Healing


Prerelease Discussion

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Greetings. Are there plans to make in-combat healing a more viable option than in the current Pathfinder?


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I hope so...

Healing hasn't really kept up with the changes in damage scaling that's happened since AD&D...outside of "Heal" and "Mass Heal"...


I would like that to happen also. I don't want it to keep up with damage outside of some specialized build, but there's a gulf between the cure spells, and Heal.

If they going to make it more difficult to be almost impossible to hit in combat then healing will have to pick up the slack.


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This is walking a fine line. What I absolutely DO NOT want to see is that it's REQUIRED to have a "healer" in the party.

If you make in-combat healing too strong, and have to balance encounters to accommodate significant in-combat healing, then it's much more likely we go back to the days of the last player who creates their character getting strong-armed into playing a cleric.


Anything is better than what we have right now, which is almost nonexistent in-combat healing.


Atalius wrote:
Anything is better than what we have right now, which is almost nonexistent in-combat healing.

Life oracles can be reasonably effective at in-combat healing. If there was an option that was more effective than a life oracle, I would start to get concerned about "Timmy, you have to play the cleric"-syndrome.


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My primary problem with significantly improving the strength of in-combat healing is that (for me at least) it just isn't fun. I don't understand the appeal of spending combats regenerating everyone else's hit points so they can keep killing the monsters, rather than actually killing the monsters yourself (or at least making your allies better at killing the monsters). And I'm afraid that if healing is too strong it will become assumed that every party has to have someone who spends all their time refilling leaky hit point buckets.


I don't want to give the impression that I'm opposed to healing, because I'm not. I loved playing a completely pacifist healer in one recent campaign. I built my life oracle to optimize channeling, and tried to resolve every possible combat in a nonviolent way. It was a lot of fun! But even with having healing fully optimized, I would say that character was on the same power level as the other characters. If it had been any stronger, I would be worried, because then I would see the path opening to "Timmy, you have to play the life oracle."


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RumpinRufus wrote:
Atalius wrote:
Anything is better than what we have right now, which is almost nonexistent in-combat healing.
Life oracles can be reasonably effective at in-combat healing. If there was an option that was more effective than a life oracle, I would start to get concerned about "Timmy, you have to play the cleric"-syndrome.

Well, this can be shored up by making in-combat healing less class-exclusive. Instead of "Timmy, you have to play the cleric," it can be "Timmy, you have to play with in-combat healing mechanics of X or Y or Z, or your character's just gonna die like a dummyhead" with multitudes of in-combat healing options available besides "LOLClerics."

Even with in-combat healing permitted and workable in first edition, available to a multitude of spellcasting classes (Witches, Oracles, "Alchemists", Druids, etc.), a 1st level character spends their standard action (AKA the majority of their turn) and very precious spell slots to heal hit points as little as two, or as much as nine. This makes using spells that weren't Heal (or its Mass counterpart), which had excellent scaling and easily calculable power, very wishy-washy and more often than not, unfavorable, whether you roll max on a paper cut, or minimally on a mortal injury. It's probably the biggest reason why Cure Wands are more valuable, since burning spell slots on a spell that may or may not do something crucial (enough) is a very risky gamble unless absolutely necessary to take, whereas taking time and burning something whose sole purpose is to be burned, in exchange for making yourself all better, is much more practical in the grand scheme of things.

In short, if steps were taken to cut down on the randomness of in-combat healing options, as well as make in-combat healing options available to more classes (which, IMO, wasn't a major issue in 1st edition when you properly look at it, instead of sticking to stereotypical tropes), it would increase its relevance in the game significantly. And to be honest, having each class be granted their own, unique means of in-combat healing could be pretty awesome if done right, and would actually make designing encounters and creatures around in-combat healing being possible not such a bad idea.

Another concept is to ditch the concept of in-combat healing altogether, and making out-of-combat healing more prevalent in the forms of resting, but this assumes that every combat can be done without in-combat healing, and basically, any combat where in-combat healing is required (which isn't necessarily noticable on initial contact), makes it a death sentence.


Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
In short, if steps were taken to cut down on the randomness of in-combat healing options, as well as make in-combat healing options available to more classes (which, IMO, wasn't a major issue in 1st edition when you properly look at it, instead of sticking to stereotypical tropes), it would increase its relevance in the game significantly.

Well, we do already know they're moving this way. The spell that's on the cleric list (and presumably will be available to other classes, since there's only four spell lists) is able to heal everyone within range for a flat amount (equal to your casting stat) if you use three actions to cast it. I don't think we know yet how that scales, though.


Atalius wrote:
Greetings. Are there plans to make in-combat healing a more viable option than in the current Pathfinder?

It seems like it to me. You get attacks at -0/-5/-10. If you trade away that last one, you can cast a touch-range healing spell. It sounds like AoOs for casting aren't as universal, too. The basic healing spell can be cast with two actions to make it ranged, or as three actions for weaker AoE healing and damaging undead at the same time.

Probably not the best choice all the time, but that sounds a lot more viable than Pathfinder 1.0. Hit somebody at your full modifier and heal your buddy a little ways away without moving? That'd normally be two feats, I think. Combine healing allies and damaging undead foes without spending an extra spell? That sounds like it'd be a feat or two in Pathfinder.


Has anyone played a Half-Elf character who took Arcane Training racial and selected Witch as the favored class? It allows martials access to healing options. Later wands and scrolls just require UMD.

There are healing options for everyone(*).


Sadida wrote:

Has anyone played a Half-Elf character who took Arcane Training racial and selected Witch as the favored class? It allows martials access to healing options. Later wands and scrolls just require UMD.

There are healing options for everyone(*).

When it's that niche, it's not everyone.


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if each class got their own abilities for self healing it could alleviate the need for in combat healing

Sovereign Court

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Maybe the cleric and similar healers get a reaction to heal an ally in response to damage, leaving your own actions available to buff/attack/etc.

Liberty's Edge

It sounds like a cleric can heal a character in touch range and still cast another spell, all in one turn. That might help some with the "pure healbot" issue already, in addition to whatever other changes might be around.


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doomman47 wrote:
if each class got their own abilities for self healing it could alleviate the need for in combat healing

4e did this.. Watch out... It won't end well.


D&D 4e has a variety of characters with a healing power as a minor action, including clerics, bards and warlords, playing off of the idea that hit points are not meat points, but vigor, morale, dodging and so on. Thus, they can move and attack and heal (usually twice per battle). This is an excellent idea that could be implemented with a healing power as a minor action. Make it outside of the usual spells, an innate power with a theme to the class with the power.

Eliminate the need for healing magic between fights too. Heal up with a rest. Specific injuries as ingering conditions can be addressed by clerical type magic or magic items.


Wheeljack wrote:


Eliminate the need for healing magic between fights too. Heal up with a rest.

And that is the one and only thing 5E did right. The Short Rest mechanic was a good idea.


Bloodrealm wrote:
Wheeljack wrote:


Eliminate the need for healing magic between fights too. Heal up with a rest.
And that is the one and only thing 5E did right. The Short Rest mechanic was a good idea.

on paper it looks good, but in practice with our groups nearly 2 years of playing 5e for a campaign we never once used the short rest....


I think healing touches into a larger issue too: attrition.
If there are still cheap "medsticks", or whatever slang term you use locally for Cure Light Wounds wands, then each battle has to be that much tougher to pose a risk. That in turn makes in-combat healing more important, which can be unfortunate because finding the balance between too much & too little seems like it'd be hard for developers.
I've seen more than one healing Cleric that could take a nearly fallen party and get them near full health in a round or two. That seems a bit much for one PC to undo all enemy efforts so fast and then expect Paizo to make a battle that challenges that party, a party without that, and a party with two of those.

Since Paizo seems to be heading away from the "must have" items, I have to wonder what'll happen re: healing sticks.

