The title pretty much says it all: I'm new to DMing Pathfinder, and my group doesn't have a cleric. I'm sure this has come up before; how did you handle healing when you don't have a healer?
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Wand of Cure Light Wounds? Anyone whose class gets that spell can use the wand automatically, even if they don't actually have the spell. Otherwise, just get someone to train up Use Magic Devices.
Or maybe let them hire an NPC cleric to trail the party as a "healbot", but not participating in battle. Find a religious excuse to make the healbot a pacifist. :p
Or just make cure potions more readily available than they would be otherwise.
The title pretty much says it all: I'm new to DMing Pathfinder, and my group doesn't have a cleric. I'm sure this has come up before; how did you handle healing when you don't have a healer?
Wands or scrolls with use magic device, npc spellcasters, summons with healing spells, potions, heal skill + treat deadly wounds, leadership + hire a healer.
Druids, Witches, Oracles and Bards can all heal right from 1st level, the Oracle and Bard are the only ones who can cast cure light wounds spontaneously though. Paladins and Rangers can heal at later levels. Even Wizards and Sorcerers can heal a little via the spell Infernal Healing from The Inner Sea World Guide.
Oh, and buy a wand of cure light wounds as soon as possible.
Oh yes, and the Hedge Witch archetype can cure spontaneously too.
throw a couple cure potions into the loot of each encounter.
Yeah most people won't pay any money for potions. People will use them but for the most part if you have a caster they usually just cover the role.
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If you want to cater to this 'cleric-less party' concept and make it more feasible in your world, you can also buff up Treat Deadly Wounds (make it cost less per use, for example, and allow people to Take 20 on it between fights), and / or introduce an alchemical healing salve (although I'd recommend it being not quite so good as the one in the 3.0 Arms & Equipment Guide).
Introducing herbal healing options for woodsy folk, better Treat Deadly Wounds options for skill-monkeys (like Rogues), or arcane transmutation healing options for sorcerer/wizards (not as good as divine conjuration, but still better than nothing), or fast healing-while-raging barbarian options, or double-healing-overnight-in-favored-terrain ranger options, or an improved wholeness-of-body monk option, or a bardic that uses a round of bardic performance to allow his allies to recover hit points equal to their character level, or something, that could go a long way to spreading the healing around to various other classes.
There's a preconception that it's 'cleric or nothing,' and, having played a druid as a sole healer, I can agree that it's pretty sucky at the lower levels knowing that you can never prepare a spell other than cure light wounds, and you'll still never be as valuable to the party as a wand thereof, because you can't use your actual druid spells, but spreading the healing options (and therefore diffusing the healing *responsibility*) can make everyone's life a little more fun (as the 1st level bard or witch isn't *expected* to use one of his two spells slots on cure light wounds or his sole 1st level hex on healing).
Okay, so just bunches of healing potions and wands of cure wounds basically. I'll also bring up the option of hiring a heal-bot, see how they like that. Thanks, all!
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Okay, so just bunches of healing potions and wands of cure wounds basically. I'll also bring up the option of hiring a heal-bot, see how they like that. Thanks, all!
Basically use the first couple fights as a barometer and give them healing potions as needed. Don't be overly generous with them, as that may encourage lazy tactics. If they have a limited economy of healing, they will think better about how much danger they put themselves in with their actions
So many classes can heal right now that I don't think I've seen a Cleric in one of my groups in at least 3-4 campaigns. The dedicated healer may be so much Betamax to the Blu-Ray of today's diversified healing portfolio.
Current group has a Summoner, Druid, Paladin, Magus, Fighter and Inquisitor. Summoner heals his Eidolon, Druid heals himself and his AC, Paladin mostly heals himself after (shocker!) charging in and getting himself chewed into a soggy mess, Inquisitor heals as she needs it, sometimes herself, rarely a spot heal on one of the other PC's.
Only the fighter doesn't heal and honestly, he doesn't take too much damage with the Eidolon, Pally Mount and AC always up in my grill.
They've burned a few potions in their brief yet illustrious career, but several cure wands sit largely unused in the party treasury.
