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So... The combination of battle medicine, godless healing and mortal healing is very interesting, and one that I'm sure others have noticed as well. The character in question that I am considering would hail from Rahadoum and worried about the roles that gods play in the world. Because my healing would be much less effective in parties with Clerics and Champions, I think I would mainly bring her out in parties that lack them -- and I've seen a few of them, though clerics are fairly common in my local PFS area. Still, I also play online, so I have other routes and options. On the other hand... I could also have roleplay fun in a party with a cleric or a champion, where I gently ask them if they have considered the consequences of their entanglement with a deity, and how dangerous it is to allow a god power over your precious soul?
I am looking for advice for a chassis to apply this godless doctor concept. A plant-based druid could be interesting, as could a bard with Soothe or a Chiurgeon alchemist. The important thing is that I want to contribute to the party in a meaningful way beyond healing. Will I needlessly be nerfing my character if I go the route of Chiurgeon Alchemist? If I take Chiurgeon, I could still do the occasional bomb, but not be able to exclude party members.
I'd love advice on how I could make this character useful both in and out of combat. Advice on races and other classes would be appreciated as well. I think this character would likely be human, but if you have other suggestions, I am willing to hear them.
Hmm
My (PFS) bomber alchemist is a godless healer, works okay in combat, and has plenty of skills to be useful outside of combat. I created her before LOCG, so the Godless Healing addition was entirely a bonus.
I made her human to pick up Far Lobber as well as Quick Bomber. The idea was that she could throw a bomb, move, and still do Battle Medicine (otherwise the missed bombs on 2nd/3rd attacks just needlessly bleeds resources). That has worked out well (or at least as well as it can work, alchemist bombs aren't going to win any awards in DPR contests).
Having bombs as her primary weapon saves quite a bit of money for buying the advanced Healer's Kit at Level 3 (she doesn't have any runes on her weapons, and has only used her dagger a few times).
The number of skills that alchemists have, plus their high intelligence, has been super useful.
I retrained her original 2nd level feat (Smoke Bomb, which was fun but rarely used) into a Wizard dedication, which has been more useful (but admittedly less fun).
If you want to look at her character sheet: paizo.com/people/QuinolineSilicate
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During the playtest for investigator, there was a forensic methodology that might work well for a Medicine-focused character as well, since it could give you a large but very different toolkit than alchemist of non-Medicine benefits to the team (and the previewed class feature to roll an attack with Int, see if you like it, and if not do something else that turn, works great if "something else" can be a relatively high value action like healing or another useful skill action).
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Please keep in mind that Godless Healing only helps you as the heal-ee, not as the heal-er:
General, Skill
Prerequisites Battle Medicine, can’t have a patron deity
You recover an additional 5 Hit Points from a successful attempt to Treat your Wounds or use Battle Medicine on you. After you or an ally use Battle Medicine on you, you become temporarily immune to that Battle Medicine for only 1 hour, instead of 1 day.
So, it's useful for keeping yourself healthy, but doesn't directly aid the rest of your group.
As for Mortal Healing:
General, Skill
PFS Note As Mortal Healing requires you to specifically use the Treat Wounds action, it does not apply when used with other actions related to medicine or healing, such as Battle Medicine.
Prerequisites Godless Healing, you follow the Laws of Mortality
You grant greater healing when the gods don’t interfere. When you roll a success to Treat Wounds for a creature that hasn’t regained Hit Points from divine magic in the past 24 hours, you get a critical success on your check instead and restore the corresponding amount of Hit Points.
A critical success just adds 2d8 to the amount healed with a successful Treat Wounds (and nothing on a critical roll), doesn't work with Battle Medicine in PFS, and requires you to follow a philosophy that really doesn't 'play well with others' in a lot of situations (working with any divine group, refusing divine aid from the party cleric, etc.).
I'm kinda surprised the 'Laws of Mortality' are allowed in PFS given the importance of 'cooperation' in the society...
