Coincidentally, at level 2 i full my whole party of their life with only 6-7 berry. concidentally, with only 10 berry, i full my whole party to full health even if they are at level 4.
incidentally, first level spell slots becomes literally useless the more you go in levels, making me use level 1 spells slots and level 2 spells lots on healing said party during short rest, which by the way my DM makes it 15 minutes instead of 1 hour. and thus our party is always full on health every short rest without having a need for healing dices, or using them to finish what i started.
as for healing outside of combat, the goal here is to proove you that overhealing is not really any better. Also, Healing spirit doesn't even remotely do what the OP claims it does. he claims the spell does 400 healing, which is false. heres the spell points by points...
- heals for 1 minute, thats 10 rounds for anybody that goes into it or start its turn into it. - its a bonus action - its a level spell slot - it heals 1d6 no bonuses to "ANY" creatures entering it or starting its turn in it. - its zone is a 5 ft zone, literally only one creature at a time can use it.
want me to tell you the biggest CON ever... - EVERY CREATURE that means enemies can also use it. you don't decide who gets healed, any creatures who get inside it is healed.
next con to the spell... - that means to heal more then 1d6 per round, the creature needs to form a line and go thru it and not stop in it. leaving room for the next person to go thru, including enemies who will not give you room to move inside it.
out of combat the spell can literally heal the whole party full, because out of combat we're not using initiatives and thus not using rounds. how often can get inside that 5ft range during a minute... ok i put my feat in and then out, get healed, i do the same and i do it like 50 times in a minute. totally possible. at this point if you do let that happen to your players, as a DM you are the problem, not the spell.
so to gives you the run down... 6 characters as OP as they can be... Level 20 barbarian, with 24 Con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d12 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 7 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 310 hp. Level 20 Druid, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d8 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 230 hp. Level 20 Rogue, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d8 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 230 hp. Level 20 Cleric, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d8 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 230 hp. Level 20 Mage, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d6 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 210 hp. Level 20 Fighter, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d10 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 250 hp.
thats an all party life at the max they be using average life.
now lets see your maths about how much your spell heals... you claim it heals upward to 400 or so HP. the total party size of 6 characters have a pool of life that exceeds way more then 400 hp.
again, i fails to see where the spell is even remotely abusive ?
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Coincidentally, at level 2 i full my whole party of their life with only 6-7 berry. concidentally, with only 10 berry, i full my whole party to full health even if they are at level 4.
incidentally, first level spell slots becomes literally useless the more you go in levels, making me use level 1 spells slots and level 2 spells lots on healing said party during short rest, which by the way my DM makes it 15 minutes instead of 1 hour. and thus our party is always full on health every short rest without having a need for healing dices, or using them to finish what i started.
as for healing outside of combat, the goal here is to proove you that overhealing is not really any better. Also, Healing spirit doesn't even remotely do what the OP claims it does. he claims the spell does 400 healing, which is false. heres the spell points by points...
- heals for 1 minute, thats 10 rounds for anybody that goes into it or start its turn into it. - its a bonus action - its a level spell slot - it heals 1d6 no bonuses to "ANY" creatures entering it or starting its turn in it. - its zone is a 5 ft zone, literally only one creature at a time can use it.
want me to tell you the biggest CON ever... - EVERY CREATURE that means enemies can also use it. you don't decide who gets healed, any creatures who get inside it is healed.
next con to the spell... - that means to heal more then 1d6 per round, the creature needs to form a line and go thru it and not stop in it. leaving room for the next person to go thru, including enemies who will not give you room to move inside it.
out of combat the spell can literally heal the whole party full, because out of combat we're not using initiatives and thus not using rounds. how often can get inside that 5ft range during a minute... ok i put my feat in and then out, get healed, i do the same and i do it like 50 times in a minute. totally possible. at this point if you do let that happen to your players, as a DM you are the problem, not the spell.
so to gives you the run down... 6 characters as OP as they can be... Level 20 barbarian, with 24 Con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d12 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 7 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 310 hp. Level 20 Druid, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d8 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 230 hp. Level 20 Rogue, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d8 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 230 hp. Level 20 Cleric, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d8 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 230 hp. Level 20 Mage, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d6 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 210 hp. Level 20 Fighter, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d10 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 250 hp.
thats an all party life at the max they be using average life.
now lets see your maths about how much your spell heals... you claim it heals upward to 400 or so HP. the total party size of 6 characters have a pool of life that exceeds way more then 400 hp.
again, i fails to see where the spell is even remotely abusive ?
Read the spell. For reference: healing spirit. It says that you can choose to heal or not heal. It can heal a creature when that creature enters its space for the first time on a turn, whether or not that creature ends its turn it the spirit's space. And you can move it up to 30 feet as a bonus action.
