Pro Healing. In fact, I'd like someone to explain to me how anything but the most optimized PCs blaze through encounters without any healing. The smartest foes tend to gang up on one PC, and not having decent healing can mean the difference between the next full attack wounding or killing the PC. Same goes for high damage-dice fireballs, breath weapons that roll a '1' on the recharge, and other situations where back-to-back high damage pools encompass the party. Is the solution just to try to kill the monster first? What about lingering effects, like Confusion, Acid Fog, and other stuff that sticks around and does damage after the "danger" is passed.
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Pro Healing. In fact, I'd like someone to explain to me how anything but the most optimized PCs blaze through encounters without any healing. The smartest foes tend to gang up on one PC, and not having decent healing can mean the difference between the next full attack wounding or killing the PC. Same goes for high damage-dice fireballs, breath weapons that roll a '1' on the recharge, and other situations where back-to-back high damage pools encompass the party. Is the solution just to try to kill the monster first? What about lingering effects, like Confusion, Acid Fog, and other stuff that sticks around and does damage after the "danger" is passed.
I agree whole heartedly with what everything you've said.
In PFS play I've to often played at a table without in combat healing and it sucked big time.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
In combat healing seems most needed when party tactics are bad. It is necessary from time to time, and some healing options are far better than others (typically ones that don't wreck the action economy like paladin self healing, shield other and oracle of life).
It's best to have it available, but to also know when to use it: for instance, if your foes are weak, you're better off layering on the offense instead of wasting time healing, which just gives them more of a chance to attack. If you /aren't/ likely to be able to take them before they can strike back, then yeah, it might be time to heal.
I am anti-combat healing unless absolutely necessary. My cleric builds prevent far more damage than they can possibly heal.
- Gauss
Absolutely necessary in our brutal campaigns, or we would have a ton more PC deaths. Healing is no longer the dominant/primary role of clerics during combat, but it remains necessary in many tougher fights.
Pro Healing. It's the bad guys' routine to have insufficient healing capability to withstand the onslaught of the enemy (PCs), not the good guys (PCs). ;)
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Yeah, I keep reading on these boards that healing in combat is a waste of time, and I don't know where that comes from.
I'll agree that some people (especially those playing clerics who think their only role is heal-bot) tend to heal every little wound in combat, when they'd be better off doing something to prevent more wounds - either attacking the enemies directly, buffing the party, etc. But not having in combat healing could easily be lethal. I've seen quite a few PCs saved by someone healing them while the rest of the party dealt with the threat.
And I've never played at a PFS table that doesn't have any in combat healing. More than half my PCs can use a wand of CLW, and I'll make a point of playing one of those characters if nobody else in the party can use one. It may not be ideal healing, but it gets the job done most of the time. As a GM, I can't recall ever having a party with no healing, either.
Pro-Combat Healing.
Pro-combat Healing.
Bonus points if you can heal and remove some sort of debuff at the same time.
My game is not a PFS game but if my party did nto have healing it would be a quick end for them.
In a "perfect" game with 10 minutes work days, perfect synergy amoung players and exact CR challegne you are probably fine. Not so much in my game. It explain the sheer number of character deaths I read about on here.
I guess you can get by with no healing if you want but I am VERY Pro Combat Healing.
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My friend playing his PC with one hit point left tried to convince me that I should perform some healing before the BBEG finished his character off.
During my turn I gave him a patient explanation of action economy, DPR and all of my accrued knowledge from the Paizo forums.
It seems he didn't listen very well since the BBEG subsequently killed his character right after my turn in the round.
(Just do smart things and respond to situations appropriately, good things will happen and there will be puppies, possibly candy and occasionally some rainbows)
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There are so many great channeling feats that make a channel heal during combat an enriching experience for all the cleric's allies.
giving bonuses to hit/damage, resistance bonus to saves = to wisdom mod, and resistance to energy = to wisdom mod, with a single channel healing.
So yes, even without th ebuffing feats for channeling, if it saves a character's life, then it is an action worth taking - channeling or direct heal. Period.
CC
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Very loaded question.
On one "side" we have an extreme "always" type of stance that I've never seen anyone actually take, ever.
The other "side" is literally everyone else (and when the first "side" is no one, "everyone else" is "everyone") and yet is framed as being one side of this false dichotomy.
A fair either/or question might be:
Is "healer" a worthwhile primary role for a PC, or is it more efficient for the party to have some emergency healing options available but have each PC's primary role be something other than "healer"?
You should always have healing available for combat, but you shouldn't necessarily use that option every time you can. Often (perhaps even usually), it will be more effective to attack, cast an offensive spell, or cast something that hinders the enemy's fighting ability.
