Playing a 5e game with friends

>playing a 5e game with friends
>make a dwarf life cleric of Moradin
>Last game I played a healer I remembered someone taking the healer feat and that person out-healed me for the good first part of the game
>I talked it over with party and DM and they allowed me to make my own background that allowed the healer feat to start
>reasoning behind this is a life cleric who has done mostly healing his entire life should be able to heal with healing kits.

How does Veeky Forums feel about making a feat available as a background in 5e? Should a lv 1 human fighter with healer feat be able to out-heal a life cleric who is supposed to be the best healer in the game or is a feat as a background too powerful?

Also d&d General

Seems fine, as long as the entire table is in agreement with it. But I thought the healer feat only allowed you to heal each person once per long rest?

>playing a 5e game with friends
>surprised when system allows for supreme bullshit

It one d6 plus 4 plus the number of hit dice per short rest

The question is of its superiority.

Is having a feat as a background too powerful?

> Healer feat Fighter
> Out-healing a cleric

I mean I guess it's possible but there are quite a few drawbacks:
> Costs 0.5gp per 1d6+4 heal since Healer's Kit = 5gp and has 10 uses.
> Can use on a particular character only once between any rests

I agree that the first-level cleric throws out less healing between rests but it's free and it only gets better whereas the Healer feat doesn't really improve all that much as the levels go up.

Also there is the ability to bring people back to conscious with the healer kit too. Shouldn't a trained healer have the same ability as well?

It seems odd that a person with that feat would have abilities beyond that of someone trained in the same area especially if I took a proficiency with a healer's kit.

I think the idea is that as a first-level cleric, your religious and magical training took priority over actually working in a hospital healing people all day long as a nurse or doctor. So it makes sense that you would not start with it.

The whole part of a life cleric is to heal the sick. That might be true for other clerics but not for a life cleric.

Quite, especially if you consider humans can choose another one at start (because of the variant)

Basically the character will have no RP asset, but will rock out any combat

I agree with this

It's like crossbow : seems like overpowered at first levels, becomes nerfed as players get extra attacks

The whole part of a cleric is that ypur powers are inherently magical. You did not do book learning.

Also, how is 1d6 + 4 + 1 once per short rest more healing than you can do, as a life cleric? Is it because at level 1 you have no spell slots? Cause cure wounds is definitely a d8, and you should have at least 2 spell slots.

And that's fine, but they're mostly trained to use divine energy to do it, not applying the (relatively expensive) healing kits very quickly. And your healing abilities significantly increase as you level up, especially the large bump at level 2 from the Disciple of Life and Channel Divinity class features.

Think of the "Healer" feat as more like "Fast Hands" for the first aid kit.

Healing after every short rest is more healing at the start than a life cleric. Until the life cleric starts to get enough spell slots a character with the healer feat can out-heal clerics also they can revive an unconscious person with 1 hit point. So you would say that life clerics wouldn't study natural healing in any form to make their healing better? Never crossed their mind?

Are you implying that you didnt think that would be the MEDICINE skill? Hurr durr, I can be an ass too, see?

Its an opinion. 1d6 + 5 once is probably less than 1d8 + 3 2 or 3 times. He can do it once per short rest, so maybe twice a day. Also, Spare the Dying auto stabilizes someone. No hit points, but no more death saves either.

The Healer feat is great. It's in the game so that no one has to play a heal-focused caster if they don't want to.

>Should a feat be available as a background?

No. Backgrounds make your character more well-rounded, feats make them more focused. Feats give you powerful mechanical abilities, backgrounds give you situational roleplay abilities. I would not allow my players to trade backgrounds for feats; I think it would be bad for the game. If your DM wants to let everyone start with one of each, that would be fine; you'd just be a little more powerful than normal.

>Should a lv 1 human fighter with healer feat be able to out-heal a life cleric who is supposed to be the best healer in the game

No one is the best anything in the game at level 1. As the cleric gets more spells, the fighter's single healing ability will become less impressive.

But healing is simply not as important in 5e. The main source of "healing" in almost every game will always be people spending hit dice during short rests. No one needs their main job to be "healer;" a cleric should be spending almost all of their actions on other kinds of spells.

