Hi! I'm about to DM a campaign where we have 3 characters, none of them clerics, but 2 are magic-users. This is mostly going to take place in the wilderness, where they can't get healing potions from a store or anything, and I was wondering how I can make healing happen? I don't want to make it too easy/overpowered but the characters will probably need some type of healing- I was thinking that they could make things out of things in the woods if they succeed on a medicine or nature check, or I could just give one of the magic-users a low-level healing spell, but I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions?
Having a healer in the party is nice, but it isn't strictly necessary. All characters can roll hit dice during a short rest to regain some HP, and any character can attempt a DC 10 medicine check to stabilize an unconscious ally. Often, DMs will rule that stabilized characters wake up some time later with 1HP, but you can do whatever you want. Finally, all lost HP is restored upon a long rest, so characters that are still alive after a tough adventuring day will be good to go the next morning.
As for ways to get some quicker healing, here's a few options:
1. Do what you said: let PCs find components for healing salves in the woods and make skill checks to see if they can successfully create medicinal substances.
2. Allow the PCs to buy/find healing potions in the woods. Maybe they run into an adventuring party willing to trade. Maybe there's a ranger who lives in the woods they can befriend. Maybe an ancient temple has some Keoghtom's Ointment or a potion of superior healing inside a loot stash.
3. Have a city not too far away where they can stock up on provisions.
4. Let them find magical items that help with healing: Periapt of Wound Closure, Staff of Healing, Ring of Regeneration, etc.
5. Grant one of them the Healer Feat. If someone in the party ends up doing most of the healing, or they put effort into trying to patch people up and learn how to use healing herbs, you can give them the Healer Feat and let them get a Healer's Kit. Healer's kits are cheap and provide pretty darn good healing that can be used in combat and out of it.
Frame challenge: You don't. That's the players' problem challenge.
It's not your job to solve the player's challenges. It's your job to present them with challenges so they have the fun of overcoming them.
They could choose to make potions using herbalism, they could buy lots of potions in town and carefully eke them out, they could take lots of rests, they could sneak into bandit camps and steal potions instead of attacking and watching the bandits use them (your NPC do use potions, right :-), they could come up with some other cool plan. They could also just spend most of their time horribly injured. Either way, it's their choice and consequences.
They chose, as a party, to not have a cleric or bard or other magical healer, so they get to deal with the consequences. As a GM if we were to shield them from the consequences of their choices, we would be robbing them of agency.
That said, do help them out a bit. Have inteligent foes carry healing potions, allowing the characters to loot them if they are smart and/or quick. Do this even if the party does have healing. It helps make the world feel real when intelligent foes do intelligent things, like carrying and using consumables.
I've thought about implementing some sort of home brew for medicine check / healer kit to allow the target to heal a Hit Die, just because it would be nice if those skills weren't 100% useless - but never seen a situation where anyone would ever use it. Generally every party has at least one Artificer, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, or even if they don't then there's always short rests + hit dice, and then of course healing potions. Even in parties with multiple healers, I've generally seen most of the healing done by short rests and long rests.
In the last 2 campaigns I've run, there were no "healers". There aren't any clerics, for sure. The parties never wiped. I mean, they got close...real close.
Potions can be crafted or purchased. So can Salves. Nature and Medicine are skills that can be learned, if they have time and coin. Proficiency with Herbalism Kit to make potions or using a Healer's Kit to bandage up a party member are solutions in the game already. Foraging for ingredients is a thing that can be done while they travel. (It also gives them an opportunity to find failure and danger in the wilderness.) Your task is all of this is to be prepared to hand them the mechanic that they need to use to make their proposed solution work inside the construct of the game.
Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action.
Let the players be afraid for their PCs longevity. Let them decide how to manage that threat and overcome the challenge of dying. You provide the resolution to their decision, not the solution to a challenge that you put in front of the PCs.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
in the wilderness not every encounter has to be a fight. if the characters start hording their healing potions and such, maybe it's time to have them stumble upon a healing spring. maybe there they can meet a group of gnomes who have made their home here, surrounding the area with an illusion to keep out the kobolds/goblins/gnolls/etc that are harassing the players. they warn the party to behave as they would normally prefer not to get involved with adventurers but the badguy patrols are more frequent and they hope to maybe come to an accommodation. in fact, if the characters impress them enough maybe they'll give a whistle to call after battle and a gnome could show up with healing water. it won't be forever and it's not like they're letting you pitch your tents within the illusion, but it does give a chance to level up and explore with confidence.
oh, and if the party wipes before finding this spring the first time just waggle your fingers and tell them they wake up in a different part of the forest, healed, well rested, and... confused. some days later when they do find the spring, the gnomes seem to know their names already. they drop hints that they're "sorry to do this to you again," and "hope it works this time." you can leave it to the players to decide whether they've been memory wiped or time warped. heck, maybe they are time looped (great idea, players!) until they can quit attacking the gnolls/kobolds/goblins/etc and instead figure out how to scare/divert them away for good.
