From what I understand from other players posting on this forum a dedicated combat healer is usually not a priority.
Is this true? In all my time in 3.0, 3.5, and now Pathfinder, our group has never gone without a dedicated combat healer. Now, this doesn't mean said healer is twiddling their thumbs unless someone needs healing, or healing unnecessarily...but should a PC start to falter after a particularly nasty full attack by the dire tiger, it's the healer's job to keep them up. etc. etc.
Is this unusual? Do groups play without anyone at all responsible for keeping people up?
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It really depends on context. Is healing the PC that just went down the most optimal thing do? Might be; might not be. Party make up should help the players determine strategies. If one guy gets mauled by the tiger and you have 2-3 melee types ready to stand and deliver it might be better to buff them. If the tiger has taken a beating it might be just best to try and finish it off with a spell. If things are really going south the best bet might be to cast a CC spell. If your fighter just got his ass beat and he is your best bet at winning the fight then by all means keep him/her up.
It largely depends on the group (classes&builds), their tactics (rush in vs. cautious), the DM and how (s)he likes to run games, ...
Often a "healer" would have other tools at his disposal to turn the tables, but ...
- if the DM will fudge dice, because he does not want his BBEG's lieutenant be CC'd (crowd-control = shut down) with a single spell/maneuver, then, yes, your best bet is to heal
- if the DM likes putting the group against enemies where half the class abilities are useless and it's become a slug-fest of who's more resilient, healing is your best bet... funny enough this is often the case vs undead (mind-magic won't work, resistances, ability-draining touches, ...) the one enemy where the healer's positive energies are usually better put to use to kill these undead quickly
In my group, we roll combat dice in the open, so everyone can see and everybody knows there is no fudging going on. If the BBEG get's stunned/blinded, so be it... life is hard. BBEG should have minions and with their help should be able to pull off some decent tactics that give a headache to PCs, even if blinded.
Hit, get hit, get healed; becomes boring quickly if fights always end up like this.
When dispel magic and such become available, BBEG and PC alike should use them... taking away enemy buffs adds another layer, maneuvers and positioning too. Mages should be busy countering/foiling enemy mage tactics, not necessarily through counterspells, just by messing up that enemy's plans.
Instead of healing your fighter, who got hit badly by the dire tiger... better make sure the tiger won't 1-hit that rogue behind him, next. ;-)
In short:
We very rarely have somebody who agrees to be the "healer" for the group, mostly because we all agree it's boring to have one and boring to be one.
I was in a campaign that recently ended and we didn't have a healer and didn't need one.
I'm currently in two campaigns. One doesn't really need one (so far..) and I Am the healer in the other and without a healer being there the group would likely have TPK'd once a session or so. (not because of me- just because of the abilities at the disposal of a dedicated healer.)
It can have alot to do with the design of the DM's stuff or AP or module you are doing. It can have alot to do with the design of the other PC's in the group and the willingness of the DM not to fudge either for or against your PC's. It can have to do with how closely the DM adhere's to the CR system and how far above it he's willing to tread to bring you to the brink of death and challenge you. It can have to do with how intelligent he plays the NPC's you encounter in combat and how well they react and act based on their given intelligence. (not all critters are smart but smart ones *should be*.)
I'd say if you have a healer and they are extremely bored from lack of things to do then your group probably doesn't need one. So far I've found being a healer gives me something to do every round except maybe the first. (and sometimes even then.)
-S
As a wild guess I'd say 25% of the time we play without a healer, and it always works fine. It can be very frustrating, but it's not a must.
In one groups Shattered Star campaign I am the healer, when I am not casting Fireballs and Flame Strikes. The Witch and my Druid cohort help out.
In another the Cleric sees to the healing in between Harm spells.
So while yes we have a character that is our healer, that is far from the only thing he does.
From what I understand from other players posting on this forum a dedicated combat healer is usually not a priority.Is this true? In all my time in 3.0, 3.5, and now Pathfinder, our group has never gone without a dedicated combat healer. Now, this doesn't mean said healer is twiddling their thumbs unless someone needs healing, or healing unnecessarily...but should a PC start to falter after a particularly nasty full attack by the dire tiger, it's the healer's job to keep them up. etc. etc.
Is this unusual? Do groups play without anyone at all responsible for keeping people up?
