poke holes and help me with the flaws in my character please?


Advice


well i started playing pathfinder with in the last year. and going through the classes i thought that the alchemist would be really cool. and the group i am with needed a healer so i told them i would be a healer but i would not be a cleric. so i was shown the archetypes and chose to make the Chirurgeon at the table it felt like one of them bank heist movie things i saw heal bombs and CLWs and grabbed them and turned out a very poorly equipped character and i had fun died near the end and rolled a replacement character to basically give me time to make a better godless healer as in not relying on divine power.

now i know a lot of people on here dote on the oracle. but i don't really like it.

i am thinking of making a ranged healer.

i think i will make a multi-classing alchemist. since alchemist has a lot of things you can chose a lot of things that makes it hard for you to die.

alchemist Chirurgeon can heal from afar which is nice and not many classes can do that very well. heal bombs.

anyways i am thinking of taking a few levels of far strike monk. but i am not very sure if i should do that. but the class benefits seem interesting like deflect arrows, dodge, and evasion.

well the next two classes i am not sure about. the first class because i am not sure would be a good healing class. the second i am not sure because the dm does not want 3rd party classes.anyways i am debating the classes of shaman which would fit in perfectly with the campaign. the second would be the vitalist which would be a really cool class if i could get approval for.

vitalist for the obvious reasons.

would a shaman be worth a few levels i can't really make heads or tails of the spirit spell stuff just yet but it does get some healing.

so i was thinking i will start with three levels of alchemist(Chirurgeon). then a lvl in (far strike) monk. i will take a second or third level in far strike monk later on. then i would take shaman or vitalist as a fifth level. if vitalist is approved for use and shaman is an alright healer i might take both the classes later on. i want to make a good healer but most the feats i will be getting will be used to negate my very bad luck.

so in short should i take monk and is shaman worth putting levels into? if all ends badly does that just leave me as an alchemist? is there a class i am missing that i should be looking at? please don't say oracle or cleric. they both rely on divinity.


Witch and shaman can heal from range by having their familiars deliver the heal for them.

Though I think the shaman is no less divine than an oracle. Indeed the shaman still needs to use a divine focus while the oracle does not.


The nice thing about Oracles is that they are beholden to nothing. They're cursed a bit, deriving what eventually becomes phenomenal cosmic power from said curse, which coincidentally gets a lot better during level advancement.

"Me bum leg and I can grant miracles, buck-o, what say ye?" ;)


Your multi-class monstrosity is going to be utterly useless. If you want to play a non-divine healer, go with Witch.


So non divine and a healer. Thats almost like saying, "I want to melee naked with a dagger", in thats it's tricky but doable. (Monk+Ninja). With oracle out and no divine, then you have alchemist, and UMD. UMD would be more efficient than your multiclass, since you're going to be MAD as hell. And theres no point to having shaman and alchemist, just choose one. And I don't even understand why far-strike monk made it in there apart from "It sounded cool".

Silver Crusade

zainale wrote:
i am thinking of making a ranged healer.

Reach Spell (Metamagic)

Your spells go farther than normal.
Benefit: You can alter a spell with a range of touch, close, or medium to increase its range to a higher range category, using the following order: touch, close, medium, and long. A reach spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level for each increase in range category. For example, a spell with a range of touch increased to long range uses up a spell slot three levels higher. Spells modified by this feat that require melee touch attacks instead require ranged touch attacks.
Spells that do not have a range of touch, close, or medium do not benefit from this feat.

Best options for none divine caster.
Bard
You will need a lot of wands.

Witch (Hedge Witch)
Healing Patron for the condition removal spells.
After level 4 you can spontaneous cast cure spells.


i don't really like the whole being bound to _______ (insert example there) servant/slave to another being's will. you piss off that being and poof you loss your powers/abilities.

the witch gains power from her communion with the unknown
(clerics) Called to serve powers beyond most mortal understanding
Although the gods work through many agents, perhaps none is more mysterious than the oracle. oracles have it off even worse then the other two they are born cursed by the gods. they don't even get a carrot they just get the stick. do this and do it now ohh and by the way your curse will get even worse if you dilly dally.

the shaman seems a little better because you form a one on one friendship with your spirit its always around and won't ever miss your call because it has to answer the phone of thousands and thousands of other people demanding it's attention.

and all that aside i kinda think of the gods in general as if they are like the Roman or Greek gods. very fickle and quick to anger and all around D-bags.

so in that sense i would not mind playing a "weaker" healer because in the end its my power i am using to save lives a power that won't get taken away because i forgot to clean the wax from my ears or bathed in the blood of lambs on the 8th day of every month because i was ass deep in a mountain fighting horrors.


I have never seen a GM take away a divine character powers for anything except extreme out of religion behaviour (Random murder for LG character for instance) so your desire to avoid divine characters is based on what based on 30 years experience is a straw man arguement.

Healing at range is very difficult , about he only way to do it is Reach spell which means you are limited to using healing spells of much lower level than normal. This means they will heal negligible amounts of damage and you may end up feeling useless.

Also if playing a caster taking lots of different classes just produces a character which cannot do anything well.
Many people including me think that healing in combat is largely a waste of time as you cannot (before the heal spell) heal fast enough to keep up with enemy damage so a weak healer will be pretty much useless of you are planning to heal in combat , out of combat healing using wands or similar is sufficiently easy that you do not need to build for it.

Now building a none divine healer.
Alchemist
Bard
Skald
(Witch not a divine character but you are putting it in that list).
Witch can be a semicompetent healer at high level but you don't want that.
Alchemist cannot heal anyone else unless they have taken the correct discovery and will have a lot of trouble doing so at range.

I think you are stuck with bard
the Songhealer archetype gets bonus to healing
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard/archetypes/paizo---bard-a rchetypes/songhealer

A bard also gets good combat support abilities so if combat healing does not work out for you then at least you will not be useless. If you take the songhealer I would recomend taking craft wands and keeping a wand of the highest level cure spell you can get on you so that you can always make use of the ability to maximise healing effects.

Thats about the best way I can think of to meet your objectives but if I actually wanted to design a healer Life Oracle or Cleric are many times better than the bard as healers.


Bard is great. The unlettered arcanist uses the witch list, and gets the awesome utility abilities.
The white mage can do it spontaneously.

The Exchange

Shaman/witch with valet archtype familiar(get one with a decent fly speed). Later take improved familiar to turn it into a psudeodragon/small air elemental. Valet archtype grants a psudeo spring attack for the purposes of delivering touch spells, and psudeodragons have 5 ft reach with tail. Small air elementals have normal reach.

You can heal at range now, limited to half your familiar's fly speed.

I understand if you have a distrust of Gods, because I started pathfinder with it. I've mostly overcomed it now, but I still don't roll paladins. Most GMs won't mess with a cleric's divine code.

I've yet to see any GM mess with an oracle's, witch's or shaman's source of power.

Oracles are awesome. If you don't want a curse that weighs on you too heavily, go for lame, or legalistic. One reduces your movement speed slightlt, the other imposes a slight penalty if you break your word. Well, just don't give your word too often.

Oracle curses also give RP hooks. I.e a oracle with wasting curse covering himself up because people will think he's a leper.

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