Am I the only one that likes healing?


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Somehow DrDeth's post asking about my games got caught up in the post-culling, but here's my response anyway.

1) Yes, I do have a lot of house rules. Those house rules, however, tend to be either class balance tweaks (such as with my psychic monk or gunslinger) or other additional content. Said mechanics are balanced around the core rules.

2) As a GM, I pretty much just stick to core, because I'm damn lazy. It's too much trouble to go rummaging around in lots of splat books for most NPCs when something out of the MM will do. I do get a bit adventurous and make use of classed monsters occasionally, but never anything outside the normal Bestiary rules. Besides, a literal ogre mage (as in ogre + wizard or sorcerer levels) probably isn't stepping on too many toes.

3) My combats generally last 5+ rounds. A large contributor to this aspect is I tend to try to make dynamic encounters, and my NPCs act how I feel is realistic for their world. That means things like tigers ambush prey, rocs will snatch you into the air and carry you off, lions will use pride tactics, and anything smarter is going to show it. That means NPCs will do things like dive for cover behind obstacles, deny full attacks when they can, and use teamwork.

4) I tend to use a lot of NPCs in my encounters. Instead of one big bad bruiser (which is fairly rare for the PCs to fight someone capable of taking them on on), it's more likely to face lots of more minor foes, again with tactics. This generally means that wrapping up combats super quick isn't a thing unless the party is really good at herding cats.

In general, for the reasons mentioned before, the reasons healing doesn't stand up is because it has the following problems.

A) It's action economy sucks. At best you are trying to spend your action to negate an action someone else already took. This is kind of like a wizard standing around casting the daze cantrip, in that except that it's expending a resource (your spells) for what amounts to an attempt to reduce the already successful actions of your enemies.

B) It doesn't scale well with damage. Enemies, including generic bestiary enemies, deal large amounts of damage. If they are at all trying (such as making use of feats, or teamwork, or buffs) then they will generally deal much more. Healing does not scale effectively with damage. It's never enough, essentially. It's also thoroughly wrecked if your friend is the victim of a critical hit (there are no critical heals, and if there were, they'd generally suck since your window of opportunity is smaller than in WoW).

C) It generally doesn't solve any problems. The thing that's dealing damage is still dealing damage. If you have 3 orcs dealing 2d4+4 damage per hit, the way to keep your fighter alive is not to heal 1d8+1, 1d8+5, or even 3d8+5. It's to stop those orcs from making attacks in the first place (how you do that is irrelevant, it could be making a wall, charming, commanding, killing, binding, banishing, confusing, or just getting something in to take the hit instead, or many more things).

D) Healing also typically requires you to hump the leg of the person you're trying to heal. It large dynamic combats, having the cleric or anyone else who is healing chasing around the wounded like a fat kid chasing cake is just as sad to watch, and is just asking for everyone to get wrecked. Sure you can make use of metamagic like reach spell or for the multiclass inclined, spectral hand, but in both cases you are generally getting a less for more deal (higher spell slot requirements, lower caster levels, etc).

E) Healing is reactionary. This is a big problem. Healing does...not a damn thing. At least until someone is already hurt. This combines with literally every other problem to compile them all. There you are, and you're doing your thing, then suddenly Boris the Strong and Fair gets wrecked for 43 damage and is now sitting at 10 HP, and another hit like that means that he's pushing daisies! So suddenly you stop what you're doing and run over to him with a double move to get your clankedy medium or heavy-armored butt over there, then burn an action point/hero point to heal him for a whopping 4d8+7 or about 31 damage, at the cost of one of your highest level spells. Awesome, he's alive, and you're the man!

Then he gets slapped again for about 43 damage, and promptly expires. Or the bad guy gets lucky and your friend dropped during its full-attack. Oops, even if you run your ass over there, your friend's already dead. Oh well, I guess raise dead is healing too. Of course, if he's not dead, you could run over there and get within touch range, just in time to show the kobold sorcerer that there's a tightly packed healer plus a wounded fighter just asking for a fireball...


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Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
137ben wrote:


I heard a "Bad DM" story at one point about a DM who house-ruled that being healed above max hp caused the healed creature to explode with energy, no saving throw allowed, and beyond the reach of Raise Dead.
The players realized that since monsters the DM threw out always started at max hp, a Reach CLW becomes a 2nd level ranged touch attack spell which instantly kills its target.
The DM then turned the house rule into a way to "beat" the PCs: the party cleric was approached by a wounded commoner asking to be healed. Now, for a first level commoner, "wounded" means anything but full hit-points (in this case, the commoner was at 1 hp out of a max of 2.) The cleric hesitated, knowing that any healing had a good chance of causing the commoner to explode....
The DM excitedly explained that refusing to aid someone in need when it was well within the cleric's power (putting aside the fact that it wasn't within the cleric's power) was against her tenants and would result in the cleric falling. The cleric went ahead and cast CLW, causing the commoner to die from over-healing. The DM then said that the cleric lost her powers for brutally slaughtering an innocent commoner.

This guy would immediately go into my "don't play in this clown's games" file.


I have a story as a GM where healing could not keep up. I will keep it short. The PC's walked into an area with the BBEG. In front of him were human meat shields whose sole purpose was to hold the PC's off so the BBEG could harrass them from afar. Also on a ledger higher up there were a few archers. They were well below the PC's level but rolling that many dice means someone will get hit. One PC in particular had been causing trouble, so the BBEG decided he was too dangerous to have around. All of the archers focused fire on the trouble maker. The troublemaker was the divine spell caster. He could not even keep himself up despite trying to cure himself.

Now even if the archers had been melee combatants being focused on by the enemy(PC's) is a good tactic. I don't always do it because I actually want the players to win, but if I have to hold back in order for healing to keep up.....

PS: Due to the low attack bonus it took two rounds to down the PC. This does not mean don't heal. It means it should be a last option. The arcane caster was a blaster, and had not battlefield control spell selected in case anyone was wondering why nothing was done to save the cleric from the archers.


Ashiel wrote:

In general, for the reasons mentioned before, the reasons healing doesn't stand up is because it has the following problems.

A) It's action economy sucks. At best you are trying to spend your action to negate an action someone else already took.

Which may be good enough. Suppose you're a group of four fighting one powerful enemy, and your healing negates his action, or even 50% of his action. That's going to give the rest of the party plenty of time to win.

Ashiel wrote:
B) Healing does not scale effectively with damage. It's never enough, essentially.

Healing one hit point is 'enough' if that one hit point is the difference between conscious and unconscious, alive or dead.

Ashiel wrote:
C) It generally doesn't solve any problems. The thing that's dealing damage is still dealing damage. If you have 3 orcs dealing 2d4+4 damage per hit, the way to keep your fighter alive is not to heal 1d8+1, 1d8+5, or even 3d8+5. It's to stop those orcs from making attacks in the first place (how you do that is irrelevant, it could be making a wall, charming, commanding, killing, binding, banishing, confusing, or just getting something in to take the hit instead, or many more things).

If it solves the problem of the fighter being dead, and the fighter (and the rest of the party) can kill the orcs, then the problem is solved. There are other options that would in theory solve the problem quicker, but not every cleric is Schroedinger's cleric.

Ashiel wrote:
D) Healing also typically requires you to hump the leg of the person you're trying to heal. In large dynamic combats, having the cleric or anyone else who is healing chasing around the wounded like a fat kid chasing cake is just as sad to watch, and is just asking for everyone to get wrecked. Sure you can make use of metamagic like reach spell or for the multiclass inclined, spectral hand, but in both cases you are generally getting a less for more deal (higher spell slot requirements, lower caster levels, etc).

