What would it take to make in-combat healing worth while?

[Dankus Memakus]

Give extra XP for healing. Not much but a little extra. That always motivates my players.

[Spacehamster]

If helas would have been designer to either: give the target a small buff on his next action or the healer gain a small buff on his next move. Then prob healing would feel more worthwhile.

[Unoriginal]

Healing mid-combat is less efficient that attacking because when you fight 4 monsters while your group has 1 healer, you can get hit 4 times and only get healed once.


There is nothing bad about healing spells being used to get downed combatants back on their feet. It makes self-healing features like Second Wind more worthwhile.

[UrielAwakened]

Add this caveat to all healing spells:

"Whenever you use an action to cast a spell of 1st-level of higher that restores hit points, the target can also spend a hit die for each level of the spell you cast."

4e healing ala "healing surges", with the burden on the recipient moreso than the caster. Doesn't work with Healing Word and I don't think it works with the new op Healing Spirit spell either. Add the duration needs to be instant if you want.

This adds more healing to all healing spells, which is desperately needed, without throwing off the resource pool of a standard D&D party.

[Dudewithknives]

Healing in combat just needs to heal more, like a lot more.

Also another problem is that monsters can just out damage your healing, easily.

If you can throw a heal that averages 12 hp returned but on each other the enemies turns they are going to be doing 30 you did not even save a round worth for whoever you healed. Conversely, if you wait until someone is at 0, then you are gaurenteed, to save them a round worth.

There are 3 ways to fix this.

1. Lower the damage enemies do in a round.

2. Greatly increase the base healing amount of spells.

3. Make it much easier for people to die. Go back to the whole, you only have to -10 hp or you die.

[mephnick]

I don't think making healing in combat an important tactic is a valuable goal. Combat should be quick and not require healers. I agree with the Devs on that.

Out of combat healing is about where it should be. Except Healing Spirit, of course, which removes the resource attrition the system is designed around from the system completely. But hey, we have a whole thread of wrongheadedness on that already.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Make the heals better and more interesting. Heals should be equal to nukes in damage. There should be more AoE and persistent healing effects, such as the popular Aura of Vitality.

It's funny to me that Xanathar's has done exactly this, and some people are complaining that those heals are too powerful. They aren't too powerful. Most of the existing heals are just too weak.

Maybe I'm just too used to 3.X, but a lot of the "overpowered" complaints I hear about 5e seem monumentally petty. That said, Healing Spirit is... actually, I don't think I would cast it during combat, as it doesn't heal much at once, it eats your Concentration, and it's easy for enemies to take advantage of. It's only as a downtime heal that it gets silly (10d6 for a 2nd level spell is a lot; 10d6 for the entire party if you congo line is... I won't say broken, exactly, but it significantly changes the attrition part of the game).

That said, it reminds me that there are really three kinds of healing, which I shall name as burst, incidental, and recovery.

• Burst Healing is when you spend your full action to drop a lot of healing. Your Cure Wounds, your Life Cleric Channel Divinity, that sort of thing.
• Incidental Healing is when you restore a smaller amount of hit points while also doing something else. The 4e style "hit a guy, heal a guy" abilities are a good example of this, and I'd argue that bonus-action abilities like Healing word and the Dream Druid ability also count.
• Recovery Healing is when you take a lot of time to restore a lot of health. You mostly see it in the form of healing-over-time things like Healing Spirit, though long casting times like Prayer of Healing also qualify. Heck, you could even count short rest abilities like spending hit dice and the Bard's Song of Rest.

5e has solid incidental healing options. Not saying that "hit a guy, heal a guy" wouldn't be fun to see, but it's not really lacking either. 5e has plenty of recovery healing, some of which (coughHealing Spiritcough) verges on game-changing-ly good. What 5e doesn't really have is good burst healing. As has been noted, Cure Wounds simply doesn't keep up with the amount of damage enemies can pump out.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't think making healing in combat an important tactic is a valuable goal. Combat should be quick and not require healers. I agree with the Devs on that.

Out of combat healing is about where it should be. Except Healing Spirit, of course, which removes the resource attrition the system is designed around from the system completely. But hey, we have a whole thread of wrongheadedness on that already.

