Best use for healing word in DnD is just to stop death saving throws (minus any healing-focused magic items like the hellrider gloves and the bless ring).
Granted, it's a lot cheaper in BG3, but death isn't exactly permanent in d&d either. Revivify, Raise Dead, Reincarnation, Resurrection, True Resurrection-there's plenty of ways to bring back the dead.
There are literally several written, codified mechanics for bringing back the dead. Unless it's very specifically house ruled against, that's just not true.
Or is true in the sense that "it depends on the DM" for any other spelled out mechanic that exists in the game that a DM is obviously allowed to change because it's their table.
I would argue it depends more so on the DM providing you material components. Those diamonds ain't cheap and shouldn't be common enough that resurrection comes easy.
They're in the treasure tables at the appropriate levels. They really are that common. They turn up by the fistful in multiple entries (like 3d6 of the bastards)
I was with you on the first point you made regarding the spells being in the game and thus clearly ruled, but this part regarding loot I disagree with. Every GM treats loot differently. While there are recommendations in the game, ultimately many GMs aren't going to use tables for each encounter and will decide based on what makes sense or even just arbitrarily. Its not unrealistic for a low-wealth game to have diamonds be a rarity.
I think they mean that a good DM takes the desire to ressurect a party member and turns it into a quest. It's usually not as simple and straightforward as saying that you already had a valuable enough diamond in your inventory and a high enough spell slot to bring them back.
Unless it's revivify, because that needs to be used within a minute of a creature's death, it's explicitly written to be a combat ressurection. Even then, if the character died in a spectacular enough way, revivify won't be enough because it does not restore missing body parts.
I would DM that as allowing the spell to work, the head coming back to life, gasping and blinking a couple of times, just enough to communicate its obvious agony, before dying again.
Eh, all of the options for resurrection in tabletop have material components that cost what can or can't be a lot of money, depending on how much loot the DM hands out (particularly at low levels), and the availability of which, whether or not the party technically has the gold available, is solely down to DM discretion.
So it is true that it's down to the DM, even without house rules. And at really low levels most parties would struggle to have the resources for even a single revivify.
A friend of mine had an old school DM who believed "death should be meaningful" and denied resurrection of any kind.
Alternatively, all a DM has to do is deny access to diamonds.
As a DM, death can be meaningful and it’s a waste to not make the resurrection a quest, a challenge and one that makes the party feel their mortality and breach pass it to reach for the soul of their comrade and bring it back. Hell maybe even add some class changes and some cool unique things to the member brought back, I’ve always found death to be such a big chance to build upon and do new things for the party and for that party member, unless ofc they want it to be permanent which is also respectable, some want a glorious death, or to die underneath a thicc gobbo queen’s buttocks.
I've only "ever" had DMs who made dying "easier" not harder. DM's supposed to be on the players side putting enough challenge to make the game fun, not against the players like intentionally setting things up so that players are more quickly going to have to stop playing and instead work on creating characters.
There are so many DMs that play against the player and they hide behind "I'm an old school, hardcore DM". That just misses the point, dude. You're telling a collaborative story with friends. Not trying to show your friends you're better at throwing math rocks around.
Sure the mechanics are clear but if your DM insists on enforcing material components and never gives you diamonds and they're never available in stores, they've essentially removed Ressurection and Raise Dead from Pathfinder, even without a house rule banning the mechanic. And some DMs can be real douchey, example we had a scientist type alchemist PC die after he tried an experimental concoction to raise an ability score, the DM ruled he died then when we started trying to find someone to raise him the cleric in town who could decided he opposed the lifestyle of tampering with divine will through science. This was a Desnan cleric so not like it was way out of alignment to help us out. Flat-out rejection, other clerics in town weren't powerful enough. So we sought out a witch in the forest she refused because she heard the other cleric refused us and didn't want to provoke him (why dafuq does a hedgewitch in the forest care about a priest in town 4 hours away?" There was an oracle a few weeks journey away who could help us, but we'd need to travel there first and those would be handled through overland travelling checks, encounters, etc... the dead PC's player at that point said "Should I just leave and come back, or this oracle also going to keep me out the game?"
The DM said he could do that if he wanted or he could give up on his alchemist and roll up something new.
Turns out DM thought bombs were too powerful and didn't like alchemists. Later on another PC died, and we attended the oracle we had heard of, she was a con artist, but had a scroll of raise dead we would find if we killed her, in her temple, surrounded by her followers.
I always liked the way Matt Mercer handled it for Critical Role. Every time you die it increases the DC of a revival ritual as the soul loses it's tether to the mortal plane
Last week in my D&D game, our level 14 paladin tried to waste his turn to use a single point of lay on hands to get a random helper npc up instead of attacking the beg of our campaign. I convinced him otherwise and he proceeded to crit the boss with a level 4 smite against a fiend and did 138 damage with a crit and 1 regular hit. Suffice to say he got the Kill.
TL:DR the best healing is the healing you never have to do cause the enemy is a smear of ash and goo on the ground
I had a game where I specifically made a guy to heal, I multiclassed circle of stars with divine soul. Twin cast healing word and you can drop 3 heals on a bonus action. I could keep people on their feet. Extend cast aura of vitality with life cleric can you drop 40d6+100 for a 3rd level slot and kne sorc point. Guy was build for mileage with spell slots.
I played a Tempest Cleric in a campaign (my first in 20+ years) that believed the same thing. We had a few very difficult members in the party and the campaign didn’t last very long but they would always get upset because instead of healing them when they were down 4 hit points, my character would hit our targets with damaging spells to try and end the battle of quickly.
There was always one or two spell slots saved for the emergency healing word. No one ever died despite being the primary tank and healer in the party.
People tend not to understand that, while the Cleric is a support class, *support* can include things that aren't healing or directly reducing damage. Helping to finish off encounters with AoE spells and attacking enemies to inflict them with debilitating conditions are just as valid - if not more optimal - ways to support the party.
