The difference for me I guess is my villains have absolutely no problem kickin’ a PC while their down to drop two instant Death Saving Throw fails on them. 🤷♂️
A DM can always arbitrarily or casually kill off PC's. Sure in theory it creates tension but if it is happening regularly, you either need to replace players constantly, or you have replacement characters creating exactly the kind of tedium you are trying to avoid.....
I didn’t say I kill PCs casually. I kill no one.
What I said was that the Players are aware that the villains are willing to kill them if they drop. (Not me, I didn’t do it, the Archlich’s minions or whoever.) That motivates them to heal before they drop instead of waiting to yo-yo.
Well either they sometimes die from not playing whack-a-mole-back-to-consciousness, or they do not. If they do not, it is because they are playing the ever so exciting whack a heal game. If they do die, then they die and the problems I cited exist.
And either you are DMing, in which case all NPC's are under your control, or you are not DMing, in which case they are not your villains.
The difference between the two varieties of “whack-a-mole” is this:
Under the current rules of 5e, with the way the Death Saves work and how easy it is to pick someone back up from unconsciousness, that given at least 1 round to get to someone the chances of actual PC death are next to 0. If a PC goes down and the DM has shown that they are unwilling to pull that trigger, then the Players know that there is nothing to fear. If however, the Players know that their PCs are likely to auto fail 2 Death Saves if they go down, then the prospect of PC death becomes more real. That ratchets up the drama, and the verisimilitude immensely.
* * *
If one cannot draw a distinction between Character Actions and Player Actions, that is not my problem. My players can tell the difference between me and my villains, what “I” do and what “they” do. That’s a good thing.
That’s a good thing because my villains are horrible people. My villains are the type of “monsters” that, when they exist IRL, countries go to war to to stop them. They are the types of people that, when we hear about them on the evening news, we H.A.T.E. them. They are the kinds of evil that make humanity weep for ourselves as a species that any of us could be that... evil. Villains like that are the reason people have invented a word for evil in every language. It is their Truename, that’s how evil they are. So evil that their executions’ would have ticket holders instead of protestors. They commit the kinds of atrocities that I can literally not mention in these forums without getting redacted, and possibly points if I described them.
If my villains make the PCs angry and vengeful, that’s fine. I’ll take it. But if my villains make the actual Players themselves legitimate angry, and maybe even a little hateful, or more than a little.... That’s when I know I did the thing. When I look in their eyes and see wrath behind them, when I see actual righteous rage looking back at me.... That moment when I know that the actual IRL people sitting across from me are having that strong of an emotional response to my NPCs. That’s what makes all the work of DMing worth it:
All those countless hours of planning and writing;
All that time populating an entire world full of billions of people;
All the work it takes holding the major NPCs as realistic people in my mind so I can narrate a story instead of “write a campaign;”
And all of the times that went flying out the window because the Players decided to go to a tavern I didn’t populate and talk to NPCs I haven’t written yet. 🙄
When I see that my friends are so angry at my villains that they would love to follow them into a dark alley if they could, that makes me happy. When I know the players will cheer when their characters finally chop the villains’ faces off with axes. That’s when the players get to be the heroes, not just their PCs, when they feel like they have rid at least some world of a monster. That’s when I earn the right to keep calling myself a DM.
But at the end of the session, when the dice are getting packed up, and the character sheet tabs are being closed, I don’t want my players to actually hate me like that. I don’t want my IRL friends feeling legitimately homicidal toward me. I didn’t do all of those horrible things. I’m not the one that hell itself is still too god for. I’m not the one whose face they want to chop off with an axe. I am their friend, not their enemy. I love them.
That ability to recognize the distinction between DM and villain extends to distinguishing PC from Player as well. Occasionally PCs do things in game that other PCs don’t like. It happens. Their characters become real to them, and real people don’t always get along. The Players don’t hold it against each other. That is precisely why my tables can enjoy PCs using social skills against each other from time to time and others’ tables cannot.
