Addendum's page

I don't find Kineticist out of combat healing to be "magnitudes" higher than other class features. It's high and it's true that you can potentially take multiple healing impulses, but that's something also available to some classes (Chirurgeon gets to some crazy high out of combat healing at high level).

I'm sure you've read the post I made earlier in the thread where I presented that utilizing just one of the first level healing impulse is healing at least double any of the old class features in exploration mode in a standard 4 person group.

However, admittedly I'd not actually looked at Chirurgeon since its rework. It looks like Chirurgeon at level 19 can use elixir's of life to heal for ~30 per person or roughly 120 in 10 minute intervals. Ocean's Balm, the lower of the two level one healing impulses heals for ~180 at this level per 10 minutes. In this instance Ocean's Balm is only 50% more health than Perpetual Perfection with Elixir's of Life but I'm not sure how I feel about the level 1 feat pulling these numbers comparative to something of such a level, it's a level 19 core feature of chirurgeon after all. That was enlightening though so I appreciate you pointing it out. I'm not sure if it does much to dissuade from the notion that we're seeing a trend given that it got reworked with Treasure Vaults. Interestingly Chirurgeon also does not abide by standard exploration mode activities for their methods of healing out of combat.

Ruzza wrote:

I mean, this is sort of why Garden of Healing is going to be a tough one since it's part of the playtest. I haven't gotten to play with the Animist yet. I feel like the main point of "Exploration mode healing is too powerful" gets muddied with material that isn't in the game yet. The topic of Garden of Healing should really be a topic for the playtest forums.

I agree, this discussion should have been posted on the playtest discussion as it's mostly about Garden of Healing.

I didn't know where to post it. It's possible you are correct and that too much of the thread emphasizes the vast disparity between just Garden of Healing. But I felt as though my overarching concern isn't just the playtest. Kineticist, a class that is already fully released, has healing options that are already healing magnitudes higher than other class feature in out of combat. For reference these impulses are 2-3x more health in exploration mode varying slightly based on which impulses/feats you're comparing. However up to this point Kineticist was an outlier and the vast disparity on those healing options were so isolated that I personally didn't really care enough to draw attention to them.

But the presence of the playtest made me feel as though suddenly out of combat healing isn't being considered at all, or if it is the projected baseline for what is acceptable has shifted up drastically. This is to say that even when we disregard Garden of Healing and Scar of the Survivor given that they're both leagues beyond the norm, Eexemplars Radiant Epithet maintains a similar increase in pacing for out of combat healing numbers. This increase is much akin to what we saw from kineticist, that is to say that it is healing for 1.5-2x times more in exploration mode than our standard baseline.

So, yes I'm drawing comparisons to play to playtest content to show a trend. And subsequently I can see the justification for putting it in the playtest forum instead. But also I'm not so wholly focused on the playtest, instead more towards the projected norm for exploration mode healing in the future.

You're saying that you can't account for every difference, but ignoring them is removing a very important set of data and you're blinding yourself to it. Yes, Fresh Produce is going to heal for more outside of combat, but Rebuke Death wasn't designed to be a powerful out of combat heal.

You've created new standards of measurement which don't have any basis in reality. It's easy to remove things that make measurement hard, but that doesn't make the measurement correct. In a white room, in perfect conditions Fresh Prduce can heal a lot. But it's because those perfect conditions (having 1 to 3 wounded allies within 10 feet who all have a hand free and are able to safely spend an Interact action to heal) are so difficult to achieve, it doesn't function well in Encounter mode.

This is a weird statement. From my perspective you're actually the one that's created new standards. One of the other reasons I picked Rebuke Death in this comparison was because up to this point it was one of the highest out of combat healing options the system had.

3 injured players total of ~33 health granted. Lay on Hands at that level is 24. Hymn of Healing and Life Boost are 32. Goodberry is ~30. The claim that Rebuke Death is a bad out of combat healing tool is tantamount to calling basically every other medicine alternative the game has bad for out of combat. This is to say Rebuke Death is on the higher end of the standard out of combat healing baseline, it even comes with a caveat of trimming down substantial amounts of excess time by topping off multiple people with a single use of an ability instead use of individually using others that might overheal, what I mean by this is that you can game the system into forcing other healing tools into those who have a proportionally higher amount of missing health. Yea no, Rebuke Death is certainly not a bad out of combat healing ability.

Additionally it's not that I'm not considering all of these subsidiary bonuses, they just usually aren't that important of considerations when having discussions like this. I simply don't think these types of differences actually matter much if the goal is to judge a healing abilities ability to heal someone.

Like, if we were watching someone try to compare the value of something like Breath of Life to a Heal spell of the same level I'd be far more inclined to submit that their differences are too vast to make a proper comparison. But something like Rebuke Death and Fresh Produce are not so wildly different in actions and value in combat that they can't be measured against one another.

But alright then, would it make it better for you if I went back to comparing Lay on Hands to Ocean's Balm? Because this is, in my opinion, the most direct one to one comparison that you could possibly make between two healing abilities. Same range, same actions spent, similar healing, same level of access, and to top it off I even thought that their subsidiary effects were something that could possibly be quantified against one another. But when I tried to make such a comparison between these abilities I was told that they were not comparable abilities. It feels like at this rate I'll run out of combat healing tools that I'm able to compare against one another. Perhaps we should just not compare any healing abilities at all! Just throw healing values at the wall because none of the options can be quantified against one another!