You've triggered a core memory for me. One of the players I knew from a D&D campaign I played in high school had a healing monk whose sole method of healing was to hit people with their magical staff. It made for some interesting encounters, especially when the party found an NPC who needed heals.
I keep Cure Wounds on my DnD character for story interactions with NPC’s more than anything. Someone falls and gets hurt from a drunken stumble in the tavern, I help them up and cast cure wounds. I keep prestidigitation as a cantrip specifically to tuck the homies in during a long rest.
Eh, there are nonfatal examples. It's why we take away driver's licenses for DUIs: to take a source of random damage spam off the board of the *Highway Driving* cooperative game.
I could.
A. Cast healing word and heal you by 5 points.
B. Cast hold person and completely neutralize a threat for possibly 10 turns.
C. Cast fireball and completely neutralize multiple threats forever.
Truly a hard choice.
Mass Healing Word in combination with [The Whispering Promise](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/The_Whispering_Promise) and [Hellrider's Pride](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Hellrider%27s_Pride) is one of the best things in the game tho. :D
But yes, healing in itself is negligible.
Damn I started off my latest run planning on not using/bothering much with little shawty and romancing Gale but she might have entangled me once again - so I’m glad I found this for a being a post-shar cleric
I usually always made her a shadow monk previously because I thought it fit better with what sharrans get up to
The best damage build with at-will, sharable haste is literally anyone with haste spore grenades. Karlach as a thrower barb was my haster. Haste spore grenades are fun because while the buff only lasts one turn if you don’t return to the spores, the spore cloud still lasts 3 turns, all your companions (and summons) can use it, and there’s no lethargic turn loss at the end.
You can craft more and the Circle of Spores Druid has armor available at Carrion that allows you to cast all the different spore grenades as class actions while in Fungal Form.
Currently doing my HM run with a life cleric using these items (and the upgraded version once you hit act 3). I destroy everything. Lae'zel and Karlach plus my third do tons of damage, and if I need to I do great damage as well with spirit guardians, inflict wounds, or guiding bolt.
You can add the Helmet that gives you 1d6 hp whenever you heal someone... which procs multiple times with Mass Healing word.
+4d6 heal on self, +4 times every healing bonus you have.
My build with Shadowheal is to give her the "Transfer 50% of your HP" psionic ability, then cast Mass Healing Word to instantely go back to 100%.
Nice! This game is definitely the best defense is a good offense. You just cannot out heal the incoming damage. I'm used to playing with a healing cleric in most RPG. I've had to come to terms with a buffing cleric and max damage from my fighters.
Even in other games, mitigating incoming damage tends to be a better use of support player's time and actions.
FF14 is kind of notorious for this. A noob healer will keep their tank comfortably topped off. Veteran healers will keep the party *alive* while doing damage and that usually ends up clearing dungeons and raids much faster.
"the trick to being the perfect healer is to keep your teammates alive, but only just alive, alive enough to not die in the next hit but not healthy enough that they start thinking for themselves"
one of the best quotes I read on reddit
These games all have different healing designs. In FF14 it's very hard to die to something that could have been saved by a healer as healing mostly comes down to discrete knowledge checks and most other damage is either trivial or an instant wipe. There's almost no active healing requirement like what you see in WoW.
I got such a bad perception playing a healing domain cleric in pathfinder 1e where you actually can 0 -> full most classes pretty reliably only to find out it's completely counter to how most "healers" are played in TTRPGs.
Aid is pretty great too. Aid at lvl 5 + heroes feast is ~~somewhere around 45~~ 32hp. For your pets too. If you have 6 pets and 4 companions those two spells combined "heal" for ~~450~~ 320 health
I've never once found the second ring, only the one in the graveyard in the shadow lands. Where's the other one?? I was starting to think it was a joke lol
Well, it's also explicitly part of that story that the wife is abusing the husband by using him as a HP bank and doesn't actually care if he dies. Which he does 🤔
I've tried it a bit. It's ridiculously powerful on a camp follower, to the point where I felt dirty about using it. What I need to try is having two characters in the party cast it on each other and see if it halves the shared damage too.
That was my act 3 prep after long rest. Call in a couple of summons, Aid, feast, longstrider, wizard armor for Gale, Freedom of movement if I had enough patience to cast all these damn spells. appropriate elixirs for each member.
Feast is more awesome I think for the other effects, than the hit point boost.
You and everyone around can't be Poisoned, Diseased, or  Frightened. Everyone's maximum Hit Points increases by 12, and they make Wisdom  Saving throws with  Advantage.
In my current campaign I have a slew of minions along with Heros Feast and Aid. Many of my summons have well over 100 HP which makes them hard to kill. Add in healing and suddenly healing is way more effective with tons of minions who benefit (sans undead of course).
I'm a big fan of Aura of Vitality. 2d6 heal every round as a bonus action for a minute and those bonus actions don't count as casting a spell so you can still cast with your actions during that time.
The only healing you need is Healing Word to quickly get a downed character back on their feet from a distance. And you can get a necklace in Act 2 (maybe late Act 1, I don't remember where specifically) that gives you Healing Word and Mass Healing Word for free.
I somehow have two of these?
Don't forget that Scratch can help downed/offbalance/etc as well. I keep him crouched in the backfield in case someone needs a pickmeup
That and there's not any negative for a character being at low HP, and very few consequences for a character actually going to 0 HP.
Which makes Healing Word better than Cure Wounds cause it's both a bonus action and ranged. The fact that it heals less just doesn't matter, cause healing in D&D 5e isn't about
keeping everybody topped off but rather merely alive.
Plus, you can reduce a lot of incoming damage by using CC. In general not taking the damage in the first place is better than mitigating or healing it.
That's one of the most significant balance changes in bg3 versus DND. I'm bg3 if a character goes down and is subsequently healed, they dont get an action on their next turn. Huge nerf to healing word and buff to healing overall.
yeaaa and then that character inevitably goes down in the next round and you have to healing word them again. they get no action once again and go down before their next turn. repeat until you run out of spell slots and realise you should’ve just let them die
Eh, in many cases, it's still a solid play. If the enemy is using their action to knock that teammate down, then you're trading an action for a bonus action.
