Is at-will healing magic (e.g. Cure Wounds) really that OP?

[Greywander]

I've played with a number of concepts in homebrew, and one of the ones that I really like but have a hard time balancing for D&D is at-will spellcasting. The intended design is for spellcasters to have a large library of spells to cast, but a limited number of casting resources. However, what if you only had a few spells, but could cast them as many times as you wanted? This would radically change your tactical approach and open up new options for you. One spell that I think serves as a good example is Enlarge/Reduce; it has a lot of utility out of combat, as well as usefulness in-combat, and isn't too strong. Being able to enlarge or reduce things, including yourself, it's kind of like a super power that you'd expect from a comic book super hero (or villain). In general, I think the 1st and 2nd level spell range works best for making at-will, though there might be select spells from higher levels that you could make at-will.

Now, there's two types of spells that seem to pose a challenge to at-will casting. The first is Shield; it's just really strong, and uses a reaction rather than an action. Not really much more that can be said about that. It's a boring, if effective pick. The other type are healing spells, like Cure Wounds or Healing Word. Because D&D is a fairly combat-heavy game, the idea of at-will healing seems like it would be broken and overpowered. But after thinking about it a bit more, I'm starting to doubt that.

To consider the effectiveness of at-will healing, we need to consider in-combat and out of combat separately. In-combat, I think it would only really be useful in tier 1, where the amount of healing you get from a 1st level spell is still a significant percentage of your max HP. After that, it's only real use is to get allies up from 0, basically a glorified Spare the Dying. Which is still useful, to be sure, but my point is that you definitely wouldn't be spamming it every round. After tier 1, you'll probably be better off using the Attack action or casting a different spell (usually a higher level one, which is also probably costing you a spell slot), rather than spamming low level heals. Even if you're a Life cleric, all of your bonuses to healing won't make 1st level Cure Wounds spam worth it. There's just so many more effective things you could be doing instead.

Out of combat is where the balance appears to tilt. Since you can spam Cure Wounds, Healing Word, or some other healing spell, there's little reason not to top everyone's HP off after each fight. It should only take a few minutes of repeated casting to do so, and you can do it while moving if needed. It's more or less a given that your party will enter battle with full HP every time. And...? I mean, we always enter the first encounter of the day with full HP (baring things like traps or self-inflicted stupidity). Yes, HP is a resource that can be gradually exhausted as the party continues adventuring, eventually forcing them to stop and rest, or to retreat from a fight they can no longer win. But it's not the only such resource. And if the DM knows that they'll have full HP for every encounter, they can throw stronger monsters at them, or throw back-to-back fights from time to time so they can't heal between (not fully, at least).

In a way, I think at-will healing is a bit like racial flight: it's an ability that seems overpowered, but if the DM puts in the effort to work around that, or work with that, then it shouldn't be a problem. It does put an extra burden on the DM, but with that additional workload comes additional opportunities. There are some types of encounters or adventures that would only really work if someone did have at-will healing (or racial flight).

It is a bit hard to have a discussion about something like this in abstract, because context definitely matters. It's important how one would get at-will healing, as that can make a big difference. I've worked on design a couple of classes that use at-will casting; one is just straight up at-will spells, but is restricted to lower level spells (they get 3rd level spells at 17th level), the other can get up to 5th level spells but has a very carefully tailored spell list and is limited by the number spells they can have running at the same time (many of their spells also use concentration, so...). It should be noted that neither class has access to healing spells (currently). More recently, I had the idea for a feat that gives you at-will casting for one 1st or 2nd level spell; contrast with Magic Initiate, which only gives you a 1st level spell once per long rest, as well as two cantrips.

Something else I've worked on which is sort of at-will casting is my homebrew wild magic system (based off Tzeentch's Curse from Warhammer FRP). There are no spell slots or other resources; to cast a spell, you roll one to four "spellcasting dice" and try to beat the DC, otherwise the spell fails. Roll doubles, triples, or quadruples, and you trigger a wild magic surge. By 5th level, your spellcasting dice are large enough to cast 1st level spells rolling only one die (albeit with only 1 in 8 chance of success, but no risk of a surge), and by 11th level you can do the same with 2nd level spells. This is more like pseudo-ritual caster, rather than at-will, as it takes roughly a minute of repeated casting to be successful (hope that spell didn't consume costly materials, by the way). As far as out-of-combat healing, though, the result is the same. I didn't originally intend it to work this way, but I think it's a fair trade off given how much more unreliable and dangerous high level spells are.

[Pinkie Pyro]

The 3.5e warlock might offer a solution: Have a specific allowed list of spells AND/OR have a very small amount of known spells.

having trouble with cure wounds? make it so they can't select that spell, but have "bolster health": target heals 2d4+2 HP, up to a maximum of half it's total HP. in addition, it gains 1d4+1 temporary HP. at level 5, increase each of these effects by 1d4+1 [ect]

If you're designing it as a base class from the ground up, you might include a "spell freshness" concept where you can cast the same spell repeatedly, but it's effects lessen until it has time to recharge. (IE: shield gives +5 AC, then +4, +3, until it's +1. spending a round grants it back +2 AC or something)

Just the thoughts of a tired 3.5 DM.

[Tanarii]

Yes, massive out of combat healing breaks things. Quite badly. That's why unlimited healing pots are an issue if players sink cash into it, and it's why they fixed Healing Spirit.

You'd probably be better off homebrew it a scaling in-combat only spell. Tag it with (Adreneline) or something to justify it. There's several other spells that could be used at will with that tag. Conversely, you could have a (No Adreneline) tag that only works at will out of combat.

[Ghost Nappa]

One of the interesting things I've noticed about Baldur's Gate 3's Early Access is that they tweaked some rules and spells to make more sense for a video game.

Shield of Faith still uses concentration, but the duration is otherwise infinite. Other spells like Longstrider and Mage Armor have infinite duration and only reset at a Long Rest. Outside of combat, you can effectively heal back up to full by eating food, and there's almost no penalty for resting in general. (There is technically one story penalty but it doesn't feel particularly severe or unavoidable).

I don't think at-will healing makes sense as a resource less thing: I think it still makes sense that reviving dead tissue, rebreathing life into something still draws from some kind of personal endurance.

At a certain point, the healer will have nothing more to give. Doctors need to rest and recharge just as much as anyone else. I don't how you would implement that. I don't think I have a problem with handwaving Out of combat healing with full restoring a character, but that's kind of what hit dice already do?

[Greywander]

To be clear, it's not that I've ever specifically tried implementing at-will healing, it's just something that can or does follow from implementing some other at-will spellcasting system. For example, say I did write up a homebrew feat that says you can pick any 1st or 2nd level spell and cast it at-will. Now, in writing such a feat, I might have spells like Fog Cloud, Spiderclimb, or Enlarge/Reduce in mind, but let's say a player picks Cure Wounds. Should I, as the hypothetical DM, disallow this? Or can I make it work? That's more the subject of this thread. In a situation where at-will spellcasting is on the table, and it just so happens that a healing spell comes up, is it really going to be that much of a problem? We could create more houserules to handle such a situation, but that risks becoming unwieldy, so it's worth asking, "Why not?" to see if we can't still make it work as-is.

Again, I think the comparison to racial flight is an apt one; a lot of DMs ban flying races at their table because it's more work for the DM to create appropriate challenges. Similarly, I think a lot of DMs would say, "No healing spells, pick a different one." It just changes up the way the game works so much that it can be difficult to adjust to. The point I want to make is that I think it's possible to make that adjustment and still have a fun adventure with challenging encounters.

There are, of course, certain limitations we could place that would handily eliminate the worst contenders from the list. For example, picking an at-will spell, but it has to use concentration. That instantly eliminates Shield, Cure Wounds, and Healing Word. Even then, though, there are still healing spells that use concentration, such as Healing Spirit. Concentration is also a good way to have at-will casting that still has limitations, e.g. you can't cast it while concentrating on something else.

I do wish D&D used a different kind of health system that made at-will healing less of a big deal. A while back I remember writing up a system where instead of HP, you get wounds of varying severity depending on how much damage you took. You could take a certain number of each severity of wound, after which more wounds would get upgraded to the next level of severity. Under this system, a Cure Minor Wounds cantrip would actually work, as it could only remove what is essentially scratch damage, not any of the serious wounds. However, even this would still be useful, since minor wounds would upgrade to more severe wounds if your minor wound track was full. I kind of want to revisit this and try it out sometime.

[Segev]

At-will healing only works in a game where the expectation is that the party will enter every fight at full health.

