Ideally speaking if the party has good teamwork, and the right spells are used damage can be mitigated because it becomes neccesary to heal. However if the GM just goes out of his way to make encounters hard enough that healing is needed, that may not matter.
Edit: Now that I see you are playing Carrion Crown which I am GMing I can say the GM is altering the NPC's if that is a common theme. A few(less than 5) monsters in that book have an AC of 30.
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I will also add that Carrion Crown has more expendable items, and less permanent items than most AP's, and that does not help either.
The pathfinder adventure paths are designed with a 'casual' player in mind who has not optimised his character at all. They should not be very difficult. However, carrion crown does have a reputation for being a little more difficult compared to other APs. If your players are absolutely terribly created you may have some issues, but without seeing the sheets it is impossible to say.
One issue might be that you are severely under-equipped. Adventure paths absolutely assume you have a certain level of magic items to remain on top of the encounters. You can see here that a 12th level character should have about 108,000 GP worth of magic items, most of which should be spent on attribute, AC and damage increasing items. Tabulate up how much your gear costs and see if it is roughly near this level. If it is much less (say, half this amount), you should probably mention this to your GM so he can adjust the loot he is giving you.
Another possibility is that your GM is fudging rolls to make the encounters harder than they actually are. If you aren't exaggerating on the 30+ AC thing (are you exaggerating?), I can tell you that not a single enemy in the level 11-12 adventure book has an AC of 30 or above. Personally I find a DM who fudges too much (especially in a pregen!) to be an absolute deal breaker on the fun front, but your mileage may vary.
In any of the above cases, your DM is the person to talk to.
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 wondrous items, is this where we are struggling?
To a certain extent, yes. But it's hard to say without knowing a lot more about your group. (Most characters of that level should have cloaks of resistance, and belts and headbands for attribute bonuses.)
A very well optimized group is less likely to need healing mid-battle.
An optimized & buffed barbarian or paladin might be killing a high level foe in a single full-attack.
A wizard played with high system mastery might be saying, "So, that type of enemy will have a low Will save. I'll use Glitterdust to get around their Spell Resistance. With my Conjuration focus and Intelligence of 27, that's around a 75% chance of blinding them."
Some players have played in that sort of group for a long time. For them, there's almost always something better they can do than healing. "I'll use Wall of Stone so they can only attack us one at a time." "I'll Plane Shift it into another dimension." They start to think of in-combat healing as a failure.
But don't let them tell you you're doing it wrong. If you can cast the Heal spell by this point, that's at least effective in-combat healing.
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Usually comments on healing in combat are based on the premise that, ordinarily, damage from enemies will come in faster than healers can heal through it. As you've said, your foes are dealing out 50+ damage a hit, and you don't have spells or abilities that are likely to keep up.
But if that character can do something that will end the fight before the enemy can dish out that damage (hit him to kill him faster, use control to break up the battlefield, etc.), it has more effect than the healing they would do. I.e., you're "healing" through preventing damage by stopping the fight sooner, rather than reactively healing after the fact.
Playing the dedicated heal-bot can also lead to boredom for some people - some fights you're just standing there waiting for someone to get hit so you have something to do, other fights you're left frustrated because damage is coming in faster than you can do anything about. It can be a recipe for character fatigue if that's not what you're expecting (it's what happened to my oracle in my last game).
That said, though, if you enjoy healing in combat, and as long as you know to expect the swinginess of demand for it, it's not useless, and some party setups, party tactics, enemies, etc. will need it or find it highly beneficial. And, in the end, the game's about enjoyment, doing something that you like doing - if you like healing, go for it!
(Incidentally, for your original question, might I suggest a shaman for an alternate healer? They can pick up channel energy and life link through the Life spirit - channel energy helps for party-wide bursts of damage in combat and life link, along with the magic item Boots of the Earth, can cover your out-of-combat healing quite handily. Shaman also get access to some of the good witch hexes, which lets them have something very useful to do in combat when healing isn't needed.)
My ac is only 30 and foes never miss me
Assuming you're playing Ashes At Dawn, most of the enemies have less than a 50% chance of hitting AC 30.
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That's not helping, that's just dying slower.
If you're a healer supporting a competent damage dealer, then that damage dealer will win the battle for you as long as he doesn't die quickly. Healing half the damage he's taking will cause him to survive twice as long. Twice as long is usually enough. That's helping. Will it help more than casting Blessings of Fervor? Probably not, but you can't do that every round. Will it help more than attacking with a weapon? Depends on whether you're any good at melee.
