I was browsing through Reddit today when I came across a discussion where someone homebrewed a healing cantrip, and there were varied opinions on what could work due to 5E's different design on healing when compared to previous editions. It wasn't the first time I've come across this, and it got my wheels turning about making my own attempt at this hotly debated type of spell.
Healing Surge
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous
Available to: Bard, Cleric, Druid
You channel the inner life force of a creature to cause a surge of natural healing. When touching a creature in range it can spend one of its Hit Dice and regains hit points equal to the amount rolled but gains one level of exhaustion.
A creature touched by this spell can spend one additional Hit Die when you reach 5th level (2), 11th level (3), and 17th level (4).
I have published this under the homebrew section here. I'd love to see anyone's opinion and have a discussion! Thank you!
The issue with healing cantrips is that the at-will nature of a cantrip fundamentally breaks the resource attrition design of Dungeons and Dragons. Any healing cantrip that's even worth considering has to come with a consumable, finite resource that can be depleted, or it turns into "everyone is always at full HP if given ten minutes between fights". Hit dice is a popular one because 5e doesn't integrate hit dice well and literally everyone can see a ton of ways a measurable, discrete pool of dice representing your physical vitality can be hooked into other systems.
This cantrip is basically one to four once-per-long-rest short rest in a can, given that the exhaustion requirement means it's a move of desperation. Nobody ever voluntarily accepts more than one level of exhaustion outside of wildly unfavorable circumstances. Yes, it doesn't consume spell slots, but I'd argue that this still conflicts with the idea of cantrip design because it's not a freely available tool you can use at will. Or rather, you can...but you can also straight-up Gib No Save your party members by Healing Surge-ing them until they die of exhaustion. Death by turbo cancer consuming the body's resources uncontrollably. Seems kind of uncool for a soothing healer.
Healing cantrips just don't work in 5e, sadly. The game insists that something be traded for healing, and the easiest/most logical thing to trade is spell slots.
Overall I like the idea, cause as previously said, many groups usually have their own variant on this spell (my group just uses the healing surge variant rule). With how you currently have it, I also see the problems of it being able to do the "death by turbo cancer" but that's one those uses where the player can do that but that's not the intended use. I can see how cantrip healing can be over powered, and can be abused, but not every group plays the same, so if your group like the idea then more power to ya man. So here's a couple of changes that i think can help it not be abused in that kind of manner.
First, make the spell only work on willing creatures. This way the spell cannot be used as an offense "turbo cancer" weapon. Next, possibly adding a fixed saving throw (my suggestion is making it CON,) that the creature would have to make in order to not gain the exhaustion. This makes it so that there is still a risk to allowing them use their hit dice, but the user isn't purposely giving the player levels of exhaustion. I personally think that just giving the player exhaustion without some sort of save is a little extreme, but that's just my opinion. Finally, a possible way to limit the players from just using with only using hit dice as a resource is you can add a consumable material component. I also noticed that you didn't have anything for the situation of if the target didn't have any hit dice, so adding a little blurb about that wouldn't hurt either.
So if you decided to use all the suggestions I list, here's one way it could turn out;
Healing Surge
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a healer's kit, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Instantaneous
Available to: Bard, Cleric, Druid
You channel the inner life force of a creature to cause a surge of natural healing. When touching a willing creature in range it can spend one of its Hit Dice and regains hit points equal to the amount rolled. If the creature chooses to spend one of its hit dice, it must make a Constitution saving throw (DC = 10) or it gains one level of exhaustion.
If the creature has no hit dice to spend, then the spell does nothing.
A creature touched by this spell can spend one additional Hit Die when you reach 5th level (2), 11th level (3), and 17th level (4).
The issue with healing cantrips is that the at-will nature of a cantrip fundamentally breaks the resource attrition design of Dungeons and Dragons. Any healing cantrip that's even worth considering has to come with a consumable, finite resource that can be depleted, or it turns into "everyone is always at full HP if given ten minutes between fights". Hit dice is a popular one because 5e doesn't integrate hit dice well and literally everyone can see a ton of ways a measurable, discrete pool of dice representing your physical vitality can be hooked into other systems.