Never seen much of a problem there. Rod of Reach, channel energy, or don't split the group in the first place...

Ashiel wrote:
E) Healing is reactionary. This is a big problem. Healing does...not a damn thing. At least until someone is already hurt.

I'm not sure how that's a problem unless you're a character who has nothing but healing spells.

Ashiel wrote:
This combines with literally every other problem to compile them all. There you are, and you're doing your thing, then suddenly Boris the Strong and Fair gets wrecked for 43 damage and is now sitting at 10 HP, and another hit like that means that he's pushing daisies! So suddenly you stop what you're doing and run over to him with a double move to get your clankedy medium or heavy-armored butt over there, then burn an action point/hero point to heal him for a whopping 4d8+7 or about 31 damage, at the cost of one of your highest level spells. Awesome, he's alive, and you're the man! Then he gets slapped again for about 43 damage, and promptly expires.

By your numbers he's on -2 hit points, and not dead. (Then again, 4d8+7 is an average of 25, so it would be more like -8.) Without the healing, he'd be very dead, assuming (a) the GM is playing for keeps, and (b) you're not Schroedinger's cleric who has an infallible 'defeat the bad guy in a single action' power up his sleeve.


I'm curious. The Fighter *can and will* defeat his opponent his next turn. Why can't the same be expected of the Cleric?


A) It's action economy sucks.: Depends on the kind of healing used. There is healing that has a good action economy. For example shared judgement with the healing judgement. Same with quick channel.

B) Healing does not scale effectively with damage.:It doesn't have to. That's the same as saying DR doesn't scale with damage so it is bad. Giving someone fast healing 5 may be similar to DR3/- in a lot of fights. And that is something few people would decline.

C) It generally doesn't solve any problems.:It may solve problems caused by dead PCs. Like wealth loss.

D) Healing also typically requires you to hump the leg of the person you're trying to heal.:This, again, depends on the healing used. Channel, reach spells or the combination of shield other with self healing doesn't require this.

[I]E) Healing is reactionary./I] Most forms are, right. The life oracle has an ability to convert over-heal to temp hp. Apart from that every pc should have more than one thing he can do. If no one is dealt damage, don't heal. Buff, debuff, deal damage.


So, isn't casting a spell to undo a debuff 'reactionary'?

So you should never cast something reactionary, and its bad use of your time?


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Matthew Downie wrote:
said stuff that might work at certain times.

That does not make it efficient or a generally good idea which is the point Ashiel was making with the healing comments.


RDM42 wrote:

So, isn't casting a spell to undo a debuff 'reactionary'?

So you should never cast something reactionary, and its bad use of your time?

As anyone who's not on a slippery slope will tell you, it depends. Should you use Dispel Magic when your Wizard got hit by Flare? Not really. Should you try to Dispel that Hold Person on your surrounded Fighter? Absolutely.


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RDM42 wrote:

So, isn't casting a spell to undo a debuff 'reactionary'?

So you should never cast something reactionary, and its bad use of your time?

Those don't happen as much so they are not the topic. In addition the word never* is not being insinuated. I and others have stated this at least 3 times. The idea is not to let your buddy your die. The idea is to prevent them from being close to dying if possible, and heal them if you think it is the best means to prevent death. However removing the enemy is the best means of preventing death since dead/unconscious enemies can't fight back. How far down they have to be hit point wise to choose healing or not to heal is a line in the sand that will have to be drawn differently for each group.

Now generally speaking if you know something is coming it is a better idea to be preventive than reactive, and that also applies to status affects. As an example if I know a monster use negative energy effects it makes more sense to cast death ward than to try to undo the affect mid battle, or after the battle. The same logic applies to preventing hit point damage from taking place.


Ashiel wrote:


In general, for the reasons mentioned before, the reasons healing doesn't stand up is because it has the following problems.

A) It's action economy sucks.
E) Healing is reactionary. This is a big problem. Healing does...not a damn thing. At least until someone is already hurt. This combines with literally every other problem to compile them all. There you are, and you're doing your thing, then suddenly Boris the Strong and Fair gets wrecked for 43 damage and is now sitting at 10 HP, and another hit like that means that he's pushing daisies! So suddenly you stop what you're doing and run over to him with a double move to get your clankedy medium or heavy-armored butt over there, then burn an action point/hero point to heal him for a whopping 4d8+7 or about 31 damage, at the cost of one of your highest level spells. Awesome, he's alive, and you're the man!

Then he gets slapped again for about 43 damage, and promptly expires.

Good points.

A- You can make healing a move action. This really helps with action economy.

e. Ok, then, and here's where I think we have a disconnect: Boris is hit for 43 pts, and another hit will kill him.

True, if you heal him for 31 pts , the next 43 hit could drop him. (Actually, it can't kill him, just drop him, unless Boris has a cruddy CON). One solution here is casting better healing spells, such as a empowered for free Cure spell . Or ranged healing spells plus a move action Chanel.

So, then you DON'T heal him. You're a double move away. What can you do that's better? Do you really have an attack that will drop the foe every single time? And, why isn't Boris attacking? Now that he's healed, he can attack and drop the foe, can't he?


wraithstrike wrote:
I have a story as a GM where healing could not keep up. I will keep it short. The PC's walked into an area with the BBEG. In front of him were human meat shields whose sole purpose was to hold the PC's off so the BBEG could harrass them from afar. Also on a ledger higher up there were a few archers. They were well below the PC's level but rolling that many dice means someone will get hit. One PC in particular had been causing trouble, so the BBEG decided he was too dangerous to have around. All of the archers focused fire on the trouble maker. The troublemaker was the divine spell caster. He could not even keep himself up despite trying to cure himself.

Ok, so say he did something else rather than heal. What could he have done?

What your scenario seems to prove is that if a DM concentrates fire on one PC, that PC is in trouble. That has nothing to do with healing.


Matthew Downie wrote:
Ashiel wrote:

In general, for the reasons mentioned before, the reasons healing doesn't stand up is because it has the following problems.

A) It's action economy sucks. At best you are trying to spend your action to negate an action someone else already took.

Which may be good enough. Suppose you're a group of four fighting one powerful enemy, and your healing negates his action, or even 50% of his action. That's going to give the rest of the party plenty of time to win.

If the big bad is strong enough to fight your team alone, then it is too strong to heal through unless you have some really specific shenanigans going on.

Example: A 3rd level party is fighting a single Wyvern. This is an Epic encounter vs a solo enemy (solo encounters are usually pretty bad, but they can be spiced up). At 3rd level, you'll have access to a mighty cure moderate wounds that heals 2d8+3 points of damage, or an average of 12 HP.

Our party is traveling along in a Hills environment, a wyvern's expected environment. A wyvern lurks on a hilltop 60 ft. away. Since the hilltop/ridge allows the wyvern to use Stealth (see Hills and Mountains in environment chapter), the wyvern has an effective +13 Stealth against the party (+7 natural, +6 more for being 60 ft. away). The wyvern takes 10 for a 23 Stealth. More than likely, few if any PCs notice the wyvern and there is a surprise round.

During the surprise round, our wyvern charges 60 ft. as a standard action and attempts to nail any PC with its sting. The wyvern is swinging at +12 on the attack and is likely targeting a flat-footed foe. A character with the best armor and shield affordable at this level will have an AC of about 18 flat footed, or 20 normal. Squishier members of the party are pretty much screwed, and those are the guys that the wyvern is going to target (people in the lightest armors). Assuming the wyvern rolls even a bit below average, someone is getting smashed for 2d6+4 (6-16) damage and getting flat-footed grappled (+16 vs CMD). Given that even a martial's CMD is pretty bad at this level, especially flat-footed, the wyvern is going to be giving the pain-hugs.

