Main and Secondary Roles for a Pathfinder Party

[Ed Reppert]

The main roles for a four person party are exemplified by the Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, and Wizard. First, what more general name would you give these four roles? Something like Damage Dealer, Healer, Utility, Blaster? Not sure that pays tribute to everything a class might be able to do. What I'd like to see, in the end, is a list of classes with notations of what they're good at. Rogue, for example, is good at damage as well as utility. And what does "utility" mean, anyway? Is "Buffer/Debuffer" a good role descriptor? What about "battlefield control"? What others are there?

Anyway, given a list that says what the classes are good at, and combining that with ThrabenU's three part tier list, it should be easy to pick a class depending on whether you're new or of moderate or experienced player ability.

[pauljathome]

Not at all sure how useful this is.

The big problem is that just the class tells you relatively little about what the character does. And their role can vary substantially over the levels. Lets take the clearest examples.

Kineticist, Animist. They can be any of healers, blasters, single target damage dealers, utility characters, controllers and probably more I'm not thinking of right now.

Obviously no one Kineticist or Animist can fill ALL of those roles simultaneously, but if all you know about the character that I'm bringing to the table is "Kineticist" or "Animist" you really have no clue what that character can do

But even barbarians can do some healing or some AoE blasting.

[YuriP]

Exactly. Defining roles in PF2e is tricky because every class can fulfill multiple roles—often simultaneously.

For instance, a Fighter can serve as a damage dealer, a tank, or a specialist, depending on their build and equipment.

A Fighter wielding a two-handed melee weapon with high damage dice—or the *mortal/fatal* trait—functions as a damage dealer thanks to their high accuracy and critical hit rates. Conversely, if equipped with a shield, they sacrifice some damage output to operate as a tank, especially with feats like Devoted Guardian, Shield Wall, and Shield Warden. If they focus on Dexterity and Wisdom, they can easily function as a specialist capable of detecting and disarming traps—provided they invest in Thievery. Since their Perception starts at Expert proficiency and advances to Master by level 7, detecting traps (even those requiring specific proficiency) is easy; by focusing on Dexterity, they can use Thievery to handle them.

And that’s not even counting archetypes, which vastly expand the range of possible roles.

So, when defining roles for the classes, it is more effective to identify which roles *don't* suit certain classes, rather than trying to assign specific roles to each one.

If you want to balance a party in PF2e, it is more useful to choose classes with different key attributes—so you have characters specialized in different skills—than to worry about distributing roles.

[Ed Reppert]

pauljathome wrote:

Not at all sure how useful this is.

I suspect that the more experience you have playing Pathfinder, the less useful it will be. I do think that new players need some discussion of what the roles are and which classes can fill them.

[Deriven Firelion]

Roles for PF2:

Essential: These roles should exist in every party spread across the party members and classes. Many classes can operate as multiple roles, but some will be better than others at a given role.

1. Tank: A class with high hit points, good AC, and the ability to control targets using martial abilities.

2. Healer: A class capable of healing with spells and skills. You can separate the two if you want to so that you have at least one healer that uses spells and one that uses skills. The heal spell is the most powerful healing spell in the game so you should prioritize one class that can cast the heal spell often.

3. Martial Damage Dealer: You want one martial damage dealer that can good physical damage.

4. Trapfinder/Scout: You want one class that can find traps and other hazards. There are multiple ways to disarm them or bypass them, but you want a high perception class to find them.

5. AOE Damage Dealer: You want a class capable of AOE damage dealing with spells with other abilities.

Desirable Roles: These roles are not essential, but highly desirable.

1. Utility/Control/Buffing: Every caster will have some of this they will add with AOE damage. You always want someone with some of the above. Even most martial will have some aspect of the above abilities. So a group will almost always have different aspects of utility, control, and buffing.

2. Ranged Martial: Some kind of ranged martial, preferably an archer. But any powerful ranged archer will do.

[Teridax]

I agree that each party member here is covering multiple functions at once, so if we're going to talk about roles I would probably establish from the start that it's not a one-to-one relationship with characters, let alone classes that can be customized to fulfill different sets of roles.

Off the top of my head, here are some useful functions you want your party to have:

* Damage, to defeat enemies and win the game.

* Tanking, which is the ability to both draw enemy harm away from others and towards yourself, as well as survive that harm.

* Control, to limit the enemy's capabilities.

* Buffing, to make your party members stronger.

* Protection, to prevent your party members from dying.

* Multi-targeting, to be able to affect multiple creatures using the same number of actions.

* Environmental Interaction, to be able to solve puzzles and deal with obstacles, mostly during exploration but sometimes during encounters.

If we apply this to the above party composition:

* The Cleric is naturally good at buffing and protection, has some multi-targeting capability, and gets access to better damage beyond the early levels as well.

* The Fighter naturally excels at damage, and can easily opt into control or tanking (or more damage). In the above case, they would probably be better off opting into better tanking, as no other party member would really cover that function.

* The Rogue deals good damage, and tends to be good at both control and environmental interaction thanks to their skills. Although they are deceptively survivable, I wouldn't say they're inherently good at tanking unless you go for a specific build like a Guardian archetype.

* The Wizard accesses good amounts multi-targeted damage, control, buffing, and environmental interaction, though will generally have to decide how much of each to have via their spells.

