I used it 3 turns in a row against a bunch of undead and dealt 4 dmg to each... I tend to roll bad so it was never a good ability for me. I mostly use it for out of combat healing now.
Are you wanting to compare it for healing or for damage?
Healing you do 1d6(3.5) at lv1 and 2d6(7) at lv3 on average per person.
A cure light wounds wand or lv1 spell does 1d8+1(5.5) healing on average per use.
An Infernal Healing wand heals 10HP in a minute.
A cure moderate wounds at lv3 heals 2d8+3(12)
Enemy attacks will most likely do much more damage than you heal.
So healing is useful to save some wand use out of combat, or to heal a little to a lot of people in combat. If you're wanting to try and heal just one person using a spell gives more healing.
damage the channel has the same numbers but they can save to half the damage.
For both, if you try in combat you'll need a feat to not target people you don't want to target.
For healing? It remains moderately helpful at mid-levels.
Let's say you're all level 10. Your party has an average of 80HP. You're all hit by a 10d6 fireball. Everyone takes 20 or 40 damage, depending on if they pass their reflex save. At this point you use a 5d6 channel. This heals, say, 17 hit points. It's not enough to cancel out all the damage, but it keeps your group going a bit longer, and is a worthwhile use of your action if you don't have anything better to do.
It's less effective if one of your PCs is taking 60 damage a round from being savaged by a dragon.
The Quick Channel feat can keep the damage it heals relevant for longer, but then they get used up pretty fast.
Channel is mostly just an out of combat heal. It can be useful in combat but only for killing weak undead, and if you do channel to heal in combat, make sure you don't heal the enemy.
The only time I ever really i use them really is with quick channel when I know we're all hurt. Or lIke last night-I was surrounded by a pack of dogs. I can't go anywhere because chances are the AoO will trip me. So I use my cure critical wounds to heal myself up, then selectively channel to heal allies. Not only have I now rolled 2 heals for myself, but I healed the damage that my party has taken. On their own, only moderately helpful. When used to get the healing edge, it's quite helpful.
If you really build toward it you can turn channelling into something useful. Quick Channel, Selective Channel & Fateful Channel/Beacon of Hope is a solid combination. However it comes at the cost of three feats that could give you as much or more spent elsewhere.
Honestly, I'd like more Cleric Archetypes that trade out Channel Energy entirely.
You do have to build towards Channel for it to be "worth it", but another important piece is being left out, Shield Other. With that spell, you take half of the target's damage. You can then heal that damage on your target and yourself at the same time with the channel, basically doubling its efficiency. Also you often have other allies within range that could be missing some life too, further increasing the efficiency of the channel.
But Selective Channel more than any other Channel feat is required for Channeling in combat. Without that feat, I doubt you should ever bother with an in combat channel.
Another cheesy thing to combine with Channel is Fey Foundling. That feat significantly increases the amount of healing your receive from Channel, which comes in very handy with the Shield Other strategy.
The healed amounts are not that great, but it doesn't cost you spell slots and is surprisingly well supported when it comes to feats. IS Gods has 28 (?) feats about channeling, 25 (?) for specific gods / worshipped entities.
If you really build toward it you can turn channelling into something useful. Quick Channel, Selective Channel & Fateful Channel/Beacon of Hope is a solid combination. However it comes at the cost of three feats that could give you as much or more spent elsewhere.
Honestly, I'd like more Cleric Archetypes that trade out Channel Energy entirely.
Those are two very amazing feats for a Vital Strike/Reach cleric I had cooked up, thank you!
So the advice is that its decent if you invest Feats. But it also means investing in stats wise as you need 13 Cha for Selective Channel. For a Dwarf that's a 5 point spend to go from 10 (12) to 13 (15) netting you one extra Channel per day and access to Selective.
Sounds like the ability scores and Feats might be better redirected elsewhere.
This is the first time Dwarfs have entered the conversation. Saying Dwarfs aren't good at channeling is different from saying Channeling isn't good.
And requiring feats for something to be good is pretty common in this game. A Finesse weapon won't do you much good unless you have Weapon Finesse and the Dexterity to take advantage of it. In the same way, Channeling won't do you much good unless you have Selective Channeling and the Charisma to take advantage of it.
