D&D 5E Why Has D&D, and 5e in Particular, Gone Down the Road of Ubiquitous Magic?

[MoonSong]

Whether you're talking about the original topic of hp inflation or the easy availability of between-combat healing, it is. High point, and arguably beginning. PC hps in 3e could go higher than in other editions, because CON bonus added at every level and CON didn't have a hard cap (and you had CON boosting items). WoCLW healing quickly became trivially available - virtually unlimited, while surges were & HD are daily resources.

I've seen a Defender 'do his job too well' and be the first one out of surges. But, yeah, especially early on, it was the melee strikers, typically the Rogue, who would run out the fastest. It wasn't all intra-encounter tactics, attrition over the adventuring day was a significant factor to manage, too.

Sure, but once they broke out the WoCLW, you could just prep different spells and go all CoDzilla....

I really never experienced the Wand of cure light wounds. I try to do my hardest at lower levels so the party doesn't even think of it.

Being a great enjoyer of 4E, I think everyone should be self-sufficient. To this day I still build characters who can stand on their own, at least long enough to run away if everyone else dies. I don't like games where you can't "play by yourself" it doesn't encourage teamwork, it encourages dependency, negative dependency, particularly in games that provide no way to get better at the things you're bad at. IME, people make better teams when they rely on each other because they want to, not because they have to. Relying on each other because they have to leads to players like you: who attempt to control others play through rationing their job in the party. Could you imagine if a damager did that? Just said "Naw I didn't like how you healed me last week, so I'm gonna let the goblin eat you." That's not cooperation. That's extortion.

There's a reasonable amount of "stay out of the fire" that any given character can do. As someone who has been a long-time raider in MMOs, there's also some things that you just can't avoid and the healer must heal them through it. The alternative is everyone playing mages and archers to stay out of melee where all the bad stuff drops more often. But then if they do that, the healer doesn't get the sort of protection they need and monsters are free to charge right up to them, instead of risking a half-dozen OAs from nearby melee.

I played in a game with a healer like you once (and I've been in god knows how many raids with healers like you). Eventually I just stop doing my job and sit on the sidelines. I'll guarantee that you'll complain more about my lack of contribution than my poor contribution.

Quoting Ghostbusters, Saelorn doesn't represent me and doesn't speak for me. We share so many views on healing. I really enjoy playing healers and doing my best to do support (and preferred when healing was more necessary and hp as meat), not so much fighting by myself but working in a team, you keep me safe and I keep you alive. I have never denied healing to party members, yet I have gotten some flak for not being a combatant, but that doesn't mean I'm trying to sabotage the party, does it?. Is it that bad that I'm not self-sufficient under these circumstances?

 

[Sunseeker]

I really never experienced the Wand of cure light wounds. I try to do my hardest at lower levels so the party doesn't even think of it.



Quoting Ghostbusters, Saelorn doesn't represent me and doesn't speak for me. We share so many views on healing. I really enjoy playing healers and doing my best to do support (and preferred when healing was more necessary and hp as meat), not so much fighting by myself but working in a team, you keep me safe and I keep you alive. I have never denied healing to party members, yet I have gotten some flak for not being a combatant, but that doesn't mean I'm trying to sabotage the party, does it?. Is it that bad that I'm not self-sufficient under these circumstances?

I think everyone should strive for some level of self-sufficiency. Healers, tanks and some types of DPS get it easier than other classes. Avoidance, damage reduction, self-healing, etc... But for some classes this comes at the expense of other class features. It was one thing I liked about 4E, you didn't need to sacrifice unique class features to get some sustainability.

Being interdependent is fine if the group builds for it from the start, I don't have a problem with people doing that, but if it's not pre-planned, there's a risk of people running characters that NEED support, in a group that doesn't provide it. And of course, it depends heavily on how strategically the DM runs encounters, because encounters that aren't strategic don't require any coordination on the part of the players mechanically or tactically.

As for clerics using magic that isn't healing, that doesn't bother me at all. But I do dislike that Clerics can literally cover every role in the game, while the same is not available to the vast majority of other classes.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Sure, like I said, there's a reasonable about of damage that can usually be avoided, and there's things that can't. Since D&D isn't an MMO and the healer doesn't know what abilities are coming up next or what people need to get out, the inexorable result is that people will take more damage on a more regular basis and attempting to play social engineering by what boils down to attempting to get others booted from the group, as Saelorn basically admitted to doing, is probably the worse of the two sins.

The healer is a person at the table, though, and can tell whether someone is taking this seriously, or if they just don't care whether the whole party dies and we lose our characters that we've been playing for months.

What you refer to as "social engineering" is an in-character way of getting people to be better players (or getting their characters to be smarter tacticians, depending on the situation at hand). It's far preferable to calling the player out at the table and telling them that they're playing wrong.

