Anyone else found healing to be broken in 5th edition?

[Pigkappa]

I have just DMed my first DnD5e campaign, my own adaptation of the 3rd edition Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. It was a lot of fun :).

My players and I had the impression that healing is very overpowered in this edition. The party consisted of 2 paladins, 1 druid, 1 bard, 1 sorcerer. The spellcasters soon decided to prepare as many healing spells as possible; the sorcerer acquired an item to cast a low level healing spell.

I found it difficult to fight this group without resorting to tactics that would look unfair. As soon as any PC is down, they'd be healed for a few hit points and, depending on initiative, get to play their round. Paladins kept dishing out massive damage right after they had been felled. I used some Counterspells against their healing, but when there are low-level bonus actions healing spells around, that doesn't go very far.

By the end of the campaign, the optimal strategy for Strahd and his minions had become clear - they had to choose spells and attacks that did small but repeated damage to characters that were just felled. A cat that does 4 attacks of 1d3-1 damage would be a much better minion than a golem that does 1 attack of 4d12+21 damage. This can possibly create an awkward dynamic - the enemies have to focus on killing the characters, rather than just knocking them out, which is not very nice.

Has any of you experienced something like this?

[JNAProductions]

How many fights per rest did you have?

Because every single heal comes from a limited pool. If they're using THAT MUCH on heals, they should be out of gas in short order.

[Rerem115]

Can't say it's been a problem in my experience. You have a party that's capable of investing really heavily into healing, more so that most, but unless they're pulling some Life Cleric+Goodberry or Healing Spirit cheese, it's probably fair. With that composition, being mad at their healing is like being mad at a party of Rogues for being sneaky.

If you're frustrated with the Chumbawamba, environmental hazards and/or AoE damage serve as a good incentive for players to avoid getting knocked to zero without looking like you're singling them out.

[Bobthewizard]

My players and I had the impression that healing is very overpowered in this edition.

I agree with you. Healing isn't necessarily OP, but I think there should be some penalty for getting knocked unconscious and revived. I'd like to see the players miss their next turn at least if they are revived. That way players would have some incentive to avoid getting knocked out without the DM having to try to kill them.

[Merellis]

Got a three person party of Paladin, Cleric, and Bard.

The amount of fights I've drained spell-slots and lay on hands via them doing emergencey healing has been hilarious.

There was one fight where they let the Paladin just tank everything while they spammed cantrips used healing word over and over.

First fight of the dungeon and they spent so many resources just keeping the paldin alive until the door closed and they were forced to get into the room.

[NaughtyTiger]

just wait until the paladin realizes he only needs to burn 1 point of lay on hands to bring them back... at level 2 that's 10 revives.

[johnbragg]

I have just DMed my first DnD5e campaign, my own adaptation of the 3rd edition Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. It was a lot of fun :).

My players and I had the impression that healing is very overpowered in this edition. The party consisted of 2 paladins, 1 druid, 1 bard, 1 sorcerer. The spellcasters soon decided to prepare as many healing spells as possible; the sorcerer acquired an item to cast a low level healing spell.

So, 4 out of 5 party members had cure wounds and/or healing word on their spell list. Yes, that's a lot of healing. And whatever the sorcerer was doing?


I found it difficult to fight this group without resorting to tactics that would look unfair. As soon as any PC is down, they'd be healed for a few hit points and, depending on initiative, get to play their round. Paladins kept dishing out massive damage right after they had been felled. I used some Counterspells against their healing, but when there are low-level bonus actions healing spells around, that doesn't go very far.

Yes, that group is going to have a lot of healing. But on the other hand, they're using those Spells Known slots for healing rather than other things. The Paladin is burning spell slots on healing that he could be using to Smite. The Druid could be casting Faerie Fire instead of Cure Wounds. The Bard could be locking down one opponent with Tasha's Hideous Laughter, but he's casting Healing Word instead. And the sorcerer--loot drops are pretty much the DM's fault.


By the end of the campaign, the optimal strategy for Strahd and his minions had become clear - they had to choose spells and attacks that did small but repeated damage to characters that were just felled. A cat that does 4 attacks of 1d3-1 damage would be a much better minion than a golem that does 1 attack of 4d12+21 damage. This can possibly create an awkward dynamic - the enemies have to focus on killing the characters, rather than just knocking them out, which is not very nice.

Has any of you experienced something like this?

[Aussiehams]

Remember, when they go down they are prone and it uses half their movement to get back up. Knock them down, then move away more than half their move distance and you have at least affected the melee chars a bit.
And remember they drop their weapons/held items when they go down. Have the baddie pick it up or kick it away.
And as said above, they are going to burn through resources quickly. Maybe up the encounters before a long rest.

[Brookshw]

my own adaptation of the 3rd edition Expedition to Castle Ravenloft.

...

I found it difficult to fight this group without resorting to tactics that would look unfair.

What EtCR are you running? That's not a module that's fair in the slightest, there are AOE SODs thrown against the party before they leave the village and a pretty good possibility of CR 17(ish, based on 3e) fights thrown against the party when they're...maybe level 9ish depending on what they do. That module, in it's origin at least, is well known for being deadly. I'm more wondering about whether your adaptation toned it down.

But to your question, yes, healing in this edition is pretty powerful.

[Dork_Forge]

I agree with you. Healing isn't necessarily OP, but I think there should be some penalty for getting knocked unconscious and revived. I'd like to see the players miss their next turn at least if they are revived. That way players would have some incentive to avoid getting knocked out without the DM having to try to kill them.

My solution for this is to give a player a level of exhaustion each time they are knocked unconscious, it puts a very quick stop to the yoyo healing you see a lot in DnD groups whilst being an understandable detriment.

[Potato_Priest]

My solution for this is to give a player a level of exhaustion each time they are knocked unconscious, it puts a very quick stop to the yoyo healing you see a lot in DnD groups whilst being an understandable detriment.

That’s definitely the most common houserule, but for some reason it never really sit right with me. I guess the consequences seem at once too severe in the long term (over the course of the adventuring day) and not severe enough in the moment, since the character is still instantly right back up fighting at pretty much full effectiveness.

I think I’ll try implementing bobthewizard’s houserule for a version with more immediate consequences. I also like that it could lead to situations in which the team has to desperately hold off baddies while the wizard slowly struggles to his feet to cast that game-changing spell.

[Dork_Forge]

That’s definitely the most common houserule, but for some reason it never really sit right with me. I guess the consequences seem at once too severe in the long term (over the course of the adventuring day) and not severe enough in the moment, since the character is still instantly right back up fighting at pretty much full effectiveness.

I think I’ll try implementing bobthewizard’s houserule for a version with more immediate consequences.

I can definitely see the not enough in the moment part if it's their first level of exhaustion, for over the course of the day I guess it just seems a bit... much that the consequence isn't increasingly severe for being knocked unconscious and dying multiple times per day. Missing a turn is definitley a potent reason to not get knocked down though!

[Jerrykhor]

You might want to look into a very special cantrip: Chill Touch. It stops any kind of healing, regeneration or HP recovery.

A reasonably smart enemy would also realise that he needs to finish off his downed foes before they get healed again. Use multi-hitting spells such as Scorching Ray or Eldritch Blast. Or just simply using all your multi-attacks on the downed PC. 2 hits should kill them by RAW, because a hit on an unconscious target is always a crit, and a crit is 2 failed death saves.

Theories such as 'cat is a more effective finisher than golem' is interesting, but how often do players fight both cat and golem to experience such disparity?

If you are feeling cruel, there's nothing better than the Disintegrate spell to put the fear of death in players. No death saves, no downed state, no revives. 0 hp=dust, get ready your backup character, thanks.

There are some monsters that have instant kill abilities such as Mind Flayer's brain eating.

[Potato_Priest]

I can definitely see the not enough in the moment part if it's their first level of exhaustion, for over the course of the day I guess it just seems a bit... much that the consequence isn't increasingly severe for being knocked unconscious and dying multiple times per day. Missing a turn is definitley a potent reason to not get knocked down though!

Yeah, you’re definitely right that it’s not exactly realistic that you could be fine after several concussions/equivalent injury in one day, but neither are hit points in general, so I’m ok with it. If you still feel it’s not harsh enough, there’s no reason you can’t do both. (Or heck, offer it as a choice between exhaustion from getting going quickly or losing a turn to doing it slowly). To be honest, the choice is actually really good as it penalizes yo-yo tactics but not getting healed after a fight, and will tend to result in adventurers with 1-2 levels of exhaustion (annoying but not crippling) at the end of a hard day.

I think an interesting opportunity presented by the lose a turn houserule is that it makes NPCs using yo-yo tactics more interesting and fun for the players. While NPCs don’t really have to care about a level or 2 of exhaustion they certainly have to care about losing a turn.

[Skylivedk]

I found adding the exhaustion levels to be a very good start. It's one of the most expensive conditions to deal with - remember long rest only removes one level. When our ranger was at his third exhaustion level, the party was very very much aware of being at the ropes.

[Pigkappa]

What EtCR are you running? That's not a module that's fair in the slightest, there are AOE SODs thrown against the party before they leave the village and a pretty good possibility of CR 17(ish, based on 3e) fights thrown against the party when they're...maybe level 9ish depending on what they do. That module, in it's origin at least, is well known for being deadly. I'm more wondering about whether your adaptation toned it down.

But to your question, yes, healing in this edition is pretty powerful.

It's the EtCR for D&D 3.5 but I have indeed made many changes that remove the unfairly deadly components. It's the 4th time I play this campaign so I what changes to make to improve it. An area SoD in the second session is not fun. Teleport traps that teleport just one PC to a part of the castle where he can't survive and that the other characters have no way to find is not fun either. I have also added lots of plot hooks into most quests outside the castle, and one of these led them to find a map of the castle (except the catacombs) because it's just too big to explore it with no guidance at all.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

How about injury variant in the DMG?

"Lingering Injuries"

I will jist remove to 1,2 and 3 options as I see them as to much evil (unless you play a meat grinder).

It will make them use more healing and wast their spell slots faster.

The problem is the paladins that can get up party members 5 times their levels(you only need 1 hp to get up and 1 is not far from 12 in terms of damage from a single attack).

The next biggest problem is healing spirit, you can fix it by attacking the druid and make him drop con on the spell.

You can also use stuff like vampires that reduce the max HP of the character.

[Grod_The_Giant]

How about going back to the 3e rules for dying, and replace zero hp/death saves with negative hit points? Yo-yo healing is a lot less of a problem when you don't have that arbitrary buffer.

[Spriteless]

Definately make them prone upon wakeup. Make smart enemies kick away their weapons/wands when they can. When I found the party I DMed had like infinite healing, I put in more weak enemies to split their actions. So many shifty goblins the pali took sentinel.

[darknite]

Not broken but definitely something you need to plan for.

[Bjarkmundur]

Yoyo healing is definitely a thing, but there are many many many many tweaks to rules and tactics you can use to counteract it. Just pick one that you like. Or better yet, describe what kind of solution you think would work best for your group, and well reply with a list of applicable solutions ^^

Yes, there are really that many ways to fix this problem, and it definitely is a problem.

