This may sound strange but I'm getting a touch confused about the rate at which people can be full health out of combat as of late.
When Thaumaturge released, the healing chalice implement came with an interesting perk, the ability for it to refill itself while the player committed to other downtime activities, such as treating wounds. However since then we've gotten Kineticist which has water and wood exhibiting overwhelming dominant numbers in the realm of out of combat healing while also maintaining what I originally thought was a unique perk for Thaumaturges chalice.
Now we see some of the options on Animist and Exemplar which continues to further the divide between old and new in the expected amount of healing for this facet of gameplay. Old methods are fairly small comparative to kineticist but it's all absolutely miniscule when put up against something like Garden of Healing on Animist.
Have I missed something? Should we just ignore adventure health attrition all together going forward? I'm concerned about how characters looking to invest in medicine are going to feel if this is going to be the standard for this kind of effect in the future.
Edit: Also I wasn't sure what section to post this in sorry if it's wrong.
out of combat healing has always been assumed to be more or less free and unlimited... so yes to the last part but no to the first.
I suppose I just fundamentally disagree with the notion that out of combat healing was free and without limit. Feat choices and time has always been costs. With Kineticist, and now Animist/Exemplar, these older feat choices and time investments seem increasingly less valuable which is just coming off strange to me.
To put it into perspective, Garden of Healing on Animist can put out an average of ~25 health to every group member every 11 minutes starting at level 1. While a DC 15 treat wounds is a possible ~9 to a single person in 10 minutes with a 50 minute downtime between uses. I question if the investment in medicine is going to feel good in the future if this is the kind of numbers we are to expect.
Sure Animist is test material but healing out of combat options have been getting increasingly higher since thaumaturge with kineticist being an alarming leap in output.
Alternatives are fine. The gap between them is what seems absurd. I'm the type of player that gets giddy to get new support options to toy with. But we're looking at a stage where medicine and all previous medicine alternatives pale in comparison to the new options.
This is to say, things like:
Blessed One
Medic Dedication
Forensic Investigator
Basic Lesson Life
Hymn of Healing
Chirurgeon Alchemist
There's probably more but none of these, in addition to just raw investment into medicine, come anywhere close to matching the amount of health that kineticist, much less animist/exemplar, is putting out in out of combat environments. In a system that has had a relatively low amount of trap options up to this point, I question if this is an acceptable path to be going down. To just assume that it's fine for these older methods of alleviating health attrition to be left in the dust by the new.
Is it fair to compare class feat/features that lock someone into certain choices (or class options) to skill investment which can be acquired by anyone?
Is it fair to compare class feat/features that lock someone into certain choices (or class options) to skill investment which can be acquired by anyone?
This doesn't make any sense to me. Medicine investment was always stronger than the class feat alternatives in the realm of out of combat healing.
Lay on Hands for example is 6 health for each spell rank.
Life boost is 8 health for each spell rank.
Hymn of healing is the same as life boost
This is all to say even if I don't bring medicine into the equation at all, the newer feats on kineticist and Animist/Exemplar are magnitudes higher than the old class options that provided out of combat healing.
In hostile areas having Medicine expertise and its feats for fast healing can make a difference. I think having at least one character in the party dedicated to Medicine is mandatory. At least the Treat multiple targets one so you use 10 minutes then use spells and consumables for the remaining, saving a lot of resources.
In hostile areas having Medicine expertise and its feats for fast healing can make a difference. I think having at least one character in the party dedicated to Medicine is mandatory. At least the Treat multiple targets one so you use 10 minutes then use spells and consumables for the remaining, saving a lot of resources.
I'm not sure that we're on the same page here. What I'm saying is that medicine and all previous medicine alternatives are being outpaced quite heavily by newer healing options.
Perhaps to try to help explain my concern I could list out some numbers at various levels for out of combat healing options? I'll list the amount of health that can be provided to the group during roughly a 10 minute period of time. I'll assume a group size of 4 and that medicine somehow always magically succeeds. Some of my numbers may be slightly off but they should be close enough to get my point across.
Level 1
Treat wounds DC 15: ~9
Lay on Hands: 6
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 8
Chalice*: 3
Ocean's Balm*: ~20 (1d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: ~16 (1d4+1 per person)
Garden of Healing (Animist): ~100 (10d4 per person)
Level 5
Treat wounds DC 20: ~19
Treat wounds ward medic DC 20: ~76 (2d8+10 per person)
Treat wounds medic dedication and ward medic DC 20: ~96 (2d8+15 per person)
Lay on Hands: 18
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 24
Chalice*: 15
Ocean's Balm*: ~50 (3d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: ~76 (3d4+11 per person)
Garden of Healing: ~300 (30d4 per person)
Radiant Epithet* (Exemplar): 16 (4 per person)
Level 10
Treat wounds DC 30: ~39
Treat wounds ward medic DC 30: ~156 (2d8+30 per person)
Treat wounds medic dedication and ward medic DC 30: ~200 (2d8+40 per person)
Lay on hands: 30
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 40
Chalice*: 30
Chalice Adept*: 50
Ocean's Balm*: ~92 (5d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: 136 (5d4+21 per person)
Torrent in the Blood*: ~92 (5d8 per person)
Dash of Herbs*: ~104 (4d10+4 per person)
Garden of Healing: ~500 (50d4 per person)
Radiant Epithet*: 88 (22 per person)
Entries with a * do not consume downtime activities which allow for other things to be done within that 10 minute period. This can include other sources of healing which I will not factor for this math because I'm not a masochist. But this is still a very notable benefit, just not one I'm willing to quantify here however just imagine the use of two of the kineticist options or a focus spell added into the mix.
