So, my friends and I are getting ready to start into our first foray into Pathfinder Second Edition playing Abomination Vaults. (No spoilers for that please) Our friend who's GMing has some experience with 2e and advised us to have a healer, but uhh... besides Cleric's Divine Font, I didn't see much in the way of dedicated healing, I also didn't feel like being the healer. I picked Bard, it has Soothe, s'okay for healing... figured someone else could handle main healing... everyone else picked Fighter, Rogue and Witch...
Our Witch is primal, so Heal spell is good. But I'm concerned if we run out of spell slots. I got Battle Medicine, but it's just once per person per day... Treat Wounds should help out of combat, but I'm concerned if we need more healing in combat... I was considering the Medic atchetype, but it only grants one more use of Battle Medicine and more medicine options... I'm most strongly considering Blessed One because it could grant up to 3 Lay on Hands uses per combat, but I'm also considering Herbalist or Alchemist Multiclass for bonus free elixirs per day.
What do you all think would be the best archetype to supplement healing?
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Your setup sounds fine to me, you don't need an healbot. Get soothe as a signature spell if you feel like you need it, at lvl 3 you will have better insight if that's needed.
For emergencies your witch can grab a heal scroll or two.
Lay on Hands is nice to have, it's one action with a rider (+ac), but you don't need it in your group composition. If you want it, it's fine of course.
Resourceless healing like Lay on Hands, Lesson of Life, Treat Wounds etc is good for out of combat healing, you usually don't want to use spell slots or consumables for that.
Medic is a really nice archetype, especially due to doctors visitation getting you an action compression and the skill feat allowing you to leave the archetype at lvl 4. The 1/day goes up to 1/h at master medicine (lvl 7)
Regarding herbalist/alchemist: free elixirs are nice, but the action economy is not, and it takes a while for the scaling to get up to speed.
I agree your party looks like is well served in terms os healing options and quantity. Yet if you fell that isn't enough my recommendation for healing archetype will by an alchemist or herbalist archetypes due the fact they will able to get a high number of elixirs with a relative low cost in terms of feats. Also you will able to act like a "portable grocery" distributing your elixirs along the party preventing that you becoming to be a heal bot responsible to heal your allies instead everyone will have their own elixir to divide this work between all party members.
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Medic I find to be the best healing archetype because it boosts your Medicine skill to expert by 2nd level and allows you to pick up Continual Recovery at the same time which covers your out of combat recovery very early. Medic also boosts the number of hit points restored per use of Treat Wounds which makes between combat recovery a little faster. It also has some key condition removal feats you can take with skill feats to satisfy the archetype requirements allowing you to take another archetype fairly early with minimal drain on class feats.
You should have sufficient healing spell power with a primal healer and soothe healer. Level 1 is always tough due to the possibility of getting crit hammered. But once you hit 2nd level and up, you should be pretty smooth sailing so long as you play with a reasonable level of tactical efficiency.
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Medic is the best healing archetype because it boosts something someone is already doing (Medicine) and gives a lot of bang for buck. It gives:
1. More healing on Treat Wounds & Battle Medicine
2. An extra battle medicine a day (or an extra one an hour at Master)
3. Better action economy (Doctors Visitation is Stride & Battle Medicine in 1 action). This is huge when can do other things that are useful in a turn (like cast a spell).
4. Ability to treat more conditions if you take the skill feats for it
For 2 class feats and a skill feat or two, that is a great package. Rogues actually make amazing Medics because they get so many skill feats and Medicine is skill intensive (and if you take Assurance you can get by without a high Wisdom as with Medic it's auto-succeeding at level 2 and auto-succeeding at Expert DC at level 6).
Look: Divine Font is a lot of healing. Medic supplements it nicely and Medicine with Continual Recovery & Ward Medic is downtime healing galore. If you also have Soothe, this is more than enough healing for any party that isn't being reckless.
You can go overboard on healing as putting too many resources into that takes them away from somewhere else, and the best healing is stopping damage from happening at all. Like, Champion Dedication is great because the reaction flat out stops damage and can be used every turn (and also does something else). Tripping enemies or hitting them with Fear weakens their attacks and makes it easier to hit them so they die faster (ditto with Inspire Courage/Courageous Anthem).
