Spell Spotlight: Healing Spirit
Healing spirit is the most criticized new spell in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Its design has been heatedly discussed on our own forums, on the D&D Reddit, and every message board and social network in between. It has been almost universally denounced by online fans of D&D as utterly broken, and in desperate need of houseruling, official errata, or even outright banning.
But is healing spirit really that broken? And if it is, what about it needs to be changed in order to fix it? These may sound like silly questions to ask, but a good game designer (and I firmly believe that all good Dungeon Masters must also be good game designers) should look at every spell, class feature, and racial trait from all angles. Let’s take a look at healing spirit—where it succeeds, where it fails, and how you can change it to fit your game.
As of April 6th 2020, healing spirit has been updated with errata, making much of the discussion in this article out of date. You can read the updated version of healing spirit on D&D Beyond, and view the specific changes made to the spell in the relevant Sage Advice errata document.
What Does Healing Spirit Do?
Healing spirit is a 2nd-level spell from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything only available to druids and rangers (and bards that steal it with Magical Secrets or Additional Magical Secrets). The spell’s most important effects are as follows; it has a few other minor properties that you can look at in the spell’s full description:
Requiring only a bonus action to cast, the caster can concentrate on this spell for up to 1 minute, creating a healing spirit that fills a 5-foot cube within 60 feet of them. Whenever a creature you can see enters the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can choose to have the spirit restore 1d6 hit points, requiring no action. This spell can be cast using a higher level spell slot, increasing the healing by 1d6 for each slot level above 2nd.
Healing Spirit’s Pros
This much-maligned spell is not without merit. If it weren't, people would just discard it instead of trying to find ways to fix it! Healing spirit fills an important niche in fifth edition D&D’s design that no other spells cover: powerful in-combat healing.
Party Composition
As a spell exclusive to the druid and ranger classes, it helps players who want to play a druid or ranger fill an important healing niche in parties without a cleric. One of the design goals of fifth edition D&D was to let people play with any party composition that they wanted—and one of the main barriers to this style of play was the perceived necessity of the cleric. Giving a powerful healing spell to druids and rangers is a step towards democratizing healing, in the same vein as giving all classes hit dice to use as a healing resource.
In-Combat Healing
It’s generally considered less efficient to spend spell slots on healing compared to spending them on damage. Compare cure wounds to guiding bolt. One deals 4d6 radiant damage (an average of 14 damage) and grants advantage on a successful hit and grants advantage to the next attacker’s attack roll, while the other restores hit points equal to 1d8 + your spellcasting modifier (an average of 7, assuming you have a +3 spellcasting modifier). Guiding bolt deals twice the damage that cure wounds heals, and has a bonus effect.
Even if you take into account the fact that guiding bolt can miss its target and cure wounds always “hits,” as long as guiding bolt hits more than half the time, it’s a more efficient use of a spell slot than healing.
Healing spirit is a healing spell potent enough to be worth using in combat. It only requires a bonus action to cast, and, with some clever positioning, can restore 1d6 hit points to each of your allies each turn. While in combat, this element of tactical positioning can be an interesting puzzle for the players to unravel, since they have to find a balance between aggressive and defensive positioning.
Out-of-Combat Healing
This is where healing spirit really falls apart. Unfortunately, I don’t have much good to say about this spell when it comes to out-of-combat healing, either from a narrative or mechanical perspective. We’ll look at it more in the cons section.
Healing Spirit’s Cons
Unfortunately, healing spirit steps on the toes of other existing spells and classes in the game. As you’ll soon see, most of healing spirit’s problems arise because, while it is a balanced and fairly competitive spell in combat scenarios, it’s grossly overpowered out-of-combat.
Party Composition
Healing spirit can cause contention in parties where both clerics and druids/rangers are present. If a cleric wants to play a support role and focus on healing and buffing, it feels unsportsmanlike to play a combat-focused ranger or Wild Shape-focused druid that also has access to a healing spell as potent as healing spirit. Personally, I feel that this is an excellent way to differentiate the healing capabilities of different classes, but the out-of-combat balance of healing spirit needs to be addressed if this stylish asymmetrical balance is to work as intended.
