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To cut down on the need for magical healing, I want to suggest the following. New us of Heal skill.
Rename the current First Aid stabilize.
First Aid
Takes two minutes to apply, must be done within five minutes of taking damage. Recipient must be stable and resting during the application.
DC 10 heals 1d4
DC 15 heals 1d6
DC 20 heals 2d6
DC 25 heals 3d6
And so on with DC +5 getting one more d6
The person applying First Aid must decide what level to heal at before making the roll, failure by 10 or more inflicts 1/2 the healing result as damage. For example, a botched attempt to heal for 8 would inflict 4 damage instead.
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This allows a certain amount of non-magical healing. Recognizes that some of the hp damage represents open wwound that could be addressed quickly. A single PC witht he heal skill can heal 1 person twice or two people once each after each fight.
Oh well, just my two coppers
I'd toss a caveat on this to limit it a bit. Maybe once an hour per character treated, thus keeping the "unlimited" healing at a reasonable level.
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To cut down on the need for magical healing, I want to suggest the following. New us of Heal skill.
First Aid
Takes two minutes to apply, must be done within five minutes of taking damage. Recipient must be stable and resting during the application.
DC 10 heals 1d4
DC 15 heals 1d6
DC 20 heals 2d6
DC 25 heals 3d6
And so on with DC +5 getting one more d6The person applying First Aid must decide what level to heal at before making the roll, failure by 10 or more inflicts 1/2 the healing result as damage. For example, a botched attempt to heal for 8 would inflict 4 damage instead.
That's not bad, but just set the DC based on how wounded the character is, and then apply a certain amount of healing. The problem with your system above is a high Heal skill character can run around miraculously healing low-level characters ("fatal sword wound? some duct tape will fix that!")
Make the DC 10 + number of hit points damage done, allow a successful check to heal 1d4 points of damage, allow unlimited checks but require an hour to make a First Aid check. Fail by 5 or more, and take the heal check amount as damage.
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There is allready a skill check in heal for healing damage, the treat deadly wounds feature.
Granted the current version is too expensive and useless. Although with bleed being introduced and it taking a DC 15 heal check to stop the heal skill is no longer completely useless. But the treat deadly wounds ability was poorly implemented. But then there are a lot of abilities that were based off of 1hp/level and they are all useless. as 1hp/level isn't worth the action to implement it, and since the treat deadly wounds skill makes you use healing kits or fail it's a waste of money when you can get potions or in the new companion elves grow a plant that heals 1d8 as a standard action *rolls eyes*
Last time I brought this up, people came into the thread and basically said that healing d4s steps on magical healing. So good luck on your attempts.
My suggestion was for the treat deadly wounds skill to heal 1d4+Wis with a succesful check and take two uses of a healers kit. Then for every 5 by which you beat the DC you heal another 1d4. This scales well with level, takes an hour, is cost effective in comparison to a potion. and doesn't step on magical healings toes.
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My suggestion was for the treat deadly wounds skill to heal 1d4+Wis with a succesful check and take two uses of a healers kit. Then for every 5 by which you beat the DC you heal another 1d4. This scales well with level, takes an hour, is cost effective in comparison to a potion. and doesn't step on magical healings toes.
That would be reasonable. I prefer a scaling DC (it should get harder for high level characters, making it a requirement to invest ranks in Heal), but I certainly would be happy with your suggestion.
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My suggestion was for the treat deadly wounds skill to heal 1d4+Wis with a succesful check and take two uses of a healers kit. Then for every 5 by which you beat the DC you heal another 1d4. This scales well with level, takes an hour, is cost effective in comparison to a potion. and doesn't step on magical healings toes.That would be reasonable. I prefer a scaling DC (it should get harder for high level characters, making it a requirement to invest ranks in Heal), but I certainly would be happy with your suggestion.
mine is a scaling DC the higher your check the more 1d4's you roll. how is that not scaling?
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In your example, 2d6 is a DC 20 Heal check.
Eustace the 10th level Expert has a +23 in Heal (+6 Skill Focus, +2 Feat, +2 MW Healer's Kit, +3 Stat, +10 ranks) and can automatically succeed at 2d6. That means Eustace can choose a fixed DC rather than take his chances, and heal someone at the rate of 7 hit points per hour, roughly better than a potion of cure light wounds each hour.
