Depends on the campaign.
If it's undead heavy then you have an AoE nuke that can be used from level 1 .
If you're in a campaign with limited access to magical healing it givee you an option that doesn't use up your spells.
If it's an undead heavy campaign with limited access to healing then it's a pretty good deal.
Either way they're less useful at later levels, though feats like Command/Turn Undead can keep them more relevant.
It's best on Life Oracles and of middling to useless on everyone else.
it's also nice to have an aoe healing ability for that moment when a fireball\trap drop 2-4 party members and you can't run to stabilize all (AND the GM won't let you know who is in what condition beside that - 'they are DAYING, do something!')
some GM won't let you know the other player's exact hp without some high dc heal checks or spells\agilities (or at all).
I've also used Channel Energy for diplomacy.
We killed 2 barbarian cannibals in a cave, then moved further in and found a large family who had been the ... "guests" of the barbarians . They were terrified, but some were brandishing weapons.
I move to the front and channeled energy to heal the entire room, and the GM let me use it as a diplomacy check with a fairly hefty circumstance bonus.
Is that a bit niche? Sure, but the ability to positively affect a room full of people is a nice thing to have up your sleeve. Don't forget what it means to those who don't have it.
I really like Channel for certain buillds...
I like the feats and archetypes and prestige classes that modify the shape of the burst. I like Variant Channeling. I like Ki Channel and the Tea of Transference shenanigans. I like those sticks you can Channel into and hang up for your allies.
I would rather have Channel Energy than something stupid like Sneak Attack, 100% of the time.
It's a bit like asking if archery is good. Channel Energy can be good, but it takes a lot of investment to use it for combat healing. It really is a lot easier on a charisma based class, because one of the more important required feats is selective channel, which lets you only heal your allies if your charisma bonus is greater than the number of nearby enemies. But that's not the only requirement for channel healing, you also have to be able to distribute the damage, so you are healing the most damage possible at once. Two common ways to do this are the shield other spell and the life link hex/revelation. Life oracles can easily get both. Life Shamans have life link, but can only get shield other through the human favored class bonus.
As for using it against undead, Yeah, it's a pretty handy option. Again charisma is helpful for the save DC.
It sounds like the archetype you're talking about is the witch doctor. I have mixed feelings about that archetype. It's better if you aren't already a life shaman, but you want to have some extra heals or damage against undead. If you are already a life shaman, the channels it gets you are a die behind, and you give up a lot of hexes to get them. So, you'd be better off to just take the extra channel feat if you want to have more channels.
There are hundreds of uses for channeling energy, and with minimal feat and item investment you can make it pretty dang powerful. As far as feats, Selective Channel and Versatile Channel are really all you need to be a competent channeler, any channel feats you get after that is icing on the cake. If you find that you're fighting a wide variety of enemies in a particular campaign, you could consider getting the Bless Equipment feat so you can put on-demand Bane on your allies' weapons, and if you're fighting an abundance of evil clerics and negative energy users, you can put Deathless and Stanching on your allies' armor while putting Lifesurge on their weapons.
If you're using ABP get a Phylactery of Positive Channeling, or if you're not using ABP but your GM allows combining magic items, Phylactery of Positive Channeling + Headband of Wisdom is really good. Also, a Ring of Protected Life will let you Channel as a Swift 1/day when you need an in-combat burst of healing or nuke undead.
Melkiador, I don't get why Shield Other and Life Link are needed. Please help me understand.
I would agree with others though that as a general ability Channel Positive Energy is pretty bland. It delivers an average of 3.5 HP worth of healing per D6 to multiple folks at once.
I guess I should have been more clear, but those answer each other. Say an enemy deals 20 damage to a damage prone ally. Shield other splits that into 10 for each of you. Then on your turn channel heals that damage for 10 on each of you. Anything you can do to spread damage out will help when you heal the damage as a group.
Lots of other nearly required feats though. Fey Foundling makes you heal that damage to yourself much more efficiently. Quick channel lets you do other things while channeling or channel twice in a round if things get really bad.
IMO its absolutely terrible... on Clerics.
The damning evidence for this is that on the Cleric - a class chassis that has so few class features on it, you will still regularly come across people dumping CHA (and thus Channeling) because the basic option of freeing up ability score points is worth more than one of your very few class features.
Let that sink in for a moment....
On Oracles I can see it having a fair bit of mileage.
The only time I've utilised it on Clerics is when playing pos energy Herald Callers.... unlimited range and auto selectivity channel heals on summoned creatures is pretty useful. But even then the most I've gone to is CHA 14.
