Good afternoon, after a long break I'm heading into PF2e (played pathfinder and then dnd with the little one) I'm leaning toward a thaumaturge mainly for flavor..I do love my monster hunters. I'm playing in PFS and I'm trying to have a bit of heals just in case.So far I am just about to hit level 2 and need to solidify my path.
My character right now is at Str +3, dex +1, con +1, Int and wis +0 and cha +4. I am doing a half elf with warrior background. I have nature ambition (scroll thaumaturgy) and diverse lore. I was doing weapon implement but really starting to look at the mirror. For healing at level 2 I'm debating on going the champion dedication (paladin) and assurance medicine. I plan to spend points to get prof with the asp coil.
So anything I should be considering that my newbie self might be missing? My thought is to use medicine outside combat, then use a scroll of heal or when I get the lay on hand ability in combat.
Good afternoon, after a long break I'm heading into PF2e (played pathfinder and then dnd with the little one) I'm leaning toward a thaumaturge mainly for flavor..I do love my monster hunters. I'm playing in PFS and I'm trying to have a bit of heals just in case.So far I am just about to hit level 2 and need to solidify my path.
My character right now is at Str +3, dex +1, con +1, Int and wis +0 and cha +4. I am doing a half elf with warrior background. I have nature ambition (scroll thaumaturgy) and diverse lore. I was doing weapon implement but really starting to look at the mirror. For healing at level 2 I'm debating on going the champion dedication (paladin) and assurance medicine. I plan to spend points to get prof with the asp coil.
So anything I should be considering that my newbie self might be missing? My thought is to use medicine outside combat, then use a scroll of heal or when I get the lay on hand ability in combat.
- Assurance in Medicine means you'll "come online" at 3rd, so it'll be a short wait.
- You probably want Blessed One instead of Champion, because it gives you Lay On Hands right away at 2nd instead of making you wait until 4th level.
You can use Blessed One instead of Champion if all you want is Lay on Hands; you won't get the heavy armor prof or the ability to take the reaction later but the dedication gives you the focus spell immediately.
Thaumaturge has Chalice and Amulet for protection oriented implements, is there a reason you aren't considering those?
I'm really not feeling the chalice to be honest. I was thinking about going amulet and then retrain when the champion ability kicks in at 6. I was worried about the class not kicking in on heals for a bit. Was debating on buying a couple level 1 scrolls of heal (get one free at the start of a adventure in pfs) huh just realized amulet gives resistance rather than just preventing damage
huh just realized amulet gives resistance rather than just preventing damage
Repeatable and reliable anti-damage is about as good as healing though.
Amulet Thaumaturge, Champion of various types, and now Flamekeeper Witch all do that.
Maybe I'll start amulet until at least 6 (I'll check for other benefits from it) Also need to see if medicine is worth the investment. Not sure if there are any skill feats I should be looking at
Also need to see if medicine is worth the investment. Not sure if there are any skill feats I should be looking at
The standard ones are Assurance, Continual Recovery, Battle Medicine, and often Ward Medic.
So debating on changing my idea slightly. Maybe ditch champion, just keep amulet and worry about medicine and scrolls for heals. Not sure if I would pick up a dedication or just go the other feats. Blessed one seems like a trap to me. With champion I could maybe use the heavy armor for a few levels and the lay on hands with the other ability are nice but not sure anymore if it is worth it
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You should discern between healing in combat - where a max rank heal scroll is costly, but strong, and healing out of combat, where focus spells and treat wounds provide resource free options.
Lay on Hands is a bit in the middle, as it is quite strong in combat as well - good healing and a nice rider with the ac bonus.
As PFS does not use FA i would also consider blessed one. While its other options are not as strong as the dedication you can just skip them unless you want to go into another archetype.
You can use retraining in PFS, can't you? When you reach lvl 4 you could retrain the archetype and switch to champion, for example.
Medicine proficiency + Assurrance is an easy way to get out of combat healing even without high wisdom, but it takes until lvl 3 to become available. Battle Medicine is a nice addon to that, but needs either your background skill feat or your lvl 4 one.
You should also keep in mind that you usually have your hands occupied as a thaumaturge (with weapon as 1st implement from lvl 5 on).
Personally i think other classes are better suited for off-healing, but keeping some heal scrolls ready with scroll thaumaturgy is an excellent backup, more flexible and much cheaper than potions.
I've been looking at other classes but nothing has really clicked for me. (first character) huh good point on the retraining, I'll have to double check. I'm not aiming to be a main healer, just in a pinch mostly. Guess I'm trying to recreate the inquisitor from pf1 :)
I'm not aiming to be a main healer, just in a pinch mostly.
Be wary of overspending resources on it, then. You need to be able to do other stuff too. :)
Amulet is pretty solid damage mitigation, and any damage mitigated is damage you don't have to heal at all. You can get that at level 1. Do note that it applies to the target of your Exploit, so you need to make sure to always have Exploit up. (Diverse Lore is also your friend here as you get extra info from Exploit, so its extra action economy.)
Blessed One will give you Lay on Hands at level 2, which you can use both in combat and in downtime, and it doesn't require an empty hand (ie: you can do it while holding a weapon and an implement).
