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I do tend to find that the "healing vs. not healing" debate involves a lot of people talking past each other and and assuming extremes. People get pushed into the camps of "Divine spellcasters shouldn't do anything but heal, and hold/ready action to heal if nobody is hurt yet" and "Clerics should let the the rest of the party bleed to death rather than stabilize them."
In reality, I think just about everyone in the threat is sitting on a similar position. That healing is just one tool in the divine spellcaster's toolbox, and like any tool it is one that should be used in the proper circumstances.
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Chengar Qordath wrote: People get pushed into the camps of "Divine spellcasters shouldn't do anything but heal, and hold/ready action to heal if nobody is hurt yet" and "Clerics should let the the rest of the party bleed to death rather than stabilize them." Are people actually saying that?
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I don't recall saying a divine spell caster should do nothing but heal. Quite the contrary.
As a note, your debuff spell has to overcome spell resistance or saves. The healing doesn't. So it may be better ... IF it takes effect.
MrSin wrote: Chengar Qordath wrote: People get pushed into the camps of "Divine spellcasters shouldn't do anything but heal, and hold/ready action to heal if nobody is hurt yet" and "Clerics should let the the rest of the party bleed to death rather than stabilize them." Are people actually saying that? The implications are quite strong. There is no real argument except in terms of degrees and the only real conclusion one can come up with is "your experience may vary".
RDM42 wrote: I don't recall saying a divine spell caster should do nothing but heal. Quite the contrary. No, you said that you should heal unless you can end the fight in a single round.
Quote:
As a note, your debuff spell has to overcome spell resistance or saves. The healing doesn't. So it may be better ... IF it takes effect.
You're assuming its a debuff spell.
Orfamay Quest wrote: RDM42 wrote: I don't recall saying a divine spell caster should do nothing but heal. Quite the contrary. No, you said that you should heal unless you can end the fight in a single round.
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As a note, your debuff spell has to overcome spell resistance or saves. The healing doesn't. So it may be better ... IF it takes effect.
You're assuming its a debuff spell. Your rejoinder would be much more effective if it actually resembled what I said.
Kthulhu wrote: At least he hasn't mentioned that one time he suggested to Arneson and Gygax how fun it would be to make their miniature wargame characters fight a bunch of Munsters in the dungeons under a castle.
Yet.
I don't go quite *that* far back.
But get off my lawn you young scalawag! :-)
Chengar Qordath wrote: I do tend to find that the "healing vs. not healing" debate involves a lot of people talking past each other and and assuming extremes. People get pushed into the camps of "Divine spellcasters shouldn't do anything but heal, and hold/ready action to heal if nobody is hurt yet" and "Clerics should let the the rest of the party bleed to death rather than stabilize them."
In reality, I think just about everyone in the threat is sitting on a similar position. That healing is just one tool in the divine spellcaster's toolbox, and like any tool it is one that should be used in the proper circumstances.
Right. My position has always been that healing is just one tool of many, but when it's the right too for the job, it's time to use it. Generally our "healers" buff first, maybe throw down a minor offensive spell, then heal only when the next hit will drop someone, unless a Channel will help everyone and there's nothing much better to do that round. We have 3 of 4 of the party built primarily for offense so it's best to have one built for defense.
Mind you, our combats often last over 5 rounds.
MrSin wrote: Chengar Qordath wrote: People get pushed into the camps of "Divine spellcasters shouldn't do anything but heal, and hold/ready action to heal if nobody is hurt yet" and "Clerics should let the the rest of the party bleed to death rather than stabilize them." Are people actually saying that? Of course nobody actually advocates either of those positions, because they're both equally absurd. Yet, those seem to be the positions people constantly argue against.
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DrDeth wrote: Matthew Downie wrote: wraithstrike wrote: I am sure the poster will be in to speak for themselves later, but in any event the majority of us think like me. Use tactics to avoid healing, and then heal when things go bad. True - about two-thirds of forum-users feel that way. That a very poorly worded poll that shows the OP's bias. Like I said:" I think your bias here, OP, made you to word the poll so that it skews towards your personal viewpoint.
I did not make the poll. I just voted in it.
edit: but with that said my earlier comment about healing to prevent death is pretty close to what most of us say.
As an example of the party is at about 80% of their HP I am not channeling or casting cure spells. I am either buffing, debuffing, or some battlefield control of some sort. Now sometimes bad things happen and the party or at least one member gets hurt pretty badly anyway so in order to keep them alive the cleric may have to heal them, but the idea is to prevent damage, not recover hit points.
So if I or anyone says "healing is a bad idea", that does NOT mean "never heal". It means you should do everything you can to make it so the healing is not needed.
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DrDeth wrote: My position has always been that healing is just one tool of many, but when it's the right too for the job, it's time to use it. Generally our "healers" buff first, maybe throw down a minor offensive spell, then heal only when the next hit will drop someone, unless a Channel will help everyone and there's nothing much better to do that round. We have 3 of 4 of the party built primarily for offense so it's best to have one built for defense.
