| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
One issue that has come I my group's playtest: clerics are perceived as "mandatory."
The feeling is that the swingy combat from high crits necessitates the ability for significant in combat healing and post fight recovery In current playtest. The perception from my players is that only clerics seem to be well suited for that job because of their ability to use a special resource (channel) to heal. This has resulted in a certain "sameness" of their party composition.
I would propose that Paizo consider adding a "healing spec" to other classes by adding a channel-ilkei ability based on Charisma. For example, the Bard Maestro muse spec, the Druid Leaf order and the Angelic bloodline for sorcerer all seem uniquely well suited for this. Perhaps the alchemist could be granted an option for channel like healing from elixirs?
Obviously, these would not be true channeling -- that power should be reserved to clerics. But Leaf Druids, for example, could have to ability to a plant based healing a number times a day equal to their charisma modifier. (perhaps by generating healing spores). Like a maestro bard could perform a healing performance a certain number of times per day, etc
My feeling is that spreading out the Channel style healing will improve party variety and not force every cleric into the heal role
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
That's one way to go about this, yes. If they all wind up playing similarly it winds up dimishing Clerics as a distinct thing, though, since channel is a pretty major ability for them. Then you get "one of you playing one of these must be the healer" and people who really want to avoid it will have more classes to avoid, especially since it's more expensive for them to be effective at it. Even a Cleric that doesn't do anything to boost healing still has useful healing if they can channel positive, which is going to be fairly common.
Another option is to reduce how quickly players can be bursted down by monsters and to come up with a better downtime HP recovery mechanic than just resting. That was part of the problem I found makes Cleric healing feel so necessary: you can get blasted to near death very quickly and if you don't have a strong healer, you can't do anything about it even after combat is over.
Maybe they can do something with Medicine about that, which would also help that skill feel more valuable.
| 13 people marked this as a favorite. |
Jason Buhlman (?) said in the report on part 1 that cleric was the most common class. Small wonder, its now mandatory. :o
That said, my party did not have a cleric, and instead opted for a 10 minute adventuring day - they retreated after the second fight.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
One issue that has come I my group's playtest: clerics are perceived as "mandatory."
The feeling is that the swingy combat from high crits necessitates the ability for significant in combat healing and post fight recovery In current playtest. The perception from my players is that only clerics seem to be well suited for that job because of their ability to use a special resource (channel) to heal. This has resulted in a certain "sameness" of their party composition.
I would propose that Paizo consider adding a "healing spec" to other classes by adding a channel-ilkei ability based on Charisma. For example, the Bard Maestro muse spec, the Druid Leaf order and the Angelic bloodline for sorcerer all seem uniquely well suited for this. Perhaps the alchemist could be granted an option for channel like healing from elixirs?
Obviously, these would not be true channeling -- that power should be reserved to clerics. But Leaf Druids, for example, could have to ability to a plant based healing a number times a day equal to their charisma modifier. (perhaps by generating healing spores). Like a maestro bard could perform a healing performance a certain number of times per day, etc
My feeling is that spreading out the Channel style healing will improve party variety and not force every cleric into the heal role
Well, the original PF1 (and 3.X) group paradigm has always been Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric, and the game has always been balanced around this set-up. I'm disappointed to see this hasn't changed, except instead of Wizards being the God class, it's now Clerics; CoDZilla is at an all-time high, and quite frankly, I'm not a fan of how Channel Energy is handled, simply because it breaks the standard rules of Spell Points, where people have only one pool to utilize all of their class abilities (which cost spell points of course). The factor it's basically Spell Points+ with such power added to it really makes Clerics that much more stronger than any other class, straight out of the gate. Even if a Cleric decides to go Negative Energy Channeling, they are much more devastating a foe in melee combat when they so choose. Ever been hit with 3D8+12 in the same round at 1st level, on touch attacks, without multi-attack penalties? Me neither. But I'm fairly certain that, unless they're a Dwarf Barbarian with 14 Constitution, they're gonna be dying on an average roll. And an optimized Cleric (18 Wisdom, 16 Charisma) can do this upwards of twice per day, trivializing extremely difficult encounters.
