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Not much more than the thread title.
I recently rolled a Dhampir Desecrator and I'm having a blast, and I'd love to be unburdened by ancestry.
A 1st/2nd level feat that unlocks Negative Healing for Evil Champions would be fantastic.
The new Revenant background in Guns and Gears gives negative healing. It is Rare, though.
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If your character is alive, they use positive healing. It’s got nothing to do with alignment.
If you want more options, Book of the Dead has some more undead ancestries coming that are likely in the same boat as dhampir.
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If your character is alive, they use positive healing. It’s got nothing to do with alignment.
If you want more options, Book of the Dead has some more undead ancestries coming that are likely in the same boat as dhampir.
Pretty much this. If negative healing access is given to a class, I feel like it would have to be on a very limited basis like a spell or "stance" of some sort. Maybe a Focus Power. Otherwise, it's just really strange without a biological justification. Maybe a dedication that allows one to transcend their mortality?
But as a normal "this is a thing that evil champions do," it feels very odd.
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I think it is more of a flavour win for negative healing to only come from actually being undead - if I had to write a feat for it, it would be a counterpart to Celestial Form and Fiendish Form at level 18 - you get darkvision, the undead trait, and instead of the fly speed you get negative healing and bonuses against poison/diseases/death effects.
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I see a lot of answers amounting to "it should be very rare", but then you can get it at the cost of a Heritage, which is worth approximately 1~ General Feat.
Evil Champions are not "just evil dudes", they get divine powers out of how dastardly they are. Baseline, they all get the ability to pull negative energy from thin air.
Once more, if a Background can grant it, it's not a particularly powerful thing to dole around, and it comes at a cost for sure.
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I see a lot of answers amounting to "it should be very rare", but then you can get it at the cost of a Heritage, which is worth approximately 1~ General Feat.
Evil Champions are not "just evil dudes", they get divine powers out of how dastardly they are. Baseline, they all get the ability to pull negative energy from thin air.
Once more, if a Background can grant it, it's not a particularly powerful thing to dole around, and it comes at a cost for sure.
A rare background asking for GM buy-in. It's not a baseline thing to deviate from the understood rules of undead biology.
Edit: It's akin (but not altogether the same) to ask that alchemists get a feat for an extra hand to deal with their action economy issues. It's not entirely implausible, but as a baseline thing, it's certainly odd.
(Also, as this was a "thing" in PF1, I wouldn't bat an eye at making a feat like that, but with the same caveats as mentioned upthread: rarity access, limited use, or even just a difficult action economy cost)
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I see a lot of answers amounting to "it should be very rare", but then you can get it at the cost of a Heritage, which is worth approximately 1~ General Feat.
Evil Champions are not "just evil dudes", they get divine powers out of how dastardly they are. Baseline, they all get the ability to pull negative energy from thin air.
Once more, if a Background can grant it, it's not a particularly powerful thing to dole around, and it comes at a cost for sure.
But that Heritage and Background both have a clear flavor… about being undead, or near enough for it. Flavor consistent with the laws of the setting.
Negative energy is the opposite of life. You wanna be healed by it? Quit being alive. There’s a reason those who follow Evil gods get Harm and not Heal.
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The sorcerer undead bloodline focus spell gives you the ability to be healed by negative if I'm not mistaken.
2 archetype feats and you got it.
Dhampir get Negative Healing as a basic part of the ancestry. Just cast Harm to regain health...
Oil of Unlife is also a thing.
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Thinking about this, homebrewing something for evil champions would be fun. My proposal is a dedication centering around touch of corruption. Something like...
Withered Knight (uncommon) Dedication 2
Prerequisites: touch of corruption, tenets of evil
Access: You have undergone a ritual to strip your mortality away
You have taken the next step towards becoming something more. You gain the Negative Healing ability, causing you to be harmed by positive energy and healed by neagtive. Additionally, when slain by a spell or attack with the Death trait, you do not die, instead becoming wounded as normal.
You could then have some feats like...
Seeping Corruption Dedication Feat 4(6/8?)
Your command over the forces of corruption have spread, allowing you greater control over your dark gifts. When casting touch of corruption you may add an additional somatic action to increase the range to 30 feet or two actions - somatic and verbal - to instead cast it in a 15 foot emanation. When cast this way, you are also affected.
Maybe some high level feats like...
Lord of Death Dedication Feat 14
The transformation that began long ago is now complete. You gain greater darkvision and resistance to physical damage equal to half your level. However, you gain a weakness to good damage equal to your level. Additionally, once per day as a three-action activity, you can assume a spectral form that lasts for 1 minute. While in this form, you gain resistance to all damage equal to your level, except for force, ghost touch, or positive damage. This resistance is doubled against non-magical damage.
That said, these are just quick thoughts without any, uh, like balance justifications behind them. I would work them over a bit before making them anything official.
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There's a lot of assertion here that you must be undead to have negative healing, and that if you're living you can only be healed by positive energy. As it happens, the lore surrounding both expressions of vital energy would be a lot less conflicting and confusing if this were as true as folks have suggested here. It may be true that negative healing is strongly associated with undeath, but there are actually several examples of either wholly living creatures with negative healing, or ways for living creatures to gain negative healing.
I feel it bears repeating but as mentioned already, dhampir, though associated with undeath, nevertheless are fully living creatures whose bodies heal when charged with negative energy. Similarly, mortics of all kinds seem to have negative healing regardless whether they currently count as undead or living. Though these creatures are clearly associated with negative energy in some respect or another, they still clearly have negative healing while living.
On the other hand, urdefhan, despite being known as Orvian vampire colloquially, are living humanoid creatures with no biological association with undeath. While death-obsessed, and said to be created by the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they are otherwise not to be confused for undead in any way.
As for ways that a living creature might gain negative healing without being born with it, the Oracle of Bones springs to mind, who can choose whether to have positive or negative healing each day. On the other hand, the undead bloodline sorcerer gains a spell which does not directly confer negative healing, but does allow a touched target to be healed by Harm spells specifically without losing the ability to heal through positive energy.
While none of the above means are much help to a living evil Champion hoping to benefit from their touch of corruption the same as a living paladin does their lay on hands (yet), they do show that not only do some living creatures have negative healing naturally, but that it is possible for a living creature to choose the ability to be healed by negative energy.
I would certainly not want the ability to gain negative healing while living to be obtained trivially, and though I value the relative exclusiveness to undeath-themed concepts, the ship has more than sailed on having living creatures with negative healing, even without an express relationship to undeath. Certainly, it feel only natural that an evil Champion should be among those able to invert their own vital essence while living.
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P.S. regarding certain options which either don't exist in 2e yet, or are not available to players, extremely powerful living adherents of the Whispering Way may gain negative healing through the Whispering Way theme template at level 17. This includes any monster of 17th level or higher which has dedicated itself to the Whispering Way (obviously a means to undeath, but the point remains). Also, in 1e the wayang were living creatures not at all associated with undeath who could gain negative healing for a minute every day. I would be surprise if this option does not return as an Ancestry feat in 2e.