Spell Spotlight: Healing Spirit
Healing spirit is the most criticized new spell in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Its design has been heatedly discussed on our own forums, on the D&D Reddit, and every message board and social network in between. It has been almost universally denounced by online fans of D&D as utterly broken, and in desperate need of houseruling, official errata, or even outright banning.
But is healing spirit really that broken? And if it is, what about it needs to be changed in order to fix it? These may sound like silly questions to ask, but a good game designer (and I firmly believe that all good Dungeon Masters must also be good game designers) should look at every spell, class feature, and racial trait from all angles. Let’s take a look at healing spirit—where it succeeds, where it fails, and how you can change it to fit your game.
As of April 6th 2020, healing spirit has been updated with errata, making much of the discussion in this article out of date. You can read the updated version of healing spirit on D&D Beyond, and view the specific changes made to the spell in the relevant Sage Advice errata document.
What Does Healing Spirit Do?
Healing spirit is a 2nd-level spell from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything only available to druids and rangers (and bards that steal it with Magical Secrets or Additional Magical Secrets). The spell’s most important effects are as follows; it has a few other minor properties that you can look at in the spell’s full description:
Requiring only a bonus action to cast, the caster can concentrate on this spell for up to 1 minute, creating a healing spirit that fills a 5-foot cube within 60 feet of them. Whenever a creature you can see enters the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can choose to have the spirit restore 1d6 hit points, requiring no action. This spell can be cast using a higher level spell slot, increasing the healing by 1d6 for each slot level above 2nd.
Healing Spirit’s Pros
This much-maligned spell is not without merit. If it weren't, people would just discard it instead of trying to find ways to fix it! Healing spirit fills an important niche in fifth edition D&D’s design that no other spells cover: powerful in-combat healing.
Party Composition
As a spell exclusive to the druid and ranger classes, it helps players who want to play a druid or ranger fill an important healing niche in parties without a cleric. One of the design goals of fifth edition D&D was to let people play with any party composition that they wanted—and one of the main barriers to this style of play was the perceived necessity of the cleric. Giving a powerful healing spell to druids and rangers is a step towards democratizing healing, in the same vein as giving all classes hit dice to use as a healing resource.
In-Combat Healing
It’s generally considered less efficient to spend spell slots on healing compared to spending them on damage. Compare cure wounds to guiding bolt. One deals 4d6 radiant damage (an average of 14 damage) and grants advantage on a successful hit and grants advantage to the next attacker’s attack roll, while the other restores hit points equal to 1d8 + your spellcasting modifier (an average of 7, assuming you have a +3 spellcasting modifier). Guiding bolt deals twice the damage that cure wounds heals, and has a bonus effect.
Even if you take into account the fact that guiding bolt can miss its target and cure wounds always “hits,” as long as guiding bolt hits more than half the time, it’s a more efficient use of a spell slot than healing.
Healing spirit is a healing spell potent enough to be worth using in combat. It only requires a bonus action to cast, and, with some clever positioning, can restore 1d6 hit points to each of your allies each turn. While in combat, this element of tactical positioning can be an interesting puzzle for the players to unravel, since they have to find a balance between aggressive and defensive positioning.
Out-of-Combat Healing
This is where healing spirit really falls apart. Unfortunately, I don’t have much good to say about this spell when it comes to out-of-combat healing, either from a narrative or mechanical perspective. We’ll look at it more in the cons section.
Healing Spirit’s Cons
Unfortunately, healing spirit steps on the toes of other existing spells and classes in the game. As you’ll soon see, most of healing spirit’s problems arise because, while it is a balanced and fairly competitive spell in combat scenarios, it’s grossly overpowered out-of-combat.
Party Composition
Healing spirit can cause contention in parties where both clerics and druids/rangers are present. If a cleric wants to play a support role and focus on healing and buffing, it feels unsportsmanlike to play a combat-focused ranger or Wild Shape-focused druid that also has access to a healing spell as potent as healing spirit. Personally, I feel that this is an excellent way to differentiate the healing capabilities of different classes, but the out-of-combat balance of healing spirit needs to be addressed if this stylish asymmetrical balance is to work as intended.
