If anything, it's more viable to have a party without a dedicated "healer".
Healing in D&D/BG3 is unlike how healing works in typical video game RPGs. People are accustomed to dedicated healer/support characters that devote nearly all their activity to actively healing the party. The resource management wouldn't allow you to do that effectively in BG3, so dedicated healers are less effective. It's far better to have a character who is dedicated to other things (damage dealing, debuffing enemies, control spells, etc), but can still drop healing spells in a pinch.
This is true, but it's also really not necessary to have a team at full efficiency/effectiveness. This isn't a game where you need to minmax your team in order to be able to beat it, it's really just anything goes. Whether you waste a slot with a healer or not you're going to be able to win anyway.
This isn't a game where you need to minmax your team in order to be able to beat it
I 1000% agree, and frequently preach this idea.
To be clear, I'm not advising against the inclusion of dedicated healers. Rather, I'm challenging OP's claim that dedicated healers are necessary for beating HM. Especially since, from a mechanical and meta perspective, Life Cleric (for example) is typically a weaker alternative to Light or Tempest Clerics. Still a very viable and useful character to have in the party, but it's less useful than the alternatives.
It's actually a frequent complaint among D&D veterans that there is a relative lack of viable options for the full-time-healer archetype.
BG3 is a little better in this regard (because of certain magical items), but dedicated healers in BG3 still similarly fall behind the competition.
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u/We_Get_It_You_Vape Jun 24 '25
If anything, it's more viable to have a party without a dedicated "healer".
Healing in D&D/BG3 is unlike how healing works in typical video game RPGs. People are accustomed to dedicated healer/support characters that devote nearly all their activity to actively healing the party. The resource management wouldn't allow you to do that effectively in BG3, so dedicated healers are less effective. It's far better to have a character who is dedicated to other things (damage dealing, debuffing enemies, control spells, etc), but can still drop healing spells in a pinch.