D&D 5E On the healing options in the 5e DMG

[pemerton]

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.

I agree for classic D&D and AD&D. (I think 3E had much more in-combat healing, but that belief is based on hearsay and rumour rather than direct experience!)

When Gygax described a cleric as a "support" character, I think the sort of support he had in mind was not in-combat healing. In combat, the very traditional cleric absorbs attacks (good AC and hp) and deals damage (not as much as a fighter, especially at higher levels due to the lack of multiple attacks). This is, in itself, a form of support by way of reducing damage taken by the fighter.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

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.

From what I've gathered, that was something which came rather late to the edition, and the "pacifist" aspect merely gave you bonuses as long as you weren't attacking a creature that was bloodied. Many players, who found the initial 4E offering to be distasteful, had long since abandoned the game by that point.

 

[Uchawi]

I tend to focus on can the mechanic fit a specific story, whether it is a book, RPG, movie, etc. In that sense healing, or any other mechanic has to be malleable, and that is where things like power sources from 4E come into play. You can have a wide range of abilities that heal (without explaining the source) So a cleric can change the source to martial healing, or a warlord to magical healing. If you separate that baggage from the ability text or fluff, you can then concentrate on any character surviving whether there is magic or no magic. Another way of viewing it, is how to establish healing for a non-magical world in reference to healing, and build up.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

When Gygax described a cleric as a "support" character, I think the sort of support he had in mind was not in-combat healing. In combat, the very traditional cleric absorbs attacks (good AC and hp) and deals damage (not as much as a fighter, especially at higher levels due to the lack of multiple attacks). This is, in itself, a form of support by way of reducing damage taken by the fighter.

And here, I was convinced that clerics had heavy armor because they were supposed to get in there and heal, where all healing spells were limited to touch range. It makes just as much sense to treat them as primarily slightly-worse fighters, who only had a few spells to help outside of combat.

Still, then, it's weird that 4E would keep the in-combat healing and remove the action component, when doing so would make combats drag on so much longer. It seems like they could have solved a lot of problems by just re-branding all heal spells as out-of-combat rituals. I guess that would have left the cleric struggling to find an identity, though.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I agree for classic D&D and AD&D. (I think 3E had much more in-combat healing, but that belief is based on hearsay and rumour rather than direct experience!)

It's generally considered a poor strategy in 3E, relative to just attacking or disabling the enemies, but it helps to have someone capable of stabilizing the wounded or removing afflictions (or buffing with things like Resist Energy). I'm playing a healer in a Pathfinder game right now, and it makes a huge difference in the face of unavoidable damage against superior forces - and we sure have been ambushed by a lot of fire-breathing creatures, lately :-/

You still run into the issue where healers don't have enough spells to heal full-time at the lower levels, and by the time you can afford to heal each round - by level 6 or so - the game starts to get kind of wonky with spellcasters in general.

 

[D'karr]

From what I've gathered, that was something which came rather late to the edition, and the "pacifist" aspect merely gave you bonuses as long as you weren't attacking a creature that was bloodied. Many players, who found the initial 4E offering to be distasteful, had long since abandoned the game by that point.

I guess it's a matter of opinion then. I would not consider July 2009 rather late in the edition. The pacifist aspects gave bonuses to hit to allies, gave penalties to attacks to enemies, and the healing was pretty much second to none. The lazy warlord build had quite a bit of healing and buffs and was pretty much designed at the start of the edition, not late either, and it was almost entirely predicated on not attacking.

If people found the initial offering distasteful does not mean that the edition did not have those options integrated into it at some point and in some cases rather quickly or right at publication. But that is neither here nor there - after all we could complain about all the things that 5e doesn't have right now and it would be a rather unfair criticism. That does not mean that those options will not appear at some time in the future (near, or late).

 

[D'karr]

Still, then, it's weird that 4E would keep the in-combat healing and remove the action component, when doing so would make combats drag on so much longer.

