18:57 you missed one of the greatest benefits of Aid- there is no requirement to see the target. If they are in range and swallowed by a monster, you can still bring that player back up without targeting them.
Once again, spells need a clear line of effect; you cannot target a creature that is behind total cover, even if the spell doesn't require you to be able to see them. This would, however, be useful if the party was under darkness, or if you've been blinded.
In the real life military, you are trained not to attempt to rescue/start first aid on wounded soldiers until the area is safe. The first step in combat triage is always "secure the area" meaning eliminate any threats, then you can put your weapon down to pull out the tourniquets and bandages.
The only edition of D&D that's ever had decent in-combat healing is 4th. At the very least, the fact that most healing powers healed 1/4 of the target's max hit points meant that a single Healing Word from a Cleric (or a Warlord's Inspiring Word, or the other equivalents) represented a meaningful recovery. The fact that you only be healed a limited number of times per day (6-10 based on class, plus a bonus number equal to Con bonus) provides a natural limit to the adventuring day that isn't just about the caster's resources. Further, 4e had more severe Death Save rules than 5e does: you didn't stabilise after 3 successful death saves, and failed saves stayed with you until your next short rest (short rests were only 5 minutes, but that still means your failed death saves remain for the entire fight even if you get healed), so you were encouraged to try and keep allies on their feet rather than letting them drop to 0 and then healing them back up (the common tactic in 5e). I think that some of this dynamic can be imported to 5e. For a start, the death save changes make for more tense and interesting play in my experience. But for the healing itself, why not have healing spells additionally let the target spend some of their hit dice immediately as well. Maybe a limited amount per spell (say, up to Proficiency Bonus hit dice). That allows a character to receive more healing when they really need it, tying it to hit dice means that healing is more proportionate to their maximum (avoiding that case where a Barbarian or Fighter gets a smaller % of their maximum hp back than a rogue or wizard would), but it comes at the cost of personal resources.
I always end up playing a support character and say something like, “not to worry everyone, i’ve got healing covered!” But then they get mad cause i don’t use literally all my resources keeping them topped off. This video is a helpful reminder of how i can make still make a big impact.
In Playtest Document 8, all but one of the new healing spells heals twice as much as before. Which means the devs also noticed the lackluster power of healing.
I have a feeling the lackluster healing was intentional design. I'm not saying it's good, but I think it's intentional, as good in-combat healing will lead to insane yo-yo effects, and basically double the length of fights which are already pretty long anyway.
@@NotsogoodguitarguyThat isn't necessarily the case. Strong healing could actually mean that you heal before they go down, so it is possible that it basically removes yo-yoing. And Healing someone who is alive is likely faster, as dropping to zero takes time. And even in the case where you are bringing someone back, if the stronger healing means that they drop again in two turns not one, then that still speeds things up.
@@spikehammer3112 that's a good point. I might have to reconsider. Although, on the other hand, if the bad guys have healing, then we run into the same problem - the bad guy is now gonna be reliably healed, whereas before it wasn't viable. And that can also bog down the game.
@@Notsogoodguitarguy For sure, if both sides have strong healing then that can be a problem. But that might finally solve the "murder hobo" problem. Just make healing so good and available that nothing can ever die. lol
Speaking of out-of-combat healing, TCOE put Aura of Vitality on the Cleric spell list, which means it's accessible to Divine Soul Sorcerers, which means it's not super hard to cast it with Extended Spell metamagic. Do what you will with this information
My life domain cleric took this spell and the metamagic adept feat for Extended Spell. If I recall correctly, the math checked out to be 40d6+100 Healing split across the party.
the best out of combat healing is any elf with goodberry with trance you can convert all your spell slots in to goodberries and still get a long rest in before the rest of the party can get one at lvl 3 with out life cleric you can have 60 hp worth of out of combat healing for free every day with life cleric its 260 hp
@@planthing2315 Depends on the type of adventure. I'm in an adventure where we spend multiple days in a dungeon. Hell if I'm going to blow all my spell slots when one of our long rests gets interrupted and we only get a short rest.
If I remember correctly... technically it's not on the cleric spell list, it's an optional class extra. Which means that technically, it is not available to Divine Soul Sorcerers. This is reflected on DnD Beyond. I was rather sad when I found out, as I had wanted to take AoV on my DSS.
At some point I came up with a technique known as the Grave Clerics Massage. If an ally is at 1 or 2 Hit Points, you give them a painful massage (unarmed strikes to reduce them to 0HP) to maximize your healing and they end up with more HP than if you had not damaged them.
The bulette example is interesting because it's an outlier, many monsters of the same CR have multiattack instead of just one powerful attack: The troll has one bite and two claws (7/11 dmg). The otyugh is similar, one bite and two tentacles (12/7+4 damage). The fire elemental has two attacks (10 dmg) and they can also catch someone on fire. Barbed Devil has two claws and one tail (6/10 dmg). The gladiator can make 3 melee attacks (11-13 dmg or 9+ prone) The roper has one "big" damage, but it does 22 with a bite... for a creature that can't move that much and needs to use their tentacles to attract it's prey. The giant shark is also similar, it does 22 damage... but hey, it's a fucking shark, it's scary because you have to fight it underwater. The giant crocodile is also a heavy hitter, it does 21 with a bite and 14 with the tail (it also knocks you prone).... So why the fuck the bulette, the thing that it's mostly a landshark does more damage than the giant shark??? because it's the fucking MM, this monsters barely follow any kind of guideline for CR. So in summary, the example of the bulette is kind of misleading, because the PCs are fighting something that can easily one-shot anybody... they shouldn't be healing, they should be retreating. It's interesting to note that the bulette in 3.5 used to do 3 attacks, one bite and 2 claws (or 4 claw attacks if it's leaping). Those attack did 17 for the bite and 11 for the claws...quite a lot of damage for 3.5... and rightfully, the monster is CR 7.
Yep. And it is worth noting that healing downed ally for 7 hp against monsters with multiattack (or just against multiple opponents) will probably get them killed. So often times you either have to heal big, or (most likely) resort to any kind of damage mitigation strat yet again
I agree that it's an outlier but his point still stands. Reducing or preventing damage is more effective than healing it after. Sure... There are times when a heal can buy a party member an extra turn and that character can do more on his turn than you could have yourself. That would be a good time to use a heal in combat. There are times when a creature has downed a party member and has moved on to attacking someone else. In this situation you might be able to buy the downed character a few extra turns and that's almost always going to be better that almost anything else you could have done. But these situations are few and far between. It's like he says... A generality but not an absolute.
This video is reminding me of my Genie Warlock/Grave Cleric multiclass that I've been playing for over two years now. I took the Cleric dip for Spare the Dying and some other utility spells, plus the extra spell slots are a godsend. In that entire time, I've barely used the healing spells at all because my entire party are all a bunch of legends who know how to keep themselves alive. The one time a party member does go down and I finally have a chance to use my healing spells on them, that party member rolls a Nat 1 on their death save before my turn and they die anyway. 😭
House Rule: in combat, healing potions may be taken as either a bonus action or an action. If taken as an action, then the PC gets max healing. If taken as a Bonus Action, then roll as usual.
With the buffs to healing spells in the playtest, I would probably allow this homebrew until healing potions are buffed to be as good as cure wounds spell scrolls (literally equal price)
The luck part is really important to consider when healing. Your Cure Wounds is more likely to roll very low than it is to save someone in the miracle 5% chance they get hit by a critical. Several times I've cast Cure Wounds and then it healed an amount comparable to healing word and I'm just there thinking "thanks, there goes what could have been a bonus action". These sort of realisations are what made me realise that Cure Wounds is generally just a bad spell, both for in combat and out of combat healing.
I've been a healer (stars druid) in a short campaign that just finished. Party of seven, though we were in situations where our other healer the bard wasn't in combat. I burned a good portion of my slots just trying to keep people alive and people were trying to act like I wasn't a good healer even though I often used the chalice constellation. 1 person having to heal for 5 other people was already ridiculous, but they acted like being a cleric would have made me a much better healer. Granted a lot of them were new but the DM and someone else who played 5e were acting like I wasn't good at doing my job lmao.
@@waifusmith4043 Yes some pretty much need to play a char with healing to understand this. Its much better to have a collection of healing resources from different players that can help get someone on their knees. Short rest is basically the heavy lifter when it comes to healing.
A thought occurred to me. Imagine a healing spell putting a 1 round buff on the recipient. Out of combat healing becomes less attractive comparatively. Like a brief shield of sorts on the healed. +5 AC for one round Or a saving throw bonus for one round Damage resistance A bonus to attack or damage Lastly: the rider could be inverted for Harm or Wounding Spells
I had a good combo in one of my games. I was playing as an Oath of Devotion Paladin. When the party needs a lot of Healing, my Paladin would case Beacon of Hope and the we have a Bard with Mass Cure Wounds. Beacon of hope maximizes ALL healing for 1 minute. Upcasting Mass Cure Wounds can get 40-50 points of Healing for each character. It was a great combo after the DM hit us with multiple Fireball spells in a single round.
I have wanted to play a character like that for a while. I've had an idea for a Shadow Touched Twilight Cleric 6/Mercy Monk X inspired in part by Medieval plague doctors and in part by the premise of the game Pathologic, of a healer infected by a plague from the Shadowfell and trying to find a cure to save himself while also trying to continue to heal others without infecting them. With the update to Monk, especially with their defensive capabilities, I think Spores Druid 6/Mercy Monk X could also work decently now, too.
Celestial Warlock FTW! Eldricth Blast at level 5 will push your Bullette back up to 20 ft from the fighter as an action. Healing Light as bonus action. "You have a pool of d6s that you spend to fuel this healing. The number of dice in the pool equals 1 + your warlock level." (DnD Beyond. No spell slots consumed. But you have a 3rd level spell slot for Cure Wounds if needed.
I’d also add that in the cleric 5/ stars druid 2 build another option might be thorn whip and healing word while concentrating on SG, and having say, warcaster instead of the bump to WIS ( 1/2 damage does a lot of work)
@@S1leNtRIP how do people get around druids not wearing metal armour? do they just ask the dm nicely to ignore it? I'm playing a life cleric 7 atm and have been contemplating druid 2 for a while, but giving up heavy armour is nasty
@@MrJronson you can just ignore it, the wording says "druids will not wear armor or use sheilds made of metal" theres nothing forcing them from not wearing it, its just a choice. The wording is mostly just left over flavour from earlier editions, the playtest UAs for the 2024 players handbook drops the metal thing, so theres that. and with your character who has been wearing heavy metal armor for 7 levels now, they wouldn't suddenly decide to ditch it.
Yep, it's been like this since 1st edition I believe - I'm going Redemption Paladin for tanking right now and dipping 3 into Celestial Warlock just for Pact of the Chain familiar's invocation to auto-maximize any healing I receive. Of course then the trick will be to ensure enemies actually attack me instead of others in the group.
As an optimizer who has played a life domain cleric from first to 18th levels in his first ever campaign, this video speaks to me. I've long asserted that 5e has a problem where healing spells simply did not scale well enough. I was of the opinion that each upcast leveling of healing should include your spell mod again (e.g 2nd level cure wounds would be 2d8+10). The playtest 8 packet effectively does this by not only increasing the base dice of each healing spell, but also making them scale better as well. I am seriously looking forward to seeing how impacts the new campaigns I'll be running with a lot of the 2024 playtest spells.
I recently played a Life Cleric 1 / Shepherd Druid 9. After our gang took a pummelling, slapping down unicorn spirit and doing some big boy healing with mass cure wounds net some ludicrous healing (almost 200hp split across 5 players). Was a lotta fun to see what can be pumped out
Our cleric regularly uses Life Transfer to keep our front line up so they don't go down. Then he heals himself with his staff of healing, potions, etc. May not be the best use of his action economy, but it lets our barbarian lock down the biggest band guy and go toe to toe with foes otherwise out of his weight class.
I recently played a campaign where the cleric relied of Life Transference above all other healing spells and I was impressed how effective it was. Routinely brought my reckless rogue back from the brink to > 50% max hp.
I feel the best healing is preventative. I usually play a bard and I’ve found that using Aid and Inspiring Leader have a number of advantages. This combo stacks, Aid lasts 8 hours and be not only adds the 5 hp buff at second level it also raises the HP max for three allies. IL can be used anytime the bard has 10 minutes and out of combat Song of Rest while it doesn’t give a huge regenerative bump to healing doesn’t cost the party resources.
There is nothing worse than being downed and having to sit there while the rest of the party continues with the fight because they plan on getting you up later. In combat healing needs to be better.
@@mrosskneI think it maybe could but it would need to be accompanied by more. For example if a spell healed 1 hp for the purpose of reviving put the rest as temp hp and then gave a buff while you had that temp hp it could work.
