Savage Tide AP without main healer?

[Ancalimon]

Hi, first sorry for my possibily bad english, I'm italian, and I'm still kinda working on it. :P
Feel free to point my mistakes out if you want to.

We've started STAP several months ago, we're currently playing CoBI (we're just finished the encounter in the pelorian encampment).

I think all we are what you would call optimizers, party composition's as follows:

Perturabo, human Fgh1 Clr4 Ordained Champion5 Fist of Raziel3 (DM allowed a link between raziel and heironeus churches); that one fighter level has probably been a bad choice, but still.

Karghail, half orc Drd8 Warshaper2 Lion of Talisid3 (with half orc druid racial substitution levels); animal companion (currently, a tiger)

Charlie, human Rog4 Div2 Unseen Seer7; prohibited school: enchantment.

Ancalimon, sun elf Abj(focused specialist)3 Master specialist6 Initiate of the SevenFold veils3 Abjurant Champion1; prohibited schools: necromancy, illusion, enchantment.

splat books, with a few reasonable limitations (i.e. no Frozen Wild Shape and 12-headed cryohydra :P), high ability points (old habit, we've ended up with about 82-84 total at 1st level).

Ancalimon's the party main wizard: buff, debuff, blast, battlefield control.

Charlie is the party "skilly", reconnoiter, backup arcane caster and surprisingly effective damage dealer (thanks to a questionable, but effective, combination of elven courtblade, weapon finesse, power attack, wraithstrike and sneak attack) and backup healer (use magic devices).

Perturabo and Karghail are the otherwise main melee fighters, divine casters and "sort of" healers.

Bottom line: all party members are spellcasters, 3 out of 4 are able to deal credible damage in melee, the party has high flexibility (druid and 2 arcane casters go a long way) and stamina, but I kinda feel we lack a main healer.
I mean, cleric and druid caster level isn't full, and in the druid's case, even if it was, Heal would be 7th level and Mass Heal unavailable.

Is it having a main healer indispensable at higher levels? Is there anything we could do about it (feats, items, and so on? druid and cleric already have an amulet of retributive healing each, anyway)?

General thoughts and suggestions about the party will be appreciated as well.
Thank you all in advance.

[Luna eladrin]

Welcome to the boards! I hope you are enjoying the Savage Tide.

Lack of healing possibly is not a problem at this level, as long as you have the possibility of buying healing items. Are you the DM or one of the players? If you are one of the players, consult with your DM about this.

[Ancalimon]

Luna eladrin wrote:

Welcome to the boards! I hope you are enjoying the Savage Tide.

Lack of healing possibly is not a problem at this level, as long as you have the possibility of buying healing items. Are you the DM or one of the players? If you are one of the players, consult with your DM about this.

Thanks for the welcome! And yes, I am enjoying ST a lot.

I'm a player (I try to avoid spoilers here, although it's not always easy :P), and we are certainly allowed to buy healing items.

Maybe most of my concerns come from the fact that I still remember our Age of Worms campaign, when the radiant servant of pelor used to Heal party members from afar (thanks to divine ward) and bring a nearly-death and/or disabled character to full hp and functioning... so I was kinda worried since we haven't such a healbot this time. ;P

I hope the extra damage output and flexibility will make up for the lack of uber-healing: until now we've been brought into negatives several times, used revivify once (maybe twice) and lost three or four animal companions, but all in all could have been much worse I think.

We'll see... thank you again, anyway.

[Luna eladrin]

Count on meeting opponents dealing lots of damage. So be sure to buy lots of healing items!

Have fun!

[Bellona]

You might want a dedicated healer for the final fight (and possibly earlier too). Some threads in this forum lead me to believe that the lack of an effective healer (and depending only on wands of CLW and the like) was the cause of at least one TPK during the STAP's final battle.

If no one wants to play a real healbot, then maybe someone could take the Leadership feat and get a single-classed Cleric as a cohort. If it's available, the Healer class (Miniatures Handbook) might be a good idea (even better if its class spell list is updated with spells from the Spell Compendium). That could be combined with the Combat Medic prestige class (Heroes of Battle) if one doesn't mind giving up the class features available at the final levels of the Healer class.

