I wanna point out one very situational thing: Healing word using a 6th level slot by a lv17 life cleric now heals 61 hitpoints while Heal using a 6th level slot heals 78 hitpoints there is a 17 hp gap but healing word uses a bonus action and you don't have to prepare heal so in my opinion you can upcast healing word in this hyperspecific situation
Cure Wounds does an average of 59 points with a 6th level spell and the Life Clerics will do 109 at 17th level. Heal needs an update or it's almost useless.
@@craigauty8874i feel like the fact that you can combo almost 200HP of healing, putting 99.9% of creatures and classes to full HP is strong. Though heal could use a buff
@@craigauty8874Heal isn’t useless just because Cure Wounds got buffed. Maybe it’s not as good for Life Clerics, but it’s still good for everyone who’s not a Life Cleric. And it doesn’t even become “worse” for Life Clerics until 17th Level; that means you’ll still have 6 levels where it’s your best healing option.
@@iammattis1479 And by the time clerics hit level 17, they have access to Mass Heal and Power Word: Heal (Granted, only once per day, but still). Also, if I'm not a 17th level life cleric, I would probably always want to cast heal instead of Cure Wounds at 6th level. Sure, there's a shot I'll roll really well and get like 80 or 90 points of healing, but there's just as much of a shot I'll roll really badly and get like 20 or 30 points of healing.
healing was good in 4e. healing that avoided burning the healer's turn (either a bonus action, or packaged with a buff or attack), healing that scaled with the target's max hp so it was both guaranteed to be relevant and rewarded the party when the tank did their job, etc. Shame 4e's reputation is so radioactive among the fandom that the devs don't want to go to that well.
Reputation aside, I think the bigger problem with 4e healing is that every party needed a dedicated healer or the whole system collapse/, because it is designed for having 4 set roles filled, and doesn’t work outside of that context:
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 what do you mean? leaders were so much more diverse than dedicated healers and even then running divine powered off roles could be a way to cover healing with the party. I mean yes 4e was about the party holistically but that's a plus there were so many hero fantasies in each role that you built as a team for the team.
The reworked Healing spells feel really good on the Celestial Warlock. Casting a healing spell in combat doesn’t feel like a waste of an action anymore and the Celestial Warlock is absolutely a character who should feel motivated to heal their allies.
a situation in a game I was playing recently was that a downed party member was down over 100 feet away. thats when I realized that my longest range healing option was summon celestial. I summoned it 90 feet away, then it took its turn and flew an additional 40 feet and healed someone who was 135 feet away from me.
Did you mention Beacon of Hope, 3rd levl Cleric spell? "For the duration, each target .....regains the maximum number of hit points possible from any healing." Makes the enhanced healing spells fanastic, if this was cast.
in combat healing also become viable a bad choice. At level 1 a cure wound spell would heal 2d8+3 so average 12 A fighter at level 1 generally has an AC of 18 (chainmail 16 +shield 2) and 13 HP So you can restore your fighter almost back to full which is great news for our fighter friend At level 2 our fighter friend goes up to 22Hp, and cure wound heals for slightly more then half, not as impressive, but a fighter at Half HP should still survive a round or 2 at level 3 the fighter get 31Hp, but the cleric can now upcast to level 2 healing 4d8+3 so average 21HP so about 2/3 of max HP at level 4 the cleric take his +2 wis so cure wound heals for 4d8+4 so 22Hp, and the fighter when up to 40HP so back to slightly over half HP at level 5 cleric upcast to level 3 for 6d8+4(31) compare to the 49HP fighter so about so about 2/3 of max HP at level 6 the fighter reach 58HP so slightly over half and so on the fighter gaining 18HP every 2 levels while the cleric heals an extra 9HP every 2 levels, maintaining a ratio of between half and 2/3 max HP (with some variance depending on the feat/ASI chosen and other subclass abilities and multiclass that could affect the healing (life cleric, celestial warlock, divine sorcerer, etc...) which is pretty good, giving the fighter a chance to survive a few rounds with a single healing, making the cleric healing spell are significative and helpful. Now the question is how much will the monster get buff? The non bear totem barbarian might be in trouble if monster deal less often piercing, bludgeoning and slashing damage. And this is the problem with playtest by small pieces. yes cure wound 2d8+stat+2d8/upcast looks great, until you see the monster damage doubling and we are back to 2014 "useless" healing
10:59 I’d like to point out that Mass Healing Word can still heal creatures that are further apart from eachother than Mass Cure Wounds - with MHW they can be potentially 125 ft. from eachother (on opposite sides of you), with MCW they can only be 60 ft. from eachother (on opposite sides of the point of origin). MCW can heal people further away from you, though - up to 90 ft. away.
Healing is quite the popular playstyle/character. When one of my players picked out the Star Druid, he ended up complaining a lot about how bad healing felt and how it felt like a waste. I pretty quickly changed how my group handled healing; we‘ve been using max rolls for almost two years now, and it works great. It feels actually relevant now, but fights are still threatening and tense. If he‘s willing, the Star Druid can go on a healing power trip, and seems to be having a lot of fun with that. Now that they finally addressed how bad healing is, its funny to see that their solution is mathematically almost identical to mine.
While I don't want people to HAVE to heal I do want people who want to play a support buffer/healer to feel rewarded for doing so. This seems like the perfect balance for that to me. You can take concentration spells like bless and the like and also take these healing spells and feel effective. Hitting the party with an AOE heal after they take a breath weapon or other AOE damage feels good. Healing the barbarian after a big hit doesn't feel wasteful. And that is good.
Playing a healer was always underwhelming to me. I hope that these healing spells are a step forward in making "bounce-back" healing less prevalent somehow.
It's a good step, since it makes healing not completely outclassed by damage. But bouncing will probably persist so long as there aren't drawbacks to doing so.
@@WolforNuva Yeah, so long as it's easy for many people to have access to healing others, the game will encourage it. I think a good next step would be to change failed death saves persist beyond each unconscious state.
In the meantime I recommend using the Baldur's Gate mechanics if it annoys you. Where you lose your action if you go down even if someone heals you back up. So you can only take a bonus action when you get to your initiative.@@WolforNuva
There is no way to make bounce-back healing less prevalent. Even if you got 30 hp back per cure spell, it is always more beneficial to cast the healing spell after you hit 0 hp because you effectively gain hp = the overflow damage, and even 30 hp isn't necessarily enough to prevent you from dropping to 0 that round anyway. Even if healing gave you max hp back, you would still be better off waiting until the PC drops to 0 to use it. Keeping track of negatives is about the only way to keep bounce-back from happening.s
Ninja'd is right. Oh the irony that our favorite advocate of "it's better to avoid damange in the first place than heal it" had his regularly scheduled wizard build interrupted by this topic. LOL Great observations, Chris!
Mass Healing Word should not only heal 3d4+modifier but also get 2d4 per spell slot level when upcast. Especially since it needs to fill the void left behind after the Aid spell is removed as the mass healing option for levels 3-8. Cast with a 5th-level slot, it would on average heal 22.5 compared to 27.5 from Mass Cure Wounds, which is a small enough gap that I would consider keeping Mass Heal Word since it's only a Bonus Action to cast and is more flexible (it shouldn't be necessary to upcast it if you're near the end of a fight). That said, I very much agree with you that I like the direction.
My main worry was that the buff to lay on hands makes it the best method of healing in the game essentially, so a buff to other healing I think was definitely necessary at the least
I think the best thing about Cure Wounds now is that the number of healing dice for the upcast spell roughly tracks with the number of PC hit dice for the level where you get the spell slot now. Previously, it was about half, and since most PCs have a positive Constitution increasing their health by 50%, the healing felt insignificant. Lay on Hands felt better because it also tracked with the number of hit dice (5 per level, about half a d10).
