D&D (2024) Healer Feat

[Amrûnril]

The Character Origins playtest reworks the Healer feat from one oriented exclusively towards nonmagical healing into one that also benefits healing spells. I think that this is a mistake and that the game would be better served by having separate feats focused on these two goals.

While the playtest feat retains a nonmagical healing function, it requires the target to expend a hit die to receive this healing. This seems like a significant nerf to the feat in its nonmagical role: while it will still be useful in a single battle, the expectation in a longer adventuring day would be that the characters will be expending all of their hit dice anyway. Sacrificing a large part of the feat's nonmagical power for a buff to healing spells will make the it much less attractive to players who want to create nonmagical healers, an interesting niche that has very little support outside this feat.

The reason stated for this change in the developer interview was that having a feat called Healer that wasn't useful for magical healers was unintuitive. I don't find this reasoning compelling, though. First of all, there's no reason that nonmagical healing is a bad option for a spellcaster to have: spell slots are a limited resource after all. Even if the name was problematic, though, the obvious solution would be to change the name, not to take away the feat's unique focus.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I personnaly love the fact that they give more way to spend HD outside of rest.

 

[the Jester]

100% agreed. The whole purpose of this feat was to give warlord players from 4e SOMETHING to chew on, since it was one of the most amazing things from a badly under-represented edition in the 5e ruleset. Nerfing it now is a terrible, terrible move, especially when some (perhaps many) groups have a character or two built around, or at least substantially around, to this feat. Some groups have it as their only form of healing; I have seen at least two such groups in 5e so far.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

100% agreed. The whole purpose of this feat was to give warlord players from 4e SOMETHING to chew on, since it was one of the most amazing things from a badly under-represented edition in the 5e ruleset. Nerfing it now is a terrible, terrible move, especially when some (perhaps many) groups have a character or two built around, or at least substantially around, to this feat. Some groups have it as their only form of healing; I have seen at least two such groups in 5e so far.

But it is now mire in spirit of the warlord: you use hd to benefit healing.
I like how they reimagine thise feats to give different benefits to different characters.
Same with tavern brawler for monks.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I agree with the designers' reasoning here. It was counter-intuitive that some feats that "sound" perfect for your character were, in fact, redundant for those characters. Making a Life Cleric with Healer was near pointless, as was making a Monk with Tavern Brawler. They fixed this, so that those choices are fine. It works.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

The 5e healer feat was great at low levels, but the amount of healing it provided became fairly irrelevant from mid-levels and on.

1D&D healer is more a "we don't want to take short rests" feat. it lets the group spend unlimited hit dice in a few minutes, so as long as everyone is a long-rest class (will there even be short-rest classes in 1D&D?) there's no need to rest until nightfall.

 

[the Jester]

But it is now mire in spirit of the warlord: you use hd to benefit healing.

It's really not. Hit Dice are absolutely not the same as healing surges were in 4e; they're only marginally similar. For one thing, using the new version, a pc can only benefit from this feat once until they recover their HD, and that same pc then has no way to further heal on its own without some other aid. This moves the cost of the healing from the character taking a feat paying a feat to the character benefiting from the feat spending a Hit Die. If the idea is to emulate the warlord, it's a piss poor attempt, since the same 1st level character in 4e would have something like four to six surges.

 

[cbwjm]

I'm not too worried about the small bonus to healing magic, mostly I'm wondering if the target of the healing also gets to add their constitution modifier. Feat might not be that useful until higher levels for some targets of the feat. Like, if a barbarian had 16 constitution at level 2, they might prefer to wait until they can get a short rest (assuming those will still be a thing) to better benefit from their con bonus. As is though, I think the healing should be something like hit die + targets con bonus + your proficiency bonus.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I am absolutely fine with them adding a little bit of extra so that the magical classes can benefit. It doesn't need to take away from the healing of the Healer feat in anyway, because as @Sorcerers Apprentice points out, the Healer feat was middling at best in terms of power to begin with.

I also agree with @cbwjm that the BIG question of the feat is whether or not you can benefit from the Con Mod of the person you are healing. Without that, the healing is incredibly anemic. It is nice that they can now heal multiple times per single short rest, but the amount of healing compared to just taking a short rest is troublesome.

What I ended up doing (and will be suggesting to them) was the following

Battle Medic: If you have a Healer’s Kit, you can expend one use of it and tend to a creature within 5 feet of you as an Action. That creature regains 1d6 + 4 + your proficiency modifier hit points. They cannot regain hit points this way again until they finish a short rest, unless they spend a Hit Die.

If a creature expends a Hit Die for this healing, then they regain HD + Their Con Mod + Your Prof Bonus hit points instead.


Basically, I combined them. You get one free 1d6+4+prof per short rest, similar but weaker than the original (which was 1d6+4+level). Then spending the HD is a choice to keep going, and they get a bonus to the HD being spent compared to just taking the short rest, since they get +your prof as part of the healing.


This may not be a HUGE thing for most tables, since a lot of them don't use HD, but I basically need to make it something like this, because I switched ALL healing (including Long Rests) to HD a while back. That makes them much much more valuable, since they are the only source of non-spell, non-item healing people have and you still only recover half on a long rest. Giving them a way to spend them but reduce the effectiveness? That'd be bad for my groups.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It's really not. Hit Dice are absolutely not the same as healing surges were in 4e; they're only marginally similar. For one thing, using the new version, a pc can only benefit from this feat once until they recover their HD, and that same pc then has no way to further heal on its own without some other aid. This moves the cost of the healing from the character taking a feat paying a feat to the character benefiting from the feat spending a Hit Die. If the idea is to emulate the warlord, it's a piss poor attempt, since the same 1st level character in 4e would have something like four to six surges.

I disagree with your assessment. I think comparing a level 1 5e char with a level 1 4e character is like comparing apples and oranges.
I think, level 3 5e character would be better.
At that point, with the healer feat, you can heal someone 3 times a day for about 1/3 of their hp. This is close enough.

A little bit of tweaking and you are on point.

PS: inspiring word also put the cost of the healing surge on the receipient. So I don't understand your argumentation.