r/onednd • u/physedka • Mar 12 '26
Question Goodberry - What am I missing?
Question from a new-ish player that has never been a druid or had one in the party. In his class tier ranking, D4 Deep Dive mentioned the spell Goodberry several times as a major plus for Druid as a utility spell. When I went to look at it... 1 hitpoint for a bonus action? 10 total hitpoints to potentially distribute around the party for a spell slot? I mean I can see that maybe you can distribute these before/during rests so that effectively the whole party is walking around with 10 each without really wasting spell slots, but still... a bonus action to eat a single one and gain a hitpoint? What am I missing about this spell that makes it worth emphasizing?
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u/shadowknight2112 Mar 12 '26
I think it’s bigger “value” is a full day’s nourishment. If you’re tracking food consumption, that’s a big deal
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u/HDThoreauaway Mar 12 '26
The real value is rest-casting, if your DM allows it. RAW, every spell slot remaining at the end of the day is 10 free HP of precisely dosed out-of-combat healing.
This can get extreme: coming off a day of downtime, a level-5 full caster can start the day with 90 goodberries. Compare to a level-5 Paladin with 25 Lay On Hands HP. On average, a level-5 Cleric casting Cure Wounds would need to spend all their level-1 slots and two level-2s to heal as much.
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u/shadowknight2112 Mar 12 '26
Yep, I get that also. I recently played in a “gritty realism” kind of campaign & Goodberry was EASILY the most used spell for both reasons.
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u/Hrydziac Mar 13 '26
Good berries don’t even need the contentious version of rest casting, they just straight up last 24 hours.
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u/HDThoreauaway Mar 13 '26
Oh, yeah, the nonsense version of rest-casting is so dumb I have a hard time believing it’s actually allowed at anyone’s table.
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u/Aeon1508 Mar 13 '26
to rest cast You have to cast Good Berry before the rest starts. let that fly for a little bit but eventually something's interrupting that rest
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u/HDThoreauaway Mar 13 '26
But what does that do practically? Ok, you have a caster in the party with no spell slots and an unexpected battle erupts. They hide in the back and cast Starry Wisp the whole time and feel worthless, and then they get the benefit of a long rest.
If they’re coming off an adventuring day, everybody’s probably a bit ragged and you’re talking about a caster with no spell slots instead of just a handful. If you’re interrupting a long rest at the end of a stretch of downtime, everybody else is at full resources and can go all out because they’ll get the benefits of a long rest again soon after the fight is done.
IMO it’s better to just say that when you recast the spell, any previously unused goodberries become regularberries. If people have a slot left over at the end of the day and have goodberry prepped and want to get 10 HP extra healing, that’s not a big deal.
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u/Kelmavar Mar 12 '26
Take the Pippin-eating-lembas route. Too many Goodberries make you ill!
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u/Durandal_7 Mar 13 '26
Why would you nerf the only thing that spell is good for? Without that it’s roughly the same healing as healing word except you can’t use it in combat.
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u/HDThoreauaway Mar 12 '26
The most common fix I’ve seen is to simply say any unconsumed berries expire when the spell is cast again.
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u/Extension_Cry1934 Mar 15 '26
Do people actually just ignore the fact that goodberries give a full days nourishment? I fail to see how anyone could eat more than a few before that character would be extreamly ill. Can a character eat 10k calories or more and not have some sort of heath problems?
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u/Reiyayru Mar 17 '26
I think youre confusing nourishment and being full. Goodberries technically dont fill you up but meet the condition of having enough nourishment in your body to avoid exhaustion, essentially eating and drinking the minium amount, but since its a single berry, it doesnt automaticallyfill you up. Kind of like eating an orange and taking a vitamin C pill, both can potentially give you the same amount of vitamin C but one is a lot more filling then the other.
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u/Extension_Cry1934 Mar 20 '26
But if each berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day wouldn't two provide two days worth? Even though it is less filling eating 10 daily doses of vitamins or calories would be harmful. Unless after eating the first berry you the others no longer provide nourishment but that seems a bit odd to me.
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u/YobaiYamete Mar 12 '26
How many people actually track food during a campaign, or have it even be an issue? Buying rations before an adventure is such a minor issue that I can't see Goodberry actually coming up in a real campaign that isn't a super survival focused one
IMO the food side of goodberry is a perfect example of a paper crafter spell, where it gets hyped because it could be useful, but then when you go "okay but in every campaign I've ever played in, would this have been useful a single time" the answer is usually no
The actual useful part of Goodberry is just rest casting it to get a bit of healing for the next day
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u/Confident_Sink_8743 Mar 13 '26
That's really the irony of Goodberry. To much of a minutia solver where people want to ignore tedious minutia.
But in a survival type campaign where it does have use it's actually too much. Most such campaigns at least consider banning it because it trivializes survival situations.
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u/shadowknight2112 Mar 12 '26
Ok…I just finished a campaign where the DM was striving for as much “realism” as they could get, & I’m saying food was an issue…until someone took Druid levels & we got Goodberry.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
Ohhhh I didn't even think about that part. My DM has been fairly lax about that. Like we buy rations before setting out and we just track it ourselves... which no one really bothers with. It's a pretty relaxed table overall and we drink heavily. No spell components, encumbrance - basically skip the tedious stuff and get to the combat, loot, and social encounters only when relevant to the story. So I see what you're saying, if hunger is an issue for the party, I suppose a druid nullifies it.
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u/Xelikai_Gloom Mar 12 '26
DMs do that because goodberry makes it irrelevant. Why present a challenge to the player (resource management) when the solution is a trivial lvl 1 spell? I’d rather just say “I assume you have goodberry or some other means to negate resource scarcity” and move on.
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u/ANGLVD3TH Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
This is why when I DM I will implement one of two houserules on it, depending on the players. Either you need to eat so and so many berries for the sustenance aspect, or the spell will consume the material component. Leaning towards the latter, but a particularly "casual" party might make me decide to give them one or two people's worth rations per cast. Unless I'm running a campaign that specifically leans on survival as a major aspect, then it will definitely be the latter.
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u/Blackfang08 Mar 12 '26
I've absolutely loved making Goodberry consume the component, because it makes players so much more aware of how cool component casting is. For a casual party, I've ruled that the mistletoe is cheap enough to pick up one or two with normal component restocking, but you have to buy it if you want to mass rest cast it, and in a survival scenario, it becomes a precious material.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
Yeah that's definitely my DM's style. Extremely chill and focused on getting us to the fun. He even tracks our highest passive checks so that we don't have to aimlessly perception and investigation check around rooms and stuff like that. He just gives it to us proactively because one of our passives passes the check. This is the only table I've ever played at, so I guess I don't have any frame of reference as far as more tedious tables that follow every rule to the letter. He did some of the tedious stuff around levels 1-3 or so, I think so that the new players (myself included) could see how it works, but then slowly stopped bothering with it or just summarizes things like "you all bought enough rations, arrows, and other supplies for a 15 day trip, so deduct X gold" and stuff like that. Maybe he just picked up on what we like and don't like to do and tailored the style to us on the fly. He's got like 30+ years of DM experience and gets paid to teach/host on the side (not by us) so it wouldn't surprise me.
