I did this recently in a game.
We were traversing an abandoned mine that had been sealed up by the mysterious previous owners. We came apon a community of terrified Halflings who had been trapped here for years, living off moss and fighting off the denizens of this underworld.
I moved my 1st level Cleric to the centre of the room and channeled energy to heal 42 people (for 4hp each). The GM asked me to roll Diplomacy (with a hefty corcumstance bonus) to improve their attitude toward our party.
For the average adventuring party Channel Energy is a nice bonus that nobody really needs, but in the real world it would be an unfathomable miracle. A little creativity can have this be a hugely powerful boon to the party.
Seems like you've understood things. Make sure to build healing chambers with verticality to maximize the full radius of the healing.
Haha good call.
Area of a circle = Pi×R^2 = Pi×6^2 = ~113
Volume of a sphere = 4/3×Pi×R^3 = ~904
(Assuming a radius of 6)
You'll probably lose some of that due to the circle not actually being a circle (it's made up of squares), but even if we round down to 800 it's still pretty good.
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On another level, channel is a burst effect and having 20 people between me and the channeler might count as cover.
A burst spell affects whatever it catches in its area, including creatures that you can’t see. It can’t affect creatures with total cover from its point of origin (in other words, its effects don’t extend around corners).
People don't count as total cover.
Even if the GM decides to call that enough people do count as hard cover you only need to mount on a stool or a boulder so that you are higher than them, raise your hand with your holy symbol, and trave your path from there.Channel doesn't require a to hit, so partial cover do nothing to it.
People seriously underestimate the efficiently of magical healing. Since the game is focused on the player characters most people don’t realize how powerful it actually is. A single cleric can heal an army of normal soldiers in almost no time. A witch with the healing hex can also heal thousands of people per day. It does not even require the healer to be particularly high level.
This has some interesting military implications. Even a few low level healer are going to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to get the troops back into action. The typical 1st level warrior that is 1 HP away from dying requires 11 days of complete bedrest to recover, or 22 days while doing something else. With a 3rd level magical healer that can be reduced down to about 3 days while still active. Even modern medicine cannot achieve those results.
The same results can be applied to other forms of labor. On the job injury becomes almost trivial. Now when a worker is wounded instead of the worker being out for long periods of time they are returned to the labor force almost immediately. Good will probably do this out of principal, but evil societies will also use this. In a lot of ways this will actually make the evil society even worse. With healing available slaves can be abused even further without having to worry about reducing their efficiency. Dangerous job are less likely to cripple a slave so they will now be forced to do more without worrying about ruining the owners investment. Now a sadistic master can beat their slave almost to death and then repeat the whole process over again in a few days.
Actually evil clerics (and clerics of evil gods) genereally can't channel positive energy. There are ways around this, but they cost feats and/or traits etc. meaning they wouldn't be common.
Oracles with the Life mystery don't have this restriction (I'm pretty sure), so there would be options, but they would be MUCH rarer in evil societies than good ones.
This means you probably wouldn't get whole-sale slave tortour just because you can, but you would definitely have more failsafes in good/neutral communities.
Actually evil clerics (and clerics of evil gods) genereally can't channel positive energy. There are ways around this, but they cost feats and/or traits etc. meaning they wouldn't be common.
Oracles with the Life mystery don't have this restriction (I'm pretty sure), so there would be options, but they would be MUCH rarer in evil societies than good ones.
This means you probably wouldn't get whole-sale slave tortour just because you can, but you would definitely have more failsafes in good/neutral communities.
Evil cleric, or clerics of evil gods may not be able to channel positive energy, but that does not mean that clerics of good or neutral gods are not operating in those societies. That could be why they are tolerated in evil societies. Cheliax has several good or neutral deities that are still popular there, and by royal decree permits them to be worshiped. The queen could be holding the threat of withdrawing that decree to keep them cooperative. I could easily see the queen forcing those religions to heal as the price for their ability to operate in the kingdom.