I hope you can see just from these examples I included that the older options all maintained a much tighter range for out of combat healing. That within this this old range medicine still came out on top but not so much that the class feat options were not decent alternatives. But with Kineticist and Animist there's a very large gap between even just medicine and these new feats. This gap is concerning me.
Also I was going to include Scar of the Survivor from exemplar but the amount of health that comes out of that when not in combat is effectively an instant full heal. It's like 100d8 in 10 minutes or something starting at level 1, granted it's all self healing but still.
Ah! Ahaha, No big deal. I was working on that list anyways to help myself get a grasp on what my concerns actually were. Our misunderstanding just gave me a reason to post it. Wish I had it in me to do the math for medicine success rates influencing the expected average output but where I ended up should be enough for now.
Interesting analysis. I think with Garden of Healing they got carried away with the "yes but it could also heal your enemies" possible drawback, and the radius is restrictive. But out of combat it's a bit out of control.
I don't believe that Ocean's Balm can be used out of combat. I may be wrong, but I believe that the Kinetic Gate can only be activated in encounter mode, and Ocean's Balm is an impulse feat that needs the Gate open.
I don't believe that Ocean's Balm can be used out of combat. I may be wrong, but I believe that the Kinetic Gate can only be activated in encounter mode, and Ocean's Balm is an impulse feat that needs the Gate open.
Kinetic Gate can be open as long as you want; it's not a stance. If you couldn't have it open out of combat, then all of the utility abilities would be non-functional.
The thing that you noticed is that out-of-combat healing already exists since the PF2 release. But was more slow and more exclusive to Medicine and its healing speed effectiveness improves with Continual Recovery and Ward Medic and Lay on Hand + Refocus and Druid's Goodberry.
Over the time more and more healing options was being added to out-of-combat healing making it become more faster and accessible. Chirurgeon Alchemist that get unlimited Elixirs of Life, Blessed One the gives Lay on Hand + Refocus without having to be a Champion or get Champion archetype rangers getting Soothing Mist.
And now Kineticist with many healing impulses and with the very efficient Garden of Healing.
But notice that these healing off-encounter abilities have their own unique costs. Medicine is just a skill that can be easily improved with just skill feats. Most other healing are part of a class chassis or require that you take some specific subclass or use class feats or choose an archetype.
I understand that some of them can heal pretty fast but in the end during most time all party will heal until full or will wait to refocus or use 10 or more minutes to investigate a room anyway. This won't change that much at all. In pathfinder most partys will usually try to stop 10-30 minutes to recover, investigate and refocus whenever they can and the healing speed usually doesn't change this at all.
In hostile areas having Medicine expertise and its feats for fast healing can make a difference. I think having at least one character in the party dedicated to Medicine is mandatory. At least the Treat multiple targets one so you use 10 minutes then use spells and consumables for the remaining, saving a lot of resources.
I'm not sure that we're on the same page here. What I'm saying is that medicine and all previous medicine alternatives are being outpaced quite heavily by newer healing options.
Perhaps to try to help explain my concern I could list out some numbers at various levels for out of combat healing options? I'll list the amount of health that can be provided to the group during roughly a 10 minute period of time. I'll assume a group size of 4 and that medicine somehow always magically succeeds. Some of my numbers may be slightly off but they should be close enough to get my point across.
Level 1
Treat wounds DC 15: ~9
Lay on Hands: 6
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 8
Chalice*: 3
Ocean's Balm*: ~20 (1d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: ~16 (1d4+1 per person)
Garden of Healing (Animist): ~100 (10d4 per person)
Level 5
Treat wounds DC 20: ~19
Treat wounds ward medic DC 20: ~76 (2d8+10 per person)
Treat wounds medic dedication and ward medic DC 20: ~96 (2d8+15 per person)
Lay on Hands: 18
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 24
Chalice*: 15
Ocean's Balm*: ~50 (3d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: ~76 (3d4+11 per person)
Garden of Healing: ~300 (30d4 per person)
Radiant Epithet* (Exemplar): 16 (4 per person)
Level 10
Treat wounds DC 30: ~39
Treat wounds ward medic DC 30: ~156 (2d8+30 per person)
Treat wounds medic dedication and ward medic DC 30: ~200 (2d8+40 per person)
Lay on hands: 30
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 40
Chalice*: 30
Chalice Adept*: 50
Ocean's Balm*: ~92 (5d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: 136 (5d4+21 per person)
Torrent in the Blood*: ~92 (5d8 per person)
Dash of Herbs*: ~104 (4d10+4 per person)
Garden of Healing: ~500 (50d4...
I have not checked either the numbers nor the abilities, but I feel many of the "old" healing methods can be used in combat whereas the new ones you mention cannot. If such is the case, the difference in numbers might actually reflect this.