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The "healing in combat is a waste/inefficient" mantra like most perceived wisdom on the web has to be taken with caution.
What is said on a forum may have no relevance to your game. These perceived wisdom's are always based on assumptions which might not apply to your game. If you are all enjoying yourselves you are doing nothing wrong.
A good strategist uses every tool at their disposal as circumstances require. Pathfinder is unusual in that in combat healing is viable, whereas in most other game systems it is not. There are plenty of situations when in combat healing is the right course of action. The best thing about in combat healing is that it is virtually guaranteed to work. I can't count the number of times I have decided to full attack and missed with everything or cast a spell only to have the spell fail due to SR or immunities or high saves. If I had instead chosen to heal someone my action would not have been wasted. Unless you have a lenient GM there is a lot that can go wrong in combat. If you have a GM that actively challenges the players, which in my experience is the majority, the relative certainty of in combat healing makes it a much more attractive strategy.
All of this assumes you care about being a party of optimized combat machines. There's still a place for Paladins and all their defenses/heals, but only because they have significant offensive output as well. If you've made a conscious choice to play a defensive healer/tanky sort of thing because you enjoy it or it sounds cool, then the relative power level of that playstyle shouldn't bother you.
Fights get more and more deadly as time goes on. It only takes one failed save to die, one nat 20 from the right monster to go into negatives. A longer combat means you bet your life on a die roll more often and use up more of your limited resources. A war of attrition is just not in your best interest.
That's not to say you should build a complete glass cannon. You will have to make some saves, you will take some damage, but you should be getting those defenses to an acceptable level, then focusing on whatever win condition your party composition lends itself to. Crowd control through action denial, overwhelming damage, save or die spam and combinations thereof.
I have always felt that healing in combat adds to the combat. I see it as a medic in a war movie sometimes it needs to be done and adds drama.
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Here's the low down. Healing is valuable as an asset, but compared to others, less so. As mentioned, there are situations where healing is valuable, but... well, think of it this way.
From a pure numbers perspective, let's look at the 1st level spell, Shield of Faith. It is single target, lasts a full combat, and, statistically speaking, at your level, reduces enemy DPR by 15-20%. That applies to every attack, every enemy, all encounter, on one guy. The amount of damage prevented by this spell alone is probably worth more than your highest level healing.
Generally when people talk about healing being ineffective in combat, they're speaking in regards to hit points not being able to keep up with damage. Because of this, it's better to prevent your allies for taking damage in the first place and healing after combat (usually with a Wand of Cure Light Wounds) when keeping up with damage is not an issue. Condition removal is still a very good thing to have however, as many monsters can apply crippling effects with long durations. Still, if you can prevent from getting a condition applied you should but you won't always be able to predict what conditions a monster might apply. Carrion Crown does deal with undead though, so consider making use of Death Ward when needed.
From a pure numbers perspective, let's look at the 1st level spell, Shield of Faith. It is single target, lasts a full combat, and, statistically speaking, at your level, reduces enemy DPR by 15-20%.
On a single ally who doesn't already have a deflection bonus. If you've all got Rings of Protection +2, it's not so great.
It's also worth remembering that any given combat buff is useful in proportion to how many rounds of combat it's going to be used for. So on the first round, a reduction of 10% to damage is pretty nice. By the third round, the combat is probably nearly over, so it's not going to make much difference.
On the other hand, a spell that lasts one minute per level might persist for several combats for a high level group.
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From a pure numbers perspective, let's look at the 1st level spell, Shield of Faith. It is single target, lasts a full combat, and, statistically speaking, at your level, reduces enemy DPR by 15-20%.On a single ally who doesn't already have a deflection bonus. If you've all got Rings of Protection +2, it's not so great.
It's also worth remembering that any given combat buff is useful in proportion to how many rounds of combat it's going to be used for. So on the first round, a reduction of 10% to damage is pretty nice. By the third round, the combat is probably nearly over, so it's not going to make much difference.
On the other hand, a spell that lasts one minute per level might persist for several combats for a high level group.
And that's fine. I'm just saying that a level 1 spell is generally better at keeping allies alive, if more situational. There are other examples, but the point I'm making is that you generally get more bang for your buck preventing damage than trying to heal through it.
