Most of the healing spells just heal HP. Is there any that removes your current bad conditions (or lowers them by a certain amount)?
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Not one spell, no.
Dispel Magic will get rid of many conditions caused by spells, Restoration gets rid of clumsy, enfeebled, or stupefied, and at higher levels drained or doomed, and helps with toxins.
And then Neutralize Poison, Restore Senses, Remove Curse, Remove Disease, Remove Fear, and Remove Paralysis all do what they say they do.
That covers just about all conditions one way or another.
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It definitely requires a big investment in prepared slots, items, or time to remove conditions. Spontaneous casters mostly need not apply. RIP spamming Heal as a cureall in 1e.
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Channeled Succor clerics get most of the way there though.
Definitely see this as a bug, not a feature. High level characters still having to worry about diseases and poisons because they can't just cure everything with one spell is definitely an improvement over 1e.
Not as big of an improvement as higher level diseases needing higher level spells to fix - that might be my favorite thing about the new affliction rules - but still an improvement.
I do wish they had gone the 5e route and combined multiple of these spells into a few more general ones. What's weird is they did this for Restoration but then left out paralysis, fear, blindness, deafness, poison, and disease, leaving most of those to be their own spells (with blindness and deafness sharing one).
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I think this is on purpose. The conditions that Restoration fixes seem like they are the conditions that are both "sticky" and significantly harmful to your short term combat capability. At the same time, none of them represent permanent disabilities.
So the niche of Restoration is clearly "get a character who has been crippled but not permanently disabled ready to fight again", making it a good versatile spell for spontaneous casters or for Clerics to prepare every day.
Meanwhile, all of the "specific condition fixes" are spread out to individual spells I think because Paizo doesn't want Clerics and spontaneous casters to typically have the answer to them. They want those conditions to be meaningful things that have a good chance of forcing you to shift your spells around or seek out help to fix it.
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I would have preferred one more general purpose condition removal spell, that you specify which condition you're trying to remove. So if someone has two diseases, blindness, and a curse, you can only try to counteract one.
But by making it a single spell, it's a lot easier on spontaneous casters for which making spells heightenable to counteract-worthy levels is quite expensive.
In my opinion, Restoration is still the generic cure for most afflictions. Poisons and diseases often give you conditions like Enfeebled, Stupefied, Drained. Having Restorations ready allows you to remove most effects of afflictions, you just don't remove the root cause. But it eases the burden.
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Wish or the equivalent of whatever tradition you are practicing is >effectively< a cure-it-all
but it needs a level 10 slot, so, theres that...
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Yeah, this kind of sucks for spontaneous casters. Unless they dedicate themselves to only being a band-aid (which is boring in my opinion) they just don't have enough spells known to support this sort of thing.
I guess wands and scrolls can help, but it sucks to be dependent on items.
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The thing about the set-up in between conditions and condition removers always struck me a little odd since playing DnD. Because if in doubt most parties will simply abandon what they are currently doing until the condition is cured, which can be really awkward, like setting camp in the middle of the dungeon (or somewhere safe) in case someone was hit with permanent blindness instead of continuing on. So unless there is a really good reason for pressing on despite any debilitating conditions the "natural" flow of dungeoneering has just been disrupted for no good reason.
The thing about the set-up in between conditions and condition removers always struck me a little odd since playing DnD. Because if in doubt most parties will simply abandon what they are currently doing until the condition is cured, which can be really awkward, like setting camp in the middle of the dungeon (or somewhere safe) in case someone was hit with permanent blindness instead of continuing on. So unless there is a really good reason for pressing on despite any debilitating conditions the "natural" flow of dungeoneering has just been disrupted for no good reason.
I've had the same experience, and hate it.
I hate the idea of camping out in dungeons, but when you inflict permanent conditions on someone the whole party wants to stop and resolve it.
I don't have a solution, but I really don't like this paradigm.
