any helpful tips for a first time healer?


General Discussion


I am playing a lvl one mystic healer with a one lvl dip in soldier(2nd lvl pc). For a Paladiny/warhammer feel to it. I do a whole lot of moving about the board to not get overran and running to players who may need a healing touch with a few attacks at straggling enemies with spell or guns before ducking for cover.

What tips/trick can you give a new to "healer" gameplay. That someone new to healing might not have grasped just yet.


Mind you, I am not looking for cheats.


Save your healing for between combats or absolute emergencies. Your team will take less damage if the enemy doesn't survive as long. Mystics get a lot of great spells for weakening and manipulating enemies, and can always whack with a staff or shoot with a pistol. Don't forget that.

If you're adding a soldier level or two you shouldn't have a problem with this. In my game, too many of my players are going into mystic/technomancer with a "Full caster" mentality of casting spells every round and wasting half of them.


Yeah, even if you were a full healer (like Cleric or Oracle in PF) it's still, generally, tactically less optimal to run around doing nothing but healing. That's called back-packing, and it's rarely effective.

In SF as a Mystic, you just aren't going to have the juice to do that.

You should primarily be healing out of combat or (ideally) not at all.

In combat, most of your actions should be geared toward defeating the enemy as quickly as possible. Sometimes that means doing damage with weapons, or providing covering/harrying fire. Sometimes it means doing direct damage spells or debuffs. Sometimes it means battlefield control spells (though, there's few enough of those).

In combat, the only time you should actually cast a Mystic Cure is when absolutely necessary.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

The fact that healing hitpoints doesn't spill over into restoring stamina pretty much means that you want to cast Mystic Cure only when someone is dying or both you and an ally have hitpoint damage (since any excess healing can be directed toward yourself, which is a great addition).


On the plus side, since I would tell you that 'shoot it with your rifle!' is going to be your default in combat, its nice that you already have that soldier dip for proficiency.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
ghostunderasheet wrote:

I am playing a lvl one mystic healer with a one lvl dip in soldier(2nd lvl pc). For a Paladiny/warhammer feel to it. I do a whole lot of moving about the board to not get overran and running to players who may need a healing touch with a few attacks at straggling enemies with spell or guns before ducking for cover.

What tips/trick can you give a new to "healer" gameplay. That someone new to healing might not have grasped just yet.

The stamina layer on top of HP (which you can't heal) means a dedicated healbot doesn't work in Starfinder, so it's good that you're going for more of a paladin feel.

Being able to heal yourself as a move action is one of the stronger abilities here, letting you keep fighting in a pinch without sacrificing your standard action attacks. (Much like lay on hands, of course.) This also combines well with life link (just as it did for oradins) letting you transfer an ally's damage to yourself, then heal it with your move action.

Are you going melee or ranged? Light or heavy armor? Further advice will depend on those answers.


Big Lemon wrote:
The fact that healing hitpoints doesn't spill over into restoring stamina pretty much means that you want to cast Mystic Cure only when someone is dying or both you and an ally have hitpoint damage (since any excess healing can be directed toward yourself, which is a great addition).

I did not catch that spill over healing feature. THX.

Arutema wrote:


Being able to heal yourself as a move action is one of the stronger abilities here, letting you keep fighting in a pinch without sacrificing your standard action attacks. (Much like lay on hands, of course.) This also combines well with life link (just as it did for oradins) letting you transfer an ally's damage to yourself, then heal it with your move action.

Are you going melee or ranged? Light or heavy armor? Further advice will depend on those answers.

Healing as a move action sounds great. I am a ranged. so I blast things with my fire guns. Well currantly I am using light armor, but when it is possible I plan on getting into a nice set of power-assist powerarmor. I tend to jump across the battlefield from cover to cover with the use of the jump jets. While administering pain to the enemies when I can hit them and healing if it is really needed. But if I can get away with it I will AoE heal the party after combat most times.

One level mystic healer, one level soldier blitz, who uses ranged weapons and is all about movement and getting to move first. I have mobility and improved initiative as my feats. And I am not strong enough yet to use heavy weaponry effectivily. And I plan one getting the shot on run and spell on run feats as well.


I play a healbot. I use the class feature of spending resolve points to megaheal everyone a lot (also the take hit points from your allies as a nonaction each round). The +2 resolve feat has helped.

I heal in combat and it allows our melee PCs to go toe to toe with some pretty serious opponents they wouldn’t otherwise be able to. They also deal much more damage than all but my high level spells. Definitely works better for me than spending spellpoints on trying to do damage - I generally save that for area effect spells or other situational times.

There’s a weird thing that you can’t heal stamina, so the healer is totally unnecessary for the first few rounds of combat (or often the first few combats, if it’s that kind of a day). It’s important to have something to do in those early rounds of battle or you end up twiddling your thumbs.


Envoys are the ones that heal stamina. And the first few rounds is when I tend to do most my damage for the combat. I tend to shoot and move in most rounds. But thats because my gm loves using hoard tatics.

Community / Forums / Starfinder / Starfinder General Discussion / any helpful tips for a first time healer? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Starfinder General Discussion