I "Don't" Need Healing

[AIR]

With concentration rules, strong potions that you can throw and multiple actions - felt like having a "Healer" was pointless. Maybe it's 5e rules, maybe it's the 4 man party or maybe the game is just too easy for CRPG fans.

I mean, I remember my Storm Ranger in pathfinder taking 3 turns to start attacking (a lot of self buffs). In BG3, Barbarian feels horrible just spending one turn to rage early on.

What composition you guys ended up with?

[AIR]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von jk2l:

My cleric genocides the whole goblin camp with spirit guardian.

"What healer?"

Exactly. Four man party, disease / poison / curse having 0 impact, it works much better having a full offensive team.

Game is easy, and that is sad.

[yuzhonglu]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 4X:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von yuzhonglu:

Never had that issue. Don't know what you're doing wrong, but her concentration is almost never broken. Also bless is a level 1 spell so it's not big deal.

They also get hero's feast at level 11. Most OP spell ever.

Are you playing on Tactician? Because NPC's always go to break concentration on this difficulty, every time they can. And don't get me wrong, but keeping the concentration slot occupied by bless 1 (2 actually, if you are gonna hit 4 targets) and not targeting anything else feels... Weak.

Bless by itself has the effect of making the other three party members 20% stronger (from a combination of higher saves and more accuracy).

That spell by itself means a cleric is already 60% of a party member just by standing there.

Then you get hero's feast. And that's it. You're done. The cleric is now doing just as much as any other party member. They can also cast freedom of movement on everyone, which makes them immune to paralyze and hamstring and what not. And they can summon a deva, which is like a level 4 paladin.

Once those buffs are cast, you can just sit the cleric in the back with 25 AC. No enemy is going to target them. And the cleric is providing enough buffs to justify their spot in the party even if they do nothing else in combat.

Furthermore, if you have a lightning caster in the party, the cleric can just sit there and "create water."

[cfehunter]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von yuzhonglu:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 4X:

Are you playing on Tactician? Because NPC's always go to break concentration on this difficulty, every time they can. And don't get me wrong, but keeping the concentration slot occupied by bless 1 (2 actually, if you are gonna hit 4 targets) and not targeting anything else feels... Weak.

Bless by itself has the effect of making the other three party members 20% stronger (from a combination of higher saves and more accuracy).

That spell by itself means a cleric is already 60% of a party member just by standing there.

Then you get hero's feast. And that's it. You're done. The cleric is now doing just as much as any other party member. They can also cast freedom of movement on everyone, which makes them immune to paralyze and hamstring and what not.

You can just sit the cleric in the back with 25 AC. No enemy is going to target them. And the cleric is providing enough buffs to justify their spot in the party.

Bless is only helpful if you're having trouble hitting things, it doesn't add any damage. You've got plenty of options to get advantage on enemies without it and once you're having no trouble hitting things then it would be better to have a fourth person throwing out big hits instead of giving you an accuracy buff you don't need.

[jk2l]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 4X:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von jk2l:

My cleric genocides the whole goblin camp with spirit guardian.

"What healer?"

Exactly. Four man party, disease / poison / curse having 0 impact, it works much better having a full offensive team.

Game is easy, and that is sad.

My favorite setup, spirit guardian, wall of fire, guardian of faith.

And gloomstalker and other just shooting across the room

Love to watch them run across the room just to get burn

[Quillithe]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von yuzhonglu:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von 4X:

Until your concentration gets broken, or you have to concentrate on another spell. Unreliable.

Never had that issue. Don't know what you're doing wrong, but her concentration is almost never broken. Also bless is a level 1 spell so it's not big deal.

They also get hero's feast at level 11. Most OP spell ever. Immunity to fear, poison, disease, provides an average of 11 health to all party members and gives advantage to wisdom saving throws.

You can also use mass healing word eventually to apply bless to everyone (with the right item) for a bit with a bonus action while healing a little and leaving concentration free. Honestly for harder fights that's my preferred technique anyway.

[yuzhonglu]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von cfehunter:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von yuzhonglu:

Bless by itself has the effect of making the other three party members 20% stronger (from a combination of higher saves and more accuracy).

That spell by itself means a cleric is already 60% of a party member just by standing there.

Then you get hero's feast. And that's it. You're done. The cleric is now doing just as much as any other party member. They can also cast freedom of movement on everyone, which makes them immune to paralyze and hamstring and what not.

You can just sit the cleric in the back with 25 AC. No enemy is going to target them. And the cleric is providing enough buffs to justify their spot in the party.

Bless is only helpful if you're having trouble hitting things, it doesn't add any damage. You've got plenty of options to get advantage on enemies without it and once you're having no trouble hitting things then it would be better to have a fourth person throwing out big hits instead of giving you an accuracy buff you don't need.

Bless increases spell accuracy by 25%. Warlock eldritch blasts are at 60-70% accuracy, so bless bring it close to 100%. That's a big deal.

Also, create water doubles damage for lightning casters.

Optimal party comp is like a level 12 cleric, a level 12 Druid, a sorlock, and a tavern brawler monk. The druid summons half a dozen creatures, the cleric buffs them all with hero's feast (and summons a Deva). Druid casts Call Lightning in combat, cleric casts Create Water and concentrates on bless. Auto-win.

[Cadaver]

Just finished my playthrough, ended with a Singular wild magic sorcerer,it was hell, but it was worth it

[Calv]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von SoloQ:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Calv:

That could be true. The first thing I did was install the mod to let me roll with 6 party members.

Always breaks my brain a little in games like this when we go "Our lives at a risk and possibly the entire world, we need to band together to stop this!!! Oh, but half of you guys just chill in camp, cool?"