[Willie the Duck]

Honestly, it sounds like the DM's problem lies mostly with Healing Word and yo-yo characters who don't even lose and action (or take up their healer's actions). Everything else is just a bunch of casters who all have the same ability (so naturally it becomes a source of their success). I'm saying, separate from the HW yo-yo, the DM would have a very similar problem if, say, all the characters had a bunch of area-of-effect direct damage spells, or they all had 2 levels of warlock and Devil's Sight invocation and perpetually fought inside magical darkness. Honestly, outside of HW (and Life Cleric/Healing Spirit shenanigans, which it seems the party hasn't yet found), healing in 5e really isn't the most efficient use of people's spell slots or in-combat actions. Buffing/debuffing, area control, even the much muted-from-previous-editions 'save or _____' spells are more effective at ending encounters and keeping the party going longer/succeeding more (preventing the loss of hp by ending combat faster, rather than healing it back). This just seems to be a big deal because it is how the PCs are resisting the DMs challenges, and they're doing quite well at it.

OP, how well are you able to limit long rests? One of the biggest issues many people have with this edition is not having rest cycles, as they occur organically to adventure progression, match up with the apparent expectations of the game.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

How about going back to the 3e rules for dying, and replace zero hp/death saves with negative hit points? Yo-yo healing is a lot less of a problem when you don't have that arbitrary buffer.

Wow, I really like this.
I think I will steal it for my next game.

[SodaQueen]

I agree with you. Healing isn't necessarily OP, but I think there should be some penalty for getting knocked unconscious and revived. I'd like to see the players miss their next turn at least if they are revived. That way players would have some incentive to avoid getting knocked out without the DM having to try to kill them.I disagree. The party spec'd specifically into healing and burn a lot of resources to achieve that. Do you penalize dpr characters for dealing lots of damage?

[Pigkappa]

The campaign is over, so I don't really need specific tweaks for it anymore. I was just wondering if other DMs experienced the same issue with the group discovering that yoyo healing is very effective.

Tweaks to the rules can only be done before the players discover a broken strategy, otherwise when done in hindsight they are perceived as unfair and spoil the fun. I might bring in some houserule on this if I play this campaign again.

Overall it was a great campaign that turned out much better than any time I played it with the 3.5 edition though :)

I did find it hard to do more than 3 encounters per long rest. Each encounter takes 1-2 hours, our sessions were only 3 hours long, and everyone enjoys a mix of story and combat, and there is usually a chance to rest during the story progression. Nobody in the group enjoyed fight after fight after fight with no break in between. The game may expect you to have 5 fights per long rest or something like that, but that is a poor design choice as it requires a pace that is not really enjoyable in my view.

[KorvinStarmast]

Re: Anyone else found healing to be broken in 5th edition? Nope.
My players and I had the impression that healing is very overpowered in this edition. You use the terms 'broken' and 'overpowered' when talking about D&D 5e. That's IMO a mistake.

Healing, if you subscribe to the nominal "design intent" adventure day is a resources management challenge that is addresed by both "short rest" HD expenditure, and other means of healing. The reset on a long rest is a deliberate design choice.

If you are not running 6 encounters per day and having 2 short rests between long rests, then you aren't putting the system to the test. Thus, your assessment of "broken" and "overpowered" are groundless.

The party consisted of 2 paladins, 1 druid, 1 bard, 1 sorcerer. Your party's composition is novel, and heavily weighted toward healing. That's your party's choice, not a matter of "is healing over/under powered" in this edition. They make choices, and in so doing forego other choices.

I fail to see any problem at all.

Consider a party with: 1 Cleric, 1 Rogue, 1 Fighter, and 1, Wizard.

How to you think they'll fare as compared to your party, in terms of healing resources?

No tweaks to the rules are needed.

I will offer this:
the healing spirit spell from XGtE has been argued to be far more powerful (as a 2d level spell) than the prayer of healing spell (2d level). It certainly seems to be a "must have" spell if you can get it. (My ranger just picked it up at level 5 after a detailed dicussion with my party). As there's some disagreement in how to rule on, and implement, the detailed effects, (in combat and out) I'll not comment further as we've had a number of threads on that particular spell's unique features.

As to applying exhaustion for dropping to 0 HP: it's a terrible idea (IMHO) due to what a mess the Exhaustion mechanic is, and in particular the recovery mechanic for Exhaustion.

Conceptually, I don't find it unreasonable.

Were a short rest enough to recover on level of Exhaustion, or a Lesser Restoration spell (resource depletion!) I'd find that house rule to be less bad. But in general, I find that house rule to be needlessly penal and do not use it as a DM.
I was able to talk the one DM who proposed it in one of our games out of using it.

[Yora]

If the players all want to have huge amounts of healing, there is no reason to take that away from them. The goal of the game is to let the players play what they want, not to make them play to any expectations.
If the players complain that they don't enjoy spending so much time on healing, then there's a reason to look into what else they could be doing.

[Contrast]

I did find it hard to do more than 3 encounters per long rest. Each encounter takes 1-2 hours, our sessions were only 3 hours long, and everyone enjoys a mix of story and combat, and there is usually a chance to rest during the story progression. Nobody in the group enjoyed fight after fight after fight with no break in between. The game may expect you to have 5 fights per long rest or something like that, but that is a poor design choice as it requires a pace that is not really enjoyable in my view.

You may want to look into the gritty realism rest variant (P267 DMG). A session does not have to equal a long rest.

Edit - the other point to make of course if that this way your players stay actively involved in fights rather than having to sit on their thumbs and wait while everyone else finishes the 1-2 hour(!?) combats.

[RSP]

I did find it hard to do more than 3 encounters per long rest. Each encounter takes 1-2 hours, our sessions were only 3 hours long, and everyone enjoys a mix of story and combat, and there is usually a chance to rest during the story progression. Nobody in the group enjoyed fight after fight after fight with no break in between. The game may expect you to have 5 fights per long rest or something like that, but that is a poor design choice as it requires a pace that is not really enjoyable in my view.

You can always just use a rest variant: like only 1 long rest per in-game week. That way you can space out the encounters over time in the game while still getting the recommended battles, and short rests, in.

[tieren]

I did find it hard to do more than 3 encounters per long rest. Each encounter takes 1-2 hours, our sessions were only 3 hours long, and everyone enjoys a mix of story and combat, and there is usually a chance to rest during the story progression. Nobody in the group enjoyed fight after fight after fight with no break in between. The game may expect you to have 5 fights per long rest or something like that, but that is a poor design choice as it requires a pace that is not really enjoyable in my view.

Note that the design consideration is 6-8 encounters not fights. A social encounter where players are using skill checks or social interaction spells and resources still counts.

Also I find short rests are more natural than most players seem to think. You don't have to take a nap, you just need the hour of light activity (which allows walking), so taking a smoke while the long rest party members search the room after a big fight can certainly count. In outdoor travel if there is an hour between encounters it almost always counts as a short rest (unless you're at a fast pace or something).

[Frozenstep]

The campaign is over, so I don't really need specific tweaks for it anymore. I was just wondering if other DMs experienced the same issue with the group discovering that yoyo healing is very effective.

Tweaks to the rules can only be done before the players discover a broken strategy, otherwise when done in hindsight they are perceived as unfair and spoil the fun. I might bring in some houserule on this if I play this campaign again.

Overall it was a great campaign that turned out much better than any time I played it with the 3.5 edition though :)

I did find it hard to do more than 3 encounters per long rest. Each encounter takes 1-2 hours, our sessions were only 3 hours long, and everyone enjoys a mix of story and combat, and there is usually a chance to rest during the story progression. Nobody in the group enjoyed fight after fight after fight with no break in between. The game may expect you to have 5 fights per long rest or something like that, but that is a poor design choice as it requires a pace that is not really enjoyable in my view.

In that case, have you ever looked at using gritty long rests? You need to tweak a few things so that abilities that last a full day last an appropriate time longer, but it lets you spread out encounters over many days, including being able to go to town and interact with npc's. Add in objectives with some sense of "sooner rather then later is preferable" and hopefully that keeps things moving. You can always tweak the gritty rules too if you feel a week is too long, some have suggested 3~ days or so as the long rest time, but it just depends on the pace of your campaign.

edit: ninja'd like 3 times

Anyway, I haven't experienced the issue of yoyo healing myself, because my party has experienced using it and finds it to be a risky, dangerous strategy heavily dependent on initiative. The way my party runs initiative also helps discourage it. I roll a single initiative for each monster type, so I generally have 2-3 monster turns, and each of those turns has 2-4 of that enemy type all acting at once. Because of that, it's very possible for a group of 4 enemies to move up to a player, down them with a first attack, and then the 3 others attack and two hit, and that's curtains for them. It sounds a little unfair when I type it, but in practice it means if you're low on hp and near a group of enemies, it's time to bail, and most enemies will turn to take out active threats before bothering to make sure the fallen are dead.

[Willie the Duck]

I did find it hard to do more than 3 encounters per long rest. Each encounter takes 1-2 hours, our sessions were only 3 hours long, and everyone enjoys a mix of story and combat, and there is usually a chance to rest during the story progression. Nobody in the group enjoyed fight after fight after fight with no break in between. The game may expect you to have 5 fights per long rest or something like that, but that is a poor design choice as it requires a pace that is not really enjoyable in my view.

There is a really big hurdle in designing for D&D due to the issue that there is a decided bimodal distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_distribution) of number of encounters that people expect. Those people that play shorter sessions with lots of social and story elements mixed in (which often makes each encounter longer, do remember that all encounters are not combat encounters) tend to only need a few encounters per session. Those that play in the traditional 'dungeon crawl' format and 6-8 hour sessions-- well, honestly the 6-8 encounters the books allude to (the recharge cycle being vaguely balanced against) is frankly a little light. The default ruleset does hew towards the average of these two peaks, which isn't really a spot a lot of groups trend towards, which leads to some dissonance (but I'm not sure that any other one option would have worked better). Another way would have been to make competing baselines (as two distinct default modes, perhaps 'Mode A' and 'Mode B') and included both as default (in a 'yes, you do have to choose' fashion). This seems like a huge confusion to someone coming into the game for the first time, so I understand why they did not do so.

Regardless, I am going to point out something that many who have commented on 'poor design' seem to overlook -- The designers very specifically discussed all this in the DMG and including multiple options for addressing the situation of ones' rest cycle not matching the default assumptions. Gritty rest being the most notable.


edit: ninja'd like 3 times

I know, right? Looks like a popular subject.

[Dessunri]

How about going back to the 3e rules for dying, and replace zero hp/death saves with negative hit points? Yo-yo healing is a lot less of a problem when you don't have that arbitrary buffer.

Yes please! I started in 3e and, when I came back to the game in 5e, I was freaking mind-blown that it doesn't matter how hard they hit you past 0 so long as it isn't negative your max HP. I actually miss the days of going negative X-HP and having to be healed that much plus any more to be effective again. This idea that a 1HP character taking 30 damage to the face and getting the paladin to Lay on Hands him for 1HP to bring him back in the fight is ridiculous.

[Malbrack]

How about going back to the 3e rules for dying, and replace zero hp/death saves with negative hit points? Yo-yo healing is a lot less of a problem when you don't have that arbitrary buffer.

This is really the big difference. A character with 30 hit points can get hit for 59 points of damage. They're unconscious. Then the group paladin uses 1 HP of Lay on Hands and that character who just went -29 is now back to 1 HP and up fighting like it never happened.

This also leads to some really counter-intuitive choices. Let's say you have 10 HP. You know you're about to get hit for 20 damage. Your teammate has an ability to heal you for 8 HP. It is better that you get knocked out first before the heal. If the teammate heals first, you go to 18 then get knocked unconscious, taking your next turn away. If you get knocked out first, you're back to fighting with 8 HP, never losing your turn.