Selective Channelling isn't always needed. Careful map positioning can often avoid catching injured enemies. If your group focuses their attacks, then you can avoid having mildly injured enemies scattered all over the place. And some kinds of enemy (undead, constructs) aren't healed by positive energy anyway.
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Clerics get too few feats to waste any of channeling in my opinion.
I have played in a couple of AP's both with and without clerics. One of them only was focused on channeling, but in my opinion it made a huge difference.
Channel specialist (having high charisma, selective channeling, quick channel and, in our case - the feat to turn channel energy into breath of life) offers very much to increase teams chances of survival. Most of the dangerous situations we run into are when an enemy can do a lot of damage to whole group - e.g. throws a couple of fireballs against a group with no protection from energy.
Cleric can easily cure that - in case of CL 10 fireball, cleric can cure all average damage (5d6) ot the team members that made their save. If a lot of them failed, or enemy has much higher potential - he can expend 3 channels to heal 10d6.
It gets even better when you have shield other spell and phylactery of energy channeling, which makes a big difference to final result.
The minus is that you need to invest feats and cash into supporting capabilities. It does not let you shine that much, but help the team.
Normal cleric does not let you heal in combat effetively, but offers the same set of spells. he can help you avoid the risk, but does not have much capability when you run into trouble (as always - being prepared helps a lot, but makes assumptions. Channel Energy specialist has lot of redundnacy, thus remaining useful even when he is not optimized or prepared for situation - as when being ambushed).
Parties without clerics had to work a lot on condition removal and healing. It simpl consumed resources that were normally saved by the healers (e.g. think of cost of wands of CLW vs of the periapt of energy channeling). They neede to solve many of the problems by different means, preparing narrowly for expected danger, or withdrawing from trouble. Frankly speaking - while i greatly enjoy a semi - martial group, i often feel that the lack of dedicated healer really hurts on the skill to sustain damage and take part in large number of encounters.
Clerics get too few feats to waste any of channeling in my opinion.
Amen..... minimise CHA too
The only exception would be taking Quick Channel and Channel Ray.... can only target 1 creature but eliminates need for selective channel, means you can still cast a normal spell, has much better range, and its +2 DC equates to a difference of 4 in your CHA score so means you dont have to pump CHA as much
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Around 3rd level is when you really start to notice the decline, but by 5th it's glaringly obvious.
The real issue with Channel Energy is that even when it's something heavily invested in, it's just not that great. The other main issue is that the Cleric is spending their action to do something that's subpar.
I can think of only 1 time where Channeling to heal saved a life, and technically that was more DM Fiat than anything, as I was pretty far out of range from the character. So it doesn't even speak to the benefit of Channel Energy. Otherwise is nearly 100% just a "Hey save your charges. I'll just Channel".
Turn/Rebuke Undead was just so much more elegant, fun, and useful, while being equally thematic.
I find turn undead to be an important early feat for positive energy channelers. 1d6 damage with a save for half means two die are rolled and the save can nearly mitigate the damage, especially at early levels.
For turn undead, you don't roll, only the GM does. And the power goes causing moderate to weak damage to possibly ending a fight or at least splitting it up so it's easier to deal with. Also, mindless undead, which you're more likely to fight at low levels get to save once or nothing.
I used turn undead to great affect against ghouls in the early levels of the game. It was well worth it. Since one ghoul gets three attacks, all of which can do something worse than damage, breaking up that fight was huge.
To understand the drop-off of channeling power, you need to look at how much the power is increased.
At level 1, it is 1d6. That is our base.
At level 3, it is 2d6. A 100% increase in power. First and best boost. You'll love hitting level 3, and so will your party.
At level 5, it is 3d6. A 50% increase in power. Not as great, but still spectacular. Around this time your channels will be more reliable as healing.
At level 7, it is 4d6. A 33% increase in power. Still fairly significant.
At level 9, it is 5d6. A 25% increase in power. This is the last truly significant boost you get to channels. Everything else is just a standard progression, and you will have a lot more options with spells after this.
Actually it improves at roughly the same pace as monster damage per round (source: Bestiary):
A CR 1 creature deals like 6 damage per round (in average, real monsters might be far below or beyond that).
A CR 2 one deals like 8.5.
A CR 10 one deals like 40.
A CR 20 one deals like 105.
That's roughly a linear increase - like for channel energy.