If you want to juice it up a bit more, folks in the party that don't have a patron deity can take Godless Healing, which gives Battle Medicine more HP and lets it be used on them every hour. This is not an option for the Cleric, of course.
The main problem with something like Herbalist or Alchemist for healing is that potions are very action intensive. That's not what you want to be doing since you have other things that help your party win the fight with those actions.
PF2 doesn't actually need a 'main healer'. The party needs to have enough in-combat healing and out-of-combat healing. And often it is best to have the in-combat healing spread in smaller amounts through all of the party rather than having it all concentrated in one character.
One character 'main healer' has two problems: If that character drops, then the party has insufficient in-combat healing. And that character will struggle to contribute to the battle in any way other than healing after something goes wrong. The healer isn't contributing to ending the fight, so the fight lasts longer and more damage ends up being dealt to the party.
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I'd add to what the others have said that considering the duration of Abomination Vaults, most archetype-based healing will end up rather disappointing. First, you'll get the archetype after a few levels. And a lot of the archetypes need a bit of time to grow into maturity. For example, Herbalist and Alchemist archetypes both provide valid healing when you get into the 2-digit levels, making them completely invalid for Abomination Vaults.
A solution to provide more healing that is in line with most of what you can get through archetypes is just to use Potions of Healing. They are available right at level 1 and often drop in profusion during adventures (and as such are nearly free). If you are fine having one or 2 at hand when walking in the donjon they should provide useful supplemental healing without asking for much investment from your part.
It's not the case for the OP that already pointed that its party already have primal and occult casters but I need to keep a notice for those who are playing without any other healing option beyond Medicine skill. Medic archetype is a pretty good archetype specially to heal conditions and even to resurrect a fallen ally. But Medicine alone may be insufficient to keep a party alive in some dare circumstances. Battle Medicine usually is a once per day per target usage and outside the situation where everyone in the party have it without an alternative healing option to help pure amounts of HP in an encounter you may risk end without sufficient to keep alive in a encounter. Even a party composed with 4 PCs with Medicine and Battle Medicine maybe not enough. So if some party are in this situation without any magical or alchemical source of healing you have at last to buy some potions or healing scrolls (that can be easily tricked) as safety.
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Divine sorcerer (the class, not the archetype) with Signature Spell in heal gives the Cleric class a run for their money. They might not have as many top end heals, but they get pretty close since they can convert ALL their spell slots to healing if needed, without locking out their other versatile spell options like prepared casters would if the prepared all heals. Hit point for hit point, I believe they beat even clerics at the healing game at the end of the day.
You won't do better than those two unless you throw on mundane healing skill feats, magical healing gear, and focus spell healing (like the champion's lay on hands).
If you really want to go ham with healing, play a divine sorcerer with the Medic archetype, healing skill feats, a staff of healing, healer's gloves, enough scrolls to make a library blush and cry out, and the Chosen One background.
Just keep opportunity costs in mind. I've seen plenty of parties focus too much on healing to their detriment.
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Divine sorcerer (the class, not the archetype) with Signature Spell in heal gives the Cleric class a run for their money. They might not have as many top end heals, but they get pretty close since they can convert ALL their spell slots to healing if needed, without locking out their other versatile spell options like prepared casters would if the prepared all heals. Hit point for hit point, I believe they beat even clerics at the healing game at the end of the day.
You won't do better than those two unless you throw on mundane healing skill feats, magical healing gear, and focus spell healing (like the champion's lay on hands).
If you really want to go ham with healing, play a divine sorcerer with the Medic archetype, healing skill feats, a staff of healing, healer's gloves, enough scrolls to make a library blush and cry out, and the Chosen One background.
Just keep opportunity costs in mind. I've seen plenty of parties focus too much on healing to their detriment.
They don't have as many dedicated top end heals.
They also have to spend a lot more of their potential to do anything else to hit the level of healing you describe.
...and the cleric has feats that crank the effectiveness of their healing further.
I'm not saying that divine sorc with signature healing is a bad healer. It's not. It's not at the same level as cleric, though. At this point, I'm not even convinced it beats a well-built Chirurgeon or Life Oracle (with signature healing).