Several classes already have "heal specs," they just aren't anywhere near as powerful. Divine Sorcerers with the Divine Evolution feat only get to do what Clerics do once per day, which is objectively worse than what anything Clerics get as their standard class, whereas Divine Sorcerers have to spend a feat just to do it once a day. If that's not broken bias, then I don't know what is. Paladins are actually better than Divine Sorcerers with their Channel Vigor feat, which is again, just plain bad. Druids with Leaf can get Goodberry as a power (usually 4/day), which gives some healing and has survival capabilities. Not as strong as Cleric Channel of course. Alchemists can make Elixirs of Life for healing. Except they cost him (and the drinker if it is not the Alchemist) Resonance to craft and use, and they don't have anywhere near the healing scale of even just plain consumable potions. Talk about a trap option if I've ever seen one. Bards don't get any sort of help, making them the absolute worst (though their buffs via cantrips could save hits, which is "healing" by PF1's standards).
But seriously, the sole reason a Cleric is broken compared to every other class is because of Channel Energy being so strong and having so much power to it. I'd consider having it be up to their Charisma modifier, flat, for starters (can't be any higher than 3). I'd also consider it costing Resonance for the Cleric to use as yet another balance point, but I'd like to see some playtesting with just the flat Charisma modifier first to see if it does enough, but then you have the whole Domain stuff too (which can bridge that gap even further with Healing domains and stuff), as well as shoring up other class options (like Bards and Sorcerers especially) so that they aren't as objectively bad. The other big thing is balancing encounters to where some of these common heal aspects between all of the classes exist.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
No.
Just finished running part 2.
The lv4 Dwarf Cleric healed for over 250 hp before DECIDING to rest. He didn't NEED to, he DECIDED to because he didn't want to run into a fight without Spiritual Weapon (which was the only thing he used his lv2 slots for).
An Alchemist, Bard, Druid, Paladin or Sorcerer wouldn't be able to make half that much even by burning all their resources and a good chunk of money. This guy did it on the side.
No.
Just finished running part 2.
The lv4 Dwarf Cleric healed for over 250 hp before DECIDING to rest. He didn't NEED to, he DECIDED to because he didn't want to run into a fight without Spiritual Weapon (which was the only thing he used his lv2 slots for).
An Alchemist, Bard, Druid, Paladin or Sorcerer wouldn't be able to make half that much even by burning all their resources and a good chunk of money. This guy did it on the side.
Mind explaining in depth how this happened? I had a cleric in our party and he died lol. He had no where near the capabilities to heal that much. Was this just with channels?
To me part of the question is "SHOULD they be made as healy".
I have no problem with other classes being I suppose sub healing compared to Cleric, as long as they can bring something else to the table a Cleric can't.
Part of my belief is you need a "Cleric" worth of healing to get anywhere into the game. Easiest way to do this is just roll a Cleric. A Bard and Sorcerer might be able to cover it with some items. Paladin, Druid, Alchemist + Fighter should be okay. Or just some clever builds and buys should be able to carry a team.
Granted, I've seen a lot of murder and wipes in the play test and in my own, we haven't run a Cleric yet(Not a lot of us like clerics. Not the healing, the whole chassis).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Can Alchemists, Bards and Druid be made to be as "healy" as clerics?": No. In fact, we had 2 people that could heal [alchemist and druid] and I don't think combined they were as 'healy' as a single cleric would have been.
That said, my party did not have a cleric, and instead opted for a 10 minute adventuring day - they retreated after the second fight.
I think we were closer to 5 min. Do an encounter, get the stuffing beaten out of us and then crawl away and rest up for the next life and death encounter.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Can they be made as healing capable as cleric? Yes. Should they? Yes, but they should work differently than cleric.