In effect, the above classes together cover all of the basic functions you'd want to have, which is why they're a classic example of a well-rounded party. Similarly, other classes each access several of these different roles in different amounts, which makes them easy to mix and match with one another.

[Angwa]

There are classes which do actually have roles baked into the base chassis so I would not say this is useless, even if overall PF2e does not design classes explicitely around roles and things get especially blurry around spellcasters. As an aside, I would define roles as confined to encounter mode.

The obvious ones are the classes with extra damage mechanics. Some, e.g. Rogue and Barbarian, are definitely more effective than others so it's hard to establish a baseline but there are classes who will be better at dealing damage no matter how you build them.

Champion and Guardian always have the basic defender catch-22 package of high defenses and survivability as well as punishment mechanics if you don't target them. This role can be a lot of fun if properly developed, but in my opinion in PF2e it lacks in mechanical support and could use more variety and toys to make it more sharply defined, but it at least exists in a basic form and these two classes come prepackaged with the core competency.

There are also classes which really lean away from the striker and defender roles and into the support/leader role. Alchemist and Commander would be the go-to examples. Still, like the defender role it feels rather basic and secondary. You don't have a lot of variety and tools if you want to make this what your character is all about, which is again a shame because with the proper mechanical support this role is easily my favorite.

The above is mostly focused on martials, because spellcasters are where it gets messy. All of them at the higher levels can be top damage dealers and they also get a complete support and controller toolkit. Some may lean more towards one of the three, but that is way less pronounced than with martials since your primary toolkit are your spells and as your level increases those generally dominate over your class features. You will be competent in all three aforementioned roles no matter how you build unless you make the concious choice not to be in your spell selection.

[YuriP]

To put it very simply—and without including archetypes, since they influence a character's ability to fulfill a role—I can define things based on four role types: Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer, and Trap Finder. These roughly correspond to the roles of the four traditional classes mentioned in the OP. I’m looking at which roles are not well-fulfilled by certain classes. Note that this greatly simplifies class capabilities and fails to explore various other abilities—such as battlefield control, teamwork, debuffing, and exploration-mode actions, among others. It’s just a bit of fun, and none of these classes should be judged solely on this basis.

The definitions I used for these four roles were:
— Tank: A class capable not only of withstanding damage on the front line but also of holding the target's attention, punishing the target for trying to flee, or protecting allies.
— Healer: A class capable of effectively healing others.
— Damage Dealer: A class capable of dealing a significant amount of damage.
— Trap Finder: This one is simple, though the definition can be tricky for those who have never GM'd or don't fully master the system. It is essentially the ability to detect hazards before they are triggered. Many people might think it simply involves a perception check, but there’s a catch: many hazards require a minimum level of perception proficiency to be spotted. In particular, hazards requiring master proficiency—which appear at level 11 and become commonplace at level 15—simply cannot be detected by almost any class that doesn't start as an expert in perception; even the Canny Acumen feat only allows a character to reach master proficiency at level 17. This renders parties containing classes that start merely trained in perception completely unable to spot these hazards before they trigger, preventing them from effectively fulfilling that role.

Below is the list of classes and the roles they do not perform well:

— Alchemist: Tank, Trap Finder, Healer¹
— Animist: Tank, Trap Finder
— Barbarian: Healer, Tank²
— Bard: Tank, Damage Dealer³
— Champion: Trap Finder, Damage Dealer⁴
— Cleric: Healer, Trap Finder, Tank⁵
— Commander: Healer, Damage Dealer⁶
— Druid: Trap Finder, Tank²
— Exemplar: Tank², Healer⁷, Trap Finder
— Fighter: Healer
— Guardian: Healer, Damage Dealer, Trap Finder
— Gunslinger: Tank, Healer
— Inventor: Tank, Healer, Trap Finder
— Investigator: Tank, Healer⁸
— Kineticist: Trap Finder
— Magus: Tank, Healer, Trap Finder
— Monk: Trap Finder, Tank², Healer, Damage Dealer⁹
— Necromancer: Tank¹⁰, Trap Finder
— Oracle: Tank, Trap Finder
— Psychic: Tank, Trap Finder
— Ranger: Tank, Healer¹¹
— Rogue: Tank, Healer
— Runesmith: Tank, Healer¹², Trap Finder
— Sorcerer: Tank, Trap Finder
— Summoner: Tank¹³, Trap Finder
— Swashbuckler: Tank¹⁴, Healer
— Thaumaturge: None¹⁵
— Witch: Tank, Trap Finder
— Wizard: Tank, Trap Finder

