The idea, is that outside of combat, you would use the coup de grace mechanic, which is an automatic critical, to amplify the healing of cure/inflict spells (if you get healed by negative energy that is).
RAW wise, this seems to work perfectly, the only slight hurdle is the Fort save or die aspect. But even then, one could argue that since it's a "DC 10 plus damage dealt" for the saving throw, you would add a negative modifier as you are healing damage.
So if you coup de grace with a cure light wounds wand, you'd heal 2d8+2 for an average of 11 hp, meaning the DC would 10 - 11 = -1 (or 0).
I mean, fluff wise, you could make it work as you are focusing the healing on the wounds itself, whereas in battle, it's too chaotic to focus the magic. So I'm curious as to people's thoughts on this. Would you let cure/inflict wounds work to amplify healing? Would you enforce the save or die aspect of the coup de grace?
I would not, since the spells are generally cast out of combat rather than in-combat to begin with.
Critical hits increase damage. They don't multiply everything about the spell. They have no effect when healing someone.
A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together. Unless otherwise specified, the threat range for a critical hit on an attack roll is 20, and the multiplier is ×2.
Healing spells (when being used to heal) deal no damage, so can't crit.
you mean like a crit?.... I'm not following how a heal could use insta-kill rules.
Cure/Inflict spells are touch range spells with an attack roll. Since they have an attack roll, they can crit. Touch spells are technically weapons, hence the reason you don't provoke an attack of opportunity when you try and touch an enemy with them.
Since they are weapons, you can use them to make a coup de grace.
Now, one could use an inflict light wounds to make a coup de grace on an enemy with no problem. You have to cast the spell first, hold the charge, and then on the following round, make a coup de grace as a full round action. You can use chill touch or shocking grasp or frostbite and other similar spells in this manner. You can use cure positive wounds in a similar manner against creatures vulnerable to positive energy, such as dhampir.
Mechanically speaking, there is no difference between a cure spell and an inflict spell, except the damage type associated with it. If you can use a spell to make a coup de grace attempt on an enemy, including inflict spells, then you could, technically, use a cure spell to attempt a coup de grace on an ally. However, since a cure spell does no damage, you get a guaranteed critical hit, which makes the positive energy used in the spell twice as effective.
Hell, one could even use it in combat on an unconcious and dying ally. Just cast your spell, hold the charge and then coup de grace them to get them back on their feet even faster.
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It doesn't work for the reason Jeraa posted. Healing isn't 'positive energy damage' and you are making a leap of logic not supported in the rules by assuming it is. If you crit with a healing touch attack you are multiplying the damage, which is 0, for a total of 0 extra damage.
Note that you could definitely use CLW to coup-de-grace a helpless undead.
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Additionally, even if this were possible and allowed, the recipient would need to make a DC 0 fortitude save to avoid dying (as you noted). However, you automatically fail a save on a natural 1, regardless of whether or not the total beats the DC. Double healing with a 5% chance of dying seems like a bad idea.
But, as noted, you can't crit with CLW used to heal- just like you can't crit with Enervation, Ray of Enfeeblement, or Arcane Mark.
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Cure/Inflict to heal? No.
Cure/Inflict to harm? Yes.
Coup de Grace: As a full-round action, you can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace (pronounced "coo day grahs") to a helpless opponent. You can also use a bow or crossbow, provided you are adjacent to the target.
You automatically hit and score a critical hit.
Touch attacks come in two types: melee touch attacks and ranged touch attacks. You can score critical hits with either type of attack as long as the spell deals damage.
When laying your hand upon a living creature, you channel positive energy that cures 1d8 points of damage + 1 point per caster level (maximum +5). Since undead are powered by negative energy, this spell deals damage to them instead of curing their wounds.
Bolded for emphasis
The reasons I don't follow that path of logic is as the others have elaborated and explained, Tels.
That said, I could see allowing the spells to crit as a house rule... but that would require you to actually roll and confirm a critical, and you could probably argue a system for raising the "crit chance" of the healing for classes trained in healing(and perhaps ranks/points of the heal skill) to increase your odds by level... but that does not appear to be any kind of RAW, and I certainly wouldn't consider it covered by "Coup De Grace".
That would actually be kind of neat... Maybe increase the "crit range" of the "attack" for every four ranks in Heal (e.g. someone with 8 ranks in Heal would "crit" on an 18, 19, or 20 on the die). Use their Heal skill as their "attack" modifier instead of the usual touch attack modifiers. Use the target's Will save instead of AC for the target to beat to confirm the "crit".
