Earlier this week I watched a YouTube video from Cody where he discusses at length why he believes Healing Word is a spell that breaks 5e. Now I enjoy watching Cody discuss what is on his mind concerning D&D, but I'm not on board with his position on Healing Word. But this thread is intended to be a discussion about all the Death mechanics in 5e D&D. They are given on [PHB] p.197 starting with Dropping to 0 Hit Points.
To summarize, once you drop to 0 HP you fall unconscious. If you do not receive any healing effects before your next turn begins, you roll a Death Save @ DC=10. During this and the following turns you are in a race to either get some healing or achieve the best 3 out of 5 saves. A Critical Save yields 2 savesstabilizes you up w/ 1 HP and a Critical Failure yields 2 failures. If you receive any damage during this period another failure is added to your total (and since all attacks withing 5ft of an unconscious victim are critical hits, they would count as 2 failures), so it isn't hard to rack up three failures and move to a status of Dead. But receiving any amount of magical healing ends the struggle and brings you to a condition called stabilized and even allows you to begin moving about as any other PC that has taken a lot of damage but not dropped to zero.
Of course, if you received say four points of magical healing and then took four points or more of damage, you fall unconscious and begin the death save cycle all over again.
[Corrected based on comments]
So under the heading of Question #1, do we agree on these details concerning death, death saves and receiving healing that breaks the cycle?
If you move into the state of being Dead, then some magical spells can bring you back to life subject to the limitations of the spell.
But my second question gets to the heart of Cody's lament that Healing Word is a ticket to abuse the whole manner in which D&D 5e handles death and dying.
Cody talks about Healing Word being totally OP because every time a player drops to 0 HP a caster can cast Healing Word as a bonus action at range of up to 60 feet to allow the character to stand up and resume fighting.
If this is considered an abuse that needs to be fixed, what about a Paladin's ability to heal damage? A first level Paladin could do this five times between each long rest. This seems like a bigger problem to me. As a 1st level Cleric I could help characters stand back up twice during a battle. A 1st level Paladin on the other hand could do this five times.
So my Question #2 is "Should magical healing be allowed to restore unconscious (dying) players during combat?"
If that is a problem, then it seems the rules should say that magical healing can only be used to heal creatures that are still alive. What do you think?
A crit success does not just count as 2 successes, it auto stabilizes you and gives you 1 HP.
If you are hit by a critical hit, you get 2 fails. Since you are unconscious all attacks within 5 feet auto crit on hit.
[Edit]You also refer to a creature with 0 HP as "dead." They are not, they are dying, but still very much alive. It is the same as losing consciousness from blood loss, but your heart is still beating. In that state, closing the wounds will stabilize the person, magically restoring their blood would make them conscious. It makes sense as much as magic can.
The reason Cody thinks Healing Word is so strong is the 60 ft. range and that it only costs a bonus action for casting. Most other healing is an action and in many cases touch range, so the paladin needs to leave combat and move to the downed PC in order to heal.
Cody specifically talks about action economy, so that with healing word, a PC never loses a round.
I don't feel D&D is about killing characters but, maybe Cody does. If that's not the case, maybe he feels that beating characters within an inch of their life is a necessary element to raise tension and excitement in a game.
I did finally decide to watch the video, I think the guy is way off base, as in a DM vs players vibe instead of neutral DM that runs world mechanics. As someone who mains Cleric, I feel Healing Word is a last resort and hate to burn spell slots on it. I walk over and Cure Wounds or use Healer feat with a med kit. Taking an OA? Oh no, I soaked some damage away from another character! I have high AC and HP and as long as my party prevent enemies from focusing me, I call it all good. If as a DM, your goal is to keep putting a player down, I'm afraid I don't understand your game plan.
Lastly, if you use the Instant Death and Massive Damage rules, it's pretty easy to kill a player. He was going on about not taking damage below 0 but, you definitely can.
I think Cody is not into PC death and player vs. DM. He just likes to run tough and dangerous encounters, were both sides try to use every action they get.
And if every action counts, haven a ranged bonus action heal is strong.
Maybe characters are in positions where they cannot move that easily over to the downed character, then healing word is much better than any touch spell.
And Cody was talking about not taking any damge below 0 as in you stay at 0 and get healing from there. There are no negative HP. Yes, you can get hit and slide closer to perma death, but you do not take damage points.
Overall, I think Healing Word is strong and I would take it every time I play a healer, but I wouldn't call it OP in general.