I never made any house rules to deal with this, but it is something that has bothered me ever since I started DMing 5e. The reason I left it alone was that my players still really hate getting knocked out, even if they can get back up. Because of this, they've never tried to game the system.

[Mitsu]

Yes and no. Yes because in 5e healing is NOT NECESSARY until you are downed. It's just not worth to waste healing spell on someone. In older editions healing was used NOT to get downed. Here when your ally drops you know this is the moment where your heal will matter.

This makes a lot of encounters end up with players having very low hp, but without losing any healing resources because nobody was downed, so there was no point. And between encounters any Druid with Healing Spirit + Goodberries from last long rest will be able to mostly get party to full HP.

Therefore I don't think that healing is OP. It's more like mechanic is bad. Instead of trying to prevent someone from dropping to 0 HP (logical reason for healing, no?), it's better to wait for him to be dropped and then heal him/her.

Many people come with same argument "how many fights per day", "more encounters!", "you need to drain resources!" like planning a campaign or story should be more about how to drain party resources instead of pacing, story, narrative etc.

The fact is that 8/10 times at table you don't have more than maybe 3 encounters per long rest, sometimes pushing it to 4, but I rarely see it. Also most tables usually make 1 long rest per session as it's more natural to feel time flying by in RPG world instead of "uff, nice 8 hours session, you spend whole 30 min inside this dungeon". At most tables people don't like to spend a month (if one session per 2 weeks) in same location because DM needs to drain resources. Usually day in game moves pretty simillar to real-life day as it's more comfortable and also allows story to not get stagnant. Though I bet other old-timers would disagree. Truth is whole long-rest concept and D&D resource-system is archaic.

So while resource draining argument is valid- it's also needs to stop being "the ultimate solution" to problems in 5e like healing, nova or short rests. Truth is it's more comfortable at tables to not play battle simulator each session! And everyone know that even one encounter can take a lot of time from already limited time adults have to meet for RPG. 5e is just badly designed, with some strange conception that people meeting once per 2 weeks for couple hours will spend most of their times fighting group of enemies each 5 steps... seriously.

You only need to look at AL stuff to know how boring that is.

So I agree that healing is broken but due to it's design.

[SodaQueen]

Yes please! I started in 3e and, when I came back to the game in 5e, I was freaking mind-blown that it doesn't matter how hard they hit you past 0 so long as it isn't negative your max HP. I actually miss the days of going negative X-HP and having to be healed that much plus any more to be effective again. This idea that a 1HP character taking 30 damage to the face and getting the paladin to Lay on Hands him for 1HP to bring him back in the fight is ridiculous.I feel that they're functionally the same thing except 3.5 scales far worse. -10 hp might as well be -1 hp at higher levels so it scales poorly to the point where I never saw anyone even hit negative hp once enemies start popping off dozens of damage from singular attacks every turn. It's even more useless if you're using Massive Damage.

Pathfinder added -10 or negative Con and allowed you to expand that pool with a handful of abilities (I believe there's a half-orc racial trait or favored class option for that). I'm not sure if I like the idea of expanding negative hp too much however.

[Keravath]

Well the question really comes down to ... do you want the character to die to the opponents or not?

Clutch healing with healing word is a "thing" in 5e. Characters and monsters are as effective offensively at 1HP as they are at full hit points. The only way to stop a character/monster is to get them to zero hit points. From an efficiency point of view there is very little incentive to using healing spells before a character goes to zero hit points unless going to zero hit points has other consequences. Disintegrate is an insta-kill at zero hit points, Rot Grubs kill their target if they reach zero hit points, various other monsters have similar negative effects when a character hits zero.

In your particular case, every character in the party has healing abilities. The paladins have cure wounds and lay on hands, the druid and bard have healing word (probably the best healing spell in the game in my opinion :) ... 60', bonus action cast, perfect for getting that character off zero and resetting death saves). Finally, you somehow let the Sorcerer even get a magic healing item so every character can heal.

However, with the possible exception of the sorcerer, all of these take resources (spell slots, actions etc) and when the party runs out then the situation will get more tense. This is where the game comes down to the game's pacing determined mostly by the DM. If the characters have one encounter, use all their healing, clean up tidily with little risk then they feel very powerful. However, they may then turn around and say lets call it a day ... we fought for 10 minutes, blew all our resources, so now we need a long rest but it is only 9:30am ... so they go and lounge around an Inn or campsite for the day, sleep over night and then going looking for 10 minutes more adventure feeling quite powerful again. This is the behavior that the DM needs to curb for healing to be "balanced". Players should be encouraged to reserve some resources for the next fight since if they go all in on the current fight then they may have nothing left for the next one and it should be the DM and the narrative determining the pacing of the adventure and the consequences of the character actions. For example, if the characters are on a rescue mission, have a couple of encounters, use resources, decide to take a long rest before the final fight and come back tomorrow to do the rescue then maybe they should find the body of the person that they were planning to rescue when they come back ... that could well be the consequence of the party choosing to refresh resources instead of completing their mission while they have an element of surprise.

Character actions should ALWAYS have in game consequences that make sense.

Yo-yo healing is another good example. Against an intelligent opponent, if the opponent finds that when they shift to attacking a different target every time they knock someone out and that the person they knocked out is back in the fight the next round then the next time they might well decide to make sure that they stay down. This is a likely logical consequence of the players choosing to use the yo-yo healing tactic rather than earlier more proactive healing or using spells/abilities offensively to take down the opponents faster. It is not the DM being mean. It is the NPCs learning that unless they make sure the attacker is actually dead they might well be back attacking the next turn. Each successful attack against a creature making death saves counts as two failures so two hits against a downed opponent and they aren't getting up again without revivify or other resurrection magic.

However, don't just spring this on the players. Let them know that sufficiently intelligent or perceptive NPCs WILL react and adjust their tactics and decisions based on the party actions. Logically, that makes sense and that is the role of the DM. They aren't an adversary to the party, the NPCs are - the DM just determines the NPCs actions based on the situation, the NPC personality and motivations, and the PC actions.

[Willie the Duck]

Yes and no. Yes because in 5e healing is NOT NECESSARY until you are downed. It's just not worth to waste healing spell on someone. In older editions healing was used NOT to get downed. Here when your ally drops you know this is the moment where your heal will matter.

This makes a lot of encounters end up with players having very low hp, but without losing any healing resources because nobody was downed, so there was no point. And between encounters any Druid with Healing Spirit + Goodberries from last long rest will be able to mostly get party to full HP.

Therefore I don't think that healing is OP. It's more like mechanic is bad. Instead of trying to prevent someone from dropping to 0 HP (logical reason for healing, no?), it's better to wait for him to be dropped and then heal him/her.

Well, the OP didn't seem to discuss HS and GB, and rather was focused on in-combat healing. That's why I think Healing Word is the primary culprit. You are absolutely right, though, that the 'spring back up' from 0 hp effect has some really weird incentivization structures.


Many people come with same argument "how many fights per day", "more encounter", "you need to drain resources" like planning a campaign or story should be more about how to drain party resources instead of pacing, story, narrative etc.

Okay, please don't misrepresent people's positions. When faced with a mechanical question, people responded with mechanical solutions. That does not mean that they do not think about things like campaign planning or story. Regardless, if the DM is having trouble challenging their players because of spells (long-rest recharging abilities), then disucussing number of encounters per rest is genuinely relevant. You also are the only person who mentioned "you need to drain resources." Others have suggested altering the rest mechanics to serve the campaign style and story that the OP wants to play.


The fact is that 8/10 times at table you don't have more than maybe 3 encounters per day, sometimes pushing it to 4, but I rarely see it. Also most tables usually make 1 long rest per session as it's more natural to feel time flying by in RPG world instead of "uff, nice 8 hours session, you spend whole 30 min inside this dungeon".

This fact seems to be a fact about your personal situation. It doesn't sound like anything people routinely mention.


So while resource draining argument is valid- it's also needs to stop being "the ultimate solution" to problems in 5e like healing, nova or short rests. Truth is it's more comfortable at tables to not play battle simulator each session. 5e is just badly design is some strange conception that people meeting once per 2 weeks for couple hours will spend most of their times fighting... seriously.

So I agree that healing is broken but due to it's design.

Once again, there are multiple preferred gaming styles, each of which is perfectly valid. The designers were well aware of the differences in playstyles and included an entire section of the DMG on making the game work for different tables. I'm not going to pretend that they did a perfect job, but pretending that they didn't very specifically address the problem being discussed seems unfathomable.

[PeteNutButter]

IMO healing in 5e suffers from a lot of problems, each one I've seen addressed with various homebrew.

1. There is no penalty to being low on hp. This is pretty standard for D&D, but not all similar systems. It can be too fiddly though. At least in 3.5/p you are at serious risk of dying when on low hp.
2. There is no long term penalty for going down. I've used the exhaustion mechanic. It works.
3. There is no penalty for standing up. This is actually a big departure for 5e. In 3.5/p you provoke opportunity attacks for standing up in melee. It's a bit fiddly, but might not be a bad houserule. It'd make going to 0 actually cause you to suffer more attacks.
4. The mechanics of dying are hit based and not damage based. Another departure from 3.5/p where in order to actually kill PCs DMs must have their monsters actively attack a downed player potentially several times. It just seems mean, so most DMs IME don't do it except in rare circumstances. The negative hp to die ala 3.5/p might be a solution, but it'd need to be a more dynamic number than 10, so it'd scale better with level, perhaps something based on a % of max hp.
5. The Little Mario problem. Due to the above mechanics, casting a healing word on an ally with 10 hp at level 9, is usually just a waste of a spell slot. It's better to wait until they are downed again, because you can't heal enough with it to prevent them from going down. This turns players into binary state, they either are up (anywhere from 1 hp to whatever the monsters will do in one round) or they are down (0 hp). They become "Little Mario" where they take one hit and die.

I see most of these problems are caused by the death saves mechanic. Negative hp might fix a good bit of of them. Casting a healing word on a downed ally at -2 hp is going to heal the same amount as it would on an ally at -8, but you're much more likely to stand up the guy at -2. Ergo, healing before they go down is suddenly not wasted.

[patchyman]

I did find it hard to do more than 3 encounters per long rest. Each encounter takes 1-2 hours, our sessions were only 3 hours long, and everyone enjoys a mix of story and combat, and there is usually a chance to rest during the story progression.

This is not intended as a criticism of either you or your players, but it is likely that each fight would have taken less time if the characters had invested in more DPS and less healing. But if your group had fun...

[Wuzza]

Look to using things like hold person/silence/darkness. You don't need to take their healing away, just attack them from a different perspective.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

You can always use the slow natural healing variant.
It make it that you only get the hit dice on long rest and not healing.

[youtellatale]

This is not intended as a criticism of either you or your players, but it is likely that each fight would have taken less time if the characters had invested in more DPS and less healing. But if your group had fun...

I tend to agree with you here. Even at levels 12+ my group (5 players + DM) can typically run 3 or so combats in a session, and that doesn't even include social encounters and other RP.

There's also no rule that says you have to have a rest between gaming sessions. Picking up where you left off with the same resources is something we do quite often.

[Jeran]

I personally dislike RAW healing in 5E. The short rest mechanic of using hit dice to heal is way overpowered, spells are under powered (except healing spirit), and there is no penalty for "whack a mole" healing where you wait for a party member to hit 0 hp and heal them so they can pop back up in combat. We house ruled the short rest hit dice healing out of the game and added a level of exhaustion for each time a character hits 0 hp. All healing comes from spells or you can heal your constitution bonus, minimum of 1, per long rest. It really makes avoiding damage important, encourages sound tactics and wise use of healing spells to keep a character from hitting 0 hp.

