Exploring D&D Party Roles with the Healer
Our Running D&D Games without Filling Party Roles series continues. This time we look at the healer. When I think healer in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons I think cleric, druid, and maybe bard. Then there’s what I consider the secondary healers of D&D – bard, paladin, and ranger. Notice bard is included in both. Bard is a super versatile character class in D&D and has the ability fill several party roles.
In this illustration the cleric is wielding an iconic weapon for her class, the mace, ready to smash evil or heal her companions. [Art by Mario Pons]
There are many ways of running D&D games
Party roles may be something that never come up in your games. Fifth edition D&D has blurred the lines between the roles more than any other edition. With four other character classes being to heal, other than the cleric, there is a lot of it to go around. That is just in the fifth edition Player’s Handbook.
There are also character classes with self-healing abilities like the fighter’s Second Wind or the monk’s Wholeness of Body. Then there is the ability every character has with their Hit Dice. During a short rest anyone can expend these from a pool to get their hit die plus Constition modifier.
During a long rest everyone gets all their hit points back. All these factors add up to make the healer role the least necessary of the party roles in 5E D&D. In our video we give solutions and alternatives that a traditional healer like a bard, druid, and/or cleric would offer.
What about you? Is a Life Domain cleric the superstar healer in your party or is the team strategy to simply dish out the hurt so quickly that monsters don’t even get a chance to deal too much damage in return? There’s as many approaches to D&D as there are people out there playing and we always enjoy hearing what others have to say. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Is there a Healer in the House – Running D&D Games without Filling Party Roles
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