[Greywander]

At-will healing only works in a game where the expectation is that the party will enter every fight at full health.
Exactly. This isn't really how the game is designed to be played, so a lot of DMs might not know how to handle something like this, but if you can handle it, then it shouldn't be a problem. I've belabored the comparison to racial flight enough, I think, so let's use a new comparison. A game with a lycanthrope PC is also going to play very differently. Immunity to non-silvered weapons means that a lot of fights suddenly become trivial, so either silver weapons start showing up everywhere or the game shifts focus to non-combat challenges, or at least to a challenge where being immune to weapons isn't all that helpful (e.g. needing to rescue someone, who might die if you don't reach them in time).

As a sidenote, I recall seeing one of the vampire powers in V:tM where you literally regenerate health. And not just a little, it only takes seconds to regenerate to not-quite-full health (I think it was similar to the Champion's regen where it only takes back up to "not full power, but not really injured"). I've only played a little bit of V:tM, but it's such a stark contrast; you can tell that game isn't designed around combat, as there's some pretty crazy good combat abilities that aren't that hard to pick up. It's easy to build a combat beast, what isn't easy is not getting chewed up by vampire politics.

[MaxWilson]

One of the interesting things I've noticed about Baldur's Gate 3's Early Access is that they tweaked some rules and spells to make more sense for a video game.

Shield of Faith still uses concentration, but the duration is otherwise infinite. Other spells like Longstrider and Mage Armor have infinite duration and only reset at a Long Rest. Outside of combat, you can effectively heal back up to full by eating food, and there's almost no penalty for resting in general. (There is technically one story penalty but it doesn't feel particularly severe or unavoidable).


I stopped playing BG3 during the Tutorial fight, as soon as I realized they hadn't even implemented Dodge. Sounds like I was right to do so.

[MoiMagnus]

I've played heavily homebrewed D&D where HP were fully regenerated between each fight, and it works fine, with two caveats:
(1) You need to rebuild the system with this new paradigm in mind [so a lot of work], or accept that some abilities that were a major component of a class are now useless.
(2) You need to introduce some sort of long lasting damages (e.g the first time of a fight you go under half of your HP, you gain one exhaustion level, or any rules about lasting injuries) to push players to spend their resources. If taking damages is no longer a real cost as long as you win, then you will heavily lean toward not using spell slots as long as you can barely win without. And IMO, fight where the optimal play is to spam cantrips and do nothing else are boring.

[Unoriginal]

The whole point of having multiple encounters between long rests is to exhaust ressources.

Racial flight may affect the parts of the world PCs have access or let a PC fight from a safe distance when out in the open, but it's nothing comparable to the utter destruction of the HP and HD management part of the game at-will healing would cause. Not to mention how it would remove the dilemma between spending spell slots to heal or to keep spell slots for later.

There's really nothing to be gained with at-will healing, unless you hate how 5e PCs have to assess if the damages taken in one encounters risk to put them in a bad position for the next ones.

[Kane0]

The attrition minigame shifts dramatically. No longer needing to worry about HP apart from the current fight you’re in means hit die become largely useless and the primary resources whittled through an adventuring day are spell slots and feature charges. At-Will healing tends to also free up some of those slots and features since they arent being used to top up health.
Also fights would probably also swing more towards deadly than easy as if it doesnt kill you it’s barely more than a speedbump.

[GeoffWatson]

Maybe something like the Champion ability (heal up to half maximum hit points) might be acceptable, but it would still be very good.

[LudicSavant]

HP attrition is such an important factor of resource attrition in D&D 5e, and resource attrition such an important factor in its challenge and strategic depth, that removing it as a concern entirely would indeed be quite strong.

By contrast a Champion healing themselves up to half at will is considerably less useful, since going into a challenging fight with half health as a Champion is a big risk. Lots of things can blow right through that and instantly kill them, as Champs have relatively few defenses to supplement their hp (compared to, say, an EK or PLD at that level).

[Warder]

We've gone in exactly the opposite direction at our table - long rests don't come with any healing for us, except you get to restore and spend hit dice - and the game is a lot more fun for it, imho.

[qube]

Out of combat is where the balance appears to tilt. Since you can spam Cure Wounds, Healing Word, or some other healing spell, there's little reason not to top everyone's HP off after each fight. It should only take a few minutes of repeated casting to do so, and you can do it while moving if needed. It's more or less a given that your party will enter battle with full HP every time. And...? I mean, we always enter the first encounter of the day with full HP (baring things like traps or self-inflicted stupidity). Yes, HP is a resource that can be gradually exhausted as the party continues adventuring, eventually forcing them to stop and rest, or to retreat from a fight they can no longer win. But it's not the only such resource. And if the DM knows that they'll have full HP for every encounter, they can throw stronger monsters at them, or throw back-to-back fights from time to time so they can't heal between (not fully, at least).
You're not the first to reason like this - but you're missing something very important.

To argue "the DM can fix it", is not an argument that something isn't a problem - it's an acknowledgement that it is, pointing out that it's a problem the DM can work around. And that's a poor stance if you're trying to craft something. A DM can work around anything, so if this logci would be valid ... what's the use of game balance in the first place?

------------------

That being said, at will healing isn't that hard. Top of my head examples:


Cauterization
Cantrip, action, touch.

You can heal up to half the damage the target has taken from a single attack since your last round.
You can't heal more hit points then your spellcasting modifier.
The target must be concious.

If cast on a dying target, remove one failed and one succesful death saving throw (if any)


or


Vigor
Cantrip, action, touch.

you grant the target a number of temp hp up to your spellcasting modifier.
The sum of current hp and temp hp may not exceed the target's maximum hp
The target loses the temp hp if other forms of healing are applied.

[MrStabby]

Honestly, I think this is a problem.

Firstly, I think there is a tendency to look at this in isolation, but in reality there is a party to consider. Big problem is that this squeezes the cleric somewhat. So in 5th edition clerics are no healbots - they can, and do, do a lot more. But healing is one of their things and it is still a pretty big part of their class. If you can heal at will then spells like Prayer of Healing that used to be great cleric spells, both mechanically and from an RP perspective just become crap. Look at the cleric spell list and see all the spells there that, whilst they might still serve a purpose, get a lot worse when there is someone in the party who can heal at will. Is this reduction in the number of spells worth playing a good thing for the game?





In a way, I think at-will healing is a bit like racial flight: it's an ability that seems overpowered, but if the DM puts in the effort to work around that, or work with that, then it shouldn't be a problem. It does put an extra burden on the DM, but with that additional workload comes additional opportunities. There are some types of encounters or adventures that would only really work if someone did have at-will healing (or racial flight).


I think this bit is the really problematic thing to me. This is where I think we have a serious disagreemnt.

The idea that the DM can adapt is fine. A good DM can mitigate the worst of the damage a poorly designed homebrew can do to a game. That is true. It doesn't follow that they should, that they should have to, or that there isn't a cost to this. Equating what can be done to what is reasonably OK to expect to be done is, in my oppinion, a mistake.

What if you want to run a campaign where resource managment matters? A campaign where fights are draining and you might want to avoid them? What if you don't want to play in a campaign where the dominant strategy is to run in, ping the enemy for 15 damage, run away and heal up? Any class that tells a DM what type of campaign they can or cannot run (and still have fun for everyone at the table) is a poorly designed class.

Unlimited healing really cuts down the options for the world the DM wants to run, and renders a whole load of potential adventuring days the DM could supply as pretty much useles. No player should be trying to dictate this kind of thing to a DM by their class choice.


Now this isn't to say at will spellcasting is a bad idea. Its great and potentially great fun for a lot of people and can be very well balanced. But I think you have picked up the themes for problems spells: spells not cast as an action and spells that heal. Spells cast as an action have a cost of an action and a cost of a spell slot - anything that doesn't use an action is leaning heavily on the cost of that spell slot to control its benefit/cost ratio. I would also go further and say that it is non-concentration spells that will also shine - concentration requirement is an additional cost and without that more of the cost is borne by the spell slot.

[Anymage]

Honestly, I think this is a problem.

Firstly, I think there is a tendency to look at this in isolation, but in reality there is a party to consider. Big problem is that this squeezes the cleric somewhat. So in 5th edition clerics are no healbots - they can, and do, do a lot more. But healing is one of their things and it is still a pretty big part of their class. If you can heal at will then spells like Prayer of Healing that used to be great cleric spells, both mechanically and from an RP perspective just become crap. Look at the cleric spell list and see all the spells there that, whilst they might still serve a purpose, get a lot worse when there is someone in the party who can heal at will. Is this reduction in the number of spells worth playing a good thing for the game?

