New to the game building a healer


Advice


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Hello, I'm new to PF2e as our DM wanted to make the switch from D&D 5e and will be starting a new campaign relatively soon.

I'm looking to fill a tank and healer role and planning on doing a Leshy Warpriest Sun Cleric of Sarenrae (this is set in stone because I spent a fair amount of money on a mini and really like the concept). Campaign will go to level 12 or so.

How much does the Medic Archetype add to the game and the medicine skills in general? Can you like without it or do you really need to have that much healing? I believe I will be the primary healer in general, so I won't have a huge amount of backup.

Any suggestions and thoughts? Any advice you can give to a newbie in making it right?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

There are two types of healing - during combat healing, and after combat healing.

During combat is generally done with healing spells like Heal - which as a Warpriest you will have several of available. You should be able to handle the party's needs in that regard from just Divine Font and maybe a couple of spell slots.

After combat healing is where the Medicine skill and Medic archetype comes in. You don't want to spend your Heal spells on patching people back up after combat has already ended. Treat Wounds can do that for free.

However, Treat Wounds has a default cooldown of 1 hour per character. Continual Recovery removes that. There is also Ward Medic that lets you use it on more than one person at a time. Both of those will decrease the amount of time that it takes you to do the after combat healing.

You can also use Battle Medicine to use Medicine skill healing for during combat healing. It starts as only being available once per day per character. Medic archetype can eventually (at Master proficiency for Medicine) change that to once per hour.

Since you are already a Cleric, you probably don't need to take Medic archetype - but it wouldn't hurt.

What would also be useful is if some of the other characters can be backup healers too. Those medicine skill feats are available to anyone who wants to invest in them.


Yeah... ideally you'd have someone else in the party (preferably someone who wanted to generally keep a hand free for other reasons) take the Medic archetype, but if no one else is willing to invest in healing in any way, and your party size is 4 or more, then you're going to want to keep your medicine skill current, you're going to want to invest in at least a few medicine skill feats, and you're going to want to at least consider going Medic at some point.

Worth noting that you'll be okay as a front-liner - you'll be able to stand there and take a few hits, and it'll be okay - but you're not going to be able to be "a tank". If the majority of the enemy hate is coming through the warpriest, then your party is having problems.

Good reason to invest in Communal Healing, though.

Also, don't stint your Charisma. Charisma skills in general are handy (and intimidate can be downright useful on the front lines, especially with the right skill feats) but mostly it's for the font. If you're the primary/sole healer in the party, then those font slots are going to have real value for you. On the bright side, as a warpriest you're already not particularly interested in hitting the enemy with spells, which means that you can afford to let your wisdom slack a little.


Tanking doesn't really exist in this system. Best you can realistically do is make yourself a more appealing target than someone else. I don't know what your mini looks like, but if it's a cloth caster you're sorta stuck with just capping dex and being up front so you're seen as an easy target. Getting beaten up in place of your martials isn't the normal way to go about it, but it's still spreading the damage around.

If it looks like cloth over armor or you're willing to bend, you can do cleric with a champion archetype for plate AC, lay on hands and champion reaction. Run around with an asp coil or something and an empty hand for battle medicine and champion reaction for extra mitigation at 6+.

Sink your skill boosts and feats into medicine. Medic archetype is nice, but I'm not sure its necessary with heal font backup.


Switching armor is no big deal. I went with more of an unarmored look for him (still not sure if a Leshy has a gender really, but don't really care about that). The Sun domain Leshy warpriest is set though.

The issue is the rest of the party. We've got a Wizard, a gunslinger, and a strength rogue (ruffian I think it's called). The rogue is playing a build that focuses on grappling, tripping, and disarming and can stand in the frontline with my leshy. We may have another if someone else joins, but don't know for sure on that.

I've got a 16 str, 16 wis, 12 dex, and 14 cha starting out so I have more healing font spells. I know at least the gunslinger has a focus on intimidation. I figure in the frontline I will be using movement, weapon attack, and raise shield for many of my turns with spells there for support. I foresee a lot of early spell slots being used on magic weapon to buff the gunslingers gun since they will have a better chance to hit twice in a turn than I do.

Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure the best battle strategies on this system so I'll see how it plays out.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
nickl_2000 wrote:
Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure the best battle strategies on this system so I'll see how it plays out.

Teamwork and synergy is better than any individual power play that one character could do alone.

In general I recommend to spend some actions on offense, some actions on defense, and some actions on teamwork. And usually any particular character doesn't have enough actions to do all of those. But the more you can balance all of it as a team the better.


nicki_2000 wrote:
Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure the best battle strategies on this system so I'll see how it plays out.

Having played an identically-statted Warpriest to 17th level (so far) my one piece of battle advice is to flank as much as you possibly can. It goes a long, long way.


ottdmk wrote:
nicki_2000 wrote:
Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure the best battle strategies on this system so I'll see how it plays out.
Having played an identically-statted Warpriest to 17th level (so far) my one piece of battle advice is to flank as much as you possibly can. It goes a long, long way.

I will take it and use that advice as much as possible. Thanks! :)

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Second Edition / Advice / New to the game building a healer All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice