Looking at making a character for an upcoming campaign and the 4 person party is looking like: Cavalier Fighter, Hunter Ranger, Monk (not sure subclass yet), then my character. I'm not particularly excited about rolling a healer. The closest I may get would be a Devotion Paladin, but right now I'd prefer a Half-Elf Draconic Sorcerer. My question is with hit dice healing on short rests and healing potions, just how necessary is a dedicated healer role in a 4 person 5th ed. party?
I had considered picking up the Inspiring Leader feat on my sorcerer for a little temp hp cushion, but I most likely wouldn't pick it up until lvl 12 after I maxed out my Cha.
What are your thoughts? Any experience DM or player with healer-less parties?
Personally, I believe that a party "healer" is way less needed than ever with 5th edition.
It's pretty important that someone on the party has a method of getting someone back up if they're on zero and making death saves though. Paladins are pretty good at that.
I'd suggest talking to your DM, letting them know what you want to play and seeing if they think it will be a problem.
The 5th edition game comes with a lot of resilience baked-in to the general rules (hit dice and full-heal long rests, for example), and into many of the classes. As such a dedicated healer is only necessary under the circumstance that the play style preferred by the group makes it necessary - by which I mean that a group that likes to use a larger number of individually less potent encounters will likely not suffer without a dedicated healer present, while a group that tries to make every encounter push the limits of the characters and significantly risk their death will need a dedicated healer or to be able to take frequent long rests.
So I second Stormknight's suggestion to talk it over with the DM and see if it sounds like a problem to them (because it wouldn't to me, but it might to someone else).
It's pretty important that someone on the party has a method of getting someone back up if they're on zero and making death saves though.
The Ranger's Goodberries could probably do the trick. If he routinely gives some to each party member each day, anyone can get a downed party member back in the action (especially a PC that acts before the downed PC's initiative).
Ah, forgot about Goodberries! Would be a nice backup. And I'll see check with the DM on the encounter frequency/difficulty to get an idea. Either way, the Healer feat isn't so bad. Especially, if I can use my action to heal via the feat then quicken a spell for the turn. (Dimension Door perhaps...)
Could consider swapping your Sorcerous Origin for Divine Soul if you're worried. Still have access to the whole Sorcerer list but also to Cure Wounds and whatever Cleric spells you prefer.
As soon as the game starts, walk out of the tavern, across the street to the temple, and hire an acolyte to carry your bags and tend your wounds. Call him Jim.
Personally, I don't think it's necessary. There are multiple means of healing and self-healing. Buy a potion of healing or get herbalism tool proficiency and make some. Fighter has second wind, rangers have goodberry, etc.
Besides that, damage is, as always, king. Healing has its place, but killing things quickly is still the best option.
In my experience playing in Adventurer's League, life is much easier if there is at least one person in the party who can cast healing word.
5e has a lot of creatures that have multiattack or can do a lot of burst damage if the dice go the wrong way perhaps especially at low level (In some cases, a single crit can knock a level 1 or even 2 to zero hit points depending on the attacker and the hit points of the character). This eliminates all their actions, attacks, spells, etc. It can be especially unfortunate for a small low level party. Sometimes, the remaining characters can still prevail but it has occasionally required a lenient DM for that to happen.
However, a character with healing word can get that downed character back into the fight from a distance for the cost of a bonus action and a first level spell slot. They may not have many hit points but once they are up they could take a healing potion, use ranged attacks or at the very least provide another target for the opponents. In combat healing is not an efficient use of spells ... but moving to another character to try to use a healing potion is even more costly in terms of actions and you won't be doing damage while it happens. On the other hand, leaving the character on the ground means they are not contributing to the fight, where you may be even more outnumbered, the character will be making death saves, and an opponent getting another good roll on the remaining characters might well result in a TPK.
In general, with hit dice on short rests and some of the class healing abilities, there is far less need for a dedicated healer than in earlier editions. However, the ability to heal at a 60' range using a bonus action can be extremely useful.
One level of cleric, bard, or druid covers it. (I have both a Ranger3/Cleric1 and a Bard2/Warlock2 who have found it a useful spell in just the sort of situation described). Note: the characters were built for role play reasons ... the healing word spell was just a useful side effect.
