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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6600508" data-attributes="member: 5834">It doesn't have to stack. It replaces. When at zero hit points, the five from the maximum hit points is gone. If you're using it to get people back up from zero, it works fine. Sure, saving a 1st level slot isn't bad.At lower level the cleric hides. As we get higher, the cleric has more hit points and can stay in melee range. Then again, all of this is dependent on the set up of the combat. In a recent combat the cleric helped carve a path through the hobgoblins. She cast spiritual weapon and started carving hobgoblins up with her rapier. Fairly impressive what she did. Clerics obviously don't always heal. The reality is we don't always do things one way. I imagine your (and every other) group is the same. It's a matter of assessing what needs to be done at a certain point in time that is most important.This really depends on level and resources. We were pinched in a battle today. Disciplined creatures will overrun your front line as the hobgoblins we fought did today. They wouldn't let us hold a choke point and they retreated to wait out magic. We had to assault and open our party up from both sides. I can understand your situation.Your party must be quite large to hold multiple tactical points. We can manage two at the most with five unless we're using a wall spell, then maybe three if we seal one off with a wall or similar impediment. Sounds like it. You would change the way you play in our games at higher level. At low level we get by with less combat healing. Tonight we didn't use any healing spells against a group of hobgoblins. We went all offense. Lower level encounters allow for less combat healing.Unless you're using a higher level spell slot. Then the healing gap is quite a bit worse. You seem to be using healing word at 1st level all the time using weeble-wobble heals. Our DM killed that tactic. Unless you do use it with higher level slots.This is definitely where our games differ. This is a style choice that definitely goes well beyond the rules.I will speak mostly for my own games when I am DM as my other buddies that DM do things differently. I design dragons specifically to be epic fights meaning they will last as in not die by the third round. If you have a party capable of outputting 500 points a round, you will fight a dragon with 5000 hit points. Dragons and other epic monsters will be designed to make you feel like you are fighting an extremely powerful epic creature that requires absolutely zero help to make you feel pain. I make sure players fear dragons in my campaigns. I don't care what the rules give a dragon, I care more what a dragon is supposed to be in a story. That being a creature more than capable of inspiring fear in a party without a single ally. You won't know how tough it is, how many hit points it has, or how long it will take to kill. But I'll have calculated all of it out before hand and given it appropriate defenses for a long, epic fight that will make you feel the fear of the unknown as well as the glorious relief of victory. For dragons in particular I don't violate this rule. They've always felt too weak in every version of D&D. In 5E a powerful ranged party or a martial party with flight can rip through their hit points using resources like Action Surge and Smite far too easily. They still haven't made dragons tough enough for my tastes, but their damage output is now good enough I don't have to alter it too much.I do the same thing with many encounters. Challenge is designed according to the party's capabilities, not the recommendations in the game books. This is probably the key difference that causes our play-styles and preferences to differ. We probably play very similarly in encounters that are run by the book because we go all offense when things are easy. The hard encounters are designed specifically to require smart and powerful healing or the party lowers their survival chances substantially. Sounds like your DM is stepping out of the rules box a bit. Good on him. At the moment I'm following the books to ensure I don't make things too tough, but once I'm comfortable I'll take the off the gloves again. I don't mind quick fights for most encounters, but epic fights should feel epic and frightening. A party killing something in three or four rounds (18 to 24 seconds) like an Ancient Dragon will never sit well with me. I won't have it in my games.</blockquote>

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