Edit: Typos and clarity.

They function entirely differently - a dying character can't spend an action to heal. A character with their hands occupied (either holding a two-handed weapon, a sword and a shield, grappling, or any other number of things) cannot benefit from Fresh Produce. Not to mention that waving away "sure the actions are spent by two different characters" is incredibly disingenuous as to the impact being dramatically different between Encounter mode and Exploration mode - to say nothing that essentially "giving your allied slowed 1" for a minor heal is a risk that many groups cannot take.

You're taking two different applications and reducing them to numbers that have nothing to do with how they function. Yes, that is disingenuous.

Every single healing ability or feat comes with some subsidiary effect. Should I try to somehow quantify value of Fresh produces Void resistance? Should I try to somehow quantify Rebuke Deaths wounded removal? How do I properly compare the value of the two between one another. How do I quantify the value of Fresh Produce not requiring focus points? How much value do focus points have? These types of differences end up not mattering because they all have some extra merit and the goal is to gauge its capacity to *heal*. I use health per action because it's significantly easier to do so and I find that Rebuke Death and Fresh Produce is an interesting thing to compare specifically because of how the action usage lines up so well to its projected healing output.

This metric makes a bit more sense if you view fights as an allotted number actions over the entire combat. The overarching goal is to kill your foes before your group dies. How much value are you getting with each individual action to accomplish this goal. To explain it another way, let's say 3 action rebuke death is used twice, this is 6 actions spent. Can we not then compare 3 total uses of Fresh Produce, or 6 actions spent, to the healing output of Rebuke death to gauge their overall contribution to your teams survival? This is still ~11 health per action spent for Rebuke Death and ~13 health per action spent for Fresh Produce.

This is exactly the sort of thing that you're doing that I find is skewing your point at best, and disenginuous at worst.

Let's actually look at these abilities. They're different. They're very different and you're comparing specific uses of them as if they are the same.

Rebuke Death: Rebuke Death allows a caster to heal up to three targets in a 20 foot emanation and uses a variable number of actions. On top of that, it specifically stops the wounded condition when bringing back dying characters. It's use is not for Exploration mode, but of mid-combat healing - it excels when things have gone poorly and the caster has several important choices to make. It's not a great spell for out of combat healing.

Fresh Produce: Fresh Produce on the other hand is not good when your party is on the backfoot. It grants a single creature within a 10 foot emanation a usable item that they have to spend an action to gain the benefit from. It's not a go to spell for Encounter mode healing, especially if you haven't got martials with free hands. Out of combat healing, it's excellent!

You're comparing apples and oranges and wondering why there...

Fresh Produce is an action to give an ally an item that they can spend an action to eat for ~26 health. This is Two actions spent for 26 health granted for your team. Does it happen in a functionally different way? Yes. Rebuke Death heals for ~11 per action or ~22 health with 2 actions albeit these are spent via a single player instead of split between two. They are both situational but they both function with similar output in combat environments. I'm not being disingenuous with my comparisons I never have been.

I think they've used some strong language

Ahaha, yea I won't deny there was a period where I lost my cool a bit. It was about the time when I had people suggesting that I dislike core philosophies present within this system when the only thing I had presented was evidence that these new options do not abide by the standard output that system has always had. It blindsided me so hard I ended up off kilter for quite some time after that.

I should have just taken a step away after that but, regrettably pride overtook my better judgement.

And yes I do think that it's something worthy of discussion.
While I obviously prefer the standard expected healing up to this point, I assert if this pacing of out of combat healing becomes to new standard for design that we should just scrap the notion of spending exploration time healing. I'd vastly prefer avoiding issues with players investing into options that no longer hold up against newer options in that facet of the game.

Disregarding Garden of Healing for the moment. I had done some math on Fresh Produce, a level 1 feature when compared to Rebuke Death, the level 8 Healing Domain focus spell. At level 8 Fresh produce is over 3 times more exploration healing than Rebuke Death and they both maintain a similar number of actions used for health gained in combat. When presented with the need to heal 130 health, the high end of health at that level, Fresh Produce heals it in ~5 uses while Rebuke Death heals it in ~12 uses, with the added caveat of needing to remain idle for the full two hours. When they are used in tandem rebuke death shaves off 10 minutes for a total of 40 minutes of healing but now the group needs to idle instead of being able to move.

This is the type of disparity and change with how exploration mode functions with these new tools that I've been talking about, it's already present and the newer options in the playtest are similarly just as high. For reference, in regards to out of combat healing Garden of Healing is ~400% more health than Fresh Produce or something like 1100% stronger than Rebuke Death. Exemplar's Radiant Epithet is also something wonky like being ~110% more potent than rebuke death for out of combat healing.

Edit: Also for everyone reading this, I'm no math major by any means. If my numbers end up wrong wrong, please feel free to correct me, I'd prefer if you do.

Try to recalculate the time for Medicine if only one character gets Medicine (improving up to master at level 7) and those 2 feats.

I'm not going to commit the time to do that but I can express from personal experience as playing a cleric with maxed wisdom and master medicine at level 10 with assurance, continual recovery and ward medic that it takes me and our bard with hymn of healing 30 to 40 minutes to fully heal my group.

And for any future consideration about the Garden of Healing focus spell just assume that at all levels of play it will heal your group to full in a single use. This isn't me over-exaggerating or anything it's just that much health.

