Spirit of Healing

[Garthanos]

I think it sounds a touch tactically demanding... forcing the party to cling to it... creating any circumstances where they dont want to do that seems like a reasonable response from the DM and npc's.

So clerics now have a connect to the unicorn force not just swordmages... eh

 

[ChristopherA]

Have you tried moving the enemies away from it? Forcing the party to spread out? It's not exactly a subtle effect, and requires some modicum of cooperation and/or terrain advantage to truly abuse.

AoEs/auras that cause ongoing damage are a good counter as well. Healing 10 per turn isn't so bad when you're being hit with an AoE or an Aura that damages the entire party just for being beside the spirit. The party'd end up taking less damage by spreading out, defeating the brokenness of this ability.

When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify his encounters in order to deal with a specific power, it's a pretty good sign the power is broken


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[DracoSuave]

When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify his encounters in order to deal with a specific power, it's a pretty good sign the power is broken

When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify encounters in order to deal with his party, that's a sign he's actually tailoring his adventures to the players, and that their characters actually matter to his game world, and it allows the players to still use their fun abilities without you having to cry 'It's broken, waaaaa' and hit it with the nerf stick.

There's two schools of thought on this. Mine, personally, is that abilities that seem strong have weaknesses, and making encounters where said weaknesses are exploited are fair game. By the same token, making encounters where said strong powers 'save the day' for the party is also fair game. The idea of this is to create experiences and good adventuring times, not to perfectly balance the system out as tho it were some competitive MMO.

The system as you run it only needs to be balanced between the players actually playing, and the monsters they come up against. Anything else is superfluous.

 

[ChristopherA]

When the DM has to start coming up with ways to modify encounters in order to deal with his party, that's a sign he's actually tailoring his adventures to the players, and that their characters actually matter to his game world, and it allows the players to still use their fun abilities without you having to cry 'It's broken, waaaaa' and hit it with the nerf stick.

There's two schools of thought on this. Mine, personally, is that abilities that seem strong have weaknesses, and making encounters where said weaknesses are exploited are fair game. By the same token, making encounters where said strong powers 'save the day' for the party is also fair game. The idea of this is to create experiences and good adventuring times, not to perfectly balance the system out as tho it were some competitive MMO.

The system as you run it only needs to be balanced between the players actually playing, and the monsters they come up against. Anything else is superfluous.

I guess that just depends on how you define "broken". If fighters had a feat that permanently gave them double hit points and an extra standard action every round, the DM could very easily adjust his adventures to compensate for that - just send in extra monsters! The adventures could still be lots of fun. Nevertheless, by my definition, that feat would be broken.


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[DracoSuave]

Agreed. But we're not talking about adding monsters. We're talking about using existing monsters in ways that enhance the play experience for that ability.

A very large difference in scope.

 

[Turtlejay]

I find myself agreeing with Dracosuave's position (in this and other threads). The word broken gets thrown around way too much. I hate houseruling and nerfing things because of a percieved unbalance. I would prefer to see it in play a few times and *then* judge it's balance. In the case of this power, it is surely a good power, but even simple tactics can counter it. My last tongue-in-cheek post about killing the cleric may have been in jest, but it is a valid strategy. Change the focus of the monsters, forcing the cleric to move the zone if he wants to make the healing effective. Take away his actions so he has to chose what he wants to do. Scatter the party so they can't all benefit (or better yet, take advantage of it and blast the hell out of them, hopefully with some debilitating condition as a rider).

And really, it is a daily utility. Usable once per day. Give it a shot, and if you still have a problem in your game, talk with the player about changing it.

Jay

 

[Garthanos]

Yeah Draco is pretty smooth and easy to agree with.

There were people arguing that they had to add more ranged adversaries just because of BRV ( a realistic change IMHO - ranged weaponry rules in real life and the damage is usually nerfed in games - perhaps to make up for having too high of hit chance)

... since I have to design my encounters for 2 and 3 players instead of 5 and 6, I am wondering what the fuss is.. I have to change mine all the time to adjust to my player set and with 4e the way it is even with standard numbers if your players are more or less strategic I suspect you will have to adjust... its why we have a DM... to make intelligent adjustments which maintain the fun, instead of a program.

In real life effective area attacks were the reason people quit clumping up (they clumped to exploit cooperative defenses like shield walls - not healing spirits unless you count the bottle of rum...)

Actually they probably started not clumping because ranged attacks worked better against clumps too (effective area attacks just put the nail in the coffin), another reason ranged weapons rule.

 

[Destil]

Well in our game it is just plain stupid - one encounter a day we basically walk out with full hit points at no healing surge cost. Its overpowered. It should be more limited. Right now its sort of brain dead to choose this power at the appropriate level and that's not how powers should be.

We'll be nerfing it or banning it. Like so that it triggers once a round only...

That sounds good; I know the cleric in my game will want it (fits her character's spiritual allies theme as well as her love of healing), making the healing a immediate reaction sounds good.

 

[Rothe_]

This is the problem I have with the whole divine power book. Lots of powers that heal without spending healing surges. Why have the surge system at all if it can be easily bypassed with stuff like spirit of healing, life transference and other powers like that.

Also, consider what happens when the cleric uses beacon of hope and then this? Beacon of hope adds another +5 to healing powers.

 

[DracoSuave]

Thing is, surgeless healing has a habit of using up standard actions.

Now, I have a theory from playing a lot of turn based RPGs, and it applies to table top. If all you are doing is healing, you are losing the battle. You need to do damage to win. If you deal no damage, you cannot win. (damage doesn't have to be hit points, it can be status effects that make the enemy surrender, etc)

Standard action healing -has- to be strong and powerful in order to counteract the fact that the monsters have also just lived longer.

Think of it this way, let's say your cleric does 10 damage per round on average. Now let's say the cleric heals a party member with his standard action. The cleric -also- just prevented 10 damage to the monsters.

Now, let's say that's with 5 40 hp foes, that turns out to be the equivalent of handing one of those monsters a free healing surge.

And if that ability only healed one healing surge, with no bonus added to it, then you've basicly traded 1 healing surge for the party for one healing surge for the monster.

This is only optimal if you're already ahead on the damage race. If you are behind (and you should be if you're breaking out daily use healing) then you've actually -costed- your party more than you've helped it.

So standard action healing -has- to be awesome otherwise it's a trap.