You call forth a nature spirit to assuage the wounded. The intangible spirit appears during a space that’s a 5-foot cube you’ll see within range. The spirit seems like a transparent beast or fey (your choice). Until the spell ends, whenever you or a creature you’ll see moves into the spirits space for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, you’ll cause the spirit to revive ld6 hit points to that creature (no action required). The spirit can’t heal constructs or undead. As a bonus action on your turn, you’ll move the spirit to 30 feet to space you’ll see.
It’s been almost universally denounced by online fans of D&D as utterly broken, and in desperate need of house ruling, official errata, or maybe outright banning.
Healing Spirit 5E
- Casting Time: 1 bonus action
- Range: 60 feet
- Components: V, S
- Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
But is healing spirit really that broken? And if it’s, what about it must be changed so as to repair it? These may sound like silly inquiries to ask, but a good game designer (and I firmly believe that each one good Dungeon Masters must even be good game designers) should check out every spell, class feature, and racial trait from all angles. Let’s take a glance at the healing spirit—where it succeeds, where it fails, and the way you’ll change it to suit your game.
This much-maligned spell isn’t without merit. If it weren’t, people would just discard it rather than trying to seek out ways to repair it! Healing spirit fills a crucial niche in fifth edition D&D’s design that no other spells cover: powerful in-combat healing.
As a spell exclusive to the druid and ranger classes, it helps players who want to play a druid or ranger fill a crucial healing niche in parties without a cleric. one among the planning goals of fifth edition D&D was to let people play with any party composition that they wanted—and one among the most barriers to the present sort of play was the perceived necessity of the cleric.
Giving a strong healing spell to druids and rangers may be a step towards democratizing healing, within the same vein as giving all classes hit dice to use as a healing resource.
Fortunately, D&D may be a game played by humans who can make house rules as they see fit, not a game governed by strict computer programs. Unfortunately, the main problem with not having any official errata on this spell means my house rules, Jeremy’s house rules, and (most importantly) your house rules are all illegal in D&D Adventurer’s League games.
And unfortunately… You even have no solutions for that. If you’re having a drag with healing spirit making your AL game less fun, your only recourse is to speak along with your players and hope they’re mature about it.
Healing spirit may be a healing spell potent enough to be worth using in combat. It only requires a bonus action to cast, and, with some clever positioning, can restore 1d6 hit points to every one of your allies each turn. While in combat, this element of tactical positioning is often a remarkable puzzle for the players to unravel, since they need to seek out a balance between aggressive and defensive positioning.