The facts these are out of combat spells meaning its normal to heal much more. Also the druid and ranger were very sub par healers making cleric of life the only real healers. This is totally warranted as its improoving druids as healers. Whis is what the circle of dreams druid is. Now consider how often any of your clerics rangers and druids have ever prepared any out of battle spells to begin with.
Sorry but its not broken because it is out of combat healing and at that point you spend a high level spell slot to heal the party and save yourself a short rest which could potentially turn into a suprise encounter.
Nonsense. A quick look at other spells shows Healing Spirit can't possibly be working as intended. The DMG gives guidelines for how much damage or healing single and multiple target spells should provide at each spell level. A multi-target 2nd level spell should have 4d6 per target. Healing Spirit has a reliable 10d6 per creature out of combat. That's a 6th level spell (11d6). It's also way higher than what Jeremy has stated are the design team's expectations: (2 * Wis)d6 in total, not per character. For a party of 5, we're talking about 50d6 total vs 10d6 max with 20 Wisdom.
Prayer of Healing is the same level and can only be used out of combat, but only heals 2d8 + WIS. For a 2nd level cleric with +3 WIS that's 12 HP, a bit under the average of 4d6 (14). You can bring that up to 14 if you have 20 Wisdom. And unlike Prayer of Healing, Healing Spirit can be used in combat. It's also better than Aura of Vitality, which is one level higher yet only heals 2d6 per round at the cost of your bonus action.
You expect me to believe they deliberately designed a spell that lets an 8 Wisdom Ranger or Druid heal twice as much as a 20 Wisdom Life Cleric's Prayer of Healing? The idea that Rangers and Druids needed to be better healers doesn't even make any sense. Rangers are only half-spellcasters. And any full spellcaster with Cure Wounds can provide adequate healing. Clerics have never been mandatory.
If Jeremy's house rule tweet wasn't enough, he's explicitly said this is something they didn't notice:
Goodberry on a life cleric gives you 4hp per berry. 10 berry means you get back 40hp at level 2 mixed cleric and druids. How abusive is that mate ?
That's still close enough to the DMG's expected 2d6 per character for a 1st level spell. For a 6 person party, 2d6 * 6 works out to 35. Considering that you're using the subclass that's designed to make healing spells better, it should be somewhat above average. It also costs 10 actions to use and forever puts you 1 level behind on learning higher level spells. Every time you would've wanted to counterspell something at 5th level and couldn't, or cast Greater Restoration at 9th level and couldn't, you're paying for that decision.
I don't think Healing Spirit is absolutely impossible to manage as written. It's just that being so much better than every other option puts pressure on Rangers and Druids to pick it even if they'd rather do other things, and likewise can make dedicated healers feel overshadowed. It's also definitely going to require DMs that like tiring the party out to replan their adventuring days. The game would be better off if its power level matched its slot.
I'm not too concerned. With the amount of backlash this spell has gotten, I expect it to be revised within 1 or 2 months.
I read it, like 5 times now, i still fail to see where the abusive part is. my druid in my group switched one spell for it, and i still don't see it as overpowered.
inquisitivecoder: have you ever realised how often jeremy says things only to satisfy the masses... people yell to him, instead of putting oil onto it and defend himself he just let people run over him and all he answers is sorry. its called disarming a situation by just not doing a thing. this spell will not be revised... errata are said by jeremy himself to never adjust gameplay, they are just reworded things in order to make it more understandable. so no, it won't be revised. once its in an official book, it will forever stay in that book. i can see errata for subsequent book, but i doubt it will change how you play it.
next stop, how about you as a DM start thinking that maybe, just maybe its up to you and not the rules as written to direct the game ? i got a druid friend, he switched the spell, i still fail to see where its abusive. because in combat its not that great compared to the other spells. outside of combat, it just gives more uses out of a spell that is not that great in combat. you could even say the same thing to prayer of healing still.
Mathias, ok you switch it place, that means you will stop it on a friend, otherwise an ennemy will pick the spot and stop you from healing. in all cases, its a clunky combat spell. by the way, did i mentionned my friend also thought it was abusive until he figured its not. i've seen more abusive charm spells int he book. like that suggestion spell that literally becomes dominate monster for 8 hours ! the sounds normal clause doesn't even remotely solve that case.
have you ever looked at the community and how charm person is viewed as the best charm spell existing. they literally think worded right they can control even kings to come to their aid. Again, its the DM job to make sure these things do not get out of hands. if you play by the book by the words, then every single ******* spell can be broken.
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inquisitivecoder: have you ever realised how often jeremy says things only to satisfy the masses... people yell to him, instead of putting oil onto it and defend himself he just let people run over him and all he answers is sorry. its called disarming a situation by just not doing a thing. this spell will not be revised... errata are said by jeremy himself to never adjust gameplay, they are just reworded things in order to make it more understandable. so no, it won't be revised. once its in an official book, it will forever stay in that book. i can see errata for subsequent book, but i doubt it will change how you play it.