@@mrosskne If you can end a fight in 1 action you should do. But you should never know for certain that using 1 action will end the fight. So it should always be a gamble - do you attack and hope the enemies die before they kill your downed friend, or do you heal your downed friend to avoid them being killed?
The consensus of needing a ‘balanced party’ with a tank, healer, and dps is so strong that most players who play a primary healer still don’t realize that there are often better uses of their actions than healing. Thanks for attempting to dispel this.
Part of that is also that not every 'healer' build really has that much else to do in their turn that is better all the time. Though some classes that heal naturally get more versatility so should have an effective move, usually not costing that vital out of combat high efficiency recovery spell slot. But some are rather more limited, or severely resource limited - Though that doesn't even mean that build was a pure healer by any stretch either, when its not the first combat of the day (or you know for sure the tough stuff is ahead and will be faced today) resource management comes in. The healing capable classes might well be conserving their top moves for later, but that 1st level slot is expendable - which creates that situation where its toss out the likely 0 damage cantrip or trickle heal the right targets so the group is ready to move on for the next wave quicker.
Hit point inflation + attack damage inflation (3e bulette bite 2d8+8 vs 5e 4d12+4) has greatly outpaced healing, which remains at 1e level (~1d8 × spell level). Under those conditions I would double regular cure wounds dice. Healing will still fall short of combat damage, which it should. It should always be easier to kill than to heal. Managing healing resources is a lost art in this age of take-a-nap self-healing.
Pretty extreme example starting with a crit. Usually the bullette will get in two normal hits, and if you throw in a heal in between, the fighter stays up and is never in any danger.
04:15 [FIX] "Channel Divinity: Preserve Life" . As a Magic Action, you present your holy symbol and evoke healing energy. . Choose any number of creatures within 30 feet of you (including youself). . Distribute among the chosen creatures a number of Temporary_Hitpoints equal to five times your cleric level. . Inmediatly after, each of the chosen creatures (that is not a construct or undead or is Unconcious), can choose to consume up to half (rounded down, minimum of 1) of the Temporary_Hitpoints provided by this feature to heal themselves, regaining that ammount of Hitpoints.
[With DM approval]: At the end of each of their turns, a creature that did not used the temporary hitpoints (provided by this feature) to heal themselves, can choose to consume all of the remaining tempHp to heal themselves for half of that ammount (rounded down, minimum of 1).
One limitation when using aid for healing is that multiple instances of the same effect don't stack. So if a character is already aided, you need to cast the spell at a higher level than before for it to heal them.
I wrote a guide on giantitp a while back focused exclusively on healing, which pretty much followed this advice to a T. This was pre-tashas, but imho the healthiest and best healer is still Life Cleric 1/Shepherd Druid X. Druids focus heavily on concentration/control which gives it an amazing Plan A. Lifeberries make out of healing absurdly efficient. And in combat healing with unicorn spirit and healing word gives you an extremely strong burst heal(that can repeat each round for another 1st level healing word) WITHOUT eating concentration. The mix of summons, control spells, efficient out of combat healing, and potent burst healing in combat just comes together incredibly well. I know the change to Disciple of Life was good for the game, but I will miss a lot of the ways you could multiclass it to be amazing.
Two mistakes: 1. Players should not assume the Aid spell can be used to remove the Unconscious condition from a creature they target with the effect, since it is only removed if the creature "regains" hit points. 2. Sometimes, a healing spell can be useful to get an ally to take their turn before the enemy creatures. Even if the enemy creatures go before your ally, a readied action can heal your ally with better timing.
@@elliotbryant3459 It is open to interpretation, which is why I said "players should not assume" I'm not sure if there is a sage advice about it, but also not all GM operate with sage advice. For example, in the new D&D ONE, they capitalize certain words. It may have been the intent of the designers(RAI) for the creature to need to specifically regain hit points, rather than "increase" them.
My biggest problem with Healing in 5E is that with combat is that same at 1 HP which also encourages concentrated attacks on one at a time. My solution for my game was to have penalties for being under half total HP and again when under quarter total HP. That has encouraged spreading damage and healing earlier in fights. DNDBeyond combat tracker helps with this since that is when images shift to red and then to flashing when taking damage.
Currently 9 levels into a game as a dedicated healer. Shepard 8, Life 1. Party gets to go into every combat at full hp, and unicorn totem gets multiple allies up and spreads chip healing around the whole squad. Plus as a summoner you have very good ways to put more HP on the field which are pro-active in nature.
I would like to point out the interesting interaction between grave clerics power and mass healing spells. Grave clerics power maximizes the spell if a target is on 0 HP. We had situations where we damaged one of our own party members to 0 HP so the cleric could then have his spell be maximized for all of us.
I don't like yo-yo healing, so I really like enemies to continue multiattack without carring if a PC reached 0. I also like effects like burning, aura-damage at the turn start, killing if 0 hp is reached. Even if one of these happen once in 3-4 games it's enough to stop players think, that 0 hp is not a big deal.
I would be careful going that route. (Multiattack is fine, I mean the other stuff). The reason this video is advocating for just healing 1 hit point to bring people back up is because there is *no option in the game* that will bring a level 5 character up from zero to anything that can survive another round from a CR5 creature. Making being at low health more lethal won't make players heal more, it'll just make them die more.
@@kevingriffith6011 It also doesn't make a ton of sense from an rp perspective most of the time, unless they absolutely hate that character and are trying to cut its head off, or they're like a beast that wants eat it. Also could be justified if they've witnessed the creature yoyo-ing.
This is one of the reasons I simply allow potions to provide maximum healing at my table. You know it will always heal 10, 20, 40, 60 (for each tier of potion). I still keep it at an action to use potions though. Even if it "feels better" to use a BA, 5e characters don't need more convenience in that specific manner if you ask me.
I think the issue is healer characters feel terrible when they shouldn't. I think there's possibilities in having a limited buff with the heal. There needs to be incentive to cast something on someone who's not nearly dead. Something like you or allies gain one of the effects depending on the spell and how much hp you have but it lasts a limited time like 1 turn. blade ward, resistance, shield of faith, armor of agathys, sanctuary, bless, shield, protection from evil and good, death ward, stoneskin, longstrider, mirror image, blink, haste, fire shield, eyebite, the druid elemental investitures
Honestly level 7 build life domain 2 stars druid. Take healer feat. Turn one activate your chalice form as a bonus action and spiritual guardians as action. Then you could use your action for healer kit for 1d6+4+7 bonus action for healing word 1d4+4+3 and finally chalice 1d8+4. This healing could be split 3 ways. The healer kit would be limited use but you could just use it on other party members that need it.
In one of my current campaigns I switched characters mid-campaign from a Twlight cleric to an order of scribes wizard. The cleric character was fine but when I have a new character idea I tend to get obsessed and have to play them immediately or never. However, as a considerate player, I realized that replacing the support character with a wizard (even if order of scribes which I didn’t realize how busted it was until after playing her for months) might be tough on the party’s survivability. Answer: mark of healing halfling as the race. This worked out perfectly because I wanted her to be a halfling regardless (just felt like the vibe, Y’know) and then there was the literal perfect subrace to solve all my qualms about switching characters. I do know that dragon marked races are not always allowed so ask DM permission as always. However, being able to add healing word to my spell book has kept my party alive far better than the ranger with cure wounds. I also now have aura of life which has become a go to spell for tough encounters. No need to use another spell slot if they will pop up on their turn anyway. Oh and I can cast it from my manifested mind to keep my squishy wizard self out of harms way (aka not having to make concentration checks). I have used these spells to save the lives of extremely important NPCs that the DM was fully expecting to die as well as my own party members. And this is all on top of casting lightning flavored fireballs every so often because I can
As much as the life domain channel divinity CAN feel shitty because it only heals up to half of a player's max HP, it is still AS powerful as the Paladin's Lay on Hands, up and to the point of being at Half HP. I can't even count the number of times I've yanked someone back from the death or the brink of death with Action: Preserve Life into Bonus Action: Healing Word or Mass Healing Word. Sure you can only do this once per Short rest levels 1-5, and twice per Short rest 6-17, but that's usually more than enough for emergency "get back in the fight" healing. On the Multiclass point, 2 levels of Stars Druid is VERY strong on a Life Domain cleric build, but 1 level of Life Domain is equally 100% worth the dip on a Shepheard druid build. Disciple of Life + Unicorn is quite potent. If you're playing Low to Mid op, it should be more than adequate in combat healing.
One other very critical question is how aggressive are the enemies to downed players. Some DM’s won’t hit a downed player, others will continue their 3 hit multi attack after you go down on the first hit. I’ve seen many players think they were safe when they were downed by the boss only to die to chump minions. In combat healing is good for the scenarios where downed effectively means dead. CR3 demonstrated this well in the Otohan fight where the party bounced a few bodies, so she started confirming her kills Not all damage is combat damage too. Environmental damage from traps and obstacles will wear your party down before you even get to the fight. Traits such as Fiendish Vigor or arcane ward are great because they give you a restorable buffer against chip damage.
Even with the buffs, I would probably only cast healing word, given it is a bonus action and actually upcasts better than before. I've stopped taking spiritual weapon in the recent times, so it works out for me. But there was a time when I came to hate all forms of healing briefly and that's purely due to how awful combat healing can be. Oh this should be fun. I normally find healing in combat awful. The one time I played a cleric, my party turned me into a heal bot and it was truly awful. I was pretty new to d&d and it left a bad taste in my mouth and I steered clear of clerics. Given all my actions were spent on either healing word or cure wounds and eventually concentrating on aura of vitality. While in reality all I wanted to was swing my giant glowing spiritual weapon and have the little spirits from spirit guardians surround me. Spending your channel divinity as a life domain just to do more healing is truly awful. I wanted to be a cleric to use spells like bless, bane, silence, locate object, dispel magic and spirit guardians. Not spam the same healing spells every three rounds. I'd much rather play a monk than do that. It didn't help that the life domain does extra healing with all their features, so despite having a druid in the party, the party would flock to me for all their healing and I would stare in silence as I marked down my spellslots. Now outside the combat, I don't really mind healing people. That's why I tend to go wizard with the strixhaven background or the new rune carver bg these days, just to grab goodberry.
I have a similar problem. First time playing DnD (SKT campaign) and as a Light Cleric. You know, the subclass for destroying enemies with light and radiant damage. I do not mind healing the other player characters but the pressure I get every time one of them is downed (because they stormed forward to a hill giant at lvl 4) to use a healing spell is annoying. For the rest they are all nice guys but the laughing when I'm considering not to heal is very annoying. They say I choose 'a healing class', while they are also in awe when I use Radiance of the Dawn on 5-6 enemies and kill 3 at once and damage the rest. Play your own character well instead of giving me directions! From the next session we will be level 5, let's see how they view a "healer" casting a well directed Fireball.
I played a decent variety of video games before ever getting a chance to try D&D, and am someone who prefers filling a damage sponge and/or support role, so I am used to healing for tanks ranging from good to arguably not enough. However, once I finally got the chance to play D&D, I was dumbfounded by how horribly inadequate the healing was in 5E for everyone, let alone for someone remotely tanky. Part of my initial issues with healing in this game likely did come from a combination of below average healing rolls (this is my biggest gripe with the healing in this game: too much variability in healing due to rolling) and party comps that didn't lend themselves well to healing a tanky character. However, 3 years after beginning my D&D journey and as someone that rarely multi-classes due to a lack of good narrative reasons to do so (so far), even my beefiest Life Clerics and Armorer Artificers only work as tanks because they lean heavily on their higher than average AC & HP (and my DMs' penchant for rolling less than stellar to-hit rolls against me more often than not). Until UA "Player's Handbook Playtest 8" came out, their ability to tank via healing rather than AC was not great. Now that UA23PT8 is out I now actually have a chance to be what I consider to be a good tank both because of high AC and because healing spells actually restore a respectable amount of HP. In case anyone is curious, yes I have known since I started playing D&D that Paladins, Barbarians, and Fighters make for better tanks than Artificers (I have played as a Battle Master Fighter before). That being said, I like playing the Artificer, and I am able to fill the role of tank or secondary tank (with a moderate amount of DPS to boot) in my groups with my Artillerist and Armorer Artificers, so I roll with the Artificer when I am not playing a Cleric.
I wish this had touched on the dark side of how the extreme efficacy of things like 1hp lay on hands/healing word+death saves wind up being so effective that all of the other ways of proactively mitigating damage start to become pointless or or so much less than optimal that the opportunity cost involved in using them starts rising too high to really justify them stillmaking enough difference
The risk of getting hit for maxhp beyond zero is still sometimes plausible at low levels like the 5th level example but by tier2 & 3 that risk is almost zero
It's funny, I just got done tweaking a homebrew Rogue healing subclass. I had to couch the amount of healing they did by saying "look how much healing everyone else (especially a cleric) can do, they're not even healing as much as these other classes can", all while knowing that the amount of healing the average character can do is *terrible* in comparison to damage received.
