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AlphaDog posted:In 3.5, why would you not be making cure wands? Cure wands were one of the early things that jumped out at me as a must-do before I even got to play the game. The worst thing about 3e magic items was that cure potions were an awful way of healing.
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Nov 9, 2015 03:40
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Cure spells were an awful way of healing.
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Nov 9, 2015 03:49
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fool_of_sound posted:Well, the DMG actually says six to eight encounters. But the problems are that six encounters is still very likely to take multiple sessions to run because of general combat speed, casters become more potent with fewer encounters, and that without being able to know what's coming next, it's very easy for players to end up with too many or two few resources for a given fight, and either chump it or have nothing to do. To be fair -- the book says "six to eight medium to hard encounters" and explicitly says more if they're easy, or fewer if they're harder. If there are assumptions being made, they seem to be pretty darn loose and explicitly flexible. What it does say below that is that the encounters should total something averaging 1,200 XP/pc for a 3rd level party, 3,500 XP/pc for a 5th level one, or 5,000 XP/pc for a 7th level party. Briefly looking at the XP by CR table, that's something like a 5th level party facing 3 CR4 monsters, 7-8 CR2 monsters, or 18 (lol) CR1 monsters per player. A single day for a party of four 5th level PCs, according to the book, might look like: 12x CR1 4x CR1 + 2x CR4 <Short Rest> 6x CR2 4x CR3 <Short Rest> 1x CR6 fool_of_sound posted:Wand of Cure Light Wounds cost less that 2gp/hp of healing, or less than 1 if you're crafting them yourself. That's chump change past level 6 or so. That seems to be balanced by a (very) old-school idea of the money economy mattering. A wand of cure light wounds looks like it runs around 750gp for 50 charges if you bought it, which I guess is cheap but seems like it would add up if you relied on it heavily. I mean or your DM could just not let you find them/craft them willy nilly, but then you're talking about relying on DM discretion. In any case, I'm in no way here to defend 3e. I can see how using healing surges would be appealing in comparison to this.
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Nov 9, 2015 04:00
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Hubis posted:So point by point: 1. Clerics were no longer healbots in 4e more because of the way their abilities were structured - hitting a dude lets an ally spend a healing surge. You're right that this doesn't necessarily imply the use of Healing Surges as a mechanic, although part of it also comes from how Surges guarantee that "hit a dude, heal a friend" will mean that the heal-a-friend part will always generate a level of healing that's actually meaningful. 4. Surges are different from the Hit Dice system because Surges were an absolute cap on healing, whereas Hit Dice aren't. A party with two Clerics will arguably have more staying power than a party with one, or even none. This is an interesting discussion, by the way, so I hope you don't take this as trying to shoot down your points or being argumentative. I think we're all mostly in agreement that there's more than a few disconnects between what D&D used to be, what D&D is, and what people use D&D for.
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Nov 9, 2015 04:30
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fool_of_sound posted:e: And I think there's a more efficient version using some sort of regeneration spell that came later. Lesser Vigor, spell compendium. Fast Healing 1 for 10 rounds, equaling 10 hp per charge. A wand of it is 500 hp, making the wand 1.5 gp per 1 hp at full retail price, half if you craft it, compared to the wand of CLW's average 5.5 hp per charge and ~2.7 gp per 1 hp. The CLW wand tops out at 1.666...:1 if you get 8 HP per d8. The only downside to the lesser vigor wand is that it takes longer.