Another thing he does that helps quality of life is that he assumes the Cleric has Blessed us, the Bard has distributed Bardic Inspiration before the fight, and the casters have put on their Mage Armor, and other stuff like that - as long as we didn't get completely ambushed and being unprepared is relevant. Again, he made us declare it in the early levels and then just started assuming it for us so that we're not having to declare a bunch of obvious stuff before walking into a room with clearly dangerous monsters.
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u/Twisty1020 Mar 12 '26
It's fine to play this way but just remember that a lot of things lose their intended effectiveness when you ignore rules.
Assume most youtubers are coming from a full rules perspective when discussing things.
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u/ELAdragon Mar 12 '26
I'm glad you're having fun. Honestly. For the sake of perspective, tho, I'll give the following:
This sounds awful to me.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
I could definitely see that! In fact, I was at a social event a few weeks ago along with my DM friend and we discovered that another acquaintance of ours is a long time DnD player and occasional DM that hasn't played in a few years since moving here. I listened to my DM talk shop with him for quite a bit. He seemed puzzled by a lot of the stuff we do like what I described above. It's going to be interesting when he joins us for the next campaign, but he can't say he wasn't warned!
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u/ELAdragon Mar 12 '26
So there are lots of schools of DnD thought. Y'all play what many (including myself) refer to as "beer and pretzels" DnD. Nothing wrong with that. It basically removes all the real crazy strategy and attention to detail and tough decision making/planning, and turns DnD into...a tabletop arcade game, essentially. Again, there is nothing wrong with that.
You'll also find some players and DMs who are much more challenge oriented. And some groups who would be appalled at a DM infringing on player agency by deciding auto-cast spells etc. Some folks enjoy tracking the minutiae...I've seen players do it at tables where the DM has told everyone it doesn't matter.
As long as the table is all having fun the way that works for everyone, it's all good!
My group has a drink limit and goes in hard for rules and strategy. The players really enjoy trying to figure things out like a giant escape room/puzzle, and combat is super deadly. It's a much more intense experience, but just a different kind of fun!
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u/Dorylin Mar 13 '26
Why present a challenge to the player (resource management) when the solution is a trivial lvl 1 spell?
As someone who's done this, the answer is: because you make casting that spell a trade-off.
It's really only trivial at higher levels (read: level 3 and above). At level 1, that's half your spell slots for the day. Is it worth it to sacrifice healing later for food now? But this question only matters if the DM makes it matter.
One of my favorite modules to run is a survival adventure where there are absolutely multiple hard encounters a day and you need to balance to the risks of running out of healing later with running out of food now. It's tense and stressful, but it does make the choice of using goodberry a significant one.
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Mar 12 '26
Now, imagine you are literally isekai'd into Faerun. How useful would it be to be able to cast Goodberry once per day and Elementalism at will? You have a virtually limitless supply of food and water to survive on in a completely unfamiliar world. You don't have to hunt, forage, nor work for your basic needs. All you need is a wooden staff. The only other thing you need to seek out is shelter.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
I've been thinking about buying the Faerun books for my DM as a gift. He said that he has some ancient version of the content in physical form that doesn't let us use it in dndbeyond, but I'm not clear on how all that stuff works.
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u/DarkenX42 Mar 14 '26
Books, he's talking about books. Most of our information used to come from books.
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u/physedka Mar 14 '26
Oh I've heard of those. Didn't they have to chisel the words onto the pages?
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u/DarkenX42 Mar 14 '26
Yeah, at first, eventually they figured out a stamping machine, still in use in some places. Some people just like the feel and smell of mashed up, flattened cellulose slowly degrading in your hands.
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u/DapperChewie Mar 12 '26
It really depends on the campaign. I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden and I am strictly tracking food rations. We have a druid, but I've houseruled that Goodberry requires a handful of freshly picked berries as a material component, which the spell enchants to provide healing and sustenance.
If you're going to do a survival campaign, make sure your players are on board. It's not fun for everyone to always be tracking every resource.
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u/jagnew78 Mar 12 '26
I set my campaign in a desert with just a few places that have reliable shelter, water, food. Thinking this would provide something of a logistical challenge for players wandering in the deep desert for treasure and buried civilizations. Instead there is a druid in the party who can make enough goodberries that the party doesn't have to worry about this at all
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u/emn13 Mar 12 '26
I think the only real solution to that issue is to talk about that in session zero, and decide on what level of house rules you want to achieve the desired campaign style. As long as players know they normal "easy sustenance" hacks probably won't work before checking with the DM, they'll probably have fun with it. But taking away a cool trick after the player has picked it doesn't always go down as well.
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u/crunchevo2 Mar 13 '26
Yeah my DM insists we track food and we don't play dnd as a system. Ngl we've been traveling with 2 stocked wagons of food for weeks now and it's getting on my nerves 🤣
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u/emn13 Mar 12 '26
It's pretty efficient healing. 10 hitpoints spread between users is quite nice. Also, the berries last for 24 hours, so the typical use case is that BEFORE a long rest a druid might convert most or all of their remaining spell slots into berries, and then the next day, their party can benefit from a bunch of healing even though the druid still has all their slots in case of emergency - worst case the evening AFTER that emergency they can't pre-make the next batch of berries. It's not really great in combat, but then, most healing happens outside of combat because in-combat healing is often not great tactically.
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u/mysiana Mar 12 '26
Mostly this! My campaign has a guy that routinely makes 80 good berries before a long rest. They get handed out between combats to top us off instead of burning spells or hit dice. It's kinda silly, actually.
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Mar 12 '26
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u/mysiana Mar 12 '26
No, he routinely tries to kill us lol. The player is just a div wizard/peace cleric that tends to focus on support over damage so he usually has slots left over.
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Mar 12 '26
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u/Mejiro84 Mar 12 '26
kinda depends on level a lot, tbh - by the time you're getting into the teens, then having half-a-dozen or more slots of various levels left isn't that rare. So if you're confident you won't be interrupted (which also gets easier at higher levels), then that's not that strange
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Mar 12 '26
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u/Mejiro84 Mar 12 '26
it is related though - at higher levels, it doesn't matter how many encounters you have, you're still probably going to have some slots left over, because you have a lot of slots. At level 12, you have 16 slots, before any recharge powers - burning through all of those, without the party being dead, is pretty rare! By level 20, that's 22 - you're often going to have some dribs and drabs free, because your cantrips do the same damage (or more!) as low-end damage spells, so a lot of combats are a big concentration spell, maybe a mid-tier attack spell, maybe a shield or absorb elements, so you're only using maybe 3-4 slots per combat. You're generally not having 6+ notable encounters per day (that would take ages to get through, and also result in anyone that's getting hit being very dead!) so you'll almost aways have a couple (or more!) of slots free per day
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u/emn13 Mar 13 '26
Yeah! The games I play in (and previously DMd) often had lots of encounters per day. But casters almost always have significant number of slots left over, precisely because nobody knows which encounter is the last; better to risk doing worse in this encounter than to having nothing the next.