I think different types of healing options would be really useful, and in some cases cool.
-Emergency temp hit point pools (which fade after battle), akin to rage, but for other classes too, like the P1 Rogue Talent that kicked in at zero (but better than that one!). There could be spells like this too, so for example maybe one level lower than actual healing.
-Healing one wound. This would heal the worst wound, or maybe last wound, that the PC suffered. Since this scales with the danger level, it could remain viable through all levels.
-Healing scaled to target. For one thing it addresses the oddity of CLW healing a 1st level PC with his intestines dangling out, but only a bruise on a 10th level PC. So CLW might not scale off the caster, but the target (or both).
-Better Heal skill. It'd be nice to have a way to patch minor wounds after every battle in a mundane way. Say 1 h.p./level of patient if wounded last battle (max. whatever they took).

Example spell:
Cure Light Wounds: Cure 5 h.p. or 1 h.p. per level of target.
Cure Moderate Wounds: Cure 10 h.p. or 2 h.p. per level of target.
Etc.
If randomness still preferred it they could be as PF1 except also with min. 1 h.p. per level of target.

Lastly, I think there needs to be in-combat healing of some sort, even if a more limited resource than what PF1 had. This is not only because of boss battles, but of chain battles where several encounters are triggered due to an alarm and the PCs are besieged.

Cheers.


I generally only read these forums but as a long time RPer and GM I feel I have to point out my own observations regarding healing in our campaigns.

First off, in combat healing is generally seen as bad because it's better to stop the opponent who did the damage than to heal said damage.

This is partly due to how healing is an attrition resource, there is no risk or reward in general in casting the cure spell. The cleric/oracle/whatever can often turn into a walking medkit which the others go to when they need patching up but it's not very involving for the person who does it.

From this standpoint the whole mechanic could use some improving.

One way is simply to remove healing and say that everyone heals this much upon a short rest etc. This removes the problem by removing the mechanic but it also removes one "role" from the game which some people like.

The other way of adjusting it would be to make healing itself more fun so that it isn't seen as a tedium which has to be done but rather something that could be fun and engaging gameplay.

Can we make healing spells crit? (Add a to-hit roll for healing where, if necessary you can just remove the natural 1 aspect of it) If you roll an uneven number on that to-hit roll, add some other effect to the healing etc? Alot could be done if we are redesigning the system.

Anything to make healing more fun would be my choice. Give the heal skill some love as a means to have the scarred soldier patch his wounds up, remove the wands, keep potions and scrolls and add more interesting healing options for the person who plays the healer to avoid the walking medkit situation.


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I have never been in a Pathfinder campaign where in-combat healing has not been seen as a valid and useful option.

At worst it is unnecessary because the battle can be won without it.


doomman47 wrote:
Bloodrealm wrote:
Wheeljack wrote:


Eliminate the need for healing magic between fights too. Heal up with a rest.
And that is the one and only thing 5E did right. The Short Rest mechanic was a good idea.
on paper it looks good, but in practice with our groups nearly 2 years of playing 5e for a campaign we never once used the short rest....

A 4e short rest is 5 minutes, a 5e one is an hour. There are a lot of good reasons not to stop for an hour in the middle of an adventure.

Make the heal skill standard for between-combat healing, and keep it vague. It could be prayer and faith healing or bandages and herb lore or Chinese traditional medicine or healing songs. Keep wands and potions as a rarer and better option if available, real magic, not just something that's mandatory for having fun and not dying.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

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I don't want this game to turn into World of Warcraft where it's more about out-sustaining your enemies than playing smart and using tactics to avoid getting hit.


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RumpinRufus wrote:

This is walking a fine line. What I absolutely DO NOT want to see is that it's REQUIRED to have a "healer" in the party.

If you make in-combat healing too strong, and have to balance encounters to accommodate significant in-combat healing, then it's much more likely we go back to the days of the last player who creates their character getting strong-armed into playing a cleric.

I submitted my Healing domain cleric first, before anybody else. Nobody's getting strong-armed in *my* group. Well.. we did force someone to be a meat-shield...but that's a different thread.

