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So by these numbers, a Cleric using nothing but Channel can pump out more healing than an Alchemist, Bard or Paladin specced for healing and ties with a Druid - and the Cleric still has all of their other class features and spells left.
THIS is why I've been saying Channel Energy is excessive, and massively contributes to the "Cleric problem". And I assume those numbers are without the Healing domain...
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Goodberry is very problematic, because the ability is dependent on you being able to find fresh-picked berries. Even something as simple as a campaign set in the season of winter will completely shut that down.
I find it ironic that you did not even mention the Angelic Sorcerer.
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I find it ironic that you did not even mention the Angelic Sorcerer.
As soon as we get the Sorcerer dedication feat line it'll be completely obsolete by Cleric/Sorcerer multiclass anyways. Literally the only thing divine sorcs have over clerics is magical striker (technically clerics can get it right now with wizard multiclass, but 16 int is too prohibitive for most cleric builds. 16 cha, on the other hand, is pretty easy to hit).
Goodberry is very problematic, because the ability is dependent on you being able to find fresh-picked berries. Even something as simple as a campaign set in the season of winter will completely shut that down.
Some berries do last through the winter though. :)
I guess it just makes the Survival DC higher.However, I can see a nitpicky DM willing to screw over their players argue that there simply are no berries to be found around you and thus cutting all healing options from the Druid outside of your very few spellslots.
As soon as we get the Sorcerer dedication feat line it'll be completely obsolete by Cleric/Sorcerer multiclass anyways.
I just want to ask (genuinely, not trying to disagree or start an argument here, just really wondering): what makes you think so?
I expect the Sorcerer archetype to provide you with limited spontaneous casting and maybe the ability to cherry pick a few feats.
Just like the Wizard and Cleric archetypes, in truth.
At the moment, I would much rather go Cleric than Angelic Sorcerer.
Why would I want to go Cleric/Sorcerer over just Cleric?
The few extra spells you gain cost you some very nice class feats and it's not like the Sorcerer can pay you back with a lot of those...
I mean, Clerics are really strong on their own right now and I don't think an archetype is going to make them much stronger. If anything, players who want to be healers will just go Cleric over Sorcerer, like they already do.
The channel energy one is just for channeling positive energy. Adding the class feat "Healing Hands" would add 8-48 to each of the levels. It really seems wrong that they have an ability that gives them 3+cha spell slots of the highest level. Even though it is only for healing it's still extreme.I regard this as a feature rather than a bug, fwiw.
Me too. Cleric is working well. You can have solid healing without being a healer (for recovery or an emergency save), having spells and feats for offense instead. Healing Hands is a cool feat in that it gives you more ways to use Heal when you can get extra actions to spare. If you try actually be a full on support, you can rock at it.
Let's have more of that to spread around.
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are we actually complaining that clerics are the best healers? clerics have always been the best healers in all editions of dungeon and dragons granted no one noticed in pathfinder 1 because the class was replaced by the wand of CLW.
are we actually complaining that clerics are the best healers? clerics have always been the best healers in all editions of dungeon and dragons granted no one noticed in pathfinder 1 because the class was replaced by the wand of CLW.
It's a matter of the scale.
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are we actually complaining that clerics are the best healers?
Better than the next two options combined is the issue. There is better and there is in a totally different league altogether.
Some berries do last through the winter though. :)
I know they exist, but I've never seen any berries in the winter myself (and there are plenty of berries that grow wild around here). I don't know whether it's just something I've never seen because I'm not a wilderness survival guy, or if it's a regional thing, so I'll let that lie.
But even if we set aside the Winter issue, there are still things like deserts, or travel by boat, or being stuck inside of a dungeon with no naturally growing plants, or being on a hostile plane, or just not having time to forage at the end of the day for fresh berries.
I just want to ask (genuinely, not trying to disagree or start an argument here, just really wondering): what makes you think so?
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At the moment, I would much rather go Cleric than Angelic Sorcerer.
Why would I want to go Cleric/Sorcerer over just Cleric?
I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm saying that Cleric/Sorcerer multiclass will completely obsolete single-class divine sorcerer. I'm not talking about single-class clerics at all, which I expect will remain incredibly powerful without any dedication feats required.
The combo in question is using a 1-action heal to target an ally or yourself, which trigger the magical striker feat. This basically means you get a massive damage buff on your next attack every time you heal. Right now this combo is unique to Divine Sorcerers (which, I agree, are otherwise just plain inferior to clerics), and as soon as the multiclass dedication becomes available even that niche will be pulled out from under them and cleric will be strictly superior in every way.