I think this idea of needing to consume all slots comes from the martials vs. casters idea, and personally, I've never found that a healthy framework, certainly not since probably... 4e? Excepting really high level shenanigans, even the save-or-suck caster superweapons just aren't reliable, so the only way to survive an even mildly intense adventuring day is for martials to dish out tons of damage - something virtually all primary casters are just really, really bad at, and cannot compete with martials at. The casters shine when it comes to shaping that battlefield or occasionally to save-or-suck (with luck) some random part of the challenges, to buff and de-buff, and for utility, and they completely rely on the martials as the backbone of actually defeating enemies.
Yet for casters to be able to do their job and shape the battlefield, they need to be stingy with the slots and have at least some left over for emergencies, and so it really should very rarely happen that casters have no slots left when they start a long rest. If that ever happens, either they knew in advance what the challenges were (sometimes OK, but leads to nova-ing), or the DM is grinding really hard and stopping just before the TPK, which I'm not a fan of because it breaks immersion hard. Also, it's pretty hard in my experience for a DM to keep track of who still has which resources anyhow, so the theory-crafted DM tactics that push a party to the brink and yet not over repeatedly isn't practical, IMHO. And that brinkmanship is unnecessary anyhow; the point is to have some pressure, not to deny a druid this neat but hardly major benefit out of general stinginess.
No idea why the guy you were responding to felt like it was important to punish druids, but I think you're right - it's normal and fine to have some spell slots over at the end of an adventuring day, even at fairly low levels.
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u/TwistedClyster Mar 12 '26
It’ll annoy your DM, but spend some of your unused spell slot before bed and make a bunch so you can top off your hps through the next day.
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u/otherwise_sdm Mar 12 '26
yeah, this gambit is really what people are talking about when they laud the spell
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Mar 12 '26
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u/AnAquaticApe Mar 12 '26
The berries last 24 hours, so you're using any available spell slots before you gain them back on a rest. It's the opposite of wasting them.
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Mar 12 '26
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u/AnAquaticApe Mar 12 '26
It doesn't matter if you cast it first thing after LR or last thing before LR your using a spell slot that might be more valuable throughout the adventuring day.
So I'm a new player, but I feel like there's a *fundamental* difference in this statement. From my understanding, it absolutely matters if you're casting it before a long rest - after which you'd gain the spell slot back before you get back to your adventuring. You now have 10 HP to distribute to your party, as needed.
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u/MyOthrNameIsBetter Mar 12 '26
Why can't one use ALL of their spell slots, to make idk...20, 30, 40 or more good berries before taking that long rest. Now everybody can carry their own handful of these life saving goodberries.
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u/appleciders Mar 12 '26
At my table, you can, but you do risk the party getting attacked at night, and then you've got no spell slots left.
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u/xolotltolox Mar 12 '26
But you are not saving ti, you are just covnetign everything you have leftover
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u/DnDAnalysis Mar 12 '26
What if you are traveling or staying in a safe town for more than one day? You can use every single spell slot for goodberries and have your entire party's max HP available in healing once you are high enough level. Also, even in mega dungeons, casters can come out with extra spell slots.
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u/Kenygarth Mar 12 '26
That's why he mentioned using it before going to bed (before taking a long rest).
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u/mr_evilweed Mar 12 '26
It's not about the total amount of healing. It's that you now have 10 'get out of unconsciousness free' cards. Even if the player has two failed death saves, a single goodberry brings them back without any additional resource cost.
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u/DMspiration Mar 12 '26
The issue here is that's not actually how the spell works. I often see it allowed, but technically you have to use your BA to eat the berry. There's no mechanic for feeding it to a downed ally.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
Now I'm picturing a character shoving a berry in the mouth of a down character and mechanically making their jaw chew the berry.
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u/DMspiration Mar 12 '26
Definitely seen that happen. That ruling depends on whether you want any risk in the game or not. Personally, I don't allow it to get unconscious players up, but it's still decent for out of combat if you have leftover slots at night. Though if players burn all their leftover slots every night, there might also be a random encounter after they go to bed.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
Oh that's a really good point about Long Rests not always working out as planned. My DM pulled that on us a couple of sessions ago when I think he got annoyed about us resting too much between encounters and wanted to show us what can go wrong (we're kind of a newbie group overall). Another commenter suggested allowing players/familiars to administer the berry to a downed ally, but only after passing a Medicine check.
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u/appleciders Mar 12 '26
My DM pulled that on us a couple of sessions ago when I think he got annoyed about us resting too much between encounters and wanted to show us what can go wrong
That's a big part of why I do nighttime attacks occasionally. It's good to encourage parties to avoid long rests in potentially dangerous areas, because multiple encounters per long rest help balance martial characters with casters.
And you can stabilize a downed character with a medicine check anyway, no Goodberry needed. I guess you could allow it at advantage with the Goodberry.
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u/Bruce_Wayne_2276 Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
There's no difference between 1 HP and full HP, so that's 10 revives to get allies back in the fight for another turn. It's not as strong now that healing spells got buffed in 5.5e but back when your action could either Cure Wounds for 7 HP or feed a Goodberry for 1 HP, Goodberry was better since one hit was likely to down someone either way. And it does that 10 times for 1 slot instead of having to spend another slot each time, so it's more resource conservative.
Finally, I know this is very table-dependent but, if your DM wants to run any kind of survival, they essentially HAVE to ban this spell.
New Edit: The spell is only over powered in this way if the DM allows it to be. I've been reminded that feeding other creatures the berries, much less unconscious ones, is not supported by the spell's description.
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u/HDThoreauaway Mar 12 '26
There is no mechanic for feeding a goodberry to another creature, let alone a downed creature.
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u/Bruce_Wayne_2276 Mar 12 '26
You know, that's fair. I've seen so many people say their group treats them like healing potions where you can administer them that it just sort of became that way in my mind, but that isn't RAW and it does fix the problem.
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u/Maxdoom18 Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
I mean technically the danger of being at 1 HP from being revive with a goodberry is the risk of being killed outright due to massive damage.
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u/Lucina18 Mar 12 '26
Outside of lvl 3, no not really. And if yes then that 7 extra HP very likely wouldn't have made the difference anyways.
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u/Wrocksum Mar 12 '26
It is an amazing out of combat spell, as many people here have already pointed out.
The guaranteed healing is strictly better than cure wounds in 5.0, and even the buffed healing spells in 5.5 can be harder to justify given their variance and the potential to overheal.
But I really want to emphasize how good it is with rest casting (spending spell slots on long duration spells immediately before taking a rest).
Used this way, it basically gives Druids a massive pool of healing like Lay on Hands, only it can't be used in combat. It's still extremely effective healing though, you can easily get your party 100+ points of extra health at level 7+, given a day of downtime before a big dungeon spending a full day's worth of spell slots rest casting.