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Nov 9, 2015 04:48
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gradenko_2000 posted:1. Clerics were no longer healbots in 4e more because of the way their abilities were structured - hitting a dude lets an ally spend a healing surge. You're right that this doesn't necessarily imply the use of Healing Surges as a mechanic, although part of it also comes from how Surges guarantee that "hit a dude, heal a friend" will mean that the heal-a-friend part will always generate a level of healing that's actually meaningful. Yeah, I just feel like so much of how clerics worked differently in 4e had as much to do with their decision to change the powers as it did the fundamental HP/Surge mechanic. I could see them working similarly with a 5e style system as well. The hp scaling of spells is a little weird. On the one hand you're right -- in 4e, one surge is 1/4 of your max HP, so something that 'heals' a friend for 1 surge will take them up 1/4 HP whether they're a Wizard or a Barbarian. I'm not sure if this is better, worse, or just different, though. If you don't look at HP as "% total" but rather "how many hits can I take before I go down", then someone with higher max HP just starts with being able to take more hits than someone with lower max HP. In that view, having a spell heal a globally fixed amount (1d8+1 or what have you) rather than a proportional amount (1 surge/HD) makes sense, too: it's restoring your ability to take 1 hit (or however much that amount corresponds to). Whatever your maximum number of hits doesn't necessarily matter. With the surge system, it's actually kind of less beneficial (in an abstract sense) to heal your Wizard instead of your Fighter, because you're getting less for your action. Of course that might be a good tension, since it's likely the Wizard is going to be needing the healing more anyways, so it becomes a bit of a balance -- heal the guy who can't take many more hits, or the guy who can take a bunch more hits but on whom the spell would be more effective? gradenko_2000 posted:4. Surges are different from the Hit Dice system because Surges were an absolute cap on healing, whereas Hit Dice aren't. A party with two Clerics will arguably have more staying power than a party with one, or even none. Hmm. So it seems to me that the real net effect of the Healing Surge system is that it limits your ability to focus healing resources on a specific PC. The guy with the best AC/HP will be able to tank a lot of damage, but you're not going to be able to just commit to him taking every hit while your heal-bot keeps hip topped up. I could see this affecting decision making and story a few ways. I could imagine it playing like the "healing" he gets just keeps him from going down immediately, but he's still drained enough that he's going to feel the hit enough that he'll have to take a rest sooner. This is opposed to something like a 5e system where the 'magical' healing his ally gives him drains a resource from the ally, meaning they are the ones who will wear out sooner and have fewer options at the moment. Of course these would be Encounter powers in 4e, but Spell slots in 3e (and maybe something restored on a Short Rest in 5e) so how the power usage impacts the group will also be very different. The net effect on the party might be similar -- a resource is consumed -- but the way it affects play after the fight seems like it would be a little different. gradenko_2000 posted:This is an interesting discussion, by the way, so I hope you don't take this as trying to shoot down your points or being argumentative. No problem here -- I'm definitely finding it interesting too, and hoping I'm not coming across as contrarian or obstinant here. It's always good to be able to have serious chats about elfgames without people getting upset   
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Nov 9, 2015 05:04
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Hubis posted:That seems to be balanced by a (very) old-school idea of the money economy mattering. A wand of cure light wounds looks like it runs around 750gp for 50 charges if you bought it, which I guess is cheap but seems like it would add up if you relied on it heavily. I mean or your DM could just not let you find them/craft them willy nilly, but then you're talking about relying on DM discretion. The Wealth By Level table includes 'you're expect to spend this much on consumables from encounter treasure each level', and it works out to the wands not even dipping into your permanent cash.
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Nov 9, 2015 06:36
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Tunicate posted:The Wealth By Level table includes 'you're expect to spend this much on consumables from encounter treasure each level', and it works out to the wands not even dipping into your permanent cash. Yep, it's one of those silly results that probably wasn't intended but that is allowed and even encouraged by the way the rest of the game's rules interact. I remember it being one of the things people trotted out "...but a good DM wouldn't..." for at the time.
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Nov 9, 2015 07:17
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I think the beauty of the surge system is that it separated the encounter-by-encounter tension of 'will you die?' from the hour by hour 'can you continue?' tension. Yeah, every fight starts at full HP - but then when an enemy hits you in the head for half of your health bar it's considerably less bullshit in the long term since that doesn't stop you from getting into a bar fight six hours later and yet there's still a concern in this encounter, right now that you might get hit a second time. I think the idea of Wizard surges being less valuable than Warden surges or whatever is an interesting one, since Wizard surges represent fewer total 'hits' from enemy combatants. But if you think about it you have to kind of take the system as a whole; sure, healing the Wizard is less 'valuable' than healing the Barbarian, but if the Defender is doing her job than the Wizard won't be getting hit as much as she is anyway. A well oiled team has to 'waste' fewer HP by healing the 'wrong' person which is sort of baked into HP/surge values and also number of surges per class overall.