Bit it makes sense if 2 of the companions stay behind?
The only way that would make any sense is if the mod had you bringing your whole camp with you. Otherwise you're just nitpicking to nitpick.

You can bring the entire group if you want to with the mod, but it becomes a little difficulty to manage with more than 6 (and it starts to severely unbalance the fights)/

[Sentient_Toaster]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von cfehunter:

From what I understand that's very intentional for 5e. Think about it from a tabletop point of view, in older versions of D&D you *needed* a healer, natural recovery was too slow for you to get anything done and hitting zero hp meant instant death.

This means that somebody at the table has to play a support role, and not everybody is into doing that.

Indeed. If they made healing quite strong, it'd also probably be necessary (at least in official prewritten content rather than homebrew tailored specifically to the individual table) due to adventures being balanced for it.

AD&D at least did have instant death at 0, although there was also the optional rule of bleeding out w/ death at -10. I don't remember whether basic/expert etc. did it the same way. Clerics were also rather likely to be called for to deal with all the poison, curses and diseases that got thrown at the party... and, of course, level loss from energy drain.


5E intentionally does not encourage in-combat healing other than of downed targets, yup. Combats often already take far far longer to resolve in real-time rather than game time (like, a fight might last 18 seconds in game time and take more than thirty minutes to resolve if people aren't being very very efficient...), which is reason enough to not want marathon-length combats dragged out by healing.

The other bit is that there's the intent to drain resources including HP. There's the notion of the adventuring day where many encounters actually won't be all that dire threats but will still drain HP, spell slots, etc. Short rests take an hour and use a limited resource (hit dice) to heal, both of which encourage parties to push on while not at full health.

This is a different expectation from, say, PF2e, where characters who are trained in medicine and equipped with healer's tools can attempt to treat wounds for healing that costs nothing except ten minutes of time, and where parties *are* expected to enter many fights at close to full HP (but possibly drained of spell slots, consumables, maybe a focus point if they used a couple and don't yet have the ability to regain more than one during refocusing)... and in which yo-yo healing is a bad strategy. If you're dropped once in a fight, revived to Wounded 1, downed again with a critical hit or a critically failed save --> now you're at Dying 3. Since getting dropped changed your initiative so that you go immediately after whomever downed you, you get forced to roll your next recovery flat check... you either roll 13+ or you die, before any teammate gets a turn. Down, revived, down, revived; now you're at wounded 2, and you just flat-out die if dropped with a critical hit or crit-failed save.

[amills1]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von cfehunter:

Bless is only helpful if you're having trouble hitting things, it doesn't add any damage. You've got plenty of options to get advantage on enemies without it and once you're having no trouble hitting things then it would be better to have a fourth person throwing out big hits instead of giving you an accuracy buff you don't need.

It also improves saving throws. IMO it's one of the best spells in the game.

[Calv]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von amills1:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von cfehunter:

Bless is only helpful if you're having trouble hitting things, it doesn't add any damage. You've got plenty of options to get advantage on enemies without it and once you're having no trouble hitting things then it would be better to have a fourth person throwing out big hits instead of giving you an accuracy buff you don't need.

It also improves saving throws. IMO it's one of the best spells in the game.

I found a staff that buffs Bless to give an additional 1d4 to saves and attacks and 2d4 to spell attacks. Really overcharges it :D

[yuzhonglu]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Calv:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von amills1:

It also improves saving throws. IMO it's one of the best spells in the game.

I found a staff that buffs Bless to give an additional 1d4 to saves and attacks and 2d4 to spell attacks. Really overcharges it :D

It doesn't work like that. The way it's worded is awful, but the way it works is that it adds an extra 1d4 to spells attacks.

Bless already provides 1d4 to spells and weapon attacks. Mystra's blessing adds another 1d4 to spell attacks for a TOTAL of 1d4 to weapon attack and 2d4 to spells.

[Calv]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von yuzhonglu:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Calv:

I found a staff that buffs Bless to give an additional 1d4 to saves and attacks and 2d4 to spell attacks. Really overcharges it :D

It doesn't work like that. The way it's worded is awful, but the way it works is that it adds an extra 1d4 to spells attacks.

Bless already provides 1d4 to spells and weapon attacks. Mystra's blessing adds another 1d4 to spell attacks for a TOTAL of 1d4 to weapon attack and 2d4 to spells.

True.

I'd seen it add two buffs to the icon bar and hadn't looked further into it. Quick bit of testing and yeah, never get higher than a 4 for saves.

The 2d4 for spell attacks is great though.

[Quillithe]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Calv:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von yuzhonglu:

It doesn't work like that. The way it's worded is awful, but the way it works is that it adds an extra 1d4 to spells attacks.

Bless already provides 1d4 to spells and weapon attacks. Mystra's blessing adds another 1d4 to spell attacks for a TOTAL of 1d4 to weapon attack and 2d4 to spells.

True.

I'd seen it add two buffs to the icon bar and hadn't looked further into it. Quick bit of testing and yeah, never get higher than a 4 for saves.

The 2d4 for spell attacks is great though.

Honestly it sounds good, but since most of the actual spell attacks I make tend to be cantrips it never turned out too amazing. So much of the good stuff is save based.

I guess there's also guiding bolt but I can't really get excited by that.

It'd be VERY good if I were actually using a blasting Warlock though

[765]

I am exploring the possibility of going without healer. I can definitely see it working with heal pots and Larian tend to lean towards allowing things instead of not allowing them from what I hear.

You might, however, have to go a little tankier because healers also provide protection.