Other than the Restoration spell and the specialized Healer's Satchel, what other options are available for healing ability drain?
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An occultist's Saint's Holy Regalia panoply (Psychic Anthology Pg 27) can start healing ability drain at 10th level.
An autodoc (Technology Guide pg 60) can be used to remove ability drain, amongst other things.
Cureall (Technology Guide pg 33) can cure ability drain from a disease or poison.
Metabolic Molting (Blood of the Beast pg 19) can cure ability drain.
Greater Neutralize Poison (Dirty Tactics Toolbox pg 28) can cure all ability drain caused by poisons.
Overall, I think that the Healer's Satchel is the best option. Renewable, relatively inexpensive, and can be applied to multiple people at the same time. Unfortunately, it's not very fast.
To be fair, neither is restoration. It is pretty tricky to heal ability drain in combat.
Basically you can't with the 3 round casting time during combat.
There is another option not yet mentioned: summon something that can heal ability drain. E.g., a planetar has the necessary spell-like ability.
Spell-wise you can use limited wish/wish/miracle. So anything that can do one of them can help, like a ring of wishes.
If you look for a cheap solution that is always available, back to the satchel it is - or someone plays a divine caster. Ah yes: you can pick up a NPC healer (maybe with leadership?).
There is another option not yet mentioned: summon something that can heal ability drain. E.g., a planetar has the necessary spell-like ability.
Two problems with that approach:
1) There is no known spell that will summon a Planetar. A calling spell of sufficient level is probably beyond the cost of the Restoration spell that you are trying to replace.
2) Even if you could summon a Planetar or some other creature with Restoration as a spell-like ability, you run into this issue (under the Summon Monster spell entry):
"Creatures summoned using this spell cannot use spells or spell-like abilities that duplicate spells with expensive material components (such as wish)."
The planetar was just an example (and not quite serious), and of course will all such summons typically be high level and more costly than a scroll. I just thought to mention the option, since nobody else had yet.
But you can get such beings with only the core rule book, just not with the summon monster spells. There are Greater Planar Ally, Greater Planar Binding and Gate, which have the HD limit needed for an 18 HD mob, and no moratorium on spell-like abilities of the mob.
The planetar was just the only mob I could think of that can use Restoration. Maybe someone can come up with something with less HD that can do it, so that lower spells (and less cash) will do.
Just noticed that there appears to be no way for a wordcaster to heal ability drain. Is this correct or did I miss something?
The planetar was just an example (and not quite serious), and of course will all such summons typically be high level and more costly than a scroll. I just thought to mention the option, since nobody else had yet.
But you can get such beings with only the core rule book, just not with the summon monster spells. There are Greater Planar Ally, Greater Planar Binding and Gate, which have the HD limit needed for an 18 HD mob, and no moratorium on spell-like abilities of the mob.
The planetar was just the only mob I could think of that can use Restoration. Maybe someone can come up with something with less HD that can do it, so that lower spells (and less cash) will do.
There's the confusion. Those aren't summoning spells.