Our groups always have multiple people capable of healing (and none of them are ever wielding the ubiquitous crutch of cure wands), but it is almost unheard of for us to have someone who's role is 'in combat' healing. Conditon removal is one thing, but topping off someone's hit points every round is a waste of action economy in our book. Players are expected to be able to take care of themselves for the most part over the course of a single encounter through solid builds, solid teamwork and solid tactics. Except in absolute emergencies, healing, restoration, etc. generally comes in-between encounters.
The worst dynamic is when a healer is sitting there trading heals for damage back-and-forth with a player in the middle when, as a more complete character, he could have simply helped defeat the foe in the first place. The best players and the best parties I've found are the ones designed to be proactive rather than reactive.
Our group does and in most of my games we've had a player who was willing to step in and heal others
In fact in a resent fight our party cleric spent most of the fight keeping me and the fighter on our feet as our opponent had brought a family size can of whoparse and was happy to open it up
Is this unusual? Do groups play without anyone at all responsible for keeping people up?
Whether there is a healer in the group or not depends on the players. I don't believe you have to have a healer, but its always nice to have someone packing breath of life for when someone goes down. Its not a priority though, and definitely not a necessity. If someone has fun with the role though I say go for it.
Personally, I'm not big on them, if only because previous experiences are meh. My last healer was a lazy guy who didn't really want to play that much as hang around, so he just kinda' went through channels and didn't cast spells. The one before that felt you absolutely had to have a healer and that she was going to fill the benevolent role because she was so innocent and couldn't hurt anything, and also she would tell you all about how goody two shoe she is and... yeah. My first healer on the other hand was a war cleric who went in swinging and healed when someone went down, and he was always excited and full of vigor. That guy was fun and the impression that it was more fun to kick butt really stuck with me.
In my active games...
Age of Worms has a positive channeling cleric.
Rise of the Runelords has a positive channeling cleric.
Carrion Crown has a positive channeling cleric (played by me).
Council of Thieves has a positive channeling cleric (played by me).
Serpent's Skull has an oracle (played by me).
In my games that have ended in the recent past...
War of the Burning Sky had a positive channeling cleric (played by me).
Legacy of Fire had a positive channeling cleric (played by me).
Savage Tide had no divine caster (maybe a ranger?).
I like playing clerics. :-) Do my clerics count as "dedicated" healers? Well, they do more than just heal, but they all have healed in combat on occasion.
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I play in PFSOP, where you never know who your tablemates might be. It is extremely rare to have a "healer" (at least in my area), if "healer" means anything more than "person who can activate wands of CLW after the fight". And yet, party after party is successful despite any sort of in-combat healing other than the (very) occasional emergency potion of CSW.
Just like any other PC role, a healer is better in some situations/encounters than in others, is not 100% essential to survival, and its presence or absence must be accounted for in the party's tactics.
Our group does and in most of my games we've had a player who was willing to step in and heal others
In fact in a resent fight our party cleric spent most of the fight keeping me and the fighter on our feet as our opponent had brought a family size can of whoparse and was happy to open it up
Just curious, looking back, do you think having someone standing there healing you had a greater impact than another damage-dealing Fighter to share some of the hits and kill the creature faster, or a full-casting Wizard to lock him/them down with spells, making the fight that much easier?
Interesting responses so far.
To clarify terms, when I say "dedicated healer" again, I don't mean someone who only heals, or who "tops off" other PCs when they aren't critical. To me that definitely seems unnecessary and inefficient.
What it does mean is a PC who has committed to having healing available at all times. This is easy for a cleric who doesn't have to do anything to have healing spells available other than not burn all their spells. In our last long-running campaign it was a druid who always made sure to pack some healing spells along with her flamestrikes.
Such a character can (and in our case always has) mix it up in combat. As others have mentioned, being a healbot can be boring, so I didn't expect every game to have one, and our group never does.
But, and I guess this is entirely anecdotal, it feels like if nobody in the party is willing or able to drop a cure spell on your front-liner when he's down to 7 hit points, things can and will go south very quickly.
The game--assuming you're fighting CR appropriate or sometimes above CR appropriate challenges--can turn on a single string of good or bad rolls, and having at least one PC who can switch from offense to damage control when needed strikes me as such an absolute necessity that I find it surprising so many groups appear to do without.