The difference for me I guess is my villains have absolutely no problem kickin’ a PC while their down to drop two instant Death Saving Throw fails on them. 🤷♂️
That makes for worse gameplay than simply removing combat healing completely.
Whacking people when they're down doesn't make for more exciting game play or anything, it just adds a layer of annoying. If you want to make them worry, just go old school and the character dies at 0 hp. Or give NPC groups Healing Word and watch the PCs suddenly start doing finishing blows on downed foes as well.
give NPC groups Healing Word and watch the PCs suddenly start doing finishing blows on downed foes as well.
I do. Well, not necessarily Healing Word, but yeah.
I don’t go around walking people when they’re down willy-nilly. Only when it serves a solid narrative purpose, or if they need a reminder that I am willing to pull that trigger if they get sloopy.
I was originally going to talk about this in the potions thread, but it's a more general issue: standard action heals, such as [Tooltip Not Found] are generally a terrible use of your action in combat. They have some value out of combat, but that's what hit dice are for.
There are two fundamental problems: healing efficiency and action economy.
The healing efficiency issue is very simple: if someone with 10 hp gets hit for 30 and then healed for 1, they wind up at 1 hp -- so 1 point healing negated 21 points of damage.
I thought that if you get hit for double your max hp you die. Not the case?
You die at negative max HP, I assume the example above was 10 current HP (so if they had more than 20 max HP they would be unconcious but not dead).
Hitting players when they are down is a way to discourage the heal from zero style. However, it is both a playstyle choice and doesn't solve the low value of healing in the first place.
In terms of playstyle we usually want the dread and suspense to be on events rather than combat (e.g. the town is destroyed) so that you can continue with the character's story. To that end there is an amount of metagaming in that enemies will be trying to contest the players rather than kill them. Consider that you're probably already doing this to an extent by not having the villain take them out via some other means. If they are so dastardly then why would they hesitate to use maximum force on this new threat they've heard of? In combat a good tactician would usually take out the healer and caster before focusing on the tank, but this could become very frustrating for those players who are knocked out early.
As for the low value healing, making enemies finish off downed characters incentivises keeping them from going down (which also rewards health metagaming) but it doesn't change the value of healing compared to damage or mitigation in this sense. You may have made healing more important without making it more rewarding - exactly the thing the game design was meant to avoid...
What makes you think the Villains haven’t poisoned an entire Inn of around 100 people just to kill the 5 PCs? They really are that dastardly. Of course, razing an entire city with fire from the sky was my favorite. Hundreds of thousands dead just to try to kill 5 adventures who pissed off the evildoer. When those 5 survived, knowing that an entire city burned just because they happened to be in it at the time....
When the PCs could still remember the faces of the dead and dying, could even remember what the victims had been wearing as the city fell all around them. The could remember the acrid smell of burning hair mixed with that familiar coppery scent of blood. The could remember the cloying, choking taste of ashes and plaster that they couldn’t quite get out of their mouths when the nightmares came for them even months later. All those innocent lives lost... the sense of responsibility they felt for that... just because they were there.
That’ll motivate the heck out of some folks right there.
I did give Iam the benefit of the doubt that he was not so strict or so vicious....
I would just like to take a moment and thank you both. Considering that you are two of the forum posters I am more used to debating against me, it is nice to know that I am not honestly thought to be nearly so callous or malicious.
I mean, I agree that HP might be a poor descriptor for what actually happens but saying 99 damage vs 100 HP isn’t disastrous or debilitating is misleading. I get that they can still take actions as normal with the same effects etc but when we describe monsters taking that amount of damage, it’s usually like “it is barely standing up” kind of deal, no? I’d argue it’s the same for a PC - “the axe cleaves you deep and you feel the blood gush from your body. You feel like you could have one more swing/spell in you before your world goes black, unless you get aid soon.” I know it’s mostly semantics and there’s no mechanical difference but....maybe that’s the poverty being discussed here. At 0 you’re unconscious and unable to do anything. The death saves are just rolls of fortune to see if you ultimately survive or not. would you consider anything below say 5 or 10 HP depending on your level to be at disadvantage? (Maybe that’s another conversation).
