Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink

[Jester David]

I believe that, in 3E, in-combat healing was also a significant factor in the game - at least at a number of tables.

There seems to be some disagreement on whether, in 5e, in-combat healing is important. That suggests to me that it is, at least in part, a table thing.

I agree that inspirational healing as a post-fight thing, rather than rousing or rallying, isn't very inspiring. I personally don't like it much for clerics either - when you look at the archetypes for prophets and wandering miracle works, very few of them perform their healing as a form of post-combat medical care.

Healing was important in 3e, but it often came as much from wands as clerics, unless you were house ruling character wealth.
Still, healing was limited, and the cleric was at its strongest when not healing. So there was a strong incentive not to heal. And even in 3e - where you quickly healed more for a spell slot and had more healing slot - damage quickly outpaced healing making in-combat healing a trap.

You heal even less in 5e and monster damage is higher, so healing is even more of a trap. And combats are faster, lasting fewer rounds. You're almost always better off using your action to attack or take the offence.

 

[Zardnaar]

Healing was important in 3e, but it often came as much from wands as clerics, unless you were house ruling character wealth.
Still, healing was limited, and the cleric was at its strongest when not healing. So there was a strong incentive not to heal. And even in 3e - where you quickly healed more for a spell slot and had more healing slot - damage quickly outpaced healing making in-combat healing a trap.

You heal even less in 5e and monster damage is higher, so healing is even more of a trap. And combats are faster, lasting fewer rounds. You're almost always better off using your action to attack or take the offence.

Bonus action healing is good though. There are only a few in commbat healing effects worth using in 5E though.

Healing word if someone goes down
Healer feat with the Thief subclass.
Aura of Vitality or whatever its callled (level 3 Paladin healing spell) via lore bard.

 

[Jester David]

Bonus action healing is good though. There are only a few in commbat healing effects worth using in 5E though.

Healing word if someone goes down
Healer feat with the Thief subclass.
Aura of Vitality or whatever its callled (level 3 Paladin healing spell) via lore bard.

Bonus action healing is okay but still hard on the ol' spell slots. You don't get as many spell slots, and 4+d4/level is pretty low. At level 5 that's an average of 11 damage when monsters should be doing 35 damage a round. You can get someone up, but they're not going to stay up.

 

[Zardnaar]

Bonus action healing is okay but still hard on the ol' spell slots. You don't get as many spell slots, and 4+d4/level is pretty low. At level 5 that's an average of 11 damage when monsters should be doing 35 damage a round. You can get someone up, but they're not going to stay up.

I know, check out the ehaler feat though 5E rewards whack a mole play style. 1d4+4 or whatever is better than outright death though.

 

[jodyjohnson]

I know, check out the ehaler feat though 5E rewards whack a mole play style. 1d4+4 or whatever is better than outright death though.

My solution for "whack-a-mole" is Lingering Wounds (DMG) and those optional rules also help resolve the "nothing ever wounds" aspect of "HP as Mojo". So you can get hurt badly but it isn't happening all the time in even the most trivial combats.

 

[mellored]

Healing was important in 3e, but it often came as much from wands as clerics, unless you were house ruling character wealth.
Still, healing was limited, and the cleric was at its strongest when not healing. So there was a strong incentive not to heal. And even in 3e - where you quickly healed more for a spell slot and had more healing slot - damage quickly outpaced healing making in-combat healing a trap.

You heal even less in 5e and monster damage is higher, so healing is even more of a trap. And combats are faster, lasting fewer rounds. You're almost always better off using your action to attack or take the offence.

A chunk of the healing in 5e (and 4e) has been moved to hit dice and full overnight healing. Which drastically reduces the pressure for groups to have a cleric / potions / wands.

It also reduces the need for warlords to have healing in order to replace clerics. Though there's still a big difference between 0 and 1 HP.

 

[Jester David]

I know, check out the ehaler feat though 5E rewards whack a mole play style. 1d4+4 or whatever is better than outright death though.

