As the title poses.
...Yeah.
Fast Healing makes all other non-combat healing obsolete.
Fast Healing 5 will top up someone with 200 HP in 4 minutes.
Or, 50 HP per minute.
It saves money and other resources, and it saves time (you heal while walking).
DR 4/- would be somewhat more useful
If you take 4 attacks in a round and each deal 10 damage, you'd subtract 4 from each for a total of 24 damage
With fast healing, you'd take the full 40 damage, and only heal back 4 for a total of 36 damage taken.
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It varies by campaign. If you're having slow-paced adventures, usually with only one or two encounters a day, then you're probably not short of healing anyway (assuming you've got a cleric or similar). If you're having rapid successive encounters - because you don't want buffs to wear off, or because an alarm has been raised - you don't have time to wait around for your health to recover. But there's a point in-between where it's useful.
+1 to what Rynjin said
Being able to not use up any spell slots for post-combat bandages is super useful. In effect, it gets you more millage out of your cleric/day.
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IT has the following effects, depending on how it is applied:
1) if One person has it, it means you don't have to spend any after-combat healing on them. This means if they are a melee person, they have no downtime or being in danger to heal. For fighters and rogues, it effectively means they can fight forever because they never run out of resources.
Your adventuring day will last longer because healing resources will go further, and you won't need to worry about your primary melee running out of health.
2) if multiple people have it, assuming they are melees, it truly frees up a lot of casting slots since healing magic will only be used sparingly.
The adventuring day lasts longer because your purchased healing goes much further, and fewer slots are used on healing.
3) if the whole party has it, you only have to heal in combat in desperate circumstances. No money will be spent on downtime perishables. Also, the constant healing means the party will 'always' recover to full between fights.
Your adventuring day thus becomes how many spell slots are used up on the casters, and those slots last much longer. Wars of attrition are much harder to do since a lot of melee is an option even if you are low on spells, as your wounds will all be healed regardless.
From a realistic standpoint: Its a bigger deal the lower your level is. At higher levels, having to dish out a 200 HP heal to keep a tank alive is not uncommon. Out of combat healing is incidental spare change.
At low levels, not having to spend ANY money on out of combat healing, and healing to full within a few minutes, is a massive advantage, meaning your primary melee's health is never a reason to call it the end of the adventuring, and he's always starting every fight at full health.
==Aelryinth
Fast healing is good for monsters, but not PC's.
For monsters, fast healing lets a monster use hit-and-run tactics. The monster engages the PC's for a short time, withdraws to heal, and then comes back once it's at full health. Most monsters aren't otherwise capable of healing themselves, so fast healing can make a monster much more tactically interesting.
PC's, on the other hand, usually have enough wands of cure light wounds that they can completely heal between encounters, which makes fast healing redundant for out-of-combat healing. Also, as kestral287 pointed out, it's basically impossible to get enough fast healing to matter significantly during combat, so fast healing is overall not very helpful for PC's.
Commenting on Fast Healing's in combat efficacy is missing the point of the ability entirely. It's not an ability meant to meaningfully prolong combats. It's an ability meant to meaningfully prolong SURVIVAL. Fleeing for even a short time can restore massive amounts of health to a monster or PC, especially in conjunction with other healing methods.
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Don't forget bleed damage, Fast Healing effectively neutralizes Bleed Damage.
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and losing HP at negative HP. Technically, you go right to 0 and then you're up the next round from a negative total.
==Aelryinth
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Commenting on Fast Healing's in combat efficacy is missing the point of the ability entirely. It's not an ability meant to meaningfully prolong combats. It's an ability meant to meaningfully prolong SURVIVAL. Fleeing for even a short time can restore massive amounts of health to a monster or PC, especially in conjunction with other healing methods.
Pointing out the combat effectiveness is quite relevant. If you don't survive combat, out of combat healing is meaningless. Fleeing is not always an option. (Besides, any non-mindless or non-feral enemies you flee from will be better prepared when you return, and if they gave you that much trouble without good prep, a little healing might not help much.)
Fast healing is helpful tis true, but it can be tedious as a GM
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I think it is really good to have. Many times the party has to stop adventuring because they have gotten beat up and the cleric is out of cure spells(adventuring day extenders). With fast healing he can use less on cure spells, and channel less. Alternately he can use the other types of channeling for more options. Fast healing is not just about the healing, but the other options it opens up which allows you to make problems into non-problems.
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One other way that fast healing can be very useful is if you have an oracle or shaman in the party with Life Link. Since they can transfer damage from anyone in the party who's below full health, their own fast healing ends up healing everyone in the party, given adequate time. Not game breaking, but definitely nice in order to conserve resources.
