Thank you for that help. My ranger has been making so many goodberries and has been making the parties lyric irrelevant. This will help slow them down and make a more balanced party.
Do life cleric features even effect goodberry? I’m not convinced... the features mention spells that heal, but the goodberry spell itself doesn’t heal, it conjures berries.
It's confirmed in Sage Advice that Life Cleric features such as Disciple of Life work with Goodberry.
If I’m a cleric/druid with the Disciple of Life feature, does the goodberry spell benefit from the feature?
Yes. The Disciple of Life feature would make each berry restore 4 hit points, instead of 1, assuming you cast goodberry with a 1st-level spell slot.
Ah I see. Thank you. Curious it didn’t mention blessed healer though which effectively has the same wording. Clearly it would be OP for the cleric to be able to heal 30HP from the goodberries being eaten!
It would actually be 40 hit points, and of the Sage Advise, it does allow it, for a single first level spell slot.
I think you're misunderstanding my post. I was referring to this:
Blessed Healer
Beginning at 6th level, the healing spells you cast on others heal you as well. When you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that restores hit points to a creature other than you, you regain hit points equal to 2 + the spell’s level.
Which isn't referenced in sage advice, and would make goodberry heal 40 (4x10) to your allies and 30 HP (3x10) to the cleric themselves. Crazy for a first level spell.
The image... someone perking up as someone else is eating at some location where the first person couldn't even tell that they were eating. "Somebody's eating my goodberries!" Hmmm how would you make Lucky from the Lucky Charm commercials? Could be a Mark of Hospitality halfling...
Definitely Blessed Healer doesn’t apply to eating a goodberry, as eating is not casting a spell. Whether it applies to the initial cast, I’m not sure.
The difference between the features is the use of “cast a spell” versus “use a spell.”
edit2: Since casting the spell doesn’t restore the hit points to another creature, I’d probably say casting good berry doesn’t activate Blessed Healer either.
Do life cleric features even effect goodberry? I’m not convinced... the features mention spells that heal, but the goodberry spell itself doesn’t heal, it conjures berries.
It's confirmed in Sage Advice that Life Cleric features such as Disciple of Life work with Goodberry.
If I’m a cleric/druid with the Disciple of Life feature, does the goodberry spell benefit from the feature?
Yes. The Disciple of Life feature would make each berry restore 4 hit points, instead of 1, assuming you cast goodberry with a 1st-level spell slot.
Ah I see. Thank you. Curious it didn’t mention blessed healer though which effectively has the same wording. Clearly it would be OP for the cleric to be able to heal 30HP from the goodberries being eaten!
It would actually be 40 hit points, and of the Sage Advise, it does allow it, for a single first level spell slot.
I think you're misunderstanding my post. I was referring to this:
Blessed Healer
Beginning at 6th level, the healing spells you cast on others heal you as well. When you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that restores hit points to a creature other than you, you regain hit points equal to 2 + the spell’s level.
Which isn't referenced in sage advice, and would make goodberry heal 40 (4x10) to your allies and 30 HP (3x10) to the cleric themselves. Crazy for a first level spell.
Sorry, yeah, Blessed Healer wouldn't apply, I don't think.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Good berry is a game breaker if you allow a character to eat one while he’s at 0 hp....which isn’t really RAW. (?) People just assume it’s legit because the healing potion works that way.
Per Jeremy Crawford: (i.e. the Sage Advice author) Question: Would you allow someone to administer a Goodberry with an action to bring someone from dying to 1hp? @JeremyECrawford: I sure would!
Good berry is a game breaker if you allow a character to eat one while he’s at 0 hp....which isn’t really RAW. (?) People just assume it’s legit because the healing potion works that way.
Per Jeremy Crawford: (i.e. the Sage Advice author) Question: Would you allow someone to administer a Goodberry with an action to bring someone from dying to 1hp? @JeremyECrawford: I sure would!
thanks, so more than just 'assume'...but still goes directly against RAW.
Goodberry: "A creature can use its action to eat one berry. Eating a berry restores 1 hit point, and the berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day."
Dropping to 0 hitpoints: "When you drop to 0 hit points, you either die outright or fall unconscious, as explained in the following sections."