If you don't have a 16 Cha minimum, then I wouldn't even invest anything in Channel, because yes it will be absolutely terrible.
If you have 12 or 14 Cha, I wouldn't make any investment in feats/items, and simply save it for out-of-combat or pre-sleep healing.
If you're using ABP get a Phylactery of Positive Channeling, or if you're not using ABP but your GM allows combining magic items, Phylactery of Positive Channeling + Headband of Wisdom is really good. Also, a Ring of Protected Life will let you Channel as a Swift 1/day when you need an in-combat burst of healing or nuke undead.Another trick (Life) Shaman have that Clerics don't is Amulet of Spirits. Not for the specific Life Spirit effect, but the clause: "If a creature that already has the associated mystery or spirit wears the amulet, that wearer does not gain the abilities listed below; instead, the effective level of her mystery or spirit powers increases by 2." Plus the Phylactery and you are effectively at +3d6 channel.
And Ki Channel/Tea of Transference (+minor creation) mentioned already.
You can also dip 1 level of Life Oracle for two separate sources of Channel, and this source would do 1d6 +2d6(Phylactery) 1 + Cha times per day :)
Well, cleric at least has a few FCB to augment channel energy's heal / damage. The half-elf one (+1/3 HP healed or damaged) means ~20% more effect, and by healing yourself three times a day with channeling you basically get the FCB HP back. The kobold and wayang ones can be better depending on situation, but half-elf is probably the easiest race to get green light from the GM and solid stats from the player.
|
Thanks for the feedback so I get the impression its a lot less useful than it sounds like it would be especially on a wisdom class and you're not planning to invest feats into it.
Melkiador, I don't get why Shield Other and Life Link are needed. Please help me understand.
I would agree with others though that as a general ability Channel Positive Energy is pretty bland. It delivers an average of 3.5 HP worth of healing per D6 to multiple folks at once. If you're playing a Witch Doctor Shaman, your effective Cleric level is Shaman level -3 for this ability.
So you're, say, 8th level before you can heal 10.5 damage to folks. For reference, the vanilla average for a CR 8 monster is to deliver 35 damage in a full attack round. I don't know if just the general healing benefits with this ability would keep pace with the needs of the party.
If however you were focusing on using the Channel Energy ability with feats to specialize it in some way it may see more application. Channel Smite might be handy if you've got a lot of undead, or maybe the elemental channeling types if you'll be facing those creatures. Bottom line, Channel Energy takes some development to be useful long term, and especially if you'll have it at a reduced level.
Actually I was looking at the spirit warden who get channel and a few other abilities in place of hexes.
Ok, the spirit warden ability is specified to only be for hurting undead. Being full power and 3+Cha times per day, it's not a bad trade for only one hex.
Rebuke Spirits (Su): At 2nd level, the spirit warden gains the ability to channel positive energy as a cleric of her level. Regardless of her alignment, she can only use this ability to harm undead creatures. The spirit warden can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + her Charisma modifier. This ability replaces the hex gained at 2nd level.
If you like the flavor and expect to fight a fair number of undead throughout the campaign, it's not a bad archetype. You won't have to really invest in it. You don't need selective channel, unless you happen to have an ally that counts as undead.
I recently played in a long-running campaign where one PC was an oracle with a "heal-bot" build. I don't know all the details, but here's what I do know about how it worked:
* The oracle maximized Charisma to get more channels, to improve the DC to harm undead, and to boost her spell DCs.
* She regularly cast Shield Other on two of the front-liners (but NOT the high-AC armor master), to soak part of their damage. She used Life Link to slowly transfer damage from all the PCs to herself.
* She had a way to heal herself as a swift action, and to get extra healing when she healed herself. (Those are some of the details I don't know, just the results.) If just one or two PCs were hurt at the end of a fight, she'd often just let the life link bleed the damage to herself, then cure herself, because that was more efficient.
* I don't think she had Selective Channel, so only rarely used channels in combat unless she could avoid foes. Instead, it was a fast way to heal multiple PCs between fights.
* Once we were high enough level to afford it, the Shield Other recipients (and one or two other PCs) bought Rings of Evasion. An area of effect spell hitting most of the party could potentially overwhelm the oracle's ability to keep up with healing herself (it killed her once), so the rings reduced that threat dramatically.
Most of the this could be done by a shaman, but it would be difficult to optimize it, mostly because a shaman channeler has to divide points between two ability scores.
Maybe oradin, but the pei zin archetype does it better. And I can’t imagine a healbot like that not having selective channel. He probably just didn’t mention he was using it because his charisma was so high.