I feel like part of goodberry's appeal was strictly providing more out of combat healing than cure wounds, but it doesn't do that anymore. The other part of it's appeal was abusing it's 24 hour duration to cast it a bunch of times the night before to have a giant pool of out of combat healing, but idk, it kinda feels like an oversight. Like I have no idea if the designers thought "of course it should last 24 hours, it provides 24 hours worth of nourishment" or if the designers thought "wouldn't it be cool to have a healing spell you could cast yesterday?" and i've been in tables who figured RAI was the former, or that using it like the latter was somehow bad table manners, so they put limits on it like having them lose magic on a long rest, or having it lose magic if you cast the spell again so you can only do it with 10hp worth of extra healing. Either way some adjustment could probably be good to give it a design neiche that we could actually all agree on
If not going to fix it by making it closer to 4E, though that would also rule, I think they could adjust the recovery system. For example, what if you mark exhaustion whenever you come back up, or if your HP is 0 you have Resistance to healing effects? Healing can emphasize preservation and not getting knocked down in the first place. Pathfinder 2E has the Wounded condition and has enemies who are damaged by Vitality healing effects as well, making area healing effects really handy. But yeah the scaling for the spells could really use a second pass.
I have a campaign that runs for 6 years now and we tried out these revised spells and healing felt so much better. The party is level 18. The characters who are the 'healers" of the party managed to restore hit points much more consistently, to the point that it was the only reason why the blood hunter, who is the primary tank of the party, didn't went down in the encounter.
What's funny is Will (DnDShorts) did a video on healing a year ago where he pointed out that even in the DMG the curing spells are too weak. That cure wounds should be 1d10, not 1d8. I'm glad that we're seeing buffs. I agree with you that the mass curing spells should be 2dX per spell level for an upcast.
We've actually homebrewed a bunch of the Healing Spells within our game to make them worthwhile in combat. Cure Wounds was more in line to what we did, and it seems to work fairly well without bogging down gameplay. Healing Word, though, upcasts better with upping creatures affected, not damage healed. So we got rid of Mass Healing Word and just had it upcast to 6 creatures at 3rd, 12 creatures at 5th, 20 creatures at 7th, and all creatures within range at 9th. (You could probably do a more granular progression at even levels if you wanted.) We haven't really used this one upcast as much, but I think it'd be cinematically cool to up a host of minions at 9th level (not that it'd be all that powerful with a well placed fireball). I realize WotC probably won't go the same route on Healing Word because they want to keep all spells from the PHB, but Mass Healing Word just seems to waste a spot that could be used on another spell.
I wasn't paying much attention to One D&D at first, so I missed the changes to Prayer of Healing, and all I have to say about that is, they really just took a 3rd level spell from XGE, improved it, and tacked the improved spell onto a 2nd level spell that already does healing. I love WotC sometimes lmao.
I noticed a almost distinct lack of mention of the Beacon of Hope spell, which with the doubled dice could make a very effective in combat healing considering it does what the life clerics 17th level ability does except it's only a 3rd lvl concentration spell. That being said there are probably better ways to spend your concentration in combat just noting that.
In Mass Healing Word's defense, levels 5-8 are a pretty sugnificant portion of the game for most players. Since clerics are prepared casters, I don't think a 5th level spell being strictly better than its 3rd level counterpsrt is that much of a problem. Especially since you might still want to use mass healing word even at levels 9-12 since you might want to use your 5th-6th level spell slots on other things, like Summon Celestial.
I like how the new healing word is roughly as strong as the old cure wounds And new cure wounds is roughly as strong as well, it should be xD Love the changes
It could be a class feature or part of the spells, but I would love "overhealing" to become temporary hp that last a short time, like maybe a minute. That would reduce the issue with dedicated healers do not know what to do in the round before people start taking damage. It does make the spells stronger, but it also make them more interesting.
13:39 Wasn't the UA Aid spell dropped from playtesting, along with the UA Banishment, Guidance, Prayer of Healing, Resistance, and Spiritual Weapon spells, when the "Druid & Paladin" (UA23DP) article was released? The UA versions of Aid, Banishment, Guidance, Payer of Healing, Resistance, and Spiritual Weapon all appeared in the "Rules Glossary" section of the "Cleric and Revised Species" (UA22CS) article, and the subsequent article, UA23DP, states in the change log of its "Rules Glossary" that "If an entry is removed from the glossary, that entry isn’t moving forward in the playtest; please use the relevant rule from the 2014 Player’s Handbook instead of the removed entry." UA23DP does have its own "Spell Descriptions" section, unlike UA22CS & previous UA articles in this series, and no subsequent UA article has the above universal reversion language regarding their "Spell Descriptions" sections, so one could make the argument that WotC simply didn't bother or didn't think to separate out the spells in UA22CS into their own section and should be grandfathered into later playtests. However, I would argue that if that were the case, then WotC would (or rather, should) have copied the UA22CS spells into UA23DP's new "Spell Descriptions" section, and that since that didn't happen that UA22CS's spells were supposed to revert to their 2014 rules for playtest purposes upon the release of UA23DP. I will also mention that there have been spell reversion/revision notes made post UA23DP for specific spells (EX: nullifying previous playtest smite spells for new playtest versions; EX: UA23PT7 "Player's Handbook Playtest 7" stating that Eldritch Blast & Hex returned to their 2014 PHB rules), though arguments can be made that this supports both the reversion & non-reversion of UA22CS's spells, so I will leave it at that. However, if WotC did state somewhere other than in the articles themselves that UA22CS's spells never reverted to their 2014 version, I am fully willing to admit that I am wrong.
Worth noting that Mass Cure Wounds also has a 30' radius sphere at 60', whereas Mass Healing Word is effectively a 60' radius sphere at 0'. This means that while MCW is a little more restrictive in area (although 30' radius is still plenty), it can actually heal someone 50% further away than MHW can reach.
My DM has let us run with the updated Prayer of Healing for a while. It is really nice for the style of campaign we have been in that has a lot of events with time pressure. One thing that a lot of people miss is that, unlike a short rest, you don't need to be stationary during the casting. This allows my paladin to reset the warlock and monk while we are on the move. I very much hope they keep the updates.
a big buff that my table does is make all healing based on HD. They don't use HD, they just recover equal to HD. potions - 2 HD, then 2 more HD per tier of the drinker. d4 spells - 1 HD per d4, d6 spells - 2 HD per d6, d8 spell - 3 HD per d8 of the receiver. drinking a potion is bonus action, feeding a potion is an action, drinking and taking max healing is an action This helped a lot in my games a lot in making healing meaningful
Here's an idea. Healing spells can be cast on someone, and "stick" to them, not immediately resolving, but being resolved at any time the target likes as a free action. Cure Light Wounds is no longer "meant" to be cast during battle, but can be basically an additional pool of bonus HP that can be discharged at will, cast before battle, or the start of the day, or whenever A creature can have a single charge of healing at a time, when they would be healed while currently carrying a charge, they can choose which to immediately use.
@@fraidei2094 Kinda, but bigger numbers, and the added effects of spells like Heal available when they're most beneficial. Could maybe justify the existence of more Healing + Upside spells, since being attatched to the heal makes the upside activate on command.
Oh wait, they changed the spells to abjuration school so that means, when you multiclass an alchemist artificer with an abjuration wizard he will have a lot of temp hp on that ward to shield their party :O
One thing i just noticed with conjure celestial is that you can, but don't have to heal people. So you can do on any turn they're in the AOE. And it's concentration so it sticks around. So you can save the once per cast heal till they're at zero hp, and pop them up at the start of their turn with some decent HP, and no action needed.
In general I like these changes. I think overall healing should be designed to keep a character up in combat rather than letting them get knocked out and bringing them back up with no ramifications to a person who was just knocked unconscious and dying - however you want to abstract hit points, knocked to zero is a potentially mortal wound. I do share Chris's concern that turning characters into heal-bots could turn combat into (more of) a slog, and also agree with him that these spells themselves don't do that.
The biggest buff to healing would be a persistent debuff on getting taken to zero hp. Like a level of exhaustion or a wound system that makes characters a little weaker every time the heal pops them up. That combined with bigger dice sounds pretty good to me. On a different aspect of healing (the fun part), my favorite heals are aura of vitality and healing spirit. Even if the healing on a turn isn't as impactful you are contributing healing every turn for a relatively small investment. (And it's very potent in current 5e wait-till-zero healing)
I play a Stars Druid/Life Cleric at the moment and really like those buffs, because it would actually make healing in combat not such a waste of time and resources. It really sucks when you want to play a healer/support character, but by doing so you´re more of a burden on your party than anything else, because pumping out the highest amount of DPR you possibly can is almost always the best option...
