Getting rid of the healer role

[Black_Lantern]

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your heal bot
I'll help you carry on.

Hello fellow adventurers, I need help to help out our cleric to stop being a heal bot. In your own personal experience what is the best way to perform combat in order to avoid making one character just a heal bot. Give items, feats, and/or strategies in order to help. Thanks again adventurers!

[Cheapy]

Read this guide by Tark.

Channel Energy was added to clerics to get rid of the heal bot issue.

Grab your longsword and light shield, put on your best armor and start whacking people. Cast Divine Power on yourself and make it clear to your party that you will only heal them if they are about to die or after combat.

[EWHM]

Most folks seem to have adopted the wand of cure light wounds for their out of combat healing role. In combat healing (other than the heal spell) can rarely keep pace with even one attacker's DPR.

[Jiggy]

EWHM wrote:

Most folks seem to have adopted the wand of cure light wounds for their out of combat healing role. In combat healing (other than the heal spell) can rarely keep pace with even one attacker's DPR.

This. Unless someone is currently in the process of bleeding out, healing should be done after combat, not during. And even if they ARE bleeding out, then unless that particular character is absolutely KEY to the combat at hand, don't bother to do more than stabilize them during combat, then fix 'em up afterwards.

[calagnar]

Any one that can use a wand of cure light wounds can be the primary healer in a group.

[Kantrip]

Focus more on preventing damage prior to combat. Stack on buffs that up AC. Put blur on your front line fighter. Convince fighters to at least try to tumble into position rather than walk through the AoO.

Changing how the party fights, especially if they cooperate, will reduce the damage they take and allow the cleric to do something beside cast a cure spell every round.

[Jiggy]

Kantrip wrote:

Convince fighters to at least try to tumble into position rather than walk through the AoO.

NITPIIIIIICK!!!

Acrobatics Skill wrote:

You cannot use Acrobatics to move past foes if your speed is reduced due to carrying a medium or heavy load or wearing medium or heavy armor. If an ability allows you to move at full speed under such conditions, you can use Acrobatics to move past foes.

Very unlikely that the fighter will be able to tumble at all. (Unless they're a dwarf, a level 7+ non-archetype fighter, or wearing light armor.)

Now that I got that out of my system, you're right - proactive manipulation of combat is FAR better than just healing.

[Charender]

I have found that the "I am here to have fun, not be your healbot" announcement to the group works wonders. If I am playing a cleric, I make sure everyone knows that I am not their personal medic.

[Nemitri]

I know why people kind of bash healing, but when i play healers in this game or another, i actually enjoy it, it makes me feel benevolent XD.

[EWHM]

Charender wrote:

I have found that the "I am here to have fun, not be your healbot" announcement to the group works wonders. If I am playing a cleric, I make sure everyone knows that I am not their personal medic.

Experienced players usually learn that healing in combat is rarely the most effective action available in any case---part of the problem is that there's such a massive non-linearity between how much the heal spell and its nearest competitor heals and the other part is how high most foes DPR is. You can overcome this if your GM is polite enough to focus all his firepower on one heavily armored tank who has an AC high enough to reduce the DPR on him to a healable level, but frankly, few GMs are that polite (I certainly am not).

[EWHM]

Nemitri wrote:

I know why people kind of bash healing, but when i play healers in this game or another, i actually enjoy it, it makes me feel benevolent XD.

Some of my players in some of the mini-series adventures I've run have asked for house rules for particular settings to make healing in combat more frequently the optimal choice. I do this occasionally to gratify the 'stop me before I heal again' crowd. Any interest in those variants?

[meatrace]

You could give people healing surges like 4E.

Make sure you have a god-wizard arcanist or some substitute in order to prevent damage to begin with.

Bring lots of healing kits and someone with skill focus (heal) to do the Treat Deadly Wounds ability.

Someone with UMD and a wand of CLW.

In my experience the more casters you have, at least competent ones, the less healing you'll need because you will kill/disable things before they get more than a swing on you.

All this having been said, it's still very valuable to have a Cleric with burst healing. I've played in a party where channel energy was the only healing because I refused to memorize healing spells or waste spell slots for it. It got us all through the day and I was able to use spells to disable/debuff enemies. It's always better to be proactive.