Saturday, September 4, 2021

Druids versus Clerics: Can Tree-Huggers Heal at the Same Level?

 The Cleric is the quintessential healing class. But that, in and of itself, often makes it a less popular role. Designers at WotC have explicitly said that they go out of their way to make Clerics the most powerful class in D&D to better encourage players to be the team healer.

If you've come from MMOs like WoW, it can be a little surprising how D&D healers work. Resources are far more limited, and so a healer is not simply going to spend every round of combat casting heals on their allies. Typically a D&D fight is mostly about killing the monsters before they can do the same to you, but being able to bring a player back from the brink (or, ideally, keeping them from going unconscious at all) can be a very important aspect of the party's action economy in allowing them to prevail.

Clerics are not the only class with access to healing. I'll still use a narrower definition of healing to mean that we're talking about the ability to heal other party members - a Fighter can get a pretty nice boost of health with their Second Wind ability, but this is reserved only for themselves - the Fighter can only get another party member healed by shoving a healing potion in their mouth.

But beyond Clerics, Artificers, Rangers, and Paladins all have a bit of healing, but as half-casters, they won't get terribly powerful effects. Bards also get some healing spells, but I don't believe any class feature reinforce this, and they only have some of the spells.

The only class I think you could argue is also truly set up to be a healer is the Druid.

Druids are, I think, more popular. They have a lot of unique spells, and their Wild Shape ability can be a lot of fun. But how do they hold up as healers?

Well, let's take a look at their respective spell lists first, and then class (really subclass) features that reinforce the ability to heal. (Of note, I'm counting the expanded spell lists from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything).

Clerics have the following spells that restore hit points (including spells that bring someone back from the dead, which give at least 1 hit point.) I'm going to set aside things that grant temporary hit points or increase hit point maximums. (I'm also leaving out any domain spells).

Cure Wounds, Healing Word, Prayer of Healing, Aura of Vitality, Life Transference, Mass Healing Word, Revivify, Death Ward (sort of), Mass Cure Wounds, Heal, Regenerate, Resurrection, Mass Heal, Power Word Heal, and True Resurrection

Druids get these:

Cure Wounds, Goodberry (sort of), Healing Word, Healing Spirit, Aura of Vitality, Revivify, Mass Cure Wounds, Reincarnate, Heal, Regenerate, and True Resurrection

So, if we eliminate the overlap, we have Clerics with Prayer of Healing, Life Transference, Mass Healing Word, Resurrection, Mass Heal, and Power Word Heal, while Druids have Healing Spirit and Reincarnate.

So, clearly, Clerics get more healing spells. But two of them are at 9th level, which few campaigns even get to.

I'd say the most glaring thing (before tier 4) here is the lack of Mass Healing Word for Druids. In most other cases, the Druid has another spell that can substitute in. Prayer of Healing is a wonderfully efficient out-of-combat heal, but I've seen Healing Spirit do wonders as a way to let the whole party get some quick heals in the middle of a fight. Reincarnate obviously introduces some major character changes (and I'd recommend that DMs change the race table to include other races in your setting,) but gets the job done.

While I think sheer numbers do put this in the Clerics' favor, I also think a Druid has nearly as good of a toolkit for keeping allies alive. Now, let's look at class features that aid with these things.

Of note is that neither class has any baseline class features that say anything about healing. So, we'll need to look at subclasses. Unfortunately, Clerics have an absurd number of subclasses. But I also believe that only a couple actually boost the ability to heal.

Life Clerics have Disciple of Life, which grants a bonus to the healing done by your spells. It's a decently generous bonus. They also have the Preserve Life channel divinity option, which is a big group heal. At Supreme Healing, at level 17, maximizes any healing you do. I think a Life Cleric is probably unmatched when it comes to sheer healing throughput.

Grave Clerics have the Circle of Mortality feature, which gives you maximum healing on a target that is at 0 hit points. Obviously not as powerful as Supreme Healing above, but you get it at level 1.

Now, I don't remember every single feature off the top of my head, but I think that that's it for real healing-boosting. Other Clerics get various utility that can keep other characters alive, but aren't strictly healing (and plenty of non-healers have stuff like that.)

Druids actually have a few subclasses with some healing capabilities.

Dreams Druids have Balm of the Summer Court, which is just an extra pool of healing to draw from.

Shepherd Druids have the Unicorn Spirit as one of their Spirit Totem options. This gives a group heal every time you use a spell slot to heal, and scales with your level. So by level 10, you could do a Cure Wounds on someone for like 9, but then everyone in the party gets 10 (meaning that the target winds up with a total of 19 healing.) Not only is this nicely multiplicative, but as a class built around summoning creatures, you can pour out a ton of healing to them. Even without any summoned creatures, though, this is a pretty great bonus to healing that can help top up allies even if they aren't in need of direct healing.

Stars Druids get their Chalice constellation with Starry Form, which effectively gives you an extra 30-ft Cure Wounds any time you cast another healing spell. In terms of pure healing, I think this is probably not as good as the Unicorn Totem (except at low levels,) but still adds some free healing, potentially to a second target, which is great.

Wildfire Druids get a bonus to their healing when their Wildfire Spirit is out, which is nice. They also get Cauterizing Flames, which effectively works as a pool of extra healing if needed, though it requires a little set-up.

And that, I think, is mostly it.

So what do we think?

The Cleric clearly has a bit of an edge here in terms of spells, especially when you get to tier 4, where those 9th level spells can do an utterly massive amount of healing and turn the tide of a battle. I think in the end, if you want to be the absolute healingest healer, Life Cleric is the way to go.

But we're not talking strictly about what's absolutely best. And I think that Druids are perfectly capable of playing the main healer role. This might have been riskier before they got access to Revivify, but once that's in the mix, I think a Druid could very easily be a party's primary healer, and even a highly effective one if they take any of those subclasses. As intense as those 9th level spells are, they're once-a-day effects. Using a spell like Shapechange, you could shift into various forms like Planetars to get access to a whole lot of limited-use heals.

So, I think this is something to consider if you want to play a healer but aren't really drawn to the lore and aesthetics of the Cleric. It might be slightly behind in full healing capabilities, but only by a small amount, and the added versatility might serve you very well.

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