IIRC don't you normally have battles that are CR=APL+2?Did you ever implement those houserules nerfing casters?
If the first question does not apply I apologize in advance.
I only bring this up because in a normal game not having a dedicated healer is still possible to survive in even if it is a lot more difficult. Even though I say a dedicated healer is not needed I still think having one is better than not having one.
I could say that no one I game with plays the APs. Everyone writes there own stuff and a lot of them like the beastiary random tables or see nothing wrong with putting up unbeatable / avoidable or very hard encounters. I have played some as well.
So yeah, that's my point. If you aren't at least using APL +2 most of the time, and higher often, you don't need a healer because in my opinion, the game is a walk through. I really think people perceive that characters who focus on damage over defense and battlefield control over healing feel that way because they know that they are going to win no matter what. Rather than exploration and survival being the main element of the game, the main element becomes contributing more to winning faster in combat: more damage faster and show off winning spells.
A character who has better defenses but takes longer to win a fight has a better ability to endure harder or more surprising encounters. Teams built around the idea of going the distance and protecting each other are hard to beat as a GM. Individual PCs that go for broke when dealing damage are...
If i put up random rolled APL + 2 encounters against my PCs they would rip through every single one, even if they had to do 5 or more in the same day. APL + 3 random is also way doable, but APL + 4 would be a little dicey depending on how unlucky they are. I would predict a TPK or very tough fight with APL +4 as many would likely be immune or have insane DR that the PCs cant deal with.
But i dont think you can call out and say that generally you need a dedicated healbot, because you as a GM put hard restrictions on any kind of PC healing, that is just not a good argument. Its like me saying Wiz are underpowered because i disallow arcane spells in my games.
I do agree that you need properly build PCs with relatively good synergy to easily beat hard encounters, but that is true whether or not you use a healer.
There do exist lenient GMs that let the party do everything they want without fear of dying. But there also exist GMs that pull one knee jerk reaction over and over just to keep their players in line, like making frequent use of complete cheeze builds and then throw 3 encounters streight at fx the wizard just because he is the easyest to kill (or rogue or whatever) completely ingoring the rest of the party. In my mind GMing is all about having fun with your players, that means challanging them but not to the point that one of the players feels marked for death because the GM doesnt like his char, that ruins the games fun.
And for the record i dont use random charts all that much, i need to g to high in the list to actually challange the players, and action economy wins. Thats why i throw 3-4 CR = APL +2 or maybe +3 mobs at my party, just to even out the numbers. Also throwing in low level CR 2-3 mobs into a level 7 fight can be pretty usefull distractions, while also fighting the CR 10 boss.
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edit: I'd also like to add that it's totally acceptable to ban all base classes, and say that you need to choose from the core classes. I've seen alot of GM's do this because it save them time from having to learn entirely new classes and not get blindsided by abilities they weren't aware that the character might possess.
Not sure if I agree Like you said it'd be one thing to outlaw a class based on campaign setting. I think it's totally different to do it because you as a GM don't want to take the time to learn your players characters. In addition getting blind-sided by abilities happens all the time (met-gaming aside) to players. I think part of the fun is trying to keep my GM on his toes as much as he keeps our group on ours. As a GM you have the ability to throw countless curve balls at your players because you run the world. As a player it's far harder to sneak one past the plate on a GM especially if he has narrowed the field to only the classes he or she is familiar with.
edit: I'd also like to add that it's totally acceptable to ban all base classes, and say that you need to choose from the core classes. I've seen alot of GM's do this because it save them time from having to learn entirely new classes and not get blindsided by abilities they weren't aware that the character might possess.Not sure if I agree Like you said it'd be one thing to outlaw a class based on campaign setting. I think it's totally different to do it because you as a GM don't want to take the time to learn your players characters. In addition getting blind-sided by abilities happens all the time (met-gaming aside) to players. I think part of the fun is trying to keep my GM on his toes as much as he keeps our group on ours. As a GM you have the ability to throw countless curve balls at your players because you run the world. As a player it's far harder to sneak one past the plate on a GM especially if he has narrowed the field to only the classes he or she is familiar with.