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Nov 9, 2015 07:54
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Mendrian posted:I think the beauty of the surge system is that it separated the encounter-by-encounter tension of 'will you die?' from the hour by hour 'can you continue?' tension. Yeah, every fight starts at full HP - but then when an enemy hits you in the head for half of your health bar it's considerably less bullshit in the long term since that doesn't stop you from getting into a bar fight six hours later and yet there's still a concern in this encounter, right now that you might get hit a second time. I agree. The Fighter has a health bar that they'll work with during the fight, and then they have two more health bars in the tank. While there's still some crossover in terms of the Fighter tapping into their tank via the Leader healing them, it's definitely different from a Fighter that just has three times the HP flat-out.
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Nov 9, 2015 08:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:I agree. The Fighter has a health bar that they'll work with during the fight, and then they have two more health bars in the tank. Yeah, a fighter with 50 HP and 100 HP in healing surges can be endangered in a single fight, but still take more hits than the 25 hp wizard. While simultaneously healing more in between fights, as suits their role. A fighter with 150 HP isn't going to feel threatened by anything that wouldn't overkill the wizard.
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Nov 9, 2015 08:19
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Been thinking about HP mechanics in general, and I've been wondering if things would be vastly improved if you just straight up turned "Hit Points" into "Luck Points". That is, the mechanic doesn't involve any direct physical damage at all until you reach 0, at which point it reflects the character finally taking a lethal blow. Anything above that and your character isn't suffering any actual wounds beyond surface cuts and scrapes. "Healing spells" would actually be more like blessings from the gods: they don't actually repair any physical damage, they just give you more protection from that possible fatal strike. Same with a Warlord's battle cry, or a Bard's song. And healing potions would just be straight-up alcohol. Most adventurers are just drunks who hang out in taverns anyway, right? Now there's actually a mechanical benefit to hitting the pub before the big dungeon crawl. Simian_Prime fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Nov 9, 2015 |
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Nov 9, 2015 08:43
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Your description of Luck Points is already what HP is, mechanically.
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Nov 9, 2015 08:45
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that's all fluff, and basically is in the rules, grogs just conveniently ignore that because reasons
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Nov 9, 2015 08:45
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Generic Octopus posted:Your description of Luck Points is already what HP is, mechanically. Then why is the game still dependent on healing magic (as in "repairs your meat")?
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Nov 9, 2015 08:47
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Simian_Prime posted:Then why is the game still dependent on healing magic (as in "repairs your meat")? Because "restores HP" is for gamist swine, and we need ~natural language~
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Nov 9, 2015 08:48
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P.d0t posted:Because "restores HP" is for gamist swine, and we need ~natural language~ gently caress that. I want my healing potions to be "literal bottles of rotgut dwarven whiskey". Hell, now I want to make liquor and market it as "Cleric in a Bottle."
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Nov 9, 2015 08:51
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That's already what Hit Points are: Gygax wrote at length about how only the first 1d6 or so HP actually represent physical wounds: the rest is your skill at defending yourself from taking a lethal blow, so going from 100/100 HP to 75/100 HP is you becoming more tired, or perhaps taking a bruise, or perhaps just becoming a little less lucky. Gygax absolutely scoffed at the idea that HP stood for anything else - if a single blow from a sword (1d6-1d8 damage) could kill a Man (1d6 HP) in one go, and HP stood for meat points, it'd be ridiculous to think about a man that could absorb more gaping chest wounds than even what a rhino could survive! Simian_Prime posted:gently caress that. I want my healing potions to be "literal bottles of rotgut dwarven whiskey". My headcanon is that healing potions are bottles of Red Bull, and healing prayers really do give you wings!
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Nov 9, 2015 08:53
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Well, hell that was all over 4E. Warlords made you feel better by giving a good speech which only made sense with the luck/morale version of Hit Points instead of the meat version.
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Nov 9, 2015 08:53
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I'm pretty sure 5e never even says what hp is beyond "measure of toughness." The Cure spell also literally just "restores hp".
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Nov 9, 2015 08:56
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Generic Octopus posted:I'm pretty sure 5e never even says what hp is beyond "measure of toughness." The Cure spell also literally just "restores hp". If your game has Hit Points which get reduced when you are Hit by the amount for which you are Damaged, and you didn't really mean that hit points were a measure of the literal damage you can take from literally getting hit, then you need to loving say so.
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Nov 9, 2015 09:04
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Simian_Prime posted:Then why is the game still dependent on healing magic (as in "repairs your meat")? Serious answer, because traditionally the only things that restored hitpoints in various early editions of D&D were curative magic spells and bedrest. Gygax weighed in on the matter and all, but in the actual text of the game the only real tools that he and various other writers gave players to interact with hitpoints were A). hitting people with swords and B). spells with names like Cure Light Wounds. Gygax may have always intended HP to be a mixture of luck and panache and cosmetic flesh wounds leading up to the one mortal blow that actually lands but the game itself never really provided a lot of emphasis to support that and the language used strongly implied that hitpoint restoration was a matter of healing wounds, not restoring luck and moxie.
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Nov 9, 2015 09:10
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gradenko_2000 posted:My headcanon is that healing potions are bottles of Red Bull, and healing prayers really do give you wings! So do the monsters drink... Monster? 
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Nov 9, 2015 09:43
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Kai Tave posted:Serious answer, because traditionally the only things that restored hitpoints in various early editions of D&D were curative magic spells and bedrest. Gygax weighed in on the matter and all, but in the actual text of the game the only real tools that he and various other writers gave players to interact with hitpoints were A). hitting people with swords and B). spells with names like Cure Light Wounds. Gygax may have always intended HP to be a mixture of luck and panache and cosmetic flesh wounds leading up to the one mortal blow that actually lands but the game itself never really provided a lot of emphasis to support that and the language used strongly implied that hitpoint restoration was a matter of healing wounds, not restoring luck and moxie. I mean, keep in mind, clerics literally weren't even a class at first. It was fighters and wizards, and then he just started making up whatever people asked for. Literally playing as a vampire came before clerics appeared as a class (and clerics were an actual reaction TO the vampire)
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Nov 9, 2015 10:40
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There's an old Dragon Magazine article where Gygax wrote about why the D&D spell system was designed it was. He initially considered a mana/spell point-based system, but decided against it, saying that it'd be too tedious and fiddly to keep track of and it'd be make Magic-Users far too powerful because of the flexibility that it would afford them. "Vancian" casting was supposed to be easier to track because you'd just cross off a spell once you'd used it, and by forcing the Magic-User to commit specific spells to specific spell slots, they'd be significantly less versatile. What's interesting is how he initially refers to this as a mnemonic power system. It wasn't Vancian at first, that was just the thing he called it as to create an in-universe explanation for the way magic worked in D&D. He even goes on to say that he actually diverges from Vance's original material by quite a bit when he added the need for Verbal, Somatic and Material requirements for spells, but he felt like he needed to add these in so that you could stop a caster from casting spells by silencing them, jostling them (or worse, usually) or removing access to their spellbook and/or bag of trinkets. I guess what I'm getting at is that Vancian casting was just as much of a game-mechanics-comes-first, game-balance-comes-first, game-design-comes-first decision as anything else, but since A. Gygax expended enough prose to demonstrate how it worked in-character and B. it came first in the decades-long game of telephone that is "traditional D&D", it's a lot more acceptable than any other new thing that has been chucked into the game since then, even if it's just as "gamist" as reducing the accountancy of camping supplies and first-aid attempts into "Healing Surges"
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Nov 9, 2015 11:13
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Going from "Cleric spends entire turn healing a guy" to "Cleric hits somebody and heals a guy in same turn" to "Cleric CAN hit somebody and heal a guy in the same turn, but the healing sucks, so they'll probably just spend their entire turn healing a guy" was a big step backwards for clerics, incidentally.