Round 1: Our wyvern is now front and center with a PC and has a lead on damage. Let's pretend that our healer beats the wyvern's +5 Initiative (maybe the wyvern just rolled badly, or our healer has Improved Initiative + Reactionary + 2 Dex), so our healer runs over and casts cure moderate wounds on the guy who got hit by the wyvern. He heals him up to full and is now down 1 spell of his highest level (so 1/2, assuming his Wis provides a bonus spell).

The wyvern full-attacks. +10/+10/+10/+10/+5/+5 for its attacks. Against an enemy with an AC of 18 (a flat-footed warrior with a shield) the wyvern is going to deal about 28.4 and likely force a DC 17 Fort save vs 1d4 Con/round that requires 2 saves to cure.

If the wyvern is fighting someone else, such as a someone wearing a chain shirt or mage armor (his preferred targets) the wyvern deals an average of 37.6 and a Fort save.

Quick Rundown
At 3rd level, with a 14-15 Con, HP looks like this.
d12 31 HP
d10 27 HP
d8 23 HP
d6 19 HP

More than likely, the wyvern has dropped the guy that he was attacking, even if he was a warrior type. If you failed to spot the wyvern during the surprise round, your victim is already dead. If the wyvern picked anyone who wasn't a turtle (IE - high flat-footed AC), then they're already dead even if you did manage to heal through his first attack. If the wyvern pulls a critical hit on any of his 6 attacks, your job just became significantly more difficult and the victim is more than likely a smear on the ground.

Even then, the wyvern has a 19 AC, 7 HD, 73 HP, Fort +9, Ref +6, Will +8, is immune to sleep, paralysis, and flyby attack. This fight is likely going to last more than a round or two, which gives the wyvern more time to unleash its wrath on your party. It's exceedingly likely that your healing will not keep up, since you've only got 2 cure moderate wounds spells per day (IIRC, you can't drop domain spells), and around 3 cure light spells on top of that.

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Healing one hit point is 'enough' if that one hit point is the difference between conscious and unconscious, alive or dead.

No arguments. I've gone out of my way to run over and heal someone who was about to die before, as a sort of last-ditch effort. Unfortunately that can easily draw even more aggro onto you and them, since now you're tightly packed together and asking for some alchemist fire spam. If the downed ally has some bleedout time, the best thing you can do for them is generally try to draw all attention away from them and/or put down anyone interested in "couping" them.

If they're down and unconscious but in melee, you might be turning them into a target again. Suddenly your buddy is alive and active, at critical HP, and prone on the ground.

You have to think about these things. Charging blindly in to heal an ally is about as dumb as charging blindly in to attack an enemy. This is one area where Channel Energy really looks good, and that's because you can heal a tiny amount of HP (enough to stabilize someone) from a distance so you are less likely to huddle together and beg enemy casters for another lightning bolt.

Fighter: "Blarg, I am down at -3 HP!" *falls down*
Cleric: "Oh no, I'd better be a healer! *clanks over to the fighter and heals him back up to 10 HP!* "I'm the hero!"
Kobold Sorcerer: "EAT HOT DEATH UPWORLDERS!" *fireball for 21 damage*
Fighter: "Gack! I'm even more dead than I was before!" *dies*
Cleric: "OW! I NEED A HEALER!"

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Ashiel wrote:
C) It generally doesn't solve any problems. The thing that's dealing damage is still dealing damage. If you have 3 orcs dealing 2d4+4 damage per hit, the way to keep your fighter alive is not to heal 1d8+1, 1d8+5, or even 3d8+5. It's to stop those orcs from making attacks in the first place (how you do that is irrelevant, it could be making a wall, charming, commanding, killing, binding, banishing, confusing, or just getting something in to take the hit instead, or many more things).
If it solves the problem of the fighter being dead, and the fighter (and the rest of the party) can kill the orcs, then the problem is solved. There are other options that would in theory solve the problem quicker, but not every cleric is Schroedinger's cleric.

I don't think you know what that word means.

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I'm not sure how that's a problem unless you're a character who has nothing but healing spells.

For all but some clerics and some oracles (that means bards, druids, rangers, etc), preparing a healing spell means not having a different spell prepared. A spell that may have prevented the need to heal in the first place. For example, with the wyvern, a druid might have forced the wyvern out of its full-attacking space by dropping a flaming sphere into his space, which forces him to either move on its turn or start suffering some damage. A cleric on the other hand might have earlier cast shield other (or cast it now) to spread the wyvern's damage out so that it was less likely to drop anyone before the party could drive it off, while most other would-be healers could probably drive the wyvern off by beating the stuffing out of it (wyverns aren't dumb, and likely won't continue a fight if it's getting pummeled to death).

All in all, I've never said healing doesn't have a place. I'm just saying that it doesn't look very good compared to most other options, unless...

A) The enemy is really stupid.
B) Something weird is going on.
C) You didn't need to heal in the first place.
D) Your friend is actually going to die if you don't.

I'm playing a healer this Sunday. A [i[dedicated healer[/i]. As in, that's pretty much what she does. She's full-on party support. The biggest difference is that, unlike vanilla healing, she's actually going to be good at her job and improve the chances of the party succeeding. This will happen with a combination of very efficient noncombat healing, strong pre-emptive combat healing, and fun mechanics that allow healing overflows to heal other members of the party, allowing for more effective group healing, and she'll have ranged healing options right from 1st level (so no leg humping for her, no matter how much the fighter may wish it).


RDM42 wrote:

So, isn't casting a spell to undo a debuff 'reactionary'?

So you should never cast something reactionary, and its bad use of your time?

It depends. It's not just the fact it's reactionary, it's the fact being reactionary increases the severity of all those other problems that healing has. A big part of that is because you can't control incoming damage, and as a result it's very possible that your target isn't going to be there in time.

Think about it like this. Dimensional anchor can be used to keep your friend from getting offensively plane shifted to the positive energy plane where he or she will die from death by awesome. However, you can't cast dimensional anchor on your friend after they've already been given the boot, right?

Well, healing is basically put into that position pretty much all of the time. A surprise critical hit, a better than average roll, and BAM, you can't even heal, because your friend is already below 0 HP and/or Dead.

Reactionary combat means your actions are being dictated by your opponents. That's not always bad, but it can be. For example, there's nothing at all wrong with dispelling haste from a BBEG's mooks if it's going to help you more than any other action you could have done (if the mooks are squishy, in this case even a fireball, an oft-considered overrated tactic, could be the right tool for the job).

In many, many, maaany cases, there's a better option than healing. Not always, but many times. And since healing is already so darn troubled, specializing in it, as in investing lots of resources (feats, class features, etc) into healing is just polishing a turd. It's a turd that's sometimes needed, but it's still a turd.


Matthew Downie wrote:
Which may be good enough. Suppose you're a group of four fighting one powerful enemy, and your healing negates his action, or even 50% of his action. That's going to give the rest of the party plenty of time to win.

This is not how action advantage works. Reactively negating half an action is awful. PArticularly since you spent a resource to do so.

Moreover, the example given wasn't a single powerful enemy. If it was the damage would likely have been much higher.

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Healing one hit point is 'enough' if that one hit point is the difference between conscious and unconscious, alive or dead.

It's more complex then that. 1 point is enough if actions are taken to rearrange the group and either finish the enemy or allow the fighter time to regroup and get more healing/buffs. One point followed by a crit on the enemies part is a waste of resources and lives.

