D&D 5E The Return of the HealBot

[eprieur]

So when 4.0 was starting to come out I remember reading cleric and healing word and saying holy bahamut they fixed healing! This (and other stuff) really picked my curiosity in dnd, a system I had abandonned in 2.5 more then 15 years ago).

I like a few things by default in NEXT and in the previous packet cleric felt not that bad. They had channel divinity, a daily version of healing word. The war cleric could attack the same turn he used channel divinity. Bad overall vs 4.0 system, but could be worse.

So now it's back to worse in the new packet, where once again, a design from the 80s (70s?) where heals are from the same pool of spells as every other spell is back there. I had hope for the at-will healing but then I read it.

But it's better you say because now heals all have the word of power keyword! Actually, this make it even worse. You see, heals are already powerfull and usefull enough so that you probably don't want to 'waste' one of your precious daily spell slot on something like shield of faith when Bobby the Dwarf is asking you to put his gut back in over there. I remember when I was a kid it was funny because the party had to have a cleric but he was pretty much forbidden to cast any spell other then something that would heal someone. Now it's not funny, it's bad design. Anyway so heals are already powerfull enough but now they are even more powerfull since you can also do a melee attack in the same round.

Why can't they make healing spells on a separate spell spool? What is so hard about it? At least it will be worth it to actually read the spells instead of just skimming to where the heals are.

4.0 had it right, please, bring it back. Make it daily I don't care, but it has to be from another spell pool and basically clerics have to be forbidden by the rules to take their normal spell slots for crap like cure light wounds. 1 pool for heals, 1 pool for the rest, balance it until it work.

 

[GhostBear]

Perhaps a better solution would be to make healing of any sort (be they spells, potions, or the 4th Ed. Voodoo) unnecessary as a whole. Something nice to have, but not mandatory.

This can be done simply by giving players a larger pool of HP to start with, and have lower amounts of damage. Have healing restore similar amounts. Now it is a viable strategy to prevent incoming damage since two or three unlucky rolls doesn't mean you're a blood stain. Spells that affect the enemy's ability to deal damage, or allow a player to avoid or absorb damage, would be more useful.

Or, simply have combats be deadly. Don't have the expectation that every combat you enter be so heavily slanted towards the players winning. The Thieve's World supplement has very limited magical healing - cure spells simply convert lethal damage to non-lethal. Getting into a fight is suddenly a lot more intimidating - it had better be worth the trouble!

 

[Blackbrrd]

After playing a Cleric in 3.5 from level 1 to 18 over several years of game time, I very rarely had problems with running out of spells to do fun things with. Sure, a lot of my low level spells went to healing, but not close to all of it.

What I lacked for the most part was actions. I used the quicken spell metamagic feat to cast Divine Favour, Divine Power (and the occational Rightous Might). Other favourite spells were Bless, Prayer, Flame Strike, Blade Barrier and some of Bigby's Hand spells (Strength domain). Basically the only in-combat healing done was with Heal. It's better to kill a mob than to heal the damage it does.

My conclusion: you had enough spells in 3e to make the Cleric something other than a heal bot. My cleric was a mix between a heal-bot, buffer, self-buffer or blaster, but usually only had one of those roles in each fight. They might get the mix right in 5e as well.

5e has some interesting mechanics for reducing damage, for instance the Maneuvers the Fighter and Rogue has where they can used expertise dice to reduce damage they take.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Perhaps a better solution would be to make healing of any sort (be they spells, potions, or the 4th Ed. Voodoo) unnecessary as a whole. Something nice to have, but not mandatory.

By and large, it already is. I've yet to see a version of D&D where a cleric or healer was absolutely essential.

Definitely some styles emphasize it more than others, and the rules need a lot of flexibility on how health and healing work to accommodate that.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

In 4E healing wasn't interesting, it was something you did as often as possible every combat. It was just attrition.

I would prefer no in-combat healing other than from potions, then if you want healing, you damn well do it yourself. Give clerics ritual healing outside of combat, so that again, it becomes a pool of resources that the whole party shares. If you worship the right deity, that might give you healing in combat as an option, but yes, you give up other spells to do that, because you worship the frakking god of healing! If we see Channel Divinity return then the lifegiver should perhaps use that for healing instead.