While spike healing can be meaningful in combat, I wouldn't expect an at-will heal to be action efficient in combat. Yo-yo heal? Good if you can snag Healing Word, less so if it takes your action. That relegates the at-will healer to downtime heals. Which I've never seen anyone excited to be the healbot. So much so that it tended to get offloaded to magic items in 3e, while 4 and 5 gave a pool of healing resources independent of the cleric.

Which does make me think. Being topped up on HP will only do so much if you're out of spells and similar daily resources, and any time you'd be able to spam a minor cure to top everyone up is probably time you could just spend resting for an hour and spending HD. I do like the idea of there being a limit to HD just so you have another incentive to finally rest at the end of the day, but HP attrition between encounters should be less of a thing.

[ZRN]

To be clear, it's not that I've ever specifically tried implementing at-will healing, it's just something that can or does follow from implementing some other at-will spellcasting system. For example, say I did write up a homebrew feat that says you can pick any 1st or 2nd level spell and cast it at-will. Now, in writing such a feat, I might have spells like Fog Cloud, Spiderclimb, or Enlarge/Reduce in mind, but let's say a player picks Cure Wounds. Should I, as the hypothetical DM, disallow this? Or can I make it work?

I think the biggest issue here is that Healing Word/Cure Wounds are a lot like Shield: they're only at all tactically interesting BECAUSE they use a limited resource. Whereas unlimited Fog Cloud or Spiderclimb or Enlarge/Reduce would potentially make the game more varied and interesting at mid-levels (much like some of the existing warlock invocations do the same with unlimited Disguise Self or Jump or whatever), unlimited Cure Wounds would actually make the game LESS varied and interesting, because you're never entering a combat at low health/resources.

Yes, you can redesign the game so it "works" with unlimited healing, and with effort you could even do so in a way that maintains resource limitations, etc. (4e already did this with healing surges, if anyone cares.) But that's a fairly big task if your only goal is to let people have some superpower-esque unlimited low-level spells. Better off to just blacklist the few spells that cause problems. (Create Food/Water might be another, depending on the setting.)

[Darzil]

I guess at will healing means that you can not need a HealBot, and recover quickly.

But maybe too quickly tactically.

Perhaps instead of at will, allow out of combat healing spells (or some of them) to be performed as a Ritual instead?

It takes longer, so can sometimes be tactically worth casting, and if you are relying on cure wounds only, much longer!

[da newt]

I'd think infinite yo-yo healing in combat would be more game breaking than out of combat full hp refills. You could adjust encounter challenge to account for everyone always being at full hp at combat start, but what do you do when every PC gets right back up when they go down? (unless you insta death or multi attack down PCs - I guess I sorta answered my own question ...)

If you did implement at will healing, I'd definitely limit it to TOUCH spells/effects.

[micahaphone]

Instead of rebalancing the entire game so that you enter every combat at full HP, why not instead use the heroic rest rule variant from the DMG? Basically, make short rests take only 5 minutes, like in 4E. Everyone spends hit die and probably ends up back at max hp unless they've had many combats already that day. Players choosing short rest recovery classes will be excited to get their goodies back. You still have a finite resource (hit die) but in general out of combat healing becomes much more accessable.

[Segev]

I'd think infinite yo-yo healing in combat would be more game breaking than out of combat full hp refills. You could adjust encounter challenge to account for everyone always being at full hp at combat start, but what do you do when every PC gets right back up when they go down? (unless you insta death or multi attack down PCs - I guess I sorta answered my own question ...)

If you did implement at will healing, I'd definitely limit it to TOUCH spells/effects.

I mean, if you don't want yo-yo healing, those are the go-to methods to stop it, even in 3e or earlier editions.

There are a few poisons and other methods to incapacitate people without having to perma-kill them. I believe centipede poison, for instance, makes them go unconscious if they hit 0 hp, and stay unconscious for an hour even if healed.

[Keravath]

At will healing just means that characters will start each combat at full hit points. From a DM perspective, this is manageable.

Adjustments to opponents and encounters will be required to keep things "interesting" since in order to be "threatening" each encounter will need to be able to inflict a significant fraction of the total party hit points in each encounter. In addition, spell slots that might be used for healing get retasked to other uses.

This can mean that if one character becomes the focus in such an encounter they may go down quickly. In addition, there can be value in having the encounter introduce opponents in waves (assuming it makes sense for the circumstances) since it is much easier to balance. The focus switches to using up the other long rest resources and not focusing on hit points.

I have this situation in a campaign I am currently running. One character is a druid X/life cleric 1 and the life cleric bonus is being applied to the goodberry spell. After a quiet day, the party has an immense amount of healing in the form of enhanced goodberries from the 10th level character using their spell slots for up-casting goodberry. A goodberry from a 5th level slot cast by a life cleric will heal 8 hit points each. As a result, the group effectively has at will healing.

By the way, I realize that as DM I could veto this but RAW, in my opinion, I think it works so I allowed it.

In any case, in my experience, it just removes one aspect of resource management and sometimes requires modification of encounters but it doesn't "break the game" or "make it unplayable" and there have been times when the goodberry and spell slot resources were depleted in a day leaving them with limited goodberries for the following day. (However, I am running Curse of Strahd and for the most part it is designed around single large combats at specific locations where the characters would be more likely to start fresh rather than a series of smaller encounters where the between combat healing would be more significant).


P.S. In a more general sense, the issue with an "At-will" spellcasting system is the more powerful spells. Casting as many fireballs as you like because it is an "at-will" spell could really be game breaking (except for very specific style games). Similarly, almost any other high level spell if able to be cast "at will" would break many aspects of the game. Healing is just one of the more minor issues compared to an overall "at-will" spellcasting system. Basically, in my opinion, powerful magics need constraints on how often they can be used during a day in order to achieve some sort of play balance.

[Sception]

perhaps you could go with a system similar to 4e's healing surges, where healing abilities are common, and effectively unlimited outside of combat, but they work by activating a limited pool of total healing a given character can benefit from over the course of the day, after which you can keep using healing abilities on that character, but they will no longer benefit from them.

Like a version of cure wounds that lets the target spend a hit die to recover hit points with some bonus to the roll, but if they're out of hit dice then oh well, can't be helped.

If you go with such a system then you probably want to base total healing resources on something other than level, since the total number of times a day that a character will need to recover hit points isn't likely to change too much over the course of a career. 20 is probably too much at level 20, while 1 is way, way too few at level one. 4e used a base number from your class (ranging from 6 for wizards up to 10 for paladins) plus your con mod, with total surges recovering at a long rest. any player can spend as many as they like for their default healing during short rests (which in 4e were short enough to be assumed after every encounter, with even the concept of 'an encounter' being defined as everything between short rest opportunities), and could spend one as an action called a 'second wind' during combat, limited to once per encounter. In this way, even parties without healers still reliably entered every encounter with full hit points, while maintaining a limited total pool of hit point reserves over the course of the day.

The system also let tank characters get healed more, incentivizing and rewarding the party for working together to make sure the tank took the brunt of enemy attacks. The base amount of healing each healing surge delivered was also determined by the target, though specific healing abilities would add to it. So basically not only could a fighter benefit from 'cure wounds' style abilities more often than a rogue in a given day, they would also heal for more total hit points each time such an ability was used on them.

It was honestly a really good system, one of the core elements of 4e I was sorry to see left behind (along with explicit monster roles / easy encounter design, and 4e's superior resting framework and commitment to ensuring that every character had a balance of at will, per encounter/short rest, and per day/long rest abilities - which in turn meant that shorter or longer than average adventuring days affected all PCs similarly, so you didn't have to worry about screwing up class balance or making individual players in the party feel screwed over if your adventure design didn't adhere to a particular schedule expected by the core mechanics of the game.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of other complaints about 4e that I absolutely agree with, and I do like 5e better overall, but there was some good stuff in there, and if you're going to do the sort of complete rebuild of 5e mechanics implied by a major overhaul to the magic system, then some of the better bits of 4e would be worth looking at to make it work, and in this case 'unlimited healing abilities' but reworking those abilities as activating a limited pool of total healing built into each given character over the course of a day may be a particular solution worth looking at.


For a more detailed look at how healing surges worked in 4e, check out: https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Healing_surge

[Tanarii]

Exactly. This isn't really how the game is designed to be played, so a lot of DMs might not know how to handle something like this, but if you can handle it, then it shouldn't be a problem.
It's not a matter of of DM not knowing how to handle it, it's a matter of turning the game into TPK rocket tag. That makes it a matter if it the players are willing to accept that any combat could have a X% risk of death, where X is a hidden variable but significant, because DMs are now blindingly throwing much harder than intended single combats against them with no guidelines.