Maybe you've watched more videos of his than I have. I generally pay attention to the damage that players take and sometimes back off and spread the damage out. If there is true animosity between a character and an enemy, I can definitely see a fatal standoff. I use Morale rules so, fights to the death are less common down to the last combatant. It seems to me whenever you tempt fate, Murphy's Law steps in. As in, you keep a player downed or at low health and BAM, natural 20. Dead character, how fun. Realism or not, most people don't enjoy character death in their game. To those players that just sit through the rest of the session and have a new character on reserve for next game, kudos!
Ultimately I feel this is one of those ultra layered situations where a thing is only an issue in a given context. In the video he's jumping back and forth between death as a status to action economy to roleplaying back to action economy to players having no fear of death. I think that last one is the only one that's important, because let's be honest, hitting zero hitpoints is not as big of a threat as it should be. And that's the thing that pushes us over the edge and into the rabbit hole.
I also feel like the focus is stuck on Healing Word, which is not OP. Healing Word is just the most obvious point to display the problem for all to see. The circumstances surrounding zero hitpoints and healing are what makes Healing Word "OP" (note, not OP, but rather "OP"). It simply checks all the boxes that make healing "OP" in the circumstance of zero hitpoints. It does *any* amount of healing; it is cast as a Bonus Action; it can be done from range (rather generous range, honestly). Those 3 things together ensure that a friendly target at zero hitpoints is not a threat to a party.
It all boils down to the issue of healing being largely worthless at any time except when at zero hitpoints. When you're in combat, it's much more efficient to be hurting the other guy than it is to be healing. The sooner you finish combat, the sooner you stop taking damage. So it is highly advantageous to organize a party to frontload as much offensive potential as possible, and use it to eliminate the largest source of damage as quickly as possible before moving on to the next source of damage. Healing doesn't help you do that. This is then compounded by the fact that the majority of healing spells really don't heal very much, unless you upcast them. And even then, the lower level spells all have small dice, and the higher level ones tend to be static values. If you were to use a damaging spell cast at the same level, unless you roll really poorly it is almost 100% guaranteed to be strictly higher value, to say nothing of control spells that can render an enemy irrelevant for a duration, or twist the battlefield itself to the same effect.
This is then reinforced by out-of-combat healing. Short Rests are perfect for this. Most of the time you don't have another use for Hit Dice anyway, and it only costs the party 1 hour to perform. No spell slots (in fact, some classes get them back instead), no items, or other expenditures. Just the Hit Dice and 1 hour. These 2 factors together actually mean that healing is incredibly underpowered and in need of some serious buffs. Other than at zero hitpoints, where it doesn't matter what the value is, just that there is a value. This would fit the definition of a binary mechanic, being either useless or essential depending on some other factor (zero hitpoints).
Healing Word ends up catching all the flack for this for the simple reason that it's a Bonus Action spell of 1st level that does some healing. The Bonus Action is the big deal here. Clerics really don't have much of a use for their Bonus Action until they learn Spiritual Weapon. Druids in human form really only use their Bonus Action to cast Shillelagh. And Bards only have so much Bardic Inspiration to give out per Long Rest, so it's significantly open for them as well. This means the only drawback from using Healing Word over another spell option is the limitation on Spellcasting to only cast a single leveled spell per turn. Any of them can still toss out a Cantrip as their Action, or where applicable use the Attack action. You certainly could cast Cure Wounds instead, but then you would only have your Bonus Action to work with for the rest of the turn, and you can only cast a Cantrip on your Bonus Action (if you even have a Cantrip castable as one).
And all of this neglects the fact that being at zero hitpoints is already a somewhat forgiving position, depending on the situation. You have to rack up 3 failures to actually die. Unless you were surrounded by multiple enemies that were already focusing you, and are intent on ensuring you are actually dead rather than defeating the party, most enemies will switch targets when you go down. Depending on how the initiative order stacks out and at what phase of a fight you are in, it may even be a viable option to simply continue attacking the enemy than to heal an ally. If a few more attacks will end the fight, don't waste time in-combat to heal -- just end it and heal afterwards.
Do I feel that any of this is a problem, though? Not really. The system works pretty well, and fixing it would require a number of changes in several areas of the architecture of the game to get any improvement. What exactly would that look like? Well, I'd do some playtesting with the following changes:
All spells that heal based on a die roll have their die increased one size (a D4 becomes a D6, etc)
Spells or features that restore hitpoints no longer revive a creature making Death Saves
Instead, spells or features that restore hitpoints give the target 1 successful save
Individual spells would also likely need some tweaking. Prayer of Healing in particular would need some serious work.
