Never played 4th but I get what your saying. I think the biggest complaint I had form what I read about it was the per day abilities for martial classes. It just didn't make any sense to me.
I don't think it was technically vancian in that one.
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But it is not. HP are a resource which can run out very suddenly just by what awaits you in the next room or cave. As multiple people have already pointed out in this thread, Pathfinder is a game where your heroes don't have plot armor but actually get hurt. As I said, look at the obituary threads to get some excellent examples of how fast that can happen. Hit points should absolutely be the last thing which runs out and is then the sign that it is time to retire for the day.
Right. Which is why I specified 'low on healing' being a sign you should stop for the day rather than 'low on HP'. The two are notably different.
I agree you should probably start every fight at full HP or thereabouts, and am aware it can go down quick, but Pathfinder is also and always has been a game of resource attrition, and having to invest resources into recovering lost HP is intended to be a part of that.
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But it is not. HP are a resource which can run out very suddenly just by what awaits you in the next room or cave. As multiple people have already pointed out in this thread, Pathfinder is a game where your heroes don't have plot armor but actually get hurt. As I said, look at the obituary threads to get some excellent examples of how fast that can happen. Hit points should absolutely be the last thing which runs out and is then the sign that it is time to retire for the day.Right. Which is why I specified 'low on healing' being a sign you should stop for the day rather than 'low on HP'. The two are notably different.
I agree you should probably start every fight at full HP or thereabouts, and am aware it can go down quick, but Pathfinder is also and always has been a game of resource attrition, and having to invest resources into recovering lost HP is intended to be a part of that.
CLW wands are resources. Sure, very cheap ones and I am game about using more high-level resources to replace them in PF2E, but overall those non-class dependent resources are what makes possible longer adventuring days and more varied class compositions. I am not here to defend the CLW wand use to the death, but I fear that the new paradigm with resonance will result in people being herded into the cleric class against their will and shorter adventuring days.
I know that you don't want that. But if you read earlier comments, you have others who are apparently under the delusion that Pathfinder is a simulation of Die Hard.
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CLW wands are resources.
I don't feel like, by the time you're 10th level, Wands of CLW in PF1 are a meaningful resource expenditure. I'm perfectly fine with non-class healing methods, though, they just need to cost something.
Sure, very cheap ones and I am game about using more high-level resources to replace them in PF2E, but overall those non-class dependent resources are what makes possible longer adventuring days and more varied class compositions. I am not here to defend the CLW wand use to the death, but because I fear that the new paradigm with resonance will be people being herded into the cleric class against their will and shorter adventuring days.
See, I'd be much more worried about that if Mark Seifter hadn't made it very clear you could make a dedicated healer of any Class (Barbarian included) and that pretty much any Alchemist, Bard, Druid, or Paladin (in addition to Cleric) could be a perfectly serviceable main healer. With 5/12 Classes, anyone who invests in the right non-Class stuff, and some consumables actually better for their level than they were at party healing (a Wand of Heal can presumably use the 3 Action version and heal everyone...even assuming only Level 3 Heal, that'd probably be at least 10 points to the whole party per casting, and thus per Resonance), I'm just not that worried about someone needing to play a Cleric.
Someone 'needing to play a healer' is maybe a concern, but honestly, you needed someone for condition removal in PF1, and this isn't all that different.
I know that you don't want that. But if you read earlier comments, you have others who are apparently under the delusion that Pathfinder is a simulation of Die Hard.
I suspect they'll be disappointed.
Need d20 modern for John Mcclain come on now hes clearly a level 10 tough hero. (at least by the later movies probably 5-7 in the first.)
See, I'd be much more worried about that if Mark Seifter hadn't made it very clear you could make a dedicated healer of any Class (Barbarian included) and that pretty much any Alchemist, Bard, Druid, or Paladin (in addition to Cleric) could be a perfectly serviceable main healer. With 5/12 Classes, anyone who invests in the right non-Class stuff, and some consumables actually better for their level than they were at party healing (a Wand of Heal can presumably use the 3 Action version and heal everyone...even assuming only Level 3 Heal, that'd probably be at least 10 points to the whole party per casting, and thus per Resonance), I'm just not that worried about someone needing to play a Cleric.
Someone 'needing to play a healer' is maybe a concern, but honestly, you needed someone for condition removal in PF1, and this isn't all that different.