Interesting analysis. I think with Garden of Healing they got carried away with the "yes but it could also heal your enemies" possible drawback, and the radius is restrictive. But out of combat it's a bit out of control.
Yes. The Exemplars Scar of the Survivor, to a lesser degree the Radiant Epithet, and the Animist's Garden of Healing are ones I wanted to point at as being pretty egregious but I didn't want to focus too much on them in this particular topic given that they are test material. It's more that the existence of these options being presented as possible future content does draw attention to how small the time investment needed for groups to attain full health is becoming with newer options.
The Raven Black wrote:
Just a note that the latter is called Assurance (Medicine). It's a Skill feat that I take for all my PCs who do Battle Medicine.
I did all of this math without assurance factored in at all, if I did all of the medicine checks would have effectively been pushed back. This is to say I was being overwhelmingly generous with my projected medicine numbers.
YuriP wrote:
But notice that these healing off-encounter abilities have their own unique costs. Medicine is just a skill that can be easily improved with just skill feats. Most other healing are part of a class chassis or require that you take some specific subclass or use class feats or choose an archetype.
I understand that some of them can heal pretty fast but in the end during most time all party will heal until full or will wait to refocus or use 10 or more minutes to investigate a room anyway. This won't change that much at all. In pathfinder most partys will usually try to stop 10-30 minutes to recover, investigate and refocus whenever they can and the healing speed usually doesn't change this at all.
This is actually in part my point. Let's isolate the comparison to two options instead, neither of which are medicine.
Lay on Hands and Ocean's Balm
They are both touch.
Both low level accessible.
They both come with subsidiary bonuses for combat.
And despite everything being almost a one to one comparison between the two, Ocean's balm provides roughly three times the health value and lay on hands requires a refocus while Ocean's Balm on the other hand doesn't come tied to a exploration activity.
What I mean by this is that the disparity between old and new is even more alarming when I don't consider medicine at all.
As for your point about groups healing until full, the question I would like to pose is, is it healthy for the game overall to have healing occur as fast is it is with the recent options? In my opinion it clearly cheapens older alternatives but the way these newer options are operating feels as though it also clashes with the expected norm for exploration activities. To touch back on the Ocean's Balm vs Lay on Hands for example, Lay on Hands interacts with exploration activities in the form of refocusing, the player utilizing it will need work with other group members to contribute to the healing knowing they'll need to invest more of their exploration activity time into refocusing if they choose to use it. Perhaps the group feels that player should instead have focused their efforts on searching or patrolling the area instead? Ocean's Balm on the other hand only interacts with exploration activities in the sense that the player utilizing it needs to stop what they're doing momentarily to use it again every 10 minutes, it doesn't have a time investment associated with it. The group could in theory continue traveling with the kineticist utilizing these types of tools every 10 minutes, to heal while moving, simply because it doesn't interact with exploration mode at all.
I'm of the opinion that the structure of the exploration activities hinges on an expected rest explicitly to heal. That a standard group of players will feel more inclined to continue with their journey instead of taking alternate options if healing has no time associated with it. And to further that I think players who do have subsidiary exploration activities they could be taking, such as players learning a spell with Magical shorthand or players who might want to finish repairing a dented shield, might feel bad for asking the group to stop their journey on their account if everyone is full hp at the snap of a finger.
NielsenE wrote:
Minor point, but I think your ward medic numbers are assuming Master proficiency before you can get it (you're multiplying by 4 and not 2)
This is true! Thank you for correcting me! I'm not sure if I can edit it, if I can I'm not seeing the option too. I'm a bit new to these forums.
The Raven Black wrote:
I have not checked either the numbers nor the abilities, but I feel many of the "old" healing methods can be used in combat whereas the new ones you mention cannot. If such is the case, the difference in numbers might actually reflect this.
All of the new out of combat healing methods I mentioned are combat tools. In fact, I believe them being so much stronger than other medicine alternatives in the sphere of out of combat healing is as a result of them being designed specifically for combat purposes, they just don't come with the standard out of combat limitations the old ones had.
Captain Morgan wrote:
Also worth noting that many of the old healing sources are going to be remastered and potentially buffed.
This is true, it's possible the remaster addresses this disparity. Though as I mentioned in my response to YuriP the increased rate of healing, and the lack of time spent associated with these new ones, feels as though it hampers the normal relationship between the various exploration activities.
I understant your worry but I will respond it with a joke that some times I use here in the forum.
In PF2 if you have 10 minutes to rest, you have 30 minutes too. If you don't have 30 minutes to rest you probably don't have even 10 minutes.
The thing in general is simple. If you are in exploration mode but you aren't in some kind of chase you will have enough time to do anything that you need even if you need 1 hour to do this (5e!?). The exception is where the players are in a chase situation and they don't have time to loose and need to continue advancing or fleeing and each minute counts.
For example the main game that I GM have a rogue with Medicine with Continual Recovery and Ward Medic and a Champion and everytime that they finish an encounter (and aren't in a chase) they stop, analise everyone situation, check if the Ward Medic will be enough to heal everyone, if not the Champion uses he's Lay on Hand to complete the HP of those need more HP and this is basically enough to fully recovery (we count fully recovery not making everyone to maximum HP but everyone close to maximum HP and fully refocused).
2 more things usually happens in this short rests.