¹ The alchemist struggles with healing at low levels—even the Chirurgeon—because the healing provided by elixirs and versatile vials at these levels is very low and limited. It improves when you acquire the Combine Elixirs feat, but it only becomes truly effective with the level 13 chirurgeon feature that maximizes elixir healing.
² What effectively makes these classes tanks are feats that punish enemies for moving out of reach—such as Reactive Strike—and other feats that allow for ally protection. However, these aren't available at level 1, creating a gap in the role's fulfillment early on.
³ Some classes that cast spells using the occult and divine traditions lack reliable, non-situational damage spells at low levels and/or suffer from poor scaling. While such spells do exist, they are often less effective against various enemy types—due to being mental effects or relying on the enemy being holy/unholy—or have relatively weak progression (as seen with Force Barrage). That said, I fully understand those who might disagree, arguing that this issue can affect almost any spell and that mental spells still work against the majority of enemies. I included this point primarily to highlight a distinction from the other traditions.
⁴ Paladins/Champions of Justice can deal nearly double the damage thanks to their reactions. Although this damage isn't dealt directly on their own turn, it is perfectly reasonable to view them as damage dealers as well.
⁵ Warpriests, battle harbingers, and druids can be considered tanks if we view healing—combined with their high defenses—as an effective way to draw the attention of intelligent enemies. The issue, however, is that not every enemy is intelligent enough to realize this and focus their attacks on them.
⁶ Commanders rely on the party to be effective damage dealers. Depending on the party's size and composition, they may or may not be able to fulfill this role.
⁷ The exemplar has several minor healing abilities scattered across its class features and feats; however, since it takes a few levels to gather them all, it is hard to consider it an effective healer during the early levels.
⁸ The investigator has subclasses based on medicine and alchemy, but their healing capacity is quite limited, relying on what the skill itself provides and the low efficacy of healing elixirs.
⁹ The monk can deal good damage with its ki spells. However, since these are instantaneous focus spells and the class starts with few focus points, it takes time to become effective at this; furthermore, the actual effectiveness of this role remains questionable, even with 3 focus points.
¹⁰ Necromancers can be considered tanks if they wear medium or heavier armor and focus on defensive spells—such as Muscle Barrier—and healing allies. However, they face the same issue as clerics and druids: if the enemy does not perceive the healing as a serious threat to their victory or survival, the necromancer might simply be ignored.
¹¹ The ranger does have a decent healing focus spell. However, it is not available at level 1 and is less effective than the champion's version.
¹² The runesmith does gain a healing rune, but it arrives quite late in the level progression, and its effectiveness is questionable regarding the healing and damage values ​​typical of the levels where it becomes available.
¹³ Theoretically, it is possible to use the Devotion Phantom Eidolon as a pseudo-tank. However, it only truly begins protecting allies at level 17, and an eidolon's defensive capability is questionable—not to mention that enemies can target the summoner directly.
¹⁴ The swashbuckler has the Antagonize feat to draw attention. The problem, in my opinion, is that the class lacks sufficient defensive power to be considered a tank.
¹⁵ The Thaumaturge is a very interesting case. They are essentially a wild card capable of filling any role, depending on their choice of implements and scrolls. A thaumaturge wielding an amulet and shield makes for an excellent tank; using a chalice and healing scrolls allows them to effectively serve as a healer; and equipping a weapon and a wand enables them to deal massive amounts of damage per round. Furthermore, they are experts in perception—becoming master at level 9—which allows them to detect hazards as well.

[Easl]

I'd phrase it slightly different from the suggestions above, as:
Tank
Heal
Control/buff/debuff
Skill/utility

But I think the nice thing about PF2E is that most classes and builds do more than one. Heal is a good example: slap decent Wis and Medicine feats on a PC, any class can be an okay healer. Most classes have debuffs and control powers. In fact it helps to have each PC try and do two of those roles, so that based on positioning and tactical options, the same PC isn't stuck always doing one thing. And while rogue and investigator lead in the skills department, the tight math of the system means your Face will likely not be the same person as your RKer and may not be the same person as your trap finder, etc. I don't list 'damage dealing' as separate since pretty much all classes are designed to have that as a component.

[The Raven Black]

ESSENTIAL In-combat Healer
so that no PC goes down in combat. Usually using spells and similar limited resources.

ESSENTIAL Out of combat Healer
so that all PCs are back to full at the beginning of the next encounter. Using unlimited resources.

ESSENTIAL Single target damage dealer - Melee
because that is where most combat encounters take place. Martials are better than casters here by design.

Single target damage dealer - Ranged
for those encounters where the enemy does not come to melee range. Note that this can be covered by the Several targets damage dealer - Ranged which better complements the Single target damage dealer-Melee above.

Several targets damage dealer - Melee
for melee encounters with several opponents rather than a single boss. Often covered by the Several targets damage dealer -Ranged.

ESSENTIAL Several targets damage dealer - Ranged
usually also covers Several targets damage dealer - Melee. Casters are better than martials here by design.

ESSENTIAL ? Hazard finder. Traps, Haunts.
Whatever can damage your party before the combat encounter actually starts.

I do not see the need for the Tank actually.

[SuperBidi]

Ed Reppert wrote:

Anyway, given a list that says what the classes are good at, and combining that with ThrabenU's three part tier list, it should be easy to pick a class depending on whether you're new or of moderate or experienced player ability.

The only really useful information is how hard it is to play a class. Roles don't really exist in Pathfinder. All classes can do damage, even if they are not equal in that regard, but overall any party will deal ok damage. And all classes can tank, even if for some of them you have to take a few feats to make that happen (especially Light Armor Proficiency if you are a cloth caster).

Overall, the game doesn't use fixed roles as these are strongly limiting the classes players can play around the table. If I had to isolate the few things a party should have:
- a good spread of skills. Maybe not all but it shouldn't be hard to cover most skills with at least Trained Proficiency.
- preferably a good spread of attributes. It helps with skills and different attributes tend to cover different areas of the game.
- a few melee characters, because the game happens a lot at melee.
- emergency healing, preferably high non-sustainable healing, for emergency situations.
- out of combat healing.

And you're set. Have fun and good game!

[The Raven Black]

Hi, SuperBidi. Long time no read. Good to see you.