Character is proficient in medicine but can't heal without feat. Also you have to use a cantrip spot to get that and doesn't bring a character back into the fight.

At this point im convinced you just want a free feat. 1 hp is barely back in the fight, and hes gotta spend his next turn standing up.

Also, a healers kit only has so many uses. He has to keep track of that, pay to refill it, and on its own says you dont have to make Medicine checks to stabilize. If you are proficient in medicine, having one is almost totally unneccessary. He's good at stitching people up, you're good at magic and saving lives and stitiching people up in a different way. Fucking deal with it.

It fits into a grey area. Other things a character could chose would be more piwerf il such as investigate or alchemy. Being proficient with a healers list only gives you poisons and dead people which don't come up often. I wanted to make a dearven character that was into medicine and healing. I think there should be a middle ground with the healer kit proficiency I just can't decide what. Proficency with a healer kit should provide some kind of healing.

> At this point im convinced you just want a free feat.
it was quite obvious since he started to justify it from start by fucking up backgrounds

he just got humiliated and wants to get - for free - what someone had to sacrifice racial bonuses and GP to get

Idea farming, guys. My group is dipping our toes into D&D 5 for the first time after a long run of Shadowrun, and I'm struggling with ideal/bond ideas for a character I've otherwise thought out pretty well.

Basically, I made an high elven acolyte paladin aiming for the Oath of the Ancients route, and styled her as sort of a druidic sohei, a warrior of a druid grove with polearms as a main combat schtick. So far it's thematically come out pretty cool, I think, since the GM seems to be running a fairly animist style of game (lot of nature spirits and shit keep talking to us) and 3 of the 4 characters are naturey types (half-orc hermit druid, gnome ranger, human life cleric). I'm trying to figure out what specifically she'd be trying to achieve by leaving the grove and adventuring, which I guess is the bond. The ideals, I mean, I know I like the idea of her seeing the druidic orders as intermediaries between the humanoid and spirit worlds, seeing wilderness and civilization as complementary rather than conflicting, and so on, but I'm realizing I don't know where to take her moral boundaries, either. You guys got any bright ideas?

something like
>ideal : keeping and maintaining the perfect balance between civilization and nature
>bond : i will defend the land from the folly of the irrespectious ones

dunno if orthograph is correct

No I wanted a proficiency in a "healer's" kit to provide some kind of healing without going as far as giving a feat. The healing shouldn't be as good but being proficient in something that has healer in the name should provide healing.

How can you be "proficient" with a healers kit and not be able to heal?

>Proficency with a healer kit should provide some kind of healing.
Yea, the ability to auto-succeed to stabilize.

then how is that "proficient"?

should be call stabilizing kit not healer's kit then

You know what you're doing with it enough that in a 5 second window (as in your turn) you can run 30 feet to someone, patch them up, and still have a bonus action left over, with no effort (no roll).

That's pretty fucking proficient.

Just admit that you want a free feat and stop trying to justify it in post, you've already decided you're right, I don't even get why this thread even exists

>It seems odd that a person with that feat would have abilities beyond that of someone trained in the same area especially if I took a proficiency with a healer's kit.

He took a feat, he's specialized in it too.

You are a cleric, he's a genius doctor.

The funniest part is, you've totally gimped any unique mechanical bonus your backstory could give you because you felt like a feat someone else took to SUPPORT your healing was outshining you, that's just pathetic.

Your healing would grow in strength as you do, and your background could have given you access to fuckloads of advantages later in the campaign such as always being able to seek sanctuary, or having access to an order of holy healers willing to help you, but no, you got jealous of the field medic trained fighter, and decided you needed to one up a minor patching up ability because "Only I should be allowed to heal".

No I want a balance to a proficiency if you knew how to read. All the medicine and healer's kit proficiency in the world doesn't give squat for healing but a feat does. A lifetime of medicine in a race as long lived as elves. I wouldn't have said its too powerful if I didn't think so, which is why I asked for balance. A lifetime of healing the sick should bear the fruit of some knowledge of non magical healing even more so than a guy that took a medic course down the street. The life cleric's entire ability IS to heal. If your background comes from healing why shouldn't that bear some kind of fruit? I agree that it doesn't diverse a feat but what I want is an alternative. Anything that might work with any other skill. I refuse to believe a bag full of bandages and salves wont allow me to heal outside of combat especially if the person chose this lifestyle as a career.

