You are an able physician, allowing you to mend wounds quickly and get your allies back in the fight. You gain the following benefits:
When you use a healer's kit to stabilize a dying creature, that creature also regains 1 hit point.
As an action. you can spend one use of a healer's kit to tend to a creature and restore 1d6 + 4 hit points to it, plus additional hit points equal to the creature's maximum number of Hit Dice. The creature can't regain hit points from this feat again until it finishes a short or long rest.
Healer: Is There a Doctor in the House?
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Who is the Healer feat for, exactly? Because despite reading it a dozen times, I still can’t figure out who picks this up.
For reference, a healer’s kit has ten uses that act as Spare the Dyings. You expend a use to stabilize a dying creature you touch. Easy peasy. Now, with the Healer feat, that creature also regains 1 hit point. That’s a massive deal, and turns healer’s kits into Goodberries. In addition, now you can consume uses as 1d6+4+ the creature’s hit dice (usually level) hit points which ends up feeling like a free up-cast Cure Wounds on each of your party members every short rest. All of the words here make up a decent amount of power. You’re getting access to a bunch of expanded tools that are useful, right? But then what character takes this?
Traditional healers, like Clerics, don’t really need this. They already have a wide arsenal of healing options available, and usually only need just Healing Word to be good enough. Healing creatures off of zero hit points is already a pretty easy task with health potions and 1st level slots; this does it without expending the slots, making it a potentially good low tier option, but is it that much better than something like Magic Initiate with the druid spell list and Goodberry? I don’t think so, as you’re also getting two cantrips that can help you explore the world in more ways than just magical healing, while getting the bulk of the useful text here with a free extra spell slot.
Short and long rests offer bountiful healing options between full heals and hit dice. Sure, 1d6+9 hit points is a decent chunk of HP, but how often do you really need it between fights? How many fights in a row are you going where this bonus healing comes into play? Maybe at the grindiest, most encounter heavy tables the bonus HP matters between three or four short rests, but with how the majority of tables play, it's not even really better than something like the temporary hit points from Inspiring Leader.
If you can already heal, you don’t really need this. If you can’t, you don’t really want to be spending a precious feat on this new toy for the most part. It could help facilitate a specific fantasy; the shaman totem warrior barbarian with healing herbal poultices jumps to mind, as does the field medic archetype for rangers or fighters. Here again though is my issue: Magic Initiate offers you a better tool for realizing that archetype I think. I don’t put a lot of weight in the 1d6 healing ability, and the stabilization can be done with Goodberry, leaving two free cantrips just on the table. Are two cantrips worth the extra healing, with the cost of needing to make sure you’re always stocked up on kits? I don’t think so, but at some tables, maybe.
I can imagine there are characters out there who would want something like this, but have a harder time imagining tables where it is particularly powerful. Healing is just so abundant based on the current resting rules that I struggle to find a lot of value in healing that does much of anything outside of getting an ally off of zero. This does that, but that can be done in easier ways at a lower cost. In the mid to upper tiers you really can’t afford to be spending actions getting people off zero; that’s why Healing Word and Mass Healing Word thrive, so this is aimed specifically at lower tier games. If you want to live the healer fantasy, and are considering this feat, I think you’ll want to make sure you’re at a table taking ample short rests, are feeling major constant pressure to the party’s hit points, and don’t find more value in extra cantrips or other options. Oh, and accept it’ll probably just feel worse to use over time.
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