The base game has basically 0% chance of TPK after 1st or 2nd level unless the PCs go into a dangerous enough fight low on resources, typically after more than an adventuring day's worth of encounters or far too long between short rests. And doing so is player choice if they want to continue to pursue their goals.

I mean, there are some posters on these boards that do exactly as you're proposing already. Some do it unintentionally by letting LRs happen too frequently. Others do it intentionally because they feel that 3xDeadly (or more) Nova fights with significant TPK risk are more fun anyway. But if a 3xDeadly Nova fight carries only a 5% risk of TPK, theres about 2-2.5 of them per level, which means there's only a 37% chance you'll make it to level 10.

[Willie the Duck]

In a way, I think at-will healing is a bit like racial flight: it's an ability that seems overpowered, but if the DM puts in the effort to work around that, or work with that, then it shouldn't be a problem. It does put an extra burden on the DM, but with that additional workload comes additional opportunities. There are some types of encounters or adventures that would only really work if someone did have at-will healing (or racial flight).

Exactly. This isn't really how the game is designed to be played, so a lot of DMs might not know how to handle something like this, but if you can handle it, then it shouldn't be a problem.

This seems to be the crux of it, but also I feel the limitation of this argument: Yes, if you are willing to put a lot of effort and re-work in, you can mod the game to work (with variously levels of 'work,' depending upon the effort you are willing to dedicate to the endeavor) in a way that violates central conceits of the default rules framework. This is true, it just isn't that meaningful of a statement in isolation. Would this be easy? No. Is it a good idea? Well, if you start from the premise that you have to start with 5e, and because you are implementing a 'all spells are at-will' concept and thus the cures have to come along, well then I guess maybe this would be the next thing to explore.

It's not like the basic concept isn't done. Plenty* of people do 1/day or less combats during wilderness trek parts of the unfolding-of-events and decline to alter their recovery rules. Likewise lots* of people don't have good uses for GP after a certain point and don't limit healing potion purchases. Thus we have something of a natural experiment for what happens.
*no clear idea on what proportion these actually are.

In my experience, what happens is that things don't work as well (inter-class balance, etc.). Also, and I've talked about this before, every time you make the game easier in some way (5 minute workday, choose your magic items, all high stats, and so on)-- and then up the challenges faced* to keep the relative challenge level the same, the swingier and more deadly the game becomes. A series of bad rolls leading to a party member dropping when it is Team Joe Normal vs. Team Normal Bad Guys is readily recoverable and maybe a party member dies but maybe not. The same bad rolls and a party member dropping when every fight is the Avengers vs. the Justice League or similar analogy is quite likely going to be a TPK on that side.
*either DM placing or PCs searching it out, depending on how rail-vs-sandbox your game is.

[Zhorn]

What's that line from Jurassic Park?

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didnÂ’t stop to think if they should."

- Ian Malcolm

I can see that there is a capacity for a DM well versed enough in encounter design and having great enough understanding of their players' tactics and abilities to adjust their games to make this function... But it fundamentally changes the game so much that you might as well just being playing something other than 5e.

As has been said above, it pushes the game towards being more about nova rounds and rocket-tag.

It also removes the 'threat' of fights that the players has a 100% chance of winning against. Getting worn down in smaller fights is one of the incentives for players to not solve all their problems like a pack of murder hobos. Sure they may be able to beat off a pack of guards or two, but eventually there's just going to be too many waves of encounters one after the other that math and the laws of probability mean the party are going to get taken down, death by a thousand cuts style.
If at will healing between encounters gets them topped up, then low CR encounters will always be solved in a simplest of methods.

"Why negotiate and attempt diplomacy, we can kill them with no real risk or lasting penalty, we have at will healing."
"Why stealth past or explore alternate paths, just kill them so we don't have a threat behind us."

Essential it has the same issue as the 5-minute adventuring day (already mentioned above), which only high CR swingy fights posing any true risk. And we already get enough people swapping over the Gritty Realism rules because they don't know how to get their party to not take a rest between every single encounter. This is the same thing without the time scale being stretched out.

I'd keep going on, but all the points I'd have look to be well covered by the above posters already.

[RogueJK]

This would radically change your tactical approach and open up new options for you. One spell that I think serves as a good example is Enlarge/Reduce; it has a lot of utility out of combat, as well as usefulness in-combat, and isn't too strong. Being able to enlarge or reduce things, including yourself, it's kind of like a super power that you'd expect from a comic book super hero (or villain). In general, I think the 1st and 2nd level spell range works best for making at-will, though there might be select spells from higher levels that you could make at-will.

Levitate is another great example of this. For it's level (2nd), it's a fantastically versatile spell both in and out of combat, without being too strong.

Use it outside combat for exploration and infiltration. Use it in combat as a "save or suck" spell to remove 1 melee enemy from the fight, with no repeating save. (If they fail their initial CON save, the only way out for its 10 minute duration is to break the caster's Concentration.)

[JellyPooga]

In isolation, unlimited healing doesn't seem too bad an idea...until you realise just how many things it actually impacts.

Others have mentioned the whole attrition deal, but it's not just encounter/adventure design at issue; you've also got to consider just how many other class features it impacts here. At the most basic, we're talking about lessening the value of Constitution to HP and Hit Die type. With HP being that much less of an issue, you've just compromised one of the elements that makes the likes of Fighters and Barbarians attractive options; more HP. If all you need is enough HP to survive a fight, then any HP over that threshold is wasted design space. In similar vein, by reducing the impact of HP damage, any class feature that mitigates damage, increases AC or avoids attacks are also made less attractive; not useless, of course but less useful certainly. Features that inflict greater damage, have more utility or greater control aspects are going to have much greater value than those that increase a characters ability to sustain damage across several encounters. This includes all the "minor" healing features (e.g. Lay on Hands).

In essence, Wizards get (even) more powerful and Fighters get (even) less powerful.

That's on top of making a whole slew of encounter types entirely redundant; many traps and low-impact/danger encounters being the primary examples. Only a small group of guards at the gate? Eh, just kill them and be done with it; even if they do a bit of damage to us, it won't matter and we probably won't have to waste any other resources on it either. The encounter may as well not be there, so the GM doesn't include it. If HP is an issue, though, that small group of guards becomes a decision point; do we risk a fight or do we avoid it to save resources? Whether we fight or not, do we spend resources to expedite the encounter; spend some to save more? Even though the fight might not be Deadly+++, it still becomes an important encounter that the party needs to consider the ramifications of and how they wish to approach it. Without HP acting as a protracted/daily resource, some of that decision space is eliminated. That's a bad thing, even if you can design around it. If nothing else, it eliminates the immersion of a given adventure; why is every encounter some kind of world-shattering battle? Where are all the normal people?

Another aspect to consider is whether your unlimited healing applies to the player characters or the world at large. If every level 1 Cleric can heal almost any injury without repercussion or limit, then the world begins to look like a very different place. Design decisions cannot exist in the vacuum of gameplay alone; they must also consider the narrative impact as well. Magical healing existing but also being limited allows magic to be widespread without impacting the greater social and economic fantasy too much. Unbinding the limitations will have much greater impact unless magic and magic users become commensurately less widespread; which isn't a bad thing in itself, but it does beg some other questions, such as how magic and those that wield it are viewed by society.

As someone else mentioned, without HP you need to include some other incentive to combat to give it impact; broken limbs, exhaustion, etc. Otherwise the combat becomes meaningless and if the combat is meaningless, then why is it there at all? This isn't so much of an issue in some other games, where the focus is in other aspects of play; investigation, exploration, social, etc. but 5ed D&D is still primarily a game that is about combat; most of its rules are there to govern it and a large amount of design space is given over to the impact of HP over the course of an adventuring day. Take that away and my advice would be to play a different game. D&D simply isn't set up for that kind of play.

[Chaos Jackal]

Like others have said, it's not really a matter of whether or not the DM can deal with at-will healing. A DM can deal with essentially anything via rule 0, and even if they don't go that far, they're still the ones designing the encounters across all pillars. Of course, rule 0 doesn't mean there isn't a problem in the first place, but this isn't an Oberoni fallacy case anyway; it only has to do with encounter design.

The problem with at-will healing, however, is that it breaks encounter design.

