If you are worried about healing in your party and the lack is disrupting your game, who cares what paizo says is balanced? Do what works for your game.
Maybe. I'll consider that.
It reeks a bit of cheese - theoretically, a "balanced" group has some trade-offs - they get a healer but trade off the fact that they don't have 4 (or in this case 5) deadly damage dealers. They gain safety but lose deadliness. Trade-off.
But if they can have their cake and eat it too, 5 deadly damage dealers and no worries about having a healer, well, maybe that's a bit of a cheesecake.
On the other hand, something needs to happen or they'll die. A lot.
What the heck, I love cheesecake.
But if I consider that, then I also need to consider action economy. If someone is going to provide the safety net of cleric-ish power (healing, condition removal, etc.), then I need to make sure their actions are reduced accordingly, so that trade-off remains balanced. I can't just give them swift-action super-healing items - that would be cheesecake without the cake...
Unfortunately, that puts someone in the role of healer which they all clearly avoided.
Just a reminder -
This thread is to discuss what a PLAYER can do, what his PC can do, to maximize his own preparedness to survive a hard AP with no healer.
What items should such a PC make or purchase? What feats should he consider taking? What wizard spells should these PCs prepare?
How can they maximize their survival chances without rebuilding their character or changing to a new character?
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Use Magic Device skill plus a bundle of Cure Light Wounds wands
I don't really see that much of an issue with healing HPs. There is plenty to help do that, and UMD to activate it.
The problem I see is ability damage, level drain, blindness/deafness, poisons and their damage....all the stuff you need Lesser Restoration and Restoration to fix. That is harder to come by and if your frontliner suddenly triggers a Blindness/level drain/poison-doing-con-damage trap with no one who can fix it, you all lead him back to town and hire a cleric to fix him. That sucks.
Use Magic Device skill plus a bundle of Cure Light Wounds wandsI don't really see that much of an issue with healing HPs. There is plenty to help do that, and UMD to activate it.
The problem I see is ability damage, level drain, blindness/deafness, poisons and their damage....all the stuff you need Lesser Restoration and Restoration to fix. That is harder to come by and if your frontliner suddenly triggers a Blindness/level drain/poison-doing-con-damage trap with no one who can fix it, you all lead him back to town and hire a cleric to fix him. That sucks.
So, wands of Lesser Restoration then. Only cost 6x what a CLW wand costs but clearly worth the price.
Wands of Cure Blindness or Neutralize Poison would be good too, but even more expensive.
Hiring a NPC cleric who gets a full share of the treasure might be more expensive still - but maybe worth it for the action economy...
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Use Magic Device skill plus a bundle of Cure Light Wounds wandsI don't really see that much of an issue with healing HPs. There is plenty to help do that, and UMD to activate it.
The problem I see is ability damage, level drain, blindness/deafness, poisons and their damage....all the stuff you need Lesser Restoration and Restoration to fix. That is harder to come by and if your frontliner suddenly triggers a Blindness/level drain/poison-doing-con-damage trap with no one who can fix it, you all lead him back to town and hire a cleric to fix him. That sucks.So, wands of Lesser Restoration then. Only cost 6x what a CLW wand costs but clearly worth the price.
Wands of Cure Blindness or Neutralize Poison would be good too, but even more expensive.
Hiring a NPC cleric who gets a full share of the treasure might be more expensive still - but maybe worth it for the action economy...
Don't ignore full on Restoration too...my group is currently 12th level in one game and we were climbing a ladder into a room, Barbarian first, when the 4 Spectres (touch)attacked. By the end of the battle (3 rounds, there was a BBEG too that wasn't too powerful) Barb was -7 levels. Lesser restore don't help that.
EDIT- Note that spectres drain 2 levels per hit, my GM forgot this in the first round with his 3 hits and decided not to retcon the additional levels drained...or that -7 would've been -10 levels.
Usually i play a PC with a follower (summoner/sorc(arcane with improv familiar)/bard(leadership)) and i make sure to avoid danger if possible.
So i will scout ahead and if i need to fight , i will try to stay away from the evil guys with spells and items.
