Song of Rest - powerful?

[Blackbrrd]

Got a Bard in the party and he uses Song of Rest with a magic item that boosts it to +7 hp healed for each healing surge used while resting. This boosts the healing while resting by about 50% at low levels, which I find quite a lot.

Nobody runs out of healing surges except maaaybe the Invoker if he is really clumsy and I focus fire on him. In a way this is fine, but on the other hand encounters that do less than 50% hp damage to a character is usually blown off with a: "Ah, one healing surge takes care of that".

On the other hand I have been in a party without a bard and it is bloody painful to heal up after a fight: "Phew! That was 4 healing surges, and I already spent two the last encounter, one left then."

The bard-party usually stops when it is out of daily powers and usually conserves all of them for a possible big encounter. The second party has to finish encounters as quickly as possible so they don't run out of surges, and when they get to the big encounter they are usually short on dailies. The downside is that the bardless party sometimes goes nova on a small encounter because they just ran out of healing surges on a character and they know they are gonna stop anyway.

What is worst? I can't really decide.

 

[cdrcjsn]

A lot of parties just take a few short rests back to back and use the two encounter healing powers that most leaders have to boost healing. At 6th level and higher, it's better than the song of rest in terms of hit points healed.

The only downside is several people hanging around half-healed for several short rests which might not be prudent in the middle of a dangerous area.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, honestly I'm totally okay with folks being really good at healing outside of combat. I actually think the game would roll along just fine if you spent a single surge and healed to full outside of combat.

 

[Nifft]

My experience playing a Bard vs. a heal-centric Cleric (pacifist build) is: the Bard is nicely balanced. When you see how well Astral Seal can heal without costing any surges at all ... yikes!

Cheers, -- N

 

[Obryn]

If you're running into issues as the DM, you can do what DMs have always done... manage timing. Don't give the players multiple short rests back to back, if it's not appropriate. Monsters don't always wait for you to come to them

-O

 

[chitzk0i]

Bards have quite a bit less in-combat healing compared to clerics, but if you've got the awesome charisma and that instrument, Song of Rest balances that out. It's a trade-off.

 

[Snowbird]

My experience playing a Bard vs. a heal-centric Cleric (pacifist build) is: the Bard is nicely balanced. When you see how well Astral Seal can heal without costing any surges at all ... yikes!

QFT. Astral Seal (optimized) is IMO silly in the early heroic levels.

 

[Rothe_]

It is just the bard class working as intended...

Also, this may be a big thing only if you don't allow using the leader classes' twice per encounter heals multiple times between encounters. Most groups do allow it, if there is enough time for multiple short rests.

 

[Iron Sky]

That's actually practically nothing. If there's enough down-time between encounters, a 2nd level cleric with Life-Transference can heal the whole party up to full without using any surges at all.

(Speaking from experience, since the cleric in my game has been doing it since he rolled up his character).

It's cool for our game since it's mostly wilderness/exploratory. I think there's only been 2-3 out of 13 sessions so far where they had more than one combat in a day anyway...

 

[Blackbrrd]

Ok, what I am hearing is that you should spend most of your healing surges IN combat, not AFTER combat? In other words, that healing after combat should be close to free? It really reminds me of the wands of cure light wounds from 3.x.

Personally I can't decide what I want. Part of me want the party to partially nova with dailies to get less damage to conserve the precious healing surges, part of me wants the party to heal out of combat without spending any healing surges so we can have 4-5-6 encounters per day - or until you get into a nasty one where you use dailies to survive.

The former way of playing is more desperate, while the latter is more heroic.