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Nov 9, 2015 12:25
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Gort posted:Going from "Cleric spends entire turn healing a guy" to "Cleric hits somebody and heals a guy in same turn" to "Cleric CAN hit somebody and heal a guy in the same turn, but the healing sucks, so they'll probably just spend their entire turn healing a guy" was a big step backwards for clerics, incidentally. Why is that, do you think? I agree with you, I'm just curious what it is about healing that makes it not "fun" as opposed to dealing damage, doing crowd control, warlord-ing extra moves/attacks for people, general buffs, etc. The obvious answer is that (most of) those other things are pro-active and actually winning the fight/affecting the world, while being a healer is just kind of keeping things going -- you are rarely if ever the one actually defeating the villain, you're just along for the ride (even if it couldn't have been done without you). Of course the counter there is that I do know people who are more than gleeful to play a healer, as they seem to really respond to the gratitude of other players' sighs of relief when they hand out heals more than the personal achievement of downing a foe -- I think there's definitely an argument to be made that it's a class for a specific personality type. The problem is when that isn't accounted for well in the game design, and when magical healing becomes a necessity within the system but no one in your particular group really enjoys (or at least wants) that kind of play.
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Nov 9, 2015 13:45
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Simian_Prime posted:So do the monsters drink... Monster? Wands of Lesser Vigor are obviously vigorettes, and every half decent adventurer has one tucked behind their ear for a pick-me-up after a fight. Nine out of ten clerics recommend smoking vigorettes.
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Nov 9, 2015 13:53
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Hubis posted:Why is that, do you think? I agree with you, I'm just curious what it is about healing that makes it not "fun" as opposed to dealing damage, doing crowd control, warlord-ing extra moves/attacks for people, general buffs, etc. The obvious answer is that (most of) those other things are pro-active and actually winning the fight/affecting the world, while being a healer is just kind of keeping things going -- you are rarely if ever the one actually defeating the villain, you're just along for the ride (even if it couldn't have been done without you). IMO, it more has to do with the environment of the tabletop game and the design of the act of healing than anything else: I've played healers and support characters in MMOs and MOBAs and Team Fortress and the likes, and there's an element of skill involved in all those cases: How do I make my mana last the whole fight? How do I balance between the slow-but-efficient heal and the fast-but-expensive heal? How closely do I stick to my healing target so that I don't get whacked myself? When do I back off? When I do heal myself instead of my partner? When I do heal the Rogue that's taken some incidental/cleave damage instead of the tank that's being constantly attacked? Those sorts of questions are interesting, but they're not present in the game of "Cure Light Wounds, done" and then waiting another 30s-2 minutes for your turn to come around again. At the same time though, trying to inject that same kind of skillful healing is tricky in a turn-based game with a premium on extra arithmetic, so the easy way out is to just make it "free" while you do all the things that people already enjoy anyway, such as hitting dudes in the face. There's a D&D-derivative I found somewhere on the internet that sort of toys with the idea though: the Cleric selects a friendly target on their turn. At the start of the Cleric's next turn, that target gets healed, unless the Cleric took any damage between designating the target and the start of their next turn. That makes healing more of a choice. You either stand in the back and guarantee that your heals are going off, but that's all you're doing, or you wade in with the rest of the group but your healing can swing between inconsistent to non-existent depending on how much of a dick the DM is in attacking and how much of a situation you can engineer where you can't be hit even when you're in the front lines. EDIT: Not to belabor the point, but there's also the mutability (?) of a player's health in other games compared to D&D. Healing is a game unto itself as you manage the up-and-down of the HP of various players at various rates, whereas the role of health and spell slots in D&D is tied closely enough to the overall design that it has to be strictly rationed. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Nov 9, 2015 |
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Nov 9, 2015 14:19
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I reckon it's because being a passive hitpoint regeneration battery just isn't all that exciting. Sure, you're necessary (though this necessity could easily be removed through game design whereby characters were responsible for their own hitpoints) but at the end of the day all you're doing is enabling the heroic deeds of others, not really performing any of your own - your primary utility can be replaced with a magic item, and often is, in campaigns where nobody wants to play the cleric.