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While not a slot based spellcaster, I do miss Monks over a certain level being basically free to loaf around in radioactive wastelands. All those new stuff like general counteracting rules and such did some grounding down for the setting in many small ways...
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I don't know, I feel that it makes traps and monsters inflicting blindess or other hard to remove conditions a nice tool for dungeon design, by making it hard for the players to reach the end without retreating and allowing the foes time to prepare for a pretty epic final encounter. A nice tool to have for the GM.
On the other hand, all those spells eat up a good chunk of the divine list at levels 2/3, leaving few more active and fun spells to prepare for clerics (and sorcs), especially if your deity's anathema already blocks some other spells (like fear effects for Desna). I guess it should become less of an issue when more spells will become available though.
My experience has been players turtle (and heal) or straight up leave and heal. Which means:
1) The enemy just leaves, maybe the players can continue the search for them2)Maybe the enemy wins and the campaign is over.
Campaign ending in player loss isn't fun. Enemy leaving is okay, but still not very satisfying and can just cause the same thing to happen with the players leaving again and again.
For players it's exceptionally un-fun to play with something as debilitating as blindness for a melee character. So I don't begrudge them for wanting to get rid of before proceeding through the adventure. Again I don't have a solution to this problem, just something I see as a problem (in both PF1 and PF2).
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The thing about the set-up in between conditions and condition removers always struck me a little odd since playing DnD. Because if in doubt most parties will simply abandon what they are currently doing until the condition is cured, which can be really awkward, like setting camp in the middle of the dungeon (or somewhere safe) in case someone was hit with permanent blindness instead of continuing on. So unless there is a really good reason for pressing on despite any debilitating conditions the "natural" flow of dungeoneering has just been disrupted for no good reason.
Yeah, this is totally a thing. My monk was knocked out and carried off into a cave by a hobgoblin commander. Rather than chase after to save me, the beat up party took ten minutes to heal up and remove conditions first.
When they went into the cave they found that the hobgoblin had used my unconscious character to distract a spider swarm and allow him passage. I was essentially auto-dead.
What might be an interesting option would be a more remedy-all type spell which has a wider range of impact, being able to remedy one identified condition. But have its limitation being that it isn't a permanent remedy, and would probably get tagged as Uncommon. It might then allow the party to continue on, so they can deal with the immediate problem, but the problem will reassert itself in a certain time, at which they will need to address the more long term issue.
It would be a balancing act allowing the longer term conditions to still require acquisition of some more specific remedy to completely resolve, but would allow it to no longer be a full stop for parties that are inclined to stop in such a circumstance.
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What might be an interesting option would be a more remedy-all type spell which has a wider range of impact, being able to remedy one identified condition. But have its limitation being that it isn't a permanent remedy, and would probably get tagged as Uncommon. It might then allow the party to continue on, so they can deal with the immediate problem, but the problem will reassert itself in a certain time, at which they will need to address the more long term issue.
It would be a balancing act allowing the longer term conditions to still require acquisition of some more specific remedy to completely resolve, but would allow it to no longer be a full stop for parties that are inclined to stop in such a circumstance.
That's an interesting idea. PF1 did this with Placebo Effect
That could well be a good "trudge on" solution: if someone in the party gets hit with a bad condition, they can continue adventuring but start of every fight the fighter needs a placebo to suspend blindness.
It doesn't take away the sting of the condition, the party would love to be rid of it. But it doesn't force an immediate end to the adventuring day.
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Here's my take:
Having many of the spells target specific conditions is a reward for researching your enemies. I know that's not always possible, but whenever possible it's something the party ought to be doing.. asking around town about the local threats and so forth. If the old codger at the tavern tells tales about giant spiders in the woods, then that's a tip off that the party ought to prepare to deal with poisons. For example.
