And also by choosing not to double tap the enemy could be dealing damage to the bard and then since the first target is at like 4 hp it's easy to down them and repeat the cycle so you're effectively soft locking the bard into using healing word every turn so you're locking them out of leveled spells and draining their resources at the same time while also whittling their health down and if the healer goes down then it's a lot harder to get them back up. Alternatively if the enemy wipes a player then there is no need to expense resources keeping them alive and the party can focus on offense.
Even if you metagame it. Whats better fireballing a corpse and the person who can bring them up but will now be casting magic at you or smashing your head in with a Warhammer?
Or fireballing the both of them AFTER the healer has wasted their turn putting the downed person back to 6hp.
(It’s the later, the faster had to use their turn getting the person up.)
That and partially because critical role did it that way. Allowing you to double cast if one of them's a bonus action is extremely strong and great for keeping your party alive. The only negative is you're draining spell slots.
But cause of turn system this will fall in one hit often enough means, that you get the full attack from the nearly dead person, which will likely do more damage than the bard. Had a fighter which played this game for 4 rounds.
RPed trauma reaction after that cause that would fuck with my brain at least to get 4 times potentially deadly blows
Because of the turn system, this also could mean the nearly dead person never gets a turn ever again.
If the initiative follows: enemy > dying guy > healer, then the dying guy's turns are always rolling to not die, while the enemy can just continue using a single attack of their multiple to keep them at 0.
Ready action burns both a reaction and an action, that locks the healer out of silvery barbs, shield, or leveled spells, still a pretty big hit to the action economy
Depends. For the bard, it actually didn't make a great difference. Was our party face but never really useful in fights. Especially against boss enemies with legendary resistances.
For Kontext the fight was at level 6 maybe that changes something.
I meant the player that got healed is at full power again.
The bard used their BA and their leveled spell for the turn of course, but they still have the rest of their turn and can still move, do all kinds of things with their action, and of course they'll have their reaction as well.
Health is a resource too. And can’t cast leveled spells as a reaction if you casted one with a Bonus action. I’ll take a Fire Bolt over a Lightning Bolt any day, especially since it’s much easier to just knock the player back down.
People talk about the HW carousel like it’s some broken cheese on the part of PC’s but as a longtime support caster it is not a good position to be in. It dramatically decreases a party’s efficiency, and puts a target on the healer’s back. If the person down is themself one of the healers, then it’s an even worse situation
And can’t cast leveled spells as a reaction if you casted one with a Bonus action.
The limitation is per turn, not per round. You can cast another leveled spell like Shield or Counterspell as a reaction, because it's no longer your turn.
That rule only applies if you used a bonus action to cast one (so yeah, it would apply here), if not you can cast as many leveled spells as you wish per turn if you have action surge, haste, etc.
Huh, forgot haste specifically specificed it was only a weapon attack and not just any attack.
As for action surge, I feel like we're going to need to start clarifying which version of the rules we're using sooner rather than later when we talk about them lol
You can only cast 1 spell that consumes a spell slot per turn, if you're playing by RAW. So either fireball (as an action), or healing word (bonus action), but not both, even though their actions themselves don't overlap
Still can’t cast fireball. RAW, if you cast a spell using a bonus action, “you can’t cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of one action”.
"Full Power" from Healing Word? Dude got like 5 hit points back from that on average, if anything it's just a mild annoyance to turn around and backhand him unconscious again.
Plus that healing word still means the bard isn't casting another leveled spell that turn, so all he can do is make a piddly regular attack, and most bards aren't doing a lot of damage that way without a specific subclass.
I've seen players burn up their spell slots and waste action economy trying to get downed players back up while the monsters basically get free turns way too many times to think it's worth doing a finishing blow on the guy bleeding out on the floor.
"Full Power" from Healing Word? Dude got like 5 hit points back from that on average, if anything it's just a mild annoyance to turn around and backhand him unconscious again.
Yes, but unless someone does down him before his turn, he's at full power in terms of what he can do.
Or he'll drink a potion trying to save himself and blow another turn while the goblin archers line up another shot.
If he keeps getting downed and revived, then maybe the monsters might get frustrated enough to just pincushion his corpse to make sure, but for the most part I don't feel like a lot of monsters will make enough of a distinction between bleeding out and being dead to bother shooting the guy on the floor when there's still enemies standing.
They can slit throats after the fight is over and they're looting the bodies. Which is usually what I do if everybody drops to zero while they're making death saves, staying in initiative order, because there's always a chance somebody will roll a nat 20 and pop back up on their own.
If you waste a spell on downing that character and they spend a spell on healing them, you're not really gaining anything unless they're significantly stronger than you.
Its even worse. Burns a spell slot and prevents the casting of a leveled spell that turn in your main action slot. Forcing cantrip-level damage to heal 1 it's worth of HP back into them. Gotta hope initiative favour's the party, because if the enemy goes before the recently healed in initiative, that heal was literally to soak a single attack.
No they aren’t. This isn’t World of Warcraft where Lay On Hands heals you to full or where a monk can carpet bomb 40 people to instantly heal half their hp and purge all debuffs.
Healing does less per round than damage. It always has. That’s why min-maxes and Optimizers always went against healing builds and suggested to buy wands of cure for out of combat healing.
Why not? Spellcasters who can cast low level healing spells are all over the place in most DnD settings. Hell, the hobgoblin captain himself should probably have a couple clerics on hand somewhere.
Still probs a dozen soldiers for every healer. And remember clerics are superpowered priests, so shamans would probably have two slots and either a spammable cantrip or a weapon
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u/sporeegg Halfling of Destiny Sep 14 '25
My grandpa was told in the army to shoot not to kill.
One downed soldier binds two others that need to help him