In-Combat Healing
My impression of healing spirit, after several readings of its spell description, is that it was balanced around its usefulness in combat (compare its 1 bonus action casting time to prayer of healing’s 10 minute casting time). As it stands, its concentration requirement makes it an unattractive option in combat, especially since so many of druids’ 2nd-level spell options require concentration.
In fact, only six of druids’ twenty-three 2nd-level spell options don’t require concentration: animal messenger, darkvision, find traps, lesser restoration, locate animals or plants, and protection from poison. Similarly, healing spirit’s concentration requirement fights directly for the ranger’s class-defining hunter’s mark.
Out-of-Combat Healing
All other small issues aside, healing spirit’s gravest flaw is its power when used out of combat. If an entire party of adventurers clusters in a 5-foot cube for the spell’s full 1 minute duration (in a sort of heroic cuddle pile, perhaps?), each character will regain 10d6 hit points (an average of 35 hit points) at the cost of a single 2nd-level spell slot.
What this essentially means is that, with only a minute of rest and a single 2nd level spell slot, a druid can fully heal an entire party of 3rd level adventurers. It’s a short rest’s worth of healing in a fraction of the time, which essentially allows an adventuring party to take on any challenge at full hit points. This is where your mileage may vary. If you like to throw a small amount of very challenging encounters at your players, then you’re probably designing all of your encounters with the assumption that your players will tackle them at full hit points anyway. This encounter design philosophy leads to a very heroic style of play, where just about every encounter is a major cinematic moment. If that’s your playstyle, then healing spirit’s out-of-combat potency isn’t a problem at all. It may still present other problems, but this isn’t one of them. In fact, it’s the way the fifth edition D&D is balanced.
However, if you like to play a grim-and-gritty D&D where adventuring is all about carefully conserving your resources in grueling dungeon crawls and being slowly worn down by constant small combats… then this presents a huge problem. First of all, starting every combat at full hit points is antithetical to this style of play. Second, healing spirit is so much better at restoring hit points out-of-combat than it is at restoring them in-combat (its supposed primary function), that the most efficient way to conserve precious resources is to only use it out of combat. Finally and most importantly, it is so much more powerful than comparable spells of prayer of healing (available only to 3rd-level clerics) and aura of vitality (available only to 9th-level paladins) that it makes a druid a better cleric than a cleric and a ranger a better paladin than a paladin, as far as healing is concerned.
This thread from the D&D Beyond forums sums the math of this issue up nicely.
The Official House Rule
Jeremy Crawford, managing editor of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, frequently answers player-submitted rules questions on his Twitter account. While he maintains that healing spirit is working as intended, it does “have the potential to exceed our expectations” in out-of-combat scenarios. In layman’s terms, the D&D team isn’t going to make a knee-jerk nerf and over-balance the spell. Instead, they’re devoting additional resources to see how this spell plays out long-term to see if it really is as much of a problem as people claim.
In the meantime, however, Jeremy has provided a simple house rule that brings the spell more in line with its intended power level.
[Pictured tweet reads: “If healing spirit has felt too effective in your game, try this house rule, which holds the spell to our expectations for it: the spell ends once the spirit has restored hit points a number of times equal to twice your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum of once).”]
If a 3rd level druid with a Wisdom of 16 (+3) cast healing spirit, it would restore 1d6 hit points to any creature that passed through the spirit’s space or started its turn there a maximum of six times. If, over the course of their adventuring career, that same druid increased their Wisdom to 20 (+5), the spell could restore 1d6 hit points a maximum of ten times. This means that, at its most powerful, healing spirit cast at 2nd level now only restores an average of 35 hit points, instead of 35 hit points per creature.