I'd recommend if Vissevald the Victim has lost 23 hit points, making his Heal check DC 33, which Eustace can still likely make, and heal 1d4 + 3 Wis Mod = 5 hit points.
If Vissevald has taken 5 points of damage from his maximum hit points, the Heal check for Eustace is automatic. However, if Vissevald is down 45 hit points after the dragon chewed on him, the DC 55 Heal check is beyond Eustace, and he must seek out Cristolph the Cleric for some magical healing.
This way, Eustace can't control the DC, so it scales based on need. An orc slams you once, Eustace is your man. If you've been submerged in acid, not so much. And the healing character can't choose an easy DC.
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In your example, 2d6 is a DC 20 Heal check.
Eustace the 10th level Expert has a +23 in Heal (+6 Skill Focus, +2 Feat, +2 MW Healer's Kit, +3 Stat, +10 ranks) and can automatically succeed at 2d6. That means Eustace can choose a fixed DC rather than take his chances, and heal someone at the rate of 7 hit points per hour, roughly better than a potion of cure light wounds each hour.
I'd recommend if Vissevald the Victim has lost 23 hit points, making his Heal check DC 33, which Eustace can still likely make, and heal 1d4 + 3 Wis Mod = 5 hit points.
If Vissevald has taken 5 points of damage from his maximum hit points, the Heal check for Eustace is automatic. However, if Vissevald is down 45 hit points after the dragon chewed on him, the DC 55 Heal check is beyond Eustace, and he must seek out Cristolph the Cleric for some magical healing.
This way, Eustace can't control the DC, so it scales based on need. An orc slams you once, Eustace is your man. If you've been submerged in acid, not so much. And the healing character can't choose an easy DC.
In my instance a DC 33 heal check would garner you 3d4+3 wis mod, or 10 hp average, 19 max. That isn't enough to heal him up and it takes an hour after combat, but it does make a decent amount of healing so that you can save that potion for another fight. And since it only took two uses of your healers kit you could do it 4 more times before buying a new healers kit.
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roughly better than a potion of cure light wounds each hour.
This arguement is one that bothers me, A potion doesn't take an hour to do the healing, it takes 6 seconds, and it costs the same amount as that healing kit. If we make skill healing always worse than a cure light wounds potion then the ability is useless. At some point it has to scale to be better than a friggen cure light wounds potion or its a waste of investing ranks in it.
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In your example, 2d6 is a DC 20 Heal check.
Eustace the 10th level Expert has a +23 in Heal (+6 Skill Focus, +2 Feat, +2 MW Healer's Kit, +3 Stat, +10 ranks) and can automatically succeed at 2d6. That means Eustace can choose a fixed DC rather than take his chances, and heal someone at the rate of 7 hit points per hour, roughly better than a potion of cure light wounds each hour.
One possible solution to this would be to limit skill-based healing to once/day/target, and then open up feats that would allow for additional uses/day if someone wanted to go for a skill-healer rather than a caster.
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I'd prefer to see something like 1d4+Wis modifier hit points healed with one use of a Healer's Kit for 1-5 ranks of the Heal skill. At 6-10 ranks, can choose to use a second use of the Healer's Kit to restore 2d4+Wis hit points.
Basically, for every 5 ranks of the Heal skill (round down), you can heal 1d4 hit points, with a base hit point bonus equal to your Wisdom score. Make it only usable once per encounter or something, and set the DCs normally, but have the amount cured based on *ranks*, not skill DCs, so that someone with ridiculous modifiers isn't healing beaucoup hit points at 1st level.
By 6 ranks, it's coming out slightly better than a Cure Light Wounds, in some cases, but it requires a 6th level person with a fully trained Heal skill and a Healer's Kit, and should take a full minute, if not longer, to perform. (Perhaps one can only heal 1 hit point as a full-round action, or the full value as a full minute action?)
Alternately, perhaps the Heal skill could be restricted to only allow one to heal hit points equal to the healers ranks in the skill +3. A 1st level character, regardless of Skill Focus or Wisdom bonus or equipment bonus, could restore 4 hit points a day for a single character with this skill (assuming he had a rank in Heal!). A 6th level Expert with 6 ranks of Heal could restore 9 hit points a day using this option. Require a full minute for any of this healing (and a 'charge' from a Healer's Kit), and allow the healer to make as many rolls as he wants throughout the day, restoring hit points equal to however much he beat the DC by, but never more than his maximum daily total for one character.