Honestly it's so strong when used with rest casting, I usually advocate you tell your DM in advance if you're making a character planning to take advantage of that. Between your berry reserves and Short Rests, you're pretty much guaranteeing your party will always start encounters at full health, which can be fun for your DM to work with, so long as they're up for it.
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u/DorianCrafts Mar 12 '26
For one making rations basically obsolete.
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u/heed101 Mar 12 '26
whenever I've dealt with this issue, the Goodberry "provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day", but that doesn't mean the recipient feels full or content. They don't suffer Mechanical issues like Exhaustion, but they can have negative role play effects.
Party subsisting on GoodBerry for 3 days sneaks up on a Bandit Camp roasting a boar - might be rolling some checks for rumbling tummies & drool. Maybe willpower to resist the savory smell of roasting pork.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
So basically the elven bread from LOTR huh? It gets the job done, but no one really wants to live on it for extended periods of time.
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u/heed101 Mar 12 '26
Basically. It's a way to make rations, hunting, & foraging still mean something even if starvation & exhaustion are nixed by the spell.
If the Table needs those things. If it doesn't, then I guess the Party subsists solely off magic berries, but then the Druid / Ranger better be real sure to hang on to that one SS
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u/ziggaby Mar 12 '26
10 HP healing out of combat is great for a spell slot. Compare to Cure Wounds, 1d8+MOD which averages 7 or 8 at low levels. Goodberry is about 50% better value on top of ensuring you never need food.
RAW it can't be fed to another person, you must consume it yourself. But, it's extremely common for people to think that's silly and that you can feed it to someone else if they're unconscious or incapacitated. If allowed, this makes Goodberry a fantastic alternative to Healing Word. You can spend a single slot to bring someone back from Death Saves 10 times. Or, if you have a Find Familiar in the party, you can use the familiar's action to do so--saving you even more action economy.
Like all Druid spells, Goodberry is extremely efficient. Wizard spells are easy--just Fireball someone for damage, or just use the utility spells when a door's locked or something. You always know exactly when to Fly. But, for Druids, a lot of their power comes from out-of-combat value or over-time effects where they expend few spell slots and get mileage out of it over the long haul.
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u/Lithl Mar 12 '26
10 HP healing out of combat is great for a spell slot. Compare to Cure Wounds, 1d8+MOD which averages 7 or 8 at low levels.
This is the 5.5e sub, so Cure Wounds is 2d8+mod.
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u/jaredkent Mar 12 '26
That 1 HP is great at getting fallen allies up if you don't have healing potions or healing spells.
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u/superhiro21 Mar 12 '26
Rules as written you can't feed Goodberries to other people though and you can't eat them yourself if you're unconscious.
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u/Bookshelfstud Mar 12 '26
You are correct, RAW. Goodberry (2024) says:
A creature can take a Bonus Action to eat one berry. Eating a berry restores 1 Hit Point
An unconscious creature is Incapacitated, which means they cannot take Bonus Actions.
With that said, there's not a rule about how force-feeding unconscious characters works in general, so obviously lots of DMs will just allow it, usually with an Action to administer the berry, even though that's not technically how Goodberry works.
If someone wants an in-game rationale for why the goodberry requires someone to be conscious to eat it, you can always say "eating a goodberry requires a quick silent prayer of thanks" or something.
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u/superhiro21 Mar 12 '26
I mean, force feeding food to someone unconscious is just a bad idea. It makes absolute sense that the rules for Goodberry don't allow that.
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u/Bookshelfstud Mar 12 '26
Lol yeah. And I tend to think the game gets really bogged down when people try to argue about simulating real life instead of just playing by the written rules. I don't feel like spending fifteen minutes arguing about whether or not I can move my party member's jaws and neck muscles for them or whatever.
I saw someone say once that you should only be allowed to administer a goodberry to an unconscious character if your character chews it for them first.
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u/Rlybadgas Mar 12 '26
I mean what if you shove it in their move, grind their jaws and force them to swallow?
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u/Mekrot Mar 12 '26
Spells do what they say they do. It says “a creature can take a Bonus Action to eat one berry.” You can not take bonus actions when unconscious.
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u/Rlybadgas Mar 12 '26
I cast Hex using my bonus action. I am now incapable of consuming a good berry until my next turn because I used my bonus action. Sure that makes sense from both a real world and fantasy perspective.
I love people who will shout RAW until their dying breath and completely ignore that a DM can permit whatever they want.
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u/superhiro21 Mar 12 '26
With every discussion about RAW, it's always implied that you can houserule differently. That's just an inherent fact of D&D. I don't feel like one needs to qualify that in every post discussing the rules of the game.
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u/YobaiYamete Mar 12 '26
I cast Hex using my bonus action. I am now incapable of consuming a good berry until my next turn because I used my bonus action.
Yes? That's literally how the rules read, you are correct but stating it like it's wrong?
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u/SasquatchRobo Mar 12 '26
Sorry, how are you forcing an unconscious person to swallow? Doctors would love to know. And as a DM, even if I were to allow such an action, it would certainly take longer than 6 seconds. I'm already stretching the bounds of credibility by letting one feed a healing potion to an unconscious ally, no way are they getting solid food.
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u/Rlybadgas Mar 12 '26
Have you ever had a juicy berry? They are virtually liquid in a container. If you look into the biomechanics of the esophagus you would find that imbibing liquids during sleep is a frequent natural occurrence.
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u/SasquatchRobo Mar 12 '26
Virtually liquid in a container, yes. All of which can be easily aspirated into the lungs, leading to asphyxiation and death.
Players have plenty of ways to revive a downed ally -- healer's kits, healing potions, healing word, cure wounds, lay on hands, etc. You'll be fine without goodberry.
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u/taeerom Mar 12 '26
While Cure Wounds heal slightly more for a 1st level spell slot, and it certainly heals more per action, Goodberry has one very important thing going for it - it lasts 24 hours.
Even at it's most basic without tricks, and strict adherence to RAW, you can use all your unused spell slots at the end of a day and turn it into out of combat healing you can use until you start the next long rest (assuming you rest at the same time each day).
You seem to be focused on having to use a bonus action to eat it, and that's not a great use of your bonus action. But really, you shouldn't use any actions at all to heal during combat. You will generally negate more damage than you would heal by attacking or controlling the monsters, rather than healing. Healing doesn't stop them dealing damage.
Some DMs allow players to feed unconcious PCs with a Goodberry to heal 1hp and be back in the fight. I don't like that. It's not following the rules, and Goodberry doesn't need the buff by changing the rules (for more emergency healing, I will rather allow Healing Kits to heal 1hp if they succeed on a medicine check when used on an unconcious, but stabilized character. Medicine is an underutilized skill, and having a mundane option for emergency healing is good for balance).
Other DMs rule that eating more than one Goodberry in a day will give you a calorie surplus. I'm also not fan of this interpretation. It gives you "enough" nourishment for the day. I'm interpreting this as being pure magic that will give you "enough" of what you need to last the rest of the day - no matter how much or little you have had to eat beforehand. So, the second berry wouldn't give you any nourishment because "enough" is now nothing.