Worth noting that when a character whose role is primarily healing is at the table, the main thing they bring is to keep the others going for longer, making the party as a whole more effective at combat.
This is important as, in theory, the healer will give the other members of the party extra hitpoints and buffs that equate to having an additional combat character in the group.
So if you were to give your party of 3 a healer, then you would need to plan your encounters as being against a party of 4, which will in turn negate the healer.
This is a player problem. When they realise they have no healing, they will start looking for potions or dipping into levels in healing classes to compensate. If they don't then they may find their days are shorter as they stop for long rests more often. If this is all the effect the lack of a healer has, consider a chase quest where they need to get somewhere as quickly as possible, and this should emphasise for them that they are lacking in healing.
Why can't you find healing potions in the wilderness? They can be stashed away in ancient ruins, or found among the remains of trade caravans attacked by beasts, stowed away in rangers' supply caches, or maybe growing naturally in a magically created healing potion tree thousands of years ago by a friendly druid.
The other things to keep in mind are that healing does not have to mean restoration of the PCs' hit points. Several spells and subclass features grant temporary hit points while most of these are tied to classes that are already known for healing (Bard, Cleric, Druid), there are some outliers, such as Warlock's Armor of Agathys spell or certain Invocations that grant increased healing/boosted healing.
Adding into all of the above which is great advice:
My Sunday night game/stream is set in 1921 and magic is all based around Lovecraftian vibes. The party is a Monk, Warlock, Rogue and has had a Barbarian, then Ranger and now Wizard in the 4th seat. When the Ranger was there, the group actually had active "healing" in the form of "salves" which is how we themed a casting of "Cure Wounds". In fact the Ranger was the most fun because he really was just working with herbs to get cool magical effects. "Trust me, the forest will hide us if we ask nicely" was what he said when he cast "Pass without Trace".
For the most part we are running on short rests (with a homebrew rule that all hit dice are restored on a long rest) and an additional "some really good aged alcohol can serve as a healing potion mechanically".
Now I justify it this way as Hit Points = ability to keep pushing yourself in a fight rather than wound points. So a good shot of "something" can cause that surge of energy to keep you in a fight and effectively restore HP.
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"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
* Sundays 7pm EDT: Ravenloft 1921 / Alt. Tuesdays 5pm EDT: CoHost of Happy Hour at the Old Timer Tavern * Wednesdays 7pm EDT: The Convergence - Homebrew 5E / Saturdays 8am EDT: The Bitter Victory - Pirate Homebrew 5E **Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir Join the table at: Start Playing Games
I suggest potions maybe a homebrew wand of healing words or an amulet resurrection healers kits . That seems to work for my player when they have no healer.
If you want to try and stick to the forest location as an anchor, you could create a homebrew rule where eating a meal and drinking enough water can provide some health regen capability. Like a previous poster mentioned, you can also create some flora (or even fauna) that can provide some form of healing.
Have you ever seen jackalope made of rare herbs, with horns that can be used as a healing implement after powdered and combined with natural spring water collected in an enchanted phial your characters locate in the forest? Probably not, but that doesn't mean it can't be a thing!
As the DM, you're an omnipotent force of your campaign. Rules are great for structure in play but there is no reason why you can't come up with your own rules, even if they are specific to this forest location; for example a timeless ritual preformed by a long dead patron spirit guardian which imbued the flora and fauna with such properties. This is just an example, but that's what makes fantasy great. You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't make your campaign unplayable and doesn't diminish the PC's want for more.
My players also have a party with no clerics. Their druid has taken to searching for healing herbs all the time and grabbing a couple healing spells. It works out.
P266 of the DMG has an optional rule called "Healing Surges," that allows a player to use an action and spend up to half their total hit dice (+Con for each die) to heal themselves, once per short/long rest. Under this rule they'd also recover all hit dice on a long rest, and on a short rest recover hit dice equal to their player level divided by 4 (minimum of 1).
