Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm surprised that A) your resources are apparently so low at level 9, when the encounter balance side of 5e really starts breaking down, and B) that going down in a fight is a serious concern. Because again, you're at the level where getting KOed in a single encounter isn't really that much of a likelihood - you typically see that running multiple combats back-to-back without a chance for a rest in between, in which case you could probably stand to be a little more strenuous about joshing for rest time.
If a single combat that you go into with your resources (hp, rage) reasonably full for is a serious risk of KOing you, that indicates to me that your GM is throwing encounters significantly above your nominal level at you; in that case, any 1-2 level dip for self-healing may as well be worthless - combat healing is, in general, a waste of time in 5e. Most opponents can deal more damage per turn than players can reliably soak, and the usual best-case scenario is a stalemate - the opponent deals damage, the player heals the damage and (less often as levels go up and monsters do more damage) maybe soaks the hit, and the round ends with the only change having been that the player has spent limited resources while the monster may well not have (and remember that even if they do spend resources, any given opponent is unlikely to have to fight more than this single battle so they don't have to conserve resources for a whole day unlike you), so functionally you have wasted resources to no functional effect. Also, dnd isn't a hard system with regards to health, so the only hit point that matters is the last one. Mathematically, the better option is almost always to attack - every instance of damage you deal to any given opponent theoretically reduces that opponent's number of turns left to continue damaging you, and every time you choose to not deal damage both prolongs the fight and potentially forces you to expend more resources.
An example: Fighter A vs Monster A, Fighter B vs Monster B; Fighter A attacks, Fighter B alternately attacks and self-heals after damage comes in, costing their action and an item or spell (henceforth referred to as resources). Assume that the Fighters each have 50 hp and would deal 10 damage per hit and can heal for 10, and Monsters have 30 hp and deal 15 damage. Assume also that the Fighters have won initiative and act first in each case.
Now this is highly simplified and your situation isn't so bad as the above. You mentioned using (I presume) the twilight cleric's channel divinity to self-heal, which only requires one action (thus one turn) not dealing damage to use... except you also have to use your rage to increase your survivability, and since you haven't attacked and your rage staying up is depending on attacking or taking damage:
This is a whole lot of words to say that combat healing (outside of specific strategies like tubthumping, or emergency measures to eke out one last turn of rage or whatever which are still best administered by a third party) is a waste of time - both yours and everyone else's. Most importantly, it slows the whole game way the fuck down by making combat take longer (and not in a fun way). Even if you do go for a two-level dip for Twilight cleric (and I'm not sure that's a winning strategy - if you go pure barbarian for those two levels you get Relentless Rage which gives you a good chance of just getting to say 'no' to being KOed at least once per combat which can be crucial) your healing is best saved for out of combat where it has its best effect.
So really, your best in-combat option depending on your circumstances is to only go into them relatively fresh (i.e. rest more frequently than you currently do, if that is a current problem), or to switch up your tactics (it sounds like you may be taking more than your fair share of damage if you the barbarian are so concerned, so either you need to draw less aggro/move into melee with fewer monsters and hope they focus on other characters), or you need to speak with the DM OOC (related to the previous, your DM may specifically be having you take more than your share of damage due to fiat/you being 'the tank' (which only works if you have synergistic support), which if you're not having fun with (and it sounds like you're not) you need to talk to them about and work out a solution for).
Anyway, combat healing sucks, don't do it.
(For 'fun,' more math: Twilight cleric's CD heals an average of 35 damage - plus 10 per point of positive Wisdom modifier - over the course of 1 minute/10 rounds. A CR 9 monster - i.e. a trivial-to-fair challenge for a party of 4 level 9s - can be expected to deal in the neighbourhood of 57-62 damage per round per the DMG, which if focused on you you can halve to 28-31. Charitably the ability will buy you one more turn of actions by healing according to that math (keep in mind it takes a full minute to get the full benefit, and the majority of encounters do not come close to lasting an in-universe minute - the expected number is 3 rounds, and in my experience 3-5 is about average for a difficult fight - so you're not getting that full 35 + 10(wis mod). Coincidentally, you could get the same number of effective combat turns by forgoing the CD and spending that turn attacking.)
