Cleric (L / E) healing?

[Amaguce]

Greetings everyone,

I'm new to Pathfinder world and D&D games in general. I played one game as a Barbarian and it was fun. I thought, I might try being a healer, but keep things interesting by going the route of Lawful Evil. I read a lot about it and the deities. Finally, I picked Zon-Kuthon as his deity. The rulebook says that I can not channel good energy or spontaneously cast ( good spells )! How can I heal my group? From what I read on the web, I need to prepare it before hand , will this make my heal a one spell/day?

I picked up alchemy and heal kit for after the battle, but not sure if that would be enough. Fairs of corruption says under Zon-Kuthon to keep the victim alive for more suffering does that work for PCs or only NPCs? Also, I remember reading somewhere that I can use unholy water with blessed surgery to heal in battle, but I'm not sure. Finally is Bloodletting a feat or a spell? I saw it Faiths of corruption as both, so do I have to cast it every time to get the effect?

Thanks in advance.

[Azten]

1) Preparing spells like Cure Light Wounds means you can heal people as many times as you prepare the spells. Prepare one? You can heal one time.

2) Unless you are torturing the PCs, they are not victims.

3) Bloodletting is the feat, Touch of Bloodletting is the spell.

[Amaguce]

So basically being an evil cleric does not mean I can't heal. I just have to prepare the spell in advance, right? By doing so will that be considered a taboo against my deity and I need to atone from? Or I can use it without consequence?

[Jeraa]

Amaguce wrote:

So basically being an evil cleric does not mean I can't heal. I just have to prepare the spell in advance, right? By doing so will that be considered a taboo against my deity and I need to atone from? Or I can use it without consequence?

You don't need to atone. Evil clerics can heal just fine. It is just that good clerics are better at it (they have more options).

[My Self]

In Pathfinder, healing is not inherently good, just like how killing* is not** inherently*** evil****. Notice how the "Death" spell subtype is not always with the "Evil" subtype. Similarly, the "Healing" subtype is not always with the "Good" subtype. The spell Infernal Healing is actually both "Evil"-typed and healing, and is the most efficient CL 1 healing spell in the game. Off the top of my head, the "Evil" subtype has a similar correlation to the "Healing" descriptor as "Good" does - there's an Infernal (Evil) and Celestial (Good) healing, both with a "Greater" version. Granted, if you want to heal, you could also consider the Oracle class, which has no restrictions on being good or evil and having full access to all healing abilities and spells. It's also a much better healer than the Cleric.

*Circumstances matter. A lot. I won't go too deep into this.
**Paladins can kill without falling, so sometimes it's not evil... right? Although one could make the argument that killing is inherently evil, and that the enemies and manner in which Paladins kill is circumstantially good, or at least non-evil.
***Unless the GM says so. Which is the second most important rule of Pathfinder. Varies by setting, although the CRB does list spells which have the "Good" descriptor, which makes them inherently good, barring GM intervention.
****Definitions vary. Go search up "Paladin", "Evil" and/or "Alignment" on this board, and you will find all the definitions, and then some.

[Murdock Mudeater]

Amaguce wrote:

So basically being an evil cleric does not mean I can't heal. I just have to prepare the spell in advance, right? By doing so will that be considered a taboo against my deity and I need to atone from? Or I can use it without consequence?

You can heal just fine. What you can't do, is heal via channel energy or heal via spontaneous castings of cure.

As a dedicated healer, the "battlefield Surgeon" is one of my favorite traits and exclusive to Zon Kuthon Worshipers. If your character has a high Wisdom (which is almost every cleric), the heal skill is actually very impressive. To heal with heal skill, you require Healers's kits (CRB). Although adventurers tend to rely on spells to heal, the heal skill is one of the best non-combat methods of healing. It is very cheap, which makes it especially useful at low levels.

You can still prepare cure spells, and heal in that manner.

As for atonement, Zon Kuthon likes pain. Dead PCs can't feel pain anymore. So heal them up, so they can feel more pain... Zon Kuthon is a really fun deity to Roleplay a follower of.

I will note that Shelyn, the NG deity of innocent love, art and beauty, is Zon Kuthon's little sister. In the fluff, Zon Kuthon will severly punish his followers if they attack the Followers of Shelyn. Zon Kuthon loves his little sister. This relationship makes role playing a mixed alignment party much more easy, provided the party includes evil characters that worship Zon Kuthon and good characters that follow Shelyn.

