The spirit summoner using the life spirit is a pretty decent healer, especially by that level. Maybe you talk your GM into letting you swap archetypes with your current character? You do give up summon monster SLA if you were built around that though.
Unless you are looking to become a dedicated healer, I would not recommend a life oracle. While they excel at healing all their class abilities are focused on healing leaving very little for combat. All your mystery spells are healing, and you will probably want to use a few of your spells know to pick up a few important condition removal spells. That leaves you very few spells for combat and the Oracle spell list is not the best for combat spells. Outside of spell you are a medium BAB class with a poor selection of weapons and limited to medium armor. You have no class abilities that boost your combat abilities so your contribution to combat is going to be mediocre at best.
What type of healing are you most looking to use? Healing can be broken up into two things. The first and most obvious is HP replacement, the second is condition removal. The first part is relatively easy to accomplish. They easiest way to do this is having access to the cure spells. The second is more difficult as it requires a lot of different spells and can suck up the spell known for a spontaneous caster.
From the sound of it you are more interested in HP replacement than condition removal. If that is the case, you don’t need a dedicated healer. One thing you are not considering is that a neutral cleric of a neutral god gets the choice of channeling negative or positive energy. You could play a chaotic neutral cleric of a chaotic neutral deity and channel positive energy. This also determines if you can spontaneously cast cure or inflict spells. That being said I would recommend against a cleric and go with a warpriest instead. The warpriest gets fervor for even more healing and does much better in combat.
If you don’t want to go with a warpriest (or cleric) an Oracle is still a good choice, but not a life oracle. Any Oracle gets to choose if they automatically know all cure or inflect spells. Unlike a cleric this is not based on alignment or deity. This means an evil oracle can choose to know all cure spells. There are a lot of mysteries that are quite competent in combat. An oracle of battle gets a lot of combat boosts and is a good alternative to a warpriest. Or you could focus more on spells with something like an oracle of heavens or an oracle of flame. Keep in mind that an oracles abilities are not dependent on a deity, so they do not have an alignment restriction and don’t have to keep in the good graces of any deity. There is no reason you cannot play a chaotic evil oracle of the heavens and even take the blackened curse.
I would probably go with an Oracle of the Heavens with the Blackened curse. The heavens mystery has a lot of decent combat revelations and spells. Between your mystery and curse you get a lot of combat spells. Not only are they decent spells they are also usually not on the oracle spell list. Between your mystery and your curse, you have enough combat ability that you don’t need to use up a lot of your spells known for that. That allows you more freedom in choosing your other spells. I built a similar oracle that focused on summoning, and it was quite effective. I took spell focus conjuration and augmented summoning and took monster summoning at every spell level. I was playing a human for the favored class bonus of extra spells known to offset taking all the summon monster spells. Don’t forget that the cure spells are conjuration spells and can be used to damage undead.
By 12th level I had 3 attack revelations, 8 combat spells, 6 summon spells and 6 healing spells and had only used 6 of my spells known. Awesome Display kept some of the lower-level spells relevant. Since my combat spells were for the most part covered by my mystery and curse, I was able to pick up condition removal spells with the normal oracle spells known.
If you want to focus on fighting with a weapon an oracle of battle will be very effective. Go for a reach trip build.
For a combat-focused character that can heal afterwards (or provide the capability for the other PCs to heal on their own), even if they turn evil, you might want to look at an alchemist.
The bombs and/or mutagen (depending on archetype[s], there may be fewer or more options; a beastmorph vivisectionist makes a great melee combatant, but replaces bombs with Sneak Attack; a grenadier with Explosive Missile makes a versatile ranged attacker; a preservationist can "summon" creatures using extracts; etc.), as well as the selection of buffs in the formula list, make an alchemist a strong combatant. The formula list, with the Infusion discovery, provides good healing and condition removal.
Alternately, you can just have a cleric, oracle, or warpriest take the Craft Wand feat to make wands of cure light wounds for use after combats and prepare/know a few healing spells "just in case."
@Melkiador Does that even work with an unchained summoner...? I got a Psychopomp Eidolon and while I dont use my Summon Monster often, It has been very useful a few times...
Jumping in to answer this: Yes, this works with the Unchained Summoner. They still possess the class features in which the archetype replaces. As for the Summon Monster ability, the access to the Life Spirit, its particular spells, and the Hexes you can pick up are definitely worth the trade off except MAYBE at the higher levels (15+) when you can summon monsters with substantial spell like abilities.
As for having a Psychopomp themed eidolon, that shouldn't be an issue with the Life spirit at all. Those particular creature serve Pharasma, the goddess of fate, death, judgement, and birth. Life is tied up intrinsically with what they represent.
Build your Eidolon around making itself a substantial melee threat and build your character as more support, since you will have access to quite a lot of resources. Pick up selective channeling and spend the rest of your feats on ranged combat if you prefer.