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Hi! I'm about to DM a campaign where we have 3 characters, none of them clerics, but 2 are magic-users. This is mostly going to take place in the wilderness, where they can't get healing potions from a store or anything, and I was wondering how I can make healing happen? I don't want to make it too easy/overpowered but the characters will probably need some type of healing- I was thinking that they could make things out of things in the woods if they succeed on a medicine or nature check, or I could just give one of the magic-users a low-level healing spell, but I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions?
Having a healer in the party is nice, but it isn't strictly necessary. All characters can roll hit dice during a short rest to regain some HP, and any character can attempt a DC 10 medicine check to stabilize an unconscious ally. Often, DMs will rule that stabilized characters wake up some time later with 1HP, but you can do whatever you want. Finally, all lost HP is restored upon a long rest, so characters that are still alive after a tough adventuring day will be good to go the next morning.
As for ways to get some quicker healing, here's a few options:
1. Do what you said: let PCs find components for healing salves in the woods and make skill checks to see if they can successfully create medicinal substances.
2. Allow the PCs to buy/find healing potions in the woods. Maybe they run into an adventuring party willing to trade. Maybe there's a ranger who lives in the woods they can befriend. Maybe an ancient temple has some Keoghtom's Ointment or a potion of superior healing inside a loot stash.
3. Have a city not too far away where they can stock up on provisions.
4. Let them find magical items that help with healing: Periapt of Wound Closure, Staff of Healing, Ring of Regeneration, etc.
5. Grant one of them the Healer Feat. If someone in the party ends up doing most of the healing, or they put effort into trying to patch people up and learn how to use healing herbs, you can give them the Healer Feat and let them get a Healer's Kit. Healer's kits are cheap and provide pretty darn good healing that can be used in combat and out of it.
Frame challenge: You don't. That's the players'
problemchallenge.It's not your job to solve the player's challenges. It's your job to present them with challenges so they have the fun of overcoming them.
They could choose to make potions using herbalism, they could buy lots of potions in town and carefully eke them out, they could take lots of rests, they could sneak into bandit camps and steal potions instead of attacking and watching the bandits use them (your NPC do use potions, right :-), they could come up with some other cool plan. They could also just spend most of their time horribly injured. Either way, it's their choice and consequences.
They chose, as a party, to not have a cleric or bard or other magical healer, so they get to deal with the consequences. As a GM if we were to shield them from the consequences of their choices, we would be robbing them of agency.
That said, do help them out a bit. Have inteligent foes carry healing potions, allowing the characters to loot them if they are smart and/or quick. Do this even if the party does have healing. It helps make the world feel real when intelligent foes do intelligent things, like carrying and using consumables.
I've thought about implementing some sort of home brew for medicine check / healer kit to allow the target to heal a Hit Die, just because it would be nice if those skills weren't 100% useless - but never seen a situation where anyone would ever use it. Generally every party has at least one Artificer, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, or even if they don't then there's always short rests + hit dice, and then of course healing potions. Even in parties with multiple healers, I've generally seen most of the healing done by short rests and long rests.
In the last 2 campaigns I've run, there were no "healers". There aren't any clerics, for sure. The parties never wiped. I mean, they got close...real close.
Potions can be crafted or purchased. So can Salves. Nature and Medicine are skills that can be learned, if they have time and coin. Proficiency with Herbalism Kit to make potions or using a Healer's Kit to bandage up a party member are solutions in the game already. Foraging for ingredients is a thing that can be done while they travel. (It also gives them an opportunity to find failure and danger in the wilderness.) Your task is all of this is to be prepared to hand them the mechanic that they need to use to make their proposed solution work inside the construct of the game.
Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action.
Let the players be afraid for their PCs longevity. Let them decide how to manage that threat and overcome the challenge of dying. You provide the resolution to their decision, not the solution to a challenge that you put in front of the PCs.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
in the wilderness not every encounter has to be a fight. if the characters start hording their healing potions and such, maybe it's time to have them stumble upon a healing spring. maybe there they can meet a group of gnomes who have made their home here, surrounding the area with an illusion to keep out the kobolds/goblins/gnolls/etc that are harassing the players. they warn the party to behave as they would normally prefer not to get involved with adventurers but the badguy patrols are more frequent and they hope to maybe come to an accommodation. in fact, if the characters impress them enough maybe they'll give a whistle to call after battle and a gnome could show up with healing water. it won't be forever and it's not like they're letting you pitch your tents within the illusion, but it does give a chance to level up and explore with confidence.
oh, and if the party wipes before finding this spring the first time just waggle your fingers and tell them they wake up in a different part of the forest, healed, well rested, and... confused. some days later when they do find the spring, the gnomes seem to know their names already. they drop hints that they're "sorry to do this to you again," and "hope it works this time." you can leave it to the players to decide whether they've been memory wiped or time warped. heck, maybe they are time looped (great idea, players!) until they can quit attacking the gnolls/kobolds/goblins/etc and instead figure out how to scare/divert them away for good.