I agree with most of what you've said. As far as increasing Healing output to be more competitive with Damage output, I feel that's a bad idea. People already feel railroaded into just Healing, if you make Healing more viable, it does even more to remove damage and utility actions as an option. It becomes Warcraft D&D except you don't have a dozen interesting Healing abilities like Warcraft. Prayer of Healing is a joke, it should be a Feature that costs an action and has limited daily uses dependent on level. As out of combat healing, it's been worthless to me, people just use hit dice and tell me to save the spell slot to buff or debuff.
Everything that I would have said has been said, But I will emphasise that death is deliberately harder for PCs and out of combat healing is significantly stronger.
I just want to reiterate that if you hit 0 HP, your chance of death is pretty high. Even if your healer brings you up, 1 hit will put you back down, if that was before your turn, the action economy did not improve. If you get hit by 1 melee attack before the healer gets another go, you have a 45% chance of death. 2 hits while at 0 and you are dead.
If the DM plays monsters even half as lethal as the party, any monster with an INT greater than 5 would know enough to kick a creature while it is down to keep it from getting back up. Any monster with an INT greater than 8 would know to focus on healers and spellcasters.
Probably the main reason why players even can think that hitting 0 is no big deal is because the DM is coddling them.
I agree with most of what you've said. As far as increasing Healing output to be more competitive with Damage output, I feel that's a bad idea. People already feel railroaded into just Healing, if you make Healing more viable, it does even more to remove damage and utility actions as an option.
I disagree entirely. If healing was even close to as effective as damage, healers would only need to consider healing as often as allies get hit. As it stands, when you can only heal for half as much as the damage 1 ally takes each turn, it isn't even worth trying,
And especially when players will start asking for heals at half health, if you only had to heal every other turn, you can still do buff/debuff/damage/etc. I've even seen DPS characters use their action to use a potion, only to then take more damage than they healed by from a creature that would have been dead if they attacked instead.
Any experienced player knows that healing in combat is so ineffective that it is best to wait and play whack-a-mole with downed allies to get the most use of that slot. If healing were actually useful (especially the close ranged kind) I doubt anyone would mention healing word as being busted.
"Every thing dies at 0 HP except PCs is a video game mechanic."
So first, why specifically contradict someone's opinion with an equally unbacked opinion? It certainly is a game mechanic, but is there a video game that fairly strictly adheres to that?
That inane line of thinking aside, if fighting things that can 1-shot your full HP without crits, that's when there's a major risk of instant death... But then we're talking 4-7 rounds to TPK if you don't heal KOed PCs. Then you're looking at a significantly longer fight, albeit at higher risk of individual death. Imo, individual or two dying > tpk risk.
How do the monsters or NPCs get the metagame knowledge that a PC is making death saves, which is why they would kick a PC who is down right? To keep him from getting back up?
They all die when they reach 0. But if they have a certain INT they would gain metagame knowledge that PCs don't die outright?
(I think you are applying videogame logic to D&D... D&D is not a videogame.)
Unconscious and bleeding out is not dead. If you were trying to kill someone, would you stop attacking when they fell over or keep going until they stopped breathing? Is the concept of a double tap IRL metagame knowledge? No. And in a world where the dying are frequently healed with a word, it is even more sensible to get those extra hits in. Monsters with a high enough INT know that magic exists, that's all.
Technically, NPCs not making death saves is just a short cut to not have to track unnecessary things. Skipping to instant death is the game logic element that is applied. All things going through the dying steps would be the common knowledge.
It is a problem that in most cases (and I would venture to guess most means about 90% or the time) a healing spell is going to heal less than the amount of damage delivered to the average character in one round.
Based on the math, it appears that any time one party member drops (to 0 HP and falls unconscious) you are riding on a razor's edge of having a TPK. The two things that prevent that from happening is bonus action healing and a DM that realizes he shouldn't be vindictive by stabbing characters that are laying on the ground with zero HP.
The math is a result that in these cases the monsters are often delivering more attacks per round than the players so when players start dropping the balance starts to quickly get much worse. If a player can't heal more than a single round of damage, then their best option is to deliver damage and leave the dying PC alone, hoping for the best. I guess in the interest of economy, the party should allow the player to make his first two death saves to see if he might stabilize himself. If he gets to two failed saves, a PC could then heal him to stabilize him and prevent the risk of a third failure. If these observations are accurate, then it seems the best option for my Bard to help in this scenario is to drop Cure Wounds and pick up Healing Word so when I must do the stabilizing I also get to shoot off one arrow.