I've got a character that makes use of that particular archetype and spirit choice, though leans heavily towards the Good side of the alignment spectrum. The Eidolon is a melee monster. The Summoner can wade into combat with the best of them after casting a (shared) buff spell on the both of them. Both of them can Lay on Hands. The Summoner can channel. The Summoner can also sit back, toss Protective Luck and Cackle/Chant while tossing a spell every round afterwards. The only real downside is that you have to gear both of the characters, and you don't share item slots.
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If you are mainly looking for out-of-combat healing, then any oracle will work. You can choose to get all the cure spells on your spells known list and you have plenty of spell slots. Especially if you are going to take Craft Wand and make your own CLW wands.
For more in-combat healing and condition removal, Pei Zin is a very good archetype.
As for which mystery: it really depends on what your party needs. Battle isn’t bad for melee, Nature gets an animal companion, Lore is versatile, and several are good attack casters.
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For Oracles, I'd recommend looking at the Spirit Guide archetype for this sort of thing as it essentially allows you to add an entire second set of 'mystery' spells to your spells known that you can change from day to day: Being a Life Mystery Oracle with spells added from the Flame Spirit kinda gives you the 'best of both worlds' (assuming you don't run out of spell slots) and you can use a different spirit if you find Fire Resistance is becoming an issue.
As noted by a previous poster, any 'cure' Oracle works fine as a healer as long as they don't burn through all their spell slots in battle (which they typically don't), so the real challenge is typically adding good 'combat' spells to your repertoire as the standard cleric spell list is kinda weak against non-undead, non-outsider foes.
To be fair, though, anyone capable of using a 'Wand of Cure Light Wounds' typically works perfectly well in the post-combat healing role as well...
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To be fair, though, anyone capable of using a 'Wand of Cure Light Wounds' typically works perfectly well in the post-combat healing role as well...
According to the original post:
The reason I'm considering making a healer is because currently all our healing comes fromn a very unsteady access to wands of cure light wounds. We have long adventuring days and between adventures decently long downtime, But access to getting things like healing wands is not easy in this campaign,…
Our current party is level 9 with a Lawful Evil Fighter, a Lawful Neutral Unchained Monk, a Chaotic Neutral Inquisitor, a Chaotic Neutral Samurai, And me
The funny thing is that your party is already jam packed with people who “fight”. So after noticing that, you probably should stick with a casting option, unless you just hate casting.
It was sort of mentioned earlier but you can actually do quite a bit of healing with summon monster by that level. And the temporary nature of the summons means they can soak damage that you don’t have to worry about healing after the fight.
To be fair, though, anyone capable of using a 'Wand of Cure Light Wounds' typically works perfectly well in the post-combat healing role as well...According to the original post:
The reason I'm considering making a healer is because currently all our healing comes fromn a very unsteady access to wands of cure light wounds. We have long adventuring days and between adventures decently long downtime, But access to getting things like healing wands is not easy in this campaign,…
Craft Wand feat, spend one day and 375 gp to create one fully charged wand of cure light wounds.
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Craft Wand feat, spend one day and 375 gp to create one fully charged wand of cure light wounds.To be fair, though, anyone capable of using a 'Wand of Cure Light Wounds' typically works perfectly well in the post-combat healing role as well...According to the original post:
The reason I'm considering making a healer is because currently all our healing comes fromn a very unsteady access to wands of cure light wounds. We have long adventuring days and between adventures decently long downtime, But access to getting things like healing wands is not easy in this campaign,…
If the inquisitor has learned CLW.
If, instead, the Summoner wants to be the healer, he can learn Infernal healing and make wands of Infernal healing. The same cost (I disagree with that, as I feel that the devil's blood will cost as much as the unholy water, but I am the minority opinion) and more hp cured.
I notice you don't have much arcane caster support in your group. If you're comfortable with playing a caster instead of a melee fighter, have you considered a healer Sorcerer?
A Sorcerer with the Phoenix bloodline can cast infinite positive energy healing via cantrips. They're not a combat healer, but they're the ultimate support class at out of combat healing, 1 hp per round with no resource expenditure.
There's two ways to go about building a Phoenix Sorcerer healer. The first way is to take the Magical Lineage trait to reduce metamagic costs by 1 on a single spell. Select Acid Splash for this spell, and take the Elemental Spell metamagic feat.
The second way is to take the Crossblooded Sorcerer archetype, and pick up Elemental (fire) and Phoenix bloodline. You can now heal with any energy spell, but the downside is -2 will saves and -1 spell known per level.
In either case, you're still gonna be a full class 9th spell level Sorcerer, with access to all those juicy arcane spells to support your group.
My current character is an Ifrit Crossblooded Sorcerer. I have +4 racial initiative, +4 initiative from my 1st level feat, +2 trait initiative, and +4 familiar initiative from taking a compsognathus bloodline familiar at 1st level. That's +14 initiative at level 1 before adding stat modifiers, meaning I'm pretty much always going first. Adding a valet familiar archetype also gets you some silly synergy like taking Escape Route as a feat and never provoking attacks of opportunity for movement, since your familiar occupies your square and shields your moves.
If you want a good out of combat healer that never runs out of juice, Phoenix Sorcerer is top tier.