I would just like to take a moment and thank you both. Considering that you are two of the forum posters I am more used to debating against me, it is nice to know that I am not honestly thought to be nearly so callous or malicious.
Don't worry, we only snipe at you when you are even more outrageously over-the-top than usual... :)
😲 How do have a metric for what is “usual” for me? Are you spying on me? Did my wife tell you?
Going down to 0 only means that your plot protection is exhausted and that you could die quickly. And having only a few hit points (such as after a Healing Word) just means that you are fragile but not impaired. The "wack-a-heal" is also something that you see so frequently in the genre books, shows, movies, of someone who seems to have been knocked out or even looks to be dead, and who still comes back to fight at the unexpected moment.
Hm. Sudden recovery when dramatically appropriate is a thing, it's true. It's just not something that happens multiple times. Could make it a limited resource (when downed and healed, you can get up... once).
As mentioned earlier, D&D is much more repetitive in all things (damage, healing, spells, whatever) than anything used in the genre, so it's not an exception here.
Once per short rest (or even once per long rest) is still more repetitive than anything in the genre.
As mentioned earlier, D&D is much more repetitive in all things (damage, healing, spells, whatever) than anything used in the genre, so it's not an exception here.
Once per short rest (or even once per long rest) is still more repetitive than anything in the genre.
You mean more repetitive than a warlock spamming Eldritch Blast ? :p
I mean more repetitive than people getting up from being down. In genres where magicians throw blasts of magic they tend to spam them just as much as warriors spam sword strikes.
It seems this conversation has veered back into whether improving healing is a good aim.
For us HP (loosely) represents fighting stamina. Above 0 you can dodge and parry most blows, and only when you reach zero do you take a meaningful hit. Healing while above zero is seeing your friend flagging and giving them the reserves to fight on. This was the other part of the reason why we also implemented exhaustion at health thresholds.
Healing will of course lead to a longer fight, but in my opinion that is fine as long as the extra time is interesting (clearly this varies person to person, but some will find a back and forth more engaging than everyone being knocked out quickly). I would like healing to be competetive so that we have the option to play that way. If healing is balanced with other options it doesn't force you to play that way, contrasting slightly to some spells that are clearly superior than others by design (e.g. fireball) that can leave a nagging feeling of loss if you choose another based on style. Whether we like it or not the mechanics shape the worlds we create, and I would like it to be more free.
This was for a homebrew game. For some people the healing from zero style is what they want, and that's great, but I would like an alternative that doesn't break too much else.
i don't like the healing from zero strategies that the mechanics force.
#1 healing feels useless to do outside of a dead/dying person
#2 the concept is hard for players to grasp " i neeeed heeals!" but as a cleric, i don't want to because it's more beneficial to let you die (this is sound logic for grave domain, not anyone else)
#3 as a cleric you feel a slight bit useless, until you find a series of buffs that can help your party more
#4 a lot of DM's allow a drink a potion as a Bonus action...this is a much better use of heals than a cleric so you get outshined
The problem is that it really impacts the length of fights. In a standard example, suppose only the tank takes a lot of damage. If you were able to heal him from almost 0 to almost to the max, you have more or less instantly doubled the duration of the fight, epecially since almost all the combattants have at will options so that they are not bored (which, again, is a good thing). So it might still be interesting, but would it be as interesting as another fight in different conditions with different adversaries ? Usually, for me, the answer is no.
So it's better to have two short interesting fights in the same time as a long one, at least for me.
Again, I can see why this is important and works well for you. I was just hoping for an inbetween option for those of us who don't mind a longer fight. In my experience the realtime length depends most on how many things are in the battle, so with fewer players they are over quickly regardless. And my personal preference is longer battles that allow more strategy and slow burn tactics than many quick battles.
Also, while in your example healing the tank to full would increase the length of that fight, as long as the efficiency isn't too high they would use more resources (spell slots) meaning fewer combats if they rely on this. Then there are additional complications gauging the lost damage from a character that is not healed before reaching zero, or that healing from zero already extends the length of fights (and I assume you are not in favour of completely removing healing).
