D&D 5E (2014) On the healing options in the 5e DMG

[MoonSong]

I have to admit that what you are describing is pretty alien to me, however. You must be glad for the new edition's option to only spend HD on a long rest.

Agreed.

Well, no need to be shy I'm fairly aware I'm quite quirky anyway so no surprise here, maybe I'm just a little weird for not always wanting to kill things and take their stuff. At least you can't say I'm inconsistent, with wanting a non blasty option for sorcerers and a sneak atackless rogue too for example.

 

[pemerton]

Well, no need to be shy I'm fairly aware I'm quite quirky anyway so no surprise here, maybe I'm just a little weird for not always wanting to kill things and take their stuff.

I think "not wanting to kill things and take their stuff" is completely orthogonal here. In any edition of D&D, non-combat resolution is not constrained by a tight action economy, and so whether healing is a "minor" action or a "standard" action has no bearing on its efficacy.

My main point of agreement with [MENTION=6779717]Eric V[/MENTION] is in respect of the "healing to death" - what you're actually describing is an inability to manage action surges (presumably due to inexperience). It seems to me to be similar to an AD&D player complaining that s/he was "healed to death" because the cleric spent all his/her Cure Light Wounds spells healing 1 hp or 2 hp injuries, and hence had none left when a character suffered a 10 hp injury and hence was dropped to negatives and dying.

As far as providing support in combat is concerned, I can only assume you weren't making robust use of the "standard action to trigger a saving throw" option, nor (presumably) did your GM put you in situations in which there were interesting things to do with your standard action while your friends beat up on things. (Despite there being plenty of GMing advice to this effect in the 4e DMGs.) Which actually connects to the other strand of discussion on this thread.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In any edition of D&D, non-combat resolution is not constrained by a tight action economy, and so whether healing is a "minor" action or a "standard" action has no bearing on its efficacy.

It's a matter of wanting to contribute during those situations, without needing to attack people to do so. From what I understand, this was more of a problem early into the edition, and more options opened up later on, but at least from the PHB, it felt distinctly non-healer-y to attack an enemy just because you wanted to grant temporary hit points to your ally.

 

[pemerton]

It's a matter of wanting to contribute during those situations, without needing to attack people to do so. From what I understand, this was more of a problem early into the edition, and more options opened up later on, but at least from the PHB, it felt distinctly non-healer-y to attack an enemy just because you wanted to grant temporary hit points to your ally.

In a 4e non-combat situation, temp hp don't have such a role to play (see the remarks in the DMG section on skill challenges, under the heading "why healing surges?" - in short, resolution isn't sufficiently compressed in time or mechanical detail to make it worth distinguishing between taking damage and spending a surge to recover that damage).

If, in a non-combat situation, the player of a 4e cleric/healer wants to help his/her friends avoid damage (ie avoid losing surges due to failed checks), s/he should be making Heal skill checks (within the skill challenge structure, these would typically be secondary checks, probably at a Hard DC). If s/he wants to buff that check by using special healing techniques or inspirational techniques that manifest themselves in the form of encounter attack powers with bonus healing/temp hp buffing, that power can be expended to grant a +2 bonus to the skill check (as per DMG2).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In a 4e non-combat situation, temp hp don't have such a role to play

Sorry, I should have been more clear.

During combat, when I play a healer (as I often do), I want to spend my actions healing and I don't particularly care about hurting the bad guys. Think of your typical healer in an RPG who sits back and cast cures and defensive buffs, rather than attacking for trivial amounts of damage.

While 4E did make the damage-contribution of the healer meaningful, and removed the action-requirement from the common healing abilities, those weren't buffs that I actually wanted or appreciated. Rather, the AEDU structure made me feel like I should be attacking the bad guys in order to heal my allies, which is just conceptually weird. It's also not terribly satisfying, given that a major draw of being the healer is that you don't have to worry about your spells failing just because you're unlucky with your attack rolls.

If clerics had an at-will power to grant an ally some temporary hit points, rather than an at-will power to shoot a bad guy and grant temporary hit points on a success, then that would have gone a long way toward preserving the feel of the role.