So, if for some reason you don't have healing capable PC's, I would offer the following advice, I would say:
-encourage tactics that help ameliorate damage (total Defense, aid another, etc) and avoid any one pc taking the bulk of the damage if possible by rotating the front lines and keeping the battlefield dynamic
-healthy use of summons/pets/controlled creatures
-wands when necessary (UMD can help with this)
I guess that's about all the goat wrote...
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If you're allowing 3.5 material, the Magic Item Compendium has this gorgeous little belt, Healing Belt for 750gp. It's effectively standard issue with our gaming group.
While wearing a healing belt, you gain a +2 competence bonus on Heal checks. This is a continuous effect and requires no activation. In addition, the belt has 3 charges, which are renewed each day at dawn. Spending 1 or more charges allows you to channel positive energy and heal damage with a touch. (You can also use this ability to harm undead, dealing them an equivalent amount of damage instead.)
1 charge: Heals 2d8 points of damage.
2 charges: Heals 3d8 points of damage.
3 charges: Heals 4d8 points of damage.
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This happened in a D&D 4th edition game I ran, once.
We had three characters; two of which happened to be mage-types, and the third was your classic tank.
I guess it really depends on the adventure you're playing, too; the one I ran was based on four-to-five players. I dealt with it by being a little generous with healing opportunities throughout the adventure; perhaps the dragon required all his little minions to be at top health while running the dungeon, and so the party would often come across a creek that just happened to have minor healing qualities to it, or they would find a few good stamina potions on the leader of each encounter, if they took the time to loot. All-in-all, it came down to if they could survive the encounter, they would have a chance to heal up afterwards. Made things run smoothly without having to detract from the tenseness of the situation.
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There's always pro-active healing... That's what our group has come to call it. It's merely to inflict a ton of damage to the enemy so they are destroyed before they can retaliate... It doesn't always work, though ;-P
Then there's this thing we use, more or less: Variant HP rules by Evil Lincoln and others...
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The other, other kind of 'pro-active healing' is to find ways to give people temporary hit points.
Aid and false life are the lowest powered options, and if you've got a Summoner who can call up lantern archons (Summon Monster III, at 5th level), those little dudes can cast aid once / round at will, providing your front-line dude with a buffer of 1d8+3 hit points every round for five minutes.
Oracles? Druids? Bards? Inquisitors? Alchemists? Witches? Paladins?
Cleric isn't the only class that can heal. Not by a long shot. You didn't say the party makeup though, so I'm gonna assume you've got none of those.
Even still. Parties CAN survive without clerics, or indeed without any kind of healer. It's more difficult in most cases, but certainly not a death sentence.
You could always try and make "find healing" a part of the scenario too... For example, use hyped up goodberries from the local forest or create a healing salve from the sap of the X plant found in the area your PC's are in, or have an NPC tell them about a healing pool outside of town guarded by "blob the beast" but if they can trick him or get past him then they could fill their waterskins from the pool... I think there are a lot of ways to be creative with this instead of saying Max the merchant has x amount of healing potions for sale... Just a thought.
The title pretty much says it all: I'm new to DMing Pathfinder, and my group doesn't have a cleric. I'm sure this has come up before; how did you handle healing when you don't have a healer?
The rate of HP is about 2 gp to 1 HP in terms of NPC healing. The average healing of a 1st level NPC casting cure light wounds is 5 hp, and costs 10 gp. Such services can be found in virtually any community, as not only can clerics, druids, bards, oracles, and so other arcane casters cast cure spells, but NPC adepts (the most common spellcaster) do as well.
The Heal skill combined with a bit of downtime can provide party-wide health benefits. You recover 4 HP * HD when you rest well and have someone around to make a DC 15 heal check. Not perfect, but it also increases your rate of healing ability damage (which is good when you don't have basic restoration spells handy).
As others have pointed out, if you purchase wands, you get roughly 5 HP per charge, so your average cure light wounds wand is about 250 HP for 50 charges (or 5 hp : 15 gp). This is the primary method of healing on the go, and have acquired the nickname "happy sticks". :P
If you allow psionics, avoiding damage becomes an option. While psionic characters aren't very good at healing, vigor and (some options in core) provide temporary hit points. A psion or psychic warrior can use vigor to grant themselves and their psicrystals solid amounts of temporary HP, and then use share pain to split incoming damage with their crystal (which allows them to sustain a suitable amount of punishment before needing to resort to healing).
