The Trait mentioned allows him to Disable Device. That's it and anyone can spent points to do that without spending a trait. What he missed is the part where I was talking about Magical Traps. No trait or feat allows that.
I quoted the relevant bit earlier -- "In addition, you can use Disable Device to disarm magic traps, like a rogue."
In our PFS group, we had two groups of people running through Eyes of the Ten simultaneously. The very first encounter came as a surprise and it looked pretty nasty for us, but we managed to hit the ground running and eventually turn the tide. The other group had one PC death and an animal companion death. We theorise that we we won our combats pretty easily because we relied much more on short-term buffs, and generally better teamwork (the majority of us had been adventuring in the same team for almost their entire career), while their party focused on more powerful, long-term buffs that weren't running yet. The Cleric helped mitigate some of the damage and put out some control, while the other party was caught with its pants down, and never really recovered.
For anyone interested, party composition:
Our party: Cleric (me), Magus, Barbarian, Bard, Eldritch Knight (Gunslinger 1 or 2, mostly for proficiencies/Wizard), Mammoth Rider (Hunter 10/MR 2).
Other team: TWF Fighter, Witch, Archer Paladin, Alchemist, Monk, multiclass monstrosity I don't even know the point of (he explained it to me once, I still don't get it. He multiclassed like seven times, it might just be a joke character).
We had a Blessing of Fervor or Haste running pretty much every combat, because the Cleric, Bard, Magus and EK all were packing it), greatly improving our damage output, while the Bard gave good buffs and did generally great support. EK focused on unsummoning and crowd control, while Magus, Barbarian and MR generally did great combat stuff (with MR also specced in random utility spells).
I didn't really keep in touch with the other group, but the general gist was that they mostly focused on damage output, with the Alchemist handing out long-term buffs. The Witch got killed in the first round of combat, and then all available healing came from Cure Lights.
The gist of it is, statistically, I think they had a better party composition. Our group had some builds more for flavour than anything else (TWO prestige classes, the Knight specialising in dispelling summons and otherwise not great spell selection, IMHO, a Cleric of Gozreh, and everyone knows how terrible those domain selections are, a STR/Intimidate-based Bard, who tries really hard on the damage output, but is easily surpassed by the rest of the team, but luckily has a fallback to frightening the enemies, and a STR-based Magus who only preps one Shocking Grasp per day), but due to dedicated healing, we managed to pull it off. There were some close calls, but our GM said we did really well, considering how hard those scenarios are.
Bottom line, my Cleric was absolutely necessary there. I don't want to hog the glory, as everyone in that fight contributed, but without that box of band-aids, we wouldn't have survived the first encounter. I didn't even have time to throw out an offensive spell, all I did was buffing and healing.
Detect Magic. How many classes can have this? Magical traps are easy to spot when you spam Detect Magic and Perception check. Disabling it like I've stated can be accomplished in many ways. And some traps can be bypassed needing no more than a Perception check and a 0 level spell. Clerics can handle magical traps. Still not seeing the mandatory need for a class with trapfinding..
The Trait mentioned allows him to Disable Device. That's it and anyone can spent points to do that without spending a trait. What he missed is the part where I was talking about Magical Traps. No trait or feat allows that. It's a class feature for the Rogue and a few archtypes can pick it up.
Some traps function as alarms (or hell, Alarm) when tripped, making it much more difficult for the players. Sure, you can bulldoze through, but catching the opponents with their guard down is so much better. If done well, you barely even need to spend resources on the ensuing fight.
|
Bottom line, my Cleric was absolutely necessary there. I don't want to hog the glory, as everyone in that fight contributed, but without that box of band-aids, we wouldn't have survived the first encounter. I didn't even have time to throw out an offensive spell, all I did was buffing and healing.
I've been in three tables of Eyes so far.
Table 1: Summoner, Summoner, Archer Paladin, Archer Ranger, Maneuver based Magus, Cleric/Fighter/Holy Vindicator(me).
Table 2: Archer Ranger, Bardbarian Dragon Disciple, Fire Domain Druid, Alchemist, Ninja.
Table 3: Paladin/Shadowdancer, Hexcrafter Magus, Druid, Life Oracle(me again!).
Guess which party had the most trouble?
Table 1? The NPCs almost didn't get their scripted actions off before they were dead.
Table 2 was my run of it. I had them quite scared, but they again nearly killed things before the initial script was complete.
|
It seems everyone missed the part where I said he was first level. I had Mage armor and shield memorized except both last only a rather short time at first and second level. Now a first level wizard non specialist has one spell a day. Add an Int of twenty that's now three spells a day. I had the ability to cast Magic Missile several times a day so I had shield memorized twice.
He is now around tenth before we stopped and mythic tier three. He is tanked up most of the time. He has several magic items all enhancing his abilities as a Wizard. At tenth and higher everyone's character should be rather tough and survive a hit or two making the healer start to become secondary making him more of a buffer and looking for ways to improve his combat effectiveness.
I've been hearing people say a healer is completely worthless and they all sound rather high level wasting an ass load of gold to not have a healer ever in their party. My question is have they ever played low level without being loaded with potions and scrolls and wands. I have that's when a medic is needed the most.
To answer your question: Yes, I have. No, it's not very expensive AT ALL. In fact, most of my experience is with low-level characters. By the time you hit 2nd level, you can usually afford a fully charged wand of Cure Light Wounds, easily so if the party all pitch in for it (it's only about 200-ish gold per character, depending on the number of players). That's not that much, and that's a TON of survivability. Heck, at that level 1 charge is actually almost useful in combat. You could even spring for a half-charged wand at a reasonable price and come out ahead on it. At later levels, you just use it to top off, and if you have an Arcane spellcaster then a Wand of Infernal Healing is even better if you have the time for it.
