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Healing was not designed to work badly. The system with CLW and all the others comes from 1E. In 1E you get 1d8+2 hp per level at most, unless you are a fighter, because all others don't get the benefit from high CON. Furthermore, you had only 9 HD (with some exceptions, wizards got 11d4). A cleric 17 had 9d8+16+CON bonus (let's say +1) hitpoints, a grand total of 65 hp. In that environment makes CSW sense. When the systems changed, the PCs got more and more HP and the CON bonus was unrestricted. But the healing spells didn't grow in the same proportion. Second problem is the introduction of criticals and iterative attacks, which cause much more damage than 1E had (fighter got 2 attacks per round, clerics got one and had to like it).
It would have been better to re-devise the healing spells, but nobody ever did. The basic system is the same as in 1978. And that is why healing has a bad name - and it is not intentional to torture players, it is something that has just grown over the years....

Have you or any one for that matter heard of a reasonable fix so that the same complexity or idea behind the vitalist healing could be placed on top of other classes? Would it be as simple as bumping up the dice a tier or the static with an eye on how either side of the "xdx" scaled or wold it require the healing available to core classes to be adjusted in the action economy?

I don't think healing trivializes encounters unless its just a large beat stick with a lot of HP and damage dice on his/her own, so far we have played a single session and the group has had to heal once in three combats the big problem was saves and lack of teamwork which I think will outstrip any healing. I do wonder with the talk of character levels and damage if I would be able to keep up with an NPC with rouge or Ninja Levels.

We have a multiclass vitalist / life spirit shaman in our Reign of Winter group, and I would rule in the "too good at healing," camp. It basically boils down to the collective mechanic being too powerful against single target damage. You can very easily blast a multitarget healing spell or power like mass cure moderate wounds or channel positive energy and funnel multiple characters worth of healing from that effect to a single target.

Healing is relatively weak in Pathfinder because being damaged is exciting—you start to worry about tactics and what you're going to do. You sweat every roll of the die. If a healer can immediately take you from 80 damage to 10 damage in a single round, you stop sweating damage because "My healer will heal me up next round."

Basically, a vitalist takes single enemy fights and trivializes then more then they already are acton economy wise, and its largely because the collective doesn't have any scaling limiters built into it.

For example, if healing was stored in the collective and a member needed to take an action to access it, there would still be suspense and decision-making. Do I take the healing or try to kill the boss this round? Alternatively, the collective could have doled out healing bit by bit each round, so if you stored 100 points in the collective then maybe you could only allocate 5 points of healing to one creature each round as a swift action. (Maybe even a free action once per turn.) That way, you keep the "I don't waste overhealing" mechanic while giving interesting gameplay choices to the vitalist and keeping damage done to players at relatively the same pace.

Basically, to challenge a vitalist you have to start throwing around more damage which makes the vitalist feel like his special class abilities do nothing.

The best advice one can give a healer is to be a "Healer Plus," meaning that you have other tricks and contributions that you bring to the party besides healing. "Healer plus Buffer," or "Healer plus Summoner," or "Healer plus Damage...

I believe Jeremy Smith put it very well in to each his own thing. Because of character reasons more than one PC out of the six of us is actually not willing to be apart of the collective for character reasons So I cannot funnel healing but that is just one case at one table cest la Life right?

And If I am reading right the game was designed with the idea that healing was supposed to be a not very good band-aid for people so things are exciting? I dunno if the prospect of always being near dead is exciting sounds more draining and nerve wracking to me.

The collective is gated by the use of Power points right? If you store the healing in the collective and let people grab a little as they please (Five seems fairly low to me for sure) Then does that not just present the same problem of rather than using my action to heal myself or anyone who is capable of using the healing is better of just using that action to kill/damage/hinder a bad person.

I don't know if the more damage is a solution as the Vitalist is only a healer until his resource is gone like any caster type and as far as I have seen the more powerful enemies in the game will outstrip me even if I am good at healing cause offense has the longer end of the stick Which is something I notice in video games. Most of this is just for the sake of conversation I don't think healing will ever just not be needed cause being a safety net or heal bot will make people worry less but they might also take some more risk because they aren't constantly "OH MAN OH BOY I AM GONNA DIE!"

Don't have much on the single enemy fights cause I haven't been in one but I suppose when healing is not needed the sheer preponderance of spells that do not heal I will even if I don't want it have a spell that can do something in any given situation and can do that stuff that is pertinent to the situation.