[Teridax]

I do think OP is right, "utility" doesn't particularly mean anything other than "not damage", and drilling down into what actually makes something utility usually has it fall into another bucket or two. Heal is a utility spell, for example, but it would be more accurate to describe what it does as healing, protection, whatever you want to call the set of abilities that help your allies not die. Similarly, haste and slow are utility spells, but are better described as a buff and a control/debuff spell respectively. Being able to detect traps, pick locks, or lower the water level of a flooded room are all forms of utility, but follow a consistent pattern of letting you interact with the environment better or in new ways.

In a way, this reminds me of this illustration someone came up with a while ago where they tried to describe every class along different metrics like damage, complexity... and magic. What contribution did magic represent? Who knows. People did like the pictures, though, and what followed was a lot of people trying to categorize classes along vague criteria that ultimately didn't add that much clarity to how characters are broadly meant to contribute in an adventuring party. It helps I think to go into some level of detail, though not necessarily get too specific either.

The Raven Black wrote:

I do not see the need for the Tank actually.

YMMV, but I think most roles aren't essential in and of themselves. You don't strictly need a tank, but having a character who can comfortably soak up a lot of enemy attention helps waste the enemy's actions, and also save up actions that would normally be spent saving your own party members from death. AoE, by the same virtue, helps save up a ton of actions when dealing with multiple enemies, but in my opinion isn't something that will automatically sink your party if you don't have it. Similarly, if your adventure doesn't feature many hazards, or none that are really that deadly, then a dedicated trap-finder isn't going to be necessary either. The only thing that is essential to winning encounters is some damage-dealing capability, which every character more or less has, and the rest is a matter of how you choose to stack the odds in your team's favor and shore up any weaknesses you might have.

[SuperBidi]

The Raven Black wrote:

Hi, SuperBidi. Long time no read. Good to see you.

Hi Raven. Yeah, the late P/SFS adventures... well, I won't start on that. But I have hope the Pathfinder Infinite adventures will put me back on PFS.

So I'm a bit back, curious and all. I'm not sure it'll last :D

[YuriP]

Teridax wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

I do not see the need for the Tank actually.

YMMV, but I think most roles aren't essential in and of themselves. You don't strictly need a tank, but having a character who can comfortably soak up a lot of enemy attention helps waste the enemy's actions, and also save up actions that would normally be spent saving your own party members from death. AoE, by the same virtue, helps save up a ton of actions when dealing with multiple enemies, but in my opinion isn't something that will automatically sink your party if you don't have it. Similarly, if your adventure doesn't feature many hazards, or none that are really that deadly, then a dedicated trap-finder isn't going...

I agree with that.

A party not filling one of the roles isn't necessarily a problem, but it is something noticeable in PF2e.

For example, I have a level 3 party on Saturdays—consisting of a monk, a cleric (me), and a commander—and one thing we’ve noticed is that we lack a strong damage dealer. This absence isn't stopping us from progressing through the adventure, but it does make encounters take a few extra rounds. However, since I can easily keep everyone healthy, the monk acts as a tank thanks to using a fortress shield and taking the Shield Block feat. The commander also uses heavy armor and a shield, and I—the cleric—alternate between the Shield cantrip and a Sturdy Shield. We’re in a situation where no one goes down and we inevitably win the fight, but the combat drags on significantly. That’s generally what happens when a role is missing in PF2e: the group still functions, but with a noticeable deficiency.

[The Raven Black]

Seen in this light, I feel the only Must Have is a way to heal everyone to full after each encounter.

[Angwa]

Yeah, this is the downside of not explicitely designing around roles in the tactical combat part of the game.

To put it in d&d4e terms the only two roles from there you can really find in Pf2e are striker and controller and those two are really all you need.

You can get parts of the defender and leader roles, enough to lean into them as a secondary focus, but not really enough to make it a primary role.

[Deriven Firelion]

Angwa wrote:

Yeah, this is the downside of not explicitely designing around roles in the tactical combat part of the game.

To put it in d&d4e terms the only two roles from there you can really find in Pf2e are striker and controller and those two are really all you need.

You can get parts of the defender and leader roles, enough to lean into them as a secondary focus, but not really enough to make it a primary role.

I think most players prefer not having hard-coded roles. The rogue doesn't suddenly want to crumple if the defender goes down. The defender doesn't want to do terrible damage because they are defender. Players in tabletop RPGs like being creative with their capabilities and building to do strange things. I think it is best roles are not hard-coded, but more like it is now where some do something better than others like Champions and Guards are set up for defense but not so much so they lack the ability to do anything else.

[Dargoth876]

Assigning a specific role to a class was a bad move from d&d4e. It was reducing a class to a type of play and reducing a party to a type of play too.

There is a lot of way to play the game. I would agree that what is needed really is a way to heal everyone.

[Unicore]

I would argue that “good at healing” is really “1a. capable of continuing adventuring after combat”, and “1c. capable of responding in combat to unexpected difficulty.”

“Good at skills” is mostly “2a. capability of navigating challenges out of combat” as well as “2c. capable of doing other things than damage in combat, when necessary.”

“Striking/damage” is largely “3c. ending combats as quickly as possible.“

And tanking is mostly “4c. Survive through combats as long as possible.”

“Utility” as a category is often the same categories as “skills” but understanding that flexible access to spells 2 or more ranks bellow top rank spells can open up a lot more options for 2a and 2c, but also both 1s. It can also contribute to 3 and 4, but because “action efficiency while doing the thing” particularly maters in combat, utility in combat often has too big an action efficiency cost to be comparable to classes that can do c things organically, or else require a lot of system mastery to accomplish all the niche action economy hacks.