This cantrip is basically one to four once-per-long-rest short rest in a can, given that the exhaustion requirement means it's a move of desperation. Nobody ever voluntarily accepts more than one level of exhaustion outside of wildly unfavorable circumstances. Yes, it doesn't consume spell slots, but I'd argue that this still conflicts with the idea of cantrip design because it's not a freely available tool you can use at will. Or rather, you can...but you can also straight-up Gib No Save your party members by Healing Surge-ing them until they die of exhaustion. Death by turbo cancer consuming the body's resources uncontrollably. Seems kind of uncool for a soothing healer.
Healing cantrips just don't work in 5e, sadly. The game insists that something be traded for healing, and the easiest/most logical thing to trade is spell slots.
The idea behind my version of this is for it to be a move of desperation, as you put it. Resources are meant to be used to overcome encounters/obstacles on an adventure, and by requiring an action from the caster, a hit die from the target, and one level of exhaustion, I was hoping to provide an optional tool to be used as a last resort to keep a party from losing one or more PCs. Ideally, creating a conflict of choice for the party as a whole, which I've found in personal experience to be a strong way to engage my players at the table. Does a player take Spare the Dying for a no-risk way to stabilize a creature or this higher risk option? Do you accept healing to take more than 1 level of exhaustion and become less effective for possibly longer than one day?
I'd disagree that it conflicts with cantrip design and that a healing cantrip can't work with 5E. There is no restriction on its use, just a downside which is using up resources of the characters, which is what happens during an adventure. Would a Cure Wounds be better? Of course, it's more healing but uses a spell slot. It's less costly, but still a resource.
A healing cantrip isn't needed in the game due to the choices the designers have made, so most of this is me playing devil's advocate and testing out my own design work.
Overall I like the idea, cause as previously said, many groups usually have their own variant on this spell (my group just uses the healing surge variant rule). With how you currently have it, I also see the problems of it being able to do the "death by turbo cancer" but that's one those uses where the player can do that but that's not the intended use. I can see how cantrip healing can be over powered, and can be abused, but not every group plays the same, so if your group like the idea then more power to ya man. So here's a couple of changes that i think can help it not be abused in that kind of manner.
First, make the spell only work on willing creatures. This way the spell cannot be used as an offense "turbo cancer" weapon. Next, possibly adding a fixed saving throw (my suggestion is making it CON,) that the creature would have to make in order to not gain the exhaustion. This makes it so that there is still a risk to allowing them use their hit dice, but the user isn't purposely giving the player levels of exhaustion. I personally think that just giving the player exhaustion without some sort of save is a little extreme, but that's just my opinion. Finally, a possible way to limit the players from just using with only using hit dice as a resource is you can add a consumable material component. I also noticed that you didn't have anything for the situation of if the target didn't have any hit dice, so adding a little blurb about that wouldn't hurt either.
So if you decided to use all the suggestions I list, here's one way it could turn out;
Healing Surge
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a healer's kit, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Instantaneous
Available to: Bard, Cleric, Druid
You channel the inner life force of a creature to cause a surge of natural healing. When touching a willing creature in range it can spend one of its Hit Dice and regains hit points equal to the amount rolled. If the creature chooses to spend one of its hit dice, it must make a Constitution saving throw (DC = 10) or it gains one level of exhaustion.
If the creature has no hit dice to spend, then the spell does nothing.
A creature touched by this spell can spend one additional Hit Die when you reach 5th level (2), 11th level (3), and 17th level (4).
"Turbo cancer" is definitely something that could potentially happen, but that's a choice on the players. I should probably change "can" to "may" in the text of the spell to make it clear that a character does not have to accept the healing of the spell, as they only gain exhaustion if they roll their hit dice. This both allows PC's to avoid exhaustion they don't want and makes it impossible to use as an offensive spell.
It's an interesting thought to add in a CON save as part of the spell, but then with high CON characters it removes the danger associated with the spell and then becomes a healing cantrip that we all agree is not suited for 5e. I also don't see a need to add the additional blurb, as you must have the resource available to spend it, so the spell would still have no effect if the resource isn't there to be used (much in the same fashion of trying to cast a spell with a spell slot that you don't have to spend).
There are so many variant rules in the DMG that I forgot about the ones specifically for healing, and is likely just a better solution overall for most groups who want more on-demand healing.
I feel like at that point you'd be better off just learning a more reliable cantrip and focus some of your income on keeping stocked up on Healing Potions.
