Over they years I have seriously grown to hate healing magic. There are a lot of reasons, but at its simplest, healing magic messes with the setting a lot. A level 1 cleric can have very dramatic effects in a community and there are a lot of level 1 clerics rolling around the world. Also I'm trying to build a world going through an industrial revolution, and advances in medical sciences become much less plausible and significant if any old cleric can walk up to you and say, "Bam, you're better now!"
So I'm looking for suggestions on how to rework the game to either remove healing magic, or because healing is actually a big deal for so gods make it rare and difficult.
Since I'm not very experienced with Pathfinder, though had a lot of experience with S&D 3.0/3.5 years ago, I'm going to the community for ideas.
Also since I'm cutting healing, may as well cut the Inflict spells too, for fairness (also they are boring like the Cure spells.)
Right now I'm keeping it simple by attacking the cleric. I see the variant Channeling rules in Ultimate Magic, which is very helpful. I'm also considering switching out spontaneous casting Heal/Inflict spells for Spontaneous casting domain spells, though that leaves the domain spell slot kind of obsolete.
As for where I want stuff in particular, I'm trying to keep an open mind about it in hope of finding some kind of solution that fits naturally into the rules set. I think I like where Remove disease is at as a level 3 spell. Similarly, delay poison seems well placed. I'm okay with low level spells alleviating symptoms or or giving someone a fighting chance at surviving, but not outright saying "bam! you're better now."
More thoughts from me later after I've had some more time to analyze the rules or get some solid feedback to discuss.
Industrial Revolution marks the point where people stop believing what they don't see. This makes Deities weaker, as their strength is based on their follower's faith. You might be able to rewrite the Cleric class to be more like a Hunter, which has very limited healing, and not until 4th level. Perhaps take a fighter/rogue/wizard (depending on Domain/flavor) and remove some key class features received every 4 levels in exchange for a new Cure spell. Double the level required for the next Domain Power. The Spells/Day can be the same as a Hunter. This would do a good job of marking the weaning of god-like influence, but still keep the "Cleric" class relevant.
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you could tamper with the material components. if healing spells have expensive or strange components, such as cannot be bypassed with the Eschew Materials feat, then healing magic becomes less accessible in proportion.
or, combined with the above suggestion, you could have healing spells only usable to prepare healing potions. in replacement of spontaneous casting could be the Brew Potion feat for the cleric.
or, in the case of the magical curing of disease, you could re-skin the spell as a death magic effect that targets diseases, either grating them a saving throw, or giving them a 'cure DC' over which a caster must make a level check (or Heal check) to eradicate - with a failure resulting in a disease which is 'beyond my skill to heal' - meaning one can only retry upon gaining a new level.
i would definitely use the variant channeling rules. they look cool.
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If you want the game to play more or less the same, but for people to get injured and have it be grievous and difficult to recover from, I must suggest the Strain-Injury HP variant rule.
This works really well in settings with low magic, and it doesn't change the nature of combat entirely.
It's worth noting that this isn't a low magic setting I'm building. Any industrial revolution is happening because you can just give a random guy on off the street a gun, or any piece of technology for that matter, and explain how to use it in a few minutes or hours and they will be able to use it and achieve magic-like effects. Do the same with magic and it is likely to take months or years or training to achieve similar results. I actually low magic and high magic settings.
I just hate healing magic.
I have considered the wounds and vitality varient, and I keep telling myself, with every rpg that play, that adding bleeding rules is to much book keeping. Anyway, for now I want to try keeping the changes minimal, so I'm attacking the part I actually don't like.
When I get back to it later I'll be looking for rules on natural healing rates, diseases, and poison and trying to make low level spells that interact with those rules sets. Maybe see if there are rules for injuries getting infected and maybe integrating that too.
sounds like pathfinder isn't your desired system
the real offender on ease of healing i don't think is healing magic in general
i think it's wands that you have issues with.
by simply removing wands from the game, you make healing a lot less common
99.9999999% of magical healing comes from a happy stick, or a regeneration stick
by banning the stick
you make healing magic a lot scarcer
banning wands is all you need to do
less people would supply that many healing consumables if all those scrolls and potions were about to weigh them down
it also has the side effect of making arcane casters have less slots to devote to the infernal healing line, and defensive buffs.
no other rules change becomes neccessary
just the banning of wands, and the craft wand feat
Wands and other magic items are definitely not my problem.
Aside the fact that I've never actually had a player that used a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, or any cure wand for that matter, addressing my issues with heal magic also addresses the vast majority of healing magic items as they simply replicate spells. Fix the spells fix the wands.
It's one of those natural solutions I mentioned that I was looking for back in by first post.
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Wands and other magic items are definitely not my problem.
Aside the fact that I've never actually had a player that used a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, or any cure wand for that matter, addressing my issues with heal magic also addresses the vast majority of healing magic items as they simply replicate spells. Fix the spells fix the wands.
It's one of those natural solutions I mentioned that I was looking for back in by first post.
To be honest I'm not sure there is a natural solution short of punishing the players for using the magic at all, and then you'll have some arguments. The players do need a way to heal up if they're in a dungeon or in the middle of traveling and take heavy damage. Natural healing isn't going to cut it because it takes too long.
Personally I don't understand the hate towards healing magic myself. Yeah it can be a short cut to helping a village out, but that's kind of what happens in a world where the gods directly intervene and there is evidence of that.
Earlier it was said that during an industrial revolution people stopped believing in things they couldn't see. Well that's true in a world like ours, but in a high fantasy world that's not necessarily true. Magic is seen every day by a whole lot of people, and the gods are active participants in the world. They see these things so they know that they're real.
Healing magic wouldn't just up and disappear without a reason. As long as the gods were around it would exist, and unless you want to make your players have to take long periods of time to heal, even in dungeons, then you're going to have to take that into consideration.
Wands and other magic items are definitely not my problem.
Aside the fact that I've never actually had a player that used a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, or any cure wand for that matter, addressing my issues with heal magic also addresses the vast majority of healing magic items as they simply replicate spells. Fix the spells fix the wands.
It's one of those natural solutions I mentioned that I was looking for back in by first post.
healing magic is kind of an assumption and a must have within the system
kinda hard to do without it when it is so vital.
If you want the game to play more or less the same, but for people to get injured and have it be grievous and difficult to recover from, I must suggest the Strain-Injury HP variant rule.
This works really well in settings with low magic, and it doesn't change the nature of combat entirely.
After look at it Strain-Injury does look like it would solve the majority of my setting issues if all but the most powerful healing magics only healed Strain and not Injuries.
That said I have other issues it doesn't address. I'll keep poking at the rules to see what I can come up with.
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Iron Heroes by Monte Cook has a Reserve HP system. Reserve HP are equal to normal HP, but spending a minute or so(Don't know the exact time.) the PCs can heal normal HP, this simulates them stitching wounds, strains being tended to and so on. They don't get to insta-heal in combat but it helps when there is a break.
In 2nd edition they did some historical setting books and the recommendation there was that Healing Magic can't bring you above half of your Hit Points.
another option I saw in an old 3rd party book was that Magical Healing converts normal damage into non-lethal damage. That way you could heal someone up to save their life but they still needed to rest time to recover.