A level 20 Chirurgeon can produce up to 84 Major Soothing Tonic that all heal for 10 hit points per round for 10 rounds for a total of 8400 hit point healed or 56 Major Numbing Tonic that give 25 Temp hit point per round for 10 rounds for a total of 14000 temp hit points in total. And I don't count Perpetual Infusions.
Game over?
Being a great healer is not about the total amount of healing per day.
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"Water/wood kineticist with a heavy healing focus" is an entirely reasonable build that most folks would be happy to see at the table, and technically their heal-per-day is unlimited.
They're really not "the best healer", though. They just don't have the spike healing to compete.
On the other hand, the meta seems two be "two fairly solid healers, plus some other heals scattered around the party". For *that*, the healer-kineticist does just fine.
Thinking about it, Kineticist+Chirurgeon as a healer pair has a bit of hidden synergy, in that they both benefit from allies that leave at least one hand free, and they also both consistently have at least one hand free a fair amount of the time. Alchemists benefit from party members who are interested in heading into battle holding their mutagen of choice, and Kineticists have Fresh Produce, which is a nice little heal power with excellent scaling and the downside that it's functionally useless if your target has both hands full (or is unconscious).
They also both do the "use this heal ability on as many people as you like for free, but the power has a per-target cooldown" thing except that they're using different powers, which winds up stacking pretty nicely.
Alchemists benefit from party members who are interested in heading into battle holding their mutagen of choice
Collar of Shifting Spider says Hi!
Alchemists benefit from party members who are interested in heading into battle holding their mutagen of choiceCollar of Shifting Spider says Hi!
Okay. Sure... but you can't tell me that for a chirurgeon, having party members who routinely keep hands free isn't useful. If nothing else, it cuts down on the actions necessary for them to pull out and chug (or administer) a healing elixir.
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Okay. Sure... but you can't tell me that for a chirurgeon, having party members who routinely keep hands free isn't useful. If nothing else, it cuts down on the actions necessary for them to pull out and chug (or administer) a healing elixir.
Ho, that, definitely. And they can also act as Chirurgeons themselves as they can administer their Elixirs to other party members.
I've played with a Monk whose hands I was filling with my Elixirs and the combination of extreme action economy and mobility + Elixirs was excellent.| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Other thing to remember is that activating a Collar of the Shifting Spider is a free Interact action. You need a hand free to activate the Collar.
I'm not saying that divine sorc with signature healing is a bad healer. It's not. It's not at the same level as cleric, though. At this point, I'm not even convinced it beats a well-built Chirurgeon or Life Oracle (with signature healing).
You're both wrong, because the best healer is the Cleric working in tandem with an Angelic Sorcerer, because the Sorcerer's Angelic Halo is such a massive boost to ALL Heal spells on allies, not just his own.
Here's a Youtube video teaching newbies some important stuff about healing in 2e.
"Water/wood kineticist with a heavy healing focus" is an entirely reasonable build that most folks would be happy to see at the table, and technically their heal-per-day is unlimited.
They're really not "the best healer", though. They just don't have the spike healing to compete.
On the other hand, the meta seems two be "two fairly solid healers, plus some other heals scattered around the party". For *that*, the healer-kineticist does just fine.
That Kineticist will also probably have Timber Sentinel, which can prevent absolutely absurd amounts of damage and keep people in fights. Especially against unintelligent creatures that can't realize whats happening, or in tight dungeons where it can be positioned in a way to cover a lot of people easily.
The tree is animate, and blocking attacks. Animalistic creatures might think it a creature in its own right--even going so far as to attack it directly. Mindless creatures probably wouldn't have any clue though.
Bards get Hymn of Healing, one of the most underrated healing spells in the game. We had a fighter who took the bard archetype and hymn of healing at 4th level. At 5th level they could put out an effective 48 points of healing for a single focus point.
It just doesn’t see as much play because it’s a composition spell and courageous anthem or dirge of doom is even better most of the time, but if it’s your only focus spell it really shines.
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I personally lean towards the Life Oracle and Divine/Primal Summoner as best healers in the game.
The Summoner is a fantastic healer because it divides by 2 the opportunity cost of casting a 2-action Heal (and even a 3-action Heal) as you have still actions remaining to play your Eidolon. It makes healing much easier.
