LordShade
2022-05-28, 03:31 PM
I generally make NPC mercenaries and hirelings available to players in my campaign. The rough rule-of-thumb I am using for price is CR*2 = daily gp cost. It breaks down a bit for CR<1, but not a big deal to me.
My question is, how should I rate an NPC whose job is primarily healing? Let's say it's a healer magewright (base CR zero) with the Healer feat. I'm assuming a 3 round combat, where the magewright spends every round healing a different person for 1d6+4+6 (my players are level 6). Average healing = 13.5. From a CR perspective, how would you rate this combat impact?
My assumptions:
1. I don't think 1 point of damage = 1 point of healing is quite right. This NPC negates incoming damage, which is more valuable on a point-for-point basis to PCs than doing damage (usually, see the recent healing thread). Assuming a 40% chance to hit from Team Monster, the 13.5 healing/round cancels out base monster damage of 33.75 per round. Using Blog of Holding's CR calculations (https://blogofholding.com/?p=7283), this is canceling out the impact of a monster of offensive CR 5.
2. If the Healer is canceling out incoming damage from Team Monster, would you count this as the magewright providing Offensive CR to the party, or Defensive CR? You could say that it's as good as providing extra total HP to the party, but that's not quite right, because the Healer has to use actions to provide the HP. Defensive CR normally counts passive AC and hit points (no actions). My inclination is that it should be Offensive CR, because using the Healer's Kit in a round means the NPC is not attacking with say, a 2d8 cantrip. In other words, adding a +2 AC shield to the NPC makes it a lot better than adding a 2d8 chill touch (which has practically no impact on its performance).
Finally, a sanity check... functionally renting out the Healer feat to the party, at a price of (~CR 3*2 = 9 gp/day), does that make economic sense in your campaign? Does it make sense contrasted with a "skilled hireling" costing 2 gp/day? PCs would bear the cost of the healer kit itself. In the case of the magewright specifically, I'm not counting whatever wages it could command even without the healer kit. But in a non-combat role, I'd assume the magewright could charge 5-6 gp/day independent of gold-consuming rituals it can use.
My question is, how should I rate an NPC whose job is primarily healing? Let's say it's a healer magewright (base CR zero) with the Healer feat. I'm assuming a 3 round combat, where the magewright spends every round healing a different person for 1d6+4+6 (my players are level 6). Average healing = 13.5. From a CR perspective, how would you rate this combat impact?
My assumptions:
1. I don't think 1 point of damage = 1 point of healing is quite right. This NPC negates incoming damage, which is more valuable on a point-for-point basis to PCs than doing damage (usually, see the recent healing thread). Assuming a 40% chance to hit from Team Monster, the 13.5 healing/round cancels out base monster damage of 33.75 per round. Using Blog of Holding's CR calculations (https://blogofholding.com/?p=7283), this is canceling out the impact of a monster of offensive CR 5.
2. If the Healer is canceling out incoming damage from Team Monster, would you count this as the magewright providing Offensive CR to the party, or Defensive CR? You could say that it's as good as providing extra total HP to the party, but that's not quite right, because the Healer has to use actions to provide the HP. Defensive CR normally counts passive AC and hit points (no actions). My inclination is that it should be Offensive CR, because using the Healer's Kit in a round means the NPC is not attacking with say, a 2d8 cantrip. In other words, adding a +2 AC shield to the NPC makes it a lot better than adding a 2d8 chill touch (which has practically no impact on its performance).
Finally, a sanity check... functionally renting out the Healer feat to the party, at a price of (~CR 3*2 = 9 gp/day), does that make economic sense in your campaign? Does it make sense contrasted with a "skilled hireling" costing 2 gp/day? PCs would bear the cost of the healer kit itself. In the case of the magewright specifically, I'm not counting whatever wages it could command even without the healer kit. But in a non-combat role, I'd assume the magewright could charge 5-6 gp/day independent of gold-consuming rituals it can use.