This is a major nerf, but it brings healing spirit more in line with prayer of healing. To compare, prayer of healing cast at 2nd level restores hit points equal to 2d8 + your spellcasting modifier to up to 6 creatures. At its most efficient, that’s an average of 84 hit points (2d8 rolls an average of 9, plus 5 is 14, times 6). Prayer of healing restores more than twice the number of hit points of the house ruled healing spirit, but is much less flexible. It must be cast out of combat because of its 10 minute casting time, and it only restores a small amount of hit points to each creature, whereas healing spirit allows you to specify how much healing each creature gets.
For more of the tweets Jeremy has made in response to this spell at the height of the outcry, you can check Zoltar’s Sage Advice blog.
My House Rule
I think Jeremy’s proposed house rule is a strong fix to healing spirit. A few months ago, I was asked how I would change healing spirit, if I were a member of the D&D team. I didn’t have a good answer then, but I’ve had some time to think about it, and this is how I would revise healing spirit to make it a more attractive option in combat while clamping down on its out-of-combat power. Here are the changes I would make to healing spirit, and the final wording I would use:
- Remove the spell’s concentration requirement, making it a much more attractive in-combat option. This limitation does nothing to make it less powerful outside of combat, so removing it doesn’t break anything.
- Causing the spirit to heal requires you to use your reaction when a creature enters the spirit’s space for the first time on its turn or starts its turn there. Replacing “(no action required)” with “as a reaction” limits the spell’s healing to a maximum of 10d6 without having the spell scale multiplicatively with spellcasting ability modifier. I can’t think of any other spells that increase their effective duration based on ability modifier, just spells like cure wounds which add healing based on your spellcasting ability modifier.
My revised version of healing spirit would look like this:
Healing Spirit
2nd-level conjuration
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V,S
Duration: 1 minute
You call forth a nature spirit to soothe the wounded. The intangible spirit appears in a space that is a 5-foot cube you can see within range. The spirit looks like a transparent beast or fey (your choice).
Until the spell ends, as a reaction when you or a creature you can see moves into the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can cause the spirit to restore 1d6 hit points to that creature. The spirit can’t heal constructs or undead.
As a bonus action on your turn, you can move the spirit up to 30 feet to a space you can see.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the healing increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 2nd.
Healing Spirit in Your Game
When you get right down to it, healing spirit needs some changes. It gives druids and rangers an effective healing spell (hooray!) but it steps all over the cleric and paladin’s comparable healing spells (boo). It you play a heroic game, it lets you start every major fight with full hit points (yay!), but it singlehandedly makes an attrition style of dungeon-crawling play unviable (yikes).
Fortunately, D&D is a game played by humans who can make house rules as they see fit, not a game governed by strict computer programs. Unfortunately, the major problem with not having any official errata on this spell means that my house rules, Jeremy’s house rules, and (most importantly) your house rules are all illegal in D&D Adventurer’s League games. And unfortunately… I have no solutions for that. If you’re having a problem with healing spirit making your AL game less fun, your only recourse is to talk with your players and hope they’re mature about it.
What have your experiences with healing spirit been? I’m interested in what you think of Jeremy’s “official house rule,” and the house rule I’ve provided here, and I also want to know what you have done in your home game to address this spell!
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with Mei and Marzipan, two fey spirits in the form of small fuzzy animals. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
Both will heal the creature but only once per round.
I'm going to be cynical here and say that this spell is pure Power Creep.
You need to have the book so you can get the best spell.
It's just so far in advance of anything else a druid can do and arguably any other class.
I can't count the number of times Healing Spirit (HS) has saved our whole party. Even with minor healing from 2 others in the party, the primary use of HS in our game is outside of combat because in combat our druid is usually in beast form soaking up damage so the party can live through the encounter. Having HS also means that the other characters in the party can focus more on damage spells than healing (we don't have.a cleric) and if things get really dicey, everyone has a Goodberry for emergencies.
Yes, it does mean that our party can heal up to near full health often, but at the lower levels the druid can only cast HS two or three times a day max and it's not much more than characters could restore with a short rest and burning hit dice. Using HS also means that the druid has to give up using (or taking) some of the other powerful spells, plus it's not usable when the druid is a beast so depending on how the battle is going the druid has to return to human (wasting the left over time and HP of that beast) in order to cast the spell.