There are some really potent support builds out there. It's specifically the White Mage "I want to spend my turn casting healing spells most of the time" playstyle that is purposely underpowered in 5e, and I do think the game is better for it--I don't think it's wise to go back to "ok who's stuck playing cleric" as the point of balance for healing. But stuff like battlefield control wizards, push/pull builds like Dao Genie Warlock, out-of-combat heals like Prayer of Healing, accuracy and damage bonus things like Bless or Faerie Fire or Haste, Bardic Inspiration (especially the Glamour Bard's use of it), Aura of Protection, even just the occasional Silvery Barbs--all of this is very powerful support, often much more useful than just cranking out a ton of damage. I played in a campaign recently where the Wand of Web I found partway through was almost more useful than my entire character. Dealing 20 DPR to an enemy that can't affect you because it's stuck in Rime's Binding Ice or Plant Growth is better than dealing 30 DPR to an enemy that can deal 30 back.
@@life-destiny1196 I always think there has to be a way to make the combat healer playstyle viable without making it mandatory. A Wizard flinging Fireballs at anything that moves is really strong, but nobody would get the idea to call a Fireball Wizard mandatory. How comes a healer would be if they were to be buffed?
I agree. I got really tired of minmaxers telling me that playing a healer in 5e is useless. I’m glad the changes have at least made that play-style a little more viable, but not so strong that if you don’t have it you get stomped.
So... you mentioned @14:05 that a number of players have requested Goodberry not grant the meal for a day feature. I would think a better redesign would be of the 10 berries you can choose to a number of them to heal 1 hit point OR be a single meal replacement. I think that would clean it up nicely. Two features available but each Goodberry does one or the other. If you want to make it more difficult, the caster has to decide at the time of casting what all of the berries can do. I think it always should have been a meal replacement instead of all the meals in a day replacement. (shrugs)
My hot take is that goodberry does not break survival campaigns the way people think it does, at least not on its own. The actual issue is that its competition on the first-level druid and ranger lists is pretty weak. If those characters had more useful things to do with their first-level spell slots, there'd be a much higher opportunity cost. In any case, if you're running a style of campaign where you want food and water to be an issue, you should already be denying your players chances to rest most of the time--gritty realism variant resting being the easiest way to do that. Goodberry isn't going to negate the need to find food when it's three days away from civilization and your casters are clutching their last spell slot for the next dangerous beastie you come across.
Do you think in-combat healing being good is actually good for the game? I can’t help but think all it will accomplish is slowing down combat even more. If you wanted healing to be engaging, it would need to do something like remove debilitating conditions alongside it (combat is sped up because those conditions are removed) or provide buffs (combat is sped up because of the buffs), I think straight healing numbers are a bad way of doing it. As an example, Cure Wounds could provide 15ft of extra movement speed for the next turn. You can then get up from prone and get back into the fight essentially for free. Stuff like that, where the healing isn’t quite worth it unless the extra effect is also useful in that moment.
I don’t think there’s a system that actually does healing well. If it’s strong, it does the game down and or necessitates every party having a dedicated healer. If it’s too weak, then nobody uses it. If it does the weird 5e thing, then you get health yo yo-ing. I think it’s very much a pick your poison kind of problem.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112I’m very uninformed about the state of other TTRPG designs, so maybe it’s naïve of me to say, but I really feel like a system that ties healing on as a minor part of buff/support spells would really work. You can heal much more actively and have a deliberate impact on the battlefield, but you still fulfill a healer role and inevitably that extra health will actually be important as well.
@@Capt.Fail.I think Icon by Massif Press takes the approach you’re talking about. The healing classes in that game usually heal by stealing HP from enemies to give to allies, or healing with bonus combat buffs. Been a while since I read through it, though.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 It really depends, because healing is extremely system dependent, so one system could do healing well for its specific niche, but be really terrible for any other system. I'm currently playing a campaign using a system called Harnmaster. It's this really crunchy system, combat is designed to be deadly, and in-combat healing is non-existent. Basically you win combats through offense and mitigation, since fighting causes you to accumulate wounds and fatigue, which add penalties to your rolls, which causes you to roll worse, creating a feedback loop where combat's basically a race to the bottom. You lose combat by accumulating enough penalties that you either go into shock or your opponent is able to hit a vital area hard enough to basically kill you outright. Outside of combat, fatigue goes away on its own with rest and eating, but you reduce your wound penalties through healing rolls, which represent your body's innate ability to repair itself. It's basically a d100 versus a target number that's a multiple of your endurance (with the multiple depending on the wound's severity). If you succeed on the healing roll, the wound's severity decreases by a single step, which in turn reduces the penalty to your other rolls. For serious wounds, it can take days, weeks, or even months of in-game time before you remove all the penalties. Receiving medical care (including through the Healing psychic power) doesn't actually heal your wounds, but will usually provide a bonus to your healing roll, or reduces the amount of time you need to wait before you attempt your next healing roll. All of that works for that specific system, because it fits the harshness and extreme crunchiness of the overall design, but it would be absolutely terrible for basically any other game out there.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 This is even true for out of combat healing; either it matters and you need a healer, or it doesn't matter and you never need it. The fact that hp is essentially binary (you either have it or you don't) makes this problematic. To solve this you need to make healing benefit even when the player would not have died without it. So, something like a wound system that made losing health confer penalties, and healing removed those by restoring health thus acting as a buff. As it is, 5e basically dodges the whole healing issue by not making combat that dangerous and by not having any penalties for resting (which essentially acts like healing). Everyone is a healer, and no one needs a healer.
Good Berry. No more 1-day nourishment. That could be painful if eat 2 or more at once. Instead have it removed a level of exhaustion due to not eating/drinking.
I like to use mass healing word on my Arcana Cleric as it acts as a better dispel magic since it can dispel via spell breaker, heal me and allies, and leaves my action open to booming blade/green flame blade. (Yeah, melee cleric bad/unoptimized, but this table is balanced around lower power levels so I can get away with riding the moon druid’s saddle of the cavalier)
All of a sudden, I want a combined heal over cure and word. (2 x Level) d4 as an action at touch range. Then pick 2 aspects to improve per cast: d4 to d8, action to bonus action, or touch to range. On the one hand, it complicates one of the easiest entry-level spells. On the other, now Cure Wounds and Healing Word only take a single spell known and you can get to more interesting stuff
For healing word I'd rather have a different upcast than just more dice. I'm not sure what exactly, either more range or targets or something like that.
I always used the hit dice for healing, always made more sense that healing the barbarian should give more hp then the wizard. Me and my players always loved it including hp potions
I really dislike healing in 5E. Options would really help and making better use of Hit Dice to differentiate the power sources from each other. For example, anything but divine healing actually needing hit dice to work with would be a very nice differentiation.
I have a life domain cleric who specifically specializes in life transference to keep his low hp hex blade friend alive. They would all be dead without it.
The buff to healing spells is actually a good way to make sure that people don't end up playing classes with the ability to heal as healbots. Increasing the healing from each spell should free up slots for control and buff spells that would have been used previously to restore hp to characters taking damage. The other advantage to buffing healing is that it gives design space for monsters to deal more damage per round. I don't think it's an accident that this is being considered at the time where the team is probably starting to look at what changes they might want to introduce in the 2024 Monster Manual because the 2024 Players Handbook playtest is winding down.
I always thought Goodberries would have worked better as like... adrenaline. "Eating one Goodberry restores 1 hit point and removes 1 level of Exhaustion from the target for an hour. At the end of this hour that level of Exhaustion returns, but a creature that consumes another Goodberry extends the time before they regain it by another hour." Which still likely gives you an extra day to not die of exhaustion if you have a sleepless night or are in the freezing cold or are without a food/water source, but also helped against things like Sickening Radiance and Berserker rage exhaustion.
With the buff to Cure Wounds, I wish Healing Word would upcast to affect extra creatures. It still would be strictly worse than a Mass Healing Word at equal levels and just generally have a unique niche. Which every spell *should* have.
I feel like the best buff to healing spells would be to bring back negative hit points. Keep death saves for at or just below 0 HP for that heroic struggling against death feel, but -20HP = insta-kill. It gives healers more of a reason to be healing mid combat rather than just waiting for someone to drop and then bringing them back
Big big fan of this change. Healing simply did not scale with monster damage with created a problem where you only healed to preserve action economy. If this plays out the way I think it will, I'd be 100% okay with additional changes to discourage letting people go unconscious in the first place.