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If it solves the problem of the fighter being dead, and the fighter (and the rest of the party) can kill the orcs, then the problem is solved. There are other options that would in theory solve the problem quicker, but not every cleric is Schroedinger's cleric.

You are correct. Schroedingers wizard could cast a spell to protect the fighter, schroedingers rogue could cover the fighter by distracting his assailant, the monk could save the fighter by tripping and then perhps grappling his opponent.

Every scenario like this is flawed in that it presents the group as it's only two people and one monster. Moreover it presents the cleric (or oracle or whatever) as always havin access to healing spells.

My current cleric is an Evangelist of Tsukiyo with the madness domain.

Her capacity to heal and heal well? Zero.

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D) Healing also typically requires you to hump the leg of the person you're trying to heal. In large dynamic combats, having the cleric or anyone else who is healing chasing around the wounded like a fat kid chasing cake is just as sad to watch, and is just asking for everyone to get wrecked. Sure you can make use of metamagic like reach spell or for the multiclass inclined, spectral hand, but in both cases you are generally getting a less for more deal (higher spell slot requirements, lower caster levels, etc).
Never seen much of a problem there. Rod of Reach, channel energy, or don't split the group in the first place...

You're misunderstanding the statement.

It's not about splitting the group, it's about positioning.

Most divine caster's effective range to support the group is a little over 30ft. That gets them in range of heals, channels, some auras, etc. etc.

Most healing requires you to be in touch range so that 30ft. is often spent moving to the target and then becoming adjacent.

Adjacency has long been seen as a certain disadvantage. It makes it easier to hit you with AOE effects, makes it slightly harder to 5ft. shift, and then there's cleaving.

Then of course you are adjacent to the groups fighter 9 times out of 10 meaning that ou are not only adjacent to the fighter but 5 to 10ft away from the thing that was mauling the fighter.

Channels are better but they have their own set of downsides like healing the enemy and generally not being very powerful at all.


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DrDeth wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
I have a story as a GM where healing could not keep up. I will keep it short. The PC's walked into an area with the BBEG. In front of him were human meat shields whose sole purpose was to hold the PC's off so the BBEG could harrass them from afar. Also on a ledger higher up there were a few archers. They were well below the PC's level but rolling that many dice means someone will get hit. One PC in particular had been causing trouble, so the BBEG decided he was too dangerous to have around. All of the archers focused fire on the trouble maker. The troublemaker was the divine spell caster. He could not even keep himself up despite trying to cure himself.

Ok, so say he did something else rather than heal. What could he have done?

What your scenario seems to prove is that if a DM concentrates fire on one PC, that PC is in trouble. That has nothing to do with healing.

It has everything to do with healing. Concentrating fire on a single foe is tactics 101. Even animals do it. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a pack of lions evenly spread out and each take a single mark at a time? No, they split one off from the herd and wreck that pool fool.

Thinning the numbers of your enemy as quickly as possible means less actions being taken against you. Go play an RTS game sometime. The fewer enemies attacking back, the better your side is going to fair. The same is true in D&D. Let's revisit the orc example.

3 orcs, each dealing 2d4+4 on a hit. Remove 1 orc from the equation and you just lowered incoming damage per round by 2d4+4. Remove 2 orcs, and you reduced incoming damage by 4d4+8. Remove 3 orcs and damage stops.

By remove, I don't mean you have to kill them (killing orcs is tough business) but you can stop them. A charm person spell can stop them. A grease can stop them. Entangle can stop them. Throwing down some caltrops and running away to use ranged weapons can stop them. You just have to make them stop beating the crud out of your friends. Not try to unbeat them (unless it's really necessary).

Good healing means being able to take the focus firing and keep on trucking. This is why in WoW PVP (which is the best videogame equivalent to a real-time D&D combat scenario I've ever experienced) you kill the healers. Why? Because healers are good in that game, and if you don't kill the healer, the healer's party is most definitely going to kill you, because you cannot outpace the healer unless you are severely outclassing the healer's party. Meanwhile, the protective sorts protect the healer and DPS, while everyone beats down on the enemy.

Because healers matter in that game. It's why I'm excited about playing a vitalist. It looks like a healer that is going to matter. One that is going to be able to play reactively, proactively, and is going to be able to crank out enough healing and protection to help her allies survive against a focus fire attempt.

Her arsenal will include vigor for granting allies significant short-duration temporary HP (proactive healing), natural healing (a solid 3 HP / PP spent for healing, which means there's no gambling), share pain (split incoming damage between 2 targets), the ability to heal at a distance (allowing more action efficiency when it comes to delivering emergency heals), and eventually the means to provide buffs and healing to multiple members of the party at the same time, which will combo very nicely with share pain.

For example, she can share pain damage between 2 party members, and then 2 more party members, so everyone is taking 1/2 of someone else's damage. She could then spend +1 PP / target, to manifest natural healing, and heal everyone in the party for some damage at once, which can become mana-efficient if everyone is splitting damage.


Ashiel wrote:


Example: A 3rd level party is fighting a single Wyvern. This is an Epic encounter vs a solo enemy (solo encounters are usually pretty bad, but they can be spiced up). At 3rd level, you'll have access to a mighty cure moderate wounds that heals 2d8+3 points of damage, or an average of 12 HP.

Alright, nice scenario. So then, what could the cleric do that would be better? Can he use that 2nd level spell to drop the wyvern with one hit?


healing in combat is awesome, that is all.


DrDeth wrote:
Ashiel wrote:


Example: A 3rd level party is fighting a single Wyvern. This is an Epic encounter vs a solo enemy (solo encounters are usually pretty bad, but they can be spiced up). At 3rd level, you'll have access to a mighty cure moderate wounds that heals 2d8+3 points of damage, or an average of 12 HP.
Alright, nice scenario. So then, what could the cleric do that would be better? Can he use that 2nd level spell to drop the wyvern with one hit?

Not likely. He could however attempt to drive the wyvern off. A good battle cleric likely has a 16-18 Strength, so he could charge the wyvern with a pole arm and give the wyvern a reason to GTFO of the party member. Swinging at a +8 or so to hit before a charge (+4 Str, +2 BAB, +1 mwk) and dealing 1d8+6 damage per hit means that the cleric is actually rather threatening to the wyvern, and now the wyvern has to decide whether to remain there and try to continue full-attacking its initial target and risk taking more damage, or whether it should backoff and circle around. Since the cleric with its d8 HD and likely 14 Con has similar HP/AC to a frontliner, the cleric is a good candidate for smacking the stuffing out of the wyvern and being able to survive the retaliation. At the very least, he can't be the target of the wyvern's rakes since the wyvern didn't begin its turn grappling with him (and likely was suffering penalties to AC vs the cleric during said grapple).

All the cleric has to do is provide a deterrent. He has to make sure that the wyvern is more interested in not getting hurt just to finish off the guy already damaged. Since the wyvern would also have to spend actions to down the guy, then pick him up to carry off with him (or attempt a grapple-move to fly off with him, which is made more risky by the bruiser-cleric nearby) the wyvern's meal is quickly becoming too difficult. It's no longer a "swoop, smash, fly away with meal" encounter, as the cleric is dangerous.

If the wyvern decides to fight it out, then he probably drops the first guy and the turns on the cleric. Congratulations, the cleric just succeeded. How did he succeed? He just drew aggro. The guy he was trying to save likely wasn't dropped to dead and is now unconscious, because the wyvern would have swapped to the cleric as soon as party member #1 wasn't able to fight. So now the cleric prevented the finishing blow and is tanking the rest of the hits, which means he is prolonging the fight for the rest of the party to gang up on the wyvern. Now outnumbered, the wyvern must decide whether continuing this spat will be more risky than rewarding, as it is also vulnerable to sudden critical hits and the like.

