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This is great and all but as an organiser, I don't want my local community facebook wall or organising email chains devolving into Betty telling everyone in the community that Chris is an ungrateful asshat. If there can be a way that Chris knows ahead of time that he needs to keep his asshat tendencies in check and always pay back the cleric/oracle for life saving magic, that'd be a better system.
I'd say that fell under 'roleplaying' a believable character.
Playing an imaginary person, as a separate entity to ones self, accepting the results of their actions, based on believable cause and effect.Play a freeloader, the PC gets treated as a freeloader.
Why would he need telling this basic aspect of social interaction?
It seems like something that would be self-evident.
Are Venture Officers forever having to intervene between players who eat each other's lunch? Wreck each other's property?
"I needed a character sheet, so I tore one out of your Core book. Jeez, no need to be so materialistic about it."
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N N, the problem with that philosophy is that in PFS, you are not guaranteed to end up at a table with a proper support character, and definitely unlikely to have a dedicated healer. Someone can likely use a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, either through UMD or from their class list, but at higher levels, those can burn through quickly. Plus, you are now obligating another character to take on the responsibility of healing, when that may not have been their desire for their character either.
The other day, my Monk required 16 charges off his wand after one combat just to heal himself. If no one at the table sees themselves as a healer, and the most anyone has is a wand of CLW, when one person doesn't bring one, the chances of running out of healing in a higher tier scenario go up. In a game over the weekend, we decided to bring the 7th level Seelah instead of Kyra, because we needed both a healer and another front liner. We burned through all of Seelah's channels/lay on hands, plus about 30 charges off of her Cure Moderate Wounds wand, and Seelah still got killed. 2 prestige every three or four levels is not going to stop a martial character from being able to afford better armor or weapons, but it will help spread around the responsibility for providing healing so that a party doesn't unexpectedly run out.
I somewhat agree with you on the potions. They are a really inefficient way to heal. I tend to keep one on my martial characters just in case I'm trapped somewhere the healer can't get to me, or if the healer goes down so I have some way to get them back up.
I would never advocate not healing a party member in or out of combat, because doing so hurts the party's chance of success. Not bringing at least some healing for your own character, however, also hurts the party's chance of success.
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My support characters have absolutely no problem buying healing wands to use on the melee types that keep me from getting hit. In fact, I'll refuse to use a fighter's wand if he just took damage defending me. If I refuse to heal him, and he refuses to return the front lines, do you think I'm going to use up fewer resources? I'm thankful there are characters who want to stand in melee so I can play characters who don't
This mostly works up until the point where you get to 7-11 scenarios and you need to start carrying Breath of Life scrolls. They're pretty cheap when you distribute the cost over the entire party. They're very expensive when the assigned dedicated healer of the group is the only one buying them.
This approach also assumes that the support character doesn't have anything better to buy than healing gear, which is often not a safe assumption. Some people play characters that frequently wind up being asked to play the healing role even though healing is not what they are built to do, they just happen to be mediocre at it (often clerics and oracles).
At the Paizocon special my oracle was asked to be on healing duty at the 14-15 tier table. He happened to be ok at it as I had been taking some staple healing spells, but he was built more as a disruption type character. He (and the rest of the table) spent something on the order of, what 50k gold on healing components (a little over 15k just from my pocket alone), and wound up burning through almost all of them (save for an inordinate amount of lesser restoration scrolls). There's no way he could have afforded all of that by himself.
Just as Oracles, Clerics, and Druids were given healing and buffs spells for a reason.
It's surprising to me how often this argument gets made despite the huge number of build options available in PFS. Just because you play an oracle, cleric or druid does not mean the character is automatically a good healer.
I played a negative energy channeling cleric at paizo con last year. I got a lot of crap for playing a sub optimized healer, because apparently a negative energy channel is a suboptimal option that doesn't contribute to the table as well as positive energy channeling.
The criticism went away after the first couple of combats.