Yeah, I guess my concern is more about what you said in your last paragraph (and shorter adventuring days overall with resonance). We'll see in a month and a few days. You can be sure that checking for the resonance rules and trying to find out what healing resources are available aside from dedicated classes will be about the second thing I do after looking at the Sorcerer, as soon as I get my hands on the playtest PDF.
Speaking about Mcclain, sometime I personally feel it brings down the game a bit that the battles don't seem bloody enough. Sure you can describe it as in role-play it, and I'm not suggesting tracking every hit location and it's severity it great detail. But, wouldn't it be interesting if instead of having to spend all of this time and energy discussing healing and what is the best approach to it you could just choose to ignore a wound and keep going. Maybe, something along the lines of taking an injury but ignoring the damage, in exchange later that untreated wound comes back to haunt you (like at the end of the game season) doing 50% more damage and having a small chance of inflicting permanent damage (only a small amount), call it a bad wound or scar.
I like the idea, but maybe that's just me.
For HP to be the very last thing you ever worry about running out of, in terms of resources. That seems seriously wrong.
For me, that's exactly what I want.
Speaking about Mcclain, sometime I personally feel it brings down the game a bit that the battles don't seem bloody enough. Sure you can describe it as in role-play it, and I'm not suggesting tracking every hit and location and it's severity it great detail. But, wouldn't it be interesting if instead of having to spend all of this time and energy discussing healing and what is the best approach to it you could just choose to ignore a wound and keep going. Maybe something along the lines of taking an injury but ignoring the damage, in exchange later that untreated wound comes back to haunt you (like at the end of the game season) doing 50% more damage and having a small chance of inflicting permanent damage (only a small amount), call it a bad wound or scar.
I like the idea, but maybe that's just me.
I've seen home brewed sub-systems like that. Probably could google something on redditrpg.
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Yeah, I guess my concern is more about what you said in your last paragraph (and shorter adventuring days overall with resonance). We'll see in a month and a few days. You can be sure that checking for the resonance rules and trying to find out what healing resources are available aside from dedicated classes will be about the second thing I do after looking at the Sorcerer, as soon as I get my hands on the playtest PDF.
I'd definitely also take a look at WBL while doing that...consumables that can be used for healing are only properly judged when you know how many you can afford. Items like the Staff of Healing are also worth a look, since they can allow a Wizard or Sorcerer to be the primary healer with GP and some spell investment. Skill Feats also definitely warrant a look.
We do also know that daily 'natural' healing is a bit better (especially at higher levels) due to it now being Level x Con Mod (min 1 on Con Mod for this purpose), which makes it a much more substantial amount (this actually helps quite a lot with going into that last fight of the day a tad low on healing).
Why do you never want to worry about losing one of the fundamental resources of the game?For HP to be the very last thing you ever worry about running out of, in terms of resources. That seems seriously wrong.For me, that's exactly what I want.
Because I don't like when my character dies, or is knocked out, or unable to act , or becomes a liability that the rest of the party has to prop up.
And I'm not saying I don't want to ever take HP damage, I'm saying I want to be able to enter each fight with my full HP, and only worry about potentially being knocked out based on the events of single combat.
I'm a big fan of Starfinder for this, because you can take a 10 minute rest, spend a point of resolve and be back to full "hp" (stamina). I don't mind spending a resource to do so, but there's a significant difference between "I need to spend several points of resonance to activate wands to heal myself or force someone else to spend several to heal me" versus "I spend one point of this limited resource to heal up to full".
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The problem's that it's really easy to see that the wand of cure light is significantly stronger than any alternatives, and thus everyone uses it. When it gets to a point where it's effectively constant free healing outside of combat, the group realizes that even if no one's said it, and thus tactics automatically change to accommodate that.
The group's never actually said anything about any of this, it's just their tactics automatically changed thanks to infinite out-of-combat healing.
Then Delete CLW as a WAND option. I see no reason or stories to suggest that everyone is walking around with permanent Mage Armor due to it being a wand. Or Shield. Why change the entire system if it's just 1 thing that's causing such a problem.
Oh no can't remove it from the game or change this 1 problem because, Reasons.
What still floors me is the people that will insist on rolling all their uses individually so they don't "Overheal" or something.
I'm sorry I'm not trying to say badwrongfun, but how other people play, with bloody spreadsheets instead of character sheets?
You don't use a spreadsheet for making your characters? Spreadsheets are good. They automatically calculate your CMB, CMD, etc. Saves a lot of tedious book-keeping.
