Would Prayer of Healing be broken as an action?

[Segev]

Prayer of healing is almost notoriously bad. A second level spell that heals 1d8/spell level + casting stat modifier with a 10 minute casting time. Admittedly, it heals up to 6 creatures within 30 feet of the caster for that much, but with a 10 minute casting time, that's still not really enough for the post-combat healing it's meant to be, and it's too expensive for short rest healing.

But what if it only took 1 action to cast? I don't think 2d8+casting stat to up to 6 creatures is too much, though maybe it would break combat expectations too much in terms of attrition?

If its intent is to be a between-combat thing that's lets you go without a short rest just a little longer, maybe it would be worthwhile as a ritual that only works once per short rest for any given target, or something?

[diplomancer]

Make it one minute; you don't want it in combat; you specially don't want bringing several people back from 0 in combat, but a one-minute cast makes it a "post-difficult combat" thing that does not make the party ask "shouldn't we just Short Rest instead?"

[firelistener]

It would render Cure Mass Wounds superfluous. Cure Mass Wounds is the same spell, but instantaneous. It's also a 5th level spell and only heals 3d8+modifier. If you use a 5th level spell slot for Prayer of Healing, it heals 5d8+modifier. The idea is for Cure Mass Wounds to be useful in battle, but for Prayer of Healing to be the superior spell outside of battle.

[Nidgit]

Making it an action is definitely pretty strong, especially when you consider that Mass Cure Wounds at 5th level is 3d8+mod for an action. I don't really see a viable niche for it in combat right now

Instead, I think I'd probably add some kind of buff to it, like advantage on Initiative or maybe the next attack/ability/ST. Right now it's a weak short rest, so maybe diversifying within that prep mentality would be good.

[meandean]

It would render Cure Mass Wounds superfluous.On the other hand, aura of vitality usually renders prayer of healing superfluous for its allegedly intended purpose of out-of-combat healing. Would you rather heal (assuming +4 modifier) ~13 HP to six different people, or would you rather spend a 3rd-level slot rather than a 2nd in order to get a pool of ~70 HP that you can basically divvy out as you prefer? Most often, it's the latter, because some people will need lots of healing and some won't need much if any. For prayer of healing to be the better out-of-combat option, you either have to have a very rare distribution of damage, or just not be able to spare the higher slot, which usually isn't a problem except at specific levels. And you don't need to homebrew aura of vitality for it to be usable in combat as well. So, are you even gonna prep prayer of healing​? (We won't even get into the Extended Spell shenanigans.)

In sum, the healing spell hierarchy is fakakta¹. So, go ahead and make it an action. I still suspect it's not gonna get much use.

¹ Admittedly, aura of vitality wasn't originally on the Cleric list, so it wasn't always a competing option.

[DarknessEternal]

Prayer of Healing is exclusively for Life Domain Clerics and out of combat healing.

Everyone else has better elsewhere.

[Keravath]

It actually does 2d8+spellcasting modifier to up to 6 creatures. For a character with +5 spellcasting stat this will average 14 hit points to 6 targets or 84 hit points healed total if everyone is down a bit. It goes to 18 average/target for a life cleric with +5 spellcasting so although it is better for a life cleric it isn't bad for other clerics. I have it prepared on a couple characters.

The reason it is half decent is for significant after combat healing if you can't afford a long rest. It only uses a second level slot compared to mass healing word which requires a third level slot heals less but only needs a bonus action (goal of this spell is getting multiple team mates up from zero usually).

[Frogreaver]

At level 3 a typical character is going to have something like ~21 hp. At that level prayer of healing heals the whole party for essentially half hp.

It's a 2nd level spell, it's not supposed to be some greatly powerful spell the whole game.

[AdAstra]

For the original question, it would definitely be broken in the sense of being dramatically more powerful than most other healing spells, even much higher level spells.

The healing is basically as efficient as you get. 2d8+Spellcasting Mod is broadly equivalent to 2 hit dice for a d8 class with +2 Con (if you have a +4 spellcasting mod it's exactly even), so even with Short Rests around it has its place. I personally would prefer it to be 1-5 minutes rather than 10, to make it feel like a bit less of an time investment, but I don't think that it's necessarily bad where it is, and most means of improving it would really step on other spells. Being able to beat one of, if not the most powerful and flexible healing spell in the game, Aura of Vitality, in terms of theoretical HP, isn't too bad considering it's a 2nd level spell being compared to a 3rd. That theoretical advantage comes with tons of caveats and limitations, but I don't think those issues are so great as to make the spell useless.