[KillingTime]

We use the exhaustion houserule on chumbawumba healing and it works great.
Exhaustion is so detrimental (esp at lvl2 and up), and so difficult to get rid of, that it serves as a massive incentive to avoid hitting the deck.
The only other rule we use is that healing spirit can't be used out of combat to do conga healing.
Otherwise the whole system works great. Damage outpaces the best of in-combat healing, so the occasional lay on hands or healing word to get characters out of trouble is the most we see.
And remember, a party that good at healing isn't covering a lot of other bases with their actions so it all balances out.

[Dalebert]

Yes, that group is going to have a lot of healing. But on the other hand, they're using those Spells Known slots for healing rather than other things. The Paladin is burning spell slots on healing that he could be using to Smite. The Druid could be casting Faerie Fire instead of Cure Wounds. The Bard could be locking down one opponent with Tasha's Hideous Laughter, but he's casting Healing Word instead. And the sorcerer--loot drops are pretty much the DM's fault.

That's their problem if you ask me. A party that's consistently using a lot of resources on healing in most fights is probably not fighting very tactically. Are they doing crowd control? Buffing and debuffing? Focusing fire? Positioning themselves to avoid AoEs? Positioning themselves to make tanky characters more appealing targets than Squishies? Etc.

[Demonslayer666]

Healing isn't broken, the death and dying rules are broken. Going to 0 and being healed a little far outweighs trying to stay healed up. I think they tried to fix the need for a dedicated healer and created a new issue (one that I dislike much more).

It hasn't been a problem with my group, but I also don't want it to become one. I have implemented the exhaustion house rule that when you get knocked to 0, you gain a level of exhaustion.

[BloodOgre]

I do the following. When a PC or monster drops to zero hp, and then is healed, they are still injured, similar to the injuries table in the DM guide. However, for lower level characters, dropping to zero is a much more frequent event and I don't like how frequently some permanent disability appears on the table, so only on a 1 does the PC get a "permanent effect". The rest are broken arm (can't hold a shield or weapon), broken leg (0 movement, disadvantage on DEX saves/ ability checks), limp, broken ribs, internal injuries, concussion (disadvantage on ALL d20 rolls, attacks, saves, ability checks, etc), or stunned for one round. Any of these can be cured instantly by one or more magic effects that recover half or more of their max hit points. To heal non-magically, two weeks.

I agree that there are plenty of ways to counter a heal-heavy party. Rarely do I attack a party with just one creature.

As a player, I find Cure Wounds and Healing Word to be rather weak when compared to the damage a spell of the same level can do.

[KorvinStarmast]

There's also no rule that says you have to have a rest between gaming sessions. Picking up where you left off with the same resources is something we do quite often. We do this all the time. Session ends when RL time alloted ends. We pick up where we left of "in universe" when the next session begins.'


I personally dislike RAW healing in 5E. The short rest mechanic of using hit dice to heal is way overpowered, spells are under powered (except healing spirit), and there is no penalty for "whack a mole" healing where you wait for a party member to hit 0 hp and heal them so they can pop back up in combat. Try being in 6 combat encounters in one adventure day (and/or or 4 hard + encounters) for three adventure days in a row when you only get half of your HD back on a long rest.

Not Over Powered. A necessity (HD recovery). And yeah, gimme a song of rest Bard. Please.

But I agree with you on a different point, which is that such a campaign, that more or less fits how the game was built from a mechanical point of view, exposes the healing spells for how weak they are (HW excluded) and makes clear why a life cleric's unique class features are built the way that they are. And why the second level spell Prayer of Healing was built the way that it is.

Also: healer feat, and each peson brings their own healing kit? A godsend in a meat grindy campaign like the above.

For the 5 minute adventure day, never mind.
@BloodOgre

As a player, I find Cure Wounds and Healing Word to be rather weak when compared to the damage a spell of the same level can do.
Yep.

[Skylivedk]

We do this all the time. Session ends when RL time alloted ends. We pick up where we left of "in universe" when the next session begins.'

Try being in 6 combat encounters in one adventure day (and/or or 4 hard + encounters) for three adventure days in a row when you only get half of your HD back on a long rest.

Not Over Powered. A necessity (HD recovery). And yeah, gimme a song of rest Bard. Please.

But I agree with you on a different point, which is that such a campaign, that more or less fits how the game was built from a mechanical point of view, exposes the healing spells for how weak they are (HW excluded) and makes clear why a life cleric's unique class features are built the way that they are. And why the second level spell Prayer of Healing was built the way that it is.

Also: healer feat, and each peson brings their own healing kit? A godsend in a meat grindy campaign like the above.

For the 5 minute adventure day, never mind.
@BloodOgre

Yep.

And you never found it... Weak that the system was built with narrative restraints so rigid? Or the amount of system understanding/mastery enforcing this requires?

We've probably had this discussion before.

At least I've seen versions of it in so many iterations I've lost count:
Response 1 (R1): "No, it just means different classes take center stage in different adventures/parts of the plot"
Question 2 (Q2): "Wouldn't the game be better if all involved could contribute most of the time?"
R2: "What if my players want to be able to specialise in one aspect?"
Q3: "How can they know that aspect is relevant?"
R3: "Have a session zero"
Q4: "What if other player choices bring those expectation alignments past the point of disbelief"
R4: "It's the dungeon master's job to ensure the doesn't happen"
Q5: "What if the dungeon master is either inexperience, used to an old system or short on time?"
R5: "Use a published adventure"
Q6: "But most of them are not adhering to the short rest system either. Most of them are long rest favouring for the majority and maybe rarely short rest favouring at points"
R6: "is not"
Q7: "is so: examples"
R7: "is not: other examples"
Q8: "So now the DM needs a new skill to master: Discern Good Published Campaign? - also this doesn't solve the issue of asking people short on time to sit for hours on end with few mechanical options available for to having the "wrong" resource class".
R8: "Back when I started playing, people didn't mind waiting for a session or ten to shine /// other patience argument"
Q9: "And back when you started playing, did you have as high an alternative cost to your time? I surely didn't"

And I didn't even read Sokrates lately

[opaopajr]

For my tastes, yes, there is way too much healing. My first big change would be to remove Long Rest from healing ALL HP: only use Hit Dice to naturally heal during Short and Long Rests. Long Rests only provide Hit Dice Refresh (RAW, starts at 1/2 lvl, min 1). :smallcool:

Oh! :smallredface: You are talking about Whack-a-Mole, Meatball Surgery, Yo-Yo Healing!

Oh yeah, that's very annoying too.


My solution for this is to give a player a level of exhaustion each time they are knocked unconscious, it puts a very quick stop to the yoyo healing you see a lot in DnD groups whilst being an understandable detriment.

This stops yo-yoing cold. Great option. It also allows monsters in-fiction-logic to not focus fire for the kill. Just by penalizing bouncing up a few times, there's a chance for opponents to down PCs to prove their point AND get away. It changes the fictive dynamic enough for the better, lowering the need for lethal force to dominate a fight.


I agree with you. Healing isn't necessarily OP, but I think there should be some penalty for getting knocked unconscious and revived. I'd like to see the players miss their next turn at least if they are revived. That way players would have some incentive to avoid getting knocked out without the DM having to try to kill them.

Easiest solution would be to dump Death Saves for Negative HP. That way front loads the urgency for magical healing.

To retain some compromising functionality, and avoid Negative HP becoming a resource sink, you can have magical healing still revive up to 1 HP on Short and Long Rests.

And while using Negative HP you can still keep Stabilized, having natural healing revive back to 1 HP while unconscious after 1d4 hours.

[Trickery]

Going to agree with a few others here. Healing is broken, but fixing it is not easy.

Problem one: healing spells don't heal enough hit points to keep someone up. Healing is weaker than attacking in terms of damage points. This was a design decision.

Problem two: they removed negative HP. I believe they did this specifically because they made healing weaker. If characters have to be healed from negative hit points, then even clerics will struggle to restore someone who's taken a beating. That's not good for morale. Players will have to bring the campaign to a halt frequently just to spend a few long rests getting everyone back on their feet.

Problem two is what causes the yoyo. I don't think anything as extreme as negative HP is necessary to fix it. And exhaustion just forces long rests. As others have said, it hurts too much on the long run and not enough in the short term.

Rather, try this: after you get up from being unconscious, you're stunned for your next turn. Simple, easy, sensible, affects only one fight, and makes players not want to go down.

[Jerrykhor]

Rather, try this: after you get up from being unconscious, you're stunned for your next turn. Simple, easy, sensible, affects only one fight, and makes players not want to go down.

Then there's no point in getting them up. What's the point in getting up if you can't do anything, only to be strike back down again? Waste of a heal and action.

[Frozenstep]

Then there's no point in getting them up. What's the point in getting up if you can't do anything, only to be strike back down again? Waste of a heal and action.

So that hit that strikes them down again isn't the one that causes them to hit 3 failed death saves.

[stoutstien]

If you want to avoid yo yo healing you need to give them a reason to heal before zero.
What if at half total hp they have disadvantage on ablity checks and at 1/4 they have disadvantage on attack rolls as well? Same goes for anything ran by the DM.

[DeadMech]

I'd be worried about nerfing healing in 5e worse than it already is. Healing is certainly broken but it's not overpowered. The problem is partially that getting people up from unconscious is too forgiving, sure. Especially if the dm isn't targeting the healer or forcing deathsaves when the party does so.

But the absolute source of this problem is that combat healing is too weak in comparison to every other option.

There has not been a single instance where I've seen someone cast a healing spell on someone conscious in combat where that person wasn't immediately flattened by the monster they were fighting regardless. If the party fighter gets hit, gets healed, pops his second wind, and immediately goes unconscious on the next enemy turn then there was no reason to heal them or to use that limited use ability.

[KorvinStarmast]

And you never found it... Weak that the system was built with narrative restraints so rigid? Or the amount of system understanding/mastery enforcing this requires? No. We figured out how to be a little smarter as we played the game more often. Ya see, this is a game that we play for fun and we don't mind learning along the way how to be a bit better at it. We don't need to have all of the exam question answers before we sit down to take the exam.

I do not come from the short attention span and instant gratification school of life.

The play's the thing.

If you are not familiar with Robin Laws' theoretical framework for how people have fun, I recommend it highly. If you are, then I think you understand where I am coming from.

The 5e DMG has a light/low calorie version of that idea on page 6.

[OverLordOcelot]

I find that there's enough incentive to not go down if you play the enemies as intelligent. Instead of knocking the player to zero and pretending they're dead, have enemies try to finish off downed enemies (maybe waiting until the first pop-up) so that they actually stay down. You only have to land two regular hits on a player at 0hp, or get them with something like one tick of AOE and one lair/legendary action attack or a 1st level magic missile and they're just plain dead. Chill touch, beholder main eye, and similar effects also shut down healing. People I play with usually go softball in T1 (splatting newbies is not really fun), but in T2 and especially T3-4 if you go down and pop up you're likely to get focus fired the next time you go down.

The 'overpowered pop-up healing' only arises if you want to play super-nice and have enemies be idiots who don't try to win the fight, with a simple and completely reasonable in-game change in tactics it becomes a high-risk game. IMO this is like a lot of the discussion where people consider spells like conjure animals for CR 1/4 critters and magic items like a cloak of displacement wildly overpowered; lots of DMs aren't willing to give the enemy thematic abilities or have them use basic AOEs and first level spells that counter the spell or item for some reason, get their fights rolled, then blame the item.