Unconscious: "An unconscious creature is incapacitated, can't move or speak, and is unaware of its surroundings."
Incapacitated: "An incapacitated creature can't take actions or reactions."
I don't think his guidance is either RAW or RAI as it specifically says it 'needs an action'. its pure RAF-DM discretion:
In this article describes three different mode to interpret rules:
I think Jeremy’s ruling is based just on the fact that it is after all a berry, and he would allow you to feed a berry to an unconscious ally even though it isn’t a potion. It is a reasonable ruling and nothing to get bent out of shape over. It is also just one DM’s opinion in this case.
If a DM told me I could only give potions to unconscious allies I would ask them if I can squeeze the berry for its juice. If that wasn't possible either I would probably look for another DM.
The great thing about RPGs is that you can do things that are not hard-coded into some system. If that's not possible I might as well play a video game.
I get it that rules are there to keep the game somewhat structured, but imho there are limits to how.... literally rules should be applied. Rules Lawyers are annoying, no matter what end of the table they sit at.
It's not RAW (though, the adjudication doesn't actually conflict with RAW either). However, at the time he tweeted this WotC had explicitly said: "the game’s rules manager, Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), can make official rulings and usually does so in Sage Advice and on Twitter". This has since changed, but his Intent still matters for RAI.
Naresea - i don't think this is nitpicking, its a fundamental issue... IMO, at least with AL...each and every tier 1 game already starts everyone off with a free healing potion. your goodberry interpretation now means every group would have practically unlimited (albeit tiny) healing pots if they have a druid. AL adventures are already balanced out of whack with players being way over-powered for the adventure. Even ramping up the difficultly well past what the adventure recommends leaves the players with very little risk unless the DM just totally adhocs additional monsters or stats (and when you greatly increase the difficulty of an encounter, you just flat out run out of time during the session...so that means you have to cut half of it out or you end up ending a session in the middle of a fight - that works at home, but not so much in AL as swapping out characters in the middle of a fight (but really a week later) is just dumb.
no risk and unlimited consumables = no fun...at least imo. kinda seems silly to even run an adventure when the outcome is given (just level up your character and save yourself a trip to the comic store)...unless you specifically target the druids and flat-out kill them with no ability to death save. that's no fun either. (and even then they'll just pass out the berries ahead of time if they know that's coming)
just wildly guessing but my money is on the writers specifically requiring an injured character's action to use to prevent unlimited and totally free tiny healing potions.
And they are free - berries don't even practically cost a spell slot to cast as the berries last 24 hours so the characters just cast it before every long rest (including right before the adventure starts), getting their spell slots back - so you can have a 1st level druid with both spell slots and 20 berries. That one hit point between full action and unconsciousness is huge in a large group of players. in my experience, staying in-module, there's very few options to whittle them down to a point where there's risk (again from my opinion - which is from a mediocre DM).
It isn't inconsistent with the rules to make a ruling in either direction, but I will point out that because of action economy, yo-yo healing is a problem no matter what. Healing word doesn't allow you to bring a creature from dead 10 times per first level spell slot, but it also heals many more HP per action. A cure wounds at first level might even allow a player to survive more than one additional hit at tier 1. I can believe that you in theory can bring people back from unconscious a bunch of times with a single spell slot and goodberry, but I really have trouble imagining that in practice you are using 10 goodberries to leave 10 players at 1 hp for an extended period of time.
Saving a dying creature from death can already be done by anyone with the medicine skill and by a whole lot of people with a cantrip. The only difference is that the Goodberry would restore 1 HP (Healer feat?).
I am sorry but I do not understand how using a first level spell to achieve the equivalent of a cantrip / successful skill check is unbalanced.
Even if you take the Life Cleric bonus into the equation you only heal 4 HP... which is a single hit by a monster, so you're trading an Action (giving the berry) for an Action (monster attack), so you gained nothing and lost nothing.
Unless the monster has multi-attack. In that case the monster even profits.
Saving a dying creature from death can already be done by anyone with the medicine skill and by a whole lot of people with a cantrip. The only difference is that the Goodberry would restore 1 HP (Healer feat?).