So, I think this goes into what role a "support" character plays in PF2. In PF1, support casters typically split their actions between buffing and debuffing. Healing was typically something handled in between combats or when someone was almost dead. From my limited PF2 play experience, healing at low levels plays a larger role than it did in most of my PF1 play.
Right now, Alchemist is pretty much non-functional. Which is a shame, because this is probably the best class thematically to make a different sort of healer. With an ability to create healing items via alchemy, it could provide single action healing items to other PCs that spread out healing's impact on the action economy. Instead of a single character dedicating a large portion of their action to healing, an Alchemist dedicates their resources to healing, but leaves the action portion to the other PCs. I think this could be a fun way to play this class and it takes healing out of the realm of divine casters.
Druid has since the ye old days, been an odd duck when it comes to healing. The class dedicated to the preservation of life and nature is a worse healer than priests worshiping the god of drinking or crafting. Maybe giving them spells or powers that mitigate damage would give them something unique? Goodberry has always been an underwhelming first level spell, and while better than in the past its still sub-par compared to heal. If a plant druid could give natural armor, resistance or temp. HP out the gate it would be something that mitigates damage w/o stepping on the cleric's toes.
The Divine Sorcerer is something I don't have a ton of experience or insight with. As it now shares a spell list with the cleric, its easier to make comparisons. My first thoughts on making them a more interesting healer than at present would be the ability to spend Spell Points to make their heal spells heal more. Essentially, you'd have a class that could heal more damage at once, but fewer times per day.
Lastly, I'm gonna touch on Paladin. I think it shouldn't be a comparable healer to Cleric without significant investment. Now, if you want to make something like a hospitalar that focuses on healing while wearing heavy armor and wielding martial weapons, I think that's cool but should require maybe half of your class feats to keep up with cleric. With how weapon damage scales now, a Paladin that could be an effective damage dealer and healer could get silly.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ever been hit with 3D8+12 in the same round at 1st level, on touch attacks, without multi-attack penalties? Me neither. But I'm fairly certain that, unless they're a Dwarf Barbarian with 14 Constitution, they're gonna be dying on an average roll. And an optimized Cleric (18 Wisdom, 16 Charisma) can do this upwards of twice per day, trivializing extremely difficult encounters.
You know spell touch attacks have the attack trait, and thus also take multiple attack penalties, right?
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
It should instead be some kind of Spell Point spend like everyone else gets. I would suggest something that lets you convert an available Spell Slot into a maximized heal or something (similar to the 3.X healing conversion). That would be somewhere in the vicinity of balanced.
In the most recent scenario, I only had 6 spell slots. I was using so much healing that we never did two combat encounters without resting. With this in place, I literally could have done nothing else except heal and my weak as all hell Cantrips, and I would have absolutely despised the game.
Channel is crazy good as it stands right now... but in a lot of ways it's kind of the only thing that is. So many of the other spells just feel weak or dull (and they run out fast), and cantrips feel like fighting a tank with a pillow.
So long as the encounters are throwing so much damage out and there's no other viable way to do downtime recovery except magical healing or resting (1 encounter days are lame but here we are), you need that healing. I do agree with you that Medicine should do this, as that skill is garbage right now, and comically makes someone more likely to die rather than helping them recover from dying. ( http://paizo.com/threads/rzs428pn?Is-the-11-update-broken-on-the-dying-rule )
It would be better to bring other classes closer to Clerics and let people have some nice tools rather than take something that actually does feel powerful and nerf it into oblivion to be weak like so much other caster stuff is. Especially in the case of healing, where people even willing to do that role are in the minority and it's something that everyone else in the group relies on to themselves be able to go do stuff and have fun.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
One issue that has come I my group's playtest: clerics are perceived as "mandatory."
The feeling is that the swingy combat from high crits necessitates the ability for significant in combat healing and post fight recovery In current playtest. The perception from my players is that only clerics seem to be well suited for that job because of their ability to use a special resource (channel) to heal. This has resulted in a certain "sameness" of their party composition.