I've read every single one of Jeremy's tweets and listened to every Sage Advice segment on Dragon Talk, and I haven't noticed any of these things Jeremy says "only to satisfy the masses."
Just this Monday he was on Dragon Talk again talking about how they're still working on fixing the Beast Master subclass, and that they might even consider providing alternate class features for Way of the Four Elements, which is another highly unpopular subclass.
Does he have a high bar for what should be revised? Yes. Is he very cautious about how to approach those revisions? Yes. Does he try to get to the bottom of why people dislike something before changing it? Yes. But they're clearly not out of the question. Their cutoff for publishing something is 70% satisfaction among players. There's no way this spell would've made it if it had been previewed.
next stop, how about you as a DM start thinking that maybe, just maybe its up to you and not the rules as written to direct the game ?
The fact that I could easily fix the spell with a house rule doesn't change the fact that it has problems. If 80% of people are all house ruling the spell or banning it, it has a problem, and fixing it is better than having 80% of people running subtly different versions of it.
have you ever looked at the community and how charm person is viewed as the best charm spell existing. they literally think worded right they can control even kings to come to their aid.
The Charmed condition doesn't give you any form of mind control, and any setting where any random person can cast Charm Person on the king hasn't been thought out nearly enough.
By the way, 1 hour after casting the spell, the king is going to call back his army, and you'll be a wanted criminal.
Again, its the DM job to make sure these things do not get out of hands. if you play by the book by the words, then every single ******* spell can be broken.
@mikemearls@JeremyECrawford@matthewmercer Druid Healing Spirit out of combat? 1 min, people walk in a circle through it each "round", 10d6 worth of healing at lvl2 ??? Surely not...what am I missing?
Key is out of combat - burning level 2 spell for quasi-short rest is balanced, opportunity cost of not using 2nd level slot can be big; also, a lot of that healing will be overkill at low levels
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
I thought this exchange summed up the design perspective pretty well:
Yep. It also nods at something that often gets forgotten when analyzing a particular game element for "balance" - what a thing can do in a theoretical sense, and what it actually does in a practical sense, are often not the same, and often not even similar enough that the former is relevant to the later.
In this case, it's the high likelihood that spell slots get spent during combat to reduce the damage that ever actually happens (i.e. defensive buffs, debuffing spells, or even just damage-dealing spells reducing the number of turns in which the bad guys cause the party to lose HP), and so they aren't available for this out-of-combat healing that can likely be done with rest instead, or if they are available for this use there isn't a "it would be broken for a single 2nd level spell to fix this" amount of hit points missing from the party for the spell to be deemed broken by restoring.
So it's balanced at low levels by the opportunity cost of a 2nd-level spell slot and by the fact that a lot of that healing will be wasted? Okay. What about high levels, though?
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
So it's balanced at low levels by the opportunity cost of a 2nd-level spell slot and by the fact that a lot of that healing will be wasted? Okay. What about high levels, though?
At high levels it is balanced by the same things - casting a different spell with that spell slot is still a relevant opportunity cost, and its unlike the party will need enough healing to make the healing from this spell not be wasted and not also have been able to get that healing in some other way (such as resting).
Inquisitive...By being a sorcerer with distant metamagic and favored soul with life domain.
You say 80% but in reality that number is not even in the 50ies. Because what you see on forums is like only 10% of the whole community that plays the game. At my place i have 3 groups... All have seen it and none of them thinks its abusive. Thats literally 0% out of 20 players i play with. By your logic at least 16 of them should of thought it was op. Which is not the case.
I do it by raw. By raw it heals 10d6 in 1 minute. Thats what i do. Anything else is not in the spell and is broken because people want to think outside the box and that means doing things the spell is not design for. Some exemples below.
Also... I never mentionned any spells per say... Just said some other spells are worded much worse then healing spirit. Best exemple i have is suggestion who can just outright kill bbeg who fails their saves.
Mathias... At high levels spell slots of level 1 and 2 often become useless. In the worse case it just gave you something to do with it in combat or out of combat. Best case you just helped heals a bit more.
But in all honesty... It feels to me like your players are trying to cheat by thinking turn and rounds do not exists outside of combat. In my games they wouldn't dance because i would count what it does in combat and just let that be the limit.
Exemples of people cheating the engine for benefit... Casting transport via plants and saving 25 people while the spell only last 6 seconds. People make the assumption they have 6 seconds to do things. That spell wasnt made for that.
Other exemple thinking dimension door is actually a door they can past through. Reguardless of what the text says they can pick every words and make an assumption. This is exactly why the dm exists to begin with... To make the calls here.
So again if you let the players do the dance... It is not the spells fault... It is yours as the dm !!!