... And Cody's premise is that this is game breaking. Well I enjoy listening to Cody's observations on D&D but we don't agree on this point.
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I just want to reiterate that if you hit 0 HP, your chance of death is pretty high. Even if your healer brings you up, 1 hit will put you back down, if that was before your turn, the action economy did not improve. If you get hit by 1 melee attack before the healer gets another go, you have a 45% chance of death. 2 hits while at 0 and you are dead.
If the DM plays monsters even half as lethal as the party, any monster with an INT greater than 5 would know enough to kick a creature while it is down to keep it from getting back up. Any monster with an INT greater than 8 would know to focus on healers and spellcasters.
Probably the main reason why players even can think that hitting 0 is no big deal is because the DM is coddling them.
I can’t agree with this enough. I have a session 0 every time where I tell players succinctly: “A monster won’t stop attacking when you get KO’d. Giving someone 1 HP won’t give the PC much more than a brief moment before they die.”
What does this do? It forces players to keep their allies standing. They don’t use Healing when they’re KO’d, they use Healing as soon as they’re bloodied. If they go down, you give them the highest possible heal you can give them because if you only give them a few HP, it’s not going to save them.
This is how you solve this problem instead of homebrewing a bunch of changes in an attempt to circumvent a DMs coddling nature.
Here's why, the enemies can do it too. In my games, enemies don't die when they reach 0 HP, they get knocked out, just like the PCs. My players learned the hard way to "double tap" when combat is over, we don't go round by round, but they say they do it or some of the enemies get back up after a while.
Here's why, the enemies can do it too. In my games, enemies don't die when they reach 0 HP, they get knocked out, just like the PCs. My players learned the hard way to "double tap" when combat is over, we don't go round by round, but they say they do it or some of the enemies get back up after a while.
That’s interesting haha! You literally added a simple rule to your games that enemies could use HW in the same way Cody laments and the first thing the PCs do is double tap all of their enemies. I think this goes to show that simply having that session 0 and telling the PCs that Monsters will double tap you, this problem with HW pretty much goes away. Your PCs will instinctively stop their allies from going down LONG before they hit 0.
Oddly enough, this strategy does work for a back row ally that is out of melee trouble and gets dropped by arrows. Him getting KOd would actually be preferable (prone gives disadv on ranged attacks), and Healing Word in that case would be still useful. But in close up combat?
Trust me... if I’m DMing your campaign, prone and KOd and prone with 1HP is still hella bad. You heal your bloodied teammates long before they get into trouble like that.
The way the game is balanced is that damage > healing so that you will eventually end fights... if they were = or healing > damage... then fights would go on and on for a long time.
Healing is meant to stem the tide of combat, to try and survive long enough to eke out a victory... can you imagine monsters doing any amount of damage and the party not fighting back but eating sandwiches as someone heals the exact same amount of damage... almost pointless to play at that point.
Perhaps, but what that inevitably means is that healing is only ever done as an emergency measure, not something you do to keep the momentum going. Compare this to playing a MOBA. You throw out your healing spells on the DPS and the mage whenever they take pretty much any damage, and the tank or bruiser whenever they get close to half. You don't hold it for redz health bars. That's the opposite of what happens in DnD, as a consequence of deliberate design decisions. Sure, the system works, but it's inherently flawed.
...and the only thing the party should ever consider "not fighting back" and "eating sandwiches" while fighting should be random road encounters with Bandits of inferior level. We both know that scenario isn't going to occur.
The math is a result that in these cases the monsters are often delivering more attacks per round than the players so when players start dropping the balance starts to quickly get much worse. If a player can't heal more than a single round of damage, then their best option is to deliver damage and leave the dying PC alone, hoping for the best. I guess in the interest of economy, the party should allow the player to make his first two death saves to see if he might stabilize himself. If he gets to two failed saves, a PC could then heal him to stabilize him and prevent the risk of a third failure. If these observations are accurate, then it seems the best option for my Bard to help in this scenario is to drop Cure Wounds and pick up Healing Word so when I must do the stabilizing I also get to shoot off one arrow.
... And Cody's premise is that this is game breaking. Well I enjoy listening to Cody's observations on D&D but we don't agree on this point.