Better than the next two options combined is the issue. There is better and there is in a totally different league altogether.
My problem isn't necessarily that the clerics are better at healing than others, but rather that they get so many more daily resources than any other class. No one else gets 3+cha extra spells at their highest spell level, or anything remotely like that.
are we actually complaining that clerics are the best healers?Better than the next two options combined is the issue. There is better and there is in a totally different league altogether.
and it should. all one has to do is look at the cleric spell list, and look at the cleric class abilities.
those other classes have far superior spell list and class abilites and feats that have nothing to do with healing. litterly everything single class feat the cleric gets is dedicated to making it a better healer or involved with channel energy or turn undead in some way.
if would be riduclous that a class that has obviously been designed from the ground up to heal, wasn't far and way the best healer.
What the figher is for martial prowess, the cleric is to healing.
and if you played the playtest, you will see you can get by with other healers just fine. so again, I dont see the point in making the cleric worst at the one thing it has been designed from the ground up to do.
Further after playing the playtest you see exactly that was the point of this class. it's endurance healing. it's a very ingenious way to balance the class.
Those other healing class get the job and do other things. the thing the cleric adds is endurance healing. it cant give you the offensive potential of those other classes, or even the utility, but a cleric will allow you to fight longer and use less resources. which is not something that will unbalance the game. this is much better a design than the 3.0 cleric designed which turned the class into a can do everything great. it was designed to be a supreme healer and contrary to popular belief lots of people have no issues being a dedicated healer.
and it should.
And that's where I disagree as it means that the other classes have no reason to go the healing route because they are so inferior to the cleric. It give the false illusion of having healing options where there is really only one: the cleric. Anyone taking another option just feels like the red headed stepchild: a clear second class character as the cleric can do your job without touching it's spell points or spell slots...
And that's the issue: cleric is the only class that get a whole class worth of abilities on top of it's other abilities. A fighter doesn't get it's weapon abilities AND the skill abilities of a rogue. A druid doesn't get ranger abilities on top of it's abilities. But a cleric has a full set of healing then has the equivalent of sorcerer abilities on top of that: they get to be a class+ while all the other are stuck being a normal class [or a bit less with the alchemist].
No matter how you look at it, the cleric just gets MORE than other classes.
What do you think about changing channel energy
Channel energy doesn't necessarily need changing but other classes would need a channel energy type pool for parity. For instance, a school pool for wizards or blood pool for sorcerers or a deception pool for thieves or a stamina pool for fighters or a nature pool for rangers or a rage pool for barbarians or a ki pool for monks or toss out resonence and make the alchemist use a alchemy pool.
So clerics don't need reduced in power if they are willing to bump up everyone elses power.
This is something I've been focused on since our first session. Not due to resonance, since I don't think resonance, decoupled from healing, is really the issue (outside of alchemist, since no one has had interest in playing an alchemist in our group, we just haven't seen how much that affects things), but that having a "healer" is ultimately required. And by "healer" that means not just someone who can heal, but someone who spends most of their slots on healing (or is a cleric), and I hope that this is something that Paizo sees as needing fixing. Because otherwise, I don't see their business model of APs working out, unless the "Well, someone needs to be the cleric" problem is solved.
Now, I will say, I don't actually see Resonance, or Channel Energy, as the problem, but focusing on resonance as healing definitely highlights the true problem, even if it is not the actual problem. And what I see as the problem is that, ideally, a healer is desired but not required for any group. And that healer's capabilities might vary between classes, but a healer's role will never be required, nor will a class that decides to fill that role ever feel like they are unable to do anything else but heal. But the issue that I see that isn't addressed either by resonance or by most resonance antagonists, is that healing is not what should be the purview of resonance (in absence of a cleric), and if healing is to play into resonance, it should be as a last resort.
To this end, I purport that some free healing, enough to get through most non-emergency scenarios, be provided to characters, and any healing provided by spells or channel energy be reserved for those emergency scenarios that go beyond that free healing. Lacking that class specific healing, Potions or extracts can fill the void, but at the cost of resonance, though this is a more last case scenario, as ideally, in most cases, resonance is more valuable for things other than healing. As such, to ensure that the gap is narrowed between parties with abundant healing and those without, I believe that channel energy should be nerfed (and if the cleric or other such classes are suddenly underpowered by that, which I believe would be the case, buff those classes accordingly).
