I will now assume you meant you don't like it in your games and did not mean that as "it should be clear that it's bad form to use CLW in a wand", which reverts it back to the opinion form as in "IMHO the wand does too much for its price."You can take it however you like, I'm honestly done discussing the ins and outs of how to post on an internet messageboard with you today. I said "my group" and I said "it's my subjective viewpoint". You don't like my premise - fine, neither does Dabbler - but you've avoided discussing the premise and are instead focused on how I presented it. I've apologized already for that. Can we move on?
A Wand of CLW helps in downtime healing after the combat, nothing else. You are not likely to have one until 2nd-3rd level, and it eats resources, but it means you don't have to blow a cleric's channelling or spells on all your downtime heals. That's all it does, nothing more than that. I can hardly see how that is 'cheese', I think that appellation is better attributed to the Healing Belt, and even then it's not really game-breaking.Alright, I understand this point. The reason I said it's "cheese" is that IN MY HUMBLE OPINION (there, everybody see that?) it marginalizes the usefulness of 1) Clerics as a class and 2) choosing non-CLW-wand healing resources on classes that aren't Clerics. There seems to be this prevailing attitude that healing HP damage just isn't cool or fun, so anything we can do to ensure that the classes that have that ability never have to actually use it outside of combat is an improvement. We tell players that healing in combat is inefficient and that virtually all healing outside of combat should be done using a 750gp twig with a command word. As a result, we've gone from the classes with the ability to heal HP damage being irreplaceable to having them be ostracized if they make use of their unique abilities in more than one very distinct way (waving a wand once everything's dead).
Fortunately,...
I am not offended at all, even thought capital letters were unneeded. I just want you to state things as you mean it without contradicting words. Using the word cheese, and knowing full well what it means, then saying in the same paragraph that it is your opinion only does not make sense. I was only trying to dissect if you were saying do you think it is a fact that nobody should use cure light wands, or were you just saying it does not fit in your group.
Saying it is cheese means nobody should do it. Saying you don't like just means it does not fit your playstyle.I avoided the discussion because the way you worded it made it unclear.
I have seen enough goalpost move that I try to clarify the other person's actual intent before moving forward.
I also made my own interpretation of your last post which you neither confirmed nor denied so I still don't know where you stand.
Language is standardized. You can't apply your own definition to something and be upset when nobody knows what you are talking about. I see you have your own idea about how the cleric should be played so I will ignore the word cheese since it does not apply, and take it is a playstyle issue as opposed to an over reaching game issue.
As to your actual comment, it is not that healing your party members is not cool. Being put into a situation where that is all you do is not fun. I am looking at you 3.5 cleric. Only having to use it outside of combat is an improvement. Otherwise it means someone got smacked in the face with a mace or something. It is also inefficient. The cleric is not ostracized for using an ability. If he heals me when I have only taken 5 points of damage I won't be happy about it though since I would rather him save it for when I need it, and if I am a cleric and a player is routinely in trouble so that I have to heal I won't be happy about that either. I understand the dice gods interfere, but the only way to have to heal on a regular basis is if someone is not being careful.
I think the difference is that you want people to have to heal in combat so the cleric can feel useful, but the cleric can be built to do so many other things that he can be useful even if he hardly ever cures hp damage, while the rest of us think something went wrong if it happens.
As a side note what would you do if a player(new to your group) learned about the anti-CLW rule and decided to boost his AC high enough that he almost never needed the cleric to burn a cure spell on him?
But let's go with this. The party is evidently 9th level. So the fighter and combat rogue are going to have around 90hps. If he's hit for 50 in a round, then they are at 40hps and likely aren't going to be around for the next one. If you can heal each for 18 or so (a channel, selective) then both can look to full attack rather than retreat. This is assuming that 2 subsequent rounds of full attacks will drop the monster which is likely.
-James
I said sometimes healing in battle can be good, but usually it's not. 9th level party, but I didn't say what round is was. Let's say round 2 (or 3). The monster has taken a good deal of beating and you are up. It might be you just need to kick its leg and it dies, or it might not. Maybe channel/CLW Mass is enough or maybe the monster decides to full attack just one and give him 75-100 points of damage.
Let's not talk about healing in combat vs. not. I used to be a fierce defender of healing in battle and healing classes, especially clerics, until two things changed for me.
A) I had some lengthy debates with people like Zurai andTriOmegaZero
B) I playtested what they said and they were right.
Healing is a secondary role in PF? Yes. Me and others have been crying out loud that better healing spells are needed. We did that during the Beta test of the Core book, and before the APG. No response. Simple truth 1) Healing doesn't scale well enough.
Simple truth 2) 99 % of the time our 13th level cleric use healing in battle is because:
A) He forgot to cast protective spells such as resist energy BEFORE the fight
B) We forgot to scout or did it badly.
C) Cleric hasn't prepared good enough spells, such as Greater Dispel Magic.