Here's a previous discussion on this sort of thing: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs432ay?Anathema-and-Organized-Play
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It was that very discussion from the Organized Play forum that actually put this idea into my head.
If someone was bringing a cleric whose primary goal was to heal everyone, I would likely not bring this doctor along. I was thinking of primarily using her in Play-by-Post, where long philosophical discussions between players is fun, and where it does not slowdown gameplay. But I also wanted to make sure that this character had other ways to contribute to the party's success & well-being. A chiurgeon alchemist could produce a lot of healing elixirs, and provide other ways to heal people. As for mortal healing, an extra 2d8 is nothing to sneeze at.
The Laws of Mortality are very interesting to me. I love the idea of stubborn atheists in a fantasy universe, who know that gods are real, but feel they are more trouble than they are worth. It is that stubborn defiance that is really making this character idea sing to me. It's a really interesting character seed.
Some things you should know about me: I build a lot of support characters that play well with others. If I built this character, she would still play well with others, but would likely have long good-natured discussions with the Party's Champion where they are both mutually trying to save the other person's soul. This character would be brought out in PBP, where the other party members would have time and an opportunity to discuss if there will be a problem.
I really, really like Mark's idea of being an Investigator, and APG is coming soon. I may wait and see what the class offers before building this character. Still, I would love to hear people's ideas on this -- even if they are also concerns.
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The Laws of Mortality are about cooperation amongst mortals, rather than relying on Gods to fix everything. It fits in very well with the Pathfinder Society, which generally doesn't expect it's members to swear religious oaths or engage in religious wars. Sure you may not like that the Cleric you've been assigned to work with relies on a deity's aid, but that's not really any different than a Champion of Abadar being forced to work with a Cleric of Cayden Cailean- you can disapprove of someone's beliefs and still work with them effectively.
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I think "clerics don't have a monopoly on healing" is an ongoing theme in the books being released and there's probably some more things in the pipeline. As Mark said, the investigator might have something to add.
Without too much wild speculation in that direction, let's look at another angle here. How do you combine healing with another combat contribution? I think you can roughly say that a combat has three phases: setup, heat of battle, and mopping up/desperate duel.
In the setup, people are moving into the room, discovering enemies, looking how to close the distance, navigate AoOs, moving so that enemies are in range of spells etc. ; at this point, there isn't yet all that much healing to be done.
In the heat of battle is the healer's biggest job. If a timely burst of spike healing can keep your front line from crumbling long enough to make theirs crumble, you're being a good part of the team.
The last part of combat is sometimes just mopping up remaining minions after the boss has been focus-fired, in which case there's probably less urgent need for combat healing.
But it can also go the other way around: the minions may be down but the boss is still going strong and the party is running on fumes, as you try to keep everyone up / bring them back up long enough to get the boss down. Here healers obviously have a job to do.
So when looking for a second job, apart from healing, I think you're particularly looking for that "setup" part, and the mopping up part.
I have a healer rogue and it’s worked fairly well in my group. The big benefit is that you get your concept in play in a reasonable amount of time. If you want to be a full on medical character you’ll really need the extra feats to pick up those you’ve mentioned and the others.
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The Laws of Mortality are about cooperation amongst mortals, rather than relying on Gods to fix everything. It fits in very well with the Pathfinder Society, which generally doesn't expect it's members to swear religious oaths or engage in religious wars. Sure you may not like that the Cleric you've been assigned to work with relies on a deity's aid, but that's not really any different than a Champion of Abadar being forced to work with a Cleric of Cayden Cailean- you can disapprove of someone's beliefs and still work with them effectively.
Except neither of those clerics is actually required to refuse heals or buffs from the other: They may not like it, but it isn't an actual anathema like it is for followers of the 'Laws of Mortality'...