Either way I understand your position and thank you for explaining it. I was looking for a home variant rule rather than saying the game is broken.
Rogue's with the healer feat heal more than first level cleric spells.
This thread was over a year old but to answer your point
A rogue (or anyone else) can do more healing than a first level cleric spell unless the cleric is a life cleric. However most creatures dont get a feat until level 4 (and even then will more than likely want an ASI instead, it is also dependent on healer's kits being available. You are also limited to each creature only being healed once per long rest.
Once you gain a few levels the value of a healing kit goes down significantly. Using their channel divinity at second level a twilight cleric can give 1d6+2 temporary hit points to every party member every round for a minute a peace cleric can give most / all the party 2d6+Wis healing. A second level cleric spell can give up to 6 people 2d8+wis healing out of combat. In combat a 2nd level druid spell druid can do 1d6 1+wis ) times using a single action.
By the time you get to say level 8 the life cleric's channel divinity does 40 points of healing, split among the party however they see fit, and in combat action economy means if you want to use your action to heal you want to either use it to heal a lot of people or a single person a lot.
Healer feat is great in combat at low levels and out of combat after that but a feat is a big investment and Cleric's do a lot more than just heal.
You are also limited to each creature only being healed once per long rest.
"The creature can't regain hit points from this feat again until it finishes a short or long rest."
Once you gain a few levels the value of a healing kit goes down significantly. Using their channel divinity at second level a twilight cleric can give 1d6+2 temporary hit points to every party member every round for a minute a peace cleric can give most / all the party 2d6+Wis healing.
Twilight cleric's THP doesn't heal whatsoever. THP in general doesn't heal.
Healer feat is great in combat at low levels and out of combat after that but a feat is a big investment and Cleric's do a lot more than just heal.
The ability to as a action/bonus action heal even if only a single hp, without a spell slot, stays useful basically forever. The party with a healer in it saves on a huge amount of other more costly healing resources by being able to patch people up at a rate of 1d6+4+level, per short rest, each.
A 5th level party, that is 10 to 15 HP to each party member per short rest. It is extremely effective.
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I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
While THP do not heal they reduce the need for healing, and in the case of twilight sanctuary to a massive degree.
Healers kits require an action and for the healer to be in reach of the recipient and I see that as a big disadvantage. At high levels (say tier 3 and 4) low level spell slots are rarely a constraint and the party may well have found some preyer beads of curing. The beads allow curing as a bonus action so the action can be used for something else, if movement is an issue or they do not have any beads healing word works too. I think it is better for an 11th level cleric to cast healing word than the rogue to give up his sneak attack to go to his unconcious colleague and use a healers kit (he might also need to use his bonus action to avoid op attacks)
Healers kits require an action and for the healer to be in reach of the recipient and I see that as a big disadvantage. At high levels (say tier 3 and 4) low level spell slots are rarely a constraint and the party may well have found some preyer beads of curing. The beads allow curing as a bonus action so the action can be used for something else, if movement is an issue or they do not have any beads healing word works too. I think it is better for an 11th level cleric to cast healing word than the rogue to give up his sneak attack to go to his unconcious colleague and use a healers kit (he might also need to use his bonus action to avoid op attacks)
We're talking Healer Feat on a Rogue, though, right? I just figured we were taking Fast Hands into account as a possibility. That should open up the option of using it as a bonus action.
You wanna talk high levels? Even as a standard action, a 16th level character is healed 1d6+20. That isn't a 1st level spell slot worth of healing... or even 2nd, it isn't even a 3rd level cure wounds... It is closer to a 4th level cure wounds. 4d8+5 is average 23 vs our Healer's average of 23.5. Pretty on the nose for a 4th level slot of cure wounds, just more reliably average result. And without using a slot.