I always read the "never heal in combat" line too, usually from the same people who say:
Which means if most of your fights are over by round three,
which, in my experience is rarely the case. Maybe a small, insignificant skirmish might be a three round affair. But not any significant show down.
I guess it all depends on what kind of game you're playing in, but I know in our game we are often obliged to heal in combat to avert death and combats are rarely resolved in 18 seconds.
A good part of it depends on your players, and your DM as well. If the game is run as "rocket tag" then damage is the most important thing. If, however, you have a sneaky DM who can really throw down on the battlefield and challenge even L20s to a 13-15 round combat and make it matter, you probably want some life-savers in your back pocket.
It doesn't mean it's all you do--it means it's a tool in your arsenal.
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Here's the argument:
If you spend your actions healing, the monster remains alive for another round and does more damage. But if you spend your action killing the monster, it dies and therefore doesn't do more damage. Then you heal after the fight is over.
Benefits:
1. The monster dies sooner so it does less damage so you can do less total healing.
2. The battle ends sooner so you use fewer real life minutes in that battle which leaves you more time for doing other things. In the same number of hours spent gaming, you explore more, roleplay more, and kill more stuff and find more loot and XP.
It's all good.
And it's all semi-theoretical.
Yes it works. For the right group with the right GM in the right encounters.
For everybody else it works a little bit until the encounter where it doesn't work and now you have one or more dead PCs, maybe a whole TPK.
I've found that the best solution is to have a dedicated healer who CAN save lives in combat when it's necessary but who can also use his actions to kill monsters and get those afore-mentioned benefits, hopefully most of the time. This requires a player who understands his class and BOTH playstyles well enough to use them each to the best advantage of the specific encounter. It also requires building a solid healer who is also (simultaneously) a solid killer.
As a GM, when I have someone in the role of a healer I often create magic items that lighten his burden - I gave my current healer's PC a "wrapping" he can wrap around the haft of his battle axe that lets him channel energy when he damages an enemy with his axe. He loves it; he can be a warrior and a healer. Sure, it breaks action economy but it lets the player NOT be a heal bot and I can compensate encounter difficulty a bit to keep it challenging without forcing him into a role he doesn't enjoy.
As other has said, it's not that healing in combat is bad, its simply a less efficient use of resources....generally speaking.
But this is a very broad statement.
To be sure, it sounds like your GM is making encounters much more challenging than they should be. Which may necessitate healing in combat more often.
In general it can be more efficient for a cleric to cast buff and other spells compared to casting healing spells, and then heal everyone up after combat (using wands). Of course, keeping a party member up and in the fight means keeping the action economy positive on your side, or at least not being reduced, in which case this can be more efficient than the other actions you may take.
And as others have mentioned this is simply because healing can't keep up with damage.
As a simple example, a 9th level cleric has 5th level spells. He's just gotten access to Breath of Life, Cure Light Wounds Mass, and Cure Critical Wounds was his previous most powerful healing spell. Cure Light Wounds Mass heals only 1d8+9 to everyone is range, for an average of 13.5 points of healing. Cure Critical Wounds heals 4d8+9 points of damage to a single target for 27. Breath of Life heals 5d8+9 for 31.5. Now lets consider a 9th level fighter. Let's go with +2 damage from weapon training, gloves of weapon training increase that to 4. Power attack adds 6 (9 damage if two handing). He probably has at least 20 strength for +5 damage (7 if two handing). If one of his attacks hits, he's probably going to deal (lets assume a great sword) 2d6+ 20 damage for an average of 27 damage, or 54 damage if both attacks hit. But this fighter isn't particularly optimized. He hasn't picked up weapon spec or greater weapon spec, he doesn't have a magic weapon, etc. So 27 damage per hit is a bit conservative.
Generally speaking your spending your action partially negating the action he just took (and took no limited resources to do so). You're using your only 5th level spell slot per day (not accounting for bonus spells from high wisdom) to do this too. But if you instead did something to reduce the enemy's combat effectiveness or remove him from the fight altogether, he deals less damage to the party and the party needs less healing overall.
It sounds like your group might need better tactics. Read the Art of War by Sun Tzu.
I'm going to venture a guess that the OP's party probably doesn't finish every encounter in the "regulation" three rounds either, so there might be several assumptions that don't apply here.
I'm going to venture a guess that the OP's party probably doesn't finish every encounter in the "regulation" three rounds either, so there might be several assumptions that don't apply here.