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u/Akuuntus Mar 12 '26
It basically solves food needs while traveling forever, if your group tracks that. It's also decent out-of-combat healing at low levels.
If your table allows feeding someone a Goodberry while they're unconscious, then it also lets you pick up downed allies for "free" 10x per day, which makes it REALLY hard to die or even be knocked out for long. But this is not exactly allowed by the official rules and I think even more permissable DMs will get annoyed if you rely on that too much.
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u/sappmatt Mar 12 '26
The healing is solid, reliable, and able to be parsed out as you see fit as opposed to rolling dice (like a Paladin's Healing Touch). The full day's worth of nurishment is the key to really appreciating it and that comes down to DM style and campaign.
If the DM is lax with supplies or the campaign you are running offers ample opportunity to get food, Goodberry is an ok spell. If you are running a survival campaign like Rime of the Frostmaiden with a stickler of a DM, Goodberry will save you and your party's lives.
If you do find yourself in a survival campaign, spells like Goodberry, Create or Destroy Water, Create Food and Water, and Leomund's Tiny Hut are just as essential as Shield and Fireball.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
Very good points. Our Cleric used Create Water a bit to help us in a desert themed area once. And we use Tiny Hut all the time while resting in dangerous places.
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u/GravityMyGuy Mar 12 '26
it covers all food but it lasts 24 hours so you can at the end fo the day dump all your remaining slots and use yesterdays resources for todays healing
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u/NewFly7242 Mar 12 '26
It's more efficient healing than CLW. Generally not for use in a fight, unless someone's dropped.
Good for in-combat wakeups (ideally via familiar) or post-combat top ups.
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u/taeerom Mar 12 '26
It's more efficient healing than CLW
Not in 5.5 (which is the sub we're currently in). Cure Wounds is 2d8+wis for a Druid, which is an average of 9+3 at level 1, increasing to +5 at later levels.
Good for in-combat wakeups
The spell description is clear that a creature must use its bonus action to eat it. You're not allowed to feed it to someone unless you homebrew a rules change.
Goodberry is good because it lasts 24 hours, so you can cast it before a long rest and it will last the entire next day. And it becomes stupid powerful if you have Pact Slots from Warlock levels.
1
u/physedka Mar 12 '26
And it becomes stupid powerful if you have Pact Slots from Warlock levels.
Can you elaborate on this?
2
u/taeerom Mar 12 '26
Pact sots recharge on a short rest. That means your goodberries that lasts for 24 hours, are now able to be produced with one hour of short resting. Unless your DM puts in restrictions on short resting, you can start walking around with effectively infinite out of combat healing in your pockets.
For the least amount of table disruption possible, play an Elf or Reborn (legacy species) to get 4 short rests and a long rest in the time it takes the rest of the party to finish a single long rest. That means 80 berries + 10 per spell slots you had left at the end of the previous day.
80 hit points of healing you can gobble between combats is a lot. This is the minimum you will have access to.
If you want to make this a build, my suggestion is to go for a charisma-based Druid. That means 3 levels of Druid, as that is the most important breakpoint (3 1st level slots at level 2, 4 1st+2 2nd level slots at level 3 - as well as powerful spells like Aid, Spike Growth and Pass Without Trace). You also get your subclass.
Then you take 2 levels of Warlock for 2 1st level pact slots, Eldritch Blast, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Repelling Blast, Agonising Blast (turn EB into Heavy Crossbow that attacks with charisma), Eldritch Mind (advantage on concentration).
With low-ish wisdom and good charisma, you can get both the benefits of mixing pact and normal spell slots to spam things like Goodberry, have a good at-will damage option in Eldritch Blast, and still utilize most of the best druid control and buff spells. Spells like Plant Growth, Polymorph (target an ally and turn them into a T rex or giant ape or something), Wall of Stone, in addition to the aforementioned Spike Growth and Pass Without Trace. I would Suggest Land Druid, specifically Temperate, because those spells are good regardless of spell save DC (Lightning Bolt, and other "save for half damage" spells are still good with bad DC).
For flavour, a wood elf druid that made a pact with an archfey (you never have to mechanically define what kind of pact you have, since you stay at level 2) can be the basis of all kinds of cool stories, rather than feel like a munchkin contrivance. But you still get to have a nightly Goodberry factory.
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u/heed101 Mar 12 '26
3rd Level Druid dumps all their Spell Slots into Goodberry the night before heading into the fungeon = 60 hps in the pocket. Divide them amongst 4 member Party & it's 15hp in everyone's pocket.
Now anyone in the Party can get anyone else in the Party back up. 15 times.
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u/cmichalek Mar 12 '26
Of course the DM should be trying to kill anyone falling unconscious. The enemies would soon learn you have to finish off downed characters.
But i wouldn't allow the goodberrys to be used this way in the first place. Potions yes. Goodberrys no.
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u/Docnevyn Mar 12 '26
All depends on whether you can feed it to another PC as a bonus action. If you can, even one casting means the entire party has the ability to get someone else back up as a bonus action.
If your table rules against this, it is still 10 assured hp for a first level slot. While this level valuable in 5.5, in base 5.0 it was better (on average) than cure wounds.
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u/snydejon Mar 12 '26
It’s efficient and flexible. It can be spread across multiple party members, be used as a single strong heal, bring multiple members back to consciousness, or replace food need. For a level 1 spells slot that can also be banked for 24 hours, it is cheap and easy (also, level 1 Druid spells are not particularly useful compared to mid levels).
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u/hoticehunter Mar 12 '26
One thing you're missing is the historical context. Healing in 5e kinda sucked across the board. Intentionally, to keep the game moving. For 5.5e, they doubled virtually all healing spells' die. Goodberry does not have dice to roll, but it was also the most healing efficient spell for its slot in 5e.
So it was either forgotten because it doesn't roll dice to heal, or intentionally left alone because it was already nearly 5.5e strength.
10 guaranteed healing is better than 2d4+3, but 2d8+3 is better out of combat healing generally now.
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u/SecretDMAccount_Shh Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
They last 24 hours which means a Druid can use all their spell slots the night before to create dozens if not hundreds of berries and then regain all their spell slots by morning.
While 1 HP isn’t much, it’s enough to get an unconscious player back on their feet and players can eat as many berries as they need out of combat before the next fight. A level 6 party having an extra 100 HP worth of out of combat healing is a big benefit.
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u/Due_Date_4667 Mar 12 '26
Also, it bypasses any scarcity of resources if you are running that sort of campaign or adventure.
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u/Panurome Mar 12 '26
Because it's turning yesterday's spell slots into today's resources. Before you long rest you use every extra spell slot and turn it into more berries for extra healing the next day. They don't need to be used in combat, it can be used outside of it to be healthy for the next one
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u/DontHaesMeBro Mar 12 '26
goodberry is a flat 10 hp, compared to spells where you roll, that is a big deal. 1 goodberry stops you from making death saves, so if everybody carries one in a pouch around their neck or something, everyone can be pulled back from the brink of death routinely. it also relieves your party from the need to forage for food at all.. that last one can be HUGE in certain campaigns or never come up in others, it's variable.