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My opinion is that it's great and I wish PC's had a reliable way of getting it at those lower levels.
It is exactly as others in this thread have said, it is an ability that greatly extends a parties day and resources and that's why I like it. In combat, it may only be "Dr once a round", but as stated it goes beyond that. It is, even in combat, much better because of bleed and other effects that make it better. But more fundamentally I like it because it does something really big, it removes the need for a dedicated healer.
Over the years I've grown tired of the traditional party make up and with Fast Healing, you aren't restricted in designing encounters around that paradigm. You wanna run a party of just Fighters or Rogues? Without that kind of ability, most would say it's more than just impractical, you'd have to tailor a campaign just to that party. With Fast Healing these kind of parties are possible in actual play, and increased diversity is a good thing or so I hear.
Best part in my opinion is it doesn't remove the role of a healer either, it just doesn't make it essential for the in between of encounters throughout the adventuring day. There are still many status effects that need curing, ability damage, raising of the dead isn't covered by fast healing, and of course in combat you will likely need some form of in combat healing. But still, it's nice to have until the game turns into Rocket Tag.
and losing HP at negative HP. Technically, you go right to 0 and then you're up the next round from a negative total.
==Aelryinth
Actually, fast healing stops helping much when you dying if you read the rules: After all Fast Heal is natural healing.
Huh, they changed the fast heal rules to work while dying in PF. It didn't in 3.5.
and losing HP at negative HP. Technically, you go right to 0 and then you're up the next round from a negative total.
==Aelryinth
Actually, fast healing stops helping much when you dying if you read the rules: After all Fast Heal is natural healing.
Huh, they changed the fast heal rules to work while dying in PF. It didn't in 3.5.
I don't see why it would cease functioning. It's not like Regeneration, where it ceases function if you're hit with a certain type of damage in a given round.
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The 'game changing' effect of fast healing is 'go go go.' Since you don't run out of healing, you can just keep going.
It doesn't 'radicalize' things. It doesn't change the game into rocket tag, or make the PC's suddenly capable of stomping all over enemies.
It means they can just Keep Going.
If you're able to gain some key defenses and immunities, such as against charms, save or dies, Freedom of Movement, and the like, you literally never need truly fear hit point damage.
Your melees are thus capable of solving more problems because they don't have to worry about injuries so much, and are always at full strength.
Conversely, with the melees shouldering even more of the load, the power of spellcasters can be stretched out a very long time. Casters that can melee along with the melee classes can extend this time out even further.
So, yes, it will change the game, because you can just keep going. The change may take the GM by surprise, and even the PC's might be startled at the shift in ability.
I cite 3.5 Persistent Mass Lesser Vigor, which granted the whole party fast healing 1 for 24 hours, and completely shifted party dynamics as nobody needed to heal, and altered the playstyle as a result.
==Aelryinth
The game works by assuming each fight will take its toll on your resources. Healing is the major resource of the game, requiring either expending precious daily abilities or items that cost you money and required you to prepare ahead of time. The gameplay of D&D/PF centers around mitigating the healing cost. If you play smart and work as a team, you lower the damage party members take and lower the healing cost of the fight. At-will fast healing on PCs completely breaks this system and has multiple design consequences that I'd need to write a multi-page article to fully explain.
This is a matter of game design. Fast healing on a PC affects the game on a fundamental level and has wide-spread consequences on the game as a whole. That's why it's powerful.
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The 'game changing' effect of fast healing is 'go go go.' Since you don't run out of healing, you can just keep going.
The gameplay of D&D/PF centers around mitigating the healing cost.
If you don't mind spending a few thousand gold on wands of cure light wounds, you can achieve basically the same thing without fast healing.
Say you're in a game with 20-point buy instead of 15-point buy. That probably means that by the mid-game every character could afford to go with a +2 headband or belt instead of a +4. In doing so, you save 12,000gp each - 48,000gp for a party of four. That's enough for 64 Wands of Cure Light Wounds, which could heal 17,600 hit points - which is likely to be several times more than the party would lose in a long campaign. In a game where wands are available in shops, unlimited healing is worth no more than a couple of attribute points.
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There is nothing game changing at all about fast healing for a PC party.
Any Pathfinder party above level 3 or so should have enough wands of cure light wounds to heal up completely after every battle. Such wands are extremely cheap and are available for sale in most campaigns. They're so cheap that there's very little reason for a cleric to ever cast healing spells between combats, except perhaps for very low-level spells that the cleric wouldn't otherwise make use of.