This one is a winner....our group does this a lot. One person takes leadership and has a cleric follower. Throw em in the stoutest armor you can get your hands on and let them channel and cast heals and buffs.
Any healing class will do, but we tread lightly on how effective these followers are in combat so as not to be abusive, knowing how leadership can get out of hand.
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Usually i play a PC with a follower (summoner/sorc(arcane with improv familiar)/bard(leadership)) and i make sure to avoid danger if possible.
So i will scout ahead and if i need to fight , i will try to stay away from the evil guys with spells and items.
This one is a winner....our group does this a lot. One person takes leadership and has a cleric follower. Throw em in the stoutest armor you can get your hands on and let them channel and cast heals and buffs.
Any healing class will do, but we tread lightly on how effective these followers are in combat so as not to be abusive, knowing how leadership can get out of hand.
This is usually what I do as a GM with a GM PC. I make a healer that joins the party, has limited combat impact (leave the main PCs with the glory) and focuses on having a bunch of fixer spells memorized, maybe with a couple fight spells for helpfulness in a pinch. He tends to get a share of treasure but I rarely have him take any good items found. He can buy what he needs after the adventure.
This is usually what I do as a GM with a GM PC. I make a healer that joins the party, has limited combat impact (leave the main PCs with the glory) and focuses on having a bunch of fixer spells memorized, maybe with a couple fight spells for helpfulness in a pinch. He tends to get a share of treasure but I rarely have him take any good items found. He can buy what he needs after the adventure.
So they get the action economy of someone to do their healing for them without burning their own actions, so they can focus on dealing death and destruction at maximum rate without bothering to slow down the carnage for personal safety, AND they don't even have to pay out a share of the loot for this?
I'm afraid that's probably going too far for my games, but the idea is still valid. Looks like the majority of responses are about getting a NPC to do the dirty work.
Anyone else have suggestions to the PCs that don't involve "bring a healer"? Feats, items, spells, etc.?
An intelligent magic item that can cast spells on the party without them having to use any actions?
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No they still pay with a share of the loot, my GMPC just takes gold instead of trying to get items. He buys items in town after the adventure with his share. Also I have a good group. They aren't min/maxers or optimizers. They build good pcs with flavor. One is a fairly straight-forward barbarian, another is a bard/ranger archer, another is a Asmodeus worshipping diabolist/shadowdancer, and the other is a displacer beast (a 10 level build to become full displacer beast gaining abilities as they went).
Barbarian does good damage, bard is decent and does his bard buff stuff, the Asmodean dude is almost invisible all the time and impossible to find but rarely causes any issues except with his Metamagic Stun-rod, and the Displacer beast is good at grappling and hard to hit but is generally a low damage dealer.
Lots of flavor, decently effective, and we all have fun.
Also I used the previous GMPC as a plot device when they were negotiating with a devil (party is generally evil-ish) and the devil's price was "one living creature to serve me" instead of battling in a deadly battle that may have cost them a couple lives. My idiotic druid who had absolute trust in the group took their word that it would be ok and they gave him to the devil.
The druid may be making a return soon as a BBEG after being turned by the devil....we'll see. The shadowdancer is constantly having people and pcs make contracts for item creations and such....services after death for small periods of time to Asmodeus and such.
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If the Wizard has the Scholar and Spell Mastery Feats, (plus 5 ranks in Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (nature), and Spellcraft) he can take the Magaambyan arcanist prestige class next time he levels up. At 1st level the Magaambyan arcanist gains Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Heal, Ride and Survival as class skills, plus an additional level of arcane spellcasting and the aura of good and halcyon magic class features. The latter enables the Wizard to take a spell at each prestige class level from the druid list two levels or lower than the highest-level arcane spell the wizard can cast and add it to the wizard's spellbook as an arcane spell. The major drawback with taking this prestige class is that, at 12th level, you won't gain the 9th and 10th levels until the Wizard reaches epic levels.