As one of the designers of the vitalist, let me give some of my view on it (all of the below is my personal opinion, but shaped the vitalist design):

Healing is one of the least effective things your character can do during a combat / encounter. You're reacting to damage that's already been dealt to prolong the encounter. That's it. Typically, your best course of action is to end the encounter as quickly as possible. Healing is the opposite of that. You're spending your actions to make the fight take longer.

Until your character or the enemy hits 0 hit points or below, any hit point damage has essentially no effect. Once the combat is over, healing options like a Wand of Cure Light Wounds are incredibly cheap ways to bring you up to full health.

So really, the only thing that "matters" is in-combat healing to keep you from getting under 1 hit point.

The vitalist does this well. It's intended to, because healing sucks. As a player, it's boring. My gaming group throughout the years has had to rely upon NPC healers because nobody wants to do it. As a tactic, it's only a stalling tactic, it's not really an effective tactic.

By 15th level, Limited Wish has become available, and your GM is upset that you can heal hit point damage?

It sounds like your GM likes to use hit points as a player resource to maintain the flow of the game. The problem is not that the vitalist is too strong - the problem is your GM's play style and the vitalist mitigating a boring and tedious part of the game don't get along nicely.

Just my 2 cents.

Wow hey thanks for the input, me personally I find healing exciting cause my imagination has my PC constantly on a swivel blasting healing sweetness at any in danger friend but thats not everyone.

I think after I explained that healing was a bad move on my part he just kinda looked at me and was confused that I wanted to be bad I think I even offered to just give up the telepathy and the forever range on the network but it was too much to balance.

I took some of the other suggestions from the thread to him and the only thing he's allowed so far has been the Oracle/Paladin so I can heal but I mocked up a few level 1/5/10 versions of the Oracle/Paladin and the Oracle/Vitalist and the only difference I can see is that the Vitalist version is more efficient where the skald, the druid and the paladin all do heal (in some cases more no matter the level) the fact that I can kinda keep all PC's topped up is dangerous.

But yeah thanks for the thoughts!

thejeff wrote:

I should just optimize more, for example, even if I don't enjoy it.

What is so bad about optimizing that you do not enjoy it ? (Honest question BTW)

I have a dude in my Sunday game who regularly is bored to tears if the combat is too easy in his eyes and thus only has fun if he gimps him self to be at a massive disadvantage. So I suppose the desire for challenge but that could be a result of the DM. I would also guess that if someone is just not fond of pouring over pages to locate the best possible option for something that might make optimization less fun or engaging.

I'll run the Skald thing by him see if thats okay he seems pretty adamant about making sure the combat healing is bad so that the game design works in his head. (Also I do believe the other guy is playing a soul knife but that is not a good class according to him so its fine)

I believe what I have right now is a Paladin/Oracle and I have lost a bit of healing but his big issue was the Vitalist making combat healing a viable option and even though I love watching health bars I'll see if swinging lay on hands and CLW.

Apologies I could have read a bit more in regards to the proper sub forum flagged me too. (I do want to ask is asking for an alternative to the 3rd party class in the core stuff grounds for a move or should I just have picked a better thread title)

He suggested the Life Oracle as a alternative because it was worse at healing and told me the game of pathfinder was designed in such a way that healing is supposed to be bad. But because I get to take two classes I initially intended to take levels in both Vitalist and Life Oracle but that was too much healing.

So my local group has just begun a gestalt campaign set in a weird mix of current day and fantasy world. Our DM gave us 25 point buy and generally free reign he had only a single class he would not allow being the OG summoner most of the rest of the group agreed. So after speaking with a few of the other players during char gen I found one guy playing a psionic character and was interested soon after discovering the Vitalist and I thought a Vitalist Life Oracle would be super fun seeing as I enjoy being a heal bot as some would put it.

BUT then I was told the Vitalist is too good at healing. But every where else I can find seems to say that healing is not great personally fine by me I don't mind being a less than great character mechanically But according to him I would be able to keep up with the damage that enemies/traps/ect. can put out and the LV 15 class feature where I can be very far away to heal the limit only being the plane that the party is on.

So I suppose two part question is there any way to match the healing a Vitalist can do in combat any other combos of classes? And Is there any real way the Vitalist is as broken as he seems to believe cause it seems to me that the only thing the class does is make in battle healing efficient and effective?