Champion doesn't give you anything until level 4 unless you really want heavy armor, so this is a lot of your career without really getting the healing you're looking for. Amulet & Blessed One gets you a similar feeling thing several levels faster.
Medicine skill is great downtime healing, especially with Assurance since at level 3 you don't need to roll. Battle Medicine is nice, but hard for a Thaumaturge because it requires an empty hand and you just won't have one most of the time (Amulet in one hand and a weapon in the other). If it's only giving you downtime healing, you may not need both it and Blessed One with a lot of investment, since they take the same 10 minutes.
Everyone also gets a potion at the start of the scenario in PFS, so there's that as well.
IMO for what you said you are looking for, that's more than enough. If you invest all your feats into healing, you're just going to really limit yourself when it comes to other types of challenges (and at that point playing something like a Cleric that comes with boatlods of healing out of the box starts to make more sense).
Thanks everyone, lot to go through..first @Easl It's PFS and I'm luck if I can manage every other week. So my main concern is there might be a session with no healer so having something is better than nothing in that case.
@Tridus I think that is my biggest concern, how to get just enough without going too deep. So I'm looking at retraining so at level 2 Go blessed one and then at 4 take champion dedication So no longer having that delay (probably cant use plate until level 5 anyways) Then at 6 I would get the champion ability and switch amulet to something else. I am leaning taking the scroll of heal so that way I have the heal if needed (maybe purchase one or two for backup) Medicine is the tough thing though..how much should I invest in it..should I get continual recovery, medic ward and reliable and keep bumping medicine or if I can stop after a point or not even go that route (but then not sure what skill feats to take
@Tridus I think that is my biggest concern, how to get just enough without going too deep. So I'm looking at retraining so at level 2 Go blessed one and then at 4 take champion dedication So no longer having that delay (probably cant use plate until level 5 anyways) Then at 6 I would get the champion ability and switch amulet to something else. I am leaning taking the scroll of heal so that way I have the heal if needed (maybe purchase one or two for backup) Medicine is the tough thing though..how much should I invest in it..should I get continual recovery, medic ward and reliable and keep bumping medicine or if I can stop after a point or not even go that route (but then not sure what skill feats to take
Medicine is going to be a case of "how good do you want to be at it?" It can be very good but requires a LOT of investment, and it may not be worth it.
- At level 3, Lay on Hands will heal 12HP. DC 15 Treat Wounds will heal 2d8, which averages out to 9, in the same amount of time, assuming you use Assurance and thus never fail/crit succeed.
- Lay on Hands can be spammed on the same target if you have time, which Medicine requires Continual Recovery to do.
- If you get Medicine to Expert and get Ward Medic, you can now treat two people at the same time, which increases the healing per 10 minutes ahead of Lay on Hands.
- DC 20 (Expert) also boosts the healing and keeps up with Lay on Hands, but Assurance can't auto-succeed at it until level 6.
I guess this is my take: if you have Lay on Hands, you can do downtime healing without investing anything in Medicine at all, because you just refocus and then cast Lay on Hands again. These take the same amount of time. Medicine can heal more and can also treat more things (like poison), but it requires a LOT of investment too do that, whereas Lay on hands just scales up on its own.
It seems like a lot of investment relative to the value to me, since you generally won't have an easy time using Battle Medicine. But it'll definitely work if its the path you want to take.
One thing to note is at least from what I've gone through I haven't really seen any skill feats that really sprung out to me. (Still looking) What is a tad interesting is it looks like if I wanted I could apply my tome skill boosts to medicine even if I'm trained in it (would need to get it to expert for prereq first though. A cool thing is though it looks like I could use medicine While refocusing. So in a battle heal the 12hp, then when the fight is done heal the 2d8 while waiting for the lay on hands to kick in again. Just a thought but going to look at the skill feats
One big hurdle with pfs is that gold is very controlled. So after a session you get x gold and you can roll a job to get a little more. With me doing some retraining I'll lose some job rolls. But you get to pick a item at the start of the session. Since I can use any scroll I'll probably take the heal scroll.
I'm going to search online to see if I'm missing anything about the skill feats. But as of now I'm leaning towards assurance, continual recovery and ward medic. I'm thinking I'll just upgrade medicine to expert and call it a day. With tome I can boost it if there is no healer.
So at level 2 I'll have a combat heal of lay on hands (1d6) +2ac,amulet will reduce 4 points per hit, a level 1 heal scroll, face skills +7, esoteric lore +7, all lore +5, and asp coil will on average do 1d6+3+3+2 up to 10ft away
Downtime is not a major source of income. Even at high levels it will barely pay for low level consumables. Even Bards, Inventors, and Alchemists, the three classes best poised to make money thanks to maxing a money making skill and the permanent circumstance bonus from specialty crafting/virtuosix performer, and even they're getting less than 10% of their income* from it. Downtime income in PFS is mostly to compensate players who don't want to retrain, and to provide players who want to craft time to do so for the sake of the experience. You give up very little using the odd week to retrain.
*And then only if they're from the Horizon Hunters faction and pick up a boon to raise the level they can attempt the earn income check at. Without Storied Talent or, downtime money is only good for basic ammunition and beer money unless you make the item yourself.