In my campaign, I have a cleric that is focused specifically on healing people and assisting the party. He's decided that he won't include a damaging spell in his spell list (Bane, Hold Person, and Blindness/Deafness his only aggressive ones), and, in the end, it levels out since there's also a rogue and two fighters (plus more) in the party. In our last session, we began with recapping the end of a previous encounter and starting the game with most of the party taking 14 points of fall damage before diving into combat with two subterranean monstrosities. At this point, the cleric in this level 3 party was completely out of spell slots, and, upon hearing my description of all the glorious foulness, decided that he wasn't going anywhere near the monsters and would instead perform medicine checks on the party members closest to him. Aside from casting Resistance once and Guidance once, that's what he continued to do the entire time. After a while, I was sorta at a loss of what to do since I hadn't really thought about Medicine checks (aside from stabilizing people) in the midst of combat, and since he only beat my DC 20 once, the cleric didn't really do much inside 2 hours of fighting.
I was wondering if anyone had any suggestion on what to do for in-combat medicine checks oriented around actively healing/helping characters. I already thought of a few things; -- the one time he beat the DC, I had him roll a d4 (he got a 4), giving our critically injured bard 2 hit points and 2 temporary hit points which lasted for two rounds ("using the rest of his 'innate magical essence' for the day") -- asking him, "How do you attempt to help/heal this person" is another thing (that I'm currently facepalming since I didn't think of that in the moment) -- homebrew thing I thought of which gives a bonus of 2 HP to hit dice rolls during short rests, if he tries to RP bandaging wounds and whatnot (limitations being a DC of 16, which increases by 2 after every successful attempt, as well as having to perform 1 successful DC10 Medicine check beforehand) Are there any other (more instantaneous effects) anyone can think of while doing medicine checks? (keeping RAF in mind)
I would definitely require him to have a healer's kit to do any sort of healing with medicine rolls.
Looks like what you are doing is a limited version of the Healer feat. If I were you I would keep it at what you are currently allowing, and strongly suggest that they pick up that feat at 4th level. If for some reason they really do not want to do that, create a magic item that includes giving them the feat.
Or you could have him find a Staff of Healing (or a homebrew limited version of one).
Don't get me wrong, I definitely like what you are doing to keep the player engaged and are letting them run the character they want to run, but I would just give them an item so that I didn't have additional medical rules/rolls to bog down combat. If you still want to engage the skill side of it, have him craft a healer's kit. Use the Healer feat as a guide. If he rolls high, the 10 charges from that kit does decent healing. If low, the 10 charges do less. That way, he can get to someone and heal with a pre-set level of healing.
The Medicine skill is fairly specific in use and quite limited.
A Wisdom (Medicine) check lets you try to stabilize a dying companion or diagnose an illness.
That's it.
There is a Healer's Kit but that just duplicates the part about saving dying companions.
The skill isn't designed for use in a combat situation.
I understand the plight of the character wanting to do something, but if they were bandaging wounds - a combat round is only 6 seconds. Even a hugely skilled paramedic isn't going to be able to effectively treat a wound in that time to do anything more than maybe temporarily staunch a bleeding wound. If the target is armoured, then they would probably need to remove some of their armour to allow treatment. This all takes a fair amount of time.
I think you nailed it with your observation of asking, "How do you attempt to help/heal this person?"
Whilst it's something that is debated within the community, the rules say that it is the DM who decides whether the player should make a skill check, based upon the player describing the actions of their character. Essentially, it is up to the player of the cleric to tell you (the DM) what their character is actually doing to help their fellow party members. If you deem their action to need a medicine check to be successful, then you let them know.
Even if the character sticks to their non-violent ways, they can still assist in combat if they are creative. How about, "I move in next to the fighter and, whilst I don't attack the ogre, I am going to yell threateningly at it, to distract it." - great, they just took the help action and now the fighter gets to attack at advantage.
4ed had a cleric build based on being a pacifist. This idea seems closest to what is described above. I would ask the player whether it is within their idea of their character to do non-damaging debuffing or buffing. E.g. is the character willing to temporarily blind the enemy? I would then see what spells match or could be altered or homebrewed to do such, and either allow access to these or provide an item/s that enable this.
personally, I'd do as much as I could to enable this RP decision.
At the very least, you could treat his Medicine checks as if he were actually taking the Help action; whoever he does "medicine" on gets Advantage on the next thing they do the following round.Other than the fact that he's rolling a "Medicine check" while you're secretly considering it a Help action, at this point you're playing vanilla 5e.