In the end, I think the problem to be solved isn't individual classes' healing potential or resonance, but the lack of healing potential outside of the classes who explicitly provide it. I don't expect this to be easy to balance for, given that classes will have explicit healing potential outside any individual character's healing potential, but I think that balance is necessary, and a more worthwhile endeavor than trying to balance resonance or channel energy to solve this issue.
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No one is arguing to make Clerics the worst - or even not the best - they are just arguing that Clerics shouldn't be SO much better that a party without a Cleric feels seriously disadvantaged.
Also if Clerics are designed to be healers from the ground up, then we have another problem, because that means that evil Clerics are an anemic class option (which does seem to basically be the case right now).
Also if Clerics are designed to be healers from the ground up, then we have another problem, because that means that evil Clerics are an anemic class option (which does seem to basically be the case right now).
I've done a little bit of mock combat with negative channel clerics, and they seem pretty decent; they can let loose with their highest level spell slots for offensive purposes in a way that other classes cannot. The problem is that everyone else in the party suffers for lack of a dedicated healer if you do this. What good is having enough harm spells to nova through 3 or 4 encounters if the rest of the party needs to stop to rest after the first fight? I think we should wait for the 10-minute adventuring day to be addressed before we cast judgement here; negative channel clerics may well be fine.
Goodberry is very problematic, because the ability is dependent on you being able to find fresh-picked berries. Even something as simple as a campaign set in the season of winter will completely shut that down.
It is a bit problematic but in a lot of areas berries can still be found in winter such as things like wintergreen berries and things like juniper berries.
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I'm still working through the numbers, but the cleric's free healing is enough to take the entire party from 0 to max at least once per day. The druid can manage, maybe, half the party. Sorcerers can... yeah, no, they don't really get free healing in a significant quantity (theirs is sufficient to take an average character from 0 to half once per day).
Once I've done the analysis on the alchemist, bard, and paladin, I'll post some charts. And decided if I need to include magic items in the other classes since alchemists spend their resonance to do their healing.
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Alright, so I crunched the numbers. Once this is more refined, I may start a separate thread on it.
Anyway, here's the spreadsheet:
Clerics start with a Wisdom of 18 and push it hard (including the magic item at level 15). The starting Charisma is 16 and it receives normal bumps.. The cleric in the example is a Cleric of Sarenrae and maximizes her spell pool for Healing Font/Healer's Blessing use. The cleric also favors single target heals with Healing Hands whenever possible.
Druids are Order of the Leaf. They start with a Wisdom of 18 and push it hard (including the magic item at level 15). She then grabs the few abilities that boost her Spell Pool to get more Goodberries.
Paladins start with a Charisma of 16 and give it normal bumps. Abilities are mostly chosen to maximize spell pool but I didn't go the extra step of taking a second domain for another 3 SP ability. This would grant an additional 2 uses of Heal per day around level 10 and onward.
Sorcerers start off with a Charisma of 18 and push it hard (including the magic item at level 15). Divine Evolution is the only ability that appears to assist with healing and it would be taken at level 4.
Low is an elf wizard that never invests further in CON.
Mid is a PC putting forth moderate effort with a +1 CON at 1st level and 8 HP per level.
High is a Dwarven barbarian that takes Toughness at level 3.
Analysis by Class
At the end of the analysis (and level 20), the ranking goes Cleric, Bard, Druid, Sorcerer, Paladin assuming that character dedicates everything they can to healing. When you delve into it a little more closely, the divide is both worse and more interesting.
Bards start out with the worst healing. This is because Soothe is strictly inferior to Heal and their spells per day are lower. Bards surpass Paladins around level 5 when the extra spell slots start to overcome the Champion Pool. On the other hand, the bard's throughput is worse. At level 14, things get really messy with the very potent Soothing Ballad. This is an AOE heal that hits up to 10 total people for a pretty good chunk of healing. I based the analysis numbers off hitting four people, but a larger party (or a smaller one, or one where only a few people consistently get wounded) would see different numbers. In the end, this ability is all that keeps them from being pretty bad at healing by comparison.
Clerics are the best by all measures. The Free Healing column assumes the cleric dumps all Spell Points into Healing Font (and tosses a point into Healer's Blessing when there's one left) and makes liberal use of Healing Hands. In terms of free healing, the cleric starts the strongest and ends the strongest. Overall, that's also true, though the variability of the bard might produce specific results that are different.