If I were to revamp it, I might have it work as a sort of "Chargeup" spell, and possibly change the nature of the targeting. The longer you take to cast it, the more HP is regained, giving it more flexibility. Something like 1 HP to each target for an action (needs to be pretty low to not outpace Aid), Spellcasting Mod HP for 1 minute, 2d8+Spellcasting Mod HP for 10 minutes. Kinda like Plant Growth, but having a more conventional boost in power as casting time increases. So you basically have a pretty inefficient but quick mass heal, a slower heal that's more effective, and a supremely efficient heal that takes a bit.

[Thunderous Mojo]

I’ve also found Prayer of Healing, to be an extremely efficient method of healing. 10 Minutes is the same time it takes to cast many Ritual Spells or use Inspiring Leader. Prayer of Healing can allow a group to bypass needing to take a Short Rest, (and expend Hit Dice), presuming only Hit Points were lost by the party.

The Harness Divinity power found in TCoE even allows Clerics to convert unused Channel Divinities into spell slot recovery…essentially nigh costless uses of the spell.

I personally find it a fantastic spell.
Ad Astra’s post resonates with me…an action cast P.o.H would make it the best healing spell in the game, (or close to it).

[LudicSavant]

Prayer of healing is almost notoriously bad. A second level spell that heals 1d8/spell level + casting stat modifier with a 10 minute casting time. Admittedly, it heals up to 6 creatures within 30 feet of the caster for that much, but with a 10 minute casting time, that's still not really enough for the post-combat healing it's meant to be, and it's too expensive for short rest healing.

But what if it only took 1 action to cast? I don't think 2d8+casting stat to up to 6 creatures is too much, though maybe it would break combat expectations too much in terms of attrition?

If its intent is to be a between-combat thing that's lets you go without a short rest just a little longer, maybe it would be worthwhile as a ritual that only works once per short rest for any given target, or something?

Your suggestion would basically turn it into a turbobuffed Mass Cure Wounds.

If you find the 10 minute casting time too long, you could make it a 1 minute casting time. But 1 action is overkill.


On the other hand, aura of vitality usually renders prayer of healing superfluous for its allegedly intended purpose of out-of-combat healing. Would you rather heal (assuming +4 modifier) ~13 HP to six different people, or would you rather spend a 3rd-level slot rather than a 2nd in order to get a pool of ~70 HP that you can basically divvy out as you prefer? Most often, it's the latter, because some people will need lots of healing and some won't need much if any. For prayer of healing to be the better out-of-combat option, you either have to have a very rare distribution of damage, or just not be able to spare the higher slot, which usually isn't a problem except at specific levels. And you don't need to homebrew aura of vitality for it to be usable in combat as well. So, are you even gonna prep prayer of healing​? (We won't even get into the Extended Spell shenanigans.)

In sum, the healing spell hierarchy is fakakta¹. So, go ahead and make it an action. I still suspect it's not gonna get much use.

¹ Admittedly, aura of vitality wasn't originally on the Cleric list, so it wasn't always a competing option.

Prayer of Healing in the same level slot as Aura of Vitality would cure 111 hit points (spread between 6 targets) on a vanilla Cleric, compared to Aura of Vitality's 70.

In the case of your suggestion, it would do so in a single round as opposed to AoV's ten (with Concentration!)

Don't even get me started on how efficient this would be on actually synergistic healer setups.

[nickl_2000]

Prayer of Healing is exclusively for Life Domain Clerics and out of combat healing.

Everyone else has better elsewhere.

I don't know, we end up using it in our group fairly often. Typically it is done in conjunction with the casting of a ritual. Since they are pretty much the same casting time it ends up being pretty useful.

[Pildion]

Prayer of healing is almost notoriously bad. A second level spell that heals 1d8/spell level + casting stat modifier with a 10 minute casting time. Admittedly, it heals up to 6 creatures within 30 feet of the caster for that much, but with a 10 minute casting time, that's still not really enough for the post-combat healing it's meant to be, and it's too expensive for short rest healing.

But what if it only took 1 action to cast? I don't think 2d8+casting stat to up to 6 creatures is too much, though maybe it would break combat expectations too much in terms of attrition?

If its intent is to be a between-combat thing that's lets you go without a short rest just a little longer, maybe it would be worthwhile as a ritual that only works once per short rest for any given target, or something?

Yes, It would be broken as a 1 action cast time. Mass Cure Wounds only does 3d8 + Mod and its a 5th level slot. That being said, I think a 1 minute cast time is fine, that makes it your basic go-to after fight heal. It puts it right with Aura of Vitality as well.

[Chronos]

My group uses the houserule (not too uncommon, since I've seen others mention it) that short rests only take a few minutes, but that you're limited to two per day. That takes away the time advantage of Prayer of Healing. In principle, it could mean that you run out of short rests, but in practice, we haven't found that happens very often (usually, by that time, we're depleted enough on spell slots and other resources that what we really need is a long rest). At least once per session, we have to remind the cleric player that Prayer of Healing isn't useful in whichever situation we're finding ourselves in.