1. Those who aren't in treatment investigate the room or stay on guard or refocusing. Those who are being treated I also allow that refocus too (because they need to stop and wait the medic treatment to be complete so I only allow activities that doesn't requires movement to them and refocus is one of that).
2. Rarely the party members ends an encounter bellow their half HP. My players are old and experience in many very hard TTRPG campaigns. To you have notion they deal with adventures like Plaguestone and AoA without difficult (they never suffer a TPK since we start to play PF2) because we are all used to insanely hight difficult campaigns since 3.5 far higher than normal CR so everyone are very cautious. The current party have 2 healers (a Primal Sorcerer and a Bard) the reserve half of the spellslots to heal and they never advance until be fully prepared, and start to cry for healing when some char reach the half of the HP.
So when a encounter ends usually 10 minutes is more than enough to them become fully healed but its also usual that they take 10 more minutes doing other things too (usually when someone with a specific skill that they need to investigate, unlock, disable are in treatment and they need to wait or when they need to wait the refocus twice because the champion already used Lay on Hands in battle).
If an Animist was in the party nothing will really change. They will be recovered faster but still have to wait the Animist to refocus. Probably the main diference is that the rogue will not invested into medicine too much but outside this nothing would change.
That was the point that designers noticed IMO. That they don't need to worry about if some more stronger healing will be used in off-encounter because in the end this won't change too much. In fact will be more useful to reduce the unwanted TPK from most inexperienced or bold parties that don't worry too much to fully recover before advance. So these new improved off-encounter healing in the end are more a solution than a problem at all.
I suppose I find the assumption that everyone will be full hp in 10 minutes to be fairly bold. Ward medic and assurance with skill investments into medicine can often permit it in very healthy situations but I struggle to view it as a standard. And it certainly isn't the case for at very least the first few levels of character progression. But even if we assume that this is true and we narrow in specifically on Garden of Healing, we'd be allowing a focus spell on one player to completely replace all of the other tools that other players would bring to the table to accomplish the task of healing each other. This is to say that within that one ten minute period, where you did have people considering using their own tools like lay on hands, hymn of healing, Life Boost, etc., that this one 10 minute refocus is invalidating all of those other players contributions to that task. That a player who thinks they may want to take ward medic or continual recovery or assurance medicine will rarely get to use them in the presence of this particular focus spell because that's how much health it provides.
What I mean to say is that at all levels of character progression one use of Garden of healing, a level one focus spell, would act as a, barring some extreme obscurities, full heal for every group member without any checks associated with it. And that all other tools, feats, items, and so on, that the system presents to players that can contribute to this process cease having value in its presence.
Now if I don't consider Garden of Healing at all. I once again challenge the notion that groups will continue to operate around the standard 10 minute rest times as we receive more and more options that heal without interacting with the standard 10 minute exploration activities.
To submit a hypothetical:
Let's say a group has an Exemplar, a Kineticist, a Barbarian and a Wizard. Should the Kineticist provide things like Ocean's Balm and Fresh Produce, or perhaps the Exemplar heals themselves instantly with Scar of the Survivor, suddenly the only person who has a 10 minute activity to maintain any of their combat potency is the Wizard. The possibility that this player may feel pressure to simply not refocus, that they may feel obligated not to make the other three members of their team wait on them is gross to me. This type of possible pressure wasn't something that was ever present up to this point because the healing tools had time investments tied to them.
As we receive more tools like this that don't abide by the standard 10 minute rests, this problem that I'm presenting will get progressively worse. Now to be fair, I had mentioned it at some point prior, we had something like this before Kineticist released and it played just fine. Thaumaturges Chalice had this, initially, unique perk. To be able to heal without a time investment, but its healing output was lower than most other tools to compensate. That when the player focused particularly on improving the chalice implement the gap between the chalice and the other healing tools was never so large that it'd completely invalidate them. Kineticist brought us tools that *Do* risk invalidating other tools in the sense that their output in this sphere of gameplay is magnitudes higher than older class investments. My assertion is that this type of tool only plays well into the standard 10 minute rest periods if the group will still need to spend some time if they want to heal to full, which is becoming increasingly not the case.
With the remaster making 30m a compelling default rest time (for focus points) the pressure to speed up healing becomes less, not more. So in that respect I think you have it backwards.
But even beyond that it still generally doesn't matter, and being generally able to fill up your HP between major combats has always been an assumption of PF2.
Out of combat healing has always been high. Balancing an adventuring day based on HP attrition has never been a thing in PF2.
Addendum wrote:
Level 1
Treat wounds DC 15: ~9
Lay on Hands: 6
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 8
Chalice*: 3
Ocean's Balm*: ~20 (1d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: ~16 (1d4+1 per person)
Garden of Healing (Animist): ~100 (10d4 per person)
Level 5
Treat wounds DC 20: ~19
Treat wounds ward medic DC 20: ~76 (2d8+10 per person)
Treat wounds medic dedication and ward medic DC 20: ~96 (2d8+15 per person)
Lay on Hands: 18
Life Boost/Hymn of Healing: 24
Chalice*: 15
Ocean's Balm*: ~50 (3d8 per person)
Fresh Produce*: ~76 (3d4+11 per person)
Garden of Healing: ~300 (30d4 per person)
Radiant Epithet* (Exemplar): 16 (4 per person)
I'm going to note that you omitted several of the other healing options. Many of which have lower healing amounts.
