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If You’re Almost Dead, Come Here
Rethinking the role of “healer” in our TTRPG
For the past year or so, we have been developing The Night’s Unrelent — a tactical heroic fantasy TTRPG. This endeavor was at least partly inspired by Oz’s long-running D&D / Pathfinder campaign and its very vocal players, who have not been shy about their criticisms of both systems (D&D 5E and PF2E). So, when Oz started designing his own tabletop role playing game, he called upon those players for feedback — myself included.
A healer’s dilemma
One of the most frequent complaints throughout Oz’s campaign came from me (Keri). I played a cleric named Magmyr. I have always liked playing casters, but this was my first time playing a cleric. I was excited about the opportunity to play a versatile role: clerics can do a little of everything, from melee damage to ranged spell attacks to healing (and harming).
Once we got into it, I realized that the healing situation was going to be a problem for my preferred play style. From my perspective, every time I prepared for my turn in combat, my preparations didn’t matter because I would feel pressured to heal someone instead. When we were playing 5E, this unplanned healing would take my entire turn — and the healing usually wasn’t enough to keep my nearly-dead friends alive for more than…