This cantrip would make sense if you have a DM who either doesn't reward a lot of money or who makes potion sellers rare in their setting. But other than that it seems like a wasted cantrip slot when there are more reliable low-level healing options.
I can agree with that statement, there are better options which I think touches on the basis of people's opinions of power levels within the system and where it should lie.
The only way this works for me is if the hit points come from the healers own total rather than just from nowhere. In this way you preserve the resource management of the system.
The only way this works for me is if the hit points come from the healers own total rather than just from nowhere. In this way you preserve the resource management of the system.
The cantrip requires the expenditure of the target's hit die as a resource, which provides the source of healing.
Thing is, Admiral? it doesn't really feel like a cantrip at that point. Cantrips are supposed to be magical tricks and basic abilities the caster can use freely, their version of the augmented attacks of martial classes. This cantrip is more limited than most regular healing spells, which to me at least means it feels like neither fish nor fowl. it's not a slot spell consuming slots and interacting with that whole system, but it also doesn't really work like a cantrip.
Almost feels more like something one would do with a healer's kit, or an enhanced (and thus useful) version of the Healer feat. In either case this could be compelling, but as a cantrip that devours one of the caster's precious cantrip slots, I'm just not sold on it fitting.
On the whole, I agree. This is not useful when you start looking at all of your other options for healing, and the trade-off that you're getting with those choices. To me, this is the boiling down of all the discussions I have seen regarding a healing cantrip. You can't make it like a normal cantrip because it breaks the way healing works in the game, but you can't add stipulations because then it isn't a cantrip anymore because it removes the ability to freely use it. It's an interesting spot to be in, and I'm not sure what or if anything can be done to make a change on it to satisfy everyone's opinion/desire out of this sort of spell.
That's really all I wanted out of designing this, to stir up some discussion and stretch my own understanding of design within 5E.
Heh, which is fine. I'm simply trying to engage in said discussion :P
The desire for a healing cantrip is real. Even beyond simply wanting more healing, the fact that most everything else gets a cantrip but healing doesn't bothers many players. "I have cantrips for controlling elements and matter, cantrips for communication, cantrips for illusions, and half the damn cantrip list is damage, but Y U NO HEAL?!" It's a thing, and I can see it, especially for players that really want to play up the Party healer aspects of their clerics/druids.
Unfortunately the fundamental design of a cantrip - that is, a spell that costs nothing save time and does not consume resources - is anathema to the fundamental intent behind healing - that is, that healing is expensive and largely an inefficient use of resources. Healing spells are weak as hell compared to damage spells, with the really powerful healing only coming into play once you get into the Greater Arcana and thus being super-limited by GA spell slots. In the ordinary course of things, regular damage is supposed to pretty sharply outweigh regular healing (which is part of why people got so insane over Healing Spirit).
This is by design - neither the PCs nor most enemies are allowed to be regen tanks. Damage mitigation and avoiding injury is more important than fixing it after the fact, because if healing could outweigh damage then damage cease to matter and the entire resource-attrition basis of D&D comes apart. Having an unlimited-use cantrip able to upset this balance breaks the game and even the casual homebrew guys understand that. The thing is that you really can't have a "cantrip" that does what you're looking for, either.
This would be something that would fit more as a feat power, or something inherent to divine casters in your setting, methinks. Could make a good boon, if you were in the habit of giving your players boons.
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I was browsing through Reddit today when I came across a discussion where someone homebrewed a healing cantrip, and there were varied opinions on what could work due to 5E's different design on healing when compared to previous editions. It wasn't the first time I've come across this, and it got my wheels turning about making my own attempt at this hotly debated type of spell.
I have published this under the homebrew section here. I'd love to see anyone's opinion and have a discussion! Thank you!
AdmiralChry's Homebrew Compendium - A collection of all my classes, subclasses, magic items, and etc.
The issue with healing cantrips is that the at-will nature of a cantrip fundamentally breaks the resource attrition design of Dungeons and Dragons. Any healing cantrip that's even worth considering has to come with a consumable, finite resource that can be depleted, or it turns into "everyone is always at full HP if given ten minutes between fights". Hit dice is a popular one because 5e doesn't integrate hit dice well and literally everyone can see a ton of ways a measurable, discrete pool of dice representing your physical vitality can be hooked into other systems.