I guess I disagree here, kind of. I'd like healing to be a combat multiplier, not just a "recover quicker" option. For me, too short combats (which is what happens with rocket-tag/nova incentives) means that those cool monster abilities? I'll never see them. Complex tactics? Nope. It's just a race to see who can dead the other side faster. My ideal would be short rounds (no minionmancy!) but average combat lasts about 5 rounds. 3 rounds for minor combats, 7-8 for major combats. It's also why I don't like SoD effects.

I'm more for spreading the love as to healing--give a bunch of classes at least some ability to heal. You shouldn't need a dedicated healer who does nothing but heal (the MMO model), but having someone who can heal should be a major benefit, and not just from a condition-removal standpoint. I'm coming around to the idea that

*Large HP recovery is best saved for out-of-combat (so single-action direct heals shouldn't be too much buffed).
*There should be more ward (damage prevention) effects
*Healing/warding spells should have trade-offs--healing word is fast, so it doesn't do anything special. Cure wounds should heal a bit + give some lingering buff. Others can improve damage output if they heal (reflect damage, etc).

I'm doing some numerical work to look at scaling vs average PC health pools, but that's not done yet.

[GlenSmash!]

I think having a Zealot or two would make in combat healing worth while. But they would have to be level 14+ so maybe not a very viable plan.

[UrielAwakened]

I guess I disagree here, kind of. I'd like healing to be a combat multiplier, not just a "recover quicker" option. For me, too short combats (which is what happens with rocket-tag/nova incentives) means that those cool monster abilities? I'll never see them. Complex tactics? Nope. It's just a race to see who can dead the other side faster. My ideal would be short rounds (no minionmancy!) but average combat lasts about 5 rounds. 3 rounds for minor combats, 7-8 for major combats. It's also why I don't like SoD effects.

I'm more for spreading the love as to healing--give a bunch of classes at least some ability to heal. You shouldn't need a dedicated healer who does nothing but heal (the MMO model), but having someone who can heal should be a major benefit, and not just from a condition-removal standpoint. I'm coming around to the idea that

*Large HP recovery is best saved for out-of-combat (so single-action direct heals shouldn't be too much buffed).
*There should be more ward (damage prevention) effects
*Healing/warding spells should have trade-offs--healing word is fast, so it doesn't do anything special. Cure wounds should heal a bit + give some lingering buff. Others can improve damage output if they heal (reflect damage, etc).

I'm doing some numerical work to look at scaling vs average PC health pools, but that's not done yet.

I'll say it again, just let PCs spend hit dice based on the level of the healing spell.

You don't need some weird formula.

[mephnick]

I'll say it again, just let PCs spend hit dice based on the level of the healing spell.

You don't need some weird formula.

Buffs healing while draining resources. I like it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'll say it again, just let PCs spend hit dice based on the level of the healing spell.

You don't need some weird formula.

I agree that that works (spending hit dice). It would also make hit dice more integrated into things, where they feel more disconnected (to me) currently.

I was mainly calculating average HP at each level and seeing how badly cure wounds scales. Turns out past 1st level, it drops off real badly even if cast out of the biggest slot you've got.

[Easy_Lee]

I'll say it again, just let PCs spend hit dice based on the level of the healing spell.

You don't need some weird formula.

Spending hit dice in addition to the heal's normal effects would be fine, but it also makes healing spirit even better. The best healing options are the ones that, like healing spirit and aura of vitality, can have multiple targets over a period of time. If all I have to do is run through healing spirit to regain 2d12+ HP on a barbarian, that becomes too good. Combine this with a wizard to cast Magic Hut and you not only have healing taken care of, but the DM can't do anything about it without breaking the rules.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. The DM can design encounters that are dangerous on their own rather than trying to kill the players through attrition. Or, if he wishes to play an attrition game, ensure the PCs can't sit still for even thirty consecutive seconds during the gauntlet. This can be done with a timer, approaching wall of destruction, or a variety of other methods.

So again, the DM can play around anything the players can do. I don't see an issue.