I would propose that Paizo consider adding a "healing spec" to other classes by adding a channel-ilkei ability based on Charisma. For example, the Bard Maestro muse spec, the Druid Leaf order and the Angelic bloodline for sorcerer all seem uniquely well suited for this. Perhaps the alchemist could be granted an option for channel like healing from elixirs?
Obviously, these would not be true channeling -- that power should be reserved to clerics. But Leaf Druids, for example, could have to ability to a plant based healing a number times a day equal to their charisma modifier. (perhaps by generating healing spores). Like a maestro bard could perform a healing performance a certain number of times per day, etc
My feeling is that spreading out the Channel style healing will improve party variety and not force every cleric into the heal role
I think that in a polytheist setting like Golarion, fixed healing class features like channeling don't make a lot of sense. Many of the deity domains and portfolios seem removed from healing. Healing is certainly in the wheelhouse of deities like Sarenrae, Selket, Sekhmet, Pharasma, Iori, Osiris, Isis, Milani, and Qi Zong that have associations with it, but a lot less for deities like Calistra, Shelyn, or Abadar who's domains and portfolios seem opposite or dissociated with healing. Because of that, some others classes make as much sense or more as healers as default clerics do.
Druids on the other hand with a nature focus seem as close or more to dealing with life forces in a way that would more uniformly deal, with healing for Storm Order druids in concept maybe being a little more distant from that than other druids. Celtic druids were in fact healers. In a polytheistic world, druids make more sense conceptually as the default healers than clerics. Giving druids greater access to healing abilities on a conceptual level makes sense, maybe more so than the clerics of less healing and life force associated deities. A healing order of druids would also make a lot of sense. Channeling ability makes some sense for druids, but maybe not positive or negative energy, but maybe life or nature primal energy in a way that generates healing.
Alchemists in history, in folklore, and in fiction tend to have to focuses, looking for the ability to transmute lead to gold and looking for the ability to bestow immortality. Developing healing is a part of the path of finding how to bestow immortality. Elixirs of life are already in the mix, but healing bombs that burst with healing salves would be well within the wheelhouse of an alchemist, particularly one with knowledge of both healing and bombs. That would make a lot more sense than channeling for an alchemist. Also just making it easier to dispense enough healing and powerful enough healing that they're similarly as helpful as a cleric currently is would make sense. If that makes them too powerful, give alchemists options to scale down other abilities to scale up healing.
As a note, some alchemists do have divine associations. One of Isaac Newton's driving forces in pursuing physics was understanding God. He was an alchemist in addition to a scientist. He studied the scriptures looking for hidden encoded secrets of science and alchemy. Divine alchemy would have some historical justification for characters.
Wizards traditionally in D&D and Pathfinder have been somewhat walled off from healing for some reason. Wizards, or at least their inspirations, in history, folklore, and fiction have been healers. Myrddin was likely and astronomer and healer. Morgan le Fay is sometimes depicted as a healer, in some stories she leads the women who heal King Arthur. In other stories, she is focused on dark magic outside of healing. Merlin in some representations has healing abilities, sometimes focusing on healing with dark magic opponents using their magic for more frivolous things. In a lot of cases in history, folklore, and fiction, deciding whether someone is a wizard, druid, or healer is hard to do. The D&D and Pathfinder distinctions are kind or arbitrary and maybe more to create player or character roles more than anything else. Witches in Pathfinder 1st edition have access to both healing spells and some of the more powerful wizard offensive spells. Hex Channeler archetype witches could channel though themselves or their familiars. Hedge Witch archetype allowed witches to swap prepared spells for cure spells. Giving wizards options to do similar things would make sense. I never saw anything where there was any consensus that healing for witches broke the game. It likely wouldn't for wizards either with the right controls in place.
Monks focus on body control, ki, and affecting opponents bodily function seems like a good match for healing. Monk of the Healing Hand and Discipline of Wholeness archetypes in Pathfinder 1st edition gave healing abilities. Channeling doesn't make a whole lot of sense with monks, but out of combat healing, maybe helping others align their ki would make sense. Monks healing themselves with their ki in combat also would make some sense.