In-Combat Healing
My impression of healing spirit, after several readings of its spell description, is that it was balanced around its usefulness in combat (compare its 1 bonus action casting time to prayer of healing’s 10 minute casting time). As it stands, its concentration requirement makes it an unattractive option in combat, especially since so many of druids’ 2nd-level spell options require concentration.
In fact, only six of druids’ twenty-three 2nd-level spell options don’t require concentration: animal messenger, darkvision, find traps, lesser restoration, locate animals or plants, and protection from poison. Similarly, healing spirit’s concentration requirement fights directly for the ranger’s class-defining hunter’s mark.
Out-of-Combat Healing
All other small issues aside, healing spirit’s gravest flaw is its power when used out of combat. If an entire party of adventurers clusters in a 5-foot cube for the spell’s full 1 minute duration (in a sort of heroic cuddle pile, perhaps?), each character will regain 10d6 hit points (an average of 35 hit points) at the cost of a single 2nd-level spell slot.
What this essentially means is that, with only a minute of rest and a single 2nd level spell slot, a druid can fully heal an entire party of 3rd level adventurers. It’s a short rest’s worth of healing in a fraction of the time, which essentially allows an adventuring party to take on any challenge at full hit points. This is where your mileage may vary. If you like to throw a small amount of very challenging encounters at your players, then you’re probably designing all of your encounters with the assumption that your players will tackle them at full hit points anyway. This encounter design philosophy leads to a very heroic style of play, where just about every encounter is a major cinematic moment. If that’s your playstyle, then healing spirit’s out-of-combat potency isn’t a problem at all. It may still present other problems, but this isn’t one of them. In fact, it’s the way the fifth edition D&D is balanced.
However, if you like to play a grim-and-gritty D&D where adventuring is all about carefully conserving your resources in grueling dungeon crawls and being slowly worn down by constant small combats… then this presents a huge problem. First of all, starting every combat at full hit points is antithetical to this style of play. Second, healing spirit is so much better at restoring hit points out-of-combat than it is at restoring them in-combat (its supposed primary function), that the most efficient way to conserve precious resources is to only use it out of combat. Finally and most importantly, it is so much more powerful than comparable spells of prayer of healing (available only to 3rd-level clerics) and aura of vitality (available only to 9th-level paladins) that it makes a druid a better cleric than a cleric and a ranger a better paladin than a paladin, as far as healing is concerned.
This thread from the D&D Beyond forums sums the math of this issue up nicely.
The Official House Rule
Jeremy Crawford, managing editor of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, frequently answers player-submitted rules questions on his Twitter account. While he maintains that healing spirit is working as intended, it does “have the potential to exceed our expectations” in out-of-combat scenarios. In layman’s terms, the D&D team isn’t going to make a knee-jerk nerf and over-balance the spell. Instead, they’re devoting additional resources to see how this spell plays out long-term to see if it really is as much of a problem as people claim.
In the meantime, however, Jeremy has provided a simple house rule that brings the spell more in line with its intended power level.
[Pictured tweet reads: “If healing spirit has felt too effective in your game, try this house rule, which holds the spell to our expectations for it: the spell ends once the spirit has restored hit points a number of times equal to twice your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum of once).”]
If a 3rd level druid with a Wisdom of 16 (+3) cast healing spirit, it would restore 1d6 hit points to any creature that passed through the spirit’s space or started its turn there a maximum of six times. If, over the course of their adventuring career, that same druid increased their Wisdom to 20 (+5), the spell could restore 1d6 hit points a maximum of ten times. This means that, at its most powerful, healing spirit cast at 2nd level now only restores an average of 35 hit points, instead of 35 hit points per creature.