"Classic" dungeon design allows for finding a bolt hole in a dungeon to lick your wounds in. The Gamemastery Guide even calls it out on page 41, paragraph 2 under Exploration Scenes: ..."1 secure cave or other staging area..." So while it is a bit too much to ask that every dungeon-type adventure has a place you can secure if you need to back off and rest/heal/reset, I think it's a fair assumption that most dungeons ought to have a place where this can happen. And I do think that typically you should have to clear enemies out of such an area, or at least deal with a trap or other hazard. You need to earn it. And I also think there should be consequences to backing off - the enemies are better prepared, they call in reinforcements, they set traps, whatever. The world should react to the players' absence as much as their presence. Heck it would be fun to fight a last stand type of battle in the morning when the enemies realize where you've been holed up, and they come at you in force, splintering their way through the door you barricaded to keep yourself safe. Sort of a Mines of Moria type moment, you know?
Anyways I'm rambling now.
I'm solidly in the camp of "negative conditions change the dynamic and force tough decisions, so they are good. The ability to remove them is necessary, but shouldn't be a foregone conclusion."
I think things are fine the way they are.
...And I'm saying this while playing a Cleric who currently cannot remove a slowly progressing petrification condition on the Barbarian, and who is currently knocked out due to a disease that reduced STR to 0 (this is a PF1 campaign, but this sort of situation is possible in either edition). Those conditions have completely halted the party's forward progress; fortunately we don't have a pressing deadline, but if we take too long there will be consequences we don't want to have to deal with. So the current situation is forcing some really difficult decisions, and that drama is what is making the game fun.
Ok I'll keep going since I think the anecdote is valuable.
The situation is that there is a very angry white dragon marauding the region. We have a VIP that is an infant that we need to keep safe - she is currently in the care of a competent and well hidden village, but the dragon is an ever present threat. We are close to our goal of finding and killing said dragon, but we're a hot mess due to negative conditions, one of which is progressing. So... once the cleric is concious we'll be able to have enough lesser restorations to deal with the STR damage, but that's gonna be at least a day or two if we wait to deal with it all. How far will the barbarian's petrification progress in that time? I'll have to wait another day to re-prepare my slate of anti-dragon spells, so do we wait for that too? Or should we pull the rip cord now and get going back to town where there is a caster that we suspect - we don't know, only suspect - will be able to cure the petrification? We risk getting caught out in the open by the dragon if we pull back. We risk not being in top form if we fight the dragon in the short term. We risk waiting too long and losing our barbarian to petrification if we hole up for days dealing with the STR issue.
And all of this is so much more gripping than "oh, literally any condition happened? No big, I have Johnson & Johnson Cure All prepared today, hold still for 6 seconds and I'll have you back on your feet. No, don't even bother putting your sword down."
The way this is designed, means that there's now a distinction between characters capable of providing magical healing, and those dedicated to magical healing.
Classes that are meant to emphasize healing and condition removal have access to features like merciful elixirs, Mercy, channeled succor, and making healing and condition removal signature spells.
This now requires effort in proportion to how you want to define your character, but the options exist to be good at it if you want. But versatility in healing afflictions DOES require that effort.
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I don't know, I feel that it makes traps and monsters inflicting blindess or other hard to remove conditions a nice tool for dungeon design, by making it hard for the players to reach the end without retreating and allowing the foes time to prepare for a pretty epic final encounter. A nice tool to have for the GM.
On the other hand, all those spells eat up a good chunk of the divine list at levels 2/3, leaving few more active and fun spells to prepare for clerics (and sorcs), especially if your deity's anathema already blocks some other spells (like fear effects for Desna). I guess it should become less of an issue when more spells will become available though.My experience has been players turtle (and heal) or straight up leave and heal. Which means:
1) The enemy just leaves, maybe the players can continue the search for them
2)Maybe the enemy wins and the campaign is over.What I meant was having the ennemy prepared for the PCs the base assumption (and thus a balanced encounter, not a campaign stopper), with the players having an easier than normal encounter on the off chance they avoid or negate the condition on the spot. Ambush encounters can be fun and shake things up, provided they are properly balanced, and conditions like blindnes provide a way to introduce these in a way that makes the evil guy look smart for exploiting the fact that the PCs retreat, while rewarding groups that manage to negate the obstacle.