To me, it sounds like you're engaged in an optimization puzzle just as tedious as the "How can we spend the fewest resources?" puzzle the game is built around:
"It would be slightly quicker if we got a Wand of Cure Moderate Wounds instead of two Wands of Cure Light Wounds, and would only cost an extra 3000gp!"
"But if we had two people using wands, we could heal two people at once!"
"No, the important thing is how many dice we roll at once. See, if we roll them one at a time, that's slow..."
"But if we roll too many, adding up all those numbers might be even slower..."
Who cares if it takes a few seconds longer or shorter for someone to do it the way they like doing it? If they think, "Is it worth a 15gp charge if I'm only 2HP from maximum?" is an interesting decision, let them have their fun.Not that I've done it with dice for a long time. I just said, "Out of combat, wands of CLW heal 6 points per charge. Work out how many you need and cross them off."
And I tended to make sure they always had enough wands, because otherwise they might need to stop and rest in the middle of an adventure, and that really kills the pacing.
Well for one, I play online most the time so online sheets of some sites do the math for me. I keep up a personal word doc to make sure I don't lose stuff but that's neither here nor there I suppose.
As for the actual point, gah I don't know. I find it bloody weird when people math out how much each Charge of the wand is and then go "HMMMM Is this action I'm going to do More or Less than the cost of a CLW charge?"
That just seems incredibly number crunching to the point I question how the REST of the game is run. Like if the Wizard has decided that casting a spell is more wasteful than using the Healing Stick, the hell do they do on their TURN? Just sit there? Does the Sorcerer just use crossbows until they get to the boss? Does the character that built for traps just not give a toss anymore, shove the Barbarian into traps and tells them to suck it up, we have Infinite health? Just, what the heck happens at these tables where EVERYTHING seems to have gain/loss fully mathed out?
My groups pick up 1 wand if we don't have a cleric or someone specializing in healing/buffs. And we tend to use it every 2-3 fights because we'd like to TRY and figure out ways of not taking damage in the first place. And even then, we tend to bring some potions and a prepared spell or two just in case. Bob took X damage, hey just roll 3 dice at once for CLW wand so we can keep going.
That's how my groups and I handle it, and I tend to lower the amount of charges the wands have anyway. It just annoys me to no end that this way of playing seems to be the WRONG way to play when it comes to CLW wands and we should feel bad.
Anyhoo, I was under impression that cure wound wands isn't the problem, problem is that its better to buy cure light wounds wand rather than cure moderate wounds?
Like, won't resonance system still allow wand to be used to cure folks to max health if wands still use charges?
The Solution is that with Resonance, you have a smaller pool of uses instead of a whooping 50. So you should more than likely use the best version you can get your hands on. In Theory.
So rather than having infinite HP because you bought 20 of the wands, you'll have; Lets go with Fighter and not mess with CHA and level 5.
5 Uses of the wand per day. Possibly less depending on how much they want to spend/save for other magic items.
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Anyhoo, I was under impression that cure wound wands isn't the problem, problem is that its better to buy cure light wounds wand rather than cure moderate wounds?
Like, won't resonance system still allow wand to be used to cure folks to max health if wands still use charges?
As I see it there are two separate problems-
1) CLW wands are so cheap, at some point it requires excessive hoop jumping to keep the PCs from being at full health before every fight if they have had time to prepare.
2) Higher level wands are so expensive, that it doesn't even make sense that they exist. Who would buy a 11,250 gold wand of Cure Serious when 3 750gp CLW wands do just as well. Who would invest the resources into making the 11k wand?
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Do we know though that wands can be only used as much as you have resonance? Staffs seemed to have charges you just recharged them with resonance.
That said, it really depends on how many healing methods there are available. If there are enough many varieties available, then you should be able to heal well with combination of them even without cleric.
@PossibleCabbage: Yeah, magic item material gold costs are in general very absurd for minor effects they do.
Anyhoo, I feel like pointing out that I'm under impression that 15 minute adventuring days are about "I can't nova anymore, so I'm out" not "I'm almost dead, I'm out". Like if case is latter, then of course party should retreat, but I myself haven't seen parties that do former though I do keep hearing internet stories about them ._.