Dedicated healers just aren't necessary in this game. They're nice to have, assuming they're actually helping to end encounters instead of simply prolonging them, but there is NO reason to build someone that is a dedicated healer when so many classes can heal via secondary means so easily. You build someone that can Support your allies (via buffs to end combat faster/more safely), kill enemies (to support by preventing damage, because dead enemies have 0 DPR), or disable enemies (because penalties to attacks/damage reduce damage taken by allies). This things that proactively prevent damage are easier, and more resource efficient, than healing, so while having someone that can heal is nice, it just isn't necessary in a system where stopping your enemy is so much easier and more efficient. Again, you don't need a dedicated healer: You need people that can end combat safely. Heals can be useful sometimes, but there are other ways to stay safe that are USUALLY more effective. Yes, having access to healing spells is nice, and there are definitely times when they are useful. But there are also times when teleporting an ally out of melee is useful, or stunning an enemy is useful, or throwing up a wall to cut of the stream of enemies is useful. Healing is nice when it's necessary, but if it isn't a vast majority of the time, it isn't worth fussing over.
I quoted the relevant bit earlier -- "In addition, you can use Disable Device to disarm magic traps, like a rogue."
It's a *really* good trait if you're a utility character, among the best "and x is a class skill for you" traits.
But it just dawned on me is that argument "we need a rogue because there might be magical traps" is (without advance knowledge of the campaign, that you shouldn't have to begin with) precisely the same reasoning as "we need a medium because there might be haunts." I guess the exception is that there's no trait that makes you as good at haunts as the medium is.
I quoted the relevant bit earlier -- "In addition, you can use Disable Device to disarm magic traps, like a rogue."
It's a *really* good trait if you're a utility character, among the best "and x is a class skill for you" traits.
But it just dawned on me is that argument "we need a rogue because there might be magical traps" is (without advance knowledge of the campaign, that you shouldn't have to begin with) precisely the same reasoning as "we need a medium because there might be haunts." I guess the exception is that there's no trait that makes you as good at haunts as the medium is.
Nah, anyone who can channel positive energy can flat out nuke a haunt.
Nah, anyone who can channel positive energy can flat out nuke a haunt.
There are plenty of ways to deal with traps that don't involve disabling them too. "Triggering them at a safe distance" usually works.
The point is that you don't need the person who is the best at dealing with the specific problem in order to deal with that problem.
But you're wrong. It's not extremely useful.
Perhaps something that could help healing is make wands have a Healing Pool instead of random dice?
A CLW wand is 1d8+1 and 50 max charges, so make the wand have a pool of the average 4x50=200 points that could be used as needed if someone takes a large chunk.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Okie Dokie, here we go.
I'm going to write this as part of a bigger project because I feel like such a thing is sorely needed.
The importance of healing.
So, generally speaking among most optimizers the consensus is this.
Healing as a combat role is not needed. Decent tactics, solid offense, and a proactive mindset can carry you quite a bit. Healing's purpose is primarily a recovery mechanic, a stop gap that punishes players mistakes without necessarily endangering the character's lives.
Having a really strong healer is useful in emergencies but not required for success. With the wide variety of healing spells and classes that can use them in existence the resource spread of healing is quite even.
The purpose of recovery actions in combat is entirely one of action negation. You send and action to negate the negative effects an opponents actions had on your group. Unfortunately it's typically not very good in comparison to simple protection.
Let's forget cure spells and their neighbors for a minute. Let's discuss Remove Paralysis.
Typically you wouldn't memorize remove paralysis normally unless there was a solid chance it would become necessary (such as when facing ghouls and mohrgs). However once you memorize it it's only as useful as that action. That's the story behind every spell.
So if you get to use that spell what did you get? Well you traded your standard and likely your move to grant your ally his turns back. However the Hold Person or ghoul that caused it has already done some damage themselves by negating not one but two turns worth of actions (unless you lucked out on initiative and can cure it between the monster's and your ally's turn). Yet, this is a considerably better trade than the alternative. And bear in mind that was an enemies one standard action, with more to follow.
That's something of the problem with recovery; it merely buys time.
In a sense that's not a bad thing. Because recovery is so inefficient utilizing it exclusively becomes a terrible waste of both time and resources. If the game were the other way turtling strategies would be better and fights would slow to an absolute crawl. No thanks I like my fights fast, furious and explosive. A nice dramatic climax between roleplay moments, not a burdensome numbers tax.
However, it also means that the MMORPG ideal of the healbot is absurd in pathfinder. You spend a lot of actions to put your allies in a zero state burning through a lot of resources in the meanwhile.
So that leads us to a couple of conclusions. First, it's far more efficient for a group to invest in careful protections and contingencies than it is for them to dedicate an entire character to Recovery. Second, any support arm of the group that wishes to use recovery as part of their strategy has to contend with this fact and learn of ways to increase the utility and efficiency of their recovery abilities. Sometimes, such as in the case of the life oracle, it means using your recovery abilities as a means to defensively buff your party. In others, such as the Merciful Healer cleric archetype it means utilizing low cost resources as efficiently as possible. This is not particularly good, but it's usually much better to use bad abilities wisely than poorly.
Ultimately, it means that no, you don't need to have one. But it doesn't hurt as long as they're good at it and can bring more to the table. Story of everyone really.
On Trapfinding and roguish types or; how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Investigator.
Alrighty another old stone goblin that has a hard time dying because people are afraid to go out into the sun.
Traps are dangerous. They can incapacitate people and force resource drains. The worst ones can waste time or flat out kill.
So why do people think you don't need trap finding?
Short answer, because you don't need it.
Long answer is because pretty much every trap, including magic ones can be circumvented in other ways. The trick is merely discovery.
Trapfinding is merely one way to circumvent magic traps and that one way is spread across nearly every class.