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One possible solution to this would be to limit skill-based healing to once/day/target, and then open up feats that would allow for additional uses/day if someone wanted to go for a skill-healer rather than a caster.In your example, 2d6 is a DC 20 Heal check.
Eustace the 10th level Expert has a +23 in Heal (+6 Skill Focus, +2 Feat, +2 MW Healer's Kit, +3 Stat, +10 ranks) and can automatically succeed at 2d6. That means Eustace can choose a fixed DC rather than take his chances, and heal someone at the rate of 7 hit points per hour, roughly better than a potion of cure light wounds each hour.
Um no, it's not a problem that it's better than a potion of cure. At the point that he's invested that much of his ability into it (3 feats 10 skill ranks and 50 gp) it should be better than a level 1 cure spell as long as it is limited to an hour to heal. The advantage of magical healing is that it is instantaneous and requires no fickle D20.
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I'd prefer to see something like 1d4+Wis modifier hit points healed with one use of a Healer's Kit for 1-5 ranks of the Heal skill. At 6-10 ranks, can choose to use a second use of the Healer's Kit to restore 2d4+Wis hit points.
Basically, for every 5 ranks of the Heal skill (round down), you can heal 1d4 hit points, with a base hit point bonus equal to your Wisdom score. Make it only usable once per encounter or something, and set the DCs normally, but have the amount cured based on *ranks*, not skill DCs, so that someone with ridiculous modifiers isn't healing beaucoup hit points at 1st level.
By 6 ranks, it's coming out slightly better than a Cure Light Wounds, in some cases, but it requires a 6th level person with a fully trained Heal skill and a Healer's Kit, and should take a full minute, if not longer, to perform. (Perhaps one can only heal 1 hit point as a full-round action, or the full value as a full minute action?)
Alternately, perhaps the Heal skill could be restricted to only allow one to heal hit points equal to the healers ranks in the skill +3. A 1st level character, regardless of Skill Focus or Wisdom bonus or equipment bonus, could restore 4 hit points a day for a single character with this skill (assuming he had a rank in Heal!). A 6th level Expert with 6 ranks of Heal could restore 9 hit points a day using this option. Require a full minute for any of this healing (and a 'charge' from a Healer's Kit), and allow the healer to make as many rolls as he wants throughout the day, restoring hit points equal to however much he beat the DC by, but never more than his maximum daily total for one character.
What difference does it make if it requires skill ranks than if you just have a higher DC to enable it to heal more? If you don't want a first level character to be able to heal 2d4 just make the DC 20 heal 1d4 a DC 25 heal 1d4+wis and then every 5 by which you beat the DC gain an extra d4. Then it would take a DC 30 to heal 2d4, a first level character with heal as a class skill and an 18 wis would only have a +8 which means he'd need to invest a feat to even hit the DC 30. The problem is then it doesn't heal enough at higher levels. i.e. that DC 33 heal check he mentioned would only heal 2d4+3 or 7 damage, unless we remove that 1 per day cap from the current version of the skill that isn't enough. (and I am all for removing the 1 per day cap, an hour per check with uses of the kit consumed on a failed check is penalty enough)
But there is no other skill that alters the result by the amount of ranks you invest in it is there? So to create one now seems like trying to alter the skill system entirely.
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What difference does it make if it requires skill ranks than if you just have a higher DC to enable it to heal more?
Basing it on skill ranks, as with a Bard's Perform uses, causes the amount of healing to be capped by level, and therefore balanced very concretely against level-based magical sources of healing, ensuring that a person who has a +X to some skill check (+Cleric level to a skill check from the Glory or Good Domains, +1 from Guidance spell, +2 from Healer's Kit, +3 from Skill Focus, +1 from Trait bonus, +10 in Aid Other bonus from his five party-members helping out, +10 from some skill-boosting magic item, etc, etc.) can't use Heal to completely blow away magical healing.
