Fast Healing ability question


Rules Questions


I'm trying to understand the Fast Healing ability. It's supposed to be "just like natural healing." But natural healing requires a full night's rest (8 hours of sleep or more.) Does this mean that creatures must sleep for their fast healing to work? Or in the case of monsters that don't sleep, do they need to rest, at least? Will they heal while taking move-equivalent actions? Or will they heal even while attacking?


My understanding is that fast healing being like natural healing is in regards to what it can heal. It can heal hit point and ability damage, but not ability drain or level loss. It cannot regenerate lost body parts and doesn't work when you are dead (or the equivalent). Otherwise, you gain the listed number of HP per round as long as you are active. Otherwise it's a pretty useless ability for most monsters to have as few are expected to survive contact with the PCs.


If the monsters are of limited intelligence, I agree with you. A clever opponent with Fast Healing, though, would be harder to finish.
1) Meet the PC
2) Battle, the PCs use some resource to try to get the guy down
3) When at 5-10% of his HP, the guy flees (or tries to, really)
4) Return a few rounds later, fully healed, while the party tries to rest (and after the possible previous summons have disappeared)
5) Rinse and repeat

There are interesting scenario hooks if the foe is humanoid, too. Unconsciousness doesn't equate to death. It'll be creepy to meet the same guy over and over when you thought him dead.


Yeah. I've pulled that trick on my players several times. They've learned, when looting bodies, to stab everything with fire. However, the issue still remains that Fast Healing is sort of like a poor man's regeneration (Con-less man's regeneration?). It just works all the time, unless it's dead. It wouldn't list the healing in rounds if it were not supposed to be used in combat. It would be listed per minute or per hour or even per day if it were meant to only be used during extended rests.


Mauril wrote:
My understanding is that fast healing being like natural healing is in regards to what it can heal. It can heal hit point and ability damage, but not ability drain or level loss. It cannot regenerate lost body parts and doesn't work when you are dead (or the equivalent). Otherwise, you gain the listed number of HP per round as long as you are active. Otherwise it's a pretty useless ability for most monsters to have as few are expected to survive contact with the PCs.

Thank you!


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I dealt with the issue tonight in the game I DM'd. A strict reading of the rules ("just like natural healing") implies that fast healing only works when a character isn't actually doing a move or standard action, he/she is just standing there. The devil is in the detail, and Fast Heal is JUST LIKE(or EXACTLY like) natural healing, while Fast Healing is merely "AS" regeneration. That is, it is under the restriction of "resting" for 1 round (JUST LIKE natural healing) and heals at a fixed rate, typically 5/round AS Regeneration. My players want it to act like regeneration. I would like to point out that simply by it being measured in rounds instead of hours or days doesn't mean you can't withdraw from combat. Note also, a benefit of this : you could double your fast healing if someone gives you a heal check DC 20 to treat deadly wounds once per day JUST LIKE natural healing.

Back in the old 3.0/3.5 days this was settled law, Fast healing required no action taken to activate in a particular round. I don't know how Paizo handles it, which is why I came here to find out, but I'm no better off. I'll let my players vote on it, but note to them that I have more opportunities to use Fast Healing than they do overall. It was only an issue because a PC has the special ability, and I pointed out the restriction on it, which started the argument, which led me here.


Feldspar_Hewerson wrote:
..... Note also, a benefit of this : you could double your fast healing if someone gives you a heal check DC 20 to treat deadly wounds once per day JUST LIKE natural healing.

Whoops, my bad, it's a heal check DC 15 to administer first aid.

Grand Lodge

I would apply the first sentence of the fast healing description "A creature with fast healing special quality heals at an exceptional rate, usually 1 or more hit points per round" quite literally. A Passive ability that heals one or more points per round, no action required. I would consider this part of the "except as noted here" text.

The rest "except where noted here fast healing is just like normal healing.." goes more into limitations of what cannot be healed.

The text of regeneration seems to support this as well "Creatures with regeneration heal damage at a fixed rate as with fast healing, but …"

I would interpret both regenerating and fast healing to heal damage at a fixed rate, with no action required on the part of the character.

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