[strangebloke]

Look, its not the most efficient healing on the block, but I've still seen it cast and prepared just because out of combat healing does need to happen and every cleric has access to it. And frankly its not even that bad as out of combat healing compared to alternatives.

[Mastikator]

Prayer of healing is pretty strong in a 5-6 party.
With a casting stat of 16 and a party size of 5 you get a total of 60 hp back spread evenly across the party.
With 20 wis/cha and 6 members it heals a whooping 84 hp. That's pretty good for a 2nd level spell slot imo.

It's just not good if the damage is very unevenly spread.

[Frogreaver]

Prayer of healing is pretty strong in a 5-6 party.
With a casting stat of 16 and a party size of 5 you get a total of 60 hp back spread evenly across the party.
With 20 wis/cha and 6 members it heals a whooping 84 hp. That's pretty good for a 2nd level spell slot imo.

It's just not good if the damage is very unevenly spread.

Even if unevenly spread you can still probably heal half of the total. It’s pretty rare that only 1 PC comes out injured IME

[Pex]

Making it an action is definitely pretty strong, especially when you consider that Mass Cure Wounds at 5th level is 3d8+mod for an action. I don't really see a viable niche for it in combat right now

Instead, I think I'd probably add some kind of buff to it, like advantage on Initiative or maybe the next attack/ability/ST. Right now it's a weak short rest, so maybe diversifying within that prep mentality would be good.

Or maybe Mass Cure Wounds is too high a level and shouldn't have been a 5th level spell in the first place. It could fit well as a 3rd level spell. That's where Fireball and Spirit Guardians come into play, major multiple opponent damage spells. It would makes sense that's where multiple ally healing spells would come in. That's where Mass Healing Word is, and personal opinion bonus action is nice but too little healing for the level.

[Frogreaver]

Or maybe Mass Cure Wounds is too high a level and shouldn't have been a 5th level spell in the first place. It could fit well as a 3rd level spell. That's where Fireball and Spirit Guardians come into play, major multiple opponent damage spells. It would makes sense that's where multiple ally healing spells would come in. That's where Mass Healing Word is, and personal opinion bonus action is nice but too little healing for the level.

IMO, the purpose of mass healing word is to be able to pick up the whole party from 0 hp. That's not something that happens often, but when it does this spell is one of the absolute best spells there is.

[LudicSavant]

That's where Mass Healing Word is, and personal opinion bonus action is nice but too little healing for the level.

It's a great tool in the hands of a Life Cleric or Arcana Cleric. And still a handy 'seatbelt spell' for others.

As a Life Cleric with 6 targets, you can get 80 distributed healing off a Mass Healing Word, as a bonus action. That's 115% of the raw HP total of a vanilla Aura of Vitality channeled over 10 entire rounds, provided instantaneously (albeit spread out). And they can combo that with their Channel Divinity as an Action, providing another 5x level hp on top of that, spread as desired (ideally, you generally cast the CD first to get people to half health, then the MHW).

What's more, it's capable of action-efficiently picking several creatures up off the death gate at the same time, basically walling off a potential TPK death spiral route. All of a sudden the party that got blasted by a Meteor Swarm gets all its action economy back for a bonus action.

Arcana Clerics also make strong use of it, as it basically becomes not just an AoE bonus action heal, but also a multiple-target bonus action Dispel Magic for them.

[Tanarii]

Yes. Healing up to 6 characters for 2d8+stat for an action and a second level spell would be broken. That's a great amount of healing at low levels. Keep in mind that's negating 2d8+stat damage adjusted for accuracy, not damage before accuracy. For a tank, that's enough to counter something like 30-34 damage before accuracy in Tier 1. Even for a squishy arcane caster, it could be enough to counter 18-20 damage before accuracy.

Also it saves many characters one and a half HD on short rests. That's pretty good value for one second level slot, especially on adventuring days when you only started with half your full HD after your Long Rest.

It does scale poorly though.

Otoh I wouldn't expect players to prepare it if they expected to end the adventuring day before they ran out of HD and get sufficiently well timed short rests to use them and that 2nd level slot was going to be the way they managed that.

[Witty Username]

Why would I ever cast Prayer of healing, when I can just upcast cure wounds?
From my experience, 10 minutes is alot of time to sit in a dangerous area and not reasonable for any reason in combat. So what do we get, the ability to heal multiple people as opposed to one, from my experience, damage doesn't tend to be split across the party, either the party front line does its thing and takes the bulk of the damage, or the party creates a stacked scenario, in which case the party doesn't take much damage to begin with.
This is competing with other healing options as well like healing potions, short rests, healer feat, goodberrys. Which all give better healing or less opportunity cost.
Which brings us too Cure wounds at 2nd level. One target, but same healing amount to that target, and costs 1 action, meaning it has the flexibility to be used in combat and under hazardous conditions. And more importantly, Clerics likely already have it prepared as a sink for 1st level slots.

