Merciful Healer and Mercy Feats

[caith]

I am assuming that the Merciful Healer archetype waves the requirement of "lay on hands class feature" for mercy feats? That they can gain additional mercy types and extra healing die if they dont need to mercy?

[ForgottenRider]

prd wrote:

Merciful Healing (Su): At 3rd level, a merciful healer can channel positive energy to relieve one or more harmful conditions. The merciful healer chooses one of the following harmful conditions at 3rd level: fatigued, shaken, or sickened. When the merciful healer channels energy she can remove the chosen condition from one living creature that she heals within her channel energy burst. At 6th level, she can choose another condition. It can be one of those she didn't choose at 3rd level, or one of the following conditions: dazed, diseased, or staggered. She can remove the selected condition or the one she chose at 3rd level from up to two creatures within her channel energy burst. She gains another condition at 9th level, and can choose an above condition or one of the following conditions: cursed, exhausted, frightened, nauseated, or poisoned. She can remove that condition, or a condition she previously chose, from one or two creatures within the burst. Finally, at 12th level, she can choose a lower-level condition or one of the following conditions: blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or stunned. She can remove that condition or one she previously chose from one, two, or three creatures within her channel energy burst. Feats and effects that affect a paladin's mercy also affect this ability.

It would look like the bolded part is a yes to your Question. Makes greater mercy ultimate mercy out of UM look realy nice

[Eric Clingenpeel]

ForgottenRider wrote:

prd wrote:

Merciful Healing (Su): At 3rd level, a merciful healer can channel positive energy to relieve one or more harmful conditions. The merciful healer chooses one of the following harmful conditions at 3rd level: fatigued, shaken, or sickened. When the merciful healer channels energy she can remove the chosen condition from one living creature that she heals within her channel energy burst. At 6th level, she can choose another condition. It can be one of those she didn't choose at 3rd level, or one of the following conditions: dazed, diseased, or staggered. She can remove the selected condition or the one she chose at 3rd level from up to two creatures within her channel energy burst. She gains another condition at 9th level, and can choose an above condition or one of the following conditions: cursed, exhausted, frightened, nauseated, or poisoned. She can remove that condition, or a condition she previously chose, from one or two creatures within the burst. Finally, at 12th level, she can choose a lower-level condition or one of the following conditions: blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or stunned. She can remove that condition or one she previously chose from one, two, or three creatures within her channel energy burst. Feats and effects that affect a paladin's mercy also affect this ability.

It would look like the bolded part is a yes to your Question. Makes greater mercy ultimate mercy out of UM look realy nice

Hmmm... I'm not sure, because both those feats affect lay on hands, not mercies, and nothing in that ability says you don't need to meet prereqs of the feats, so you'd still have to have levels of paladin. I think this might be a bad choice of wording maybe? But AFAICT, RAW those feats wouldn't do a thing for the merciful healer

[Guhigh]

As RAW the last line (Feats and effects that affect a paladin's mercy also affect this ability.) apply to nothing. Mercy Ability is describe as an added effect of lay on hand , so the only 3 feats that have mercy class feature requirement also have a lay on hand class feature requirement... and nearly all item that use/affect mercy also require you to have lay on hands like the "crystal of healing hands"... so as RAW it's totally useless.

Now if we take into account that the merciful healer use mercy as an added effect to channeling positive energy and that paladin need 2 use of lay on hands to gain 1 channel use... Rules a intended is probably to allow you to take the feats with a mercy class feature requirement and that you replace the lay on hand part with channel positive energy, only if your class feature mercy is involved somewhere in the magical item/feat.

the 3 following feat will be legal

extra mercy
requirement: lay on and class feature, mercy class feature
bonus: gain an extra mercy

greater mercy
requirement: cha 13, lay on hands class feature, mercy class feature
bonus: +1d6 healing if target has nothing to remove

ultimate mercy
requirement: cha 19, lay on hands class feature, mercy class feature, greater mercy
bonus: expend 10 use to bring a creature back to life.

but not for feat like: reward of grace, reward of life, radiant charge and so on... Because they have "lay on hand class feature" requirement only ( as opposed to having "lay on hand AND mercy class feature" requirement)

[Rhorek]

Now if you could repeat this in English it would be great... Sorry I don't seem to understand what you are trying to say. I am currently building a merciful cleric. I was thinking of sidestepping into a few levels of paladin, but this would take me more toward a combat oriented character(which is not what merciful healer is geared towards)

I guess I'm just trying to understand what you were referring to, as I didn't know a cleric could cast lay on hands.... At least not without taking a level of paladin

[Warsor]

The problem is without any errata or comment from a official Paizo rules representative, any discussion here is just about what may have been intended to be written at the end of the Merciful Healing Ability.

Without a specific line to tell us that prerequisite for the mercy feats are waived the last line of the ability is open to interpretation, what was intended by the designers? On one hand they might only want the Merciful Healer to benefit from the feats if they also have 2 paladin levels to get LoH. But I find that an illogical design for an ability that is meant to work with those mercy feats.

What is needed is for a designer to clarify the intent of the ability, if channel positive energy replaces the requirement for Lay on Hands for the Mercy feats. It is my hope that errata for the intent of this is made clear so that official games can handle this when it arises.

[Guhigh]

(edited 30 jan 2012 so link is easier to spot)

Official answer here From James Jacobs

It's up to your DM to decide if they apply or not. In addition to basing this decision on the type of player (optimiser or not) it's also good to see what would be the impact to game balance.

Basically by allowing it, the following things will happen:

At 3rd level the cleric will have a channel energy of 3d6, the same as a 5th level one. So the party will a stronger healing source that it normally should have. This mean that they can survive encounter of higher CR more easily.

The best thing to balance the game would not be use higher CR since it would end up in more loot and more xp, unbalancing even more the game, but to use encounter with AoE damage source. CR 2-3 dragon, alchemist with bomb and splash damage, low damage AoE trap, goblins with sky rocket, multiple low level mob to swarm the party...
The effect of that extra channeling dice will fade as the party advance in level. At 5-6th level AoE damage or heavy hitter appear more often and above level 10 that 1-6 extra hp per heal won't change much when some monster can kill a pc in one round if they focus there attack.

At level 7 or 9 the party cleric will be able to return other party member to life for only 2000 gp instead of 7000gp (1000gp for each negative level + 5000gp for raise dead) This mean that the party can have member dying more often. The DM can play the monster with more deadly efficiency without too much fear of ruining the mood of the game, since returning from the dead will be cheaper than usual.

Add-in the hero point system and as long as the cleric as 2 hero point to cheat death and a total party kill cannot simply occur. If the player avoid a TPK because the cleric used 2 hero point then returned to life the party to life it could be a good opportunity to force them to survive with minimal gear since all there valuable gear will be looted by there opponent. Reequipping them-self,getting rid of the 2 negative level per party member, then finally track down there slayer to exact vengeance and reclaim there original gear.

As long as your DM know what to expect from allowing it and feel comfortable with that and can adapt to it so it won't ruin everybody fun, it should be fine.