I don't know for sure what it'd look like, but I feel like there's a kind of cool idea there, and it would help to keep the Heal skill more relevant. Like M1k31 said, though, not covered by existing rules, especially Coup De Grace. Including it under Coup De Grace would be nice, but it's unfortunately not the case (unless you're using it to damage undead, that is, as discussed above).
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Additionally, even if this were possible and allowed, the recipient would need to make a DC 0 fortitude save to avoid dying (as you noted). However, you automatically fail a save on a natural 1, regardless of whether or not the total beats the DC. Double healing with a 5% chance of dying seems like a bad idea.
"Oh, Frank, you're injured! Here, let me heal you right there."
"Oh, thanks, Bett—AUAUAUUAAGHH""...how is it even possible to be allergic to positive energy?!"
Additionally, even if this were possible and allowed, the recipient would need to make a DC 0 fortitude save to avoid dying (as you noted). However, you automatically fail a save on a natural 1, regardless of whether or not the total beats the DC. Double healing with a 5% chance of dying seems like a bad idea."Oh, Frank, you're injured! Here, let me heal you right there."
"Oh, thanks, Bett—AUAUAUUAAGHH"
"...how is it even possible to be allergic to positive energy?!"
And that's it for this week's episode of Guess Whose Grandpa Was Secretly A Vampire. :)
If I were to allow this, I would then require all cure light wounds spells to be used with a touch attack in combat. Totally a house rule. But this would offset the benefits.
How is positive energy not damage?
When you hit an undead is it not Positive Energy DAMAGE. The difference with living and non living is that one does "negative damage" and one does "positive damage." With living creatures, its like throwing a fireball at a Iron Golem, they GAIN power from it. Visa Versa for undead.
I remember in 3.5 it WAS negative damage. Essentially, they treated it like how many Video Games treat healing in game, its damage, just damage with a negative value (Subtract a negative value from your HP creates a positive addition, for those who are bad at math). They just didn't write it that way since it would look REALLY messy.
How is positive energy not damage?
When you hit an undead is it not Positive Energy DAMAGE. The difference with living and non living is that one does "negative damage" and one does "positive damage." With living creatures, its like throwing a fireball at a Iron Golem, they GAIN power from it. Visa Versa for undead.
I remember in 3.5 it WAS negative damage. Essentially, they treated it like how many Video Games treat healing in game, its damage, just damage with a negative value (Subtract a negative value from your HP creates a positive addition, for those who are bad at math). They just didn't write it that way since it would look REALLY messy.
When you hit an undead with a cure spell, it is positive energy damage. When used to heal a living creature, it is just positive energy. There is no damage. There is no damage when used to heal.
The combat chapter even says damage is something that reduces your hit points. If it raises your hitpoints, it is not damage.
Damage
If your attack succeeds, you deal damage. The type of weapon used determines the amount of damage you deal.
Damage reduces a target's current hit points.
And 3.5 treated it exactely the same as Pathfinder treats it.
Technically you can argue it is reducing HP. It is reducing your HP by a negative value, therefor causing it to go up. Mathmatically, you can just see Positive Energy as a negative numerical value. Essentially your equation would be
HP= C-E[D1+D2]
Where HP= Final HP
C= Maximum HP
E[D1+D2}= Sum of all damage Sustained (not sure how to do a sigma on a keyboard -.-)
If Positive Energy is simply a Negative Value you would have something like this (lets assume you took 10 damage from a longsword prior):
so lets start with
40= 50-[10+0]
Now lets say you get hit with a CLW
48= 50-[10+(-8)]
And we know that current HP is tracked as total HP subtracted by total damage sustained (this was cleared up with all the confusion with non lethal damage that is tracked up, not down).
Therefore you can very easily say "healing" is just negative damage. The only reason it is not written as "negative damage" is that it would confuse the crap out of newer players. Heck, this is actually how most video games track HP and damage (which is why you CAN crit with heals in things like WoW).
You *could* construct the rules in a way so that healing is just negative damage.
That's not how it works in Pathfinder.
Damage reduces HP, and Healing restores HP. There is no such concept as "negative HP damage" in the ruleset. It's not much of a logical leap to make that connection and you could (probably) easily houserule it to work, but the ruleset as written doesn't make that connection.