The rest of the ways are simply too many to count. Use a sturdy table or ladder to cross a pit, piton a boulder in place so it doesn't come crashing down, summon a fire elemental to wreck the magic trap as it sits impervious to the fireball.
And let's be honest here. As ways go trapfinding is really really boring.
What sounds more fun? Rolling a die to have your character waste a couple of minutes to maybe disarm the trap? Or studying the trap, learning how it operates and using your big brain to find a way around it through other abilities?
It's ultimately why we say all you really need is perception. The trick is finding the trap. After that the trap is simply a puzzle to solve.
Frankly I've never had a game I worried about traps so badly I needed a whole class to deal with it.
On trying to make characters fit into roles rather than the needs of the game.
Pathfinder is not particularly well designed to fit the fighter/thief/priest/mage paradigm. It's better than that.
I can build a cleric for every day of the week. I can do things with summoners that would make a lot of gm's scratch their heads the moment I plopped in. I'm currently trying to stretch out unchained monks into some rather interesting shapes. I'm not interested merely in the best tools.
Point being is you can't look at a class and decide immediately that this is the thing that it does. They are certainly inclined towards one thing or another and there are certain things that are simply impossible to do under there own power. But, if you stretch things a bit and try things in ways you haven't previously thought of, you'd be very surprised on how much you can get away with.
What that ultimately means is that after you take care of the needs of combat you can build for the needs of the campaign. I've discussed a highly successful combat strategy of which I won't bother linking since it's already been done. The needs of the campaign are dependent upon the game that's being run and the themes inherit in it.
I can go on but I've spent an inordinate amount of time writing this and I do need to get to bed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So if you get to use that spell what did you get? Well you traded your standard and likely your move to grant your ally his turns back.
I think your missing perhaps the most important part of casting Remove Paralysis, and also healing. Casting either spell alters the odds that a player is going to have to sit around waiting for his PC to get raised after getting CdG'd by a ghoul or clawed to death. You can play the odds, and sometimes the fight will end before combat healing is needed, other times, players are going to wait for their characters to be raised from the dead. It might not be "optimal", but a heal spell or two is generally worth it, so that everyone can stay in the game. YMMV.
Also, pretty much nobody, anywhere, ever, wants to play a "Healbot", or ____bot of any kind. A character that can only heal, and isn't useful for other things is just a silly strawman. No one is talking about healing all the time. Thankfully, Pathfinder allows a character to spend a fraction of their characters resources, equipment, and actions, on healing, yet they can still be an excellent "Healer". Just about any positive energy cleric can be a good healer with basic tactics. If you invest in healing just a little, it can negate the full damage dealing actions actions of an APL+1 or APL+2 foe fairly easily.
Can't each player take care of emergency (i.e. I have a strong chance of dying the next round) healing with potions, or just avoid fatal damage with tactics? There's absolutely value in being able to remove nasty status effects from party members who can't do so for themselves (e.g. paralysis) but if the simple issue is "HP loss" it seems unreasonable to expect another player, who might have something better to do with their actions ("better" as in "ends the fight quicker, with fewer resources consumed") than to do what you could do with a 5' step and a healing potion (carry some in case of emergencies, they keep you not-dead).
In my experience the players who are most insistent about "someone must be the healer" are the ones who get indignant when the cleric doesn't spend their turn healing them when they're down less than 25% of their total HP. It's not like there are penalties for being wounded in this game, so it's not any class's job description to keep anybody else topped off on HP. It's reasonable to ask party members to drop what they're doing and stabilize you, or fix things that you are incapable of fixing on your own that will take you out of the fight, but that's only a fairly small part of what "heal me" covers.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, you can't Remove Paralysis yourself, as a general rule. And potions usually provide terrible healing compared to an actual spell.
Frankly, I think having a guy who can do emergency heals in combat is super useful. It's situational, but technically so is having a guy with social skills...and that's not something you want to be without in most games either.
Really, the part of TarkXT's post I disagree with is this:
Un-paralyzing your ally doesn't just give him one more action, it gives both of the following:
1. It gives your ally at least one more action. If it's only one action, yeah, net loss in terms of combat effectiveness. But what if it's a long fight and he manages not to get hit again? Then it might be five. Huge net gain. But even if it's only two, that's still a net gain unless your offense is miles better than his (in which case you have a whole different problem than is being addressed here).
2. It also keeps him from being Coup De Grace'd and dying, which is a long-term issue rather than a per-fight concern, but potentially saves the party a huge amount of long-term resources. 2nd level spell and a wasted turn in combat to save 7k in party gold? Sign me up. Hell, even just a 2nd level spell to avoid having to use a 5th level one (Breath of Life) is still totally worth it.
Given these points, healing him is usually (though perhaps not always) worth it.
The same points apply almost directly to bringing an ally above zero HP. At least, they do if you can bring him enough above that he won't get killed next hit.
Now, the corollary to this point is that healing in combat is, in fact, mostly useless unless it does at least one of the two things mentioned above. Therefore, the only circumstances you should be doing so under are if one of the following points applies. The more that apply, the more likely you should heal:
A. The ally you intend to heal (ie: enable to take actions again) is currently incapable of acting (or at such penalties they might as well be), and you expect that combat will last at least two more turns, and that there is some chance the ally won't go down again next turn (the higher a chance they go down, the bigger the gamble you're making).
B. The ally is incapable of acting and their offense is, for whatever reason, vastly more effective against the foes you are fighting than your own (you're melee and they are ranged vs. a flying enemy at low levels, for example). In this instance, healing them (ie: enabling them to take actions again) is pretty much always the right call unless it'll get said ally killed.
C. Healing them will likely prevent the ally's death. This is basically always worth preventing, just for monetary reasons. The corollary here is that if you have a better way to prevent their death, do that instead. But that's by no means always possible.