As it stands right now, most of the ... um... CharOp people say that unless you're casting heal or mass heal, you've wasted a turn and are a drag on the party. That needs to stop. Right now. And that means more power for in-combat healing (prior to Heal+ anyhow).

I agree that they have to be careful about how much power is added, but that's no different than any other class or feature.

Norlore wrote:

The other way of adjusting it would be to make healing itself more fun so that it isn't seen as a tedium which has to be done but rather something that could be fun and engaging gameplay.

Can we make healing spells crit? (Add a to-hit roll for healing where, if necessary you can just remove the natural 1 aspect of it) If you roll an uneven number on that to-hit roll, add some other effect to the healing etc? Alot could be done if we are redesigning the system.

I added some suggestions about that in my own thread, like more varieties in the way healing can be delivered. Your crit suggestion sounds interesting too.

Cyrad wrote:
I don't want this game to turn into World of Warcraft where it's more about out-sustaining your enemies than playing smart and using tactics to avoid getting hit.

What sort of tactics are you talking about here? Not being clustered in a tight group, or what?

It's not like tactics are going to disappear with enhanced healing. Enemy has a healing-focused cleric, oracle, or such? Instead of just walking to the nearest thing and full-attacking until it's dead, maybe setting up some flanking on the enemy healer and using that CMB for something more creative is a good idea? Or perhaps counterspelling? Are they doing that to YOUR healer? Maybe defending her might be a good idea. If done right, it expands tactics rather than shrinking them.

To put another way, playing smart and using tactics to avoid having the enemy team constantly regenerating.


Well we've seen a little on healing in the Podcast. Dice used seems to be down (Pally Lay on Hands I think was 1d4 or 1d6 with feat) but Flat bonus for Caster Modifier is up because it's now Level + Attribute Modifier.

Channel Energy had 3 options depending on how many Actions you spent on it
1 Action - Single Target touch heal
2 Actions - Burst Heal
3 Actions - Burst Heal+Harm but only Caster Modifier amount with no save allowed.

Also 1st level HPs seem to have doubled


There are lots of viable ways for a game system to deal with healing.

D&D/PF have created their own fantasy genre, and moving too far from that will mean the game won't feel like D&D/PF anymore. This is the trouble D&D 4e got into.

Resting to recover Fatigue (HPs that recover quickly) was part of the old Dragon Quest game in the 1980s. It worked well. But it doesn't feel like D&D/PF. Moving from an existing system to a very different system is disrupting to long-term games.

Things will be easier on me if they don't make large changes here. If they want to add new options, that works out, specially if they can be turned on/off via Hero Lab.


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Wheeljack wrote:
doomman47 wrote:
Bloodrealm wrote:
Wheeljack wrote:


Eliminate the need for healing magic between fights too. Heal up with a rest.
And that is the one and only thing 5E did right. The Short Rest mechanic was a good idea.
on paper it looks good, but in practice with our groups nearly 2 years of playing 5e for a campaign we never once used the short rest....

A 4e short rest is 5 minutes, a 5e one is an hour. There are a lot of good reasons not to stop for an hour in the middle of an adventure.

Make the heal skill standard for between-combat healing, and keep it vague. It could be prayer and faith healing or bandages and herb lore or Chinese traditional medicine or healing songs. Keep wands and potions as a rarer and better option if available, real magic, not just something that's mandatory for having fun and not dying.

Oh, I was thinking 5E's short rest was 10 minutes for some reason. Yikes. Okay, so 5E didn't even do that right. I still like the concept of the short rest, though, and using your number and size of hit dice to fuel it (rather than the ridiculous Resolve Point and Stamina Point farce Starfinder has for its equivalent). Using the Heal skill to tie in to it would also be good, I agree.


RumpinRufus wrote:

This is walking a fine line. What I absolutely DO NOT want to see is that it's REQUIRED to have a "healer" in the party.

If you make in-combat healing too strong, and have to balance encounters to accommodate significant in-combat healing, then it's much more likely we go back to the days of the last player who creates their character getting strong-armed into playing a cleric.

That assumes only clerics are allowed to heal. That is in no way required in a new edition.