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Nov 9, 2015 14:44
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One other reason I think it is a step backwards in game design is that the "Hit Someone, Heal Buddy" system that had been created had the in-game crunch to support a bunch of the different kinds of cleric people enjoyed playing. There's "But I Want To Heal The World!" backline heal battery materials, so that the folks who enjoy hearing those relieved sighs can still hear them. There's also things for the folks who want to walk forwards, thump a monster in the face, and have their god so pleased at the face-thumping that your buddy gets healthier. Heck, you can play a Cleric that does nothing but fire lasers of God-Beams, healing your friends and harming your foes while acting like an angry, drunken, dwarven artillery piece. 5e kind of allows this; but it's back to the 3.5 philosophy with regards to Cleric Design. "Sure, you can do all of this cool stuff. But you're the only one who can heal people, so either hope you have a really understanding group that doesn't mind going healerless when they've got a healer class, or resign yourself to the Healing Battery." Clerics were unstoppable juggernauts in 3.5, if you built them properly; but I can't count the number of groups who were outright baffled when I'd turn up with a cleric of Plague and Orc domains, who hadn't prepared healing spells. To them, a Cleric in the party meant "Build yourself around the idea of having the Healing Battery." and not "Holy hell, Nightsticks were a really dumb item to be made, and please stop solving problems by having a swarm of rats devour the problem."
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Nov 9, 2015 17:18
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Bassetking posted:I can't count the number of groups who were outright baffled when I'd turn up with a cleric of Plague and Orc domains, who hadn't prepared healing spells. To them, a Cleric in the party meant "Build yourself around the idea of having the Healing Battery." and not "Holy hell, Nightsticks were a really dumb item to be made, and please stop solving problems by having a swarm of rats devour the problem." That just seems like a terrible waste to have all this DM fiat and still not accommodate the tabletop equivalent of a Shadow Priest and a Ret Paladin.
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Nov 9, 2015 17:46
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Covok posted:Is there a 5e character builder? Since no-one addressed this that I noticed: no, it doesn't. They tried to make one but the comp-any over-promised, under-delivered, pulled out and then failed to kickstart their character builder for PF. Wizards have since C&Ded every credible 5e builder that has been released AFAIK. Yes, this is colossally stupid of them.
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Nov 9, 2015 18:17
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thespaceinvader posted:Since no-one addressed this that I noticed: no, it doesn't. They tried to make one but the comp-any over-promised, under-delivered, pulled out and then failed to kickstart their character builder for PF. Wizards have since C&Ded every credible 5e builder that has been released AFAIK. Well, there is one, but it is also colossally expensive for such a thing: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/stor...m_campaign=WoTC $50 for just stuff that is in the first PHB. I'm not certain if errata is included. This $50 also doesn't include the normal fee to have an active account on FantasyGrounds which can run from 4/10 (player/GM) bucks a month or 40/150 for lifetime. So, it is officially licensed and exists, but is such a bad value if all you want is a character generator.
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Nov 9, 2015 18:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:That just seems like a terrible waste to have all this DM fiat and still not accommodate the tabletop equivalent of a Shadow Priest and a Ret Paladin. Or hell, even a Disc priest what with the whole smite to heal thing.
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Nov 9, 2015 18:27
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Covok posted:Is there a 5e character builder? Others have covered Fantasy Grounds, the Wizards Approved (and annoyingly expensive) solution to this issue. Beyond that, there's Beyond Tabletop, which looks to have some pre-entered stuff but you still have to do a decent amount of manual work. Other than that, the only things I've found have been Excel spreadsheets with macros that may or may not get taken down by Wizards Legal for having too much info, and various other generators like Pathguy's generator that did get taken down, and then re-implemented with only the Basic Set rules.