That's always the struggle with homebrewing when you've got an optimizer's perspective. If you're making a rogue subclass, for example, you have to ask yourself "Am I trying to salvage the rogue class with this subclass?" or "Am I trying to make something that is balanced with other rogue subclasses?". A subclass that brings someone like the rogue, monk or barbarian up to the level of a dedicated spellcaster would absolutely be overpowered compared to it's peers as subclasses of that class, but it wouldn't necessarily be overpowered compared to the rest of the game around it.
Dunno man. I've played a Druid and watched a Paladin tank like 4 Type VI demons for a whole round. Then cast Heal on him and watched my DM's utterly defeated face when they wasted their turns like that (the pally hadn't gone down). That was satisfying AF.
In defense of the cleric casting cure wounds for the “insignificant amount” of 25 yes the Bullette can knock him down again no problem but he can’t outright kill the fighter anymore. I used a bullete in one of my campaigns and it got a crit on our sorcerer, who instantly died. Then it proceeded to tpk the rest of the party (tunneling). A little bit of healing can go along way, and if the group works together you can get more turns to get them out of the red. I use a few rules to prevent yo-yo healing specifically so that the guy who plays the healer has his job really matter instead of just resurrecting the party as they drop. You are right though, having a heal-bot 9000 is only useful when you get hit, so they are less useful then a character who can heal and still contribute to the combat, and it takes a good player to be the healer because you need to be very efficient with how you fight and heal otherwise your wasting resources or making stupid plays and drag the team down. And despite all that, the party still wants a healer, so someone might as well be good at it.
One of the things I’ve done as a tank was think of the opposite for healing, but getting healed. 3 levels of warlock isn’t impossible for some paladins builds and 3 levels warlock can get you pact of the chain and the “gift of the everliving ones” which maximizes how much I get healed if the familiar is alive. This could make the Druid cleric over 30hp on me (24+4+5=33 hp) and if I go celestial, I can heal myself for 6x the number of dice I spend on the feature it gives.
TBH, you never need healing until you drop to 0HP. A player character with 1HP is as effective as one with 150HP. Until that changes, all you need is healing word to revive a fallen foe.
That's why I'm considering a house rule something like: every time you are healed from 0 hit points, you have a failed death roll that lasts until you take a short or long rest. With this rule, in- combat healing becomes much more valuable. The downside is potentially increased lethality, which many people think 5e lacks, and the motivation to take more rests. It may encourage the 5 minute work day. On the other hand, it may encourage more short rests to the benefit of classes that rely more on short rests.
My buddy just rolled a warforged twilight 10/stars 2 to join our spelljammer campaign (going from Lv1-30 w/ heros handbook). He wanted to be a healer in the traditional sense & im looking forward to next week when he gets to do just that XD.
My dm modifies the going unconscious from 0 hp to applying progressive levels of exhaustion. So in addition to going unconscious, you don't want to be going up and down with healing word. So healing is about staying alive more than up and down.
One of the biggest power fantasies in playing a Cleric is the ability to heal the sick and wounded. And instead people have been served with being the equivalent of a potion dispenser.
In the context of the Order Cleric 1/Divine Soul Sorcerer 8 I'm currently playing, I've had seen some mileage done by a combination of three spells: Aura of Vitality; Aid; Wither and Bloom Extended Aura of Vitality - for a measly 1 sorcery point - allows me to bring up the average healing upwards to 140 hit points per combat. It's the bet healing spell in my toolbox, so, the trick is making sure my allies last that long. Aid is an easy upcast for me since - as a multiclass dip - I lack a spell known for 5th level spells. An extra 20 hit points (60 in total) is a nice enough value next to the potential of other spells such as Mass Cure Wounds. Finally, the third tool is Wither and Bloom. Not the greatest damage spell, but since our party has 3 frontliners, it's the one I can the most easily use in a melee. The damage is nothing overly impressive, but if one of them is flagging, I can upcast it for a pitance more damage... but the main point is the opportunity to use hit dice to heal then-and-there. A 4th-level upcast allows the one of the frontliners a equivalent or greater amount of healing than an upcast Cure Wounds of the same level; on top of triggering a Voice of Authority Reaction attack. Yes, it costs hit dice, but they barely use them since I've obtained Aura of Vitality. In the right kind of melee (say, 3 targets), I can - in a single action with a 4th-level Wither and Bloom - deal 40ish damage over my 3 targets, have the fighter do an attack dealing an extra 12ish damage on hit, and heal said fighter 4d10+4. It's not a trick I can perform all day, but when I do, it seems like a nice pick-up moment for them. There's also the alternative of turning them into a Giant Crocodile for the extra buffer of hit points, but Polymorph's been getting a poor reception in this campaign when I try to use it as an alternative to the risky twin-cast haste (which I want to retrain but keep being begged not to). For some reason, the warrior-types really don't like not playing as themselves.
Healing in the middle of combat can also be useful if there's a rider on providing an effect. Order cleric does this very well. Did the rogue need healing?, no but the reaction attack that he got to make due to the rider effect was worth it, especially when you are able to influence more than 1 ally/creature through a spell like wither and bloom, silvery barbs, polymorph or an ability like the chalice's chain healing, even better if you can combine it. A character concept of mine that does this is: 1 order cleric, 2 stars druid (mostly chalice, but dragon has it's use) and the rest bladesinger tortle. Since tortle you can focus on decent WIS and INT and passable CON and DEX/STR (I like strength since it gives greater weapon choice and some of the normal considerations aren't needed like AC since tortle has that covered) after all as a wizard hitting things shouldn't be your primary contribution anyway.
I really wish this was common knowledge but sadly it isn't. For whatever reason I usually end up being the last person to join a campaign before it starts, which in turn usually means I end up playing a Cleric because nobody else wants to, which is fine because I enjoy the class, except for one thing. People will always say "Oh good, we have a healer" and I have to quickly counter with "No, you don't" because if I don't, they'll get extremely cocky, do something extremely stupid and then expect me to burn all of my spell slots to dig them out of trouble. Case in point, this last weekend during a Phandelver campaign we were wildly outnumbered by bandits. We're only level 3, they're all in a big room so we decide to funnel them through a doorway so the bandits with ranged weapons didn't shoot us up and kill us all. Our Fighter and Warlock decided to completely ignore the plan, both charge into the room and then are shocked to discover the easily discernable fact that every single bandit had a turn before the rest of us did so they proceed to surround our Fighter and Warlock and drop them both in a single turn. Now they're begging me to heal them both and I have to explain to them why what they did is extremely stupid and how healing them would do literally nothing except waste a spell slot. I can honestly say that once One D&D drops I'm never going to touch Cleric or any other class that can cast a heal again. The improvements to healing is just going to encourage extremely stupid behavior that the classes that can't heal will expect you to burn all of your spell slots to fix. Whew... yeah. I might need a break from Cleric.
I standby what I said last video, in that the improvements to healing spells in playtest 8 feel really good, but aren't enough to solve the problem completely. Beacon of hope carries it hard, and that Spell isn't very good due to its action cost and spell level, which likely won't be fixed... but if the effect was incorporated into life cleric or something, (say I spend a channel divinity to use the max healing of this spell I cast, kind of like how tempest cleric works with thunder) that would feel pretty good while not taking away from what cleric does in general
@JuckiCZ agreed, by just preparing cure wounds you can get TONS of value by upcasting on a downed party member. 51-53 healing with just a third level slot? Sign me up!
Maybe that's the way they balance it is make healing instead extra protection of some kind. Or maybe some kind of pre healing. I think the real issue is its either terrible or too good. I think there's potential in doing temp hp and buffs while the temp hp is available. Make exactly 1 hp to bring someone up and the rest is temp hp. I think the other issue is spell mod should matter more.
I think one of the design flaws of 5E is there is no cost to getting dropped to 0. Characters can keep tubthumping, and as long as they don't take a kill shot it's fine. I've used house rules that inflict a level of exhaustion on a dropped character, and tactics switched to mitigation and healing before the character could get dropped, which feels more realistic than saying "Let Fritz the Fighter get dropped. One healing word and he'll be fine."
I get a little annoyed by this argument because this is a significant oversimplification. There is certainly a cost to bringing someone back which is paid in action economy (first and foremost), resources, and positioning to the rest of the party. First, most forms of healing will require close proximity to the downed player, which may be very dangerous for the rest of the party if it's a melee character that went down in melee (the most likely scenario). Second, someone that has the ability to bring the downed character back up must take their turn before the downed character's in the turn order, or else the party will lose an additional action. Unless the party was already winning the encounter with a surplus of action economy, this can take quite a toll on the rest of the party's ability to survive and can snowball into a TPK very quickly. If you are struggling to survive with 4 actions per round and someone goes down, then what happens during the next round of attacks when you only 2 actions? You might have 4 actions again the round after that, but that's a long ways away. I'm sure you're yelling about healing word at this point because that's really where the problem is, not the fact that people going to 0 have no impact. In my opinion, healing word and other bonus action features which provide healing should heal as normal, but should remove the unconcious condition. This would mean that, sure, you can keep someone from dying as long as you have healing words to spare, which might be a good stopgap and what you need at that moment, but you won't get that person back into the fight without something more substantial. Alternatively, moving healing word to being a 2nd level spell would reduce its availability significantly and other features are much more limited or specific subclasses already, so this may also be a viable option. I do not think adding penalties for dropping to 0 makes for a fun game for 2 reasons: 1) monsters are designed around few, large hits and so getting hit just a couple times, getting critical'd, or being a squishy and taking just a single hit will all immediately initiate this downed scenario and began sapping resources from the party to maintain, often with very little counterplay, and 2) the design of healing features, as mentioned by Chris, is very weak and inefficient for use in combat as-is, so using features to bring someone back in this way can often not even give them the ability to avoid the next source of damage that will put them right back down. All that being said, I think if the bonus action features were unable to bring someone back from conciousness, then you could increase the amount of healing generally to make healing actually feel significant and not a complete waste to cast a cure wounds or healing word on someone who's low but not yet been downed in order to avoid them going down in the first place. Just my thoughts. *TL;DR*: Going to 0 isn't the problem, it's the easy availability of low-cost (primarily in action economy cost) features that can correct the problem. Instead of adding a penalty, make it so these features can heal, but not remove unconciousness, or reduce the availability of these features (i.e. move healing word to 2nd level).
Hm... Im thinking hospitality halfling, divine soul sorcerer X, celestial warlock 3, and twilight druid 2. This NPC is a Medical Center technician, dedicated to all forms of healing, natural to the supernatural. Take feats like leadership, healer. Those warlock slots make for wonderful use of either goodberry or aid. Get effectively free distant spell with pact of the chain imp. Celestial healing, med kits. Lots of variety with regards to just hp management. But I love to splash sneaky control spells like bane, mind spike, Tasha's whip. Who needs high level of spells?access to glyph of warding, if one wants to be clever with spell traps
*cries in Healing Spirit* I feel I had to take this on my Ranger is CoS, since BOTH Cleric and the Paladin wanted to change characters, and the other Cleric stopped playing. Feels bad, man. There ARE some decent uses for Healing Spirit, thankfully I got a lot out of it last night. The BA heal is helpful for action economy, and at least you can keep healing on other rounds, but 1d6 is pitifully low... 😢
First version of Healing Spirit was totally broken (when there was no limit on number of heals it could do), but the following errata made it useless for anyone not maxing WIS and not great for anyone who did max WIS. It's a bad story about this spell overall...
Seeing this video in my mailbox healed my boredom, so healing can’t be that bad. Also I really like the Oath of the Ancients Paladin ability (available at 1st level!) in BG3 that heals a target a small amount as a bonus action, but then at the start of the target’s next turn. I really think a spell with an effect like that could be very effective.
Effects like that without concentration are used in BG3 but are more uncommon in TTRPGs because people forget about them. Concentration draws your attention because it's a resource you constantly have to maintain. It's also why BG3 has more status effects in general, like the bleeding one that causes targets to take more physical damage, the game can keep track of it yourself. Do you think in a game where people can't even remember whether they have inspiration (bardic or not) would be better with more passive things to track?
