So you're saying in-combat healing is so powerful that you have to use much better tactics in order to survive without it? :)Then improve your tactics.
If you just switch off the healing nozzle and continue to do the same thigns that turned you onto it of course you're going to wipe.
You're not cute.
Any time you change your strategy you must alter your tactics to suit.
If you're talking about weening yourself off of healing then you intend to extend the adventuring day and save monetary resources. That's a gain, not a loss.
If you don't change your tactics to suit then you should endeavor to avoid taking unnecessary damage. The solution is group dependent. Sometimes it means focusing your offense better. Other times it means shoring up your defense. Often it just means your spellcasters have to look at their spell list critically and work with the group to reach that goal.
Similarly, not every level 9 evil cleric is an optimised PC-killing machine with exactly the right spells to end the battle.
This.
The particular evil cleric in question was on a mission to sweep this huge dungeon for the presence of hostile invaders (the PCs, but they didn't know it was PCs yet, they only knew that some of their weaker patrols had not returned).
As such, he had a few good combat spells but also had some divination spells and group buffs prepared.
He wasn't a war machine because he had a life to live, as a priest who was a LEADER of his men and as such prepared his spells to cover all contingencies, not just to slaughter a group of PCs he didn't even know were there.
"Medic!"
"What?!"
"My leg, my leg!"
"I don't make house calls. Take two aspirin and mail me the five dollars."
In my experience, in-combat healing tends to increase the survival chances of PCs in low-optimization games - it's not as effective at keeping you alive as what an optimised PC could do, but quite useful compared to what the average PC actually does. (YMMV.)
Against that, in-combat healing means you're expending daily resources on extending combats - and extending a combat means other PCs have to use more daily resources as well.
So, is that a bad thing? Is extending the adventuring day a real gain?
This depends a lot on GM psychology. A hardcore simulationist GM will probably have decided that in three days time, the orcs will attack the city, and if the players haven't resolved the situation by then, they'll be too late.
Other GMs will just increase the threat level whenever the PCs seem to be surviving too easily - and nothing says "surviving too easily" like PCs not needing in-combat healing - and will only punish the PCs for being slow if they stop to rest when they've still got lots of resources left.
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Hello everyone, I've been looking on these boards for an alternative healer to the cleric I currently play ( alt in case I die).
Every thread I read seems to say that you shouldn't be healing in combat, and I am wondering what we are doing wrong.Normally encounters are fine and We go through well but when we encounter anything that is above a standard encounter level I end up doing a lot of healing.
At level 11-12 we are taking 50+ damage regularly on a single attack (there's always multiple foes) and we are having to hit 30+ AC, we also find spells ineffective against them as they Always save. We are playing Carrion Crown.
All that being said we are all old mates and have a blast gaming regardless of the outcome. But why are we always needing/performing healing in combat? Is Pathfinder a Min Max game for set adventures, we have mostly +2 items and we don't all have wonderouse items, is this where we are struggling?
Haven't read the rest of this long thread, so forgive me if some of this is redundant.
The idea that in-combat healing is a poor strategy is based on a few key assumptions:
First, it assumes that "in-combat healing" is referring specifically to the replenishment of Hit Points, not things like removing harmful conditions.
Second, it's only a generality: for instance, sometimes you get into situations where only one or two PCs can contribute offensively and so keeping them up is a priority; however, these are (typically) the exceptions, not the rule.
Third, it assumes that the game is being played pretty close to "default" Pathfinder. That is, the more houserules/homebrew you have in your game (and/or the more severe the houserules you do have are), the more chance there is that this advice won't apply to your game. For instance, if the GM dislikes Pathfinder's reliance on "magic marts" and/or item crafting and so your only HP recovery is spells and bedrest, then the value of healing spells skyrockets. You have to look at the reasoning behind the advice and ask yourself "Does my campaign have any differences that change the context of this assessment?".
So with the above in mind, here's the idea about the "don't heal in combat" advice:
Basically, in most cases, the caster who is spending both a turn and a spell slot recovering someone's HP could usually have spent both of those resources doing something far more effective. For example, I played a melee-oriented cleric from 2nd to the end of 11th level. Whenever an ally was hurting, I almost always had something better I could do than casting a healing spell. That might be to attack (with just as much accuracy and similar damage to the fighter), which might very well prevent more damage than the cure spell would heal. Or it might be to cast plane shift and just outright remove the threat/end the encounter.