You can boost healing spells, but unless something is done about making damage at low HP (1-20%) more risky, then it still doesn't matter. Because enemy damage will end up escalating too. The only things that matter are; are they up? Can they withstand 1 hit? And are they full? There's not any actual difference other than those
Since healing feels less effective on higher levels of play, how about high level spells or subclass features that provide an additional effect to the target they healed, helping them prevent further damage in a round? Arcana Cleric's Spell Breaker is the best example for this where the healing can also save someone from a sticky situation if they're affected by a strong spell. Maybe an aura-like spell that gives allies that are healed in the area a bonus to their AC or saving throws for one round; or a spell that gives allies that are healed an effect similar to the Evasion feature.
Do you think homebrewing mass cure wounds to start at level 1 for 1d8+mod would cause issues? I don't see a problem honestly and I think it would bring interesting new options at low level
I think a potentially nice buff would be to make the extra five heal at the next turn. It might be cumbersome, but it would provide longevity and value for a whole action.
I'm toying with a idea of a healing spell that does friendly fire! More healing at a lower level but when cast its a largish area spell that cures both friend and foe. Its fixing the bad guy. It does not harm undead as some healing spells do. I believe this is in one manga and a computer game already but it would take ages to check. I have nowhere to put it. I probably should suggest it for DC 20.
So my party is using the buffed spells, and I finally got to use one: Entire party got hit by a Great Death Dragon's Breath Weapon. Fortunately, I had Aura of Life up and halved the damage, but everyone took at least 13 damage (significantly better than we would have, but still a decent chunk), with the melee fighters having taken more damage fighting it. One buffed Mass Cure Wounds and most of the party is back at full health. It was SO MUCH better than the old version's 3d8 would've gotten us. In fact I healed more than the max number the old Mass Cure Wounds could heal. It made me feel so awesome to heal that much HP. And probably over all a good thing, as the party is about to fight Lord Soth. As I'm a Grave Cleric, will see how things go if anyone hits zero.
Would love to see a reaction cast healing feature. Make it like a cleric version of counter spell but for damage or a cleric spell that can give other creatures a Shield spell bonus.
Does switching healing spells to abjuration from evocation make 1 to 3 level dip into cleric (life I guess) plus abjuration wizard x the best defensive wizard?
Hey Chris ... off topic, but didn't know where else to post. I know you were traveling when BG3 came out, and you said that you weren't going to do ant videos, but would play the game offline. It would be kind of cool just to see a video of your thoughts on the game. I know there's a bunch of UA content and other videos you want to get to. I don't think a BG3 has to come out any time soon. But, I do value your opinion on such topics, and it would offer some interesting insights. Anyways, thanks for all that you do.
Well you play a lot between 5th and 9th level. So there is a lot of playtime where Mass Cure Wounds is not an option, but Mass HEaling Word is. And sometimes a sittuation is screaming for a mass heal so several downed team members can stand up again. The tempes Cleric I'm currently playing is quite offensive minded and does not heal all tha often, but Healing Word and Mass Healing Word are ready to go (not yet Level 9). And there were sittuations where he had to use Mass Healing Word because the enemy is also allowed to use aoe ...
It’d be cool if inflict wounds and cure wounds were the same spell and used the same dice roll upcast the same. Similar to the monk hand of healing/harm.
I’m interested to see these changes and how they affect the game considering I enjoy the level of healing in 5e. Letting healers have too much power makes it so the only way to kill anyone is to solo target the healer. Having healing give someone just an extra attack or two they can tank before they go down lets attacks feel more lethal and makes you think smarter. These problems go both ways (player and dm) and I worry these healing spells could feel arduous as a player even trumping the feeling of using them yourself. I am absolutely open to seeing how these changes effect the game and actually really enjoy 2d8 or d4 for a first level spell slot especially at early levels.
I ended up adapting these rules partially: only adding one additional dice for level 1 spells, then 1 additional dice every level. I'm kinda wary of the heal bot, my players tend to think that they "NEED" a healer (Even tho I've been tweaking rules and encounters so they only need heals in battle).
It looks like mass cure wounds is actually less range than mass healing word. MCW lists a range of 60 ft. but the description states up to six creatures in a 30-foot radius sphere, MHW only lists a range of 60 ft.
If we feel that the upcasting amount on Mass Cure Wounds isn't enough, but doubling it would be too much, then my suggestion would be instead of 1d8 per level, make it 2d4 per level.
Do you think adding resistance to damage for one turn to healing word would fix the issue of being downed again the next turn and make it more worth while to upcast?
what about a solution where for each spell slot level you expend you get to add your spellcasting ability mod again? for example, a 1st level cure wounds adds their spellcasting ability mod once but a 3rd level cure wounds adds it two more times?
I've been doubling the dice in my latest campaign. Then my stars druid with some staff that helped boost his healing went and healed 3 players for like 40hp each in 1 turn when I had spent two whole rounds wacking on them only to have them all healed back to full HP at lv 6. I knew he had spec'ed into healing but hadn't realized he had figured out that extreme of a combo, idk if his staff was homebrew, I think it was raw and I let him enhance the enchantment as a reward for finishing the lost mine module before we moved on to the main story of the campaign. I let them restore to forge to make their gear permanent +1 stuff, and if it was already magical, they could get another effect instead. Honestly, I find the healing fine and would still let him use that combo but it was rather annoying that they finished a deadly fight agaist 8 vampire spawn with practically no injuries and only down half their slots. That's mostly my fault, !but still, it makes me realize I need to over tune all of their encounters going forward.
I think the scaling is fine, because in practice a higher level means another 3 to 6 d8's of total healing. But maybe knocking each down a level and a dice would be kinder; I don't think 4th level is inappropriate for a mass healing spell. I do wonder how mass healing spells would work if they gave you a pool of dice that you then decided how to share at casting, with an upper limit to the number of dice you can roll per character. Eg, a pool of 20d8 dice for mass cure wounds, but no more than 5d8+mod to a single creature and no limit to the number of creatures healed. Idk, just spit balling.
they got it just right with Healing Word and Cure Wounds, but imo Mass Cure Wounds should be 6d8 +2d8 per upcast level, and Mass Healing Word should be 2d4 +2d4 per upcast level.
I wanna point out one very situational thing:
Healing word using a 6th level slot by a lv17 life cleric now heals 61 hitpoints while Heal using a 6th level slot heals 78 hitpoints
there is a 17 hp gap but healing word uses a bonus action and you don't have to prepare heal so in my opinion you can upcast healing word in this hyperspecific situation
Cure Wounds does an average of 59 points with a 6th level spell and the Life Clerics will do 109 at 17th level. Heal needs an update or it's almost useless.
@@craigauty8874i feel like the fact that you can combo almost 200HP of healing, putting 99.9% of creatures and classes to full HP is strong. Though heal could use a buff
@@craigauty8874Heal isn’t useless just because Cure Wounds got buffed. Maybe it’s not as good for Life Clerics, but it’s still good for everyone who’s not a Life Cleric. And it doesn’t even become “worse” for Life Clerics until 17th Level; that means you’ll still have 6 levels where it’s your best healing option.
@@iammattis1479 And by the time clerics hit level 17, they have access to Mass Heal and Power Word: Heal (Granted, only once per day, but still). Also, if I'm not a 17th level life cleric, I would probably always want to cast heal instead of Cure Wounds at 6th level. Sure, there's a shot I'll roll really well and get like 80 or 90 points of healing, but there's just as much of a shot I'll roll really badly and get like 20 or 30 points of healing.
Life cleric goes to work.
healing was good in 4e. healing that avoided burning the healer's turn (either a bonus action, or packaged with a buff or attack), healing that scaled with the target's max hp so it was both guaranteed to be relevant and rewarded the party when the tank did their job, etc. Shame 4e's reputation is so radioactive among the fandom that the devs don't want to go to that well.
I miss 4e. The character options were many and diverse. I wish the online resource was still available.
They half assedly did with hit dice but didn't bother to integrate it into the game at all.
Reputation aside, I think the bigger problem with 4e healing is that every party needed a dedicated healer or the whole system collapse/, because it is designed for having 4 set roles filled, and doesn’t work outside of that context:
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 what do you mean? leaders were so much more diverse than dedicated healers and even then running divine powered off roles could be a way to cover healing with the party. I mean yes 4e was about the party holistically but that's a plus there were so many hero fantasies in each role that you built as a team for the team.