Any character that can’t do both adventuring things and combat things is going to be a party liability at times.

[Teridax]

I do think certain classes are going to excel at certain roles no matter what: the Champion and Guardian can be built in many ways, but will always be excellent tanks, for instance, just as Bards will always have a way of buffing their team, and that I'd say is perfectly fine. The mistake D&D 4e made was making roles super-categorical and having classes lock themselves into a small subset of MMO-style role options, when the beauty of many TTRPGs is that roles are more fluid, and each character tends to fill in many roles at once in varying amounts. Champions aren't just tanks, for instance, they also protect their allies and damage enemies, whereas Bards and Guardians can control or debuff enemies in addition to their other capabilities. Essential as out-of-combat healing is, it's also something anyone can pick up by investing in Medicine, so unlike other TTRPGs and definitely unlike most MMOs, there's no specific need for anyone to lock into a healer class or the like if they don't want to, though PF2e certainly makes healing a lot of fun.

[erucsbo]

YuriP wrote:

Below is the list of classes and the roles they do not perform well:

...
— Cleric: Healer, Trap Finder, Tank⁵

??? Cleric not able to perform as a Healer ???

Classifications I would use are more aligned with the types of challenges that come up in encounters.
While some classes are better suited than others, I hesitate to put things in boxes, and in PF2e IME you need to focus and be good on a small number than try to be a jack of all trades.

There are combat encounters (deal damage and cover a variety of ways of being able to do it - range, melee, AoE, different types to avoid immunities and exploit weaknesses)
There are social encounters (usually skills (separate the roleplayers from the murder hobos))
There are hazards (skills again, but often different to social)
And finally working out what to do next (scouting, recall knowledge, twisting the GM's arm to spill information).

Failing in any of those areas is going to stall progress - there may be alternate avenues through one of the other areas but not guaranteed.
Getting hung up on character roles leans (imho) to individual job descriptions rather than to a fluid and flexible team approach that I believe is more aligned with PF2e.

[The Raven Black]

The Raven Black wrote:

Seen in this light, I feel the only Must Have is a way to heal everyone to full after each encounter.

Musing further on this, I wish all PCs had an innate ability to go back to full HPs after an encounter.

So that we don't need to have so many ways to get this same result.

Why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined end result of "fully healed" ?

What should stay though is how much you can heal when you only have a few rounds or max 10 minutes between wave encounters. Similar to Focus Points recovery.

[Agonarchy]

Roles are less important than capabilities. A party needs to, in total, accomplish certain things, but there doesn't need to be the explicit divisions of labor. Roles can make a specific class feel more valuable, but you can do just fine with more overlapping medium-strength roles. Specializing can be more efficient, but is also more fragile and can be less efficient when a role isn't needed.

[Deriven Firelion]

The Raven Black wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Seen in this light, I feel the only Must Have is a way to heal everyone to full after each encounter.

Musing further on this, I wish all PCs had an innate ability to go back to full HPs after an encounter.

So that we don't need to have so many ways to get this same result.

Why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined end result of "fully healed" ?

What should stay though is how much you can heal when you only have a few rounds or max 10 minutes between wave encounters. Similar to Focus Points recovery.

I prefer some realism with healing. I do like they added this skill option as using the heal spells up and loading up potions and wands wasn't much realism.

[Teridax]

Agonarchy wrote:

Roles are less important than capabilities. A party needs to, in total, accomplish certain things, but there doesn't need to be the explicit divisions of labor. Roles can make a specific class feel more valuable, but you can do just fine with more overlapping medium-strength roles. Specializing can be more efficient, but is also more fragile and can be less efficient when a role isn't needed.

I'd say it's pretty much impossible not to have overlap. Everyone can deal damage to varying extents, everyone can usually take at least one hit, and everyone has skills that will give them some measure of control over enemies, interaction with the environment, or healing if they pick Medicine, plus buffing via Aid. I agree with what you're saying as well: filling out capabilities isn't a matter of casting individual characters into singular roles like in a MMO or a MOBA, so much as trying to hit a certain overall distribution with the party overall. Some characters can contribute most of a capability single-handedly, but the fact that there's always room for more makes it a lot easier for classes to coexist in the same party. It also allows for hybrid classes like the Magus or Summoner, who contribute a smattering of different things that leaves room for other classes to also contribute those things in the party.

The Raven Black wrote:

Why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined end result of "fully healed" ?

IIRC, the designers' original intention was to just have the party heal to full after every encounter, no rolls needed, but this chafed with a subset of playtesters who were still very much in the 1e mentality of finding attrition-based gameplay more natural and realistic. The compromise was to move that healing to the Medicine skill, which would allow those playtesters to continue experiencing daily attrition while letting others heal up in-between combat. As was the case with a few other mechanics, the 1e mentality soon became a minority in 2e, and healing between encounters is now considered standard, even if opting into it is what I'd consider a false choice due to how overwhelmingly beneficial it is.

[YuriP]

erucsbo wrote:

YuriP wrote:

Below is the list of classes and the roles they do not perform well:

...
— Cleric: Healer, Trap Finder, Tank⁵

??? Cleric not able to perform as a Healer ???