[Frozenstep]

If you want to avoid yo yo healing you need to give them a reason to heal before zero.
What if at half total hp they have disadvantage on ablity checks and at 1/4 they have disadvantage on attack rolls as well? Same goes for anything ran by the DM.

That just creates a positive feedback loop, or in other words, it makes the team that's winning win even harder. This means those heroic last stands and clutch moments are suddenly way less likely to happen, and encounters the players were already going to win are less likely to require resources on the party's part.


But the absolute source of this problem is that combat healing is too weak in comparison to every other option.

I agree with this so much.

People keep talking about discouraging yoyo healing, but then the alternative is to just die. It's a losing, dangerous, and desperate tactic. But if you had a spell slot before an ally goes down and could choose to heal them with it, odds are you're better off using it on a different spell with the potential to take enemy turns and thus prevent the damage in the first place, while also potentially giving your allies advantage or something (command, hold person). While healing is guaranteed to work, it's not guaranteed to make a difference in whether it'll allow the player to endure one more hit, and that's kind of sad.

[lperkins2]

There's 2 ways for healing to be an issue. The first is that it provides essentially extra HP. This is usually not a problem (healing spirit, goodberry cheese excepted), as a healing spell usually counters a single attack's damage. There is the general problem that damage scales slower than HP in 5e, which can lead to fights dragging out, and that can be made worse by healing spells, but in practice that's not likely to be an issue until fairly late in a campaign.

The second issue is the yoyo party, where they take advantage of the zero lower bound on HP as major damage reduction. There are many suggestions for house rules to fix this, if you poke around the fora. You can track the negative HP, not for insta-death a-la 3.5e, but just to blunt the effect of healing spells. You can apply exhaustion to anyone knocked out. You can roll death saves in secret, or when the character is checked on, but that doesn't help if they are getting healing-worded awake on the same round. There's also suggestions for which optional rules (longer rests and the like) might help.

You don't need any of them. You just need to not pull punches and play the enemies as they are.

Some things aren't a serious threat, because they'll quit attacking a character as soon as the character is no longer a threat. Most animals defending territory fit into this category, as do sapients which simply want to escape.

Some things are a moderate threat because they will happily munch on the fallen. Wolves, wargs, and similar wild beasts fall into this category. If someone else comes up and attacks them, they'll leave the fallen to face the new threat, but if they knock someone down, next round they munch.

Some things can be a serious threat. Mindless beasts, undead, and grapplers are in this category. Once the rug of smothering or the mimic has a hold of a character, it continues to attack that character until the character dies or escapes. Zombies and other mindless undead attack the nearest living thing, even if that living thing is helpless. Even though mindless undead are not particularly powerful, PCs should be wary of them for this reason.

Some things are always a serious threat. Experienced, trained sapients will focus fire downed characters, at least if they think the enemy might have healing magic. Other sapients will focus fire once the party reveals a willingness to heal someone mid-fight. This is simply a natural outgrowth of the possibility of healing magic.

In all of this, make sure you properly follow the rules on attacking helpless foes and foes at 0 HP. If the target is helpless, and you attack with a melee attack, the attack is at advantage. If the attack hits, and the attacker is withing 5 feet, it is an automatic critical. Critical hits against a creature at 0HP count as 2 failed death saving throws. If the critical hit damage against a creature at 0 HP is equal to the creature's max HP, it dies, no save. This means your golem, which will happily target a downed creature, has a 50% chance to instagib a character with 73 max HP, assuming it can hit on its attack. True, the housecat will also instagib the character, but small animals in 5e are comically overpowered.

[OverLordOcelot]

True, the housecat will also instagib the character, but small animals in 5e are comically overpowered.

I agree with the rest of this post, but in 5e a normal 5e housecat won't instagib the character, because it only gets one attack. I don't find that what I'd call 'small animals' (actually size tiny in game terms) in 5e are comically overpowered, what ones pose a significant danger to an adventurer? Things like a house cat have low enough hit points to be one shot and low enough AC to be hit most of the time - something that has 2 hp, AC12, and one attack at +0 for 1 point of damage doesn't strike me as overpowered in the least. Even a wizard with no con bonus requires six hits for it to to bring down, and his odds of hitting will be quite high, and he'll one-shot it better than 9/10 times with fire bolt. It's very unlike 3e where they'd scale to have multiple attacks with a significant minus to damage that couldn't go below one and a high AC from being small, and lots of characters had a bad to hit modifier. Some things like poisonous snakes are pretty dangerous (2d4 poison damage, save for half) but that's not out of line with a poisonous snake IRL.

[Laserlight]

I dislike yoyo healing from a verisimilitude point of view, and in my experience "each time you hit 0 you get Exhaustion" really encourages the players to avoid hitting 0hp.

However, that's not to say "healing is overpowered". The reason you see all that yoyo healing is because the players kept taking damage from monsters they should have already killed.

[Mitsu]

I find that there's enough incentive to not go down if you play the enemies as intelligent. Instead of knocking the player to zero and pretending they're dead, have enemies try to finish off downed enemies (maybe waiting until the first pop-up) so that they actually stay down. You only have to land two regular hits on a player at 0hp, or get them with something like one tick of AOE and one lair/legendary action attack or a 1st level magic missile and they're just plain dead. Chill touch, beholder main eye, and similar effects also shut down healing. People I play with usually go softball in T1 (splatting newbies is not really fun), but in T2 and especially T3-4 if you go down and pop up you're likely to get focus fired the next time you go down.

The 'overpowered pop-up healing' only arises if you want to play super-nice and have enemies be idiots who don't try to win the fight, with a simple and completely reasonable in-game change in tactics it becomes a high-risk game. IMO this is like a lot of the discussion where people consider spells like conjure animals for CR 1/4 critters and magic items like a cloak of displacement wildly overpowered; lots of DMs aren't willing to give the enemy thematic abilities or have them use basic AOEs and first level spells that counter the spell or item for some reason, get their fights rolled, then blame the item.

It's not really that easy to do if player are remotely intelligent. Usually players inform each other about their HP at tables. One player can easy do Ready Action knowing that his friend will go down on next hit. Bonus Action Healing Word can easy heal downed player way before most enemies can finish him off. Also once players start to have access to Revivify (only 5 level is required) even death of character is not a problem. Especially if you have 2 divine characters, like Cleric + Paladin (which is not that unusual) or Divine Soul Sorc who can Twin Healing Word, Twin Revivify etc. Later you also have Rise Dead, True Ressurection, Wish etc.

Ok, AOE damage works fine, but it's not that easy to pull off. Enemies are usually in blast range too, players have access to Counter Spell etc and mostly it would take only 1 death save away.

So again, there is always a possible solution to a problem, but there is no "golden solution".

The thing is the sole fact that you need to sweat like that to counter yoyo healing in 5e is best proof that RAW healing mechanics are bad.

I would prefer return of negative HP but big buff to healing spell numbers. I know that they wanted probably to get rid of "we need healer" mindset, but on the other hand I preferred that I think.

[Spore]

How many fights per rest did you have?

Because every single heal comes from a limited pool. If they're using THAT MUCH on heals, they should be out of gas in short order.

This, you might be treating Barovia like any typical setting where you can safely camp in the woods and at worst run into a few wolves.

Even if you just go by the book, the random encounters if you don't rest in a settlement can be deadly. Plus the fact that if you sleep in anything not resembling a sanctified house can turn you into vampire chow.

[Contrast]

It's not really that easy to do if player are remotely intelligent. Usually players inform each other about their HP at tables. One player can easy do Ready Action knowing that his friend will go down on next hit. Bonus Action Healing Word can easy heal downed player way before most enemies can finish him off.

A player readying an an action to heal another player when they do down is a gift to enemies. You're giving up your turn, any enemies who hit you in the meantime may disrupt your concentration and the spell would fizzle and the enemies may miss your friend meaning you wasted your turn and a spell slot to do nothing. Plus many sources of healing that you might ready are touch based so you'd need to finish your turn in contact.

This is a pretty terrible argument for healing being OP. If this is working in your games combats are a breeze because they're a breeze, not because healing is OP.

Healing Word however is great because of the action economy and range, however I've played at many tables where only one person (or no-one) in the party has access to Healing Word. In those scenarios, order of initiative can be crucially important. You can easily have an entire round of enemies going before you get back to the person who can get you up. Speaking as someone currently playing a bard, when combat goes sideways I would often also love to be doing something more impactful with my action than sling a cantrip because I cast Healing Word (or indeed, as a glamour bard, wishing I would give everyone THP instead).

Resurrection is a bit of a difficult one. If you don't have a cleric in the party it can remain a real issue for a long time (if you don't have a cleric in party or access to Gentle Repose and you're out in the wilderness you're going to need to track down someone capable of casting 7th level spells which in many campaigns just isn't a thing) whereas a cleric can make it somewhat trivial from level 5 (at the cost of preparing it, stocking up on diamonds and keeping level 3 spell slots free anyway). So there you go, there is still a 'we need a cleric' vibe to 5E like you wanted :smallwink:

[Willie the Duck]

Problem two: they removed negative HP. I believe they did this specifically because they made healing weaker. If characters have to be healed from negative hit points, then even clerics will struggle to restore someone who's taken a beating. That's not good for morale. Players will have to bring the campaign to a halt frequently just to spend a few long rests getting everyone back on their feet.

That’s my assumption for why overnight heal-to-full happened. My take on removing negative HP was thus: dead at -10 worked fine in AD&D when most enemies did somewhere between 1d6 and 2d8 per hit. You had a pretty good idea of how much a risk you were taking staying toe-to-toe with the bugbear captain with X hp left (‘okay, I have a X% chance of staying on my feet, a Y% chance of going down, and a Z% chance of biting the bullet’). In 3e, they kept the -10 rule, but damage got significantly more varied (especially if the enemy had power attack, or a weapon with a wild crit. Range, or the like). There was no longer a good informed strategy for playing a front-liner ‘right’ when your HP started to dwindle. The ‘down at 0, but little chance to actually insta-gib’ rules seem like a reasonable reaction to that situation.


The 'overpowered pop-up healing' only arises if you want to play super-nice and have enemies be idiots who don't try to win the fight

It's not really that easy to do if player are remotely intelligent. Usually players inform each other about their HP at tables. One player can easy do Ready Action knowing that his friend will go down on next hit. Bonus Action Healing Word can easy heal downed player way before most enemies can finish him off. Also once players start to have access to Revivify (only 5 level is required) even death of character is not a problem.
…
So again, there is always a possible solution to a problem, but there is no "golden solution".
…

Good points. I think making pop-up healing less optimal needs to be a combination of changes including fixing other-healing, playing monsters intelligently to the world they live in, and giving realistic ‘other good options’ for how best to play.

One thing that occurs to me is that a huge part of 'overpowered pop-up healing' that I find most bothersome is that it feels to trivial as a bonus action. I mean, if a character (probably a support character, but maybe even the paladin—who has lots of other things to do in a fight) has to spend a primary action to get another character off the ground – then I think it still sucks that healing someone ahead of going down is so sub-optimal, but overall it doesn’t seem quite so grating.

[NNescio]

I have just DMed my first DnD5e campaign, my own adaptation of the 3rd edition Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. It was a lot of fun :).

My players and I had the impression that healing is very overpowered in this edition. The party consisted of 2 paladins, 1 druid, 1 bard, 1 sorcerer. The spellcasters soon decided to prepare as many healing spells as possible; the sorcerer acquired an item to cast a low level healing spell.