[UrielAwakened]

Spending hit dice in addition to the heal's normal effects would be fine, but it also makes healing spirit even better. The best healing options are the ones that, like healing spirit and aura of vitality, can have multiple targets over a period of time. If all I have to do is run through healing spirit to regain 2d12+ HP on a barbarian, that becomes too good. Combine this with a wizard to cast Magic Hut and you not only have healing taken care of, but the DM can't do anything about it without breaking the rules.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. The DM can design encounters that are dangerous on their own rather than trying to kill the players through attrition. Or, if he wishes to play an attrition game, ensure the PCs can't sit still for even thirty consecutive seconds during the gauntlet. This can be done with a timer, approaching wall of destruction, or a variety of other methods.

So again, the DM can play around anything the players can do. I don't see an issue.

Easy solution there:

Restrict it only to instantaneous spells that require an action to cast.

This limits Healing Spirit and Healing Word, and makes Cure Wounds/Mass Wounds/Heal better. Healing Word becomes the "emergency, get this player up now" healing spell, Healing Spirit the, "we have a ton of free time" healing spell.

One problem I see is that Mass Cure Wounds becomes a lot better. Maybe instead the rule should be:

When you cast an instantaneous healing spell using an action, the target can also spend a hit die. For each level the spell is upcast, the target can spend one additional hit die.

[Talamare]

Easy solution there:

Restrict it only to instantaneous spells that require an action to cast.

This limits Healing Spirit and Healing Word, and makes Cure Wounds/Mass Wounds/Heal better. Healing Word becomes the "emergency, get this player up now" healing spell, Healing Spirit the, "we have a ton of free time" healing spell.

Easiest solution of all would be to add the feature to certain spells.
Then you can pick and choose who gets it

[UrielAwakened]

Easiest solution of all would be to add the feature to certain spells.
Then you can pick and choose who gets it

Yeah that's true. I prefer general rules personally but to each their own.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah that's true. I prefer general rules personally but to each their own.

Easiest solution of all would be to add the feature to certain spells.
Then you can pick and choose who gets it

I'm in favor of the spell-by-spell approach, because that allows you to do different things with different spells. One allows spending hit dice. Another reflects the next attack. A third allows a boosted save against an ongoing condition. Stuff like that.

[Samayu]

When you're at 5HP, and the monster is dealing 25 damage twice per round, it makes more mathematical sense to heal after you drop to zero, than when you're still at 30. Especially when you're only healing 8 at a time.

House rule that hit point totals drop below zero, so that you have to be healed up from a negative number. Then the only decision point is who is more likely to be hit next. The downside is that since people are less likely to regain consciousness after a heal at negative hit points, healing only stabilizes the dying.

[PhoenixPhyre]

When you're at 5HP, and the monster is dealing 25 damage twice per round, it makes more mathematical sense to heal after you drop to zero, than when you're still at 30. Especially when you're only healing 8 at a time.

House rule that hit point totals drop below zero, so that you have to be healed up from a negative number. Then the only decision point is who is more likely to be hit next. The downside is that since people are less likely to regain consciousness after a heal at negative hit points, healing only stabilizes the dying.

My issue with that house rule is that in any serious combat (where people dropping to negative HP is likely), players are likely to spend quite a bit of table time doing nothing. Unconscious but stable is the most boring state you can be in. Yes, even worse than being stuck in a force cage . You can't do anything--might as well go get snacks or tune out on a phone. That's corrosive to table fun.

I feel the same way about hard crowd control as applied to the players. Monsters don't get bored when they're polymorphed/banished/stunned/etc. The DM has many more to play (or they can go to narrative time if that was the last one). The player doesn't. He's stuck as a passive observer.

I'm convinced that this is a major reason 5e went away from lots of save-or-suck/die effects and implemented the current death-saves/no negative HP model. It keeps players in the game as much as possible. And that's a good thing in my opinion.

[Sigreid]

I guess I disagree here, kind of. I'd like healing to be a combat multiplier, not just a "recover quicker" option. For me, too short combats (which is what happens with rocket-tag/nova incentives) means that those cool monster abilities? I'll never see them. Complex tactics? Nope. It's just a race to see who can dead the other side faster. My ideal would be short rounds (no minionmancy!) but average combat lasts about 5 rounds. 3 rounds for minor combats, 7-8 for major combats. It's also why I don't like SoD effects.