D. You have a huge action economy advantage on healing. Such that healing either undoes multiple enemy turns, or so that you can do it on your turn at no meaningful cost to your other effectiveness (Lay on Hands + Life Link, Quick Channel combined with Standard Action spells, etc.).
.
.
.
Healing in combat when it gives your ally their action back is a gamble, and one that you should take carefully and advisedly, but by no means always a bad one.
Healing to prevent an ally's death when that's the best tactic to do so is a strong logistical move at the cost of a tactical advantage, and logistics almost always trump tactics, meaning you should usually do it.
Healing when you have an action economy advantage is just good math.
If healing neither gives your ally their action back, nor saves their life, and you lack a huge action economy advantage...why are you doing it in combat?
|
Can't each player take care of emergency (i.e. I have a strong chance of dying the next round) healing with potions, or just avoid fatal damage with tactics? There's absolutely value in being able to remove nasty status effects from party members who can't do so for themselves (e.g. paralysis) but if the simple issue is "HP loss" it seems unreasonable to expect another player, who might have something better to do with their actions ("better" as in "ends the fight quicker, with fewer resources consumed") than to do what you could do with a 5' step and a healing potion (carry some in case of emergencies, they keep you not-dead).
To hear some people say it, you should be able to avoid all serious harm with good tactics. I strongly disagree with this. For example, recently we played the 8-9 tier of an adventure and ran into an edavagor. That's supposedly a CR 12 monster (yeah right), but it has 5 attacks at +25 to hit, DR 10/good, high SR, high AC, high HP, reach, and a 16d6 breath weapon (reflex 24 halves). You fight it in a 20ft wide corridor with very little to hide behind.
You're going to get hurt. It went to town on our optimized paladin/monk/misfortune oracle/champion of Irori that's normally unhittable and then tore into the gunslinger behind him.
We actually managed to survive rather handsomely, but this was due to receiving a lot of specialist buffs. Communal Resist Fire (20), Blessing of Fervor, Communal Align Weapon (Good) being the most significant. This was all coming from the support cleric. Some emergency healing also helped to keep both those PCs in the fight.
In my experience the players who are most insistent about "someone must be the healer" are the ones who get indignant when the cleric doesn't spend their turn healing them when they're down less than 25% of their total HP. It's not like there are penalties for being wounded in this game, so it's not any class's job description to keep anybody else topped off on HP. It's reasonable to ask party members to drop what they're doing and stabilize you, or fix things that you are incapable of fixing on your own that will take you out of the fight, but that's only a fairly small part of what "heal me" covers.
IMO the best reason to heal someone would be "he's better at defeating this monster than I am, and if I don't heal him he can't full attack next round". You don't need to heal every scratch, but if you can prevent someone from dropping to 0, going prone, dropping weapons, and not getting a full attack, that can be very economical. So if you see an enemy focus-firing on an important teammate and that teammate is going into the danger zone, it may be time.
A character that can only heal, and isn't useful for other things is just a silly strawman.I've been noticing that trend in some of the previous posts too.
I think it's a difference of interpretation of what the phrase "dedicated healer" meant. To my mind, resist energy, dispel magic, AC boosts or manipulating miss chances are all tools of a "dedicated healer" but I can also see how some people might assume a person who said that phrase meant "someone who only casts cure spells or removes afflictions"
Well, "someone who only casts cure spells or removes afflictions" is definitely my interpretation of the phrase. Especially when we're talking about a cleric/oracle being mandatory in that context. That's one step removed from the unarmed noncombatants who, according to the laws of war, you're not allowed to shoot at -- the primary difference being that you're allowed to shoot at them, but need not bother.
If you want to define "dedicated healer" as "someone who can cast healing or do other things that are actually useful," then literally any character with CLW (or infernal healing) on their spell list is, by definition, a "dedicated healer," which means the word "dedicated" is meaningless in this phrase. Look, I'm a paladin! I'm a dedicated healer who does all the damage! Look, I'm a druid! I'm a dedicated healer who turns into a T-rex and rips people's heads off! Look, I'm a witch! I'm a dedicated healer who debuffs enemies into helplessness and then kills them with a coup de grace! Look, I'm a wizard (Harry)! I'm a dedicated healer who destroys large groups of enemies with balls of fire!
.... because they can all pull out a cheap CLW wand from a wrist sheath and stabilize a fallen companion.
But, if played intelligently, few if any of them will spend many actions doing that, because there are usually better things they can do to end the fight more quickly and decisively. Tark covered the "heals are reactive, not proactive" argument very well, and I won't re-make it, but the fact that almost any character can have reactive healing in their haversack means that no one needs to "dedicate" more than a few hundred gold pieces --- and certainly not a class feature -- to healing or condition removal.
To hear some people say it, you should be able to avoid all serious harm with good tactics. I strongly disagree with this. For example, recently we played the 8-9 tier of an adventure and ran into an edavagor. That's supposedly a CR 12 monster (yeah right), but it has 5 attacks at +25 to hit, DR 10/good, high SR, high AC, high HP, reach, and a 16d6 breath weapon (reflex 24 halves). You fight it in a 20ft wide corridor with very little to hide behind.
So you make your own terrain to hide behind. Lack of planning on your part is not actually an argument.
Especially since, by your own admission,...
We actually managed to survive rather handsomely, but this was due to receiving a lot of specialist buffs. Communal Resist Fire (20), Blessing of Fervor, Communal Align Weapon (Good) being the most significant. This was all coming from the support cleric.
.... it was the (proactive) buffs that saved you. Buffing is something that a cleric should be doing, not healing. The resist fire saved your four person party up to eighty hit points of damage per round -- how many would a third level cure spell have given you? (Answer: a one-time 3d8+9 -- there's a good chance it wouldn't even repair one round's worth of saved damage to one person.)