For all intents and purposes, my cleric is a terrible healer, and a pretty terrible caster, so the criticism is true to that regard. But that's obviously because I didn't build him to be a healer, I built him to have very useful channel based repositioning abilities. So while he can't heal as well as say a life oracle, he's still very useful in most situations.
It's also worth mentioning that not all oracles even know cure spells, some take the inflict route and don't even bother picking up things like BOL, Raise Dead, BOF, Heal, etc. Good luck getting them to heal.
There's more to what a character can do than their class, so I would encourage you to pay more attention to the build as a whole.
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stuff
What do you do when you sit down and realize no one in the party is an Oracle, Cleric or Druid? Scrap the table? Switch someone to a pregen? This "not my job" philosophy seems to me entirely counter to the 'cooperate' part of the PFS motto.
Even in my home S&S game with a fixed party we don't have a dedicated healer. My Oracle takes on healing duties, but his primary job is damage. Each party member buys wands and diamonds (for Raise Dead) out of their cut of the loot because they recognize it is not my responsibility to pay for their healing. Similarly, I do not charge them for the arrows that I use.
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... First year economics in college teaches us that if two countries focus on what they are good at producing and then trade, both countries become richer. ...
History shows that a country which produces only one thing and relies on imports for everything else is very much at risk and will likely fall.
... A barbarian who forgoes four potions of Cure Serious Wounds and improves her AC, is going to save the party more money in the long run. It's cheaper to not get hit, then to heal it afterwords. Even more important to this mechanic is that a barbarian who has to stop fighting to pull a potion and heal herself, gives up a valuable round of attacking.
My support characters have absolutely no problem buying healing wands to use on the melee types that keep me from getting hit. In fact, I'll refuse to use a fighter's wand if he just took damage defending me. If I refuse to heal him, and he refuses to return the front lines, do you think I'm going to use up fewer resources? I'm thankful there are characters who want to stand in melee so I can play characters who don't. ...
That isn’t actually what was being discussed.
My tank character actually could not perform as a tank because I had to use my resources to cast protection from evil on him several times because he can’t make a will save. My tank character could not protect the squishy casters because I had to drag him out of combat because he went down again since his AC is 13 at level 6 (11 when raging) and his reflex is only +4 (I think that was it). Before the scenario was over my tank character had to use my potion of neutralize poison and scroll of restoration on him because this guy failed his saves and nothing except a +4 adamantine falchion.The blaster character could not blast because he was busy trying to cast defensive buffs on this guy.
I have no problem using a wand of CLW on anyone in the party that needs it. I have a bit more problem using up an entire (or nearly so) wand of CLW, a moderately expensive potion and a fairly expensive scroll on only 1 guy because his character is unprepared.
Yes he was unprepared. He didn’t even do his job very well since he could stay up, in the fight, and pointed in the right direction without extreme effort from everyone else.
We were actually trying to figure it up afterward. It probably would have been cheaper for the rest of us if that player had NOT gone with us. We are pretty sure we could have still handled all the combats. Not 100% sure if it would have been cheaper or not. We are 100% sure we would have rather had a different martial melee PC with the group. A newbie playing one of the pregens would have been much preferable.
... Yeah, it's called a team game. ...
I would agree it is a team game. He isn’t playing a team game. He’s playing look how wonderful I am you guys that suck are just here to support me.
… You just said the guy was spending all his money on armor/weapons. How is he unprepared? His job it so be able to kill things. He needs a party to assist to help put him in the situation so he can kill things. If that means letting him fly or aligning his weapon, then so be it. ...
I am not saying every character needs to prepare for absolutely every eventuality. But they all should prepare for the reasonably common and necessary. Your character can’t fly and doesn’t have a missile weapon. If I am a sorcerer who has the spell, sure I will cast fly on you. But what if I wasn’t a sorcerer or didn’t have fly. That is an extremely likely occurrence in PFS. So now does my character use the consumable I purchased to be prepared for just this situation on you or me? Well I did buy a bow, so I can still shoot. I give you the potion of fly. So now my potion of fly that I bought for me to be prepared is gone. You were rewarded for not being prepared. And I am poorer.