But above all, have fun!

[Ancalimon]

Bellona wrote:

You might want a dedicated healer for the final fight (and possibly earlier too). Some threads in this forum lead me to believe that the lack of an effective healer (and depending only on wands of CLW and the like) was the cause of at least one TPK during the STAP's final battle.

If no one wants to play a real healbot, then maybe someone could take the Leadership feat and get a single-classed Cleric as a cohort. If it's available, the Healer class (Miniatures Handbook) might be a good idea (even better if its class spell list is updated with spells from the Spell Compendium). That could be combined with the Combat Medic prestige class (Heroes of Battle) if one doesn't mind giving up the class features available at the final levels of the Healer class.

But above all, have fun!

We don't rely entirely on CLW wands! :P

Only, our cleric has lost a few caster levels along the way and won't cast mass heal at 20th level; furthermore, he's our main melee damage dealer and is supposed to use as many full attack actions as possible (he has taken divine metamagic and quicken spell, but can use it only a couple of times per day).
The druid, similarly, is our second best melee damage dealer and a mediocre healer because of the loss of two caster levels and druids' delayed access to healing spells: our plan was in fact to keep these two as close as possible in combat, using Heal with only one of them in a given round (using amulet of retributive healing to get both healed) when needed, hoping to take down the bad guy before we run out of the few good healing spells we have.
Maybe it's "a bit" too risky, but nobody really wanted to play a full healer.

Hmm... Leadership, you say. Ehm... I forgot to mention that charisma has been everybody's dump stat :P
Anyway, low char or not, we could think about it and I'll ask the DM.

Last, I don't know the miniature handbook, but I'll try to take a look at the healer somehow.

Thanks for now (and sorry again for the mistakes here and there ^^)

[Bellona]

If you do get your hands on the Miniatures Handbook, your group might want to consider a house-rules variant of the Healer class. The following house-rules variant has the advantage that it is easier to run as a second-string character (cohort from Leadership feat, ally, or whatever).

Change the Healer's HD from d8 to d6. (This variant is meant as a support character, and not as a constant front-liner.)

Allow the use of wooden shields, both light and heavy.

Make it a spontaneous caster class (instead of prepared spells) which gains access to all the Healer spells at each new spell level.

For the number of Spells per Day, use the Warmage's table (p. 15 of Miniatures Handbook, also available in Complete Arcane). While this does mean that L 9 spells will not be available before caster L 18, note that the Healer class spell list has Mass Heal available as a L 8 spell (which in this variant would then be available at caster L 16).

Remove the Unicorn Companion class feature (at L 8). (Too many pets tend to slow down game play.)

The character's build should include the Reach Spell feat (found in Complete Divine, Defenders of the Faith, Deities and Demigods, and Faiths and Pantheons).

This variant can still be combined with 4 levels of Combat Medic (Heroes of Battle) to creat an effective healing character.

[Ancalimon]

I've not yet checked the miniatures handbook for the healer, but I'm glad to hear it can cast mass heal as an 8th level spell. ^^

I can't make a comparison of your variant with the original healer (mostly because I don't know its original spell progression) but it sounds good, especially the spontaneous casting part (well, the rest mostly being a nerf to balance it, I suppose).
I really have to check it out, and consult the DM... about that, and the Leadership feat. Thanks.

[Carl Cramér]

We did this with 4 players; the main healer was a druid and the team sorcerer got some heal powers too. Worked just fine.

[Ancalimon]

Quick update.

Two session played since my last post, and for now we are still doing fairly well (we've played the fight against 15 or so skinwalkers in City of Broken Idols, proved less dangerous than it looked) so we've decided to wait to take any step toward improving our healing capabilities (we prefer avoid adding a new charachter unless it's absolutely necessary, because managing 4 chars +1 animal companion is already taking enough time at the table :P).

I only hope we don't have to regret this... well, we can always teleport to safety and set things straight I guess. ;)