This cantrip is basically one to four once-per-long-rest short rest in a can, given that the exhaustion requirement means it's a move of desperation. Nobody ever voluntarily accepts more than one level of exhaustion outside of wildly unfavorable circumstances. Yes, it doesn't consume spell slots, but I'd argue that this still conflicts with the idea of cantrip design because it's not a freely available tool you can use at will. Or rather, you can...but you can also straight-up Gib No Save your party members by Healing Surge-ing them until they die of exhaustion. Death by turbo cancer consuming the body's resources uncontrollably. Seems kind of uncool for a soothing healer.
Healing cantrips just don't work in 5e, sadly. The game insists that something be traded for healing, and the easiest/most logical thing to trade is spell slots.
Please do not contact or message me.
Overall I like the idea, cause as previously said, many groups usually have their own variant on this spell (my group just uses the healing surge variant rule). With how you currently have it, I also see the problems of it being able to do the "death by turbo cancer" but that's one those uses where the player can do that but that's not the intended use. I can see how cantrip healing can be over powered, and can be abused, but not every group plays the same, so if your group like the idea then more power to ya man. So here's a couple of changes that i think can help it not be abused in that kind of manner.
First, make the spell only work on willing creatures. This way the spell cannot be used as an offense "turbo cancer" weapon. Next, possibly adding a fixed saving throw (my suggestion is making it CON,) that the creature would have to make in order to not gain the exhaustion. This makes it so that there is still a risk to allowing them use their hit dice, but the user isn't purposely giving the player levels of exhaustion. I personally think that just giving the player exhaustion without some sort of save is a little extreme, but that's just my opinion. Finally, a possible way to limit the players from just using with only using hit dice as a resource is you can add a consumable material component. I also noticed that you didn't have anything for the situation of if the target didn't have any hit dice, so adding a little blurb about that wouldn't hurt either.
So if you decided to use all the suggestions I list, here's one way it could turn out;
Healing Surge
Evocation cantrip
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (a healer's kit, which the spell consumes)
Duration: Instantaneous
Available to: Bard, Cleric, Druid
You channel the inner life force of a creature to cause a surge of natural healing. When touching a willing creature in range it can spend one of its Hit Dice and regains hit points equal to the amount rolled. If the creature chooses to spend one of its hit dice, it must make a Constitution saving throw (DC = 10) or it gains one level of exhaustion.
If the creature has no hit dice to spend, then the spell does nothing.
A creature touched by this spell can spend one additional Hit Die when you reach 5th level (2), 11th level (3), and 17th level (4).
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The idea behind my version of this is for it to be a move of desperation, as you put it. Resources are meant to be used to overcome encounters/obstacles on an adventure, and by requiring an action from the caster, a hit die from the target, and one level of exhaustion, I was hoping to provide an optional tool to be used as a last resort to keep a party from losing one or more PCs. Ideally, creating a conflict of choice for the party as a whole, which I've found in personal experience to be a strong way to engage my players at the table. Does a player take Spare the Dying for a no-risk way to stabilize a creature or this higher risk option? Do you accept healing to take more than 1 level of exhaustion and become less effective for possibly longer than one day?
I'd disagree that it conflicts with cantrip design and that a healing cantrip can't work with 5E. There is no restriction on its use, just a downside which is using up resources of the characters, which is what happens during an adventure. Would a Cure Wounds be better? Of course, it's more healing but uses a spell slot. It's less costly, but still a resource.
A healing cantrip isn't needed in the game due to the choices the designers have made, so most of this is me playing devil's advocate and testing out my own design work.
AdmiralChry's Homebrew Compendium - A collection of all my classes, subclasses, magic items, and etc.
"Turbo cancer" is definitely something that could potentially happen, but that's a choice on the players. I should probably change "can" to "may" in the text of the spell to make it clear that a character does not have to accept the healing of the spell, as they only gain exhaustion if they roll their hit dice. This both allows PC's to avoid exhaustion they don't want and makes it impossible to use as an offensive spell.
It's an interesting thought to add in a CON save as part of the spell, but then with high CON characters it removes the danger associated with the spell and then becomes a healing cantrip that we all agree is not suited for 5e. I also don't see a need to add the additional blurb, as you must have the resource available to spend it, so the spell would still have no effect if the resource isn't there to be used (much in the same fashion of trying to cast a spell with a spell slot that you don't have to spend).