You mention regularly taking 50+ damage from an attack at 11th level. A cure critical wounds spell at that level heals 4d8+11 damage, or about 30 damage on average. Best case scenario, the fighter has, say, 90 HP, so the 50 damage per round will drop him in 2 rounds. Add in your healing, and he now takes 3 rounds to kill instead of 2 round.
You spent your turn so that the fighter could have one more turn. You traded your turn for the fighter's at a 1:1 exchange. The number of turns/actions available to try and defeat the enemy hasn't changed, you just donated one of yours to the fighter, at the cost of one of your higher level spell slots.
So to determine whether it was worth it to make that trade, you have a simple question to answer: does another turn from the fighter contribute more to your goals than the turn the cleric gave up? That's the key question. Very few are the cases where spending your turn healing will give the fighter more than 1 extra turn (and sometimes, it won't even give that). So assuming a baseline of using spell slots to trade the cleric's turn for an extra fighter turn, is it worth it?
Well, what else could the cleric have done with his turn? If he was a melee build like mine, he could have attacked just as well as the fighter, which means the trade was meaningless, yet still came at the cost of a 4th-level spell. Why would I spend a spell to let the fighter do what I could have just done myself for the same action cost? Alternatively, he could have cast an offensive spell that would have potentially ended (or severely altered) the encounter on the spot: hold person, invisibility purge, daylight, blindness/deafness, all kinds of neat options. For the same action cost, and the same or lower spell cost, the cleric can very often do something that will have a much higher impact on the outcome of the battle than giving the fighter another attack.
Now, at this point I would refer you again to the third assumption I listed. I noticed that in your post you mentioned that it seems like the monsters always save; that changes things a LOT. I've played with GMs who think that fights are SUPPOSED to be HP races, and so anything that does something other than dealing or healing HP damage gets mysteriously blocked. In such a case (and assuming your cleric is not built for damage-dealing), then yeah, healing becomes worthwhile by virtue of being the only thing the GM will allow you to succeed at. "That which the GM allows" is always the strongest tactic, after all.
Hopefully that sheds some light on the advice you've been seeing, and helps you determine whether it applies to your games or not. :)
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Healing is also more valuable in small groups than in very large groups. If a party of 3 loses a member in a fight, then they drop to 67% effectiveness. If a party of 7 loses a member, then they merely drop to 86% effectiveness.
Best case scenario, the fighter has, say, 90 HP, so the 50 damage per round will drop him in 2 rounds. Add in your healing, and he now takes 3 rounds to kill instead of 2 round.
You spent your turn so that the fighter could have one more turn. You traded your turn for the fighter's at a 1:1 exchange.
If you're able use your turn to extend the fighter's life by one round, that gives the entire group one more round of fighting to end the threat without loss of PC life. That's better than a 1:1 exchange.
Healing is also more valuable in small groups than in very large groups. If a party of 3 loses a member in a fight, then they drop to 67% effectiveness. If a party of 7 loses a member, then they merely drop to 86% effectiveness.
Debatable. If you have a party of 3 and one of them uses their turn healing, that's one third of your potential offensive capacity lost.
Also, that was my PC who died! He had a nine page backstory! He's not just a statistic!
If you're able use your turn to extend the fighter's life by one round, that gives the entire group one more round of fighting to end the threat without loss of PC life. That's better than a 1:1 exchange.Best case scenario, the fighter has, say, 90 HP, so the 50 damage per round will drop him in 2 rounds. Add in your healing, and he now takes 3 rounds to kill instead of 2 round.
You spent your turn so that the fighter could have one more turn. You traded your turn for the fighter's at a 1:1 exchange.
The idea is drop, not dead dead. Dropping is fine, you're usually out of the fight.
90-100 = -10 you're not dead yet.120-150 = -30, you're dead dead, the cleric just killed you by making you killable instead of droppable.