I disagree with letting a downed player take 2 failed Death Saves. Ultimately it's going to depend on the context of the combat. But if the character in question is in even the remotest danger of taking any further attacks, you should be healing them immediately. If they are not in that danger, then it depends on how close the fight is to being over. If 1 or 2 more attacks from other characters will put all the enemies in the ground, then go ahead and let them make saves. If the fight is still going on, you generally want to revive them as soon as possible to keep as much damage as possible going into the enemies, since the player currently down can't make attacks, but if they are up they can. Anybody with 1 failed Death Save should immediately be the priority for revival.
As for Cure Wounds vs Healing Word, it depends on how metagamy you want to be. If you've only taken it for the purposes of getting "any heal", and you are concerned about action economy, then yes, absolutely replace Cure Wounds with Healing Word. But if you're more focused on the character's point of view, you'll have to make a judgement call between the 2. If it makes more sense thematically for your character to have Cure Wounds than it does for Healing Word, then keep Cure Wounds.
Not entirely sure I agree that Cody finds it gamebreaking. I think he's more reacting to the fact that the game has a mechanical weakness that leads to a wonky situation with character actions that really aren't logical from living breathing entities, and not immediately finding a reason for it he latched onto the most visible point of abuse of that weakness (Healing Word) that he otherwise can't pin down.
Yeah, I bet Cody would really hate my range Spare the Dying on my Grave cleric too. Just stabilize a fool and casually make my way to them for a Cure Wounds or medkit heal.
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Folks,
Earlier this week I watched a YouTube video from Cody where he discusses at length why he believes Healing Word is a spell that breaks 5e. Now I enjoy watching Cody discuss what is on his mind concerning D&D, but I'm not on board with his position on Healing Word. But this thread is intended to be a discussion about all the Death mechanics in 5e D&D. They are given on [PHB] p.197 starting with Dropping to 0 Hit Points.
To summarize, once you drop to 0 HP you fall unconscious. If you do not receive any healing effects before your next turn begins, you roll a Death Save @ DC=10. During this and the following turns you are in a race to either get some healing or achieve the best 3 out of 5 saves. A Critical Save
yields 2 savesstabilizes you up w/ 1 HP and a Critical Failure yields 2 failures. If you receive any damage during this period another failure is added to your total (and since all attacks withing 5ft of an unconscious victim are critical hits, they would count as 2 failures), so it isn't hard to rack up three failures and move to a status of Dead. But receiving any amount of magical healing ends the struggle and brings you to a condition called stabilized and even allows you to begin moving about as any other PC that has taken a lot of damage but not dropped to zero.Of course, if you received say four points of magical healing and then took four points or more of damage, you fall unconscious and begin the death save cycle all over again.
[Corrected based on comments]
So under the heading of Question #1, do we agree on these details concerning death, death saves and receiving healing that breaks the cycle?
If you move into the state of being Dead, then some magical spells can bring you back to life subject to the limitations of the spell.
But my second question gets to the heart of Cody's lament that Healing Word is a ticket to abuse the whole manner in which D&D 5e handles death and dying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzlR00IZ29A
Cody talks about Healing Word being totally OP because every time a player drops to 0 HP a caster can cast Healing Word as a bonus action at range of up to 60 feet to allow the character to stand up and resume fighting.
If this is considered an abuse that needs to be fixed, what about a Paladin's ability to heal damage? A first level Paladin could do this five times between each long rest. This seems like a bigger problem to me. As a 1st level Cleric I could help characters stand back up twice during a battle. A 1st level Paladin on the other hand could do this five times.
So my Question #2 is "Should magical healing be allowed to restore unconscious (dying) players during combat?"
If that is a problem, then it seems the rules should say that magical healing can only be used to heal creatures that are still alive. What do you think?
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Quick correction about death saves:
[Edit]You also refer to a creature with 0 HP as "dead." They are not, they are dying, but still very much alive. It is the same as losing consciousness from blood loss, but your heart is still beating. In that state, closing the wounds will stabilize the person, magically restoring their blood would make them conscious. It makes sense as much as magic can.
The reason Cody thinks Healing Word is so strong is the 60 ft. range and that it only costs a bonus action for casting. Most other healing is an action and in many cases touch range, so the paladin needs to leave combat and move to the downed PC in order to heal.
Cody specifically talks about action economy, so that with healing word, a PC never loses a round.
That is, why healing word is strong.
I don't feel D&D is about killing characters but, maybe Cody does. If that's not the case, maybe he feels that beating characters within an inch of their life is a necessary element to raise tension and excitement in a game.