An ability that makes any number of encounters of whatever kind trivial doesn't break encounter design; you can "simply" include something that neutralizes or at least reduces the effectiveness of the ability. At-will flight, like mentioned in the OP, can allow for very easy exploration, infiltration or fighting, but the DM can add bows to enemies, give flight to sentries, bring powerful winds in the equation and so forth. But that's not where the power of at-will flight lies, and where it breaks the design. The strongest aspect of at-will flight is that it can potentially save a lot of resources in spells learnt or cast (or items found/attuned to); the DM can create problems for a flying character regardless of whether the character flies under fly or race-granted wings, but the winged character alleviates or even removes the need for someone to eventually learn fly and the debate over whether or not it's worth it to spend a 3rd-level slot to cross an overflown river without athletics checks.

Similarly, being able to enter combat healthy isn't where the power of at-will healing lies. The DM can make every combat extremely hard, or have really tight time constraints that prevent the party from resting for even the few minutes required to top up everyone, or both. But the real power lies elsewhere.

D&D is, at its core, a resource management game. We often talk about how easy or difficult certain official or homebrew games are by mentioning specific fights and situations, but the truth is, unless said situations are outright unfair, they don't determine the difficulty of the game; resource access and management requirement does. And what at-will healing breaks in encounter design is the complete removal of an important aspect of resource management. A day with ten deadly fights and at-will healing is far easier than a day with ten medium encounters but no at-will healing; as long as the encounters are created to be beatable (and they more often than not are), then the party going against the ten deadly enemies doesn't have to care at all about whether or not they should engage in a fight, whether the meatshield got surrounded one time too many, whether stray arrows have hit the support caster more often than it's safe. Gambits, recklessness, getting hit with aoo in order to get ahead in action economy, they all become much less important; as long as there's someone standing in the end, everything can be fixed. HP and HD become non-existent, rather than resources, and the spell slots of certain classes (at least in some games) become much easier to manage.

For a lemons to oranges example, the feat Tomb-Tainted Soul in 3.5 is considered a staple pick of the dread necromancer class, allowing personal-only at-will healing through their own touch. It's by no means the most powerful or broken ability of the class, which is, after all, made for excellent minionmancy (and undead minionmancy is really strong in 3.5), but it's still basically essential for any decently optimized dread necromancer.

For a more contemporary example, look at the old iteration of healing spirit. It wasn't irredeemably broken, people overrated it (people are really quick to scream "broken!", after all), but there's no denying that it was a remarkably powerful spell. And yet, what it did was use a 2nd-level slot to make the last fight's HP casualties irrelevant for the party, meaning that it would require an amount of spell slots equal to daily fights-1 to be as effective as at-will healing (less so, even, considering that at-will healing can also be used for yo-yo healing in combat and whatnot). For that reduced effect, however, it often appeared at or near the top of "most powerful spells" lists, and is one of the very few cases (if not the only one) where a spell was errata'd solely to curb its power.

At-will healing doesn't completely break the game, but it does remove elements of resource management from it. And that unquestionably makes the game both easier and less tactical.

[Xervous]

When the only different results of a fight that a Rogue can experience are dead or alive, how close to the line do you have to push to get the desired feeling of challenge? If you’re not serving up cakewalks there will be swings taken at downed characters.

[EggKookoo]

At will healing just means that characters will start each combat at full hit points. From a DM perspective, this is manageable.

Or it means the party will rest less often. My players rarely start a fight with significantly less than full HP. They heal themselves up right after each fight. This consumes other resources which they need to rest to recover (spell slots, or hit dice if they're short-resting to heal).

Giving my players an at-will or ritual healing spell will not change fights at all in any significant way. Healing will just no longer become a major reason to ever rest, and short rests might go away for the most part (except we have a warlock, who will likely make her opinion known).

Right now, "we need to heal" informs rest-based decisions (along with spell slot recovery and any other thing that goes with resting). Is that a valuable decision? Sure, I mean at my table it is. So I wouldn't want to remove it.

[JNAProductions]

It changes the game.

It means that every PC will enter every situation at full HP, barring really weird circumstances. And that can be okay-but it will change how the game is played.

Also, find another use for Hit Dice, as they're basically useless if someone can at-will use a healing spell.

[kazaryu]

I've played with a number of concepts in homebrew, and one of the ones that I really like but have a hard time balancing for D&D is at-will spellcasting. The intended design is for spellcasters to have a large library of spells to cast, but a limited number of casting resources. However, what if you only had a few spells, but could cast them as many times as you wanted? This would radically change your tactical approach and open up new options for you. One spell that I think serves as a good example is Enlarge/Reduce; it has a lot of utility out of combat, as well as usefulness in-combat, and isn't too strong. Being able to enlarge or reduce things, including yourself, it's kind of like a super power that you'd expect from a comic book super hero (or villain). In general, I think the 1st and 2nd level spell range works best for making at-will, though there might be select spells from higher levels that you could make at-will.

Now, there's two types of spells that seem to pose a challenge to at-will casting. The first is Shield; it's just really strong, and uses a reaction rather than an action. Not really much more that can be said about that. It's a boring, if effective pick. The other type are healing spells, like Cure Wounds or Healing Word. Because D&D is a fairly combat-heavy game, the idea of at-will healing seems like it would be broken and overpowered. But after thinking about it a bit more, I'm starting to doubt that.

To consider the effectiveness of at-will healing, we need to consider in-combat and out of combat separately. In-combat, I think it would only really be useful in tier 1, where the amount of healing you get from a 1st level spell is still a significant percentage of your max HP. After that, it's only real use is to get allies up from 0, basically a glorified Spare the Dying. Which is still useful, to be sure, but my point is that you definitely wouldn't be spamming it every round. After tier 1, you'll probably be better off using the Attack action or casting a different spell (usually a higher level one, which is also probably costing you a spell slot), rather than spamming low level heals. Even if you're a Life cleric, all of your bonuses to healing won't make 1st level Cure Wounds spam worth it. There's just so many more effective things you could be doing instead.

Out of combat is where the balance appears to tilt. Since you can spam Cure Wounds, Healing Word, or some other healing spell, there's little reason not to top everyone's HP off after each fight. It should only take a few minutes of repeated casting to do so, and you can do it while moving if needed. It's more or less a given that your party will enter battle with full HP every time. And...? I mean, we always enter the first encounter of the day with full HP (baring things like traps or self-inflicted stupidity). Yes, HP is a resource that can be gradually exhausted as the party continues adventuring, eventually forcing them to stop and rest, or to retreat from a fight they can no longer win. But it's not the only such resource. And if the DM knows that they'll have full HP for every encounter, they can throw stronger monsters at them, or throw back-to-back fights from time to time so they can't heal between (not fully, at least).

In a way, I think at-will healing is a bit like racial flight: it's an ability that seems overpowered, but if the DM puts in the effort to work around that, or work with that, then it shouldn't be a problem. It does put an extra burden on the DM, but with that additional workload comes additional opportunities. There are some types of encounters or adventures that would only really work if someone did have at-will healing (or racial flight).

It is a bit hard to have a discussion about something like this in abstract, because context definitely matters. It's important how one would get at-will healing, as that can make a big difference. I've worked on design a couple of classes that use at-will casting; one is just straight up at-will spells, but is restricted to lower level spells (they get 3rd level spells at 17th level), the other can get up to 5th level spells but has a very carefully tailored spell list and is limited by the number spells they can have running at the same time (many of their spells also use concentration, so...). It should be noted that neither class has access to healing spells (currently). More recently, I had the idea for a feat that gives you at-will casting for one 1st or 2nd level spell; contrast with Magic Initiate, which only gives you a 1st level spell once per long rest, as well as two cantrips.

Something else I've worked on which is sort of at-will casting is my homebrew wild magic system (based off Tzeentch's Curse from Warhammer FRP). There are no spell slots or other resources; to cast a spell, you roll one to four "spellcasting dice" and try to beat the DC, otherwise the spell fails. Roll doubles, triples, or quadruples, and you trigger a wild magic surge. By 5th level, your spellcasting dice are large enough to cast 1st level spells rolling only one die (albeit with only 1 in 8 chance of success, but no risk of a surge), and by 11th level you can do the same with 2nd level spells. This is more like pseudo-ritual caster, rather than at-will, as it takes roughly a minute of repeated casting to be successful (hope that spell didn't consume costly materials, by the way). As far as out-of-combat healing, though, the result is the same. I didn't originally intend it to work this way, but I think it's a fair trade off given how much more unreliable and dangerous high level spells are.

basically this question boils down to the same as 'is healing spirit broken'. and..generally the answer is no. healing spirit isn't broken for most games. however, for a game where you're *meant* to use HP as a limited resource, it would be.

beyond that, things like at-will healing or at-will flight, the problem isn't that a DM can't work around it. the problem is that the DM *HAS* to work around it. its explicitly a limit that gets placed on the DM, forcing to them to account for a single ability in their design and limiting the types of challenges that would get thrown at the party. essentially it can reduce the DM's options. which can end up being unfun.