The encounter powers gave you an incentive to heal in combat, because otherwise you'd miss the opportunity.
I like playing the class fantasy as a dedicated healer. The playstyle itself is the goal. Having healing be more effective makes me happy.
Me too!
The reworked Healing spells feel really good on the Celestial Warlock. Casting a healing spell in combat doesn’t feel like a waste of an action anymore and the Celestial Warlock is absolutely a character who should feel motivated to heal their allies.
Yeah honestly Celsestial warlock was the first thing i thought of when i say the redesigns😊
Maybe we will see a buff to healing light along with these changes?
@@Apeiron242 Once you get Contact Patron you’re legally obliged to tell her all of the lessons you’ve learned about friendship.
a situation in a game I was playing recently was that a downed party member was down over 100 feet away. thats when I realized that my longest range healing option was summon celestial. I summoned it 90 feet away, then it took its turn and flew an additional 40 feet and healed someone who was 135 feet away from me.
Did you mention Beacon of Hope, 3rd levl Cleric spell? "For the duration, each target .....regains the maximum number of hit points possible from any healing." Makes the enhanced healing spells fanastic, if this was cast.
13:26 Power Word Heal also now has a range of 60 feet.
in combat healing also become viable a bad choice.
At level 1 a cure wound spell would heal 2d8+3 so average 12
A fighter at level 1 generally has an AC of 18 (chainmail 16 +shield 2) and 13 HP
So you can restore your fighter almost back to full which is great news for our fighter friend
At level 2 our fighter friend goes up to 22Hp, and cure wound heals for slightly more then half, not as impressive, but a fighter at Half HP should still survive a round or 2
at level 3 the fighter get 31Hp, but the cleric can now upcast to level 2 healing 4d8+3 so average 21HP so about 2/3 of max HP
at level 4 the cleric take his +2 wis so cure wound heals for 4d8+4 so 22Hp, and the fighter when up to 40HP so back to slightly over half HP
at level 5 cleric upcast to level 3 for 6d8+4(31) compare to the 49HP fighter so about so about 2/3 of max HP
at level 6 the fighter reach 58HP so slightly over half
and so on the fighter gaining 18HP every 2 levels while the cleric heals an extra 9HP every 2 levels, maintaining a ratio of between half and 2/3 max HP (with some variance depending on the feat/ASI chosen and other subclass abilities and multiclass that could affect the healing (life cleric, celestial warlock, divine sorcerer, etc...) which is pretty good, giving the fighter a chance to survive a few rounds with a single healing, making the cleric healing spell are significative and helpful.
Now the question is how much will the monster get buff? The non bear totem barbarian might be in trouble if monster deal less often piercing, bludgeoning and slashing damage. And this is the problem with playtest by small pieces. yes cure wound 2d8+stat+2d8/upcast looks great, until you see the monster damage doubling and we are back to 2014 "useless" healing
Now count all of this again using Grave domain and you will see it is almost always 0 to MAX with single spell slot at any level.
10:59 I’d like to point out that Mass Healing Word can still heal creatures that are further apart from eachother than Mass Cure Wounds - with MHW they can be potentially 125 ft. from eachother (on opposite sides of you), with MCW they can only be 60 ft. from eachother (on opposite sides of the point of origin). MCW can heal people further away from you, though - up to 90 ft. away.
Holy Health Grenade
Healing is quite the popular playstyle/character.
When one of my players picked out the Star Druid, he ended up complaining a lot about how bad healing felt and how it felt like a waste.
I pretty quickly changed how my group handled healing; we‘ve been using max rolls for almost two years now, and it works great. It feels actually relevant now, but fights are still threatening and tense. If he‘s willing, the Star Druid can go on a healing power trip, and seems to be having a lot of fun with that.
Now that they finally addressed how bad healing is, its funny to see that their solution is mathematically almost identical to mine.
I homebrew a rule at my tables where the caster's spellcasting mod is multiplied by the spell level and it balances really well.
While I don't want people to HAVE to heal I do want people who want to play a support buffer/healer to feel rewarded for doing so. This seems like the perfect balance for that to me. You can take concentration spells like bless and the like and also take these healing spells and feel effective. Hitting the party with an AOE heal after they take a breath weapon or other AOE damage feels good. Healing the barbarian after a big hit doesn't feel wasteful. And that is good.
Playing a healer was always underwhelming to me. I hope that these healing spells are a step forward in making "bounce-back" healing less prevalent somehow.
It's a good step, since it makes healing not completely outclassed by damage. But bouncing will probably persist so long as there aren't drawbacks to doing so.
Agreed on the second point. Pop-up healing feels so much like a mechanics gimmick, I really dislike it. I do like playing a healer though.
@@WolforNuva Yeah, so long as it's easy for many people to have access to healing others, the game will encourage it. I think a good next step would be to change failed death saves persist beyond each unconscious state.
In the meantime I recommend using the Baldur's Gate mechanics if it annoys you. Where you lose your action if you go down even if someone heals you back up. So you can only take a bonus action when you get to your initiative.@@WolforNuva
There is no way to make bounce-back healing less prevalent. Even if you got 30 hp back per cure spell, it is always more beneficial to cast the healing spell after you hit 0 hp because you effectively gain hp = the overflow damage, and even 30 hp isn't necessarily enough to prevent you from dropping to 0 that round anyway. Even if healing gave you max hp back, you would still be better off waiting until the PC drops to 0 to use it.
Keeping track of negatives is about the only way to keep bounce-back from happening.s
Ninja'd is right. Oh the irony that our favorite advocate of "it's better to avoid damange in the first place than heal it" had his regularly scheduled wizard build interrupted by this topic. LOL Great observations, Chris!
Mass Healing Word should not only heal 3d4+modifier but also get 2d4 per spell slot level when upcast. Especially since it needs to fill the void left behind after the Aid spell is removed as the mass healing option for levels 3-8. Cast with a 5th-level slot, it would on average heal 22.5 compared to 27.5 from Mass Cure Wounds, which is a small enough gap that I would consider keeping Mass Heal Word since it's only a Bonus Action to cast and is more flexible (it shouldn't be necessary to upcast it if you're near the end of a fight).
That said, I very much agree with you that I like the direction.
My main worry was that the buff to lay on hands makes it the best method of healing in the game essentially, so a buff to other healing I think was definitely necessary at the least
I think the best thing about Cure Wounds now is that the number of healing dice for the upcast spell roughly tracks with the number of PC hit dice for the level where you get the spell slot now. Previously, it was about half, and since most PCs have a positive Constitution increasing their health by 50%, the healing felt insignificant. Lay on Hands felt better because it also tracked with the number of hit dice (5 per level, about half a d10).
Now calculate it with Grave Domain Cleric…
I feel like part of goodberry's appeal was strictly providing more out of combat healing than cure wounds, but it doesn't do that anymore.
The other part of it's appeal was abusing it's 24 hour duration to cast it a bunch of times the night before to have a giant pool of out of combat healing, but idk, it kinda feels like an oversight. Like I have no idea if the designers thought "of course it should last 24 hours, it provides 24 hours worth of nourishment" or if the designers thought "wouldn't it be cool to have a healing spell you could cast yesterday?" and i've been in tables who figured RAI was the former, or that using it like the latter was somehow bad table manners, so they put limits on it like having them lose magic on a long rest, or having it lose magic if you cast the spell again so you can only do it with 10hp worth of extra healing.
Either way some adjustment could probably be good to give it a design neiche that we could actually all agree on
If not going to fix it by making it closer to 4E, though that would also rule, I think they could adjust the recovery system.
For example, what if you mark exhaustion whenever you come back up, or if your HP is 0 you have Resistance to healing effects? Healing can emphasize preservation and not getting knocked down in the first place.
Pathfinder 2E has the Wounded condition and has enemies who are damaged by Vitality healing effects as well, making area healing effects really handy.
But yeah the scaling for the spells could really use a second pass.
I have a campaign that runs for 6 years now and we tried out these revised spells and healing felt so much better. The party is level 18. The characters who are the 'healers" of the party managed to restore hit points much more consistently, to the point that it was the only reason why the blood hunter, who is the primary tank of the party, didn't went down in the encounter.