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The Laws of Mortality are about cooperation amongst mortals, rather than relying on Gods to fix everything. It fits in very well with the Pathfinder Society, which generally doesn't expect it's members to swear religious oaths or engage in religious wars. Sure you may not like that the Cleric you've been assigned to work with relies on a deity's aid, but that's not really any different than a Champion of Abadar being forced to work with a Cleric of Cayden Cailean- you can disapprove of someone's beliefs and still work with them effectively.Except neither of those clerics is actually required to refuse heals or buffs from the other: They may not like it, but it isn't an actual anathema like it is for followers of the 'Laws of Mortality'...
You're saying that like it's a big deal, when it's really not. Followers of the Laws of Mortality would prefer Clerics not cast spells on them, that's hardly a party destroying issue. "Please don't use the powers from your God on me" isn't an insane request, nor is it an aggressive one. PF1 had the very common Superstition Barbarians that disliked having spells cast on them and that didn't tear the PFS apart.
It's definitely less likely to cause party conflict than a follower of Sheyln or Serenrae wanting to accept the surrender of a foe whilst followers of Calistrea or Torag aren't supposed to forgive or show mercy. Unless you're playing a Class that is affected by their Anathema (which is very hard for a follower of the Laws of Mortality) these are all roleplaying guides, and its on all players involved to ensure that they are doing their best to stay true to their character but more importantly aren't overly disrupting the game because of it. The Laws of Mortality don't require the character to be judgemental or aggressive in their dislike of religion, for most people outside the Pure Legion it's simply a matter of preferring to rely on other mortals rather than trusting the Gods.
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Two things to be mindful of:
There are GMs out there who have an overly restrictive view of what a Laws of Mortality lay worshipper can and can't do (as you probably saw in that discussion), so obviously ask your GM ahead of time how they handle things.
Keep in mind nobody knows how many hands Battle Medicine requires. There's an almost 500-post thread in the Rules Forum debating this. Mark Seifter said there's errata coming out; you might want to wait until that decides the issue.
I haven't had much problem with my -2001, who is both a lay worshipper and uses Battle Medicine, but I see the potential to game under a GM who is restrictive on both.
Druid is definitely a good route to go since they are Primal magic (which isn't Divine, a big difference here), they use Wisdom as their primary score (important for Nature and Medicine checks alike), do have good offensive spells on their list, like Fireball, and utility spells like Haste, and so on. The Natural Medicine feat will be good in granting you temporary bonuses until you decide to get Assurance (Medicine) as a skill feat, which will let you auto-succeed on Master-tier checks by the time you have access to it. And since you're a Druid who will probably be leveling both Nature and Medicine at the same time, it's a win-win.
Bard is another option if you want to be more buff/debuff focused, but their spell list is a bit more limited in scope compared to Primal in my personal opinion. It has some stuff Primal doesn't, to be sure, but honestly I don't think it's worth the loss in focus and versatility that the Bard's other stuff grants.
Another option to consider is a Primal Sorcerer. Having more spells per day plus other focus powers and different feats for blasting and such make them pretty strong. However, you're more squishy with the less HP and proficiencies, and you'll be quite strapped for applying the relevant skills since you'll be Charisma-based instead, whose focus on skills will largely make you a face, much like the Bard, and you'll have much less skills compared to a Bard to be able to focus on things like Medicine and Nature.
Alchemist is interesting simply because they can utilize Elixirs compared to magical potions, and I believe they can make Medicine key off of Intelligence with the Chirurgeon path, a huge barrier for Medicine being easy for you. The bombs and other alchemical items do offer some interesting utility, the only problem I have is that you're so item dependent that it's sickening unless you buy them yourself. Plus, being Intelligence based means you'll at least have some nice trained skills available to you, and if you decide to do some shenanigans like take Rogue Dedication with Skill Mastery to raise up a bunch of Expert and Master skills (plus free skill feats) to capitalize on your other focii, it's really interesting to see what can be done.