… When I play my barbarian, I don't buy healing potions/wands, etc. 1) because potions are a totally inefficient healing; 2) it is completely immersion breaking for my barbarian to carry around a wand of healing. I've spend my money on weapons and armor. I take point so long as I'm healed. If no one heals me, then I let someone else take point. I've never had a problem with someone on the team be ready to heal me when they see I'm getting +16 on damage. And no, I never demand I get healed IC or OOC. I'll let players know I'm wounded and as soon as they seem me move to the back of the line, someone figures it out. ...
Armies all over the world carry first aid kits that they are not experts in using. Why because you don't want the medic to run out of X just when he gets to you. In fact iirc, morale is known to plummet when the bean counters try to save money by only allowing the medic to carry just a little bit of what is probably needed.
And in PFS anywhere in the area. Why should my character, who is also not a medic, repeatedly foot the bill because you are unwilling to spend just a little on the basics and unwilling to learn?
Carrying a wand of CLW and other common condition removal items is absolutely entirely within in-character immersion. Not carrying that stuff should be what breaks your immersion unless your character is in-character incredibly moronic.
In recent (last 6 months) I have been in scenarios where people were curse, poisoned, blinded, paralyzed, etc… Without a caster that had any of the specific condition removals ready at the table. Yes, I truly believe that PC’s melee or range, caster or martial, support or skill; should all be able to make an attempt to try and take care of themselves.
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I don't expect one character to have a BoL for every character in the party. If I am a cleric, I might carry one specifically to bring someone back who could save the entire party. That may or not be a fighter.
Since we're talking about cost efficiency, I will tell you that factually, carrying around one BOL scroll for the express purpose of reviving the "key" party member is going to cost you more in Raise Deads. One unprevented death of a "non-key" party member is 5450 + 4 prestige or 2k gold (for restoration). It's cheaper for everybody to buy a scroll for themselves and have someone who can cast it carry it in case of a bad situation.
As you said later on in your post, the prevention is cheaper than the cure. It's just that everybody needs to carry their own because it's still expensive.
1. Preventions is cheaper than cure. I'd rather be given Barkskin potions than CSW.
2. Claiming that Clerics and Oracles are mediocre at healing is like saying Fighters are mediocre at fighting. If I build a fighter who can't fight, then I'm not going to blame a cleric for not healing me.
3. If you play a cleric and don't want to heal, that's your prerogative. Just as it is for someone to make a paladin and not tank. Or a barbarian who uses a rapier and throws darts for ranged damage. You're making a decision and there may or may not be consequences to those decisions. Regardless, the game is built around fundamental roles. If you aren't going to fill them, then you're going to make it harder on yourself. Maybe it's more fun, maybe it's not.
1. There are some things that are going to happen in scenarios that you won't (and sometimes cannot be) prepared to prevent. In these situations, you need to at least be prepared to address them. This means keeping BOL scrolls, restoration scrolls or diamond handy.
2. Claiming that all Clerics and Oracles are good at healing is a poor expectation. An Oracle who selects the inflict course and does not take healing spells will need to heal off of scrolls or wands, which is very expensive. Can they heal? In theory, yes. But they will be bad at it. The only difference in such an oracle being asked to heal versus asking, say, a summoner or sorcerer to heal is that the oracle doesn't need to make a UMD check. Some clerics do not take positive energy channel, or go into evangelist and therefore weaken or lose a staple healing ability. Class != role. Period.
3. And I'm sure quite a few people you meet if you ever go to a convention will tell you not to tell them how to play or build their characters. Or at the very least they will not appreciate being at the receiving end of your expectation for them to fulfill a role they don't want to play. There are tons of builds and party compositions that deviate from the traditional party structure and are still quite successful.
I can't speak to the particulars of something I did not witness. If I were in your situation, I would probably examine our party strategy and ask whether it would have been more cost effective to spend the money on something else.
I would like to underscore that the tier was 14-15 and this was a special designed specifically to be very difficult. The stuff we encountered was gross and very strong. And we did at least 10 encounters. It just cost resources.
