Non-Cleric Healer type decks


Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion

Liberty's Edge

Hi all,

Need your recommendation on my next class deck purchase. If I want a healer type deck, aside from the obvious 'cleric' class deck, which ones are out there that you can recommend?

Lone Shark Games

Oracle, Druid, Inquisitor, and even Witch all have solid healer options in them.

Which you should do depends a lot on your playstyle, and how much healing you really need.


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I can confirm that for large (~5 characters) groups, Alahazra (Oracle) is great, Grazzle (Oracle) is even better (see recent thread) and Varril (Inquisitor) is just an über-monstruous healer.

Liberty's Edge

Would the alchemist and goblins burn have any good healers?

Grand Lodge

My first look at Alchemist says Damiel looks like a good healer - recharges his spells automatically and has 2 Cures up front, on top of his recharging of alchemicals (like the healing potion). Can't say that either of the others looked all that for it, but I'm going to try out Damiel this week in Season of Plundered Tombs as the party healer, so we'll see how it goes. :)


Goblin Burns goes about it a little differently at times, but the spells are there to support that role. Poog allows people to recharge cards from discard if they play a blessing on him, for a slow trickle heal which is nice. The deck itself has Cure(B), Cauterize(2), and Breath of Life(6) for direct heals. Cauterize has to be the best heal for a goblin deck ever btw, discard 1 card to heal, makes me laugh every time as it's so thematic. Dogfinder(B) (goblin only heal if memory serves) and Healing Potion(1) for banish on use Item heals.

I don't think I'd have a problem fill a secondary healer slot with any of the Goblin Burns characters, but if you are wanting a primary healer I'd definitely go with Poog. That trickle heal is going to go a long way for keeping everyone topped up.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Oracle, Oracle, ORACLE!


Why Varril? Give 3 or more cure spells to Varril, and have him take all cards feats in blessings, then spells.

Game: Each turn you move towards the most injured and have him heal 2 cards (doing so you recharge one useless card and maybe draw another if you cleverly took the Knight of the Rose role). If needed, cast a cure on the guy. Then if needed cast cure on yourself to recharge cures and blessings (if needed, drop a blessing to ensure). Explore. Recharge non-spell non-blessing card to use divine to acquire or defeat. After defeating bane (with blessings if needed), recharge non-cure spell to reexplore. Anytime you need to make a check during someone else's turn, recharge a non-spell non-blessing card.

Result, your deck is cycling like hell (just keep one weapon handy), so you nearly always have cures and blessings in hand (all other cards are just there to be recharged). You cure a minimum of 2 cards each turn (but more like 4 from experience), and you can support any other characters via blessings.

Add a Holy Feast and nobody will ever die. And with your weapon and blessings and using divine for strength, you are actually able to fight too... and defeat barrier... and close locations...


Frencois wrote:
Why Varril? Give 3 or more cure spells to Varril, and have him take all cards feats in blessings, then spells.

That's not always possible (OP play), though if you're in box play you almost always give 2-3 Cures to a dedicated healer who doesn't have any special powers to bypass having to cycle them.

Varril does have a very high cycle velocity. I actually dislike building him as a healbot though since he can be a problem solver for anything else your party is missing, and he can't really do both at once (due to the fact that he almost has to recharge a card to make any type of check, so his hand size is the limiting factor, hand size 7 isn't enough :( )

Cure speed is also a thing - despite the fact that Kyra has a power that heals every turn, I still carry a Cure for emergency triage.

I like drip heals, but the drip heal powers can be hard to activate.

Grand Lodge

Any character with a spell slot and a basic cure spell *can* heal, although oviously not as well as a true healer. We have run alchemists and monks with this approach, since they have Cure in their decks, and it works well enough, especially if other characters play a little conservatively or have Staffs of Minor Healing, Surgeons, etc.

You do gain some risk in people being too bold discarding blessings and allies and then having to slow way down due to small decks, but you can gain more combat potency.


I like the Warpriest deck.

Oloch. He can heal (discarding an armor). He can hit things. If bad things hit his buddy at his location, you can instead discard one card and he will hit the things for you. Hard.


IronGiant wrote:

I like the Warpriest deck.

Oloch. He can heal (discarding an armor). He can hit things. If bad things hit his buddy at his location, you can instead discard one card and he will hit the things for you. Hard.

Those are two different Olochs you're talking about. Healy Oloch is in S&S and pinch-hitter Oloch is the Class Deck version.

Scarab Sages

Oracle is good. Warpriest is decent. I haven't been too impressed with the healing in the Druid deck, but I haven't played it to later levels, either.

Lone Shark Games

Maznar's a very solid Divine caster and helpful dwarf to have around, unlikely to fail a Cure recharge even at low AD. Even on Lini I never felt low on healing.

Druid doesn't start off as strong at healing, but I never felt low on healing, and at AD 5 it gets both Breath of Life and Ring of Regeneration.

That said, if you're looking for the most cures possible - consider a different deck.


IronGiant wrote:

I like the Warpriest deck.

Oloch. He can heal (discarding an armor). He can hit things. If bad things hit his buddy at his location, you can instead discard one card and he will hit the things for you. Hard.

Whoops, my bad. I was indeed mixing them up.... The Warpriest Oloch doesn't have the heal ability....

Scarab Sages

It's not really an issue of "most cures possible" so much as it is the fact that there's only one basic cure spell in the deck. Low-level characters will often fail their recharge checks on that one cure spell, making two the minimum for an effective healer that doesn't have healing powers on their character card. With just one, you pretty much have a one-shot with a chance of seeing that again. Maybe. If you cycle through the deck in one game. Even the Bard deck has better healing.


Non OP mostly (but works for OP too): always start a newbee party with two cures in the party (even if in different characters), and then immediately give them both to whomever has the best chance of recharging them.

Especially true if you play our favorite RPG houserule (with random basic cards for starting decks).

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