Merciful healer archetype and versatile channeler

[friendly sauce]

Can it be done?

Merciful healer just says he must choose positive and cannot channel to harm undead. Player wants to take versatile channeler as he worships pharasma. Any reason this wouldn't work?

[MageHunter]

As long as you're neutral. You do make a choice but i would argue you can only heal with the channel.

[friendly sauce]

So you wouldn't allow the pc to channel negatively to harm is what your saying?

[FLite]

Please post the full text of the archtype

[dien]

No, he can channel negatively (i.e., negative energy) to harm living creatures. All that Merciful does as regards this, is that he can't channel positive energy to harm undead.

Rules-wise there's no contradiction there, but as a Pharasman, what he probably is trying to get is the ability to harm undead with the channel, and for that purpose, no, Versatile Channeler does not give him that.

[friendly sauce]

Well we also have a dhampire or 2 in the party who are pushing for versatile haha

[FLite]

Having read it, it sounds like the archtype only applies to positive channels. If you had versatile, the negative channel would function normally, but would not benefit from merciful healing or rerolling ones

[FLite]

Also, this should be in rules, not advice. Flagged for move.

[FLite]

Someone pointed out that merciful healer might not be eligible to take versatile channel, because versatile requires you to be able to chose negative, and MH can't choose negative.

[Viskous]

Specifically from the feat Versatile Channel -

Note: This feat only applies to necromancers, neutral
clerics who worship neutral deities, or neutral clerics who
do not worship a deity—characters who have the channel
energy class ability and have to make a choice to channel
positive or negative energy at 1st level. Clerics whose
alignment or deity makes this choice for them cannot
select this feat.

I marked the section bold that I think applies.
For PFS I would expect table variation, in a home game GM gets to choose how that works.

Getting all the Merciful Healer perks and then still using negative channeling feels wrong to me. Against the spirit of the archetype.

[cyandb]

From merciful healer:

Channel Energy (Su): As the cleric ability, save that a merciful healer must channel positive energy, and when she does, she cannot choose to target undead. This ability is otherwise identical to the cleric ability of the same name.

From versatile channeler:

If you normally channel positive energy, you may choose to channel negative energy as if your effective cleric level were 2 levels lower than normal

Seems pretty clear to me, must channel positive energy means you can't chose to channel negative energy, even if you pay extra for it.