D&D 5E Magical Healer's Kit

[Tobold]

The healer's kit in the Player's Handbook works like this:

Healer's Kìt, This kit is a leather pouch containing bandages, salves, and splints. The kit has ten uses. As an action, you can expend one use of the kit to stabilize a creature that has 0 hit points, without needing to make a Wisdom (Medicine) check.

The main use of it appears to be to provide a basic option for stabilizing dying companions in the absence of healing spells or people with the medicine skill. But even then it is only marginally better than somebody without proficiency in medicine making an easy WIS check. I haven't seen it used much.

On the other hand the absence of healing spells or potions means than any character knocked unconscious will remain so for 1d4 hours, which is frequently annoying. There is no cantrip healing 1 hit point or other easy solution to just get somebody back up once you ran out of Cure Wounds. So I was considering giving my players the following magic item:

Magical Healer's Kìt, This kit is a leather pouch containing bandages, salves, and splints. The kit has infinite uses. As an action, you can expend one use of the kit to make a Wisdom (Medicine) check DC 10 to treat a creature that has 0 hit points. If you fail the check, you nevertheless stabilize the target. If you succeed the check, the target also gains 1 hit point. You can't use the kit to heal more than 1 hit point.

Does that sound reasonable, or is that for some reason completely breaking 5E healing/dying rules?

 

[schnee]

If you want to make super low levels (and, occasionally, the high levels) less like Fantasy Vietnam and more like the movies, sure, why not?

 

[DEFCON 1]

As a house rule it is absolutely fine and will not break anything. Basically it turns a healer's kit into an automatic Nat 20 on a death save. If the game can survive a player rolling a Nat 20 on a death save, it can survive your house rule.

That being said... I suspect the reason the game has the healer's kit the way it does (with it seemingly virtually useless to most people) is because WotC decided to throw in a lot of extra little bits and bobs into the game to account for many of the differing playstyles, without actually stating in the books outright "Here's what you should use to replicate a 'XE' experience game!" So in this particular case, some tables are going to play with majorly low or anti-magic, and some even without skills, so having an object or tool that helps with certain actions makes sense and is exceedingly important. It's obviously not going to be really needed for 98% of the groups out there that'll have like 3 casters all of whom have Cure Wounds on their spell lists... but I'm sure there will be some for which having the healing kit in the adventuring gear purchase list is a godsend and means they don't have to invent one themselves.

 

[Fanaelialae]

In my next campaign, I'm planning on trying out the following house rule (we used to use a very similar house rule back in 2e / 3e).

A character can take 1 minute of time and 1 use of a healer's kit to treat wounds. That character rolls a Medicine check and restores 1 hp to the target if the check beats DC 10, + 1 additional hp for every 5 points the check is over 10 (so if your check is a 20, you restore 3 hp). A character trained in Medicine, but without a healer's kit, can restore 1 hp with a DC 15 medicine check, but no more than that. A creature must take a short or long rest before benefiting from this healing again.

It's a very minuscule amount of healing compared to something like the Healer feat, but every little bit counts. The medicine skill isn't the best skill in 5e by a long shot, so giving it a little actual healing potential isn't likely to hurt anything in my opinion. As it takes a minute to perform, it's useless in combat.

However, I wouldn't under estimate the difference between an auto-success and having to roll, unless your Medicine bonus is 9+. For a character who's failed one or two death saves, having a 100% chance of stabilization is way better than anything less. My characters usually carry one. Well worth the 5 gp.

With regard to your particular item, I would personally add a once per short rest limitation. Otherwise it may exacerbate the whole yo-yo effect where a character drops in combat, gets back up, drops again, and is healed again, and so on. As it's currently written, the item would make your PCs much harder to kill IMO.

 

[Tobold]

I hadn't thought of it as an in-combat item, because I would think that bandaging somebody takes more than 6 seconds. Maybe explicitly state that one use of the kit takes 1 minute, so it won't be used in combat.

 

[akr71]

In the hands of someone with the Healer Feat, its a pretty useful item. In addition to being able to stabilize a creature, you can

As an action, you can spend one use of a healer's kit to tend to a creature and restore 1d6+4 hit points to it, plus additional hit points equal to the creature's maximum number of Hit Dice. The creature can't regain hit points from this feat again until it finishes a short or long rest.

 

[tuxgeo]

That feature of the "Healer" feat is only usable once per character per short rest, as stated above; but the "Healer" feat also has another use: each time you expend a use of a Healer's Kit to stabilize a dying creature, that creature regains 1 hit point. This means that you can give your dying allies the effect of rolling a natural 20 on a death saving throw each time you use your Healer's Kit on them to stabilize them.

For maximum healing of a fallen ally, use that 1-HP-only feature first to get the ally back to consciousness; then use the other feature of the "Healer" feat to let that same ally regain the listed 1d6+4+(number of Hit Dice) hit points. Doing so will start that ally in the "dying" condition to regain consciousness, give it 1 HP so it is no longer "dying," then give it the rest of those HP.

Doing so does consume two actions and two uses of a Healer's Kit. Carry spares. . . .