D&D 5E The Return of the HealBot

[Leatherhead]

Am I the only one who bothered to read the Healing ruls in the new packet

Warder

Experimental rule 2 is interesting. Although I would rather it be you can only heal up to Bloody without some kind of long term or magical care. And that Refocus thing needs some kind of additional limit. I suppose it is meant to be the new second wind, but as it stands you wouldn't need any kind of short-term rest.

 

[Li Shenron]

Here's the thing... some people like playing the HealBot. Shouldn't they have a class they can play? Changing the cleric to cater to everyone who doesn't like it and wants to play a different class is taking a class away from everyone who liked it.

Don't want to play a HealBot cleric? Then don't. Play a cleric of a war or trickster god and never memorize any heals. Encourage someone to take the Healer speciality and rely on kits and potions.

The other method has its downsides.
4e allowed the cleric to attack and heal at the same time. This then necessitated fights where the cleric would have to heal mid-combat. Instead of occasionally being the combat healer and mostly the out-of-combat healer, the cleric was forced to always have healing on their mind. It was an Encounter resource.

There are lots of preferences here, I'll try summarize my current view a bit better:

Magical healing should exist. Magical healing should not act to simply extend combat. Therefore magical healing in combat should consume a resource that could be used to do something else.

Clerics should not have to be the ones consuming those resources. Besides, not all deities really go in for healing. The healing deity does though, of course, so his or her Clerics are probably happy to consume their own resources to heal. These need to be limited in some sense, however, so that this type of Cleric doesn't become essential.

I propose that there exist rituals to grant healing outside of combat. The party makes a decision to turn a communal resource, gold, into healing. The creation of healing potions should also be a ritual, at slightly greater cost. These rituals should be available by use of a Heal (Wisdom) check. Hit dice are sort of achieving this, and I think the ritual could integrate with spending HD.

In combat, a character can use healing potions (a party resource), and there could be a second-wind action to spend a HD (his or her own resource). Clerics of the lifegiver will then be the only clerics able to heal, preferably via channel divinity. The divine speciality should give access to a specific god's channel divinity powers, hence anyone could in theory be the healer.

I think these 2 are the most reasonable posts in this thread.

All the complaints about "I shouldn't have to waste a spell to heal you", "I shouldn't have to waste an action to heal you" just tells me that everybody wants to get healed, but nobody wants to heal others. As [MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION] says, if you don't want to play the healer then just don't. Do you want to bash foes instead of healing? Play a fighter! Do you want to blast with spells? Play a wizard. Do you really want them to have a "religious flavor"? Fluff them up, or take a background or specialty that gives you some crunch with it. Play a Cleric if you WANT to be the party healer first, buffer/debuffer next.

But [MENTION=882]Chris_Nightwing[/MENTION] is also right there is a lot of room in the game to have both healer clerics and non-healer clerics, and possibly also something in between.

However the first thing to do is to address in-combat healing with out-of-combat healing which are very different things. OOC-healing can range from very important to totally moot, depending on what rules for resting you're using. IC-healing should be easier to design, but I say that if you want "background healing" i.e. you want to be healed without this having a tactical cost (using actions) I don't see why you couldn't just use a simple enough optional rule that says that drinking a potion is a free action, and then let your group have access to as many potions as you think it's fair (or if the idea of an "object" offends you, call them surges, second or third winds, luck, hero points, badwrongfuns or else).

 

[Gargoyle]

I agree with the "Don't play a healer if you don't want to heal" in theory, but in practice, this doesn't work. D&D is a social game, with social pressures. In many groups, there is pressure to play a particular role or class. Players often have a teamwork mindset, which is why you rarely see parties composed of all fighters or all wizards. "Somebody has to play the cleric" is only somewhat more common than "Somebody has to play the fighter (or wizard, or even rogue)".

You can be disdainful of players for giving in and playing a class or role they aren't thrilled with, but it's a fine line between being a sheep and being a team player. It's not the player's fault when they agree to play something the party needs, and then discovers it is boring for them yet can't change to something else because they are relied upon. It's the game design.

D&D Next seems to have gone in the direction that healing is going to be a key part of the game. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's mandatory to have a healing cleric in your group, but it certainly is optimal and therefore will feel mandatory for many.

Some ideas for making this fun, all IMO of course:

1) Make healing spells into the equivalent of "minor actions" so that clerics can do more in a round than heal. Adding the text "You can cast this spell as a free action after casting any other divine spell" to all their healing spells could work.
2) Add some healing to other spells. What if pillar of fire healed allies in its area of effect?
3) Make being a heal bot more fun. Make the healing spells more powerful and more interesting by making them do more than heal. What if cure light wounds also gave an AC buff and cure serious wounds gave advantage on the target's next saving throw? You might find yourself using a weaker heal to get a particular side effect, creating some interesting decision making. Hard choices = fun, and too often healing doesn't involve hard choices.

 

[eprieur]

A few ideas I was toying with, the idea that each class should be responsible for active defense (passive would be having decent AC/HP which everyone already try to have in theory). Parry/Protect is a step in the right direction since it's empower the player to try to reduce the damage they take.

Fighter:
-Parry (self melee attack only, based on expertise dice).
-Protector (should work on self melee/range or adjacent friendly melee/range and require a shield). It's strickly better then parry but require a shield.