It's sad really. He took the healing and Fire domain and extra channeling and selective channeling. At lower levels channeling proved to be great, or at least good. But it soon became obsolete. At higher levels he also discovered that blast spells, more and more, became obsolete. But he plays his cleric as a healing and fire Cleric, the best he can. He just hit level 13 and he will notice heal is still the best and only healing spell that he can use in battle.
Edit:
All this said Healing can be good. As James Jacobs said in the thread "Healing in combat = doing it wrong?":
if the monsters do something unexpected or get a lucky crit, and you the healer do not go in to heal your friend, your friend is justified in thinking you're an ass and being unhappy with the fact that you would rather try to kill a monster (whose proximity to death normally can't be known to PCs) than to save the wounded ally (whose proximity to death normally CAN be known to PCs). Even if you end the combat faster by killing the monster before it can hurt the wounded friend again.
In other words... sometimes, it's a nice to have someone help you not be in pain
He also said: "And WHATEVER side of this interesting argument you find yourself on... neither side gets a "I can be a jerk because I'm right" card. And if many folks misunderstand you, chances are good you aren't explaining yourself clearly. Play nice, or let it go."
So here is to OP. If you want to read more about it,
A bunch of good stuffEvery time you post that, TOZ, I have an urge to go through the specific suggestions and rewrite it for a purely Pathfinder game
Please do. :-) I hope you or TriOmegaZero actually do rewrite it for a purely Pathfinder game.
A bunch of good stuffEvery time you post that, TOZ, I have an urge to go through the specific suggestions and rewrite it for a purely Pathfinder gamePlease do. :-) I hope you or TriOmegaZero actually do rewrite it for a purely Pathfinder game.
Same here.
Great post
+101.
That's why people are leaving the cleric for Paldin, Witch, Oracle or even Inquisitor.
Thanks for a great post. I snatch it for the thread, "Am I the only one that finds the PF cleric a bit pointless? (long)"
{Some interesting points}
I think that the reason healing does not scale well is simply that you get so many hit points by high level, having that much healing makes combat both long and boring.
At 1st level, 8 hp is a LOT, and one lucky hit can make a first level character a corpse. At 10th level, you have huge numbers of hit points, so getting so close to getting killed isn't likely to happen as often. I think that the philosophy is that you only need healing to scale enough to keep you from the brink in an emergency.
The case in point is then simply: if the cleric cannot wipe out the threat in this round then the melee combatants won't be able to afford to take their full attacks as they'll be both killed in the following round.
1) The cleric can't always know if he can wipe out the threat
2) if you at level 11 fight a dragon with SPA or spells doing 100 - 150 points of damage each round, mass Cure Moderate Wounds won't help.
During the first round it may be nice, but a greater dispel magic is far better during first round, removing stuff like, displacement, Blur, Haste, Mirror image, heroism, shield, Stoneskin, etc
Healing does serve a purpose in altering these thresholds.
sometimes yes. But usually no, at least at higher levels.
My experience is that in boss fights healing is Always bad, unless using heal. Or should I say, healing is bad 99% of the times.
Clerics are like Marmite - you either love playing them, or you hate playing them, and no amount of wands are going to change it.
That's not true at all.
I've played with some groups who expect a cleric to be a healbot and get pissed at you if you "waste" spells on something that isn't healing. I can't stand playing a cleric with those guys.
In a game in which people aren't begging me to heal them every round of combat I enjoy playing a cleric -- even a cleric built to be more of a support guy than a showstealer.
There's situations under which I wouldn't want to play MY favourite class, either. That doesn't stop them being my favourite.
The way I've set up my healing for my party allows me to remain effective at dealing damage or debuffing regularly.
Our party is an inquisitor, a barbarian (Tank), and myself (Oracle).
Life-Link is always on the both of them, which heals them each 5 hp at the start of my turn every turn at the cost of 5hp per 5 healed.
Shield other is also always on (at the cost of two 2nd level spells every 26 hours... not an issue).
So effectively my party members receive half damage after their damage reduction/other resistances etc and also have 5 hp regen per round.
My HP pool is chillin' at around 175~210 depending on the buffs I have running, and if I feel a fight is going to be all sorts of bananas I'll bust into elemental form to essentially gain 14~21 hp / round regeneration for 13 rounds (at the cost of my move actions). I took reach spell metamagic to circumvent this.
With all of this running I'm essentially an HP battery that just needs to recharge life pool every few rounds and then whore out a few channels after the fight, or after AoE damage (heals like 7d6 right now) which vastly outheals cure moderate wounds mass.
All of this running, I have several rounds between heals to cast things like bestow curse, searing light, harm, and I have time to break things like exhaustion and poison.
The only issue I have is my DM has taken to hitting the barbarian for STUPID amounts of damage (Just hit tier 4 creatures....) and sometimes requires me to recharge the health pool every round or every other round.
Admittedly it took me until level 6 before I could effectively start dealing damage, as I was whoring out the heals every turn at request. But work past that, and it's all good from there.