[KorvinStarmast]

Is at-will healing magic (e.g. Cure Wounds) really that OP? Cure Wounds isn't at will. It requires burning a spell slot. That's is a core design principle. You'll note that the wizard, who gets at will spells at very high level, does not get healing spells.

However, what if you only had a few spells, but could cast them as many times as you wanted? This would radically change your tactical approach and open up new options for you. Those are called cantrips. You will note that the game does not have healing cantrips, but it has a "stablilize" cantrip: spare the dying. Why? Healing is supposed to cost a resource to deal with the overall HP resource.


I do wish D&D used a different kind of health system that made at-will healing less of a big deal.
You should probably play a video game if you want always on healing auras or spells. What you are asking is "Should I be playing a different game?" Your concept does not fit the basice games' design framework. (Tanarii said something similar but different).

[Sception]

Cure Wounds isn't at will. It requires burning a spell slot.

I think you may have missed the purpose and content of the thread.

[Dragonexx]

I play with a lot of homebrew and honestly, as a DM it makes it far easier for me to design encounters if I can assume everyone is going to be at full HP.

[KorvinStarmast]

We've gone in exactly the opposite direction at our table - long rests don't come with any healing for us, except you get to restore and spend hit dice - and the game is a lot more fun for it, imho. This is a neat variation on the theme. Recover all HD at end of full rest and see how many you use to start your day ... not sure our table wants to mess with that, but the idea appeals to me.

I think you may have missed the purpose and content of the thread. Nope, didn't miss the point at all. The question is, in my opinion, an incredibly ill considered one.

[EggKookoo]

Do people really charge into battle at anything less than 90% full HP?

[JNAProductions]

Korvin, this is not "Is Cure Wounds OP?"

It's "Would a class that can cast Cure Wounds at will be OP?"


Do people really charge into battle at anything less than 90% full HP?

When trying to rescue their kid? Yes, they do.

[KorvinStarmast]

Do people really charge into battle at anything less than 90% full HP? Yes, with some frequency during anything close to approaching the standard adventure day.

For the five minute adventure day, rarely.

[EggKookoo]

Yes, with some frequency during anything close to approaching the standard adventure day.

For the five minute adventure day, rarely.

Huh. Maybe it'll change later, but my five APL 4 guys hit 5-6 encounters* a day, with 2-3 short rests scattered in among them. I houserule that you can only gain the benefits of a long rest once per day (specifically, you must wait 16 hours after completing one before starting the next). They do stock up on healing potions when they can, and they do get quite a bit of gold from adventuring to do so. We have two party members who can cast cure wounds. Admittedly, one of those is a moon druid who can basically summon more hit points. They certainly eat through hit dice. If they can control the situation they won't engage in a fight or encounter unless the majority of the party is mostly at full HP.

So at my table, free healing just means slower attrition of other resources, and would probably mean 6-8 encounters rather than 5-6. But the encounters themselves would mostly be the same.

* I define encounter as anything that risks resource loss. Obviously combat, but also dealing with traps or damage-dealing puzzle thingawhatsits. I generally hit them with CR even to the APL, sometimes more, sometimes less. They just took out a young black dragon (CR7) with one party member down and another close to it.

[Willie the Duck]

Do people really charge into battle at anything less than 90% full HP?

Absolutely. They also spend resources like spell slots to heal up to 90% hp (especially if everyone but the Fragile Frontline Freddie can heal up to 90% with just Hit Dice expended). They also also turn back, because they are below 90% hp, think the next stretch is going to be challenging, and don't have resources they feel they can devote to healing (or if they did, they aren't confident in the next stretch anyways, so best to turn back).

[Unoriginal]

Do people really charge into battle at anything less than 90% full HP?

If they don't want to face the consequences for not doing so, sure.


Also keep in mind that PCs aren't always the ones charging.

[EggKookoo]

If they don't want to face the consequences for not doing so, sure.

I suppose my perception is a little biased right now. I'm putting my table through a modified version of Forge of Fury, a 3e module updated to 5e in Yawning Portal. I've noticed that there are ample opportunities to short-rest in that place, but thinking about it, it's probably because there was no short rest concept in 3e. (It's also quite monotonous.)

[KorvinStarmast]

I suppose my perception is a little biased right now. I'm putting my table through a modified version of Forge of Fury, a 3e module updated to 5e in Yawning Portal. I've noticed that there are ample opportunities to short-rest in that place, but thinking about it, it's probably because there was no short rest concept in 3e. (It's also quite monotonous.)
FoF is where my players are now, I am a DM who does not mind a short rest in a logical place, but I also know how to turn up the heat on a party ...

[Drascin]

Honestly, plenty of games just assume you always go into fights at nearly full health, anyway.

If you ask me, spell slots are generally a much harder limitation than HP, in any case. Hard encounters will require your spellcasters to burn actual spells even if you have a ton of potions. So at will healing mostly would just add maybe an extra encounter or two to the mix.

[EggKookoo]

FoF is where my players are now, I am a DM who does not mind a short rest in a logical place, but I also know how to turn up the heat on a party ...

I don't normally run published stuff, so it was an experiment to see what the experience is like. It's... okay. I ended up tweaking more and more as it went along. I don't think I'll run published stuff straight out of a book again.

[patchyman]

Honestly, I think this is a problem.

Firstly, I think there is a tendency to look at this in isolation, but in reality there is a party to consider. Big problem is that this squeezes the cleric somewhat. So in 5th edition clerics are no healbots - they can, and do, do a lot more. But healing is one of their things and it is still a pretty big part of their class. If you can heal at will then spells like Prayer of Healing that used to be great cleric spells, both mechanically and from an RP perspective just become crap. Look at the cleric spell list and see all the spells there that, whilst they might still serve a purpose, get a lot worse when there is someone in the party who can heal at will. Is this reduction in the number of spells worth playing a good thing for the game?


Heh, heh, I agree with you, but for the opposite reason. In some respects, clerics appear more powerful than wizards, who are already overpowered. Clerics get as many prepared spells as wizards, can choose any spell on the cleric list, AND get the added flexibility of their domain spells.

What keeps them from being overpowered? The fact that they need to reserve some of their spell slots for healing, unlike wizards, who can blast with pretty much all their slots.

[Kane0]

I suppose my perception is a little biased right now. I'm putting my table through a modified version of Forge of Fury, a 3e module updated to 5e in Yawning Portal. I've noticed that there are ample opportunities to short-rest in that place, but thinking about it, it's probably because there was no short rest concept in 3e. (It's also quite monotonous.)

Currently running Lost Tomb of Tamoachan, the poison gas really stifles their inclination to rest at every opportunity.

[KorvinStarmast]

I don't normally run published stuff, so it was an experiment to see what the experience is like. It's... okay. I ended up tweaking more and more as it went along. I don't think I'll run published stuff straight out of a book again. since our group is on roll20, it's a lot easier for me to take the published maps and stuff, and then make modest mods than to create my own game world. I still do plenty of ad hoc encounters between adventures; this one has some neat lore tie ins to the world we are using (not FR) if the PCs survive. I am not sure how they'll handle being surprised by a young black dragon . They already bypassed the ambush at the entrance by going in the chimmey. They just freed the two ladies and are just past being gassed by the dwarf statue ... when the session ended. The fight will start at the opening of next session. Should be fun.

Currently running Lost Tomb of Tamoachan, the poison gas really stifles their inclination to rest at every opportunity. That's our next adventure.

[Keravath]

since our group is on roll20, it's a lot easier for me to take the published maps and stuff, and then make modest mods than to create my own game world. I still do plenty of ad hoc encounters between adventures; this one has some neat lore tie ins to the world we are using (not FR) if the PCs survive. I am not sure how they'll handle being surprised by a young black dragon . They already bypassed the ambush at the entrance by going in the chimmey. They just freed the two ladies and are just past being gassed by the dwarf statue ... when the session ended. The fight will start at the opening of next session. Should be fun.
That's our next adventure.