As for the 11d6 maximum... Wizard broke it themselves with numerous spells. Like beacon of hope who just makes every heals abusives. Regeneration who makes you invincible for 10 minutes literally. Or even mass heal who does like full your entire party and still has overhealing. Or has abusive as that druid infinite wildshape who basically heals him for 150hp every rounds !!!
But yeah... Healing spirit is abusive right.
Wizards always said they made rules to break em. It can only get worse as the months go by.
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Inquisitive...By being a sorcerer with distant metamagic and favored soul with life domain.
How is that broken? You traded being one level behind on learning new spells and having to invest in Wisdom when you could've invested in Constitution or Dexterity for a bit more healing in a class that can already boost healing. That's a bad trade. At least the Druid/Cleric combo doesn't have to invest in a separate ability score and literally quadruples the HP on goodberry.
All have seen it and none of them thinks its abusive. Thats literally 0% out of 20 players i play with
They're obviously not going to think it's abusive if they're under the impression it only heals 10d6 in total. But that's not how the spell works. Crawford wouldn't be giving a house rule that limits it to 10d6 if it was already limited to 10d6. He also wouldn't be describing it as something that slipped through.
You're also not accounting for Adventurer's League, where the DMs play by the book.
However, I think some of the possible in combat uses are mitigated by the movement requirements. If an opponent moves into the square occupied by the healing spirit then its ability can't be used for that round. If the healing spirit is cast on a character in melee then they will get 1d6 healing/turn ... allies could move through their square as difficult terrain ... however, the d6 healing is not worth the likely opportunity attacks. The opponents could also move to attack positions that would pin down the allies so that they can't use the healing spirit without opportunity attacks. The healing spirit provides some interesting options but I suspect it will never reach its in combat healing potential against a reasonably deployed opponent.
Another application for healing spirit might be to cast it on a front line barbarian. With their damage resistances, the healing would be effectively doubled.
Out of combat, healing spirit could provide an average 37.5 hit points/character (77.5 for a life cleric multiclass). This compares to the 12 to 14 hps/character from prayer of healing. So from an out of combat healing perspective, healing spirit completely obsoletes prayer of healing since under those circumstances there is nothing preventing the full use of healing spirit. In addition, healing spirit requires only 1 minute and can be applied to an unlimited number of characters while prayer of healing is limited to 6.
So, overall, in my opinion, in combat healing spirit might be fine due to the movement requirements and the ability of opponents to interfere with its use or capitalize on the possibility of opportunity attacks, while out of combat it is clearly a bit over the top compared to other options.
inquisitive, i have played in adventurer's league, i guess you just make assumptions that DM have to follow the book closely. i can guarantee you, you don't need to be a rules lawyer to understand the job of a DM. even more, you seem to fail to see that 5e is far from being balanced edition wise. and the more we had content to it, the more unbalanced it will be. much like how the 3rd edition was at the end.
distant cure wounds becomes strickly better then healing word, which totally become obsolete, making that use of that spell totally unwaranted for. thus making sorcerer healers the best damn class from level 1 to about 11. clerics pulls back only when they get beacon of hope. You also seem to be on the impression that high level spells are important. but in reality all low levels spells breaks high level spells. so anything level 8 or 9 is unimportant. anybody who played that far can tell you they didn't need anything higher then level 7 to begin with. the most abusives spells are all level 1 to 6. i added 7 mainly because of a few specific spells.
as for jeremy crawford tweets... you never worked for supports huh... we have to take the customers stand because otherwise it leads to more fire and more oil being thrown. of course he wouldn'T go saying its as intended when a buynch of people cry about it. he's gonna take the stand that sure it can lead to some disasters if you take it word for word. but every single spells can be that way if you take them word for word. after all, everyone i talked to on the net, thinks charm person is a fully operationnal combat thing that leads to awefully big things. like charming a king and getting a new kingdom out of it. while i know this to be false, it seems everyone i talked to when i made that vampiric class we're against it saying its literally already abusive a spell. in reality it is very very very far from abusive if you play it by the rules in the book.
here i see the same thing, all i see is a person saying its abusive, yet somehow they fail to see the right play... the right play being, that normally we should be playing turns and rounds at all times because thats what makes sense. but somehow when people start thinking out of combat they sudddently see a ton of abusive stuff. and that's normal when you are trained in thinking combat and non-combat are two different things.
on that, it seems this arguments is turning around in circles... but im fine with this. d&d is all about, each its own game after all.
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...anybody who played that far can tell you they didn't need anything higher then level 7 to begin with.
Acting as if you have the authority to speak for "anybody" hinders your argument, even if it happens to be technically correct, because you are not citing evidence - you are just appealing to some kind of majority that you assume shares your opinion.
