Aid vs Prayer of Healing

[daendil]

I'm playing my first 5e Cleric (Light Domain), and I'm torn between Aid and Prayer of Healing as my initial 2nd Level prepared spell choice.

I am leaning toward Aid, as the additional 5HP boost to max HP all day seems like it could really pay off, particularly at level 3. Plus no concentration.

Prayer of Healing appears to be a nice OOC group heal, but using hit dice on short rests has worked for us to this point. We are playing Curse of Strahd, so I'm not sure if that extra mass heal between combats will be more necessary as things get more nasty.

Thoughts?

[Specter]

I'd go for Aid: you can always have it on at the beginning of the day, it takes less time to cast (10 minutes even out of battle can crack all the tension the DM is building up) and it can even be used in combat in a pinch.

[Drackolus]

Why not both?
It depends on your build and group. In a larger group (5+) go for prayer of healing.
But, remember that prevention trumps recovery. Killing things faster is the better way to go.
Personally, I generally prefer prayer, but I play with upwards 8 players.

[Slipperychicken]

I've been playing a life cleric "healbot" build at level 8 for a few months, and I find that I haven't cast prayer of healing once yet. I find that whenever we have 10 minutes off to cast it, we usually have at least a full hour off too. At that point, everyone just short rests to blow their hit dice on healing, so we don't bother. Between the life cleric channel divinity when people get really low, the healer feat to get people over half, and short rests to cover the rest, prayer of healing doesn't have enough of a niche to justify prepping it.

I think that since you're not building a full healbot, you won't have as much short-rest-based healing competing with it, so you should have more of a reason to use daily powers like spell slots on healing. Even so, it's not a huge deal which one you pick because every day you can swap out your spells, experiment, and figure out what's right for you in each situation.

Also, I'll echo Drackolus: If your party is doing their job, being careful, and being efficient in combat, then you shouldn't have as much need to spend spells on healing.

[djreynolds]

Aid is I think worth 8 hours or so, that's a 3rd of a day, and it stays when you short rest. So when you expend hit dice, you can refill the "hit points"

To me prayer of healing is like, we just got out of a nasty battle, and it is not safe to even short rest, if we get attacked either getting to place to short rest or while we short rest, we will die. That's prayer of healing, otherwise, you can just short rest and not waste a spell that needs to be recharged on a long rest.

And remember every short rest recharges your channel divinity uses.

As for CoS, if you just got out of a nasty battle and its going to be dark, and you have the time for 10 minutes to spare than prayer of healing will get you to safety and out of the mist.