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But, and I guess this is entirely anecdotal, it feels like if nobody in the party is willing or able to drop a cure spell on your front-liner when he's down to 7 hit points, things can and will go south very quickly.
You would be correct about that being entirely anecdotal. ;)
The game--assuming you're fighting CR appropriate or sometimes above CR appropriate challenges--can turn on a single string of good or bad rolls, and having at least one PC who can switch from offense to damage control when needed strikes me as such an absolute necessity that I find it surprising so many groups appear to do without.
Then I guess you're incorrect about it being an "absolute necessity". ;)
If it were a necessity, the current Organized Play campaign would implode. Pretty much every encounter has a CR higher than APL, and there is never a guarantee of having anyone at the table be capable of dropping cures in the manner you describe. If that sort of healer were a necessity, there would be a pretty high mortality rate - yet there's not. Therefore, it must not be a necessity.
For instance, I have a 10th level PC, an 8th level PC, and several lower-level PCs. All of them started at level 1. All of their combats have been CR=APL+1 or higher, and only a handful of all those games have included someone you'd define as a healer. I've only had one death in that time, and that was in a game that HAD a healer. Also, my 8th-level PC is a cleric (capable of spontaneous cure spells), yet in his entire career there's been exactly ONE fight where he needed to cast a cure spell.
That should tell you something about how much of a "necessity" a healer is in Pathfinder.
EDIT: Lest I be misunderstood, this doesn't mean that a healer is useless or can't contribute. I only mean that the absence of such a PC is not a death sentence. They are not "an absolute necessity".
It does make me wonder, Jiggy, what misconception I'm operating under. It may be that our GM is providing us with more deadly encounters than I'd realized... :)
It does make me wonder, Jiggy, what misconception I'm operating under. It may be that our GM is providing us with more deadly encounters than I'd realized... :)
Or your group might be under-optimized in other respects, possibly because of too much focus on healing. It's hard to say.
Things that will usually get you by without healing:
A melee character with incredible AC.
A melee character with the ability to cast spells like Mirror Image.
Damage dealers (often archers) who deal enormous damage and kill the enemy first.
A caster who knows how to force impossible saving throws on the enemy.
A caster who can Dimension Door you to safety if you're losing.
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It does make me wonder, Jiggy, what misconception I'm operating under. It may be that our GM is providing us with more deadly encounters than I'd realized... :)
I'm going to speculate that it has nothing to do with the deadliness of encounters. Rather, the value of a healer is a function of lots of variables. For instance, a healer does better if your frontliner has a high AC (as opposed to a low-AC, high-HP barbarian sort) because a given amount of healing goes farther.
I play in PFSOP, where you never know who your tablemates might be. It is extremely rare to have a "healer" (at least in my area), if "healer" means anything more than "person who can activate wands of CLW after the fight". And yet, party after party is successful despite any sort of in-combat healing other than the (very) occasional emergency potion of CSW.
Considering his definition is "a PC who has committed to having healing available at all times" (which could come from wands or potions, presumably), it sounds like there are probably many healers in Pathfinder Society play.
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I play in PFSOP, where you never know who your tablemates might be. It is extremely rare to have a "healer" (at least in my area), if "healer" means anything more than "person who can activate wands of CLW after the fight". And yet, party after party is successful despite any sort of in-combat healing other than the (very) occasional emergency potion of CSW.Considering his definition is "a PC who has committed to having healing available at all times" (which could come from wands or potions, presumably), it sounds like there are probably many healers in Pathfinder Society play.
I get the impression he's talking more about people who can pop a cure spell on someone besides themselves. Given that his examples were clerics, oracles, and a druid who prepped high-level cures; I don't think he's counting a ranger who has a happy stick for after combat and a potion of CSW for emergencies.
Could be wrong, but the impression I'm getting of what he means be "healer" is something that's fairly scarce around my neck of the woods (but of course that will vary by region).
It has been a long, long time since I've played in a group with a "dedicated healer." We usually have someone in the party with healing ability, but that is usually a secondary role. For example, I have an archer druid who provides healing. We've had battle clerics and witches who can heal.
But healing is generally not a combat priority for our groups. Healing in combat is done, but it is the exception not the rule.