A crazy late-game idea would be to take a Wizard with Medicine and Nature with the Natural Medicine feat, and the Unified Theory feat, who can actually perform Medicine checks via the Arcane skill. Since Natural Medicine lets you use Nature in place of Medicine checks, and Unified Theory lets you use Arcane in place of any Religion, Occult, or Nature skills being requested (this includes skill feats, which Natural Medicine is). The only problem with this is that you still need to boost up Medicine to at least Master so you can benefit from the skill feats needed to get the utility other Medicine-focused characters get, and all you really get out of this is Intelligence and a slightly higher proficiency modifier (which is the same as a Focused Medicine character). Like I said, crazy late-game idea.
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Though you couldn't heal a target after divine healing (for 24 hours), you could heal first. Since your PC's in-combat healing has limited use anyway, you could get much out of it if you coordinate w/ the divine folk, precede their healing.
As long as you have something else to contribute to battles too, it shouldn't be an issue.
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I sidestepped the number of hands issue for my rogue with a pair of gauntlets. Fairly little of my theoretical damage comes from the weapon anyway. And having both hands frees me up for any number of shenanigans. I do a fair bit of debuf, decent flanking damage and have more skills than the rest of the four person party combined to work with outside of healing.
I suppose it’s just my perspective, but why would someone with magic devote much time to training as a doctor? It would seem that a leaf druid for instance would almost always have a better magic option available, learning a doctor’s skills would be a lot of extra effort. I’m not trying to be critical of the character choice, you do you is my general stance. But I’d be curious as to the thoughts behind the mindset, since this is a RP focused idea. If someone wouldn’t mind giving a bit of explanation, I find character Ideas interesting.
Maybe this is a question better suited for Rules, but there's no requirement that a non-religious character follow the Laws of Mortality, is there?
The way I see it, there is (a) the religious group, which is probably large (in Golarion and on Earth), (b) the atheist group, which is small (in Golarion and on Earth), and (c) a whole lot of people who don't care, or don't care to the point where they'd opt out of the path of least resistance.
I don't see any necessary conflicts between someone who's passively nonreligious and someone who's actively religious (clerics/champions/inquisitors). I imagine a large number of nonreligious people even go through the motions of being religious. They show up at the shrine to Erastil every week with their offerings because it's a neighborly thing to do, not because they care about Erastil. Or they show up at the Calistrian orgies but just for the orgy part and don't even care about Calistria.
My "atheist" character likes and dislikes churches based on the amount of high-profit blue-tinted glass they buy from her. The church of Iomedae buys low-profit red glass, now she thinks of Iomedae a stingy god. The churches of Desna and Cayden Cailean don't have many physical churches so she just doesn't know those gods at all. I'm sure there would be some philosophy-nerdrage about her technically being an agnostic or implicit/weak atheist, but day to day, she simply doesn't think about religion. Gods probably do exist (divine magic definitely does) but none have offered her any powers so she can't even worship them in a transactional fashion. And I think a large percentage of nonreligious characters are like her, even the ones that have a formal god on their character sheet.
Tl;dr: I think if everyone were honest, a large number of characters and a large number of players would put "shrug IDK" as their god on a questionnaire.
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Maybe this is a question better suited for Rules, but there's no requirement that a non-religious character follow the Laws of Mortality, is there?
No, and kinda Yes...
No, you are generally free to play a character who doesn't follow any diety or specific philosophy.Yes, because following the Laws of Mortality is a pre-req for one of the specific feats (Mortal Healing) brought up by the OP.
So, as long as you don't plan to take Mortal Healing, you are free to be an atheist who doesn't follow the Laws of Mortality (indeed, you can't be a follower if you happen to be chaotic).
How would the doctor be aware that the patient has received or not divine healings within the last 24 hours?
They wouldn't, though their Treat Wounds being less effective than normal might tip them off, I guess.
How would the doctor be aware that the patient has received or not divine healings within the last 24 hours?They wouldn't, though their Treat Wounds being less effective than normal might tip them off, I guess.
And I'm not sure the doctor has to know either way.
Hopefully the default answer would be that nearly every day requires zero divine healing. Plus we were also talking in the context of a PFS party, not random people. So while PFs are more prone to injury, they also can tell you, again not that it seems to matter.