Goodberry: available at level 1 and does (1d6 +4) * rank.
Soothing Mist: available at level 3 and does (1d8) * rank
Rejuvenating Flames: available at level 1 and does (1d4) * rank to all of your allies, but not you.
I think that Goodberry does more healing than any other focus spell, but still less than Treat Wounds does after investing several skill boosts and skill feats in it.
The other two look like they do quite a bit less than Lay on Hands.
TL;DR: I don't think the game is balanced around not letting the players heal up their characters after combat and never has been. Having more options to do that with is fun and good for the game. And healing abilities have always had best/worst in show rankings. It doesn't bother me that some of the newer ones are higher than normal.
Out of combat healing has always been high. Balancing an adventuring day based on HP attrition has never been a thing in PF2.
I think that Goodberry does more healing than any other focus spell, but still less than Treat Wounds does after investing several skill boosts and skill feats in it.
The other two look like they do quite a bit less than Lay on Hands.
TL;DR: I don't think the game is balanced around not letting the players heal up their characters after combat and never has been. Having more options to do that with is fun and good for the game. And healing abilities have always had best/worst in show rankings. It doesn't bother me that some of the newer ones are higher than normal.
I didn't include all of the medicine replacements because I didn't think it was necessary to do so. All of these older options followed a very standard rate of healing in a 10 minute period of time. For example, good berry is on average roughly the same as Hymn of Healing and Life Boost. And once again, all of the newer options are magnitudes better than these old options.
I've seen several people in this thread make the claim that out of combat healing has always been high. It's a notion I find quite confusing. High compared to what? Other games? If so, probably, but I don't see how that has any relevance to this discussion. All healing in this system maintained a relatively tight output when compared to one another, so these comments noting that "out of combat healing has always been high" don't make any sense to me. New options are nice, it is not my intention to say we should never see anything new in this facet of the game. But the options we have been seeing lately shatter the expected time investment that groups need to make in order to maintain a safe amount of health during an adventure.
The one thing I've learned from this thread so far is that my expectations for how out of combat plays, and my perception of how GMs can utilize exploration mode to present tension, seems to be significantly different than those of other players.
I've seen several people in this thread make the claim that out of combat healing has always been high. It's a notion I find quite confusing. High compared to what?
'High'. Not 'higher'. 'High' isn't compared to anything. Out of combat healing has always been high amounts.
Meaning 'high enough that you can heal to full between encounters'. High enough that you don't have to rest for the night (and certainly not for multiple days) after a battle in order to restore the party to fighting condition without spending non-renewable resources.
I'm not going to say that the new options don't heal more than the old ones do. The point is that they are all - the old ones and the new ones - high enough to get the job done.
Encounter balance in the Building Encounters rules assume that the party is going in to the battle at full HP and the 'lack of resources due to prior encounters' mentioned in Severe encounters is talking about spell slots, 1/day abilities, hero points, focus points, and things like that. Not Hit Points.
New 10 minute healing abilities that do that full party HP restoration after combat faster don't really change anything as far as overall game design and encounter balance. The full party HP restoration after combat has always been standard. Aside from plot-driven encounter-specific things that would have to be balanced specifically on a case by case basis.
Is it fair to compare class feat/features that lock someone into certain choices (or class options) to skill investment which can be acquired by anyone?
This doesn't make any sense to me. Medicine investment was always stronger than the class feat alternatives in the realm of out of combat healing.
Lay on Hands for example is 6 health for each spell rank.
Life boost is 8 health for each spell rank.
Hymn of healing is the same as life boost
This is all to say even if I don't bring medicine into the equation at all, the newer feats on kineticist and Animist/Exemplar are magnitudes higher than the old class options that provided out of combat healing.
Emphasis mine.
Depends on the kineticist feat. Ocean's balm is lower than Lay On Hands (1d8 per rank < 6 per rank, and ocean's balm scales precisely as well as spell ranks do). Torrent in the blood is off-level (level 6, +1d8 per 2 levels) but scales worse than Lay On Hands as well against a single target (3d8 < 18, certainly less than 24, and 1d8 per rank is less than 6 per rank). And it's quite common to have damage focused on a single PC, in my experience.
But besides that fact...medicine is pretty much an autopick anyway. Torrent In the Blood or Lay On Hands will never scale as well as a medicine PC with ward medic and continual recovery. For instance, at level 8, Torrent and Ocean's Balm restore 4d8 every 10 minutes, about 18 points. Against expert DC, which a medicine PC WILL make (+8 levels + 6 prof + 4ish Wis ~ +18, you make it on a 2) and will crit succeed on a little less than half the time (roll of 12 or higher), you regain 2d8+10 or 4d8+10 on a crit success. Medicine pretty much mins out at 2d8+10 ~ 19 on a success or 28 on a crit success. So your minimum healing is a point higher, and healing is substantially higher 45% of the time. Expectation value for medicine, if you're curious, is 22 points.
The scaling is likewise unfavorable to Torrent and Balm .
