Distributed Healing
A healer is a good thing to have. But when your healer goes down, there’s no substitute for a dose of the red juice.
Most gamers are quick to figure this one out. They’ll distribute the good berries between party members each morning. Buy a six pack of stimpaks. Invest ranks into Use Magic Device so that wand of cure light wounds becomes a more effective poking stick. I don’t know about you guys, but regardless of the shape it takes, a backup heal is something that I try to include on each and every one of my characters.
“But Colin!” cries the straw golem. “I’m a front line fighter! It’s my job to deal the big damage and KO the enemy as fast as golemly possible. Healing for 2d4 + 2 Hit Points is a waste of my action! It’s much more efficient to let a dedicated healer do their job.”
“Oh straw golem,” I might be heard to reply. “You’re such fun to argue with.”
Of course a crappy heal is crappy. That big bad crit, or that awesome spell, or whatever other super-cool-thing-you-built-your-character-to-do is probably better in 99% of situations. But if you find yourself rescuing civilians from the site of a crashed airship, heading out on a solo adventure in enemy territory, or the last gamer standing in a battlefield full of toppled minis, you’re going to want that comparatively crappy option. The opportunity cost is negligible, so why not add it to your character sheet?
So for today’s discussion, why don’t we talk about your policy for backup healz? How do you like to keep those life bars in shape when the party healer is otherwise unavailable? Do you favor potions or wands? Staves or stimpaks? Or do you prefer to rough it with negligible healing resources, turning those gritty realism dials up to 11? Whatever your first aid strats, let’s hear all about ’em down in the comments!
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In the depicted scenario this looks like a “bag of holding and run for the nearest rez” situation
Unless it’s a disintegrate, in which case you can skip that bag and use your dust pan of holding.
In the parties I’ve been in, we all carried potions.
When possible, we had multiple healers. A weak heal is better than no hral, and can get your dedicated healer back on their feet.
As for favourite heals, I like the PF 1e Witch’s healing hex. A heal per person, whose effects scale up with caster level? Yes, please!
Oh – those capable of casting healing spells or just operating magic gear would usually carry wands, too. The effect might not be super, but they hold more charges than your emergency potion.
I always liked “infernal healing” mechanically, but holy crap are the alignment debates obnoxious.
Indeed! Now imagine some big, red devil popping up at the end of the year to discuss your medical fees… and the compound interest accumulated due to late payments!
It’s a great spell (almost too good to be honest), but the flavor text and detecting as evil while under the effect just asks for trouble at the table.
It’s the paladin debate in microcosm: making RP the cost of power is always going to lead to arguments. That can be fun for some, but holy crap is it hard to adjudicate in a way that will strike all comers as fair and fun.
That’s probably why they came up with celestial healing as an alternative.
In 3.5e you coould get a Healing Belt for a very reasonable price of 750 gp. It had 3 charges worth 2d8 points of healing each OR you could use 3d8 for 2 and 4d8 for all 3, if you wanted a more surefire way of getting your the party members with actual healing on their feet. It’s my go-to healing item.
Sure, with a wand you could use 50 charges, but this is just a renewable first aid kit, which is also nice to have in emergencies. The real wand gold sink is Lesser Restoration.
I feels like these items are stop-gap measures to get you into the mid-game, at which point you have enough resources to stay topped off without items.
Makes me wonder if 4e style “healing surges” really were the way to go, just so we don’t have to deal with this level of granularity.
4e had a lot of mechanical ideas I really like. Healing surges, 1-HP minions, a standardized level of Vancian-ness across all classes, the sense that non-spellcasters could still use some kind of magic even though they weren’t specialists…
There’s stuff I dislike about 4e’s mechanics, and its presentation really highlighted the flaws. But I wish 5e had tried to be the best of 4e and 3.5, not 3.75. (Maybe 3.85 or 3.9, if PF1 is 3.75.)
3.5 v2, let’s go with that. Or maybe 3.5.2 if we want it to look like software version numbers.
5e was too late to be 3.75 anyway.
PF 1e got there first. 😉
I always figured them as “healer substitutes”, since there’a nothing stopping you from buying/making like 20 Healing Belts. Attunement wasn’t a thing back then, so you just had to swap the one in the belt slot with a fresh one. Time consuming, sure, but most healing was done out of combat.
