Multi-class Life oracle/paladin (oradin) can be a strong healer.
A paladin with VMC (Variant Multi-Class) Order of the Star Cavalier is a very powerful healer, particularly channeling.
What level?
Mystical Healer is a 3rd party feat that gives a substantial scaling bonus to healing.
I made a fun human paladin that was good at healing, 15 point buy.
Str 14, Dex 13, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 16 (includes +2 from human)
Traits: Sword Scion, Magical Knack (paladin)
1. Fey Foundling
1. Power Attack
3. Extra Lay on Hands
5. Mystical Healer
7. Quicken Channel
If you go the VMC route:
Traits: Magical Lineage (divine favor), Fates Favored
1. Fey Foundling
1. Power Attack
1. VMC Cavalier (Order of the Star Edicts)
3. VMC Cavalier (Challenge)
5. Mystical Healer
7. VMC Cavalier (2nd level Order Ability
9. Quicken Channel (use 4 daily LoH to channel as Move Action)
11. VMC Cavalier (Tactician)
13. Selective Channel or Vital Strike
15. VMC Cavalier (Greater Order Ability, 8th level)
17. Quicken Spell (for Quickened divine favor) or Improved Vital Strike
19. VMC Cavalier (Greater Tactician)
Fey Foundling gives you +2 to each die when you received healing.
Paladins can Lay Hands on themselves for 1d6 per 2 levels as a swift action.
VMC Cavalier adds half your level to your paladin level for Lay on Hands and Channel Energy.
Mystical Healer adds additional dice of healing, based on caster level, which is paladin level-3. For this paladin, that's +1d4 at 5th, +1d6 at 7th, +2d6 at 10th, +3d6 at 13th, +4d6 at 16th.
So, for Lay on Hands and Channel Energy, you'll get:
1. 0
2. 1d6+2
3. 1d6+2
4. 2d6+4
5. 2d6+1d4+6
6. 3d6+1d4+8
7. 6d6+12
8. 7d6+14
9. 8d6+16
10. 9d6+18
11. 11d6+22
12. 12d6+24
13. 12d6+24
14. 14d6+28
15. 15d6+30
16. 16d6+32
17. 16d6+32
18. 17d6+34
19. 18d6+36
20. 19d6+38
Which makes you really durable, since you can self-Lay on Hands as a swift action, and lets you Channel Energy very potently. After 9th level, you can use a Move Action to Channel Energy to heal you and your allies. At 13th, you can use a Standard to Vital Strike (4d6+ with a greatsword) or Selective Channel so you don't heal enemies.
So, the first question you need to answer is, "What do you mean when you say main healer?" What conditions need to be met for you to approve of your guy as a main healer?
examples may be
Just have access to status removal stuff
be able to heal hp damage
must be able to heal 1/2 a characters max HP in a combat 5 times a day.
This question is very important for deciding if a paladin can even meet the criteria and how long it would take for it to do so for you to know if you're okay with a paladin being the "main healer"
Well, if all you want is after combat hp healing, every class with spells can take Cure Light Wounds at level one. And wands of that spell are pretty cheap.
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After combat HP healing, And emergency in combat "Prevent death on next attack" healing. But mostly after combat topping off HP.
Would a Alchemist work with the Wasteland Blighter or Chirurgeon archetypes? Then healing touch and healing bombs and such discoveries.. I love the alchemist.. xD
Healing Bombs are awkward at best, really. You spend a prepared cure extract slot or a cure potion and a bomb to heal one person (if you hit them) for the effect of the extract/spell, doing minimum splash heal. Because it is healing, you do not add INT to it as you would with your bomb damage, so it ends up being rather weak in combat (and requires you to use precise bombs if you want to avoid healing enemies), heavy on your resources, and completely undesirable outside of combat due to more efficient ways of healing.
Healing Touch is better, and the alchemist can cover most of the condition removal your party may need, but you will have to prep extracts carefully. Fortunately, you can rely on mutagen and bombs for most of your combat needs, so is it possible to play a healing alchemist? Yes. Chirurgeon will be necessary due to Breath of Life later on.
If you have some downtime in your games generally, Clone Master may be a fun way to martyr yourself on the frontline with healing and administering cure extracts, or by creating alchemical simulacrums (and doppleganger) to have a full set of identical medics a la Valkyria Chronicles.
Shaman, especially Animist Shaman, is also rather potent at condition removal and healing, I'd prefer it for healing since you can straddle Witch and Oracles while wearing medium armor. Very versatile with your spirit and wandering spirit, too.
If you're starting at level 7, I'd rather go with the Spirit Guide Oracle. You can choose to go double life at the beginning of the day if you think you need tons of channels and double life link. Or you can pick some other spirit and do something else like blasting, if your party isn't really needing all of the heals.
You can go Life Oracle and use your Revelations for healing stuff, then devote your feats and spells to non-healing stuff.
For example, you could build a reach fighting, monster summoning character.
1. Combat Reflexes
1. Spell Focus conjuration
3. Augment Summoning
5. Sacred Summoning
7. Power Attack
Spell Focus conjuration even synergizes with using cure light wounds against undead
Yeah... Fey Foundling is really too good at what it does. I fully expect it to get nerfed some day.