Cleric spent a life healing the sick but can't heal any other way but magical.

Well, if you want to heal like that take the feat.

The cleric can treat diseases and other illnesses with his healers kit. He's just not a Trauma Surgeon like the guy with the feat. Which is fine, that's what he's got spells for.

So there are only trauma surgeons or nothing in the world? no grey? Even if he dedicated his life to healing. his background as a healer would mean no healing ability what so ever?

They CAN heal. That's the basic use of the healer's kit. There is healing other than Hit Points.

Also: You didn't spend the feat. Clearly that means he's trained in areas you are not. You wanna do that, take the feat.

Ok no matter how long a cleric spends healing he can only do CPR.

I'm glad you're not my DM. I think something is too powerful and ask for balance and get a total wall of ignorance.

A lifetime of medical study should offer some healing.

>You know what you're doing with it enough that in a 5 second window (as in your turn) you can run 30 feet to someone, patch them up, and still have a bonus action left over, with no effort (no roll).

so you're saying a person that has studied healing for decades couldn't do that?

also rounds are 6 seconds

>A lifetime of medical study should offer some healing.

Then take the feat. Are you saying that a genius doctor who has spent a very rare resource should be a worst healer than an acolyte of a god?

>I'm glad you're not my DM. I think something is too powerful and ask for balance and get a total wall of ignorance.

Why is it too powerful? You can take the feat too if you want extensive non-magical healing.

Yes but healing is my background and he has studied it for years. I want a way to heal without taking the feat. I think the feat is too powerful to be just given but I don't know any other way of healing out of combat medically without that feat. He is a dwarf of Moradin his profession is healing. He seeks to sculpt the body back together as a blacksmith molds iron but i want a way to do it without ninjaing a feat. He shouldn't have to learn a feat for something he already knows how to do but at the same time he shouldn't get a feat out of it either. Like I said before I want balance. I want a way to use medicine to heal out of combat without making something that is overpowered.

Fucking christ mate, you're grasping at straws. Clerics, even life clerics spend their lives healing the sick WITH MAGIC granted by, BEING A CLERIC. There is zero reason you would have to "study medicine", you pray in the morning and Moradin says "fuck that shit m8, you got spells to that do that". If you want to role play a cleric who does that, and also studied non-magical healing. That's what the fucking feat is for. Stop trying to sell this as anything other than what it is, you wanting a free feat.

>i want a way to do it without ninjaing a feat
>i want a way to do it without doing it the right way

> lifetime of medicine
a lifetime of medicine is being a lvl20 healer

your background is you pre-adventuring life

>b-but my character got these super rad skills before even adventuring!
Then it's not DnD, because DnD backgrounds are made to model run-of-the-mill citizen.
I mean, the soldier background doesn't give you heavy armor proficiency. The acolyte background doesn't make you able to throw miracle, even if your 200 years old elf spent all his time worshipping gods.

exposure to the sick and dying reaping no benefits to non magical healing but taking a back alley course does?

Also Moradin is for anything that helps Dwarf kind all dwarfs have to choose a profession and that is his profession. He is a weird Dwarf but that's what i want to roleplay. his life was saved by a field medic and was taken in by the medic and taught to heal in a war with giants. he has seen death and injury on a daily basis for years and has assisted the procedures hundreds of times until he followed the call of the church when the war ended.

lifetimes are different for different races

a 55 year old dwarf who has seen combat injuries for 30 years never learned anything about healing. Ok whatever

>exposure to the sick and dying reaping no benefits to non magical healing but taking a back alley course does?

If he took a feat, it wasn't a back ally course.

you're just trying to use your character story to bypass the fact that lvl1 adventurer are newbies in regard to adventuring

you just saw 'background earned abilities' and thought
>oh hey, I can use that to give my character any fucking game mechanic I want

guess what guys before being a lvl1 Sorcerer, my characters was raised as the blacksmith's son, so he has proficiency with any armor

I take the warcaster feat and I can cast in full plate!