Not so sure if lack of granularity is a good thing every time. In my mind that word also means “opportunity”. Maybe players end up using most of their money on healing itmes and that becomes their style. Not optimal, but it might work…
Healing surges would be nice to have as an optional rule.
> there’a nothing stopping you from buying/making like 20 Healing Belts.
I was about to be like, “Except encumbrance and flavor,” but then I remembered:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/overdesigned
My characters, when able, carry a healing potion in a spring-loaded wrist sheath for this very reason.
Your potion bottles are shaped like arrows and daggers?
https://www.fishersci.at/shop/products/test-tube-cap-pfa-25ml-chemware/11714518
I guess that’s fair, but it does feel a bit like you’re getting away with one, you clever player you.
Huh, didn’t realize it never specified a potion vial as an option. Though it’s not too out of place to assume a vial (especially a steel one) would fit in it, if a wand can. Or just putting a cure wand in there.
Likewise, for casters, one could probably tuck a scroll in there – those can be wrapped around an arrow for example.
To be fair it just specifies “a forearmlength item such as[…]” and then it gives some examples. It isn’t an exhaustive list.
The size of potions are a bit vague, but I certainly think that they aren’t bigger than forearm length, not even if it’s a slender bottle if they’d otherwise be too wide.
A scroll would also seem reasonable to me, through I usually put it in a scroll case instead of wrapping them around around an arrow, the latter seems like they’d risk getting stuck in the spring
Not a big deal. I’d probably allow it at my own tables. But I might be tempted to ask ’em to commission specialized bottles as an RP thing. I always dig those sorts of details for helping items feel more physically present in a game world rather than rules abstractions.
I don’t think a potion or a wand will help with that amount of blood pooling about. Unless that’s just raspberry juice/jam.
Fun thing about most (heroic) RPGs – as soon as you regain 1HP, your wounds close and you regenerate all your missing blood.
You might think that’s OP for the players, but then again, the DM can allow NPCs to be healed the same way.
Resurrection sickness is just the consequence of all your spilled blood being contaminated by dirt/mud/dust/rust before being sucked back into your body by a healing spell. 😀
I imaging this make rare blood-types much easier to acquire at fantasy blood drives.
In our West Marches game, due to the varied party members not guaranteeing any healers and the lack of resources/civilization to rely on for shopping, one of the players & DM homebrewed vitae flasks, which are effectively Estus flasks from Dark Souls – healing potions that refill over night. Some have bonus effects like casting spells, removing conditions or adding buffs. They’re also balanced to not be stackable or otherwise abusable. It’s pretty neat!
I like that they refill overnight. Limited use but reusable seems like a good way to actually get players to use their consumables.
What works in video games can often also work in TRPGs. I hope whatever FromSoft dev came up with Estus Flasks got a raise.
Good grief, Sorcerer is still such a brat… =_=
Has he learned anything at all from the Abyssal blood covenant-incident?
He’s learned that he misses Paladin’s lay on hands.
The “Handbook of Erotic Fantasy”-entries just write themselves, don’t they…?
I struggle with this. Surely some of our characters are straight, right? Is the Dragon Age “everybody is bi” thing the best way to go?
My vote is for all Bi, all the time.
Man, I miss old Evil Party. :'(
Stupid plot….
That, of course, is up to you.
Well sure. But it’s also a legit question from a game design perspective.
Didn’t we talk about this a million years ago…? Yup.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/aura-sight
Came up in the comments mostly.
whatever healing is quick and available in the system, of course, a lot of games don’t have instantaneous healing, so it’s been mostly the DnD family of games where talk of spreading around the healing has been necessary, I remember a Pathfinder game a few years ago where we all had enough extra healing that the gm for one fight had to play whack-a-mole with us
Our 5e DM had to introduce a home rule that whenever you drop to 0HP, you also gain a level of exhaustion; to incentivize preventative healing over “you have 3HP left, I heal you after you soak that 20 points of damage”. It actually worked nicely.
Oh my gosh, that tactic is so annoying. The party paladin used my character that way once, when we were fighting a slime in a narrow corridor. He’d spend one point of lay on hands on me, then the slime attacked, and my initiative was after that so there was nothing I could do about it.
That might seem un-paladin-like, but the paladin was being played by my little brother. I don’t think paladin oaths apply to siblings; there would be a lot more fallen paladins if they did.
