No. Do not give the players infinite free healing. Ever.
Now if one of the leaders crawls into a temple, as long as they're recognized, they will probably be healed without question. But they're going to get a bill later.
The clergy is probably going to expect a certain amount of tit-for-tat. They provide you with free healing, but you showing up for free healing means that you owe them something. They get some more influence over how things are run as a result, since you're leaning on them for support.
I'd recommend coming up with a strong central figure for the clergy (or one each for the various clergies, since many kingdoms have two or three major religions) with their own goals and interests. And hey, if the healing comes from channeling, other injured people can be included in the AoE- it's good PR, showing that the leaders and common folk are equal in the eyes of the great ones. (Unless it's Asmodeus. The church of Asmoedus is quite clear that you're better than all those common rabble, and is happy to arrange for whatever healing you need. Now, if you'll just sign off on this minor extension to the chaplain's role in criminal trials…)
Church of Nethys? Some tenets they have that the PCs won't like may include:
- Creatures with magical abilities or properties are sacred. Yes, even if those magical properties are wreaking havoc on the area. The church will likely not hold with a dragon being slain, for instance.
- Those who can do magic are better than those who can't, full stop.
- Nethys is a dual-natured god. Factions of his church might favor creation and restoration over destruction, but he's still also a god of destruction, and there will probably always be cults a little too interested in that aspect of him.
- He's also a god of knowledge. Forbidden things which humanoids were not meant to know is probably a little more likely than usual to show up where the church is active.
On the other hand, the church has some serious magical chops, and will probably be good for the general level of education in the kingdom. If the PCs need to find out information or acquire magical goods, the church will be better able to help them out.
"I think we can arrange the resurrection of his lordship the High Warden...for a suitable donation of land and governmental sway."
Handle it on a case by case basis. If the party only has spontaneous casting and they need a redirection, many be only charge for material components. Make sure it's the exception to the rule. If the players expect it, definitely charge them. If the PCs host a festival and monsters attack, a npc priest would probably cast a cure spell if it was safe to do so.
have the healers remind the ruler that they still have to pay rent and taxes and buy food and cloths and magical components etc.
Nothing is "free." A Cleric can only cast so many spells per day, and any spell he is using on the PCs is a spell not used on the community or the church.
Also, these are human beings, not drones. They don't just sit around all day waiting for someone to demand their free healing. Maybe no one is there, or maybe they already used up all their healing. Or, better yet, they resent the PCs ordering them around and decide to move away. Demand free healing once and they get upset, 3 or 4 times and the PCs realize all the healers have left town and they are SOL. Oh and no one wants to work for them b/c they're huge pricks.
the church would still have to charge them, just because their leaders of a kingdom doesn't mean squat
The leaders of a well run kingdom should never be short on cash. Pay for that healing cost with a BP withdrawal, and you've just successfully abstracted the 'favors' flying around between the clergy and the nobility.
When you play with Kingdom-Rules, pay for that stuff with BP.
1 BP can buy you "favors" worth 4.000 gold.
If you withdraw it you only get 2.000 gold and +1 Unrest.
When you play with Kingdom-Rules, pay for that stuff with BP.
1 BP can buy you "favors" worth 4.000 gold.
If you withdraw it you only get 2.000 gold and +1 Unrest.
Pretty sure there's no rules for 'buying' favors with BP. Any use of kingdom assets for personal gain should result in the normal withdrawal penalties (Unrest).
Unless the party is fighting right outside the temple free healing is not going to be much of an issue. If they are relying on free healing as their only source of healing then they are going to be extremely limited in their range. They could be ambushed on the way home and suddenly random encounters become more deadly.
Just having a temple doesnt mean that suitable clerics are there all day. They have duties to attend to in the town and maybe even if more far-flung settlements and may not be back for a day or 2.
I say let them have their free healing (hp and lesser restoration only; PCs only) whenever they are back as it doesnt break anything too much
If you want to give free healing, then have boots of the earth bolted to the ground.
Boots of the earth gives 1 fast healing while wearing them and standing in a still position. Even the beefiest barbarian goes from 1 hp to full in about 15 minutes.
As such, you could put it down as a fixture (ie- bolt it to the ground) and then give people free access to them. Since they can provide infinite healing at no additional cost.
Not going to help everyone (I mean...you need to eb well enough to stand), but it should cover general aches and pains. Clerics will still be there for emergency healing of the guys that got knocked out.
This method is especially important for nonliving communities. Undead and intelligent construct desperately need it. I can't imagine wyrwoood society going to well without it, since eveyrone has to go both the wizards for infernal healing constantly otherwise.
You can limit this by controlling highest level spell casters in the faith. in campaigns with kingdom building elements I have seen, spell casting 'clerics' only represent part of the clergy.