Mind you, our combats often last over 5 rounds.
This is a very reasonable statement.
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DrDeth wrote: Chengar Qordath wrote: I do tend to find that the "healing vs. not healing" debate involves a lot of people talking past each other and and assuming extremes. People get pushed into the camps of "Divine spellcasters shouldn't do anything but heal, and hold/ready action to heal if nobody is hurt yet" and "Clerics should let the the rest of the party bleed to death rather than stabilize them."
In reality, I think just about everyone in the threat is sitting on a similar position. That healing is just one tool in the divine spellcaster's toolbox, and like any tool it is one that should be used in the proper circumstances.
Right. My position has always been that healing is just one tool of many, but when it's the right too for the job, it's time to use it. Generally our "healers" buff first, maybe throw down a minor offensive spell, then heal only when the next hit will drop someone, unless a Channel will help everyone and there's nothing much better to do that round. We have 3 of 4 of the party built primarily for offense so it's best to have one built for defense.
Mind you, our combats often last over 5 rounds. In this case I think we agree.
As the player of a single class divine caster that has (in two different campaigns) been the first person to toss a fireball downrange (Fire Domain), I've seen multiple sides of this argument with the same character.
There are many times, more common with some GMs than others, where even with mid-range characters, you aren't in a position to spend your first few rounds buffing. If you're able to do this consistently, your Game Master is being WAY too nice to you. When you're not the one ambushing, or at least initiating combat, equally matched fights should RARELY be in a position where the PC side isn't taking as much as they're giving in the early rounds.
If you're the one being ambushed, or if everyone (including the bad guys) blows their Perception rolls and you walk right into a fight where the damage dealing starts right away (and a few big hits result), you might have to start healing/Channeling in Round 2 or even Round 1, just to keep the party from having to consider retreat by round 4.
Damage output is nice, but don't forget just how dangerous focusing in on it might be. Sure, your warrior types might be able to do copious amounts of damage, and even better when buffed - but how does that help when the party gets ambushed by creatures with nearly +30 in stealth, sneak attack, AND a half-dozen DRs & immunities, like a Babau Demon? (happened in our game yesterday).
The Ranger/Rogue couldn't do more than 3-4 points of damage without a critical or sneak attack against them, The Paladin was having to pull ways of aligning his/others attacks out of his posterior (try casting bless weapon in melee, after being sneak attacked, and the attacker able to hit you on a natural 7 for the first attack, 12s for the subsequent 3 more - concentration checks are a b++~*), and the only one who was doing any serious damage was the cleric, and only because the cleric took alignment channel to hurt evil outsiders 6 levels ago (after the party got massacred repeatedly at early levels from fiendish & infernal vermin). The choice was,
a. channel to heal (on average) about the same damage per round (or less than) the warriors were taking
b. Cast more buffs after the first round's prayer, which would only increase the chance to hit and the damage slightly (and it's not like I could cast a bless weapon on their weapons while they were swinging them, and where I'd have to be well within the demon's 10 foot reach for their AoO, that they got multiples of from their own feats)
or c. Continue to offensively channel, and make the bad guys take more damage each than the two persons tanking were doing, and hopefully the tankers would stay up.
The final result was the demons finally working their way past the tankers to go after the cleric at about round 6, who ironically had the best armor class due to a combination of items that the warriors couldn't or wouldn't wear. The cleric continued to not fight, just defend, finally able to channel to heal every other attack so that the other two could flank the last two demons. Still, the death shot for 4 of the 5 demons was not from a weapon, but a channel, and that feat spent on "extra channel" that the rest of the party moaned about as wasteful when I created the character at level 1, was very appreciated by them at level 9 - as I had one channel left when the last demon fell, and everyone was below 20 HP.
Simply, Healing has its place, Buffing has its place, and a properly run game shouldn't have one or the other dominating unless circumstances of the encounters dictate. A wisely played cleric has to weigh the following....
* If you're initiating the fight, you should never have to buff DURING combat, except for special circumstances (like a necromancer pulling a non-corporeal undead out on you midway through the fight, and having to fire off a ghostbane dirge so that someone can engage it).
* If your opponent attacks first but you know they're coming, you have that sticky situation where you don't want to buff too soon and waste the buffs, or too late and not get them off (and, likely, make the casters an obvious target - after all, if you have line of sight to the party for buffs, and the party LOS to the enemy, most times the enemy can see you too). You'll probably start as the sides close, but then have to weigh benefits vs. drawbacks once the sides start doing damage to each other.
* If you're attacked by a weaker force without time to prepare, that's when you're probably going to buff during combat. Healing won't matter.
* Being attacked by a stronger force without prep time, that's when healing might take priority - as buffs mean nothing without being conscious to use them.