What's funny is Will (DnDShorts) did a video on healing a year ago where he pointed out that even in the DMG the curing spells are too weak. That cure wounds should be 1d10, not 1d8. I'm glad that we're seeing buffs.
I agree with you that the mass curing spells should be 2dX per spell level for an upcast.
We've actually homebrewed a bunch of the Healing Spells within our game to make them worthwhile in combat. Cure Wounds was more in line to what we did, and it seems to work fairly well without bogging down gameplay. Healing Word, though, upcasts better with upping creatures affected, not damage healed. So we got rid of Mass Healing Word and just had it upcast to 6 creatures at 3rd, 12 creatures at 5th, 20 creatures at 7th, and all creatures within range at 9th. (You could probably do a more granular progression at even levels if you wanted.) We haven't really used this one upcast as much, but I think it'd be cinematically cool to up a host of minions at 9th level (not that it'd be all that powerful with a well placed fireball). I realize WotC probably won't go the same route on Healing Word because they want to keep all spells from the PHB, but Mass Healing Word just seems to waste a spot that could be used on another spell.
I wasn't paying much attention to One D&D at first, so I missed the changes to Prayer of Healing, and all I have to say about that is, they really just took a 3rd level spell from XGE, improved it, and tacked the improved spell onto a 2nd level spell that already does healing. I love WotC sometimes lmao.
Maybe they could give mass healing word more range on upcast
I noticed a almost distinct lack of mention of the Beacon of Hope spell, which with the doubled dice could make a very effective in combat healing considering it does what the life clerics 17th level ability does except it's only a 3rd lvl concentration spell. That being said there are probably better ways to spend your concentration in combat just noting that.
In Mass Healing Word's defense, levels 5-8 are a pretty sugnificant portion of the game for most players. Since clerics are prepared casters, I don't think a 5th level spell being strictly better than its 3rd level counterpsrt is that much of a problem. Especially since you might still want to use mass healing word even at levels 9-12 since you might want to use your 5th-6th level spell slots on other things, like Summon Celestial.
I still wouldn’t go out of my way to upcast Healing Word, but if you’re out of 1st level slots then this makes it hurt a little less.
I like how the new healing word is roughly as strong as the old cure wounds
And new cure wounds is roughly as strong as well, it should be xD
Love the changes
Thanks Treantmonk!
It could be a class feature or part of the spells, but I would love "overhealing" to become temporary hp that last a short time, like maybe a minute. That would reduce the issue with dedicated healers do not know what to do in the round before people start taking damage.
It does make the spells stronger, but it also make them more interesting.
13:39 Wasn't the UA Aid spell dropped from playtesting, along with the UA Banishment, Guidance, Prayer of Healing, Resistance, and Spiritual Weapon spells, when the "Druid & Paladin" (UA23DP) article was released?
The UA versions of Aid, Banishment, Guidance, Payer of Healing, Resistance, and Spiritual Weapon all appeared in the "Rules Glossary" section of the "Cleric and Revised Species" (UA22CS) article, and the subsequent article, UA23DP, states in the change log of its "Rules Glossary" that "If an entry is removed from the glossary, that entry isn’t moving forward in the playtest; please use the relevant rule from the 2014 Player’s Handbook instead of the removed entry."
UA23DP does have its own "Spell Descriptions" section, unlike UA22CS & previous UA articles in this series, and no subsequent UA article has the above universal reversion language regarding their "Spell Descriptions" sections, so one could make the argument that WotC simply didn't bother or didn't think to separate out the spells in UA22CS into their own section and should be grandfathered into later playtests. However, I would argue that if that were the case, then WotC would (or rather, should) have copied the UA22CS spells into UA23DP's new "Spell Descriptions" section, and that since that didn't happen that UA22CS's spells were supposed to revert to their 2014 rules for playtest purposes upon the release of UA23DP.
I will also mention that there have been spell reversion/revision notes made post UA23DP for specific spells (EX: nullifying previous playtest smite spells for new playtest versions; EX: UA23PT7 "Player's Handbook Playtest 7" stating that Eldritch Blast & Hex returned to their 2014 PHB rules), though arguments can be made that this supports both the reversion & non-reversion of UA22CS's spells, so I will leave it at that.
However, if WotC did state somewhere other than in the articles themselves that UA22CS's spells never reverted to their 2014 version, I am fully willing to admit that I am wrong.
I can always count on Treantmonk to give an excellent breakdown on playtests and game mechanics :)
Worth noting that Mass Cure Wounds also has a 30' radius sphere at 60', whereas Mass Healing Word is effectively a 60' radius sphere at 0'. This means that while MCW is a little more restrictive in area (although 30' radius is still plenty), it can actually heal someone 50% further away than MHW can reach.
Also think a grave cleric might want to use upcast cure wounds on a downed party memember since max healing applies
My DM has let us run with the updated Prayer of Healing for a while. It is really nice for the style of campaign we have been in that has a lot of events with time pressure. One thing that a lot of people miss is that, unlike a short rest, you don't need to be stationary during the casting. This allows my paladin to reset the warlock and monk while we are on the move. I very much hope they keep the updates.
Thanks for the video. I always look forward to your perspective.
a big buff that my table does is make all healing based on HD. They don't use HD, they just recover equal to HD.
potions - 2 HD, then 2 more HD per tier of the drinker.
d4 spells - 1 HD per d4, d6 spells - 2 HD per d6, d8 spell - 3 HD per d8 of the receiver.
drinking a potion is bonus action, feeding a potion is an action, drinking and taking max healing is an action
This helped a lot in my games a lot in making healing meaningful
Here's an idea.
Healing spells can be cast on someone, and "stick" to them, not immediately resolving, but being resolved at any time the target likes as a free action.
Cure Light Wounds is no longer "meant" to be cast during battle, but can be basically an additional pool of bonus HP that can be discharged at will, cast before battle, or the start of the day, or whenever
A creature can have a single charge of healing at a time, when they would be healed while currently carrying a charge, they can choose which to immediately use.
So basically the old Aid?
@@fraidei2094
Kinda, but bigger numbers, and the added effects of spells like Heal available when they're most beneficial.
Could maybe justify the existence of more Healing + Upside spells, since being attatched to the heal makes the upside activate on command.
Oh wait, they changed the spells to abjuration school so that means, when you multiclass an alchemist artificer with an abjuration wizard he will have a lot of temp hp on that ward to shield their party :O
Mass Healing Word shines when combined with Channel Divinity: Preserve Life.
One thing i just noticed with conjure celestial is that you can, but don't have to heal people. So you can do on any turn they're in the AOE. And it's concentration so it sticks around. So you can save the once per cast heal till they're at zero hp, and pop them up at the start of their turn with some decent HP, and no action needed.
In general I like these changes. I think overall healing should be designed to keep a character up in combat rather than letting them get knocked out and bringing them back up with no ramifications to a person who was just knocked unconscious and dying - however you want to abstract hit points, knocked to zero is a potentially mortal wound. I do share Chris's concern that turning characters into heal-bots could turn combat into (more of) a slog, and also agree with him that these spells themselves don't do that.
I actually already planned to do that in my next campaign. There's a lore reason for it, but it's fun that this is close to canon
The biggest buff to healing would be a persistent debuff on getting taken to zero hp. Like a level of exhaustion or a wound system that makes characters a little weaker every time the heal pops them up. That combined with bigger dice sounds pretty good to me. On a different aspect of healing (the fun part), my favorite heals are aura of vitality and healing spirit. Even if the healing on a turn isn't as impactful you are contributing healing every turn for a relatively small investment. (And it's very potent in current 5e wait-till-zero healing)
I play a Stars Druid/Life Cleric at the moment and really like those buffs, because it would actually make healing in combat not such a waste of time and resources. It really sucks when you want to play a healer/support character, but by doing so you´re more of a burden on your party than anything else, because pumping out the highest amount of DPR you possibly can is almost always the best option...
There are some really potent support builds out there. It's specifically the White Mage "I want to spend my turn casting healing spells most of the time" playstyle that is purposely underpowered in 5e, and I do think the game is better for it--I don't think it's wise to go back to "ok who's stuck playing cleric" as the point of balance for healing.