If you want to start to throw him a bone and reward high Medicine rolls in combat, maybe come up with a small table of buffs that high rolls can hand out. 15+ they get a choice of +5 feet of movement or +1 to attack or +1 to damage, 20+ they get a choice of 5 THP or an extra bonus action, 25+..... that sort of thing.
If you do go that route though, I'd definitely enforce that he needs to start buying Medicine kits, and each one has a limited number of uses as he's burning through stims and drugs and supplies of some sort?
An idea for when he is out of spells, since that seems to be the jest of the topic, is have him be potion giver. He buys or makes potions that buff and heal party members. If he isn't already proficient in the alchemist kit, have him study under a local alchemist for a predetermined amount of time for him to learn. Then he can brew up potions and during combat he is able to go around giving these potions to people. As so the party member doesn't lose their action to drink a potion, he can uncork and pour it down their throats as his action. Potions like protection from evil and good (each potion is predetermined the creature type), enhance ability, and lesser restoration would be good to have. (Check the DMG pg. 129 for the brewing a potion). He could just have a bandoleer of potions that he just gives out. You may want to adjust the pricing on potions though otherwise he won't have enough to make or buy enough potions to be of help. Hope this helped.
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I would try something like this. When a character spends a hit die after a short rest, if you make a successful wisdom(medicine) DC 15 (?) the character recovers max hit points on one die. You can only do this once per character per short rest.
I would suggest he takes the guidance cantrip when he levels up. That way he always has a useful thing to do every round without attacking, and you don't need to make up new rules on the fly. Officially you can only retrain spells on level up, not cantrips, but I always thought that was a dumb rule, and you're the DM so you can change it.
Alternately, since medicine is the least useful skill in 5e, if you wanted to just let his medicine checks count as the guidance cantrip it probably wouldn't break anything.
The Cleric's player probably doesn't want to play a "murder hobo", but is limiting himself and his game play by only wanting to heal. While this can work well outside of combat, it is limiting him way too much in "classic combat". I think he should change a bit. Just sitting in the back isn't enough. - Help action in a fight. He could pair up with another melee fighter (5 feet limit for help action) and use a shield and mace /quarterstaff just to mess with the foe and grant the ally advantage to the attack or willingly be the first to move, so the AoO (as a reaction of the foe) is "wasted" on him and not the ally. - be close to the ally for Guidance and Resistance. You can touch your ally to cast the spells on you allies.
Don't forget, we will get other spells later (now at only level 3 he is quite limited) that work well, without direct involvement in combat. Non Concentration ones are: Command (Flee, drop Weapon, Surrender), Sanctuary, Aid, Warding Bond etc.
Outside of combat, you have multiple options to make him shine as a healer, just by allowing him to heal some hitpoints when using a healer's kit (like his wisdom modifier once a day on each person). He could get a bonus to his charisma check after treating some villagers for free when the party comes to small village. He could treat diseases and fractured bones if you want to deviate from the "pool of life force" concept that is D&D's hit points (falling damage you have describes sounds like a broken foot or a strained ankle).
I applaud your willingness to work with the player. Though, I think going forward, he should understand that there’s no healing in a 6 second turn that can be accomplished without magic, especially on a battlefield full of movement and chaos. All characters have limits to their resources that keep them from accomplishing what they otherwise could. Encourage him to broaden his definition of non-aggression. Word of Radiance as a cantrip is a burst of radiant light that can be played as a prayer and a divine judgement against the target more than a direct assault. He can feel free to use it sparingly instead of every time something needs killed. Also, just stepping into range of an enemy and taking the dodge action is enough to give a party rogue sneak attack without swinging a weapon, or flanking an enemy(and also doging as your action) to give anyone advantage against a flanked target.
so, the good news is as soon as he gains level 4 his healing ability goes way up. He can take the healer feat, as mentioned. He gets a new cantrip, and learns a new spell. And there are a lot of 2nd level spells that heal.
Medicine checks wouldn’t allow for healing .. so you need to come up with some other actions the cleric could take that might fit the character.
1) help action as mentioned to distract the opponent and give one of your team mates advantage on the attack roll. If the cleric objects to helping then you really have to question why they are out adventuring knowing that it will likely require killing things if only for the survival of the group.
2) taking the healer feat will provide for more healing options during combat
3) learn to use a net .. nets do no damage but will restrain the target if they hit. Combine with sharpshooter for use at 10’ range without disadvantage or with crossbow expert for adjacent use without disadvantage
4) if the objection is to killing things then the cleric could engage in melee combat doing only non-lethal damage.