The Life Oracle has a 1-action Focus Spell that makes up for "basic healing" and the craziest burst healing in the game. A bit overkill, but funny.
I don't really like the Cleric as a healer as the Font is just to much: I nearly never use more than a couple of Heals in an adventuring day past the very first levels. The Cleric is still the best AoE healer in the game, but AoE healing is such a rare event I'm not sure it's really interesting.
My healing preference is a druid, primal sorcerer, or a fervor witch. The cleric font is overkill past the low levels. Druid is ideal because wisdom is a main stat for medicine which makes the higher checks easier, though many DMs absent a time crunch let the party heal to keep the game quick. Primal sorcerer as the feats, focus spells, and charisma as main stat with the ability to heavily focus on wisdom makes an efficient character. Fervor witch for similar reasons to the sorcerer and the 1 action extra damage hex is nice as well.
It's hard for me to play a life oracle in PF2 as my life oracle in PF1 was such an incredible beast of a character that the new life oracle feels weak. By high level my life oracle was immune to almost everything when in life form or whatever that was called. It was pretty ridiculous, but I enjoyed it. Just a brutal, nearly unkillable healer that could quick heals equal to their level all day.
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The best healer in the game is the healer that can also do something else well apart from heal. Because they are only going to be healing half the time at best.
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The best healer in the game is the healer that can also do something else well apart from heal. Because they are only going to be healing half the time at best.
I agree. I've seen plenty of parties have a really hard time due to overemphasis on healing. In my experience this often occurs as a knee-jerk reaction by new players who don't know the system and who have had a few bad encounters due to poor tactics, or due to an inexperienced GM making things harder on the players than the developers intended.
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The best healer in the game is the healer that can also do something else well apart from heal. Because they are only going to be healing half the time at best.
Let's be honest: That's more of a player issue than a class/build issue. There's no class in this game that don't have at least a significant amount of firepower.
Honestly, there are a bunch of ways to get healing in PF2; IMO even more than in PF1.
One possibility that hasn't been mentioned is alchemist (Chirurgeon) with the multiclassed witch archetype for the remastered Cauldron feat. A patron granting Divine or Primal spells and at least Basic Witch Spellcasting allows the use of heal in addition to the daily elixirs and the daily temporary potion(s).
The best healer in the game is the healer that can also do something else well apart from heal. Because they are only going to be healing half the time at best.Let's be honest: That's more of a player issue than a class/build issue. There's no class in this game that don't have at least a significant amount of firepower.
Gives Guardian some lingering side-eye, then accidentally makes eye contact with the Investigator
Jokes aside, pf2e does a great job of putting "safety nets" in place to ensure that everyone can contribute to damage.
Jolt Coils alone do a huge amount of lifting in that respect, though such flashy examples do leave things like Aid under-utilized, even when it might be a contextually better idea.
Honestly, there are a bunch of ways to get healing in PF2; IMO even more than in PF1.
One possibility that hasn't been mentioned is alchemist (Chirurgeon) with the multiclassed witch archetype for the remastered Cauldron feat. A patron granting Divine or Primal spells and at least Basic Witch Spellcasting allows the use of heal in addition to the daily elixirs and the daily temporary potion(s).
Yeah, after playing Witch in the playtest, I've been waiting / trying for Cauldron for a while.
IMO, the main appeal for a Chiurgeon is that at L8, Cauldron can provide a Haste potion per day. Being able to drink a Haste spell for 1A is crazy appealing.
Chiurgeons still really want to be able to make one MAP 0 Strike per turn; mixing elixir use and damage is kinda the "only" way pull your weight. And a Hasted Action for rounds 2-11 makes it sooo much easier to stay in that goldilocks "Offense & Support" zone.
Haste Potions are so much more appealing to an Alchemist than a Witch due to Alch's using Strike, while casters can't even sustain a Spiritual Weapon to use that hasted action.
When an Independent familiar is ready for a handoff, a Hasted Chiurgeon becomes genuinely great. Cast a Spell(or 2A magic item) + Strike + (handoff) + Elixir is an amazing turn, despite being sub-optimal at all of it.
And getting Haste via Cauldron enables you to not burn a R3 spell slot or to demand a caster's key first turn spell in combat.