Personally, I don't think it's necessary. There are multiple means of healing and self-healing. Buy a potion of healing or get herbalism tool proficiency and make some. Fighter has second wind, rangers have goodberry, etc.
Besides that, damage is, as always, king. Healing has its place, but killing things quickly is still the best option.
I tend to agree, but with a single caveat. If you are dealing with lots of monsters which result in encounters with the action economy favoring the monster side, it starts to feel necessary.
I have seen groups where the deadly single boss encounter felt trivial...and then you hit a pack of goblins/kobolds and you wonder what happened.
While it is a DM's role to balance it out, we all have to learn it and the dice can be unfriendly sometimes. A common player answer is to have dedicated healing. It's not the only answer, but I think in an another thread, someone mentioned that MMO players (like WoW) go that direction as a solution. Of course D3 players, would just add more AoE damage by comparison. Would love to see data on that.
Buying potions is an option certainly, but that may not be an answer. The current campaign I am in, is magic poor...and a pack of hyena's did a number on my Warlock. The death experience was a cool RP moment...and my Warlock has a cleric level to help offset. :)
I've been thinking on the action economy of healing potions and I'm wondering, does taking/giving a Potion of Healing require an action? Or does it count as using an object as part of another action (such as a movement action)? For example, could I move to a fallen ally and administer a Potion of Healing all as part of my movement action, then cast a spell (dimension door perhaps)? In the PHB it states that you take the "Use an Object" when the object requires your action to use, but the item description for this potion (and all the potions I've seen) do not state that an action is required to "use" this object. Items such as rings, robes, wands, staves, etc all state that an action is needed to use them, but not potions from what I can tell.
Has anyone heard any specifics on this? Or would this simply be an environmental/DM discretion issue?
Has anyone heard any specifics on this? Or would this simply be an environmental/DM discretion issue?
The description of the potion category of magic items says "Drinking a potion or administering a potion to another character requires an action." (You can find that here, though it is missing from the basic rules - like all the rest of the magic item category rules are - for some reason).
I've been thinking on the action economy of healing potions and I'm wondering, does taking/giving a Potion of Healing require an action? Or does it count as using an object as part of another action (such as a movement action)? For example, could I move to a fallen ally and administer a Potion of Healing all as part of my movement action, then cast a spell (dimension door perhaps)? In the PHB it states that you take the "Use an Object" when the object requires your action to use, but the item description for this potion (and all the potions I've seen) do not state that an action is required to "use" this object. Items such as rings, robes, wands, staves, etc all state that an action is needed to use them, but not potions from what I can tell.
Has anyone heard any specifics on this? Or would this simply be an environmental/DM discretion issue?
See the section from the DMG below, regarding potions -- yes it does require an action to drink or administer a potion. If you do not have the DMG on DND beyond but have it physical, it's page 139. (Sage Advice pointed me here)
Also related, it is not considered the "use an object" action, activating a magic item is "it's own thing" per Jeremy Crawford, via sage advice (this would have an effect on the Rogue's Fast Hands ability for the Thief subclass, meaning Fast Hands does not give you the ability to take a potion as a bonus action)
All this being said, the PHB states that you can pull a potion from your backpack in tandem with your movement and action, and as such, I'd allow you to also pass it to another player, but not administer it unless you are using your action.
I'd say some kind of heal to get people up from 0 is necessary, but for normal healing you can rely on hit dice. It is harder though.
Consider a bard over a sorcerer for this party though. Free access to the occasional healing spell, and still a full arcane caster (and imo a more interesting caster than a sorcerer). In addition you get Song of Rest to boost all the hit dice healing your party will be doing without a healer (add a 1d6 to whenever someone heals during a short rest). (Lore) bards can also grab Aura of Vitality from the paladin list at 6th level, which is 20d6 healing over 10 rounds for a single lvl 3 slot.