Drive the wyvern off, channel energy, your friend is stabilized. If your friend is in really bad trouble, channel energy during the fight. The wyvern is outnumbered 3 to 1, and healing the wyvern for 1d6 damage in exchange for stabilizing yur downed buddy is probably not going to hurt anything as the HP gain is minimal, while you plus a martial character and a support character are dealing far more damage with every hit, likely flanking, and probably getting buffed (assuming a party of something like cleric, ranger or paladin, bard, and sorcerer or wizard).

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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Ashiel wrote:


Fighter: "Blarg, I am down at -3 HP!" *falls down*
Cleric: "Oh no, I'd better be a healer! *clanks over to the fighter and heals him back up to 10 HP!* "I'm the hero!"
Kobold Sorcerer: "EAT HOT DEATH UPWORLDERS!" *fireball for 21 damage*
Fighter: "Gack! I'm even more dead than I was before!" *dies*
Cleric: "OW! I NEED A HEALER!"

This was actually hilarious because I've had this experience on more than one occasion, where I've healed someone just enough to make sure that instead of falling unconcious at -5 or so, they're left barely standing so that the next hit straight up murders them. After this happened in a RotRL campaign, I was specifically asked to "stop helping" as the former bard rolled up a new character.


Ssalarn wrote:
Ashiel wrote:


Fighter: "Blarg, I am down at -3 HP!" *falls down*
Cleric: "Oh no, I'd better be a healer! *clanks over to the fighter and heals him back up to 10 HP!* "I'm the hero!"
Kobold Sorcerer: "EAT HOT DEATH UPWORLDERS!" *fireball for 21 damage*
Fighter: "Gack! I'm even more dead than I was before!" *dies*
Cleric: "OW! I NEED A HEALER!"
This was actually hilarious because I've had this experience on more than one occasion, where I've healed someone just enough to make sure that instead of falling unconcious at -5 or so, they're left barely standing so that the next hit straight up murders them. After this happened in a RotRL campaign, I was specifically asked to "stop helping" as the former bard rolled up a new character.

Yep. I've seen, and heard, of it happening many, many times. And why not? It makes sense. Most enemies unless they're just either A) especially interested in cruelty over survival, or B) want to eat you in the middle of a fight (very few things should) will generally not bother to continue attacking downed foes in the middle of a fight. It's just bad business.

However, having the healer bring someone up makes them a target again, so if you're going to bring them up, bring them up HARD. Healers don't do this very well in D&D until high levels when spells like heal come online. The best they can do otherwise is generally metamagiced versions of cure spells (admittedly, maximized cure spells look really nice, but that's usually a druid thing with meditation incense), but normal metamagic effects require you to sacrifice higher spell levels. This might not be so bad, but clerics can't apply metamagic on the fly, which means locking yourself into that spell, which is painful.


All this talk about healing though is making me more and more excited about playing my vitalist this Sunday. :P

Paizo Employee Design Manager

My experiences have been that unless you've really invested into healing, your spells will often only heal about 1/2 the damage (or less) an enemy can deal with two-handed weapons or primary natural attacks like big bites, so sometimes you take the guy who might have bled for a round or two while his group wrapped things up and put him a position where an enemy that would have moved on instead takes that one extra attack that finishes them off entirely.

Vitalist and Oracle are the only ones I've personally seen capable of breaking that dynamic, though I imagine a Cleric could do it as well.

I ran a module recently where the party "healer" was a Sensei monk with the Mantis Style feats and Touch of Serenity using Advice to share Inspire Greatness for some bonuses and temp hp. It's surprising how often the best "healing" is just making damage not happen to begin with.


Ssalarn wrote:

My experiences have been that unless you've really invested into healing, your spells will often only heal about 1/2 the damage (or less) an enemy can deal with two-handed weapons or primary natural attacks like big bites, so sometimes you take the guy who might have bled for a round or two while his group wrapped things up and put him a position where an enemy that would have moved on instead takes that one extra attack that finishes them off entirely.

Vitalist and Oracle are the only ones I've personally seen capable of breaking that dynamic, though I imagine a Cleric could do it as well.

I ran a module recently where the party "healer" was a Sensei monk with the Mantis Style feats and Touch of Serenity using Advice to share Inspire Greatness for some bonuses and temp hp. It's surprising how often the best "healing" is just making damage not happen to begin with.

I play a discipline priest on a WotLK WoW server. Damage prevention is pretty much my favorite form of "healing". That's one of the reasons I'm psyched about my vitalist. Being able to drop +5 HP onto a friend at the start of a fight means less chance that a surprise critical is going to cause them to start pushing daisies. :P

Paizo Glitterati Robot

Removed another post. Drop it.


In fact, in that game, my brother and I have taken on absolutely silly odds against us through careful teamwork. When playing my priest, I play a disc priest and he a protection warrior. He kills things and keeps me alive, and I do the same for him, but in different ways. I keep us healed and keep small-ish amounts of magic damage and some control ready, and he runs over anyone that tries to hurt me like a an angry mac truck, and has a lot of stuns and such.

Our roles are reversed on our paladins, where I'm a protection paladin and he's a holy paladin. We've broken up teams of people by ourselves before. In one instance when we were running around in the Hellfire Peninsula around level 60 (means nothing to most people here, I'm sure), we were jumped by some members of the opposing faction, all about our level. We were outnumbered 2-1, but threw them out on their butts. They called for reinforcements who were also around the same level, and we beat them. Then we beat them with one of their outposts helping them. We even let them take the opening move and rest up between fights (our foes consisted of death knight, warlock, mage, and druid).

We worked well together because we had solid damage mitigation, clensed debuffs, my brother's holy Paladin can heal 2 people at one time, so he would heal both of us at once, I could off-heal if needed, if one of us got stunned or disabled the other would bubble him for a bit to keep the pain off, if we had a big emergency, Lay on Hands kept us up, our auras supported each other (my aura increased our defense and increased healing we received, his aura reduced spell interruptions and reduced the duration of silence effects). We were hard nuts to crack. And of course, we picked a target and blew that target up first (usually starting with their squishiest person like the warlocks and working our way up to their plate wearers).

Eventually they gave up and asked us to cut them some slack through a series of emotes. We both bowed and walked away peaceably. We didn't start it, but we were having a lot of fun with it. :)


DrDeth wrote:
You can make healing a move action. This really helps with action economy.

I presume you're talking about Quick Channel. That's not really helping anyone's case. Channel Energy is terrible as a healing ability in combat. Out of combat it's not so bad, in combat it's generally only to stabilize downed allies from a distance unless something funny is going on (Fey Foundling on the recipient would help, but you have no control over your target's feats). In an odd way, having a higher Channel Energy actually hurts, because you're more likely to not only stabilize them but make them a target again (see my previous posts and Ssalarn's).

Even still, you're burning feats to be a little better at something you usually suck at, and then it costs you more to use it. Channel Energy becomes a move action? Okay, but now it takes 2 uses of it when you do it, so you run out 100% faster, and it costed you a feat to do that.

You'd probably have been better off casting shield other, taking Toughness with your feat, and then casting cure spells on yourself at that point. At least you can heal your friend from a distance and halve all of his incoming damage, and only have to worry about healing yourself. Call it "the martyr" or something. That might even be a really funny build for a Life Oracle who gets her total level to bonus healing and can turn overhealing into temporary HP. A Cleric with the 6th level Healing Domain would be helpful in that sense as well.


