Healing hands and devoted paladin - balance?

[UngeheuerLich]

Hi, when i built a paladin on the character builder i wondered why there are two feats that do nearly the same thing, but one of them gives a free healing surge to the paladin.

My reasoning:

devoted paladin only gives +cha if you use it on an ally.

healing hands gives +cha even if you use it on yourself.

But: healing hands also states that the touched ally regains extra hp, but has no clause: "if you use it on an ally,..."

So what is RAW and what is RAI?

From a balance standpoint, i would allow a paladin to give himself extra charsma hp when he heal himself...

 

[FireLance]

Well, there has been no official errata released for Healing Hands, but yes, Devoted Paladin would make Healing Hands obsolete if Healing Hands also affected allies only.

As a side note, the text of Healing Hands in the character sheet of the sample paladin for the 4E D&D Basic Game uses "target" instead of "ally", but this is not official errata either.

I would say that there is a good case for Healing Hands to heal additional hit points if the paladin uses lay on hand on himself, but this is something that each DM will have to decide for himself.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

yeah, i know...

but i thought i make it public, so that someone of the 4e staff can read it and put it on the errata list^^

edit: thanks for the hint @ sample paladin

 

[eamon]

Unless I'm mistaken, a paladin can take both - so neither makes the other obsolete; these are feats which do almost the same thing and if that's your focus, you'll take both.

Really, it's not exactly a big balance issue whether or not the paladin can get the bonus when targeting himself. There is a simplicity issue, however; as written, it's easy to miss the implicit exception of yourself that Devoted Paladin makes. If there were to be an errata, I'd prefer both feats to simply apply to all usages of lay on hands - or, alternatively, to call attention to the distinction via language such as "when you use lay on hand on a target other than yourself".

In any case, I don't think it's a big issue either way. It's a little weird they made two such very similar feats in the first place, but oh well...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

No it is not. It is like the second avenger feat, but on a less broken base...

I would like to see wisdom added instead of charisma for devoted paladin. Having two similar feats and one is strictly better than the other sounds wrong to me. At least the broken avenger feat has higher prerequisites.

A better more obvious wording would be appreciated. And maybe a wis requirement of 13 for the devoted paladin feat (this would usually be not that hard to fullfill, but it makes 13 wisdom better than 8 wisdom for such a paladin, and maybe the resulting lower constitution will be remedied by the extra healing surge)

 

[DracoSuave]

Or maybe Healing Hands is a terrible feat so they made a new feat to replace it. Maybe it's better on -purpose-.

 

[Destil]

I'd rather have seen healing hands give an extra daily use of LoH. There would be some choice there, including some nice incentive to take both.

 

[FireLance]

Or maybe Healing Hands is a terrible feat so they made a new feat to replace it. Maybe it's better on -purpose-.

If that was the case they could have just issued errata.

 

[Jhaelen]

Unless I'm mistaken, a paladin can take both - so neither makes the other obsolete; these are feats which do almost the same thing and if that's your focus, you'll take both.

This was my conclusion as well.

 

[DracoSuave]

If that was the case they could have just issued errata.

Unless they don't mind the redundancy so a paladin can take both which isn't actually all that bad.

Also, this isn't an MMO. Expecting that level of attention to balancing feats out when it's more economic just to release another feat is... unrealistic at best.

They aren't afraid of obsoleting past feats. Melee Training?