I'm of the opinion that such a player having it was not forced to have it, possessing it is a result of playing Animist, just the same that Lay on Hands is as a result picking Champion. To insinuate that they were forced to play the class to have it implies that Animist itself doesn't bring any other strong tools to the table as well. Which I disagree with but if it was true there's even bigger problems with the class than the presence of Garden of Healing.

For example:

Bard: Alright, great battle, all. Let me get my Hymn of Healing going.
Kineticist: Don't waste a Focus Point on that, I've got Ocean's Balm and Fresh Produce. It's going to be easier and faster for us.

This is not a problem to me. The bard and the kineticst are in the same party and have chosen to focus towards out of healing roles. The kineticist has spent a significant amount of their class strength in doing so - they went dual gate (or are higher level and went back to grab another gate and then the feats) and used two of their impulse feats to do so. The bard spent only one feat and, importantly, is still a bard. They haven't locked themselves into a build more.

This situation is completely realistic and makes my stomach wrench at how vile it is. It's not that I'd blame the kineticist player necessarily, they are objectively correct. However I find that to be a horrible gameplay experience that we've not really seen the risk of happening in this system before. No player should be made to feel like a class feature they've invested in is a waste. Healing numbers up to this point have followed that standard baseline and continually interacted with exploration activities (except chalice). And this has always kept these sort of class investments usable in every party, even when paired with people with high medicine investments.

As for power creep, I'm finding your views of what falls under the definition of power creep to be difficult to follow. While it may just be a game of semantics at this point I'd like to pose a question in hopes that I can understand your viewpoints on the topic. So you've claimed that it wouldn't be power creep of a wizard was granted an area version of Hymn of Healing. Let's say we gave barbarian a better version of the You're Next Rogue/Swashbuckler feat, we'll say the Barbarian version is also level 1 and gives them a +8 to the intimidation check instead of +2. Is this power creep? If so what is the difference between these two instances?

Lastly your hyperbolic example, "After 10 minutes, restore everyone to full health", this is exactly what Garden of Healing is. I know you don't want to compare test classes but it's just kind of funny to me that I, at risk of sounding monotonous, made this thread in response to that very thing you said would be problematic. Kineticist isn't this extreme obviously but I sought to show its increased in efficacy in out of combat healing explicitly in response to seeing Paizo testing even higher numbers.

Is the wood/water dual gate kineticist going to provide more healing, more quickly than the rogue with Assurance Medicine? Sure, absolutely. Does this represent power creep? Here, I would disagree in absolute terms.

Can you define absolute terms as used in this case, please? I may be suffering from the classic case of my brain being fried. The notion of having medicine alternatives I agree with for sure and I'd even be open to the idea of reducing Treat Wounds healing output to be lower than class features. But I'm struggling to wrap my head around the assertion that newer class features outperforming older class features can be anything other than power creep.

I agree with setting aside Garden of Healing when comparing the options we have right now. It's something I've done a few times during my presented math. But the reason I made the thread now instead of when Kineticist was released was because we caught a glimpse of designs that, similar to kineticist, break the established exploration healing norms. Both Animist and Exemplar have options that both wildly outperform other options in this sphere of the game and it seems foolish not to draw concern from that presented trend. Let's say we ignore them, how many classes need to be released before it's justifiable to bring into question the original standard out of combat healing value being shattered?

My request is not to prove that there is a difference. And I am not going to bother to mention that there are ways even at level 1 to improve on the amount of time needed for those level 1 Medicine healing times, and there is no reason that only one character and one option is the limit for a 4-person party - the Bard can use Hymn of Healing and the Rogue can use medicine at the same time. Because this is all completely beside the point.

My request is for you to explain why this difference is important to you.

Why are the characters looking at each other after a hard fight and saying, "We need to get going. We don't have an hour to wait around patching ourselves up. We need to get to the next battle pronto." Or "We have to explore this room now. No time to spend healing up."

What plot and campaign scenarios are no longer viable if after-combat healing is faster?

That entire thing I presented to you contained both my rationale and my proof. I put it forward in response to you wanting concrete examples. So I gave you legitimate information in hopes of somehow turning my "theoretical differences" into "practical differences". I then further expanded upon that information with projected issues that occur in the presence of such abnormal numbers. It's extremely difficult to parse what you actually want me to present, I'll try one more time before I give up.

However before that, I didn't want to include other players contributing to the healing process because that same amount of extra health can be applied to any healer including the kineticist. But because you mentioned it, I was curious so I'll present my results as further suggestion to why this type of power creep is bad. This time I'll suffer you not with the numbers.

A rogue with assurance (medicine), a bard with hymn of healing and a champions lay on hands, that's three players resources, takes the same amount of time to fully heal the aforementioned injured group as the kineticist does with just Ocean's Balm and Fresh Produce. That tri-force of healing also must need commit most of their group to idling during this time while the kineticist does not need to idle at all nor do they need their group to idle. And what I found when I applied such team contributions to the kineticist is that, just like I was alluding too several times in this thread now, almost all of the extra healing from the other team members ends up wasted. But it's the thought that counts right? I'm sure those players don't feel bad about their class feat choices in that moment.

And as for your next request I guess I'll go ahead and repost this.