There are so many variant rules in the DMG that I forgot about the ones specifically for healing, and is likely just a better solution overall for most groups who want more on-demand healing.
Thanks for the input!
AdmiralChry's Homebrew Compendium - A collection of all my classes, subclasses, magic items, and etc.
I feel like at that point you'd be better off just learning a more reliable cantrip and focus some of your income on keeping stocked up on Healing Potions.
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Spare the Dying would be better (biased opinion, I really like the cantrip). What if you don't have gold for potions though? A conundrum of choices!
AdmiralChry's Homebrew Compendium - A collection of all my classes, subclasses, magic items, and etc.
This cantrip would make sense if you have a DM who either doesn't reward a lot of money or who makes potion sellers rare in their setting. But other than that it seems like a wasted cantrip slot when there are more reliable low-level healing options.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
I can agree with that statement, there are better options which I think touches on the basis of people's opinions of power levels within the system and where it should lie.
AdmiralChry's Homebrew Compendium - A collection of all my classes, subclasses, magic items, and etc.
The only way this works for me is if the hit points come from the healers own total rather than just from nowhere. In this way you preserve the resource management of the system.
The cantrip requires the expenditure of the target's hit die as a resource, which provides the source of healing.
AdmiralChry's Homebrew Compendium - A collection of all my classes, subclasses, magic items, and etc.
Thing is, Admiral? it doesn't really feel like a cantrip at that point. Cantrips are supposed to be magical tricks and basic abilities the caster can use freely, their version of the augmented attacks of martial classes. This cantrip is more limited than most regular healing spells, which to me at least means it feels like neither fish nor fowl. it's not a slot spell consuming slots and interacting with that whole system, but it also doesn't really work like a cantrip.
Almost feels more like something one would do with a healer's kit, or an enhanced (and thus useful) version of the Healer feat. In either case this could be compelling, but as a cantrip that devours one of the caster's precious cantrip slots, I'm just not sold on it fitting.
Please do not contact or message me.
On the whole, I agree. This is not useful when you start looking at all of your other options for healing, and the trade-off that you're getting with those choices. To me, this is the boiling down of all the discussions I have seen regarding a healing cantrip. You can't make it like a normal cantrip because it breaks the way healing works in the game, but you can't add stipulations because then it isn't a cantrip anymore because it removes the ability to freely use it. It's an interesting spot to be in, and I'm not sure what or if anything can be done to make a change on it to satisfy everyone's opinion/desire out of this sort of spell.
That's really all I wanted out of designing this, to stir up some discussion and stretch my own understanding of design within 5E.
AdmiralChry's Homebrew Compendium - A collection of all my classes, subclasses, magic items, and etc.
Heh, which is fine. I'm simply trying to engage in said discussion :P
The desire for a healing cantrip is real. Even beyond simply wanting more healing, the fact that most everything else gets a cantrip but healing doesn't bothers many players. "I have cantrips for controlling elements and matter, cantrips for communication, cantrips for illusions, and half the damn cantrip list is damage, but Y U NO HEAL?!" It's a thing, and I can see it, especially for players that really want to play up the Party healer aspects of their clerics/druids.
Unfortunately the fundamental design of a cantrip - that is, a spell that costs nothing save time and does not consume resources - is anathema to the fundamental intent behind healing - that is, that healing is expensive and largely an inefficient use of resources. Healing spells are weak as hell compared to damage spells, with the really powerful healing only coming into play once you get into the Greater Arcana and thus being super-limited by GA spell slots. In the ordinary course of things, regular damage is supposed to pretty sharply outweigh regular healing (which is part of why people got so insane over Healing Spirit).
This is by design - neither the PCs nor most enemies are allowed to be regen tanks. Damage mitigation and avoiding injury is more important than fixing it after the fact, because if healing could outweigh damage then damage cease to matter and the entire resource-attrition basis of D&D comes apart. Having an unlimited-use cantrip able to upset this balance breaks the game and even the casual homebrew guys understand that. The thing is that you really can't have a "cantrip" that does what you're looking for, either.
This would be something that would fit more as a feat power, or something inherent to divine casters in your setting, methinks. Could make a good boon, if you were in the habit of giving your players boons.
Please do not contact or message me.