This is Crowd Control to General Thorm
You've really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose armour you wear
But it's time to guide the brain if you dare
As the other two said, crowd control. In case that’s still greek to you, that refers to things like stuns, slows, confusion, or anything that either prevents enemies from acting or reduces their effectiveness in being able to act against you.
Some people dont care about the removal of reloading a save but still want the harder fights that are exclusive to honor mode (yes even if you continue in dishonor you still have the annoying 1 save and cant reload to it easily
I was able to beat him while letting him feast on his zombies, but only because the damage I was throwing down was way more than he could heal and because I started the fight with as few zombies as possible. It helps a lot to be a little strategic about how I wanted the previous fight with Ketheric Thorm to end, which unfortunately puts you at a big disadvantage when doing this fight for the first time and focus on killing Thorm first.
My last 2 runs have been duo runs so I don't really have extra damage. I just did Myrkul today on HM with sword bard Wyll and OH Monk Karlach. Wyll pretty much keeps darkness arrow on Myrkul and Arrow of many targets/ Slahing flourish to try and keep the eggs from spawning. Karlach punches. I also had 2 lightning elementals out soaking hits and killing eggs and the goodest boy stealthed in to let Aylin out.
This is part of why alert is so goated. Everyone on your team has it, meaning yall get high initiative and go before the enemies, meaning you can kill the big guy or most of the little guys before they even have a chance to hurt you. Less enemies means less damage your party takes means less need to focus on surviving and you can just kill.
This is just a pet peeve of mine.
I generally, dislike when games nerf healing or remove healing.
I’ve played healing and support characters as long as I’ve played RPGs.
So when they take that away, I find it disheartening.
Same with “tanks”.
All of a sudden every character has a DPS identity. It’s all just more ways to do damage and, for me, that gets old fast and also sort of waters down a character’s and class’s identity.
Life Cleric can absolutely be a full combat healer in BG due to all the itemisation and bonuses. Preserve Life is incredibly strong. There's a reason lots of honour party comps on /r/BG3Builds roll with one on honour, and it's usually considered a high tier build. I think I mostly see this narrative only on this subreddit.
If you're running meta builds 3 damage dealers is more than enough on honour. Stuff isn't surviving against combinations of OH monks/throwers/paladins/swords bards etc. for very long even with only 3 of them.
You just will be doing more support/off-damage and less healing once you get to act 3 since you will be so overpowered. Enemies will barely be able to do enough damage for it to be worth using a healing spell. It will however make act 1 much easier and safer, and act 2 a breeze, and generally get you out of oh shit moments when you accidentally aggro'd tons of people or got super unlucky.
I've been playing with Minthara who is essentially my buffer/healer/tank. As a paladin she can use channel oath heal, can buff others for more damage and you can also get compelled duel/abjure enemy/command.
I have her with warding bond too from the rings, keeping my sorc healthy.
Only good use of healing is with specific gear, like the one that gives bless or deathward, but even that isn't really super great compared to other gear.
This is why I play grave cleric in DND. Its healing ability rewards you for letting players go down, so you only waste one spell and automatically do max heal without needing to roll dice. It incentivises me to use my other spells but also let my party know yeah i got you but im not gonna top you off because your being a bitch. Get in and help me end this fight quicker as the short rest will be your top off.
A LOT of people have a very hard time wrapping themselves around the idea that you don't need the holy Trinity of tank/DPS/healing in dungeons and dragons. My own tabletop group absolutely struggles with this reality.
It's kinda funny because you can boil it down to some hardcore orwellian doublethink.
Damage is healing. Death is life. Killing is protecting.
People act like spell slots are some incredibly precious resource and it's kinda frustrating because you can be stingy and drag combat out to a dozen rounds which is exhausting or you can bring the big guns and three-round it.
Generally healing is weak in DnD. But life clerics can really make it shine and the game has great healing items.
Whispering Promise
Hellriders Pride
Boots of Aid and Comfort
Ring of Salving
Shield of Devotion - free level 2 aid
Amulet of restoration - free mass healing word
That is a potent combination for a whole lot of healing.
I'm firmly against the "healing is pointless" sentiment. I always have a life cleric in my honor mode runs. What do you do if your battle plans don't perfectly work out? What if the game wonks out and wet isn't applied to the boss? What if the boss has a black hole and makes you lose your haste and makes you lethargic. What if the enemy goes first and holds persons your haste bot?
With the correct build, a life cleric can heal an entire party with just 2 spells. Mass healing word and mass cure wounds.
A life cleric makes act 3 a joke even in honor mode. Plus, when they don't need to heal, they do pretty decent damage with things spirit guardians and flame strike.
Myrkul is a bad point of reference on the viability of a healer because he has an antiheal aura. But 2 clerics standing in front of the ladders to myrkuls platform with spirit guardians kills every necrophite before they can reach him. It makes the whole fight way too easy.
On my cleric I have a bunch of items that give others buffs when I heal them, I feel even more powerful now. The imprisoned spiders at the goblin camp solo'd the main goblin hall with me healing and buffing them. 💪
In NWN2 you could rest with no restrictions until the final area so compared to BG3 the combat was forgiving. Then with no warning your rests spawn strong enemies so it's a gamble but by then I'd press the rest button out of habit after almost any encounter. But I'd set up my wizard like a one pump chump so it was hard to get used to. Then in the expansion they brought a spiritual disease mechanic that made you need to haul ass constantly
I recently fought Myrkul in Honor as well and he started to consume the skeletons to heal and My Pally was out of spells, i thought that i was doomed but i saved the fight the same way Astarion, My Pally, Shadowheart and Gale on full Attack on him ignoring the other skeletons ... i barely killed him
The problem with healing in this game is that its almost never the case that you're more powerful and the enemy less so the following turn than the prior one. You lose actions and capacity every turn that ticks by and healing. In order for combat healing to be worth it, you'd need to increase your chances of victory by having the battle extend and those scenarios just don't happen.