So, yeah, I'd say that resist fire did, in fact, save you from a lot of serious harm.
|
|
Re: Tarxx and Remove Paralysis;
I generally enjoy reading your analyses and find them insightful. However in this case -
1) Remove Paralysis targets up to 4 creatures. Trading 1 action to unlock the actions of 4 PCs is a good trade.
2) Remove Paralysis works at close range. Unlocking someone standing elsewhere can improve battlefield dominance because you're expanding total threatened area of the party. Also, that PC might be standing next to an enemy he could full-attack, while you could only go there with a move action first.
3) Action advantage: paralyzed PCs could delay until after the cleric.
4) Paralysis might last more than one round. Meaning, the enemy took one action to deny your ally many actions. Spending one action to regain many actions is probably a good trade.
5) A significant cause of paralysis is as a rider effect on melee attacks (ghouls and their higher-level brethren). That means that if nothing is done, a CdG may happen next round. PC death is a massive drain on party resources because the PC will be unavailable or weakened for multiple encounters. Preventing death is a valuable meta-tactic for winning multiple subsequent encounters.
6) Remove Paralysis can also cure the Staggered condition. If your standard action can bring the iterative attacks and mobility of 1-4 other PCs back into the game, that's also an attractive trade. This makes the spell more versatile and therefore a better choice to keep in your arsenal.
Also a meta-argument: I think we should award a small premium to any choice that brings "locked out" players back into the game sooner, because being able to participate is important to enjoying the game.
Obviously not every condition is equally dire. Nobody bothers to spend an action in combat against Dazzled. Shaken is not necessarily worth removing, although it may be worth it if you suspect enemies can upgrade it to Frightened or Panicked; a fleeing PC takes a long time before he can rejoin the fight, and might actually flee in a direction that triggers additional encounters. Dropping your best weapons and provoking AoOs for fleeing is also a hassle and bad action economy.
If a condition is imposing serious disadvantage on your party (action economy, health risks, effectiveness of actions) then not removing it requires a good argument. Those could be: "I could instead do something worse to the enemy". But make sure you critically assess whether your other action is really that powerful in comparison.
So if you get to use that spell what did you get? Well you traded your standard and likely your move to grant your ally his turns back.I think your missing perhaps the most important part of casting Remove Paralysis, and also healing. Casting either spell alters the odds that a player is going to have to sit around waiting for his PC to get raised after getting CdG'd by a ghoul or clawed to death.
That sounds nice --- but it should also be true for literally any other spell (or other action) taken by any character in the party. The wizard's fireball will alter the odds of a player death, because dead ghouls don't injure people -- and so will the rogue's attack from behind with a rapier. (To put it another way, if your proposed action will not in any way alter the odds of a TPK, why did you propose that action?)
Phrasing the discussion in this way is misleading because it makes it sound like the only way to keep the barbarian upright is a restoration spell of some kind, when in many cases, you can shift the odds as much or more with a more proactive action.
Killing the ghoul, for example, negates its threat. As does debuffing it to the point that it can't hit. Simply bull rushing the ghoul away from the barbarian and into a more tactically disadvantageous position will both save the barbarian and weaken the ghoul.
Indeed -- although this is GM-dependent -- you should be able to save the barbarian by offering it an alternate target. If the barbarian is paralyzed, he's no longer a threat to the ghoul.... but if the cleric steps up and starts to bash with her mace, she is. An intelligent ghoul should (IMHO) realize that to continue to attack the helpless barbarian invites death from the cleric.... but killing/paralyzing the cleric may save its life.
So by stepping up and offering herself as a target to the ghoul, she's managed to a) save the barbarian from dying for as long as she can remain upright, b) damage the ghoul and thereby hasten the ultimate victory instead of simply prolonging the fight, and c) save a spell slot that can be used later.
.... suggesting that, even in this case, condition removal is not the best choice.
I think your missing perhaps the most important part of casting Remove Paralysis, and also healing. Casting either spell alters the odds that a player is going to have to sit around waiting for his PC to get raised after getting CdG'd by a ghoul or clawed to death. You can play the odds, and sometimes the fight will end before combat healing is needed, other times, players are going to wait for their characters to be raised from the dead. It might not be "optimal", but a heal spell or two is generally worth it, so that everyone can stay in the game. YMMV.
1. It gives your ally at least one more action. If it's only one action, yeah, net loss in terms of combat effectiveness. But what if it's a long fight and he manages not to get hit again? Then it might be five. Huge net gain. But even if it's only two, that's still a net gain unless your offense is miles better than his (in which case you have a whole different problem than is being addressed here).
2. It also keeps him from being Coup De Grace'd and dying, which is a long-term issue rather than a per-fight concern, but potentially saves the party a huge amount of long-term resources. 2nd level spell and a wasted turn in combat to save 7k in party gold? Sign me up. Hell, even just a 2nd level spell to avoid having to use a 5th level one (Breath of Life) is still totally worth it.
Given these points, healing him is usually (though perhaps not always) worth it.
generally enjoy reading your analyses and find them insightful. However in this case -
1) Remove Paralysis targets up to 4 creatures. Trading 1 action to unlock the actions of 4 PCs is a good trade.
2) Remove Paralysis works at close range. Unlocking someone standing elsewhere can improve battlefield dominance because you're expanding total threatened area of the party. Also, that PC might be standing next to an enemy he could full-attack, while you could only go there with a move action first.
3) Action advantage: paralyzed PCs could delay until after the cleric.
4) Paralysis might last more than one round. Meaning, the enemy took one action to deny your ally many actions. Spending one action to regain many actions is probably a good trade.
5) A significant cause of paralysis is as a rider effect on melee attacks (ghouls and their higher-level brethren). That means that if nothing is done, a CdG may happen next round. PC death is a massive drain on party resources because the PC will be unavailable or weakened for multiple encounters. Preventing death is a valuable meta-tactic for winning multiple subsequent encounters.