* Lastly, sometimes the nature of the enemy forces your hand. Undead, outsiders, and other creatures with resistances might neutralize your conventional melee/missile/spell damage output, and you are left with channel for damage as your party's best hope for survival, even if it means that the rest of the party has to forgo healing AND buffs. And, if you know you're going to definitely run into this situation, you might want to consider bringing along a second divine spellcaster so that one of you can channel for damage, one channel for healing, and cut any buff times in half by each of you casting a different buff as you go in.
Other than the 2nd level spell that acts as a bless, then a cure light when it is ended, and the 5th level spell that heals 5D8 and can bring someone back from the dead that died the round before, I can't remember the last time I used a regular or spontaneously-cast heal-for-HP-only spell in combat as a cleric. Healing other than channels end up being post-combat use only (unlike the days of the TSR games and memorized cures for clerics).
Quote: a. channel to heal (on average) about the same damage per round (or less than) the warriors were taking
b. Cast more buffs after the first round's prayer, which would only increase the chance to hit and the damage slightly (and it's not like I could cast a bless weapon on their weapons while they were swinging them, and where I'd have to be well within the demon's 10 foot reach for their AoO, that they got multiples of from their own feats)
or c. Continue to offensively channel, and make the bad guys take more damage each than the two persons tanking were doing, and hopefully the tankers would stay up.
Of course there is also an option (d), use some of the very effective control spells which clerics get to have a far greater impact on the fight. From level 1-5 we are looking examples such as:
Level 1:
Murderous Command an enemy, make it attack its nearest ally which entirely wastes its turn and may also cause it to take opportunity attacks if it has to move to do so.
Command to force them prone giving your melee people an imporved chance to hit and force the enemy to take a penalty on their attacks or opportunity attacks to get up
Forbid Action to simply shut down an opponent for a round. Trade your action for theirs which is often extremely effectve.
Level 2:
Sound Burst to stun potentially multiple opponents in an area. Stunned means your allies gain a sizeable bonus to attack (-2AC and they lose their dex bonus) and you effectively disarm any weapon user.
Burst of Radiance potentially blinds multiple enemies in an area and deals a small amount of automatic damage to evil creatures.
Hold Person paralyses any humanoid target (this includes things like ogres and giants now) leaving the helpless and letting your allies coup de grace them.
Level 3:
Blindness is a permanent debuff which utterly destroys so many different types of enemies it isnt even funny.
Bestow Curse can impose a huge debuff, -4 to attack rolls and saves is massive as is a 50% chance to take no action every turn.
Summon Monster III brings into play tasty creatures like the pouncing leopard, trampling aurochs or the DR ignoring lantern archon. The latter is particularly useful as you can summon it as a standard action with the Sacred Summons feat.
Animate Dead has a casting time of a single action. If your group has already taken out some of the encounter turns the bodies of your allies enemies against them.
Level 4:
Dismissal simply removes enemy outsiders, including summons, from the fight.
Holy Smite provides large area blindness which is one of the most disabling conditions in the game and can be entirely party friendly
Orders Wrath covers a huge area and dazes opponents which is a similarly hideous condition. Preventing your enemies from attacking simply removes the need to actually use healing spells and is far more efficient. It can also be entirely party friendly.
Level 5:
Plane Shift is effectively a will based save or die which no-one is immune to. A small number of opponents may be able to return but most opponents will be doomed.
Greater Forbid Action is large area mass control which does not provide an extra save each round in the same way greater command does. This can shut down an entire encounter in a single action.
Wall of Stone can pretty much cut an encounter in half allowing you to deal with it in more manageable pieces with each being far easier to fight on their own. Sure whatever you hem in may break through the wall but holding them up for a couple of rounds is liable to be determinative, far more so than any mass cure light wounds spell.
Summon Monster V allows you, depending on your build and alignemnt, to call in 1d4+2 lantern archons, 1d3+1 hound archons or hell hounds, a babau, bearded devil, kyton or xill as a single standard action. They can easily act as meat shield, battlefiled control and damage dealers and will have a far greater impact on the vast majority of fights again than a single heal spell.
Now a lot of these options come with some limitations or allow a save or require you to peentrate SR but all of those issues can be significantly improved on depending on the choices you make for your character. It is very easy to put together an extremely capable control orientated cleric or oracle caster and contribute far more effectively and efficiently than you are likely to do healing in combat.
Basara549 wrote: * If you're initiating the fight, you should never have to buff DURING combat, except for special circumstances (like a necromancer pulling a non-corporeal undead out on you midway through the fight, and having to fire off a ghostbane dirge so that someone can engage it). Ghostbane Dirge is not a buff spell, it's a debuff spell. You have to cast it in combat (on the target). Not sure what you mean by this as an example of having to buff in combat. (Possibly some confusion with the Ghost Touch weapon property?)
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