I found it difficult to fight this group without resorting to tactics that would look unfair. As soon as any PC is down, they'd be healed for a few hit points and, depending on initiative, get to play their round. Paladins kept dishing out massive damage right after they had been felled. I used some Counterspells against their healing, but when there are low-level bonus actions healing spells around, that doesn't go very far.

By the end of the campaign, the optimal strategy for Strahd and his minions had become clear - they had to choose spells and attacks that did small but repeated damage to characters that were just felled. A cat that does 4 attacks of 1d3-1 damage would be a much better minion than a golem that does 1 attack of 4d12+21 damage. This can possibly create an awkward dynamic - the enemies have to focus on killing the characters, rather than just knocking them out, which is not very nice.

Has any of you experienced something like this?

In my experience this isn't usually a problem because healing is generally one of the least efficient use of an action (Fast Hands thieves with the Healer feat being a notable exception, but that's their shtick compared to Assassins and Tricksters). Casters usually have better uses for their turns such as disabling (groups of) enemies, creating difficult terrain and obstructions, summoning, or straight-up dropping an AoE damage template to cull hordes. Even bonus action heals denies most of a caster's effective options, as they can only cast a cantrip thereafter for that turn.

One notable exception is, as you noted, when a teammate goes down, as it's now effectively trading a caster's action for a teammate turn, as well as partially negating an enemy's (turn spent dealing damage to the teammate). This is still a highly risky tactic though, as it makes them vulnerable to getting killed via three failed saving throws (getting damaged count as one autofail per instance of damage, and crits count as two) or straight up massive damage (equal to max hp or higher). It also doesn't help against debilitating effects like being Stunned or Restrained or Paralyzed or Poisoned or Diseased or cursed. Intelligent enemies are also more likely to attack downed PCs (or the medic) to finish them off if they see them getting up repeatedly after being healed (face it, your players will do the same thing too if you give the enemies death saves [which is a RAW-legal option] and back them up with healers). Going unconscious also explicitly makes the creature drop whatever they were holding and go prone, which can be inconvenient (needing to pick up the weapon then stand) to highly dangerous (losing a powerful weapon/magic item/McGuffin, falling down from heights, dropping something that explodes, etc.) depending on what they were holding and where they were.

Now, your players' party composition incentivizes the above tactic more as they have two Paladins and a glut of other healers. Paladins are one of the most worthwhile allies to trade a turn bringing them back up, as they can nova for a lot of damage and provide auras to the whole party while conscious (other casters tend to rely on concentration spells for their more powerful effects, which go down if they fall unconscious, while Fighters don't deal as much burst damage as Paladins). Paladins are also more valuable in an undead-heavy setting like Ravenloft, due to access to radiant damage and anti-undead effects.

Due to the presence of the Paladins, consider using AoE disabling spells that don't rely on failed saves to go off (because Aura of Protection). Take the Silence spell, for one. It blocks verbal components, so no Cure Wounds or Healing Word within its area. Then there's Darkness, and the various Fog/Sleet spells. Or anything that obscures/blocks line of sight (normal/cursed fog is really fluffy in Ravenloft). No LoS means no Healing Word. No Misty Escape either. Both these options also become more effective if the party has a tendency to bunch up together (which they will if they're trying to take full advantage of the Paladins' auras. Also bear in mind that combining both effects can also potentially neuter Turn Undead attempts, as TU only affects undead that can see or hear the user.

You can also choose to throw mobs of weaker enemies at them. Lots of attacks can make downed characters feel threatened. In this regard, bat and rat swarms (and wolf packs) are incredibly fluffy (I mean, they are associated with vampires, and gamewise vamps get to 'summon' them anyway). Hordes of undeads can also be very threatening, especially ghouls with paralyze touch and shadows with amorphous and drain strength. Meanwhile incorporeal undead are Ethereal and can bypass obstacles (including from under the floor!).

Also consider varying the enemies' tactics. Most unintelligent enemies are not likely to stop attacking a downed opponent, especially if their body is blocking a passage or doorway. Some 'predatory' enemies are likely to drag off downed opponents to finish them off later, instead of continuing to attack the rest of the party. Enemies with the Swallow ability can even (and are inclined to) run off after snatching enough party members to fill their stomach. This is particularly dangerous because swallowing also happens to block targeting for most healing and escape spells, and can deal ongoing acid damage that can rapidly kill a downed party member. It may also block somatic and verbal components, but this part is entirely up to DM's discretion (RAW-wise nothing says it does, but RAW-wise nothing says getting bound/manacled and gagged does either, so it depends on DM's discretion how tightly wrapped the 'restraints'/stomach walls are. Heck manacles don't even impose the Restrained condition by a strict reading of RAW.)

Intelligent enemies may very well ignore downed opponents in favor of conscious ones (unless they are feeling particularly sadistic/bloodthirsty). This changes, however, if they witness downed opponents getting up again and again after getting healed by their allies. In this case they may switch tactics to finish off downed opponents, or at the very least taking away their weapons or focii/implements (free object interaction to pick up or kick away) before moving on. Some intelligent enemies (especially assasin and sneaky caster types) may also choose to avoid outright combat, instead preferring to wear down the party with traps and repeated skirmishing/withdrawing.

Now, personally speaking as a general rule I don't think DMs should tailor encounters to... arbitrarily neuter the party members' abilities (key word being "arbitrarily"), but intelligent adverseries are capable of changing up their tactics, and if they are aware of how a party operates (either by them or their minions surviving an encounter and running away, or via spies and/or diviniation spells), they may very well plan to counter them., especially if the party are being unsubtle and resort to the same tactics over and over again (like how ABD countered Vaarsuvius). From a meta perspective, letting the party trump encounters over and over again with the exact same tactic is also boring (for people on both sides of the DM screen), so it also behooves the DM to change things up a bit to keep them out of their comfort zone. (Otherwise the encounters aren't, well, challenging and might as well be bypassed or skipped.)

Note also that my previous suggestions aren't foolproof. Silence and spell-created Obscurement effects can be dispelled, for one. Likewise for summons, which can also be blasted with AoEs. But they shouldn't be (you are not trying to win against your players). The important thing is that this makes the party consider other options, making gameplay more dynamic (and interesting). In a similar vein, the players may also learn to outmaneuver their enemies (both in and out of combat, even in intrigue), to take down (or sideline/bypass) more dangerous enemies like casters.

With all the above said, I do find Ravenloft to be a very unforgiving setting, A lot of the modules and adventures are also blatantly unfair, especially when Strahd is involved (100% of the encounters in the 5e incarnation are Deadly if you crunch out the numbers, I think?). So, yeah, for Strahd, as a DM I tend to pull my punches a bit if the players are inexperieneced, or be more lenient with cheese and metagaming for the more experienced groups. (And maybe chuck out the module and come up with things on the fly at some point when the party decides to run away. Going with the campaign rails is just suicide.) It's too easy to TPK the whole party (accidentally or otherwise) if you are playing the villains intelligently to their full potential. Still, even then, as mentioned, if the players can repeatedly roll over encounters with the same tactic, the DM does have to change up things a bit to challenge them. Maybe go slow a bit with the changes at the beginning to gauge how the party react?

[Dessunri]

I tend to agree with you here. Even at levels 12+ my group (5 players + DM) can typically run 3 or so combats in a session, and that doesn't even include social encounters and other RP.

There's also no rule that says you have to have a rest between gaming sessions. Picking up where you left off with the same resources is something we do quite often.

Picking back up with the same resources is the only way my table plays it. If we don't tell our DM we're taking a rest, long or short, we don't magically get those benefits. Just because we walk away from the table doesn't mean our characters get to heal to full and get all their spell slots back.

[OverLordOcelot]

It's not really that easy to do if player are remotely intelligent. Usually players inform each other about their HP at tables. One player can easy do Ready Action knowing that his friend will go down on next hit. Bonus Action Healing Word can easy heal downed player way before most enemies can finish him off.

If a player readies an action, that means that he's not using his action to do anything useful, so he's effectively CCing himself indefinitely. This is a strong action economy cost, having a PC dedicated to popping up another character. Why do I say indefinitely? Because when you hit the character with a small heal, they will be 'about to go down on next hit' after they come up, and you have to repeat the ready action. If the heal is big enough to soak more than one hit (like the heal spell), then you can just use your action to cast it in the first place and not be tied up with ready actions and the risk of losing the spell.

Bonus action healing word prevents the caster from casting any leveled spell as his action (another significant cost), and only occurs on that player's turn. If the enemies have the same initiative count, they ALL go between 'character goes down' and 'another character gets an action'. If not, then the big guy can order his minions to ready their action to finish off anyone who he drops, so the follow-on attacks happen with no intervening turns.


Also once players start to have access to Revivify (only 5 level is required) even death of character is not a problem. Especially if you have 2 divine characters, like Cleric + Paladin (which is not that unusual) or Divine Soul Sorc who can Twin Healing Word, Twin Revivify etc. Later you also have Rise Dead, True Ressurection, Wish etc.

Revivify takes a 300gp gem per casting, it's not an unlimited resource (if the DM is giving players unlimited money at level 5, that's the issue not any kind of pop-up healing). Also since it brings the person back with just 1hp, you're likely to have to recast it over and over. And it's also a full action to cast, which again starts to eat away at your action economy. Wish is a 1/day spell, that's a very limited resource, and using it for pop-up healing is absurdly, stupidly wasteful. Why wait for someone to die to cast it when you can heal all of your allies to full and clear every effect listed under greater restoration for them instead? Also if we're talking about Tier 4 power levels (you know, where PCs have a wish or so much money that revivify's cost is negligible) it's not uncommon to see things like 5 fireballs in a round, power word kill, finger of death, disintegrate, and other effects that will fully kill a character at 1 hp, or multiple star spawn manglers (6x attacks averaging 90 damage).

Raise dead and true ressurrection are hilariously unsuited for pop-up healing as they have an hour long casting time, if your combats are taking an hour of in-game time you're doing something either so unusual it's irrelevant to game balance or just plain wrong. I seriously have no idea why you're bringing up hour long spells in a discussion about in-combat healing.


Ok, AOE damage works fine, but it's not that easy to pull off. Enemies are usually in blast range too, players have access to Counter Spell etc and mostly it would take only 1 death save away.

AOE damage is easy to pull off. Lots of AOEs are not counterspellable (environmental effects, wing buffet), lots of AOEs have immunity clauses (devils throwing around fire, for example) or small enough AOEs that it isn't a problem. And counterspell is a limited, unreliable resource that uses up a character's reaction (so they might try to counter the first fireball, but then can't absorb elements for the second). One death save failed means the next melee attack kills the character, three small AOEs means the character dies incidentally.


The thing is the sole fact that you need to sweat like that to counter yoyo healing in 5e is best proof that RAW healing mechanics are bad.

Having enemies take basic actions in combat does not require sweating on my part. If you have a hard time handling basic combat mechanics, DMing D&D is probably not your ideal calling. "The guy sends his second attack into your body, 2 failed death saves. His minion also attacks, OK now you're dead" just isn't that difficult. And if your combats are so light that PCs are sitting around readying healing spells that might not ever fire instead of doing something useful, the problem is that the fight isn't challenging, not that players can contrive a way to do pop-up healing instead of something more effective.

[Demonslayer666]

...
Easiest solution would be to dump Death Saves for Negative HP. That way front loads the urgency for magical healing.

To retain some compromising functionality, and avoid Negative HP becoming a resource sink, you can have magical healing still revive up to 1 HP on Short and Long Rests.