The cleric archetype doesn't have channel abilities, but it might be good to have channeling feats as a part of the cleric archetype or as a part of a druid archetype. An alchemist archetype that gave access to elixirs and healing bombs would make sense too.
|
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Once they figure how to make channeling not crazy overpowered, then they can work on putting in some healing feats for everyone else.
tl;dr: Channel isn't OP, the lack of viable non-channel healing and/or strong mitigation increases reliance on healing creating the illusion of channel's power.
I think the problem isn't channeling. I think the problem is healing done by other classes. Based on higher starting HP, changing in AC and Save scaling, I think we can infer that the devs are trying to discourage the 5 minute work day. At present in the playtest, a cleric is the only way to prevent it without a regular casualties.
The Cure Light Wounds wand of first edition was a player fix for a fundamental flaw in Pathfinder (and D&D): Healing scales much slower than damage does. Maybe in combat, that's fine. Higher level play should feel more deadly. However, the 5 minute work day is disruptive to the narrative of any game that doesn't involve a static dungeon. They "fixed" the narrative problem caused by the CLW wand with the introduction of resonance. However this system reinforces the flaw that wand was used to fix: healing's effectiveness is a fraction of damage output.
I can take a foe out of a fight reliably with a second level cleric spell in PF1 (such as Hold Person or Blindness) or I can heal the damage caused by 1-2 hits with that same slot. With PF2 these spells are largely less powerful (unless the foe fumbles the save), the value of healing is increased but the effectiveness of the class is decreased. Thus, Clerics with their specialized healing ability seem more powerful than other casters because the effectiveness of spells is down, but the need for healing is higher.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Zeonsghost:
Seems to me the answer is to improve the heal spell and loh so the base healing value goes up (maybe increase the die sizes two steps). So, heal can heal for d12s and loh can heal for d8s or d12 with a feat. Then make channeling a less stupid effect that uses up spell points (like the maximized conversion example I gave).
That would make all healers better and keep the cleric good at healing without being required.
I don't think channeling as printed is overpowered. It only seems that way because there's no other viable healing or damage mitigation option. The lack of reliable damage mitigation due to numerous changes to the game has made it so that the game requires a cleric for the express purpose of healing because they're the only ones capable of reliably doing so.
Because control has become less powerful due to an overall lower effectiveness of spells, inability to rely on combat maneuvers like trip, and more mobile foes thanks to two classes having any form of action punishment (Fighters' AoO and Paladins' Retribution Strike) you have to rely on healing more than before in a version of the game with less reliable healing.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Clearly, you feel the root cause is the heal spell isnt good enough. So, the answer should be to address the root cause.
Please don't speak for me. I listed things I felt wasn't good enough. None of them were the Heal spell.
To restate: Channel isn't the problem. The state of mitigation and non-channel recovery is the problem.
How about this: Clerics start with Charisma modifier plus one casting of Channel Energy (minimum of one).
Every four levels they gain an added use of Channel Energy, meaning at level 20 a Cleric could have between four and 10 uses of Channel Energy (assuming they don't burn any Feats to buy more Channels).
This would allow Clerics at higher levels to be progressively better Healers while keeping the adventuring group in battles for longer. It also makes sense that Clerics gradually gain abilities in Channel Energy.
|
|
I wasn't speaking for you. You said...
Thus, Clerics with their specialized healing ability seem more powerful than other casters because the effectiveness of spells is down, but the need for healing is higher.So, the need of healing is higher. We have one spell that focuses on healing. The base spell isnt meeting the need.
Please re-read the whole paragraph.
I can take a foe out of a fight reliably with a second level cleric spell in PF1 (such as Hold Person or Blindness) or I can heal the damage caused by 1-2 hits with that same slot. With PF2 these spells are largely less powerful (unless the foe fumbles the save), the value of healing is increased but the effectiveness of the class is decreased. Thus, Clerics with their specialized healing ability seem more powerful than other casters because the effectiveness of spells is down, but the need for healing is higher.