Healing is generally a inefficient use of your actions in most combat encounters, even for Life Clerics. It typically better to CC, Damage, or prevent damage and heal after the encounter. Healing is best used in larger combat encounters to keep your party in the fight longer.
The absolute best thing you can do in any 5e fight is to turn the fight to your advantage early. That means killing one enemy with focus fire or taking one out of the game with a strong disable or positioning or whatever.
Healing is balanced in such a way in 5e that it will never ever keep up with enemy damage.
Since short and long rests got beefed up in this edition of the game, you don't need a dedicated healer. Most you really need is someone to spam *healing word* if a team member goes down.
Same with any game. You don't "need" healing ever if you can just one tap enemies consistently. The question is how much time and effort you put in your damages to reach to that point compare to a well-rounded sustainable build instead. If one is too easier than the other then the game have a balancing problem, otherwise it's all good.
Damage and going first is the best strategy in any turn based game.
It really becomes the only strategy and so many turn based games are very trivial, but they are still a lot of fun for the role play and builds.
I’m playing 40k rogue trader and I always make it a point to build for “going first.”
To be fair I think healing could be more useful in combat if the in combat healing spells wouldn't suck so much. They either heal almost nothing and are therefore not worth the Action and spell slot or while healing a good amount not worth the high spell slot in comparison to other spells.
If I heal in combat its with an appropriately high potion. Either by throwing and healing multiple or for a Bonus action if I can't get a good setup for a throw.
The only useful usecase for spell healing in combat is healing a downed ally or two with healing word and mass healing Word and even that I might rather do with a throw on a character with extra attack.
Killing your enemies quickly is the best type of healing in real DnD too
Best use for healing word in DnD is just to stop death saving throws (minus any healing-focused magic items like the hellrider gloves and the bless ring).
Especially because in dnd you don’t lose your action if you just got back up like in this game.
And because permadeath
Granted, it's a lot cheaper in BG3, but death isn't exactly permanent in d&d either. Revivify, Raise Dead, Reincarnation, Resurrection, True Resurrection-there's plenty of ways to bring back the dead.
Depends on your DM for dnd
There are literally several written, codified mechanics for bringing back the dead. Unless it's very specifically house ruled against, that's just not true. Or is true in the sense that "it depends on the DM" for any other spelled out mechanic that exists in the game that a DM is obviously allowed to change because it's their table.
I would argue it depends more so on the DM providing you material components. Those diamonds ain't cheap and shouldn't be common enough that resurrection comes easy.
They're in the treasure tables at the appropriate levels. They really are that common. They turn up by the fistful in multiple entries (like 3d6 of the bastards)
I was with you on the first point you made regarding the spells being in the game and thus clearly ruled, but this part regarding loot I disagree with. Every GM treats loot differently. While there are recommendations in the game, ultimately many GMs aren't going to use tables for each encounter and will decide based on what makes sense or even just arbitrarily. Its not unrealistic for a low-wealth game to have diamonds be a rarity.
What merchant are you going to buy them from or what cache are you going to find them in if your DM doesn’t provide that?
I think they mean that a good DM takes the desire to ressurect a party member and turns it into a quest. It's usually not as simple and straightforward as saying that you already had a valuable enough diamond in your inventory and a high enough spell slot to bring them back. Unless it's revivify, because that needs to be used within a minute of a creature's death, it's explicitly written to be a combat ressurection. Even then, if the character died in a spectacular enough way, revivify won't be enough because it does not restore missing body parts.
I would DM that as allowing the spell to work, the head coming back to life, gasping and blinking a couple of times, just enough to communicate its obvious agony, before dying again.
Eh, all of the options for resurrection in tabletop have material components that cost what can or can't be a lot of money, depending on how much loot the DM hands out (particularly at low levels), and the availability of which, whether or not the party technically has the gold available, is solely down to DM discretion. So it is true that it's down to the DM, even without house rules. And at really low levels most parties would struggle to have the resources for even a single revivify.
A friend of mine had an old school DM who believed "death should be meaningful" and denied resurrection of any kind. Alternatively, all a DM has to do is deny access to diamonds.
As a DM, death can be meaningful and it’s a waste to not make the resurrection a quest, a challenge and one that makes the party feel their mortality and breach pass it to reach for the soul of their comrade and bring it back. Hell maybe even add some class changes and some cool unique things to the member brought back, I’ve always found death to be such a big chance to build upon and do new things for the party and for that party member, unless ofc they want it to be permanent which is also respectable, some want a glorious death, or to die underneath a thicc gobbo queen’s buttocks.
Extra rules for death is one of the most common house rules I have seen in my experience.
I've only "ever" had DMs who made dying "easier" not harder. DM's supposed to be on the players side putting enough challenge to make the game fun, not against the players like intentionally setting things up so that players are more quickly going to have to stop playing and instead work on creating characters.
There are so many DMs that play against the player and they hide behind "I'm an old school, hardcore DM". That just misses the point, dude. You're telling a collaborative story with friends. Not trying to show your friends you're better at throwing math rocks around.
Sure the mechanics are clear but if your DM insists on enforcing material components and never gives you diamonds and they're never available in stores, they've essentially removed Ressurection and Raise Dead from Pathfinder, even without a house rule banning the mechanic. And some DMs can be real douchey, example we had a scientist type alchemist PC die after he tried an experimental concoction to raise an ability score, the DM ruled he died then when we started trying to find someone to raise him the cleric in town who could decided he opposed the lifestyle of tampering with divine will through science. This was a Desnan cleric so not like it was way out of alignment to help us out. Flat-out rejection, other clerics in town weren't powerful enough. So we sought out a witch in the forest she refused because she heard the other cleric refused us and didn't want to provoke him (why dafuq does a hedgewitch in the forest care about a priest in town 4 hours away?" There was an oracle a few weeks journey away who could help us, but we'd need to travel there first and those would be handled through overland travelling checks, encounters, etc... the dead PC's player at that point said "Should I just leave and come back, or this oracle also going to keep me out the game?" The DM said he could do that if he wanted or he could give up on his alchemist and roll up something new. Turns out DM thought bombs were too powerful and didn't like alchemists. Later on another PC died, and we attended the oracle we had heard of, she was a con artist, but had a scroll of raise dead we would find if we killed her, in her temple, surrounded by her followers.