6) Remove Paralysis can also cure the Staggered condition. If your standard action can bring the iterative attacks and mobility of 1-4 other PCs back into the game, that's also an attractive trade. This makes the spell more versatile and therefore a better choice to keep in your arsenal.
Preaching to the choir here boys as literally the next sentence after that discussed how taking that disadvantage is better than leaving things lie. I didn't feel like wasting more words then necessary on the obvious.
However a loss is still a loss. Even if you make it into a minor one. It's preferable to avoid it regardless of how many points are made. Being dedicated to recovery is essentially accepting that nearly every recovery action is a loss unless you can make it otherwise.
I've been a lot of people saying a healer is unwanted and useless. I have said at high levels a healer is more about buffing and healing. Low level to around seventh they are absolutely needed.
Take this into account. First where is the item replacing the healer. Second what is it. Let's say a potion in a backpack. That's two actions a fighter is using to find and drink the potion. Now he's drinking the potion, attack of opportunity. If he needed healing now he's in real trouble. That's an action he isn't appending beating that monster. That goes for anyone else.
Now he's paralyzed. No healer no one bothered to bring a Remove Paralysis scroll, wand or potion.
You start out with assuming bad tactics on your part, and you're surprised you're in trouble?
I've specifically been recommending bringing consumables of any emergency spells you need -- such as the remove paralysis spell -- and you ignore that. You also ignore the fact that wands are not only more useful than potions (because they can be used on others), they're also cheaper.
You're right that the monsters may try to screw up your tactics,..... but in this case, I'm not sure that there's much they can do. You seem to have walked into the dungeon with their job mostly done for them already.
If the barbarian is struggling to kill it, then surely the cleric will have a better time of killing it, right? The cleric with its guaranteed lower BAB and smaller HP pool, and its likely lesser DPS and smaller toolbox of tactics....
Some people here are acting as if there is no aspect of luck or randomness to this game. I dunno about you guys, but most deaths occur in my group when the player's dice are cold and/or the dm's dice are hot. We've got an inquisitor and a wizard in our current game that seriously have not rolled double digits on anything in 2-3 sessions. Couple this with a DM who can't seem to miss our respectably AC'ed front-liners (level +15, level +16 and level +19!) or fail a saving throw for those past few sessions, and we've had some character turnover. Without in combat healing, we would have had at least 2 TPW's by now, if not more. In-combat healing is often the only buffer against terrible luck because it's guaranteed to work rather than just offering a possibility of success like an attack or a spell with a saving throw does.
|
|
I've been a lot of people saying a healer is unwanted and useless. I have said at high levels a healer is more about buffing and healing. Low level to around seventh they are absolutely needed.
Take this into account. First where is the item replacing the healer. Second what is it. Let's say a potion in a backpack. That's two actions a fighter is using to find and drink the potion. Now he's drinking the potion, attack of opportunity. If he needed healing now he's in real trouble. That's an action he isn't appending beating that monster. That goes for anyone else.
Now he's paralyzed. No healer no one bothered to bring a Remove Paralysis scroll, wand or potion. You didn't expect a Ghoul to be there. A smart ghoul and some are will move to the next target and will keep doing that until dead or the party is.
My point is you talk about tactics but you keep admitting to me one glaring problem. You can spend all your time to drop the monster fast which is what every party tries to do. Someone in combat may need to heal that's his action. Most likely it's the martial types in the middle of combat. Only a stupid monster isn't going to take advantage of that. While the fighter is trying to heal himself he is a target and not doing his job. A Cleric or an Oracle or god forbid a Bard who are not the heavy hand melee guys can step in and heal the fighter so he can kick out the damage.
Sure you can spend money on wands, potions and scrolls. Most of my characters make their own to supplement their own power. Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion and Craft Wands all add to the versatility of the healer. Spends half the amount of gold and then can select spells to help buff the party or damage foes while the use the wands and scrolls. Something about tactics it's nice when a plan works but monster especially the smarter ones and played that way will work to screw up all your tactics or use some of his own.
Again I have built healers to be medics and then learn to buff them to aid the party when they are not needed. Our...
The fact that you refer to the bard as not being a heavy melee guy suggests to me you've never actually built/played a bard, or at least never seen one played that wasn't some limp-wristed buff-baby (/bard-flex). I can make a bard that, for most of the game, fights almost as well as the un-buffed fighter (who WILL be buffed because my Bard is there) in melee and not only survive, but thrive there.
The fighter doesn't drink a potion in the front lines. That's dumb (what's his Int/Wis?). He takes the withdraw action to get into a better position, and fires his ranged weapon from his more advantageous position while his allies hold off the ghouls, because they're versatile and expected that such a thing could happen. Look, the fighter doesn't need healing unless things go south for his party, and he has time to get himself together and drink that stupid potion if he needs to, relatively safely.
Or my cleric could just nuke the ghoul from orbit, because that's what I do... or the barbarian could, or my motha-!@#$in' BARD COULD. Because we're awesome, and we don't sit around going "Oh no! Fights McGee is in danger! Why did no one think to bring healer!" We save him, we don't make him feel better about his bad decisions.
If the barbarian is struggling to kill it, then surely the cleric will have a better time of killing it, right?
The barbarian's the only one fighting it? Small wonder he's having difficulty, then. I was assuming -- silly me, I know, "you make...." -- that the party was operating as a team and that everyone was trying to contribute to killing the ghoul. In terms of actual crisis DPS, the person with the best chance of killing it is probably an arcane blastercaster.
If the barbarian is struggling to kill it, then surely the cleric will have a better time of killing it, right?The barbarian's the only one fighting it? Small wonder he's having difficulty, then. I was assuming -- silly me, I know, "you make...." -- that the party was operating as a team and that everyone was trying to contribute to killing the ghoul. In terms of actual crisis DPS, the person with the best chance of killing it is probably an arcane blastercaster.