Kkkk, sorry, ,sorry. It was a mistake when I wrote. I was thinking if the champion would be a reasonable healer or not due to Lay on Hands and for inattention I ended up putting healing in cleric right below.

[The Raven Black]

Teridax wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined end result of "fully healed" ?

IIRC, the designers' original intention was to just have the party heal to full after every encounter, no rolls needed, but this chafed with a subset of playtesters who were still very much in the 1e mentality of finding attrition-based gameplay more natural and realistic. The compromise was to move that healing to the Medicine skill, which would allow those playtesters to continue experiencing daily attrition while letting others heal up in-between combat. As was the case with a few other mechanics, the 1e mentality soon became a minority in 2e, and healing between encounters is now considered standard, even if opting into it is what I'd consider a false choice due to how overwhelmingly beneficial it is.

Just a note though that the whole encounter budget system has been built on the assumption of PCs entering combat fully healed.

It is good that Medicine gives a way to heal between encounters that is not magical.

But by now, IME, the only meaningful use of Medicine is Battle Medicine in combat.

That people are healed back to full within 30 minutes or 2 hours matters extremely rarely. And that you reach this point through Medicine or Lay on Hands or Garden of healing or any other unlimited resource is likewise meaningless.

[pauljathome]

The Raven Black wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Seen in this light, I feel the only Must Have is a way to heal everyone to full after each encounter.

Musing further on this, I wish all PCs had an innate ability to go back to full HPs after an encounter.

So that we don't need to have so many ways to get this same result.

Why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined end result of "fully healed" ?

.

I could as easily ask "why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined result of PCs won?"

My answer would be pretty much the same.

How the healing/victory occurs is the whole point. The character who spent resources gets to feel their build choices were validated, a story that is hopefully more than just dice rolling is told

Sometimes the result isn't actually all that predefined. PCs lose battles or they're stopped from healing

[Theaitetos]

Screenshot from a ThrabenU video: https://imgur.com/a/u2Db5ea

[Deriven Firelion]

On the healing, even in PF1 and earlier versions of D&D healing post combat always occurred. It was harder at low level and you might have to go a few encounters with low hit points and possibly die in those early years. But 3E and PF1 improved the healing through magic and made it relatively easy to get to full hit points between combats. You had to spend lots of gold on potions and/or wands, but they provided a way to heal to full between every combat. So attrition based play disappeared almost completely with the advent of 3E and PF1.

It was harder in the early years from Red Box to 2nd edition, especially at the low levels. Magical healing got you back to full nearly every combat as the levels progressed.

Main thing is to include the verisimilitude of having to heal between a tough fight, not just magically back to full like you're reviving in a video game. Death and harm still needs to feel possible in these games or you lose any sense of verisimilitude. Then it comes down to why even bother to play a pen and paper RPG when it's just become a more tedious video game on paper? I think more and more people would opt to play a video game than play a pen and paper RPG the more it moves away from any sense of realism which is why 4E had such problems. It moved too far towards a pen and paper video game and a lot of fan base did not like that.

3E and PF1 had other problems that causing issues. 5E and PF2 seem to have landed somewhere between overly gamist like 4E and heavily imbalanced like PF1/3E. I think that's a pretty good place to land.

Medicine skill based healing is part of that move to the middle ground. I think it provides enough verisimilitude to maintain immersion, while providing a non-magical, mostly resourceless way to heal up. It also allows healing to be spread out amongst the group rather than concentrated in a single, magical healer.

And you don't have to buy tons of potions and wands to heal up between battle.

Maybe after the older generation like myself age out and die off, the younger generation won't care about verisimilitude. Even now I even wonder if the younger generations play this game because of books and movies like the older generation did. I did not come to this game by way of video games or cartoons. I read lots of fantasy books in my youth and finding a game that simulated fantasy stories was amazing. I wanted to be in an imaginary world like the books I read or like a Conan movie or something. I play for storytelling number one and I very much like verisimilitude in my stories and thus much prefer healing up to be part of that story. I find the Medicine skill more realistic than magic healing all the time. So I like it. I think it was a great addition to the game and the game's ability to tell a story.

[Ed Reppert]

The Raven Black wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Seen in this light, I feel the only Must Have is a way to heal everyone to full after each encounter.

Musing further on this, I wish all PCs had an innate ability to go back to full HPs after an encounter.

So that we don't need to have so many ways to get this same result.

Why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined end result of "fully healed" ?

What should stay though is how much you can heal when you only have a few rounds or max 10 minutes between wave encounters. Similar to Focus Points recovery.

Do you want your "role-playing" game to be nothing more than a series of combat encounters? No Exploration, no Downtime, no doing anything other than combat? I sure don't.

[Angwa]

Teridax wrote:

I do think certain classes are going to excel at certain roles no matter what: the Champion and Guardian can be built in many ways, but will always be excellent tanks, for instance, just as Bards will always have a way of buffing their team, and that I'd say is perfectly fine. The mistake D&D 4e made was making roles super-categorical and having classes lock themselves into a small subset of MMO-style role options, when the beauty of many TTRPGs is that roles are more fluid, and each character tends to fill in many roles at once in varying amounts. Champions aren't just tanks, for instance, they also protect their allies and damage enemies, whereas Bards and Guardians can control or debuff enemies in addition to their other capabilities. Essential as out-of-combat healing is, it's also something anyone can pick up by investing in Medicine, so unlike other TTRPGs and definitely unlike most MMOs, there's no specific need for anyone to lock into a healer class or the like if they don't want to, though PF2e certainly makes healing a lot of fun.