Something one of my DMs favored in a low or no healing composition party was jokingly referred to as splat potions, same cost as a regular healing potion but is bonus action to break against a body healing for 1d4, followed by taking 1 damage. The reason I did not write that as 1d4-1 was because it gave a 1/4 chance to do no healing BUT would still restart the death saving roll clock. He did say no throwing the potion at people, said something about fantasy paintball.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
I also suggest thinking beyond healing. A cleric can easily do other things that parties frequently need:
Raise Dead, esp. revivify
Remove curse
Silence
Turn undead
Restoration
We have to current campaigns and one that recently finished. Two have a main cleric and one only has a druid. In my opinion, there are a fair number of encounters that are significantly easier or harder depending on the presence of a cleric. Now, I played one of those clerics instead of the wizard I wanted to play. I took it as a challenge and my cleric became the party leader and actually did 90% of the damage to Strahd.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
I've found that in 5E large amounts of damage are common. It's easy to do damage and having some healing abilities that work in combat in a party is almost a necessity. Simple healing potions will meet that need and so will any spell or ability that does some healing. When you have a monk or rogue in melee, they don't have the super high AC's that tanks have and they do get hit so healing them once or twice in a combat makes things go much better for the party as a whole!
I had a blast playing a life cleric that was a variant human took the magic initiate feat Wizard. Get 2 wizard cantrips and a 1st le3vel spell Took Magehand and Minor illusion as cantrips and Find Familiar as the 1st level spell. It is so fun standing back and dropping touch based healing spells on the party via your familiar.
I think the key part of this ask is... dedicated. And to that I would say absolutely not. As noted in some of the assumptions of the posts in response, there are a lot of options for healing. You do not need a character to be the dedicated healer during fights like in say an mmorpg. The idea of it being useful to stand back or stay out of fighting and heal is just not a good option. Combat Spells really only heal damage equal to maybe 1 attack or turn of attacks as things scale. You will never "keep the party alive" for more than one fight a day. Out of combat there are a few useful heals and some that are broken good. But again, a limited number of times a day. You will not "heal through" an encounter.
Even a class that can heal, should think about what it can do in combat besides heal because it will mostly be using a heal to get someone who drops back into the fight and hopefully that isn' every turn :)
Basically you want some sort of melee, ranged or cantrip attack to use most of the time or plan on using the help action to give your fighters advantage (maybe using sanctuary or protection from good/evil to discourage people attacking you while you are in midst of fight)
Some things that are useful healing without needing to be a central focus...
Goodberry spell (Druid, ranger or magic initiate feat)- single most useful heal at low level. Parcel out 10hp that can be used any time throughout day per 1hp by anyone. Everyone in party has 1 or 2 to wake people up in combat. Familiars are also pretty nice for delivery. Getting 0hp teammates back to 1hp is stupidly useful.
Healer feat: good supplement to magical healing. Usable 1 per short rest give 1d6+4+#HD so 4th level character would get 1d6+8. Also gives people 1hp when used to stabilize. Again, getting folks back up.
Healing Word though smaller is more useful as others have stated because it is ranged and a bonus action allowing you to stay in the fight while bringing someone "back online". Not to be overlooked is that it only requires a verbal component allowing it to be used while fully armed.
Generally, it feels to me like a "dedicated" healer will just make you feel very weak if you aren't built to do somehing else during combat. And before you say Duh. I am currently playing with someone who is entrenched in 3.5 think and is baffled why his druid who can't fight, has crappy AC, burns all his heals in one fight and then is useless the rest of the day. And yes, have had the conversation with him numerous times. He gets mad when he asks "anybody need a cure?" And we say no, save it for when someone is out of fight.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Looking at making a character for an upcoming campaign and the 4 person party is looking like: Cavalier Fighter, Hunter Ranger, Monk (not sure subclass yet), then my character. I'm not particularly excited about rolling a healer. The closest I may get would be a Devotion Paladin, but right now I'd prefer a Half-Elf Draconic Sorcerer. My question is with hit dice healing on short rests and healing potions, just how necessary is a dedicated healer role in a 4 person 5th ed. party?
I had considered picking up the Inspiring Leader feat on my sorcerer for a little temp hp cushion, but I most likely wouldn't pick it up until lvl 12 after I maxed out my Cha.
What are your thoughts? Any experience DM or player with healer-less parties?
Thanks in advance!
Personally, I believe that a party "healer" is way less needed than ever with 5th edition.
It's pretty important that someone on the party has a method of getting someone back up if they're on zero and making death saves though. Paladins are pretty good at that.
