How do we account for healing (and related abilities) for "min-max" or "powergaming"?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The "underpowered party" and also in general discussions about "grind" make me wonder - how good is healing and related abilities like extra saves and condition removing/ignoring abilities regarding a characters or a party's power?

A lot is talked about stuff like Iron Armband of Powers, Bloodclaw (pre-errata) weapons or Staffs of Ruin. But we certainly also have discussions about abilities that grant healing and temporary hit points.

My general hypothesis wass that it doesn't really matter whether a party or character is build offensively or defensively - the overall power will probably stay the same. But more damage means shorter combats, and so it still seems preferable to focus on that. Some defensive abilities - specifically in regards to "condition negating" (saves, save rerolls, outright removal or immunity to conditions) are still relevant, as conditions can also make combat last longer by denying actions to the PCs.
That is a big change from the way it was in 3E - healing was great (and cheap) after combat, but during combat, the healing you could provide was very limited - only when Heal or Mass Heal became available, healing at a chance to keep up with the damage taken or dished out per round.


But: Is it true that both sides are "equal"? That it is equally valid to focus on healing and defensive abilities than on offensive abilities? Or is one side actually stronger and would allow beating more encounters or more difficult encounters?

I certainly know that the party that I DM is really good at healing thanks to its "Laser Cleric" and several abilities that grant regeneration or regeneration-like abilities. It seems almost impossible to keep them down. I wonder if alternative builds where they focused more on offense then defense would really be more effective?

How could we test? Might the "Monte Carlo" thread possibly show us this, once different "builds" are tested and compared? (If it indeed turns out that they are about equal, than I must say: Kudos to the designers, especially since the way the achieved it is not as transparent as other stuff they tried to balance!)

What are your experiences in this regard? Have you seen different parties in actions and seen them perform similar succesful in similar situation, despite different focusses?

 

[Stalker0]

I'm actually in the camp that thinks healing is extrememly strong in 4e, and in fact it may be one of the most overpowered builds you can do.

There are a lot of builds that can focus on healing, and make it where your party heals when the enemy attacks them. Clerics can heal their buddy from near death to near full in an instant several times a fight.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

It's certainly easy to fall into the trap of having so much low-bonus, surge-using heals that you easily survive a few encounters but then run out of surges prematurely.

But if the extra healing is surgeless, or in the form of "more HP per surge" rather than "more ways to use a surge", I think it adds a lot to any party.

One big benefit that isn't often mentioned is that most healing powers use only a minor action. That's actually a big reason I like leaders -- I can make a contribution even on a turn when I whiff with a big daily.

 

[Jack99]

As noted in your other thread, the cleric in my game often heals around 180 with a minor action (healing word). He has 3 of those per encounter, on top of a host of other heals. In a fight where he has most of his stuff available, he can heal well over 1000 hit points without breaking a sweat (guestimate, though faily conservative imo).

Those 1000+ hit points does give quite a bit of survivability, and in order to compensate for that, you would have to optimize your characters a lot damage-wise.

In short. I have no idea. But healing seems to make a much bigger difference at higher level. IME and all that jazz.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

My own experience seems to mirror what has been said in this thread - healing is powerful.

I've DMed a group (through lower heroic) with a laser cleric, taclord & chaladin (+a melee ranger & orbwizard), and basically nothing below ECL +4 even made the party sweat. That said, 4 encounters was generally their typical adventuring day, as the melee ranger would go through surges fast.

The group I play in (also through lower heroic) only has a Str cleric for healing (+a rogue, starlock & a shield fighter) typically sweats with an ECL +3, but is able to have longer days - though things are easier now that I've swapped my warlock for a sorcerror (and MC-ed to bard), we've gained an invoker and our cleric has more healing abilities thanks to more levels and divine power.

So I too am of the opinion that healing is really powerful in that it makes hard encounters easier, at the expense of having a shorter adventuring day (though, this is somewhat offset by powers that regenerate and to boosts to surge values).

That said, while I do think healing is powerful, its not more powerful in a way that IMHO makes the game more fun - rather, IMHO, it makes encounters less dramatic by reducing the tension by allowing pretty much any character to regain hitpoints whenever they want.

Additionally, its a wierd power curve - at lower difficulty levels, it likely has no effect, as it isn't needed. Then, as things get more difficult, healing becomes more powerful quite quickly. However, at a certain point the ability to heal doesn't make up for a decreased ability to "proactively heal" by killing stuff, and the power of healing drops off. My gut check is that the encounter difficulty level for a TPK on a high-healing party isn't that much greater than for a high-damage (and low healing) party, provided neither party has the ability to disengage (even they can, the high-healing party has a better chance to run away, as the healing gives them more time to realize how screwed they are, and a better chance of keeping members up after that.

On a related note, I've encouraged my party's taclord (MC wizard) to become a hybrid - gives him more of that wizard feeling that he wants, plus that's one more healing trigger per encounter that I don't have chew through.

 

[Skallgrim]

People have mentioned the "short on surges" issue, but I also think there are other variables that prevent Healing from being a overpowering option.

First, it is always possible to use high level but staggered encounters. This is to say, a level+3 or more encounter constructed not with high level monsters, but with many less powerful monsters, and staggered in waves. The encounter lasts much longer than many other encounters, and the 'encounter period' healing is suddenly much less available. In these encounters, good defenses, strong at-will attacks, and tactics can matter much more than healing availability.

Also, I really think that consistently making it possible for the party to plan on 4 encounter, or 5 encounter 'adventuring days' makes it possible to strategize and pool healing resources to make them much more effective. If that is your preferred style of play, go nuts, but it WILL make a heal-focused character more effective. They know how much healing they will have to use, and how many surges the party can use in each fight. It's much easier to plan for as a healer.