I'm going to be the dissenter here, If your role is the party healer and you don't want to play Oracle or Oradin, then channel becomes one of the main stays of your build. Get a Phylactery of positive channeling, and Selective channel, and you can pretty much heal the entire party far easier than using spells. There are a few feats, traits, and class options that will boost your healing ability.
I am currently GMing a campaign and the Cleric has so much potential channel healing (and damage to undead) that the party is near invincible and undead don't stand a chance.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Another general rule.... if you're healing inside combat (as opposed to outside) then something has gone wrong in terms of how your party operates.
Misleading. If you have a small party size(3-4), then there is a fair chance that your party will need in combat healing on a regular basis. If you're not, then your GM is probably being very kind and never going for a kill, even if doing so would be logical for the enemies. It's also unreasonable to assume that your entire party has been minmaxed for maximum efficiency. Many people build a character from the top down. There's a concept or character they want to play and then they try to fit mechanics around that. This is after all a roleplaying game. I've watched many players and groups play with substandard characters, and they have had the best of times.
Another general rule.... if you're healing inside combat (as opposed to outside) then something has gone wrong in terms of how your party operates.Misleading. If you have a small party size(3-4), then there is a fair chance that your party will need in combat healing on a regular basis. If you're not, then your GM is probably being very kind and never going for a kill, even if doing so would be logical for the enemies.
Agreed.
I'll also add that "something has gone wrong" is exactly what healing is for. Healing is your method of correcting mistakes after they've happened.
Buffs and debuffs are more efficient, but you have to plan ahead to know what to cast. Resist Energy is amazing, but if you pick the wrong energy type it's useless. Slow is a phenomenal debuff against martial enemies but pretty minor against a caster. These are both spells that will mitigate a huge amount of damage in the right circumstances, but they don't let you course-correct after the fact if you guess wrong.
The higher the optimization level of your table, the less likely you'll need in-combat healing, but "higher optimization level" doesn't necessarily mean "better at the game". Also, "less likely to need" doesn't mean "won't need" - every table will need some in-combat healing eventually.
I agree. I don't like the idea of someone playing any class/role just because they feel they need to.
Personally, I've enjoyed many healers and the playstyle that comes with it. I've even taken it too far to the point where it made things less fun for the party. Once you take away the ability for your party to be reasonably threatened by HP damage, most encounters start feeling a lot less dangerous, and thus boring. (And that was done with a gnome double life spirit guide oracle. So many channels I couldn't run out. So much distributed damage, everyone always stayed topped up. Healing myself really fast with fey foundling. Throwing out 2 channels a round with quick channeling. Being nearly impossible to kill through high hp, armor and reactive channeling. And on top of that all of my spells.)
Currently playing a life spirit summoner. Not the greatest healer in the world, but you have the freedom of relying on your eidolon for combat, when heals aren't so needed. It's a bit of an interesting challenge, when you've already played most of the other healers
I always make sure that my spontaneous casters take Cure Light Wounds, just to be on the safe side. Though my prepared casters tend to be the classes that can lose a spell to cast Cure so I don't bother prepping it. I rarely have my spontaneous casters take Cure Moderate unless I end up as the only one in the party that has any healing spells. (That's very rare.)
I only have two characters that can use channel, not counting a character that took a single level cleric dip. I didn't put any feats into channeling for the first character as he's melee DPS focused. The other character I just put in some flavor channel feats as he's summoning focused.
I feel alot of you are overlooking alternative channels as well. For example, a Cleric of the drunken god can NAUSEATE every enemy in their channel range, OR remove the nauseated and sickened condition of allies for a round. That can be immensely useful in either account, Yes the damage or healing is halved, but that effect is QUITE powerful, and there ARE other options as well.
I feel alot of you are overlooking alternative channels as well. For example, a Cleric of the drunken god can NAUSEATE every enemy in their channel range, OR remove the nauseated and sickened condition of allies for a round. That can be immensely useful in either account, Yes the damage or healing is halved, but that effect is QUITE powerful, and there ARE other options as well.
*For a single round.
**Most clerics can only do one or the other. I.E A Neutral Cleric of Cayden can nauseate people with Channel Negative Energy, but a Good one can only temporarily remove Nausea/Sickened.
***DC isn't fantastic and is difficult to raise since it's based on Charisma.
****Your already few uses of Channel Energy get reduced by using these options thus making the healing portion even more useless.
*****You cannot choose to do either the full HP/negative energy once selected, you must always channel the variant. Thus reducing the normal usefulness of Channel Energy even further since the numerical value of the healing or damage is reduced by half.