To understand the drop-off of channeling power, you need to look at how much the power is increased.
At level 1, it is 1d6. That is our base.
At level 3, it is 2d6. A 100% increase in power. First and best boost. You'll love hitting level 3, and so will your party.
At level 5, it is 3d6. A 50% increase in power. Not as great, but still spectacular. Around this time your channels will be more reliable as healing.
At level 7, it is 4d6. A 33% increase in power. Still fairly significant.
At level 9, it is 5d6. A 25% increase in power. This is the last truly significant boost you get to channels. Everything else is just a standard progression, and you will have a lot more options with spells after this.Actually it improves at roughly the same pace as monster damage per round (source: Bestiary):
A CR 1 creature deals like 6 damage per round (in average, real monsters might be far below or beyond that).
A CR 2 one deals like 8.5
A CR 10 one deals like 40.
A CR 20 one deals like 105.That's roughly a linear increase - like for channel energy.
Average damage on the low end according to the bestiary is 90 at CR20.
Average healing is 35 for channel energy.
Paizo printed monsters tnd to be slightly above that.
At level 1, it can keep a party up and running for a very long time.
At level 3, it's barely noticeable, because wands start to be availible in bulk supply.
It's never a good move in combat, unless you have the ability to Daze everyone who fails their save. Then it becomes a pretty good ability.
Do a lot of people not use Shield Other? Because that pairs so very well with channeling.
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I'very made two clerics, both specialized in channeling, one positive one negative. The negative one used the old version of the whimsy domain, allowing for a lot more dice on channels. The new version of whimsy is useless. Phylactery of negative channeling was a good boost too. Carting around an altar with desecrate on it meant nobody made their saves against him. The force channel feat chain lets him be creative in the shape of his channel and move people around.
The positive channeled is a life oracle with the aasimar FCB, got that taken away too. She's going down the Bless Equipment feat chain, so most of her channels get turned into ___ Bane weapon enchantments. Unless we're fighting undead, in which case the trait to reroll one's on channel is nice. Again, the Phylactery is very helpful.
To understand the drop-off of channeling power, you need to look at how much the power is increased.
At level 1, it is 1d6. That is our base.
At level 3, it is 2d6. A 100% increase in power. First and best boost. You'll love hitting level 3, and so will your party.
At level 5, it is 3d6. A 50% increase in power. Not as great, but still spectacular. Around this time your channels will be more reliable as healing.
At level 7, it is 4d6. A 33% increase in power. Still fairly significant.
At level 9, it is 5d6. A 25% increase in power. This is the last truly significant boost you get to channels. Everything else is just a standard progression, and you will have a lot more options with spells after this.Actually it improves at roughly the same pace as monster damage per round (source: Bestiary):
A CR 1 creature deals like 6 damage per round (in average, real monsters might be far below or beyond that).
A CR 2 one deals like 8.5
A CR 10 one deals like 40.
A CR 20 one deals like 105.That's roughly a linear increase - like for channel energy.
Average damage on the low end according to the bestiary is 90 at CR20.
Average healing is 35 for channel energy.
Paizo printed monsters tnd to be slightly above that.
Well, cleric starts off with a bonus, since he gets 1d6 already at level 1. So at low levels his progression is significantly below linear, probably explaining the experiences made by some players. However, at level 1 it's just a 1:2 ratio (1d6 heal to 6 damage), while at level 10 it's still 1:2 (5d6 heal to 40 damage). It's even still 1:2 at level 15 (8d6 heal to 61 damage), it becomes more problematic later though. 1:3 at level 20 is not totally bad, though.
For clarification: I use the average of high and low damage. There are monsters like clay golems which are even below low damage, since they have other strengths. And there are ones significantly above high damage. Healing becomes much stronger in the first case and much weaker in the second.
Things become more complex in real battles though. A CR x encounter will likely be split up into several opponents. That can be a blessing if different foes damage different allies. But, for instance two CR x-2 creatures deal significantly more damage than a CR x creature - and their relative advantage increases with level: 0% at x=3, +35% at x=7, +50% at x=10, +70% at x=15 and +70% at x=20. Then the 1:2 ratio is gone in favor of a 1:3 one, slowly becoming worse down to 1:5 at level 20. And that's probably what makes channeling worse of the course of levels - the cleric will have to make it up with additional effects.