I did finally decide to watch the video, I think the guy is way off base, as in a DM vs players vibe instead of neutral DM that runs world mechanics. As someone who mains Cleric, I feel Healing Word is a last resort and hate to burn spell slots on it. I walk over and Cure Wounds or use Healer feat with a med kit. Taking an OA? Oh no, I soaked some damage away from another character! I have high AC and HP and as long as my party prevent enemies from focusing me, I call it all good. If as a DM, your goal is to keep putting a player down, I'm afraid I don't understand your game plan.
Lastly, if you use the Instant Death and Massive Damage rules, it's pretty easy to kill a player. He was going on about not taking damage below 0 but, you definitely can.
I think Cody is not into PC death and player vs. DM. He just likes to run tough and dangerous encounters, were both sides try to use every action they get.
And if every action counts, haven a ranged bonus action heal is strong.
Maybe characters are in positions where they cannot move that easily over to the downed character, then healing word is much better than any touch spell.
And Cody was talking about not taking any damge below 0 as in you stay at 0 and get healing from there. There are no negative HP. Yes, you can get hit and slide closer to perma death, but you do not take damage points.
Overall, I think Healing Word is strong and I would take it every time I play a healer, but I wouldn't call it OP in general.
Maybe you've watched more videos of his than I have. I generally pay attention to the damage that players take and sometimes back off and spread the damage out. If there is true animosity between a character and an enemy, I can definitely see a fatal standoff. I use Morale rules so, fights to the death are less common down to the last combatant. It seems to me whenever you tempt fate, Murphy's Law steps in. As in, you keep a player downed or at low health and BAM, natural 20. Dead character, how fun. Realism or not, most people don't enjoy character death in their game. To those players that just sit through the rest of the session and have a new character on reserve for next game, kudos!
Ultimately I feel this is one of those ultra layered situations where a thing is only an issue in a given context. In the video he's jumping back and forth between death as a status to action economy to roleplaying back to action economy to players having no fear of death. I think that last one is the only one that's important, because let's be honest, hitting zero hitpoints is not as big of a threat as it should be. And that's the thing that pushes us over the edge and into the rabbit hole.
I also feel like the focus is stuck on Healing Word, which is not OP. Healing Word is just the most obvious point to display the problem for all to see. The circumstances surrounding zero hitpoints and healing are what makes Healing Word "OP" (note, not OP, but rather "OP"). It simply checks all the boxes that make healing "OP" in the circumstance of zero hitpoints. It does *any* amount of healing; it is cast as a Bonus Action; it can be done from range (rather generous range, honestly). Those 3 things together ensure that a friendly target at zero hitpoints is not a threat to a party.
It all boils down to the issue of healing being largely worthless at any time except when at zero hitpoints. When you're in combat, it's much more efficient to be hurting the other guy than it is to be healing. The sooner you finish combat, the sooner you stop taking damage. So it is highly advantageous to organize a party to frontload as much offensive potential as possible, and use it to eliminate the largest source of damage as quickly as possible before moving on to the next source of damage. Healing doesn't help you do that. This is then compounded by the fact that the majority of healing spells really don't heal very much, unless you upcast them. And even then, the lower level spells all have small dice, and the higher level ones tend to be static values. If you were to use a damaging spell cast at the same level, unless you roll really poorly it is almost 100% guaranteed to be strictly higher value, to say nothing of control spells that can render an enemy irrelevant for a duration, or twist the battlefield itself to the same effect.
This is then reinforced by out-of-combat healing. Short Rests are perfect for this. Most of the time you don't have another use for Hit Dice anyway, and it only costs the party 1 hour to perform. No spell slots (in fact, some classes get them back instead), no items, or other expenditures. Just the Hit Dice and 1 hour. These 2 factors together actually mean that healing is incredibly underpowered and in need of some serious buffs. Other than at zero hitpoints, where it doesn't matter what the value is, just that there is a value. This would fit the definition of a binary mechanic, being either useless or essential depending on some other factor (zero hitpoints).
Healing Word ends up catching all the flack for this for the simple reason that it's a Bonus Action spell of 1st level that does some healing. The Bonus Action is the big deal here. Clerics really don't have much of a use for their Bonus Action until they learn Spiritual Weapon. Druids in human form really only use their Bonus Action to cast Shillelagh. And Bards only have so much Bardic Inspiration to give out per Long Rest, so it's significantly open for them as well. This means the only drawback from using Healing Word over another spell option is the limitation on Spellcasting to only cast a single leveled spell per turn. Any of them can still toss out a Cantrip as their Action, or where applicable use the Attack action. You certainly could cast Cure Wounds instead, but then you would only have your Bonus Action to work with for the rest of the turn, and you can only cast a Cantrip on your Bonus Action (if you even have a Cantrip castable as one).