For my part, I would like them to make hit point restoration proportional. So if you have 10x the hit points, the same ability would give you approximately 10x the hit points back.

I would also like them to stop referring to hit point restoration as "healing", but I may be fighting an uphill battle on that one...

_
glass.


The thing about the "free healing during a short rest" everyone always praises about 4th/5th editions and wants added to Pathfinder is that Pathfinder already had that in the form of a healer's kit and a heal skill check.


I like healing falling with arcane: one action per component. It adds drama and forces RP.

Make healers PRAY. Why not?

I started with AD&D. It cost something to cast. 3.0 freed casters. PF2 needs to reign casters in. Make magic expensive.


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TheFlyingPhoton wrote:
The thing about the "free healing during a short rest" everyone always praises about 4th/5th editions and wants added to Pathfinder is that Pathfinder already had that in the form of a healer's kit and a heal skill check.

(Checks Core Rulebook.)

Nope. Heal skill only works during a long rest or to keep someone from bleeding out.


Matthew Downie wrote:
TheFlyingPhoton wrote:
The thing about the "free healing during a short rest" everyone always praises about 4th/5th editions and wants added to Pathfinder is that Pathfinder already had that in the form of a healer's kit and a heal skill check.

(Checks Core Rulebook.)

Nope. Heal skill only works during a long rest or to keep someone from bleeding out.

The heal skill

Quote:
Treat Deadly Wounds: 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. You must expend two uses from a healer's kit to perform this task. You take a –2 penalty on your Heal skill check for each use from the healer's kit that you lack.
Quote:
Action: Providing first aid, treating a wound, or treating poison is a standard action. Treating a disease or tending a creature wounded by a spike growth or spike stones spell takes 10 minutes of work. Treating deadly wounds takes 1 hour of work. Providing long-term care requires 8 hours of light activity.


Oh yeah, you're right. I somehow always ignore/forget that bit.

I guess the difference from other systems with short rest mechanics is, an hour of work for a tiny amount of healing for one character doesn't feel remotely adequate for extending the adventuring day. It even costs 10gp worth of healer's kit to use; compare that to 15gp per use of a wand of Cure Light Wounds, which doesn't take an hour, and isn't limited to once per day.


Starfinder Charter Superscriber
glass wrote:
RumpinRufus wrote:

This is walking a fine line. What I absolutely DO NOT want to see is that it's REQUIRED to have a "healer" in the party.

If you make in-combat healing too strong, and have to balance encounters to accommodate significant in-combat healing, then it's much more likely we go back to the days of the last player who creates their character getting strong-armed into playing a cleric.

That assumes only clerics are allowed to heal. That is in no way required in a new edition.

For my part, I would like them to make hit point restoration proportional. So if you have 10x the hit points, the same ability would give you approximately 10x the hit points back.

I would also like them to stop referring to hit point restoration as "healing", but I may be fighting an uphill battle on that one...

_
glass.

I'm totally with you on this one, glass. Especially on the proportional healing bit. Trying to say Hit Points aren't meat, but not having proportional healing never made any sense to me.

To change terminology, you'll need to come up with an alternate term a lot more elegant than 'hit point restoration', though.


So are we thinking its just gonna be hp no resolve+stamina?


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After thinking about this for some additional time and reading Kerrilyn's earlier post on the matter as well as having a lengthy discussion with 2 people who tend to play healers in our group I came to a few conclusions. The current system for healing focused characters feel static both in the diversity of actions during combat as well as the build/diversity. Healing is safe, there is little variation in it and it is a resource which gradually gets drained throughout the adventuring day. This has some positive aspects as it gives a sense of tension when they are running low on resources and at the same time every encounter becomes important in trying to reduce the resources spent.

Unfortunately, the straight up mechanics of most healing effects make them dull and both healers did express that they sometimes just felt like walking medkits for the rest of the party.

1. A general review of the cure spells for the divine spell casters. They are definitely on the low-end powerwise until you reach the Heal spell. If you can use your action and not even negate the damage a fighter takes from an opposing fighter in 1 round despite using your highest level spell slot is a problem in itself.