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If you're able use your turn to extend the fighter's life by one round, that gives the entire group one more round of fighting to end the threat without loss of PC life. That's better than a 1:1 exchange.Best case scenario, the fighter has, say, 90 HP, so the 50 damage per round will drop him in 2 rounds. Add in your healing, and he now takes 3 rounds to kill instead of 2 round.
You spent your turn so that the fighter could have one more turn. You traded your turn for the fighter's at a 1:1 exchange.
On the other hand, the "party gets more time to end the fight" thing applies just as much to the enemy party as to the PC party, so isn't that basically a wash?
And then on top of that, the extra turn you give the fighter comes two rounds AFTER the turn that the cleric was trading in for it. That means that if the turn in question had even remotely comparable levels of contribution between the fighter and the cleric, it becomes vastly better for the cleric to do it now instead of the fighter doing it later, because you'll end the fight a round earlier and save the whole party some additional damage/resources.
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Thank you, Jiggy.
Also, there seems to be this mysterious idea going around this thread that people are saying you should never heal.
NO ONE HAS SAID THIS. I don't know why it keeps popping up.
What HAS been said is that healing is generally less efficient than taking other courses of action, but that it does have situational use.
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Also, that was my PC who died! He had a nine page backstory! He's not just a statistic!
This is the thing.
When we reference Sun Tzu, we are talking about all out warfare, where soldiers ARE going to die and while that's unfortunate, it's expected and acceptable.
After all, it is the Art of War, not the Art of Battle.
In a more personal combat, people are not just expendable resources.
Your fighter dies; that's one player who can't play until his new character can be played in or his old character somehow gets resurrected.
At high levels, getting raised is no big deal, but at mid levels that can be a large expenditure of resources or even take an exceptional amount of time.
And nothing sucks as bad as sitting on the couch, listening to your friends have fun at the table while you wait for your raise...
You heal in combat as needed.
If healing is the difference between life and death, you heal.
If no one's going to die in the next round, you don't heal.
If the target of your heal is better at the particular combat situation than you are, you heal.
If you can end combat before the next round, you do that instead.
You heal as needed, and when needed you heal.
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You heal in combat as needed.
If healing is the difference between life and death, you heal.
If no one's going to die in the next round, you don't heal.
If the target of your heal is better at the particular combat situation than you are, you heal.
If you can end combat before the next round, you do that instead.
You heal as needed, and when needed you heal.
Unfortunately, it's been my experience that in Pathfinder, following this (very wise) advice leads to the near extinction of the iconic fantasy gaming trope of the divine healer. Since I like having the iconic divine healer as a viable option, that's part of what eventually drove me away from Pathfinder.
I've found that 5E D&D is much more supportive of being able to contribute effectively as that type of character, while simultaneously not requiring that every party include it. Very much a point in its favor for me. :)
Healing is also more valuable in small groups than in very large groups. If a party of 3 loses a member in a fight, then they drop to 67% effectiveness. If a party of 7 loses a member, then they merely drop to 86% effectiveness.
Yes, but after four of those combats (about one average adventuring day) that party will be down to 3 characters dragging around 4 corpses. That's a pretty bleak game...
Shouldn't the point be to NOT lose members?
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Healing is also more valuable in small groups than in very large groups. If a party of 3 loses a member in a fight, then they drop to 67% effectiveness. If a party of 7 loses a member, then they merely drop to 86% effectiveness.Yes, but after four of those combats (about one average adventuring day) that party will be down to 3 characters dragging around 4 corpses. That's a pretty bleak game...
Shouldn't the point be to NOT lose members?
I imagine "lose a member" meant "they get KO'd and stop contributing to the fight and then afterwards we bring him back to full with wands", not "they actually died".
I imagine "lose a member" meant "they get KO'd and stop contributing to the fight and then afterwards we bring him back to full with wands", not "they actually died".Healing is also more valuable in small groups than in very large groups. If a party of 3 loses a member in a fight, then they drop to 67% effectiveness. If a party of 7 loses a member, then they merely drop to 86% effectiveness.Yes, but after four of those combats (about one average adventuring day) that party will be down to 3 characters dragging around 4 corpses. That's a pretty bleak game...
Shouldn't the point be to NOT lose members?