YMMV but it has some serious output. One 4th level cure wounds per party member...per short rest. That's not nothing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
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The difference between the two varieties of “whack-a-mole” is this:
Under the current rules of 5e, with the way the Death Saves work and how easy it is to pick someone back up from unconsciousness, that given at least 1 round to get to someone the chances of actual PC death are next to 0. If a PC goes down and the DM has shown that they are unwilling to pull that trigger, then the Players know that there is nothing to fear. If however, the Players know that their PCs are likely to auto fail 2 Death Saves if they go down, then the prospect of PC death becomes more real. That ratchets up the drama, and the verisimilitude immensely.
* * *
If one cannot draw a distinction between Character Actions and Player Actions, that is not my problem. My players can tell the difference between me and my villains, what “I” do and what “they” do. That’s a good thing.
That’s a good thing because my villains are horrible people. My villains are the type of “monsters” that, when they exist IRL, countries go to war to to stop them. They are the types of people that, when we hear about them on the evening news, we H.A.T.E. them. They are the kinds of evil that make humanity weep for ourselves as a species that any of us could be that... evil. Villains like that are the reason people have invented a word for evil in every language. It is their Truename, that’s how evil they are. So evil that their executions’ would have ticket holders instead of protestors. They commit the kinds of atrocities that I can literally not mention in these forums without getting redacted, and possibly points if I described them.
If my villains make the PCs angry and vengeful, that’s fine. I’ll take it. But if my villains make the actual Players themselves legitimate angry, and maybe even a little hateful, or more than a little.... That’s when I know I did the thing. When I look in their eyes and see wrath behind them, when I see actual righteous rage looking back at me.... That moment when I know that the actual IRL people sitting across from me are having that strong of an emotional response to my NPCs. That’s what makes all the work of DMing worth it:
When I see that my friends are so angry at my villains that they would love to follow them into a dark alley if they could, that makes me happy. When I know the players will cheer when their characters finally chop the villains’ faces off with axes. That’s when the players get to be the heroes, not just their PCs, when they feel like they have rid at least some world of a monster. That’s when I earn the right to keep calling myself a DM.
But at the end of the session, when the dice are getting packed up, and the character sheet tabs are being closed, I don’t want my players to actually hate me like that. I don’t want my IRL friends feeling legitimately homicidal toward me. I didn’t do all of those horrible things. I’m not the one that hell itself is still too god for. I’m not the one whose face they want to chop off with an axe. I am their friend, not their enemy. I love them.
That ability to recognize the distinction between DM and villain extends to distinguishing PC from Player as well. Occasionally PCs do things in game that other PCs don’t like. It happens. Their characters become real to them, and real people don’t always get along. The Players don’t hold it against each other. That is precisely why my tables can enjoy PCs using social skills against each other from time to time and others’ tables cannot.
Same response as above.
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Whacking people when they're down doesn't make for more exciting game play or anything, it just adds a layer of annoying. If you want to make them worry, just go old school and the character dies at 0 hp. Or give NPC groups Healing Word and watch the PCs suddenly start doing finishing blows on downed foes as well.
I do. Well, not necessarily Healing Word, but yeah.
I don’t go around walking people when they’re down willy-nilly. Only when it serves a solid narrative purpose, or if they need a reminder that I am willing to pull that trigger if they get sloopy.
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I thought that if you get hit for double your max hp you die. Not the case?
DM - And In The Darkness, Rot: The Sunless Citadel
DM - Our Little Lives Kept In Equipoise: Curse of Strahd
DM - Misprize Thou Not These Shadows That Belong: The Lost Mines of Phandelver
PC - Azzure - Tyranny of Dragons
You die at negative max HP, I assume the example above was 10 current HP (so if they had more than 20 max HP they would be unconcious but not dead).
Hitting players when they are down is a way to discourage the heal from zero style. However, it is both a playstyle choice and doesn't solve the low value of healing in the first place.
In terms of playstyle we usually want the dread and suspense to be on events rather than combat (e.g. the town is destroyed) so that you can continue with the character's story. To that end there is an amount of metagaming in that enemies will be trying to contest the players rather than kill them. Consider that you're probably already doing this to an extent by not having the villain take them out via some other means. If they are so dastardly then why would they hesitate to use maximum force on this new threat they've heard of? In combat a good tactician would usually take out the healer and caster before focusing on the tank, but this could become very frustrating for those players who are knocked out early.
