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Below is a list of all of the healing classes and methods of healing ranked from best to worst, at least in my eyes.
By far the best healer in the game. Channel energy allowing you to use your max heals 3 + CHA times a day, along with the variou spell slots allows for a goodly amount. If you choose a goddess with the healing domain (which means Pharasma or Saranae currently), Healer's Blessing and Healing font especially (use your spell points to heal) adds even more healing. Healing hands adds an extra 1d8 (2d8 at 10th) to targeted heals. Sadly, Paizo got rid of spontaneous heals, so if you want to use the spell slots for healing.
Paladin, you say? Ranked just below cleric? Yes. For one reason, lay on hands and channel life (turning your spell points into full heals). Hospice knight is good until you get channel life, but be sure to retrain it afterwards. Mercies are nice to get rid of status effects, although not as well as a divine caster. That said, you could multiclass into cleric eventually to get actual spells, and if you want to be the main healer you will want to.
The choice between sorcerer and drud was close, but eventually I went with sorcerer being the slightly better healer. The sorcerer can be the main healer... eventually. Both Divine and Primal has heal on its list, and sorcerer edges out druid simply because of the spontaneous heighten. Thus, unlike druids, sorcerers don't have to fill their spell slots with heals to use them. I would choose Primal over divine, just so that you have actually useful cantrips you can use.
Sorcerers do have one advantage over cleric, however. Sorcerers have the class feat Wellspring Spell, allowing a 20th level sorcerer to cast up to 5th level heals all day, every day.
Druid does get heal on their spell list, so they can heal. The big issue is since they are prepared casters, they have to actually choose their heal spells at the beginning of the day, so are much less flexible than the sorcerer. The reason they are close to sorcerers is the plant druid ability of goodberry, adding extra healing (although not much, admittedly) per day. The druid aso doesn't get much class feat support for healing, although like sorcerers at 20th they do get unlimited heals wth Leyline conduit.
In most ways as far as healing is concerned Bard is a worse Sorcerer. They don't get heal, they get Soothe, which works like heal, but not as well. They do get the heightened spell and at 14th they can take Soothing Ballad, which helps, but in general the sorcerer is a better healer. However, bards are the superior buffing class, so if you want a class that buffs and heals as a secondary ability, Bards might cover your healing needs.
As a main healer, Alchemist is at the bottom of the heap. Yes, an alchemist can create elixirs of life, but they heal d6 vs d8 for the heal spells. If you don't want to spend bunches of gp (see items below), they also cost resonance. Worse, they cost the alchemist resonance to make, and the user resonance to drink. Since your primary class feature (bombs) also takes resonance, along with any invested items you are wearing, you won't have that much left over for those elixirs. Very few of your class feats work with elixers of life, and the few that do requires you use quick alchemy. I'd advise against using an alchemist as the primary healer.
You can attempt to supplement your healing abilities by multiclassing into cleric. This will take a lot of feats, and for non-healing classes will not make you a primary healer. The first feat, cleric dedication doesn't even get you the heal spell, just a couple of cantrips. Once you take Basic Cleric Spellcasting, you will get a first level spell slot at 4th, a second level slot at 6th, and a third level slot at 8th. So, that is 1d8+wisdom once at 4th, and at 6th a single 3d8+wisdom. At 6th you can take Basic Dogma to get healing hands for an additional 1d8. At 8th, you can take Divine Breadth to get 1 more spell slot not counting your 2 highest spell levels (which at this point means 1 cantrip and 1 first level spell). Expert cleric spellcasting at 12th gets you a 4th level slot at 12th, a 5th level slot at 14th and a 6th level slot at 16th. Master level spelcasting at 18th gets you a 7th level slot at 18th and an 8th level slot at 20th. So if you are willing to sacrifice all of your class feats except your 10th, 14th, 16th and 20th, you can almost be a marginal healer. Note that if you are primary spellcaster, you don't get a 12th or 16th level class feat.
That said, if you are a Paladin or primary caster and are trying to supplement your healing, it might be worth it. In addition, you do get to use divine spellcasting items.
This option is for those without another source of healing or to help relieve the pressure on the primary healer. Note that this option is expensive and costly in terms of resonance.
First off, thanks to resonance, you will be wanting to use the highest healing you can afford. There are five sources of item healing: Elixirs of life, healing potions, scrolls of heal, wands of heal and a staff of healing.
Elixirs of life is usually the worst deal since they only heal d6 damage instead of d8 damage of the other methods. However for alchemists or those with alchemical crafting, they can often be created cheaper and easier than others, significantly saving money.
In PF2, potions and scrolls cost the same amount, so the big difference is who is paying the resonance cost. (Potions, the user pays, scrolls the caster pays.) Wands now only have 10 charges, and the price savings per cast is marginal, so they are not as good a deal as before.
Staffs of healing, on the other hand, are very much worth it. They can be recharged and most importantly, the user can sacrifice a spell slot to cast from it instead of using charges from the staff (use still need to use resonance). For prepared casters, this allows them to memorize spells other than heal in their spell slots.
A brief menton of the medicine skill. The only way you can use it to heal others is if you have the skill feat battlefield medic. This allows you the chance to heal 1d10+Wis HP once per day (2d10+Wis on a critcal success). Note that the DC to do so is 20, and healer's tools do not help. Interestingly, it looks like they aren't needed either, or at least they are not listed. This is almost certainly an oversight, so expect this to be fixed. Master of medicine gets 2d10+wisdom with a DC 25 check, and Legendary gets 4d10+wisdom on a DC 30 check.