The daily resource that Pathfinder characters run out of is spells. Adventuring parties don't decide to rest because they're out of healing -- they decide to rest because the casters are running out of good spells. Fast healing doesn't help with this at all, which means that it doesn't extend the adventuring day one bit.
The only effect that fast healing has it that it will let the party spend less gold on wands of curing. A typical party spends maybe 5% of its money on such wands, so this effect isn't really that big. Out-of-combat healing was an important resource to be managed in original D&D, but starting in 3rd edition it became a cheap commodity, and it remains so in Pathfinder.
Kind of curious as to what actually grants PC's long-term fast healing?
I know there's those boots in some softcover book somewhere (Or was it an Adventure path) that grants Fast Healing 1. Boots of the Earth, or something like that. And most people consider those boots ridiculous for the reasons listed above.
I believe an Alchemist can get fast healing as their capstone discovery.
What other methods are there?
There are things about PCs having fast healing that I like.
1. Longer adventuring days. Where's the downside to that?
2. Longer adventuring runs. Instead of trying to nova with all their 1 minute/level buffs and surge through the dungeon, the party might be willing to wait around, explore, and strategize between combats while they regain hit points.
3. It gives the cleric something else to do. It also reduces the mandatory nature of the CLW wand, giving the cleric money to spend elsewhere.
4. It gives the martial PCs a little taste of independence, as well as underlining the one big advantage fighters have. Fast healing means longer adventuring days, and, as mentioned, fighters and rogues never run out of anything. And if the party does decide to stop and sleep, it's clear to everyone that that's fully the mage holding back the party. In short, this playstyle actually underlines the one and only weakness mages have.
It depends on your GM. Some might make it a way to get full HP after every encounter, others will ambush you while you're sitting down and sucking your thumb, others will make you fail the mission because the villain of the week was informed of intruders and fled/killed the hostages/some other bad thing.
Hey, just 'cause they're sitting around doesn't mean my guys gotta.
Fast healing on a PC affects the game on a fundamental level and has wide-spread consequences on the game as a whole. That's why it's powerful.What "wide-spread consequences?"
It greatly changes the way the game is played. As I mentioned in my previous post, D&D/PF's gameplay centers around playing smart to mitigate the healing cost of an encounter. In many ways, roleplaying works this way, too--it's often better to talk your way out of a conflict than resort to violence that harms your party members. Even wands of CLW still require investing money, preparing ahead of time, and assuming your GM will make magic markets available. Giving all PCs a constant fast healing breaks this system. There's much less incentive to play cautiously. As long as you don't die, taking damage has no cost to it. This also changes the way GM designs and runs encounters. He has to make the encounters harder to cause any attrition, limiting the types of encounters he can run.
Again, this is a game design matter. I could go on for days. When you change a fundamental assumption in the game, it will have major consequences. Some of them not expected or desired.
was fast healer ruled to work with fast healing? Because it looks like it only works with spells and natural healing.
==Aelryinth
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It greatly changes the way the game is played. As I mentioned in my previous post, D&D/PF's gameplay centers around playing smart to mitigate the healing cost of an encounter. In many ways, roleplaying works this way, too--it's often better to talk your way out of a conflict than resort to violence that harms your party members. Even wands of CLW still require investing money, preparing ahead of time, and assuming your GM will make magic markets available. Giving all PCs a constant fast healing breaks this system. There's much less incentive to play cautiously. As long as you don't die, taking damage has no cost to it. This also changes the way GM designs and runs encounters. He has to make the encounters harder to cause any attrition, limiting the types of encounters he can run.
Again, this is a game design matter. I could go on for days. When you change a fundamental assumption in the game, it will have major consequences. Some of them not expected or desired.
I disagree with this. Resources are resources, and the party will generally stop and rest when they feel they don't have enough resources to defeat the next encounter, regardless of what the specific resources are. Fast healing just means it's less likely the resource constraint will be healing; the party will still stop when they run out of spells, smites, rounds of rage, and what have you.
Because fast healing - unless you have some obscene amount - has a negligible effect on combat, the danger of combat is unchanged. The GM doesn't need to make combats more difficult to compensate for out of combat healing because the PCs will still expend offensive resources to defeat encounters.
What you're describing makes more sense in the context of MMO healing, not healing in Pathfinder.