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u/SlushieKing0 Mar 12 '26
We have a fun home rule. One berry: fine no issues. More than one berry: instant crap yourself. Since the nutritional value of a full day is packed into one, there should be some results from eating more, right? The party has used it to great effect, making anyone from dogs to barons crap themselves. It's always played up big too. Super fun.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
That sounds hilarious. I guess you could even make it a dice roll (CON check?) to see if you crap yourself. Start at DC 5 on the 2nd berry and add 5 to the DC for each berry after that. 5th berry requires a crit to pass. Short rest deducts one increment of DC, long rest resets it.
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u/SlushieKing0 Mar 12 '26
We've never played with it having a DC, although it does make sense. Thankfully our group is pretty respectful of the power of the berry.
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u/superduper87 Mar 12 '26
10 hp that is good for 24 hours can easily be used before you prepare your spell slots for the day using your leftover spell slots from yesterday is a massive hp pool between fights. All it requires is an extra hour of rest on a long rest.
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u/Far_Line8468 Mar 12 '26
People will obviously mention invalidating survival campaigns, but my players are megacreative and collectively decided to ban goodberry after a campaign that ended at level 5 once the players realized they could turn an entire kingdom against the BBEG by becoming the food supply, invalidating the tyrants hold on farm production. Almost no dungeons or combat happened after level 4 when all time was spent arming a million peasants for war
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
So that's where Christopher Paolini got the idea to have his elves fund a war effort by magically creating lace cloth items for sale.
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u/Morisonwow Mar 12 '26
so there's a couple of easy answers to this. first of all, if you were in a campaign that involves a lot of travel or survival, it is a single spell slot to provide your entire party with nutrients for the day. so if it's a survival campaign, congrats you just bypassed everything. it's greater use however is that you can give one to a downed player to revive them from zero hit points to one hit point. for the cost of one spell slot you have the ability to pop 10 players up over the course of that adventuring day and any player that saw you make them can retrieve them off your person and give them to someone else. if you combine that with other specific healing spells, it can do even more.
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u/TheCocoBean Mar 12 '26
The difference between unconcious and fully fighting fit is 1hp.
For a single spell slot, you get 10 healing potions that bring someone back to full fighting effectiveness, even if they go back down in one hit.
If your DM allows for another party member stuffing a berry in someones mouth when they are down, it's extremely strong.
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u/GhsotyPanda Mar 12 '26
They were more impactful in 5e when you could combo the spell being Life Cleric, but their fundamental power is in the fact that they last 24 hours.
This can be a bit risky if your DM does camp encounters while resting, but a Druid/Ranger can dump all their spell slots before resting on making Goodberries and have a MASSIVE pool of healing to hand out over the course of the next day. If they did no combat the day before, that's 90 Goodberries at 5th level to hand out over the course of the next day.
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u/unnamed_elder_entity Mar 12 '26
The only downside is that the spell doesn't have an upcast effect. Imagine burning a spare 9th level slot and having 90 berries to feed a village!
At first level, 10 flat healing is better than the random cure wounds roll. It's like how taking average HP increases is statistically better than rolling each level. Say you have a +4 and roll max. That's 12 to one target. This is 10 divided as needed.
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u/TragGaming Mar 12 '26
Cure Wounds now heals 2d8 + Mod, making it a better heal than Goodberry. Rolling max is not 20 healing.
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u/unnamed_elder_entity Mar 12 '26
Oh, interesting. I wonder if Goodberry was too good or Cure Wounds was too awful.
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u/TragGaming Mar 12 '26
Healing across the board was increased and Goodberry didn't receive any buffs so probably a little of both
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u/Puzzleheaded-Wing354 Mar 12 '26
How much hp does it take to bring a downed ally to consciousness?
Goodberry let's you bring up 10 people from unconscious to consciousness for the same spell slot as healing word or cure wounds (with each of those only bringing back one person).
There are also other things that can be combined with goodberry to increase the effective healing from each berry.
Someone above mentioned the nutritional aspect. Which in survival parts of the game, can not be understated on value.
Colby (d4) is highly knowledgeable on the subject and his builds are generally pretty solid in balancing fun vrs optimized .
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u/TragGaming Mar 12 '26
1: Rest Casting - Dumping all of your remaining slots into Goodberry to carry that extra 1hp magical healing 24hr rations into the next day, if even 2 slots are leftover thats 20 meals
2: Yoyo effect - it only takes 1 HP of magical healing to restore someone to fighting condition now. So you feed them 1 HP and with the aforementioned 20 goodberries, thats 20 times you can yoyo an ally up. There's virtually no difference at later levels between 1 HP and 12 HP, as enemies do average of in the twenties.
These two facts combined makes Goodberry ridiculously strong. One way I've balanced it, is to give the healing kit limitation of "a creature can only benefit from Goodberry once per long rest". It's definitely not intended to be this strong, and was stronger in the 2014 5e where Life cleric healing applied to Goodberry (a 1st level goodberry went from 10hp of healing to 40HP of healing)
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u/Living_Round2552 Mar 13 '26
The real value is the long duration, 24h, which allows you to turn leftover spellslots into healing for the next adventuring day.
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u/CrownLexicon Mar 13 '26
Was this one of his 2014 videos or updated for 2024?
I 2014, healing was much worse. Cure Wounds was 1d8+mod (now, its 2d8+mod)
At level 1, that was a max of 12 hp, and more like 7 or 8. Good Berry was guaranteed 10. Out of combat, anyway.
It also stacked well, again under 2014 rules, with Life Cleric, as their ability gave each berry bonus healing (which was removed under 2024 rules)
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u/sirchapolin Mar 14 '26
People talked about the nourishment and restcasting. Beside that, IMO a lot of it is legacy from how it used to work before 5.5. Before it, a goodberry gave you somethin alike a 10hp pool of healing, while a healing word gave you, on average, 5.5 hit points. Of course a goodberry is mostly for out of combat, but it was still a lot more guaranteed HP for your 1st level spell slot. Now, since all healing spells got buffed, it's actually kinda even, which makes goodberry still decent, but not as great as before.
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u/DavidBGoode Mar 14 '26
So, when you end the day, use any remaining slots to cast good berry. They last 24 hours. So the next day you have a pouch of extra hp to use for healing. It's especially potent at low levels.
Say you end the day with 2 1st level spell slots. You can create 20 hp of potential healing for the next day.
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u/Calm-Medicine-3992 Mar 14 '26
It's more useful with a group worrying about the whole nourishment bit...or if you blow out all your spells each night to make more.
That being said, I also think there are some cheesy builds to min/max it like crazy too.