Absolutely.
But are you better served using that 1st level slot to heal that 1d4+4 or is it more effective blasting the enemy, ending the combat, and stabilizing your friend via Medicine?
Will the fight still be ongoing in 3 rounds?

In some situations, yes, healing is good. Getting that rogue positioned beside the BBEG and ready for a sneak attack is probably a more effective use of a 1st level cleric or bard spell than another spell, especially if they're already concentrating on something. Provided the rogue acts before the BBEG and all its potential minions, and can hit with their attack. If the villains go first or the rogue misses then it's very easy to knock someone with 6 hitpoints back on their ass and negate all use of the spell. You might as well have spent your action and spell slot casting grease against a beholder.

A chunk of the healing in 5e (and 4e) has been moved to hit dice and full overnight healing. Which drastically reduces the pressure for groups to have a cleric / potions / wands.

It also reduces the need for warlords to have healing in order to replace clerics. Though there's still a big difference between 0 and 1 HP.

And that's the big catch.

In 1e and 2e, healers (read: clerics) were essential for downtime reduction. At 5th level, it took the fighter a month of rest to get back to full. The cleric could knock that down to a couple days. In 3e it could take that same fighter 10 days to heal. But the cleric could bring them back after 2. And some healing after combat is handy to make up for some bad rolls and get ready for the next fight.
In 5e you heal overnight, so that use of the cleric is gone. And you can spend hit dice, allowing you to top up between fights. So that use is also reduced. It's a pretty effective system where you don't really need a cleric or healer.

In combat healing is nice, but it's not a primary role. It's a secondary role at best.


Healing has become the equivalent of getting past a locked door. It's super handy to have a rogue or the wizard prepare knock. And it sucks when you come across a locked door and can't get passed, and it can really bring the adventure to a halt. But you really don't want to design a character solely around being a "lock picker". And being a "door cracker" is a pretty weak class feature to make essential to a class.

 

[jayoungr]

Aragorn isn't a commander of Legolas or Gimli, but clearly inspires them.

But Aragorn was the acknowledged leader of the Fellowship after Gandalf's fall. (See "The Window on the West," where Frodo refers to him as "the leader of our Company from Moria to Rauros," and the only reason he stops there is because that's where he left the group.)

There is also a question of how much archetype slippage is tolerable in a class-and-level-based FRPG based around the "adventuring" paradigm.

Agreed, but we need to establish how the literary examples work before we can think about how best to translate them to D&D rules.

Whether archetype examples have to be mundane - I think that's a deeper source of division than the concessions for playability necessary for D&D to be D&D.

The reason I specified mundane is because one of the stated goals for a warlord is for it it be usable in a completely mundane party--no magic and no supernatural stuff of any kind. But I'm really more concerned about examples of inspiring "leaders" who are not also the acknowledged leaders or commanders of their groups. That's where I have the most difficulty "getting" the archetype.

In LotR, and other work, Tolkien doesn't have categories of "magic" and "mundane". There is no categorical contrast between the "natural" fear of being attacked by an oliphant and the "supernatural" fear of being terrorised by a Nazgul.

I agree, which is why translating examples from Tolkien to a setting that does have "magic" and "mundane" categories is problematic.

I think if you reduce all that to spells, you misfire: spells in D&D are little discrete rituals - like Gandalf igniting pinecones or trying to open the doors of Moria - and in that sense I think it's clear that Gandalf's heartening of the defenders of Gondor does not involve spell-casting.

For what it's worth, I am not saying that Gandalf uses spells to hearten the defenders of Gondor. I am saying that (1) as a "higher" being, he is likely capable of stirring reactions that would be unrealistic if directed toward a mundane human unknown to the soldiers--think racial feature for Deva/Aasimar; and (2) his previous demonstration of a spectacularly effective attack probably contributes to their faith in him.

Also, once again, he's their supreme commander, as per a line you yourself quoted in post 171: "So it was that Gandalf took command of the last defence of the City of Gondor."