For reference, you are factually wrong here. Some people who have played far enough to have 7th and higher level spells, specifically me and my group, will not tell anyone we "didn't need anything higher than level 7 to begin with" because we absolutely did need those high level spells - a product of going up against high-level threats, which are often capable of causing consequences that can only be counteracted with those high level spells you claim literally no one needs.
inquisitive, i have played in adventurer's league, i guess you just make assumptions that DM have to follow the book closely.
I'm not making any assumptions. From D&D Adventurer's League Dungeon Master's Guide 7.0:
You’re Empowered. Make decisions about how the group interacts with the adventure; adjusting or improvising is encouraged, so long as you maintain the adventure’s spirit. This doesn’t allow you to implement house rules or change those of the Adventurers League.
No house rules, and no breaking any of AL's additional rules.
even more, you seem to fail to see that 5e is far from being balanced edition wise. and the more we had content to it, the more unbalanced it will be. much like how the 3rd edition was at the end.
Not really. 5th edition has a ton of safeguards built into the core rules that 3rd edition didn't have. To name a few: bounded accuracy; concentration; the rules on casting spells as a bonus action; magic item attunement; no stacking AC calculations; fewer 6th-9th level spell slots; multiclassing is optional; no magic items or class features that can store 6th-9th level spells or restore 6th-9th level slots. They're also releasing new player options at a much slower rate, and previewing them for public playtesting.
distant cure wounds becomes strickly better then healing word, which totally become obsolete, making that use of that spell totally unwaranted for. thus making sorcerer healers the best damn class from level 1 to about 11.
Except for the fact that 1) you're wasting sorcery points that could be better spent on other things since 2) you don't always need the range and 3) Healing Word uses a bonus action anyways so you can still use your action for something else.
as for jeremy crawford tweets... you never worked for supports huh... we have to take the customers stand because otherwise it leads to more fire and more oil being thrown. of course he wouldn'T go saying its as intended when a buynch of people cry about it.
That's an extraordinary claim; it's going to require evidence. Jeremy's job is explaining the rules, not keeping people happy. He has no qualms about defending his design decisions even if people complain about them (e.g. the spell identification rules in XGTE.) We're talking about someone that looks up the exact text in the books before answering rules questions.
Yet most of what you mentionned has already been broken by the official books...
Exemples of bladesingning who actually stack with other formulas.
But as i said to each its own.
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Exemples of bladesingning who actually stack with other formulas.
That's a bonus, not a formula.
You don't say...
*sigh*
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This was a frustrating conversation to catch up on. I am really disappointed in the mentality of some of the people here.
1. If your first inclination as a DM is to punish the players for using a 2nd level spell EXACTLY the way it's written, then should be a pretty clear signal that a) this spell is broken b) you're a terrible DM. 2. The OP clearly broke down the numbers. It is absurd seeing people claim that "all out of combat healing is OP so this is ok" when this spell is doing MAGNITUDES more healing than any existing option (including SIX TIMES the healing power of the current level 3 spell slot MVP: Aura of Vitality). 3. It is utterly ridiculous that anyone could argue that 6 people can't move in and out of a 5'x5' space every 6 seconds, or that they can't just crowd into that space. What is wrong with you guys?
The spell is broken. Period.
The discussion was supposed to be about how a completely broken spell was able to make it into an officially released product and how we can fix it in the future. Instead it got sidetracked by people who are clearly trolling for the sake of argument. Really disappointing.
Coincidentally, at level 2 i full my whole party of their life with only 6-7 berry. concidentally, with only 10 berry, i full my whole party to full health even if they are at level 4.
incidentally, first level spell slots becomes literally useless the more you go in levels, making me use level 1 spells slots and level 2 spells lots on healing said party during short rest, which by the way my DM makes it 15 minutes instead of 1 hour. and thus our party is always full on health every short rest without having a need for healing dices, or using them to finish what i started.
as for healing outside of combat, the goal here is to proove you that overhealing is not really any better.
Also, Healing spirit doesn't even remotely do what the OP claims it does.
he claims the spell does 400 healing, which is false.
heres the spell points by points...
- heals for 1 minute, thats 10 rounds for anybody that goes into it or start its turn into it.
- its a bonus action
- its a level spell slot
- it heals 1d6 no bonuses to "ANY" creatures entering it or starting its turn in it.
- its zone is a 5 ft zone, literally only one creature at a time can use it.
want me to tell you the biggest CON ever...
- EVERY CREATURE
that means enemies can also use it. you don't decide who gets healed, any creatures who get inside it is healed.
next con to the spell...
- that means to heal more then 1d6 per round, the creature needs to form a line and go thru it and not stop in it. leaving room for the next person to go thru, including enemies who will not give you room to move inside it.
out of combat the spell can literally heal the whole party full, because out of combat we're not using initiatives and thus not using rounds. how often can get inside that 5ft range during a minute... ok i put my feat in and then out, get healed, i do the same and i do it like 50 times in a minute. totally possible. at this point if you do let that happen to your players, as a DM you are the problem, not the spell.
so to gives you the run down...