In a typical new town the highest level priest may only be 5th or less even. That means clerics are having to use scrolls and potions which have an associate cost.
Later on I would make the lower level stuff free to the rulers (with the expectation that the church gets special concessions, exemption from taxes, own courts, state sponsorship etc). The high priest may be 9th level by that point and will only need scrolls for regenerations etc.
Even better, have the high priest a PC and then they can do as they like!
Do they also expect the farmers to give them free food, or smiths to give them free weapons and armor? If so you may want to reconsider their supposed alignment. On the other hand paying taxes in goods and services is reasonable. One way to handle it would be to reduce their income from taxes by the amount of the healing.
The church may also want special favors for their healing. They will at least want to be the official religion which probably means suppressing all other religions. They will probably also want the laws of the kingdom to reflect the teachings of the deity. Since Nethys is all about magic they will probably want special protections for spell casters, and magical creatures.
Instead of just saying no to the idea make sure the church is getting equal or more value for any services it provides. This could actually backfire on the party. It may be cheaper to simply pay for the healing instead of building the elaborate temple they demand. Think of all the cities paying for sports arenas to attract or keep sports teams.
In my Kingmaker campaign the church of Desna offered to contribute half the build cost of a cathedral in the capital but they wanted several concessions. I find it helpful to think of who the different power players in a kingdom are.
- church leaders
- powerful noble families
- powerful guilds (merchants, wizards)
- powerful spell casters
- advisors (may be one of the above groups)
How do they interact, what are their motivations? I played a lot of birthright in an earlier day and that was very good for mechanically representing other interest groups.
Pretty sure there's no rules for 'buying' favors with BP. Any use of kingdom assets for personal gain should result in the normal withdrawal penalties (Unrest).When you play with Kingdom-Rules, pay for that stuff with BP.
1 BP can buy you "favors" worth 4.000 gold.
If you withdraw it you only get 2.000 gold and +1 Unrest.
I think that this is a grey area, but i also think that not having halve the cabinet dying of bubonic plague and the then following (hopefully only ppartial) breakdown of public order occure, might very well be in the State's interest.
Just like building a Palace is clearly done via BP, even though you could still rule as efficiently from a 2-story townhouse near the docks.
Here's an underestimated solution:
Tell your players »Hey, I think free healing would unbalance the game and eventually make the game un-fun. You agree, right? Okey then. Why won't the clergy give you heals for free?«
Invite the players to come up with the solution and you'll probably end up with the solution least annoying to your players.
You could have free healing with Boots of Earth like the other posts said. I think there's a couple other ways for infinite healing too. Custom 1/day Remove X items and some at-will CLW. If you as the DM don't want infinite healing, you just say no, but it's already part of base Pathfinder, or a very short leap of logic in light of magic item rules.
I hate Boots of the Earth. I ban them in every game I run.
I hate Boots of the Earth. I ban them in every game I run.
They are only a problem in the 'fight per day' style games.
In an actual dungeon run, it would be a pain in the rear. As I mention- it can take more than 15 minutes to get up to top with high HP melee characters. That is a problem since a lot of people use minutes/level buffs. A couple of fights would wipe that out, particularly if you are passing the boots around.
Wands of cure light wounds do the job much faster, and they are easier to have multiple party members going about using it. Sure, an actual expense per heal, but you get value for that with time.
Also, you have more than enough reason to make players have other reasons to question whether they should go taking 15 minute coffee breaks right after a fight in a hostile area. Enemies can ambush in the middle,and they can fortify their defenses.
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Well most churches run off charitable donations. Running a Church isn't exactly cheap. With a NG priest in charge of a church of Nethys. You can expect that they probably won't turn away injured people.
I would start having members of the church come around asking for donations. With a frequency equaling how much the players abuse the healing of the church. If the players refuse the donations or not give enough I would have the church start demanding payment or slamming the door in their face and spread word of the heretics in charge of the land.
Your players seem to be under the impression that as the lord of lands. That everyone is going to rally under there flags and ignore there own self interests. I would squash that false idea.
Do Boots of the Earth completely break the game? No, not in any sense. But it's far more completely resource-free healing than should ever be allowed for that price tag.
Churches, even LG ones, don't often just give away their services. Except for charity to the poor, which hardly applies to the rulers of a kingdom.
It costs money to build temples, buy hymnals and candles and smocks and sacramental wine and vestal virgins and whatever other expendables the church goes through. Also, churches usually use money to help the faithful followers, such as when Brother Bob's house burns down, the church buys materials and gets volunteer laborers to help build a new one.
Evil churches are no different, though their expenses may be on different stuff. They help their faithful followers too (it's how they keep them faithful).