Actually, the life oracle's enhanced healing is pretty nice. Especially when combined with Empower Spell which also increases the enhanced healing. Now if there was an effective way of getting the healing domain onto an oracle of life without a 6 level dip into cleric (which would pretty much make you a worse healer since you'd be stunting your growth by such a horrible degree).


I was never really a fan of Enhanced Cures. It's a fairly small bonus and it only contributes to CLW, CMW and CSW - CLW after level 5, CMW after level 10, and CSW after level 15(!). If you're casting CMW after level 10 it's (hopefully) not in combat, so the HP bonus is primarily only relevant for downtime healing - in which case you're better off using wands instead of spell slots anyway.

That said, the Healing Domain on an oracle would be very nice indeed. You could do it via five levels in the Exalted prestige class, but I think that would stunt your oracle abilities - namely Channel Energy. There's probably other prestige classes that offer an extra domain, though I can't think off any at the moment.

Levels in Envoy of Balance would let you simultaneously heal and deal damage using Channel Energy, which could potentially be quite interesting. Strict RAW of the language wouldn't allow the Oracle though.

Edit: Actually, an aasimar life oracle with levels in Envoy of Balance stacking channel energy dice could be a really fun character to play - shame it doesn't come online till level 9 at the earliest.

Edit Edit: Never mind, doesn't work - you can't pick up Versatile Channeler as a Life Oracle, kind of killing the concept in its infancy.


Okay, had a second go at this to see if I could make it work:

True Neutral Human Cleric of Pharasma 6/ Envoy of balance 4

Endowment x2 (Spiritual Equilibrium, Twinned Channeling)

Feats:
Versatile Channeler
Selective Channel
Quick Channel
Extra Channel
Fateful Channel
Improved Channel

Traits
Sacred Conduit
Channel the Earth

Charisma:
18 base, +2 aasimar, +2 levels, +4 item +2 item = 24 for 12 channel energy charges per day with + 2 from Extra Channel.

Gear
Phylactery of Positive/Negative Channeling (depending on where your focus is, I'll assume Negative)
+4 Charisma heeeadba... damn. Phylacteries are headbands. Hm.
Costume Bureau!
Bag of Holding type III. Primarily to bring your commode when you're out adventuring, at least now you'll always be fashionably attired!

Each time you channel energy you'd be doing 5d6 healing (average of 17.5) to your allies and 7d6 negative energy damage (Will half, DC 25, average of 24 damage before save), your allies can roll two dice on one attack, skill or saving throw and use the better roll, all allies get +2 on CMD to resist bull rush, reposition and trip maneuvers while enemies get a -2 penalty on the same checks.

Using Quick Channel you can step the output up to 14d6/10d6 for an average of 49 damage (before saves) and 35 HP healed, though you'd go through charges in a hurry.

Granted, the above combines two fairly unimpressive strategies (reactive healing and channel energy blasting) but I wonder what the mix would play like. The concept doesn't really come online until level 9 (cleric 5 / envoy 4) when it picks up Twinned Channeling, it plays like a normal negative channel build until then.

If I can find a way to make Oracle work with Versatile Channeler I'd be looking at 9d6 instead of 7d6, since Aasimar FCB is pretty cool for a life oracle. Anyone have any ideas on that?


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Just combine the phylactery into the headband. It's not cheap, but definitely legal.


Ravingdork wrote:
Just combine the phylactery into the headband. It's not cheap, but definitely legal.

Personally I'd be perfectly OK with that, but I'm trying to keep it PFS legal in case someone wants to try it out. :)


EvilPaladin wrote:

Here is one of my Real Life experiences with my cleric's healing not keeping up with damage. Keep in mind, this was my first PF character, and I didn't know the rules for PF very well, so I was far from optimized.

First level, we are fighting around 3 different humans[I think, it was a while ago], and the fighter in the group drops in one hit, along with a few others getting damaged. So, I used Channel Energy to heal everyone, and the fighter gets back up [and almost to full]. So, he stands up as a full-round action[houseruled to not provoke], and then the next turn, he gets dropped even further then the last turn. So rinse, repeat, [and I did throw a CLW or two at him IIRC] a few rounds later he was 1 point away from death, because I was combat-healing somebody who could only do frontline melee fighting. The healing I was doing was not keeping up with the damage, and was merely prolonging the fight.

EvilPaladin wrote:
and I think he had an AC of 15 or 16. I had a 17 AC at first level, and should have had 11 HP.

PRD wrote:
Channeling energy causes a burst that affects all creatures of one type (either undead or living) in a 30-foot radius centered on the cleric. The amount of damage dealt or healed is equal to 1d6 points of damage plus 1d6 points of damage for every two cleric levels beyond 1st (2d6 at 3rd, 3d6 at 5th, and so on).

I call shenanigans. Your fighter took at a minimum 12 points in one swing and you channeled a maximum of 6 on that single d6 almost healing him to full?

I don't think that healing keeps up with damage as you level in a meaningful way and that's why you apply buffs as preventing damage is the best form of healing. Going by the monster creation tables you can make the comparison easily to spells.

CR 1 high damage is 7 HP, low damage is 5 HP. Average healing on a CLW is 5.5 HP.

CR 3 high damage is 13 HP, low damage is 9 HP. Average healing on CMW is 12 HP.

CR 5 high damage is 20 HP, low damage is 15 HP. Average Healing on CSW is 18.5 HP.

CR 7 high damage is 30 HP, low damage is 22 HP. average healing on CCW is 25 HP.

CR 9 high damage is 40 HP, low damage is 30 HP. Average healing on BoL is 31.5 HP.

CR 11 high damage is 50 HP, low damage is 37 HP. Heal is 110 HP.

Healing keeps pace with the low damage, but slowly falls behind further on the high damage until level 11 where heal trumps the amount of damage per round. The problem is multiple creatures attacking one character or running out of your highest tier of spells to keep the pace.

Preventing attacks from landing will always trump spending time healing in combat UNLESS a dire situation calls for it.


It could have been an Old Elf level 1 fighter with 3 constitution and his FCB in skills, he'd have a baseline HP of 6 or so.

Or, you know, a slightly faulty memory. No need to call shenanigans, let's keep this friendly. :)


DrDeth wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
I have a story as a GM where healing could not keep up. I will keep it short. The PC's walked into an area with the BBEG. In front of him were human meat shields whose sole purpose was to hold the PC's off so the BBEG could harrass them from afar. Also on a ledger higher up there were a few archers. They were well below the PC's level but rolling that many dice means someone will get hit. One PC in particular had been causing trouble, so the BBEG decided he was too dangerous to have around. All of the archers focused fire on the trouble maker. The troublemaker was the divine spell caster. He could not even keep himself up despite trying to cure himself.

Ok, so say he did something else rather than heal. What could he have done?

What your scenario seems to prove is that if a DM concentrates fire on one PC, that PC is in trouble. That has nothing to do with healing.

So you are saying healing only works if the bad guys don't try as hard as they can to kill PC's through hit point damage?

Had the arcane caster had something like fog cloud, or if the cleric(who got taken down) had upped his AC he actually would have lived, but he chose not to cast protection from evil or shield. Then again I don't know if he prepared them that day, to be honest. He also could have fought defensively. He also had a potion of invis he refused to drink. He was not being threatened in melee at the time so it would have been safe.


Kudaku wrote:

It could have been an Old Elf level 1 fighter with 3 constitution and his FCB in skills, he'd have a baseline HP of 6 or so.

Or, you know, a slightly faulty memory. No need to call shenanigans, let's keep this friendly. :)

He specifically said it should have had 11 hp. That's a 12 con on a fighter so it's a believable number. The math is also very simple. 1d6 heals a maximum of 6. The fighter went down in one hit which is a minimum of 12 damage. The channel got the fighter back to his feat and almost to full HP which is impossible.