The druid is then locked into human form while the spell is going because as a beast you can't manipulate any spells and since the wording of HS is based on "a creature you can see" and "you can cause" it means that as a beast your HS wouldn't heal anything because you can't cause a spell to do anything while in beast form (at least that's what our interpretation was).
Just came across this while looking at a spell list for a player. Hoo boy. Did not know this existed, or the fervor around it.
This is one of those moments where I feel like they shoehorned in a class feature into a spell. Making it an optional feature for some druids and rangers would prevent bardic abuse and solve a lot of these problems. You could more easily restrict how often it worked and more arbitrarily apply conditions around it, without having to worry about its interactions with spells as much. For example, if you had to spend a Wild Shape to summon it, but not a spell slot, is it as valuable? What if you can only do it once per short rest?
This is the same problem that lingers at the edges of eldritch blast, hex, and hunter's mark; (and, I would argue, all of the Paladin Smite spells). These are class-defining abilities more than they are spells, and cramming them into that system can expose them to abuses and weird overlaps when they no longer work sufficiently. Hex and Hexbalde's Curse have, for example, a very odd feeling interaction: I curse the target. Then, on my next turn, I'm gonna curse it again. Then, once it's double cursed, I'm gonna do stuff to it with my spells. Say what now? No effect on spell saves? Coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool.
Healing spirit has this same problem: it's clearly meant to allow druids and rangers to function something like 4th edition Shaman and Druids (and, to a lesser extent, Seekers). That edition's greater emphasis on tactical play seems to be draped all over this spell, down to the idea of "spaces" as a unit of measurement as opposed to feet or miles, and the fact that most features and time abstractions are built around combat encounters as opposed to unstructured narrative time. If healing spirit were simply a part of the feature list for druidic circle or ranger archetype, (or part of the base class for one or the other), then there are a lot more controls that can be exercised against this.
That said, healing spirit is not the first culprit to harsh prayer of healing's buzz. The bard in my game picked up aura of vitality with her magical secrets, and she uses it almost exclusively as an out of combat healing spell. Just now, as we reached level 11, she's picked up a single multiclass level of Life cleric, and I don't anticipate her picking up or using prayer of healing basically ever because of its comparable inflexibility and weakness.
With Life domain, aura of vitality gives Caswyn 12 (2d6 + 5) hit points to dole out as she sees fit up to 10 times, averaging around 120 hit points. Because it's only a party of 5 adventurers, prayer of healing lets her down at equal level ((3d8 + 5 + 4) * 5), and is much easier to interrupt. If interrupted for any reason, Prayer of Healing consumes all of that time and grants no benefit. Meanwhile, over half a minute, Caswyn could get around 60 hit points dished out, possibly prioritizing those most in need.
Plus, she can be more exacting about who gets what healing using aura of vitality. For example, she can decide, of the 120 hit points, the fighter who took the majority of the beating in the last fight can instead enjoy 60 of her 120 hit points she hands out. At its best rolls, prayer of healing could restore only a little over half of that, possibly wasting it on the remainder of the party that took less damage. In general, in-combat healing gets really relevant and powerful at higher level spells, because you need it to keep people out of Power Word: [Insert Ouchy] range.
The easiest change, to me, is to require the creature which would be healed to expend either a bonus action or an action to tap the spirit, and limit the number of times the spirit can be tapped to 10. This reduces out of combat effectiveness without hamstringing in-combat effectiveness. I'd even say you could remove the concentration requirement, at that point, since the spirit has its own obvious end point. Yes, the druid has to do more maintenance, a la guardian of faith, but I don't think that's an intractable tradeoff.
The life cleric ability specifically says "when you use .. hit points to a creature". It doesn't say "one or more creatures" If the spell can target more than one creature, it doesn't work, or if you want to be generous, it hits the first target.
