I like the Variant Channeling rules, but many of the options seem underpowerd, especially the "Heal" effects. Have you had any experience with these? How did they work out for you?
Are there any that are particularly worth using?
Harm has quite a few good ones. Freedom's Harm is awesome.
Magic's Heal can be pretty good if you have a lot of casters, doubly so if you have Quick Channel. Use your Channel to give yourself a boost to CL checks to overcome SR? With how rare boosts to overcoming SR are, not bad.
Disease Heal is wonderful.
Protection Heal isn't so bad either.
There are probably some other ones that become really strong when combined with other abilities. Imagine an ability where you can AoE nauseate or sicken your enemies fairly easily. Just channel with the Ale Heal, and your team is gold.
They especially kick off around level 10, when they're giving +3. Cities variant + lots of summons? Suddenly they can hit more often.
Amusingly, with the prevalence of raise dead type effects in PF, "dead" is a temporary condition past a certain point, so Self-Perfection's Heal would temporary raise the dead :p The trouble with that one is finding a GM who would allow it!
Barbarians could love Farm Heal (maybe not, depending on how your GM rules the "ignores but still has it" debate).
Fire Harm is nice too. Having enemies catch fire isn't so great, until you force a spellcaster to roll to cast a spell. More useful at lower levels, for sure.
Pain's Harm is wonderful.
As is Rulership's Harm. Dazed for around?! Damn!
...ok, there are a lot better variant channels than I thought they were.
...ok, there are a lot better variant channels than I thought they were.
There are a few that seem good, especially the harm abilities.
Disease/Heal (Creatures heal a number of points of ability damage to one ability score equal to your channel bonus.) is the only heal that looks worthwhile to me though.
I hadn't thought about Quick Channel, but it certainly makes a number of these powers better!
...ok, there are a lot better variant channels than I thought they were.There are a few that seem good, especially the harm abilities.
Disease/Heal (Creatures heal a number of points of ability damage to one ability score equal to your channel bonus.) is the only heal that looks worthwhile to me though.
I hadn't thought about Quick Channel, but it certainly makes a number of these powers better!
Yeah, I'm building a dhampir Cleric of Urgathoa for PFS to make use of the disease heal ability along with Quick Channel... since I'm taking the Undeath subdomain, I can touch my allies to treat them as undead for several rounds, then channel several times (even in the same round thanks to Quick Channel) to heal their ability damage and heal them at the same time. Pretty sweet!