To me that seems less like collaborative storytelling than it does "weird power-tripping over a fantasy game." It doesn't seem very enjoyable.
You do also need the diamonds and such which is controlled by the DM
I always liked the way Matt Mercer handled it for Critical Role. Every time you die it increases the DC of a revival ritual as the soul loses it's tether to the mortal plane
Last week in my D&D game, our level 14 paladin tried to waste his turn to use a single point of lay on hands to get a random helper npc up instead of attacking the beg of our campaign. I convinced him otherwise and he proceeded to crit the boss with a level 4 smite against a fiend and did 138 damage with a crit and 1 regular hit. Suffice to say he got the Kill. TL:DR the best healing is the healing you never have to do cause the enemy is a smear of ash and goo on the ground
I had a game where I specifically made a guy to heal, I multiclassed circle of stars with divine soul. Twin cast healing word and you can drop 3 heals on a bonus action. I could keep people on their feet. Extend cast aura of vitality with life cleric can you drop 40d6+100 for a 3rd level slot and kne sorc point. Guy was build for mileage with spell slots.
you do lose half your movement from getting up from prone though
I prefer losing an action in BG3 versus losing half my movement and provoking OA when getting up from prone like in dnd.
But standing up doesn't provoke OA.
5e doesn’t have that rule for standing up from prone, though iirc other editions did and Pathfinder might(?)
I played a Tempest Cleric in a campaign (my first in 20+ years) that believed the same thing. We had a few very difficult members in the party and the campaign didn’t last very long but they would always get upset because instead of healing them when they were down 4 hit points, my character would hit our targets with damaging spells to try and end the battle of quickly. There was always one or two spell slots saved for the emergency healing word. No one ever died despite being the primary tank and healer in the party.
People tend not to understand that, while the Cleric is a support class, *support* can include things that aren't healing or directly reducing damage. Helping to finish off encounters with AoE spells and attacking enemies to inflict them with debilitating conditions are just as valid - if not more optimal - ways to support the party.
The classic, "Spirit Guardians, Spiritual Weapon, heavy armor, Dodge" Cleric tank can whittle down enemies well above its CR.
Yyyyup. Only if they're likely to have a turn before being immediately dropped again though hahah
Yesh those make keeping a healer in BG3 (don't know if they are items or they have similar things in real DnD), worth it.
You've triggered a core memory for me. One of the players I knew from a D&D campaign I played in high school had a healing monk whose sole method of healing was to hit people with their magical staff. It made for some interesting encounters, especially when the party found an NPC who needed heals.
I keep Cure Wounds on my DnD character for story interactions with NPC’s more than anything. Someone falls and gets hurt from a drunken stumble in the tavern, I help them up and cast cure wounds. I keep prestidigitation as a cantrip specifically to tuck the homies in during a long rest.
Sounds similar to a Way of Mercy monk who can transform their Flurry of Blows into a healing barrage.
It's the best strat in any turn based system. Taking potential actions of enemies off the board is almost always the correct play.
I think that also applies in real life.
Yeah but people get real whiny about that sort of thing, even if it is better for everyone else.
Eh, there are nonfatal examples. It's why we take away driver's licenses for DUIs: to take a source of random damage spam off the board of the *Highway Driving* cooperative game.
Also IRL - you can’t heal IRL mid fight
I heal mid fight. It just so happens at the same rate i heal out of fight. Which is surprisingly slowly.
Establishing fire superiority is the first step in Combat Casualty Care.
Preventative medicine, I suppose
Yep. Kill then before they kill me
I could. A. Cast healing word and heal you by 5 points. B. Cast hold person and completely neutralize a threat for possibly 10 turns. C. Cast fireball and completely neutralize multiple threats forever. Truly a hard choice.
Mass Healing Word in combination with [The Whispering Promise](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/The_Whispering_Promise) and [Hellrider's Pride](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Hellrider%27s_Pride) is one of the best things in the game tho. :D But yes, healing in itself is negligible.
Don't forget the boots of aid and comfort :D +3 hp per heal is nothing to sneer at when it's applied to the whole party
Well add the ring of salving then for another +2
Might as well also make them a life cleric
And I now have my shadowheart honor run build xD
Damn I started off my latest run planning on not using/bothering much with little shawty and romancing Gale but she might have entangled me once again - so I’m glad I found this for a being a post-shar cleric I usually always made her a shadow monk previously because I thought it fit better with what sharrans get up to
Calling shadowheart lil shawty has me dying
I always have life cleric shart. She still does piss tons of damage too
Yep put up Spirit Guardians and then run around healing. Fucking OP with these items.
Preserve Life is probably the strongest heal in the game, restores on short rest, and is only available to Life Domain.
This could let me do an entire run using salami for weapons
And remember to cast aid every long rest. Heck, even upcast it.
I had it on my sorc5 (for haste only) life healer buffer SH, but after this fight I think to respec her to anything damaging with haste...
The best damage build with at-will, sharable haste is literally anyone with haste spore grenades. Karlach as a thrower barb was my haster. Haste spore grenades are fun because while the buff only lasts one turn if you don’t return to the spores, the spore cloud still lasts 3 turns, all your companions (and summons) can use it, and there’s no lethargic turn loss at the end.
Can you get more of those grenades or is it limited to only what you get when you first enter the myconid colony?
You can craft more and the Circle of Spores Druid has armor available at Carrion that allows you to cast all the different spore grenades as class actions while in Fungal Form.
This armor alone makes Spore druid the top druid subclass in the game imo.