It's also worth mentioning that not a single person was put off by having to contribute to the pool of healing resources, and in fact I didn't even have to ask.
The entire point of my post was that you can't put people into these role boxes and expect them to succeed (or appreciate it, for that matter). You need to be more aware that you're not always going to have the perfect party composition. If you don't want to be prepared for that scenario, I guess that's your business.
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As a cleric who is not built around healing, I will be glad to burn one of my slots to heal a PC instead of to buff him. I will be willing (although not happy) to burn all of my slots I would have otherwise used to buff him for healing him, if that is his desire. But if he is too cheap to get himself a CLW wand or some Pots so that I can be about buffing, then why am I the bad guy when I don't burn my wands and Pots to heal him?
Because he's busy using his money on armor and weapons to protect me? I'm right there on the frontline with him, carrying the same load, burning my money on similar gear. And I don't see him expending his weapons and armor and having to buy new ones between sessions. So why am I called on to expend my wealth while he gets to keep his?
Does this make me selfish and greedy? Really? He's being the drain on my economy and I'M the selfish one? At the very least it should be a party thing. We all go in knowing the risks and we share the costs. Fighter was killed and the Barb was level-drained? Their recovery comes out of the party loot before everything else is split. All accounts are settled. THEN we share the excess. If someone was being excessively stupid along the way, then the party can vote to change said shares.
This is part of the issue with a game system like this. In a regular weekly/monthly group consisting of the same players, there's unity there. Everyone is generally ok with having a Party Fund of some kind. Not so much when you're hopping from table to table at a CON and you hardly bump into the same people twice. I've got a buddy that I usually run with on Fantasy Grounds when they have PFS games up. We make a good team and we're there to help each other out. I don't mind burning money on him because I know he does the same for me. In the larger group, I don't have a problem sharing the cost. But the rules are set up so that what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours. There is no sharing.
If allowing everyone to purchase their own copy of the +1 flaming longsword that was sundered during the adventure isn't too much of a stretch, then allowing the party to dump coin and PP into a generic Party Fund of some type that allows them to buy supplies before/during/after the adventure isn't too much of a stretch either.
My humble opinion anyway.
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And if you don't have anyone in the group who can cast it, it's not going to do you much good is it?
For BOL, having the scrolls means that you can either save a 5th level spell slot for something else, or not have to worry about running out of BOLs as much if you expend your spells.
Material components for spells are trade goods, and can be sold back at the end of the scenario for a full refund. They're good to keep around, especially if you happen to have a spontaneous caster around.
So if you're running around with someone who says "Hey, I'm going to prepare X raise deads because I have a bad feeling about what we're going to run into" it's cool if you help them out by throwing some money in for the components for the caster to raise you (or if you're feeling extra nice, your slightly less wealthy party member).
EDIT:
I think I may have misunderstood this:
Claiming that Clerics and Oracles are mediocre at healing is like saying Fighters are mediocre at fighting.
At face value, yes I would agree with this statement, as it is entirely possible to build a cleric/oracle that are abysmal at healing just as it is possible to build a fighter or barbarian that aren't that great at certain kinds of fighting. This analogy is a little bit misapplied, as "fighting" is much more broad than "healing" and is difficult to categorize. I can build a fighter or a barbarian that specializes in combat maneuvers, and not necessarily killing stuff.
My concern is from the language of your posts, you do not seem to be acknowledging that one can build cleric or oracle that is not built to heal, or at least has not been built in such a way that allows them to heal. The cleric or oracle are divine casters. Yes, they can heal, but they can also buff, and they can also have offensive spells. Just as a fighter or barbarian can tank, do damage, disable, or crowd control. There are a lot of different roles.
The point being that -some- clerics or oracles will be bad at healing. Just as some fighters and barbarians will be bad at fulfilling certain "fighting" roles. Expecting said characters fulfill roles that they are not designed to fulfill is going to be strenuous on the party, yes, and in some cases the players may not be willing or happy having to do it. And in such cases where a character is being expected to fulfill a role that is beyond their means, that's a good reason for the party to help compensate.