I'd suggest talking to your DM, letting them know what you want to play and seeing if they think it will be a problem.
Pun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
The 5th edition game comes with a lot of resilience baked-in to the general rules (hit dice and full-heal long rests, for example), and into many of the classes. As such a dedicated healer is only necessary under the circumstance that the play style preferred by the group makes it necessary - by which I mean that a group that likes to use a larger number of individually less potent encounters will likely not suffer without a dedicated healer present, while a group that tries to make every encounter push the limits of the characters and significantly risk their death will need a dedicated healer or to be able to take frequent long rests.
So I second Stormknight's suggestion to talk it over with the DM and see if it sounds like a problem to them (because it wouldn't to me, but it might to someone else).
Ah, forgot about Goodberries! Would be a nice backup. And I'll see check with the DM on the encounter frequency/difficulty to get an idea. Either way, the Healer feat isn't so bad. Especially, if I can use my action to heal via the feat then quicken a spell for the turn. (Dimension Door perhaps...)
Could consider swapping your Sorcerous Origin for Divine Soul if you're worried. Still have access to the whole Sorcerer list but also to Cure Wounds and whatever Cleric spells you prefer.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
Healing in 5th edition:
As soon as the game starts, walk out of the tavern, across the street to the temple, and hire an acolyte to carry your bags and tend your wounds. Call him Jim.
Personally, I don't think it's necessary. There are multiple means of healing and self-healing. Buy a potion of healing or get herbalism tool proficiency and make some. Fighter has second wind, rangers have goodberry, etc.
Besides that, damage is, as always, king. Healing has its place, but killing things quickly is still the best option.
In my experience playing in Adventurer's League, life is much easier if there is at least one person in the party who can cast healing word.
5e has a lot of creatures that have multiattack or can do a lot of burst damage if the dice go the wrong way perhaps especially at low level (In some cases, a single crit can knock a level 1 or even 2 to zero hit points depending on the attacker and the hit points of the character). This eliminates all their actions, attacks, spells, etc. It can be especially unfortunate for a small low level party. Sometimes, the remaining characters can still prevail but it has occasionally required a lenient DM for that to happen.
However, a character with healing word can get that downed character back into the fight from a distance for the cost of a bonus action and a first level spell slot. They may not have many hit points but once they are up they could take a healing potion, use ranged attacks or at the very least provide another target for the opponents. In combat healing is not an efficient use of spells ... but moving to another character to try to use a healing potion is even more costly in terms of actions and you won't be doing damage while it happens. On the other hand, leaving the character on the ground means they are not contributing to the fight, where you may be even more outnumbered, the character will be making death saves, and an opponent getting another good roll on the remaining characters might well result in a TPK.
In general, with hit dice on short rests and some of the class healing abilities, there is far less need for a dedicated healer than in earlier editions. However, the ability to heal at a 60' range using a bonus action can be extremely useful.
One level of cleric, bard, or druid covers it. (I have both a Ranger3/Cleric1 and a Bard2/Warlock2 who have found it a useful spell in just the sort of situation described). Note: the characters were built for role play reasons ... the healing word spell was just a useful side effect.
I've been thinking on the action economy of healing potions and I'm wondering, does taking/giving a Potion of Healing require an action? Or does it count as using an object as part of another action (such as a movement action)? For example, could I move to a fallen ally and administer a Potion of Healing all as part of my movement action, then cast a spell (dimension door perhaps)? In the PHB it states that you take the "Use an Object" when the object requires your action to use, but the item description for this potion (and all the potions I've seen) do not state that an action is required to "use" this object. Items such as rings, robes, wands, staves, etc all state that an action is needed to use them, but not potions from what I can tell.
Has anyone heard any specifics on this? Or would this simply be an environmental/DM discretion issue?
All this being said, the PHB states that you can pull a potion from your backpack in tandem with your movement and action, and as such, I'd allow you to also pass it to another player, but not administer it unless you are using your action.
How do you get a one-armed goblin out of a tree?
Wave!
Ah ok, that's reasonable. Thanks guys!
I'd say some kind of heal to get people up from 0 is necessary, but for normal healing you can rely on hit dice. It is harder though.