And while using Negative HP you can still keep Stabilized, having natural healing revive back to 1 HP while unconscious after 1d4 hours.
This creates another unwanted problem of forcing the party to have a dedicated healer, a role that was avoided because you don't do much else, and we frequently saw it NPCd.


I find that there's enough incentive to not go down if you play the enemies as intelligent. Instead of knocking the player to zero and pretending they're dead, have enemies try to finish off downed enemies (maybe waiting until the first pop-up) so that they actually stay down. You only have to land two regular hits on a player at 0hp, or get them with something like one tick of AOE and one lair/legendary action attack or a 1st level magic missile and they're just plain dead. Chill touch, beholder main eye, and similar effects also shut down healing. People I play with usually go softball in T1 (splatting newbies is not really fun), but in T2 and especially T3-4 if you go down and pop up you're likely to get focus fired the next time you go down.

The 'overpowered pop-up healing' only arises if you want to play super-nice and have enemies be idiots who don't try to win the fight, with a simple and completely reasonable in-game change in tactics it becomes a high-risk game. IMO this is like a lot of the discussion where people consider spells like conjure animals for CR 1/4 critters and magic items like a cloak of displacement wildly overpowered; lots of DMs aren't willing to give the enemy thematic abilities or have them use basic AOEs and first level spells that counter the spell or item for some reason, get their fights rolled, then blame the item.

You are acting like the party structure is something commonly dealt with, and they see pop-up healing frequently and know how to counter it. The way I DM, an enemy won't kill a downed player unless they have an easy opportunity and that is their goal (assassin), or they are blind with bloodlust like a shark in bloody water, or maybe they want to torment the other characters.

[Trickery]

Not every table has problems with yoyo healing. Only some tables legitimately have issues resulting from this.

Additionally, not all heals are created equal. Bonus action heals are particularly good, and it's often the case that enemies will have a hard time putting down a player if their teammates have bonus action heals. Consider that enemies are not assumed to go through death saving throws, only players. Also consider that you need to hit the downed player a few times before they get healed in order to keep them down. There won't always be enemies ready to do that.

As others have said, a Thief Rogue with Healer is particularly good at bringing allies back up. So is a Celestial Warlock. So is that Aura of Vitality Lore Bard build. So is a Druid with Healing Spirit. And just polymorphing your ally into a T-Rex or something is often the best kind of "healing." But the basic spell Cure Wounds is not too good, and nor are several of the other healing spells.

Thus, we can say that healing is good when players optimize for it, and is just average, or even bad, otherwise. But that's true of everything. You can optimize any role.

Healing isn't where I'd like it to be, but I don't think it's really all that bad this edition.

[patchyman]

I don’t have a problem with yo-yo healing in my game, but another alternative is the Punch-out! rule. Each time a player goes down, he has to make an increasingly difficult Con check to recover. If the check fails, the healing stabilizes him, but he cannot act. Third time a character goes down since taking a short rest, it’s TKO until the end of the fight.

[OverLordOcelot]

You are acting like the party structure is something commonly dealt with, and they see pop-up healing frequently and know how to counter it. The way I DM, an enemy won't kill a downed player unless they have an easy opportunity and that is their goal (assassin), or they are blind with bloodlust like a shark in bloody water, or maybe they want to torment the other characters.

This isn't some complicated obscure metagaming weirdness or obscure effect that's hard to see in the game world. This is 'barbarian was down and dying, priestly guy cast a spell on him, and he's fighting again, I better make sure he's down for good next time'. Magic is usually part of a D&D world (it definitely is in Barovia), and it's just silly to play every set of enemies like they've never in their life encountered it. It's even sillier to act like it's difficult for NPCs to figure out when they have a higher-than average int, spellcasters on their side, or even spellcasting themselves. Do you really think Strahd has never encountered healing word before the PCs came along and has no idea how healing works on non-undead enemies? "He didn't stay down when I hit him, so I'll hit him until he stops breathing" is not secret arcane lore that no one but the PCs understand.

Try a little experiment: Apply the 0HP rules to NPCs, and give NPC groups someone who has a small bonus action heal (priest NPCs for example). Then throw your party into a fight where the heavy-hitter NPCs keep getting pop-up healed. If you're not one of the people who feels that using anything but published books is bad, hold an encounter in an area they infuses the enemies with power and have all of them heal 1 hp per round and see how the PCs react. I'd be willing to bet good money that even if your PCs aren't 'blind with bloodlust' or 'wanting to torment the NPCs', they will start finishing off the pop up guys or shutting down the healers instead of letting them pop-up repeatedly.

[Pigkappa]

Thank you all for your input. I had not read all of the 5e DMG - I could only invest so much time into preparing. Next time I play this campaign (probably in a few years...) I'll consider using the gritty rests rules, and giving my NPCs more abilities to make healing harder like Silence, fog, and Chill Touch. I'll also consider the houserule of being stunned for 1 turn after getting up. Also, next time my Holy Symbol of the Ravenkind should probably double your character's heals, rather than grant you the ability to cast Heal Wounds. It was meant to be an item that can be appreciated by divine spellcasters, but this time the Sorcerer took it so that he'd be able to heal too.

For what it's worth, my NPCs were pulling punches in the first part of the campaign, but not at the end. Strahd was very happy to focus on the characters who were down, Counterspell the area healings, and split the party with Wall of Stone/Ice. I just noticed that one of my biggest weakness was the yoyo healing and it was triggering all kind of weird incentives for PCs and NPCs. Two characters died in the last fight because I attacked them with multiple attacks as soon as they went down.

Another weakness was that the paladins could pretty much kill my vampires in 1 turn if they rolled well, but I guess that's not as weird.

[Demonslayer666]

This isn't some complicated obscure metagaming weirdness or obscure effect that's hard to see in the game world. This is 'barbarian was down and dying, priestly guy cast a spell on him, and he's fighting again, I better make sure he's down for good next time'. Magic is usually part of a D&D world (it definitely is in Barovia), and it's just silly to play every set of enemies like they've never in their life encountered it. It's even sillier to act like it's difficult for NPCs to figure out when they have a higher-than average int, spellcasters on their side, or even spellcasting themselves. Do you really think Strahd has never encountered healing word before the PCs came along and has no idea how healing works on non-undead enemies? "He didn't stay down when I hit him, so I'll hit him until he stops breathing" is not secret arcane lore that no one but the PCs understand.

Try a little experiment: Apply the 0HP rules to NPCs, and give NPC groups someone who has a small bonus action heal (priest NPCs for example). Then throw your party into a fight where the heavy-hitter NPCs keep getting pop-up healed. If you're not one of the people who feels that using anything but published books is bad, hold an encounter in an area they infuses the enemies with power and have all of them heal 1 hp per round and see how the PCs react. I'd be willing to bet good money that even if your PCs aren't 'blind with bloodlust' or 'wanting to torment the NPCs', they will start finishing off the pop up guys or shutting down the healers instead of letting them pop-up repeatedly.

You seemed to have missed the entire point I was trying to make that not every encounter is at PC level intelligence in tactics and planning. You certainly should run intelligent encounters intelligently.

[OverLordOcelot]

This creates another unwanted problem of forcing the party to have a dedicated healer, a role that was avoided because you don't do much else, and we frequently saw it NPCd.
You are acting like the party structure is something commonly dealt with, and they see pop-up healing frequently and know how to counter it. The way I DM, an enemy won't kill a downed player unless they have an easy opportunity and that is their goal (assassin), or they are blind with bloodlust like a shark in bloody water, or maybe they want to torment the other characters.

You seemed to have missed the entire point I was trying to make that not every encounter is at PC level intelligence in tactics and planning. You certainly should run intelligent encounters intelligently.

I don't see how the material I quoted in the first part (which is all of your text in the post I was responding to) is supposed to make the 'point' you say it did in the second part, it in fact contradicts it. You literally only discussed intelligent enemies in it, and stated that you would not have them act intelligently (finishing downed PCs) unless they were blind with bloodlust or sadistic and attempting to torment the other PCs. I didn't miss a point, you're now making a different point as well as a claim that directly contradicts what you said in the post I was responding to.

[Mitsu]

Having enemies take basic actions in combat does not require sweating on my part. If you have a hard time handling basic combat mechanics, DMing D&D is probably not your ideal calling. "The guy sends his second attack into your body, 2 failed death saves. His minion also attacks, OK now you're dead" just isn't that difficult. And if your combats are so light that PCs are sitting around readying healing spells that might not ever fire instead of doing something useful, the problem is that the fight isn't challenging, not that players can contrive a way to do pop-up healing instead of something more effective.

It doesn't work like that unless players are morons or play really badly designed builds. But any experienced party will be very very hard to TPK even if you try while still being fair (sure, I can drop 10 Ancient Red Dragons but that has no point).

5e is hardy a hard or deadly setting. If killing downed player would be that easy, I would see it much more often in all AL session i have DMed or all custom campaigns I have played or DMed with various groups. Like Mike Tyson said "anyone have plan, then they get punch in face".

It's actually under normal circumstances hard do kill downed player. Sure IF YOU WANT TO as DM you can- but that will be obvious.

There is a reason 5e is considered by many people easiest edition.

Also my fights are very hard due to my party being veteran munchkins and I don't hold blows. I still wasn't able to kill any players because if players are smart and build well optimized party it's almost impossible under normal circumstances because 5e is that easy. Sure, when we talk about custom monsters etc.- it won't be. But since discussion is RAW healing, I will stick to RAW enemies. And RAW 5e is laughtable easy if someone knows what he is doing.

Even in AL where new people play crap builds it was quite rare to see someone die. Being downed sure. But killed, with all that death saves, clerics, paladins, druids, goodbarries, healing kits, healing words etc. - nah.

Also if your player has 16 AC and 3 enemies next to him have +8 to hit and multiattack and he has low AP- you only need basic mathematic to know that he will go down next enemies turn so ready action healdoes not go to waste. Then there is also initiative order etc. Players are not stupid, unless you only met such. There are 4-5 brains working vs DM 1 brain. I just stated example of how that whole "if player is down, it can be killed" is pretty stupid as anyone who played 5e knows that it doesn't work that way, nor it's that easy.

Yet people catach on "ready action" like players also don't know it's not always best solution. But it's is one of many solutions to easy prevent any sort of TPK in 5e. And the higher levels go- the easier it is and more and more utility options players can use.

[Pex]

The bad guys in the non-first combat of the day are at full hit points. I see no reason why the party can't be as well. D&D combat is not a simulator and is not meant to be. Realism can go fly a kite where fun is more important. PCs and NPCs follow different rules. Players have to accept that, but so too do DMs. That means yes, it's perfectly fine PCs get to "yo-yo" heal in combat to keep fighting. That's their perk for being a PC and not an NPC.

[lperkins2]

I agree with the rest of this post, but in 5e a normal 5e housecat won't instagib the character, because it only gets one attack. I don't find that what I'd call 'small animals' (actually size tiny in game terms) in 5e are comically overpowered, what ones pose a significant danger to an adventurer?
...

By comically overpowered, I don't mean they are a serious threat to adventurers, or on par with dragons, or anything of that sort. What I mean is their power level far exceeds what it ought to be. That cat has a decent chance to kill an average human in about a minute. If the human is helpless, but covered head to toe in armour (full plate), the cat still will kill it in fairly short order. It comes from the lack of DR and the minimum value of 1 damage, so anything that should really be doing 0.1 damage gets a power boost.