I'm more for spreading the love as to healing--give a bunch of classes at least some ability to heal. You shouldn't need a dedicated healer who does nothing but heal (the MMO model), but having someone who can heal should be a major benefit, and not just from a condition-removal standpoint. I'm coming around to the idea that

*Large HP recovery is best saved for out-of-combat (so single-action direct heals shouldn't be too much buffed).
*There should be more ward (damage prevention) effects
*Healing/warding spells should have trade-offs--healing word is fast, so it doesn't do anything special. Cure wounds should heal a bit + give some lingering buff. Others can improve damage output if they heal (reflect damage, etc).

I'm doing some numerical work to look at scaling vs average PC health pools, but that's not done yet.

Just thought I'd insert that however successful they are at it any intelligent party is going to at least attempt to rocket tag/alpha strike their opponents to reduce the risk and incoming damage.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Just thought I'd insert that however successful they are at it any intelligent party is going to at least attempt to rocket tag/alpha strike their opponents to reduce the risk and incoming damage.

But a system that makes that a dominating strategy (like 3.5e did) is, in my opinion, boring. It effectively removes any builds, abilities, or tactics that don't lend themselves to alpha strikes from the game--either you can alpha strike your opponent or they alpha strike you.

Compare this to Mechwarrior (where I learned the term alpha strike). Pulling an alpha strike (firing all weapons on target) was a tactic of desperation because the heat build-up would likely shut you down at least temporarily. It was a high risk/high reward tactic, one of many possibilities.

Alpha strikes should have trade-offs other than having to rest quicker. They should require judgement--"can we successfully blow this guy up?" instead of being the go-to. There should be the possibility of all sorts of different viable tactics, from the harrier/death-by-a-thousand-cuts type to the brute-force smack-them-harder types to the ranged nuke to the patient fencer who waits for the perfect opening to the outlast type ("break yourselves on my wall while my friends keep me up!"). Those all get lost under "nova it harder" tactics.

[Tanarii]

Yah. 5e resources management works makes consideration of the alpha strike / nova relevant over the course of an adventure. Not within a specific battle. If you're going to alpha/nova a combat in 5e, beat to do it early on.

Effective combat healing could change that, but you'd have to raise the ability to heal with a resource to be equivalent of using it to take an action instead.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yah. 5e resources management works makes consideration of the alpha strike / nova relevant over the course of an adventure. Not within a specific battle. If you're going to alpha/nova a combat in 5e, beat to do it early on.

Effective combat healing could change that, but you'd have to raise the ability to heal with a resource to be equivalent of using it to take an action instead.

I understand why it's like that, but it's something I'm not satisfied with, at least in theory. In practice, my players don't alpha strike things, nor are they particularly concerned with optimization. They also heal quite a bit, so it's actually rare that people go to 0 HP. Part of this whole thing is that I'm not the most tactically-savvy DM (too many things to remember), I'm too soft (meta-gaming for the players by doing things like hitting the rogue and monk with the DEX save effects and the GOO lock with the psychic damage and splitting attacks against multiple targets instead of nuking a single target) and that my dice love the players, not the monsters.

[KorvinStarmast]

This looks to be a solution looking for a problem. It works fine as is. I think that the whole issue being raised is a symptom of "overthinking" what healing is and how it works in this particular edition. I can't read the minds of devs, but I think this post came close.

I think the major reason that healing is (perceived as) weak in 5e is because the designers wanted to encourage proactive tactics. Making healing too good would cause fights to drag on for longer with less exciting things happening. If healing were super-good, battles might turn into a kind of trench warfare, where healing just gets dumped and dumped until one side makes a mistake or bad roll. A quick and decisive battle can be fun in itself and also allows more fun down the line. It makes sense for a game about a lot of battles.

[lperkins2]

As has been mentioned a couple times, Life clerics are the only competent combat healers. 1d8+3 vs 1d8+6 for first level slots, plus their fancy channel divinity. The extra 3+ points healed from Disciple of Life means they can actually heal faster than a cantrip can harm, at least until they run out of spell slots.

