Healing too powerful?

[Andre La Roche]

I find that it's quite balanced. While healing may restore parties to full health, well...that's what it's supposed to do. What I find key is the drain on resources that it presents. The cleric in my game rarely has any spell slots left over at the end of the day whenever the party faces a series of encounters, and even then scrapes to get by near the end of it all. The key is to make challenges so that the cleric will also be forced to use up spell slots that could later be converted to spontaneous curing.

 

[Crothian]

what would really be cool is if healing depended on who you wrorshiped. If you worshiped the same god as the cleric you';d get more healing then if you didn't.

 

[MonsterMash]

what would really be cool is if healing depended on who you wrorshiped. If you worshiped the same god as the cleric you';d get more healing then if you didn't.

Use something like a +2 circumstance modifier on the roll?
It would fit with the gods taking care of their own worshippers.

 

[Dr Simon]

Some random thoughts:

I've recently been running a Dragonlance campaign using the RuneQuest rules. Now, DL (at the start) has *no* magical healing until the healing goddess Mishakal is returned. RQ as a system is quite gritty - characters can be taken out with one good sword blow, theoretically. More often than not they will be injured in a limb and out out of action for about a week. Natural healing will heal a light injury in about a week, with two or more for anything worse.

It was a different experience. It didn't deter the players from combat much, but has seemed to have instilled three principles in them - 1) armour is your friend, 2) get the first strike and make it count, 3) be very careful with big monsters.

Second point:

In Monte Cooke's Arcana Unearthed, magical healing is slightly less common. Instead of CLW, the first level spell equivalent is Lesser Transfer Wounds, which takes a Full Round to cast, heals 1d10+CL but transfers half that to the caster as nonlethal damage. The next spell, Lesser Battle Healing, is a Standard Action casting but cures slightly less (1D6+CL, I think), but doesn't affect the caster. It's 3rd level.

On the other hand, *any* spellcaster can prepare these spells, further there are a few classes with class ability healing and a few feats that help. The flip-side of caster flexibility is that you don't have a dedicated Band Aid mage, so spell slots used to heal are spell slots unavailable for buffs 'n' blasting. It plays marginally differently to D&D, but not massively so.

Combined point - I've tried various systems with and without extensive magical healing, and I think (unless you want really grim like Call of Cthulhu) it's better to have some sort of unrealistic recovery time otherwise your characters spend a lot of time in hospital! (This, of course, is a boon in CoC because that's when the evil cultists come back to finish off the hapless investigator, or better still send a beasty from Beyond).

 

[Gez]

There's a spell for that in Magic of Faerûn. Faith Healing is a first level spells that acts as a maximized cure light wounds on your correligionaries, and has no effects at all on other people (so you convert it spontaneously into a standard CLW instead)...

 

[sfedi]

I find that it's quite balanced. While healing may restore parties to full health, well...that's what it's supposed to do. What I find key is the drain on resources that it presents. The cleric in my game rarely has any spell slots left over at the end of the day whenever the party faces a series of encounters, and even then scrapes to get by near the end of it all. The key is to make challenges so that the cleric will also be forced to use up spell slots that could later be converted to spontaneous curing.

Until the Cleric realizes that is much more convenient to use Wands of CLW to recover after combats...

 

[Ryltar]

I'm actually planning on using the VP/WP system without any clerical healing in my next homebrew. Not yet sure if alchemical (e.g. potions) aid will suffice ... lots of playtesting to do.

 

[swrushing]

The only thing I came up to nerfing magical healing is to drop all healing hit dice to 1d4s instead of 1d8s.

Note that Magical Healing is so powerful, that the Cleric's spontaneous ability is just to prevent Clerics to prepare only CLWs (which was the case in AD&D)

A number of d20 based fantasy worlds have healing not "restore lost hit points, but it converts lethal damage into non-lethal damage.

So a fight with 50 hit points of lethal damage hit with enough cures has 50 hit points of nonlethal.

since non-lethal recovers at the rate of your level in hp per hour instead of per day, this makes healing not a tactical thing going to keep you on your feet in a single fight a lot longer, but a "how soon beforte i can do it again" thing.

maybe using something like that would help you out?

 

[sfedi]

maybe using something like that would help you out?

I;m not sure nerfing healing is my way to go.
To do that, as other posters suggested, I should change the setting completely.
Instead, I'm trying to figure out how to handle it in-game.
As what consequences in the world should happen.

For example, Dragons should have a hefty arsenal of healing magic, although I'm nt sure how. Potions are extremely expensive (even for Dragons) and awkward (for a Dragon). I'm not sure they can use CLW Wands until they reach an age category in which they can cast clerical spells.

 

[Ace]

The problem with limiting magical healing is that it really slows down play

The games go from fight till we are low on resources, often 2 or 3 battles enough for an an evening -- to Fight till you hurt than run away and recoup.

It also makes field recovery a pain. A badly injured group in D&D may only need to rest 2 days in the field -- 1 to get back spells and cast em -- another for full recovery and its back to the game

Changing this means you get a lot more run away from the monster/dungeon/plot and rest for 2 weeks in a safe location -- not a good outcome