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I think the group investing in a few wands of Cure light/moderate wounds would be a better idea, esp if you don't particularly like the idea of having to class out to get channel energy.
Doing that along with taking the "Infusion" discovery, and making liberal use of that potion creation granted to you at level 1 then you guys should be fine. Not every party really needs a dedicated healer. I personally fall under the school of thought that a dedicated healer does more to lengthen battles than they do to keep the party safe.
So in summation my suggestion is the following, Pick up a few wands of cure light/moderate wounds (Paid for communally) and pass them around to those players with ranks in UMD. Next, cook up several potions for them to drink (Again paid for communally) if ever a single player gets too low. Lastly invest one discover into Infusion and hand out a couple spare extracts of whatever level heal spells to the melee centric players.
I think the druid should be able to help out with wands. The Alchemist can work on making potions. The high CHA folks, especially the rogue, could get Use Magic Device up there and use scrolls or wands as well. Note that any of the casters can take Craft Wand and then the druid jsut helps out to provide the cure spells during item creation.
Another option would be to have someone take leadership and get a cohort that can heal.
All that being said, if you have no healer for combat then you will have to work on changing your tactics a bit. Retreat a little more often and rest up in town when you need to. Focus on crowd control and limiting the damage you take.
Good luck and have fun.
Let your DM know that your group probably cant heal every two minutes, and to design encounters around that. It's not necessarily holding your hand, its providing a fair game.
That or do what my group does, and stock up on healing items like cure wound potions and wands.
I personally fall under the school of thought that a dedicated healer does more to lengthen battles than they do to keep the party safe.
that's a really interesting perspective, thanks for that.
Agreed, Prevention is better than a Cure, but you will still get banged up, no PC can ever get through a campaign without setting off a trap, getting shot in the face with a Lightning Bolt or having a weapon of some kind getting lodged in their spleen.
As an alchemist, you have access to a large amount of Healing Potions, which while not the best form of in-combat healing, is better than nothing, and you can heal yourself with your own Alchemist 'spells', so that's yourself covered, at least.
Might pay to grab yourself a Merciful Injection Spear and load it up with Healing Potions. One of the weirder ways to heal, but the other people won't be having to worry about taking an action/round to drink a potion and Non-Lethal Damage is tracked separately from Lethal Damage, and both are healed at the same time by Cure Spells, which a Potion is, just in a different form.
I would recommend getting some ranks in Use Magic Device and grabbing some items that allow access to some higher level 'White Magic' spells such as Raise Dead and Mass Cure/Inflict and the like, or research some Alchemical variations of these spells, costly but ultimately you will save in the long-run without burning through tens of thousands of gold coins worth of magical items.
I'd think the Sorcerer would be a better heal-bot. A level of cleric adds more spells, a ton more healing (Cha number of Channels), and a couple more levels of cleric lead to mystic theurge.
Or the fighter can spend a level on cleric, get a handy boost to Will Saves, and some good non-combat abilities....or some nifty buffs for combat.
If the APG has a good rogue/cleric PrC, maybe the rogue?
There's a sor/wiz1 spell called Infernal Healing which provides 10 rounds of fast healing 1. It is an evil spell and gives the target an evil aura, but maybe that would be thematically appropriate for an infernal sorcerer descended from Asmodeus himself...or maybe you could just buy a lot of wands and ask the DM about healing belts.
How about taking levels in the witch class? The witch also uses Intelligence as her casting stat, and can take the healing hex as her first hex. While an alchemist already has Brew Potion as a bonus feat the Cauldron hex gives the witch in question a +4 bonus to Craft(alchemy) checks.
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Let your DM know that your group probably cant heal every two minutes, and to design encounters around that. It's not necessarily holding your hand, its providing a fair game.
This. Unless of course your GM is running a published adventure (like an AP) in which case they may not like having to rejig stuff if the adventure is based on the assumption of a party having a cleric. This is one of the downsides of published adventures (party having to fit around the adventure rather than the adventure fitting around the characters).
Put full ranks in Use Magic Device to utilize scrolls and wands. Buy a lot of scrolls, wands, and potions. Keep any of those that you find along the way.
Are you guys running a home brew campaign or a Paizo AP or modules? If the latter, you need a dedicated cleric. In my experience in Paizo products, you absolutely need the cleric's buffs, mass healing and turning. Note that I said mass healing. Their products have a tendency to be deadly and the ability to channel is a vital time-saver. Wands of cure light wounds will not get you through battles, especially since Paizo likes the active dungeon where noise in one place leads to the entire location being activated. Once you hit 8th level, you won't have time to mess around doing 1d8+1 cure 10 times per frontline character after every fight.
You need The 10-Minute Rest Period.
Mark L. Chance | Spes Magna Games
You also need to have a discussion about 'who has the responsibility of healig us',and 'what do we do if no one wants the ful time healer job'?
That's your real issue. If you can come to a consensus that it's everyone's responsibility, then you can start looking for solutions like the ones above. Even small steps, like throwing ranks into heal, or pouring some of your cash into healing magic, can go a long way.
You could also go old school, and hire a cleric henchman.
