Why Does The Term "Healbot" Ride Alone?

[macd21]

Why is a healer whose only personality is "If someone is injured, then I cast cure," less fun than a fighter whose only personality is "If it looks hostile, then I attack it"?

Why would a (hypothetical) healer that could only heal, be any worse of a design than a fighter that could only attack?

Because attacking is, quite simply, seen as more fun, more proactive and more consequential. And rightly so. Sure, there are some players who like being the healer, but they’re a lot less common than the players who like killing things.

As for bad designs, both would be bad, but the mono-healer would be worse.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Because attacking is, quite simply, seen as more fun, more proactive and more consequential. And rightly so. Sure, there are some players who like being the healer, but they’re a lot less common than the players who like killing things.

That makes it seem less like the old cleric was poorly designed (as GrahamWills suggested, however you're supposed to tag people in this forum), and more that they simply mis-judged their audience.

If a kill-bot is an acceptable character, then logically, a heal-bot should be equally acceptable. If it's not true in practice, then the players aren't the right fit for that game.

 

[John Dallman]

Why is a healer whose only personality is "If someone is injured, then I cast cure," less fun than a fighter whose only personality is "If it looks hostile, then I attack it"?

Because quite a few people play RPGs for the vicarious violence?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

There are people that like healing as a role, and any group is lucky to have them. Personally, when I play a cleric, I tend to avoid healing. I remember my group being somewhat disappointingly baffled when my 3.5e cleric didn't have heal prepared. I had better things to do with that 6th level spell slot than restored hp! Although the contextually relevant point that its other effects were more powerful than restoring hp did have merit in the situation.

In general, we've never really had that issue of someone needing to play a dedicated healer in our various games. Those in the group who tend to be big picture thinkers will sometimes take account of the overall party composition, but we often have only modest healing abilities and it's still enjoyable.

 

[Hussar]

AFAIC, the killbot fighter is just as bad as the healbot cleric. They're both one dimensional, if even that. There's nothing there that you couldn't replace with a chatbot.

I've certainly seen more than my share of players whose sole contribution to the game is throwing a die once in a while.

OTOH, to me, a Healbot is so often an NPC. No one wants to play the cleric, but, particularly in older editions, having a cleric was considered necessary, so, we drag along an NPC cleric whose sole function is to provide healing spells. Thus, healbot.

 

[macd21]

That makes it seem less like the old cleric was poorly designed (as GrahamWills suggested, however you're supposed to tag people in this forum), and more that they simply mis-judged their audience.

If a kill-bot is an acceptable character, then logically, a heal-bot should be equally acceptable. If it's not true in practice, then the players aren't the right fit for that game.

A kill-bot isn’t an acceptable character, it’s just not as bad as a heal-bot.

The cleric was also bad design in that it was an essential class. You could get away with not having a kill-bot in your party, but playing old-DnD without a cleric turned it into a struggle, even a chore.

 

[MichaelSomething]

This reminds me of the TF2 honest trailer.

"Doctor. The class everyone loves but no one wants to play."