"You can use this five times to bring up five allies, that dropped to zero hit points. Or the same ally that went down five times." That sounds familiar 🤔
Why the only healing build I play is thieve rogue flavoured as a field medic for I thieve the dying from the reaper. level 3 Fast Hands Bonus action to use a healer kit if you take the healer feat at lv1 or 4 depending on if human variant/custom lineage or not. A rogue has damage from sneak attack & you get 6 ASI as a rogue so not a massive resource dedication to fulfil the healer role & more. You heal d6+4+maximum number of hit die for a bonus action once on all party members, self or Npc's between short rests. Healer & potions on a bonus action who needs a healing spells. Note: Take tavern brawler at level 1 variant human or custom lineage & you can throw acid, alchemist fire vials or oil as bonus action as well when not healing. Become a grenadier & medic for 2 feat of 7. A dip into another class for green Flame blade is worth consider as a melee cantrip a you can match martial damage even without getting of sneak attack. Being able to grapple is nice for a bonus action as well upon a melee hit in certain circumstances then the next tur you can use the shove action to guarantee sneak attack. Dexterity 15+(1 human) & 14+(2 tavern brawler & Human) with 10 all stats except 13 charisma for dip usually warlock hex blade dip. Green flame blade & armour of agathy's is to good not to mention shield & medium armour proficiency is to good to pass up. 4 ASI for the 2 feat mentioned & 2 ASI for 20 dexterity you have 3 ASI's if played to level 20 to use as you please If you can get a belt of giant strength to get a 21 strength or plus for with bonus action grapple you can achieve some shenanigans on top of the grenades as nothing more funny then grabbing a fella after sneak attacking to then throw them off a building in 1 turn a green flame blade strike then bonus action grapple. Rogue grenadier medic is the most fun I have had filling the healing role as a bonus action. The party request someone to be a healer but they never specified I have to be a caster?;)
I can see why it’s suboptimal, but on the other hand, as a DM who had a life domain cleric on a 1-20 game, I can tell… on tiers 3&4 he had the power to heal more than the enemies dmg output, combining his channel divinity with spells or even the healer feat with the spells. It was kinda expensive to do it but when he needed, he had that option. And I swear to god, even tho his character was nothing close to be optmized, he was annoying as F. The party: fey lock life priest, champion/vengeance ranged cbe ss fighter bm war priest/fig bm
I think part of the problem is legacy design. Imagine a world where healing is effective, but has dynamic elements to it: juggling durations on regeneration abilities, knowing when to pop off a large, spare usage heal, heals that are vampiric so damage dealt becomes an important support component, etc. all allow for more nuanced and dynamic versions of supporting allies than "spell slot=a little healing". Some designs (like heal, life transference, and the oft overlooked Wither and Bloom) all provide cool moments for the game that Cure Wounds just doesn't.
Im playing a Order Cleric 1/divine soul 7 focussing full support (still got the needed fireball), Inspiring leather and Healer feats, Extended Aid max up cast before sleep, twinned deathward, extended aura of vitality between combat. Healer save a lot of spell slot, Inspiring leather + Aid rise the HP a tons, i vortex warp the rogue or the barbarian around giving them more attack. I could have taked Life cleric for insane extended aura of vitality but with my party the Order ability was too good. We play with a house rule that every time you go to 0 HP you get 1 level of exhaustion (the -1 to every d20 roll and the DC of spells like in the first One DND playtest) we use this because one time the barbarian got the "0 -> healing word -> 0" train 16 time and it was pretty ugly to see and play
I've houseruled yo-yo healing out of my game by requiring a scaling medicine check from a party member to restore consciousness, or a short rest. Healing word is still useful for stabilisation, but it doesnt remove the unconscious condition. Of course my party has adapted to this, and my encounter balancing takes it into account. I will be very curious to see how changes to healing may affect the value of healing in the context of my house rule.
While it makes perfect sense, it's always somewhat disheartening to hear: "You chose a subclass supposedly designed to maximize your effectiveness at this one function? Well, actually, you can be better at that one function if you multiclass...,". As someone playing a Life Cleric, while I chose it knowing that it really wouldn't be all about healing, its design still is somewhat disappointing because of how healing works in the game. It's frustrating that they essentially didn't change it's design at all in OneDnD with this in mind. There is a lot they could do to make in-combat healing more interesting and worthwhile besides just boost its power slightly. Maybe add a limited-use reaction-based heal for when someone goes down, or a feature that adds a temporary HP buffer or a 1-turn sanctuary-like effect when the Life Cleric heals someone, to help prevent them immediately going back down on the next attack...really anything more than, "You heal for a bit more, but still not enough to make a difference in most cases,"...
Aid is the best healing spell. bring 3 friends up from KO, heals more hp than most dedicated heal spells, even upcasts well. Only problem is it doesn't stack with itself, so one per set of party members.
It's changed in one d and d which i think would be fine but the effect just isn't good enough. I think giving temp hp and maybe a buff but the low temp HP it's currently at just isn't enough. In the new playtest however I do see power word fortify which seemingly suggests you could choose to give an ally 120 temp HP or 2 allies 60 temp hp which is kind of interesting. Because an fighter would have like 150 hp at that level or something so I could see some potential particularly if there are things that buff while you have temp hp like Armor of Agathys
Ok, got it. So, I'll tell the cleric that their only job is to cast Spirit Guardians and then Dodge during every fight because the Paladin is a better healer with Lay on Hands. Good thing I pay attention to the whole video and not just to a few seconds of it 👌🏻
As an in combat healing specialist, Healing Word is the worst healing spell in the entire game lol, it destroys action economy because you will always have a better bonus action, especially for attacks, and never heal when someone is down, heal when they are at 25% HP, and then they will never go down again, also, the best healing spell in the game is ..... Wither And Bloom, ranged healing with d10's and d12's, damaging enemies, and saving bonus actions for attacks it's worth upcasting to 3rd every time, until you get Mass Cure Wounds which is your best friend, these tactics have avoided a 100+ potential TPK's
The simplest solution for healing I can think of is increase the size of the dice of all healing spells/abilities that rely on die by 1, so 1d6 is now 1d8, 2d8 is now 2d12, 5d12 could be 5d20 but that might be too much so maybe at d12 you just add half the spell levels worth of die so 5th level that does 5d12 would now do 7d12, doesn't seem insanely broken but I just thought it up so it might be too much.
An interaction I'm considering trying in my next campaign is playing a Divine Soul Sorcerer with Life Transference. Assuming you only take the damage once, which is how I'm interpreting it at this point in time, that's 72 points of healing on average for a third level spell slot when using the twin spell metamagic and 3 sorcery points. Decently expensive in sorcery point terms, but a really cool burst heal option that lets my character be the battle medic instead of sticking to picking up aura of vitality to heal outside of combat. In fact this heals about the same as a 3rd level Aura of vitality, which over the course of a minute heals an average of 70 hit points, though without the self damage and sorcery point investment. Though I'll acknowledge something like Extended Spell can easily make Aura of Vitality outshine this, and at a lower sorcery point cost. But hey in combat healing is cool.
Fair point. I was coming at it from the perspective of being a "cost" along the lines of being a material component, but it could definitely be read that it does that. The wording is vague though, it just says you sacrifice life then choose a creature in range. It doesn't outright target you, but it does affect you, so maybe it shouldn't work for twin spell RAW. I'd argue that its fine from a balance standpoint though since you're spending quite a few resources just to make in combat healing effective at the level where this would be significant enough to use. @@elliotbryant3459
My PC's (Cleric, Druid, Ranger) all had healing magic and insisted on using it whenever anybody took damage. It was painful to run. Fortunately the Cleric died and rerolled as a Wizard. I can take off the kid gloves now.
Damage taken vs single target healing is an unstable equilibrium problem with a boring outcome on both sides. You do too little, why bother, you do too much, no danger at all. In my opinion each of the 3 main healers could get a base class feature choice like: - Cleric heal a second person for same amount, or deal damage to an enemy equal to healed. - Druid control, when resurrecting pull the target to your spot, or gain a shield equal to heal. - Bard buffing, take their turn right after yours, grant the effect of Dodge or Disengage.
I think healing has the capacity to be better, but generally it isn’t fun to play around in 5e. The game doesn’t want to support a pure healing focused character and generally it just doesn’t feel good.
I realy wish they will change healing. I like changes in Playtest 8, need to test them. I would like to see changes because in current state I hate how healing someone slightly injured is not best action, but letting him fall to the ground and then heal him to 1-2 HP is better. We had fights when each of players and bad guys went to 0 HP at least once and my character went to 0 and back three times. It was silly. I know DnD is not real world but for me it was immersion breaking. While I understand if someone does not like this but I would love to see a little bit more MMO Style healing where your healing can actually outpace or be similar to damage taken.
I'm curious why you don't mention Regenerate. Yes, i probably wouldn't use it in combat much (unless i'm expecting the same party member to repeatedly get downed), but out of combat it's a little over of 600 points of healing to a single target for a 7th level slot. I think i've heard optimizers tend to not like Regenerate, but i can't figure out why.
one thing that often gets overlooked is its 1 minute casting time. It can do cool things though, like disciple of life could potentially trigger for each instance of healing, same with the wis mod bonus from Temple of the Gods would probably need someone else to cast it or blow your 8th level slot]. Could also be cool to twin or extend it via divine soul sorcerer. Pair it with heavy armor master to add insult to add insult to injury [or lack there of]
This video is cap, as the kids say. Treantmonk starts with a claim of healing in general. Then follows with an example that supports his claim. So far so good...expect he chose the HIGHEST DAMAGE MONSTER AT CR5 to support his claim. And on top of that it crits with its highest damage attack??? That's 1/20 encounters where the monster has a crit opener. The only other monster at CR 5 to come close to 60 damage(with a single crit attack, so no multi-attack crits) is the Triceratops at 48 damage. We continue for 20 more minutes with more examples of how every other healing choice or mechanic will not save you from a 30/60 damage attack. Come on man.... If the claim of this video is "reactive healing is lower on the meta power tier list, and preventive healing is higher rank", sure I absolutely agree 100%. But I would not say that a heavily focused healing PC isn't VIABLE. Treantmonk (and maybe players at large) seem to forgot that if you could heal the bulette's damage, you would be effectively 'disarming' the monster every turn, with nothing the monster could do. Healing can still be a great way to keep the fighter up long enough to take 4 rounds of attacks and finally fall to 0hp at the 5th round. But we are so focused on every heal needs to be 1 damage to 1 health, that Treantmonk and others will make a video to show only 1 side of the power of healing in combat, which in their eyes is bad. With all that being said, I hope this criticism doesn't come off as baby raging. Treantmonk makes excellent videos, I just disagree with this one. I think there are different ways to approach the game's combat and I just want more people to really look at what a healer/support is doing more than just a surface level of healing in combat sucks.
I see where this is going, Chris is preparing to do his first Twilight Cleric build. ;D
😂 right
Blasfemy!
busted.
@@TreantmonksTempleCelestial warlock then?
😂
18:57 you missed one of the greatest benefits of Aid- there is no requirement to see the target. If they are in range and swallowed by a monster, you can still bring that player back up without targeting them.
I used this to revive another PC from the other side of a locked door once.
Nice one.
I hadn't realized that.
Might be even one of the few things Treantmonk hadn't noticed yet.
Once again, spells need a clear line of effect; you cannot target a creature that is behind total cover, even if the spell doesn't require you to be able to see them. This would, however, be useful if the party was under darkness, or if you've been blinded.
@@MagicScientistHe’s unaware…
In the real life military, you are trained not to attempt to rescue/start first aid on wounded soldiers until the area is safe. The first step in combat triage is always "secure the area" meaning eliminate any threats, then you can put your weapon down to pull out the tourniquets and bandages.
The only edition of D&D that's ever had decent in-combat healing is 4th.
At the very least, the fact that most healing powers healed 1/4 of the target's max hit points meant that a single Healing Word from a Cleric (or a Warlord's Inspiring Word, or the other equivalents) represented a meaningful recovery. The fact that you only be healed a limited number of times per day (6-10 based on class, plus a bonus number equal to Con bonus) provides a natural limit to the adventuring day that isn't just about the caster's resources.
Further, 4e had more severe Death Save rules than 5e does: you didn't stabilise after 3 successful death saves, and failed saves stayed with you until your next short rest (short rests were only 5 minutes, but that still means your failed death saves remain for the entire fight even if you get healed), so you were encouraged to try and keep allies on their feet rather than letting them drop to 0 and then healing them back up (the common tactic in 5e).
I think that some of this dynamic can be imported to 5e.
For a start, the death save changes make for more tense and interesting play in my experience.
But for the healing itself, why not have healing spells additionally let the target spend some of their hit dice immediately as well. Maybe a limited amount per spell (say, up to Proficiency Bonus hit dice). That allows a character to receive more healing when they really need it, tying it to hit dice means that healing is more proportionate to their maximum (avoiding that case where a Barbarian or Fighter gets a smaller % of their maximum hp back than a rogue or wizard would), but it comes at the cost of personal resources.
In 3.5 there was a class called the Healer, and you could be a decent at in combat healing. Not using the the Healer.
I always end up playing a support character and say something like, “not to worry everyone, i’ve got healing covered!” But then they get mad cause i don’t use literally all my resources keeping them topped off. This video is a helpful reminder of how i can make still make a big impact.
In Playtest Document 8, all but one of the new healing spells heals twice as much as before. Which means the devs also noticed the lackluster power of healing.