Healing lets you keep playing the game, so I would only recommend in-combat healing if you really like playing.
Not a good answer, Jiggy, but my take is this:
It depends on party makeup.
In our CC campaign, currently one of the players is playing an Oracle of Life with the Lifelink and Energy Body revelations, as well as the ability to spam CLW and channeling. Does this make her optimized in every encounter? Absolutely not, since sitting on so much healing is in a way being reactive and not proactive against the threat at hand. However, when you consider the rest of the party makeup, (single class Fighter, Barbarian, and Magus PCs) the inefficiency becomes life-saving, if not overpowered. The three hitters will gang up on whatever threat is at hand, which usually results in the threat reacting to their attacks with whatever retaliation is at its disposal. The Oracle then mitigates whatever retaliation this might be, either with healing or a 'Remove X' spell. The result is that the foe in question has wasted his action on the effect he was trying to produce since not only has the Oracle equalized it, but also there are 3 other turns worth of action coming at it. The Oracle also has Sound Burst and a couple other offensive spells if need be, but for the most part, the player usually channels and heals during combat, and no one seems to mind.
While this rule of action economy is a principle truth of the game, it becomes truly evident when a bad guy's actions for the round are completely equalized by one PC's healing abilities. Mathematically, channeled healing doesn't scale with the damage pools present at the different levels, but it does offset enough AoE damage spells that a group of PCs doesn't need to stop their actions to heal themselves or risk falling to another one.
Of course, its easy to stop these tactics (target the healer), but for the most part, I don't think its inefficient at all.
It is my belief that most player have healing practices that are more similar that the arguments seem to suggest. I blame semantics and emphasis on specific situations.
False dilemma: Having the option is good. Channeling to heal is generally one of the better ways to in combat heal since it is defused and harder to overcome. However there are generally better choices than healing during combat. Admitting such doesn't mean saying healing is a waste of resources (though it might not be the *optimal* use of resources) just that there often are better choices at hand.
question is a "bit" loaded... No one in their right mind would think that healing in combat is always a waste of resources, and of course it is better to have an option available, than not. You could just as well loaded it towards the other side by asking who thinks healing always will be the best option for a character that can heal in combat. A more reasonable way to phrase the question, would be to ask if we think it's a good option in combat the majority of the time. IMO, the answer to that, for the majority of characters, would be no (at least until they get heal).
You obviously haven't read some of the threads here, where posters claim that it is always better for the Cleric to do anything other than heal.
Which is strange, because I've been in situations more than once, where my Cleric needed 20s to hit the monster, but casting my highest level cure spell would heal more than the monster was doing to the fighter, allowing the fighter to get multiple rounds of attacks with a decent shot of hitting the monster.
Combat healing has it's uses, especially when someone suffers a focused attack or you can do away with conditions or bleed effects, a spell like heal can often undo a BBEG's efforts for the last two rounds trying to put the barbarian down. Two rounds of useless without a save for the BBEG is generally a good thing.
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question is a "bit" loaded... No one in their right mind would think that healing in combat is always a waste of resources, and of course it is better to have an option available, than not. You could just as well loaded it towards the other side by asking who thinks healing always will be the best option for a character that can heal in combat. A more reasonable way to phrase the question, would be to ask if we think it's a good option in combat the majority of the time. IMO, the answer to that, for the majority of characters, would be no (at least until they get heal).
You obviously haven't read some of the threads here, where posters claim that it is always better for the Cleric to do anything other than heal.
Which is strange, because I've been in situations more than once, where my Cleric needed 20s to hit the monster, but casting my highest level cure spell would heal more than the monster was doing to the fighter, allowing the fighter to get multiple rounds of attacks with a decent shot of hitting the monster.
Citation on said threads, because all the ones I've been have always said, "Healing in combat is often less effective than other choices but sometimes it needs to happen."
Followed by people saying that we are saying you should never use combat healing, which we then explain AGAIN isn't what we said.
I play PFS exclusively, and I almost never have a dedicated healer in our party. In the few cases that we have had one, they've typically been limited to casting something like Bless and then standing there idle until the fight ends. In-combat healing is almost never needed, and a character built specifically to be an in-combat healer is going to be boring to play at most of the tables I've sat down to.
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How many people believe in combat channeling/healing is waste of resources?How many people believe its always best to have healing available during any combat?
Those who point out that this is a loaded question are correct. It presents a choice between an extreme (never ever heal in combat!) and a moderate/reasonable option (have healing available if needed).
You obviously haven't read some of the threads here, where posters claim that it is always better for the Cleric to do anything other than heal.
So far, nobody in this thread has claimed that "healing is a waste of resources". Only one poster has said he prefers to save healing for outside combat, except when absolutely necessary.