And, conversely, a group who decided that a warlord's aura of courage (or however it is handled) was not the sort of magical effect to be suppressed by an Anti-Magic Field wouldn't be doing anything wrong. Would they?

Off the top of my head, I don't think so. I reserve the right to change my mind depending on the type of compromises made for an individual iteration of the class, however.

 

[Aldarc]

The reason I specified mundane is because one of the stated goals for a warlord is for it it be usable in a completely mundane party--no magic and no supernatural stuff of any kind. But I'm really more concerned about examples of inspiring "leaders" who are not also the acknowledged leaders or commanders of their groups. That's where I have the most difficulty "getting" the archetype.

Avatar the Last Airbender's Sokka? Aang is the undisputed leader of the group, but Sokka is the mundane tactician, strategist, and planner. Is he a warrior/fighter? Sure, but he often was regularly outclassed by other mundane fighters, such as his girlfriend Suki, Jet, Ty Lee, or even Zuko without his firebending.

Mat Cauthon of Wheel of Time. Sure he became a commander of the Band of the Red Hand, but that was something he stumbled into as a result of tactical competency. Are his memories or ta'veren status supernatural? Sure. But I would still say that he qualifies as a mundane inspiring commander.

I would say that one of the major problems, however, is that when people list examples of warlord archetypes, they get dismissively handwaved away. "Oh, those are just fighters with leadership feats." or "Oh, those characters can't possibly contribute to our understanding of the warlord, since they commanded troops."

It's as if we were talking about rangers, and we were repeatedly met with "No, those aren't rangers. Those are just fighters with wilderness skills and feats." or "They can't be considered rangers, since they are mundane and D&D rangers must cast spells." If everything gets irreducibly reduced to being just a fighter with X, it's a miracle we have barbarians, rangers, and paladins at all.

 

[Lord Twig]

The 'advantage' of being arbitrary, yes. A design advantage, really. Whether that advantage is used to arbitrarily make magic a balanced/playable/fun part of a game, or to make arbitrarily broken/overpowered/game-wrecking is apparently a matter of taste - and tradition.

This is just an odd attack on magic. Since it does not actually exist in our world it can be whatever you want it to be. You can make it as specific or general as you like. The only limit is that it should be internally consistent. But that doesn't make it arbitrary.

Anyone who designs a magic system is going to have reasons for how they design it. As Mark Twain said: "It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."

And your bias is showing. I doubt that an "arbitrarily broken/overpowered/game-wrecking" magic system is to anyone's taste. And considering how different the 5e magic system is compared to the original 1e/2e system, I don't think tradition holds much weight either.

Worked fine for Fantasy Hero and others, as well, and when it finally went officially 'universal.'

Yes it worked for Fantasy Hero as well, but it gave the game a different feel from D&D because of it.

It completely misses the rapid run-up of hps total with level in D&D, that so nicely models the 'plot armor' inherent in genre. You can literally make yourself some plot armor in Hero, of course, but D&D has really captured that genre bit with hps like no other game, in a very simple, abstract way - hps. It's too bad they didn't initially have equally simple/abstract hp-restoration, but just had magical wound-healing as the primary thing.

And this is an interesting perspective. I think it is the opposite. Superheroes rarely increase rapidly in power. And the 'plot armor' is something that all superheroes have from the beginning and doesn't increase. They might lose it if their comic comes to an end, but it doesn't really increase.

And you are making the assumption that HPs were always an entirely abstract measure that never represented wounds, but then simultaneously claiming that the Cure Wounds spells were not abstract and only represented healing actual, physical wounds. Do you think maybe the problem is not with the rules, but with your interpretation of them?

I have always played HPs as representing not just physical wounds, but also abstract concepts like luck, willpower and stamina, and likewise Cure Light Wounds restored all of that. It made you whole, physically and spiritually. So, yes, Cure Light Wounds could heal psychic damage. Of course back in the day psychic damage was just damage.