The big issue is that if you critcally fail, the subject loses 1d10 damage. This means it makes it much less of an option at low levels. Since it is currently only once per day per person, this means a party could not rely on it as a primary source of healing.
Hopefully others have found this useful.
Below is a list of all of the healing classes and methods of healing ranked from best to worst, at least in my eyes.
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Couple of notes on the Medicine skill:
Battle Medic is much better when combined with Assurance. At 7th level (assuming you grab medicine as a signature skill somehow) you can auto-make the basic check. At 13 with legendary medicine, you auto-succeed at the highest DC check, giving an extra 4d10+wis healing to everyone in the party every day.Also, there is another 1/creature/day healing feat, Natual Medicine. DC 20 Nature check, heal 1d8+wisdom. Increase by 1d8 at master, increase by 1d8 if your GM feels like the area has abundant healing ingredients.
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Couple of notes on the Medicine skill:
Battle Medic is much better when combined with Assurance. At 7th level (assuming you grab medicine as a signature skill somehow) you can auto-make the basic check. At 13 with legendary medicine, you auto-succeed at the highest DC check, giving an extra 4d10+wis healing to everyone in the party every day.
Also, there is another 1/creature/day healing feat, Natual Medicine. DC 20 Nature check, heal 1d8+wisdom. Increase by 1d8 at master, increase by 1d8 if your GM feels like the area has abundant healing ingredients.
A troll (level 5) does 2d10+5 on a normal hit - looking over the damage from a few level 6 monsters - 2d10 isn't that abnormal. Medicine healing on average 2 hits (or a single crit - perhaps) in a day at level 7 doesn't seem that impressive - when this system seems to be designed that most monsters will hit even if very under level (crits will just occur less often).
Couple of notes on the Medicine skill:
Battle Medic is much better when combined with Assurance. At 7th level (assuming you grab medicine as a signature skill somehow) you can auto-make the basic check. At 13 with legendary medicine, you auto-succeed at the highest DC check, giving an extra 4d10+wis healing to everyone in the party every day.
Also, there is another 1/creature/day healing feat, Natual Medicine. DC 20 Nature check, heal 1d8+wisdom. Increase by 1d8 at master, increase by 1d8 if your GM feels like the area has abundant healing ingredients.
Assurance does guarantee at least a success, true, for a whole 1d10+wisdom. That does help, and most healers will be picking it up. And while Legendary medicine doesn't kick in until 15th, that does allow you to hit the 4d10+wisdom, which is nice since critically succeeding on the higher DC checks only adds a additional 1d10.
And yes, you can use Natural medicine, but now you have to split your skill feats between both medicine and nature. Also, natural medicine takes 10 minutes while battlefield medic is an action, so battlefield medic can be used during combat, a distinct advantage. That said, a dedicated healer will eventually get both, so I should have included that too. You usually only get either medicine or nature as a signature skill (many get neither), so usually primal casters will get natural healing first while divine casters get medicine first.
Couple of notes on the Medicine skill:
Battle Medic is much better when combined with Assurance. At 7th level (assuming you grab medicine as a signature skill somehow) you can auto-make the basic check. At 13 with legendary medicine, you auto-succeed at the highest DC check, giving an extra 4d10+wis healing to everyone in the party every day.
Also, there is another 1/creature/day healing feat, Natual Medicine. DC 20 Nature check, heal 1d8+wisdom. Increase by 1d8 at master, increase by 1d8 if your GM feels like the area has abundant healing ingredients.Assurance does guarantee at least a success, true, for a whole 1d10+wisdom. That does help, and most healers will be picking it up. And while Legendary medicine doesn't kick in until 15th, that does allow you to hit the 4d10+wisdom, which is nice since critically succeeding on the higher DC checks only adds a additional 1d10.
And yes, you can use Natural medicine, but now you have to split your skill feats between both medicine and nature. Also, natural medicine takes 10 minutes while battlefield medic is an action, so battlefield medic can be used during combat, a distinct advantage. That said, a dedicated healer will eventually get both, so I should have included that too. You usually only get either medicine or nature as a signature skill (many get neither), so usually primal casters will get natural healing first while divine casters get medicine first.
Another point for natural medicine is that there is no penalty for failing or critically failing. You can only heal someone once a day, but if you fail you don't heal and can presumably try again. And crit fails don't damage either. Which means you are pretty much guaranteed the healing if you have some time to kill, even if you don't have a great wisdom/nature bonus yet. Still mediocre, but if you aren't a healing class and want to throw some more into the party's pot, it works.
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Yep, someone already mentioned the Natural Medicine feat, which isn't impressive imo. Battle Medic doesn't impress me either and shouldn't have a crit failure condition.
In your item healing, you should probably mention the skill feat "Trick Magic Item". It's basically UMD and allows the non-spellcasting PCs to use a wand of healing. The downside is that the activation DC increases with your level.
For me, all of this underscores how little healing there is in the game. You need a dedicated healer.
For this game to be fun for PFS or for my home group, you need to either:
- Make a 10 minute healing ritual that uses resonance and heals the group; and/or
- Increase resonance so wands can be used more; and/or
- Greatly improve the healing feats; and/or
- Short rest like they have in D&D
I don't like the change of feel back to needing dedicated healers. I lived through the 1E and 2E days of some poor guy sacrificing his PC to "be the healer", I'm not returning to that, ever.
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I don't like the change of feel back to needing dedicated healers. I lived through the 1E and 2E days of some poor guy sacrificing his PC to "be the healer", I'm not returning to that, ever.
You're right.
Its actually been a pretty nostalgic experience playing without the wands. I always played the cleric in my 2ed days and remember well the feeling of being the mvp of the after battle heal up (and not much else).