You only fight one mob at a time? Small wonder you never need in combat healing. Your DM is awfully kind to you.
Something about tactics it's nice when a plan works but monster especially the smarter ones and played that way will work to screw up all your tactics or use some of his own.
Then. You. Change. Them.
This aggravates me. Do people really run around dumb when their initial tactic fails? In a turn based game where they have all the time in the world to talk about it? When you have three some odd people who can chip in? When you're playing characters with an incredible number of resources in comparison to the creatures they face?
If the barbarian is struggling to kill it, then surely the cleric will have a better time of killing it, right? The cleric with its guaranteed lower BAB and smaller HP pool, and its likely lesser DPS and smaller toolbox of tactics....
Elaborate. I really want to hear this one.
|
|
You only fight one mob at a time? Small wonder you never need in combat healing. Your DM is awfully kind to you.
And your GM is awfully cruel to you. PCs die when outnumbered. Regardless of healing. If you're always running into equally matched, equal opposition, then you've strayed from the baseline that says a party can handle a CR of equal level with a certain expenditure of resources. The epic battle against steep odds is supposed to be a special occurrence, not the standard.
No one assumes bad tactics, bad players who make mistakes maybe.
Call it what you want. If you're not familiar with the equipment list (spring-loaded wrist sheaths are things, and they let you get a wand into action as an immediate action, not a move action), the character building rules (the Trap Finder trait is a thing, as is a bard as a front-line combatant, as are any number of archetypes that allow for finding magic traps), the spell list (the keep watch spell is a first level spell that allows you to have your most perceptive person on sentry duty at all times), or the basic design principles that underly the game (like the fact that reactive tactics are designed to be worse than proactive ones to encourage a more exciting game at the table) then you'll make bad decisions that result in bad tactics (like the fighter fumbling for a potion on the front line).
If someone wandered into my office looking for a job based on thirty years of experience with Windows 3.0, they'd be laughed at. While it's true that Windows 10 shares a design history with Windows 3, the newer version has so much more capacity and features that it might as well be an entirely different platform.
Pathfinder has similar issues. The designers of Pathfinder -- actually, the designers of D&D 3.0 -- specifically took a hard look at the cleric and its "traditional" role as primary healer, and recognized that a large fraction of the playing community didn't like the fact that someone had to take one for the team and play the cleric. So in 3.0, they did a radical cleric redesign and arguably went overboard on the other side, producing CoDzilla. The Pathfinder designers actually reigned in the cleric, to the point that it's now an exceedingly powerful and versatile class but not nearly as overpowering.
Similarly, the designers looked at the healing task itself and provided lots of options both for spreading the task around (so now no one needs to be a primary healer because everyone except maybe a pure fighter can be a secondary healer) and for making in-combat healing itself no longer necessary. There are many more options for cheaper out of combat healing (starting with cheap wands) and many more spells and abilities that act to prevent damage before it happens.
So, basically, "you need a healer" was seen as a problem, and was fixed. You've somehow managed to miss the fixes.
If the barbarian is struggling to kill it, then surely the cleric will have a better time of killing it, right? The cleric with its guaranteed lower BAB and smaller HP pool, and its likely lesser DPS and smaller toolbox of tactics....
Elaborate. I really want to hear this one.
Well, all clerics can do is heal and remove conditions, right? <roll eyes>
|
|
No one assumes bad tactics, bad players who make mistakes maybe. Consumables another issues, like how many? Use Magic Device three classes get it as a trained skill Bards, Rogues and Sorcerer. DC20 to use. Right there that's the Sorcerer's action to use. He could have used a spell to drop a monster. That's also a skill point used every level and he gets two plus int. Rogue would be better off taking it with a high Chr. Our party doesn't load up on consumables merely keeping spoils of war. Money spent on consumables is money not used to purchase magic weapons, armor, cloaks and other more useful permanent items. Items that make a fighter tougher stronger.
Again sounds like your DM tells you everything or worse you read the module ahead of time to know what is going to happen. You sound like you tell the players what to do or else rather then let them figure out how to work as a team. Money never seems to be an issue with you. Another issue is sometimes you are in a dungeon for the long haul sounds like the DM has an escape hatch for you whenever you want.
1) At low levels, a +1 magic weapon costs 2000, plus the cost of the base weapon. Assuming the party all pitch in (and they should), a wand of Cure Light Wounds runs you 200-ish gold (it's actually a little less). That's for a fully charged one. You could buy one for less (a half-charged one will probably suffice for most of your early level healing), and at low levels even a half-charged wand should see you through quite a few levels. By 4th level, expected WBL is 6000 gold. Are you REALLY telling me that that extra 200 gold is such a huge expense that you can't handle it? Remember, also, that you are intended to get a little MORE than the listed WBL (roughly 10% more) to spend SPECIFICALLY on consumables! That's 600 gold for consumables alone by that level! In addition to whatever situational stuff, like scrolls, etc., your group could all pitch in and not have the wand impact their expected progression AT ALL, for less than the price of 1 Cure Moderate Wounds potion per party member.
So it isn't expensive. It's NEVER expensive.
2) If the sorcerer can use a spell to just drop the monster, then you don't need to heal. Problem solved.
3) No, I plan ahead. I'm currently playing Mummy's Mask, and guess what? There are mummies. There are also ghouls, ghasts, shadows, and all sorts of nastiness. So you know what I did? I grabbed a reach weapon (to take down more enemies and keep them out of melee with trips), had a backup ranged weapon to tackle flying foes/foes I couldn't trust to get into melee, and bought a couple of potions of Remove Fear because I needed a way to counteract mummies. The first time we faced them we had a hard time, but the group mostly stayed at range and dropped them with spells/disabled them with blinds. We learned from experience and planned so that we could be more effective against them in the future (I mean, it's in the AP name...).