Regardless, the game is built around fundamental roles. If you aren't going to fill them, then you're going to make it harder on yourself.
But implying that it is a design mistake is not really productive.
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Couldn't agree with you more.
This "not my job" philosophy seems to me entirely counter to the 'cooperate' part of the PFS motto.
I'm pretty sure you could.
You're saying "not my job" means me saying "it's not my job to heal you, brave fighting man. I am a sub-optimal fighty cleric who selfishly hoards his gold for swords that I know not how to use."
I'm saying "not my job" means someone saying "it's not my job to provide my own resources for my own healing. It's anyone else's but mine, because it's better for everyone if I have the best armor and weapons money can buy."
I'm not telling you how to play your character. You can play him however you like. I'm saying that it is not my character's responsibility to subsidize your character's choices. You're saying if I have a cleric, he should be focused on healing, and his resources should be spent keeping you alive. Otherwise, you'll take your ball and go home:
I take point so long as I'm healed. If no one heals me, then I let someone else take point.
I'm not saying my philosophy is right and yours is wrong. I am thinking it, though.
A barbarian who doesn't buy wands gets healed at my discretion. A barbarian who doesn't buy wands because it's "not in character" but will happily accept healing from someone else's wands is also a hypcocrite and/or a devout member of the Church of Cheapass:
"Oh, my religion forbids drinking unless someone else is paying for it."
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There is no specialization required in acquiring a wand of CLW. If your job regularly involves being hacked to pieces, you carry around the duct tape.
You can bet that if the army medic had to buy medicine out of his own paycheck, any grunt he came on had better be carying their own morphine or they're in for a loooong night.
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I'll repeat myself, it's a fallacy to claim the party is stronger if everyone shares all roles equally.
I don't really understand how asking someone to help pay for the costs of healing them and keeping them alive is expecting them to share all roles equally. I'm pretty sure nobody is saying that. If you fork over a scroll of BOL so that I might heal you later, that's not sharing a role, that's delegating it to me in such a way that it doesn't have to come out of my own pocket. And because I'm worrying about executing on your healing needs, you get to worry about killing stuff.
It's not sharing roles, it's about helping people who specialize in the expensive roles. (EDIT: Or get assigned to an expensive role when it's not their primary one).
The game is built round mechanical roles. It's statistically provable that characters that specialize in addressing the needed roles are more efficient than characters that generalize to fill those roles.
Be that as it may, it is irrelevant in situations where you have no control over your party composition.
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You can't buy meaningful gear with the 2/4/6 PP you end up spending on CLW wands. I don't understand the problem.That's just false.
What he's saying is that an incredibly small (possibly zero) decrease in your ability to do your primary job should be enough to keep the clerics you play with from going broke. If your wand habbit is so bad that you need more than that, then its your fault for making a character that expensive.
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If the guy is a bad build and a bad player and I think the characters is a detrimental in performing that roll, then I'll tell them I'm not going to support their character and I have to live with the consequences.
Let's turn that around because I kind of object to that.
Would this still be true if this character gave you a BOL scroll or some other resource specifically so you would heal them, and you had an easy opportunity to do so?
Could it be that the practice of sharing healing spell casting resources helps alleviate this kind of prioritization between your wallet and the well being of their character (and in some cases their experience at PFS)?
Because I certainly think it does and that's part of the reason why it's important.
If I, as someone who has been asked to take up healing duty, cannot afford to actually heal your character, then I'm not going to do it as you so aptly put. Not because I don't want to, but because it's too difficult or I actually can't. In my opinion, that situation is very bad, and it makes for a bad table experience. This situation can be completely avoided by people helping out with the healing cost by providing some healing resources for themselves.
Does the healer not help you succeed at your role by keeping you alive? Is it then so unreasonable for the healer to ask you to help them succeed at their role by helping foot some of the healing costs?