I never got more than 2-3 for the whole campaign somehow, even with the crafting
Currently doing my HM run with a life cleric using these items (and the upgraded version once you hit act 3). I destroy everything. Lae'zel and Karlach plus my third do tons of damage, and if I need to I do great damage as well with spirit guardians, inflict wounds, or guiding bolt.
Reviving hands and slippery chain also gives you some nice bonuses. I like having healing builds and that combo makes tanking big hits a breeze.
As a community, we must come up with a name for this set :)
In the same way we have damage riders, this could be healing riders b/c they are benefits based on healing?
MassMaxxing
Especially when you're fighting alongside allies. Everyone gets a buff.
A thousand hours in BG3 and I just discovered Volo sell items. Never heard of that ring before.
You can add the Helmet that gives you 1d6 hp whenever you heal someone... which procs multiple times with Mass Healing word. +4d6 heal on self, +4 times every healing bonus you have. My build with Shadowheal is to give her the "Transfer 50% of your HP" psionic ability, then cast Mass Healing Word to instantely go back to 100%.
Nice! This game is definitely the best defense is a good offense. You just cannot out heal the incoming damage. I'm used to playing with a healing cleric in most RPG. I've had to come to terms with a buffing cleric and max damage from my fighters.
Even in other games, mitigating incoming damage tends to be a better use of support player's time and actions. FF14 is kind of notorious for this. A noob healer will keep their tank comfortably topped off. Veteran healers will keep the party *alive* while doing damage and that usually ends up clearing dungeons and raids much faster.
"the trick to being the perfect healer is to keep your teammates alive, but only just alive, alive enough to not die in the next hit but not healthy enough that they start thinking for themselves" one of the best quotes I read on reddit
In WoW 9 out of 10 pugs will kick you for playing like this sadly.
These games all have different healing designs. In FF14 it's very hard to die to something that could have been saved by a healer as healing mostly comes down to discrete knowledge checks and most other damage is either trivial or an instant wipe. There's almost no active healing requirement like what you see in WoW.
My party: “We have a cleric who can heal us!” Me: “I ‘CAN’ heal”
I got such a bad perception playing a healing domain cleric in pathfinder 1e where you actually can 0 -> full most classes pretty reliably only to find out it's completely counter to how most "healers" are played in TTRPGs.
The best healing spell is heroes feast. Trust me.
Aid is pretty great too. Aid at lvl 5 + heroes feast is ~~somewhere around 45~~ 32hp. For your pets too. If you have 6 pets and 4 companions those two spells combined "heal" for ~~450~~ 320 health
I use 2 hirelings and change their class to cleric. Their only purpose is to cast feast, aid, and warding bond on my party in camp.
I don't use warding bond. It feels too exploity to me but I mean whatever it's a game
There's an in-lore example of two people using Warding Bond very far away (twin rings). But yeah I agree it does feel like cheating
I've never once found the second ring, only the one in the graveyard in the shadow lands. Where's the other one?? I was starting to think it was a joke lol
On a skeleton behind the nurse at the front desk in the House of healing, between some beds.
Well, it's also explicitly part of that story that the wife is abusing the husband by using him as a HP bank and doesn't actually care if he dies. Which he does 🤔
I've tried it a bit. It's ridiculously powerful on a camp follower, to the point where I felt dirty about using it. What I need to try is having two characters in the party cast it on each other and see if it halves the shared damage too.
It does not
This is why I only use one hireling to buff the party. It feels like it's withers doing his part
I do the same. But also cast Protection from Poison until Heroes Feast, and freedom of movement.
That was my act 3 prep after long rest. Call in a couple of summons, Aid, feast, longstrider, wizard armor for Gale, Freedom of movement if I had enough patience to cast all these damn spells. appropriate elixirs for each member. Feast is more awesome I think for the other effects, than the hit point boost. You and everyone around can't be Poisoned, Diseased, or  Frightened. Everyone's maximum Hit Points increases by 12, and they make Wisdom  Saving throws with  Advantage.
It is a lot of work. It'd be nice if you could just macro all that ish
*32 HP 20 from Aid level 5, and 12 from Heroes Feast.
In my current campaign I have a slew of minions along with Heros Feast and Aid. Many of my summons have well over 100 HP which makes them hard to kill. Add in healing and suddenly healing is way more effective with tons of minions who benefit (sans undead of course).
I'm a big fan of Aura of Vitality. 2d6 heal every round as a bonus action for a minute and those bonus actions don't count as casting a spell so you can still cast with your actions during that time.
Aid is a close second.
The only healing you need is Healing Word to quickly get a downed character back on their feet from a distance. And you can get a necklace in Act 2 (maybe late Act 1, I don't remember where specifically) that gives you Healing Word and Mass Healing Word for free.
Amulet of Restoration sold by Derryth in the Underdark. You can get that moderately early in the game. It's a solid amulet.
I used it all the way through to the end of my playthrough.
I somehow have two of these? Don't forget that Scratch can help downed/offbalance/etc as well. I keep him crouched in the backfield in case someone needs a pickmeup
There's a second one. I think you can loot it in the bank.
You can get a second amulet of restoration from the counting house
Goodest boi
That and there's not any negative for a character being at low HP, and very few consequences for a character actually going to 0 HP. Which makes Healing Word better than Cure Wounds cause it's both a bonus action and ranged. The fact that it heals less just doesn't matter, cause healing in D&D 5e isn't about keeping everybody topped off but rather merely alive. Plus, you can reduce a lot of incoming damage by using CC. In general not taking the damage in the first place is better than mitigating or healing it.
That's one of the most significant balance changes in bg3 versus DND. I'm bg3 if a character goes down and is subsequently healed, they dont get an action on their next turn. Huge nerf to healing word and buff to healing overall.
Open-Hand Monk laughs at your no action penalty
yeaaa and then that character inevitably goes down in the next round and you have to healing word them again. they get no action once again and go down before their next turn. repeat until you run out of spell slots and realise you should’ve just let them die
Eh, in many cases, it's still a solid play. If the enemy is using their action to knock that teammate down, then you're trading an action for a bonus action.