The Heal skill, IMO, needs to be worthwhile. Not *broken.*
Basing healing on simple DC checks allows all sorts of shenanigans to artificially boost those checks, without half of the craziness that goes into those 'Diplomancer' builds that get +35 to their Diplomacy checks at 1st level.
Arbitrarily high DCs to punish people who try any of the above stuff (or just happen to have the Glory or Good domains, or a five-man party willing to Aid Other to boost their checks) just make the skill useless for any character who *isn't* capable of taking advantage of these options. Basing it on DC just makes it too good, or back to being utterly worthless, depending on how you 'optimize.'
I can't stand that sort of mechanic, that punishes the player who doesn't optimize and rewards the power-gamer with abilities out of line for their level.
One things for sure the current version is a complete waste of resources and time.
On this, we are in complete agreement.
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What difference does it make if it requires skill ranks than if you just have a higher DC to enable it to heal more?Basing it on skill ranks, as with a Bard's Perform uses, causes the amount of healing to be capped by level, and therefore balanced very concretely against level-based magical sources of healing, ensuring that a person who has a +X to some skill check (+Cleric level to a skill check from the Glory or Good Domains, +1 from Guidance spell, +2 from Healer's Kit, +3 from Skill Focus, +1 from Trait bonus, +10 in Aid Other bonus from his five party-members helping out, +10 from some skill-boosting magic item, etc, etc.) can't use Heal to completely blow away magical healing.
the problem is that in order to do it the way you are talking means it's a class feature and not available to every class. As for all those little things you talked about lets see there was a spell, a feat, a 50gp item, a trait. That's a lot to invest to get a good skill check. That should be able to at least be competative. As for the aid another cheese, wouldn't it be easier to add a note saying no more than one person can use aid another on this check?
The Heal skill, IMO, needs to be worthwhile. Not *broken.*
Agreed, see above.
Basing healing on simple DC checks allows all sorts of shenanigans to artificially boost those checks, without half of the craziness that goes into those 'Diplomancer' builds that get +35 to their Diplomacy checks at 1st level.
That's because there are spells out there that add +10 or more to the check, there exists no such spell for the heal skill. Simple solution don't create one.
Arbitrarily high DCs to punish people who try any of the above stuff (or just happen to have the Glory or Good domains, or a five-man party willing to Aid Other to boost their checks) just make the skill useless for any character who *isn't* capable of taking advantage of these options. Basing it on DC just makes it too good, or back to being utterly worthless, depending on how you 'optimize.'I can't stand that sort of mechanic, that punishes the player who doesn't optimize and rewards the power-gamer with abilities out of line for their level.
The difference being that the heal skill even if the character builds it up like you fear it
a)can't be used in battleb) can only be used once per day (you have just convinced me against having the ability be used as much as you want as long as you give it an hour per)
c)doesn't affect enemies the way a diplomacy skill does.
Lets say the worst happens. you have someone that builds a heal-o-mancer. someone with a +100 at first level. so they can use their heal skill to heal 16d4+wisdom. in the end their ability means that they can heal each ally to full once per day. Remember it takes an hour and can only be used once per day. And by the time they get that huge check they've invested magic, feats, money, and ranks into the skill. It doesn't break the game at all, and because it can't be used in combat doesn't alter the flow of combat at all.
In fact the worst it can do is save a whoping 1 spell per character and prevent needing to rest six days after a fight if your party doesn't have a divine caster.
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to add some more thoughts on this:
First, a frontline character tends to have about 8 hp/level and a second line character has about 5 hp/level, or a little bit more than the value 2d6 and 1d6 per level. Of course individual characters can vary from this a lot, but for discussion it works.
So at first level, it would take a DC 10 check to heal most of a second line character, and DC 15 for Front line. Neither of which is too hard for a first level healer.
At 10th level though, healing most (and i am figuring 75%) in a single try would be alot more difficult. Along the order of DC 40-45. Which is much harder to hit, even for a tenth level healer.
So you probably need two attempts to heal someone, and two attempts is all a single healer gets. After that the wounds are locked in.
Which brings up the second point, and the more major flaw with my system, which is that wounds older than 5 minutes are "locked in" and can't be healed. So you have to track old wounds and new wounds.
Finally, I wouldn't argue against making each use of the skill consume some resource so that the cost is there too.