Introduction
I know there are a few thousand posts concerning Healing Skill, Heal Kits, and Healing spells but I thought I would propose some options. My concern is the lack of healing for a party if you don't have a cleric. Even if you do, one cleric doesn't seem to be enough keep the party going.
Discussion
I have to admit bias because I think Wands of Cure Light Wounds is simply Munchkinism and have TWO is Monty Haulism. If I were a cleric and making said wands, I would include alignment and religion requirements. At the very least, a control ring. I might even force a quest or place geas, in case it fell into the Wrong Hands.
I was thinking about a secondary healer, such as a rogue or ranger, who could aid a thoroughly beaten up party at the end of the day with a nonmagical manufactured kit.
Alchemical Heal Kit weighs 3#
This collection of bandages and herbs provides a +2 circumstance bonus on Heal checks. (stacks with surgeon's tools, yielding +4, +6 vs Deadly Wounds). Treating Deadly Wounds with an Alchemical Heal Kit restores 2 hit points per level of the creature and costs only one use of the Heal Kit. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount. This healing kit is lighter and less bulky than a regular heal kit and has 50 uses. Requires Craft (Alchemy) 5 ranks, Heal 5 ranks (or DC 20s); Requires an Alchemical Lab.
Surgeon's Tools, Masterwork 100 gp weighs 3#
These tools serve the same purpose as artisan's tools, but masterwork surgeon's tools are the perfect tools for the job, so you get a +2 circumstance bonus on Healing checks made with them, +4 vs Deadly Wounds. They reduce the time to treat Deadly Wounds from 1 hour to 30 minutes. These bonuses stack with Heal Kits.
Analysis
Most of the threads that I looked at thought Healing skill should heal 1d4 (or 2.5) damage per HD. The AlkyKit heals more at lower levels per HD, and slightly less than an average d4 after level 4. I suspect that situational modifiers to wisdom could boost the yield on healing a bit higher as a character ages
Surgeons Tools would boost favorable outcomes and reduce treatment times by half. With moderate skill, the chance of a catastrophic failure would be greatly reduced. These modifiers would significantly boost the effacy of Healing in the game. OK, so it sounds like something out of the health care bill, but its still true!
level: healed w/ wisdom modifier +2: average / HD
1:4:4
2:6:3
3:8:2.6
4:10:2.5
5:12:2.4
6:14:2.3
10:22:2.2
14:30:2.1
16:34:2.1
I think of the AlkyKit as a more purified and refined version of the HealKit. Aside from game mechanics, I envision characters having to collect the herbs and ingredients, process them into ointments or whatever, and then further purified into more potent medicene.
Questions
Is it on target?
How would you price it?
Will the wand dealers get upset?
OK thats it! Tell me what you think . . . .
Introduction
I know there are a few thousand posts concerning Healing Skill, Heal Kits, and Healing spells but I thought I would propose some options. My concern is the lack of healing for a party if you don't have a cleric. Even if you do, one cleric doesn't seem to be enough keep the party going.
My party has a fighter, rogue, paladin, alchemist and a wizard at level 12. For the last level or two, we've been forced to travel with two NPC clerics, but even before that, we were doing fine on healing. The clerics are evil, so they do not even provide a lot of healing.
The paladin has a good amount of healing with lay on hands and Extra Channelling (house ruled to provide 4 uses of lay on hands that must be used to channel, so effectively +2 channel energies).
The alchemist has two weird science devices that reliably give Cure Moderate and Cure Light wounds 5/day and can be used more if he wants to risk breaking them.
The rogue can active a wand on a natural 1 with his use magic device roll, and shares wands of CLW, CMW and lesser restoration with the Paladin.
All three have occasionally fallen into the primary healer roll during combat.
We seem to be doing fine with zero clerics.
Discussion
I have to admit bias because I think Wands of Cure Light Wounds is simply Munchkinism and have TWO is Monty Haulism. If I were a cleric and making said wands, I would include alignment and religion requirements. At the very least, a control ring. I might even force a quest or place geas, in case it fell into the Wrong Hands.