I am sorry but I do not understand how using a first level spell to achieve the equivalent of a cantrip / successful skill check is unbalanced.
my issue isn't saving a dying creature from death. its the 1hp, which is a HUGE difference imo.
a cantrip keeps you at 0. a successful skill check keeps you at 0. unless you're human, i believe feats aren't an option until level 4 (and understanding i'm a small sample size, pretty sure i've never seen a human with the healer feat). You're multiplying a spell slot x10 - turning a super cheap / almost free consumable to the level of something that requires either a spell slot each time or a healing potion (which is expensive in the first few levels - at least in AL).
level 1-3, that's huge.
and its not a wash, you're trading one action now for two actions every round after that.
and its not a wash, you're trading one action now for two actions next round.
Meh, I disagree on this part too. You are trading one action this round for the possibility of two next round, but if any monsters go before the PC that now has 1 HP, that 1 HP had better be in serious danger, or the DM isn't playing the creatures very well. If that is the case then you are trading one healer's action for one attack of the monster (which may not be its entire action - monsters get weapon multiattacks at very low CR). And every time a creature uses a weapon attack to remove 1 HP from a player that will be healed with a goodberry, you are still trading a free attack with something has some (although minimal) resource cost, which is still a net loss for the players side. Not to mention that every time a level 1-3 character with a single hitpoint takes another hit there is a serious risk of massive damage outright killing the character.
and its not a wash, you're trading one action now for two actions next round.
Meh, I disagree on this part too. You are trading one action this round for the possibility of two next round, but if any monsters go before the PC that now has 1 HP, that 1 HP had better be in serious danger, or the DM isn't playing the creatures very well. If that is the case then you are trading one healer's action for one attack of the monster (which may not be its entire action - monsters get weapon attacks at very low CR). And every time a creature uses a weapon attack to remove 1 HP from a player that will be healed with a goodberry, you are still trading a free attack with something has some (although minimal) resource cost, which is still a net loss for the players side. Not to mention that every time a level 1-3 character with a single hitpoint takes another hit there is a serious risk of massive damage outright killing the character.
good points and the red does apply to me. going off-topic but in my experience, i usually get one good chance with my AL group to make a dent in the party and actually make them feel like they're in jeopardy (which is almost always 6-7 players)...not that i want to wipe them, but i want to make them feel like they're in danger. If i don't do that in the first 2 rounds of combat, i can't seem to do it at all. there's always been enough characters in the party that they can afford to split one off to run healing pot duty. I've got one player who loves his berries and party-administered berries means that healing-pot-duty option is pretty much unlimited in duration. anyone who goes down, pops right back up....there's no risk unless i continue to bash on that half-dead character and perma kill them, which i'm not going to do.
usually by round 3-4 (if the fight even lasts that long), the party is fully on its feet and they pretty well understand what they're up against, so even if half of them are at 1 hit point, the risk is just gone unless i go out of module and throw something else in.
If it is a problem at your table, then that's really the thing to talk about. Based on what else we've talked about here, it is probably within your purview to not allow feeding unconscious characters goodberries in combat. I'd recommend maybe following the advice of the others here: allow it out of combat. You can say that it is simply because it takes more than 6 seconds to feed a solid to an unconscious person to make sure that they don't choke.
Or maybe do something else, like require a medicine check as one action and then on the next round allow that character who performed the medicine check to administer the berry (to prevent them from choking the unconscious character with the berry), that way it takes two rounds to occur in combat.
But if you do decide to change things, make the changes clear to the players before it comes up, and make it clear why.
Good berry is a game breaker if you allow a character to eat one while he’s at 0 hp....which isn’t really RAW. (?) People just assume it’s legit because the healing potion works that way.
If you allow it without another character spending an action, sure, but at a cost of an action it's barely relevant.
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Thank you for that help. My ranger has been making so many goodberries and has been making the parties lyric irrelevant. This will help slow them down and make a more balanced party.
I think you're misunderstanding my post. I was referring to this:
Blessed Healer
Beginning at 6th level, the healing spells you cast on others heal you as well. When you cast a spell of 1st level or higher that restores hit points to a creature other than you, you regain hit points equal to 2 + the spell’s level.