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It may be that our GM is providing us with more deadly encounters than I'd realized... :)
Another thought on this:
Sound hard enough? ;)
We didn't need any in-combat healing, despite having a professed healer (life oracle) in addition to my own cleric.
Hrm. I wonder if part of the issue is that the bulk of my experience is with 3.5. I'm going over my Pathfinder experience (which is maybe 20 sessions or so, all told) and finding it hard to recall much in-combat healing either.
But I can clearly recall it in our 3.5 campaign.
can we put the 'create thread' and 'search this forum' items closer together, or tie their functionality together
Other than potions, our group doesn't really have a designated healer..come to think of it, we never have. I suppose my Sorcerer, surprisingly, is a very minute healer, as I can cast Delay Pain, which lasts up to 10 hours; you won't heal wounds, but at least you‘ll be able to walk back to town.
We absolutely have at least one healer in all three PF groups. And JJ sez he thinks in-combat healing is a “must” also. Thus, in combat healing is mainstream.
There are a couple of play styles where one isn’t needed- Rocket Tag where either you kill the foe or you’re dead anyway, or “toon” where it doesn’t matter if you or your buddy dies, you have a stack of newer/better PC’s ready to play. Neither is badwrongfun, but neither is mainstream, either.
And, we have had this debate about once a month going back to 3.5.
Our group had no divine caster at all for what I'd call the a sizable amount of our play through (~2 years out of 5). These days an NPC cleric has tagged along for a while (though she's leaving shortly). While it seemed like at lower levels the party could get by without someone who could drop heals, restorations, and so forth, as we have gotten higher level our ability to overcome encounters without taking big damage in return has vanished.
Now (at level 15) it seems like every encounter if there isn't a heal spell to be tossed around someone is going to go down. It's a fairly regular thing that enemies trade full attacks with the party fighters, often taking out more than half of their hit points per trade. This seems to be true whether or not it's our AC ~42 tank or our AC 27 berserker.
This is probably more a function of our campaign though, where most enemies dish out between 30 and 60 damage per swing (before crits), and potions or wands aren't even a band-aid.
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And JJ sez he thinks in-combat healing is a “must” also. Thus, in combat healing is mainstream.
I don't know if that's how it works... Your joking right?
Anyways, my groups usually don't have a dedicated skill monkey or a dedicated healbot unless the group really wants one. I think I prefer it that way. The idea that you absolutely have to have something can be kind of a drag if no one wants to play it.
Is this the same druid who let her animal companion die for the party sorcerer?It has been a long, long time since I've played in a group with a "dedicated healer." We usually have someone in the party with healing ability, but that is usually a secondary role. For example, I have an archer druid who provides healing. We've had battle clerics and witches who can heal.
But healing is generally not a combat priority for our groups. Healing in combat is done, but it is the exception not the rule.
"Let her animal companion die?"
Let's see, the party was surprised by a couple of giant crocodiles. One grabbed the sorc and dove underwater, the other grabbed the AC and dove underwater.
Healing would not have helped her AC anyway, he was killed in one round. The same round my druid was stopping the other croc from killing the sorc.
A game I'm in now I ended up having to essentially healbot and it's annoying. I started as a Oracle with the Dark Tapestry mystery at level 1 and I played it all the way to 5 having to use pretty much every spell I had on Cures. At that point I told the DM I was done, but we compromised and he let me take the Channel revelation. Things kinda worked out, but it's getting old again because I spend half the combat rounds having to Channel to keep the essentially all melee party (plus a summoner who goes into melee) up, but hey at least I can Black Tentacles stuff sometimes.
Seriously thinking of just going optimized Bard so I can give everyone +5 hit/dam while still having my turn to do things so we can actually kill things in a timely fashion.
A game I'm in now I ended up having to essentially healbot and it's annoying. I started as a Oracle with the Dark Tapestry mystery at level 1 and I played it all the way to 5 having to use pretty much every spell I had on Cures. At that point I told the DM I was done, but we compromised and he let me take the Channel revelation. Things kinda worked out, but it's getting old again because I spend half the combat rounds having to Channel to keep the essentially all melee party (plus a summoner who goes into melee) up, but hey at least I can Black Tentacles stuff sometimes.
Same thing happened to me once actually! I was playing a witch and I was forced to play nurse for the party. Got ridiculous. Sadly different ending to the story.