But stuff like battlefield control wizards, push/pull builds like Dao Genie Warlock, out-of-combat heals like Prayer of Healing, accuracy and damage bonus things like Bless or Faerie Fire or Haste, Bardic Inspiration (especially the Glamour Bard's use of it), Aura of Protection, even just the occasional Silvery Barbs--all of this is very powerful support, often much more useful than just cranking out a ton of damage. I played in a campaign recently where the Wand of Web I found partway through was almost more useful than my entire character.
Dealing 20 DPR to an enemy that can't affect you because it's stuck in Rime's Binding Ice or Plant Growth is better than dealing 30 DPR to an enemy that can deal 30 back.
@@life-destiny1196 I always think there has to be a way to make the combat healer playstyle viable without making it mandatory. A Wizard flinging Fireballs at anything that moves is really strong, but nobody would get the idea to call a Fireball Wizard mandatory. How comes a healer would be if they were to be buffed?
I agree. I got really tired of minmaxers telling me that playing a healer in 5e is useless. I’m glad the changes have at least made that play-style a little more viable, but not so strong that if you don’t have it you get stomped.
So... you mentioned @14:05 that a number of players have requested Goodberry not grant the meal for a day feature. I would think a better redesign would be of the 10 berries you can choose to a number of them to heal 1 hit point OR be a single meal replacement. I think that would clean it up nicely. Two features available but each Goodberry does one or the other. If you want to make it more difficult, the caster has to decide at the time of casting what all of the berries can do. I think it always should have been a meal replacement instead of all the meals in a day replacement. (shrugs)
My hot take is that goodberry does not break survival campaigns the way people think it does, at least not on its own. The actual issue is that its competition on the first-level druid and ranger lists is pretty weak. If those characters had more useful things to do with their first-level spell slots, there'd be a much higher opportunity cost.
In any case, if you're running a style of campaign where you want food and water to be an issue, you should already be denying your players chances to rest most of the time--gritty realism variant resting being the easiest way to do that. Goodberry isn't going to negate the need to find food when it's three days away from civilization and your casters are clutching their last spell slot for the next dangerous beastie you come across.
Do you think in-combat healing being good is actually good for the game?
I can’t help but think all it will accomplish is slowing down combat even more. If you wanted healing to be engaging, it would need to do something like remove debilitating conditions alongside it (combat is sped up because those conditions are removed) or provide buffs (combat is sped up because of the buffs), I think straight healing numbers are a bad way of doing it.
As an example, Cure Wounds could provide 15ft of extra movement speed for the next turn. You can then get up from prone and get back into the fight essentially for free. Stuff like that, where the healing isn’t quite worth it unless the extra effect is also useful in that moment.
I don’t think there’s a system that actually does healing well. If it’s strong, it does the game down and or necessitates every party having a dedicated healer. If it’s too weak, then nobody uses it. If it does the weird 5e thing, then you get health yo yo-ing.
I think it’s very much a pick your poison kind of problem.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112I’m very uninformed about the state of other TTRPG designs, so maybe it’s naïve of me to say, but I really feel like a system that ties healing on as a minor part of buff/support spells would really work. You can heal much more actively and have a deliberate impact on the battlefield, but you still fulfill a healer role and inevitably that extra health will actually be important as well.
@@Capt.Fail.I think Icon by Massif Press takes the approach you’re talking about. The healing classes in that game usually heal by stealing HP from enemies to give to allies, or healing with bonus combat buffs. Been a while since I read through it, though.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 It really depends, because healing is extremely system dependent, so one system could do healing well for its specific niche, but be really terrible for any other system.
I'm currently playing a campaign using a system called Harnmaster. It's this really crunchy system, combat is designed to be deadly, and in-combat healing is non-existent. Basically you win combats through offense and mitigation, since fighting causes you to accumulate wounds and fatigue, which add penalties to your rolls, which causes you to roll worse, creating a feedback loop where combat's basically a race to the bottom. You lose combat by accumulating enough penalties that you either go into shock or your opponent is able to hit a vital area hard enough to basically kill you outright.
Outside of combat, fatigue goes away on its own with rest and eating, but you reduce your wound penalties through healing rolls, which represent your body's innate ability to repair itself. It's basically a d100 versus a target number that's a multiple of your endurance (with the multiple depending on the wound's severity). If you succeed on the healing roll, the wound's severity decreases by a single step, which in turn reduces the penalty to your other rolls. For serious wounds, it can take days, weeks, or even months of in-game time before you remove all the penalties. Receiving medical care (including through the Healing psychic power) doesn't actually heal your wounds, but will usually provide a bonus to your healing roll, or reduces the amount of time you need to wait before you attempt your next healing roll.
All of that works for that specific system, because it fits the harshness and extreme crunchiness of the overall design, but it would be absolutely terrible for basically any other game out there.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 This is even true for out of combat healing; either it matters and you need a healer, or it doesn't matter and you never need it. The fact that hp is essentially binary (you either have it or you don't) makes this problematic.
To solve this you need to make healing benefit even when the player would not have died without it. So, something like a wound system that made losing health confer penalties, and healing removed those by restoring health thus acting as a buff.
As it is, 5e basically dodges the whole healing issue by not making combat that dangerous and by not having any penalties for resting (which essentially acts like healing). Everyone is a healer, and no one needs a healer.
Good Berry. No more 1-day nourishment. That could be painful if eat 2 or more at once. Instead have it removed a level of exhaustion due to not eating/drinking.
Mass Healing Word only requires verbal components. Could be useful on a weapon focussed build that doesn't want war caster
I like to use mass healing word on my Arcana Cleric as it acts as a better dispel magic since it can dispel via spell breaker, heal me and allies, and leaves my action open to booming blade/green flame blade. (Yeah, melee cleric bad/unoptimized, but this table is balanced around lower power levels so I can get away with riding the moon druid’s saddle of the cavalier)
All of a sudden, I want a combined heal over cure and word. (2 x Level) d4 as an action at touch range. Then pick 2 aspects to improve per cast: d4 to d8, action to bonus action, or touch to range. On the one hand, it complicates one of the easiest entry-level spells. On the other, now Cure Wounds and Healing Word only take a single spell known and you can get to more interesting stuff
For healing word I'd rather have a different upcast than just more dice. I'm not sure what exactly, either more range or targets or something like that.
I always used the hit dice for healing, always made more sense that healing the barbarian should give more hp then the wizard. Me and my players always loved it including hp potions
Would love to see an instantaneous cleric spell that blasts enemies and heals your allies at the same time. Maybe that could be conjure celestial?
I really dislike healing in 5E. Options would really help and making better use of Hit Dice to differentiate the power sources from each other. For example, anything but divine healing actually needing hit dice to work with would be a very nice differentiation.
Can't believe they didn't buff Life Transference it's the most healing for a third level spell
I have a life domain cleric who specifically specializes in life transference to keep his low hp hex blade friend alive. They would all be dead without it.
I think that’s the point. Since it already heals a bunch, it doesn’t necessarily need the boost as much when compared to Cure Wounds and other spells
If this goes through WotC is absolutely going to need to give us more tough opponents!
The Verbal only component of the Healing Word spells is a big part of their allure to me. I can heal as long as I can speak.
The buff to healing spells is actually a good way to make sure that people don't end up playing classes with the ability to heal as healbots. Increasing the healing from each spell should free up slots for control and buff spells that would have been used previously to restore hp to characters taking damage.
The other advantage to buffing healing is that it gives design space for monsters to deal more damage per round. I don't think it's an accident that this is being considered at the time where the team is probably starting to look at what changes they might want to introduce in the 2024 Monster Manual because the 2024 Players Handbook playtest is winding down.
I always thought Goodberries would have worked better as like... adrenaline.
"Eating one Goodberry restores 1 hit point and removes 1 level of Exhaustion from the target for an hour. At the end of this hour that level of Exhaustion returns, but a creature that consumes another Goodberry extends the time before they regain it by another hour." Which still likely gives you an extra day to not die of exhaustion if you have a sleepless night or are in the freezing cold or are without a food/water source, but also helped against things like Sickening Radiance and Berserker rage exhaustion.
With the buff to Cure Wounds, I wish Healing Word would upcast to affect extra creatures. It still would be strictly worse than a Mass Healing Word at equal levels and just generally have a unique niche. Which every spell *should* have.