6 characters as OP as they can be...
Level 20 barbarian, with 24 Con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d12 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 7 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 310 hp.
Level 20 Druid, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d8 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 230 hp.
Level 20 Rogue, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d8 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 230 hp.
Level 20 Cleric, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d8 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 230 hp.
Level 20 Mage, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d6 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 210 hp.
Level 20 Fighter, with 20 con score and the tough feat. with average life is equal to ( ( 20d10 ) / 2 + 10 ) + ( 20 * 5 ) + ( 2 * 20 ) = 250 hp.
thats an all party life at the max they be using average life.
now lets see your maths about how much your spell heals...
you claim it heals upward to 400 or so HP. the total party size of 6 characters have a pool of life that exceeds way more then 400 hp.
again, i fails to see where the spell is even remotely abusive ?
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Nonsense. A quick look at other spells shows Healing Spirit can't possibly be working as intended. The DMG gives guidelines for how much damage or healing single and multiple target spells should provide at each spell level. A multi-target 2nd level spell should have 4d6 per target. Healing Spirit has a reliable 10d6 per creature out of combat. That's a 6th level spell (11d6). It's also way higher than what Jeremy has stated are the design team's expectations: (2 * Wis)d6 in total, not per character. For a party of 5, we're talking about 50d6 total vs 10d6 max with 20 Wisdom.
Prayer of Healing is the same level and can only be used out of combat, but only heals 2d8 + WIS. For a 2nd level cleric with +3 WIS that's 12 HP, a bit under the average of 4d6 (14). You can bring that up to 14 if you have 20 Wisdom. And unlike Prayer of Healing, Healing Spirit can be used in combat. It's also better than Aura of Vitality, which is one level higher yet only heals 2d6 per round at the cost of your bonus action.
You expect me to believe they deliberately designed a spell that lets an 8 Wisdom Ranger or Druid heal twice as much as a 20 Wisdom Life Cleric's Prayer of Healing? The idea that Rangers and Druids needed to be better healers doesn't even make any sense. Rangers are only half-spellcasters. And any full spellcaster with Cure Wounds can provide adequate healing. Clerics have never been mandatory.
If Jeremy's house rule tweet wasn't enough, he's explicitly said this is something they didn't notice:
"We catch hundreds of things like this in every book. This is an odd one that slipped through the cracks."
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I read it, like 5 times now, i still fail to see where the abusive part is. my druid in my group switched one spell for it, and i still don't see it as overpowered.
inquisitivecoder: have you ever realised how often jeremy says things only to satisfy the masses... people yell to him, instead of putting oil onto it and defend himself he just let people run over him and all he answers is sorry. its called disarming a situation by just not doing a thing. this spell will not be revised... errata are said by jeremy himself to never adjust gameplay, they are just reworded things in order to make it more understandable. so no, it won't be revised. once its in an official book, it will forever stay in that book. i can see errata for subsequent book, but i doubt it will change how you play it.
next stop, how about you as a DM start thinking that maybe, just maybe its up to you and not the rules as written to direct the game ?
i got a druid friend, he switched the spell, i still fail to see where its abusive. because in combat its not that great compared to the other spells. outside of combat, it just gives more uses out of a spell that is not that great in combat. you could even say the same thing to prayer of healing still.
Mathias, ok you switch it place, that means you will stop it on a friend, otherwise an ennemy will pick the spot and stop you from healing.
in all cases, its a clunky combat spell.
by the way, did i mentionned my friend also thought it was abusive until he figured its not.
i've seen more abusive charm spells int he book. like that suggestion spell that literally becomes dominate monster for 8 hours !
the sounds normal clause doesn't even remotely solve that case.
have you ever looked at the community and how charm person is viewed as the best charm spell existing. they literally think worded right they can control even kings to come to their aid.
Again, its the DM job to make sure these things do not get out of hands. if you play by the book by the words, then every single ******* spell can be broken.
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I've read every single one of Jeremy's tweets and listened to every Sage Advice segment on Dragon Talk, and I haven't noticed any of these things Jeremy says "only to satisfy the masses."
"Healing spirit is exceptionally effective outside combat, and it does have the potential to exceed our expectations for it. I'll have my eye on it to see if it causes disruption in actual play, rather than in theoretical situations. If it does, we'll change it." He's re-quoted that tweet 4 times this week.
Just this Monday he was on Dragon Talk again talking about how they're still working on fixing the Beast Master subclass, and that they might even consider providing alternate class features for Way of the Four Elements, which is another highly unpopular subclass.
Does he have a high bar for what should be revised? Yes. Is he very cautious about how to approach those revisions? Yes. Does he try to get to the bottom of why people dislike something before changing it? Yes. But they're clearly not out of the question. Their cutoff for publishing something is 70% satisfaction among players. There's no way this spell would've made it if it had been previewed.