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Meh, screw that GM. Sounds like he had it coming.
In the future if I want to go Oracle (or Cleric, never been a fan but who knows) I think I'm going to take Negative Energy and Inflict. I'll probably never use them because both are pretty awful, but at least people won't whine because I'd rather do something interesting on my turn rather than healbot all day every day... or maybe I could just spend a feat on Leadership and get someone who loves to do that sort of thing.
A game I'm in now I ended up having to essentially healbot and it's annoying. I started as a Oracle with the Dark Tapestry mystery at level 1 and I played it all the way to 5 having to use pretty much every spell I had on Cures. At that point I told the DM I was done, but we compromised and he let me take the Channel revelation. Things kinda worked out, but it's getting old again because I spend half the combat rounds having to Channel to keep the essentially all melee party (plus a summoner who goes into melee) up, but hey at least I can Black Tentacles stuff sometimes.
Seriously thinking of just going optimized Bard so I can give everyone +5 hit/dam while still having my turn to do things so we can actually kill things in a timely fashion.
Yea I have seen this and its part of why I usually have healing abilities within my character but refuse the role of 'healer'. I think for the most part everyone should have some ability to recover hit points (3.5 healing belts are standard equipment in my opinion). Condition removal is ofcourse something different.
The issue is really around dm perceptions and impressions. If you went strictly as written in most modules you wouldnt need in combat healing if everyone just optimized for combat. You could kill everything before it hurt you. But that tends to leave the dm unsatisfied, and they tend to then ramp up the challenge, making those high damage characters more of a liability then they were. Groups can go through cycles of this in a sort of arms race, untill you 'need' someone there to recover the huge amounts of damage the party is taking because the dm isnt happy unless someone is near 0 HP in every significant fight.
This isnt a failing of dms, they are human, and sometimes they dont see the results of their own behavior, but the reality is, we play a game run by a human being, with his or her own preferences and biases. And your bard might just ramp up the arms race even further, because again if things die fast, your dm might ramp up the challenge.
This isnt a failing of dms, they are human, and sometimes they dont see the results of their own behavior, but the reality is, we play a game run by a human being, with his or her own preferences and biases. And your bard might just ramp up the arms race even further, because again if things die fast,...
I'm not trying to talk down on the DM here. My DM is a good guy and runs things well for the most part (besides some odd ideas about WBL). Party composition is an issue. We're looking at 4 melee only characters (2 fighters, 2 rangers), an archer inquisitor with 2 levels of rogue, and a melee Summoner who likes to hold his badass Eidolon in reserve. Because of that Bard seemed like a perfect fit, but yeah it would drastically ramp up the party efficiency to the point it might be an arms race... still it seems like it could be more fun than fighters whiffing most of the time and then me healing them.
This isnt a failing of dms, they are human, and sometimes they dont see the results of their own behavior, but the reality is, we play a game run by a human being, with his or her own preferences and biases. And your bard might just ramp up the arms race even further, because again if things die fast,...I'm not trying to talk down on the DM here. My DM is a good guy and runs things well for the most part (besides some odd ideas about WBL). Party composition is an issue. We're looking at 4 melee only characters (2 fighters, 2 rangers), an archer inquisitor with 2 levels of rogue, and a melee Summoner who likes to hold his badass Eidolon in reserve. Because of that Bard seemed like a perfect fit, but yeah it would drastically ramp up the party efficiency to the point it might be an arms race... still it seems like it could be more fun than fighters whiffing most of the time and then me healing them.
Yea, that is a rather sever divergence from expectations. The game assumes that one guy will fight well, 2 guys sort of fight with one of them being skillful and the other casts divine spells, and a fourth guy who casts arcane spells. If you have 5 damage dealers (2 fighters, 2 rangers and an inquisitor), you are basically playing rocket tag with the dms npcs. Theres no one to reduce the damage pcs take (wizards and clerics who buff or cast control spells, or debuff enemies drastically reduce the damage dealth to the rest of the party) and the enemies have to be able to take a butload of damage or be really hard to hit. It exhacerbates the above mentioned problem of ramping up difficulty untill a lack of a healer leads to a party wipe.