I imagine that too.
But there is a fine line between being KO'd and being dead. At low levels, when monsters do 5 or 10 HP average damage and people don't usually die until below -10 HP, it' shard to one-shot a standing PC to dead. At higher levels, a PC with even 30 HP can often be one-shot all the way to dead given the large damage outputs. That little buffer of 10 or 12 or even 15 negative HP shrinks to being nearly useless at high enough level.
So it's very possible if the attitude is "We can lose a member because we'll still be at 86 percent efficiency so I don't need to heal that guy", then there will come times, more often as levels rise, that characters will die from this attitude.
The best way to keep a party alive in combat is prevent the damage from occurring in the first place. At low level, there are plenty of highly effective ways to prevent enemies from dealing damage. Just from the wiz list, there's create pit to target reflex saves, glitterdust to target will, and stinking cloud to target fort saves. All of those ignore SR too. There's even two sides to this equation; I just showed the debuff end but there's also the party buff end. Wiz have resist energy, protection from energy and stoneskin. Clerics have shield of faith and magic vestments. Druids have barkskin. Those are just the spells that can be applied to other people when you add personal only spells you get to add goodies like mirror image.
As an anecdote, I had an arcanist get to level 12 with extend spell and spell tinkerer casting communal resist energy on the party. Sure that effectively ate all of my level 4 slots but I knew ahead of time that there'd be mostly casters in the tower. Those 5 slots saved hundreds of hit points that any kind of healing would have been unable to match.
There is a pretty basic mismatch between healing and damage. Just compare standard damage spells to the cure spells of the same level.
Level 1: Shocking grasp (3.5/lvl) vs CLW (4.5+1/lvl) tilts to damage at level 2.
Level 2: Scorching ray (3.5/lvl averaged) vs CMW (9+1/lvl) damage ahead at all levels
It only gets worse from there with the excep. Looking at the numbers, it might be reasonable to replace all cure spells with their mythic versions sans the ability damage healing.
You heal in combat as needed.
If healing is the difference between life and death, you heal.
If no one's going to die in the next round, you don't heal.
If the target of your heal is better at the particular combat situation than you are, you heal.
If you can end combat before the next round, you do that instead.
You heal as needed, and when needed you heal.Unfortunately, it's been my experience that in Pathfinder, following this (very wise) advice leads to the near extinction of the iconic fantasy gaming trope of the divine healer. Since I like having the iconic divine healer as a viable option, that's part of what eventually drove me away from Pathfinder.
I've found that 5E D&D is much more supportive of being able to contribute effectively as that type of character, while simultaneously not requiring that every party include it. Very much a point in its favor for me. :)
I can completely understand and respect that.
Well, what else could the cleric have done with his turn? If he was a melee build like mine, he could have attacked just as well as the fighter, which means the trade was meaningless, yet still came at the cost of a 4th-level spell. Why would I spend a spell to let the fighter do what I could have just done myself for the same action cost? Alternatively, he could have cast an offensive spell that would have potentially ended (or severely altered) the encounter on the spot: hold person, invisibility purge, daylight, blindness/deafness, all kinds of neat options. For the same action cost, and the same or lower spell cost, the cleric can very often do something that will have a much higher impact on the outcome of the battle than giving the fighter another attack.
.
Keep the bolded part of the quote in mind. Spells might radically change the encounter's dynamic - but they can potentially fail completely as well. The probability of having a useless round should enter into the calculus of what's a better tactical decision.
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I imagine "lose a member" meant "they get KO'd and stop contributing to the fight and then afterwards we bring him back to full with wands", not "they actually died".Healing is also more valuable in small groups than in very large groups. If a party of 3 loses a member in a fight, then they drop to 67% effectiveness. If a party of 7 loses a member, then they merely drop to 86% effectiveness.Yes, but after four of those combats (about one average adventuring day) that party will be down to 3 characters dragging around 4 corpses. That's a pretty bleak game...
Shouldn't the point be to NOT lose members?
I imagine that too.