Ah, the Oberoni fallacy. Classic.
The fact that I could easily fix the spell with a house rule doesn't change the fact that it has problems. If 80% of people are all house ruling the spell or banning it, it has a problem, and fixing it is better than having 80% of people running subtly different versions of it.
The Charmed condition doesn't give you any form of mind control, and any setting where any random person can cast Charm Person on the king hasn't been thought out nearly enough.
By the way, 1 hour after casting the spell, the king is going to call back his army, and you'll be a wanted criminal.
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I thought this exchange summed up the design perspective pretty well:
Yep. It also nods at something that often gets forgotten when analyzing a particular game element for "balance" - what a thing can do in a theoretical sense, and what it actually does in a practical sense, are often not the same, and often not even similar enough that the former is relevant to the later.
In this case, it's the high likelihood that spell slots get spent during combat to reduce the damage that ever actually happens (i.e. defensive buffs, debuffing spells, or even just damage-dealing spells reducing the number of turns in which the bad guys cause the party to lose HP), and so they aren't available for this out-of-combat healing that can likely be done with rest instead, or if they are available for this use there isn't a "it would be broken for a single 2nd level spell to fix this" amount of hit points missing from the party for the spell to be deemed broken by restoring.
So it's balanced at low levels by the opportunity cost of a 2nd-level spell slot and by the fact that a lot of that healing will be wasted? Okay. What about high levels, though?
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Inquisitive...By being a sorcerer with distant metamagic and favored soul with life domain.
You say 80% but in reality that number is not even in the 50ies. Because what you see on forums is like only 10% of the whole community that plays the game. At my place i have 3 groups... All have seen it and none of them thinks its abusive. Thats literally 0% out of 20 players i play with. By your logic at least 16 of them should of thought it was op. Which is not the case.
I do it by raw. By raw it heals 10d6 in 1 minute. Thats what i do. Anything else is not in the spell and is broken because people want to think outside the box and that means doing things the spell is not design for. Some exemples below.
Also... I never mentionned any spells per say... Just said some other spells are worded much worse then healing spirit. Best exemple i have is suggestion who can just outright kill bbeg who fails their saves.
Mathias... At high levels spell slots of level 1 and 2 often become useless. In the worse case it just gave you something to do with it in combat or out of combat. Best case you just helped heals a bit more.
But in all honesty... It feels to me like your players are trying to cheat by thinking turn and rounds do not exists outside of combat. In my games they wouldn't dance because i would count what it does in combat and just let that be the limit.
Exemples of people cheating the engine for benefit... Casting transport via plants and saving 25 people while the spell only last 6 seconds. People make the assumption they have 6 seconds to do things. That spell wasnt made for that.
Other exemple thinking dimension door is actually a door they can past through. Reguardless of what the text says they can pick every words and make an assumption. This is exactly why the dm exists to begin with... To make the calls here.
So again if you let the players do the dance... It is not the spells fault... It is yours as the dm !!!
As for the 11d6 maximum... Wizard broke it themselves with numerous spells. Like beacon of hope who just makes every heals abusives. Regeneration who makes you invincible for 10 minutes literally. Or even mass heal who does like full your entire party and still has overhealing. Or has abusive as that druid infinite wildshape who basically heals him for 150hp every rounds !!!
But yeah... Healing spirit is abusive right.
Wizards always said they made rules to break em. It can only get worse as the months go by.
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How is that broken? You traded being one level behind on learning new spells and having to invest in Wisdom when you could've invested in Constitution or Dexterity for a bit more healing in a class that can already boost healing. That's a bad trade. At least the Druid/Cleric combo doesn't have to invest in a separate ability score and literally quadruples the HP on goodberry.
They're obviously not going to think it's abusive if they're under the impression it only heals 10d6 in total. But that's not how the spell works. Crawford wouldn't be giving a house rule that limits it to 10d6 if it was already limited to 10d6. He also wouldn't be describing it as something that slipped through.
You're also not accounting for Adventurer's League, where the DMs play by the book.
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It is an interesting spell.
However, I think some of the possible in combat uses are mitigated by the movement requirements. If an opponent moves into the square occupied by the healing spirit then its ability can't be used for that round. If the healing spirit is cast on a character in melee then they will get 1d6 healing/turn ... allies could move through their square as difficult terrain ... however, the d6 healing is not worth the likely opportunity attacks. The opponents could also move to attack positions that would pin down the allies so that they can't use the healing spirit without opportunity attacks. The healing spirit provides some interesting options but I suspect it will never reach its in combat healing potential against a reasonably deployed opponent.
Another application for healing spirit might be to cast it on a front line barbarian. With their damage resistances, the healing would be effectively doubled.
