"Cure"-type Abilities on Characters

[Rohml]

I started playing Rise of the Runelords in which I noticed Clerics has the "Instead of your first exploration, <do something> <do healing>" abilities and it did carry to the Warpriest of Skull & Shackles but it was dropped when the Cleric character deck was released and even for Wrath of the Righteous base set. Are there reasons for removing this kind of ability is it is considered to overpowered, removed for balance concerns?

I did a couple of customization to existing characters when we played RotR in which the "Instead of your first exploration" we changed it to "At the start of your turn" and made it in a way that you can discard any card. We found ourselves too reliant on that skill and I believe it made the game easier for us. So right now, we are currently playing WotR, we tried using the ability as written and we found out that the "Instead of your first exploration" was rather off-putting for the healer player since he is not able to do anything aside from healing other players and we are concerned for his enjoyment of the game.

I wanted to ask (if it's possible) the design reason why the "Cure"-type ability was dropped for future characters. My purpose is I would like to homebrew-change the existing "Tarlin" character, but I do not want to make him super-OP in healing because otherwise the player will choose Damiel (and that opens a whole lot of canned worms).

Thanks!

[elcoderdude]

I'm thinking this thread belongs in the Home Brew forum, so I flagged it.

Note you *can* explore after you use RotR Kyra's first exploration to heal someone. You just have to play a card in order to explore. Since Kyra can carry 8 blessings -- and, depending on role feats, can get eventually get Saranraes back -- it's not usual for her to heal and explore on the same turn.

Although it's true, in a party of 5 or 6, losing your free exploration is a high penalty. (On the other hand, large parties need less healing.)

I don't think the curing ability was consciously "dropped"; I think the designers just choose to try out different combinations of abilities. Not all clerics have a healing power, but all can use healing spells effectively. (Same with Druids.)

[takaisan]

elcoderdude wrote:

... it's not usual for her to heal and explore on the same turn.

You likely wanted to say "it's not unusual for her". And I agree, a healer will have access to more blessings and can play these for an exploration. Healing is a powerful ability and there are also quite a few boons that allow for it. My favorite are cards with drip healing.

[zeroth_hour2]

We can't really ascertain design intent, so you'll have to see if one of the designers pop in and answer that question.

However, powerful healing powers haven't stopped appearing; Grazzle from the Oracle class deck has one and so does Kasmir in the Witch class deck.

I think the issue though is that you may be taking a lot of damage or you may be overhealing. If you have less than 4-5 cards in your discard pile, you generally don't need a d4+1 healing ability. You say that you are "too reliant on healing" which seems to me that at least one player has a lot of discards in their discard pile at any one time. More experienced groups in general take less damage because they can gauge risk better.

You may also take takaisan's suggestion and use "drip healing" abilities like Varril (Inquisitor class deck)'s "At the start of your explore step, you may recharge a card to allow another character at your location to recharge a random card (□ or 2 random cards) from her discard pile." power

[elcoderdude]

takaisan wrote:

elcoderdude wrote:

... it's not usual for her to heal and explore on the same turn.

You likely wanted to say "it's not unusual for her".

Arg. Of course. Darn one-hour edit limit.