I assume that large temples of benevolent gods have a daily channel, where the poor and injured gather at a certain time of day to get healed in this manner.
In and near a large city, people will get injured from all manner of things every day, like falling, or getting kicked by a horse or getting mugged. And of course there are people’s pets and livestock. Maybe your dog got tore up chasing goblins out of the field. It just makes sense that the big good temples would have a daily channel to help all of those people and animals.
Yeah I think Illness would be more common, and would be more of a problem for the average commoner, but patching up scraps, scratches and bruises at the daily service would still be amazing.
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My guess/assumption is that workplace injuries would be more common in the type of society typical of PF settings than we think of in our world.
On the topic of cure spells and channel, I'm continually frustrated by the lack of a good mass variants of, and lower level versions, of Remove Disease. Disease is the big killer in daily life, not injury. You can save someone who has their guts hanging out at 1st level but can't cure a common cold until 5th.
I completely agree with this.
The RESTORATION subdomain gets you Remove Disease as a second level domain spell, but it's only once per day (as it' a domain slot). I think in areas with disease this would be extremely important and you'd see clerics with this domain doing the gods' work extremely commonly.
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People seriously underestimate the efficiently of magical healing. Since the game is focused on the player characters most people don’t realize how powerful it actually is. A single cleric can heal an army of normal soldiers in almost no time. A witch with the healing hex can also heal thousands of people per day. It does not even require the healer to be particularly high level.
This has some interesting military implications. Even a few low level healer are going to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to get the troops back into action. The typical 1st level warrior that is 1 HP away from dying requires 11 days of complete bedrest to recover, or 22 days while doing something else. With a 3rd level magical healer that can be reduced down to about 3 days while still active. Even modern medicine cannot achieve those results.
The same results can be applied to other forms of labor. On the job injury becomes almost trivial. Now when a worker is wounded instead of the worker being out for long periods of time they are returned to the labor force almost immediately. Good will probably do this out of principal, but evil societies will also use this. In a lot of ways this will actually make the evil society even worse. With healing available slaves can be abused even further without having to worry about reducing their efficiency. Dangerous job are less likely to cripple a slave so they will now be forced to do more without worrying about ruining the owners investment. Now a sadistic master can beat their slave almost to death and then repeat the whole process over again in a few days.
True, but the main problems for armies are the diseases, not the wounds.
Until very recent times most of the losses for armies were caused by diseases, something that the abstract "hit points system" doesn't reflect very well.Even when speaking of wounds, the main problem, if the wounded survived to be hospitalized, where the infections, not the blood loss.
For an army, some of the variant channeling powers can be very interesting.
Actually, even though disease is a major killer for armies, healing the wounds would prevent a huge proportion of those diseases.
I should look up Variant channeling, it sounds like it might be what I've been missing =)
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When I work on a medievalish setting, I find a problem. The ruling religion of medieval Western Europe was a somewhat monolithic entity, with an actual king-priest, and zero tolerance for other religions. But that's not part of D&D.There are nations with find dominant jealous monotheistic religions in certain settings. If you count the trinity and saints as separate gods in a pantheon, the number of equivalents increases quite a bit.
On the topic of cure spells and channel, I'm continually frustrated by the lack of a good mass variants of, and lower level versions, of Remove Disease. Disease is the big killer in daily life, not injury. You can save someone who has their guts hanging out at 1st level but can't cure a common cold until 5th. Sure, house ruling this is pretty easy, but there has been virtually no development on this front for 40 years.
Purify Food and Drink is a cantrip and will have a big impact in a pseudo-medieval or renaissance society, reducing the risk of diseases, but it will be available mostly in well to do households with a resident low-level cleric (at least in Italy between old retired priests that were members of a family and retainers, well to do households often had a resident priest).
Actually curing diseases is a big issue and Remove disease requires a CL check, so the chance of success isn't so great for low-level casters.
Personally, with the relatively high chance of success of the healing skill when used with normal diseases, I think that there isn't the need of a low level Cure Disease spell.
