Time to Heal

Mark CMG

Creative Mountain Games
Time to Heal - WotC Blog Entry

Along with the subliminal nature of the article's title, it's a nice rundown of the past healing practices of clerics and an interesting question. :)


I'm in the none of the above camp. My solution? I like the idea of each player character having three pools of personal energy on which to draw, one built from the combined bonuses from Strength and Constitution, one built on the bonuses from Intelligence and Dexterity, and one built from the Wisdom and Charisma bonuses. The first speaks to dealing with Fatigue, the second innate Arcane ability and the third innate Divine ability. A character who can utilize Divine magic can draw either on their own pool of innate Divine energy to cast Restorative magic or can tap into the pool of the person being healed. These are reserves that replenish every twenty-four hours if one is getting proper rest.
 
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I'm probably in the minority on this, but I don't really like in-combat healing. I prefer healing to be something that is done after battle, rather than during it. Maybe there's the occasional very high level spell that can revive fallen comrades mid battle, but I think that should be high level magic, not common.
 

"If you ask a random D&D player what a cleric does, five out of six of them probably say, “A cleric heals.”

Wow. That's so far removed from what a cleric is it's not even funny. It's like saying a car's purpose is to play loud music. Sure, it can do that, but that's not why you buy one. A cleric is a warrior of god first, a healer 2nd.
 

"If you ask a random D&D player what a cleric does, five out of six of them probably say, “A cleric heals.”

Wow. That's so far removed from what a cleric is it's not even funny. It's like saying a car's purpose is to play loud music. Sure, it can do that, but that's not why you buy one. A cleric is a warrior of god first, a healer 2nd.

I think it's a fair thing to say by the OP. Every person I play with describe the cleric as a healer.
 

I think it's a fair thing to say by the OP. Every person I play with describe the cleric as a healer.

I have to agree. A cleric, ever since OD&D, has been defined by his support status, and the top method of support has been healing, the ability to help an adventurer carry on.

Playing with three different gaming groups in elementary and high school, I never saw a cleric played who didn't have the majority of his 1st, 4th, and 5th level slots filled with three simple spells...
 

I've played a lot of clerics over the years, and I never load up on just heals. Maybe first level spells at higher levels because there's not a whole lot of great spells there. I listed my mage spells in the fireball thread, may as well do the same here. Here's my 7th level cleric's list in a 1e game I'm in (18 wis):

CLWX2
CommandX2
Detect Magic

Hold Person X3
Silence 15' Radius
Speak With Animals

Cause Blindness
Remove Paralysis
Meld into Stone

Animal Summoning I
Call Woodland Beings


I'd hardly look at him as a healer, though he is capable of that.
 
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I prefer to split healing into five categories:

1) Natural healing - done over days, weeks and possibly months (or even not at all).

2) Mundane assisted healing - aids the process of natural healing. More chance of successful healing and over a possibly lessened time frame.

[The next three assume that you divide "hit point" damage (as hps are actually defined in the last four editions) from actual wounding.]

3) In-combat boosting - helps restore lost hit points. A priest's blessing, a commander's motivational pushing of those around them, or a character's inner resolve and toughness are all examples of hit point restoration that are capable in combat.

4) Out of combat restoring - pretty much you get your hit points (as in wind/luck/chutzpah/resolve) back. This should happen a short period of time.

5) Ritual healing - rituals that can magically heal wounds but can take varying amounts of time to either perform (as in an actual ritual) or to manifest (wand or potion being immediate but possibly taking hours to heal - as against restore hps).

As such, this covers at will hp restoration (which is effectively limitless) as well as healing actual damage (which is limited and becomes unspammable).

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
 

The Healbot was new to 3.0, IMHO.

In early D&D/AD&D, Clerics simply didn't get all that much healing magic at early levels. You basically just had cure light wounds until you got to 7th level in AD&D, when you could finally cast 4th level spells and cast Cure Serious Wounds.

So you had all these non-healing spells in spell levels 2 & 3.

Personally, in all the Clerics I played, I would split the levels with healing spells 50/50. Command is a very useful spell, and even the higher level spells competed with Flame Strike and Blade Barrer.

4th was pretty much split between Neutralize Poison and Cure Serious Wounds though

Beyond that, since there were 4 tiers of fighting ability, the Cleric was also the 2nd best fighter (in AD&D at least, D&D only 3).


In 3e, they changed the spell list so the healing spell were at all levels. And monsters were beefed up, so every fight was tougher, you really constantly needed healing, sometimes even in combat, as opposed to after or in special fights.

And in OD&D/D&D, Clerics didn't even get spells at 1st level, so could hardly start off as a support class.

The whole problem has been caused by MMORPGs, IMHO. People are applying play styles from that to tabletop ones.
 

notice the "5 out of 6" that leaves 1 out of six who don´t think healing is the cleric´s priority...
and notice: "random", not "forum users"...

It always was the clerics duty to heal... because he could! He was the only class that could back then, so a cleric was the healer... period. Other duties were alway secondary... and if the cleric refused to heal you sooner or later got seriously pissed...
 

"If you ask a random D&D player what a cleric does, five out of six of them probably say, “A cleric heals.”

Wow. That's so far removed from what a cleric is it's not even funny. It's like saying a car's purpose is to play loud music. Sure, it can do that, but that's not why you buy one. A cleric is a warrior of god first, a healer 2nd.

So you're one of the one out of six then? :)

It is the simplest answer to what a cleric does when you're talking about a D&D game. If the typical D&D game involved little to no fighting, then I'd agree.
 

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