, and I decided that I'm gonna eliminate it - only the original 2 healing words from the encounter can be used.

 

[davethegame]

I'm ruling that the cleric can use whatever healing words are remaining from the previous encounter, and afterwards he must also rest and cannot continue to utilize this. 4E has gone out of its way to eliminate ridiculous over-inflation of this sort of bookkeeping. It annoyed me on the very first session, and I decided that I'm gonna eliminate it - only the original 2 healing words from the encounter can be used.

Cool, that's basically what I'm considering too, though I wonder if the Cleric and Warlord will be unhappy. (And I'll probably be asked why the power only works in combat, effectively.) I might consider giving them a static bonus to all allies' healing surges as a class feature.

The book-keeping is definitely what I want to toss.

 

[erik_the_guy]

I'm gonna have to disagree with you guys on the healing word thing. I don't find it a balance issue to use it in between encounters (since it still uses a healing surge). The idea is that a party with a healer recovers better between combats. I do like the idea of just using a static bonus. That's pretty much what you were doing when you told your party to use the average healing bonus from healing word.

The cleric utters a hymn of praise as you bandage your wounds, and the pains of the last encounter seem to dim away quicker than usual.

Remember that allowing the party to increase their healing abilities between encounters encourages them to continue adventuring that day, rather than taking an extended rest. I think this is a good thing. The average healing word bonus I believe is around 5 or 6 points at the heroic tier (d6 and charisma I believe). This is good for defenders and great for spell casters. I think it is balanced and helps make the healer feel useful.

 

[kouk]

I think it's fine to allow the healing powers every 5 minutes.

It makes sense that a Cleric or Warlord can help heal even outside of a combat. You don't want the players trying to start fights with common rats just so they can heal themselves using the class abilities provided.

The more healing they get out of each surge, the more adventuring they can get done in a day.

I haven't had problems with a Cleric rolling multiple times, but if it is an issue then I agree to go with average. Average Healing Word for a Cleric would be 3 (average of the d6) at early levels plus whatever his Wisdom modifier is because of Healer's Lore. Expand from there.

 

[Foxen]

This past weekend out party got into a big fight over this...after an encounter with sewer rat swarms, my pally dropped and was seriously wounded from the encounter. I wanted more serious healing from our cleric and was willing to wait TEN minutes (five for the cleric to rest and regain his encounter powers which meant two Healing Word's boosted with Healer's Lore (which makes a HUGE difference)... our dwarven fighter disagreed and grumbled that we were waiting ten minutes (not to mention that the cleric was HIS fricking pocket cleric while my pally was her own healer and limited to three rather weaker lay on hands).

Ok, mechanically I saved a single healing surge...which "might" have mattered if we had more encounters or what not. But on the roleplaying end, my pally prefered to get additional blessings and healing from our cleric as she would rather save her strength for the dangers that lay ahead.

I don't think our GM minded, but one player was stubborn and didn't want to wait for additional rest...five minutes, seriously.

Fox

 

[keterys]

The tactic lets you save a small number of healing surges at the risk of being attacked in a more dangerous state.

For example, let's say you have 3 injured people after combat:

A - 22 / 40
B - 14 / 30
C - 5 / 30

So you rest 5 minutes and spend 2 healing surges at 1d6 + 4 bonus - let's say on the two lowest hp guys:

A - 22 / 40
B - 28 / 30
C - 20 / 30

Now they go to rest again, but a patrol discovers the party and attacks. Not only is the party still down quite a number of hit points, but they're also down their two healing words. This could have been avoided by just spending the healing surges.

 

[the Jester]

Letting the leaders use their Healing Words during short rests encourages the party to keep going on their adventures sooner. I'm all for it.

 

[Fkewl]

As DM, if more than 2 rests are needed, i would check for random encounters barging in on their rest...

 

[keterys]

Letting the leaders use their Healing Words during short rests encourages the party to keep going on their adventures sooner. I'm all for it.

This doesn't follow - it takes more game time to resolve using healing words as part of short rests, manually rolling for people's health, tracking number required, etc.

People will keep going sooner if they just use up any left at the end of the encounter then rest marking off the proper number.

Personally, I wish that leaders just provided a static bonus to healing surges during rest and the words didn't enter into it at all somehow.