Can Bards no longer heal?


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


Not to sound too dramatic but honestly I cannot find Heal or Healing spells in the Occult section...

I Love everything they have done with BARDS in both flavor and mechanics and especially how the two are combined in their own unique way.

But then I was preparing spells and I noticed I could no longer have my trusty level one Cure Wounds (or HEAL as its called now)

I thought it worked in some way with the cleric being special... However it seems funny to me that Necromancy would not be Occult. Both negative and positive powers seem very Occult in a story sense Especially dealing with Ghosts and the unseen intrigue.

It also makes it seem like I will be forced to have a cleric and that is something Im not fond of. Now I have lots of experience with P1 but P2 I am still scratching the surface.

Is there any way to add Heal to my list of spells as a bard? Or is healing not as demanding as it was in P1? Will it hurt the bards in the long run to have made such a change.

Please educate me and help me to understand this decision...

Designer

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Heal directly manipulates vital essence. Soothe is the occult healing spell you're looking for.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

In addition, in both playtest (which is what you are presumably looking at) and the final second edition has a robust use of the medicine skill. It can restore sizable amounts of hit points with just 10 minutes time and a successful check. This means spells like Heal are mostly just used to heal in combat, but even that can be supplemented with the Medicine skill by taking the Battle Medic feat. And of course there are consumables.

So the short answer is: no, you don't need a cleric. Most of the parties I've seen so far haven't had one.


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Mark Seifter wrote:
Heal directly manipulates vital essence. Soothe is the occult healing spell you're looking for.

Thank You!!

For not only the speedy reply but for adding a spell that fits perfectly with the Bard... I read through all the spells and when I read the NAME soothe I thought it had something to do with sleeping recovery lol.

This way of adding theme's to the mechanics is great. Making it really have a flavor in not only character creation but progression and now to find it carries over to the spells is really impressive.

At first I was feeling this was just a money grab due to 5th edition "ease of use dominance"

But the amount of CARE and FEEDBACK has shown me 2nd edition Is a new beast on its way to being what I thought 5th was going to be. Every time I "think" I find something I hate there is something shown to me that I absolutely love.

Sorry for Wasting your time lol...


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It took me quite some time to find it during the playtest as well. Hopefully the CRB will have short summaries of the spell included on the lists, like the PF1 crb has.


Bards can use Soothe, Remove paralysis, Remove curse, Restoration, Restore senses... at least with the Playtest. All these are Healing spells. At least I hope this is correct, since I let my player’s bard have them.


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IAmPageicus wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Heal directly manipulates vital essence. Soothe is the occult healing spell you're looking for.

Thank You!!

For not only the speedy reply but for adding a spell that fits perfectly with the Bard... I read through all the spells and when I read the NAME soothe I thought it had something to do with sleeping recovery lol.

This way of adding theme's to the mechanics is great. Making it really have a flavor in not only character creation but progression and now to find it carries over to the spells is really impressive.

At first I was feeling this was just a money grab due to 5th edition "ease of use dominance"

But the amount of CARE and FEEDBACK has shown me 2nd edition Is a new beast on its way to being what I thought 5th was going to be. Every time I "think" I find something I hate there is something shown to me that I absolutely love.

Sorry for Wasting your time lol...

Actually this question comes up a lot. They way spells lack a description makes most of players do this mistake too... And the erratas of the playtest do not help.

But they said PHB will be more approachable.


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oholoko wrote:

Actually this question comes up a lot. They way spells lack a description makes most of players do this mistake too... And the erratas of the playtest do not help.

But they said PHB will be more approachable.

Yep, if I remember correctly each spell on the list will have a brief description right there and then. That's great!


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Starfinder style? Awesome


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I'll be pretty impressed if they manage to arrange the spells in a way that even approaches legible... I gave up on reading the spell sections in my books a long time ago and just use a third party site to look them up.


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Oh, that's good too - when I was running 5e we had an app that quickly found for us what spells did and how they worked. Our sorcerer used it all the time. I'm sure as soon as 2e hits the shelves apps like that will spring up like mushrooms.


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Roswynn wrote:
Oh, that's good too - when I was running 5e we had an app that quickly found for us what spells did and how they worked. Our sorcerer used it all the time. I'm sure as soon as 2e hits the shelves apps like that will spring up like mushrooms.

Yeah, the spell list section of the 5E PHB isn't the most helpful. In addition to short descriptions of the spells themselves, the spells could also have done with abbreviations for what school they belong to, as well as other 5E things like whether they're rituals or concentration spells. Later books like Xanathar's would correct some of that. The playtest did at least include subscript telling if the spell is heightenable or not.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Tectorman wrote:
Roswynn wrote:
Oh, that's good too - when I was running 5e we had an app that quickly found for us what spells did and how they worked. Our sorcerer used it all the time. I'm sure as soon as 2e hits the shelves apps like that will spring up like mushrooms.
Yeah, the spell list section of the 5E PHB isn't the most helpful. In addition to short descriptions of the spells themselves, the spells could also have done with abbreviations for what school they belong to, as well as other 5E things like whether they're rituals or concentration spells. Later books like Xanathar's would correct some of that. The playtest did at least include subscript telling if the spell is heightenable or not.

I just recently tried making a hex warlock trying to find spells he could actually cast without dropping his shield. I gave up pretty quickly and just played him without spells for the first session.


I was trying to make an npc wizard and choosing his spells - it took me hours and I gave up on the project.


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IAmPageicus wrote:


Please educate me and help me to understand this decision...

The occult list is a trimmed cleric list plus a selection of (mostly lesser or utility) wizard spells. Plus a few unique oddballs, haste and soothe.

Similarly, the primal list is the druid list plus the better wizard spells. And the evocations.

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