If you have some days with just a single encounter or two, and others where the party cannot rest for 5-7 encounters, and others where it is clearly not possible to be certain WHEN you will be able to rest, then a lot of healing does not seem as overwhelming.

If your party knows they can go "balls-to-the-wall" in four encounters, and heal up after each one, they can maximze their tactics for that eventuality. That doesn't make healing overpowered, as much as it makes it overpowered in those games.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Given that the most common healing triggers are "per encounter" (being the leader heals), and given there isn't usually much incentive to not heal when one can, I don't see how there being an expected adventuring day length affects the use of healing surges - either you are damaged and you use them, or you aren't and you don't. I just don't see how a standard encounter length of day makes healers more effective.

Now for daily healing triggers, I can see that, but from my own experience those tend to be in the distinct minority and saved for when they are desperately needed, so its not like a longer day would make the party waste these - in either case they would be used when they need to be used.

After all, its not like a party that doesn't know if another wave of monsters is coming in are going to say "Don't heal Jonny - we might need that healing" - indeed, there is more incentive to heal him now if monster might be coming, as he's more likely to end up dead if you don't.

 

[Destil]

One thing about healing is that there's a lot of support in the game for it. I bet you could easily outfit a cleric with more items/feats that boost healing than any other single aspect of the game... usually these obscene healing builds I see combine 5-6 magic items and 3-4 feats which each give a small amount of extra healing for really big numbers.

This, of course, makes spells that heal in pulses like concreted ground really strong.

 

[eamon]

While I think healing is extremely powerful, I wouldn't use the word overpowered.

There are several reasons why its power doesn't cause issues:

• It's a really a party buff. A lot of balance issues surround keeping various members of the party somewhat balanced. Healing may be crucial, but it's also firmly relegated to being a supporting feature.
• It gives the party another shot at success, but it doesn't directly contribute to success: if something's really hard to beat, healing won't be your ticket; you'll need some way of generating damage and particularly attack bonuses. It's a swinginess buffer.
• It stacks poorly. The first few minor action heals available make a huge difference. Having a bit more healing than one leader can by default provide matters. But, as you get more, well, you'll be able to take trickier encounters more reliably, but you'll need ever more healing to compensate when compared to just having an extra +1 to hit. Surgeless healing tends to be low in amount per round, so it's not a true replacement.
• Right now, it's very hard to keep up with monster damage - despite that not being high - with healing. Unless you've got some shtik (say a hospitaler who's mark constantly triggers or damage resistance), even multiple leaders will be hard pressed to compensate for incoming damage. Your best bet isn't to constantly heal (it doesn't work well enough for that), but to mitigate particularly critical issues. Since most healing is per-encounter, that means that you'll burn through these high-healing rounds very quickly, and need to use the time that buys to get a head start.

Healing becomes problematic when it's essentially at will and significant enough to seriously dent focused fire. Say, a pre-errata battle-ragers THP buffer, high damage resistance, or a hospitaler's blessing (if you could somehow manage to extend it to many foes and force them to actually trigger it). That kind of healing really negates attacks almost entirely, and that really poses issues because it can enable you to deal with entirely new kinds of threats.

So, three factors contribute when "healing" becomes problematic: it's at-will (or more frequent than per encounter, anyhow), it's reactive to incoming attacks and doesn't have an action cost (so focused fire won't help), and it's reliable.

By contrast, per-encounter stuff with an action cost that's not reactive to incoming damage is very unlikely to cause imbalances. Hospitaler's blessing is unreliable (and limited to one opponent), but probably comes closest to being problematic, certainly against solos.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Given that the most common healing triggers are "per encounter" (being the leader heals), and given there isn't usually much incentive to not heal when one can, I don't see how there being an expected adventuring day length affects the use of healing surges - either you are damaged and you use them, or you aren't and you don't. I just don't see how a standard encounter length of day makes healers more effective.

Now for daily healing triggers, I can see that, but from my own experience those tend to be in the distinct minority and saved for when they are desperately needed, so its not like a longer day would make the party waste these - in either case they would be used when they need to be used.

After all, its not like a party that doesn't know if another wave of monsters is coming in are going to say "Don't heal Jonny - we might need that healing" - indeed, there is more incentive to heal him now if monster might be coming, as he's more likely to end up dead if you don't.

What you're not factoring in is the opportunity cost of those healing powers. I agree, there's no reason to not use a healing power when it is needed, but sometimes what you need is damage output, not healing.

Consider a sort of "reductio ad absurdum" argument about healing. A party which has infinite healing and no damage output can win what? Nothing. In effect their healing capacity is valueless. The contrary situation, a party that can deliver infinite damage output and has no healing at all is obviously going to be able to win fights. Neither extreme is optimum, but it clearly illustrates what eamon is saying, healing is essentially a purely support function.

Fundamentally healing contributes to action economy. When a healing power shifts the action economy in favor of the party then it contributes to success. Any healing ability which doesn't do that is simply taking up resources that could be dedicated to winning.

What I've found is that up to the point where these abilities keep the party generally on its feet and free of serious debilitating conditions it increases success. Once you hit the point where its unlikely that party members will be down or disabled by a condition for an appreciable amount of time then piling on more healing capacity has a negative effect as it displaces the more primary function of reducing the enemy's action potential. Sooner or later you pile enough on that characters practically never go down, but fights also tend to go excessively long and you end up with the party drained of surges by the time they win. At that point the party is unable to proceed while the more balanced party wins quicker and can handle more fights.