I'm not trying to be rude, just pointing out that this comment shouldn't be used for any valid reasoning for the effectiveness of combat healing anymore than saying my level 20 fighter only takes 13 points of damage a round and the cleric always heals 13 with his CLW spells.

They're dishonest statements and someone else even favorited the post.


MartialMadness wrote:
Kudaku wrote:

It could have been an Old Elf level 1 fighter with 3 constitution and his FCB in skills, he'd have a baseline HP of 6 or so.

Or, you know, a slightly faulty memory. No need to call shenanigans, let's keep this friendly. :)

He specifically said it should have had 11 hp. That's a 12 con on a fighter so it's a believable number. The math is also very simple. 1d6 heals a maximum of 6. The fighter went down in one hit which is a minimum of 12 damage. The channel got the fighter back to his feat and almost to full HP which is impossible.

I'm not trying to be rude, just pointing out that this comment shouldn't be used for any valid reasoning for the effectiveness of combat healing anymore than saying my level 20 fighter only takes 13 points of damage a round and the cleric always heals 13 with his CLW spells.

They're dishonest statements and someone else even favorited the post.

EvilPaladin wrote:
(...)and I think he had an AC of 15 or 16. I had a 17 AC at first level, and should have had 11 HP.

I read that to mean that the cleric had 11 HP, not the fighter, but I could very well be mistaken.

Either way It's worth noting that the original post is stated to be an example of healing not keeping up. While EvilPaladin's memory of the specifics might be incorrect, I think he's just trying to contribute to the discussion with an example. I doubt he's intentionally trying to mislead anyone.


ikarinokami wrote:
healing in combat is awesome, that is all.

Not needing to be healed in combat is even more awesome. :D


Ashiel wrote:
Ssalarn wrote:
Ashiel wrote:


Fighter: "Blarg, I am down at -3 HP!" *falls down*
Cleric: "Oh no, I'd better be a healer! *clanks over to the fighter and heals him back up to 10 HP!* "I'm the hero!"
Kobold Sorcerer: "EAT HOT DEATH UPWORLDERS!" *fireball for 21 damage*
Fighter: "Gack! I'm even more dead than I was before!" *dies*
Cleric: "OW! I NEED A HEALER!"
This was actually hilarious because I've had this experience on more than one occasion, where I've healed someone just enough to make sure that instead of falling unconcious at -5 or so, they're left barely standing so that the next hit straight up murders them. After this happened in a RotRL campaign, I was specifically asked to "stop helping" as the former bard rolled up a new character.

Yep. I've seen, and heard, of it happening many, many times. And why not? It makes sense. Most enemies unless they're just either A) especially interested in cruelty over survival, or B) want to eat you in the middle of a fight (very few things should) will generally not bother to continue attacking downed foes in the middle of a fight. It's just bad business.

However, having the healer bring someone up makes them a target again, so if you're going to bring them up, bring them up HARD. Healers don't do this very well in D&D until high levels when spells like heal come online. The best they can do otherwise is generally metamagiced versions of cure spells (admittedly, maximized cure spells look really nice, but that's usually a druid thing with meditation incense), but normal metamagic effects require you to sacrifice higher spell levels. This might not be so bad, but clerics can't apply metamagic on the fly, which means locking yourself into that spell, which is painful.

Had the cleric attacked the Kobold there's no guarantee it would have killed it followed up by its 5 foot step, dropping a fireball to engulf the already unconscious fighter killing him and still damaging the cleric.

Or why the cleric wasn't dropping a cure serious and healing an average 19.5 vs the average 21 damage fireball which leaves them both charred, but the fighter not dead.

If healing is your focus I'm sure you also plan to take abilities that maximize its effectiveness like the healing domain which bumps that CSW up to 27 which now has both characters standing after the fireball.

Or maybe the fighter and cleric were close and the cleric can quick channel and cast CSW bringing the fighter up another 10.5 to 37.5 and healing himself 10.5

I don't get why it has to be comparisons to the worst outcome and never a look at the inverse.

Ashiel wrote:
Channel Energy is terrible as a healing ability in combat.

Channel energy + Quick Channel + Shield Other is one of the most effective combat healing methods there is. Split the damage a front liner takes by half and your channel becomes twice as effective.

wraithstrike wrote:
ikarinokami wrote:
healing in combat is awesome, that is all.

Not needing to be healed in combat is even more awesome. :D

Not needing combat is even more awesome.

Kudaku wrote:
Evil Paladin wrote:


(...)and I think he had an AC of 15 or 16. I had a 17 AC at first level, and should have had 11 HP.

I read that to mean that the cleric had 11 HP, not the fighter, but I could very well be mistaken.

You are correct, I misread that. Even still the fighter could have a 5 con at the lowest using the RAW leaving it at 7 HP requiring 8 damage and a maxed 6 roll on channel to be fitting of the statement. I'd be questioning who plays a fighter and dumps con and AC. Why not throw your wizard into melee.


Ssalarn wrote:
Ashiel wrote:


Fighter: "Blarg, I am down at -3 HP!" *falls down*
Cleric: "Oh no, I'd better be a healer! *clanks over to the fighter and heals him back up to 10 HP!* "I'm the hero!"
Kobold Sorcerer: "EAT HOT DEATH UPWORLDERS!" *fireball for 21 damage*
Fighter: "Gack! I'm even more dead than I was before!" *dies*
Cleric: "OW! I NEED A HEALER!"
This was actually hilarious because I've had this experience on more than one occasion, where I've healed someone just enough to make sure that instead of falling unconcious at -5 or so, they're left barely standing so that the next hit straight up murders them. After this happened in a RotRL campaign, I was specifically asked to "stop helping" as the former bard rolled up a new character.

There were times I have seen people healed, and they stayed on the ground because they knew if they got attacked again they would likely die. I have also seen some not wise enough to stay down, and get put down permanently.


Ashiel wrote:
Ssalarn wrote:
Ashiel wrote:


Fighter: "Blarg, I am down at -3 HP!" *falls down*
Cleric: "Oh no, I'd better be a healer! *clanks over to the fighter and heals him back up to 10 HP!* "I'm the hero!"
Kobold Sorcerer: "EAT HOT DEATH UPWORLDERS!" *fireball for 21 damage*
Fighter: "Gack! I'm even more dead than I was before!" *dies*
Cleric: "OW! I NEED A HEALER!"
This was actually hilarious because I've had this experience on more than one occasion, where I've healed someone just enough to make sure that instead of falling unconcious at -5 or so, they're left barely standing so that the next hit straight up murders them. After this happened in a RotRL campaign, I was specifically asked to "stop helping" as the former bard rolled up a new character.

Yep. I've seen, and heard, of it happening many, many times. And why not? It makes sense. Most enemies unless they're just either A) especially interested in cruelty over survival, or B) want to eat you in the middle of a fight (very few things should) will generally not bother to continue attacking downed foes in the middle of a fight. It's just bad business.

However, having the healer bring someone up makes them a target again, so if you're going to bring them up, bring them up HARD. Healers don't do this very well in D&D until high levels when spells like heal come online. The best they can do otherwise is generally metamagiced versions of cure spells (admittedly, maximized cure spells look really nice, but that's usually a druid thing with meditation incense), but normal metamagic effects require you to sacrifice higher spell levels. This might not be so bad, but clerics can't apply metamagic on the fly, which means locking yourself into that spell, which is painful.

Since clerics can spontaneously cast cure spells couldn't they apply metamgic to those? I am not saying it is good idea, but it might help at times.