I disagree with this. Resources are resources, and the party will generally stop and rest when they feel they don't have enough resources to defeat the next encounter, regardless of what the specific resources are. Fast healing just means it's less likely the resource constraint will be healing; the party will still stop when they run out of spells, smites, rounds of rage, and what have you.It greatly changes the way the game is played. As I mentioned in my previous post, D&D/PF's gameplay centers around playing smart to mitigate the healing cost of an encounter. In many ways, roleplaying works this way, too--it's often better to talk your way out of a conflict than resort to violence that harms your party members. Even wands of CLW still require investing money, preparing ahead of time, and assuming your GM will make magic markets available. Giving all PCs a constant fast healing breaks this system. There's much less incentive to play cautiously. As long as you don't die, taking damage has no cost to it. This also changes the way GM designs and runs encounters. He has to make the encounters harder to cause any attrition, limiting the types of encounters he can run.
Again, this is a game design matter. I could go on for days. When you change a fundamental assumption in the game, it will have major consequences. Some of them not expected or desired.
Players use those resources to make fights end more quickly. Weighing the choice between using a daily ability or conserving it at the cost of a longer battle functions as a cornerstone of the gameplay. But with fast healing, there's less consequence if a battle lasts a few more rounds unless it's above CR = APL or an enemy has a long lasting status effect. Deny it all you want, but fast healing does significantly influence how combat plays, how players spend their class resources, and how the game functions as a whole.
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The difference in consequences is pretty neglible, considering most fights only take a couple rounds. Longer fights are simply padded with rounds where nothing changes due to opponents closing or maneuvering.
Hell, my characters end the day with resources unspent simply because there weren't enough actions in combat to use them all.
Players use those resources to make fights end more quickly. Weighing the choice between using a daily ability or conserving it at the cost of a longer battle functions as a cornerstone of the gameplay. But with fast healing, there's less consequence if a battle lasts a few more rounds unless it's above CR = APL or an enemy has a long lasting status effect. Deny it all you want, but fast healing does significantly influence how combat plays, how players spend their class resources, and how the game functions as a whole.
I'm sorry but you're just flat wrong. With fast healing there's less of a consequence if the battle lasts a few more rounds? The amount of damage inflicted in any given round of combat far outstrips the few meager hit points fast healing recovers. Unless you're running extremely easy encounters, no group is ever going to delay ending the fight as quickly as possible, because the consequence of a "few more rounds" is very likely to be the death of one or more of the PCs.
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Fast Healing is similar to DR/- in consideration of it's power. Both of them allow someone to not worry so much about their HP, which allows them to devote more effort and resources to offense or other things, and less to (physical) defense. They do mostly the same thing, but in different ways. DR works during a fight to keep someone from taking the damage in the first place, while Fast Healing works better after the fight to repair the damage that was taken.
The similarity of the two in terms of balance consideration is clear when you look at the Spelleater Bloodrager. They trade away their class based DR/- in exchange for Fast Healing. The reason it's actually a bad trade is that they're giving up DR/- that works at all times for Fast Healing that only works while raging. As pointed out, DR is most effective in combat, so if it was keyed to raging it would be completely effective. Fast Healing works best out of combat, so to key it to raging makes it far less useful.
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A party with fast healing starts really placing emphasis on high hit points and getting immunities to other conditions. This is so they don't have to worry about in combat healing...they have so many hit points they WANT the fight to be about hit points.
Hit points come back out of combat for nothing. totally a win situation. 1hp of fast healing/rd = 15,000 hp/day, which is the equal of 55 CLW wands. A party with fast healing starts tilting their gameplay style towards hit points and gogogo.
This is very friendly to classes with few daily resources, like fighters and rogues, whose only resource to manage is hit points. They are never telling the party 'time to rest' because they are out of hit points.
==Aelryinth
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Xexyz, his point is that you don't care if you lose 3/4ths of your HP compared to 1/4th, because within ten minutes both are completely recovered. Not that its in-combat use is somehow worth noting.
My point is that it's an irrelevant concern. Combat - challenging combat, that is - is not so predictable that PCs can just casually say, "yeah I'll let that monster beat on me an extra few rounds instead of smiting it because I'll just be able to heal to full after combat anyway."
Furthermore, step back and look at the big picture. Even if fast healing did have the effect Cyrad is claiming, it's still irrelevant. The current design paradigm intends for a CR = APL encounter to consume 25% of the party's resources. Suppose fast healing had the impact of making a CR = APL encounter only consume 20% of the party's resources, allowing for an extra encounter per day. So what? Since four CR = APL encounters per day is an arbitrary amount to begin with, going from 4 to 5 makes no meaningful impact on the way encounters need to be designed.
Fast healing does have an impact, but it's mostly an economic one, as other people have already mentioned. I certainly wouldn't have to make encounters harder because of it.
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agreed. It doesn't make individual encounters harder or easier. it just enables you to go through more of them before you have to stop. Sometimes to an almost ridiculous extent, depending on the enemy.
==Aelryinth