As for the low value healing, making enemies finish off downed characters incentivises keeping them from going down (which also rewards health metagaming) but it doesn't change the value of healing compared to damage or mitigation in this sense. You may have made healing more important without making it more rewarding - exactly the thing the game design was meant to avoid...
What makes you think the Villains haven’t poisoned an entire Inn of around 100 people just to kill the 5 PCs? They really are that dastardly. Of course, razing an entire city with fire from the sky was my favorite. Hundreds of thousands dead just to try to kill 5 adventures who pissed off the evildoer. When those 5 survived, knowing that an entire city burned just because they happened to be in it at the time....
When the PCs could still remember the faces of the dead and dying, could even remember what the victims had been wearing as the city fell all around them. The could remember the acrid smell of burning hair mixed with that familiar coppery scent of blood. The could remember the cloying, choking taste of ashes and plaster that they couldn’t quite get out of their mouths when the nightmares came for them even months later. All those innocent lives lost... the sense of responsibility they felt for that... just because they were there.
That’ll motivate the heck out of some folks right there.
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I would just like to take a moment and thank you both. Considering that you are two of the forum posters I am more used to debating against me, it is nice to know that I am not honestly thought to be nearly so callous or malicious.
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I mean, I agree that HP might be a poor descriptor for what actually happens but saying 99 damage vs 100 HP isn’t disastrous or debilitating is misleading. I get that they can still take actions as normal with the same effects etc but when we describe monsters taking that amount of damage, it’s usually like “it is barely standing up” kind of deal, no? I’d argue it’s the same for a PC - “the axe cleaves you deep and you feel the blood gush from your body. You feel like you could have one more swing/spell in you before your world goes black, unless you get aid soon.” I know it’s mostly semantics and there’s no mechanical difference but....maybe that’s the poverty being discussed here. At 0 you’re unconscious and unable to do anything. The death saves are just rolls of fortune to see if you ultimately survive or not.
would you consider anything below say 5 or 10 HP depending on your level to be at disadvantage? (Maybe that’s another conversation).
DM - And In The Darkness, Rot: The Sunless Citadel
DM - Our Little Lives Kept In Equipoise: Curse of Strahd
DM - Misprize Thou Not These Shadows That Belong: The Lost Mines of Phandelver
PC - Azzure - Tyranny of Dragons
😲 How do have a metric for what is “usual” for me? Are you spying on me? Did my wife tell you?
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Hm. Sudden recovery when dramatically appropriate is a thing, it's true. It's just not something that happens multiple times. Could make it a limited resource (when downed and healed, you can get up... once).
Once per short rest (or even once per long rest) is still more repetitive than anything in the genre.
I mean more repetitive than people getting up from being down. In genres where magicians throw blasts of magic they tend to spam them just as much as warriors spam sword strikes.
It seems this conversation has veered back into whether improving healing is a good aim.
For us HP (loosely) represents fighting stamina. Above 0 you can dodge and parry most blows, and only when you reach zero do you take a meaningful hit. Healing while above zero is seeing your friend flagging and giving them the reserves to fight on. This was the other part of the reason why we also implemented exhaustion at health thresholds.
Healing will of course lead to a longer fight, but in my opinion that is fine as long as the extra time is interesting (clearly this varies person to person, but some will find a back and forth more engaging than everyone being knocked out quickly). I would like healing to be competetive so that we have the option to play that way. If healing is balanced with other options it doesn't force you to play that way, contrasting slightly to some spells that are clearly superior than others by design (e.g. fireball) that can leave a nagging feeling of loss if you choose another based on style. Whether we like it or not the mechanics shape the worlds we create, and I would like it to be more free.
This was for a homebrew game. For some people the healing from zero style is what they want, and that's great, but I would like an alternative that doesn't break too much else.
i don't like the healing from zero strategies that the mechanics force.