Eh, between sources, hybrids, themes, paragon and heroic paths and your build options 4e's roles were actually just as fluid as PF2e. Just because roles existed and designed around did not mean you were locked in at all. Only if that was your deliberate choice. You really had an insane amount of freedom in your build options.

Explicitely designing around roles for the tactical combat part of your RPG does make it more gamey. That's definitely true, but it comes with upsides too.

Anyway, PF2e combat is also pretty gamey and tactical, and it definitely leans heavily into tactical role design.

[OceanshieldwolPF 2.5]

Ed Reppert wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Seen in this light, I feel the only Must Have is a way to heal everyone to full after each encounter.

Musing further on this, I wish all PCs had an innate ability to go back to full HPs after an encounter.

So that we don't need to have so many ways to get this same result.

Why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined end result of "fully healed" ?

What should stay though is how much you can heal when you only have a few rounds or max 10 minutes between wave encounters. Similar to Focus Points recovery.

Do you want your "role-playing" game to be nothing more than a series of combat encounters? No Exploration, no Downtime, no doing anything other than combat? I sure don't.

I have played with a GM who opined that PF2 is designed so that every combat starts with the characters fully healed, and seen other games where the GM just handwaves the healing between each encounter.

Definitely hard to get used to if you have been playing since B/X.

Of course chained/wave encounters are something else again, and both of those GM types were fine with chaining encounters. But once that was done……zip! Back to full health, ready. to. go. There was still Downtime of larger portions of time/earning of coin, and RP, and exploration etc….

[Squiggit]

pauljathome wrote:

I could as easily ask "why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined result of PCs won?"

Ed Reppert wrote:

Do you want your "role-playing" game to be nothing more than a series of combat encounters? No Exploration, no Downtime, no doing anything other than combat? I sure don't.

What's with these ridiculously bad faith twists on Raven Black's opinion here?

[The Raven Black]

Thank you.

My experience is that healing to full, when not under time pressure, is just time spent rolling dice until the hit points are all back. I fail to see how one can weave an interesting story about this.

All the space dedicated to out of encounter healing feats and effects in the books might as well have been used for things that make the story more interesting. Same for the build resources PCs dedicate to this.

Continual Recovery is a feat tax and how often does Ward Medic really shines ?

Most PFS builds I see these days get an Aeon Stone (Pearly White Spindle) as soon as they can precisely because it is a RAW way to handwave out of combat healing to full.

[Ascalaphus]

The Raven Black wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Seen in this light, I feel the only Must Have is a way to heal everyone to full after each encounter.

Musing further on this, I wish all PCs had an innate ability to go back to full HPs after an encounter.

So that we don't need to have so many ways to get this same result.

Why spend build choices, resources and time/rolls just to reach the predefined end result of "fully healed" ?

What should stay though is how much you can heal when you only have a few rounds or max 10 minutes between wave encounters. Similar to Focus Points recovery.

Well, there's natural healing, over days. Anyone can do that.

More seriously though, Starfinder 1 had a system like that. You had a daily pool of Resolve Points, and you had Stamina and Hit Points, roughly 50/50. Damage first went through stamina, then hit points. After combat, you could spend a resolve point and 10m rest to get all your stamina back.

So an easy fight would be one where nobody gets damaged beyond their stamina, and you can cheaply heal up. A tough fight is where some or many PCs get hit down to hit points, and you actually need to spend some resources to heal up.

[YuriP]

In general, what The Raven Black describes is already what happens at most tables where I play. Unless there is time pressure, GMs simply take the group's average healing output over a 10-minute span, calculate it against the most injured characters' HP to determine how long we spend "licking our wounds," and allow characters not actively performing *Treat Wounds* (or *Aid*-ing that activity) to do whatever they want in the meantime—such as refocusing, repairing shields, exploring the room, investigating objects, and so on.

Simplifying the process to "combat ends, HP restores to maximum"—akin to *Guild Wars 2* and many video game RPGs—might seem like a simplistic solution (and it is). However, it benefits the story's pacing and cuts down on time wasted on repetitive resting routines that, in 99% of situations, play out exactly the same way.

Granted, the current system does create some additional constraints; for instance, while one character is being treated and another is treating a third, the party might trigger a hazard or attract an enemy's attention during exploration. In practice, however, even a GM who leverages this mechanic usually ends up with players simply stopping exploration, sitting down, and waiting for all treatments and refocusing to finish before moving on. That is why the idea—whether for a future edition of *Pathfinder* or a homebrew rule—of simply declaring "everyone is healed" once combat ends isn't actually a bad one. Unless, of course, the GM wants to force some friction (which can be achieved simply by not technically ending the encounter).

[Unicore]

As a GM, when I am comfortable signing posting that there is absolutely no threat in the current vicinity, I will hand wave healing roles, but I’d say that is probably less than 25% of encounter situations.

My dungeons do tend to be dynamic, so if combat occurs in one and there is any organization to the opposition, the party has to assume that there is time pressure and efficiency with healing can absolutely be the difference between success and failure. My parties tend to make sure to carry a fair bit of emergency healing resources and will happily use them to cut between encounter healing from 10-30 minutes of healing to less than a minute if they know the enemy knows they are there. My party (only running one game right now) is happy with this arrangement because I follow the guidelines of the GM core and replace gold spent on consumables pretty liberally to keep the party wealth where it is supposed to be at each level.