The Kineticist routes do not tie the group down to idling at all. This means that any player that does want to toy around with their own idle exploration activities now needs to ask the group to pause on their account, an unspoken pressure that doesn't exist for any other of the other healing options. This also means the GM doesn't have as much room to use standard player exploration activities to present information to the group unless the group decides to commit to idling in one spot instead of pressing forward. This type of feature also makes it difficult to have exploration activities against the clock be interesting choices, because the players don't make such choices with these kinds of healing abilities, it just happens. It also takes the risk away from players going off ahead while group healing happens because the group doesn't need to stop what they're doing to heal.

And I suppose I'll elaborate further on this here.

It matters because many other exploration activities that involve sitting around will often occur when people are healing. These activities tend to benefit the individual the player utilizing them which is normally fine. However with the inclusion of features that expedite the healing process or have no activity associated with them at all these players must need request the group wait on their behalf. This in my opinion, yields a less healthy gameplay environment for these types of activities.

It matters because the GM may want to design facets of their adventure around the exploration activities and unidentified items. These GMs committing to this may find players more likely to pass over things given that they aren't made to sit and heal. This is to say one of the incentives to commit to these types of searching or investigating activities is often the need to tend to wounds.

It matters because perhaps a GM seeks to design an adventure where time is a factor:
-The group is running out of oxygen.
-Someone is cursed or diseased and we need to finish things quick.
-There's a ritual being cast that we need to stop now.
These are just some examples but there are tools and systems in pf2e that play off of time. And in the adventures, or quests, that might utilize these systems the GM is likely going to want to consider how much time groups will take between combats. It's fairly reasonable right now to look at the projected healing output of most things in the game and judge how long an average group might take to heal between fights. But the healing options in Kineticist, Animist and Exemplar all throw this expected norm off kilter. The question this GM now needs to ask themselves is should they just continue to design while pretending these new healing options don't exist? What about 4 class releases from now and we have a whole new list of options that have this similar amount of healing power creep? Does the GM readjust their adventure according to this rapidly increasing rate of healing and hope that future groups don't end up falling too far outside of their allotted time? The realistic answer is that these new options cause time constraints on adventures or quests to be a far less reasonable and interesting thing to present to players, or that any constraint like that should be purely narrative adlib on a per group basis. This in turn causes the aforementioned systems that do play off of time to be a less intriguing option for GM's considering this style of quest hook.

It matters because the threat of patrolling enemies ceases to be a consideration when you no longer need to sit around to do your healing. The safety of retreating to the outside of a dungeon or barricading yourself into a room fortified with lock/alarm spells or traps aren't as interesting of choices because the group has no need to find shelter while healing. This is to suggest that many options that non healers can contribute to these types of situations become less valuable as the time to heal decreases.

It matters because the realism associated with an adventuring group delving into a lethal dungeon is blurred. Highly Lethal areas can now be walked through because the time investment associated with treating wounds ceases to be. Groups are becoming capable of speed running between combats and the overarching world time to clear a dungeon shrinks drastically.

And it matters because we've *always* had a standard norm for an amount of health we are to expect on a 10 minute time investment, a norm that only few things could break. These newer actions are leagues outside of that norm. This is power creep, regardless of your opinion on health attrition. And as I suggested above, it makes the older options feel and play worse in their presence. This system champions itself on its tight math in almost every category of the game I fail to see how this subset of the game should be any different.

Talking about this in abstract is not working. So give some concrete examples of what you are having concerns about. What scenario works before Rage of Elements existed that doesn't work now that Kineticist is a thing. Specific things. What activities are the characters doing during that time between battles and why is it important.

I'm not exactly sure what you want me to present at this point, I feel as though I've given examples and numbers in spades. I'm not going to give you an exact play by play of my own gameplay experiences to try to prove to you there's obvious number imbalances in the realm of out of combat healing. Should I throw out an example that I perceive to be a realistic outcomes for healing after fights? I guess to keep it simple I'll look at level 1 because otherwise I'll be here all night trying to give you what you want.

Player One has 3/21 health remaining after the fight.
Player Two has 10/16 health remaining after the fight.
Player Three has 8/17 health remaining after the fight.
Player Four has 8/14 health remaining after the fight.

Medicine DC 15 is ~9 health on a success.
It'd take ~2 successes to heal Player One full
It'd take ~1 success to heal Player Two full
It'd take ~1 success to heal Player Three full
It'd take ~1 success to heal Player Four full
If we assume every single medicine check was a success it's 50 minutes of idling over an hour and a ten minutes. If just one of these is a failure then we begin tacking on substantially higher amounts of time.

With that same array of health, Hymn of Healing heals for 8 health per refocus.
It'd take 2 uses to heal Player One 19/21
It'd take 1 use to heal Player Two full
It'd take 1 use to heal Player Three 16/17
It'd take 1 use to heal Player Four full
This is a total of 50 minutes of idling to heal everyone to almost full but will be 60 minutes if the bard wishes to refocus.

With that same array of health, Ocean's Balm heals for ~5 health per use.
It'd take ~4 uses to have Player One full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Two full
It'd take ~2 uses to heal Player Three full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Four full
This is done in 40 minutes because the kineticist is healing everyone at the same time. Total of 0 minutes of idling because there's no exploration activity associated with Impulses.

With that same array of health Ocean's Balm and Fresh Produce together heal for ~8.5 health per use.
It'd take ~2 uses to heal Player One full
It'd take ~1 uses to heal Player Two full.
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Three to full.
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Four to full.
This is done in 20 minutes because the kineticist is healing everyone at the same time. Total of 0 minutes of idling because there's no exploration activity associated with Impulses.