I feel alot of you are overlooking alternative channels as well. For example, a Cleric of the drunken god can NAUSEATE every enemy in their channel range, OR remove the nauseated and sickened condition of allies for a round. That can be immensely useful in either account, Yes the damage or healing is halved, but that effect is QUITE powerful, and there ARE other options as well.*For a single round.
Nauseating all enemies within 30 feet is a hugely impactful effect. This would potentially be worth it on a single target effect, let alone an AoE.
All your other points are worth consideration though.
it's also nice to have an aoe healing ability for that moment when a fireball\trap drop 2-4 party members and you can't run to stabilize all (AND the GM won't let you know who is in what condition beside that - 'they are DYING, do something!')
some GM won't let you know the other player's exact hp without some high dc heal checks or spells\abilities (or at all).
Dude, take deathwatch from the Core Rulebook (well, 1st Ed.; not sure if they still have it in 2nd Ed...if not, they lost a wonderful spell). It's an awesome little spell that does exactly what you were looking for, and it's only Cleric 1. :)
Let me see if I can find it...ah:
DEATHWATCH [pg. 265, Core Rulebook, 1st Ed.]
School necromancy; Level Cleric 1
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
Range 30 ft.
Area cone-shaped emanation
Duration 10 min./level
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no
Using the powers of necromancy, you can determine the condition of creatures near death within the spell’s range. You instantly know whether each creature within the area is dead, fragile (alive and wounded, with 3 or fewer hit points left), fighting off death (alive with 4 or more hit points), healthy, undead, or neither alive nor dead (such as a construct). Deathwatch sees through any spell or ability that allows creatures to feign death.
And back in the old days (I'm thinking....3.0?), the write-up for it was so ghastly: "Using the horrible, wretched, putrescent, unholy, despicable [etc.] powers of necromancy! Boo!" that I wanted a "good" version of it called triage, because you could do exactly the same thing for your potential patients as a healer that you could for an evil, terrible, no-good necro looking for victims. X-P Fortunately, Paizo did a better job of writing it up in Pathfinder than WoC did in the Player's Handbook. ;->
LB
I'm going to be the dissenter here, If your role is the party healer and you don't want to play Oracle or Oradin, then channel becomes one of the main stays of your build. Get a Phylactery of positive channeling, and Selective channel, and you can pretty much heal the entire party far easier than using spells. There are a few feats, traits, and class options that will boost your healing ability.
I am currently GMing a campaign and the Cleric has so much potential channel healing (and damage to undead) that the party is near invincible and undead don't stand a chance.
As a general rule..... building a Cleric towards "Healbot" is a horrendous waste of a class.
Wands of CLW in the hands of anyone that can use them is far more efficient.
Another general rule.... if you're healing inside combat (as opposed to outside) then something has gone wrong in terms of how your party operates.
I currently have 6 players in the game I am GMing, 3 of them can heal, Cleric, Paladin, and Inquisitor. If they "didn't heal during combat", then they would be dead. With a paladin that can deal over 200 damage in one round, you know the bad guys need to be able to do the same. Quite often the paladin is doing a swift lay on hands on himself, the cleric is doing a swift channel on the whole party and still needing to cast a healing spell just to keep the party going.
With 3 healers in the party, I am forced to deal out massive damage to keep the game from being a cake walk.
Wands being used after the fact or even during combat are a huge waste of resources. not only is there a cast, but they require UMD checks and take up valuable actions.
i.e. do I use a cure light wand, or make 4 attacks. (here's a hint, killing the thing that's causing the damage is a better bet)
The lack of healing required is usually caused by the action economy gap combined with damage getting distributed amongst more player characters. Damage can be a big part of not needing much healing, but the bigger issue is often from control abilities. Enemies can't deal much damage, when they've largely been kept from acting. This is often known as rocket tag, because the first to go often gets to change the outcome of a battle.
But not having a bunch of controllers isn't "doing it wrong". It's simply a different play style.
Whether channel energy is worth it depends on what you want out of it, and how much resources you are willing to spend. I have a player who’s character is a channel focused cleric of Sarenrae in an undead heavy campaign. He can do 10d6+22 point of damage 10 times a day with a DC of 26 vs Undead and they don’t get their channel resistance vs him. There is also a paladin who can channel positive energy for 8d6 points of damage with a DC of 23. The characters are currently 15th level with 5 mythic tiers so they often go up against hordes of undead. The clerics channel energy usually destroys any undead minions that try and overrun them. Vs. the big boss undead it will not bring him down but when still contributes to taking him down. In another campaign and with a different race and deity it would not be anywhere near as effective.
