Or hell, maybe an enemy throws some AOE.Įven if you’ve got a way to heal with a Bonus Action like Healing Word or the Celestial Warlock’s Healing Light, it really boils down to whether said Bonus Action will interfere with any other strictly superior option that turn. Locking yourself out of casting a spell that requires an Action because you decided to Healing Word a low value party member is probably not the best.Īt the same time, deciding who to pick up and who to leave kissing the floor is an acquired skill. Maybe they’ve got shitty positioning and were already standing in fire, or they just so happen to be the monster-of-the-week’s favorite chew toy and said monster has Legendary Actions. This becomes even more apparent if you’ve got an eye on the Initiative tracker, and the target of your healing goes down again before they can take a turn, simply because there are so many things that can go wrong.

The truth of it is, if you’re healing in combat, you’re already on the back foot. Wasting an Action to cast a healing spell is far less valuable than casting a control or mitigation spell, or even pushing damage. Throwing out heals the minute someone in the party drops is a mistake lots of new players (and even some seasoned ones) make. The game can get very, very swingy with a bad dice streak, and when all the fails pile up, tensions and emotions will run high, people will break, and the game will fall apart.īecause you know, people die if they are killed, and stuff. Then there’s also that element of RNG we all love and hate. I’ve seen players lock up with choice paralysis the minute they are thrown into an unfamiliar situation and their tempo gets disrupted, and whole tables wipe because they put all the pressure on the Support after biting off more than they can chew.

This becomes even more apparent when the situation involves high stakes, at higher tiers of play where there are multiple things to keep track of and you’re not just looking out for your party’s health bars, but also hazards in the environment, monster abilities, and critical boss mechanics. In either case, a Support character should also capable of helping out in one other pillar of play, be it Social or Exploration.Īs such, Support characters often bring a big toolkit to the table, but it takes some degree of game mastery and rules knowledge to be able to pick the right one for the job. They may be proactive (buffs, debuffs) or reactive (mitigation, heals) during Combat. Simply put, a Support character in D&D is any character that has spells or class features that can help empower and enhance the capabilities of the party, heightening the party’s chance of success in an adventure. Let’s talk a bit about what defines the role of Support. Many such players also have a habit of gravitating toward Life Clerics and Lore Bards, but more on that later. I’ve noticed that very often, newer players are locked into playing Support either because they’ve been gaslit by their friends into healing, because they think it’s less stressful, or because other players at the table don’t care enough about the new player experience to tell them otherwise. Playing Support might look easy, but playing it well is hard. Characters are assumed to be built in compliance with AL character creation rules. XGE presents players with the most options, and should be the splat of choice for optimizers. We’re going to do one better, while keeping it #ALLegal too.įor the purpose of this article, we will be focusing on material from the Player’s Handbook (PHB) and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything (XGE), though we may mention other books on occasion. It’d be terrible to crush their frail egos, and wholly against the spirit of good sportsmanship that AL represents. Yes, this article was prompted by more than a few grating experiences with such PUGs and idiots in D&D groups on the Internet, but we’re not here to viciously mock them. These very same players tend to gravitate toward archers (especially hexbows) or sorcadins (built using the first guide they Google online), and for some reason or other, love standing in fire and whining when they’re not the center of attention. I‘ve discovered that this malady often manifests in a certain subset of players who claim they play MMOs or MOBAs (I blame League mostly).

5e quickbuild