For better or worse, methinks the phrase “working as intended” applies to this bug.
My current party actually has a ridiculous amount of magic healing available — with paladin, ranger, druid and cleric, the barbarian is the only one in the group who can’t cast at least “cure light wounds”. Though I believe we also have a few healing potions distributed among the team for emergencies…
But yes, your straw golem poses a difficult challenge… is it better to get a fallen party member back on their feet immediately so they can help you, or to keep fighting and try to free up someone else to take care of the fallen? For the barbarian, it’s usually an obvious answer, since he’s typically killing a couple of lesser foes per round… foes who won’t be making attacks of opportunity on the cleric. For my ranger, it’s less clear…
If the foes are still up, then swing away 100%. But if you happen to be the last man standing, it can be all manner of obnoxious waiting a few in-game hours for your buddies to get conscious again.
It has been a long time since I played a pathfinder game where everyone didn’t have some kind of emergency healing, generally a potion of cure “something” wounds some sort. These aren’t really meant for in-combat use through, but rather for the situation where a healer need to be brought back on their feet post-combat. (Trying to bring them back in-combat is generally not done since that has far to high chance of outright killing them when they are left 1) on a very small number of HP, 2) lying down and vulnerable and 3) now once again an active combatant).
I don’t think I have ever brought any of those potions through, they tend to be collected from fallen foes who weren’t quick enough to drink them, and then distributed instead of getting sold.
Serious out-of-combat healing is typically handled by wand and/or healer (often through the use of channel energy).
> (Trying to bring them back in-combat is generally not done since that has far to high chance of outright killing them when they are left 1) on a very small number of HP, 2) lying down and vulnerable and 3) now once again an active combatant).
It’s such a weird idea to me that healing PCs risks killing them. That’s one pain point in PF1e that grates on me every time I hear the Glass Cannon guys talking about it. Of course, the alternative is the “whack-a-mole” problem from 5e discussed further up the thread. There must be some kind of design solution out there….
As far as I can tell both problems have the same source, namely that the healing is relatively small compared to enemy hurting ability, but still sufficient to bring someone back from “too wounded to fight” to “heavily wounded but still able to fight”. (that and since healing generally keeps your positioning they’ll still be in whatever position the enemy took them down in last time).
Note that the same problem doesn’t apply to spells like Heal, since 10 hp pr level is usually enough to be significant.
If a heavily wounded PC is in risk of being killed by an enemy, (like in pathfinder or low-level 5e) then the slight healing is dangerous.
If a heavily wounded PC is pretty safe from death but can still be knocked down to “too wounded to fight”, then you get whack-a-mole stuff like medium-or-more-level 5e, as they repeatedly get brought back and forth over that line.
Design wise then you could make the healing more significant (and probably both harder and rarer to pull off to compensate), so that the healed PC is not only unlikely to die if attacked but even unlikely to be rendered too wounded to fight, at least in the near term.
Another possibility is to make healing someone back from a bit slower and just formalize the “not practical in combat” nature of it.
This could be combined with the above solution for a mixture of weaker healing that takes time and more powerful solutions that don’t.
For instance one could say that once you are unconscious from damage you only wake up again once you are at half of your MAX hp, instead of immediately above 0. (you’d probably also include a timeframe for naturally waking up, say half an hour or 10 min in case the group doesn’t have healing available right now, so the player can participate in talky-non-combat scenes at least)
For me, plan A is keep a couple healing potions on hand. Plan B is keep enough juice for a teleport spell* for when scat really hit the fan.
*One notable time being when I figured out to save the entire party by teleporting them roughly 20m.
The Villain’s Escape Kit ain’t just for villains!
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s/?=%2F%2F%2F%2F/#The_Villains_Escape_Kit
A Wand of Infernal Healing is the best out of combat heal pound for pound, though they tried nerfing it to make it unavailable to good-aligned parties and Celestial Healing isn’t worth it by comparison. A Wand of Cure Light Wounds is still excellent mileage for your gp, and if you know the command word (you should, you bought it) anyone can use it. There’s also a 5k pair of magic boots that can root you to the ground to give you fast healing 1, give it a quick Prestidigitation clean between uses and pass it to whoever needs it the most.