This is a major nerf, but it brings healing spirit more in line with prayer of healing. To compare, prayer of healing cast at 2nd level restores hit points equal to 2d8 + your spellcasting modifier to up to 6 creatures. At its most efficient, that’s an average of 84 hit points (2d8 rolls an average of 9, plus 5 is 14, times 6). Prayer of healing restores more than twice the number of hit points of the house ruled healing spirit, but is much less flexible. It must be cast out of combat because of its 10 minute casting time, and it only restores a small amount of hit points to each creature, whereas healing spirit allows you to specify how much healing each creature gets.
For more of the tweets Jeremy has made in response to this spell at the height of the outcry, you can check Zoltar’s Sage Advice blog.
My House Rule
I think Jeremy’s proposed house rule is a strong fix to healing spirit. A few months ago, I was asked how I would change healing spirit, if I were a member of the D&D team. I didn’t have a good answer then, but I’ve had some time to think about it, and this is how I would revise healing spirit to make it a more attractive option in combat while clamping down on its out-of-combat power. Here are the changes I would make to healing spirit, and the final wording I would use:
- Remove the spell’s concentration requirement, making it a much more attractive in-combat option. This limitation does nothing to make it less powerful outside of combat, so removing it doesn’t break anything.
- Causing the spirit to heal requires you to use your reaction when a creature enters the spirit’s space for the first time on its turn or starts its turn there. Replacing “(no action required)” with “as a reaction” limits the spell’s healing to a maximum of 10d6 without having the spell scale multiplicatively with spellcasting ability modifier. I can’t think of any other spells that increase their effective duration based on ability modifier, just spells like cure wounds which add healing based on your spellcasting ability modifier.
My revised version of healing spirit would look like this:
Healing Spirit
2nd-level conjuration
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V,S
Duration: 1 minute
You call forth a nature spirit to soothe the wounded. The intangible spirit appears in a space that is a 5-foot cube you can see within range. The spirit looks like a transparent beast or fey (your choice).
Until the spell ends, as a reaction when you or a creature you can see moves into the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can cause the spirit to restore 1d6 hit points to that creature. The spirit can’t heal constructs or undead.
As a bonus action on your turn, you can move the spirit up to 30 feet to a space you can see.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the healing increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 2nd.
Healing Spirit in Your Game
When you get right down to it, healing spirit needs some changes. It gives druids and rangers an effective healing spell (hooray!) but it steps all over the cleric and paladin’s comparable healing spells (boo). It you play a heroic game, it lets you start every major fight with full hit points (yay!), but it singlehandedly makes an attrition style of dungeon-crawling play unviable (yikes).
Fortunately, D&D is a game played by humans who can make house rules as they see fit, not a game governed by strict computer programs. Unfortunately, the major problem with not having any official errata on this spell means that my house rules, Jeremy’s house rules, and (most importantly) your house rules are all illegal in D&D Adventurer’s League games. And unfortunately… I have no solutions for that. If you’re having a problem with healing spirit making your AL game less fun, your only recourse is to talk with your players and hope they’re mature about it.
What have your experiences with healing spirit been? I’m interested in what you think of Jeremy’s “official house rule,” and the house rule I’ve provided here, and I also want to know what you have done in your home game to address this spell!
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with Mei and Marzipan, two fey spirits in the form of small fuzzy animals. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
Look, I honestly don't care how you rule it at your table. I'm not here to tell you what is right and what is wrong. What I am here to give DM's the information they need to reinforce the type of game they have set out to play without a Rule's Lawyer walking all over them, and how to quickly adjudicate this in a League play setting. If you're the DM of your own homebrew, it is your prerogative to define the terms in whatever way you deem necessary to play the type of game your table dictates. Please, feel free!
THE "SHORT" RESPONSE
I'll address your points for the sake of helping everyone involved in the discussion to understand just how much they can gain by really diving into the rules objectively, instead of subjectively. You can say anything else you want after, I'll have said my peace and done my best to explain the simplest way to stop anyone from trying to exploit the game beyond the spirit of the game.
As an interesting sidebar you brought up, I'd like to point out, just because a player isn't seeking every advantage to "win" doesn't mean that players has set out to play a game poorly. D&D is like the game Patrick Rothfuss put into his book series, Tact-- "The point isn't to win, it's to play a beautiful game".