Thank you for your information video
How many times has this been posted? I swear you already talked about this. I'll keep watching.
I feel like the best buff to healing spells would be to bring back negative hit points. Keep death saves for at or just below 0 HP for that heroic struggling against death feel, but -20HP = insta-kill. It gives healers more of a reason to be healing mid combat rather than just waiting for someone to drop and then bringing them back
Big big fan of this change. Healing simply did not scale with monster damage with created a problem where you only healed to preserve action economy. If this plays out the way I think it will, I'd be 100% okay with additional changes to discourage letting people go unconscious in the first place.
You can boost healing spells, but unless something is done about making damage at low HP (1-20%) more risky, then it still doesn't matter. Because enemy damage will end up escalating too.
The only things that matter are; are they up? Can they withstand 1 hit? And are they full?
There's not any actual difference other than those
Loved this video.
Since healing feels less effective on higher levels of play, how about high level spells or subclass features that provide an additional effect to the target they healed, helping them prevent further damage in a round? Arcana Cleric's Spell Breaker is the best example for this where the healing can also save someone from a sticky situation if they're affected by a strong spell.
Maybe an aura-like spell that gives allies that are healed in the area a bonus to their AC or saving throws for one round; or a spell that gives allies that are healed an effect similar to the Evasion feature.
Do you think homebrewing mass cure wounds to start at level 1 for 1d8+mod would cause issues? I don't see a problem honestly and I think it would bring interesting new options at low level
I think a potentially nice buff would be to make the extra five heal at the next turn. It might be cumbersome, but it would provide longevity and value for a whole action.
I'm toying with a idea of a healing spell that does friendly fire! More healing at a lower level but when cast its a largish area spell that cures both friend and foe. Its fixing the bad guy. It does not harm undead as some healing spells do. I believe this is in one manga and a computer game already but it would take ages to check. I have nowhere to put it. I probably should suggest it for DC 20.
Agh, that Aid change screws up my Inspiring Leader/Mark of Hospitality Warlock with his chain pact pet walking around with a solid chunk of HP.
Clockwork soul is going to be a powerhouse healer now
So my party is using the buffed spells, and I finally got to use one:
Entire party got hit by a Great Death Dragon's Breath Weapon. Fortunately, I had Aura of Life up and halved the damage, but everyone took at least 13 damage (significantly better than we would have, but still a decent chunk), with the melee fighters having taken more damage fighting it.
One buffed Mass Cure Wounds and most of the party is back at full health. It was SO MUCH better than the old version's 3d8 would've gotten us. In fact I healed more than the max number the old Mass Cure Wounds could heal.
It made me feel so awesome to heal that much HP.
And probably over all a good thing, as the party is about to fight Lord Soth. As I'm a Grave Cleric, will see how things go if anyone hits zero.
I'd like to see Healing Word's range increase with upcasting
Would love to see a reaction cast healing feature. Make it like a cleric version of counter spell but for damage or a cleric spell that can give other creatures a Shield spell bonus.
Silvery Barbs is a fantastic reaction to affect ally HP. It isn't useful every round but an order cleric can make good use of the spell.
@@TheReedsofEnki ya but silvery barbs is banned for a lot of games.
You kind of get that from the Adept of the White Robes feat
I love the update to healing spells. I don’t see how D&D can fault the life cleric’s channel divinity power with these buffs
Does switching healing spells to abjuration from evocation make 1 to 3 level dip into cleric (life I guess) plus abjuration wizard x the best defensive wizard?
You should do a video comparing PF2E healing to 5e, and include the kineticist; I’m enjoying the wood/water combo.
Order Domain Clerics will be that much more fun with these healing buffs! Buffed heals and trigger an attack from a buddy :)
Dude! Abjurer Wizard with a dip or feat to grab Healing Word. Does that work?
Hey Chris ... off topic, but didn't know where else to post. I know you were traveling when BG3 came out, and you said that you weren't going to do ant videos, but would play the game offline. It would be kind of cool just to see a video of your thoughts on the game. I know there's a bunch of UA content and other videos you want to get to. I don't think a BG3 has to come out any time soon. But, I do value your opinion on such topics, and it would offer some interesting insights.
Anyways, thanks for all that you do.
I wonder if potions got a boost too.
Well you play a lot between 5th and 9th level. So there is a lot of playtime where Mass Cure Wounds is not an option, but Mass HEaling Word is. And sometimes a sittuation is screaming for a mass heal so several downed team members can stand up again. The tempes Cleric I'm currently playing is quite offensive minded and does not heal all tha often, but Healing Word and Mass Healing Word are ready to go (not yet Level 9). And there were sittuations where he had to use Mass Healing Word because the enemy is also allowed to use aoe ...
It’d be cool if inflict wounds and cure wounds were the same spell and used the same dice roll upcast the same. Similar to the monk hand of healing/harm.
I’m interested to see these changes and how they affect the game considering I enjoy the level of healing in 5e. Letting healers have too much power makes it so the only way to kill anyone is to solo target the healer. Having healing give someone just an extra attack or two they can tank before they go down lets attacks feel more lethal and makes you think smarter. These problems go both ways (player and dm) and I worry these healing spells could feel arduous as a player even trumping the feeling of using them yourself. I am absolutely open to seeing how these changes effect the game and actually really enjoy 2d8 or d4 for a first level spell slot especially at early levels.
When is the Scribe’s build video? Last one left off in a cliffhanger and I’m chomping at the bits in anticipation
Big boost to the Celestial warlock
I ended up adapting these rules partially: only adding one additional dice for level 1 spells, then 1 additional dice every level. I'm kinda wary of the heal bot, my players tend to think that they "NEED" a healer (Even tho I've been tweaking rules and encounters so they only need heals in battle).
What if healing word upcasting would also increase the range?
It looks like mass cure wounds is actually less range than mass healing word. MCW lists a range of 60 ft. but the description states up to six creatures in a 30-foot radius sphere, MHW only lists a range of 60 ft.
If we feel that the upcasting amount on Mass Cure Wounds isn't enough, but doubling it would be too much, then my suggestion would be instead of 1d8 per level, make it 2d4 per level.
Would rather see the standard up cast dice but with modifier added for every up cast. So up cast cure wounds level 3 be 3d8 + modx3. 14:37
Do you think adding resistance to damage for one turn to healing word would fix the issue of being downed again the next turn and make it more worth while to upcast?
Assuming Gift of the Ever-Living Ones makes it into 2024, Cure Wounds will be quite amusing for a Celestial Warlock.
what about a solution where for each spell slot level you expend you get to add your spellcasting ability mod again? for example, a 1st level cure wounds adds their spellcasting ability mod once but a 3rd level cure wounds adds it two more times?
I've been doubling the dice in my latest campaign. Then my stars druid with some staff that helped boost his healing went and healed 3 players for like 40hp each in 1 turn when I had spent two whole rounds wacking on them only to have them all healed back to full HP at lv 6. I knew he had spec'ed into healing but hadn't realized he had figured out that extreme of a combo, idk if his staff was homebrew, I think it was raw and I let him enhance the enchantment as a reward for finishing the lost mine module before we moved on to the main story of the campaign. I let them restore to forge to make their gear permanent +1 stuff, and if it was already magical, they could get another effect instead.
Honestly, I find the healing fine and would still let him use that combo but it was rather annoying that they finished a deadly fight agaist 8 vampire spawn with practically no injuries and only down half their slots. That's mostly my fault, !but still, it makes me realize I need to over tune all of their encounters going forward.
I think the scaling is fine, because in practice a higher level means another 3 to 6 d8's of total healing. But maybe knocking each down a level and a dice would be kinder; I don't think 4th level is inappropriate for a mass healing spell.
I do wonder how mass healing spells would work if they gave you a pool of dice that you then decided how to share at casting, with an upper limit to the number of dice you can roll per character. Eg, a pool of 20d8 dice for mass cure wounds, but no more than 5d8+mod to a single creature and no limit to the number of creatures healed. Idk, just spit balling.
When you need to double the dice to just generally move further towards "good" that just shows how bad it was before.
they got it just right with Healing Word and Cure Wounds, but imo Mass Cure Wounds should be 6d8 +2d8 per upcast level, and Mass Healing Word should be 2d4 +2d4 per upcast level.