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Nov 9, 2015 18:42
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The problem with healing battery clerics is that you serve as a long-term preventative measure. Sacrificing your turns to gradually make everyone's HP go back up is mostly mindless and doesn't have a lot of impact. You could take no actions at all and walk around granting a potent defensive aura to all of your allies and accomplish the same goal. The inclusion of healing as a class-specific feature seems pointless unless it's represented as clutch intervention that bails someone out of a dangerous situation, especially since the only point of HP that matters is the last one. Regarding HP as a measure of stamina and the ability to overcome pain, it would help if the system reinforced that idea more. Features with names like "Second Wind" recovering HP help with that, while things with names like "Cure Wounds" doing the same does not help. Similarly, an attack will "hit" or "miss", rather than "succeed" or "fail". Pillars of Eternity had an injury system that helped to reinforce the concept; When you were knocked the hell out during a fight, you came back up with bruised ribs or a sprained ankle, instead of missing limbs.
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Nov 9, 2015 18:51
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Hubis posted:Why is that, do you think? I agree with you, I'm just curious what it is about healing that makes it not "fun" as opposed to dealing damage, doing crowd control, warlord-ing extra moves/attacks for people, general buffs, etc. The obvious answer is that (most of) those other things are pro-active and actually winning the fight/affecting the world, while being a healer is just kind of keeping things going -- you are rarely if ever the one actually defeating the villain, you're just along for the ride (even if it couldn't have been done without you). Because "sit back and heal everyone until you run out of heals" is a fairly mindless and often very thankless task. There's nothing really tactically interesting about it most of the time...oh, that guy's lowest on HP, better heal him, done. And the game expects someone to be the healbot especially now that things have been rejiggered so that the Cleric is really the only game in town for regular healing short of the GM giving you a steady infusion of magical bandaids quote:Of course the counter there is that I do know people who are more than gleeful to play a healer, as they seem to really respond to the gratitude of other players' sighs of relief when they hand out heals more than the personal achievement of downing a foe -- I think there's definitely an argument to be made that it's a class for a specific personality type. The problem is when that isn't accounted for well in the game design, and when magical healing becomes a necessity within the system but no one in your particular group really enjoys (or at least wants) that kind of play. Every RPG is going to exclude someone's preferences by dint of not being an all-encompassing omnigame capable of satisfying everyone at once, but I'm willing to bet money that for every person out there who thinks playing a walking heal-turret is the best thing ever that ten other people want nothing to do with the Cleric for that exact reason. And "isn't accounted for well in the game design but becomes a necessity in the system" pretty much sums up Next's take on the situation. In a game where the expected pacing is "6-8 combat encounters a day between long rests" then anything that's designed to keep a character doing something that isn't also contributing to the killing of enemies just makes those 6-8 combat encounters drag out that much longer, in a game where one of the complaints from people playing and running it is "combat still takes too long for what it is." You could, by the way, play a completely healing-focused "pacifist Cleric" in 4E, not straight out of the core PHB1 but they did eventually introduce the option to do so, focusing on healing and buffs/debuffs. Properly made you could put out some truly ridiculous amounts of hitpoint restoration...but it turns out that there's an upper limit of usefulness on handing out hitpoints and that it's often better (and better for a 4E character's ability to keep fighting throughout the day) to bring fights to an end quicker by defeating the enemies than it is to hang back and continually pump hitpoints into people.
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Nov 9, 2015 19:08
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I'm not arguing against the healbot badness, but people keep saying Clerics are the ones who are dedicated healers. Can't Bards and Druids, and to a lesser extent, Rangers and Paladins also contribute pretty significantly to healing? In the 5e games I've played, the answer is yes to all of the above.
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Nov 9, 2015 19:42
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Kibner posted:Well, there is one, but it is also colossally expensive for such a thing: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/stor...m_campaign=WoTC Wait what when the hell did that happen.
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Nov 9, 2015 19:47
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