Since you are trying to extrapolate ideas from the rules as the basis of your argument, we should go ahead and directly quote the rules. Keep track of the italicized portions, as they are very specific in their implication.
"In situations where keeping track of the passage of time is important, the DM determines the time a task requires. The DM might use a different time scale depending on the context of the situation at hand. In a dungeon environment, the adventurers' movement happens on a scale of minutes. It takes them about a minute to creep down a long hallway, another minute to check for traps on the door at the end of the hall, and a good ten minutes to search the chamber beyond for anything interesting or valuable.
In a city or wilderness, a scale of hours is often more appropriate. Adventures eager to reach the lonely tower at the heart of the forest hurry across those fifteen miles in just under four hours' time.
For long journeys, a scale of days works best. Following the road from Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep, the adventures spend four uneventful days before a goblin ambush interrupts their journey.
In combat and other fast-paced situations, the game relies on rounds, a 6-second span of time described in chapter 9, "combat".
So, you can see your note about handling traps is addressed in there, as well as that last sentence halting your argument entirely. Unless the DM decides that combat continues OR that the poison or healing warrants a "fast-paced situation", it doesn't... and it doesn't by game terminology. But let's double check it by the definitive definition cited in chapter 9, "combat".
"The game organizes the chaos of combat into a cycle of rounds and turns. A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world. During a round, each participant in the battle takes a turn. The order of turns is determined at the beginning of a combat encounter, when everyone rolls initiative. Once everyone has taken a turn, the fight continues to the next round if neither side has defeated the other."
The first sentence again hammers home that rounds and turns are simply present to "organize the chaos of combat". After that, we get to the meat of why time is delineated in terms as absolute as minutes, hours, days, etc., but not in rounds and turns. It's because Rounds and Turns are variable in the length and nature. We can't definitively say that 10 rounds equal 1 minute because we can't definitively say that 1 round is exactly 6 seconds.
Do you see now where your interpretation is subjective?
Again, I honestly don't care how you rule it at your table. I'm not here to tell you what is right and what is wrong. What I am here to give DM's the information they need to reinforce the type of game they have set out to play without a Rule's Lawyer walking all over them.
THE LONG WAY DOWN!
BREAKING DOWN THE MATH
The "about" shows us:
1 Round =/= 6 seconds. What does that mean?
10 rounds =/= 1 minute.
Lemme put it to you this way... how long is a turn?
In order for your argument of 10 rounds equals 1 minute to be valid, you must define the term without referencing anything other than seconds or fractions of seconds. Your math must be exact, invariable, and there can't be more than one answer, regardless of the size of the group. You must be especially specific, since the rules never assess that as a direct equivalent, and thus for your math to work backwards, there can be no room for outside variables. This is how a proof works. In order for two things to be equal front to back, they must be absolutely equal.
EVEN FURTHER EXPLANATION: (Most people need not read this far).
To your quasi-points, drinking a Potion of Poison turns into a "fast-paced situation" in the narrative. Why? Cause that rogue has a limited amount of time before he/she/they dies. If the rogue isn't going to die from it, or if no one recognizes that's the case, all the damage is rolled and assigned. You don't slow down time to reveal that someone is taking that damage about every 6 seconds unless there is a narrative reason.
Couple that with what we have from the "TIME" portion of the rules in the chapter before, and you have little leeway. Turns exist within Rounds. Rounds exist within Combat and can't exist without an Initiative order. Even the circular logic is flawed, as you don't have initiative after combat concludes. Outside of combat, time is measured in minutes, hours, days. How your DM adjudicates the Regenerate out side of combat is of little consequence, as the spell is intended to work for an hour, and on a singular target. Nothing about the spell requires you to handle that healing in a "turn" based situation. In fact, the later part of the spell clearly returns to minutes, as both rounds and turns have variable blocks of time... "A round represents about 6 seconds". The same thing happens with the Potion of Poison. The only thing that is actually required before taking each hit of damage is a Constitution saving throw.
