Proactive or Reactive? Overall, which is superior?

[jaappleton]

My question boils down to this:

Some classes and builds heal better than others. Life Domain is great at healing, its the whole schtick of the Domain.

The issue with healing is that its reactive. Your party was hurt, and you're healing them as a result. And sometimes, that's unavoidable. It happens.

And a Fighter with 5hp hits just as well as one with 55hp.

So are resources better spent healing, or preventing the enemy from being able to do anything? Counterspell, Hold Person, etc can all prevent enemy actions. Who doesn't love shutting down a foe?

I've long held the opinion that 5Es design dictates that healing reactively isn't the best way to go about it, but does that apply even to 'super healers' like Life Domain, or Life 1 / Lore Bard X?

[PhoenixPhyre]

My question boils down to this:

Some classes and builds heal better than others. Life Domain is great at healing, its the whole schtick of the Domain.

The issue with healing is that its reactive. Your party was hurt, and you're healing them as a result. And sometimes, that's unavoidable. It happens.

And a Fighter with 5hp hits just as well as one with 55hp.

So are resources better spent healing, or preventing the enemy from being able to do anything? Counterspell, Hold Person, etc can all prevent enemy actions. Who doesn't love shutting down a foe?

I've long held the opinion that 5Es design dictates that healing reactively isn't the best way to go about it, but does that apply even to 'super healers' like Life Domain, or Life 1 / Lore Bard X?

It may not be efficient, but losing actions because someone's at 0 HP, especially repeatedly so is less efficient. Pop-up healing only doesn't lose actions if the healer
a) can go before the downed person
b) is in range/LoS

[MaxWilson]

Proactive is fine if it's very efficient.

Popup healing is just a way to exploit 5E rules to increase the efficiency of reactive healing. But some proactive healing is even better than that. When you can heal the whole party from zero to 100+ health with a single 5th level spell (Extended Healing Spirit V, w/ Disciple of Life bonus for average 420 HP healed total) and one sorcery point, there is no reason to wait and be reactive.

[Maxilian]

In general, being Proactive is better, you don't have to waste a spell slot healing, if your enemy is unable to attack and rarely does damage, but IMHO one of the biggest problem with healing in general, is that is way too expensive mid combat, it consumes an Action in most cases (so most of your turn) and a spell slot (again in most of the cases), so for the sake of reactive heals, i value more bonus action heals (Warlock heals and Druid heals are nice because of this).

Note: Still i think that is great that healing is this way, so it won't suddenly become a "I'm immortal as long as the Cleric is here"

[Man_Over_Game]

There's an interesting point about the OP's post when it comes to proactive vs. reactive actions. Generally, proactive options are more efficient than reactive ones. Counterspell can nullify a Cone of Cold (deals about 27 damage), where Mass Cure Wounds heals less at the same level (heals about 17 HP), despite Counterspell and Mass Cure Wounds being the same level.

As they say in war, the best defense is a good offense. The only thing stopping the threat of a nuke is the threat of another nuke.

[PhoenixPhyre]

There's an interesting point about the OP's post when it comes to proactive vs. reactive actions. Generally, proactive options are more efficient than reactive ones. Counterspell can nullify a Cone of Cold (deals about 27 damage), where Mass Cure Wounds heals less at the same level (heals about 17 HP), despite Counterspell and Mass Cure Wounds being the same level.

As they say in war, the best defense is a good offense. The only thing stopping the threat of a nuke is the threat of another nuke.

One thing to note in comparing healing to damage is that healing always works. Attacks can miss, saves can succeed. This (somewhat) balances the scale.

[MaxWilson]

Also, if you're sufficiently proactive, action economy costs don't matter. Healing in combat is more reactive than healing before combat.

[Man_Over_Game]

One thing to note in comparing healing to damage is that healing always works. Attacks can miss, saves can succeed. This (somewhat) balances the scale.

In my example, the 27 damage was based on a 50% chance saving or not. Assuming everyone makes their saves, that's still 18 damage average. Even in the worst case scenario, a good Counterspell prevents just as much damage as a Mass Cure Wounds, while still only using a Reaction vs. an Action, and has a 100% chance of success at this level.

Healing just didn't get a good place in 5e. Healing is more versatile (more things deal damage than things that cast spells), but it's not enough to justify the lack of support for it.

[MaxWilson]

In my example, the 27 damage was based on a 50% chance saving or not. Assuming everyone makes their saves, that's still 18 damage average. Even in the worst case scenario, a good Counterspell prevents just as much damage as a Mass Cure Wounds, while still only using a Reaction vs. an Action, and has a 100% chance of success at this level.

Healing just didn't get a good place in 5e. Healing is more versatile (more things deal damage than things that cast spells), but it's not enough to justify the lack of support for it.

Healing got a weird place in 5E. The healing in the game is either crummy and inefficient (Cure Wounds, Mass Healing Word, etc.) or insanely strong (Aura of Vitality, Healing Spirit, to a lesser extent Goodberry if you use it in a certain way). It's like the devs couldn't make up their minds what they wanted it to be.