I have a feeling the lackluster healing was intentional design. I'm not saying it's good, but I think it's intentional, as good in-combat healing will lead to insane yo-yo effects, and basically double the length of fights which are already pretty long anyway.
@@NotsogoodguitarguyThat isn't necessarily the case. Strong healing could actually mean that you heal before they go down, so it is possible that it basically removes yo-yoing. And Healing someone who is alive is likely faster, as dropping to zero takes time. And even in the case where you are bringing someone back, if the stronger healing means that they drop again in two turns not one, then that still speeds things up.
@@spikehammer3112 that's a good point. I might have to reconsider. Although, on the other hand, if the bad guys have healing, then we run into the same problem - the bad guy is now gonna be reliably healed, whereas before it wasn't viable. And that can also bog down the game.
@@Notsogoodguitarguy For sure, if both sides have strong healing then that can be a problem.
But that might finally solve the "murder hobo" problem. Just make healing so good and available that nothing can ever die. lol
@@spikehammer3112 haha, yeah!
Speaking of out-of-combat healing, TCOE put Aura of Vitality on the Cleric spell list, which means it's accessible to Divine Soul Sorcerers, which means it's not super hard to cast it with Extended Spell metamagic. Do what you will with this information
My life domain cleric took this spell and the metamagic adept feat for Extended Spell.
If I recall correctly, the math checked out to be 40d6+100 Healing split across the party.
I’ve seen a life domain cleric with Metamagic Adept purely to pump out 240 healing over 2 minutes.
the best out of combat healing is any elf with goodberry with trance you can convert all your spell slots in to goodberries and still get a long rest in before the rest of the party can get one at lvl 3 with out life cleric you can have 60 hp worth of out of combat healing for free every day with life cleric its 260 hp
@@planthing2315 Depends on the type of adventure. I'm in an adventure where we spend multiple days in a dungeon. Hell if I'm going to blow all my spell slots when one of our long rests gets interrupted and we only get a short rest.
If I remember correctly... technically it's not on the cleric spell list, it's an optional class extra. Which means that technically, it is not available to Divine Soul Sorcerers. This is reflected on DnD Beyond. I was rather sad when I found out, as I had wanted to take AoV on my DSS.
At some point I came up with a technique known as the Grave Clerics Massage. If an ally is at 1 or 2 Hit Points, you give them a painful massage (unarmed strikes to reduce them to 0HP) to maximize your healing and they end up with more HP than if you had not damaged them.
The bulette example is interesting because it's an outlier, many monsters of the same CR have multiattack instead of just one powerful attack:
The troll has one bite and two claws (7/11 dmg). The otyugh is similar, one bite and two tentacles (12/7+4 damage). The fire elemental has two attacks (10 dmg) and they can also catch someone on fire. Barbed Devil has two claws and one tail (6/10 dmg). The gladiator can make 3 melee attacks (11-13 dmg or 9+ prone)
The roper has one "big" damage, but it does 22 with a bite... for a creature that can't move that much and needs to use their tentacles to attract it's prey. The giant shark is also similar, it does 22 damage... but hey, it's a fucking shark, it's scary because you have to fight it underwater.
The giant crocodile is also a heavy hitter, it does 21 with a bite and 14 with the tail (it also knocks you prone)....
So why the fuck the bulette, the thing that it's mostly a landshark does more damage than the giant shark??? because it's the fucking MM, this monsters barely follow any kind of guideline for CR.
So in summary, the example of the bulette is kind of misleading, because the PCs are fighting something that can easily one-shot anybody... they shouldn't be healing, they should be retreating.
It's interesting to note that the bulette in 3.5 used to do 3 attacks, one bite and 2 claws (or 4 claw attacks if it's leaping). Those attack did 17 for the bite and 11 for the claws...quite a lot of damage for 3.5... and rightfully, the monster is CR 7.
Yep. And it is worth noting that healing downed ally for 7 hp against monsters with multiattack (or just against multiple opponents) will probably get them killed. So often times you either have to heal big, or (most likely) resort to any kind of damage mitigation strat yet again
I agree that it's an outlier but his point still stands. Reducing or preventing damage is more effective than healing it after. Sure... There are times when a heal can buy a party member an extra turn and that character can do more on his turn than you could have yourself. That would be a good time to use a heal in combat. There are times when a creature has downed a party member and has moved on to attacking someone else. In this situation you might be able to buy the downed character a few extra turns and that's almost always going to be better that almost anything else you could have done. But these situations are few and far between. It's like he says... A generality but not an absolute.
They seem to have made the cure spells weaker from 3.5. xd8+ caster level is usually going to be getter than xd8+ casting mod
This video is reminding me of my Genie Warlock/Grave Cleric multiclass that I've been playing for over two years now. I took the Cleric dip for Spare the Dying and some other utility spells, plus the extra spell slots are a godsend. In that entire time, I've barely used the healing spells at all because my entire party are all a bunch of legends who know how to keep themselves alive. The one time a party member does go down and I finally have a chance to use my healing spells on them, that party member rolls a Nat 1 on their death save before my turn and they die anyway. 😭
That rough buddy.
Not really. I'd rather have chad party members that roll bad every once in a while than a group that has no idea what their class does.
House Rule: in combat, healing potions may be taken as either a bonus action or an action. If taken as an action, then the PC gets max healing. If taken as a Bonus Action, then roll as usual.
We have one where it's full HP if out of combat.
With the buffs to healing spells in the playtest, I would probably allow this homebrew until healing potions are buffed to be as good as cure wounds spell scrolls (literally equal price)
I require an action, but they always heal max. I think Bob the World Builder did a video about trying to drink potions in combat.
Never going to be better than killing the enemies so they can't deal damage.
This is how I do it, makes potions actually useful
The luck part is really important to consider when healing. Your Cure Wounds is more likely to roll very low than it is to save someone in the miracle 5% chance they get hit by a critical. Several times I've cast Cure Wounds and then it healed an amount comparable to healing word and I'm just there thinking "thanks, there goes what could have been a bonus action". These sort of realisations are what made me realise that Cure Wounds is generally just a bad spell, both for in combat and out of combat healing.
I've been a healer (stars druid) in a short campaign that just finished. Party of seven, though we were in situations where our other healer the bard wasn't in combat. I burned a good portion of my slots just trying to keep people alive and people were trying to act like I wasn't a good healer even though I often used the chalice constellation.
1 person having to heal for 5 other people was already ridiculous, but they acted like being a cleric would have made me a much better healer. Granted a lot of them were new but the DM and someone else who played 5e were acting like I wasn't good at doing my job lmao.
@@waifusmith4043 Yes some pretty much need to play a char with healing to understand this.
Its much better to have a collection of healing resources from different players that can help get someone on their knees.
Short rest is basically the heavy lifter when it comes to healing.
You're close, but it's not that cure wounds is a bad spell, it's that healing is always a waste of an action regardless of the amount restored.
@@mrosskneOrder cleric (dip) might be the exception than.
@@jugglejunk nope.
A thought occurred to me. Imagine a healing spell putting a 1 round buff on the recipient.
Out of combat healing becomes less attractive comparatively.
Like a brief shield of sorts on the healed. +5 AC for one round
Or a saving throw bonus for one round
Damage resistance
A bonus to attack or damage
Lastly: the rider could be inverted for Harm or Wounding Spells
12 hp would heal a lot of 1st level characters to full. That seems like a good change.
I had a good combo in one of my games. I was playing as an Oath of Devotion Paladin. When the party needs a lot of Healing, my Paladin would case Beacon of Hope and the we have a Bard with Mass Cure Wounds. Beacon of hope maximizes ALL healing for 1 minute. Upcasting Mass Cure Wounds can get 40-50 points of Healing for each character. It was a great combo after the DM hit us with multiple Fireball spells in a single round.
People really underestimate that spell.
Now that the monk seems to be pretty decent, I’m looking forward to making a way of mercy / cleric build for my next game
I have wanted to play a character like that for a while. I've had an idea for a Shadow Touched Twilight Cleric 6/Mercy Monk X inspired in part by Medieval plague doctors and in part by the premise of the game Pathologic, of a healer infected by a plague from the Shadowfell and trying to find a cure to save himself while also trying to continue to heal others without infecting them.
With the update to Monk, especially with their defensive capabilities, I think Spores Druid 6/Mercy Monk X could also work decently now, too.
I’m currently playing a Stars Druid 6/Life Cleric 1 so this is a very valuable video for my current campaign. Thanks Treantmonk!
Celestial Warlock FTW! Eldricth Blast at level 5 will push your Bullette back up to 20 ft from the fighter as an action. Healing Light as bonus action. "You have a pool of d6s that you spend to fuel this healing. The number of dice in the pool equals 1 + your warlock level." (DnD Beyond. No spell slots consumed. But you have a 3rd level spell slot for Cure Wounds if needed.
Man i really thought this was going to be about the new UA healing spells, i guess the thumbnail should have cued me in.
I’d also add that in the cleric 5/ stars druid 2 build another option might be thorn whip and healing word while concentrating on SG, and having say, warcaster instead of the bump to WIS ( 1/2 damage does a lot of work)
Such useful multiclass. Dragon for spirit guardians, archer for ranged threats, and chalice for super heals!
@@S1leNtRIPIt's my next character. Arcana Domain for extra melee potential, out of combat utility, and Spell Breaker.
@@S1leNtRIP how do people get around druids not wearing metal armour? do they just ask the dm nicely to ignore it? I'm playing a life cleric 7 atm and have been contemplating druid 2 for a while, but giving up heavy armour is nasty
@@MrJronson you can just ignore it, the wording says "druids will not wear armor or use sheilds made of metal" theres nothing forcing them from not wearing it, its just a choice. The wording is mostly just left over flavour from earlier editions, the playtest UAs for the 2024 players handbook drops the metal thing, so theres that.
and with your character who has been wearing heavy metal armor for 7 levels now, they wouldn't suddenly decide to ditch it.
@@MrJronsonAnother option is to have a decent dex so you don't need to wear heavy armor
The Heal spell is usually the first time I even consider trying to replace hit points during a combat, and that's pretty late.
Yep, it's been like this since 1st edition I believe - I'm going Redemption Paladin for tanking right now and dipping 3 into Celestial Warlock just for Pact of the Chain familiar's invocation to auto-maximize any healing I receive. Of course then the trick will be to ensure enemies actually attack me instead of others in the group.
As an optimizer who has played a life domain cleric from first to 18th levels in his first ever campaign, this video speaks to me. I've long asserted that 5e has a problem where healing spells simply did not scale well enough. I was of the opinion that each upcast leveling of healing should include your spell mod again (e.g 2nd level cure wounds would be 2d8+10). The playtest 8 packet effectively does this by not only increasing the base dice of each healing spell, but also making them scale better as well. I am seriously looking forward to seeing how impacts the new campaigns I'll be running with a lot of the 2024 playtest spells.
I think it kind of does. I will say at least they tried increasing it so maybe that will make it reasonable.
I recently played a Life Cleric 1 / Shepherd Druid 9. After our gang took a pummelling, slapping down unicorn spirit and doing some big boy healing with mass cure wounds net some ludicrous healing (almost 200hp split across 5 players). Was a lotta fun to see what can be pumped out
Our cleric regularly uses Life Transfer to keep our front line up so they don't go down. Then he heals himself with his staff of healing, potions, etc. May not be the best use of his action economy, but it lets our barbarian lock down the biggest band guy and go toe to toe with foes otherwise out of his weight class.
I recently played a campaign where the cleric relied of Life Transference above all other healing spells and I was impressed how effective it was. Routinely brought my reckless rogue back from the brink to > 50% max hp.
I feel the best healing is preventative. I usually play a bard and I’ve found that using Aid and Inspiring Leader have a number of advantages. This combo stacks, Aid lasts 8 hours and be not only adds the 5 hp buff at second level it also raises the HP max for three allies. IL can be used anytime the bard has 10 minutes and out of combat Song of Rest while it doesn’t give a huge regenerative bump to healing doesn’t cost the party resources.
There is nothing worse than being downed and having to sit there while the rest of the party continues with the fight because they plan on getting you up later. In combat healing needs to be better.
That is something I absolutely hate about the game rn
Healing will never be better than using your action to end the fight faster.
@@mrosskneI think it maybe could but it would need to be accompanied by more. For example if a spell healed 1 hp for the purpose of reviving put the rest as temp hp and then gave a buff while you had that temp hp it could work.
@@barcster2003 Or you could use your action to full attack for 250 damage and end the fight.
@@mrosskne If you can end a fight in 1 action you should do. But you should never know for certain that using 1 action will end the fight. So it should always be a gamble - do you attack and hope the enemies die before they kill your downed friend, or do you heal your downed friend to avoid them being killed?
Listing the different considerations is very helpful, since it's situational what's the optimal choice any given turn.
