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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6461519" data-attributes="member: 42582">I still don't understand how any of this relates to the healer being mandatory.If the healer spends an action keeping the fighter alive, that helps the fighter do his/her fightery thing. If, instead, the player of the healer was playing an archer then the fighter woud do less fightery stuff (eg fall back, fight defensively etc) but the archer would be making up for the lost offensive capability.Or, if the healer was uinstead an illusionist or an assassin, the fighter would take less damage overall because the PCs would attack via ambush rather than frontal assault, thereby taking out more NPCs/monsters before suffering retaliation. Etc.I don't see why the healer is anything special here. (I also don't see why the healer can't win a fight by inflicting damage, at least in principle - like everyone else in D&D s/he has a base attack and a list of proficient weapons. S/he is not uniquely incapable in a fight.)Honestly, to me this suggests a lack of familiarity with 4e. The invoker/wizard in my game does miniscule damage even allowing for the fact that quite a bit of it is AoE - at 28th level his typical AoE does one or two dice +14, compared to the sorcerer doing 2 to 4 dice +50-odd with his AoEs.Yet the invoker contributes. He delivers control effects (he has the only AoE per-encounter blindness). He negats invis (via Clinging Radiance). He supports battlefield manouevrability (via various teleport and shift/slide options).The fighter also does considerably less damage than the sorcerer or the ranger-cleric, but contributes via first-rate battlefield control.Ultimate, healing is just another form of control - because like control it negates enemy actions via mitigating damage inflicted. The healer shoudn't need to be any more special than any other controller/debuffer.</blockquote>

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