Like I've noticed that some people seem to assume that if players complete dungeons in one adventuring day, they are brutally beaten almost dead to the pulp desperately hoping for good rolls. I was more thinking of "So adventurers win all encounters without that many problems, maybe take resources or maybe lose best spells before final boss, but otherwise they are good to go without problems"
For me I am a big fan of all those things because they are inevitably the stories me and my friends talk about for years to come. Not once have I reminisced about the fights or adventuring days that didn't really have much peril but almost every time we get together to talk about these things we remember the time Volosh was knocked unconscious and needed dragging out of the fire, or how Rockingham with only 6HP left interrupted the sacrificial rite when the rest of the party was ready to forsake their moral duty for fear of their lives. Tension made those moments and being full hp for every encounter sacrifices a lot of that tension for basically nothing.
On the other hand we would be idiots to not use healing when available, so the healing paradigm off 3.x has given us less of those moments than in harsher games (oh man the amount of Dark Heresy stories we have, because of the consequences in that game despite being dark and gritty and shades of grey my characters have felt more Heroic than in Pathfinder were you'd expect to find heroes.)
You can easily have peril within a fight, within needing to enter it at diminished HP. Status conditions, big hits, etc have the same effect without necessarily being as risky between multiple fights. And while you might like that risk, I hate it. And the two play styles aren't really able to be combined. Neither one is right or wrong, but they can't both be mutually supported. And this is strong reason why I'm unlikely to transfer to PF2.
While I do like some of the things they have been discussed as improvements to PF2, there are some very fundamental things that I can't accept that will likely mean I wont adopt PF2. Which is fine, I realize the game doesn't have to cater to what I want. But it does mean I can choose not to play it or support it.
2) Higher level wands are so expensive, that it doesn't even make sense that they exist. Who would buy a 11,250 gold wand of Cure Serious when 3 750gp CLW wands do just as well. Who would invest the resources into making the 11k wand?
Someone that wants to heal more HP mid fight to get someone back on their feet rather than spend 3 turns doing so? That and with crafting rules, you can probably get it down cheaper than that I would think.
2) Higher level wands are so expensive, that it doesn't even make sense that they exist. Who would buy a 11,250 gold wand of Cure Serious when 3 750gp CLW wands do just as well. Who would invest the resources into making the 11k wand?Someone that wants to heal more HP mid fight to get someone back on their feet rather than spend 3 turns doing so?
From a mathematical perspective, it's a losing proposition. Monsters (at least in PF1) inflict more damage per hit than a level appropriate wand can possibly heal.
That's why people say that you shouldn't heal in combat, short of keeping someone from dying. And in that sort of case you expect that person to disengage and attempt to get out of harms way.
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You can easily have peril within a fight, within needing to enter it at diminished HP. Status conditions, big hits, etc have the same effect without necessarily being as risky between multiple fights. And while you might like that risk, I hate it. And the two play styles aren't really able to be combined. Neither one is right or wrong, but they can't both be mutually supported. And this is strong reason why I'm unlikely to transfer to PF2.
I'm not so sure they can't support both. It just takes a conscious choice to prioritize full health between fights. That might come at the expense of other priorities, but it sounds doable. Players who prioritize high armor over full health are going to make different choices.
2) Higher level wands are so expensive, that it doesn't even make sense that they exist. Who would buy a 11,250 gold wand of Cure Serious when 3 750gp CLW wands do just as well. Who would invest the resources into making the 11k wand?Someone that wants to heal more HP mid fight to get someone back on their feet rather than spend 3 turns doing so? That and with crafting rules, you can probably get it down cheaper than that I would think.
I think you get into a question of frequency though. So let's assume the party needs emergency healing short of what can be provided with class features. But how often is this going to happen over the course of the campaign? Probably not 50 times. It's probably better to just drop 4500 gold on a six pack of CSW potions since if emergencies are coming up that often, what you need is not more healing.
I mean, eventually 3d8+6 is not exactly going to get you out of danger. So the leftover charges on your wand are going to go to waste.
Actual healing spells, scrolls or potions would be better for emergency healing that wands though <_< And much cheaper, wands are better for out of combat heal
Who makes scrolls of Cure anything though? And Potions take... odd actions to apply to someone else if I recall? Spells are a good use, I can't argue that.
2) Higher level wands are so expensive, that it doesn't even make sense that they exist. Who would buy a 11,250 gold wand of Cure Serious when 3 750gp CLW wands do just as well. Who would invest the resources into making the 11k wand?Someone that wants to heal more HP mid fight to get someone back on their feet rather than spend 3 turns doing so?From a mathematical perspective, it's a losing proposition. Monsters (at least in PF1) inflict more damage per hit than a level appropriate wand can possibly heal.