Emergency potions do have their place at low levels, but they’re in that awkward spot where you might genuinely not be able to grab one or two without cutting into the gear your character needs at minimum to function, and after levels where they’re cheap enough to reasonably grab, you’ll be better off picking up the wand with little fuss. You definitely want 1 in case the healer goes down or someone is about to die and the healer isn’t able to pick them up, corner cases like that- 50gp prevention or 5k+ cure for death (or long slog of the party wizard slowly dragging the armored tank back to town)? No contest.
That said, you’re usually better off toughing it out mid-combat. If you put an ally back on their feat with 1d8+1 healing and get a low roll, they’re potentially in range of being outright killed, and are more likely to be targeted as an ‘active threat’ than if they were on the ground not contributing. Gotta be proactive, either kill the damage source or heal your ally ahead of time.
2e makes it easier to get some cheap heals, Elixirs being affordable, and the Battle Medicine skill feat being a nearly free (need a one-time payment for Healer’s Tools) pick up per person each day.
> A Wand of Cure Light Wounds is still excellent mileage for your gp, and if you know the command word (you should, you bought it) anyone can use it.
Quick gut check: I think that the wand is spell-trigger rather than command word.
Checking now:
…
…
…
Yup. “Wands use the spell trigger activation method.”
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wands
Sadly, that means most classes still have to invest in UMD.
Obviously, this depends a lot on the system.
In general, I’m adverse to spending permanent resources (like gold) on expendable abilities (like healing potions), even in 5e where that gold really doesn’t have any other use once you’ve bought your dream armor. I’d say I’m the D&D equivalent of those people who play JRPGs hoarding every basic healing potion, except that that’s also how I play JRPGs. (Though in my defense, Lavos’s last form is a lot easier if that’s the first time you remember you have a warehouse’s worth of Megalixer.)
When I’m not playing the primary healer, I tend to pick up secondary abilities that let me function as the backup healer, like the witch’s Healing hex. If available, I might grab a magic item with daily healing charges or something. If I’m lucky, grabbing those backup healing options doesn’t make me the primary healer, like that witch I was talking about was. (Note that the Healing hex only works once per day per target.)
> I’d say I’m the D&D equivalent of those people who play JRPGs hoarding every basic healing potion
This sounds vaguely familiar.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/phoenix-downs
😛
Shadowcraft Mages and summoning-focused Conjurers should reliably have the option to summon monsters with Cure SLAs. Not as slot-efficient as actual Cure spells, but it’s good for when you need it, and the summons can often do other things too before their duration expires.
SLAs are already powerful on summons. You want to standardize the options across all levels? Surely there are less arcane ways to grant parties healing options.
At low levels (3.5): An eternal wand of cure minor wounds (400 gp). 2 uses per day to stabilize a dying character without having to make a DC 15 Heal check. Usable by Bards, Divine Casters, or anyone with a decent Use Magic Device modifier, no first aid kit should be without it.
All Levels (3.5): Touch of Healing feat allows a character to heal [3 hp per (level of highest healing spell currently memorized, min. 2nd)] at will (maximum of 50% victim’s max health). This (again) negates the chance of failing Heal Check to stabilize a victim and stretches the party healer’s spell reserves.
At first level, Bards (with a Cha 15) can use another feat slot (or take a Flaw to acquire another) to buy the Precocious Apprentice feat–giving them a 2nd level arcane spell of their choice– then choose Cure Moderate Wounds (but never actually cast it) to power Touch of Healing and make them a low-level healing powerhouse.
In the Oriental Adventures (3.5) campaign I run for my son, the party leader was given his next assignment and offered the choice of a cache of healing scrolls for him to use (via Spellcraft and Use Magic Device) or an NPC caster (shugenja) to do the same job. The samurai picked the shugenja novice. Despite the extra mouth to feed and the necessity of protecting the glass cannon, he says he hasn’t regretted the decision.
In our game group, one player (no doubt based on years of unfortunate in-game experiences) regularly drops 300 gp on a six-pack of cure light every time he passes through any village or hamlet large enough to support a potion shop. We rarely ever use them, but he’ll conscientiously dole them out just before each dungeon or major encounter like a mom slathering bug spray and sunblock on toddlers at the beach. “Does everybody have their vial? Do you know where it is in your pack? Who’s your buddy? Where’s the gnome? Has anybody seen Bobby?!!”
Friggin’ Bobby, bro… Little shit is always wandering off.