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Or try Spirit Guide archetype for oracle. You can take Life Link and Channels from Shaman with it and still get other stuff from Oracle. You are not tied to life mystery that way.
It's not as strong as pure life oracle healer, but I think it gets the job done. It sacrifices a lot of Revelations, but you can take extra revelations with feats or buy equipment like Soothsayer's Raiment or Ring of Revelation to help it out.
I'm currently building Time Oracle with that sort of setup. Plan is to be little bit of everything. I'm still trying to find way to get Ember Staff work with it to get few fireballs as well.
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I'm not sure if life links stacks, but channels do I believe. It's very powerful healer combination, but playing pure healer is boring.
Also you can switch to different spirits daily to get stuff like Fireballs from Flame spirit. So you are not tied to Life spirit either. I can be very versatile archetype.
Spirit guide. But yeah. You can be double life. It’s a bit of a late bloomer though. If you want to be extra cheesy, combine it with a kitsune and the wrecking mysticism curse to get virtually free feats.
It seems that double life link stacks because they are merely similar abilities, meaning they are not the same thing. The ranges are different and one is a hex while the other is a mystery.
Another good double spirit is heavens, but that’s off topic
meh i never really understood why people want to go after the magical tail feats
Understandable. But when you're basically getting them for free, they're not bad. I think those feats are more about the flavor of being a 9-tailed fox, than meaningful amounts of power.
meh i never really understood why people want to go after the magical tail feats
Well, you go Double Life for the two separate full strength channel pools (at level 11 with a 24 charisma you have 16 6d6 channels!). But since the life mystery and the life spirit have the exact same bonus spells, if you don't trade away your bonus spells for something you're basically wasting a class feature (assuming you want to channel the life spirit all the time.) Wrecking Mysticism is just an efficient way to get something out of redundant bonus spells.
It's not like 2/day Invisibility or Dominate Person as an SLA is a bad thing to have either, when it doesn't cost you anything to get.
Well, if all you want is after combat hp healing, every class with spells can take Cure Light Wounds at level one. And wands of that spell are pretty cheap.
There are quite a few spellcasting classes that don't have access to Cure Light Wounds.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned clerics... there's several different ways you can build them (depending on where you want your balance point to be between melee and casting) but reach clerics can be really effective. Worship a god whose favored weapon has reach, take combat reflexes; that's the basic chassis- use positioning to get free attacks (from attacks of opportunity) for your combat contributions and then you still have your normal actions for casting, channeling, using wands/scrolls, etc (or just making more attacks if you want).
I enjoyed playing a war priest, and did solid healing and damage with even a less than optimal race and build.
Basically half fighter half cleric, get some extra feats and wear full plate; use pretty much any weapon you could ever want along with weapons most people never use, plus you can cast. I like the fact you can magic your own equipment in battle a time or two a day. Suddenly need a holy weapon, bam your weapon is now holy.
If you want to smash skulls and heal, take a few levels in barb and the rest in cleric... Or paladin and change lay on hands to healing punch to the face.
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lol- if you actually want to combine healing with punching people in the face, the sacred fist warpriest archetype isn't as good as it once was but its still a viable option for doing that.
and, if you want a rage healer there are several ways you can do that too... a cleric of Gorum with the destruction[rage] domain (which stacks nicely IMO with the strength[ferocity] domain)- Gorum is neutral so you can still channel positive energy and spontaneously cast cure spells; an inquisitor of Gorum can take the anger inquistion which also grants rage; a sacred servant paladin of Ragathiel can take the destruction[rage] domain too (which is an even more potent option for them than the cleric, though they get it later iirc)... and that's just off the top of my head.
I'm playing the "healer" role in our current campaign as a witch with the hedge witch and herb witch archetypes. The hedge witch provides the ability to spontaneously convert my spells to cure wounds which is in in fight where none of my prepared spells would otherwise be useful. The herb witch archetype has been useful for removing disease, poison and a variety of other conditions.
I don't recommend taking these archetypes together unless you're GM is willing to make some small changes; even if you were to only use one it would still be worth trying to get it altered. In my case I had the completely useless Empathic Healing of the Hedge Witch replaced with the slightly less useless (but much more thematically interesting and appropriate to my character) Witch's Bounty hex and the alchemy bonus of the Cauldron hex changed to a herbalism bonus as we both judged it ridiculous thatthe Herb Witch can use Profession: Herbalism in place of Craft:Alchemy but it forces you to take the Cauldron hex.
Consider the Gravewalker or Cartomancer archetypes as these allow you to deliver touch spells at range. While I don't have either archetype my GM did give me the ability to deliver touch spells at range in place of a familiar and it has been invaluable.
If it's raw damage you want to do then the witch might not be for you. When it comes to combat, I focus on debuffing and crowd control. My spell tend to have a cursing/body-horror theme; while I can really kill anything I can inflict such horrible conditions that dying becomes the preferable option for whatever we're fighting. Occasionally I vomit spiders, much to the disgust of other players.