Level 16 comparison:
Torrent and Balm heal for 8d8 ~ 36
Medicine has +16 (levels) + 8 (legendary prof) + 2 (item bonus) + 5 (Wisdom modifier) = +31. You succeed against master DC on a 2, and crit succeed on a 9. Success is 2d8+30 = 39, critical success is 4d8+30 = 48. Expectation value is 42.
But also, yeah, I am generally shocked and appalled if my party can't heal to full between combats. It's just really rare.
I agree that kineticist can probably substitute in for medicine or Lay On Hands, if you are willing to take a bit longer. I don't think that's a bad thing.
As The Raven Black says, as a GM I want to be able to create situations where the party has got limited time to patch up, refocus, repair, or whatever else. Some abilities make that choice much less meaningful.
Slapping an "Every x-minutes" frequency on those at-will healing abilities would make their out-of-combat usage less cheesy, but it makes no sense to lift that restriction in combat, and having that isn't really desirable.
As The Raven Black says, as a GM I want to be able to create situations where the party has got limited time to patch up, refocus, repair, or whatever else. Some abilities make that choice much less meaningful.
Slapping an "Every x-minutes" frequency on those at-will healing abilities would make their out-of-combat usage less cheesy, but it makes no sense to lift that restriction in combat, and having that isn't really desirable.
Kineticist already has a once every 10 minutes restriction, doesn't it? I agree that exemplar's "No Scar But This" doesn't, but that's self-only healing and probably will get the same once every 10 minutes errata anyway.
Kineticist already has a once every 10 minutes restriction, doesn't it? I agree that exemplar's "No Scar But This" doesn't, but that's self-only healing and probably will get the same once every 10 minutes errata anyway.
Or an 'only available in combat' change like Psychic's Restore the Mind has due to the Psyche trait (in addition to the 10 minute immunity that Restore the Mind lists separately).
The kineticist 10 minute "lockout" is fundamentally different than standard 10 minute exploration activities in the sense that it's not an activity, it's an action with a 10 minute reuse timer per person. This is to say that you can use multiple of these on a 10 minute interval and still commit to a different exploration activity. As per Caliope5431's math we're looking at kineticist having multiple options available to them that maintain close pacing with high investment medicine while also being able to be used in tandem with one another should the kineticist take multiple of these options.
I'd like to reiterate that my concern with the thread is that this abrupt increase in what these types of abilities can output seems to be a trend. This what I'm concerned with, and I'm more or less fine with Kineticist having this overwhelming capacity if it goes back to being a rarity for future content. When Paizo presented the playtest for Animist and Exemplar it made it apparent that it seems to be a potential norm going forward which I wholeheartedly think is bad for the system.
Ocean's Balm heals less than Lay on Hands does in average and has a worse combat effect. It can be used to heal up groups quicker, but it is worse at patching up a single person. And it is significantly worse as a combat healing source because it is less reliable and can't be spammed 3 times in a row on the same target. Oceans Balm is nice if everyone is getting hit, but often in practice you have one person you need to heal real badly.
Ocean's Balm heals less than Lay on Hands does in average and has a worse combat effect. It can be used to heal up groups quicker, but it is worse at patching up a single person. And it is significantly worse as a combat healing source because it is less reliable and can't be spammed 3 times in a row on the same target. Oceans Balm is nice if everyone is getting hit, but often in practice you have one person you need to heal real badly.
Lay on hands is indeed a bit better for most combat situations. But I'm not sure how that's relevant to the discussion of their out of combat outputs where Ocean's Balm is magnitudes stronger than Lay on Hands. In a single instance where a person uses lay on hands and then spends 10 minutes refocusing ocean's balm is healing every group member and doesn't require a time investment to recharge the ability.
which I wholeheartedly think is bad for the system.
Given that PF2 has always been built to de-emphasize attritional gameplay I just can't see it as a significant issue.
You're still largely limited by 10 minute intervals, and the game still expects you to be able to recover large amounts of HP in between encounters.
The time scale has shrunk slightly in certain cases, but overall very little has actually changed other than the variety of options.
The most significant ramification here is that there are now ways to build parties that don't require the medicine skill in the same way core PF2 assumed you would... which is just objectively a good thing.
@Addendum Yeah, I'm not sure why you are digging in your heels so much on this. What, exactly, is not available to your gameplay scenes due to the fast post-combat healing?
HP Attrition gameplay is not a good idea in general. Going into what is rated as a hard fight while already low on HP is a recipe for TPK.
Playing an Attrition style campaign can be done, but it already requires houserules and player buy-in with even just the core rulebook. Just ban or tweak the new options for your campaign and call it a day.
Because with this thread, it feels like you are trying to enforce your particular flavor of attrition-based gameplay onto all other gaming tables in existence.
The time scale has shrunk slightly in certain cases, but overall very little has actually changed other than the variety of options.
The most significant ramification here is that there are now ways to build parties that don't require the medicine skill in the same way core PF2 assumed you would... which is just objectively a good thing.
It's not slightly, in teams with these new options it's significantly faster. The ramifications are:
-Less time for groups to commit to multiple activities in the time that it takes for the group to be full health. Which does impact some skills and class features more than others. And does put an unfortunate pressure on people who would like to utilize these types of exploration activities to their own benefit. Utilizing the Spell Substitution wizard thesis to reselect a more fitting list of spells comes to mind.