With that same array of health Animist's Garden of Healing heals for ~25 per use.
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player One to full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Two to full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Three to full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Four to full
This is done in 1 minute with a follow up 10 minute refocus.

If we assume that players are looking to commit to exploration activities in the normal time to heal:
The Treat wounds route gives the group members and GM a minimum of 5 total instances of playing around with exploration activities while the group needs to idle.

The Hymn of Healing route gives the group members and GM 5 or 6 total instances of playing around with exploration while the group needs to idle.

The Kineticist routes do not tie the group down to idling at all. This means that any player that does want to toy around with their own idle exploration activities now needs to ask the group to pause on their account, an unspoken pressure that doesn't exist for any other of the other healing options. This also means the GM doesn't have as much room to use standard player exploration activities to present information to the group unless the group decides to commit to idling in one spot instead of pressing forward. This type of feature also makes it difficult to have exploration activities against the clock be interesting choices, because the players don't make such choices with these kinds of healing abilities, it just happens. It also takes the risk away from players going off ahead while group healing happens because the group doesn't need to stop what they're doing to heal. I'm not sure how much more I can present to express how strange these new healing feats play into the standard norm for healing out of combat and exploration activities in general.

And surely I don't need to explain how Garden of Healing's 1 minute group wide full heal exacerbates what I've mentioned above.

To clarify, as I presented in another post this divide between these healing options isn't just present solely at level one. Kineticists built with multiple healing tools continue to present this disparity throughout the entirety of the level progression. And at any point another player in a group with such a kineticist thinks to perhaps pick up a medicine alternative to try to help their group will find their output in this facet of the game miniscule in comparison.

And once again to clarify, I'm more or less fine with Kineticist having this gap. Sure it's weird to me but it's only on players built as healers on one class of twenty three, the issues I have are fairly isolated right now. But I'm very apprehensive about it being common place going forward.

I mean, your issue is a subjective discomfort with core assumptions of PF2 design. Fixing it via houserules is the only thing that makes sense, because for the most part the things you're complaining about are features of the system, not bugs.

It's more than a touch annoying that you've now proposed that I have something against core designs of PF2e when what I've done up to this point is show the disparity between old exploration mode healing options and the new ones. This is to say you've read through the thread, seen that I very clearly prefer the standard healing output the system has had up to this point and somehow determined that I disliked it because I'm pointing out that the new options are better? Do I have that correct?

Unless you're suggesting that the new healing numbers are the standard which is very confusing.

The time scale has shrunk slightly in certain cases, but overall very little has actually changed other than the variety of options.

The most significant ramification here is that there are now ways to build parties that don't require the medicine skill in the same way core PF2 assumed you would... which is just objectively a good thing.

It's not slightly, in teams with these new options it's significantly faster. The ramifications are:

Because with this thread, it feels like you are trying to enforce your particular flavor of attrition-based gameplay onto all other gaming tables in existence.

With this thread, I once again will reiterate, I'm trying to point to the very clear power creep the game is receiving in the realm of out of combat healing. This power creep is objectively true.

It doesn't matter if the perception that health attrition over time is a good or a bad thing, what matters is that the tools that were available to deal with health attrition in the past are worse than the tools we have received, and the tools we are potentially receiving in the future, and that the time it takes for groups to fully heal themselves is narrowing. For tables in which this isn't a problem normally nothing changes but it does change tables that want for grittier exploration.

To commit to the notion that these tables should just ban the overperforming abilities in lieu of them being balanced against all of the other tools is surreal to me.

Ocean's Balm heals less than Lay on Hands does in average and has a worse combat effect. It can be used to heal up groups quicker, but it is worse at patching up a single person. And it is significantly worse as a combat healing source because it is less reliable and can't be spammed 3 times in a row on the same target. Oceans Balm is nice if everyone is getting hit, but often in practice you have one person you need to heal real badly.

Lay on hands is indeed a bit better for most combat situations. But I'm not sure how that's relevant to the discussion of their out of combat outputs where Ocean's Balm is magnitudes stronger than Lay on Hands. In a single instance where a person uses lay on hands and then spends 10 minutes refocusing ocean's balm is healing every group member and doesn't require a time investment to recharge the ability.

The kineticist 10 minute "lockout" is fundamentally different than standard 10 minute exploration activities in the sense that it's not an activity, it's an action with a 10 minute reuse timer per person. This is to say that you can use multiple of these on a 10 minute interval and still commit to a different exploration activity. As per Caliope5431's math we're looking at kineticist having multiple options available to them that maintain close pacing with high investment medicine while also being able to be used in tandem with one another should the kineticist take multiple of these options.

I'd like to reiterate that my concern with the thread is that this abrupt increase in what these types of abilities can output seems to be a trend. This what I'm concerned with, and I'm more or less fine with Kineticist having this overwhelming capacity if it goes back to being a rarity for future content. When Paizo presented the playtest for Animist and Exemplar it made it apparent that it seems to be a potential norm going forward which I wholeheartedly think is bad for the system.

Out of combat healing has always been high. Balancing an adventuring day based on HP attrition has never been a thing in PF2.

I think that Goodberry does more healing than any other focus spell, but still less than Treat Wounds does after investing several skill boosts and skill feats in it.

The other two look like they do quite a bit less than Lay on Hands.