Worth noting that when a character whose role is primarily healing is at the table, the main thing they bring is to keep the others going for longer, making the party as a whole more effective at combat.
This is important as, in theory, the healer will give the other members of the party extra hitpoints and buffs that equate to having an additional combat character in the group.
So if you were to give your party of 3 a healer, then you would need to plan your encounters as being against a party of 4, which will in turn negate the healer.
This is a player problem. When they realise they have no healing, they will start looking for potions or dipping into levels in healing classes to compensate. If they don't then they may find their days are shorter as they stop for long rests more often. If this is all the effect the lack of a healer has, consider a chase quest where they need to get somewhere as quickly as possible, and this should emphasise for them that they are lacking in healing.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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As this is home brew, you could offer one of the PCs a bonus feat (Healer) along with the kit.
Why can't you find healing potions in the wilderness? They can be stashed away in ancient ruins, or found among the remains of trade caravans attacked by beasts, stowed away in rangers' supply caches, or maybe growing naturally in a magically created healing potion tree thousands of years ago by a friendly druid.
Healing potions also don't always have to be actually potions - maybe there are some healing plants, that can be recognised using the Nature skill.
The other things to keep in mind are that healing does not have to mean restoration of the PCs' hit points. Several spells and subclass features grant temporary hit points while most of these are tied to classes that are already known for healing (Bard, Cleric, Druid), there are some outliers, such as Warlock's Armor of Agathys spell or certain Invocations that grant increased healing/boosted healing.
Adding into all of the above which is great advice:
My Sunday night game/stream is set in 1921 and magic is all based around Lovecraftian vibes. The party is a Monk, Warlock, Rogue and has had a Barbarian, then Ranger and now Wizard in the 4th seat. When the Ranger was there, the group actually had active "healing" in the form of "salves" which is how we themed a casting of "Cure Wounds". In fact the Ranger was the most fun because he really was just working with herbs to get cool magical effects. "Trust me, the forest will hide us if we ask nicely" was what he said when he cast "Pass without Trace".
For the most part we are running on short rests (with a homebrew rule that all hit dice are restored on a long rest) and an additional "some really good aged alcohol can serve as a healing potion mechanically".
Now I justify it this way as Hit Points = ability to keep pushing yourself in a fight rather than wound points. So a good shot of "something" can cause that surge of energy to keep you in a fight and effectively restore HP.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
* Sundays 7pm EDT: Ravenloft 1921 / Alt. Tuesdays 5pm EDT: CoHost of Happy Hour at the Old Timer Tavern
* Wednesdays 7pm EDT: The Convergence - Homebrew 5E / Saturdays 8am EDT: The Bitter Victory - Pirate Homebrew 5E
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
Join the table at: Start Playing Games
I suggest potions maybe a homebrew wand of healing words or an amulet resurrection healers kits . That seems to work for my player when they have no healer.
If you want to try and stick to the forest location as an anchor, you could create a homebrew rule where eating a meal and drinking enough water can provide some health regen capability. Like a previous poster mentioned, you can also create some flora (or even fauna) that can provide some form of healing.
Have you ever seen jackalope made of rare herbs, with horns that can be used as a healing implement after powdered and combined with natural spring water collected in an enchanted phial your characters locate in the forest? Probably not, but that doesn't mean it can't be a thing!
As the DM, you're an omnipotent force of your campaign. Rules are great for structure in play but there is no reason why you can't come up with your own rules, even if they are specific to this forest location; for example a timeless ritual preformed by a long dead patron spirit guardian which imbued the flora and fauna with such properties. This is just an example, but that's what makes fantasy great. You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't make your campaign unplayable and doesn't diminish the PC's want for more.
My players also have a party with no clerics. Their druid has taken to searching for healing herbs all the time and grabbing a couple healing spells. It works out.
P266 of the DMG has an optional rule called "Healing Surges," that allows a player to use an action and spend up to half their total hit dice (+Con for each die) to heal themselves, once per short/long rest. Under this rule they'd also recover all hit dice on a long rest, and on a short rest recover hit dice equal to their player level divided by 4 (minimum of 1).