Which isn't referenced in sage advice, and would make goodberry heal 40 (4x10) to your allies and 30 HP (3x10) to the cleric themselves. Crazy for a first level spell.
The image... someone perking up as someone else is eating at some location where the first person couldn't even tell that they were eating. "Somebody's eating my goodberries!" Hmmm how would you make Lucky from the Lucky Charm commercials? Could be a Mark of Hospitality halfling...
Definitely Blessed Healer doesn’t apply to eating a goodberry, as eating is not casting a spell. Whether it applies to the initial cast, I’m not sure.
The difference between the features is the use of “cast a spell” versus “use a spell.”
edit2: Since casting the spell doesn’t restore the hit points to another creature, I’d probably say casting good berry doesn’t activate Blessed Healer either.
Sorry, yeah, Blessed Healer wouldn't apply, I don't think.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Per Jeremy Crawford: (i.e. the Sage Advice author) Question: Would you allow someone to administer a Goodberry with an action to bring someone from dying to 1hp? @JeremyECrawford: I sure would!
thanks, so more than just 'assume'...but still goes directly against RAW.
Goodberry: "A creature can use its action to eat one berry. Eating a berry restores 1 hit point, and the berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day."
Dropping to 0 hitpoints: "When you drop to 0 hit points, you either die outright or fall unconscious, as explained in the following sections."
Unconscious: "An unconscious creature is incapacitated, can't move or speak, and is unaware of its surroundings."
Incapacitated: "An incapacitated creature can't take actions or reactions."
I don't think his guidance is either RAW or RAI as it specifically says it 'needs an action'. its pure RAF-DM discretion:
In this article describes three different mode to interpret rules:
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
I think Jeremy’s ruling is based just on the fact that it is after all a berry, and he would allow you to feed a berry to an unconscious ally even though it isn’t a potion. It is a reasonable ruling and nothing to get bent out of shape over. It is also just one DM’s opinion in this case.
That tweet sure makes it look like he's just speaking for himself.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
If a DM told me I could only give potions to unconscious allies I would ask them if I can squeeze the berry for its juice. If that wasn't possible either I would probably look for another DM.
The great thing about RPGs is that you can do things that are not hard-coded into some system. If that's not possible I might as well play a video game.
I get it that rules are there to keep the game somewhat structured, but imho there are limits to how.... literally rules should be applied. Rules Lawyers are annoying, no matter what end of the table they sit at.
in fairness, this is the rules and game mechanics subforum. Nitpicking rules is what we do here.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
And here
It's not RAW (though, the adjudication doesn't actually conflict with RAW either). However, at the time he tweeted this WotC had explicitly said: "the game’s rules manager, Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), can make official rulings and usually does so in Sage Advice and on Twitter". This has since changed, but his Intent still matters for RAI.
Naresea - i don't think this is nitpicking, its a fundamental issue... IMO, at least with AL...each and every tier 1 game already starts everyone off with a free healing potion. your goodberry interpretation now means every group would have practically unlimited (albeit tiny) healing pots if they have a druid. AL adventures are already balanced out of whack with players being way over-powered for the adventure. Even ramping up the difficultly well past what the adventure recommends leaves the players with very little risk unless the DM just totally adhocs additional monsters or stats (and when you greatly increase the difficulty of an encounter, you just flat out run out of time during the session...so that means you have to cut half of it out or you end up ending a session in the middle of a fight - that works at home, but not so much in AL as swapping out characters in the middle of a fight (but really a week later) is just dumb.
no risk and unlimited consumables = no fun...at least imo. kinda seems silly to even run an adventure when the outcome is given (just level up your character and save yourself a trip to the comic store)...unless you specifically target the druids and flat-out kill them with no ability to death save. that's no fun either. (and even then they'll just pass out the berries ahead of time if they know that's coming)
just wildly guessing but my money is on the writers specifically requiring an injured character's action to use to prevent unlimited and totally free tiny healing potions.