The consensus of needing a ‘balanced party’ with a tank, healer, and dps is so strong that most players who play a primary healer still don’t realize that there are often better uses of their actions than healing.
Thanks for attempting to dispel this.
Part of that is also that not every 'healer' build really has that much else to do in their turn that is better all the time.
Though some classes that heal naturally get more versatility so should have an effective move, usually not costing that vital out of combat high efficiency recovery spell slot. But some are rather more limited, or severely resource limited - Though that doesn't even mean that build was a pure healer by any stretch either, when its not the first combat of the day (or you know for sure the tough stuff is ahead and will be faced today) resource management comes in. The healing capable classes might well be conserving their top moves for later, but that 1st level slot is expendable - which creates that situation where its toss out the likely 0 damage cantrip or trickle heal the right targets so the group is ready to move on for the next wave quicker.
Hit point inflation + attack damage inflation (3e bulette bite 2d8+8 vs 5e 4d12+4) has greatly outpaced healing, which remains at 1e level (~1d8 × spell level).
Under those conditions I would double regular cure wounds dice. Healing will still fall short of combat damage, which it should.
It should always be easier to kill than to heal. Managing healing resources is a lost art in this age of take-a-nap self-healing.
Pretty extreme example starting with a crit. Usually the bullette will get in two normal hits, and if you throw in a heal in between, the fighter stays up and is never in any danger.
04:15 [FIX] "Channel Divinity: Preserve Life"
. As a Magic Action, you present your holy symbol and evoke healing energy.
. Choose any number of creatures within 30 feet of you (including youself).
. Distribute among the chosen creatures a number of Temporary_Hitpoints equal to five times your cleric level.
. Inmediatly after, each of the chosen creatures (that is not a construct or undead or is Unconcious), can choose to consume up to half (rounded down, minimum of 1) of the Temporary_Hitpoints provided by this feature to heal themselves, regaining that ammount of Hitpoints.
[With DM approval]: At the end of each of their turns, a creature that did not used the temporary hitpoints (provided by this feature) to heal themselves, can choose to consume all of the remaining tempHp to heal themselves for half of that ammount (rounded down, minimum of 1).
One limitation when using aid for healing is that multiple instances of the same effect don't stack. So if a character is already aided, you need to cast the spell at a higher level than before for it to heal them.
Once the temp HP from the first are gone any new casting should replace the old
@@greghamilton9505they were probably thinking of the old version.
I wrote a guide on giantitp a while back focused exclusively on healing, which pretty much followed this advice to a T. This was pre-tashas, but imho the healthiest and best healer is still Life Cleric 1/Shepherd Druid X. Druids focus heavily on concentration/control which gives it an amazing Plan A. Lifeberries make out of healing absurdly efficient. And in combat healing with unicorn spirit and healing word gives you an extremely strong burst heal(that can repeat each round for another 1st level healing word) WITHOUT eating concentration. The mix of summons, control spells, efficient out of combat healing, and potent burst healing in combat just comes together incredibly well.
I know the change to Disciple of Life was good for the game, but I will miss a lot of the ways you could multiclass it to be amazing.
Two mistakes:
1. Players should not assume the Aid spell can be used to remove the Unconscious condition from a creature they target with the effect, since it is only removed if the creature "regains" hit points.
2. Sometimes, a healing spell can be useful to get an ally to take their turn before the enemy creatures. Even if the enemy creatures go before your ally, a readied action can heal your ally with better timing.
Current hit points increasing by 5 is different from regaining hit points?
@@elliotbryant3459 It is open to interpretation, which is why I said "players should not assume"
I'm not sure if there is a sage advice about it, but also not all GM operate with sage advice.
For example, in the new D&D ONE, they capitalize certain words. It may have been the intent of the designers(RAI) for the creature to need to specifically regain hit points, rather than "increase" them.
My biggest problem with Healing in 5E is that with combat is that same at 1 HP which also encourages concentrated attacks on one at a time. My solution for my game was to have penalties for being under half total HP and again when under quarter total HP. That has encouraged spreading damage and healing earlier in fights. DNDBeyond combat tracker helps with this since that is when images shift to red and then to flashing when taking damage.
Currently 9 levels into a game as a dedicated healer.
Shepard 8, Life 1. Party gets to go into every combat at full hp, and unicorn totem gets multiple allies up and spreads chip healing around the whole squad.
Plus as a summoner you have very good ways to put more HP on the field which are pro-active in nature.
Thanks for the video. Can't wait to see the wizard build you talked, Chris.
I would like to point out the interesting interaction between grave clerics power and mass healing spells. Grave clerics power maximizes the spell if a target is on 0 HP. We had situations where we damaged one of our own party members to 0 HP so the cleric could then have his spell be maximized for all of us.
Ya I like that one, I played a sadist grave cleric who did this frequently 😂
Even better, use a pet rat 🍺
I don't like yo-yo healing, so I really like enemies to continue multiattack without carring if a PC reached 0. I also like effects like burning, aura-damage at the turn start, killing if 0 hp is reached.
Even if one of these happen once in 3-4 games it's enough to stop players think, that 0 hp is not a big deal.
I would be careful going that route. (Multiattack is fine, I mean the other stuff). The reason this video is advocating for just healing 1 hit point to bring people back up is because there is *no option in the game* that will bring a level 5 character up from zero to anything that can survive another round from a CR5 creature. Making being at low health more lethal won't make players heal more, it'll just make them die more.
@@kevingriffith6011 It also doesn't make a ton of sense from an rp perspective most of the time, unless they absolutely hate that character and are trying to cut its head off, or they're like a beast that wants eat it. Also could be justified if they've witnessed the creature yoyo-ing.
I was truly expect your call to how many build videos this would led up to...
This is one of the reasons I simply allow potions to provide maximum healing at my table. You know it will always heal 10, 20, 40, 60 (for each tier of potion).
I still keep it at an action to use potions though. Even if it "feels better" to use a BA, 5e characters don't need more convenience in that specific manner if you ask me.
I think the issue is healer characters feel terrible when they shouldn't.
I think there's possibilities in having a limited buff with the heal.
There needs to be incentive to cast something on someone who's not nearly dead.
Something like you or allies gain one of the effects depending on the spell and how much hp you have but it lasts a limited time like 1 turn.
blade ward, resistance, shield of faith, armor of agathys, sanctuary, bless, shield, protection from evil and good, death ward, stoneskin, longstrider, mirror image, blink, haste, fire shield, eyebite, the druid elemental investitures
Honestly level 7 build life domain 2 stars druid. Take healer feat. Turn one activate your chalice form as a bonus action and spiritual guardians as action. Then you could use your action for healer kit for 1d6+4+7 bonus action for healing word 1d4+4+3 and finally chalice 1d8+4. This healing could be split 3 ways. The healer kit would be limited use but you could just use it on other party members that need it.
In one of my current campaigns I switched characters mid-campaign from a Twlight cleric to an order of scribes wizard. The cleric character was fine but when I have a new character idea I tend to get obsessed and have to play them immediately or never. However, as a considerate player, I realized that replacing the support character with a wizard (even if order of scribes which I didn’t realize how busted it was until after playing her for months) might be tough on the party’s survivability. Answer: mark of healing halfling as the race. This worked out perfectly because I wanted her to be a halfling regardless (just felt like the vibe, Y’know) and then there was the literal perfect subrace to solve all my qualms about switching characters. I do know that dragon marked races are not always allowed so ask DM permission as always. However, being able to add healing word to my spell book has kept my party alive far better than the ranger with cure wounds. I also now have aura of life which has become a go to spell for tough encounters. No need to use another spell slot if they will pop up on their turn anyway. Oh and I can cast it from my manifested mind to keep my squishy wizard self out of harms way (aka not having to make concentration checks). I have used these spells to save the lives of extremely important NPCs that the DM was fully expecting to die as well as my own party members. And this is all on top of casting lightning flavored fireballs every so often because I can
As much as the life domain channel divinity CAN feel shitty because it only heals up to half of a player's max HP, it is still AS powerful as the Paladin's Lay on Hands, up and to the point of being at Half HP. I can't even count the number of times I've yanked someone back from the death or the brink of death with Action: Preserve Life into Bonus Action: Healing Word or Mass Healing Word.
Sure you can only do this once per Short rest levels 1-5, and twice per Short rest 6-17, but that's usually more than enough for emergency "get back in the fight" healing.
On the Multiclass point, 2 levels of Stars Druid is VERY strong on a Life Domain cleric build, but 1 level of Life Domain is equally 100% worth the dip on a Shepheard druid build. Disciple of Life + Unicorn is quite potent. If you're playing Low to Mid op, it should be more than adequate in combat healing.
One other very critical question is how aggressive are the enemies to downed players. Some DM’s won’t hit a downed player, others will continue their 3 hit multi attack after you go down on the first hit. I’ve seen many players think they were safe when they were downed by the boss only to die to chump minions. In combat healing is good for the scenarios where downed effectively means dead.
CR3 demonstrated this well in the Otohan fight where the party bounced a few bodies, so she started confirming her kills
Not all damage is combat damage too. Environmental damage from traps and obstacles will wear your party down before you even get to the fight. Traits such as Fiendish Vigor or arcane ward are great because they give you a restorable buffer against chip damage.
Even with the buffs, I would probably only cast healing word, given it is a bonus action and actually upcasts better than before. I've stopped taking spiritual weapon in the recent times, so it works out for me. But there was a time when I came to hate all forms of healing briefly and that's purely due to how awful combat healing can be.
Oh this should be fun. I normally find healing in combat awful. The one time I played a cleric, my party turned me into a heal bot and it was truly awful. I was pretty new to d&d and it left a bad taste in my mouth and I steered clear of clerics. Given all my actions were spent on either healing word or cure wounds and eventually concentrating on aura of vitality. While in reality all I wanted to was swing my giant glowing spiritual weapon and have the little spirits from spirit guardians surround me. Spending your channel divinity as a life domain just to do more healing is truly awful. I wanted to be a cleric to use spells like bless, bane, silence, locate object, dispel magic and spirit guardians. Not spam the same healing spells every three rounds. I'd much rather play a monk than do that. It didn't help that the life domain does extra healing with all their features, so despite having a druid in the party, the party would flock to me for all their healing and I would stare in silence as I marked down my spellslots.
Now outside the combat, I don't really mind healing people. That's why I tend to go wizard with the strixhaven background or the new rune carver bg these days, just to grab goodberry.
I have a similar problem. First time playing DnD (SKT campaign) and as a Light Cleric. You know, the subclass for destroying enemies with light and radiant damage. I do not mind healing the other player characters but the pressure I get every time one of them is downed (because they stormed forward to a hill giant at lvl 4) to use a healing spell is annoying. For the rest they are all nice guys but the laughing when I'm considering not to heal is very annoying. They say I choose 'a healing class', while they are also in awe when I use Radiance of the Dawn on 5-6 enemies and kill 3 at once and damage the rest. Play your own character well instead of giving me directions! From the next session we will be level 5, let's see how they view a "healer" casting a well directed Fireball.
If you are an Order cleric. Healing the rogue with healing word whenever they are injured is also probably an attack for all of their backstab damage
I played a decent variety of video games before ever getting a chance to try D&D, and am someone who prefers filling a damage sponge and/or support role, so I am used to healing for tanks ranging from good to arguably not enough. However, once I finally got the chance to play D&D, I was dumbfounded by how horribly inadequate the healing was in 5E for everyone, let alone for someone remotely tanky. Part of my initial issues with healing in this game likely did come from a combination of below average healing rolls (this is my biggest gripe with the healing in this game: too much variability in healing due to rolling) and party comps that didn't lend themselves well to healing a tanky character.
However, 3 years after beginning my D&D journey and as someone that rarely multi-classes due to a lack of good narrative reasons to do so (so far), even my beefiest Life Clerics and Armorer Artificers only work as tanks because they lean heavily on their higher than average AC & HP (and my DMs' penchant for rolling less than stellar to-hit rolls against me more often than not). Until UA "Player's Handbook Playtest 8" came out, their ability to tank via healing rather than AC was not great.
Now that UA23PT8 is out I now actually have a chance to be what I consider to be a good tank both because of high AC and because healing spells actually restore a respectable amount of HP.
In case anyone is curious, yes I have known since I started playing D&D that Paladins, Barbarians, and Fighters make for better tanks than Artificers (I have played as a Battle Master Fighter before). That being said, I like playing the Artificer, and I am able to fill the role of tank or secondary tank (with a moderate amount of DPS to boot) in my groups with my Artillerist and Armorer Artificers, so I roll with the Artificer when I am not playing a Cleric.
I wish this had touched on the dark side of how the extreme efficacy of things like 1hp lay on hands/healing word+death saves wind up being so effective that all of the other ways of proactively mitigating damage start to become pointless or or so much less than optimal that the opportunity cost involved in using them starts rising too high to really justify them stillmaking enough difference
The risk of getting hit for maxhp beyond zero is still sometimes plausible at low levels like the 5th level example but by tier2 & 3 that risk is almost zero
It's funny, I just got done tweaking a homebrew Rogue healing subclass.