 

[pauljathome]

One of my favourite changes in Pathfinder is the addition of channel energy to the clerics standard bag of tricks (for those who don't know what this means, clerics get a fair bit of healing from a different pool than their spells).

This lets clerics be significantly more fun. Their primary role is still generally party healer (where healer includes healing conditions, poisons, etc etc etc) but they now have enough flexibility that they will often get to cast non healing spells and can easily fill a secondary niche or two.

I vaguely recall that the later 3.5 splatbooks allowed something similar.

4th edition also makes clerics a lot more than the healbot. While I personally prefer the pathfinder method the important thing is that both make a cleric a lot more than just a healbot.

 

[kerleth]

Myself, I would like the cleric to be more similar to the previous packet. Every cleric has channel divinity at 1st level. Channel divinity can be used for turning undead or healing by default. Certain domains/deities (I'm okay with either) may and probably will modify these abilities and add new ones, among other things. I think Chris Nightwing's idea has merit. Put in a cure spell, but also give it a ritual option. Make it work so that it's not the most efficient things to do in a fight USUALLY, but you can burn up some of your ritual components to heal outside of combat(kinda like buying healing potions in a way). I think an approach along these lines could be developed to take care of the heal bot problem while allowing players who want to focus a little more on healing to do so.

 

[nightwalker450]

I think the healing issue is more one of perceptions, and intents.

Players wish to be as safe as possible, so they will want as much healing available as they can (all healing spell clerics). The GM's want their combats to have meaning, to impact the players, and make them fear for their characters' lives. GM escalates damage/creatures, players escalate healing, an arms race. The more a GM wants to run a "gritty" game, the more the players will go defensive and healing.

I think the best solution is instead of focusing on healing, we should think more along the lines of damage prevention. Give the players some form to pull back their damage output, while decreasing their incoming damage. This would go a long ways to reducing the arms race. The GM would then be able to see that the players are feeling that "gritty" tension, because they are fighting defensively. The players as well wouldn't feel the need to escalate as much because they would have some option to throttle the damage.

The problem with using healing for this, is that all the DM sees is the players healing back up after everything and therefore he doesn't feel he's being as effective as he should be. He doesn't take into account the reason the players have all those healing spells is because they know what type of DM they have. So the "gritty" feel was taken care of in character creation, not in the individual combat.

Unfortunately almost all editions have only had an off or on switch for defensive fighting. You either are attacking, or you are dodging (and practically nobody dodges). 5e with the maneuvers of parry or deadly strike are getting closer but it needs to be available for everyone. Combat Expertise of 3e and the berserker of 4e (though the player has less control over it), are as close as we've come.

I'd say use disadvantage on your attacks to give all your opponents disadvantage on theirs, but over using advantage/disadvantage is making the status more and more useless. Maybe a penalty to your own damage (no modifiers?) in order to reduce incoming damage by 1 Hit Dice would be an effective way. I don't know if this is the proper way, but I think the key is we need to look at a different dimension than we currently are.

 

[Cadence]

By and large, it already is. I've yet to see a version of D&D where a cleric or healer was absolutely essential.

I remember lots of 1e games where it was pretty important ... and I'm glad my current 1e group has two clerics in it. We'd have lots of tense camping after one combat and be unable to pursue run-away bad guys otherwise.

 

[GameDoc]

Part of the "spell nerf" in the new packet is due to the fact that in DDN, there are no additional spell slots for high abilities. It didn't stand out so much in the earlier packets because you got more than one spell per level anyway. Now it's a glaring difference from pre 4e iterations.

I think the idea is that at low level you'll use cure minor wounds as an at will to keep allies from dying round to round instead of using cure light wounds repeatedly. Also given the new XP chart, your only a couple of encounters from getting to second level from the start. Not saying I care for this one first glance (I don't), but I'm slated to play a cleric this weekend and will test it our before I write it off completely.