And all of this neglects the fact that being at zero hitpoints is already a somewhat forgiving position, depending on the situation. You have to rack up 3 failures to actually die. Unless you were surrounded by multiple enemies that were already focusing you, and are intent on ensuring you are actually dead rather than defeating the party, most enemies will switch targets when you go down. Depending on how the initiative order stacks out and at what phase of a fight you are in, it may even be a viable option to simply continue attacking the enemy than to heal an ally. If a few more attacks will end the fight, don't waste time in-combat to heal -- just end it and heal afterwards.
Do I feel that any of this is a problem, though? Not really. The system works pretty well, and fixing it would require a number of changes in several areas of the architecture of the game to get any improvement. What exactly would that look like? Well, I'd do some playtesting with the following changes:
Individual spells would also likely need some tweaking. Prayer of Healing in particular would need some serious work.
I agree with most of what you've said. As far as increasing Healing output to be more competitive with Damage output, I feel that's a bad idea. People already feel railroaded into just Healing, if you make Healing more viable, it does even more to remove damage and utility actions as an option. It becomes Warcraft D&D except you don't have a dozen interesting Healing abilities like Warcraft. Prayer of Healing is a joke, it should be a Feature that costs an action and has limited daily uses dependent on level. As out of combat healing, it's been worthless to me, people just use hit dice and tell me to save the spell slot to buff or debuff.
Everything that I would have said has been said, But I will emphasise that death is deliberately harder for PCs and out of combat healing is significantly stronger.
A good move IMO, healing word fills the role well
I just want to reiterate that if you hit 0 HP, your chance of death is pretty high. Even if your healer brings you up, 1 hit will put you back down, if that was before your turn, the action economy did not improve. If you get hit by 1 melee attack before the healer gets another go, you have a 45% chance of death. 2 hits while at 0 and you are dead.
If the DM plays monsters even half as lethal as the party, any monster with an INT greater than 5 would know enough to kick a creature while it is down to keep it from getting back up. Any monster with an INT greater than 8 would know to focus on healers and spellcasters.
Probably the main reason why players even can think that hitting 0 is no big deal is because the DM is coddling them.
I disagree entirely. If healing was even close to as effective as damage, healers would only need to consider healing as often as allies get hit. As it stands, when you can only heal for half as much as the damage 1 ally takes each turn, it isn't even worth trying,
And especially when players will start asking for heals at half health, if you only had to heal every other turn, you can still do buff/debuff/damage/etc. I've even seen DPS characters use their action to use a potion, only to then take more damage than they healed by from a creature that would have been dead if they attacked instead.
Any experienced player knows that healing in combat is so ineffective that it is best to wait and play whack-a-mole with downed allies to get the most use of that slot. If healing were actually useful (especially the close ranged kind) I doubt anyone would mention healing word as being busted.
How do PC's gain metagame knowledge that one of their party members is making death saves and that they need to be healed?
Every thing dies at 0 HP except PCs is a video game mechanic.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
"Every thing dies at 0 HP except PCs is a video game mechanic."
So first, why specifically contradict someone's opinion with an equally unbacked opinion? It certainly is a game mechanic, but is there a video game that fairly strictly adheres to that?
That inane line of thinking aside, if fighting things that can 1-shot your full HP without crits, that's when there's a major risk of instant death... But then we're talking 4-7 rounds to TPK if you don't heal KOed PCs. Then you're looking at a significantly longer fight, albeit at higher risk of individual death. Imo, individual or two dying > tpk risk.
Unconscious and bleeding out is not dead. If you were trying to kill someone, would you stop attacking when they fell over or keep going until they stopped breathing? Is the concept of a double tap IRL metagame knowledge? No. And in a world where the dying are frequently healed with a word, it is even more sensible to get those extra hits in. Monsters with a high enough INT know that magic exists, that's all.
Technically, NPCs not making death saves is just a short cut to not have to track unnecessary things. Skipping to instant death is the game logic element that is applied. All things going through the dying steps would be the common knowledge.
It is a problem that in most cases (and I would venture to guess most means about 90% or the time) a healing spell is going to heal less than the amount of damage delivered to the average character in one round.
Based on the math, it appears that any time one party member drops (to 0 HP and falls unconscious) you are riding on a razor's edge of having a TPK. The two things that prevent that from happening is bonus action healing and a DM that realizes he shouldn't be vindictive by stabbing characters that are laying on the ground with zero HP.