But there is a fine line between being KO'd and being dead. At low levels, when monsters do 5 or 10 HP average damage and people don't usually die until below -10 HP, it' shard to one-shot a standing PC to dead. At higher levels, a PC with even 30 HP can often be one-shot all the way to dead given the large damage outputs. That little buffer of 10 or 12 or even 15 negative HP shrinks to being nearly useless at high enough level.
So it's very possible if the attitude is "We can lose a member because we'll still be at 86 percent efficiency so I don't need to heal that guy", then there will come times, more often as levels rise, that characters will die from this attitude.
This is true (although it's mitigated somewhat by the fact that PCs tend to boost their CON a lot with belts and books and such as levels rise as well, so the effective shrinking of the KO-range isn't quite so rapid as you make it out to be).
Of course, this is also all interrelated with the whole "what else could the cleric be doing" issue; the relative shrinking of the KO range is predicated on the increase of enemy damage output, while clerics and other casters become more and more well-equipped to preemptively keep that increased damage from happening in the first place (whether through debuffing the enemy, buffing the party's defenses, or instantly neutralizing members of the enemy group). And of course, the proactive mitigation of enemy damage output then re-inflates the relative KO-range, which makes the risk of death go back down again, and it all just keeps cycling back around. It's one great big web of context with lots of interdependent variables that ultimately add up to the neutering of a classic and fun character role. :(
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Well, what else could the cleric have done with his turn? If he was a melee build like mine, he could have attacked just as well as the fighter, which means the trade was meaningless, yet still came at the cost of a 4th-level spell. Why would I spend a spell to let the fighter do what I could have just done myself for the same action cost? Alternatively, he could have cast an offensive spell that would have potentially ended (or severely altered) the encounter on the spot: hold person, invisibility purge, daylight, blindness/deafness, all kinds of neat options. For the same action cost, and the same or lower spell cost, the cleric can very often do something that will have a much higher impact on the outcome of the battle than giving the fighter another attack.
.
Keep the bolded part of the quote in mind. Spells might radically change the encounter's dynamic - but they can potentially fail completely as well. The probability of having a useless round should enter into the calculus of what's a better tactical decision.
Keep the same in mind for the fighter's attacks. Unfortunately, the caster's odds of successfully ending a threat with a well-placed spell tend to outstrip the figher's odds of successfully ending a threat with his weapon attacks (both with the "accuracy" of the d20 and with the fighter needing to chew through all that HP before his actions take effect while the caster's is instant).
You're not the first to bring up the "But they might save against your spell!" argument in these healing threads. Nobody ever seems to want to acknowledge, however, that the fighter might miss (or, even on a hit, not do enough damage to neutralize the threat).
Neither the cleric nor the fighter can guarantee success, and (sadly) aiming for the best odds very often puts things in the cleric's favor.
That's another thing I like about 5E: everybody's using the same math.
My current group of five players tried to go with only healing between combats using wands. By the time we reached 11th level everyone had died multiple times and we had at least three occasions where it should have been a TPK except the GM captured us or did something else instead to spare us the grief of creating new characters. We now have an in combat healer and so far so good. We have already had two battles where in combat healing prevented a TPK.Then improve your tactics.
If you just switch off the healing nozzle and continue to do the same thigns that turned you onto it of course you're going to wipe.
IF your melee just charges in devourign delicious crunchy full attacks that's a mistake.
If your spellcaster jsut chuck damage spells around and don't work to lock down excess opponents, or improve the base defenses of your melee that's also a mistake.
If you don't bother to scout fights as often as possible and determine the best course of action before you get into fights you are going to wipe.
The reason you rely on the emergency measure is because you keep finding yourself in an emergency.
Those tactics are basic, we were already doing all that stuff. Now that we have an in combat healer we are still using those tactics just as well and we have an emergency back up plan when things don't go our way.
So, is that a bad thing? Is extending the adventuring day a real gain?This depends a lot on GM psychology. A hardcore simulationist GM will probably have decided that in three days time, the orcs will attack the city, and if the players haven't resolved the situation by then, they'll be too late.
Other GMs will just increase the threat level whenever the PCs seem to be surviving too easily - and nothing says "surviving too easily" like PCs not needing in-combat healing - and will only punish the PCs for being slow if they stop to rest when they've still got lots of resources left.
