D&D 5E How has 5e solved the Wand of CLW problem?

[Sailor Moon]

I restricted the list of spells that you used for a wand. Healing and Raise Dead type of spells were not allowed.

 

[delericho]

If I ever run 3e again (unlikely), I'll be house ruling wands (and potions and scrolls) - instead of allowing 50 'free' castings of the spell, they'll instead allow the character to Spontaneously cast that spell.

(Scrolls will be the same, but single-use. Potions will be a 'free' casting, but will also have an expiry date - they'll last for one adventure before becoming unusable.)

 

[ExploderWizard]

Wanted to add that the 5e version is the Goodberry spell. At night the druid, ranger, or bard (magic secrets) can spend all unused spell slots casting Goodberry, every casting is 10 berries that each heal 1 h.p and the berries last 24 hours. Do this every day, the following day you can have a whole pouch full of berries to heal up after fights with.

For example the day before the adventuring party sets off on their next epic quest the Druid not having to cast any spells the previous day expends all his slots before laying down for the night on Goodberry. At 5th level this is 90 berries to use the following 24 hour period, if he mostly uses wild shape and say only uses half his spell slots we are talking another 40 berries for day 2 and so on.

I don't have my PHB handy, but can a single character benefit from more than one goodberry per day? I thought that was the limiting factor on that spell.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't have my PHB handy, but can a single character benefit from more than one goodberry per day? I thought that was the limiting factor on that spell.

As a druid who often casts Goodberry, I can confidently say there is no such limiting factor written in the spell description.

 

[MoonSong]

I'd never heard of this wand problem until these boards. Sounds super broken to me. I cant imagine many DMs permitting it.

This is easily solved as a player, each time I play healbot I become very protective of my niche, hoarding and dispossing of offending things that could replace me, and being a little bitchy if anybody ever buys a wand of CLW, good luck getting healed when you drop unconscious and surviving poisons or other conditions this is teamwork, you respect each other's job and show trust that I will do my job instead of attempting to replace me with a cheap toy. I guess it could happen if the cleric player didn't like "wasting slots healing" but I'm never that player.

 

[Inglorin]

As a druid who often casts Goodberry, I can confidently say there is no such limiting factor written in the spell description.

... as long as you don't mind getting fat. A full days nourishment with each berry: I don't need to check with my doctor for that [emoji4]

 

[The Crimson Binome]

My ideal solution is for the game to offer an optional rule or agreement for these campaigns - a rule you simply don't use when you have a "traditional" party (with a primary healer).

I'm really not a fan of rules that change in the presence of certain characters.

As a player, my primary goal is not dying, and I'm willing to play whichever role will contribute toward that goal. If nobody else wants to be a healer, then I can have a lot of fun with that. If playing that healer means everyone else gets weaker, because they don't have access to the optional rule, then that creates a huge conflict of interests.

 

[Ricochet]

One would think that easy access to healing would encourage the KITD play style, not encourage pussyfooting.

Well the kind of players who like being at full health aren't too happy to KITD.

Same with casters who worry about being down to half their spells for the day wanting to rest.

Takes time to convert such rational people into being chaos-inducing madmen, but it is definitely doable. Taking away Wands of Healing aids in the process.

 

[SteveC]

I'd say that 5E solved part of the CLW problem with the overnight healing, and has attempted to solve the rest of it with hit dice and short rests.

As far as the second part, I don't think it's really been dealt with since the short rests were shifted to an hour by default. There are many times when you can't take that hour of downtime, or your DM won't let you get away with it due to the organization of the dungeon and wandering monsters.

The issue we're really talking about here is pacing, where the course of the adventuring day has to allow for multiple encounters without the party simply getting wiped out. Pacing is a tough issue to get right, but when you get it right it can add a great deal of tension to the game, which makes things much more interesting to me.
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So, we're partially there I'd say... better than classic 3X, but not (in my opinion) nearly as effective as 4E.

 

[Staffan]

You could have... but many players felt it went against the philosophy of the game. The game was clearly designed to give access to them.

I'm fairly sure they were an unintended consequence of open-ended wands based on spells. If their use had been intended from the start, the 3e and 3.5e DMGs wouldn't have described attrition-based adventuring the way they did. Wands of cure light wounds changed the resources actually expended with an encounter from "hit points and spells" to just "spells" (spells including all limited-use special abilities - a druid using wild shape might not technically be casting a spell, but it counts).

Cure wound wands might get again highly sought after if they would function like wand of magic missile, except of course casting cure wounds.

Staff of Healing, rare item requiring attunement by a bard, cleric, or druid. 10 charges, recharges 1d6+4 per day, can cast cure wounds (1 charge/level up to 4), lesser restoration (2 charges), or mass cure wounds (5 charges).

This is limited by being Rare, recovering ~7 charges per day (so on average about 60 points of healing per day, or about twice that if you can get full use of a mass cure wounds) and requiring attunement.