Druids are far behind clerics, but not terrible. The biggest issue the druid faces is the fact that their goodberry spell turns out to be flat-out stupid from a logistical sense. In order for a level 20 druid to hand out all his free healing, he has to have 200 berries to enchant and his group has to eat, individually, those 200 berries. This leads to his throughput on free healing being the absolute worst of the bunch (really only suitable for out-of-combat or the occasional "now you're not dying" patch-up).
Paladins are an interesting one because pretty much all of their healing is free. It starts strong, but tapers off gradually as the realities of the Champion Pool's slow increase sets in. Because healing will never be more than a Paladin's secondary role, this is probably okay, though. Their throughput is good, at least, making them a solid spot healer.
Sorcerers are in a weird place. Their healing potential is the lowest of the casters and almost none of it comes from a "free" resource. It's all spell slots. This can mean the sorcerer is versatile, but it can also easily leave the sorcerer as a heal-bot.
I left out magic items. Alchemists are entirely magic item healing, and so you can't really analyze them beside the other healers without adding that factor. I'll leave it to someone else to delve into that realm.
I assumed you obtain your stat booster at 15. I also assumed that all casters would take it in their primary attribute.
Did I make some errors? Incorrect assumptions? Bad math? Let me know and I'll look at it.
The biggest issue the druid faces is the fact that their goodberry spell turns out to be flat-out stupid from a logistical sense. In order for a level 20 druid to hand out all his free healing, he has to have 200 berries to enchant and his group has to eat, individually, those 200 berries.
This is one of the things I find curious. A lot of people seemed up at arms over CLW because it feels stupid and out of place to repeatedly tap someone with the wand... But no one seems bothered by sitting down and eating 100 berries in a row...
As to logistics, just HOW do you find 200 berries a day, 365 days out of the year? How many plants are decimated when you take 73000 berries a year.
The biggest issue the druid faces is the fact that their goodberry spell turns out to be flat-out stupid from a logistical sense. In order for a level 20 druid to hand out all his free healing, he has to have 200 berries to enchant and his group has to eat, individually, those 200 berries.This is one of the things I find curious. A lot of people seemed up at arms over CLW because it feels stupid and out of place to repeatedly tap someone with the wand... But no one seems bothered by sitting down and eating 100 berries in a row...
As to logistics, just HOW do you find 200 berries a day, 365 days out of the year? How many plants are decimated when you take 73000 berries a year.
The nice thing about goodberry compared to cwl spam is it has the built in you ate all the berries in the area limiting factor if you feel it is being abused. The GM can also rule there simply are no fresh berries in that area as it is not the right season for them.
The biggest issue the druid faces is the fact that their goodberry spell turns out to be flat-out stupid from a logistical sense. In order for a level 20 druid to hand out all his free healing, he has to have 200 berries to enchant and his group has to eat, individually, those 200 berries.This is one of the things I find curious. A lot of people seemed up at arms over CLW because it feels stupid and out of place to repeatedly tap someone with the wand... But no one seems bothered by sitting down and eating 100 berries in a row...
As to logistics, just HOW do you find 200 berries a day, 365 days out of the year? How many plants are decimated when you take 73000 berries a year.
I am pretty sure the answer is in most areas you probably don't. That said in some areas such as those with juniper trees that have berries nearly year round in pretty large number.
Also good berry lets you use a lot of berries that normally would be completely inedible to people. There are a lot of berries that get ignored year round simply because only specific animals/birds can digest them without problems. Good berry just needs A freshly picked berry and then transmutes it into something nourishing. This opens your choices up a great deal for what you are using.
As to logistics, just HOW do you find 200 berries a day, 365 days out of the year? How many plants are decimated when you take 73000 berries a year.
Having done berry-picking as a kid, I can tell you that picking 200 berries by hand in the wild is hard work. If you actually have to move around while doing it, it could easily take many hours of foraging.
Also good berry lets you use a lot of berries that normally would be completely inedible to people.
No it doesn't. Goodberry says nothing about making poisonous berries safe to eat.
The GM can also rule there simply are no fresh berries in that area as it is not the right season for them.
This is a serious flaw, in my view. It means the GM is put in the spot of having to decide what arbitrary threshold causes one of the player's primary class features to stop functioning. That's unfair to both the player and the GM.
