Healing and monster damage in 5ed

[Jaxxen]

I keep reading a lot of posters saying healing in 5th ED is mostly supposed to be done after combat. However seems that no matter what game I'm in the monsters seem to hit 5X harder than most the players at the table. IE we might do 2 or 3 d8 per round depending. Then the monsters hit for like 30 DPR or more most times, which results in usually at least 1-2 downed players per round and our cleric playing whack a mole with HP / downed players. I guess im asking is this normal?

[Strill]

That sounds very unusual. What level are you, and what classes are you playing? It sounds like you're level 4 or below, and have a party full of squishy casters who aren't casting any spells.

Also, if by "3d8" you mean "3 hits of 1d8 + Ability modifier", then your group should've done around 22 damage.

[Jaxxen]

Guess I should start with a brief stat run down on my character.

66HP/ 16 AC ranger level 8

Played last night combat went thusly.
Turn 1 I had a 21 went first attacked did 1d8 + 1d6+ 3 for around 12 damage total missed my second attack.
Drow warrior turn 1: closes to melee combat I'm hit for 51 total off two hits.
Turn 2: Disengage
Turn 2 drow warrior: Hits me from ranged for 18 damage, im unconscious.

Than healer proceeds to play whackamole with my HP till im able to kill the drow.

It just seems to me whatever the scenario or enemies this is common, level doesn't really matter to much into it, ive played games from level 1-10. Maybe I just don't minmax enough or something. Though its not just me this happens constantly to our bard monk and necromancer as well (though less often to necro since he is surrounded by zombies.)

[Strill]

Was that the only enemy? It sounds like a CR8 enemy from the damage you've described. Possibly an Assassin from the Monster Manual. If that's the case, then it was a Medium encounter. It sounds to me like your spellcasters aren't chipping in enough to incapacitate enemies.

Solo enemies are easy because in a solo fight, single-target status effects apply to the entire enemy force. That means your party needs to focus on crowd control. You can cast Spike Growth or Ensnaring Strike to prevent the target from getting close to you in order to keep out of range of its Melee attacks. Alternatively, a single Blindness/Deafness or Hold Person from the Cleric, Bard, or Wizard would've completely shut him down.

[Snails]

Well, a frost giant is CR8 and gets two atttacks at +9, averaging ~25 per hit. So I do not think your experience is so unusual if you up against an offense heavy opponent who gets even a little lucky with the dice.

With the flat math, you can easily see streaks of many hits in a row or many misses in a row.

I would note that the system seems to be working, in a fashion. In 1e/2e/3e having single digit hit points will get you killed outright, so it was often necessary to useful a powerful healing spell slot to bring someone back in the fight. In 5e, the cleric can play "HP whackamole" using low level slots, and you are not likely to die just because you got walloped (yet again) while having 3 HPs. Against an enemy like that, it hardly matters whether you have 3, 13, or 23 HPs, right?

[Unoriginal]

the Drow Elite Warrior from the MM could do that kind of damage, if DM rolled for it and got near the maximum.

[Unoriginal]

Does your group have any melee/tank character?

[Silfazaris]

Make a cleric or bard NPC to stick with the party for a reason. That's my suggestion.
I'm Dming an OotA campaign. On the very first sign I saw that our cleric was going to leave the game I created a nice background for a tiefling cleric of Ilmater and introduced her in the group. The cleric player played for 2 more sessions and now he left the game.

Yesterday I ran a medium difficult combat against my players featuring 2 Fire Giants (The party is big, with 8 characters, npcs and followers already included).
Our Half-Orc Fighter was literally massacred in 2 rounds and he has 113hp (he always roll HP instead of getting the average) on 9th-level.

I can't see a group without a cleric/bard going too far in a campaign, UNLESS, the campaign has some traits like potions of healing being so common that they come from trees and can be bought in bulks in literally any settlement in the game. But that's just my opinion.

[Trolleitor]

5e is balanced around a 3-round combat (for example when a DM creates a monster with regeneration he needs to multiply the regeneration value x3 and add it to the HP to calculate its CR). Its perfectly normal that you drop to 0 hp if a monster can target you 2 rounds in a row, and don't roll like ****.

If you don't like that, ask your DM to prepare fights with 1-2 monsters per PC. That way the monsters won't focus all their resources on one PC.

If he doesn't like that idea, build a party around crowd control, and **** up his encounters.

[DivisibleByZero]

I see comments about an healer and comments about your Drow. What's the rest of the party and what were they doing? Because from your description it looks like a 2-man party.

[Naanomi]

Why were you taking all the damage? Clerics are not squishy in general; they should have been up with you, limiting maneuverability options, getting in attacks of opportunity, and maybe taking a blow or two. Or (as mentioned above) throwing out a saving throw spell and ending the encounter instantly?

[Albions_Angel]

Lots of replies about the damage and the fight, not much on the "healing in combat" thing.

Basically, whatever edition you play, healing in combat is suboptimal. A downed player is still likely to survive (death saving throws take a while, usually, and once stable, they are just gunna lie there). So you are better off continuing to do damage and kill the threat, rather than take time out to get them back in the fight and risk losing another member.

There are ways around this, but they involve new death mechanics. Making downed chars bleed every round rather than rolling saves puts a time limit on healing them. Allowing characters to be staggered (on or below 0) but still conscious (able to perform a single move action without bleeding, or a full/partial other action at the risk of bleeding a point) leads to more up time and heroic moments.

BUT, while that can help, its not necessary, and there is nothing wrong with healing in combat in MOST games. These forums are very optimization heavy. And thats fine. But its worth remembering that people here have likely done the maths and found the "wasted" heal action is sub optimal compared to the party damage over time... and that such optimal play is going to matter one encounter in 50 or more in most peoples games. Sooo, dont worry about being sub optimal. Playing healer whack-a-mole is fine (if a little dull potentially for the healer), and it ensures people dont die by accident.

The others are right though. If all you are getting are single target encounters, and all you have are squishy characters, something needs to be said to the DM. More enemies will be just as tough, have just as much HP and deal just as much damage, but spread out across the entire party, not just you.