Then I'm doing it wrong too. I'd say 80% or more of my encounters go over 3 rounds. Maybe as many as 20% actually go into double digits.
Note: I'm only counting encounters of an equal CR or higher.
I'm going to venture a guess that the OP's party probably doesn't finish every encounter in the "regulation" three rounds either, so there might be several assumptions that don't apply here.Then I'm doing it wrong too. I'd say 80% or more of my encounters go over 3 rounds. Maybe as many as 20% actually go into double digits.
Note: I'm only counting encounters of an equal CR or higher.
That's why I used the quotes. The common wisdom on the forum is that fights only last three rounds, especially if players know what they're doing. It's not been my experience either.
Here's the argument:
If you spend your actions healing, the monster remains alive for another round and does more damage. But if you spend your action killing the monster, it dies and therefore doesn't do more damage. Then you heal after the fight is over.
Benefits:
1. The monster dies sooner so it does less damage so you can do less total healing.
2. The battle ends sooner so you use fewer real life minutes in that battle which leaves you more time for doing other things. In the same number of hours spent gaming, you explore more, roleplay more, and kill more stuff and find more loot and XP.It's all good.
And it's all semi-theoretical.
Yes it works. For the right group with the right GM in the right encounters.
For everybody else it works a little bit until the encounter where it doesn't work and now you have one or more dead PCs, maybe a whole TPK.
I've found that the best solution is to have a dedicated healer who CAN save lives in combat when it's necessary but who can also use his actions to kill monsters and get those afore-mentioned benefits, hopefully most of the time. This requires a player who understands his class and BOTH playstyles well enough to use them each to the best advantage of the specific encounter. It also requires building a solid healer who is also (simultaneously) a solid killer.
As a GM, when I have someone in the role of a healer I often create magic items that lighten his burden - I gave my current healer's PC a "wrapping" he can wrap around the haft of his battle axe that lets him channel energy when he damages an enemy with his axe. He loves it; he can be a warrior and a healer. Sure, it breaks action economy but it lets the player NOT be a heal bot and I can compensate encounter difficulty a bit to keep it challenging without forcing him into a role he doesn't enjoy.
Something else that may help, I suspect, is variant channeling. I haven't played with it myself, but it looks promising. Perhaps let it act as a 'rider' to channel a certain number of times per day. Granted, it is a power boost--but it's another way to make healing fun.
As many people have pointed out generally it is better to use your action to end the fight faster. However if an ally is about to lose their actions then it may be worth preventing them from losing actions if their actions are better at ending a fight tan your actions.
Example: My group was in a pretty tough fight. Due to ale spells the party had sustained enough damage that another round of the enemies expected damage would leave the wizard dead and the damage unconscious. Our life oracle had a flame strike prepped but decided his actions were better spent healing everyone out past the danger zone.
Healing in combat does have it's place.
One of the best "in combat" healers is the oradin build. Passive healing with the ability to "burst heal" as a swift (on yourself) while keeping combat capable.
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That's why I used the quotes. The common wisdom on the forum is that fights only last three rounds, especially if players know what they're doing. It's not been my experience either.I'm going to venture a guess that the OP's party probably doesn't finish every encounter in the "regulation" three rounds either, so there might be several assumptions that don't apply here.Then I'm doing it wrong too. I'd say 80% or more of my encounters go over 3 rounds. Maybe as many as 20% actually go into double digits.
Note: I'm only counting encounters of an equal CR or higher.
Barring dice acting up, reinforcements, a crazy number of enemies or some kind of chase, I honestly have no idea how anyone gets into double digit combat rounds. Even (or especially) at level 1, if you hit a CR 1 enemy (and you should at least 60% of the time) you should kill it. If you don't it should only need on more attack. Unless there are 10+ CR 1 enemies, a party of 4 people should mow through that.
Oh sure, I've had fights where it seems everyone misses for 2 rounds straight, but even those wrap up long before 6 rounds. The math of the game doesn't really support fights going past 5 rounds without something strange going on or sub-par (not merely below average) characters. I'd be immediately suspicious of fudging in all cases of a fight going past 6 rounds. I'd love to hear the details of a fight going past 6 rounds with no fudging involved or one of the above noted exceptions.
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Basically, there are a few scenarios in which in-combat healing is useful (when the enemy does a relatively small amount of damage, when you're very low-level, when you really need one person to be up to do something, and corner cases). That said, you should definitely spend the majority of your time ending fights. An ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure. Commanding a deadly enemy to run past three AoOs is much more effective than curing your friend for a third of what that enemy can dish out.