That's why people say that you shouldn't heal in combat, short of keeping someone from dying. And in that sort of case you expect that person to disengage and attempt to get out of harms way.
And yet, from a player perspective, that should be MY choice to make not the math's. If I feel that using a Wand of Cure Serious Wounds is my best option, I will go over and do it.
Am I doing it every round? I should hope not, I don't want to play the healbot. But if I have a wand and no spells, I'll go over and use it on the person that's badly hurt to buy them maybe another turn. Or enough time for someone with better options to figure out how to get us out of this mess.
OR! OR we just suck up the damage and CLW spam. Because the math said so.
Yeah Math, get out of here, I've already gone on record that I dislike doing the community meta. I pick odd feats, of course I'm going to use wands badly.
2) Higher level wands are so expensive, that it doesn't even make sense that they exist. Who would buy a 11,250 gold wand of Cure Serious when 3 750gp CLW wands do just as well. Who would invest the resources into making the 11k wand?Someone that wants to heal more HP mid fight to get someone back on their feet rather than spend 3 turns doing so? That and with crafting rules, you can probably get it down cheaper than that I would think.I think you get into a question of frequency though. So let's assume the party needs emergency healing short of what can be provided with class features. But how often is this going to happen over the course of the campaign? Probably not 50 times. It's probably better to just drop 4500 gold on a six pack of CSW potions since if emergencies are coming up that often, what you need is not more healing.
I mean, eventually 3d8+6 is not exactly going to get you out of danger. So the leftover charges on your wand are going to go to waste.
Probably not 50 times you're right. But I've already said that my games don't HAVE 50 charges so that might be a different argument point for me. Who needs 50 casts of any spell? "But CLW...", maybe figure out how to take LESS damage and maybe you wouldn't need to spam it.
And even then, it's a game where I get to make choices. If you guys can sit down and math out the BEST way to break the game wide open and then complain that you CAN break the game wide open; I'm entirely in my right to just ignore that math and do what I feel is right/fun for me and my character.
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Then you should prefer the new system. Because right now with only 2 variables it is pretty clear that CLW is the better option. By far. The maths is making that choice. With three variables, one of which ties into all your other magical variables, the optimal solution is a lot less clear and is far more of a player choice.
And yet, from a player perspective, that should be MY choice to make not the math's. If I feel that using a Wand of Cure Serious Wounds is my best option, I will go over and do it.
I don't prefer the new system because it feels like I'm being punished for what the community has done. It never came up in my games, why should I be forced to fix what isn't broken at my table?
And what do you mean two options? There's CLW Wand, Potions, Abilities, Spells, Magic items that might heal, and any homebrew the table has.
But no, I might 100% pick the best option. I'll need CLW wands, THESE feats, THESE magic items, and THIS build. I'm just doing it wrong otherwise.
How about I just GIVE you guys the character sheets then as apparently, the community wants to play my characters for me from what I see.
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Two variables, not two options. There are many possible options, but with only two variables, there are very few "good" options. More variables, means more "good" options.
If adventure designers don't feel as much pressure to design to the one option the community has gravitated toward, that will lead to more varied encounters and adventures in published material for you and your group.
Two variables, not two options. There are many possible options, but with only two variables, there are very few "good" options. More variables, means more "good" options.
If adventure designers don't feel as much pressure to design to the one option the community has gravitated toward, that will lead to more varied encounters and adventures in published material for you and your group.
More "Good" options.
But I have no faith in "Good" options to be picked up. I have faith the community with math out the "Best" options and the cycle will repeat to the point adventure designers are back to designing to the option the community has gravitated towards, leading to the SAME type of encounters and adventures in published material.
Material that which we are free to edit to what we want anyway. So this all doesn't effect me and my tables anyway.
I'm done. I'll let you all get back to wallowing in a problem you caused for yourselves and will continue to keep causing. PF2 will fix nothing when it comes to group think and expectations.
Wow, I had never done the math on Cure X Wounds Wands. CLW is clearly the cheapest at 15 GP per healing die. And then they are 45, 75, and 105 gp per die of healing even with the +4 on that last one there is no reason to get a higher level Cure wound. Ok I see what the issue is. Might as well buy 28 CLW and heal an average of 7700 hp of damage, rather then 1 CCW and heal an average of 1100 hp.