Another possibility is the Pathfinder savant prestige class (Only if the Wizard has the Magical Aptitude feat. The wizard bonus feat of Scribe Scroll should count as the required item creation feat.) As it only has seven levels, the Wizard could max it out by 19th level. The drawbacks are as follows; unlike Magaambyan arcanist, the only benefits (beside the d6 hit die) at 1st level are a +1 to Will saves and the class's skill prerequisites ( Knowledge(arcana), Spellcraft and Use Magic Device,) plus Perception ,Survival and Use Magic Device as class skills, and the ability to take 10 on the above skill prerequisites when making a skill check, except when activating an item blindly. The Esoteric magic class feature (which enables the Pathfinder savant to take any one spell/level not on the sorcerer/wizard class level list as an arcane spell one level higher) is only gained at 2nd level. If you can stomach gaining spells at the same rate as a Sorcerer, it seems to be a decent prestige class.
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Anyone else have suggestions to the PCs that don't involve "bring a healer"? Feats, items, spells, etc.?
Again, they are having trouble not so much because they lack an in-combat healer, but because they lack an in-combat 'anvil'. This group will benefit far more from battlefield control spells (Grease! Stinking Cloud! Walls!) than they will from a healer. Condition removal is a problem, but that will also be less of a problem if they have some battlefield control. PCs can buy items for condition removal, so long as they don't need to use them up too quickly.
My advice is that one of those two wizards needs to provide some 'anvil' action. Effective battlefield control mostly removes the need for in-combat healing. I already highlighted some Wizard spells that would help them also fill the 'arm' role. So long as they remain a group of 'hammers',they will continue to struggle with every fight. Regardless of whether they have a healer.
As someone said above, either wizard could easily add some battlefield control effects to their blasts. With mostly low-tier PCs, the top-tier wizards need to pull their own weight and then some. As prepared casters they can be extremely flexible. If the wizards don't adapt their tactics to cover the group's weaknesses, the group will fail.
Blood reservoir of physical prowess (2000)
Turning into a battlefield control freak might be effective, but you can't control everything, so eventually the need for healing is going to come up anyhow. If the players were interested in what was smartest they'd probably have a better balanced party. I'm guessing that maybe they'd like to focus on killing stuff with megadamage, having some close calls, and laughing about it all back at the tavern. With that in mind here are some thoughts.
Summons - Summoned azatas are a great start for in combat healing and can also help kill enemies faster. A metamagic rod of echoing spell would basically double the Wizard's number of 5th and 6th level slots to keep the azatas coming. A celestial dire tiger once in a while might help too. Enemies sometimes tend to ignore summoned monsters to focus on PCs, but a smiting dire tiger is pretty hard to ignore. Don't forget the Grab ability.
Golfbag of Healing - If you give the dragon familiar a handy haversack with CMW wands and maybe even a CSW that should help with any in combat hit point emergencies. Scrolls of Restoration can be effective too, but they’re expensive and fairly tough to use with UMD (DC 27 I think). It might be easier for the Cleric/Rogue to pass the caster level check. Depending on the campaign, a wand of Delay Poison can be really nice to have too.
Change the Channel - Since one of the PCs has a Cleric level, the phylactery of positive channeling seems worth mentioning. For around 11,000gp it adds +2d6 to your channel energy. I'd say that 3d6 healing isn’t horrible, especially if you combine it with something else like 2d8+3 from a CMW wand.
It seems a little unfortunate that you’re asking about this at 12th level since the journey to self-sufficiency begins at 1st level. If you allow the retraining rules from Ultimate Campaign or just give everybody the chance to change a few feats/traits/etc some of the other PCs could bring more to the healing table. For instance, Rogues and PCs with Cha 13+ could get familiars. One familiar using CMW for 2d8+3 is better than nothing. Two working together for 4d8+6 is actually pretty good, and obviously there are better wands available if you want to make the investment.
i like these ideas. Some solid advice here. Thanks Devilkiller.
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It's been said earlier in the thread, but Toughness, high cons, con boosting items. Other thoughts... for the arcane casters, False Life. Shawl of Life Keeping, maybe, but it's always tough to give up the Cloak of Resistance. Potions of Remove Blindness. The First Aid Gloves that were mentioned are an excellent option when they start thinking about needing a Breath of Life.