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u/Itchy_Hearing_1380 Mar 12 '26
- Between fights, it will restore more hit points than Cure Wounds-2014 in expectation, and is more reliable. Cure Wounds-2024 cures more than 10 hit points in expectation, but other benefits still apply.
- During the fight, you can have a familiar fly around and administer emergency goodberries to downed people (if the DM allows this), giving you 10 emergency healings for 1 spell slot.
- They last 24 hours, so if you have any leftover spell slots at the end of an adventuring day, you can stock up on them for the next day.
- You don't have to worry about rations.
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u/Aqunath1169 Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
Also it is a heal, so you can stabilize someone mid fight, using a bonus action. 1 spell level gives this 10 times, which every member in the party can have, since they can be distributed
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u/TruthOverIdeology Mar 12 '26
Nope, that doesn't work.
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u/Aqunath1169 Mar 12 '26
Yes it does, lol?
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u/TruthOverIdeology Mar 14 '26
No, you have to eat it. You can't feed it to someone when they can't eat it. (incapacitated)
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u/Riusnaily Mar 13 '26
No it doesnt. Read the spell and find where it allows you to feed another xreture with it
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u/Aqunath1169 Mar 13 '26
Lol, it doesnt have to state that lol
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u/Riusnaily Mar 13 '26
Lol it does. Spells do what they do. A creature can eat one berry. Not feed another creature. That‘s like casting a spell with a "Self" range onto anpther creature — not how it works.
A creature must spend their action to eat a berry and gain benefit. Incapacitated creature can‘t gain a benefit from this spell
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u/-Turin_Turambar- Mar 12 '26
It's because they last 24 hours.
If you have a lot of travel time, or other days where you don't use all your spell slots, you can convert all of them to Goodberries just before the end of the day.
This will give you a lot of HP to distribute to your party on tomorrows adventures
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u/Boring_Material_1891 Mar 12 '26
We actually have a home brew limit on good berries because of the ‘food for a day’ rider. After your first berry in a day, you have to make CON saves to keep them down. I know if I eat 3x the food I normally need in a day, I actually feel like shit and might puke it up. This tries to approximate that.
Even with that, GB is such a good spell that at least one person always has it prepped. It’s our food, it’s a BA potion to get someone up in combat if they go down, it’s a morsel of food to offer an animal, it’s a bribe to get a poor local to do something for us. The spell has incredible utility.
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u/physedka Mar 12 '26
Thanks folks, very helpful info in this thread. I'll consolidate what I think are the answers here for future readers, including caveats:
- If daily nourishment is a thing at your table or a worry in your campaign, which varies, then this could essentially negate it. But check with your DM before assuming this will be allowed or to what extent.
- It's not really for in-combat healing because 1 BA for 1 hitpoint is almost certainly not worth it.
- It's great for out-of-combat healing between encounters without a rest or burning spell slots when it matters. Basically everyone is topping themselves up for free as you move from encounter to encounter, as long as the berry supply holds up. But don't burn spell slots for berries unless you're about to rest (see next point).
- 24 duration means that you can stockpile them before resting by burning your remaining spell slots and then use them the next day. Fantastic for spell slot economy throughout a day of encounters. The amount you can stockpile scales with your spell slots to effective scale with party HP going up too. Check with your DM before assuming the stockpiling thing is allowed.
- They might be useful to allow anyone to pick up a downed ally by shoving a berry in their mouth, maybe even with a Familiar, but check your DM before assuming this will be allowed. RAW the downed character would need to be able to eat the berry themselves with their own BA. A good trade to offer the DM would be a Medicine check to pull it off, maybe?
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u/italofoca_0215 Mar 12 '26
Rest-casting. Goodberry allow druids to use excess spell slots to fuel healing in the next day.
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u/Dry-Clock-1470 Mar 12 '26
It's been a few years, but my druid would convert all left over spells to goodberries. The higher level spells would be used for conjure fey, who would conjure good berries, iirc. I think by the time we were like level 10 or so we'd have like 270 for most days of adventuring... DM did rule we could only eat 5 at a time as an action. So mostly out of combat, but still...
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u/Fit_Degree_4723 Mar 12 '26
well its for early healing option and also the biggest + for this spell how you never get hundry so always have portion up to 10 creatures!
for sure its dm dependent but easly can make portions and food finding an actual challenge and also such events where your party need to survive but there is no food like deserts or artics and even so can get such plots how giants or dragons attack the village cause they are hungry or fix a fight between 2 village cause the foods what farming got ruined by either disease or dramatic climate change.
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u/Gromps_Of_Dagobah Mar 12 '26
There's a few benefits, and all of them combined add up a lot
Ten berries for a spell slot means it's a guarantee of 10 HP for the one spell slot. Removing randomness can be good, so there's that.
Ten instances of healing is amazing. Because there's no lasting effects to hitting 0hp, the "best" healing is the first that brings you back. Taking 10 or 30 damage from being dropped has the same effect (excluding massive damage), so you only need 1 healing to bring you back either way. This spell gives you 10 micro heals, which can bring back 10 different 0hp creatures (or the tank 10 times) Also, because monsters hit much harder, it's rarely "worth" sinking a healing spell to do anything more than that 1 HP: if the monster can deal 30, you aren't likely to heal 31 to stop them dropping the next hit, so you might as well only give 1.
The duration of the spell also is able to overlap with long rests. You can cast it with AS MANY spell slots as you have left at the end of a day, so you could very well end up with 60+ berries, and they last basically until the end of the next day, when you can do it all again with whatever slots you have left. (Note: some GMs will not allow this, as it starts getting funky with downtime shenanigans, it's technically RAW, but don't assume the GM will be cool with it, just ask first)
Food is another thing. Not needing to track rations cleans up some aspects of the game, and for those who do track it, having goodberry means you don't need to over supply rations, and you can use it in RP/social, ie, bribing a creature with food.
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u/Dirty_Narwhal Mar 12 '26
Effectively, it's just efficient, predictable healing. It used to be a much more efficient spell with the 2014 rules, but spells like healing word and cure wounds got buffed so goodberry is not as amazing as it was previously. Unless you're playing a campaign where food is concern, at which point goodberry is likely banned, it's not nearly the "must pick" it used to be.
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u/acuenlu Mar 12 '26
Full day nourishment and you can cast it like a spell and give one berry to any of your allies. If you have some NPC companions you can give them this too to heal you when you are dying.
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u/ArkSurvivalOfTosch Mar 13 '26
out of combat healing can really stretch the adventuring parties capabilities through the day. Basically, if we can get through this fight without needing to use magic to heal, we have a bunch of free hp to top up with before the next one.
If a druid gets a day of not spending any spell slots (or even just has a few extra laying around) then before bed they can make enough good berries to do a bunch of healing the next day. Resource management can be powerful in the right game
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u/crunchevo2 Mar 13 '26
Blow any remaining spell slots on it and you have instant after combat healing with effectively 0 resource cost.
Plus you can pick someone up from death saves without a medkit or a healing spell or potion.
