Heal: Not a Heal I Want to Die On

Usable By: Cleric, Druid

Spell Level: 6

School: Evocation

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 60 feet

Duration: Instantaneous

Components: V, S

Choose a creature that you can see within range. A surge of positive energy washes through the creature, causing it to regain 70 hit points. This spell also ends blindness, deafness, and any diseases affecting the target. This spell has no effect on constructs or undead.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 7th level or higher, the amount of healing increases by 10 for each slot level above 6th.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

There are next to no times I’d want access to Heal in a fight. “But Sam! What if your barbarian friend is low on hit points, and needs a good boost to get back up? What if not only are they about to die, but they’re also blinded AND deafened, plus have picked up every disease under the sun from their time in every dirty brothel you can imagine? Surely it has to be good then!” you may ask.

What an oddly specific question, dear reader, but even in this example, I’m going to have to pass on Heal. Tactically, healing more than one hit point is roughly the same as healing one hit point, and the other effects just don’t warrant a 6th level spell. Honestly, you don’t need anything other than Healing Word; Heal is worse than that 1st level spell (in combat, at least).

To further elaborate on why Heal is worse than Healing Word in combat, we need to have a general understanding of how fights in 5e work. Fundamentally, the greatest advantage a side can have is having more actions than the other. Players are typically kitted out with ample Bonus Actions and additional effects like Sneak Attack and Divine Smite to get as much out of each action as possible. This tends to counterbalance the often higher quantity of enemies with actions of their own.

Why healing is so bad is it doesn’t actively contribute to reducing your opponents actions, nor does it necessarily give you an action advantage. At its best, heal COULD eat two, three, or even four actions from the enemy team should each attack deal a small amount of damage. By the time you’re casting Heal for the 70 hit points, more realistically it's recovering from a single large attack like a dragon’s breath weapon; you’re trading an action and a 6th level slot for just a part of an enemies action. The circumstances where the spell is good require a lot to have happened beforehand that could have been mitigated through instead denying your enemies actions; every spell that deals damage simultaneously is “mitigating” damage. A dead creature normally isn’t dealing any damage, after all.

To expand on this point, healing a creature that isn’t unconscious is often a waste of actions. You are spending an action to gain no additional actions, all in a situation where action loss wasn’t guaranteed to happen. Even if your paladin is sitting at 3 HP, spending your 6th level spell hindering whatever would be killing them is potentially mitigating any incoming effects that would lead to action loss. If the creatures threatening the paladin instead die, are restrained, or are terrified, you aren’t allowing any action loss to occur on your side while eating enemy actions.

The instance in which healing magic IS good is when it nets you more actions than it takes to cast. This occurs mainly when a character is making unconscious; at the time, they are taking no actions, so taking any action or bonus action that revives them a form of action advantage. In the case of Healing Word, a bonus action can net another player an Action, Bonus Action, Move, and more, all for just a 1st level slot. Sure, they are more likely to drop to smaller increments of damage than they would had you committed something like Heal, but in most circumstances a single Healing Word will provide exactly what a Heal would have. If you take 70 damage, the game doesn’t care if you’re at 1 or 70 hit points; both cases put you under, and most importantly, deny actions. Heal sometimes will net you more actions by allowing you to take more hits before dropping, but it isn’t guaranteed, and it takes an entire action and your 6th level spell to do. Instead, you could be killing the creatures attempting to kill your friends, then get them up with a bonus action spell.

Out of combat, Heal is a fine solution to some diseases, but you’re probably better off using a lower level spell like Lesser Restoration. Instead of preparing Heal, prepare something that actually kills people.

5e Spells

Heal: Not a Heal I Want to Die On