The math of the game doesn't really support fights going past 5 rounds without something strange going on or sub-par (not merely below average) characters. I'd be immediately suspicious of fudging in all cases of a fight going past 6 rounds. I'd love to hear the details of a fight going past 6 rounds with no fudging involved or one of the above noted exceptions.
Recently I had a battle with a Will O Wisp - that went on for quite a few rounds because the group couldn't hit its Armor Class even when they could see it, but they had a wand of Cure Moderate Wounds that could negate the damage it inflicted.
A battle consisting of multiple waves of weak enemies will often become the kind of drawn out affair where healing becomes urgent. If the party attacks a fortress-style dungeon and the alarm is raised then four or five CR-appropriate encounters will start to converge on the PCs.
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One other scenario that can make in combat healing effective is if your party has the means to spread the damage out and then you can heal them all at once.
Examples:
If I have one ally that takes all the damage (say 50 points) I cannot keep up it each round with a single effect (unless I have heal and then I'm better waiting until it will heal as much as possible without my ally dropping).
However if my team can spread those same 50 points across the entire party (say 4 people) then each person only takes say... 15 damage (yes this more than 50, but lets go with it). Now I can channel energy and heal everyone fully. This would be effective since I can keep up with the damage we take each round (and use channel energy, possibly preserving both my higher level spells and with the right feats, standard action as well).
BUT this depends on the party being able to spread the damage, and me having the means to heal in mass.
Healing in combat always has a place, but that doesn't mean it should be the first thing you want to do. It works best if you can spread the damage because most of the spread options for healing keep up with the single target heal options too.
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It sounds like your group might need better tactics. Read the Art of War by Sun Tzu.
I've read Sun Tzu's art of war (or to be precise an English translation of it). To summarise he advocates using strategy and diplomacy to avoid combat. Whilst I agree with his point of view, I don't see how it is relevant to healing magic.
That's why I used the quotes. The common wisdom on the forum is that fights only last three rounds, especially if players know what they're doing. It's not been my experience either.I'm going to venture a guess that the OP's party probably doesn't finish every encounter in the "regulation" three rounds either, so there might be several assumptions that don't apply here.Then I'm doing it wrong too. I'd say 80% or more of my encounters go over 3 rounds. Maybe as many as 20% actually go into double digits.
Note: I'm only counting encounters of an equal CR or higher.
Barring dice acting up, reinforcements, a crazy number of enemies or some kind of chase, I honestly have no idea how anyone gets into double digit combat rounds. Even (or especially) at level 1, if you hit a CR 1 enemy (and you should at least 60% of the time) you should kill it. If you don't it should only need on more attack. Unless there are 10+ CR 1 enemies, a party of 4 people should mow through that.
Oh sure, I've had fights where it seems everyone misses for 2 rounds straight, but even those wrap up long before 6 rounds. The math of the game doesn't really support fights going past 5 rounds without something strange going on or sub-par (not merely below average) characters. I'd be immediately suspicious of fudging in all cases of a fight going past 6 rounds. I'd love to hear the details of a fight going past 6 rounds with no fudging involved or one of the above noted exceptions.
In our games we rarely encounter enemies in the open. Enemies also tend to be spread out and some combatants may arrive a few rounds after the fight starts. So our combats tend to have an ebb and flow to them making in combat healing a good option.
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It sounds like your group might need better tactics. Read the Art of War by Sun Tzu.I've read Sun Tzu's art of war (or to be precise an English translation of it). To summarise he advocates using strategy and diplomacy to avoid combat. Whilst I agree with his point of view, I don't see how it is relevant to healing magic.
You must have gotten one of the versions that omits the chapter about the best usage of onmyoji. I bet it was also missing the chapter about shaolin monks and how many hundreds of men you need to defeat one. You have to watch out for those budget translations.
You must have gotten one of the versions that omits the chapter about the best usage of onmyoji. I bet it was also missing the chapter about shaolin monks and how many hundreds of men you need to defeat one. You have to watch out for those budget translations.It sounds like your group might need better tactics. Read the Art of War by Sun Tzu.I've read Sun Tzu's art of war (or to be precise an English translation of it). To summarise he advocates using strategy and diplomacy to avoid combat. Whilst I agree with his point of view, I don't see how it is relevant to healing magic.
Ha ha, perhaps you are correct.