And it's all because of his pre-adventuring history ! :^) he is so lucky

>his life was saved by a field medic and was taken in by the medic and taught to heal in a war with giants
This is literally what the feat is for. This right fucking here. If you would just admit that you want a free feat this would go so much easier for you. Nobody here is saying your character idea is badwrongfun, you're just being the kind of insufferable jackass who refuses to work within the system. Feats are a very big deal in 5e, they should not be given out lightly to "balance" some perceived imbalance. Not to mention that simply being a cleric would shred the amount of healing someone with a kit could do in only a couple of levels.

I have no issue with it, a Background is basically a small selection of mini-feats anyway, along with some gear. Just choose a template, swap out appropriate stuff and yer good to go

soldier proficiency gives athletics though but i guess healing background give you no ability to heal injuries but a short rest allows you to heal?

It gives you healer's kit proficiency.

athletics doesn't influence as much in combat as say your movement speed

just like medicine doesn't influence as much in combat as your actual healing spells

What you should get as an ex-healer is medicine proficiency

Ok you can take feats in the middle of a dungeon at the deepest darkest parts of the world. How then between the time you started the dungeon till the time you got to the end did he take a course? How can the time from level 1 to 4 did he gain enough experience to outdo someone who dedicated a life to healing?

that's the problem healer kits don't heal which means its not a healer's kit. It has bandages but they can't heal wounds

>nobody is allowed to heal but me!

Dude, there's literally a cantrip for that.

A cleric gets two skills and I chose medicine and religion. Does Medicine provide any kind of out-of-combat healing? If so i think i found my answer.

Talking medical ability not spell ability and the medical ability is somehow better than the spell ability too.

Medicine is used to stabilize a dying creature, or diagnose an illness. Healer's kit proficiency lets you auto-stabilize, you still need medicine to figure out if someone is diseased or poisoned.

>takes a magical healer class
>finds out a level 1 healer with a feat can do the same things he can with magic
>thinks he should have all the access to anything healing no matter what
I can only imagine what would happen if you ever play with an abjurer. "I need a magical shield I can absorb HP damage from too! It makes sense, I'm a healer!"

I'm glad this mongloid isn't one of my players, trying over hard to get crunch at the expense of fluff is the hallmark of a shitter who should be playing a video game instead

30 years of medicine


Can only perform CPR

And, you know, magically heal wounds and fatigue.

Oh, and bring the dead back to life.

Should cleric spells from a life cleric do more damage than pure damage dealers because of a feat at lv1? Why have any other races or classes lets just make one best at everything and demand everyone play that.

I can stop you from dying but heaven forbid if I try and bandage your wound

Let me put this in perspective: Someone with the Healer feat can, in less than 6 seconds, heal a dying commoner, your average person, to perfect health and then some. Your ability to bandage a wound is represented by your ability to stabilize someone, the ability to heal hitpoints through a medical kit is almost magical in nature, that's why it's a feat.

It's not magical because it doesn't get extra hailing from cleric abilities. If it is magical healing then why don't clerics get it? Wouldn't a cleric me more adept at it than a martial character?

Why is it a problem that someone with advanced training can use a mundane item to do something that a shitty magic caster can do with a 1st level spell? The magic caster's spell is free, can be used in six seconds, and gets better as time goes on, and the mundane item will always stay just as good/shitty as it is at first level. How the hell is that overpowered?

Because it's too strong to be a level 1 cleric class feature, so it's a feat instead. Are you happy?

Why not take the magic initiate feat at lv 4 and get two damage cantrips from druid and goodberry. goodberry heals 4 hp each with the life cleric ability that gives pluses to magic healing. it would heal 40 hp outside of combat. You would have to walk around without a weapon in one hand but you would get the magic healing out of combat you wanted along with some damage cantrips.

Thank you !!! Finally some progress

>[gibberish intensifies]

complain that something is "too powerful"

offer no alternatives

ok thanks

Are you even aware of how little your response has to do with anything?

Ok thanks for sharing bye bye now

>a lifetime of medicine is being a lvl20 healer
no, being a lvl20 healer is being the new god of medicine

no being lv 20 makes you the god of spell-casting not physical medicine. physical medicine god you only have to chose to be a doctor at lv 4.

>gain 4 levels in 3 days playing time
>become doctor
>years of medicine
>can't heal