To provide an example.
The need for healing is higher because control options are less powerful. Hold Person mitigates a lot more damage in PF1 than Cure Moderate Wounds does. Paralyze (PF2's version of the spell) is a lot less effective at mitigating damage due to a much lower duration. This makes the healing spell more powerful by comparison in PF2 vs. PF1 as the other spells have gone down in power. This, combined with the lack of the ability to effectively convert resources into healing for classes outside of cleric is a flaw in the game, not in the cleric.|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Zeon:I think you are wrong. The need is higher because enemies have three attacks at early levels and they tend to have higher attack bonuses than pcs. Its a deadlier game and the +10 crit thing and the lack of a need to confirm adds to that.
It's a deadlier game with weaker damage mitigation options than PF1, causing the game's single useful healing option to stand out as functionally mandatory. That's not a problem with that class, that's a balance issue with the game.
|
|
Incorrect. The class surfaces a problem. If it has to spam the core healing spell more times that it has core spell casts for it to be able to heal effectively, then the heal spell itself needs to be improved.
By doing that, you can have the cleric effectively work within the bounds of the game while simultaneously improving every healer.
Basically, buff Heal and nerf Channel Energy.
That is a narrow and limited solution to a wider issue regarding mitigation. As it stands, the cleric looks powerful because there are few effective ways to prevent damage. Changing the amount of healing out of the Heal spell or channel doesn't change that mitigation is weak. In PF1, my Shaman's best heal spell is Misfortune Hex. My Cleric's is Waves of Ecstasy (at lower levels it was Murderous Command and Holy Smite). Every point enemies couldn't do while locked down was another point I didn't have to heal. Given that enemies do damage in one attack than you typically can heal in one spell, this was a good value (even figuring the risk of a successful save).
Meanwhile in PF2 Heal is more effective than Cures were in PF1 and Channel is only slightly more powerful than it was (but not significantly until higher levels). The 2nd level cure spell's 3 action version is effectively a 5th level spell in PF1 (mass cure light wounds). However, other spells are weaker than their PF1 versions for the most part. So, Heal's power has gone up over cure, where other spells' power has dropped.
This is compounded by the change to wands, which were a non-narrative fix to a narrative breaking problem. W/O an effective, cheap means of healing between fights and with weaker mitigation, cleric looks all the better because it has more healing. Not better healing, not efficient mitigation, just more healing.
Given all this, I would say increasing max spells / spell level to 4 would be a better fix than buffing the Heal Spell or nerfing channel.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
But, honestly, why play something other than a cleric? I can think of nothing as fearsome as a party of 4 clerics in this edition. They get tons of healing through channel, have great armor/shields and can toss out some decent spells too. Heck, take Fighter Dedication and some feats, then you can be decent in melee too. Its Channel that puts them over the top, though.
The same thing applies to PF1, as well most versions of D&D. The thing the opened other classes up in PF1 was the availability of affordable healing.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'll have more thoughts on this once we reach the adventure where the original party of heroes returns - because our recurring group has no cleric, at all. Our healing is spread out between the bard, the druid, and the alchemist (wizard and fighter rounding out the party of 5). They successfully completed the initial part of Doomsday Dawn, so I'm looking forward to seeing the distributed healing strategy in action at a higher level. Especially after seeing the all-healer adventure in Sombrefell Hall.
We often ran PF1E adventures without a healing battery character, so this seemed to be a great chance to test our default playstyle on the new edition. We never had the classic healbot cleric - instead we had primary 'healers' that were oracles of battle and alchemists and death clerics... with assistance from witches and paladins and warpriests, oh my.
Mind explaining in depth how this happened? I had a cleric in our party and he died lol. He had no where near the capabilities to heal that much. Was this just with channels?No.
Just finished running part 2.
The lv4 Dwarf Cleric healed for over 250 hp before DECIDING to rest. He didn't NEED to, he DECIDED to because he didn't want to run into a fight without Spiritual Weapon (which was the only thing he used his lv2 slots for).
