How do heal 3 act heighten?
Heightened (+1) The amount of healing or damage increases by 1d8, or by 2d8 if you’re using the 1- or 2-action version to heal the living.
So the 3-action version goes up by 1d8 per spell level above 1st.
1st level = spellcasting ability modifier only
2nd level = 1d8 + mod
3rd level = 2d8 + mod
4th level = 3d8 + mod
etc.
It's badly worded. I would change the wording to:
Heightened (+1) The amount of healing or damage increases by 2d8 if casting as a single target heal or 1d8 if casting as a burst.
I think that would be more easily understood. Bonus, it seems to save a word or two in case page space is a premium.
Side note: This is the most confusing rulebook I've ever seen, due entirely to confusing sentences like this one and counter-intuitive placement of rules that are often fragmented (requiring the reader to glean the rule by reading several different bits of information scattered throughout the book). Paizo, please get a professional technical writer on staff before the final release!
Side note x2: Pursuant to Side note, I bet there are capable individuals on the forums here who might even volunteer to help with that, maybe free of charge, just to get a good rulebook out of it.
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The issue with your wording DM_Blake is that that changes what the spell does.
Level is the spell level
lv1 1/2 = 1d8+w, 3 = w
lv2 1/2 heal 3d8+w, 1/2 hurt 2d8+w, 3 = 1d8+w
lv3 1/2 heal 5d8+w, 1/2 hurt 3d8+w, 3 = 2d8+w
lv4 1/2 heal 7d8+w, 1/2 hurt 4d8+w, 3 = 3d8+w
The 1 and 2 action recovery version go up 2d8, but the 1 and 2 action attack versions only go up at 1d8 like the burst.
I think this wording is great. It goes up 1d8 for everything. Cool we have our base. Then it adds the exception, IF using it for recovery it's a 2d8 increase
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Heightened (+1) The amount of healing or damage increases by 2d8 if casting as a single target heal or 1d8 if casting as a burst.
That's a clearer wording, but it's also not what the designers wrote. As the spell is currently designed, casting it to damage undead also always uses the slower 1d8 track.
Which is a tight snarl of rules to bury inside a reference from a class ability. But, if those need to be the rules, then sacrifices will end up being made in the text.
Paizo, please get a professional technical writer on staff before the final release!
This usually isn't the problem, honestly. A project like this has a push and pull between specificity and clarity and flavor and balance and word count and art and time and layout and some things I'm probably forgetting.
If a rule is balanced in a short amount of space with a complicated wording, you're going to end up sacrificing something to make the wording easier. I'm way on the "easy wording" side of the spectrum and that's well within Paizo's technical writing chops. But it means some rules would need to change dramatically, other things will be unbalanced, more rules arguments online, less content overall, and certain concepts really just won't work in the space allotted.
Those are all sacrifices I would gladly accept in exchange for a game that reads well, but they are sacrifices. Other people have very different, equally valid desires. And I'm not sure my desire is necessarily even the right one for a playtest.