So it costs a lot of money to run a church.
Real world churches rely on donations. That's a difficult business model because the income is unpredictable. But they have little choice; real world priests can't peddle a dozen miracles each day in the form of spellcasting. Pathfinder churches literally CAN peddle multiple miracles every day, earning cash for each miracle provided. This is a much more stable form of income; there is no way ANY church is going to just give it away, especially to people who obviously can afford their services.
That's not to say they won't choose to barter instead of sell - maybe they'll provide healing without requiring gold, but they may want land or influence or something else in return for their "charity"...
In our KM campaign we tithe 10% to our official state church to help ensure the availability of healing magic for dead characters. For lesser boo-boos we buy Band-Aids.
When I was running kingmaker, I assumed that the characters got an income from the nation, which paid their 'cost of living' expenses. They could use this to abstract food, clothes, entertainment or a limited amount of free healing. *shrug*
They are nobles and rulers after all, and should get some recompense for those Kingdom Ruling Duties they take on. We started off with 10gp per month equivalent and (by the end of the campaign) went right the way up to to 1000 gp per month equivalent.
It worked well enough and didn't break anything.
And if I ever thought they were abusing it, I just reduced the treasure they collected next time they went adventuring. *Evil GM Grin*
Do Boots of the Earth completely break the game? No, not in any sense. But it's far more completely resource-free healing than should ever be allowed for that price tag.
Still, evne a wand of infernal healing has far, far more efficiency with time.
But if it is really the issue, then just raise the price tag so it isn't that useful for low level parties (who could pool resources togehter to get one).
That doesn't change that it would be useful as a fixture in a settlement though. Even a price hike is still useful since it improves the health of a near unlimited number of people without additional costs.
Is Nethys a god of magic? If so, maybe chapels devoted to him have witches with the Healing hex. Then they can give out free healing to all.
Also, the king has Divine Right. The church would want to support a personage favored by their deity by providing whatever aid and comfort they can.
That's not to say they won't choose to barter instead of sell - maybe they'll provide healing without requiring gold, but they may want land or influence or something else in return for their "charity"...
Aka Buildpoints.
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Independent of that above:
The case here is explicitly not about "Can Joe Shmoe, random adventurer based in Villagetown, just badger the local Temple of Villagetown for free healing?"
But "How does the local Lord, Richard von Villagetown the 3rd, gets his healing needs satisfied?"
And in my opinion Buildpoints are exactly what would be used in this case.
If this is kingmaker, the kingdom subsidized 100% of the church's construction... casting some healing spells is basically the least they could do.
If this is kingmaker, the kingdom subsidized 100% of the church's construction... casting some healing spells is basically the least they could do.
This is a huge misunderstanding of what BP actually are.
BP are an abstract representation of the economy of the entire kingdom. The fact that "the rulers" choose what is built in any given kingdom turn, and spend the BP for it, does not at all imply that the people who live in or work in those buildings are beholden to the rulers.
It's best to remember that it is an abstract subsystem, so the decision by the religion to build a church in a particular city has nothing to do with the kingdom's rulers beyond asking permission. The BP cost is a combination of lost kingdom revenue, the difficulty in persuading the people that this building is a good idea, and the effort of the kingdom's bureaucracy in managing the transport of goods and material, and probably a dozen other things I've not thought of.
In the end, though, the kingdom didn't subsidise the church building at all.
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If they want healing, that is a use of the labor of their kingdom for personal use. Given that BP represents (among other things) the labor available in your kingdom, asking for free healing is the equivalent of withdrawing BP from the treasury. Just figure up how much the healing would have cost if they had hired spellcasting, then treat it as a withdrawal from the treasury. I'd let them do this outside of the kingdom phase so they can use it whenever, but it will still produce the appropriate unrest. All in all, it's not that bad of a trade, since unrest can usually be kept under control pretty easily. Additionally, given how much downtime there is, if they're seeking out healing they probably need a pretty potent condition removal, so this shouldn't be a frequent issue (I hope).
I really don't see what the issue with giving them free healing. Unless all the fights and dangers are in the temple itself, the free healing the temple is providing is most likely just going to be used to prevent days of rest and the removal of (generally unfun to play) conditions, like blind, ability drain, disease, petrification, etc.
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I just started GMing a kingdom building campaign and I heard one of my players mentioning since they are the kingdom leaders, they could go ask the clergy for free healing.
How do I handle this? What argument I can use?
PFS allows a player to permanently buy "temple membership" for 4 prestige points. With that, a player can get one free casting of cure moderate wounds or lesser restoration. This can be on the player, or one of their allies, but they can only do this once per session and only if the session includes a scenario with access to a temple.
Seems like a good starting point.