[Man_Over_Game]

Healing got a weird place in 5E. The healing in the game is either crummy and inefficient (Cure Wounds, Mass Healing Word, etc.) or insanely strong (Aura of Vitality, Healing Spirit, to a lesser extent Goodberry if you use it in a certain way). It's like the devs couldn't make up their minds what they wanted it to be.

Valid point. Seems like every instance of repetitive, short-burst healing was accidentally made too strong, which is why things like Healing Word is more valuable than Cure Wounds.

Hmm....trying to wrack my brain for a patch job...

I think the easiest thing to do is just to punish players who enter the Dying state (via Exhaustion or some other method, like MaxWilson's special dying state) so that minor popup healing is less valuable, and just making a specialized change to Healing Spirit (like it grants Temporary HP, up to your missing HP, instead of real HP, so it can't easily be recycled).

[DrowPiratRobrts]

I agree with those who've said proactive is more efficient. That's not to say that healing is bad or unnecessary, but let me over-simplify with an example.

Imagine you're a cleric playing with a rogue, fighter, and bard. You could spend an action healing someone(s) or attacking/disabling someone(s). If you heal you've done nothing to bring the combat closer to an end, but you're fighter at only 15 hp might thank you for prolonging his/her ability to fight. And that's precisely what healing does. You enable others to keep fighting longer. You also run the risk of sliding into a constant state of healing depending on the fight at hand. It's reasonable to think that the fighter might take as much or more damage before your next turn than what you just healed him/her for. So when your turn comes up are you going to heal again or do something proactive? Essentially the party is fighting with a man down since you aren't being proactive, but they will be able to fight with a man down for longer than normal.

Is that better than using hold person or suggestion or some mass debuff on your enemies? Maybe in some situations when such spells aren't likely to work. As someone else stated, healing always works and that's no small thing. But this still leaves me with the impression that the best thing is typically to attack as much as possible even as a cleric/healer. Work on doing damage or disabling enemies/buffing allies by giving them advantage or something. At the last possible moment try to heal as much as possible with one action, then go back to being proactive. You might just make it through many combats without ever thinking about healing until after the fact.

[MaxWilson]

Valid point. Seems like every instance of repetitive, short-burst healing was accidentally made too strong, which is why things like Healing Word is more valuable than Cure Wounds.

Hmm....trying to wrack my brain for a patch job...

I think the easiest thing to do is just to punish players who enter the Dying state (via Exhaustion or some other method, like MaxWilson's special dying state) so that minor popup healing is less valuable, and just making a specialized change to Healing Spirit (like it grants Temporary HP, up to your missing HP, instead of real HP, so it can't easily be recycled).

You could also just change the spell durations. E.g. make Aura of Vitality 3 rounds instead of 10, ditto for Healing Spirit, since that's the math WotC writers were apparently relying on when they wrote it. (Also, fix Healing Spirit's weird action economy tricks at the same time by making it heal you when you start and end your turn in the spell's area.)

I'm not going to do that for my own games, since 5E's magic system is messed up in all kinds of ways already (Polymorph, Planar Binding) and isn't worth overhauling, but it would be the most obvioius fix.

[Tanarii]

Healing is fine, at least in T1 and T2. With 100% success rate, a single healing spell can negate multiple normal-level enemy actions on hard to hit/damage allies.

The trick / hard part is to stop your easy to hit/damage teammates from being attacked in the first place. Often easier said than done. :smallamused:

The typical downside of reserving your healing for pop-up healing is that's how you lose PCs. Either to massive damage, or DMs that roll multiattacks all at once, or even to a DMs that have enemies target downed Pcs.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

I think you are going to have to consider the circumstances individually.

Ideally I'd like to keep my party up with temporary hit points I shared from killing lots of bad guys. Is that gonna happen? Probably not.

In parties I'm in or DM with a good Cleric pro-active healing really has a place.

The Cleric left another party I'm in leaving my Bard as the main healer. Yeah, great. The guys just don't understand the limitations of them D4's + CHA Healing Word dishes out. BUT reactively the Bard can keep many a party member from dying. We just aren't buffing ppl back up with 4D4 of Level 4 Healing Words.

[Unoriginal]

My question boils down to this:

Some classes and builds heal better than others. Life Domain is great at healing, its the whole schtick of the Domain.

The issue with healing is that its reactive. Your party was hurt, and you're healing them as a result. And sometimes, that's unavoidable. It happens.

And a Fighter with 5hp hits just as well as one with 55hp.

So are resources better spent healing, or preventing the enemy from being able to do anything? Counterspell, Hold Person, etc can all prevent enemy actions. Who doesn't love shutting down a foe?

I've long held the opinion that 5Es design dictates that healing reactively isn't the best way to go about it, but does that apply even to 'super healers' like Life Domain, or Life 1 / Lore Bard X?

Asking which is superior assumes one of the two is. Neither are.

Healing people who aren't at 0 HP has a cost: you're spending ressources and action to make it more likely someone will not go down, and it risks to be a waste because the formerly wounded person might not get wounded again.

Healing people only when they are at 0 HP has a cost: It still cost you ressources and action (cost 1: automatically lose spell slot and most of your turn when one of your comrades is in danger) the person is down, meaning they'd have to get up (cost 2: movement), plus between the turn they're downed and the turn you heal them they can still die, be it from enemies that keep attacking or bad death saves (cost 3: risk of death).