An Alchemist, Bard, Druid, Paladin or Sorcerer wouldn't be able to make half that much even by burning all their resources and a good chunk of money. This guy did it on the side.
channels = 3 + cha = 5
each channel is 3d8 + 5 (healing staff) + 1d8 healing hands = 23 averagechannels = 115
6 spell points = 3 second level heals = 69
2 first level heals prepared + 2 staff charges each day = 56 (with healing hands)
total = 240 average.
So 250 with lucky rolls.
Had an unused wand of heal and 5 resonance left to use it.
Also used battle medic and natural medicine outside of combat, but the 50% success chance and the low healing makes those feel terrible to use or take.
Not just with channel, but channel is way better than what any other class gets. I think just getting Cha mod channels might be a good start.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Channel Energy is currently way too much of a draw because its basically tripling your highest level spell slots. I can see it for the Paladin since he gets no spells and LoH is their schtik.
But if you're doing positive energy, you can only use it to heal. It's not tripling your spell slots, it's tripling your healing output. Those are not the same thing.
They just look similar right now because so many other spells are garbage compared to Heal in usefulness, especially with how much damage is going out, how weak other spells are, and how there's no sane way to recover in downtime aside from rest.
When people can get blasted from full to brink of death in one turn and I have no reliable way to mitigate damage other than Heal, I have little choice but to use Heal if I'm the party healer. Change it to use spell slots, and I'll just run out of spell slots in one encounter and we're done for the day instead. Nothing has really been fixed except now Clerics suck as much as the other casters do.
Considering how many people already don't want to play healers and how often tables just flat out don't have one because of that, making it so that Clerics are strictly healbots with no capacity to do anything else whatsoever because heal will consume all their highest spell slots in a single encounter isn't going to help anyone. It'll just make playing the game miserable for the people who don't want to play healers but DO want to do more than one encounter between rests.
I play healers more than any other role, and I just flat out wouldn't play 2e with the current healing requirements and only six spells a day like I had in dd2. As it was I was burning through all six channels in one encounter + downtime recovery keeping the party alive. Then we'd rest, because with how much healing they were sucking up, absolutely nobody thought it was a great idea to go charging ahead without it.
But, honestly, why play something other than a cleric?
Because you don't want to heal and/or want to do good damage? Martials with magic weapons are easily outclassing Clerics aside from maybe negative channel, and once that runs out Cantrips are the equivalent of a pea shooter.
I can think of nothing as fearsome as a party of 4 clerics in this edition. They get tons of healing through channel, have great armor/shields and can toss out some decent spells too. Heck, take Fighter Dedication and some feats, then you can be decent in melee too.
I can: A healing focused Cleric and three martial characters. You've got all the healing the other three need and they will dish out a whole lot more reliable offense.
Its Channel that puts them over the top, though.
If by "over the top" you mean "actually fun to play", then yes. It does. That's not a bug, it's a feature. More caster classes need it. I don't know many people who are playing just so they can put Heal in every spell slot and fire off a pea shooter cantrip on turns when they're not healing, even those who like playing support. You had way more options for being support effectively in PF1.
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
But seriously, the sole reason a Cleric is broken compared to every other class is because of Channel Energy being so strong and having so much power to it. I'd consider having it be up to their Charisma modifier, flat, for starters (can't be any higher than 3). I'd also consider it costing Resonance for the Cleric to use as yet another balance point, but I'd like to see some playtesting with just the flat Charisma modifier first to see if it does enough, but then you have the whole Domain stuff too (which can bridge that gap even further with Healing domains and stuff), as well as shoring up other class options (like Bards and Sorcerers especially) so that they aren't as objectively bad. The other big thing is balancing encounters to where some of these common heal aspects between all of the classes exist.
Seriously, man, why does it seem that the first impulse of many people is always to go "Okay, this class is actually competent at something, nerf nerf nerf!!!"?
Bring the other classes up to the level of the Cleric in terms of healing. That way adventuring days can last more than ten minutes, maybe.