4) No, our DM doesn't have an escape hatch for us. We have a plan. If we get in too deep, or an encounter goes south, we run. We know the way out, after all. Drop some difficult terrain, or just run, and we're good. If they chase us out, we get to lead them to favorable terrain. Or, at higher levels (7+) our spellcasters usually have a means of escape ready to go (though I'm currently the only spellcaster in the group, but hey, Plane Shift works :P).
You only fight one mob at a time? Small wonder you never need in combat healing. Your DM is awfully kind to you.And your GM is awfully cruel to you.
One of the problems our group has with published APs is that there are too many single-opponent battles. Small groups happen from time to time, but the group is VERY rarely outnumbered, and when that does happen, the opposition is usually popcorn.
So if our DM is awfully kind to us, that's the way Paizo intends the game to be run. (And our homebrew adventures tend to up it a notch, both in terms of quality and quantity of opposition, but you quickly run into diminishing returns if there are too many miniatures on the board.)
The epic battle against steep odds is supposed to be a special occurrence, not the standard.
Yes. I think it was JJ and SKR both who pointed out that the party is generally supposed to win, and that Paizo's published adventures reflect that. Even if that's not how your homebrew games work, that's how PFS games work, and the published adventures are generally the standard from which tactical advice is given.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Actually incorrect. While 4th edition sucked for a variety of reasons it had one great thing I liked. The DM's Guide was written in simple terms for beginning and even advanced GMs about how to make adventures and campaigns. In this case it talked at great length about CR and characters. About half encounters should equal CR to a party or one higher. The rest should be below CR or up to three levels higher then the party.
Why are you referencing 4th edition on a Pathfinder board in a Pathfinder argument?
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why are you referencing 4th edition on a Pathfinder board in a Pathfinder argument? Because it talked about CRs and adventurers more then Pazio has. Pazio in the Core Rule book glossed over how to do an adventure 4th ed spent a full chapter on it.
My point is CRs encounters are supposed to be base line to party level and one higher. Depending on the power level a DM should increase that by one or two more. Now it also stated an adventure should also have CRs equal or lower to the party.
Yeah, but now you're quoting the rules for a different game to try and argue your point about this game. That's like me saying "Well, World of Warcraft requires dedicated healers in the Trinity, and that game did that really well, so I expect that to apply to Pathfinder as well." It just doesn't.
Actually incorrect. While 4th edition sucked for a variety of reasons it had one great thing I liked. The DM's Guide was written in simple terms for beginning and even advanced GMs about how to make adventures and campaigns. In this case it talked at great length about CR and characters. About half encounters should equal CR to a party or one higher. The rest should be below CR or up to three levels higher then the party.
Yes, I saw a similar distribution table for Pathfinder somewhere that said roughtly the same thing. Another way of looking at it is that is that a level is supposed to involve 13-14 "level-appropriate" (meaning CR=APL) encounters, which, at PFS' three-adventures per level baseline means a little less than five encounters per adventure.
A CR+2 encounter is two level-appropriate encounters at the same time. A CR+3 encounter is three such encounters at the same time, a CR+4 encounter is four such encounters at a time -- basically, an entire adventure worth of experience.
Depending on a party's power level base line CR or even one higher isn't even a remote challenge.
Again, doing the math -- a single PC of level X is a CR X encounter, so a typical four-person party outnumbers (and overpowers) that guy by 4:1. So, yes, you have a 4:1 advantage over a "level-appropriate" challenge, and should be able to handle it with minimal resource expenditure.
CR+4 is a party facing a mirror image of itself, and you should have a 50/50 chance of winning or losing (if you're fool enough to make it a fight to the death). And, yes, you should be fairly tapped out if you manage to win, since if you have any resources left, you're lucky. But this kind of encounter is not very fun on a long-term basis, and the Paizo designers recognize that.
Where is this Trait? I'd love to see it.
Asked and answered. I'm not going to cite it a third time.
Yeah, but now you're quoting the rules for a different game to try and argue your point about this game. That's like me saying "Well, World of Warcraft requires dedicated healers in the Trinity, and that game did that really well, so I expect that to apply to Pathfinder as well." It just doesn't.Why are you referencing 4th edition on a Pathfinder board in a Pathfinder argument? Because it talked about CRs and adventurers more then Pazio has. Pazio in the Core Rule book glossed over how to do an adventure 4th ed spent a full chapter on it.
My point is CRs encounters are supposed to be base line to party level and one higher. Depending on the power level a DM should increase that by one or two more. Now it also stated an adventure should also have CRs equal or lower to the party.
Exactly, and it's a game with entirely different expectations upon the subject matter. It's silly to reference it.
Exactly, and it's a game with entirely different expectations upon the subject matter. It's silly to reference it.
Except I don't think that Pathfinder has all that different expectations about the types of challenges to be faced by parties.
A typical PFS adventure for example, will have a mix of level X and level (X+1) characters. It will also typically have something like two CR X, two CR (X+1), and a single climactic CR (X+2) encounter.
From a design perspectives, the early encounters are there just to soak up resources so the players can't simply nova on the final encounter.
These discussions always tend to assume or outright state that with proper use of tactics no in-combat healing should ever be needed, and I disagree. Fundamentally. with the definition of "challenging" used in these situations, with the handy ignoring of the effects of luck in a d20 game, and with the idea that if someone brings a "dedicated healer" they should be made to feel un-needed, which is a corollary of this particular belief evident in the attitudes of certain advocates.
Luck isn't being ignored. Reliance on it is being reduced as much as possible. I'd rather win on a series of mediocre rolls than pray constantly for big ones.
In addition damage is not an indication of challenge. Resource expenditure is. That's a common mistake gm's make. They think that their encounters aren't challenging enough because the group doesn't take damge. Even though that group may have spend over 30% of their resource just to accomplish that.