Not having your team go down in a TPK, or near TPK, does not make the combat drag longer. Unless the TPK is the goal and I'm not sure many would agree that is a worthwhile goal. What you have stated is pretty much mathematically impossible. Attacking and healing in the same action makes combats go faster. It's a matter of pacing.

More attackers on your side attacking less, or a dwindling number of, attackers on their side makes combat go faster. It also makes the strategy of concentrating fire much more effective. A pacifist cleric also improves your chances to hit or reduces the chances of the enemies hitting your team - making combats also go faster.

There are only two times when your statement might be accurate. When your team is missing a lot. In that case combats will drag no matter what system you are using, unless damage on a miss is also part of the actions allowed. The other is when monsters start to heal/regenerate, which effectively cancels damage already done.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Not having your team go down in a TPK, or near TPK, does not make the combat drag longer. Unless the TPK is the goal and I'm not sure many would agree that is a worthwhile goal. What you have stated is pretty much mathematically impossible. Attacking and healing in the same action makes combats go faster. It's a matter of pacing.

Combat accelerates pretty rapidly as you remove participants. It only drags on if the TPK isn't a possibility, and you need to contrive some way for your fewer-remaining-PCs to somehow defeat a greater number of opponents. And of course, if you can do that, then there's nothing stopping them from doing the same.

And yes, it's pretty much a given that both sides will be using the same healing rules, so any change to those rules would affect both sides evenly.

 

[pemerton]

And here, I was convinced that clerics had heavy armor because they were supposed to get in there and heal, where all healing spells were limited to touch range.

I can only report how, in my experience, the B/X cleric and (traditional) AD&D cleric played. In combat healing was not the norm, because there was generally no need for it. Combat did not routinely reduce hit points to life-threatening levels, and the hit point pool was more of a "per day" resource than a "per encounter" resource.

That's not to say that hit point reocvery wasn't useful, but it was generally underaken between combats, to top up the pool for the next combat, rather than during combat to stop someone dying.

pacifist cleric

From what I've gathered, that was something which came rather late to the edition

As [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION] has pointed out, Divine Power dates from July 2009. I think that's fairly early in the edition.

it's pretty much a given that both sides will be using the same healing rules, so any change to those rules would affect both sides evenly.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this, but NPCs and monsters in 4e largely do not heal in any mechanical fashion, and hence as a general rule don't use the same healing rules. Rather, they have bigger pools of hit points.

This feeds into the next point:

it's weird that 4E would keep the in-combat healing and remove the action component, when doing so would make combats drag on so much longer. It seems like they could have solved a lot of problems by just re-branding all heal spells as out-of-combat rituals.

I don't fully follow this, but to the extent that I do it seems to get 4e more-or-less backwards.

There is relatively little out-of-combat healing magic in 4e. Out-of-combat healing is a matter of spending healing surges. There are effects that can buff this - the bard's song of rest, a cleric using an encounter healing power during a short rest, etc - but the kernel of the healing is the spending of a surge. There is some surgeless healing (eg cleric daily Cure spells) and some surge recovery magic, but it is relatively rare; surges are the "hard cap" on the amount of adventuring that can be undertaken between extended rests.

In-combat healing, on the other hand, is fundamental to the play of 4e. There are two aspects to this, one connected to combat encounter building, the other to combat encounter pacing.

With respect to building: the out-of-combat healing rules ensure that, in nearly all cases, PCs will enter combat at full hit points. Monsters are built around this assumption, and the encounter difficulty guidelines in turn reflct this assumption about monster design. One feature of 4e is that monsters do relatively more damage than their equivalents in B/X or AD&D (except at 1st level, where 4e is far less swingy than its predecessors). It is expected that combat will deplete a large amount of many characters' hit points.

With respect to pacing: this hit point depletion will, typically, be noticed by the players. They will feel their PCs under pressure, and try and respond. This can involve a range of mechanical options, but one key one is to unlock healing surges during combat, thereby mitigating that damage. This is where in-combat healing comes in: its principal function is to enable healng surges to be used outside the context of a short rest. That is, it is about unlocing a source of healing rather than, itself, being a source of healing.