 

[pemerton]

During combat, when I play a healer (as I often do), I want to spend my actions healing and I don't particularly care about hurting the bad guys. Think of your typical healer in an RPG who sits back and cast cures and defensive buffs, rather than attacking for trivial amounts of damage.

While 4E did make the damage-contribution of the healer meaningful, and removed the action-requirement from the common healing abilities, those weren't buffs that I actually wanted or appreciated. Rather, the AEDU structure made me feel like I should be attacking the bad guys in order to heal my allies, which is just conceptually weird.

<snip>

If cleric's had an at-will power to grant an ally some temporary hit points, rather than an at-will power to shoot a bad guy and grant temporary hit points on a success, then that would have gone a long way toward preserving the feel of the role.

In my earlier reply I thought you were talking about non-combat healing.

You are correct that 4e combat has very limited room for "pure healing" (you can take the daily, standard action surgeless healing Cures, but using them in combat is actually pretty inefficient). I think this design feature has two motivations: (1) pure healing slows combat even further, and 4e does not need this; (2) having every character type deliver damage makes combat design, monster design etc less swingy.

Controllers are something of an exception to (1), but I guess the designer thought that control/debuff is pretty core to D&D (via the MU tradition) and they extended it to fighters. Presumably they thought that pure healing was less central to the D&D play experience. (And for what it's worth, I think this is true to a significant extent for AD&D; but probably not for 3E.) I suspect they also believed that control/debuff is more exciting than healing.

This is not to defend (nor condemn) their design decisions. It's just setting them out as I understand them.

 

[Gimul]

It's a fair point that pure healing slows combat. Traditionally this was offset by the coexistence of pure buffing.

4e moved a lot of the buffing into secondary effects; this worked well for combat/support builds, but I see how this might be less desirable for full support builds.

I think 5e has room for both playstyles; perhaps with the additon of a next attack roll buff cantrip (would not stack with Bless, but would provide synergy with Bane)?

 

[MoonSong]

I think "not wanting to kill things and take their stuff" is completely orthogonal here. In any edition of D&D, non-combat resolution is not constrained by a tight action economy, and so whether healing is a "minor" action or a "standard" action has no bearing on its efficacy.

My main point of agreement with @Eric V is in respect of the "healing to death" - what you're actually describing is an inability to manage action surges (presumably due to inexperience). It seems to me to be similar to an AD&D player complaining that s/he was "healed to death" because the cleric spent all his/her Cure Light Wounds spells healing 1 hp or 2 hp injuries, and hence had none left when a character suffered a 10 hp injury and hence was dropped to negatives and dying.

As far as providing support in combat is concerned, I can only assume you weren't making robust use of the "standard action to trigger a saving throw" option, nor (presumably) did your GM put you in situations in which there were interesting things to do with your standard action while your friends beat up on things. (Despite there being plenty of GMing advice to this effect in the 4e DMGs.) Which actually connects to the other strand of discussion on this thread.

You are right on both fronts, though in the first case this is different in that both the leaders could still heal others in the party but not me, and I still had one self healing power I couldn't use either. And on my defense I can barely remember the aid another action, let alone that other obscure option, I didn't think of looking for something like that in that section.

In my earlier reply I thought you were talking about non-combat healing.

You are correct that 4e combat has very limited room for "pure healing" (you can take the daily, standard action surgeless healing Cures, but using them in combat is actually pretty inefficient). I think this design feature has two motivations: (1) pure healing slows combat even further, and 4e does not need this; (2) having every character type deliver damage makes combat design, monster design etc less swingy.

Controllers are something of an exception to (1), but I guess the designer thought that control/debuff is pretty core to D&D (via the MU tradition) and they extended it to fighters. Presumably they thought that pure healing was less central to the D&D play experience. (And for what it's worth, I think this is true to a significant extent for AD&D; but probably not for 3E.) I suspect they also believed that control/debuff is more exciting than healing.

This is not to defend (nor condemn) their design decisions. It's just setting them out as I understand them.