#1 healing feels useless to do outside of a dead/dying person
#2 the concept is hard for players to grasp " i neeeed heeals!" but as a cleric, i don't want to because it's more beneficial to let you die (this is sound logic for grave domain, not anyone else)
#3 as a cleric you feel a slight bit useless, until you find a series of buffs that can help your party more
#4 a lot of DM's allow a drink a potion as a Bonus action...this is a much better use of heals than a cleric so you get outshined
...i could go on.
Again, I can see why this is important and works well for you. I was just hoping for an inbetween option for those of us who don't mind a longer fight. In my experience the realtime length depends most on how many things are in the battle, so with fewer players they are over quickly regardless. And my personal preference is longer battles that allow more strategy and slow burn tactics than many quick battles.
Also, while in your example healing the tank to full would increase the length of that fight, as long as the efficiency isn't too high they would use more resources (spell slots) meaning fewer combats if they rely on this. Then there are additional complications gauging the lost damage from a character that is not healed before reaching zero, or that healing from zero already extends the length of fights (and I assume you are not in favour of completely removing healing).
Either way I understand your position and thank you for explaining it. I was looking for a home variant rule rather than saying the game is broken.
Rogue's with the healer feat heal more than first level cleric spells.
This thread was over a year old but to answer your point
A rogue (or anyone else) can do more healing than a first level cleric spell unless the cleric is a life cleric. However most creatures dont get a feat until level 4 (and even then will more than likely want an ASI instead, it is also dependent on healer's kits being available. You are also limited to each creature only being healed once per long rest.
Once you gain a few levels the value of a healing kit goes down significantly. Using their channel divinity at second level a twilight cleric can give 1d6+2 temporary hit points to every party member every round for a minute a peace cleric can give most / all the party 2d6+Wis healing. A second level cleric spell can give up to 6 people 2d8+wis healing out of combat. In combat a 2nd level druid spell druid can do 1d6 1+wis ) times using a single action.
By the time you get to say level 8 the life cleric's channel divinity does 40 points of healing, split among the party however they see fit, and in combat action economy means if you want to use your action to heal you want to either use it to heal a lot of people or a single person a lot.
Healer feat is great in combat at low levels and out of combat after that but a feat is a big investment and Cleric's do a lot more than just heal.
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"The creature can't regain hit points from this feat again until it finishes a short or long rest."
Twilight cleric's THP doesn't heal whatsoever. THP in general doesn't heal.
The ability to as a action/bonus action heal even if only a single hp, without a spell slot, stays useful basically forever. The party with a healer in it saves on a huge amount of other more costly healing resources by being able to patch people up at a rate of 1d6+4+level, per short rest, each.
A 5th level party, that is 10 to 15 HP to each party member per short rest. It is extremely effective.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Sorry typo regarding shorter long rest.
While THP do not heal they reduce the need for healing, and in the case of twilight sanctuary to a massive degree.
Healers kits require an action and for the healer to be in reach of the recipient and I see that as a big disadvantage. At high levels (say tier 3 and 4) low level spell slots are rarely a constraint and the party may well have found some preyer beads of curing. The beads allow curing as a bonus action so the action can be used for something else, if movement is an issue or they do not have any beads healing word works too. I think it is better for an 11th level cleric to cast healing word than the rogue to give up his sneak attack to go to his unconcious colleague and use a healers kit (he might also need to use his bonus action to avoid op attacks)
We're talking Healer Feat on a Rogue, though, right? I just figured we were taking Fast Hands into account as a possibility. That should open up the option of using it as a bonus action.
You wanna talk high levels? Even as a standard action, a 16th level character is healed 1d6+20. That isn't a 1st level spell slot worth of healing... or even 2nd, it isn't even a 3rd level cure wounds... It is closer to a 4th level cure wounds. 4d8+5 is average 23 vs our Healer's average of 23.5. Pretty on the nose for a 4th level slot of cure wounds, just more reliably average result. And without using a slot.
YMMV but it has some serious output. One 4th level cure wounds per party member...per short rest. That's not nothing.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.