| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
PF2e was developed to allow unlimited healing out-of-combat pretty easily. The system expects that every combat happens with characters with full health, full focus points and full everything that you are able to recover every 10 minutes.
Yet the GM may press your party if he thinks that there's some urgency preventing such thing but usually for most GMs and situations this is pretty rare.
I think I found my answer: you can't Take 20 on a Flat check because it represents chance, not skill or technique.
So "Searing Restoration" kinda is an unlimited font of healing, even in combat, but only so long as your luck holds out.
Outside of combat, you can use it at will so long as you are willing to deal with the consequences of any failures you get on the Flat checks.
Is that about right?
No, you can't take 20 because taking 20 doesn't exist in this edition.
And in previous editions, it was stated (IIRC) that it was essentially like rolling from 1 to 20 in order, with all the consequences that would happen. And so you could only take 20 on things were there were no consequences or the consequences were irrelevant.
PF2e was developed to allow unlimited healing out-of-combat pretty easily. The system expects that every combat happens with characters with full health, full focus points and full everything that you are able to recover every 10 minutes.
Yet the GM may press your party if he thinks that there's some urgency preventing such thing but usually for most GMs and situations this is pretty rare.
This! The medicine skill, with the right feats, allows you to heal your entire party back up to full very quickly (outside of combat).
Ward Medic + Continual Recovery Skill Feats allow you to quickly heal your party. I remember doing some math once I risky surgery, but can't remember the outcome as to whether Risky Surgery was actually worth it.
Looking back at it, the difference is in the variable portion of the healing going from 2d8 to 4d8. An average of 9 to 18. But you subtract 1d8 (4.5 avg) as part of the process. Meaning very marginal gains.
Anyways, having 1 to 2 people with the medicine skill is seen as the "standard" for healing out of combat, and even decently capable in combat. With other options seen primarily as in combat "burst" healing.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
One Addendum to YuriP's comments: Paizo has gotten more comfortable with back to back encounters or encounters only seperated by a single 10 minute window, to the point such encounters show up semi-frequently in some recent publications (one adventure published in the last year has multiple such gauntlets it puts the players through). So while it's absolutely true that out of combat healing is plentiful and more often than not you can take the time to heal up to full between fights, there's a definite trend of including endurance tests where the party fights multiple weak to moderate encounters with minimal downtime. So if you always spend replenishable reaources with the assumption you can get them back right away or neglect out of combat burst healing like potions, you can find yourself in for a rude awakening.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think I found my answer: you can't Take 20 on a Flat check because it represents chance, not skill or technique.
Flat Checks replaced percentiles. Instead of rolling percentile for, say, a 50% chance at something, Paizo leaned into d20 and created Flat Check 11 for 50%.
For skill checks, PF2E replaced taking 20 with Assurance
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
For skill checks, PF2E replaced taking 20 with Assurance
It gets criticism for being more of a 'take 8' than 'take 10' or 'take 20'.
In comparison, the benefits of Assurance are that you don't have to make any decisions about if a task is done 'under stress' or has a risk of failure. You can use Assurance on your skill check at any time for any check.
The drawback is that it does remove all of the penalties that might apply, but it also removes all bonuses - including your Attribute bonus.
So for Assurance on Acrobatics, you can use Assurance to do a balance check to cross a ledge over a pit while in combat, but you will take 10 and then remove your DEX bonus from what you add to the value (as well as things like circumstance bonuses from ally help).
Oh, and as for the original question:
Is "Searing Restoration" an unlimited font of healing?
Yes. And it is far from the only one. There are more infinite healing abilities than I care to list here.
The most common one is Treat Wounds with a couple of upgrade skill feats of Continual Recovery and Ward Medic.
Lay on Hands and other focus point healing spells are also popular.
The game design is that the party is generally at full HP by the time they get into their next fight of the day. Only 1/day (or n/day) abilities and spell slots are subject to attrition.
For skill checks, PF2E replaced taking 20 with AssuranceIt gets criticism for being more of a 'take 8' than 'take 10' or 'take 20'.
In comparison, the benefits of Assurance are that you don't have to make any decisions about if a task is done 'under stress' or has a risk of failure. You can use Assurance on your skill check at any time for any check.
The drawback is that it does remove all of the penalties that might apply, but it also removes all bonuses - including your Attribute bonus.
So for Assurance on Acrobatics, you can use Assurance to do a balance check to cross a ledge over a pit while in combat, but you will take 10 and then remove your DEX bonus from what you add to the value (as well as things like circumstance bonuses from ally help).
So, depending on the check, if it's quick and has no consequences, some GMs (myself included) allow some kind of take 20 (because it's simply a pain to keep rolling until you pass).
But in PF2e it's very rare to have checks without consequences. I think the only situation I can remember where the PCs could keep checking until they passed was to Force Open a door. Almost everything else has some kind of cooldown, a critical failure effect that breaks something or tests the patience of some NPC.
Searing Restoration, like other effects with unstable, is a good example, the PC can keep repeating, but whenever the unstable fails it takes 10 minutes to fix, so the failures have a consequence in the form of time, which means that using it until everyone is healed, unless the PC is very lucky, means that it can take several minutes or even hours.
ultimate Assurance is medicine. No rolling and hoping not to get a nat 1. really streamlines things.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So, depending on the check, if it's quick and has no consequences, some GMs (myself included) allow some kind of take 20 (because it's simply a pain to keep rolling until you pass).
But in PF2e it's very rare to have checks without consequences. I think the only situation I can remember where the PCs could keep checking until they passed was to Force Open a door. Almost everything else has some kind of cooldown, a critical failure effect that breaks something or tests the patience of some NPC.
Searing Restoration, like other effects with unstable, is a good example, the PC can keep repeating, but whenever the unstable fails it takes 10 minutes to fix, so the failures have a consequence in the form of time, which means that using it until everyone is healed, unless the PC is very lucky, means that it can take several minutes
The reason why it's rare to have checks without consequences is because the advice for gamemasters presented in various spots is that there aren't consequences you shouldn't be rolling in the first place.
If you're trying to climb a wall, but it's only 5ft high, and you can't jump to grab an edge, and you're terrible at climbing...I could make you keep rolling...or we could move along and say you do and it takes a minute of time (if that's even relevant). In many cases that time won't be relevant, and so if there's no relevant negative outcome that matters we're advised to say it happened and continue on with the parts of the game that actually matter.