Edit: fixed the typo on CCW.
Risky within fights is just escalation to make anything challenging to me. Even then you don't get any "man we took a beating but need to press on" moments with full healing.
Not true.
If you put a time table on certain things, the group doesn't have time to use CLW wand to heal up between combats. But I also believe that's something to be used to sparingly.
I as a player, want and expect, to be at full health between fights most of the time, with some exceptions in certain scenarios. Again, it's why I'm a fan of Starfinder. If I have 10 mins between fights, I should be at full "health" IMO.
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Two variables, not two options. There are many possible options, but with only two variables, there are very few "good" options. More variables, means more "good" options.
If adventure designers don't feel as much pressure to design to the one option the community has gravitated toward, that will lead to more varied encounters and adventures in published material for you and your group.
More "Good" options.
But I have no faith in "Good" options to be picked up. I have faith the community with math out the "Best" options and the cycle will repeat to the point adventure designers are back to designing to the option the community has gravitated towards, leading to the SAME type of encounters and adventures in published material.
That is a bad assumption. Optimization problems become more complex with more variables, and different solutions exist for people with different value functions. Yes, there will be "best" options. But there will be "best hp for your gold!" options alongside "best hp for your resonance!" and "best hp for your feats!" which works out a lot better.
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2) Higher level wands are so expensive, that it doesn't even make sense that they exist. Who would buy a 11,250 gold wand of Cure Serious when 3 750gp CLW wands do just as well. Who would invest the resources into making the 11k wand?Someone that wants to heal more HP mid fight to get someone back on their feet rather than spend 3 turns doing so?From a mathematical perspective, it's a losing proposition. Monsters (at least in PF1) inflict more damage per hit than a level appropriate wand can possibly heal.
That's why people say that you shouldn't heal in combat, short of keeping someone from dying. And in that sort of case you expect that person to disengage and attempt to get out of harms way.
And yet, from a player perspective, that should be MY choice to make not the math's. If I feel that using a Wand of Cure Serious Wounds is my best option, I will go over and do it.
Am I doing it every round? I should hope not, I don't want to play the healbot. But if I have a wand and no spells, I'll go over and use it on the person that's badly hurt to buy them maybe another turn. Or enough time for someone with better options to figure out how to get us out of this mess.
OR! OR we just suck up the damage and CLW spam. Because the math said so.
Yeah Math, get out of here, I've already gone on record that I dislike doing the community meta. I pick odd feats, of course I'm going to use wands badly.
I like math. I mope at the rejection.
Okay, enough moping. Putting on my professional mathematician hat, I point out that what Claxon called "a mathematical perspective" is merely one mathematical model of combat. Apply the wrong mathematical model and get the wrong conclusion.
Consider a 7th-level fight that occurred in the Hook Mountain Massacre module. The party was against some Kreeg ogre fighters armed with ogre hooks, Melee +1 ogre hook +17/12 (2d8+14/19-20/x3). Those ogre hooks did an averge of 63 damage on a critical hit, and the ogres had learned Improved Critical(Ogre Hook) to expand their crit range. My monk ranger had 62 hp, the battle oracle had 84 hp, and the rest of the party was a rogue, wizard, and druid. The ranger and the oracle were the front line.
Inevitably, a Kreeg ogre succeeded at a crit. Fortunately, it was against the oracle. She used an oracle ability to safely charge backwards and spent 2 rounds healing herself. Then she returned to the front line. Later, another ogre succeeded on a crit against the oracle, for a repeat of in-combat healing.
In that combat, letting the battle oracle risk the critical hits was the optimal tactic, despite requiring in-combat healing. Not only could she take 63 damage without dying or falling unconscious, but she also had the highest AC. Any mathematical model that says not to heal her in combat is wrong.
I remember an encounter I played in which was basically a beach landing with our party on the defense. The early stages of the fight basically turned into a snipe battle between the archer on our side and a blasty sorcerer on the other. I, as the support witch, basically used up a lot of my spell slots to keep the archer from biting it with heals while the two of them traded arrow for spell.
It was fun.
This is a tangent but it was a sudden attack on an open beach. In any case my support witch had a summoned crocodile and a vomit swarm waiting for the opposition as soon as they landed.
Back to CLW. Cleric on a stick is something that is kinda annoying in my view and I'm more than willing to give Resonance a shot after playing with it when the playtest comes out.