EDIT: Note, that I'm saying some not all
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Would this still be true if this character gave you a BOL scroll or some other resource specifically so you would heal them, and you had an easy opportunity to do so?I'm not sure what you're asking. Would I use BoL on the character that gave me the scroll? Why wouldn't I?
Perhaps I misunderstood:
If the guy is a bad build and a bad player and I think the characters is a detrimental in performing that roll, then I'll tell them I'm not going to support their character and I have to live with the consequences.
That, or if you would support them when they provide you resources to do so, then that seems like a good indication that sharing the healing cost with the healer is a good practice if it helps motivate them to keep you alive.
I think it's far worse table experience to have the entire party drain their wands/potions/scrolls to allow one player to perform a role they are ill-equipped to perform.
If the Rogue with Mage Armor is a better tank than character X, then I'm offering that as a solution.
Are you basing this argument off the assumption that people need healing because they're not doing their role correctly? Surely you've had a bad save or run into a creature that has like a 30 to hit. Or you've run into someone who realizes that the wizard is killing all of his friends and decides to take him out instead.
I've spent my money on making myself a better fighter. If you, the support character (because healing is the last resort), don't think you're benefited by supporting me....then don't. I'll adjust my play style based on how my team functions. The only character I'm controlling is my own.
I seem to recall a statement made by you where if a "healer" isn't going to heal you, then you will stop fighting. Is that still the case? Because if so, I would argue that in that situation you're pressuring the "healer" to heal you.
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Well if you are going to channel then it means investing stat points into charisma which otherwise you have little use for. Without selective channelling you are healing your enemies as well so there is a feat which clerics get very few of. You are also using up a standard action you could be using to take down an enemy with a spell or melee/ranged attack.
I personally think Clerics and Oracles are far better off applying some hefty control to the battlefield. A single sound burst can prevent far more damage than a cure moderate will heal. Burst of Radiance can pretty much end encounters before they begin. At the weekend I saw Command used to utterly destroy the BBEG by forcing him to approach through a corridor of waiting melee.
Channel Force, Death's Embrace, Twinned Channeling, Quick Channeling and Selective Channel are fun for days.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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At the Paizocon special my oracle was asked to be on healing duty at the 14-15 tier table. He happened to be ok at it as I had been taking some staple healing spells, but he was built more as a disruption type character. He (and the rest of the table) spent something on the order of, what 50k gold on healing components (a little over 15k just from my pocket alone), and wound up burning through almost all of them (save for an inordinate amount of lesser restoration scrolls). There's no way he could have afforded all of that by himself.
Now that was a fun table to GM.
I would like to underscore that the tier was 14-15 and this was a special designed specifically to be very difficult. The stuff we encountered was gross and very strong. And we did at least 10 encounters.
Almost correct. You actually did every encounter possible in that event. Which, at the time, was about twenty or so in a five hour period. Some were ended in one round (like Todd's persistant bouncing baleful polymorph), others took a bit longer (like the ooze that killed Melissa's magus three different times).
Overall, your party faced seemingly insurmountable odds that were overcome by excellent teamwork and resource management. Those consumables were all well spent, and Nerosyan thanks you for your sacrifice and service.
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Now I never buy consumables with gold.
Although if I risk my character's life to walk point and take hits for you, you should do something to help protect me.
My gnome sorcerer I view his job is to make sure the front liners take as litle damage as possible.
When someone one drops that is protecting me, it is my fautl for not protecting them.
If you a cleric refuses to heal me with his wands, spells, or channels. Well what is your role then? Why was I injured?
Now because clerics often refuse to use their spells and channels to heal outside of comabt almsot all of my characters can heal themselves.
That I find silly that I have to dedicate resources to that for people that go the entire scenario without using a channel because they will only use the wand.
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A barbarian who doesn't buy wands gets healed at my discretion. A barbarian who doesn't buy wands because it's "not in character" but will happily accept healing from someone else's wands is also a hypcocrite and/or a devout member of the Church of Cheapass:
"Oh, my religion forbids drinking unless someone else is paying for it."
Wut? Doz yuz mean Zarongel?