Just remember :) ... if they open the bunk room first (which my party did) then Yarrack is likely to be yelling for Ulfe and if they go the other way, Ulfe is likely to yell for Yarrack and the rest to get off their butts :)

Hard to avoid alerting everyone at that end since the doors are only 30' apart :) ... though my group managed to survive it somehow :) (though they did seem confused when the NPC seemed to keep loudly grunting UUULLLLLFFFFF!! :) )

[KorvinStarmast]

Just remember :) ... if they open the bunk room first (which my party did) then Yarrack is likely to be yelling for Ulfe and if they go the other way, Ulfe is likely to yell for Yarrack and the rest to get off their butts :)

Hard to avoid alerting everyone at that end since the doors are only 30' apart :) ... though my group managed to survive it somehow :) (though they did seem confused when the NPC seemed to keep loudly grunting UUULLLLLFFFFF!! :) )I expect the party to be somewhat non-plussed by the reaction of all of the various deinzens to their home invasion - Santa Clause style - down the chimney. We'll see if they need to flee, up the chimeny or down to the next level, based on how the battle goes.

[Unoriginal]

I don't normally run published stuff, so it was an experiment to see what the experience is like. It's... okay. I ended up tweaking more and more as it went along. I don't think I'll run published stuff straight out of a book again.

Published modules are decent base paste to be made into a dish to the DM's -and players'- liking.

That being said FoF can feel somewhat bland just from reading it at time, so I imagine playing it as if can make that feeling worse. Many other modules don't have this issue, even if I still recommend tweaking.

[Pex]

Exactly. This isn't really how the game is designed to be played, so a lot of DMs might not know how to handle something like this, but if you can handle it, then it shouldn't be a problem. I've belabored the comparison to racial flight enough, I think, so let's use a new comparison. A game with a lycanthrope PC is also going to play very differently. Immunity to non-silvered weapons means that a lot of fights suddenly become trivial, so either silver weapons start showing up everywhere or the game shifts focus to non-combat challenges, or at least to a challenge where being immune to weapons isn't all that helpful (e.g. needing to rescue someone, who might die if you don't reach them in time).

As a sidenote, I recall seeing one of the vampire powers in V:tM where you literally regenerate health. And not just a little, it only takes seconds to regenerate to not-quite-full health (I think it was similar to the Champion's regen where it only takes back up to "not full power, but not really injured"). I've only played a little bit of V:tM, but it's such a stark contrast; you can tell that game isn't designed around combat, as there's some pretty crazy good combat abilities that aren't that hard to pick up. It's easy to build a combat beast, what isn't easy is not getting chewed up by vampire politics.

I don't see it as a bad thing. The bad guys are always at full health every combat; why can't the PCs? The PCs still use up their other power resources as the game day progresses. Full health only gives them a bit more resilience. Since the at will healing is not Heal All Hit Points a character dropping during combat is still a possibility.

This is an individual's personal taste thing. Hit point attrition and healing resources do matter. Given personal bias I fully accept a DM is not a "tyrant" for not wanting infinite out of combat healing. I don't find it breaking the game, but I understand how it can affect some DMs in designing combats for those DMs where this really matters to them.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I stopped playing BG3 during the Tutorial fight, as soon as I realized they hadn't even implemented Dodge. Sounds like I was right to do so.

The food thing and lack of dodge were big negatives for me, I wasn't about to drop it though because I enjoy me some Larian games.

Calling it "faithful" to 5E, though, is a far off dream at the moment. I wouldn't fault anyone for not wanting to deal with it when it's taken a lot of liberties, many of which I think are detrimental in making it still feel like its based in a DND system.

Because I could heal using food (and it was often more effective than potions, which were equally plentiful) I saw few, if any, of the cutscenes that were triggered through excessive resting... since, you know, you were supposed to be doing thing on a time limit to cure your brain slug problem and if I couldn't eat sausage links until I was full health I would have actually had to take long rests.

Hard to believe the sense of urgency and stakes were removed because food was a viable and plentiful source of healing. Very strange that it was as well considering in previous Larian games all of the food items game you a downright pitiful amount of healing with an often times useless side effect.

I'd like it if they didn't heal for more than a single hit point at most, I'd be happiest if it didn't heal you at all.

On Topic: In the short time that our Ranger in SKT had access to Healing Spirit we used it to storm the frost giants stronghold in a single day, ambushing their leader using rope trick. What could have taken us a long time, perhaps with retreats or through attrition, took us about an hour.

Healing Spirit was all the indication I needed to see that at will healing is considered massively taboo for good reason, because this wasn't even at will and still managed to decimate any chance of having health conservation matter as a resource to track.

I've invested a lot into my Redemption Paladin to make him heal quickly, since he takes the most damage in our party by design. This includes feats, spell slots reserved for specific spells, spells that will be prepared for the rest of this campaign, magic items, downtime... A significant cost, that I wouldn't have had to make in the event that there was a resourceless or incredibly efficient method of healing.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It also removes the 'threat' of fights that the players has a 100% chance of winning against.
Counterpoint: while the occasional curbstop power fantasy is fun, if you repeat them over and over again things get boring.

At-will healing magic ultimately is a pretty minor distortion of the game. Players will spend, I dunno, 20% fewer resources healing between combats, and the GM will throw an extra goblin or two into their fights so they have to spend those resources on combat spells instead. You wind up having individual fights become a bit deadlier while attrition becomes a smaller factor. There's some amount of adjustment necessary, but if your group likes the idea there's no reason not to do it.

You might have some problems if you're running a classic meat grinder type dungeon crawl, but... I've run all of Curse of Strahd and Out of the Abyss, and I'm halfway through playing Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and I'm having trouble pointing to any points in those where at-will Cure Light Wounds would have been an issue-- and even fewer in the original campaigns I've run.


On Topic: In the short time that our Ranger in SKT had access to Healing Spirit we used it to storm the frost giants stronghold in a single day, ambushing their leader using rope trick. What could have taken us a long time, perhaps with retreats or through attrition, took us about an hour.
That sounds like less of an issue with Rope Trick/Healing Spirit and more of an issue with "monsters standing in the same small groups no matter what the state of the dungeon." If the players are smashing squads, the enemies need to regroup into companies.

[RifleAvenger]

Yes, massive out of combat healing breaks things. Quite badly. That's why unlimited healing pots are an issue if players sink cash into it, and it's why they fixed Healing Spirit.

You'd probably be better off homebrew it a scaling in-combat only spell. Tag it with (Adreneline) or something to justify it. There's several other spells that could be used at will with that tag. Conversely, you could have a (No Adreneline) tag that only works at will out of combat.

This is pretty much my view. At-will full healing out of combat breaks a significant aspect of the attritional gameplay D&D 5e's design assumes as a baseline. HP, after all, is a resource like any other. At-will healing in dangerous encounters only counters or slows the bleeding, and the GM can easily tune things to make average threat DPR exceed party at-will HPR (either by bulk DPR or spreading damage out so a single target heal can't erase all the damage at once). Choosing to heal in encounters also forgoes using the actions doing so takes to do other things. This often isn't the case out of encounters in any meaningful way.

Obviously people can run games as triple/quadra/quintuple plus deadly combat gauntlets, and in those going in at full health is probably assumed. I usually try to give the party a chance to heal up before I run that sort of encounter myself. However, that sort of game is heavily divergent from the assumed norm of the system.
--------------------------------------
On the other hand, this sort of thing was pretty old hat in 3e/PF1e, using a wand of Cure Light Wounds or Infernal Healing to do the job. Somewhat of a gp bleed, sure, but minor in the grand scheme of things. That somehow didn't leave the game an unplayable mess.

[EggKookoo]

Published modules are decent base paste to be made into a dish to the DM's -and players'- liking.

Right, I should clarify that I don't normally run published stuff unmodified. I do what you suggest a lot more. Either for use as a base, or as a buffet of encounters or ideas that I surgically graft to my own thing.


That being said FoF can feel somewhat bland just from reading it at time, so I imagine playing it as if can make that feeling worse. Many other modules don't have this issue, even if I still recommend tweaking.

Yeah. I turned the Stone Tooth into a busted up Spelljammer Forge. I'm so hoping for a 5e Spelljammer book. I'm probably setting myself up for disappointment.

[ProsecutorGodot]

That sounds like less of an issue with Rope Trick/Healing Spirit and more of an issue with "monsters standing in the same small groups no matter what the state of the dungeon." If the players are smashing squads, the enemies need to regroup into companies.

That's how we ambushed them, we managed to sneak into the throne room during the commotion we caused and waited there until the Jarl returned. We assassinated him and used a teleportation conch to escape. He'd put together a small army in the meantime but since we didn't have to stop to rest in any of our prior encounters we had already set all this up before anyone knew we'd set up the trap.