There are other methods of healing, such as fast healing and/or regeneration, but those aren't generally available to PCs unless they are playing exotic races such as trolls (which is fine with an experienced GM, but as a newbie GM, I'd recommend sticking to basics for a little while at least, unless you'd really like to offer such opportunities to your PCs, in which case you can start another thread or PM me and I'll help you out with handling such things).
There is an ioun stone that gives a very stunted fast healing at the rate of about 1 HP per minute, and it's kind of expensive. It's arguably alright for boosting natural healing, since it equates to 60 hp / hour, which means a few hours downtime and you're back up, but has very little use in the "here and now" of combat.
Summoned monsters can heal. If you have a wizard or sorcerer in the group, you can summon things like Azata and Angels from summon monster V and up. Some of them even have other cool benefits, like bardic music (inspire courage) and other useful spells and such. Summoned creatures can't use spells that require expensive components like restoration, but Called creatures can; so if you need an emergency healer, you could use planar binding to call an angel to heal your party and then return safely to their plane.
There's probably some other methods too...
Potion of Cure Serious Wounds: 750
Heals 3d8+5
Charges: 1Healing Belt: 750
3 charges/day
1 charge: Heals 2d8 points of damage.
2 charges: Heals 3d8 points of damage.
3 charges: Heals 4d8 points of damage.
I gotta agree with McKenzie on this one. Just because the cost of potions are overpriced for the benefit of the spell within it does not mean other options are overpowered.
The belt was fine. It also used a body slot, which potions and wands do not. Potions are horrible for healing in general, unless you can craft them yourself or loot them off enemies, as they have the absolute worst ratio of investment to healing available.
750 gp for 18.5 Hp is terrible. The same value it 1st level CL potions results in 75 HP worth of healing. The benefit of being able to suddenly use them in combat is nearly non-existent because you have to sacrifice your action, provoke an attack, and then proceed to die when the CR 1/3 orc slams your face for 1d12+6 points of damage.
The belt was actually a legitimately good idea and legitimately good item.
Also, on the subject of magic items, you might consider adding minor wondrous items that allow healing when you use them for mundane tasks. For example, a pair of boots that heals you when you spend a move-action to move, or a sword that heals you when you strike an enemy, and so forth.
Here's a link to a thread where I was discussing the possibility of such an item: Boots of Healing.
Alternatively, Crafting or Buying an Intelligent item can get you an item that could cast healing spells on you, without even using up your actions.
True. That belt, while usefull at low levels will be all but useless in a few levels time when 4d8 hit points of damage would be considered a flesh wound.
True. That belt, while usefull at low levels will be all but useless in a few levels time when 4d8 hit points of damage would be considered a flesh wound.
Yeah. They were good enough people used to buy multiples and exchange belts as the day progressed, but never good enough to overpower anyone or anything. Healing is so bad in D&D that's it's a wonder people freak out when someone or something can actually make it somewhat relevant.
Ok, look, there's lots of classes that can heal now. Oracle, Paladin, Inquistor, Bard, Witch, Druid, there's even a Sorc bloodline with a tiny bit of healing.
Explain to them that they will need healing. Then, don;t coddle them. Yes, let them buy- with normal WBL- wands, potions, whatever.
But with a half-dozen classes that can do healing, there's just no reason to coddle a party where everyone refuses to be any sort of healer.
I've just started a campaign where nobody rolled a healer. Eventually we'll be UMDing wands and stuff, but for now we're living off Infernal Healing, which was the kindest thing a fiend ever did for an arcane caster.
As advice for the DM? Let them roll with it, and if they die, they die. Party balance is an important lesson.
Seriously, all of this is excellent advice. (And sorry for the silence: I work at night, so I've been unconscious all day.)
Party Makeup: we just ran through the Beginner Box and had a blast, but now I've opened up just the regular CRB to them and we're still building characters. One thing that has been made abundantly clear, though, is that no one wants to be the cleric.