Given that the common complaint about the system is the phenomenon of the 15 minute adventuring day I'd say extending that is a gain on all sides.
A GM who responds to that by upping the ante until he forces in combat healing is misunderstanding what challenge means.
Challenge is about resource expenditure. That's what the system is designed around not damage taken. Forcing resource expenditure is also more than just numbers. A GM who only sees resource expenditure after rolling a bunch of attacks on his pc's is doing a poor job at actually challenging them.
A good example of this is fighting on collapsing ground around hazardous terrain. No amount of healing in the world will help you if a minotaur or some other beastie knocks you off.
It gives you different sorts of challenges. First comes the challenge of numbers. Where you have to pit yours agaisnt the baddies. Second is the challenge of positioning. If you find yourself getting knocked off or nearly knocked off that can be jsut as devastating as a critical hit. If the enemy outnumbers you aswell you can add an actions challenge on top of that.
All of these can cost resources to overcome practically none of it requires healing to beat.
One thing that some seem to leave out is the hits taken by the fighter if he is healed would hit someone else if the monsters still live. It could be the cleric or worse the wizard if he's not in a great position. So yes while you are trading your action and a spell for the fighter to get an action you're also ensuring that the monsters focus remains on the fighter who hopefully can take a hit better than the rest.
Every round you need to evaluate what would be best for your group, most of the time it's a buff, attack, debuff or such but sometimes it's a heal.
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So yes while you are trading your action and a spell for the fighter to get an action you're also ensuring that the monsters focus remains on the fighter who hopefully can take a hit better than the rest.
Most monsters with an INT score will notice when the guy they're wailing on is being kept alive by the squishier-looking guy, and just turn and kill the cleric so that the fighter will stay down. So unless you're fighting mostly just mindless oozes (or your GM runs every monster like a mindless ooze, conveniently always attacking the guy who was made to get attacked), then playing life-support for the fighter might not have the effect you're aiming for here.
So yes while you are trading your action and a spell for the fighter to get an action you're also ensuring that the monsters focus remains on the fighter who hopefully can take a hit better than the rest.Most monsters with an INT score will notice when the guy they're wailing on is being kept alive by the squishier-looking guy, and just turn and kill the cleric so that the fighter will stay down. So unless you're fighting mostly just mindless oozes (or your GM runs every monster like a mindless ooze, conveniently always attacking the guy who was made to get attacked), then playing life-support for the fighter might not have the effect you're aiming for here.
This is true, but if the rest of the party are doing their job (and especially the fighter) then just picking a new target is not that easy. The monster will usually have to suffer some AoOs to get to the squishy targets. And that was my whole point, without the fighter there to be in the way to hold that key position then the monsters are free to go after them without any risk.
So yes while you are trading your action and a spell for the fighter to get an action you're also ensuring that the monsters focus remains on the fighter who hopefully can take a hit better than the rest.Most monsters with an INT score will notice when the guy they're wailing on is being kept alive by the squishier-looking guy, and just turn and kill the cleric so that the fighter will stay down. So unless you're fighting mostly just mindless oozes (or your GM runs every monster like a mindless ooze, conveniently always attacking the guy who was made to get attacked), then playing life-support for the fighter might not have the effect you're aiming for here.
Absolutely true. Never assume your opponent will just keep doing the same thing if what you are doing is making it less effective. Also keep in mind that touside of a few select options most healing spells mean you have to touch your target. So yes, you traded your turn to the fighter, who also happens to be next to the thing kicking his ass. And now you're very close to it too or worse you're in reach.
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Hello everyone, I've been looking on these boards for an alternative healer to the cleric I currently play ( alt in case I die).
Every thread I read seems to say that you shouldn't be healing in combat, and I am wondering what we are doing wrong.While I agree with most that relying on healing isn't optimal, though some are saying that you shouldn't be healing in combat at all, which is just silly, since some games/situations will require it. But it should be avoided if possible.
Literally no one has made this argument. Those of us on Team "Don't Heal" have been very clear that we mean that healing is generally a sub-optimal use of actions and optimal uses are limited to a few exceptions.
Here's a way to look at it:
In-combat healing is like the barbarian's longbow; sometimes you'll get into situations where you'll be glad you have it available, but it's not something you want to be using a lot.