 

[Sunseeker]

The healer is a person at the table, though, and can tell whether someone is taking this seriously, or if they just don't care whether the whole party dies and we lose our characters that we've been playing for months.

What you refer to as "social engineering" is an in-character way of getting people to be better players (or getting their characters to be smarter tacticians, depending on the situation at hand). It's far preferable to calling the player out at the table and telling them that they're playing wrong.

Tomato Tohmato. The "healer" is also a human being and an imperfect, partisan judge of things and really doesn't occupy the position of making those sorts of decisions, that's the DMs job. Your judge of character, much like everyone else's, is probably not as good as you think it is (everyone tends to believe they're a great judge of character). It's the DMs job to stay impartial and keep an eye out for people causing problems through action and inaction and determine if it was done on purpose, or on accident.

You want people to be better players? Communicate with them. Use better tactics: free action "Hey get that one over on the left!" or "Help get this guy off me!" AKA: communicate with them.

You're still telling people they're playing wrong, you're just being passive-aggressive about it, which IME is worse than being up-front about it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think it would be preferable to speak to the player directly rather than being passive aggressive by witholding healing, you have a problem with another player, talk to them. Tell them directly that they are costing the party all of its healing resources, sometimes that's all that it takes and the player will pull back a bit on the reckless charge in.

I don't necessarily have a problem with the player, though; my problem is with the character who takes foolish risks.

It's not my place to tell the player how to play their character. If they want to play a foolish character who ends up dying, then that's fine, but I'm not going to let that one character get the whole party killed if there's any way I can stop it. All else being equal, I'd prefer if none of us had to die. It's not like I'm staying silent about my decision-making process; they know exactly why I'm spending a spell slot on the paladin instead of their barbarian - it's for the good of the group.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The "healer" is also a human being and an imperfect, partisan judge of things and really doesn't occupy the position of making those sorts of decisions, that's the DMs job.

No, that's exactly the healer's job - to make judgment calls about who gets healing and who does not, and when. That is the role you play on the team, just as it's the tank's job to decide which enemies to intercept and how to hold their attention, and the mage's job to decide which spell (if any) to use in any given situation.

The DM has no voice in this process, unless it's as an NPC who happens to be there on the scene while this is happening. If the DM was going to tell the players how to play the game, then there would be no game left.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Even in MMOs when playing a healer with essentially unlimited healing you make judgment calls on who gets it. Tanks are primary. Front liners next. I'll heal the mage and hunter in the back if I have time. "You pull it, you tank it" essentially means you die until I can rez you when yhe fight is over.

In D&D when you have finite resources it's even more important. That front liner that's protecting us (me) gets dibs. Backliners get what's left. And if you're stupid, yes, I have a right to grumble about that. And maybe you don't get healed if j need to conserve.

 

[Azurewraith]

"You pull it, you tank it"

Oh I like you. As someone that played WoW in its prime at a hardcore level I couldn't appreciate the stament more then Wotlk happened and everyone was a tank

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

Being a great enjoyer of 4E, I think everyone should be self-sufficient. To this day I still build characters who can stand on their own, at least long enough to run away if everyone else dies. I don't like games where you can't "play by yourself" it doesn't encourage teamwork, it encourages dependency, negative dependency, particularly in games that provide no way to get better at the things you're bad at. IME, people make better teams when they rely on each other because they want to, not because they have to. Relying on each other because they have to leads to players like you: who attempt to control others play through rationing their job in the party. Could you imagine if a damager did that? Just said "Naw I didn't like how you healed me last week, so I'm gonna let the goblin eat you." That's not cooperation. That's extortion.

For 2 people that have such different and opposing opinions of 4E, we have surprisingly similar (if not downright exact) preferences on character dependency and nature of cooperation

 

[Sunseeker]

No, that's exactly the healer's job - to make judgment calls about who gets healing and who does not, and when. That is the role you play on the team, just as it's the tank's job to decide which enemies to intercept and how to hold their attention, and the mage's job to decide which spell (if any) to use in any given situation.

The DM has no voice in this process, unless it's as an NPC who happens to be there on the scene while this is happening. If the DM was going to tell the players how to play the game, then there would be no game left.

I don't take issue with healers deciding where healing is most needed. That's NOT what you were doing. You are using your rationing of healing as a bar to judge PLAYERS and if they are fit for your group. That is NOT your job. It is not your job to determine if the player cares. It is not your job to determine if the player is taking the game seriously. And it's not your job to attempt to force people from the table when they start playing in a manner you don't like, especially through passive-aggressive social engineering. You're welcome to talk to the DM or heck even voice your concerns in the ever acceptable "Hey man, you're gonna get us all killed, stop that!" But being the healer no more entitles you to control the group than being being any other member of the group.