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It's funny, I was once in a thread where someone was insisting that being the "healer" was a cleric's job by default, and if that's not what you're doing then GTFO. Took it to the point of saying "If the cleric doesn't want to heal the barbarian, then maybe when the barbarian gets low on HP he should just move to the back of the party and let the cleric do all the fighting." I could hardly stop laughing that he considered that a threat, seeing as my cleric is usually the first into the front lines. :D
And JJ sez he thinks in-combat healing is a “must” also. Thus, in combat healing is mainstream.I don't know if that's how it works... Your joking right?
Anyways, my groups usually don't have a dedicated skill monkey or a dedicated healbot unless the group really wants one. I think I prefer it that way. The idea that you absolutely have to have something can be kind of a drag if no one wants to play it.
No, why would you think I am joking? Or that James Jacobs, the Creative Director is joking?
Not that you need a DEDICATED healer. In my drwaf group, I play a Hospitaler Paladin. He's mostly a tank, but can lay in some great in-combat healing when needed. We also have a couple PC's that can do a little healing, such as an Inquisitor.
If you went strictly as written in most modules you wouldnt need in combat healing if everyone just optimized for combat. You could kill everything before it hurt you.
I have trouble with this statement. I do believe that smart play should be rewarded, and my own group rarely finds itself in dire, dire straights.
But I can't help but think that if the assumption is that your group should never be hurt, that something is undertuned. If the enemy isn't even a threat, then isn't the DM right to tune-up the encounters?
Make no mistake, I'm not accusing anyone of playing "wrong." I just feel that there should be a certain degree of challenge in combat for it to serve its purpose. Otherwise, the point seems lost...
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If you went strictly as written in most modules you wouldnt need in combat healing if everyone just optimized for combat. You could kill everything before it hurt you.I have trouble with this statement. I do believe that smart play should be rewarded, and my own group rarely finds itself in dire, dire straights.
But I can't help but think that if the assumption is that your group should never be hurt, that something is undertuned.
I don't think he literally meant "kill absolutely every enemy before you take any damage ever". I think he just meant that a party can have an M.O. of striking first and striking hard and, if done well, can prevent not all damage, but enough that you don't need a full-time combat medic.
One way of beating a monster is to whittle it down with moderate damage and suffer through multiple rounds of attacks, while a healer increases your effective HP through cure spells, to the point that the HP of the party outlasts the HP of the monster.
Another way of beating a monster is to typically have most of the party win initiative, dish out lots of damage, suffer one full-attack, then pulverize it before it gets to its second turn. Then afterwards, bust out the happy sticks.
Either way can work, but they use different tactics, require different builds to be effective, and so forth. I think that's all he was meaning.
Most of the groups that I have played in have had a healer or taken advantage of other healing options available (potions, etc.). In the current Runelords campaign that we are running, we have two (a fighter/cleric and bard) which seem to work out well. This keeps the cleric from having to worry about healing -- as they share responsibilities -- all the time. This opens up a lot of options for him and he seems to be having fun.
If you went strictly as written in most modules you wouldnt need in combat healing if everyone just optimized for combat. You could kill everything before it hurt you.I have trouble with this statement. I do believe that smart play should be rewarded, and my own group rarely finds itself in dire, dire straights.
But I can't help but think that if the assumption is that your group should never be hurt, that something is undertuned. If the enemy isn't even a threat, then isn't the DM right to tune-up the encounters?
Make no mistake, I'm not accusing anyone of playing "wrong." I just feel that there should be a certain degree of challenge in combat for it to serve its purpose. Otherwise, the point seems lost...
As Jiggy said, I dont mean literally no damage, I mean that you are doing so much damage, that you will kill the enemy before they kill you without recovering any hp. The problem here is as you say, the dm will perceive this as being low threat and ramp up encounters to above what is recommended by the CR guidelines of the game. That is the escalation I am talking about. And its why the whole 'you dont need in combat healing' only works if the dm doesnt make encounters harder because you didnt need in combat healing.
I have rarely seen anyone propose that the party gets through even a minor encounter with ZERO damage. Damage is generally understood to be a given. The proposal that I have advanced and I see others also promote is that in the majority of encounters, usually anything but a major encounter or boss fight, healing shouldn't be necessary DURING THE FIGHT. Healing after the fight is almost always assumed as part of the post-fight mop-up activity. And in ANY encounter, the possibility of really bad luck might necessitate in-combat healing, but that should be the exception.
Or that's how we usually play.