The "round" is a game term that is defined as "representing about 6 seconds in the game world". Not a series of turns. Your pointing to the "Complex Trap" rule is based on your assumption that you are not in "a fast-paced situation" or that traps don't fall under "Combat". Thus, as an assumption, it is mute. The reason it is used in such a way is to point that each character that attempts to bypass it is susceptible to its effect. Otherwise, if it said minute, people would have the basis to assume and argue that a trap can only, ever, trigger once per minute. That is clearly not the design intention of the "Complex Trap". This is call circular logic. You (unless you're the DM, in which case, you can bend it to anything you like) can't use events to retroactively circumnavigate the written rule.
As to why Jeremy didn't quote it. Knowing him, and other designers, I can say that it is far more likely that: As designers, we often create things based on the rules we have in front of us. Months later, when asked about them (and as humans) we forget that we were using an application of that specific rule. The fact of the matter is, I've pointed out the actual rule. Cited it verbatim. Just because Jeremy didn't turn around and point to that one specifically, doesn't mean it isn't in effect. It could simply mean that when he was questioned, he forgot he had an easy reference. Trust me, we have to look up the rules constantly.
The 5e designers are smart people. Perhaps smarter than they realize sometimes. Knowing how mathematical proofs work, we know that with certainty that rounds and turns are variable lengths of time and thus, outside of combat, they lose any definition or barring on their definitive cousins, the minute, day, and hour.
How about making Prayer of Healing a bonus action Concentration Cantrip doing 1d4+mod that scales with level and can last up to 1min. effecting one creature per cleric level
@DnDPaladin I wanted to start by saying I agree with your first post saying it's not really that big a deal. :)
The spell's wording works out to per turn, not once per round. It being limited to once per turn still lets any number of a characters get healed once per round, so a single character doesn't get another heal by running through it twice on their turn, but 5 characters could run through it and each get healed in a single round. As written, in a 6-second round a bunch of characters could be healed by it in a single round, each on their turn. Limiting it to once per round would mean in any given 6 seconds, only one character could be healed.
But, all that said, I still don't think limiting it to once per round is a great solution. I'd leave it how it is, and if I thought it was being abused against the spirit of the rules somehow, then I'd just chat with my group. :)
Why does it matter? It's deliberately undefined, but no amount of turns changes the duration of a round and we know how long a round is.
For your argument to matter, you have to be able to answer these two questions:
You can make a big deal about the lack of precision in the definition of a round, but if you don't have a way to translate from minutes to rounds or rounds to minutes that's rooted in the rules then I don't really care. If a round is 6 seconds +/- some small margin of error, 10 rounds will still be close enough to 1 minute for rules purposes.
Which is something you've arbitrarily decided. Nothing in the rules define what a "fast-paced situation" is. You can just as easily decide the party moving in and out of Healing Spirit constitutes a fast-paced situation too.
As a DM I have made no adjustments to the spell. In our gaming group the spell is currently only cast out of combat (except once). I'm finding it allows traditional classes that perhaps feel the need to save spell slots for out of combat healing to instead use different spells in combat. This has varied and created exciting pieces of the story. "Wow, so cool when you used hold person and we......" vs "Thanks for healing me up again....". Bottom line the use of Healing Spirit out of combat has freed up many spell slots of other classes to be used in combat (Bravo!). The game has evolved slightly and for me as a DM it is working nicely with our group since in combat action is a big part of our game.
Thank you, James. Specifically, thanks for giving a nicely formatted block for your revised spell.
I'm sorry, but who in the heck would let players stand in a "cuddle puddle" to abuse the spell. The spell OBVIOUSLY wasn't meant to be used that way and just become some power gamers want to exploit some loose wording doesn't mean it should be allowed. Actually, I don't even really see how it's exploitable.
Note the spell text below in bold and my repsonses below them
You call forth a nature spirit to soothe the wounded. The intangible spirit appears in a space that is a 5-foot cube you can see within range. The spirit looks like a transparent beast or fey (your choice).