That said, the Eagle is my goto CR0 deadly foe. AC12, 60' flight, dies in one hit, but so do kobolds, +4 to hit, 1d4+2 damage. A medium encounter with them is 10 of them for 4 level 1s. That's around 20HP of damage a round against AC14ish PCs. And the best part is it's only worth 25XP per player, per encounter. That means 12 encounters for the party in a single day to reach the experience budget.


It's not really that easy to do if player are remotely intelligent. Usually players inform each other about their HP at tables. One player can easy do Ready Action knowing that his friend will go down on next hit. Bonus Action Healing Word can easy heal downed player way before most enemies can finish him off.
...

Small point of order, RAW you cannot cast BA spells via Ready. Ready lets you choose to move, or to use an Action, not a Bonus Action. Assuming you have a way to use a different spell, you spend the spell slot when you Ready, and lose the spell if the trigger never happens. Also, if you take damage, you risk losing the spell. Plus, multiattack or larger numbers of smaller creatures can easily undo HW, as it scales terribly.

[JNAProductions]

By comically overpowered, I don't mean they are a serious threat to adventurers, or on par with dragons, or anything of that sort. What I mean is their power level far exceeds what it ought to be. That cat has a decent chance to kill an average human in about a minute. If the human is helpless, but covered head to toe in armour (full plate), the cat still will kill it in fairly short order. It comes from the lack of DR and the minimum value of 1 damage, so anything that should really be doing 0.1 damage gets a power boost.

That said, the Eagle is my goto CR0 deadly foe. AC12, 60' flight, dies in one hit, but so do kobolds, +4 to hit, 1d4+2 damage. A medium encounter with them is 10 of them for 4 level 1s. That's around 20HP of damage a round against AC14ish PCs. And the best part is it's only worth 25XP per player, per encounter. That means 12 encounters for the party in a single day to reach the experience budget.

Small point of order, RAW you cannot cast BA spells via Ready. Ready lets you choose to move, or to use an Action, not a Bonus Action. Assuming you have a way to use a different spell, you spend the spell slot when you Ready, and lose the spell if the trigger never happens. Also, if you take damage, you risk losing the spell. Plus, multiattack or larger numbers of smaller creatures can easily undo HW, as it scales terribly.

At least a fight between a housecat and commoner will usually result in the commoner winning.

The same could not be said of 3.5.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I've definitely found myself living Team Cleric (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0077.html) with bonus action healing word to keep myself and the other cleric in action while still casting offensive spells with my action.

There are some definite flaws to that strategy, though. Any attack against a downed character is an automatic critical, and thus an automatic two death saving throw failures. So any slightly coordinated group of enemies (or poor coordination among allies) will see downed characters die rapidly if the DM is so inclined. And any single attack that does twice the character's max HP causes instant death no matter how much HP you had when it landed, so relying on healing to make up for your squishiness can end poorly. Finally, toll the dead and similar magic can spell (heh) the end for such shenanigans.

[Frozenstep]

I've definitely found myself living Team Cleric (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0077.html) with bonus action healing word to keep myself and the other cleric in action while still casting offensive spells with my action.

There are some definite flaws to that strategy, though. Any attack against a downed character is an automatic critical, and thus an automatic two death saving throw failures. So any slightly coordinated group of enemies (or poor coordination among allies) will see downed characters die rapidly if the DM is so inclined. And any single attack that does twice the character's max HP causes instant death no matter how much HP you had when it landed, so relying on healing to make up for your squishiness can end poorly. Finally, toll the dead and similar magic can spell (heh) the end for such shenanigans.

But you can only cast cantrips if you use a bonus action spell on that turn.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

But you can only cast cantrips if you use a bonus action spell on that turn.

That's what I meant, though I suppose "offensive spells" was ambiguous. I find that a well placed ray of frost or shocking grasp will answer most of a draconic lion's probing interview questions. (My character was a Cleric/Sorcerer multiclass).

[NNescio]

There are some definite flaws to that strategy, though. Any attack against a downed character is an automatic critical, and thus an automatic two death saving throw failures. (...)

To nitpick; only if the attacker is within 5ft, and assuming it hits.



And any single attack that does twice the character's max HP causes instant death no matter how much HP you had when it landed, so relying on healing to make up for your squishiness can end poorly.

That's true. But one doesn't necessarily need to deal 2x Max HP damage to cause instant death (it's only required if the PC has full HP). It's Max HP + Current HP. (The exact rule is "When damage reduces you to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum.") So, a character who's relying on low-powered heals to pop up from 0 HP can be taken out just by any single source of damage that deals Max HP + whichever minuscule amount the PC was healed for.


That's what I meant, though I suppose "offensive spells" was ambiguous. I find that a well placed ray of frost or shocking grasp will answer most of a draconic lion's probing interview questions. (My character was a Cleric/Sorcerer multiclass).

That sounds a bit... MAD (multiple attribute dependent). Rolled stats, I presume? '

[Willie the Duck]

That sounds a bit... MAD (multiple attribute dependent). Rolled stats, I presume? '
Just with Vuman, one can easily make a pretty reasonable life cleric1/sorcerer X-1 build using standard array. Perhaps s8/d14/c12/i10/w13+1/ch15+1. Half-elf could be s8/d14/c12+1/i10/w13+1/ch14+2 and set up resilient:con for level 4. The medium or heavy armor really adds to the survivability of a sorcerer, and the cleric side doesn't really need to max out their wisdom if they are going to be using sorcerer abilities as offense rather than relying on Spiritual Weapon/Spirit Guardians (/other save or attack-based spells) for combat prowess.

[Demonslayer666]

I don't see how the material I quoted in the first part (which is all of your text in the post I was responding to) is supposed to make the 'point' you say it did in the second part, it in fact contradicts it. You literally only discussed intelligent enemies in it, and stated that you would not have them act intelligently (finishing downed PCs) unless they were blind with bloodlust or sadistic and attempting to torment the other PCs. I didn't miss a point, you're now making a different point as well as a claim that directly contradicts what you said in the post I was responding to.

Handling encounters differently based on their intelligence is not me contradicting myself. If you want your encounters to kill downed players to prevent pop-up healing, knock yourself out.

[Snails]

Going to agree with a few others here. Healing is broken, but fixing it is not easy.

Problem one: healing spells don't heal enough hit points to keep someone up. Healing is weaker than attacking in terms of damage points. This was a design decision.

Problem two: they removed negative HP. I believe they did this specifically because they made healing weaker. If characters have to be healed from negative hit points, then even clerics will struggle to restore someone who's taken a beating. That's not good for morale. Players will have to bring the campaign to a halt frequently just to spend a few long rests getting everyone back on their feet.

Problem two is what causes the yoyo. I don't think anything as extreme as negative HP is necessary to fix it. And exhaustion just forces long rests. As others have said, it hurts too much on the long run and not enough in the short term.

Rather, try this: after you get up from being unconscious, you're stunned for your next turn. Simple, easy, sensible, affects only one fight, and makes players not want to go down.

While I agree with the statement of the main problems, Stunning only addresses Problem Two, by making the situation absolutely worse off for the PCs. Ditto exhaustion levels, which are harsh are hard to fix, short of simply going home for the day.

Since in combat healing is so weak, a player has no practical tactical option. Burning an Action on a 1st or 2nd level spell is not enough better than Healing Word.

The robustness against death from typical attacks is a design decision, IMHO motivated in large part by greater randomness from flat math at all levels of play. The yo-yo has the practical advantage of making adventuring parties of 4 or less PCs workable without DM fudging.

tl;dr -- Stunning is a reasonable option, but Healing should be boosted, too (or perhaps some other resource can come into play).

[Garfunion]

After skimming through this thread I feel that 4th edition did a better job when it came to healing. Every player was in charge of their own reservoir of healing capability. The “healer” in the party had a class feature that allowed them to heal players in combat. This freed up the healer’s ability to choose other spell that they may like to use, instead of worrying about healing spells.

This is why 5th edition’s healing was designed the way it is. To help reduce the need for a healer to choose healing spells over other spells. However this also allows a party to have a lot of healing capability.

[Mitsu]

Speaking about healing- Grave Domain 1 Cleric/19 Divine Soul Sorcerer is super strong healer especially for YoYo with his Circle of Mortality where he restores maximum hit points in dices if target has 0 HP. Add Twinning or Quicken to it and you have very potent dedicated YoYo healer.

Back to main problems though:

I understand the problem- if healing would be to important to keep character alive we would be back to "ok, before we start- who will be Cleric/Healer?"

Fact is that right now you don't need dedicated healer in 5e and that is good.

But compromises had to be made and here we are- it's so easy to heal and not die that it's not fun anymore.

[KorvinStarmast]

The robustness against death from typical attacks is a design decision, IMHO motivated in large part by greater randomness from flat math at all levels of play. The yo-yo has the practical advantage of making adventuring parties of 4 or less PCs workable without DM fudging. Thank you for putting into words a thing I was thinking but could not quite express.

The swinginess of low level encounters, and that this edition was supposed to appeal to new players, sets up the need for new players not to need to roll up a new char so often.

@mitsu

But compromises had to be made and here we are- it's so easy to heal and not die that it's not fun anymore. For you, maybe.

I find that your assessment is at odds with the game's success, and its appeal to new players. Korvin Starmast, life cleric, died. Perma death. He was digested by ogres and pooped out, as was his companion the dwarf. (The rest of the party was able to escape the battle that nearly turned into a TPK. The two of us were stuck down in the pit, out of resources, out of spells, and out of luck. (The dice really were cold for us that night)

Death is still a thing.

[Mitsu]

T

@mitsu
For you, maybe.

I find that your assessment is at odds with the game's success, and its appeal to new players. Korvin Starmast, life cleric, died. Perma death. He was digested by ogres and pooped out, as was his companion the dwarf. (The rest of the party was able to escape the battle that nearly turned into a TPK. The two of us were stuck down in the pit, out of resources, out of spells, and out of luck. (The dice really were cold for us that night)

Death is still a thing.

For me, yes, but as you can see in thread- not only for me.

Sure death still is a thing, but many times due to DM inexperience (making encounter too hard) or due to player making bad builds/party compositions and adding to it lack of any tactical thinking at all.

Naked 5e with it's suggest CR and monsters design is not really deadly or even try to be.

Also mind you, I don't try to homerule that. Healing is as it is in 5e and I just play along with that. My private opinion is my own, but I DM and play with it and definitely I have fun, but I just find it a little bit boring of how easy 5e has become, and in large part due to healing and downed mechanics.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

That's true. But one doesn't necessarily need to deal 2x Max HP damage to cause instant death (it's only required if the PC has full HP). It's Max HP + Current HP. (The exact rule is "When damage reduces you to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum.") So, a character who's relying on low-powered heals to pop up from 0 HP can be taken out just by any single source of damage that deals Max HP + whichever minuscule amount the PC was healed for.

Huh, didn't know that. Makes sense, though.


That sounds a bit... MAD (multiple attribute dependent). Rolled stats, I presume? '

Point buy (with a house rule that you can go up to 16 for an appropriate cost). The build was Tempest Cleric 2/Storm Sorcerer X. A little MAD, true, but you only need a little Wisdom to vastly increase your versatility, and heavy armor and shield proficiency from Tempest domain let you neglect Con to an extent and completely dump Dex in exchange for Str. You're a spell level behind on Sorcerer known spells, but the Cleric spells/cantrips make up for the lost versatility, and upcasting and the Tempest Channel Domain ability (max damage on a thunder/lightning spell) keep your damage up to snuff.