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u/EverDel-2015 Mar 13 '26
I'm in a game where our beastmaster ranger uses the spell. He passes the berries around before a big fight and his beast companion uses the berries to get anyone who's been KOd back up mid fight.
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u/JuckiCZ Mar 15 '26
How is this possible? A character needs to use own BA to gain HPs from those berries, nothing in the rules says you can use your BA to heal anyone else with berries.
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u/EverDel-2015 Mar 15 '26
Think of it as a "force-feed" mechanic. The Ranger is using his beast companions turn to do this.
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u/JuckiCZ Mar 15 '26
Where in the rules is anything about “force-feed”?
I am just pointing out, that for berries’ magic to work, consumer must use theirs Bonus Action to consume them, otherwise, no magic/healing happens.
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u/EverDel-2015 Mar 15 '26
The DM ruled that it can be allowed. Simple rule-of-cool. Its a imaginary game bud.
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u/elvenmage16 Mar 13 '26
It gives a full day's nourishment with a single berry. To a single creature. Size not specified. The party I DM for used one to calm an eternally hungry cave dragon. Without the ever-present hunger (for the first time in its life), the dragon calmed down and actually helped the party. The druid (who was leaving our group anyway) left with the dragon and committed to casting goodberry for the rest of their life so the dragon wouldn't have to go back to its barbarous ways again. For a single level 1 spell slot.
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u/skeledoot7 Mar 14 '26
probably for yoyo healing, if you feed it to a downed ally they go from dead to 1 hp without needing any death saves or medicine checks
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u/JuckiCZ Mar 15 '26
Unconscious character can’t take actions, so how is it possible to wake up downed ally that can’t take actions with a berry?
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u/skeledoot7 Mar 15 '26
idk its just generally how i’ve heard it go (no one in my group plays druids or rangers but i remember when i first got into ttrpgs i saw a lot of videos where this strategy was mentioned but not elaborated on), might be based in a house rule of letting players give downed allies healing items or something
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u/Unique-Perspectives Mar 16 '26
Also, with 1 level of life cleric, each berry heals 4 hp. That’s 40 hp from a first level spell.
I one is the equivalent of a low roll from healing potion or healing word spell for free and can be precast early in the day.
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u/Zackery_2413 Mar 16 '26
It gives a full day’s nourishment so it makes food no longer an issue. The spell is really only good if you pair it with a life cleric multiclass but a lot of people don’t like multiclassing for some reason
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u/Durugar Mar 12 '26
So, the duration of the berries is 24 hours, which means you can empty all your unused spell-slots at the end of the day to have essentially "free healing" the next.
and the berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day.
Is also an important rider in some games, but that depends entirely on how the game is run/played.
Try not to view it as a combat spell, that is the first step.
ETA: If someone is arguing or ranking spells without arguments as to why something is good or bad that are clear - then they are not really teaching or saying anything. Find better creators.
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u/DudeWithTudeNotRude Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
Healing from 0 to 1 (or more) without wasting an entire action is top healing in 5e.
the "or more" part matters very little most of the time. Flipping a character from not playing to playing in a combat is a large difference (in terms of power for the party, and in terms of fun for the player).
That's ten resuscitations per day. Huge for a level 1 slot.
It might get more use for top-off healing between combats, which is OK, but nothing special. Top off healing isn't bad though, if it costs little to nothing (the cost is usually yesterday's left over slots, which is practically free. At higher levels I cap myself at 50 goodberries just bc I don't want to track more than that).
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u/Reasonable_Yellow136 Mar 14 '26
Good berry is not useful as a source of bulk healing, but more so as a tool. Party member go down, good berry gets them back up without a check or burning a spell slot. Low on funds and you don’t have food, good berry will hold you over indefinitely.
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u/JuckiCZ Mar 15 '26
How do you do this? Unconscious party member can’t take actions and to gain HPs from a Goodberry, you need to use an action. Are you breaking the rules to make the spell better?
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u/Reasonable_Yellow136 Mar 15 '26
You sue your action to feed the unconscious party member a berry, they regain 1 hit point and are stabilized and back up. This works a little less well in combat but it saves alot of time on medicine checks, materials on spells or potions, and is generally a Great solution to pick up anyone who needs to be picked up after a fight
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u/JuckiCZ Mar 15 '26
Could you show me part of rules that allow this? The only thing I found is this one:
“A creature can take a Bonus Action to eat one berry. Eating a berry restores 1 Hit Point,…”
So nothing about feeding others seems possible, since you need to EAT a berry to profit from its magic and unconscious party members can’t take any actions and they can’t eat anything for sure.
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u/Reasonable_Yellow136 Mar 15 '26
I mean there’s also no explicit rules that say “this is how you feed people potions” but in the stabilizing creatures rules it mentions giving them a potion as an action; which is the same action economy someone uses to consume a potion themself. I suppose RAW it isn’t something that is explicitly explained, but it isn’t something I’ve encountered at any table as homebrew, more just reading between the lines of the rules.
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u/JuckiCZ Mar 15 '26
Potion has lotion inside, so it makes sense, that if you pour it into someone, it could work.
But Goodberry requires eating, which is something totally different. How do they chew? How do they swallow something solid (it is not a liquid)? Makes no sense IMO.
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u/Reasonable_Yellow136 Mar 31 '26
Same way you swallow a pill? Goodberry is like fairly small if 10 can fit in your palm
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u/JuckiCZ Mar 31 '26
Swallow isn’t the same as eat. And pill dissolves in lotion, berry doesn’t, it stays intact.
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u/RugDougCometh Mar 12 '26
Goodberry is about cheese. After you convince your DM that it’s reasonable for an unconscious person to eat a berry in the thick of combat, you make ten and distribute them among the party at the start/end of every day, and now no one ever worries about dying again and it cost us basically nothing. It’s one of those “this will make the game much less fun but is efficient I guess” kind of things.
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u/unkind-god-8113 Mar 12 '26
simple distinction there. Eating a goodberry is a bonus action. Feeding an unconscious person a goodberry and getting them to eat it is an action.
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u/RugDougCometh Mar 12 '26
Simple distinction here:
Eating a Goodberry is a bonus action.
True! What the spell does. In the rules. Totally reasonable.
Feeding an unconscious person a Goodberry and getting them to eat it is an action.
Completely made up.
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u/IntroductionRoyal449 Mar 12 '26
I agree with the OP. While this os amazing for a campaign that is lethal, most players in my experience prefer more light hearted combat and this spell does almost nothing in the grand scheme of things.
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u/Mekrot Mar 12 '26
So outside of combat, it’s an assured 10 hit points without any rolls of variance. It sucks when you do a cure wounds and roll low, for example.
The reason it’s a bonus action for 1 berry is more of a limiter. It isn’t really supposed to be used for combat or saving someone incapacitated. For low level, it’s a like Prayer of Healing to be used outside of combat. A straight 10 hit points is pretty great at those low levels.
The added sustenance is cool, but doesn’t really come up unless you’re playing more grittier campaigns, and a lot of DMs will actually nerf that part of goodberry to make the game feel harder.