We're on a ghoul farm. My barbarian's longbow has been busy. (And when she had to go in and chop ... some bad saves and she's not moving much. Still was moving long enough to drop the local boss.)
In MOST situations, you want to make the source of damage go away quickly. Methods to do this include damaging spells, debuffs, buffing allies..and sometimes that ally buff needs to be 'enough HP to not drop soon'. The 1:1 turn exchange idea is a good way to look at it ... depending on initiative, turn order, and other factors, maybe you DO want your cleric to give his turn to the barbarian. Or wizard. Or someone else.
Analyse the situation and use the right tool for the job.
Literally no one has made this argument. Those of us on Team "Don't Heal" have been very clear that we mean that healing is generally a sub-optimal use of actions and optimal uses are limited to a few exceptions.Hello everyone, I've been looking on these boards for an alternative healer to the cleric I currently play ( alt in case I die).
Every thread I read seems to say that you shouldn't be healing in combat, and I am wondering what we are doing wrong.While I agree with most that relying on healing isn't optimal, though some are saying that you shouldn't be healing in combat at all, which is just silly, since some games/situations will require it. But it should be avoided if possible.
I think your terminology is the problem. Sub-optimal implies that you should never use it when the optimal option is available. As an analogy would you ever use sub-optimal petrol when better fuel was available? Of course not. There are times when it is better to heal than to attempt battlefield control or full attacking, it is not sub-optimal it is situational, like every other tactic.
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I think your terminology is the problem. Sub-optimal implies that you should never use it when the optimal option is available. As an analogy would you ever use sub-optimal petrol when better fuel was available? Of course not. There are times when it is better to heal than to attempt battlefield control or full attacking, it is not sub-optimal it is situational, like every other tactic.Literally no one has made this argument. Those of us on Team "Don't Heal" have been very clear that we mean that healing is generally a sub-optimal use of actions and optimal uses are limited to a few exceptions.Hello everyone, I've been looking on these boards for an alternative healer to the cleric I currently play ( alt in case I die).
Every thread I read seems to say that you shouldn't be healing in combat, and I am wondering what we are doing wrong.While I agree with most that relying on healing isn't optimal, though some are saying that you shouldn't be healing in combat at all, which is just silly, since some games/situations will require it. But it should be avoided if possible.
Meh, it's the same argument made against putting up class guides, "OMG if you show the optimal no one will take the less optimal, or they will think you are saying this is the 'ONE AND ONLY WAY!'"
Making sure the knowledge is out there is not the same as saying, "don't do (x)."
Instead it's ensuring you are making an informed decision. So if things don't go how you hoped you can't blame ignorance for it.
Nice philosophy!
I think your terminology is the problem. Sub-optimal implies that you should never use it when the optimal option is available. As an analogy would you ever use sub-optimal petrol when better fuel was available? Of course not. There are times when it is better to heal than to attempt battlefield control or full attacking, it is not sub-optimal it is situational, like every other tactic.Literally no one has made this argument. Those of us on Team "Don't Heal" have been very clear that we mean that healing is generally a sub-optimal use of actions and optimal uses are limited to a few exceptions.Hello everyone, I've been looking on these boards for an alternative healer to the cleric I currently play ( alt in case I die).
Every thread I read seems to say that you shouldn't be healing in combat, and I am wondering what we are doing wrong.While I agree with most that relying on healing isn't optimal, though some are saying that you shouldn't be healing in combat at all, which is just silly, since some games/situations will require it. But it should be avoided if possible.
It is *extremely* situational compared to other tactics. There are very limited numbers of times where healing is the optimal move in combat. They exist, people on Team "Don't Heal" acknowledge these rare exceptions. If it saves someone from losing actions (or potentially losing actions) then yes Healing might be optimal choice.
By your definition every spell is sub-optimal.
By your definition every spell is sub-optimal.Why would every spell be sub-optimal? Spells can steal enemy actions (confusion), increase player output (haste), limit enemy options (grease), provide lots and lots of damage to groups (fireball), buy you another several actions (time stop), pretty much kill (color spray), or outright kill (weird).
