D&D 5E How much healing, how much mitigation for a warlord?

[mellored]

For a hypothetical 5e warlord.

What % of a warlord's support should come from healing (the creature regains X hit points)
and what % should come from mitigation ("When an ally is hit by an attack, you can use your reaction to reduce the damage by 1dX. If this reduces the attack to 0, it is a miss." , THP, proactive bonus, or other thing).

With some variation from sub-classes and options.

 

[Bawylie]

To me these are functionally equivalent, so I don't care.

 

[mellored]

To me these are functionally equivalent, so I don't care.

Then you would be fine if it was 100% mitigation? No healing?

Because no-healing would solve a major hurdle.

 

[Ainulindalion]

100% mitigation and no healing would be really difficult to say "you can replace your cleric (bard, druid, paladin, ranger) with this", which I always felt was the best part of a warlord.

 

[Bawylie]

I would be fine with 100% mitigation in-combat. Out of combat, something like the bard's song of rest would be appropriate.

I'd be fine with 100% mitigation Particularly if one such mitigation could prevent an ally from dropping to zero.

Healing damage, preventing damage, in combat, are functional equivalents. But to go 100% either way, it would have to be worth it.

Like, if we're going mitigation, it has to be ... Not lame. You know? Reduce by 1d6 is not what I'm looking for.

 

[Tony Vargas]

First of all, Warlords don't literally heal, and 5e's jargon isn't so precise as 4e's, where 'healing' surge was jargon.

They should restore hps.

The ratio between restoring hps and mitigating damage shouldn't be fixed.

The Warlord should have some flexibility in how it helps manage the party's hps & HD resources.


Mitigation, though, is generally inferior to restoration of hps. Plop a damage-mitigation effect on someone, and if no enemy tries to do damage to them, while someone else gets beaten down, it's wasted. AFAIK, there's no 'mitigation' effect that brings a fallen ally back from zero, and none that prevent dropping to zero with the same efficiency as merely healing from zero.

For instance, if you have some cute reaction to mitigate damage, and you're trying to save Boromir, Lurtz skewers him with a third or fourth arrow, and drops him to 0, you use your action to intervene and negate the hit, Lurtz shoots him again and he dies.
That helped.

Sure, once in a while it might work, but must as likely it'll just make the poor ally draw more attacks, and he'll need to be brought up from 0, anyway.

 

[Bawylie]

First of all, Warlords don't literally heal, and 5e's jargon isn't so precise as 4e's, where 'healing' surge was jargon.

They should restore hps.

The ratio between restoring hps and mitigating damage shouldn't be fixed.

The Warlord should have some flexibility in how it helps manage the party's hps & HD resources.


Mitigation, though, is generally inferior to restoration of hps. Plop a damage-mitigation effect on someone, and if no enemy tries to do damage to them, while someone else gets beaten down, it's wasted. AFAIK, there's no 'mitigation' effect that brings a fallen ally back from zero, and none that prevent dropping to zero with the same efficiency as merely healing from zero. For instance, if you have some cute reaction to mitigate damage, and you're trying to save Boromir, Lurtz skewers him with a third or fourth arrow, and drops him to 0, you use your action to intervene and negate the hit, Lurtz shoots him again and he dies. That helped. Sure, once in a while it might work, but must as likely it'll just make the poor ally draw more attacks, and he'll need to be brought up from 0, anyway.

Nonsense.

Prevent X damage = heal X damage.
Prevent zero HP is almost equal to heal from zero HP, depending on how much HP remains after all is said and done.

What's more, after Boromir gets back up from zero, what stops Lurtz skewering him again after anyway? C'mon now.

These are functionally equivalent.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Nonsense.

Prevent X damage = heal X damage.
Prevent zero HP is almost equal to heal from zero HP, depending on how much HP remains after all is said and done.

What's more, after Boromir gets back up from zero, what stops Lurtz skewering him again after anyway? C'mon now.

These are functionally equivalent.

That depends how it is done.

Prevent X damage = heal X damage if and only if you are clairvoyant enough to put it in the right place at the right time.

If I give the party fighter 20 temp hit points and he doesn't tak a single hit of damage because the monsters attack someone else that's precisely nothing mitigated (assuming the temps are temporary). Meaning it's not worth a single point of healing.

If I give the party fighter 20 temp hit points, the fighter takes 30 damage, and the wizard takes 20, dropping the wizard, yes I prevented 20 damage. But we still had a character drop which healing would have prevented. Both these happen because I can't predict who the monsters will attack or how the dice will roll - but I can get the healing in the right place because I can know who the monsters did attack and how the dice did roll.

Therefore all else being equal prevention is a whole lot less efficient than healing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Prevent X damage = heal X damage.

Not when being dropped comes into the picture, because of 5e heal-from-0. And not if your damage mitigation must be applied in advance (because you could mitigate damage for someone who wouldn't have taken any, anyway).

Prevent zero HP is almost equal to heal from zero HP, depending on how much HP remains after all is said and done.

If it outrights negates the damage that would have dropped the target to 0, maybe, but...

What's more, after Boromir gets back up from zero, what stops Lurtz skewering him again after anyway? C'mon now. These are functionally equivalent.

Most DMs have enemies move on from dropped PCs, if you mitigate the damage that would drop a PC, any remaining multi-attack or remaining monsters are going to keep attacking him. So he's very likely dropping, anyway, and, if you're 100% mitigation, you can't help him. (Though, you've mitigated damage on whomever would have been attacked instead, FWIW - and in a game with HD, that's possibly not much, since spreading the hurt around isn't such a bad thing).

Now, if monsters are just determinedly charactercidal, they'll keep chopping at the dropped one until he's 100% dead, and mitigation becomes a bit better, since 'healing' from 0 will be rare (and raising common) - but I'm guessing that's unusual.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Double