I’m always torn about options like “specific wand” or “obscure feat” as a solution for healing. It feels like a more robust core healing mechanic would be a better solution.
after one TPK and one near TPK our RotRunelords group now has 1 full Cleric, 1 full Paladin, 1 level of Oracle Sneak. Two wands of cure light wounds and whenever feasible 1 healing potion per person.
Last session the Cleric got nearly killed, then failed a check and panicked away, the Paladin nearly died, the Oracle is still in limbo with the „Defensive Roll“ due next session. The Barbarian is effectively desintegrated from lack of heals.
Poor barbarian… I feel like the actual Heal spell is pretty dang mandatory at high level.
Always keep the last enemy alive so you sink your fangs into his neck to drink that precious red wine of his 😛
I read the comment, thought to myself, “This sounds like Schattensturm.” And then I allowed my eyes to flick up to the name.
You edgy edgelord you. 😛
I got STYLE 😀
Let’s be honest, the existence of healing magic is what make adventuring in a fantasy world at all possible. Without it, the attrition rate would be so much worse.
I’ve toyed with the idea of starting an adventure in magic-dead world, but the lack of magic healing would make it very difficult. The Ranger class suddenly becomes a lot more attractive when it’s one of the few non-useless remaining classes that still have access to the heal skill (wizards and clerics being of course non-viable in such a world).
It does raise the question of why all those dead questing nights and skeletons wearing armor didn’t bring heal-bros with them. What kind of adventurer would set off into the darkness without healz? How did they live long enough to earn that armor in the first place?
Maybe their healer wasn’t as skilled as he pretended to be?
Hey, it happens…
https://marblegate.webcomic.ws/comics/158/
lol. The potion economy is in shambles.
Another things I like about PF2. Are you trained in the Medicine skill? Does someone in the party have Healer’s Tools? Good, you can pitch in as an emergency healer in the worst case scenario.
Just recently in a campaign, had an enemy with an explosive death ability. Resulted in the majority of the party being downed, on fire, or both. Front liner isn’t wrong to say their best use of their actions is usually to attack. But when the bag of hp is the only one still standing, they might end up being the only one around to save everyone else’s life – even if it just means grabbing the gauze off the normal healer and keeping enough blood in a PC’s body to avoid death.
My first experience in PF2 was playing a healer. Crit fail the first heal check. Deal damage to the injured party member. Feels bad, man.
In Pathfinder and D&D, I’ve found that most of the time everyone will try to bring a little bit of their own healing just in case, whether that be as class features or items. Everyone will have a couple of the basic healing potions at the bare minimum. If wands of healing are available and can be used by multiple individuals in the party, someone (probably not the primary healer) will carry that.
> most of the time everyone will try to bring a little bit of their own healing just in case
The Handbook gives accurate advice every once in a while. When it isn’t trying to murder uncritical readers.
While I prefer to have a primary dedicated healer, especially if they can get access in 5e to Heal/Mass Heal or (Mass) Healing Word and in Pathfinder if they’ve got channels, it’s extremely important for everyone to have some healing available to them in case of disaster.
Honestly it probably depends what game/edition you’re playing. In D&D 5e the most readily available (because it’s in the PHB item list and thus GM’s are less likely to deny you access to them) is your basic potion of healing.
If I have the money for it, I’ll take as many as ten of them as a safety net.
Would I prefer a wand, better potions, or other magic item? Yeah probably. If not for the sake of probably being more effective, than at least for the sake of being a less common experience.
If there’s a druid in the party I will certainly always encourage them to have Goodberry prepared. (Not so much because it’s a great in-fight heal, because it isn’t, but because it’s just a really efficient/reliable means of keeping people at full hp without feeling like a waste of resources.)
Current game has a good berry caster. They’re rolling on a Bertie Bott’s table for flavor everyone time someone eats one:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8e/40/29/8e40290bb3d64aff345414da46745f4a.jpg
Boy I hope someone in the party knows prestidigitation and the GM allows “tongue” as a valid object to clean. Because there are an awful lot of nasty options there.
(Actually given my feelings about jellybeans basically ALL of them would be unpleasant, lol.)
What!? Sure cinnamon and juicy pear are nasty, but how can you say that about all-time greats like grass, black pepper, and vomit?
Aha! I knew it! Finally I’ve unmasked your true identity as a dog! =P
I prefer to think of myself as an andalite bandit.