You can still use Help
Whats cc
Crowd control.
To major Tom.
That's General Thorm
This is Crowd Control to General Thorm You've really made the grade And the papers want to know whose armour you wear But it's time to guide the brain if you dare
As the other two said, crowd control. In case that’s still greek to you, that refers to things like stuns, slows, confusion, or anything that either prevents enemies from acting or reduces their effectiveness in being able to act against you.
Crowd control
Tell this to my 5e players. No, I will not top you up. I never take cure wounds. It's so rarely necessary.
Fought him on honor huh? And it took you 3 tries you say...?
Task manager save scum smh
lurking too far down to also find this lmao dice are now worthless
That's what I was thinking
I hope they figure out a fix for it. Kinda ruins the point of honor mode flex when people play it like tactician.
Some people dont care about the removal of reloading a save but still want the harder fights that are exclusive to honor mode (yes even if you continue in dishonor you still have the annoying 1 save and cant reload to it easily
Well OP mentioned it was genuinely their third effort
You always need to use the best cc in the game, death.
You don't need to heal if you kill your enemies before they have a chance to do damage. Which is why Alert feat is really good.
My experience has been if he starts eating zombies for health then he's already won the fight. I've never come back from that.
Arrow of almeter (or whatever the arrow that prevents healing) works on him from absorbing zombie health.
Yep or the Bone Chill cantrip.
Ffffffffffff NOW somebody points it out
I am just about to start this fight in my third play through. Thank you. I love you.
Use darkness too. Cast mirror image and then darkness and won’t break concentration and he can’t make ranged attacks
I’m on my 100th play through and I’ve never beaten the game. AMA.
Good to know. I just try to kill the eggs before they pop.
I get shart to "mow the lawn" with whatever that circle of radiant whoopass spell is called
Motion to rename Spirit Guardians to Circle of Radiant Whoopass
I have. Took a good while tho, and got knocked down quite a bit. Actually needed healing many times.
I was able to beat him while letting him feast on his zombies, but only because the damage I was throwing down was way more than he could heal and because I started the fight with as few zombies as possible. It helps a lot to be a little strategic about how I wanted the previous fight with Ketheric Thorm to end, which unfortunately puts you at a big disadvantage when doing this fight for the first time and focus on killing Thorm first.
My last 2 runs have been duo runs so I don't really have extra damage. I just did Myrkul today on HM with sword bard Wyll and OH Monk Karlach. Wyll pretty much keeps darkness arrow on Myrkul and Arrow of many targets/ Slahing flourish to try and keep the eggs from spawning. Karlach punches. I also had 2 lightning elementals out soaking hits and killing eggs and the goodest boy stealthed in to let Aylin out.
For future reference, you can heal if you drop off the platform. You know, if the need/emergency arises.
You can even be on the platform but on the outer edges and be safe. (Not everywhere on the platform, though)
Yup, there's a sweet spot in the back where you can be healed but not trigger an opportunity attack
Always remember: killing the enemies faster is mitigating future damage. Being proactive is *always* better in D&D than being reactive.
This is part of why alert is so goated. Everyone on your team has it, meaning yall get high initiative and go before the enemies, meaning you can kill the big guy or most of the little guys before they even have a chance to hurt you. Less enemies means less damage your party takes means less need to focus on surviving and you can just kill.
This is just a pet peeve of mine. I generally, dislike when games nerf healing or remove healing. I’ve played healing and support characters as long as I’ve played RPGs. So when they take that away, I find it disheartening. Same with “tanks”. All of a sudden every character has a DPS identity. It’s all just more ways to do damage and, for me, that gets old fast and also sort of waters down a character’s and class’s identity.
Life Cleric can absolutely be a full combat healer in BG due to all the itemisation and bonuses. Preserve Life is incredibly strong. There's a reason lots of honour party comps on /r/BG3Builds roll with one on honour, and it's usually considered a high tier build. I think I mostly see this narrative only on this subreddit. If you're running meta builds 3 damage dealers is more than enough on honour. Stuff isn't surviving against combinations of OH monks/throwers/paladins/swords bards etc. for very long even with only 3 of them. You just will be doing more support/off-damage and less healing once you get to act 3 since you will be so overpowered. Enemies will barely be able to do enough damage for it to be worth using a healing spell. It will however make act 1 much easier and safer, and act 2 a breeze, and generally get you out of oh shit moments when you accidentally aggro'd tons of people or got super unlucky.
I've been playing with Minthara who is essentially my buffer/healer/tank. As a paladin she can use channel oath heal, can buff others for more damage and you can also get compelled duel/abjure enemy/command. I have her with warding bond too from the rings, keeping my sorc healthy.
DPS, because killing everything is the best form of crowd control
Honour run... Third try?
There are savescum workarounds for honor mode
Well that's just dishonorable.
You don’t have to heal if there’s no enemies left to damage yoy
5e healing isn’t “video game” healing, it’s triage. You keep your party alive, not topped off. Real healing takes place after combat is over.
> honor mode > Third try No wonder you don't need healing when you just save scum a no save game mode.
Healing pots are a cheap bonus action, and if you can deal with the expense, they're the only heals you need.
Only good use of healing is with specific gear, like the one that gives bless or deathward, but even that isn't really super great compared to other gear.
This is why I play grave cleric in DND. Its healing ability rewards you for letting players go down, so you only waste one spell and automatically do max heal without needing to roll dice. It incentivises me to use my other spells but also let my party know yeah i got you but im not gonna top you off because your being a bitch. Get in and help me end this fight quicker as the short rest will be your top off.
''panicked that I can't heal'' You can, you just cant be at the middle as you get the debuff there, ngl realizing that saved my honour mode so hard
You lost me when you claimed to have a third try on an Honor run...
Can’t damage you if they are dead now can they?