If you want combat healing in general, boost other healing classes to match the life cleric, then give the life cleric something special. Of course, balancing that is another matter entirely. Our life cleric can pretty well counter 1 turn worth of damage each turn, so the party doesn't really take much for HP damage until she runs out of spell slots. Giving that much healing power to bards would make a solid choice for a character into one of the best.

[Strangways]

It's widely[1] believed that in-combat healing is a waste of time in 5e, except to pop someone up from 0 HP. This, in my opinion, is a bad thing. It leads to the whack-a-mole situation, it devalues a core piece of game-play that many players (judging from my players) enjoy, and it provides a near-trap option. It also feels very weird--players letting themselves go full out, get knocked out, then pop back up again without trying to keep their health up.

Ok, so if healing in combat is mostly useless and that's bad, what would be required to make it worth the spell slots/actions?

[1] on forums at least

Healing is widely believed to be useless in combat, other than to keep people from dying, because it is almost useless in combat. And that's realistic. Doctors don't run around trying to heal people in mid-firefight. For the most part, the healing waits until the fight is over.

The basic mechanical problem with in-combat healing in 5e is that damage output vastly outpaces healing output. A fairly low-level fighter type can easily put out 20 or 30 points of damage per turn while expending very few resources, but pumping out that kind of healing every turn would require a huge resource expenditure. Equalizing those two things would trade one set of problems for another. You'd have to let NPCs have that kind of healing capacity too, and then battles would be long, drawn-out affairs, like WoW raids, where the balance between damage output and healing can be maintained over extended periods. In 5e terms, that could easily result in battles going 30 or 40 rounds. More subtly, but probably even worse in the long run, is the question of who would have that kind of healing output? Presumably Clerics and Druids would get it, and probably no one else. But then, given encounters balanced for that kind of healing output, every party would be incomplete without a cleric or druid, thus forcing at least one person in every party to play a class they may not wish to play.

[Tanarii]

A healers healing compared to a fighters output isn't relevant. It's either vs a monsters (which is often considerably less than a damage oriented melee PC), or vs the healer could do using the slot to do damage as a percentage of total damage needed to end the fight faster and the incoming damage that would counter.

I mean, by both of those scales it's a tad low. But nowhere near as low as comparing to a Barbarian or Fighter damage output.

And don't forget you have to compare healing value as 100% success rate, whereas damage commonly has either an attack roll or saving throw. 8 pts of healing from a Cure Light Wounds on an A.C. 18 lvl 1 S&B fighter negates about 4 attacks from a +4 to hit for 6 damage monster. If using it for a offensive spell, it needs to negate that many attacks by ending the fight early to be more effective.

[Eradis]

I dunno about your players, but if I saw a PC getting low under the 'exhaustion at 0hp' rule, they'd be getting a big heal on my next action.

That or the critical hits/falling to 0hp wounds rule. Makes you want to avoid getting dropped to 0 hp. No one wants to lose an eye.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A healers healing compared to a fighters output isn't relevant. It's either vs a monsters (which is often considerably less than a damage oriented melee PC), or vs the healer could do using the slot to do damage as a percentage of total damage needed to end the fight faster and the incoming damage that would counter.

I mean, by both of those scales it's a tad low. But nowhere near as low as comparing to a Barbarian or Fighter damage output.

And don't forget you have to compare healing value as 100% success rate, whereas damage commonly has either an attack roll or saving throw. 8 pts of healing from a Cure Light Wounds on an A.C. 18 lvl 1 S&B fighter negates about 4 attacks from a +4 to hit for 6 damage monster. If using it for a offensive spell, it needs to negate that many attacks by ending the fight early to be more effective.

Agreed. Oh, and you've got old editions coming out again--it's Cure Wounds, not Cure *Light* Wounds . PCs are all glass cannons by design. They're offensive powerhouses (even the non-optimized ones) that have relatively weak defenses. Monsters are the reverse, also by design. This is because

a) big numbers are fun
b) except when they happen to you
c) there are always more monsters. Not so easy to replace a PC.

[Kane0]

Jumping off from Grod's post, I wonder what a specific burst heal would look like?

Perhaps a spell that heals a creature touched for all damage they have taken since your/their last turn up to X amount which scales by slot? Then a higher level version that is usable at range.