Per Sage Advice/JC, if each goodberry created would be allowed to benefit from Diciple of Life, then why not each target of multitarget heal spell? Also, if each tick of regeneration gets the feature, so would healing spirit.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/sage-advice/rules-answers-august-2015
Check out @JeremyECrawford’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/951624537971421184?s=09
Healing Spirit isn't broken. You are reading it wrong. I'll admit that it could have been written better. But especially in combat, it's not broken. I removed some text that's not relevant to my argument (come on, you don't want me spell out the whole spell, do you?). The problem with the text is that it assumes that everyone is going to follow the movement and space rules, and the text never even eludes to that. But my big hang up is pretty much everyone ignoring the "FOR THE FIRST TIME ON A TURN" part. This means NO conga lines. Healing Spirit isn't a backyard sprinkler that you can just run through and get healed everytime time you move through it.
"The intangible spirit appears in a space that is a 5-foot cube you can see within range. Until the spell ends, whenever you or a creature you can see moves into the spirit’s space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you can cause the spirit to restore 1d6 hit points to that creature (no action required)."
If you move into the 5-foot spirit cube for a SECOND time on a turn...NOTHING HAPPENS! NO. CONGA. LINES. To get healed again by the 5-foot spirit cube, you need to start your turn in the 5-foot spirit cube. But what if another PC is already standing in the 5-foot spirit cube waiting to start their turn there?
In combat: "You can move through a non-hostile creature's space. Remember that another creature's space is difficult terrain for you. Whether a creature is a friend or an enemy, you can't willingly end your move in its space."
So, in combat, if PC#1 is already standing in the 5-foot spirit cube (waiting to start their turn there to get healed), PC#2 can only pass through the 5-foot spirit cube. PC#2 can't join PC#1 in the 5-foot spirit cube to both wait to start their next turns there. No in-combat hug circles. Bye, Felicia.
Out of combat. I've already de-bunked the conga line. What about a group hug? How many PC's are you going to fit in this 5-foot spirit cube with weapons, armor, and backpacks on? If I were the DM, I would use the "Squeezing into a Smaller Space" rules. I'd allow two Medium sized humanoids hugging or four small sized humanoids hugging.
Thank You for coming to my TED Talk.
^ That's how I have been reading it. The counter for first time entering a space is triggered based on the spirit's perspective not the other characters. I also agree with the group hug reading. If you can stick a pinky finger into an area and have an effect impact you why not. Use that same logic for other AEs? If I have an AE sitting on top of a monster and my fighter friend sticks his hand in the cube to attack why doesn't the fighter take damage as well during that round? Or if the spell effect is instant why not make the fighter roll a dex save to see if their arm gets impacted by the attack as well ?
Nope.
Those are general rules that always apply to combat situations. They would only not apply if 1) you're not in combat or 2) the spell explicitly said those rules didn't apply for whatever reason.
This is pretty standard verbiage for non-instantaneous spell effects.
The intent here is absolutely clear: the spells will affect you on contact, and if you choose to stay in the area, they'll continue to affect you on subsequent turns. The only difference is that Healing Spirit helps instead of hurting and that the caster can opt out of the healing, but the timing is exactly the same as the above spells. A conga line through healing spirit has a chance to heal everyone just like a conga line through Cloud of Daggers will most certainly damage everyone.
The conga line works even better out of combat since the space rules go out the window and there's no enemies trying to kill you. As for the group hug, the party doesn't even have to be fully within the area, just like you don't have to be fully inside a spell like Wall of Fire to get hurt. But even if your DM is strict about that, it's absolutely no problem to fit 4-6 people into a 5x5 space.
The spell really does heal for a massive amount of HP with trivial effort. It was an oversight on the designer's part.
You know what's crazy, is that I read it again and interpreted it a different way. Now I'm focusing on the "on a turn" part. Whoever wrote the spell did a terrible job. I think I've got it wrong and that you can run through the spirit every turn. YIKES!