I agree, and when I GM all classes, archetypes, prestige classes are acceptable, but I can see a less experienced GM not wanting to add all of the other books outside of the Core to the game.
My main point in that post was to clarify a difference between a GM not wanting to have more material then they can learn, vs "this class is stupid so I ban it".
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WOW...someone needs to go back to basic 4e rules.
All I hear is "Lets take everything that makes the game a game and lets gather together once a week to listen to me share a sweet story I wrote about the characters I made up."
Actually that would be still be 3.x (including PF), 4e is stereotyped as having a lack of roleplaying (aka story).
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Actually that would be still be 3.x (including PF), 4e is stereotyped as having a lack of roleplaying (aka story).WOW...someone needs to go back to basic 4e rules.
All I hear is "Lets take everything that makes the game a game and lets gather together once a week to listen to me share a sweet story I wrote about the characters I made up."
I think it's more of a comment on the lack of control by players, who, in this case, seem to be there to watch the DM play with himself.
I think it's more of a comment on the lack of control by players, who, in this case, seem to be there to watch the DM play with himself.Actually that would be still be 3.x (including PF), 4e is stereotyped as having a lack of roleplaying (aka story).WOW...someone needs to go back to basic 4e rules.
All I hear is "Lets take everything that makes the game a game and lets gather together once a week to listen to me share a sweet story I wrote about the characters I made up."
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I think it's more of a comment on the lack of control by players, who, in this case, seem to be there to watch the DM play with himself.Actually that would be still be 3.x (including PF), 4e is stereotyped as having a lack of roleplaying (aka story).WOW...someone needs to go back to basic 4e rules.
All I hear is "Lets take everything that makes the game a game and lets gather together once a week to listen to me share a sweet story I wrote about the characters I made up."
Yep.
For one this team has a bard which can heal. The fact that Bards are also spontaeous casters helps too. That alone should be enough to smile at the DM tell him to do his worst and the party will happily deal with the consequences. I would also suggest to the player who is having no fun running a cleric that there are a few options if his original intention was a barbarian. One would be to multiclass into oracle and then rage prophet. Oracles have heals, and if the DM is going to allow a change of character they should have not issue with moving some stats around. A barb/oracle can be a real blast and the flavor of the rp can be very similar. Second straight clerics can do anything. The right diety and domain can make you any kind of character to rp you want to be. I have played a number of clerics and they were all very, very different from each other.
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For one this team has a bard which can heal. The fact that Bards are also spontaeous casters helps too. That alone should be enough to smile at the DM tell him to do his worst and the party will happily deal with the consequences. I would also suggest to the player who is having no fun running a cleric that there are a few options if his original intention was a barbarian. One would be to multiclass into oracle and then rage prophet. Oracles have heals, and if the DM is going to allow a change of character they should have not issue with moving some stats around. A barb/oracle can be a real blast and the flavor of the rp can be very similar. Second straight clerics can do anything. The right diety and domain can make you any kind of character to rp you want to be. I have played a number of clerics and they were all very, very different from each other.
The prob is the GM (from what is being told to us) looked at the player and said you have to play this exact class with this exact archtype and you have to be a healer. It wasn't, "Hey you should play something that CAN heal." The GM flat out said, "You are the dedicated party healer and that is all you will do."
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Okay, I just figured out how to make you a Necromancer, even with the forced archetype. Be a merciful healer(as mandated) of Pharasma, be neutral, and then take the versatile channel feat. You will not be able create undead, but you can still damage enemies. Later you can nab the Phylactery of Negative Channeling, and maybe the extra channel feat, or the Ability Focus feat.
I don't see Pharasma having an explicit issue with one of her priests channeling negative energy to damage living creatures. She's a neutral goddess and her priests run the gamut of the alignment spectrum.
If the priest channeled negative energy to heal undead or used any method to create undead, it'd be atonement time at the very least. Hastening the impending death of a creature that has overestimated its time in the world of the living, however? I don't see Pharasma having a problem with her priests handling the powers of death.
The way of dealing with this problem is NOT to cater to the DM, that will just convince him that he is right and perpetuate bad behaviour.
@ Blackbloodtroll, LOL, I'll pass that along, that's a hillarious idea.