2. Diversify the different ways of healing. Heals which linger for several rounds at a lower pace, quick 1-2 action heals which can be used in an emergency. A feat which adds a temporary hp-buffer to yourself if you cast a cure spell on someone else?

3. Shamelessly stolen from Kerrilyn's post on the matter but healing spells which add other effects for a short time after the heal. Maybe even a heal which has an extra effect if the receiving target took damage during the last round? Heals which affect everything in a line (including enemies?). An additional effect if someone was recently crit? There are alot of possibilities and it would reward using the right heal at the right time and location.

4. If there are warlord type classes or archetypes then add ways for them to give people temporary hp as their ways of healing. Fits the theme of "inspirational leader" and still doesn't give some unexplained healing effect lore-wise to the world.

5. One point I've seen raised is the balance factor where a party with a healer would be more effective than one without. I can't see a major problem with this in itself, after all a party with an arcane caster is usually more powerful than a party without one. The problem which we should put effort into should rather be to turn the healing role into a more active and diversified role where people can choose to create their characters in different ways and which hopefully would increase player satisfaction during the game.

5. Naturally healers must be able to do other things except heal but just a quick look at clerics and oracles does this pretty well in the current iteration in my opinion.

6. Add bandages and enable the heal skill to be a valuable skill for fighters or other non-healing classes for downtime healing. Potions could cover the need for in-combat healing. (Though that healing probably needs to be stronger as well, see my first point regarding the cure spells.)

I believe this would add more depth and enjoyment to that aspect of the game.


Vidmaster7 wrote:
So are we thinking its just gonna be hp no resolve+stamina?

In the Know Direction podcast with Erik Mona and Logan, they were asked if there would be Stamina, and the answer was an outright no, that it would just be HP.


From what we've heard, out of combat healing may be a thing, but the economic return on investing in 20 wands of CLW is being over turned.


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RumpinRufus wrote:

This is walking a fine line. What I absolutely DO NOT want to see is that it's REQUIRED to have a "healer" in the party.

If you make in-combat healing too strong, and have to balance encounters to accommodate significant in-combat healing, then it's much more likely we go back to the days of the last player who creates their character getting strong-armed into playing a cleric.

The simple key here is NOT to 'balance around the healer.'

'healer' is typically seen as a role less fun than others, it should come with great rewards and commensurate great risks against enemies intelligent enough to identify somebody dishing out healing magic.

Make a dedicated healer (not a casual cleric who throws out healing when he chooses ro) a huge asset to a party but balance the game on the assumption half of parties won't have one.


Bloodrealm wrote:
Wheeljack wrote:
doomman47 wrote:
Bloodrealm wrote:
Wheeljack wrote:


Eliminate the need for healing magic between fights too. Heal up with a rest.
And that is the one and only thing 5E did right. The Short Rest mechanic was a good idea.
on paper it looks good, but in practice with our groups nearly 2 years of playing 5e for a campaign we never once used the short rest....

A 4e short rest is 5 minutes, a 5e one is an hour. There are a lot of good reasons not to stop for an hour in the middle of an adventure.

Make the heal skill standard for between-combat healing, and keep it vague. It could be prayer and faith healing or bandages and herb lore or Chinese traditional medicine or healing songs. Keep wands and potions as a rarer and better option if available, real magic, not just something that's mandatory for having fun and not dying.

Oh, I was thinking 5E's short rest was 10 minutes for some reason. Yikes. Okay, so 5E didn't even do that right. I still like the concept of the short rest, though, and using your number and size of hit dice to fuel it (rather than the ridiculous Resolve Point and Stamina Point farce Starfinder has for its equivalent). Using the Heal skill to tie in to it would also be good, I agree.