Out of combat, healing spirit could provide an average 37.5 hit points/character (77.5 for a life cleric multiclass). This compares to the 12 to 14 hps/character from prayer of healing. So from an out of combat healing perspective, healing spirit completely obsoletes prayer of healing since under those circumstances there is nothing preventing the full use of healing spirit. In addition, healing spirit requires only 1 minute and can be applied to an unlimited number of characters while prayer of healing is limited to 6.
So, overall, in my opinion, in combat healing spirit might be fine due to the movement requirements and the ability of opponents to interfere with its use or capitalize on the possibility of opportunity attacks, while out of combat it is clearly a bit over the top compared to other options.
inquisitive, i have played in adventurer's league, i guess you just make assumptions that DM have to follow the book closely. i can guarantee you, you don't need to be a rules lawyer to understand the job of a DM. even more, you seem to fail to see that 5e is far from being balanced edition wise. and the more we had content to it, the more unbalanced it will be. much like how the 3rd edition was at the end.
distant cure wounds becomes strickly better then healing word, which totally become obsolete, making that use of that spell totally unwaranted for. thus making sorcerer healers the best damn class from level 1 to about 11. clerics pulls back only when they get beacon of hope. You also seem to be on the impression that high level spells are important. but in reality all low levels spells breaks high level spells. so anything level 8 or 9 is unimportant. anybody who played that far can tell you they didn't need anything higher then level 7 to begin with. the most abusives spells are all level 1 to 6. i added 7 mainly because of a few specific spells.
as for jeremy crawford tweets...
you never worked for supports huh... we have to take the customers stand because otherwise it leads to more fire and more oil being thrown. of course he wouldn'T go saying its as intended when a buynch of people cry about it. he's gonna take the stand that sure it can lead to some disasters if you take it word for word. but every single spells can be that way if you take them word for word. after all, everyone i talked to on the net, thinks charm person is a fully operationnal combat thing that leads to awefully big things. like charming a king and getting a new kingdom out of it. while i know this to be false, it seems everyone i talked to when i made that vampiric class we're against it saying its literally already abusive a spell. in reality it is very very very far from abusive if you play it by the rules in the book.
here i see the same thing, all i see is a person saying its abusive, yet somehow they fail to see the right play... the right play being, that normally we should be playing turns and rounds at all times because thats what makes sense. but somehow when people start thinking out of combat they sudddently see a ton of abusive stuff. and that's normal when you are trained in thinking combat and non-combat are two different things.
on that, it seems this arguments is turning around in circles... but im fine with this. d&d is all about, each its own game after all.
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Acting as if you have the authority to speak for "anybody" hinders your argument, even if it happens to be technically correct, because you are not citing evidence - you are just appealing to some kind of majority that you assume shares your opinion.
For reference, you are factually wrong here. Some people who have played far enough to have 7th and higher level spells, specifically me and my group, will not tell anyone we "didn't need anything higher than level 7 to begin with" because we absolutely did need those high level spells - a product of going up against high-level threats, which are often capable of causing consequences that can only be counteracted with those high level spells you claim literally no one needs.
I'm not making any assumptions. From D&D Adventurer's League Dungeon Master's Guide 7.0:
No house rules, and no breaking any of AL's additional rules.
Not really. 5th edition has a ton of safeguards built into the core rules that 3rd edition didn't have. To name a few: bounded accuracy; concentration; the rules on casting spells as a bonus action; magic item attunement; no stacking AC calculations; fewer 6th-9th level spell slots; multiclassing is optional; no magic items or class features that can store 6th-9th level spells or restore 6th-9th level slots. They're also releasing new player options at a much slower rate, and previewing them for public playtesting.
Except for the fact that 1) you're wasting sorcery points that could be better spent on other things since 2) you don't always need the range and 3) Healing Word uses a bonus action anyways so you can still use your action for something else.
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Yet most of what you mentionned has already been broken by the official books...
Exemples of bladesingning who actually stack with other formulas.
But as i said to each its own.
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This was a frustrating conversation to catch up on. I am really disappointed in the mentality of some of the people here.
1. If your first inclination as a DM is to punish the players for using a 2nd level spell EXACTLY the way it's written, then should be a pretty clear signal that a) this spell is broken b) you're a terrible DM.
2. The OP clearly broke down the numbers. It is absurd seeing people claim that "all out of combat healing is OP so this is ok" when this spell is doing MAGNITUDES more healing than any existing option (including SIX TIMES the healing power of the current level 3 spell slot MVP: Aura of Vitality).
3. It is utterly ridiculous that anyone could argue that 6 people can't move in and out of a 5'x5' space every 6 seconds, or that they can't just crowd into that space. What is wrong with you guys?
The spell is broken. Period.
The discussion was supposed to be about how a completely broken spell was able to make it into an officially released product and how we can fix it in the future. Instead it got sidetracked by people who are clearly trolling for the sake of argument. Really disappointing.