So far we've got:
Wizard
Ranger
Rogue
2 undecided, probably 1 melee and 1 caster
I'm thinking of just going the heal-bot route, but working that into the campaign: y'all want healing? PAY FOR IT.
In addition to suggestions above, wherever the Party goes to rest up, make sure there's a cleric with enough levels to heal up the Party, when they finish their dungeon crawl.
In cleric-less party's I've found this helps with big damage. Cure light wounds wands/potions work to keep a Party on its feet, but if your gone for several days it can be hard to recoup all the damage absorbed without a dedicated healer.
Having one in town helps speed up the down time needed to get stuff sorted out in the town and back to the adventure.
I think the issue is nobody wants to waste his round with in-combat healing. None of the players think it's fun, and I don't blame them.
Ask them if they want a healbot NPC to tag along. They'll be losing a share of xp and loot, but they'll all get to play what they want and how they want.
I've got an idea for a healbot that will stay out of the way, and not be useful for anything other than mitigating damage. Also, hopefully, will be easy for a DM to run. This assumes, of course, that you want to show pity on them.
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Make him a cleric of Abadar, a magic item crafter and healer/buffer extraordinaire! He'll follow the PCs for, as Adam Moorhouse said, a full share of the loot (part of which is donated to the church and part of which he uses to upgrade himself), and he'll also craft items for the PCs (for 100% of the price of course, the Church needs to make its money somehow!).
I'd build him as an oracle of life, using the words of power variant spellcasting. The heals are cast at short range (rather than touch), so he can stand out of the spotlight and heal hit points, use the life link from medium range, and channel to top folks off out of combat.
Also, he's got set spells and the rest of the words of power are neigh useless. The party can't use him for a "we-need-this-spell" crutch; all he brings are heals.
I think the issue is nobody wants to waste his round with in-combat healing. None of the players think it's fun, and I don't blame them.
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Actually a party buffer and healer can be a really fun role. Not to mention, you rarely have to heal in combat- but when you do it's critical. Having the other PCs- and players- owe you for taking on this role is a golden opportunity.
3.5 / PFRPG characters are so much more versatile that you can have any weakness in the old-school paradigm (fighter, M-U, cleric, thief) and still be quite successful. My group has proven this time again.
In the Eberron Age of Worm one of us ran (we have 3 rotating GM's, including myself) we had no cleric, although we did have a barbarian / druid / nature's warrior and a bard. Wands of CLW are the cheapest healing in the game. Even if you have a cleric (playing the healer role), you *still* want these. We got through all 20 levels just fine. The final battle was almost a joke. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
In the current campaign (Rise of the Runelords) we doing fine with no arcane spell-caster (we're all knights - and this was before the magus, or pathfinder came out). With UMD we get by using arcane wands & scrolls. We do have a paladin and a fighting cleric, and they do channel to help wounded comrades in a pinch, but we do not rely on this as a strategy. Fully buffed the cleric is the most powerful knight in the party, and that player would rather dig in and fight alongside everyone else - front of the line. We all have the shield wall teamwork feat. There are innumerable tactics to deal with a wounded man or a man down. Combine strategy with *high AC* and lots of HP's and we *usually* don't need anything more than that Wand of CLW's after we win the fight.
I'm running Second Darkness for a different group of mostly pathfinder (even 3.5) nubes, and they have no cleric. And they're dealing with it just fine. I haven't even considered throwing in a heal-bot. I'd rather let the player's use their brains to solve problems because in my experience - that's exactly what they will do. However, a nudge here or there (invisible, of course) are a good idea from time to time. I've converted the ancient TSR module the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan to PFRPG. Because of the poison gas issue, I added a wand of delay poison (8 charges or something) for them to purchase from their Riddleport contacts along with a few other things being sold, if they wanted to. That's a cheap, emergency situation contingency item that they couldn't pass up, so because they had that they're only taking 1 HP damage per minute instead of 1d6 (in the tradition of the module).
As a DM I only give players what *they need* and not what's best for them. Trust me. Those damn players are clever bastards. They will usually find a way to win on their own, and, in doing so, are more satisfied to boot!
Any witch worth her gold should stop a pretty good amount of deaths.