Each player takes up a 5ft space. so one at a time heals for the healing spirit.
Until the spell ends, as a reaction when you or a creature you can see moves into the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can cause the spirit to restore 1d6 hit points to that creature. The spirit can’t heal constructs or undead.
Even out of combat, the caster would have to use it's reaction. And you only get 1 per round correct? So again, one at a time for the healing spirit. Also, it says "you can cause the spirit to restore 1d6 hit points to that creature." It clearly says THAT CREATURE. As in singular creature per round. Not every creature in some huddle trying to abuse the rules.
Ahhh gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.
But even without the changes, I mean.... isn't kind of obvious that a 2nd level wouldn't be designed to heal 10d6 to all party memebers? Even with the RAW, I would think an honest player would admit this is just some bad wording. It just is frustrating to me as a person who has DM'd for more many years to hear that people will use stuff like this to exploit the design intent.
Besides, if you stick to 1 person takes a 5 foot space, then you couldn't do the lame "cuddle puddle" anyway.
That doesn't solve the problem of every player being able to move through the area every 6 seconds and receive healing. They don't need to stay in the area, that just makes the logistics a bit easier.
There's no loopholes being exploited here. The spell might "obviously" heal too much for its level, but there's no way to claim that's not how it works. If the spell is disruptive to your group, the only solutions are to house rule it to bring it in line with what you imagine the intent was, or ban it.
The ethics of a player deliberately taking a spell they know is unbalanced without talking to the DM is a whole other issue. I doubt this is happening regularly in home games, but there's no persistent groups or house rules in Adventurer's League.
I'm not saying it's a loophole. It's a player ethics issue. I don't think the designers intended to use the spell in that way but a simple houserule would fix that.
Thanks Dusey, all good points. I think it's limited to one heal per turn. "Whenever a creature you can see enters the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can choose to have the spirit restore 1d6 hit points, requiring no action."
Seems consistent with the way the thread has gone.
Point in case: it can heal one person, per turn (in combat) or every 6 seconds (outside of combat), if they start on it or walk through it.
One way a player could be creative: If a player wants to 'throw' a friend that needs healing into the spirit space, they could use their turn to try and do that. Since it's a new 'turn', the player being thrown into or through the spirit space, would be able to receive the healing.
Oh, and don't forgot, the caster must be able to SEE the character passing through the spirit's space. No vision, no healing.
I think a good, careful read of the spell answers most questions. If there's uncertainty, make a decision and stay consistent. And/or jump into some forums and hash it out. Just make sure to have fun, and understand that's why the rules are there.
We've been assuming that turns do not occur outside of combat. This prevents things that trigger on starting a turn from being used outside of combat. So far we have not run into any issues with using this assumption. Minutes still occur so spell durations still end, but things like Healing Spirit have no effect since the trigger does not occur.
We don't end combat until all adverse effects that rely on turns (like poison and death saves) are resolved.
Awe, I love you too, buddy! I think we’ll need to ask him specifically, because that’s not at all what that tweet says to me.
“If it’s necessary” doesn’t mean it is in all circumstances, and the DM is who decides “if it’s necessary”. Further, it says “6 seconds or so” and finally, “For more about time, see “Time” in the PHB.” Which brings us back to the wording of the passages, again.
Brother, don’t misunderstand, I’m not arguing for the sake of it. The purpose of my posts is to empower the DM not to be chained to the table by a rule lawyer. Healing Spirit is ONLY an issue for the pace and power of a game if the DM isn’t empowered to make these exact the type of decisions.
So I suppose we have to ask the purpose of your article; Is it to support the DM and story OR the player and winning? So far, I have seen nothing that dictates the player gets the say by RAW, and certainly not by RAI.
That tweet doesn’t disagree with me at all. It is actually about whether or not you can cast reaction spells out of combat. We all know the answer for that. It’s probably best not apply context where it is only half implied, and err on the side of “Time” in the PHB.