And they are free - berries don't even practically cost a spell slot to cast as the berries last 24 hours so the characters just cast it before every long rest (including right before the adventure starts), getting their spell slots back - so you can have a 1st level druid with both spell slots and 20 berries. That one hit point between full action and unconsciousness is huge in a large group of players. in my experience, staying in-module, there's very few options to whittle them down to a point where there's risk (again from my opinion - which is from a mediocre DM).
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
It isn't inconsistent with the rules to make a ruling in either direction, but I will point out that because of action economy, yo-yo healing is a problem no matter what. Healing word doesn't allow you to bring a creature from dead 10 times per first level spell slot, but it also heals many more HP per action. A cure wounds at first level might even allow a player to survive more than one additional hit at tier 1. I can believe that you in theory can bring people back from unconscious a bunch of times with a single spell slot and goodberry, but I really have trouble imagining that in practice you are using 10 goodberries to leave 10 players at 1 hp for an extended period of time.
Saving a dying creature from death can already be done by anyone with the medicine skill and by a whole lot of people with a cantrip. The only difference is that the Goodberry would restore 1 HP (Healer feat?).
I am sorry but I do not understand how using a first level spell to achieve the equivalent of a cantrip / successful skill check is unbalanced.
Even if you take the Life Cleric bonus into the equation you only heal 4 HP... which is a single hit by a monster, so you're trading an Action (giving the berry) for an Action (monster attack), so you gained nothing and lost nothing.
Unless the monster has multi-attack. In that case the monster even profits.
my issue isn't saving a dying creature from death. its the 1hp, which is a HUGE difference imo.
a cantrip keeps you at 0. a successful skill check keeps you at 0. unless you're human, i believe feats aren't an option until level 4 (and understanding i'm a small sample size, pretty sure i've never seen a human with the healer feat). You're multiplying a spell slot x10 - turning a super cheap / almost free consumable to the level of something that requires either a spell slot each time or a healing potion (which is expensive in the first few levels - at least in AL).
level 1-3, that's huge.
and its not a wash, you're trading one action now for two actions every round after that.
again, all imo.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Meh, I disagree on this part too. You are trading one action this round for the possibility of two next round, but if any monsters go before the PC that now has 1 HP, that 1 HP had better be in serious danger, or the DM isn't playing the creatures very well. If that is the case then you are trading one healer's action for one attack of the monster (which may not be its entire action - monsters get
weaponmultiattacks at very low CR). And every time a creature uses a weapon attack to remove 1 HP from a player that will be healed with a goodberry, you are still trading a free attack with something has some (although minimal) resource cost, which is still a net loss for the players side. Not to mention that every time a level 1-3 character with a single hitpoint takes another hit there is a serious risk of massive damage outright killing the character.good points and the red does apply to me. going off-topic but in my experience, i usually get one good chance with my AL group to make a dent in the party and actually make them feel like they're in jeopardy (which is almost always 6-7 players)...not that i want to wipe them, but i want to make them feel like they're in danger. If i don't do that in the first 2 rounds of combat, i can't seem to do it at all. there's always been enough characters in the party that they can afford to split one off to run healing pot duty. I've got one player who loves his berries and party-administered berries means that healing-pot-duty option is pretty much unlimited in duration. anyone who goes down, pops right back up....there's no risk unless i continue to bash on that half-dead character and perma kill them, which i'm not going to do.
usually by round 3-4 (if the fight even lasts that long), the party is fully on its feet and they pretty well understand what they're up against, so even if half of them are at 1 hit point, the risk is just gone unless i go out of module and throw something else in.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
If it is a problem at your table, then that's really the thing to talk about. Based on what else we've talked about here, it is probably within your purview to not allow feeding unconscious characters goodberries in combat. I'd recommend maybe following the advice of the others here: allow it out of combat. You can say that it is simply because it takes more than 6 seconds to feed a solid to an unconscious person to make sure that they don't choke.
Or maybe do something else, like require a medicine check as one action and then on the next round allow that character who performed the medicine check to administer the berry (to prevent them from choking the unconscious character with the berry), that way it takes two rounds to occur in combat.
But if you do decide to change things, make the changes clear to the players before it comes up, and make it clear why.
If you allow it without another character spending an action, sure, but at a cost of an action it's barely relevant.