Is avoiding risking death, movement loss and having the healer's actions limited anytime the situation shows up superior to not risking to waste spell slots and a turn's action when the wounded person isn't as much in danger?

Answer is: it depends. It's a calculation people have to do depending on circumstances. At best you could ask which situation tends to be the most common.

Some people will tell you that the devs couldn't make their minds about healing, others will tell you that it'd be foolish to heal someone who's not on the brink of death, and others still will tell you 5e's healing is plain bad.

In actuality, 5e's healing is meant to fit a variety of situations that might or might not happen.

Anyone can pretend to be insightful at posteriori when they guess right in a game of random chances and mutating possibilities. Actual insight requires admitting that it is a game of random chances and mutating possibilities, which means you're gambling to have the correct solutions, and so the writers of the games putting a lot of solutions, covering various cases, for you to pick from is only competent game design.

[Astofel]

Generally speaking, I find that being proactive is better, unless the thing you're being reactive with is really, really good. For instance, as mentioned earlier it's better to Counterspell a Cone of Cold than to try and patch it up with Mass Healing Word after the fact. But in a situation where most of the party is down and only the cleric is left standing I couldn't think of a better use of their action than Mass Heal.

[Lonely Tylenol]

I think the opportunity costs matter for this discussion as well. If you’re already going Cleric, for example, then going Life Cleric can dramatically increase the value of your reactive options for a relatively low opportunity cost, which means... You’re not really worse than any other Cleric at proactive (or preventative) measures.

By contrast, I can’t think of a single Cleric subclass that is meaningfully better at preventing damage to others (via party buffs, debuffs, or submission via superior firepower) without being too resource-intensive (I guess Order Cleric’s Channel Divinity and bonus action Enchantments stand out as probably the best examples?), which means a control-oriented non-Life Cleric will be about as good at control as a control-oriented Life Cleric, while also being much worse at the healing.

So a Life Cleric who isn’t “focused” on healing might still be the better option, because their Spirit Guardians is just as good as the War Cleric’s, but their panic button is bigger and friendlier.

[Innocent_bystan]

I'm playing a support Bard as my main character and she is absolutely brilliant at the combination of preventing/healing. Healing Spirit as a magical secret, Healing Word for in combat healing and my all time favorite ability Cutting Words for prevention.

Preventing 30+ damage on our tank with a single inspiration point, as a reaction, is magnificent.

My other magical secret is Counterspell. That spell is worth it's weight in gold. Getting to tell the Dm: "no, you don't", after the BBEG casts Cone of Cold -or something similar-, is priceless.

[Unoriginal]

I'm playing a support Bard as my main character and she is absolutely brilliant at the combination of preventing/healing. Healing Spirit as a magical secret, Healing Word for in combat healing and my all time favorite ability Cutting Words for prevention.

Preventing 30+ damage on our tank with a single inspiration point, as a reaction, is magnificent.

My other magical secret is Counterspell. That spell is worth it's weight in gold. Getting to tell the Dm: "no, you don't", after the BBEG casts Cone of Cold -or something similar-, is priceless.

In principle you wouldn't know it's a Cone of Cold when you're using Counterspell, though. Many DMs rule otherwise and tell which spell it is before you choose to counter, to be sure, but it makes Counterspell waaaaay much stronger.

[Innocent_bystan]

In principle you wouldn't know it's a Cone of Cold when you're using Counterspell, though. Many DMs rule otherwise and tell which spell it is before you choose to counter, to be sure, but it makes Counterspell waaaaay much stronger.
True. But it works the other way around too, so that's more or less even.

I feel the whole react-to-something mechanic not very well thought out, not for Counterspell nor Cutting Words. Luckily, my Dm is like the ones you describe.

[Pex]

It depends on the individual and personal taste.

Unlike many/most people here I do not value initiative so highly. It is significant and I agree certain classes really really want go first, but if I'm not playing one of those classes concerns of initiative isn't important to me when creating my character. Add in personal luck where I'm notorious for almost always rolling low when it comes to initiative, I'm very used to not going first and near to last if not last. I respond to what the enemy has already done. That allows other players to take the initiative, no pun intended, and do what they want to do. It's teamwork. My taking care of defense allows them to be more aggressive on offense.

I don't always play reactive characters. That's just how it works for me when I do. The other players know I contributed to helping the party win the day.

[jaappleton]

I think as some have said, it comes down to action economy.

If I can heal and cast a shutdown or offensive spell in the same round, that's the best of both.

Life Domain's channel divinity isn't a spell, so that plays into the whole 'heal and do something else' line of thought.

I suppose Divine Souls have a lot to say in this scenario with Quicken and Twinned.

Even Grave getting more out of their healing and spare the dying as a bonus action can really add something.

[Chronos]

It's worth remembering that, although life clerics and some others are really good at healing, that's still not all they can do. You do still have some offensive spells and cantrips, and you also have heavy armor and at least some sort of weapon. If nobody's hurt yet, then go ahead and hurt someone.