D&D General What's the DC for a fighter to heal their ally with a prayer?

[pemerton]

In a more rules-light game solving this sort of thing via a skill roll (or similar) would be perfectly appropriate. However, D&D has classes and other ways for the characters to gain codified capabilities. If one wants to pay a devout fighter whose prayers are occasionally answered they probably should take a feat that allows them to cast some divine spells. That being said, improvised action are of course allowed and should even be encouraged, they just shouldn't step on the toes of capabilities the players used character building resources for.

I often see posts about eg anyone can make a check to disarm, "stunt" etc. Is healing by prayer different as a matter of principle?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I often see posts about eg anyone can make a check to disarm, "stunt" etc. Is healing by prayer different as a matter of principle?

No. But there are features characters have for doing these things, so anything similar that can be done without such feature must be quite a bit worse, or why would you take that feature otherwise? For example, there actually is a disarming attack manoeuvre battle master fighters can use via expending a superiority die, so any free disarming that is available to anyone should be significantly worse than that.

Also, there is a skill intended for healing, and it is called "medicine." And it cannot do terribly much. But if you can match or exceed that via a religion skill, then doesn't that make religion just a better skill? And of course next you can start to pray for other things, supplanting other skills as well.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Literally anyone or anything can make a 'basic attack'. A child can do it. A housecat can do it. They don't have to be 'quite good'.

A fighter, or any other PC, making a Basic Attack is not 'a child' or 'a housecat'.

Qi is an actual martial concept based on focus and muscle memory that is exagerated by pop culture. So yes, Qi is a good descriptor for NOT MAGIC.

Ummmm, look, my wife is Chinese, not Chinese American or whatever, just plain old born and raised in China. She is very into Chinese fantasy. I ASSURE YOU that your definition of Qi as you have put it here bears NO relation whatsoever to how she defines it. While I would say that Chinese have a rather different outlook than westerners on the ideas of 'magic' and 'mundane', Qi is a highly 'fantastical' concept. Sure, people who are using it in a non-fantastical sense, might describe it as being based on focus and such, but there's a distinct element even then of 'gift', you have it or you don't. Once you go anywhere into the realm of fantasy, at all, Qi is a mystical force of spirit energy related to connections with fate and the supernatural. It is IMHO pretty much exactly Martial Power.

There it is! One of the classics.!

'Shouting arms back on'.

No. Full stop. No. What is happening here is rousing the other person to continue the fight, not inserting new meat points into their corpse. It is not magical. It is not closing wounds. And the assertions that they are need to be buried in a shallow grave next to a septic tank unknown and unmourned.

I don't see anything in 4e's text which states HOW this is accomplished, or why. Who says it is 'shouting' at all? Why not marshaling the warlord's internal spirit and fortitude, focusing that magical force on the target, and causing them to heal? It may serve a specific rhetorical purpose to attempt to cast it in this absurd light of 'shouting', but I go by game text, not rhetoric, lol.

Honestly, I think that 4e is written in such a way that you are left with the option to interpret many things in whatever ways you wish. I've certainly described warlords as inspiring their allies to ignore their wounds and fight on myself. I don't think its WRONG to do so, but I also don't think you can simply dismiss Martial Power as nothing but mundane stuff. It just doesn't hold water. Too much of what higher level PCs do that falls under that power source is just way too fantastic.

 

[pemerton]

@AbdulAlhazred

When it comes to the "Word" spells - Healing Word, Inspiring Word, Majestic Word, Word of Vigour, etc - I go the other way: I see them all as rousing, comforting, soothing etc. The power source tells us something about how the character is able to exercise such presence, that carries others with them, in the face of adversity: the cleric speaks with religious assurance (or perhaps religious comfort, for a cleric of a more humble tradition - say Ioun compared to Kord); the warlord with passion and command; the bard with joy and a type of immanent revelation; etc.

The only healing that I see as manifestly miraculous (as opposed to ambiguously miraculous) are the Cure Wounds prayers (which allow surgeless recovery) and the healing rituals (Cure Disease, Cure Affliction, etc) - eg in my campaign Cure Affliction has been used to restore missing or maimed limbs.

 

[Chaosmancer]

To be fair, there are rules for grung characters (which I'm fine with by the way).

And there are rules adjudicating the usage of skills. Which do not claim to be definitive, because you can't give a definitive list of skill usage.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Zero. The chance must be zero because otherwise they are are stepping on the"Divine Intervention" class ability of level 10+ Clerics. If even Clerics don't get this until L10, and even they have to roll percentile dice less than or equal to their level and may succeed only once a week, then why would anyone else ever be able to do this ever?

So, no one other than a 10th level cleric who can raise the dead can ever have any prayer of any degree answered by the Gods? Any person who has ever prayed for salvation as their homes were being destroyed had their prayers denied, because they were not 10th level clerics?

 

[Grogg of the North]

So, no one other than a 10th level cleric who can raise the dead can ever have any prayer of any degree answered by the Gods? Any person who has ever prayed for salvation as their homes were being destroyed had their prayers denied, because they were not 10th level clerics?

The 10th level cleric has a direct line to a representative of his faith. He doesn't need to wade through the telephone prayer automated menus and get put on hold. "Your prayer is very important to us. All representatives are currently busy. Please stay on the line. If this is an emergency, please hang up and contact your local cleric or paladin immediately."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@AbdulAlhazred

When it comes to the "Word" spells - Healing Word, Inspiring Word, Majestic Word, Word of Vigour, etc - I go the other way: I see them all as rousing, comforting, soothing etc. The power source tells us something about how the character is able to exercise such presence, that carries others with them, in the face of adversity: the cleric speaks with religious assurance (or perhaps religious comfort, for a cleric of a more humble tradition - say Ioun compared to Kord); the warlord with passion and command; the bard with joy and a type of immanent revelation; etc.

The only healing that I see as manifestly miraculous (as opposed to ambiguously miraculous) are the Cure Wounds prayers (which allow surgeless recovery) and the healing rituals (Cure Disease, Cure Affliction, etc) - eg in my campaign Cure Affliction has been used to restore missing or maimed limbs.

Yeah, fair enough. I mean, you can describe it that way. I kinda think when you get to the level of "the cleric wraps the divine aura of Bahamut round himself and fills the Fighter with confidence and renewed vigor" its almost splitting hairs though. I called them all magic. Heck, I'd basically consider the 5e healer's kit magical in the sense that the reason pressure and bandages and whatever heals people is ITSELF magical, given that the function of living organisms is in and of itself a form of magic! This is why I always fall back to the "the entire world is literally MADE OF MAGIC" point. I mean, there sure ain't no such thing as chemistry there!

 

[pemerton]

Heck, I'd basically consider the 5e healer's kit magical

I do, for a different reason: as a piece of first aid equipment its pretty miraculous!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Anti-magic field procs.

A divot is removed from the planet.