D&D 5E On Healing and Broccoli

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Making all clerics healers isn't a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.

Don't you mean making all priests healers isn't a good thing? Healing is pretty central to the cleric class. The other priests you're describing are much like invokers (except for some silly reason WotC decided that invokers aren't supposed to serve a single deity).

WotC needs some commonly available class to be the healer. If it's not the cleric, then what? The cleric is a much older class than the warlord, and probably even the bard (neither of whom have flavor text to backup the healing).

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm not sure I follow the distinction. And how is being brought back from the brink of death and back into the fight a mere 'convenience?'

In the context of a fight it's rarely effective to heal a downed character when you could be attacking the enemy that just felled him. Casting a cure spell without doing anything about the enemy is likely to just get both characters attacked. The best defense is a good offense.

In 3.5, combat healing is only an effective use of actions for characters optimized to do it under favorable circumstances. Going back to 3.0 and 2e, the old Heal spell is combat-effective, but that's a 6th level spell, out of reach for most characters. A CLW to prevent actual character death can be important, but is a relatively rare and sometimes metagame-y occurrence.

Conversely, out-of-combat healing represents a dump of healing spells and wands that can easily be accomplished by a majority of characters in the game, and 3e revised natural healing such that anyone could recover their full allotment of hit points without external aid in very time-efficient fashion. Healing is thus not a huge consideration in character creation, though in the 2e era it was moreso because natural healing was not so generous.

 

[Mattachine]

I just wish healing were divorced from divine casting. Just be done with it. Arcane magic can heal, too. White wizards and such.

That way, casters can be described by theme (serving a deity, studying magic), rather than by type of spell (healing, damage).

 

[I'm A Banana]

This thread is interesting.

It also plays into this idea I had over in the exploration thread that injury and HP damage might need to be separated out. More varied injuries will enable more varied healing, too.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I just wish healing were divorced from divine casting. Just be done with it. Arcane magic can heal, too. White wizards and such.

While I can see that in other RPG settings, that doesn't sit well for me in D&D.

I always saw Wizards as "magical scientists", figuring out the rules of magic in a slow & orderly fashion, handing down their discoveries down through the ages via tomes & scrolls...and apprentices. Like RW scientists, they may know a lot about the world, but they haven't figured out ALL of the mechanisms.

Divine casters, OTOH, get to cheat because the beings who created the cosmos- at least, as far as anyone has been able to divine*- know all the rules already, and aid their chosen followers with the keys to a couple of the rooms to the palace...as long as they are faithful.









* yes, I did that pun

 

[JamesonCourage]

I'm not sure I follow the distinction. And how is being brought back from the brink of death and back into the fight a mere 'convenience?'

Again, you said:

Given that the obvious alternative to healing is running out of hps and dying, I don't think 'obligatory' is out of line.

I said that you can rest to full HP. You can get their faster with other types of healing. Which is convenient, but not obligatory.

Yeah, healing in combat can save your life in combat from time to time (this depends greatly on edition... it was a lot more important in 4e than 3e, for example). But, will you eventually run out of HP and die without it? Not from my experience. The game dynamic changes, and you need to be more careful. It was in no way obligatory from my experience. As always, play what you like

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

More and more I support the idea of bringing back the bloodied condition at half hit points. If your not bloodied, healing is fast and easy. If you are, healing is slow and hard. This opens up some interesting possibilities.

Turn Undead/Channel Energy (class feature): As an at will action, a cleric can create a ten foot radius of positive energy around them. Any undead in this aura must make a wisdom save or flee. Any living creatures in this aura, and who are not bloodied, heal a number of hit points equal to their level each round they are within the radius. The cleric may concentrate to sustain this effect, and can perform other actions but can not cast spells.

Cure Wounds (spell): Can be prepared at any level, healing a number of dice depending on the level prepared. Can heal bloodied characters.

Non-Bloodied Healing Spells: A series of spells that heal any non-bloodied character to full, different only in their range and area of effect. If the healer can keep the party from becoming bloodied, then late in the fight, when the enemies themselves become bloodied, the cleric can drop area of effect healing without healing enemies. This makes healing more tactical.

Rejuvenation (spell): If the target is not bloodied, they roll a number of dice equal half their available hit dice every round. This does not consume their hit dice.