TL;DR: I don't think the game is balanced around not letting the players heal up their characters after combat and never has been. Having more options to do that with is fun and good for the game. And healing abilities have always had best/worst in show rankings. It doesn't bother me that some of the newer ones are higher than normal.

I didn't include all of the medicine replacements because I didn't think it was necessary to do so. All of these older options followed a very standard rate of healing in a 10 minute period of time. For example, good berry is on average roughly the same as Hymn of Healing and Life Boost. And once again, all of the newer options are magnitudes better than these old options.

I've seen several people in this thread make the claim that out of combat healing has always been high. It's a notion I find quite confusing. High compared to what? Other games? If so, probably, but I don't see how that has any relevance to this discussion. All healing in this system maintained a relatively tight output when compared to one another, so these comments noting that "out of combat healing has always been high" don't make any sense to me. New options are nice, it is not my intention to say we should never see anything new in this facet of the game. But the options we have been seeing lately shatter the expected time investment that groups need to make in order to maintain a safe amount of health during an adventure.

The one thing I've learned from this thread so far is that my expectations for how out of combat plays, and my perception of how GMs can utilize exploration mode to present tension, seems to be significantly different than those of other players.

...

I suppose I find the assumption that everyone will be full hp in 10 minutes to be fairly bold. Ward medic and assurance with skill investments into medicine can often permit it in very healthy situations but I struggle to view it as a standard. And it certainly isn't the case for at very least the first few levels of character progression. But even if we assume that this is true and we narrow in specifically on Garden of Healing, we'd be allowing a focus spell on one player to completely replace all of the other tools that other players would bring to the table to accomplish the task of healing each other. This is to say that within that one ten minute period, where you did have people considering using their own tools like lay on hands, hymn of healing, Life Boost, etc., that this one 10 minute refocus is invalidating all of those other players contributions to that task. That a player who thinks they may want to take ward medic or continual recovery or assurance medicine will rarely get to use them in the presence of this particular focus spell because that's how much health it provides.

What I mean to say is that at all levels of character progression one use of Garden of healing, a level one focus spell, would act as a, barring some extreme obscurities, full heal for every group member without any checks associated with it. And that all other tools, feats, items, and so on, that the system presents to players that can contribute to this process cease having value in its presence.

Now if I don't consider Garden of Healing at all. I once again challenge the notion that groups will continue to operate around the standard 10 minute rest times as we receive more and more options that heal without interacting with the standard 10 minute exploration activities.

To submit a hypothetical:
Let's say a group has an Exemplar, a Kineticist, a Barbarian and a Wizard. Should the Kineticist provide things like Ocean's Balm and Fresh Produce, or perhaps the Exemplar heals themselves instantly with Scar of the Survivor, suddenly the only person who has a 10 minute activity to maintain any of their combat potency is the Wizard. The possibility that this player may feel pressure to simply not refocus, that they may feel obligated not to make the other three members of their team wait on them is gross to me. This type of possible pressure wasn't something that was ever present up to this point because the healing tools had time investments tied to them.

As we receive more tools like this that don't abide by the standard 10 minute rests, this problem that I'm presenting will get progressively worse. Now to be fair, I had mentioned it at some point prior, we had something like this before Kineticist released and it played just fine. Thaumaturges Chalice had this, initially, unique perk. To be able to heal without a time investment, but its healing output was lower than most other tools to compensate. That when the player focused particularly on improving the chalice implement the gap between the chalice and the other healing tools was never so large that it'd completely invalidate them. Kineticist brought us tools that *Do* risk invalidating other tools in the sense that their output in this sphere of gameplay is magnitudes higher than older class investments. My assertion is that this type of tool only plays well into the standard 10 minute rest periods if the group will still need to spend some time if they want to heal to full, which is becoming increasingly not the case.

Interesting analysis. I think with Garden of Healing they got carried away with the "yes but it could also heal your enemies" possible drawback, and the radius is restrictive. But out of combat it's a bit out of control.

Yes. The Exemplars Scar of the Survivor, to a lesser degree the Radiant Epithet, and the Animist's Garden of Healing are ones I wanted to point at as being pretty egregious but I didn't want to focus too much on them in this particular topic given that they are test material. It's more that the existence of these options being presented as possible future content does draw attention to how small the time investment needed for groups to attain full health is becoming with newer options.

Just a note that the latter is called Assurance (Medicine). It's a Skill feat that I take for all my PCs who do Battle Medicine.

I did all of this math without assurance factored in at all, if I did all of the medicine checks would have effectively been pushed back. This is to say I was being overwhelmingly generous with my projected medicine numbers.

But notice that these healing off-encounter abilities have their own unique costs. Medicine is just a skill that can be easily improved with just skill feats. Most other healing are part of a class chassis or require that you take some specific subclass or use class feats or choose an archetype.

I understand that some of them can heal pretty fast but in the end during most time all party will heal until full or will wait to refocus or use 10 or more minutes to investigate a room anyway. This won't change that much at all. In pathfinder most partys will usually try to stop 10-30 minutes to recover, investigate and refocus whenever they can and the healing speed usually doesn't change this at all.

This is actually in part my point. Let's isolate the comparison to two options instead, neither of which are medicine.

What I mean by this is that the disparity between old and new is even more alarming when I don't consider medicine at all.