I suspect that here, you are going to run into disagreements with most other players. What is so munckiny about a wand for curing? At first level, it does provide nearly infinite healing, but it's also probably the most expensive thing that anyone is thinking of buying, beyond whatever armor the tank is getting.
At mid levels, a wand helps delay the onset of the 15 minute adventuring day. If the barbarian takes a lot of damage, the cleric can burn through most of his spells to heal him, or use some charges on the wand. In the former case, there is a good chance this would lead to the party needing to rest until the cleric can recover his spells.
I was thinking about a secondary healer, such as a rogue or ranger, who could aid a thoroughly beaten up party at the end of the day with a nonmagical manufactured kit.
Alchemical Heal Kit weighs 3#
This collection of bandages and herbs provides a +2 circumstance bonus on Heal checks. (stacks with surgeon's tools, yielding +4, +6 vs Deadly Wounds).Surgeon's Tools, Masterwork 100 gp weighs 3#
These tools serve the same purpose as artisan's tools, but masterwork surgeon's tools are the perfect tools for the job, so you get a +2 circumstance bonus on Healing checks made with them, +4 vs Deadly Wounds.
You did not include a price for the Alchemical Heal Kit. I assume the are more expensive than a normal Healer's Kit, but on the same price scale.
Can you use a regular Healer's kit with an Alchemical Heal Kit? Thematically, it seems like you should not be able to, but I do not think it would be unbalancing if you did all it.
I am somewhat concerned by how the healing scales with level but the price does not. At level 20, I could easily see the wisdom-focued character (cleric, druid) healing 50 hit points for 2 gp and half an hour of time. (2*level 10 + 10 from wisdom 30). OTOH, it is less than twice as good as the standard Treat Deadly Wounds, so if that is balanced, this is unlikely to be a problem.
In summary, I disagree with your premises about clerics and healing items, but I think the proposed items are reasonable.
I'm currently looking at making the heal skill useful for higher level characters. What I was thinking of was allowing the heal skill check to be made in coordination with the application of healing magic - combined into a full round action. For every 5 pts the heal check exceeds 10, 1 extra HP is healed. For treating PCs at negative HP, a DC 10-neg HP (so a pc at -5 hp would result in DC 15), the healer cuts the negative total in half with a 1 minute application. So a PC at -6 HP can be healed 3 hp. Now, this would be without application of magic healing. So a PC at negative HP can be treated twice, once to reduce their negative HP, then another in conjuncture with a magic source of healing.
Yeah, not a huge difference, but the free boost to hp healed will add up, and each use of healing noted above uses up an application of a healing kit (or skip the healing use but roll at -2)
Also - if doing a lesser restoration of stat dmg, a healing check of 15 adds 1 more stat pt, and a 25 adds 2 more stat pt.
Hmmm. I'm not sure, but this may be too complicated.
As to your healing kits - I like the idea, but allowing the heal skill to heal 2*LV of subject seems a bit much. Also, it would seem to me that it should take some time. Surgery in a dungeon sounds a bit odd. Perhaps limit it to bringing a character up to 1/2 their max HP. If used on a PC a 2nd time in a day, up to 1/3 their max HP, and so on (you can bandage and seal wounds, but you will not be replacing lost blood or that pound of flesh that dire wolf bit off of your ass).
Im about to run my first GM session, and none of the PC are healers.
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/general/campaignWithoutAHealer
I've been thinking alot about this and ways to deal with it, if it becomes problematic.
1) magic bandages / bandages soaked in CLW potions that increase the heal rate on resting / bed rest. Would either need to be bought from NPC or created with CLW potion and bandages using craft feat.
2) Amulet of healing aura. When activated heals 1 point of damage per hour of rest for everyone in 30ft of the amulet. After 24 hours the amulet is exhausted.
3) Zelda-esque faries you can trap in bottles :P
I don't plan on using any of these if i don't have to, only if the group gets into trouble.