As a general comment, it will become harder to maintain this approach at higher levels since healing is generally much less efficient than doing damage to targets and clerics have fewer crowd control options than others.
PS Guidance and resistance are generally not very useful in combat since neither affects attack rolls .. resistance might be useful against enemy spell casters .. but bless is usually the preferred approach to that AND it increases attack rolls.
Is a Healer’s Kit mandatory to stabilize a fallen creature when doing the Wisdom (Medicine) ✔️
If not, how else can I flavor one stabilizing a fallen creature without one? 🤔
It's not necessary you can try to stabilize a dying creature without a healer's kit but using one let you automatically do so without needing to make a Wisdom (Medicine) check.
Trying to stabilize a dying creature by making a Wisdom (Medicine) check without the use of a healer's kit could be represented by shaking it, applying preassure on a wound, making an improvised tourniquet with a cloth, placing it in recovery position while talking to him or her etc
I might allow a character like that to learn to manufacture poultices from certain plants, and then apply them, in combat for say a d4 healing, at the risk of getting hit, of course. The necessary plants might happen to appear more frequently along the way to a difficult battle....
Trying to stabilize a dying creature by making a Wisdom (Medicine) check without the use of a healer's kit could be represented by shaking it, applying preassure on a wound, making an improvised garrot with a cloth, placing it in recovery position while talking to him or her etc
I think you might mean a tourniquet; a garrotte is for doing the opposite of saving someone's life. 😉
It sounds to me like the OP's problem is a classic example of a character making life unnecessarily difficult for themselves; I'm all for playing to a theme but on a resource-limited class you have to think about what you do when those resources run out.
I wouldn't personally allow healing with Medicine checks in combat; I'd just remind the player that there are always other options such as using the Help action to aid others, if the creatures are the right size they could also Grapple or Shove. If they had the thaumaturgy cantrip they could use it to attempt to distract enemies (especially if they're subterranean since they could be noise sensitive), or you might rule that light could be used to dazzle, and so-on.
I might allow a character like that to learn to manufacture poultices from certain plants, and then apply them, in combat for say a d4 healing, at the risk of getting hit, of course. The necessary plants might happen to appear more frequently along the way to a difficult battle....
That would require proficiency in the herbalism kit. It is specifically designed for that and a player can use it to make healing potions.
In my campaign, I have a cleric that is focused specifically on healing people and assisting the party. He's decided that he won't include a damaging spell in his spell list (Bane, Hold Person, and Blindness/Deafness his only aggressive ones), and, in the end, it levels out since there's also a rogue and two fighters (plus more) in the party.
In our last session, we began with recapping the end of a previous encounter and starting the game with most of the party taking 14 points of fall damage before diving into combat with two subterranean monstrosities. At this point, the cleric in this level 3 party was completely out of spell slots, and, upon hearing my description of all the glorious foulness, decided that he wasn't going anywhere near the monsters and would instead perform medicine checks on the party members closest to him. Aside from casting Resistance once and Guidance once, that's what he continued to do the entire time. After a while, I was sorta at a loss of what to do since I hadn't really thought about Medicine checks (aside from stabilizing people) in the midst of combat, and since he only beat my DC 20 once, the cleric didn't really do much inside 2 hours of fighting.
I was wondering if anyone had any suggestion on what to do for in-combat medicine checks oriented around actively healing/helping characters. I already thought of a few things;
-- the one time he beat the DC, I had him roll a d4 (he got a 4), giving our critically injured bard 2 hit points and 2 temporary hit points which lasted for two rounds ("using the rest of his 'innate magical essence' for the day")
-- asking him, "How do you attempt to help/heal this person" is another thing (that I'm currently facepalming since I didn't think of that in the moment)
-- homebrew thing I thought of which gives a bonus of 2 HP to hit dice rolls during short rests, if he tries to RP bandaging wounds and whatnot (limitations being a DC of 16, which increases by 2 after every successful attempt, as well as having to perform 1 successful DC10 Medicine check beforehand)
Are there any other (more instantaneous effects) anyone can think of while doing medicine checks? (keeping RAF in mind)
I would definitely require him to have a healer's kit to do any sort of healing with medicine rolls.
Looks like what you are doing is a limited version of the Healer feat. If I were you I would keep it at what you are currently allowing, and strongly suggest that they pick up that feat at 4th level. If for some reason they really do not want to do that, create a magic item that includes giving them the feat.
Or you could have him find a Staff of Healing (or a homebrew limited version of one).