I think he's confusing your argument for Red Mage's argument on why he can't cast spells.
Because every spell he casts means he can't cast it later leaving him weaker for casting it.
So even though he might know the perfect spell for a situation he can't cast it because then he won't be ready if the situation comes up again.
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That isn't what I meant. What I mean is that there is no optimal action. Sometimes it is better to use battlefield control spells, sometimes it is better to full attack, sometimes it is better to move and attack once, sometimes it is better to bluff your way past. There is no optimal option that always works well. Healing is not sub-optimal it is situational like every other tactic.
I think at least part of the "don't heal in combat" push stems from the fact that there are quite a few players who expect clerics (or any caster with healing spells on their list) to serve primarily as healbots. Heck, I once had a fellow player blow up at me because my bard was buffing in combat instead of casting cure spells.
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Also, that was my PC who died! He had a nine page backstory! He's not just a statistic!
Unless my character can pick those 9 pages up and smack the monsters with them, the emotional focus will be a but more "fight or flight." I'll cry at your funeral, if I make it out of this alive. But I'll be focused more on survival while those Vrocs are warming up for a second round of Dance Dance Revolution.
Looking like a pretty interesting thread. I'll be following it closely, since I'm getting into a homegame that has 2 melee martials and a switch-hitter so far, and I've honestly considered playing a Life Oracle.
Also, that was my PC who died! He had a nine page backstory! He's not just a statistic!Unless my character can pick those 9 pages up and smack the monsters with them, the emotional focus will be a but more "fight or flight." I'll cry at your funeral, if I make it out of this alive. But I'll be focused more on survival while those Vrocs are warming up for a second round of Dance Dance Revolution.
Looking like a pretty interesting thread. I'll be following it closely, since I'm getting into a homegame that has 2 melee martials and a switch-hitter so far, and I've honestly considered playing a Life Oracle.
For our group it depends on whether we are the heroes or the villains as to how often we heal during combat. When we are the heroes the number one priority is to protect our own, not kill the bad guys, so in combat healing is common. Even our villain characters will heal during combat from time to time to maintain morale amongst the minions, not because we care about them, it's only to maintain fighting ability.
Whether healing is needed or not in combat kind of depends on how optimized the party is. If the party is optimized for offense/defense, then healing shouldn't be needed in every combat. If the melee aren't optimized then deaths will occur without combat healing.
We once had this guy show up to play in this AP that had lot's of giants with a 7th level character who had a 14AC. Our other party members consisted of a fighter, bard and druid. Needless to say he died.
I kinda have to intervene here because this is just plain wrong.
I have a lot of experience with games where infight healing is mandatory and let me tell you, the squishier characters get, the more important proactive measures (and the less important reactive ones, i.e. healing) get. When your healing can't keep up with the damage, you have to even the odds, otherwise you only delay the inevitable.You know you can cast barkskin on other people, right?.
For our group it depends on whether we are the heroes or the villains as to how often we heal during combat. When we are the heroes the number one priority is to protect our own, not kill the bad guys, so in combat healing is common. Even our villain characters will heal during combat from time to time to maintain morale amongst the minions, not because we care about them, it's only to maintain fighting ability.
You present it as if you had to choose between only two options: Full on damage, or combat healing. The reality is that the best defense is proactive, a.k.a. preventing the enemy from using all he's got against you. As an example, if you make a five-headed hydra staggered you prevent an average of 80% of it's damage (for multiple rounds with one round worth of actions, I might add). Even if you could heal 100% of the hydra's damage each turn, staggering it and healing once every five rounds would still be a better choice: Even if you ignore the amount of daily recources spent, make every heal a Heal, and have the enemy attack a target that is not in danger of a one-turn-kill, the staggering approach still leaves you with 60% more avaible actions.
Yes, it's completly reasonable for the good guys to have more defense and less damage - but healing is only a small and (for the most) rather weak part of the defensive options Pathfinder has.
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I had a CR14 or so encounter for a group of 14th level characters.
The 13th level sorcerer's dazing chain lightning ended the fight on the first action.
Sure, it took them a few more rounds to do the HP damage needed, but are you really going to count that?
(And yes, similar stories happen in lower levels.)