In the same way, blinding monsters or basilisks make for interisting encounters by changing the rules of battle. This is only possible because you can't simply dissipate the condition during the fight, but have to find a way to carry on despite it.
That say it is pretty easy to make such encounters completely unfair, and I had my fair share of super tedious fights with debilitated PCs... But provided you can make it work, it's an interesting possibility.
If you're saying you build your plot around the enemy trying to blind the party, to "buy time" to setup the "epic boss fight" and that if the players are lucky they might be able to press on and catch the enemy unprepared for the fight then that might be a reasonable way to work it.
But I feel like status condition infliction often isn't used that way, because many monsters can cause permanent status conditions and are in no way tied to this sort of plot line when used in most adventure paths.
I agree that what you're describing can work, but it's not how most pre-written adventures are written.
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One of my character builds addresses the limited repertoire of a spontaneous caster by pairing spontaneous with prepared. He's a Sorceror with Spontaneous Primal Spells AND a Druid multiclass with Prepared Primal Spells.
Of course, he won't necessarily have the proper spell prepared to fix a broken character, but as a Druid, he can use his slots to prepare the needed spell the next day.
All sorts of spontaneous/prepared combos are possible.
The main downside is that it's feat intensive to multi-class into a caster class. Dedication, 3 caster feats, and the breadth feat. You can save on the Dedication by being an Ancient Elf, but that's still 4 class feats you are eating up.
Yes, thank you. Brain clearly wasn't working...
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One of my character builds addresses the limited repertoire of a spontaneous caster by pairing spontaneous with prepared. He's a Sorceror with Spontaneous Primal Spells AND a Druid multiclass with Prepared Primal Spells.
Of course, he won't necessarily have the proper spell prepared to fix a broken character, but as a Druid, he can use his slots to prepare the needed spell the next day.
All sorts of spontaneous/prepared combos are possible.
The main downside is that it's feat intensive to multi-class into a caster class. Dedication, 3 caster feats, and the breadth feat. You can save on the Dedication by being an Ancient Elf, but that's still 4 class feats you are eating up.
I was looking into something similar.
Mind to share your spell list for the sorcerer?
I wouldn't mind, but I haven't actually played the character and I haven't picked spells. The character is a Gnome with (at level 5) full ability to speak with animals, high diplomacy and a bunch of diplomacy feats (so he can interact with animals). He doesn't have Wild Empathy, but he has Gladhand, which is great - you push aside the bush to find a Tiger hiding, so you use your Gladhand to do an immediate diplomacy check to make the Tiger your friend (or at least convince him not to eat you)!
EDIT - Actually, I checked the character sheet and I did pick his level 1 and 2 spells, so here they are:
At Level 1:
Bloodline (Fey) Spell: Faerie Dust
Sorceror Cantrips: Ghost Sound, Detect Magic, Read Aura, Lightning Arc, Disrupt Undead
Sorceror 1st Level Spell: Charm, Heal, Grease
At Level 2:
Druid Cantrips: Guidance, Stabilize
Sorceror 1st Level Spell: Gust Of Wind
One of my character builds addresses the limited repertoire of a spontaneous caster by pairing spontaneous with prepared. He's a Sorceror with Spontaneous Primal Spells AND a Druid multiclass with Prepared Primal Spells.
Of course, he won't necessarily have the proper spell prepared to fix a broken character, but as a Druid, he can use his slots to prepare the needed spell the next day.
All sorts of spontaneous/prepared combos are possible.
The main downside is that it's feat intensive to multi-class into a caster class. Dedication, 3 caster feats, and the breadth feat. You can save on the Dedication by being an Ancient Elf, but that's still 4 class feats you are eating up.