In any case if people do feel constrained by resonance then an easy fix is to just increase the amount of resonance.
In any case if people do feel constrained by resonance then an easy fix is to just increase the amount of resonance.
Indeed, I think "houseruling the amount of resonance one gets" is a better way to control how much magic there is in a game, in case someone wants to run a game in an especially high or low magic setting than "micromanaging what there is for sale."
Like PF1 does not work especially well for "low magic settings" and this is eminently correctable. If you set it so resonance is an extremely precious quantity, for example, you can still have the healstick but it will no longer be a go-to answer.
Simply increasing resonance by a flat amount seems like it could have unintended consequences, like firing off powerful weapon effects round after round.
It's not a good solution if you just want to increase people's capacity to use wands and consumables.
Since it only one spell really has the biggest issues with regards to Wands and the costs associated with it, it's possible to work around that in regards to resonance. Perhaps like this?
Wand of Healing Item 2+
Invested, Magical, Necromancy, Wand
Method of Use held, 1 hand; Bulk 1
Activation: Empower Wand (1 RP)
Made of ivory, white wood or milk quartz, this wand nevertheless functions as a wand of healing. When you empower the wand, you may cast the spell heal a number of times equal to the maximum charges for the wand. The level of the heal spell is equal to the maximum level that the user can cast when the user empowers the wand. If the character cannot cast heal when empowering the wand of healing, the wand casts all charges at the lowest spell level. Higher level wands can carry more charges.
Type minor; Level 2; Price 100gp; Maximum Charges 3
Type moderate; Level 8; Price 4,000gp; Maximum Charges 6 (2 RP)
Type major; Level 14; Price 30,000gp; Maximum Charges 10 (3 RP)
Roughly speaking, tie the number of charges to the price instead of the level of the spell, incentivizing players to buy higher level wands so their healer can empower the wand with high level healing and also cast more charges of it. That or know a high level caster that will empower a wand for GP for parties in need of healing without access to high level heal spells.
This could help with all wand types as well, where the investment of RP starts to outweigh the healing provided unless they access higher heal spells or increase the charges of the wand so they can heal more reliably. May be some problems but just a thought on possible balancing ideas.
I like math. I mope at the rejection.
Okay, enough moping. Putting on my professional mathematician hat, I point out that what Claxon called "a mathematical perspective" is merely one mathematical model of combat. Apply the wrong mathematical model and get the wrong conclusion.
Consider a 7th-level fight that occurred in the Hook Mountain Massacre module. The party was against some...
To be clear, I'm not saying you shouldn't heal in the situation you described.
But you we're also in a tough situation were any other character would have been unconscious and no one could take 2 critical hits.
The odds in this case we're heavily stacked against you making in combat healing necessary.
What I was suggesting was more the short hand version, which is:
Don't heal in combat*
*Caveats not included
There are lots of specific circumstances which change the balance, but in general a single hit from a monster does more than you can heal so it's better to take the monster out or control it to prevent it from dealing damage than it is to try to "out heal".
But in a situation were most of the party can be knocked unconscious or killed outright form a single crit, that definitely means different tactics are required from a normal situation.
But you're situation here does help to illustrate a point, which is that if you hadn't entered into that combat with full health, likely the first person to take a hit would have been outright dead.
And that's the kind of reason why I like to be able to enter combats at full health.
I don't mind resources attrition, especially of offensive resources. But I don't really care for it with the one resource that controls my character being alive or able to act.
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CLW wands helped parties with no dedicated healer to survive the encounters without feeling like they could have to say goodbye to their character in any encounter beyond the second (or even the first)
I feel that in PF2 having a dedicated healer is compulsory. I do not like that feeling
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I've always liked the idea of attrition-based encounters that are designed to use up resources, but I also understand the "its extremely dangerous to not heal to full" mentality. In general I like the idea behind the various short-rest mechanics that have been in various versions/derivatives of the game.
I don't even see the point of the short-rest requiring a resource (healing surges, resolve point). Just "if its safe to take a ~5min rest, you're healed to full. No other resources reset." We'll stay in-combat/initiative for at least one full round after the last known threat drops to allow for in-combat healing/perception to decide if its safe to rest. If people are worried about patrols/pulling the entire complex/etc that should shape their tactics and their approach from the beginning.
When healing resources/consumables are being weighed against the action-cost of the in-combat setting, I feel most factors work out in ways that support the stories I enjoy telling.