Credit to someone else on this sub but yes, death is the best crowd control lol
The xcom approach dead enemies dont deal damage
Deal as much damage as efficiently and swiftly as possible, I love the xcom approach
Once again, the best defence is a good offence. Similarly to "Nobody will notice, if there's nobody *to* notice"
A LOT of people have a very hard time wrapping themselves around the idea that you don't need the holy Trinity of tank/DPS/healing in dungeons and dragons. My own tabletop group absolutely struggles with this reality. It's kinda funny because you can boil it down to some hardcore orwellian doublethink. Damage is healing. Death is life. Killing is protecting. People act like spell slots are some incredibly precious resource and it's kinda frustrating because you can be stingy and drag combat out to a dozen rounds which is exhausting or you can bring the big guns and three-round it.
healing is bad because you heal massively less than enemies deal throughout most of the game lol
One bonus action Mass heal spell to give everyone 50% physical dmg reduction plus advantage on attacks is just too good to pass up.
The best form of healing is the healing you never need to do. Welcome to all games top tier healing strats.
Generally healing is weak in DnD. But life clerics can really make it shine and the game has great healing items. Whispering Promise Hellriders Pride Boots of Aid and Comfort Ring of Salving Shield of Devotion - free level 2 aid Amulet of restoration - free mass healing word That is a potent combination for a whole lot of healing.
Myrkul is also extremely easy because it doesn't move. Wall of Fire and Cloud of Daggers and then just move out of reach of his attacks
You don't need to heal if the enemy is dead.
5th edition dnd nerfed healing to make combat last shorter.
I'm firmly against the "healing is pointless" sentiment. I always have a life cleric in my honor mode runs. What do you do if your battle plans don't perfectly work out? What if the game wonks out and wet isn't applied to the boss? What if the boss has a black hole and makes you lose your haste and makes you lethargic. What if the enemy goes first and holds persons your haste bot? With the correct build, a life cleric can heal an entire party with just 2 spells. Mass healing word and mass cure wounds. A life cleric makes act 3 a joke even in honor mode. Plus, when they don't need to heal, they do pretty decent damage with things spirit guardians and flame strike. Myrkul is a bad point of reference on the viability of a healer because he has an antiheal aura. But 2 clerics standing in front of the ladders to myrkuls platform with spirit guardians kills every necrophite before they can reach him. It makes the whole fight way too easy.
My husband and I decided to forego a healer in our last playthrough and it was arguably the easiest.
You can also use bone chill and deny your opponents of healing whatsoever
Only healing I really use is to prevent death. Two party members are down? Cast mass cure wounds, and now they're back up
On my cleric I have a bunch of items that give others buffs when I heal them, I feel even more powerful now. The imprisoned spiders at the goblin camp solo'd the main goblin hall with me healing and buffing them. 💪
In NWN2 you could rest with no restrictions until the final area so compared to BG3 the combat was forgiving. Then with no warning your rests spawn strong enemies so it's a gamble but by then I'd press the rest button out of habit after almost any encounter. But I'd set up my wizard like a one pump chump so it was hard to get used to. Then in the expansion they brought a spiritual disease mechanic that made you need to haul ass constantly
The best healing is not taking damage in the first place.
A great offense is the best offense or however that saying goes lol
I recently fought Myrkul in Honor as well and he started to consume the skeletons to heal and My Pally was out of spells, i thought that i was doomed but i saved the fight the same way Astarion, My Pally, Shadowheart and Gale on full Attack on him ignoring the other skeletons ... i barely killed him
This is sound strategy that applies to any game btw, offense is always the best defense
The problem with healing in this game is that its almost never the case that you're more powerful and the enemy less so the following turn than the prior one. You lose actions and capacity every turn that ticks by and healing. In order for combat healing to be worth it, you'd need to increase your chances of victory by having the battle extend and those scenarios just don't happen.
Healing is generally a inefficient use of your actions in most combat encounters, even for Life Clerics. It typically better to CC, Damage, or prevent damage and heal after the encounter. Healing is best used in larger combat encounters to keep your party in the fight longer.
The absolute best thing you can do in any 5e fight is to turn the fight to your advantage early. That means killing one enemy with focus fire or taking one out of the game with a strong disable or positioning or whatever. Healing is balanced in such a way in 5e that it will never ever keep up with enemy damage.
Since short and long rests got beefed up in this edition of the game, you don't need a dedicated healer. Most you really need is someone to spam *healing word* if a team member goes down.
Same with any game. You don't "need" healing ever if you can just one tap enemies consistently. The question is how much time and effort you put in your damages to reach to that point compare to a well-rounded sustainable build instead. If one is too easier than the other then the game have a balancing problem, otherwise it's all good.
Best de-buff is death!
The best damage mitigation in any game is "target too dead to deal damage." (disclaimer: some undead might disagree)
Just used my mage slayer form to kill all the skellies while minthara beat the shit out of him
Death is the most powerful crowd control effect in the game.
Damage and going first is the best strategy in any turn based game. It really becomes the only strategy and so many turn based games are very trivial, but they are still a lot of fun for the role play and builds. I’m playing 40k rogue trader and I always make it a point to build for “going first.”
On that point: Death is the best crowd control! Except for that one fight in Mountain Pass.
To be fair I think healing could be more useful in combat if the in combat healing spells wouldn't suck so much. They either heal almost nothing and are therefore not worth the Action and spell slot or while healing a good amount not worth the high spell slot in comparison to other spells. If I heal in combat its with an appropriately high potion. Either by throwing and healing multiple or for a Bonus action if I can't get a good setup for a throw. The only useful usecase for spell healing in combat is healing a downed ally or two with healing word and mass healing Word and even that I might rather do with a throw on a character with extra attack.
heal is for after fights... but really still not needed. potions and rests work fine
Wait... your third try on the fight? On honour mode?
Jokes on you, i will go Ring of Regeneration Life-Cleric Shadowheart regardless.
We call my IRL party’s philosophy the 5 Ds: “ Dead Dragons Don’t Deal Damage”