I had to couch the amount of healing they did by saying "look how much healing everyone else (especially a cleric) can do, they're not even healing as much as these other classes can", all while knowing that the amount of healing the average character can do is *terrible* in comparison to damage received.
That's always the struggle with homebrewing when you've got an optimizer's perspective. If you're making a rogue subclass, for example, you have to ask yourself "Am I trying to salvage the rogue class with this subclass?" or "Am I trying to make something that is balanced with other rogue subclasses?". A subclass that brings someone like the rogue, monk or barbarian up to the level of a dedicated spellcaster would absolutely be overpowered compared to it's peers as subclasses of that class, but it wouldn't necessarily be overpowered compared to the rest of the game around it.
Dunno man. I've played a Druid and watched a Paladin tank like 4 Type VI demons for a whole round. Then cast Heal on him and watched my DM's utterly defeated face when they wasted their turns like that (the pally hadn't gone down). That was satisfying AF.
Im new to the game and this was super useful, thank you very much!
Hot Take: It may be that weak healing makes the sense of danger more real and more thrilling.
In defense of the cleric casting cure wounds for the “insignificant amount” of 25 yes the Bullette can knock him down again no problem but he can’t outright kill the fighter anymore. I used a bullete in one of my campaigns and it got a crit on our sorcerer, who instantly died. Then it proceeded to tpk the rest of the party (tunneling). A little bit of healing can go along way, and if the group works together you can get more turns to get them out of the red. I use a few rules to prevent yo-yo healing specifically so that the guy who plays the healer has his job really matter instead of just resurrecting the party as they drop. You are right though, having a heal-bot 9000 is only useful when you get hit, so they are less useful then a character who can heal and still contribute to the combat, and it takes a good player to be the healer because you need to be very efficient with how you fight and heal otherwise your wasting resources or making stupid plays and drag the team down. And despite all that, the party still wants a healer, so someone might as well be good at it.
One of the things I’ve done as a tank was think of the opposite for healing, but getting healed. 3 levels of warlock isn’t impossible for some paladins builds and 3 levels warlock can get you pact of the chain and the “gift of the everliving ones” which maximizes how much I get healed if the familiar is alive. This could make the Druid cleric over 30hp on me (24+4+5=33 hp) and if I go celestial, I can heal myself for 6x the number of dice I spend on the feature it gives.
TBH, you never need healing until you drop to 0HP. A player character with 1HP is as effective as one with 150HP. Until that changes, all you need is healing word to revive a fallen foe.
That's why I'm considering a house rule something like: every time you are healed from 0 hit points, you have a failed death roll that lasts until you take a short or long rest. With this rule, in- combat healing becomes much more valuable. The downside is potentially increased lethality, which many people think 5e lacks, and the motivation to take more rests. It may encourage the 5 minute work day. On the other hand, it may encourage more short rests to the benefit of classes that rely more on short rests.
My buddy just rolled a warforged twilight 10/stars 2 to join our spelljammer campaign (going from Lv1-30 w/ heros handbook). He wanted to be a healer in the traditional sense & im looking forward to next week when he gets to do just that XD.
My dm modifies the going unconscious from 0 hp to applying progressive levels of exhaustion. So in addition to going unconscious, you don't want to be going up and down with healing word. So healing is about staying alive more than up and down.
One of the biggest power fantasies in playing a Cleric is the ability to heal the sick and wounded.
And instead people have been served with being the equivalent of a potion dispenser.
In the context of the Order Cleric 1/Divine Soul Sorcerer 8 I'm currently playing, I've had seen some mileage done by a combination of three spells: Aura of Vitality; Aid; Wither and Bloom
Extended Aura of Vitality - for a measly 1 sorcery point - allows me to bring up the average healing upwards to 140 hit points per combat. It's the bet healing spell in my toolbox, so, the trick is making sure my allies last that long.
Aid is an easy upcast for me since - as a multiclass dip - I lack a spell known for 5th level spells. An extra 20 hit points (60 in total) is a nice enough value next to the potential of other spells such as Mass Cure Wounds.
Finally, the third tool is Wither and Bloom. Not the greatest damage spell, but since our party has 3 frontliners, it's the one I can the most easily use in a melee. The damage is nothing overly impressive, but if one of them is flagging, I can upcast it for a pitance more damage... but the main point is the opportunity to use hit dice to heal then-and-there. A 4th-level upcast allows the one of the frontliners a equivalent or greater amount of healing than an upcast Cure Wounds of the same level; on top of triggering a Voice of Authority Reaction attack. Yes, it costs hit dice, but they barely use them since I've obtained Aura of Vitality.
In the right kind of melee (say, 3 targets), I can - in a single action with a 4th-level Wither and Bloom - deal 40ish damage over my 3 targets, have the fighter do an attack dealing an extra 12ish damage on hit, and heal said fighter 4d10+4. It's not a trick I can perform all day, but when I do, it seems like a nice pick-up moment for them.
There's also the alternative of turning them into a Giant Crocodile for the extra buffer of hit points, but Polymorph's been getting a poor reception in this campaign when I try to use it as an alternative to the risky twin-cast haste (which I want to retrain but keep being begged not to). For some reason, the warrior-types really don't like not playing as themselves.
Remember you can spend extend more than once also. If you need more time
really? that's the firstI've heard of this, interesting@@petenell5807
you're a good player.
Healing in the middle of combat can also be useful if there's a rider on providing an effect. Order cleric does this very well. Did the rogue need healing?, no but the reaction attack that he got to make due to the rider effect was worth it, especially when you are able to influence more than 1 ally/creature through a spell like wither and bloom, silvery barbs, polymorph or an ability like the chalice's chain healing, even better if you can combine it.
A character concept of mine that does this is: 1 order cleric, 2 stars druid (mostly chalice, but dragon has it's use) and the rest bladesinger tortle. Since tortle you can focus on decent WIS and INT and passable CON and DEX/STR (I like strength since it gives greater weapon choice and some of the normal considerations aren't needed like AC since tortle has that covered) after all as a wizard hitting things shouldn't be your primary contribution anyway.
I've been in combat. Healing IN combat. Will Never be as good as away from combat
I really wish this was common knowledge but sadly it isn't. For whatever reason I usually end up being the last person to join a campaign before it starts, which in turn usually means I end up playing a Cleric because nobody else wants to, which is fine because I enjoy the class, except for one thing. People will always say "Oh good, we have a healer" and I have to quickly counter with "No, you don't" because if I don't, they'll get extremely cocky, do something extremely stupid and then expect me to burn all of my spell slots to dig them out of trouble.
Case in point, this last weekend during a Phandelver campaign we were wildly outnumbered by bandits. We're only level 3, they're all in a big room so we decide to funnel them through a doorway so the bandits with ranged weapons didn't shoot us up and kill us all. Our Fighter and Warlock decided to completely ignore the plan, both charge into the room and then are shocked to discover the easily discernable fact that every single bandit had a turn before the rest of us did so they proceed to surround our Fighter and Warlock and drop them both in a single turn. Now they're begging me to heal them both and I have to explain to them why what they did is extremely stupid and how healing them would do literally nothing except waste a spell slot.
I can honestly say that once One D&D drops I'm never going to touch Cleric or any other class that can cast a heal again. The improvements to healing is just going to encourage extremely stupid behavior that the classes that can't heal will expect you to burn all of your spell slots to fix.
Whew... yeah. I might need a break from Cleric.
Just play a negative energy Cleric, or Clericromnacer.
Don't even have the healing spells prepared
Just play a grave cleric with life transference. 😊
I standby what I said last video, in that the improvements to healing spells in playtest 8 feel really good, but aren't enough to solve the problem completely. Beacon of hope carries it hard, and that Spell isn't very good due to its action cost and spell level, which likely won't be fixed... but if the effect was incorporated into life cleric or something, (say I spend a channel divinity to use the max healing of this spell I cast, kind of like how tempest cleric works with thunder) that would feel pretty good while not taking away from what cleric does in general
Grave Cleric is awesome with playtest 8 healing spells!
@JuckiCZ agreed, by just preparing cure wounds you can get TONS of value by upcasting on a downed party member. 51-53 healing with just a third level slot? Sign me up!
Twilight for the win... why heal AFTER damage is taken?!
Maybe that's the way they balance it is make healing instead extra protection of some kind. Or maybe some kind of pre healing.
I think the real issue is its either terrible or too good.
I think there's potential in doing temp hp and buffs while the temp hp is available. Make exactly 1 hp to bring someone up and the rest is temp hp.
I think the other issue is spell mod should matter more.
Thanks Treantmonk!
I think one of the design flaws of 5E is there is no cost to getting dropped to 0. Characters can keep tubthumping, and as long as they don't take a kill shot it's fine. I've used house rules that inflict a level of exhaustion on a dropped character, and tactics switched to mitigation and healing before the character could get dropped, which feels more realistic than saying "Let Fritz the Fighter get dropped. One healing word and he'll be fine."
No cost, the extra 10 points of damage aren’t a death save, and in my experience once downed most DMs rarely will hit the downed player
I like BG3 handling of this. When you get up from dying, you lose your next action. Can still bonus, can still move to run away.
I did the same, and removed full healing on long reast on top of it. Absolutely love how it has affected my game.
I do the same thing - if someone gets KOed twice in one battle, they sure as heck aren't going to be as fresh as a daisy afterwards
I get a little annoyed by this argument because this is a significant oversimplification. There is certainly a cost to bringing someone back which is paid in action economy (first and foremost), resources, and positioning to the rest of the party. First, most forms of healing will require close proximity to the downed player, which may be very dangerous for the rest of the party if it's a melee character that went down in melee (the most likely scenario). Second, someone that has the ability to bring the downed character back up must take their turn before the downed character's in the turn order, or else the party will lose an additional action. Unless the party was already winning the encounter with a surplus of action economy, this can take quite a toll on the rest of the party's ability to survive and can snowball into a TPK very quickly. If you are struggling to survive with 4 actions per round and someone goes down, then what happens during the next round of attacks when you only 2 actions? You might have 4 actions again the round after that, but that's a long ways away.
I'm sure you're yelling about healing word at this point because that's really where the problem is, not the fact that people going to 0 have no impact. In my opinion, healing word and other bonus action features which provide healing should heal as normal, but should remove the unconcious condition. This would mean that, sure, you can keep someone from dying as long as you have healing words to spare, which might be a good stopgap and what you need at that moment, but you won't get that person back into the fight without something more substantial. Alternatively, moving healing word to being a 2nd level spell would reduce its availability significantly and other features are much more limited or specific subclasses already, so this may also be a viable option.
I do not think adding penalties for dropping to 0 makes for a fun game for 2 reasons: 1) monsters are designed around few, large hits and so getting hit just a couple times, getting critical'd, or being a squishy and taking just a single hit will all immediately initiate this downed scenario and began sapping resources from the party to maintain, often with very little counterplay, and 2) the design of healing features, as mentioned by Chris, is very weak and inefficient for use in combat as-is, so using features to bring someone back in this way can often not even give them the ability to avoid the next source of damage that will put them right back down.
All that being said, I think if the bonus action features were unable to bring someone back from conciousness, then you could increase the amount of healing generally to make healing actually feel significant and not a complete waste to cast a cure wounds or healing word on someone who's low but not yet been downed in order to avoid them going down in the first place. Just my thoughts.
*TL;DR*: Going to 0 isn't the problem, it's the easy availability of low-cost (primarily in action economy cost) features that can correct the problem. Instead of adding a penalty, make it so these features can heal, but not remove unconciousness, or reduce the availability of these features (i.e. move healing word to 2nd level).
My glamour bard pumps out a decent amount through Aid and Mantle of Inspiration.
Hm... Im thinking hospitality halfling, divine soul sorcerer X, celestial warlock 3, and twilight druid 2. This NPC is a Medical Center technician, dedicated to all forms of healing, natural to the supernatural. Take feats like leadership, healer. Those warlock slots make for wonderful use of either goodberry or aid. Get effectively free distant spell with pact of the chain imp. Celestial healing, med kits. Lots of variety with regards to just hp management. But I love to splash sneaky control spells like bane, mind spike, Tasha's whip. Who needs high level of spells?access to glyph of warding, if one wants to be clever with spell traps
*cries in Healing Spirit*
I feel I had to take this on my Ranger is CoS, since BOTH Cleric and the Paladin wanted to change characters, and the other Cleric stopped playing. Feels bad, man. There ARE some decent uses for Healing Spirit, thankfully I got a lot out of it last night. The BA heal is helpful for action economy, and at least you can keep healing on other rounds, but 1d6 is pitifully low... 😢
First version of Healing Spirit was totally broken (when there was no limit on number of heals it could do), but the following errata made it useless for anyone not maxing WIS and not great for anyone who did max WIS.