Short rest is 10m in Starfinder, maybe that's why you mixed them up


Just as a spark for brainstorming, what if there were as many healing options as there were damaging options? (energy variants aside)

Ex. To mirror Acid Arrow, there could be a divine spell which cures 2-8 h.p per round for 1 round + 1 rd./3 levels. (those wouldn't necessarily be the target numbers, but along those lines)

Similar mirroring:
Vampiric Touch: Healer & healed gain 1d6/2 levels.
Scorching Ray: 4d6 positive energy as ranged touch attack
Fireball: Too strong if it harms undead too, but also heals living foes, or maybe they're temp hit points that fade fast or borrowed hit points that go away like a Con boost would.
Magic Missile: Inerrant healing fairies go out and heal 2-5 each.
These mostly seem balanced on first pass. Hmm...
And then there are Healing Tentacles!!! (Maybe they free you!)

This all brings to mind a meta-question of what's the appropriate power level of healing vs. damaging? Or healing vs. PC h.p.? Or as some have mentioned vs. PC level? Or maybe vs. ave. monster damage?
In some game systems there's parity, many seem to favor damage, but some favor defense. I have found it anti-climactic to have one PC undo a BBEG's round of damage, especially if it was their one big trick. But don't we sometimes need that to survive? Hmm...


To bring an example of some game released recently, which may or may not have some of it's spells influenced by NPF, in Starfinfer the healing spell heals:
1d8+ WIS at 1
3d8+ WIS at 2
5d8+ WIS at 3
12d8+WIS at 4
16d8+WIS at 5
20d8+WIS at 6.


Norlore wrote:


3. Shamelessly stolen from Kerrilyn's post on the matter but healing spells which add other effects for a short time after the heal. Maybe even a heal which has an extra effect if the receiving target took damage during the last round? Heals which affect everything in a line (including enemies?). An additional effect if someone was recently crit? There are alot of possibilities and it would reward using the right heal at the right time and location.

It's not stealing, btw. I consider my posts here to be under OGL terms. Free for everybody to use. Yay OGL!

And yep yep, my vision included enemies being healed by area-type spells (lines/cones/etc). That would make it more interesting. Also undead being damaged.


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A Reddit report from Garycon said there’s a limit on how many use activated magic items you can use per day, which included wands. His was only 1+Cha, so spamming CLW wands won’t work anymore and you’ll have to invest in higher level cures at some point. It also makes shields more valuable if you can’t heal cheaply between fights.


hmmmm..... yeah not a fan of that. Pretty sure we saw that sort of limit on magic items back with 4E


Xenocrat wrote:
A Reddit report from Garycon said there’s a limit on how many use activated magic items you can use per day, which included wands. His was only 1+Cha, so spamming CLW wands won’t work anymore and you’ll have to invest in higher level cures at some point. It also makes shields more valuable if you can’t heal cheaply between fights.

Well there might be changes in the rules that make healing outside combat much easier with new things for example, so it is easily to assume what one would need or not.

BUT, if we assume the other rules will continue the way they are, then all this means is that someone will have to take the fall and bother with healing, or the party will literally fight one, go home, fight again, go home...


Nox Aeterna wrote:
Xenocrat wrote:
A Reddit report from Garycon said there’s a limit on how many use activated magic items you can use per day, which included wands. His was only 1+Cha, so spamming CLW wands won’t work anymore and you’ll have to invest in higher level cures at some point. It also makes shields more valuable if you can’t heal cheaply between fights.

Well there might be changes in the rules that make healing outside combat much easier with new things for example, so it is easily to assume what one would need or not.

BUT, if we assume the other rules will continue the way they are, then all this means is that someone will have to take the fall and bother with healing, or the party will literally fight one, go home, fight again, go home...

Higher 1st level hit points will alivate that a little but I generally agree. it kind of plays into the 15 minute workday. Kind of depends on what that Limit of use applies to. It includes wands but does it include Potions and Scrolls?


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Healing works just fine in Pathfinder.

OK, there might be an issue or two with bards and druids and such healing, but if you put very minimal effort into healing, it works just fine.

Quick note: Many issues that crop up around healing are caused by player/GM choices without addressing the consequences. Houserules or unusual playstyles require adjusting healing. Healing works just fine in the standard game, but if you play a non-standard game, you need to adjust healing as well.

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