Ashiel wrote:
DrDeth wrote:
You can make healing a move action. This really helps with action economy.

I presume you're talking about Quick Channel. That's not really helping anyone's case. Channel Energy is terrible as a healing ability in combat.

I always thought it should have been an immediate action since it cost a feat. At the very least a swift action.


One of my groups has a hospitor paladin and a healing focused cleric.

They also don't know how to buy wands of CLWs, so we end up needing all that healing.

A good healer is useful because even if they only heal OOC it's faster than pots and wands, which means less buff time is wasted.


Marcus Robert Hosler wrote:

One of my groups has a hospitor paladin and a healing focused cleric.

They also don't know how to buy wands of CLWs, so we end up needing all that healing.

A good healer is useful because even if they only heal OOC it's faster than pots and wands, which means less buff time is wasted.

Why don't they buy the wands? They are good for saving daily resources. I use them to heal out of combat, to save my spells and channels as a cleric for when I really need them.


I think clerics using healing is situationally useful, and hard to execute correctly. In my opinion, there are two forms of in-combat healing - useful healing, and useless healing. The form of healing can only be identified post combat.

Useful healing is defined as healing that grants your ally another turn. Useless healing is the opposite. As an example, with a fighter and a cleric:
Situation: Fighter is damaged. Cleric can heal, or do something else.
- Assuming the cleric heals:
-> If the fighter takes damage again and is dying/dead on his turn anyway, it is useless healing. Cleric should have done something else.
-> If the fighter doesn't take damage, it is useless healing. Cleric should have done something else.
-> If the fighter takes damage again, but takes such low damage that the healing wasn't necessary for the fighter to get another turn, it is useless healing. Cleric should have done something else.
-> If the fighter takes damage, and the new damage would have downed the figher, but does not because of the healing, it is useful healing. Cleric might have made the correct decision, depending on Cleric's other options*.

That said, I think the same logic applies for Clerics doing combat trying to do damage. Let's call it useful damage and useless damage with the same setup with the Cleric and Fighter:
Useful damage is defined as damage that removes a turn from an enemy. Useless damage is the opposite.
Situation: Initiative order is Fighter->Cleric->Enemy Ogre. Additionally, the Enemy Ogre will not survive two Fighter attacks.
Cleric can attack, or not attack.
- Assuming the cleric attacks and deals damage:
-> If he downs the Ogre, it is useful damage. Cleric might have made the correct decision, depending on Cleric's other options*.
-> If he doesn't down the Ogre, it is useless damage. The Ogre gets a turn, and the Fighter downs the Ogre next round anyway. Cleric should have done something else.

I personally think a core rulebook Cleric is one of the hardest classes to execute correctly. This is because the amount of healing is generally low compared to high-damage encounters AND the amount of damage a Cleric can dish out is low due to medium BAB and no resource-free class-bonuses to attack / damage**. As a result, Core-rulebook Clerics have to often make gambles on healing / damage. Clerics have to constantly ask themselves, "Is this Healing / Damage going to be useful?" every round. In some rounds, there is no correct answer - a cleric's healing / damage is both useless, and that's something a Cleric has to live with. On the other hand, a core rulebook fighter is easy to execute correctly because of full BAB and in-class benefits to attack / damage. If the fighter attacks, it is almost always going to be 'useful damage', whereas if the Cleric heals or does damage, it might not be useful.***

* Maybe there are other party members who need healing / other enemies to damage / debuffs to remove / buffs to add / other scenario specific actions
** Clerics can definitely match Fighters in attack / damage, but only after expending resources
*** I also agree to Ashiel's posts about resource-management, positioning, and other complications that healing comes with. But in this post specifically, I wanted to give an example of what the bare minimum healing should accomplish.


wraithstrike wrote:
Marcus Robert Hosler wrote:

One of my groups has a hospitor paladin and a healing focused cleric.

They also don't know how to buy wands of CLWs, so we end up needing all that healing.

A good healer is useful because even if they only heal OOC it's faster than pots and wands, which means less buff time is wasted.

Why don't they buy the wands? They are good for saving daily resources. I use them to heal out of combat, to save my spells and channels as a cleric for when I really need them.

Believe it or not. Buying wands is a form of optimization that is not intuitively known.


Marcus Robert Hosler wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
Marcus Robert Hosler wrote:

One of my groups has a hospitor paladin and a healing focused cleric.

They also don't know how to buy wands of CLWs, so we end up needing all that healing.

A good healer is useful because even if they only heal OOC it's faster than pots and wands, which means less buff time is wasted.

Why don't they buy the wands? They are good for saving daily resources. I use them to heal out of combat, to save my spells and channels as a cleric for when I really need them.
Believe it or not. Buying wands is a form of optimization that is not intuitively known.

Even when I play with people who don't frequent the forums online they have purchased wands, but thanks for the reply.

Shadow Lodge

Kudaku wrote:
MartialMadness wrote:
Kudaku wrote:

It could have been an Old Elf level 1 fighter with 3 constitution and his FCB in skills, he'd have a baseline HP of 6 or so.

Or, you know, a slightly faulty memory. No need to call shenanigans, let's keep this friendly. :)

He specifically said it should have had 11 hp. That's a 12 con on a fighter so it's a believable number. The math is also very simple. 1d6 heals a maximum of 6. The fighter went down in one hit which is a minimum of 12 damage. The channel got the fighter back to his feat and almost to full HP which is impossible.

I'm not trying to be rude, just pointing out that this comment shouldn't be used for any valid reasoning for the effectiveness of combat healing anymore than saying my level 20 fighter only takes 13 points of damage a round and the cleric always heals 13 with his CLW spells.

They're dishonest statements and someone else even favorited the post.

EvilPaladin wrote:
(...)and I think he had an AC of 15 or 16. I had a 17 AC at first level, and should have had 11 HP.

I read that to mean that the cleric had 11 HP, not the fighter, but I could very well be mistaken.

Either way It's worth noting that the original post is stated to be an example of healing not keeping up. While EvilPaladin's memory of the specifics might be incorrect, I think he's just trying to contribute to the discussion with an example. I doubt he's intentionally trying to mislead anyone.

This. I wasn't trying to be misleading, nor was I trying to give an irrelevant example, I just was trying to give an example, and the first one I could remember was this one, the first time I noticed the problem. Also, going to point something out.
MartialMadness wrote:
They're dishonest statements and someone else even favorited the post.

Again, not dishonest, just inaccurate[and if needed, I have a few other examples, most are going to have inaccuracies or will have exterior factors contributing, because I don't often heal in-combat unless I know it will be more helpful then me taking other actions]. And, more importantly favorite-ing posts isn't always used as a way of saying that you like a post. Sometimes it is used make it easier to find a certain post, or even page, in the future without having to dig through a bunch of old threads or old pages.


Kudaku wrote:

I was never really a fan of Enhanced Cures. It's a fairly small bonus and it only contributes to CLW, CMW and CSW - CLW after level 5, CMW after level 10, and CSW after level 15(!). If you're casting CMW after level 10 it's (hopefully) not in combat, so the HP bonus is primarily only relevant for downtime healing - in which case you're better off using wands instead of spell slots anyway.

That said, the Healing Domain on an oracle would be very nice indeed. You could do it via five levels in the Exalted prestige class, but I think that would stunt your oracle abilities - namely Channel Energy. There's probably other prestige classes that offer an extra domain, though I can't think off any at the moment.

Oh, well do that then. Channel Energy sucks a lot, so getting free empowering on all your healing at the cost of some d6s on your channel energy is probably a win/win. Heck, keeping your channel dice low means you can stabilize allies without making them targets again.

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