As for your point about groups healing until full, the question I would like to pose is, is it healthy for the game overall to have healing occur as fast is it is with the recent options? In my opinion it clearly cheapens older alternatives but the way these newer options are operating feels as though it also clashes with the expected norm for exploration activities. To touch back on the Ocean's Balm vs Lay on Hands for example, Lay on Hands interacts with exploration activities in the form of refocusing, the player utilizing it will need work with other group members to contribute to the healing knowing they'll need to invest more of their exploration activity time into refocusing if they choose to use it. Perhaps the group feels that player should instead have focused their efforts on searching or patrolling the area instead? Ocean's Balm on the other hand only interacts with exploration activities in the sense that the player utilizing it needs to stop what they're doing momentarily to use it again every 10 minutes, it doesn't have a time investment associated with it. The group could in theory continue traveling with the kineticist utilizing these types of tools every 10 minutes, to heal while moving, simply because it doesn't interact with exploration mode at all.

I'm of the opinion that the structure of the exploration activities hinges on an expected rest explicitly to heal. That a standard group of players will feel more inclined to continue with their journey instead of taking alternate options if healing has no time associated with it. And to further that I think players who do have subsidiary exploration activities they could be taking, such as players learning a spell with Magical shorthand or players who might want to finish repairing a dented shield, might feel bad for asking the group to stop their journey on their account if everyone is full hp at the snap of a finger.

Minor point, but I think your ward medic numbers are assuming Master proficiency before you can get it (you're multiplying by 4 and not 2)

This is true! Thank you for correcting me! I'm not sure if I can edit it, if I can I'm not seeing the option too. I'm a bit new to these forums.

I have not checked either the numbers nor the abilities, but I feel many of the "old" healing methods can be used in combat whereas the new ones you mention cannot. If such is the case, the difference in numbers might actually reflect this.

All of the new out of combat healing methods I mentioned are combat tools. In fact, I believe them being so much stronger than other medicine alternatives in the sphere of out of combat healing is as a result of them being designed specifically for combat purposes, they just don't come with the standard out of combat limitations the old ones had.

Also worth noting that many of the old healing sources are going to be remastered and potentially buffed.

This is true, it's possible the remaster addresses this disparity. Though as I mentioned in my response to YuriP the increased rate of healing, and the lack of time spent associated with these new ones, feels as though it hampers the normal relationship between the various exploration activities.

Ah! Ahaha, No big deal. I was working on that list anyways to help myself get a grasp on what my concerns actually were. Our misunderstanding just gave me a reason to post it. Wish I had it in me to do the math for medicine success rates influencing the expected average output but where I ended up should be enough for now.

In hostile areas having Medicine expertise and its feats for fast healing can make a difference. I think having at least one character in the party dedicated to Medicine is mandatory. At least the Treat multiple targets one so you use 10 minutes then use spells and consumables for the remaining, saving a lot of resources.

I'm not sure that we're on the same page here. What I'm saying is that medicine and all previous medicine alternatives are being outpaced quite heavily by newer healing options.

Perhaps to try to help explain my concern I could list out some numbers at various levels for out of combat healing options? I'll list the amount of health that can be provided to the group during roughly a 10 minute period of time. I'll assume a group size of 4 and that medicine somehow always magically succeeds. Some of my numbers may be slightly off but they should be close enough to get my point across.

Level 1
Treat wounds DC 15: ~9
Lay on Hands: 6
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 8
Chalice*: 3

Ocean's Balm*: ~20 (1d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: ~16 (1d4+1 per person)
Garden of Healing (Animist): ~100 (10d4 per person)

Level 5
Treat wounds DC 20: ~19
Treat wounds ward medic DC 20: ~76 (2d8+10 per person)
Treat wounds medic dedication and ward medic DC 20: ~96 (2d8+15 per person)
Lay on Hands: 18
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 24
Chalice*: 15

Ocean's Balm*: ~50 (3d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: ~76 (3d4+11 per person)
Garden of Healing: ~300 (30d4 per person)
Radiant Epithet* (Exemplar): 16 (4 per person)

Level 10
Treat wounds DC 30: ~39
Treat wounds ward medic DC 30: ~156 (2d8+30 per person)
Treat wounds medic dedication and ward medic DC 30: ~200 (2d8+40 per person)
Lay on hands: 30
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 40
Chalice*: 30
Chalice Adept*: 50

Ocean's Balm*: ~92 (5d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: 136 (5d4+21 per person)
Torrent in the Blood*: ~92 (5d8 per person)
Dash of Herbs*: ~104 (4d10+4 per person)
Garden of Healing: ~500 (50d4 per person)
Radiant Epithet*: 88 (22 per person)

Entries with a * do not consume downtime activities which allow for other things to be done within that 10 minute period. This can include other sources of healing which I will not factor for this math because I'm not a masochist. But this is still a very notable benefit, just not one I'm willing to quantify here however just imagine the use of two of the kineticist options or a focus spell added into the mix.

I hope you can see just from these examples I included that the older options all maintained a much tighter range for out of combat healing. That within this this old range medicine still came out on top but not so much that the class feat options were not decent alternatives. But with Kineticist and Animist there's a very large gap between even just medicine and these new feats. This gap is concerning me.

Also I was going to include Scar of the Survivor from exemplar but the amount of health that comes out of that when not in combat is effectively an instant full heal. It's like 100d8 in 10 minutes or something starting at level 1, granted it's all self healing but still.