-Less value from older class feats. This type of trend risks the older tools becoming "trap" feats.
-Less value from high investment into medicine.
-And in my opinion the worst offender is there is less time the GM has to present tense situations both for being within a dangerous area and being on a time budget. In the case of Animist's Garden of Healing for example, every group member is full health within a minute of the fight ending.
breithauptclan wrote:
Because with this thread, it feels like you are trying to enforce your particular flavor of attrition-based gameplay onto all other gaming tables in existence.
With this thread, I once again will reiterate, I'm trying to point to the very clear power creep the game is receiving in the realm of out of combat healing. This power creep is objectively true.
It doesn't matter if the perception that health attrition over time is a good or a bad thing, what matters is that the tools that were available to deal with health attrition in the past are worse than the tools we have received, and the tools we are potentially receiving in the future, and that the time it takes for groups to fully heal themselves is narrowing. For tables in which this isn't a problem normally nothing changes but it does change tables that want for grittier exploration.
To commit to the notion that these tables should just ban the overperforming abilities in lieu of them being balanced against all of the other tools is surreal to me.
Eh, not really in any significantly important way.
Quote:
To commit to the notion that these tables should just ban the overperforming abilities in lieu of them being balanced against all of the other tools is surreal to me.
I mean, your issue is a subjective discomfort with core assumptions of PF2 design. Fixing it via houserules is the only thing that makes sense, because for the most part the things you're complaining about are features of the system, not bugs.
I mean, your issue is a subjective discomfort with core assumptions of PF2 design. Fixing it via houserules is the only thing that makes sense, because for the most part the things you're complaining about are features of the system, not bugs.
It's more than a touch annoying that you've now proposed that I have something against core designs of PF2e when what I've done up to this point is show the disparity between old exploration mode healing options and the new ones. This is to say you've read through the thread, seen that I very clearly prefer the standard healing output the system has had up to this point and somehow determined that I disliked it because I'm pointing out that the new options are better? Do I have that correct?
Unless you're suggesting that the new healing numbers are the standard which is very confusing.
It's more than a touch annoying that you've now proposed that I have something against core designs of PF2e when what I've done up to this point is show the disparity between old exploration mode healing options and the new ones.
All I am seeing is a theoretical difference. Not a practical one.
Basically it boils down to, 'this number is higher than that number and that's not fair'. Which really isn't meaningful.
Consider: 873 is a higher number than 814. That is an actual fact. But it is not a practical difference when we are talking about the temperature of a room that you are in. Both are going to be high enough to get the job done.
Talking about this in abstract is not working. So give some concrete examples of what you are having concerns about. What scenario works before Rage of Elements existed that doesn't work now that Kineticist is a thing. Specific things. What activities are the characters doing during that time between battles and why is it important.
Ocean's Balm heals less than Lay on Hands does in average and has a worse combat effect. It can be used to heal up groups quicker, but it is worse at patching up a single person. And it is significantly worse as a combat healing source because it is less reliable and can't be spammed 3 times in a row on the same target. Oceans Balm is nice if everyone is getting hit, but often in practice you have one person you need to heal real badly.
Lay on hands is indeed a bit better for most combat situations. But I'm not sure how that's relevant to the discussion of their out of combat outputs where Ocean's Balm is magnitudes stronger than Lay on Hands. In a single instance where a person uses lay on hands and then spends 10 minutes refocusing ocean's balm is healing every group member and doesn't require a time investment to recharge the ability.
It is relevant because the two options feel balanced against each other when you consider both in combat and out of combat uses. Ocean's Balm being better for out of combat healing the whole team is a nice quality of life feature, but it isn't an overall stronger ability and out of combat healing was already cheap and plentiful.
I'll assume a group size of 4 and that medicine somehow always magically succeeds.
Just a note that the latter is called Assurance (Medicine). It's a Skill feat that I take for all my PCs who do Battle Medicine.
Assurance only lets you succeed if the DC is 10 plus your proficiency bonus, though. Item and ability bonuses don't help, which is rather significant. The levels at which a certain proficiency rank with Assurance will succeed on a simple DC of the same rank are:
Trained: 3
Expert: 6
Master: 14
(Legendary would be 22 but that's beyond the scope of the rules).
It's interesting that these come so close to the levels at which the next proficiency rank becomes available.
Talking about this in abstract is not working. So give some concrete examples of what you are having concerns about. What scenario works before Rage of Elements existed that doesn't work now that Kineticist is a thing. Specific things. What activities are the characters doing during that time between battles and why is it important.
I'm not exactly sure what you want me to present at this point, I feel as though I've given examples and numbers in spades. I'm not going to give you an exact play by play of my own gameplay experiences to try to prove to you there's obvious number imbalances in the realm of out of combat healing. Should I throw out an example that I perceive to be a realistic outcomes for healing after fights? I guess to keep it simple I'll look at level 1 because otherwise I'll be here all night trying to give you what you want.
Player One has 3/21 health remaining after the fight.
Player Two has 10/16 health remaining after the fight.
Player Three has 8/17 health remaining after the fight.
Player Four has 8/14 health remaining after the fight.
Medicine DC 15 is ~9 health on a success.