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Technically you can argue it is reducing HP. It is reducing your HP by a negative value, therefor causing it to go up. Mathmatically, you can just see Positive Energy as a negative numerical value. Essentially your equation would be
HP= C-E[D1+D2]
Where HP= Final HP
C= Maximum HP
E[D1+D2}= Sum of all damage Sustained (not sure how to do a sigma on a keyboard -.-)
If Positive Energy is simply a Negative Value you would have something like this (lets assume you took 10 damage from a longsword prior):so lets start with
40= 50-[10+0]
Now lets say you get hit with a CLW
48= 50-[10+(-8)]
And we know that current HP is tracked as total HP subtracted by total damage sustained (this was cleared up with all the confusion with non lethal damage that is tracked up, not down).
Therefore you can very easily say "healing" is just negative damage. The only reason it is not written as "negative damage" is that it would confuse the crap out of newer players. Heck, this is actually how most video games track HP and damage (which is why you CAN crit with heals in things like WoW).
If I were to allow this, I would then require all cure light wounds spells to be used with a touch attack in combat. Totally a house rule. But this would offset the benefits.
Well, if someone were to try to resist the spell, you would actually have to make an attack roll to hit them with it. So if my ally decides he doesn't want to get hit with the spell, then I get to make an attack roll, and they have to make a will save to resist it.
Do I get to make a critical hit then? I mean, you can land a critical hit with enervation, and it doesn't deal damage, it drains levels.
What about if I have an ally with butterfly sting using non-lethal damage to fish for critical hits so he can then transfer the critical hit to me as I hit the "resisting" ally with a cure critical wounds? Would I crit then and heal 8d8+14 hit points?
Interesting concept...
Would it not be simpler to just say they do 2x healing outside of combat and forget the rest?
I would allow this, absolutely.
If I were to allow this, I would then require all cure light wounds spells to be used with a touch attack in combat. Totally a house rule. But this would offset the benefits.Well, if someone were to try to resist the spell, you would actually have to make an attack roll to hit them with it. So if my ally decides he doesn't want to get hit with the spell, then I get to make an attack roll, and they have to make a will save to resist it.
Do I get to make a critical hit then? I mean, you can land a critical hit with enervation, and it doesn't deal damage, it drains levels.
What about if I have an ally with butterfly sting using non-lethal damage to fish for critical hits so he can then transfer the critical hit to me as I hit the "resisting" ally with a cure critical wounds? Would I crit then and heal 8d8+14 hit points?
What about this concept do you not get? Crits multiply damage. When you are healing someone you are doing zero damage.
You're trying to unfairly manipulate the rules, don't try to make it seem like anything else.
Interesting concept...
Would it not be simpler to just say they do 2x healing outside of combat and forget the rest?
I would allow this, absolutely.
To clarify, I would allow this HOUSERULE.
A coup de grace is basically slitting someone throat or putting a dagger in their heart. I fail to see how shoving a wand of cure light wounds through someone’s heart is going to heal extra damage. Common sense does have a place in the game.
This would also mean a rogue could sneak attack with a cure light wounds. Now a unchained rogue with major magic suddenly becomes the best healer in the game.
If healing is negative damage, then it could be affected by bardic performance, Power Attack, etc. It seems like a risky house rule to impose.
If you're trying to make a house rule to make healing better out of combat, I'd suggest making it automatically heal X per dice (where X is whatever seems balanced to you). For example, a wand of CLW out of combat could heal 6 (above average) or 9 (maximum) or 10 (maximum +1) every time. That has the advantage that after a combat you can just say, "Right, I need 23 hit points and you need 17. That's 5 charges," instead of having to roll a bunch of dice, which gets increasingly tedious at high levels.
Interesting concept...
Would it not be simpler to just say they do 2x healing outside of combat and forget the rest?
I would allow this, absolutely.
The thing is, Cure spells are almost only used outside combat. Their effectiveness within combat is negligible—if a cleric's desperate to help her friends mid-fight, she'll usually use a channel, or something bigger like a heal.
So you're basically saying, "I want Cure spells to heal double all the time." Which will make a big difference in how much the classic Wand of CLW is worth to a party.
Interesting concept...
Would it not be simpler to just say they do 2x healing outside of combat and forget the rest?
I would allow this, absolutely.
The thing is, Cure spells are almost only used outside combat. Their effectiveness within combat is negligible—if a cleric's desperate to help her friends mid-fight, she'll usually use a channel, or something bigger like a heal.
So you're basically saying, "I want Cure spells to heal double all the time." Which will make a big difference in how much the classic Wand of CLW is worth to a party.
Not really, because it takes twice as long to use this method.
Round 1, Cast spell, hold charge.
Round 2, coup de grace as a full round action.