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In my experience in Paizo products, you absolutely need the cleric's buffs, mass healing and turning. Note that I said mass healing.
Has anyone (e.g. 3rd party or Paizo) created a non-religious class that can "heal" as well as the cleric? I am thinking something along the lines of the 4e Warlord - perhaps a Bard variant in PF?
May I also ask, with the ability to mass heal given to clerics in PF (i.e. chanelling) have the Adventure Paths changed to be even more challenging? If so are they at the point that a cleric without channelling ala a 3.5 cleric wouldn't be good enough?
I originally though Channelling was a great change in PF, but now I wonder whether it just made the cleric even more indespensible.
As an alternative to a cleric perhaps your GM would allow the introduction of Reserve Points from Unearthed Arcana? This would allow everyone to recover some hitpoint between combats, but not be any better off within any single encounter.
A dedicated healer is a bad thing.
No I'm not saying "healing sucks" or "OMG YOU HEAL NOOB! LOL!!OLO!1"
Just that you don't want all your healing eggs in one basket, and you don't want someone that can only heal.
Having everyone in the party have some means of healing is awesome -- you never know when it might be a great idea to have someone heal and you need to have it be whoever is present, not the guy that is "dedicated" to it.
Also if somehow it gets reduced to just the guy that can heal, and that's what he is built to do -- the party is generally screwed because he can't provide anything else.
Having said that I suggest the heal skill as well. It has good applications beyond simply healing HP (which it can do) and is worth the points well into the higher levels (why waste a spell curing poison when you can do it with 10 gp and a heal check?).
It's a homebrew campaign in a homebrew setting. I can use wands of CLW and CMW since they are on my spell list (I think CSW might fall within the 4th level limit for me, too), and I brew potions like candy. The GM is willing to tailor he adventure to the party, but I've always been of the mind that having a dedicated healer is always a Good Thing.
You have most of it covered, and a dedicated healer is NOT a good thing unless a player really wants to play one. This is because:
1) A dedicated healer has to do the healing and little else with their actions - most players find this boring.
2) Time and resources in combat are better spent reducing the foe's hit points rather than shoring up your own - save healing for later, or for when somebody actually goes down. If you have a dedicated healer, you have in effect got one less character in the fight.
If you make sure every character always has a healing potion just in case, they can all take care of their own in-combat healing if they need it.
I don't want to refight the "Is healing stupid" thread, so I'll just limit myself to this statement: Channelling is a smart use of an action, especially if you can get 3+ people healed up. Cure spells are indeed a waste of an action. Buff, de-buff and battlefield control are a far better use of your time as a cleric. But the action economy of getting the equivalent of a 5th level spell (Mass cure light wounds) at first level is just too good to be optional now, especially since it scales with you. (Mass Cure Light Wounds is a terrible 5th level spell, ironically.)
I'll bet the problem is more with lack of party-wide buffs and enemy de-buffs than with healing when you're missing a cleric.
I would suggest that Cure spells are a waste of time, but I would stick this to purely Cure x wounds spells.
Heal is a good spell for curing HP and various afflictions, and breath of life when conditions are right is literally a life saver.
Not always true, and depends on the situation at hand.
I recall one table I played at where the cleric dropped a flamestrike rather than heal either of two VERY heavy hitters. The cleric did less than a hit's worth of damage spread over 3 foes
-James
Agreed, James. But please note I didn't put direct damage on the list of things worth doing instead of Cure X spell-casting. Clerics can't do that worth a darn until Harm, unless they're facing undead. And, even then, you're probably better off using Channeling to harm undead.
In any case, my money's on the lack of buffing and debuffing being the real major issue, which leads to more damage being taken, which highlights the lack of healing, which leads to more party death, which leads to party resources being spent on raising characters, which leads to falling behind in equipment, which leads to greater need for more buffing spells.
It's the Party Death Spiral and once it's started, it's very hard to get out of... without the DM getting really obvious about tailoring treasure to party needs. "Huh. ANOTHER wand of ability boosting! That makes five this week!"
In any case, my money's on the lack of buffing and debuffing being the real major issue, which leads to more damage being taken, which highlights the lack of healing, which leads to more party death, which leads to party resources being spent on raising characters, which leads to falling behind in equipment, which leads to greater need for more buffing spells.
It's the Party Death Spiral and once it's started, it's very hard to get out of... without the DM getting really obvious about tailoring treasure to party needs. "Huh. ANOTHER wand of ability boosting! That makes five this week!"
I agree, oh fellow mouse-of-burden.
Buffs have a three-fold use:
1) impede the enemy, making it harder for them to hurt you.
2) improve the defences of the party, making them harder to hurt.
3) enhance the attacks of the party, making them hit harder and/or more often.
The cleric has a mass of these spells, and you can start casting them before the fight starts so that you go in prepared. The druid can join in, as he has plenty too. When your fighters go in with +4 to their AC, temporary hit points and the enemy already wavering, it'll make a big difference. Remember, 10% less hits on the party means 10% less hit points you have to heal ...
On the subject of healing spells, I found the vigor series from the SC excellent - one mass lesser vigor at the start of a fight really ensures the party are well protected and saves on calls for healing in combat.