Being an old 3.5 player, I did not read the pathfinder heal rules with attention, until now. But with Unchained they are NOT wwhat they used to be.
Treat Deadly Wounds*Requirement: You must expend two uses from a healer's kit to perform this task. You take a –2 penalty on your check for each use from a healer's kit that you lack.
When treating deadly wounds, you can restore hit points to a damaged creature. Treating deadly wounds restores 1 hit point per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount. A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day.
and with signature skill "heal"
With sufficient ranks in Heal, you earn the following.5 Ranks: When you treat deadly wounds, the target recovers hit points and ability damage as if it had rested for a full day.
10 Ranks: When you treat deadly wounds, the target recovers hit points as if it had rested for a full day with long-term care.
15 Ranks: When you treat deadly wounds, the creature recovers hit point and ability damage as if it had rested for 3 days.
20 Ranks: When you treat deadly wounds, the target recovers hit point and ability damage as if it had rested for 3 days with long-term care.
Now add
Battlefield Surgeon traits :
Benefit(s) Heal is a class skill for you, and you can use the treat deadly wounds aspect of Heal 1 additional time per creature per day.
It means that a level 20 character can heal 2(3x4+wis) level hitpoints without using any magic, and probably without even needing the medkit (DC29...).For a 24 wisdom druid/cleric/whatever healing his barbarian buddy in the antimagic plane of no escape, that's 494 hit points healed in two hours, just with mmundane skill.
What about lower levels ? A level 5 character with 18 wis [b]could[b] heal 2x(5+4) =18 hit point. Not stellar, but that's a two hour action requiring no magic expanditure, just four uses of the healer kit. If he don't rolls high enough, that would be only 10 hit points.
If you add the fact that this skill is precious against disease and poisons.
In most guides I have read, the poor "heal" skill is rarely highly rated. It seems that wands of cure light wounds and magical healers are everywhere in every campaigns. Sure, a skill tax and a trait tax may seem useless in any standard campaign with a cleric, a paladin and groceries full of magic wands. But even so, with Pathfinder Unchained and the treat deadly wounds mechanic, I think this skill could be used as your standard "out of combat healing".
Plus, I like the flavor of characters needing a few hours of actual healing after a combat rather than the standard "whizz, whizzz, whizz, whizz, one more wand charge and I'm OK".
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I mean, while thematically appropriate, it still just doesn't do enough.
Two hours to heal 18 hit points? Really? That's unacceptable under most conditions, unless the adventuring day is over. A wand of cure light wounds does that in 4 turns, which is 24 seconds.
About the only time I can see this being relevant is if you become trapped in a dead-magic antimagic zone. Of course, if that happens there's a solid chance half your party has been reduced to commoners and the other half doesn't have the magical gear they need to operate against creatures of an appropriate CR.
The main thing I can see where this is slightly useful is that it allows for treating of ability damage on shorter time scale than normal natural healing, and doesn't require restoration to accomplish it. Which outside of lesser restoration can become expensive.
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Judging it from a Pathfinder Society perspective, its more useful, but not super exciting. Firstly, wands are cheap enough that people are going to use that instead of waiting for 2 hours.
In a dungeon its not useful for regaining hp, in a scenario where you can take the two hours between encounters sure.
I mean, while thematically appropriate, it still just doesn't do enough.
Two hours to heal 18 hit points? Really? That's unacceptable under most conditions, unless the adventuring day is over. A wand of cure light wounds does that in 4 turns, which is 24 seconds.
And an adventuring day in most dungeon is roughly 15 minutes...:D
In many campaign I played in, we had one big fight in the session, after which we were mostly recovering from our wounds and loss of offensive potential (spells and so on), when not running away and hiding somewhere. Sure, the pesky low-threat fights were there, too. But, particularly at low level(1-6) and with small party (3 PC), those rules do make "heal" a more interesting skill to max out.
I mean, while thematically appropriate, it still just doesn't do enough.
Two hours to heal 18 hit points? Really? That's unacceptable under most conditions, unless the adventuring day is over. A wand of cure light wounds does that in 4 turns, which is 24 seconds.
And an adventuring day in most dungeon is roughly 15 minutes...:D
In many campaign I played in, we had one big fight in the session, after which we were mostly recovering from our wounds and loss of offensive potential (spells and so on), when not running away and hiding somewhere. Sure, the pesky low-threat fights were there, too. But, particularly at low level(1-6) and with small party (3 PC), those rules do make "heal" a more interesting skill to max out.
See, I'm a big advocate against the 15 minute adventuring day. It is one of the worst thing to happen to the game. Allowing players to expect 1 big fight per day is fine, but not just 1 relevant fight per day. You should have at least 3 other fights that day that should be mildly challenging. Allowing the 15 min work day is either the symptom of not having access to magical healing, or because the full casters don't know how to use resource more efficiently and running themselves dry on spells. Which in turn leads to the issue that martial characters are marginalized by spell casters. The fighter can swing his sword all day, but if the wizard runs out of fireballs he demands the party stop adventuring until tomorrow. That situations prevents martial characters from having a chance to shine, which is simply unfair.
kind of, healing kits require a lot more space than a wand...
It would be nice if the ability and it's DC were rewritten, so that it does not require a healing kit, but a caveat at the end says what happens if you do use healing kits.