The main downside is that it doesn't work. You won't be able to cast high enough spells to cure anything past level 8. And even at level 8, you cure low level conditions only.
The main downside is that it doesn't work. You won't be able to cast high enough spells to cure anything past level 8. And even at level 8, you cure low level conditions only.One of my character builds addresses the limited repertoire of a spontaneous caster by pairing spontaneous with prepared. He's a Sorceror with Spontaneous Primal Spells AND a Druid multiclass with Prepared Primal Spells.
Of course, he won't necessarily have the proper spell prepared to fix a broken character, but as a Druid, he can use his slots to prepare the needed spell the next day.
All sorts of spontaneous/prepared combos are possible.
The main downside is that it's feat intensive to multi-class into a caster class. Dedication, 3 caster feats, and the breadth feat. You can save on the Dedication by being an Ancient Elf, but that's still 4 class feats you are eating up.
This is assuming that you only encounter conditions of your level or higher and you never critically succeed counteract checks; while the second is arguably a fair assumption, the first is not.
This is assuming that you only encounter conditions of your level or higher and you never critically succeed counteract checks; while the second is arguably a fair assumption, the first is not.The main downside is that it doesn't work. You won't be able to cast high enough spells to cure anything past level 8. And even at level 8, you cure low level conditions only.One of my character builds addresses the limited repertoire of a spontaneous caster by pairing spontaneous with prepared. He's a Sorceror with Spontaneous Primal Spells AND a Druid multiclass with Prepared Primal Spells.
Of course, he won't necessarily have the proper spell prepared to fix a broken character, but as a Druid, he can use his slots to prepare the needed spell the next day.
All sorts of spontaneous/prepared combos are possible.
The main downside is that it's feat intensive to multi-class into a caster class. Dedication, 3 caster feats, and the breadth feat. You can save on the Dedication by being an Ancient Elf, but that's still 4 class feats you are eating up.
You mean conditions of your level -2 or higher?
Most conditions you will take will be inflicted by enemies around your level and as such be above your counteract ability outside critical successes.And even if by chance you face a condition inflicted by an enemy 3 levels under yours, your counteract check won't even be very good considering the low proficiency and ability score you'll have, so you'll certainly need 2 days on average to get rid of it.
If you play in a "survival" campaign, where you won't be able to get rid of conditions in any other way and where the time scale is quite large, it can be interesting. Otherwise, I'll pass, personally.
Just speaking from my experience running Age of Ashes, I would say 75% of the enemies the party encounters are lower level than them.
And yes, that's 75% of enemies, not 75% of encounters, but it's still frequent enough that I don't think it's as simple as being able to say "it doesn't work".
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This is assuming that you only encounter conditions of your level or higher and you never critically succeed counteract checks; while the second is arguably a fair assumption, the first is not.The main downside is that it doesn't work. You won't be able to cast high enough spells to cure anything past level 8. And even at level 8, you cure low level conditions only.One of my character builds addresses the limited repertoire of a spontaneous caster by pairing spontaneous with prepared. He's a Sorceror with Spontaneous Primal Spells AND a Druid multiclass with Prepared Primal Spells.
Of course, he won't necessarily have the proper spell prepared to fix a broken character, but as a Druid, he can use his slots to prepare the needed spell the next day.
All sorts of spontaneous/prepared combos are possible.
The main downside is that it's feat intensive to multi-class into a caster class. Dedication, 3 caster feats, and the breadth feat. You can save on the Dedication by being an Ancient Elf, but that's still 4 class feats you are eating up.
You mean conditions of your level -2 or higher?
Most conditions you will take will be inflicted by enemies around your level and as such be above your counteract ability outside critical successes.
And even if by chance you face a condition inflicted by an enemy 3 levels under yours, your counteract check won't even be very good considering the low proficiency and ability score you'll have, so you'll certainly need 2 days on average to get rid of it.