As to logistics, just HOW do you find 200 berries a day, 365 days out of the year? How many plants are decimated when you take 73000 berries a year.Having done berry-picking as a kid, I can tell you that picking 200 berries by hand in the wild is hard work. If you actually have to move around while doing it, it could easily take many hours of foraging.
Also good berry lets you use a lot of berries that normally would be completely inedible to people.No it doesn't. Goodberry says nothing about making poisonous berries safe to eat.
The GM can also rule there simply are no fresh berries in that area as it is not the right season for them.This is a serious flaw, in my view. It means the GM is put in the spot of having to decide what arbitrary threshold causes one of the player's primary class features to stop functioning. That's unfair to both the player and the GM.
one freshly-picked berry
Duration 1 dayYou imbue the target berry with the bounty of nature, allowing
it to heal and sustain far beyond its normal capacity. A living
creature that eats the berry with an Interact action gains as much
nourishment as a square meal for a typical human and regains 1d4
Hit Points plus your spellcasting ability modifier. If not consumed
during the duration, the berry withers away.
Heightened (+1) You can target an additional berry.
There is nothing indicating any limitations for what berry is used only that they be freshly picked. A lot of berries are also not so much poisonous as they are simply inedible due to being too bitter or otherwise taste god awful that nothing other than selected species eat them. If you can magically transform that to something that is tasty it opens up a lot of berries that other animals/birds are just ignoring.
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Oh, I just realized that Goodberry has another annoyance to it. It takes 10 minutes for every single casting. Even at the lowest levels, that's potentially a lot of time spent doing nothing but making magical berries.
I'd feel better about the ability if it simply produced a small plant with 3+CHA berries on it that each healed 1d6+mod heightened by 2d6 per berry. You're left with slightly less healing than heal and the need for the person eating the berry to take Interact actions (which is kind of a wash), but the healing would be easier and cleaner. And just give it to all druids instead of locking it into one order.
While I'm at it, sorcerers need a better option, either through a real Channel Energy pool or something else. And bards could do with something, too, though I'd rather see them get an easy way to hand out THP than more raw healing.
I think goodberry is fine it is not there for a combat healing but if you are taking a rest break in an area that has berries they can be used to help boost your parties healing. They also have some built in stuff that if a GM thinks players are abusing the s%%& out of it they can put their foot down and say you have picked the area clean. CLW wands short of making them not available was more difficult to control for things like good berry its a lot easier for a GM to just put their foot down on it if its getting abused.
Goodberry also has a duration of an entire day, which means that you can cast the spell repeatedly when you are not pressed for time to have this resource available later in the day when you might need it on short notice.
If you are using it to prepare the equivalent of a meal, 10 minutes is not too long to spend "cooking".
There is nothing indicating any limitations for what berry is used only that they be freshly picked.
I'm not arguing you can't target it, just that there's nothing in the spell that would remove any harmful properties from the berry. If it was poisonous before, it's still poisonous after.
its a lot easier for a GM to just put their foot down on it if its getting abused.
I cannot disagree with this strongly enough. As a GM, targeting players like this and arbitrarily shutting down their class features is incredibly vindictive. I'm not normally one to critique styles of play, but that's just bad form on the part of the GM if they're doing that. Being able to make use of your own class abilities is a basic expectation of the game, and if you suddenly rob your players of that on a whim you're being a jerk. The fact that the goodberry power puts GM's of potentially having to do that because the environment the PC's are in has few if any naturally occurring berries is a massive flaw.
This is less problematic for abilities with well-defined limitations. Being unable to shoot arrows accurately into the darkness is fine because the limitations of darkness are well-defined and players can work around them. How hard is it to find berries in a mountainous forest in the middle of winter? I have no idea, and I doubt my players do either. This puts the GM in the position of having to delineate an arbitrary line that could be very different from player expectations.
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Playtest rulebook p 186 wrotemateRial Component pouCh This pouch contains material components for those spells that require them. Though the components are used up over time, you can refill spent components during your daily preparationsHe said, " Well it looks like getting berries isn't a problem"
Speaking strictly from a RAW perspective, the berry is the "target" of Goodberry, not a material component. It would not be part of the spell component pouch.
Your GM can (and probably should) handwave it, but there are going to be a lot of situations where having "freshly picked berries" is just not feasible. GMs are free to ignore it, of course, but that shouldn't be the only way the ability functions.
If the ability were obscenely powerful, I might go in for weird arbitrary limits. However... it's not. It's significantly weaker than Channel and making it more finicky is just kicking it while it's down.