I rather like the idea of a cleric-less undead campaign, with a gunslinger. A fantasy version of playing out a zombie apocalypse. Or some more gritty, classic horror.
The undead are more frightening when you don't have any divine power tipping the scales your way anyway.
I like the tactic of making the healer sound like more of a liability might be a good strategy. I do think a divine class would be pretty good for the party overall if they weren't pigeonholed into the healbot. In my group it's pretty much assumed that if your a cleric your have to take the merciful healer archetype. tbh I wouldn't even mind this approach, but only if it was the case that the player wanted to play this type of person.
I know this has been said repeatedly, but I think it bears repeating:
A well-played divine caster (cleric, druid, or oracle) does not mean a Healbot. In fact, a "min-maxed" divine caster is NOT going to be a dedicated Healbot.I really think people misunderstand the idea of "min-max." It does not mean "maximize one class feature/role and at the cost of minimizing the rest." It means "maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses."
For example, a 25-point-buy human cleric that selects the Merciful Healer archetype, goes 7 Str/8 Dex/9 Con/8 Int/20(+2 racial)Wis/18 Cha, is the wrong kind of mix-maxed. They have sort-of maximized* one role (healing and status removal), but have minimized their survivability (by dumping con), utility (by only having one domain and dumping int so you have no skill points), and damage output(by dumping strength and being unable to channel energy against undead). This character can heal or... hold their action until its time to heal.
*It is debatable that the Merciful Healer Archetype is maximizing anything, but that is a whole different arguement.
This is the opposite of what you want to do in a tabletop game. By limiting yourself to one role, you are worthless when that one role is ineffective.
Instead, lets say the human cleric goes with no archtype, takes the Domains of Luck/Restoration(Healing Subdomain), and has an array of 14 Str/10 Dex/14 Con/10 Int/18(+2 Racial)Wis/14 Cha. This cleric is still excellent at healing and removing status effects. This cleric can also has far fewer weaknesses. They have +3 HP per level from Con, can use their Touch of Luck domain ability to give an ally 2 rolls against an important d20 check, can channel energy against undead, and can smack things in the head with morningstar from time to time. They have maximized a strength (healing and status removal), and minimized weaknesses (more survivable, more utility from Touch of Luck, more damage output when needed/nothing else to do.) Note: I would not consider this character a Healbot. They are good at healing, but I would expect no more than 30% of their in-combat actions to be heals. They can and should be buffing, using crowd control, reading counter-spells with dispel magic, using Touch of Luck, and using their morningstar.
There is a reason that fighters carry golf-bags full of different weapons, and wizards carry tons of different scrolls, and all adventurers pack their backpacks to the brim with rope, 10-foot poles, tanglefoot bags, masterwork tools, lanterns, etc. This reason is flexability. The strongest characters are flexible enough to adapt to any situation that arises. The weaker ones just do one thing well(no matter how well they do it.)
I know this has been said repeatedly, but I think it bears repeating:
A well-played divine caster (cleric, druid, or oracle) does not mean a Healbot. In fact, a "min-maxed" divine caster is NOT going to be a dedicated Healbot.
You know this. I know this. The OP knows this.
The problem is that the OP's DM does NOT know this and does not subscribe to this point of view.
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I would probably take the merciful healing cleric as mandated (and I would make a point of stating that it was mandated).
Wisdom no higher than 14
Charisma no higher than 12.
Pump str and con as high as I could get them.
However, then I would take the feats for combat.
Heavy armor prof
Martial weapon prof
Weapon focus greataxe
etc...
I would take mostly self buffing spells (maybe a few attacks).
I would try to spend some time buffing myself at the start of every fight.
I would NOT specifically try to save spells for heals.
Then I would play him as close to a headstrong barbarian as I could manage.
"Well Gronk was forced by his parents to attend the healing abbey. Apparently he was violent and stubborn as a child. They thought the abbey would cure him of that behavior. It did not. It just gave him some additional tools to use in brawls and gave him the capability to heal himself back up after a fight."
He could level into Barbarian or Fighter and never come back as soon as he gains his next level. "He learned that prevention is better then healing and decided to take up the sword."