I think this is a failure to use common sense on what the spirit can do and how entering a spells area of effect works. If you read between the lines of Jeremy Crawford's explanation of Spirit Guardians. It can't just zoom around the battlefield like a healing missile and its not going not heal you if it just momentarily touches a part of your body. No more than 2 people should be able to use this per round in a normal combat, and it should be reduced to 1 in a chaotic combat. If you had a static melee wall then i would let 2 melee and 1 ranged use it. Out of combat no more than 4 armored people should be able to use this. If you can show me more than 4 people in Plate armor and wielding Polearms doing the Conga then I would consider upping that number.
Imagine a 5x5x5 cube. Imagine it surrounded by 5x5 grid squares. Imagine that each 5x5 square surrounding the cube has a character standing it in (a total of 6 characters). Each character stands in their grid square and sticks their arm into the 5x5x5 cube, while holding a polearm with their other hand, looking majestic AF in their shining full plate. This is physically plausible and extremely easy to accomplish. If you don't like that, just imagine each character in turn stepping into that 5x5x5 cube and then back into their square.
You don't need a conga line. Plate armor and Polearms be damned.
The spell was not intended for non-combat situations, and the designers have admitted that it was an oversight on their part because the spell is easily "broken". If your players want to do this, it seems easy enough to let them do it and then just throw max HP monsters or higher CR encounters in front of them. Welcome to Hard Mode kids.
If you read the explanation for concentration AoE spells that move onto a creature it only takes damage on the next turn and only if it stays there. Clearly being subjected to the effect for a fraction of a round is not enough for it to take effect.
Logically Healing Spirit would work the same way. You have to be in the same space for most of the round. They could have avoided a lot of drama and problems with a more simple explanation and less legalese.
Amen?
Our table's house rule is that you only get the healing if you're stopping there or it's stopping there. So there's still the potential to get multiple heals in a round, but you're not getting your whole party a d6 every round.
Example, I cast healing spirit on John's character, who gets a d6 immediately, and then at the beginning of his turn. On his turn, he gets the d6, then moves to a different enemy. On her turn, Mariam moves through the space, but doesn't stop, no healing, but when Thuy moves into the space and stops there, she gets her d6. On my turn, I move it onto Mariam's character w/ my bonus, and she gets a d6. On the way, it passed over John's character, but it didn't stop, so he doesn't get it.
And so on.
I haven't dealt with Healing Spirit in my game yet, but I think I would draw inspiration from the cleric spell Guardian of Faith, which is similar in that it is a stationary sentinel that is activated when something enters its space. In this case, it "vanishes when it has dealt a total of 60 damage." For Healing Spirit, I might rule that it vanishes when it has restored a total of hit points equal to 5 times the caster's spell-casting modifier (or one minute passes). Apologies if this has already been suggested.
"aura of vitality and prayer of healing only being acessible to clerics and palladins"
mark of healing haflings laughing in the distance
There are a couple of ways to fix it. The official house rule works. Personally I would attach it to a sub class so that everyone knows at the beginning of the game that they could do this or that it's what they're intending. (Possibly negating the need for a cleric)
The other option that I see (possibly connected to my first option) is that instead of having it as a spell. Make it a daily power for those subclasses. (Also negating the need for concentration)
There's been an Errata for it! Now it only heals a number of times equal to 1 + your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum of twice).
https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/XGtE-Errata.pdf
I like very much your version.
I'd add this though:
"The spirit is a combat healing spirit. If, at the start of your turn, the spirit determines that the ongoing combat is already mostly more or less won (even if .there are still a few minor enemies left), or that there is no combat going on, then the spirit immediately disappears."
Potentially 35 HP of healing, at range, at no main Action cost (i.e. only a Bonus Action to cast it) is a lot more than the 12-14 avg HP that a level 2 Cure Wounds will give. But Cure can be used outside battle: thus HS should be a COMBAT ONLY spell, and *never* a "Let's make Cure Wounds completely obsolete" spell.
*NEVER* compare a spell's power to the BEST spells from all other books, but always only to the baseline in the base book. THAT is how game balance should be checked. Even Prayer of Healing makes CW obsolete. IMHO in 5e, power creep is still alive and well, so constantly using "all books including the latest books" inevitably leads to power inflation.