Don't get me wrong, I definitely like what you are doing to keep the player engaged and are letting them run the character they want to run, but I would just give them an item so that I didn't have additional medical rules/rolls to bog down combat. If you still want to engage the skill side of it, have him craft a healer's kit. Use the Healer feat as a guide. If he rolls high, the 10 charges from that kit does decent healing. If low, the 10 charges do less. That way, he can get to someone and heal with a pre-set level of healing.
The Medicine skill is fairly specific in use and quite limited.
That's it.
There is a Healer's Kit but that just duplicates the part about saving dying companions.
The skill isn't designed for use in a combat situation.
I understand the plight of the character wanting to do something, but if they were bandaging wounds - a combat round is only 6 seconds. Even a hugely skilled paramedic isn't going to be able to effectively treat a wound in that time to do anything more than maybe temporarily staunch a bleeding wound. If the target is armoured, then they would probably need to remove some of their armour to allow treatment. This all takes a fair amount of time.
I think you nailed it with your observation of asking, "How do you attempt to help/heal this person?"
Whilst it's something that is debated within the community, the rules say that it is the DM who decides whether the player should make a skill check, based upon the player describing the actions of their character. Essentially, it is up to the player of the cleric to tell you (the DM) what their character is actually doing to help their fellow party members. If you deem their action to need a medicine check to be successful, then you let them know.
Even if the character sticks to their non-violent ways, they can still assist in combat if they are creative. How about, "I move in next to the fighter and, whilst I don't attack the ogre, I am going to yell threateningly at it, to distract it." - great, they just took the help action and now the fighter gets to attack at advantage.
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4ed had a cleric build based on being a pacifist. This idea seems closest to what is described above. I would ask the player whether it is within their idea of their character to do non-damaging debuffing or buffing. E.g. is the character willing to temporarily blind the enemy? I would then see what spells match or could be altered or homebrewed to do such, and either allow access to these or provide an item/s that enable this.
personally, I'd do as much as I could to enable this RP decision.
At the very least, you could treat his Medicine checks as if he were actually taking the Help action; whoever he does "medicine" on gets Advantage on the next thing they do the following round.Other than the fact that he's rolling a "Medicine check" while you're secretly considering it a Help action, at this point you're playing vanilla 5e.
If you want to start to throw him a bone and reward high Medicine rolls in combat, maybe come up with a small table of buffs that high rolls can hand out. 15+ they get a choice of +5 feet of movement or +1 to attack or +1 to damage, 20+ they get a choice of 5 THP or an extra bonus action, 25+..... that sort of thing.
If you do go that route though, I'd definitely enforce that he needs to start buying Medicine kits, and each one has a limited number of uses as he's burning through stims and drugs and supplies of some sort?
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
An idea for when he is out of spells, since that seems to be the jest of the topic, is have him be potion giver. He buys or makes potions that buff and heal party members. If he isn't already proficient in the alchemist kit, have him study under a local alchemist for a predetermined amount of time for him to learn. Then he can brew up potions and during combat he is able to go around giving these potions to people. As so the party member doesn't lose their action to drink a potion, he can uncork and pour it down their throats as his action. Potions like protection from evil and good (each potion is predetermined the creature type), enhance ability, and lesser restoration would be good to have. (Check the DMG pg. 129 for the brewing a potion). He could just have a bandoleer of potions that he just gives out. You may want to adjust the pricing on potions though otherwise he won't have enough to make or buy enough potions to be of help. Hope this helped.
Remember this is a game and it's suppose to be fun for everybody. Let's all have fun and kill monsters.
I would try something like this. When a character spends a hit die after a short rest, if you make a successful wisdom(medicine) DC 15 (?) the character recovers max hit points on one die. You can only do this once per character per short rest.
I would suggest he takes the guidance cantrip when he levels up. That way he always has a useful thing to do every round without attacking, and you don't need to make up new rules on the fly. Officially you can only retrain spells on level up, not cantrips, but I always thought that was a dumb rule, and you're the DM so you can change it.
Alternately, since medicine is the least useful skill in 5e, if you wanted to just let his medicine checks count as the guidance cantrip it probably wouldn't break anything.
My take on the "problem"
The Cleric's player probably doesn't want to play a "murder hobo", but is limiting himself and his game play by only wanting to heal. While this can work well outside of combat, it is limiting him way too much in "classic combat". I think he should change a bit. Just sitting in the back isn't enough.