At worst it is a nice source of healing HP that can work with other methods to keep the party fully healed. Using wands to cure HP is a good method, but don’t forget wands run out of charges. There are also going to be circumstances where the party is not going to be able to renew their stock of wands. What happens when the party needs to make a long journey through hostile territory? Wands are like relying on fossil fuel for energy. Sure they are quick easy and effective, but not really sustainable. They bleed resources that could be used for other things. Don’t get me wrong they have a place, but work best in conjunction with other methods of healing. By having some channel positive energy available the party can stretch their use of wands a lot further. I am saying you need to maximize channel positive energy, but don’t actively tank it.
In my experience, Channel Energy is good enough that if you play your cards right, the GM might ban certain things like Life Link and Shield Other because ... "It becomes too difficult to effectively challenge the party when they are constantly being healed that effectively." I can speak from personal experience on that. I am single handily responsible for having our GM institute houserules regarding multiclassing and using numerous archetypes when building classes.
Channel Energy is a fairly nice ability. One that you should invest in but it should not be the focus of your character.
I feel alot of you are overlooking alternative channels as well. For example, a Cleric of the drunken god can NAUSEATE every enemy in their channel range, OR remove the nauseated and sickened condition of allies for a round. That can be immensely useful in either account, Yes the damage or healing is halved, but that effect is QUITE powerful, and there ARE other options as well.Groooooannn!
If you are using Channel in this way, you are basically in competition vs casting a spell for your standard action (or even one of your domain powers if they're decent).
When you factor in the additional spell options provided by domains and in certain cases the worshipping of a specific deity, the cleric has an excellent spell list, only marginally behind that of the Wizard. That the Cleric always knows all of them raises it another notch higher.
A build that favours an offensive CHA based effect, in terms of DC is always going to be very subpar vs that of a WIS based one for a cleric. And that's without factoring in that WIS is an overall more useful ability to invest points in.
If for whatever reason you have a RP/thematic reason for prioritising Channel over spellcasting then OK fair enough, have a great time...... HOWEVER, as soon as mechanics enters the equation then I'm afraid things change rapidly....
I've seen many clerics at either PFS or regular tables with a CHA 5 - 10!!!
Even if you want to compare it to casting a spell, go for it. Clerics don't have a ton of spells, and this gives options. How many cleric spells can a cleric have that can immediately stop your entire parties bleed effect? Also stop your entire party from being nauseated or sickened? It's an entirely new tool you are chossing not to use. Now, I'm not saying its perfectly viable, and better than spells, but it's an option that should not be overlooked. If you want to be a perfect class, why are you a cleric anyway? Also, as for casring instead of a spell, thats what quicken channel works for too!
Spells and Channels "competing" isn't really a problem. At the higher levels, spells are for the first rounds of combat, while channels are used if a big distributed damage hit happens. For the lower levels, you won't have that many spells per day anyway, so channels really fill out your daily actions.
Of course, that's assuming you have the bare minimum of selective channel. If you don't have selective channel, then channel is mostly just an out of combat gold saver. Or a decent option if you are fighting haunts or groups of undead.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Saying spells are competing with Channel is like saying spells are competing with Hexes. Get real. Anything that can help the cause without spending precious spell slots is worth at least a little investment. It is a tool at your disposal, to ignore it is not only wasteful, but foolish.
Dazing Channel is fun. I have had it on a character before... had big boy Charisma and all the traits and feats to make it scary... use it maybe half a dozen times in 9 levels... maybe.
It's not fun. It actually makes the game less fun. Nice to have just in case, but I couldn't imagine how freaking boring it would be to play with someone dedicated to it. LAME!!!
Saying spells are competing with Channel is like saying spells are competing with Hexes. Get real.WOW!
By making a comparison between Channel and Hexes you immediately obliterate any credibility you might have had.
Hexes are leagues above in superiority to Channels.....there is no comparison.
Hexes are an excellent class feature even viewed independently of spells....they define the Witch, the basic fact that they key off the Witches main casting stat (INT) for spells is just by itself a huge boon.
Excuse me...I need to go and away on meditate on your complete absence of.... well...everything that matters
Not saying Channel is directly comparable to Hexes. I am saying it is a resource that you have besides spells.
Clerics and Witches have entirely different play styles, and they both use their various resources completely differently... but Channel and Hexes are both resources one may use instead of spells.
I don't know why I am even bothering explaining myself on the internet. Nobody actually cares why I said what I said. I know I don't give enough of a $#!+ to argue about. I've been wrong before, probably will be again...