The math is a result that in these cases the monsters are often delivering more attacks per round than the players so when players start dropping the balance starts to quickly get much worse. If a player can't heal more than a single round of damage, then their best option is to deliver damage and leave the dying PC alone, hoping for the best. I guess in the interest of economy, the party should allow the player to make his first two death saves to see if he might stabilize himself. If he gets to two failed saves, a PC could then heal him to stabilize him and prevent the risk of a third failure. If these observations are accurate, then it seems the best option for my Bard to help in this scenario is to drop Cure Wounds and pick up Healing Word so when I must do the stabilizing I also get to shoot off one arrow.
... And Cody's premise is that this is game breaking. Well I enjoy listening to Cody's observations on D&D but we don't agree on this point.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I can’t agree with this enough. I have a session 0 every time where I tell players succinctly: “A monster won’t stop attacking when you get KO’d. Giving someone 1 HP won’t give the PC much more than a brief moment before they die.”
What does this do? It forces players to keep their allies standing. They don’t use Healing when they’re KO’d, they use Healing as soon as they’re bloodied. If they go down, you give them the highest possible heal you can give them because if you only give them a few HP, it’s not going to save them.
This is how you solve this problem instead of homebrewing a bunch of changes in an attempt to circumvent a DMs coddling nature.
Is Healing Word powerful? Yes. Is it broken? No.
Here's why, the enemies can do it too. In my games, enemies don't die when they reach 0 HP, they get knocked out, just like the PCs. My players learned the hard way to "double tap" when combat is over, we don't go round by round, but they say they do it or some of the enemies get back up after a while.
That’s interesting haha! You literally added a simple rule to your games that enemies could use HW in the same way Cody laments and the first thing the PCs do is double tap all of their enemies. I think this goes to show that simply having that session 0 and telling the PCs that Monsters will double tap you, this problem with HW pretty much goes away. Your PCs will instinctively stop their allies from going down LONG before they hit 0.
Oddly enough, this strategy does work for a back row ally that is out of melee trouble and gets dropped by arrows. Him getting KOd would actually be preferable (prone gives disadv on ranged attacks), and Healing Word in that case would be still useful. But in close up combat?
Trust me... if I’m DMing your campaign, prone and KOd and prone with 1HP is still hella bad. You heal your bloodied teammates long before they get into trouble like that.
Perhaps, but what that inevitably means is that healing is only ever done as an emergency measure, not something you do to keep the momentum going. Compare this to playing a MOBA. You throw out your healing spells on the DPS and the mage whenever they take pretty much any damage, and the tank or bruiser whenever they get close to half. You don't hold it for redz health bars. That's the opposite of what happens in DnD, as a consequence of deliberate design decisions. Sure, the system works, but it's inherently flawed.
...and the only thing the party should ever consider "not fighting back" and "eating sandwiches" while fighting should be random road encounters with Bandits of inferior level. We both know that scenario isn't going to occur.
I disagree with letting a downed player take 2 failed Death Saves. Ultimately it's going to depend on the context of the combat. But if the character in question is in even the remotest danger of taking any further attacks, you should be healing them immediately. If they are not in that danger, then it depends on how close the fight is to being over. If 1 or 2 more attacks from other characters will put all the enemies in the ground, then go ahead and let them make saves. If the fight is still going on, you generally want to revive them as soon as possible to keep as much damage as possible going into the enemies, since the player currently down can't make attacks, but if they are up they can. Anybody with 1 failed Death Save should immediately be the priority for revival.
As for Cure Wounds vs Healing Word, it depends on how metagamy you want to be. If you've only taken it for the purposes of getting "any heal", and you are concerned about action economy, then yes, absolutely replace Cure Wounds with Healing Word. But if you're more focused on the character's point of view, you'll have to make a judgement call between the 2. If it makes more sense thematically for your character to have Cure Wounds than it does for Healing Word, then keep Cure Wounds.
Not entirely sure I agree that Cody finds it gamebreaking. I think he's more reacting to the fact that the game has a mechanical weakness that leads to a wonky situation with character actions that really aren't logical from living breathing entities, and not immediately finding a reason for it he latched onto the most visible point of abuse of that weakness (Healing Word) that he otherwise can't pin down.
Yeah, I bet Cody would really hate my range Spare the Dying on my Grave cleric too. Just stabilize a fool and casually make my way to them for a Cure Wounds or medkit heal.