Save your 2nd level spells for real spells, like spiritual weapon, heat metal, pass without trace, or hold person. An enemy that doesn't deal damage is the best form of healing.

[LudicSavant]

Why would I ever cast Prayer of healing, when I can just upcast cure wounds?

Because Prayer of Healing heals up to 6x as much as Upcast Cure Wounds.

That's not like, a small amount more. Even if you are getting significantly fewer targets than that (and you shouldn't, for reasons below), it's far more efficient as a non-combat heal than Cure Wounds is.

If the casting time is an issue, reduce it to 1 minute, but don't put it at 1 action. It is not balanced against in-combat heals.


This is competing with other healing options as well like healing potions, short rests, healer feat, goodberrys. Which all give better healing or less opportunity cost.

Let's examine those opportunity costs real quick.

Prayer of Healing is primarily used by Clerics (Tasha's gives it to Paladins too). They have all of their spells known, so it matters significantly less if a spell is niche; they can choose to prepare said spell only on days where they have good reason to expect that niche to come up.

Healer takes up an entire ASI. That means you grabbed that instead of something like, say, Fey-Touched for a Wis Bump, a 2nd level spell slot, and a 1st level Magical Secrets-like slot, and 2 extra spells prepared.

Prayer of Healing isn't on the Druid spell list, and that's where Goodberry comes from. So you'd have to multiclass to get it, delaying your entire spells known and feature progression. Either that or be a Mark of Hospitality Halfling from Eberron.

I'm not sure I'd say short rests are competing, unless you really 'only have exactly 1 hour, not 1 hour and 10 minutes.' Maybe if we were instead examining spells that create opportunities for short rests (like Rope Trick or Catnap), in which case those can indeed be better than Prayer of Healing in many situations. But if the party is drained of hit dice, they won't add any more.

Healing potions depends on how much loot the DM is throwing at you, so it's really table-dependent -- in some they'll obviate the need for non-combat healing, others are a very different story. But just for perspective, if a mid-level Life Cleric throws a Prayer of Healing on a group that just got chunked by an AoE, they're getting a value that would require 16 healing potions to replicate.

[Mastikator]

Save your 2nd level spells for real spells, like spiritual weapon, heat metal, pass without trace, or hold person. An enemy that doesn't deal damage is the best form of healing.[

Yeah but that's true for all healing, not a very compelling reason to buff a healing spell that already gives the best bang for your buck (compared to every other healing spell).

Choosing to use spell slots on healing is always situational. Whether you have something better and you know what you're facing.

An argument in favor of prayer is that some other activities also take 10 minutes, like inspirational leader and ritual casting. But also situational. You have to choose, it's sometimes good and sometimes bad. Prayer is good and has its place

[Chronos]

Quoth Pex:

Or maybe Mass Cure Wounds is too high a level and shouldn't have been a 5th level spell in the first place. It could fit well as a 3rd level spell. That's where Fireball and Spirit Guardians come into play, major multiple opponent damage spells. It would makes sense that's where multiple ally healing spells would come in. That's where Mass Healing Word is, and personal opinion bonus action is nice but too little healing for the level.
The funny thing is that the DMG's guidance for homebrewing spells says that a healing spell should heal about as much as a damaging spell of the same level... even though that's never actually true of any of the healing spells in the books.

[noob]

The funny thing is that the DMG's guidance for homebrewing spells says that a healing spell should heal about as much as a damaging spell of the same level... even though that's never actually true of any of the healing spells in the books.
Healing spirit used to be "cloud of knives but for healing" it was nerfed because cloud of knives but for healing is stupidly overpowered.
It is a guidance on how to homebrew but not an exact indication on how healing spells should work.

[stoutstien]

The funny thing is that the DMG's guidance for homebrewing spells says that a healing spell should heal about as much as a damaging spell of the same level... even though that's never actually true of any of the healing spells in the books.

I think they just forgot to factor in accuracy with healing for homebrewed spells.

Saying that I will say PoH is solid but I wish it scales better in some way that was unique for it's niche.

[Tanarii]

The funny thing is that the DMG's guidance for homebrewing spells says that a healing spell should heal about as much as a damaging spell of the same level... even though that's never actually true of any of the healing spells in the books.
DMG had a couple of poor recommendations in it. Healing spells should always be less than damage spells. Damage spells usually have either a 40% chance of missing or a 50% chance of doing half damage. Healing spells are 100% effective.

Conversely, typical opponents have about a 35% chance of hitting a tank in Tier 1 (and about 30% chance higher of hitting a squishy). So that's Healing/(.35-.65) to compare to Damage when determine dice to use for a low level spell. That's why Cure Wounds seems so low, and why it (and healing in general) is consistently undervalued when valued based on the raw dice.