D&D 5E (2014) The Healing Spirit Nerf=Complete Overkill

[Iry]

They ruined an important part of Healing Spirit. The spell was INDEPENDANT of spellcasting modifiers, which made it an excellent tool for character builds that do not involve a lot of Wisdom (14 or less). The new version makes the spell extremely ineffective for low wisdom builds.

 

[werecorpse]

I played in one group that used original healing spirit for a while. I played a healing cleric, but once the ranger got access to it it wasn’t long before we relied on the ranger for between combat healing!

I run a game where we don’t use any non PHB spells (iirc) with 2 of the players who play in the first game. All three of us prefer it just not exist.

Prayer of Healing got used a bit but it was agreed it was a bit weak and between combat healing could do with a boost so we reduced casting time to 1 minute and changed the dice to d12. I think I’ll now suggest we put it on bard, druid and Ranger spell lists.

 

[dave2008]

This is sadly true. 5E was built around a set of assumptions on encounters per day, and this assumption doesn't match actual play for most groups.

I don't think that really is the assumption though. The baseline of 6-8 encounters per day is predicated on a certain amount of difficulty per encounter (not very difficult). The real assumption, to balance long and short rest classes, is 2 short-rest per long rest. This means the real "requirement" is 3 encounters per day (with a short rest between each encounter). However, if you want to keep the same daily challenge as 6-8 encounters / day, you need to increase the per encounter challenge.

I've used the above guideline and it has worked wonderfully for our group. FYI, we average about 3+/- encounters per long rest.

 

[jgsugden]

If you're not seeing 6-8 encounters per day/LR - talk to your DM. See if that is something the players and DM want to try out.

Techniques for moving towards it:

* Rolling encounters - Encounter one takes place with the orcs in the entry of the dungeon. Unless the PCs are stealthy in their assassination of these orcs, the orcs in the next room will pick up their weapons, and come to the battle starting on the third (or fourth) round. The PCs will nearly eliminate the first group of orcs before that second comes. This prevents any rest between encounters.

* Time pressures - The PCs have 8 encounters between them and the finish line, and they know that something bad will happen in 90 minutes if they do not get there.

* No place to rest - The PCs are being hunted and there is no place to rest. This can be overcome with Rope Trick or Tiny Hut, obviously, but for parties without those options, it works.

* Into the Unknown - When the PCs do not know whether they're going to lose out if they rest, they may be more hesitant to rest so often. Don't let them know that the BBEG is going to escape in 90 minutes - but when they get to the end of the dungeon they discover he escaped while they took their long rest, the next time they decide to rest you can remind them that the world moves on when they rest, like when the BBEG escaped, ....

I'm not particularly worried about Healing Spirit. But versions were/are fine.

 

[werecorpse]

I’m with Dave2008. If your adventuring day goes

encounter (s)
short rest
encounter (s)
short rest
encounter (s)
long rest

it’s working as intended. It doesn’t really matter if the “encounter (s)“ are a single combat, 3 combats or a roleplay encounter, terrain and a trap.

One or two short rests between long rests is most common for the games I play, we rarely get none or three and I can’t remember ever getting four.

 

[Bacon Bits]

If you're not seeing 6-8 encounters per day/LR - talk to your DM. See if that is something the players and DM want to try out.

That's not the problem. The problem is actually pretty deep. Short rests were supposed to fix the five minute adventuring day, but they haven't done that at all, and the 6-8 encounter recommendation carries it's own problems.

1. Encounter require time to play, especially if you use a battle grid. 6-8 encounters means setting up 6-8 encounters. If you're only able to play 3-5 hours a week, it's actually somewhat reasonable that you don't have time to fit in 6-8 encounters unless you're literally running 6-8 connected rooms. Yes, even if they're at half difficulty like 5e encounters are. Sure, you could use two game sessions to split one adventuring day, but my experience is that few game groups do that. Most game groups want to start a session at the end of a long rest so that they don't have to remember their character state from a week or two ago at the start of the next session.

2. Because 5e encounter difficulty is heavily lowballed, 6-8 encounters can be extremely easy, not challenging, or not interesting. In some groups, the players can feel like combat is a waste of time in a game primarily about running encounters. This means the group will just run fewer, more challenging encounters, but this has it's own problems because it eliminates one of the ways 5e tries to encourage you to short rest.

3. There is no reason to short rest. Or, rather, there is no reward for not long resting and playing through more encounters in a day. Since the game still has attrition elements like long rests not recovering all hit dice, the cost of a short rest is often not a lot lower than the cost of a long rest. Since a long rest does everything a short rest does and more, the only reason you ever really need to short rest is when you're under time pressure, which simply isn't appropriate for every adventuring day in every campaign. Worse, if your campaign has real time pressure, then you often run into situations where the players can't short rest, either!

 

[Azuresun]

If you're not seeing 6-8 encounters per day/LR - talk to your DM. See if that is something the players and DM want to try out.

Wrryyyyyyy....

The DMG does not mandate 6-8 encounters. I swear nobody ever reads that section for themselves and instead takes someone else'sword for it. Running one big encounter is a bad idea, but running 6-8 is not mandated or promoted by the rules, never has been

 

[Gadget]

I must say, I agree with @Charlaquin, the spell as originally released was somewhat broken, or at least very overtuned, in that it was vastly more effective out of combat and dwarfed other spells in a similar niche. We had tried a fix, pre-errata, that required the caster to spend a reaction to cause the Spirit to heal a creature in it's space. This seemed to curb the "conga-line" and out of combat issues, while only minimally hindering in combat usage.

 

[Charlaquin]

I must say, I agree with @Charlaquin, the spell as originally released was somewhat broken, or at least very overtuned, in that it was vastly more effective out of combat and dwarfed other spells in a similar niche. We had tried a fix, pre-errata, that required the caster to spend a reaction to cause the Spirit to heal a creature in it's space. This seemed to curb the "conga-line" and out of combat issues, while only minimally hindering in combat usage.

If you wanted to get the same effect without eating the caster’s reaction every round, you could even just say it can only heal once per round.

 

[dave2008]

I'm not sure how it was "fixed," but would the solution just be to limit the duration to 30 seconds or whatever is "balanced."