If a single combat that you go into with your resources (hp, rage) reasonably full for is a serious risk of KOing you, that indicates to me that your GM is throwing encounters significantly above your nominal level at you; in that case, any 1-2 level dip for self-healing may as well be worthless - combat healing is, in general, a waste of time in 5e. Most opponents can deal more damage per turn than players can reliably soak, and the usual best-case scenario is a stalemate - the opponent deals damage, the player heals the damage and (less often as levels go up and monsters do more damage) maybe soaks the hit, and the round ends with the only change having been that the player has spent limited resources while the monster may well not have (and remember that even if they do spend resources, any given opponent is unlikely to have to fight more than this single battle so they don't have to conserve resources for a whole day unlike you), so functionally you have wasted resources to no functional effect. Also, dnd isn't a hard system with regards to health, so the only hit point that matters is the last one. Mathematically, the better option is almost always to attack - every instance of damage you deal to any given opponent theoretically reduces that opponent's number of turns left to continue damaging you, and every time you choose to not deal damage both prolongs the fight and potentially forces you to expend more resources.
An example: Fighter A vs Monster A, Fighter B vs Monster B; Fighter A attacks, Fighter B alternately attacks and self-heals after damage comes in, costing their action and an item or spell (henceforth referred to as resources). Assume that the Fighters each have 50 hp and would deal 10 damage per hit and can heal for 10, and Monsters have 30 hp and deal 15 damage. Assume also that the Fighters have won initiative and act first in each case.
| Round 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Fighter A deals 10 Monster A deals 15 F: 35/50 hp M: 20/30 hp | F deals 10 M deals 15 F: 20/50 M: 10/30 | F deals 10 M is dead and cannot act F: 20/50 (total of 30 damage taken and can spend 3 resources to return to full out of combat) | ||
| Fighter B deals 10 Monster B deals 15 F: 35/50 hp M: 20/30 hp | F heals 10 M deals 15 F: 30/50 hp (net -5) (1 resource) M: 20/30 hp | F deals 10 M deals 15 F: 15/50 M: 10/30 | F heals 10 M deals 15 F: 10/50 hp (net -5) (1 resource; 2 total) M: 10/30 | F deals 10 M is dead and cannot act F: 10/50 (has spent 2 resources and must spend 4 more [6 total] to return to full out of combat) |
Now this is highly simplified and your situation isn't so bad as the above. You mentioned using (I presume) the twilight cleric's channel divinity to self-heal, which only requires one action (thus one turn) not dealing damage to use... except you also have to use your rage to increase your survivability, and since you haven't attacked and your rage staying up is depending on attacking or taking damage:
...so if you use Channel Divinity and rage in the first turn without having taken a hit already (or baiting one via AOO which feeds into the time-to-kill vs resources-spent math) which would seem to be the optimal play, you immediately waste your rage (resources) - this is a lesser but still extant problem later in the encounter, since if you have taken a hit you effectively have the freedom to cast the ability without losing rage resources, but it's still suboptimal math because you're A) potentially allowing the monsters more uptime to hurt you and force you to spend more resources than you otherwise would have and B) blunting the benefit of the resources you're already actively spending.
This is a whole lot of words to say that combat healing (outside of specific strategies like tubthumping, or emergency measures to eke out one last turn of rage or whatever which are still best administered by a third party) is a waste of time - both yours and everyone else's. Most importantly, it slows the whole game way the fuck down by making combat take longer (and not in a fun way). Even if you do go for a two-level dip for Twilight cleric (and I'm not sure that's a winning strategy - if you go pure barbarian for those two levels you get Relentless Rage which gives you a good chance of just getting to say 'no' to being KOed at least once per combat which can be crucial) your healing is best saved for out of combat where it has its best effect.
So really, your best in-combat option depending on your circumstances is to only go into them relatively fresh (i.e. rest more frequently than you currently do, if that is a current problem), or to switch up your tactics (it sounds like you may be taking more than your fair share of damage if you the barbarian are so concerned, so either you need to draw less aggro/move into melee with fewer monsters and hope they focus on other characters), or you need to speak with the DM OOC (related to the previous, your DM may specifically be having you take more than your share of damage due to fiat/you being 'the tank' (which only works if you have synergistic support), which if you're not having fun with (and it sounds like you're not) you need to talk to them about and work out a solution for).
Anyway, combat healing sucks, don't do it.
(For 'fun,' more math: Twilight cleric's CD heals an average of 35 damage - plus 10 per point of positive Wisdom modifier - over the course of 1 minute/10 rounds. A CR 9 monster - i.e. a trivial-to-fair challenge for a party of 4 level 9s - can be expected to deal in the neighbourhood of 57-62 damage per round per the DMG, which if focused on you you can halve to 28-31. Charitably the ability will buy you one more turn of actions by healing according to that math (keep in mind it takes a full minute to get the full benefit, and the majority of encounters do not come close to lasting an in-universe minute - the expected number is 3 rounds, and in my experience 3-5 is about average for a difficult fight - so you're not getting that full 35 + 10(wis mod). Coincidentally, you could get the same number of effective combat turns by forgoing the CD and spending that turn attacking.)
