5e Healer Feat Scaling

[Reynard Loxley]

Greetings all,

I'm running a game where we have no magical healer at all yet there is a rogue who has got in their background that they were a medic in a war and have taken the healer feat in order to heal.

I like what they've done in that they're using a resource and making their background work with the party makeup (they had the medic background before the party knew there were no magical healers).

I'd like to know what everyone thinks about improving the amount of health Healing Kits can do as the group level up. My thought is to make it more like a spell in that it can be used as if using a higher level. I would increase the d6 to 2d6 at third level, 3d6 at 5th and so on. However I would only allow it to be used in this way a certain number of times (I'm thinking of basing this off the Multiclass Spellcaster Spell slots table on p165 of the PHB).

Additional costs for the healing kit might also come into affect.

What does everyone think of this? I'd like to hear opinions on it and especially if you think it's a bad idea altogether, how you would improve it.

[Sander]

Hmm... I honestly hadn't considered that, but you have a point. I'd be wary of excessive scaling though. It is, still, "just" a feat, not an actual class feature/spell/whatnot. That being said, maybe increase the healing at the 3 "tiers" of play? I.E 1d6 at lvl.1, 2d6 at 5, 3d6 at 11 and 4d6 at 17? It won't win any awards, but it's still a massive boost to the power of the feat, and considering how often you can use it, it'll likely amount to quite a bit of healing through the day.

[Shaofoo]

I would only allow it if healing kits were a limited resource and you can only buy so much and if you could expend one charge for each d6 that you heal (So 2 charges for 2d6 and so on).

Otherwise if they can just freely buy kits then I see this breaking the game since you could easily heal out of combat for a substantial amount for little cost.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Given that there's still the 1/Short Rest limit, I don't see any harm in letting it scale.

I mean, there's honestly little harm in just letting people heal to full after each fight, even. It reduces the threat of very weak encounters somewhat and lessens the attrition game, but there are still plenty of other resources to manage, and healing remains important for in-combat. You just don't need someone to play a healer and burn lots of spell slots after every fight. It's a power increase and potentially a slight tone shift, but it's a fairly universal one that's easy to compensate for.

[Sir cryosin]

I don't scale the how much it heals but how many times you can use it a short rest. Like AFB but you heal 1d6 every use at lv x you can use two uses each 1d6. Then at xx you get another 1d6 heal ect......
But you are going to want to higher the cost of healer kit some because your giving your players really really cheap healing.

[Zaq]

I would only allow it if healing kits were a limited resource and you can only buy so much and if you could expend one charge for each d6 that you heal (So 2 charges for 2d6 and so on).

Otherwise if they can just freely buy kits then I see this breaking the game since you could easily heal out of combat for a substantial amount for little cost.

You can still only use it once per rest per character. And there's a listed price for buying Potions of Healing—yes, that price is higher than a healer's kit, but the point is that even the PHB anticipated the ability to trade gold for healing. And that's without the expenditure of a feat. I don't see it hurting anything.

Granted, I'm generally of the school of design that says that it shouldn't be a big deal to heal outside of combat (though I'm fine with having a daily limit on it, like with 4e's healing surges, as long as that daily limit isn't used to conflict with anything else).

What if the feat also allowed you to take an action to allow a character to spend Hit Dice (with all the same effects as spending HD normally after a rest)? That might even be underpowered, though, really.

[Joe the Rat]

1d6, +4, +the maximum hit dice of the recipient. Once per short rest per recipient. So it already scales some. I like adding an extra die at 5, 11, and 17 if you want more.

Having easy access to healing pots (if you treat them as magic items, the craft time is 2 days instead of 10) gives you some in-fight heals.

Something else you could do is to add a song of rest trait to the healer. Expend a kit charge, and everyone gets an extra d6 if they use hit dice during a short rest.

[Centik]

I recently created a fighter archetype with better use of healer's kits, since the idea of non-magic healing is awesome, so I've been mulling over the item a good bit. I reckon having them scale is a solid idea, but could be easy-mode for your party if they all abuse them up after seeing the potential when the rogue uses one. My recommendation would be to add a proficiency component to them in order to get their full effect and those without proficiency heal half the allotted amount. Just give said proficiency over to your rogue for having the background. It gives him something of his own, something special, and doesn't absolutely destroy combat encounters!

Just my 2 cents.

[gfishfunk]

Do not scale the feat, scale the items.

After you notice the healing kit as being too lackluster, start providing 'improved healing kits', etc. Then, you can balance it by availability rather than as a straight feat progression.

[Segev]

Do not scale the feat, scale the items.

After you notice the healing kit as being too lackluster, start providing 'improved healing kits', etc. Then, you can balance it by availability rather than as a straight feat progression.

This is about what I was going to suggest. Make better healing kits which cost more but heal more. You could scale the feat with those, too.

Another possible item would be a variation on the healing kit that heals less, but can be used more often per short rest.

[Reynard Loxley]

You've all made some really good points and suggestions. I think I'll be re-designing my approach and add bits of many things that have been said.

Thank you all!

[Lollerabe]

Hehe funny side note: I have a rogue in my campaign (Vhuman) who has a background of being a combat medic while he was working for his father who was a cleric of Torm. He now despises religion due to the horrors he saw inflicted in its name.

He took the thief archetype, and the fast hand + healers kit with the feat has saved our behinds so many times now.

On topic: it does scale by itself, and adding more lucrative healing kits seems like a great idea. If there's a player who has survival as a skill or knowledge nature, maybe they could help the rogue player buy tracking down herbs and plants that makes for stronger healing kits (2d4 instead of 1d6).
That way you also create some team synergy which everyone loves :)