It's a bad story about this spell overall...
Seeing this video in my mailbox healed my boredom, so healing can’t be that bad.
Also I really like the Oath of the Ancients Paladin ability (available at 1st level!) in BG3 that heals a target a small amount as a bonus action, but then at the start of the target’s next turn.
I really think a spell with an effect like that could be very effective.
Effects like that without concentration are used in BG3 but are more uncommon in TTRPGs because people forget about them. Concentration draws your attention because it's a resource you constantly have to maintain. It's also why BG3 has more status effects in general, like the bleeding one that causes targets to take more physical damage, the game can keep track of it yourself. Do you think in a game where people can't even remember whether they have inspiration (bardic or not) would be better with more passive things to track?
"You can use this five times to bring up five allies, that dropped to zero hit points. Or the same ally that went down five times."
That sounds familiar 🤔
Why the only healing build I play is thieve rogue flavoured as a field medic for I thieve the dying from the reaper.
level 3 Fast Hands Bonus action to use a healer kit if you take the healer feat at lv1 or 4 depending on if human variant/custom lineage or not.
A rogue has damage from sneak attack & you get 6 ASI as a rogue so not a massive resource dedication to fulfil the healer role & more.
You heal d6+4+maximum number of hit die for a bonus action once on all party members, self or Npc's between short rests.
Healer & potions on a bonus action who needs a healing spells.
Note:
Take tavern brawler at level 1 variant human or custom lineage & you can throw acid, alchemist fire vials or oil as bonus action as well when not healing.
Become a grenadier & medic for 2 feat of 7.
A dip into another class for green Flame blade is worth consider as a melee cantrip a you can match martial damage even without getting of sneak attack.
Being able to grapple is nice for a bonus action as well upon a melee hit in certain circumstances then the next tur you can use the shove action to guarantee sneak attack.
Dexterity 15+(1 human) & 14+(2 tavern brawler & Human) with 10 all stats except 13 charisma for dip usually warlock hex blade dip.
Green flame blade & armour of agathy's is to good not to mention shield & medium armour proficiency is to good to pass up.
4 ASI for the 2 feat mentioned & 2 ASI for 20 dexterity you have 3 ASI's if played to level 20 to use as you please
If you can get a belt of giant strength to get a 21 strength or plus for with bonus action grapple you can achieve some shenanigans on top of the grenades as nothing more funny then grabbing a fella after sneak attacking to then throw them off a building in 1 turn a green flame blade strike then bonus action grapple.
Rogue grenadier medic is the most fun I have had filling the healing role as a bonus action.
The party request someone to be a healer but they never specified I have to be a caster?;)
I can see why it’s suboptimal, but on the other hand, as a DM who had a life domain cleric on a 1-20 game, I can tell… on tiers 3&4 he had the power to heal more than the enemies dmg output, combining his channel divinity with spells or even the healer feat with the spells. It was kinda expensive to do it but when he needed, he had that option. And I swear to god, even tho his character was nothing close to be optmized, he was annoying as F.
The party:
fey lock
life priest,
champion/vengeance
ranged cbe ss fighter bm
war priest/fig bm
Shepherd Druid + 1 lv Life Cleric + Moon Sickle + Unicorn Spirit is the best combo for In Combat Healing.
Simple you play a Twilight Cleric/Circle of Stars Druid so you can still deal significant damage as well as heal!
I think part of the problem is legacy design. Imagine a world where healing is effective, but has dynamic elements to it: juggling durations on regeneration abilities, knowing when to pop off a large, spare usage heal, heals that are vampiric so damage dealt becomes an important support component, etc. all allow for more nuanced and dynamic versions of supporting allies than "spell slot=a little healing". Some designs (like heal, life transference, and the oft overlooked Wither and Bloom) all provide cool moments for the game that Cure Wounds just doesn't.
I was just thinking the same, it would be coller if vanilla heals provided other kinds of buffs in addition
Im playing a Order Cleric 1/divine soul 7 focussing full support (still got the needed fireball), Inspiring leather and Healer feats, Extended Aid max up cast before sleep, twinned deathward, extended aura of vitality between combat. Healer save a lot of spell slot, Inspiring leather + Aid rise the HP a tons, i vortex warp the rogue or the barbarian around giving them more attack.
I could have taked Life cleric for insane extended aura of vitality but with my party the Order ability was too good. We play with a house rule that every time you go to 0 HP you get 1 level of exhaustion (the -1 to every d20 roll and the DC of spells like in the first One DND playtest) we use this because one time the barbarian got the "0 -> healing word -> 0" train 16 time and it was pretty ugly to see and play
I've houseruled yo-yo healing out of my game by requiring a scaling medicine check from a party member to restore consciousness, or a short rest. Healing word is still useful for stabilisation, but it doesnt remove the unconscious condition. Of course my party has adapted to this, and my encounter balancing takes it into account.
I will be very curious to see how changes to healing may affect the value of healing in the context of my house rule.
While it makes perfect sense, it's always somewhat disheartening to hear: "You chose a subclass supposedly designed to maximize your effectiveness at this one function? Well, actually, you can be better at that one function if you multiclass...,".
As someone playing a Life Cleric, while I chose it knowing that it really wouldn't be all about healing, its design still is somewhat disappointing because of how healing works in the game. It's frustrating that they essentially didn't change it's design at all in OneDnD with this in mind. There is a lot they could do to make in-combat healing more interesting and worthwhile besides just boost its power slightly. Maybe add a limited-use reaction-based heal for when someone goes down, or a feature that adds a temporary HP buffer or a 1-turn sanctuary-like effect when the Life Cleric heals someone, to help prevent them immediately going back down on the next attack...really anything more than, "You heal for a bit more, but still not enough to make a difference in most cases,"...
Aid is the best healing spell.
bring 3 friends up from KO, heals more hp than most dedicated heal spells, even upcasts well. Only problem is it doesn't stack with itself, so one per set of party members.
It's changed in one d and d which i think would be fine but the effect just isn't good enough.
I think giving temp hp and maybe a buff but the low temp HP it's currently at just isn't enough.
In the new playtest however I do see power word fortify which seemingly suggests you could choose to give an ally 120 temp HP or 2 allies 60 temp hp which is kind of interesting. Because an fighter would have like 150 hp at that level or something so I could see some potential particularly if there are things that buff while you have temp hp like Armor of Agathys
Ok, got it.
So, I'll tell the cleric that their only job is to cast Spirit Guardians and then Dodge during every fight because the Paladin is a better healer with Lay on Hands.
Good thing I pay attention to the whole video and not just to a few seconds of it 👌🏻
Thank you for your information video
I sense a variation of Colby's Starry Twilight healer build coming
As an in combat healing specialist, Healing Word is the worst healing spell in the entire game lol,
it destroys action economy because you will always have a better bonus action, especially for attacks,
and never heal when someone is down, heal when they are at 25% HP, and then they will never go down again,
also, the best healing spell in the game is ..... Wither And Bloom, ranged healing with d10's and d12's, damaging enemies, and saving bonus actions for attacks
it's worth upcasting to 3rd every time, until you get Mass Cure Wounds which is your best friend, these tactics have avoided a 100+ potential TPK's
The simplest solution for healing I can think of is increase the size of the dice of all healing spells/abilities that rely on die by 1, so 1d6 is now 1d8, 2d8 is now 2d12, 5d12 could be 5d20 but that might be too much so maybe at d12 you just add half the spell levels worth of die so 5th level that does 5d12 would now do 7d12, doesn't seem insanely broken but I just thought it up so it might be too much.
An interaction I'm considering trying in my next campaign is playing a Divine Soul Sorcerer with Life Transference. Assuming you only take the damage once, which is how I'm interpreting it at this point in time, that's 72 points of healing on average for a third level spell slot when using the twin spell metamagic and 3 sorcery points. Decently expensive in sorcery point terms, but a really cool burst heal option that lets my character be the battle medic instead of sticking to picking up aura of vitality to heal outside of combat. In fact this heals about the same as a 3rd level Aura of vitality, which over the course of a minute heals an average of 70 hit points, though without the self damage and sorcery point investment. Though I'll acknowledge something like Extended Spell can easily make Aura of Vitality outshine this, and at a lower sorcery point cost. But hey in combat healing is cool.
There is nothing stopping you from spending twin more than once either. So absorb way 😂
I could definitely see an argument being made that life transference targets 2 creatures already [the caster and the healed], preventing twinning
Fair point. I was coming at it from the perspective of being a "cost" along the lines of being a material component, but it could definitely be read that it does that. The wording is vague though, it just says you sacrifice life then choose a creature in range. It doesn't outright target you, but it does affect you, so maybe it shouldn't work for twin spell RAW. I'd argue that its fine from a balance standpoint though since you're spending quite a few resources just to make in combat healing effective at the level where this would be significant enough to use. @@elliotbryant3459
Use the XGTE rules for making Healing Potions and use them only in emergencies. NO TOP OFFS!
My PC's (Cleric, Druid, Ranger) all had healing magic and insisted on using it whenever anybody took damage. It was painful to run. Fortunately the Cleric died and rerolled as a Wizard. I can take off the kid gloves now.
Damage taken vs single target healing is an unstable equilibrium problem with a boring outcome on both sides. You do too little, why bother, you do too much, no danger at all.
In my opinion each of the 3 main healers could get a base class feature choice like:
- Cleric heal a second person for same amount, or deal damage to an enemy equal to healed.
- Druid control, when resurrecting pull the target to your spot, or gain a shield equal to heal.
- Bard buffing, take their turn right after yours, grant the effect of Dodge or Disengage.
Thanks Chris
I think healing has the capacity to be better, but generally it isn’t fun to play around in 5e. The game doesn’t want to support a pure healing focused character and generally it just doesn’t feel good.
I realy wish they will change healing.
I like changes in Playtest 8, need to test them.
I would like to see changes because in current state I hate how healing someone slightly injured is not best action, but letting him fall to the ground and then heal him to 1-2 HP is better.
We had fights when each of players and bad guys went to 0 HP at least once and my character went to 0 and back three times. It was silly.
I know DnD is not real world but for me it was immersion breaking.
While I understand if someone does not like this but I would love to see a little bit more MMO Style healing where your healing can actually outpace or be similar to damage taken.
I'm curious why you don't mention Regenerate. Yes, i probably wouldn't use it in combat much (unless i'm expecting the same party member to repeatedly get downed), but out of combat it's a little over of 600 points of healing to a single target for a 7th level slot.
I think i've heard optimizers tend to not like Regenerate, but i can't figure out why.
one thing that often gets overlooked is its 1 minute casting time. It can do cool things though, like disciple of life could potentially trigger for each instance of healing, same with the wis mod bonus from Temple of the Gods would probably need someone else to cast it or blow your 8th level slot]. Could also be cool to twin or extend it via divine soul sorcerer. Pair it with heavy armor master to add insult to add insult to injury [or lack there of]
Me reading the latest 1D&D doc realizing my Twilight X Stars 2 Beacon of Hope healer build just got a 33-50% boost to their healing output.
Treantmonk's Contingency was set to cast publish video when he's too busy dissecting the latest playtest
Colby did a really cool build centered around life transference.
Dedicated healer doesn't necessarily mean you heal in combat. Even a good dedicated healer knows to diversify and cast other spells in combat.
This video is cap, as the kids say.
Treantmonk starts with a claim of healing in general. Then follows with an example that supports his claim. So far so good...expect he chose the HIGHEST DAMAGE MONSTER AT CR5 to support his claim. And on top of that it crits with its highest damage attack??? That's 1/20 encounters where the monster has a crit opener. The only other monster at CR 5 to come close to 60 damage(with a single crit attack, so no multi-attack crits) is the Triceratops at 48 damage. We continue for 20 more minutes with more examples of how every other healing choice or mechanic will not save you from a 30/60 damage attack. Come on man....
If the claim of this video is "reactive healing is lower on the meta power tier list, and preventive healing is higher rank", sure I absolutely agree 100%. But I would not say that a heavily focused healing PC isn't VIABLE. Treantmonk (and maybe players at large) seem to forgot that if you could heal the bulette's damage, you would be effectively 'disarming' the monster every turn, with nothing the monster could do. Healing can still be a great way to keep the fighter up long enough to take 4 rounds of attacks and finally fall to 0hp at the 5th round.
But we are so focused on every heal needs to be 1 damage to 1 health, that Treantmonk and others will make a video to show only 1 side of the power of healing in combat, which in their eyes is bad.
With all that being said, I hope this criticism doesn't come off as baby raging. Treantmonk makes excellent videos, I just disagree with this one. I think there are different ways to approach the game's combat and I just want more people to really look at what a healer/support is doing more than just a surface level of healing in combat sucks.