The practical effect of this, especially when contrasted with NPCs/monsters larger hp pools but lack of healing surges and the ability to unlock them, is to produce a fairly standard combat dynamic: the PCs (and thereby the players) feel the force of the NPC/monster assault, as they lose hit points at a (proportionately) faster rate than their enemies. But the PCs have a greater depth of resrouces to draw on - unlocking healing surges to mitigate damage, and deploying encounter and daily powers to step up their output relative to that of their enemies - and hence the tide turns.

As one example, the 28th level defenders in my 4e game have around 200 hp and well over a dozen surges each. When they spend a surge they may regain anywhere from 50 to 70+ hp (depending on character, on riders on cleric spells, etc). It is not especially uncommon for one of them to spend 4 or more surges in a combat, as they are pushed towards unconsicousness and death by their enemies but then rally either under their own steam (second wind) or at the urging of the party's cleric-ranger (Healing Word, Word of Vigour) or sorcerer/bard (1x/day Majestic Word).

As far as design is concerned, this is pretty much the opposite of the classic D&D attrition model of hit point loss, where a typical encounter depletes only a modest amount of a daily hit point pool, and where the main function of clerical healing is to extend the size of that pool on a per-day rather than per-encounter basis.

Whether it is a good design or not is of course disputed. But changing it in the way you suggest - ie going back to the traditional D&D model of limited relevance to in-combat heaing and an emphasis on magical healing as the per-day resource - would be a fundamental change. The whole healing surge subsystem, for instance, would need reworking from the ground up; and the removal of in-combat heallng would eliminate the pacing aspect that is central to 4e combat design.

And on the matter of pacing: once you decide to make the "pushed to the ropes and bounce back" approach central to your combat pacing, you are already going to have long combats, almost inevitaby, as combats will have to last for four or more rounds if they are to deliver that experience (say, 2 rounds of being pushed to the limit, a round of resurgence, and then a round of cleaning up). In my personal experience many 4e combats, especially at paragon and above, last more than 4 rounds.

In this context, introudcing even more healing and thereby reducing PC damage output risks making combats even longer. Whereas the default 4e approach of healing being a complementary function helps maintain a minimum PC damage output. I think the rationale for that default approach is pretty clear, whether or not one actually likes the result.

 

[Hussar]

And here, I was convinced that clerics had heavy armor because they were supposed to get in there and heal, where all healing spells were limited to touch range. It makes just as much sense to treat them as primarily slightly-worse fighters, who only had a few spells to help outside of combat.

Still, then, it's weird that 4E would keep the in-combat healing and remove the action component, when doing so would make combats drag on so much longer. It seems like they could have solved a lot of problems by just re-branding all heal spells as out-of-combat rituals. I guess that would have left the cleric struggling to find an identity, though.

I'd point out that very early D&D, 1st level clerics didn't even get spells at all. They didn't get anything until second level, so, you weren't there to heal, at least not in the beginning. Plus, with no bonus spells (Basic/Expert and I believe OD&D) you were limited to that 1 spell per day. You simply weren't going to heal anything significant until much higher levels.

AD&D changed this by giving clerics 1st level spells at 1st level and then giving them (generally) two bonus first level spells. So, your standard cleric layout was 3 cure light wounds. And, you probably didn't take any different 1st level spells until you got five or six of them. Plus, since there were no additional healing spells until 4th level spells in AD&D and 2e, you needed to burn all those slots on cure light wounds. There really was a lot of pressure just from the mechanics to make sure that the cleric was the healbot. Asking for someone to fall on the cleric grenade wasn't exactly a new idea.

I would say that most healing occurred after combat though. It just wasn't worth it, usually, to heal in combat - a simple d8 HP? That wasn't going to change the fight at all. It was far better to save all your spells for after combat and then heal once the fight was done.

3e solved this with healing wands - unlimited healing after combat finished. Made clerics much more versatile, but, also led to clerics being much, much more powerful than just about any other class. They were known as CoDzilla for a reason.