- Help action in a fight. He could pair up with another melee fighter (5 feet limit for help action) and use a shield and mace /quarterstaff just to mess with the foe and grant the ally advantage to the attack or willingly be the first to move, so the AoO (as a reaction of the foe) is "wasted" on him and not the ally.
- be close to the ally for Guidance and Resistance. You can touch your ally to cast the spells on you allies.
Don't forget, we will get other spells later (now at only level 3 he is quite limited) that work well, without direct involvement in combat. Non Concentration ones are: Command (Flee, drop Weapon, Surrender), Sanctuary, Aid, Warding Bond etc.
Outside of combat, you have multiple options to make him shine as a healer, just by allowing him to heal some hitpoints when using a healer's kit (like his wisdom modifier once a day on each person). He could get a bonus to his charisma check after treating some villagers for free when the party comes to small village. He could treat diseases and fractured bones if you want to deviate from the "pool of life force" concept that is D&D's hit points (falling damage you have describes sounds like a broken foot or a strained ankle).
I applaud your willingness to work with the player. Though, I think going forward, he should understand that there’s no healing in a 6 second turn that can be accomplished without magic, especially on a battlefield full of movement and chaos. All characters have limits to their resources that keep them from accomplishing what they otherwise could. Encourage him to broaden his definition of non-aggression. Word of Radiance as a cantrip is a burst of radiant light that can be played as a prayer and a divine judgement against the target more than a direct assault. He can feel free to use it sparingly instead of every time something needs killed. Also, just stepping into range of an enemy and taking the dodge action is enough to give a party rogue sneak attack without swinging a weapon, or flanking an enemy(and also doging as your action) to give anyone advantage against a flanked target.
so, the good news is as soon as he gains level 4 his healing ability goes way up. He can take the healer feat, as mentioned. He gets a new cantrip, and learns a new spell. And there are a lot of 2nd level spells that heal.
Medicine checks wouldn’t allow for healing .. so you need to come up with some other actions the cleric could take that might fit the character.
1) help action as mentioned to distract the opponent and give one of your team mates advantage on the attack roll. If the cleric objects to helping then you really have to question why they are out adventuring knowing that it will likely require killing things if only for the survival of the group.
2) taking the healer feat will provide for more healing options during combat
3) learn to use a net .. nets do no damage but will restrain the target if they hit. Combine with sharpshooter for use at 10’ range without disadvantage or with crossbow expert for adjacent use without disadvantage
4) if the objection is to killing things then the cleric could engage in melee combat doing only non-lethal damage.
As a general comment, it will become harder to maintain this approach at higher levels since healing is generally much less efficient than doing damage to targets and clerics have fewer crowd control options than others.
PS Guidance and resistance are generally not very useful in combat since neither affects attack rolls .. resistance might be useful against enemy spell casters .. but bless is usually the preferred approach to that AND it increases attack rolls.
Forgive me for only skimming through this reply
Is a Healer’s Kit mandatory to stabilize a fallen creature when doing the Wisdom (Medicine) ✔️
If not, how else can I flavor one stabilizing a fallen creature without one? 🤔
It's not necessary you can try to stabilize a dying creature without a healer's kit but using one let you automatically do so without needing to make a Wisdom (Medicine) check.
Trying to stabilize a dying creature by making a Wisdom (Medicine) check without the use of a healer's kit could be represented by shaking it, applying preassure on a wound, making an improvised tourniquet with a cloth, placing it in recovery position while talking to him or her etc
It’s a DC10 Wisdom(medicine) check to stabilise an unconscious person without a medicine kit. Flavour as posted by Plaque.
I might allow a character like that to learn to manufacture poultices from certain plants, and then apply them, in combat for say a d4 healing, at the risk of getting hit, of course. The necessary plants might happen to appear more frequently along the way to a difficult battle....
I think you might mean a tourniquet; a garrotte is for doing the opposite of saving someone's life. 😉
It sounds to me like the OP's problem is a classic example of a character making life unnecessarily difficult for themselves; I'm all for playing to a theme but on a resource-limited class you have to think about what you do when those resources run out.
I wouldn't personally allow healing with Medicine checks in combat; I'd just remind the player that there are always other options such as using the Help action to aid others, if the creatures are the right size they could also Grapple or Shove. If they had the thaumaturgy cantrip they could use it to attempt to distract enemies (especially if they're subterranean since they could be noise sensitive), or you might rule that light could be used to dazzle, and so-on.
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That would require proficiency in the herbalism kit. It is specifically designed for that and a player can use it to make healing potions.
Yes tourniquet i used the term in french instead sorry i will edit thanks for pointing it out