Actually, almost nobody argues that "you should never ever heal. let teammates die if necessary". Some people point out that it is often (not always!) advantageous to perform non-healing actions in combat and heal later. This varies from situation to situation, and game to game.
People too often misrepresent this argument as saying "healing bad always noob!" Nobody is saying that. Okay, nobody but Jayne is saying that.
This topic has been discussed to death. If you're interested, there is a 638-post thread here on it where most posters seem reasonable, polite, and respectful.
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I think combat healing is neccessary because GMs are humans and adjust to percieved circumstances.
Basically, if you go purely 'by the numbers' a cleric (or other divine caster) is better off focusing his resources on taking out the enemy rather then removing what the enemy has done. BUT (and this is a big but) that is ONLY if the opponents are static. If we were playing a computer game, that would be accurate. Encounters wont change based on the computer's perceptions. And you are better off killing the enemy before they are able to do significant damage to your allies is better then your ally getting stabbed and you removing some of the injury.
But we dont play against static worlds (most of the time). Most GMs want their players to feel like important encounters are hard. Usually that means taking damage. If you focus all your resources on offense to take out the enemy before he hurts the party, or if you prevent the damage with buffs and protective spells, the dm will start ramping up the difficulty of encounters untill he DOES start damaging the party. And in that direction, party wipes lie because there is definately a breaking point there.
If you regularly heal in combat, dms are more likely to be satisfied with encounters, and thus not ramp up difficulty.
As one of my friends often says, "If you need to administer healing in combat as a cleric, you're doing it wrong."
His justifications for this are that clerics and other healers get so many abjurations that healing should only be an after-thought.
I don't entirely agree with him, but yeah.
I think it all comes down to play style, honestly.
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one of my friends often says that dealing exclusively in absolutes and generalizations often makes you sound arrogant and usually comes back to bite you in the rump
one of my friends often says that dealing exclusively in absolutes and generalizations often makes you sound arrogant and usually comes back to bite you in the rump
"Only sith deal in absolutes."
"But that's an absolute!""Umm."
Will point out that limiting the players ability to buy magic items like a wand of healing (any!) makes a dedicated spell caster capable of healing necessary - and the game also becomes far less cheesy with regards to Uber-Builds designed around an improbably array of be-spoke items. Not my idea of a 'character' more a set of numbers.
It does, but is it fair to require one of your players to dedicate all or most of their resources to hit point recovery? I dont know about you but I wouldnt sign up for that job. I play divine casters, but I am not willing to play the bandaid, and not get to use most of my spells/resources for more interesting tasks
This topic has been discussed to death. If you're interested, there is a 638-post thread here on it where most posters seem reasonable, polite, and respectful.
Thanks for the link, I somehow missed the very lengthy and informative thread. The consensus seems to be that there are no absolutes in Pathfinder; that in any given encounter, certain classes will always be better to have than others, but that doesn't necessarily reduce the viability of any given class, or its strategy (like spamming Channels).
just don't moan if your party is imbalanced and I won't let you buy your way out of it.
Wow, really?
Wands with healing abilities are common items in this game. By spending the gold on a wand like this, your party is choosing not to spend it on weapons or armor... They are choosing to sacrifice some of their specialization in damage or whatever for this healing.
If your party had nobody that specialized in ranged combat, I guess you wouldn't let them buy a bow? Sheesh!
Channel doesn't work well against focused damage, but is nice against damage defused over the party. As far as healing goes channeling is better than most your other options.
There really isn't a general consensus.
There are attitudes that range across:
Healing in combat is never the right answer. NEVER!
Healing in combat is a very bad use of resources and should be a last resort.
Healing in combat is a perfectly effective way to reduce risk to your party.
Every party needs a dedicated healer who does nothing but cast healing spells in battle.
Interesting, perhaps I should create a poll like I did for the 3.5 reach exception poll with your criteria Matthew. We can find out if there is a general consensus. My guess is that it would be the second option.
Edit: I have done so. Here it is
- Gauss
just don't moan if your party is imbalanced and I won't let you buy your way out of it.Wow, really?
Wands with healing abilities are common items in this game. By spending the gold on a wand like this, your party is choosing not to spend it on weapons or armor... They are choosing to sacrifice some of their specialization in damage or whatever for this healing.
If your party had nobody that specialized in ranged combat, I guess you wouldn't let them buy a bow? Sheesh!
Well they might be in most games but they didn't even exist in the earlier forms of D&D I will point out.
But this isn't AD&D, this is Pathfinder. Trying play the game as something other than Pathfinder tends to lead to problems.
In combat healing is basically a waste of time, but just in case the dice gods are in a bad mood it should be available in some form. More often than not prevention of hit point damage is the best way to go.