Healing Potion: If you are unbloodied, heal to full. Otherwise, gain your level in hit points.
​

The actual numbers are conceptual placeholders. But the concept is to make healing more of an interesting tactical game, give the cleric some cool tools, such as fireballs that heal unbloodied people, and yet reduce dependency on the cleric by letting people use some of those effects through potions. All of this withing removing the risk of actually taking injury and having to take time to heal.

Of course, this is sure to have flaws that need to be addressed. It's a starting point.

 

[Blackbrrd]

There are some advantages to in-combat and out of combat healing. 3e was for the most part out-of-combat healing (diregarding high level play with heal), while 4e very much so depended on in-combat healing.

The advantages of 3e's way of doing healing, with the healer having to choose between healing and being offensive is that fights could get pretty tense. Usually, the best tactic was to go on the offensive, soak the damage and heal up afterwards. If you started healing, it could quickly become a slippery slope as more and more resources were used defensively instead of offensively. Fights were typically over in 2-4 rounds.

The advantage of 4e healing was that you could turn fights around and keep it on the brink for several rounds. Fights usually took 5-7 rounds. This actually gave you time to see that the fight was going badly and let you retreat.

Personally I would like something balanced a bit in between, but I think it will be pretty hard to manage. I didn't really like the ping-pong feeling of characters going up and down in 4e combat. Going below 0hp should be scary.
[MENTION=61749]Jeff Carlsen[/MENTION] I do kinda like your idea, but instead of: "If your not bloodied, healing is fast and easy. If you are, healing is slow and hard." I think it would be interesting to have monsters that maybe put a condition on you that makes you hard to heal. Maybe from a crit, or by getting bloodied or some special attacks. And - I never want healing to be fast and easy. I want it to be useful - and then hard, but useful.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In the context of a fight it's rarely effective to heal a downed character when you could be attacking the enemy that just felled him. Casting a cure spell without doing anything about the enemy is likely to just get both characters attacked. The best defense is a good offense.

That might be true. If it's just the two of you, and you (the healer) have that good an offense. Or if you're (the healer) the last one to act before the monster goes again, and might drop it. And if the monster is certain to hit before the ally acts and certain to do more damage than you can heal. That's sounding more like the 'rarely,' to me though. :shrug: Then again, if your healer is consistently able to drop any given monster in any given round of any given fight, he just might be "CoDzilla." In which case, sure, stow the Cures and bring on the radioactive breath.

Conversely, out-of-combat healing represents a dump of healing spells and wands that can easily be accomplished by a majority of characters in the game,

Nod. Starting a combat at less than full hps was prettymuch a choice out of the lowest levels in 3e. In 1e, monster damage was low enough and healing resources few enough that you'd sometimes press on wounded, though it was a great way to get killed or put out of action for a week. ;( I got the impression that 4e healing surges were prettymuch there to replace the cheap WoCLW phenomenon with something that would serve the same purpose (full hps at the start of most fights), but remain a more balanced resource accross levels.

Whether you heal to preserve allies' action in-combat, or carry the fight yourself and wake them up when it's over, D&D magical healing is still commonplace (clerics, clerics-in-sticks, guzzling healing potions like gatorade), frequent, and not at all special.

and 3e revised natural healing such that anyone could recover their full allotment of hit points without external aid in very time-efficient fashion. Healing is thus not a huge consideration in character creation, though in the 2e era it was moreso because natural healing was not so generous.

I know 1e natural healing was extremely slow, and 3e hp/level/day healing was faster (though it oddly boiled down to large HD and CON bonuses making you take longer to heal), but still not so fast as recovering spells, casting them as Cures, and resting again. If the DM was at all guarding against the dreaded "5MWD," natural healing would be prohibitively slow, and the prep-cure-prep cycle would probably be a rarity, too. Monetized healing would be a must.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

@Jeff Carlsen I do kinda like your idea, but instead of: "If your not bloodied, healing is fast and easy. If you are, healing is slow and hard." I think it would be interesting to have monsters that maybe put a condition on you that makes you hard to heal. Maybe from a crit, or by getting bloodied or some special attacks. And - I never want healing to be fast and easy. I want it to be useful - and then hard, but useful.

Sure. I'm mostly with you. But many want a level of easy healing. They want to able to rest and heal up before the next fight. Myself, I want the opportunity for actual injuries. And we all want a simple to play game. This is a compromise. How would you respond to it as such?