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Actually, even though disease is a major killer for armies, healing the wounds would prevent a huge proportion of those diseases.
With the hit point system, sure, but if you consider more a realistic depiction of the real world, closing a wound without clearing and disinfecting it will only reduce the chance of infection.
A wound to the guts will generally release feces in your body and cause an infection. Weapons generally aren't very clean, so again a high chance of contracting a disease. Sometimes closing the wound will even aggravate the infection.
The most common problem for a wounded soldier in pre modern medicine is infection. That probably killed more soldiers than the enemy troops did. Magical healing should pretty well eliminate this risk. Another common problem was bleeding which magical healing also stops. Almost any class that has any form of mass healing also has access to the 0 level spell stabilize.
This is not to say that low level magic can eliminate all health problems, but they can significantly lower them. Most of the common diseases that where problems for armies in the past were due to contaminated food and water. In addition to the direct healing clerics also get purify food and drink, and create water. Both of those spells are 0 level spells that can be cast as often as needed by even a 1st level caster. With a source of clean water and not having to worry about spoiled or diseased food your troops are not going to get sick anywhere near as much they did in the real world.
While this is not going to solve all the problems of disease that it will significantly reduce what the typical soldier has to face in an army. Now about the only thing they need to deal with are actual contagious diseases.
Just because something else may be more dangerous does not mean that the first thing is not a big deal.
And there are heal checks for curing disease too
Also, warriors are still a d10 class
Honestly, the kit you get as a first level cleric is amazing.
You also get Channel Energy, which makes you amazing at healing large numbers of injured peope, over 100 per channel easily.
You also get Orisons, which allow you to stabilize the dying, or create enough water in 1 hour to sustain 2,400 people for a day, or purify twice that amount of pre-existing water in that time. You can use these as often as you like, which is crazy.
Also you get domain abilities, which are mostly basically specific spells you can cast (too varied to go into here).
And finally - you get irrefutable proof of the existence of god(s).
The benefits of being a Cleric would be absolutely staggering go a modern community, let alone a medieval one. Every single part of that is mind-blowingly powerful if used correctly.
How often are wounds infected in D&D? I don't think I have seen that, beyond being bitten by rats.
Pathfinder is not a good reality simulator at all. It's heroic fantasy. Wounds don't get infected unless there's a special ability or the story calls for that to happen.
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How often are wounds infected in D&D? I don't think I have seen that, beyond being bitten by rats.Pathfinder is not a good reality simulator at all. It's heroic fantasy. Wounds don't get infected unless there's a special ability or the story calls for that to happen.
True. Back in the days (1st ed. AD&D) there was a table for the chance of getting a disease. You had to roll monthly, plus in the event of exposition to adverse conditions, from the attacks of certain creatures to wading in an othyug lair.
Gygax and Arneson roots as wargamers did show. ;-)
I just wanted to confirm something related to channel positive energy. Per the SRD: "Channeling energy causes a burst that affects all creatures of one type (either undead or living) in a 30-foot radius centered on the cleric."
Assuming I'm playing a character who can channel positive energy, is there any reason I couldn't stand in the middle of a field / town square / arena, gather a whole bunch of injured people around me, and channel energy to heal all of them with a single use of channel positive energy?
A 30-foot radius circle is about 2,826 square feet, or about 262.5 square meters. If we stick with the idea of 1 person per 5-foot square, that's 113 people. If we're going by real-world crowd densities, it should be possible to get up to 500 easily into a 30-foot radius circle if they squish a little.
Obviously this sort of circumstance wouldn't come up tremendously often, but I can envision a military chaplain healing an entire company after a battle with a single channel energy, or a city's cleric healing everyone injured in an earthquake or monster attack or something. Am I missing something? Is there any reason I wouldn't be able to do this?
This topic comes up for highest caster level stuff. The witch coven has the same 30' limit, and per my post you can get 257,000 creatures in range.
The spells Pillar of Life and Symbol of Healing also can do a lot of healing, especially if you can get people to move through the area.
/cevah