Is it fair to compare class feat/features that lock someone into certain choices (or class options) to skill investment which can be acquired by anyone?

This doesn't make any sense to me. Medicine investment was always stronger than the class feat alternatives in the realm of out of combat healing.

This is all to say even if I don't bring medicine into the equation at all, the newer feats on kineticist and Animist/Exemplar are magnitudes higher than the old class options that provided out of combat healing.

Alternatives are fine. The gap between them is what seems absurd. I'm the type of player that gets giddy to get new support options to toy with. But we're looking at a stage where medicine and all previous medicine alternatives pale in comparison to the new options.

This is to say, things like:
Blessed One
Medic Dedication
Forensic Investigator
Basic Lesson Life
Hymn of Healing
Chirurgeon Alchemist

There's probably more but none of these, in addition to just raw investment into medicine, come anywhere close to matching the amount of health that kineticist, much less animist/exemplar, is putting out in out of combat environments. In a system that has had a relatively low amount of trap options up to this point, I question if this is an acceptable path to be going down. To just assume that it's fine for these older methods of alleviating health attrition to be left in the dust by the new.

out of combat healing has always been assumed to be more or less free and unlimited... so yes to the last part but no to the first.

I suppose I just fundamentally disagree with the notion that out of combat healing was free and without limit. Feat choices and time has always been costs. With Kineticist, and now Animist/Exemplar, these older feat choices and time investments seem increasingly less valuable which is just coming off strange to me.

To put it into perspective, Garden of Healing on Animist can put out an average of ~25 health to every group member every 11 minutes starting at level 1. While a DC 15 treat wounds is a possible ~9 to a single person in 10 minutes with a 50 minute downtime between uses. I question if the investment in medicine is going to feel good in the future if this is the kind of numbers we are to expect.

Sure Animist is test material but healing out of combat options have been getting increasingly higher since thaumaturge with kineticist being an alarming leap in output.

This may sound strange but I'm getting a touch confused about the rate at which people can be full health out of combat as of late.

When Thaumaturge released, the healing chalice implement came with an interesting perk, the ability for it to refill itself while the player committed to other downtime activities, such as treating wounds. However since then we've gotten Kineticist which has water and wood exhibiting overwhelming dominant numbers in the realm of out of combat healing while also maintaining what I originally thought was a unique perk for Thaumaturges chalice.

Now we see some of the options on Animist and Exemplar which continues to further the divide between old and new in the expected amount of healing for this facet of gameplay. Old methods are fairly small comparative to kineticist but it's all absolutely miniscule when put up against something like Garden of Healing on Animist.

Have I missed something? Should we just ignore adventure health attrition all together going forward? I'm concerned about how characters looking to invest in medicine are going to feel if this is going to be the standard for this kind of effect in the future.

Edit: Also I wasn't sure what section to post this in sorry if it's wrong.

The Eldritch Trickster rogue archetype reads:
"Choose a multiclass archetype that has a basic, expert, and master spellcasting feat."

Traditional spellcasting archetypes spellcasting features are worded such as:
"Basic Bard Spellcasting
You gain the basic spellcasting benefits...-"

However the magus and summoner archetypes are bounded spellcasters and theirs reads as:
"Basic Magus Spellcasting
You gain the basic bounded spellcasting benefits."

This is an extremely slight difference obviously, when I went to look at the bounded spellcaster archetype rules I found that it reads:
"A bounded spellcasting archetype allows you to use scrolls, staves, and wands in the same way that a member of a spellcasting class can, and the basic bounded spellcasting feat counts as having a spellcasting class feature."

It seems to me that Paizo made sure to clarify that the bounded spellcasting features still count as spellcasting class features.

I was referenced to a thread on reddit that talked about confirmed information on Magus prior to its release and on bullet point nine they mention the Magus archetype being unable to function with Eldritch Trickster: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/nphzau/magus_what_we_know/

So for my own clarity can the Eldritch Trickster rogue racket choose the Magus and Summoner archetypes?

The Umbral Extraction spell reads:
"... During umbral extraction's duration, you can use the Steal action to attempt to take one of the foe's prepared spells or unused spontaneous spell slots instead of an item. You can also make one attempt to Steal as part of Casting umbral extraction. If you succeed at your check to Steal a spell, you deal 1d4 mental damage to the target per level of the spell stolen... "

The steal action specifies:
"Typically, you can Steal only an object of negligible Bulk, and you automatically fail if the creature who has the object is in combat or on guard."

The pickpocket skill feat reads:
"If you’re a master in Thievery, you can attempt to Steal from a creature in combat or otherwise on guard. When doing so, Stealing requires 2 manipulate actions instead of 1, and you take a –5 penalty."

My questions are:

-Does Umbral Extraction alone permit the usage of steal in combat?

-If Umbral Extraction alone does permit stealing in combat is it one or two actions to steal, as per the wording on the pickpocket skill feat?

-If Umbral Extraction alone does not permit stealing in combat is it intended for the spell to require both a skill feat and master in a skill to be functional in combat?

-If Umbral Extraction alone does not permit stealing in combat how would one feasibly use the spell without pickpocket and master thievery? Given the somatic and verbal components associated with the spell and the mental damage from completing the steal action, it seems like it'd be extraordinarily difficult to make work within its already narrow niche of requiring an enemy spellcaster.

All of these would likely apply to the Umbral Graft spell which has similar functions with the same wording.