Rogue:
-They have parry but I would personnaly give them a dodge (work on melee/range) since they are by default squishier. They could get parry/dodge if there is a way to balance them.

Wizard:
-Shield: Use level 0 non at-wills spells as ressource, a shield like the one in 4.0: You use a reaction to increase your AC by 4 for this attack (in theory you don't know 100% if it's going to work or no). If attack hit it still hit if not it miss.
-Counterspell: Wizard, being the master of arcane could have a lvl 0 non at will counterspell, reducing the damage by X of any magic damage on himself or an ally, using a reaction.

Cleric:
Obviously clerics have heals but they could also have something else to prevent damage
-Divine shield, lvl 0 non at-will, use a reaction to give resistance to incoming damage (all damage) to himself or an ally about to take some. If this scale too well (half damage, etc), use a die or something similar to what is used by counterspell.

Now for the actual healing, right now I'm a fan of using hit dices as the new surge (it's already the case out of combat).

Basically clerics could have a pool of heals (heal points) they could use equal to their max spell level if it's an encounter ressource (10 min, etc) or equal to their level if it's a daily ressource. They can spend X number of heal point as a free action once per turn to make a target spend X hit dice. If the target doesn't have hit dice left you can't heal him. Target would then roll his hitdice + constitution + whatever bonus feels right. But that's probably wayyy too simple for dnd and work way too easily. Another more complex system could use spells like cure light wound, etc, and still be equivalent (you get 1 free healing spell per spell level in a separate pool).

With the HD system you actually have lower healing then right now but once you add counterspell, divine shield, etc, you balance things out a bit but everybody is responsible for the defense of the group.

 

[Mattachine]

I would love for there to be non-divine magic for healing as well.
Why can't an arcane caster "magically channel positive energy" to heal someone?
Isn't there a "White Wizard" trope out there?

In the AD&D campaigns I ran in middle school, high school, and college, no one played a cleric . That would be about a dozen players over 12 years. No cleric PCs. Healing was by potions, druids, and NPCs. Druids were the top choice, because players found them interesting to play--better than healbot with armor.

 

[Blackwarder]

I would love for there to be non-divine magic for healing as well.
Why can't an arcane caster "magically channel positive energy" to heal someone?
Isn't there a "White Wizard" trope out there?

In the AD&D campaigns I ran in middle school, high school, and college, no one played a cleric . That would be about a dozen players over 12 years. No cleric PCs. Healing was by potions, druids, and NPCs. Druids were the top choice, because players found them interesting to play--better than healbot with armor.

You have the healer speciality...

Warder

 

[Mattachine]

You have the healer speciality...

Warder

That character isn't casting a spell to heal, though. That is more of the herbalist/alchemist trope, and requires gold. I do agree that the healer specialty improves things a bit.

 

[Libramarian]

Actually the reverse is less fun. I have played about 50-50 3e and 4e over the last year and the 3e cleric is constantly frustrated that he wants to do somehting fun and in line with his (non-healing-based) fire god desires, but from the party's POV by far his best action is "ready to interrupt the big bad's full sequence attack on the fighter to keep him alive". Or even just "go heal someone".

It's not fun when the choice is "enjoy the game, or be a healbot". That's why the ability to do both, or the ability to have all classes heal themselves, is necessary. A system that intentionally forces you to choose between having fun and being a good party member is a poor system. Your basic role SHOULD BE FUN.

At the risk of being laughed at, the MMO DCUO solved this by having healing powers only available after you had had enough hits. This would be a cool cleric system -- your domain determines when you can heal: war domain, only after hitting someone, sun domain, after casting a radiant spell, etc. Make it a free action after the domain-based trigger. The you still have the choice of action, but the other players WANT you to have fun so you can heal. Heck, the fighter will probably take a blow to give you a flank to ensure your god will grant you a heal when you hit the enemy!

Nobody should be telling another player what they can and can't do with their own character's resources. That's just being an obnoxious jerk, whether you're telling the cleric when and who to heal or telling the wizard to cast a certain spell or ordering the fighter around.

 

[Rhenny]

I kind of like the HD healing out of combat mechanic.

I hate "2nd wind" in combat. That just makes the DM need to throw more an more monsters at the party to get them to use their 2nd wind healing resources.

As it plays now, it seems as if the DM can easily make adventures that don't force reliance on Clerics. Part of the cleric as healbot, and over reliance on the cleric, might stem from adventure design. If PCs are pushed to the brink of death in too many encounters, the need for magical healing becomes too great. If there is a balance, and perhaps many smaller skirmishes with only a few tougher encounters, the need for magical healing becomes less important.

 

[n00bdragon]

Nobody should be telling another player what they can and can't do with their own character's resources. That's just being an obnoxious jerk, whether you're telling the cleric when and who to heal or telling the wizard to cast a certain spell or ordering the fighter around.

When the designers design the game they assume that players will have access to healing of some sort. They assume players can heal in the middle of deadly situations. "Play whatever you want but be aware that unless you play X the game design will fall apart." is ridiculous.

People should not just be allowed to play whatever they want to play, they should be encouraged to play whatever they want to play. Make people WANT to play clerics.