It's nice of you regardless, I think it as a small victory after three or so years we are finally on a similar page. Perhaps 4e could have helped to integrate players like me and [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] by allowing pure healing and pure buffing powers using the standard action and minor action attacks/lazy attacks without much in the way of riders in order to keep the numbers running?, that way the psychological effect of being reduced to "secondary action" and "just a rider" is averted without affecting the tight math so much.

 

[Ahrimon]

Sorry, I should have been more clear.

During combat, when I play a healer (as I often do), I want to spend my actions healing and I don't particularly care about hurting the bad guys. Think of your typical healer in an RPG who sits back and cast cures and defensive buffs, rather than attacking for trivial amounts of damage.

While 4E did make the damage-contribution of the healer meaningful, and removed the action-requirement from the common healing abilities, those weren't buffs that I actually wanted or appreciated. Rather, the AEDU structure made me feel like I should be attacking the bad guys in order to heal my allies, which is just conceptually weird. It's also not terribly satisfying, given that a major draw of being the healer is that you don't have to worry about your spells failing just because you're unlucky with your attack rolls.

If clerics had an at-will power to grant an ally some temporary hit points, rather than an at-will power to shoot a bad guy and grant temporary hit points on a success, then that would have gone a long way toward preserving the feel of the role.

While a totally valid way of playing and enjoying the game, I think a character focused on healing is a relatively new concept to RPGs. It only really started in the video game subgenre as far as I am aware. Red box, 1e, 2e, and 3e clerics were all melee characters. Later specialty priests and such added a diversity to the class to allow a pure healer/buffer style. The problem with that type of class is the balance needed by the designers. Where do you draw the line between this character is a valuable member and this character is absolutely required or everyone dies. In my opinion it's to narrow of a sweet zone and if the designers get it wrong it's going to really affect the game. Keeping in-combat healing as a good to have but not important gives a much wider sweet zone IMO.

So, I think it would be best to move the conversation from they didn't provide the options needed, which are too varied for the vast number of folks out there, to what options can we come up with to make some these preferred styles more viable.

Saelorn want's the healer to be a vital role, the biggest drawback is going to be that spell slots are limited. Especially at low levels. Give them an at will style and it's way too much. 4e balanced that by requiring the healing/buffing abilities to be a rider on an attack however Saelorn has already mentioned that he doesn't like that style. So, what about a per short recharge? Say a new channel divinity that healed. Or perhaps one that adds temp HP and gives advantage on the next attack for the party. That sounds like a good channel divinity. But that still leaves the rest of the combat. One option might be to re-wire the sorcerer class by changing the spell list/abilities to be a healer. That would give the character access to more healing without it being completely unlimited. What about a special cantrip that gives the target advantage on his next attack role but opponents have advantage against you? That way the character can be buffing his allies every round without the problem of unlimited healing. Knowing this style the DM could join in by upping the damage of the monsters a little bit and lowering their HP. Now they're deadlier which makes the healer more necessary, but will go down faster so if the healer drops or is out of juice it's not a guaranteed wipe.

 

[D'karr]

Sorry, I should have been more clear.

During combat, when I play a healer (as I often do), I want to spend my actions healing and I don't particularly care about hurting the bad guys. Think of your typical healer in an RPG who sits back and cast cures and defensive buffs, rather than attacking for trivial amounts of damage.

While 4E did make the damage-contribution of the healer meaningful, and removed the action-requirement from the common healing abilities, those weren't buffs that I actually wanted or appreciated. Rather, the AEDU structure made me feel like I should be attacking the bad guys in order to heal my allies, which is just conceptually weird. It's also not terribly satisfying, given that a major draw of being the healer is that you don't have to worry about your spells failing just because you're unlucky with your attack rolls.

If clerics had an at-will power to grant an ally some temporary hit points, rather than an at-will power to shoot a bad guy and grant temporary hit points on a success, then that would have gone a long way toward preserving the feel of the role.

I believe the pacifist cleric build was extremely effective at healing, and its shtick was expressly not to attack. So 4e did have other options for this also.