[Amaguce]

Thanks for the help! That is what I thought about healing, but then one of my friends told me no healing in general; because of my alignment. He got me confused. I like the options that clerics has and the deities lore is a fun read and gives flavor to the character creation. I thought of the oracle and inquisitor, but I was already working on the cleric, so I stopped. For now I think I will read more about prestige classes and which route I shout take. Or maybe, just make cleric my favorite class. This actually reminds me,Does a favorite class effect multiclassing? I mean with stats.

Apologies for asking a lot of questions, I really like the game and I want to know what I'm doing and how to do it the right way.

Thank you again for the help I really appreciate it!

[Isonaroc]

Amaguce wrote:

Thanks for the help! That is what I thought about healing, but then one of my friends told me no healing in general; because of my alignment.

Yeah, that happens a lot, people sometimes also think that good clerics can't cast inflict wounds either for much the same reason. They're wrong too.

[Arachnofiend]

Worth mentioning that you can just pick up a Wand of Cure Light Wounds and that'll handle almost all of your healing needs. Healing is a grossly inefficient way to use your turns unless you'r spec'd heavily for it (there are a few builds like the Life Oracle that do it really well but I'm pretty sure a Cleric of Zon-Kuthon is not one of them) so you'd be better suited to using your turns to prevent damage from happening either from buffing your allies or debuffing your enemies.

[Dr Styx]

Murder Mudeater wrote:

As a dedicated healer, the "battlefield Surgeon" is one of my favorite traits and exclusive to Zon Kuthon Worshipers. If your character has a high Wisdom (which is almost every cleric), the heal skill is actually very impressive. To heal with heal skill, you require Healers's kits (CRB).

Treat Deadly Wounds wrote:

Treating deadly wounds restores 1 hit point per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount.

So..?

1 hit point per level + Wisdom mod = amount healed
Or
(1 hit point + Wisdom mod) per level = amount healed

Treat Deadly Wounds wrote:

You must expend two uses from a healer's kit to perform this task. You take a –2 penalty on your Heal skill check for each use from the healer's kit that you lack.

So..?

Heal check with two uses is + 4?
Heal check with one uses is +/- 0?
Heal check with no uses is -4?

[Murdock Mudeater]

Dr Styx wrote:

Treat Deadly Wounds wrote:

You must expend two uses from a healer's kit to perform this task. You take a –2 penalty on your Heal skill check for each use from the healer's kit that you lack.

So..?

Heal check with two uses is + 4?
Heal check with one uses is +/- 0?
Heal check with no uses is -4?

Just always have a healer's kit....rules are really murky without one, and the kits are really cheap when compared to potions, scrolls or wands.

As for the amount healed, Heal is a Wis based skill, so with a high wisdom mod (like +4 or +5), beating the DC by 5 isn't very difficult. Treat Deadly wounds requires only DC 20 (so 25 to beat it by 5), which when you add 1 rank, and consider it's a class skill on a wisdom based class, it isn't that difficult to get a high result if you actually try.

The amount healed is 1 per level of the target, plus your wisdom mod. So at first level, a character with 18 wisdom can heal about 5HP per use. Which, sounds minor, but is about what a cure light wounds would heal at first level (1d8+1). And this uses no spell slots, can be attempted within an anti-magic field, and, unlike cure, is not impaired by class abilities which alter healing if the source is negative or positive (it just heals damage).

As for the limitations, the limits are basically 2 key factors. First, you can only attempt this once per day per creature. And Second, it takes an entire hour. So it doesn't work in combat and doesn't work if one creature keeps taking all the damage. As a healer, it lets you save your prepared cure spells for when the party actually needs them in combat.

Zon Kuthon's Battlefield Surgeon trait, allows a second use of treat deadly wounds per creature per day. So it really removes one of the key limitations of treating deadly wounds. So at 1st level, you can effectively heal 10hp per party member without using spells. Time is a factor here, so you can't realistically do this for every party member, but if a specific party member keeps taking damage, it will greatly help save your prepared cures.

Trait info is found here: link

[Murdock Mudeater]

Dr Styx wrote:

Treat Deadly Wounds wrote:

Treating deadly wounds restores 1 hit point per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount.

So..?

1 hit point per level + Wisdom mod = amount healed
Or
(1 hit point + Wisdom mod) per level = amount healed

As I understand it, it's 1xlevel of the target, plus your wisdom if you succeed by 5. So success by 5 on a 2nd level creature would heal 6 hp via an 18 wisdom healer.

Obviously, this means it becomes less useful at higher levels, but that's okay. At higher levels, the heal skill is very much less practical for a cleric, anyway, as they have many spells that outdo the skill. Though it's always handy to have a cheap alternative to using spells, especially if you'll need them later.

Really, most healing spells should be reserved for use in-combat.