Consider a bard over a sorcerer for this party though. Free access to the occasional healing spell, and still a full arcane caster (and imo a more interesting caster than a sorcerer). In addition you get Song of Rest to boost all the hit dice healing your party will be doing without a healer (add a 1d6 to whenever someone heals during a short rest). (Lore) bards can also grab Aura of Vitality from the paladin list at 6th level, which is 20d6 healing over 10 rounds for a single lvl 3 slot.
DnDBeyond Tooltip Syntax
Something one of my DMs favored in a low or no healing composition party was jokingly referred to as splat potions, same cost as a regular healing potion but is bonus action to break against a body healing for 1d4, followed by taking 1 damage. The reason I did not write that as 1d4-1 was because it gave a 1/4 chance to do no healing BUT would still restart the death saving roll clock. He did say no throwing the potion at people, said something about fantasy paintball.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
I also suggest thinking beyond healing. A cleric can easily do other things that parties frequently need:
Raise Dead, esp. revivify
Remove curse
Silence
Turn undead
Restoration
We have to current campaigns and one that recently finished. Two have a main cleric and one only has a druid. In my opinion, there are a fair number of encounters that are significantly easier or harder depending on the presence of a cleric. Now, I played one of those clerics instead of the wizard I wanted to play. I took it as a challenge and my cleric became the party leader and actually did 90% of the damage to Strahd.
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
Bran -- Human Wizard - RoT
Making D&D mistakes and having fun since 1977!
I've found that in 5E large amounts of damage are common. It's easy to do damage and having some healing abilities that work in combat in a party is almost a necessity. Simple healing potions will meet that need and so will any spell or ability that does some healing. When you have a monk or rogue in melee, they don't have the super high AC's that tanks have and they do get hit so healing them once or twice in a combat makes things go much better for the party as a whole!
Professional computer geek
I had a blast playing a life cleric that was a variant human took the magic initiate feat Wizard. Get 2 wizard cantrips and a 1st le3vel spell Took Magehand and Minor illusion as cantrips and Find Familiar as the 1st level spell. It is so fun standing back and dropping touch based healing spells on the party via your familiar.
I think the key part of this ask is... dedicated. And to that I would say absolutely not. As noted in some of the assumptions of the posts in response, there are a lot of options for healing. You do not need a character to be the dedicated healer during fights like in say an mmorpg. The idea of it being useful to stand back or stay out of fighting and heal is just not a good option. Combat Spells really only heal damage equal to maybe 1 attack or turn of attacks as things scale. You will never "keep the party alive" for more than one fight a day. Out of combat there are a few useful heals and some that are broken good. But again, a limited number of times a day. You will not "heal through" an encounter.
Even a class that can heal, should think about what it can do in combat besides heal because it will mostly be using a heal to get someone who drops back into the fight and hopefully that isn' every turn :)
Basically you want some sort of melee, ranged or cantrip attack to use most of the time or plan on using the help action to give your fighters advantage (maybe using sanctuary or protection from good/evil to discourage people attacking you while you are in midst of fight)
Some things that are useful healing without needing to be a central focus...
Goodberry spell (Druid, ranger or magic initiate feat)- single most useful heal at low level. Parcel out 10hp that can be used any time throughout day per 1hp by anyone. Everyone in party has 1 or 2 to wake people up in combat. Familiars are also pretty nice for delivery. Getting 0hp teammates back to 1hp is stupidly useful.
Healer feat: good supplement to magical healing. Usable 1 per short rest give 1d6+4+#HD so 4th level character would get 1d6+8. Also gives people 1hp when used to stabilize. Again, getting folks back up.
Healing Word though smaller is more useful as others have stated because it is ranged and a bonus action allowing you to stay in the fight while bringing someone "back online". Not to be overlooked is that it only requires a verbal component allowing it to be used while fully armed.
Generally, it feels to me like a "dedicated" healer will just make you feel very weak if you aren't built to do somehing else during combat. And before you say Duh. I am currently playing with someone who is entrenched in 3.5 think and is baffled why his druid who can't fight, has crappy AC, burns all his heals in one fight and then is useless the rest of the day. And yes, have had the conversation with him numerous times. He gets mad when he asks "anybody need a cure?" And we say no, save it for when someone is out of fight.