It'd take ~2 successes to heal Player One full
It'd take ~1 success to heal Player Two full
It'd take ~1 success to heal Player Three full
It'd take ~1 success to heal Player Four full
If we assume every single medicine check was a success it's 50 minutes of idling over an hour and a ten minutes. If just one of these is a failure then we begin tacking on substantially higher amounts of time.
With that same array of health, Hymn of Healing heals for 8 health per refocus.
It'd take 2 uses to heal Player One 19/21
It'd take 1 use to heal Player Two full
It'd take 1 use to heal Player Three 16/17
It'd take 1 use to heal Player Four full
This is a total of 50 minutes of idling to heal everyone to almost full but will be 60 minutes if the bard wishes to refocus.
With that same array of health, Ocean's Balm heals for ~5 health per use.
It'd take ~4 uses to have Player One full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Two full
It'd take ~2 uses to heal Player Three full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Four full
This is done in 40 minutes because the kineticist is healing everyone at the same time. Total of 0 minutes of idling because there's no exploration activity associated with Impulses.
With that same array of health Ocean's Balm and Fresh Produce together heal for ~8.5 health per use.
It'd take ~2 uses to heal Player One full
It'd take ~1 uses to heal Player Two full.
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Three to full.
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Four to full.
This is done in 20 minutes because the kineticist is healing everyone at the same time. Total of 0 minutes of idling because there's no exploration activity associated with Impulses.
With that same array of health Animist's Garden of Healing heals for ~25 per use.
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player One to full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Two to full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Three to full
It'd take ~1 use to heal Player Four to full
This is done in 1 minute with a follow up 10 minute refocus.
If we assume that players are looking to commit to exploration activities in the normal time to heal:
The Treat wounds route gives the group members and GM a minimum of 5 total instances of playing around with exploration activities while the group needs to idle.
The Hymn of Healing route gives the group members and GM 5 or 6 total instances of playing around with exploration while the group needs to idle.
The Kineticist routes do not tie the group down to idling at all. This means that any player that does want to toy around with their own idle exploration activities now needs to ask the group to pause on their account, an unspoken pressure that doesn't exist for any other of the other healing options. This also means the GM doesn't have as much room to use standard player exploration activities to present information to the group unless the group decides to commit to idling in one spot instead of pressing forward. This type of feature also makes it difficult to have exploration activities against the clock be interesting choices, because the players don't make such choices with these kinds of healing abilities, it just happens. It also takes the risk away from players going off ahead while group healing happens because the group doesn't need to stop what they're doing to heal. I'm not sure how much more I can present to express how strange these new healing feats play into the standard norm for healing out of combat and exploration activities in general.
And surely I don't need to explain how Garden of Healing's 1 minute group wide full heal exacerbates what I've mentioned above.
To clarify, as I presented in another post this divide between these healing options isn't just present solely at level one. Kineticists built with multiple healing tools continue to present this disparity throughout the entirety of the level progression. And at any point another player in a group with such a kineticist thinks to perhaps pick up a medicine alternative to try to help their group will find their output in this facet of the game miniscule in comparison.
And once again to clarify, I'm more or less fine with Kineticist having this gap. Sure it's weird to me but it's only on players built as healers on one class of twenty three, the issues I have are fairly isolated right now. But I'm very apprehensive about it being common place going forward.
Out of combat healing has always been high. Balancing an adventuring day based on HP attrition has never been a thing in PF2.
On a side note, I think one of PF2's issues is that there are no guidelines for adventuring day balance at all. That's why you get adventure paths that expect you to deal with 10+ encounters per day.
I'm not exactly sure what you want me to present at this point, I feel as though I've given examples and numbers in spades.
Medicine
If we assume every single medicine check was a success it's 50 minutes of idling over an hour and a ten minutes. If just one of these is a failure then we begin tacking on substantially higher amounts of time.
Hymn of Healing
This is a total of 50 minutes of idling to heal everyone to almost full but will be 60 minutes if the bard wishes to refocus.
Ocean's Balm and Fresh Produce together
This is done in 20 minutes
Animist's Garden of Healing
This is done in 1 minute with a follow up 10 minute refocus.
My request is not to prove that there is a difference. And I am not going to bother to mention that there are ways even at level 1 to improve on the amount of time needed for those level 1 Medicine healing times, and there is no reason that only one character and one option is the limit for a 4-person party - the Bard can use Hymn of Healing and the Rogue can use medicine at the same time. Because this is all completely beside the point.
My request is for you to explain why this difference is important to you.
Why are the characters looking at each other after a hard fight and saying, "We need to get going. We don't have an hour to wait around patching ourselves up. We need to get to the next battle pronto." Or "We have to explore this room now. No time to spend healing up."
What plot and campaign scenarios are no longer viable if after-combat healing is faster?
Out of combat healing has always been high. Balancing an adventuring day based on HP attrition has never been a thing in PF2.
On a side note, I think one of PF2's issues is that there are no guidelines for adventuring day balance at all. That's why you get adventure paths that expect you to deal with 10+ encounters per day.
You are talking about Agents of Edgewatch, yes? One of those first campaign adventure path books that is known to be poorly designed because the AP was written while the game rules were still also being written and changed. And the AP writers were also still in a PF1 mentality - which is also now known to be a problem.