In the meantime, you could have hit the person with two charges for the same effect. It's really best utilized by cure spells that consume a slot, or if you have not time restrictions or movement restrictions. I know there have been several times we've had to heal on the move because of buffs or limited windows of opportunity.
Personally, I see it as the cleric/oracle/witch/bard etc having the opportunity to really sit down and focus on the wounds and direct them where they are most needed, doubling the effectiveness.
I mean, if you've ever played Fallout 3/New Vegas, you know that when you get injured, you can apply stim packs to the body and it will slowly heal the body, or you can apply directly to the wounded area for a greater healing effect. Applying the stim(s) to the body will eventually heal the wounds, but it costs far less stims to heal by directly targeting the wounded areas, than just a general location.
I view combat healing, or healing by the normal means as just slapping the spell onto the body and hope it works. The energy is dispersed in this method, and less efficient as much of it is wasted. But if you could focus it on the wounds, you get a greater efficiency. However, it takes time and concentration to do it. Hence, using the coup de grace mechanic.
[Edit] By the way, the claim that cure spells are only used out of combat is a product of online forum theory craft. The reality is that cure spells are still very often used in combat. As much as people want to devalue in combat healing, it's going to happen. It's going to continue happening, and will remain happening forever as long as there are humans in control of the game. Theory craft only takes you so far, the reality is that the game is far too unpredictable to say they only use X in Y situation.
Okay, if we're going into the "it's just theorycraft" stuff, I'm out. GG BROS
Okay, if we're going into the "it's just theorycraft" stuff, I'm out. GG BROS
kthxbai
As a house rule, i would be fine using it. Especially so if for whatever reason the party wouldn't have easy access to 'happy sticks'. (CLW wands)
It can help mitigate the 15 min adventure day as well as allow a behind the lines healer to get more oompf out of 'not the Heal spell'.
Okay, if we're going into the "it's just theorycraft" stuff, I'm out. GG BROSkthxbai
omg
As a house rule, i would be fine using it. Especially so if for whatever reason the party wouldn't have easy access to 'happy sticks'. (CLW wands)
It can help mitigate the 15 min adventure day as well as allow a behind the lines healer to get more oompf out of 'not the Heal spell'.
This is actually the whole reason it even occurred to me. I got invited to play in an evil campaign and decided to play a witch idea I'd had for awhile, someone who manipulates the energies of life and death (positive and negative energy). So she's got the healing patron, but also worships Charon, Horsemen of Death.
Anyway, party was supposed to have a 'neutral' cleric who was going to be able to channel positive energy and be the healer. He decided to switch at the last moment to an evil cleric and play a dhampir. So, while the cleric can still make use of wands, he's not going to be preparing or casting many healing spells. Meanwhile, since I took the Hedge Witch archetype, I will be spontaneously casting healing spells, well, at 4th level and above anyway.
So, I tried to come up with a method of improving the limited heals that I have, and this is what occurred to me. I'll definitely be using it in my games when I GM, but I still have, as of yet, to run it by my GM.
The only real issue is the whole "critical hits deal double damage" but even then, it's only a minor one, as you can crit with other things that don't deal damage, like enervation or various touch attacks by undead. Even still, if one were to think of healing as 'negative damage' it would, theoretically, apply. I don't know, doesn't really seem like that big of a hurdle to me though, you know?
If you are doing a witch healer, look into hex vulnerability combined with healing hex as another helpful suggestion.
If you are doing a witch healer, look into hex vulnerability combined with healing hex as another helpful suggestion.
I wasn't originally planning that, I intended to be more of a debuffer/Save-or-suck with a little supplemental healing on the side, but now I've been forced into a "primary healer" role :(
If you are doing a witch healer, look into hex vulnerability combined with healing hex as another helpful suggestion.
They errata'd that trick away, sadly.
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So, just to make sure we're all on the same page here: we all know that this is 100% house rule, and not even a little bit supported by the rules, right? If so, I still think it's a bad one, but each table can make that decision for themselves. I don't want anyone walking away from this thread thinking that's how the game works.
So, just to make sure we're all on the same page here: we all know that this is 100% house rule, and not even a little bit supported by the rules, right? If so, I still think it's a bad one, but each table can make that decision for themselves. I don't want anyone walking away from this thread thinking that's how the game works.
Agreed, but I don't think it breaks the game, that's why I would allow it.
Especially for a game where someone was forced into a healing role when they didn't intend to build that way.
(Currently in the same situation, with a fourth level Hunter serving as party healer, ugh).