If you play in a "survival" campaign, where you won't be able to get rid of conditions in any other way and where the time scale is quite large, it can be interesting. Otherwise, I'll pass, personally.
Having a chance to cure a condition is much better than simply being stuck with the condition and having no way to remove it other than travelling back to town and paying someone to remove it for you (if such a person is even available - how many towns have a 14th level Cleric built with Max casting stats?). Players tend to find the latter EXTREMELY frustrating - even a small chance greatly reduces the frustration factor for many players.
And remember, the build is not simply focused on this condition removal ability, but the slots can be used day to day for any of a variety of purposes - extra Heal spells, utility spells, etc.
Also, I haven't done more than a surface check on this and it is a topic for another thread (so start another thread to argue about this), but my initial read is that the proficiency for spell attacks and DC is based on TRADITION, not class. In other words, if you get Primal Tradition spell attack and DCs from two different classes, you use the higher of the two to cast Primal Tradition spells. Note that you must still use the appropriate stat, so the actual numbers are likely different for the two sets of spells (e.g. +4 from CHA for the Sorceror sourced Primal Spells vs +3 from WIS for the Druid sourced Primal Spells).
This is no different than weapon proficiency - if you get proficiency with a weapon from two different classes/archetypes/ancestries/etc, you use the higher of the two with that weapon.
(if such a person is even available - how many towns have a 14th level Cleric built with Max casting stats?)
I think technically no towns have 14th level clerics since NPCs are built differently to player characters.
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(if such a person is even available - how many towns have a 14th level Cleric built with Max casting stats?)I think technically no towns have 14th level clerics since NPCs are built differently to player characters.
NPCs can be built like PCs if the GM so desires. It's as legal as using PC WBL gear and higher point-buy was in PF1, so uncommon but not impossible. It hasn't happened yet in a published work, but it's early days.
But more importantly, while most towns won't have a character who's technically a Cleric, most will have priests who are X level prepared divine casters, many of whom will have Divine Font. And X will be 14 about as often as 14th level NPC Clerics showed up in PF1. Referring to such NPCs as 14th level Clerics, while incorrect in the most technical sense, remains the simplest and clearest way to talk about them.
Just speaking from my experience running Age of Ashes, I would say 75% of the enemies the party encounters are lower level than them.
And yes, that's 75% of enemies, not 75% of encounters, but it's still frequent enough that I don't think it's as simple as being able to say "it doesn't work".
Lower level is not enough. You need enemies that are at least 2 or 3 levels under yours (depending on your level), which starts to be really low.
Also, most debilitating permanent conditions (like Blinded) are protected by the Incapacitation tag. So I don't think you'll be able to remove much conditions using a Cleric/Druid Dedication.Having a chance to cure a condition is much better than simply being stuck with the condition and having no way to remove it other than travelling back to town and paying someone to remove it...
We are speaking of rolling a natural 20, so you need 20 days on average to remove a condition. I think we can consider that "being stuck with a condition".
DCs are based on tradition, so in your case they will be higher. I was speaking of the general case of using a Dedication to remove conditions. But in your case you'll be able to quite easily remove very low level conditions.When you'll be higher level, you may give us some feedback about your character's ability to remove condition. I think it'll be way too low, but you may have a different experience.
...Referring to such NPCs as 14th level Clerics, while incorrect in the most technical sense, remains the simplest and clearest way to talk about them.(if such a person is even available - how many towns have a 14th level Cleric built with Max casting stats?)I think technically no towns have 14th level clerics since NPCs are built differently to player characters.
Hence "technically".
Isn't the staff of healing actually doing this?
Isn't the staff of healing actually doing this?
That's a good catch. It expands one's options, and remains relevant if you upgrade. At least until the highest levels as it stops at level 16. I'm not sure I'd choose it to be my one staff though, but for a spontaneous caster, it can be used the next day for many spells they don't have.