A Homebrew Healing Cantrip for 5E D&D

Over at the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Facebook group I came across a post sharing a very intriguing idea for a healing cantrip for 5E D&D. I know what you’re thinking — it’s madness! — and believe me I’d agree with you almost all of the time. But I think there’s some merit to this homebrew healing cantrip worth considering. Maybe it’s perfect for your game or maybe it would break the system asunder. Character death in 5E D&D doesn’t occur with the kind of frequency it has in past editions. Your mileage may vary of course but the rules for death and dying lean towards the forgiving side. At any rate I think close wound is worth taking a closer look at and sharing with the D&D community. So let’s get into it and see what this homebrew healing cantrip for 5E D&D is all about.

Back in Avalyne The Life Giver’s day they didn’t even have cantrips at all, and they had to walk uphill both ways to heal companions. [Art by Larry Elmore]

Making a healing cantrip work

Before we take a closer look at the homebrew healing cantrip close wound, let’s see what the spell itself does and the associated mechanical fiddly bits. This screenshot is from D&D Beyond, where the user created the spell with the homebrew tools available. Side note: have you tried out the DDB homebrew tools? You can create and browse homebrew spells, monsters, magic items, feat, backgrounds, races and subclasses. And the Encounter Builder is currently in beta as well, which is an extremely useful development of the DDB digital toolset. As a matter of fact, our Out of the Box: Encounters for 5th Edition material will be the first third-party creator to offer a portal to our content in the form of Encounters built using those tools.

Close wound offers an interesting take on a healing cantrip for 5E D&D. Click the image to browse more homebrew spells at D&D Beyond.

Why this healing cantrip works

There’s currently 168 cantrips in the DDB homebrew spells database tagged with Healing. I did not preview every one, but I did take a peek at quite a few for comparison. Some of them sound kind of neat, and some of them are straight up ridiculous. But not one of the homebrew healing cantrips I looked at tap into the best feature of close wound, using another resource.

We look at existing mechanics and resources first whenever we design anything over here at Nerdarchy. And one of the best, most underutilized resources in 5E D&D are Hit Dice. They’re great for a hit point boost after a short rest, there’s a few magic items and feats referencing them and not incidentally my favorite monster from Mordenkainen’s Fiendish Folio Volume 1 interacts with character Hit Dice positively and negatively. We like Hit Dice so much we created an entire book about alternate ways to use them! From Hit Dice to Heroics happens to be our most popular title by a tremendous margin.

Anyone who’s played fourth edition D&D might find close wound reminiscent of the Healing Surge mechanic. There’s already precedent for Healing Surge in 5E D&D too! Chapter 9: Dungeon Master’s Workshop in the Dungeon Master’s Guide includes Healing Surge as an Adventuring Option along with a few others to “make it easier or harder for adventurers to recover from injury, either increasing or reducing the amount of time your players can spend adventuring before rest is required.”

Close wound creates a terrific middle ground by taking this idea and tacking on elements making it a more impactful choice. In the DMG option, any character can use an action and spend up to half their Hit Dice to heal, adding their Constitution modifier to the roll. For even easier healing, the DMG suggests Healing Surge as a bonus action. With this homebrew healing cantrip it takes another character’s action to allow using Hit Dice, eating into the caster’s action economy.

Tying this healing cantrip to an expendable resource like Hit Dice puts a nice cap on overuse. Characters only have so many Hit Dice to spend after all. And monsters have Hit Dice too, so I love the idea of enemy creatures casting close wound during combat. Close Wound would make a great creature ability aside from being an actual spell. Dungeon Masters and the creatures we deploy don’t have to follow the same guidelines as player characters, with access to strange magics and unique features. Battle Master fighters can Rally allies and Purple Dragon Knights can shout a Rallying Cry. There’s no reason an enemy commander can’t command troops to walk it off with a close wound type effect.

Lastly, the creator of close wound included a very important restriction for the effect — the target creature must have at least 1 hit point. Spare the dying can breath a sigh of relief, it’s still the only cantrip capable of staving off death. A stable creature still has 0 hit points, so it’s going to take more than a cantrip to bring a creature back into the fight.

Why this healing cantrip could be problematic

I’ll have to comb through comments on the Facebook post for this portion, because if I’m honest I don’t see a problem with close wound. Here are some of the comments that stand out to me on why this homebrew healing cantrip could be a problem for 5E D&D games or suggestions for tweaking the design.

• It’s becomes a must have cantrip. Suggestions are requiring target to spend 2 Hit Dice for every 1 Hit Die of healing.
• Require the target to expend their reaction
• It will replace short rests
• Reduce healing to 1 hit point per Hit Die spent
• Include some form of temporary recover weakness after healing
• Target can use Hit Dice at the start of their next turn as a bonus action
• The caster expends their own Hit Dice to impart healing
• Once a creature has been the target of close wound they cannot be the target again until they finish a short or long rest
• The hit points gained are temporary hit points
• The target expends all of their Hit Dice to regain 1 Hit Die of healing

And the most important feedback of all…

• Dungeon Master’s Guide straight up says “A cantrip shouldn’t offer healing.”

Homebrew content for 5E D&D

Nerdarchists Dave and Ted say it in every video, Nerdarchy is a place they like to talk about news, views and homebrews for 5E D&D. Creating new content for the games we love brings immense joy for us as DMs and (hopefully) the players who join us at the gaming table. Achieving balanced content becomes much more important for creators who intend to market their work. In a home game, new material only needs to work for you and your group. I was happy to come across this homebrew healing cantrip and thankful for the creator who shared it with the D&D community. As it stands close wound seems like a solid addition to my collection of homebrew stuff. Experimenting with some of the suggested changes in the feedback seems like a worthwhile idea too.

What do you think? Would you allow close wound in your 5E D&D games as written, or would you include some of the feedback suggestions to change it up? Is the idea of a healing cantrip anathema to everything you hold dear? Do you like to discover new ways to use existing mechanics for your own homebrew 5E D&D content?