In Warhammer fantasy roleplay, magic is both rare and unreliable, even the best healing casters in the game, Shallyan priests, have to deal with magical misfires (and a restrictive oath of pacifism, kinda relevant to the last strip as well). On the mundane side, the heal skill is an “advanced skill”, so it cannot be used without training. Potions are expensive and come with a table of all the *fun* ways they can not work as advertised. Same with a visit to a physician or barber.
Good luck.
I am reminded of the surgery table from Mordheim (pg 14):
https://broheim.net/downloads/fo/66EncampmentsPt1.pdf
Pretty much, yeah. The “Quack Medicine” table for potions has such lovely entries as “Tincture of Mercury: Gain an Insanity point”. The surgery mishap table is much the same, with more infections and a second table listing the various modifiers to the Heal test, everything from the surgeon’s level of expertise to the procedure taking place in a sewer. And noone who knows Warhammer needs reminding just how badly things can go wrong once magic gets involved.
All of my casters that have CLW on their class list will prepare at least one. Or put it on their spells known if they’re a spontaneous caster. The bard probably isn’t doing much in the way of healing with it, but if it gets the guy with the big healing back on his feet, then it’s worth it.
It does make me wonder if a bard is better served by a potion, thus freeing up a spells-known slot. Still, I suppose it’s more efficient to cast, move, and then touch-to-heal rather than move, retrieve potion, wait until next turn to gently trickle the heal-juice down the big healer’s throat.
Yup. And you can’t lose your internal magic so it’s always available whereas a potion or wand can get lost, stolen, or broken.
The last D&D campaign I DMed, the party was a cleric, a bard, a paladin, and a rogue/wizard with use magic device.
So it was a main healer, two backup healers, and a backup backup healer.
You fool! You neglected to include a backup for your backup’s backup!
Crappy healing *mid-combat* is like putting a bandaid on the hull of a sinking ship. But I always keep “crappy” healing around for *between* combats. Power Word: ANYWHERE BUT HERE is a good one to have on lock too.
I find myself wondering how Magus is getting along… and also, what Replacement Magus thinks about the adventuring life. And being a cat.
…not necessarily in that order.
The thing in 3e/3.5e was that using potions or wands provoked an attack of opportunity (as did leaving a threatened square to drink the potion someplace safe) so unless you had quite a powerful potion using a healing potion would often simply invite further damage
…In addition to the whole “killing enemies will save you more hp than healing” thing. Yeah.
I’m tempted for my next character to try the Phoenix Sorcerer bloodline in PF1e. Has the really cool ability to heal with fire damage (For half of what the damage deals). I can think of lots of ways to use that. Mostly around abusing Fireball and metamagic. That way the damage dealer can also multi-heal pretty good, depending on what he/she does.
Pathfinder (1e) players, and I really like Healer’s Hands for this (which for the unfamiliar, is a feat that allows you to heal people with the Heal skill multiple times per day, in a shorter period of time, and for more HP). Have tried to find a place for that + Signature Skill on quite a few characters, especially skill monkey types.
Goes along with the fact that I’m the person in my group who always stocks up on all the cheap consumables (alchemical remedies and such), and playing “the doctor” character who mixes mundane/magical/alchemical healing methods to patch everyone up out of combat is so much more interesting roleplay-wise than just poking everyone with a wand a dozen times after every fight is.
So we were playing Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and we had aggroed two groups of pirates. We had no dedicated healer, but hey, we had a ranger and an artificer, we figured we’d make do until…uh…a pirate crit on the artificer and he goes down. Me, the ranger, already used up her spell slots. Uh oh. The artificer botched his first death save. BIG uh oh. His life now depended on my ranger turning her back on the enemy, dropping her weapon, and attempting an unproficient heal check mid-battle.
She’s got the Marine background, with the ‘Leave None Behind’ hardship flavor choice. She wasn’t going to let him die there. Thankfully the dice were with me. I succeeded, the two pirates who attacked missed me, and I was in a choke point so I could keep them away from my now-stabilized ally.
And all of my characters now get a healer’s kit as soon as they can afford one. In character creation, if possible!
Ironically in the official videogame adaptation of [i]Temple of Elemental Evil[/i] the healing potions were blue, not red, as a result of conjuration stuff being blue in that game.