If healing weren't so easy we wouldn't have made such swift progress into their encampment, we probably would have died or teleported out before the third encounter.

[Tanarii]

Given personal bias I fully accept a DM is not a "tyrant" for not wanting infinite out of combat healing. even though you've never posted anything to indicate otherwise (on this topic), this still seems like a major concession on your part. :)

[Zwordsman]

Didnt read through the discussion but just throwing in my note.
I've seen play and watched play of a game that had a Cantrip Healing ability.
In effect a Cantrip that was 1/short rest, that let the target or the caster, spend their Hit Die to heal one hitdie + Con of the target as an action.
This limited the amounts and gave more interesting dynamics to the hit die. But also gave a lot more folks a "emergency button"

[Zhorn]

Counterpoint: while the occasional curbstop power fantasy is fun, if you repeat them over and over again things get boring.
Fair point and understood, but that's more of a narrative problem than anything else. Mechanically small fights and low threats retaining relevance at higher levels is a positive of the game when used appropriately, and what those fights represent doesn't need to be the same thing within a story when used at level 2 versus being used at level 10.
I agree that is your DM is just throwing repetitive low level encounters at you because that's what came up on the random encounter table, that can get stale fast, but that's still just a problem of how the tool is being used, not with the tool itself.

[Greywander]

These two quotes seem to summarize this thread pretty well.

The idea that the DM can adapt is fine. A good DM can mitigate the worst of the damage a poorly designed homebrew can do to a game. That is true. It doesn't follow that they should, that they should have to, or that there isn't a cost to this. Equating what can be done to what is reasonably OK to expect to be done is, in my oppinion, a mistake.

At-will healing magic ultimately is a pretty minor distortion of the game. Players will spend, I dunno, 20% fewer resources healing between combats, and the GM will throw an extra goblin or two into their fights so they have to spend those resources on combat spells instead. You wind up having individual fights become a bit deadlier while attrition becomes a smaller factor. There's some amount of adjustment necessary, but if your group likes the idea there's no reason not to do it.
Adapting to something like at-will healing magic is possible, but it does put an extra burden on the DM. Not every DM may be willing to take on that extra burden, nor should they be forced to. For those willing to give it a try, it will take some adjustment, but probably isn't the most broken change you could implement.

It's also worth remembering on the player side that there would necessarily be some investment involved in getting an at-will healing spell. This might mean spending a feat on it, and then picking a healing spell instead of a good damage or utility spell. It might mean playing a specific class that has been balanced around at-will spellcasting, and so isn't as strong as a full- or even a half-caster. It might mean applying a custom spellcasting system to an existing class that makes spamming low levels spells easier but makes using your higher level spells more dangerous and less reliable. (Case in point, using that wild magic system I mentioned in the OP, at one point I was trying to cast Misty Step to catch an escaping bad guy, and not only did the spell fail, but I ended up destroying my right arm in a wild magic surge. IIRC, I was level 4, so Misty Step was a "high level" spell for me at that time.)

Ultimately, this definitely seems like something you'd want to clear with your DM first, but if your character concept is some kind of dedicated healer and the DM is fine with it, then it should work out fine. That's really all I wanted to say in the OP: If the DM is okay with it, then it really shouldn't be too broken.

[Pex]

even though you've never posted anything to indicate otherwise (on this topic), this still seems like a major concession on your part. :)

My reputation precedes me. Best to get the elephant out of the room as soon as possible where applicable.
:smallbiggrin:

[Tanarii]

In effect a Cantrip that was 1/short rest, that let the target or the caster, spend their Hit Die to heal one hitdie + Con of the target as an action.
This limited the amounts and gave more interesting dynamics to the hit die. But also gave a lot more folks a "emergency button"Yeah, this is probably the way to model at will healing. Even if it's unlimited use, having it trigger use if a HD is far better than flat at-will.

[micahaphone]

Yeah, this is probably the way to model at will healing. Even if it's unlimited use, having it trigger use if a HD is far better than flat at-will.

Now it just needs a snappy name. It's healing, and it comes all at once and lets you spring back into the fight with renewed vigor. Healing that makes you Surge back into battle...

[Unoriginal]

These two quotes seem to summarize this thread pretty well.


Adapting to something like at-will healing magic is possible, but it does put an extra burden on the DM. Not every DM may be willing to take on that extra burden, nor should they be forced to. For those willing to give it a try, it will take some adjustment, but probably isn't the most broken change you could implement.

It's also worth remembering on the player side that there would necessarily be some investment involved in getting an at-will healing spell. This might mean spending a feat on it, and then picking a healing spell instead of a good damage or utility spell. It might mean playing a specific class that has been balanced around at-will spellcasting, and so isn't as strong as a full- or even a half-caster. It might mean applying a custom spellcasting system to an existing class that makes spamming low levels spells easier but makes using your higher level spells more dangerous and less reliable. (Case in point, using that wild magic system I mentioned in the OP, at one point I was trying to cast Misty Step to catch an escaping bad guy, and not only did the spell fail, but I ended up destroying my right arm in a wild magic surge. IIRC, I was level 4, so Misty Step was a "high level" spell for me at that time.)

Ultimately, this definitely seems like something you'd want to clear with your DM first, but if your character concept is some kind of dedicated healer and the DM is fine with it, then it should work out fine. That's really all I wanted to say in the OP: If the DM is okay with it, then it really shouldn't be too broken.

It breaks the principles of the game. Doesn't mean it's unmanageable, just that it is completely outside of and contrary to the 5e design philosophy.

[Tanarii]

Now it just needs a snappy name. It's healing, and it comes all at once and lets you spring back into the fight with renewed vigor. Healing that makes you Surge back into battle...Rushing Recovery? :smallamused:

[AvalancheSpring]

Resource-free healing has done of the same problem as ultra short adventuring days. Each fight becomes either pointless or deadly. Every way to wear down the party on a successful fight is a tool to have more interesting outcomes. These outcomes fall between "win with no cost" and "tpk". I would not want to give up damage as an outcome.

Otoh, I think *more efficient* out of combat healing is fine, as long as there is a reasonable cost. I thought other ooc heals should have been brought *up* to match Healing Spirit - burning spell slots is no joke, and the other options are often not even worth it. I also allow 10 minute Short Rests in my game - the hit dice are the resource there.

[KorvinStarmast]

Right, I should clarify that I don't normally run published stuff unmodified. I do what you suggest a lot more. Either for use as a base, or as a buffet of encounters or ideas that I surgically graft to my own thing.



Yeah. I turned the Stone Tooth into a busted up Spelljammer Forge. I'm so hoping for a 5e Spelljammer book. I'm probably setting myself up for disappointment. If the dragon defeats my players, they revive them, take their stuff (money and magic) and send them through a one way portal to its original home in a swamp. The next quest is Hidden Shrine ... :smallbiggrin:

[Doug Lampert]

One of the interesting things I've noticed about Baldur's Gate 3's Early Access is that they tweaked some rules and spells to make more sense for a video game.

Shield of Faith still uses concentration, but the duration is otherwise infinite. Other spells like Longstrider and Mage Armor have infinite duration and only reset at a Long Rest. Outside of combat, you can effectively heal back up to full by eating food, and there's almost no penalty for resting in general. (There is technically one story penalty but it doesn't feel particularly severe or unavoidable).

I don't think at-will healing makes sense as a resource less thing: I think it still makes sense that reviving dead tissue, rebreathing life into something still draws from some kind of personal endurance.

At a certain point, the healer will have nothing more to give. Doctors need to rest and recharge just as much as anyone else. I don't how you would implement that. I don't think I have a problem with handwaving Out of combat healing with full restoring a character, but that's kind of what hit dice already do?

You need something like 4th edition healing surges, where most/all healing powers spend a surge to give you back a bunch of HP. That way, healing is limited, even if healing spells are effectively at will.

The HD in 5th edition work sort of kind of similarly, but are decoupled from magical healing, and the fact that you only have one at level 1 rather than a bunch means that you'd excessively limit magical healing of low level characters if you used HD for this.

[KorvinStarmast]

You need something like 4th edition healing surges, where most/all healing powers spend a surge to give you back a bunch of HP. That way, healing is limited, even if healing spells are effectively at will.

The HD in 5th edition work sort of kind of similarly, but are decoupled from magical healing, and the fact that you only have one at level 1 rather than a bunch means that you'd excessively limit magical healing of low level characters if you used HD for this. 13th age does something like this also.