I think for my table, hearing “you heal to full without issue,” other than after it is very clear they have cleared a dungeon or fully retreated to a settlement for safety, would be a bit of a let down because it would make the dungeon feel less alive and threatening.

[SuperBidi]

Yeah, I think it's just a question of freedom. You can handwave healing as a GM, or not, depending on the situation.
Clearly, rolling dice is pointless if the result has no in game impact (even if players do love to roll dice so sometimes they will do it just for the sake of rolling them).
But there are many situations where your out of combat healing output has an impact. Sometimes, it's even just for verissimilitude: Do we really spend 2 hours healing when we are supposed to be on the clock?

Overall, the system is fine. It's one of the few things you absolutely need to handle properly in a party, but it's extremely easy to reach the bar.

[Deriven Firelion]

The Raven Black wrote:

Thank you.

My experience is that healing to full, when not under time pressure, is just time spent rolling dice until the hit points are all back. I fail to see how one can weave an interesting story about this.

All the space dedicated to out of encounter healing feats and effects in the books might as well have been used for things that make the story more interesting. Same for the build resources PCs dedicate to this.

Continual Recovery is a feat tax and how often does Ward Medic really shines ?

Most PFS builds I see these days get an Aeon Stone (Pearly White Spindle) as soon as they can precisely because it is a RAW way to handwave out of combat healing to full.

I think knowing who the skilled medic is in the party is an important part of the story. You don't need to write who is the medic every time, but weaving in occasional moments where they shine being a skilled medic can enhance a story.

Everyone just being able to heal up to full after battle would be a pretty lame story if every story was that way. No one skilled in medicine, they all somehow are back to full in every battle.

You can handwave it on your own. I don't see medicine and feats as a feat tax. I see it no differently than Thievery or Arcana or any other skill. It's a skill set necessary to survival and success for an adventuring group. Same as it would be for nearly any group deploying deep into dangerous territory to do battle often. Groups that do this always deploy with medics or someone with medical training. I don't see why they wouldn't do this in small adventuring parties engaged in dangerous adventuring.

[The Raven Black]

I think a Medic shines when they put PCs back on their feet in combat, ensure PCs get rid of nasty side effects like poison or disease and when they quickly give back a lot of HPs when in wave encounters or similar on the clock situations.

Not when they do the healbot fastidiously rolling dice for 30 minutes or more.

[Hilary Moon Murphy]

SuperBidi wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Hi, SuperBidi. Long time no read. Good to see you.

Hi Raven. Yeah, the late P/SFS adventures... well, I won't start on that. But I have hope the Pathfinder Infinite adventures will put me back on PFS.

So I'm a bit back, curious and all. I'm not sure it'll last :D

Off-topic: what is missing in current adventures that you want to see in the new ones?

[Deriven Firelion]

The Raven Black wrote:

I think a Medic shines when they put PCs back on their feet in combat, ensure PCs get rid of nasty side effects like poison or disease and when they quickly give back a lot of HPs when in wave encounters or similar on the clock situations.

Not when they do the healbot fastidiously rolling dice for 30 minutes or more.

You keep focusing on the rolls. The rolls don't take 30 minutes. That's all arbitrary. It takes at most a few minutes of game time.

The time is all arbitrary like refocusing or using something once every ten minutes.

The time is a random number of minutes chosen by game designers. Not a real absolute of the game world from a storytelling perspective.

For storytelling, what's important for something like healing is that you know there is a skilled medic in the group who does the healing after battle that you incorporate into the story when necessary.

Just as the amount of time spent refocusing isn't important to the story, just that you convey that the abilities are powerful enough they require some time to recover from.

You can write that any way you want such as tending wounds or patching wounds or what not just as for refocusing you can write it as a meditating to recover from mental strain or regenerate elemental energy in you or what not.

The way you creatively write it is limited only by your imagination. It's put in to provide some sense of verisimilitude.

Whereas everyone is perfectly healthy after every battle for no reason and every class and ancestry can just somehow be ok after every single battle. Wounds are not real at all. No one ever gets hurt enough. You just heal.

Even MMORPGs like Everquest and WOW put in the game healing taking time and they are video games. They usually put in food or unlimited healing spells or some other ability so you have to do something to heal up. Even those games the farther they move away from providing that immersive experience, the more they have been bleeding customers to other games. Even now in WOW there is a huge movement by the player base towards WOW classic which require more downtime for healing to create a more immersive feel in the game along with other more immersive game elements like training to advance and taking more time to gear up.

People like elements that make these types of game feels immersive in the fantasy world. Moving away from that type of immersion by making everyone heal up would I think be a mistake similar to what you saw in 4E and even in advanced versions of video games like WOW or Everquest.

You have to walk a very fine line when you remove a game element that is very important to immersion in a fantasy world because you might find out how angry fans will get and leave your game if you make games like PF or D&D less immersive and more gamist.

In Everquest 2 something as small as removing racial cities disappointed numerous fans and turned them off to the game. People are still playing Everquest 1 and Everquest 2 is a barely existing game.

4E tried to do what you want done, pretty much splintered D&D.

I think if you want this, you should handwave it yourself, not try to push for codification of this in the game. Paizo has to walk a fine line because games like this and fantasy gamers in general are a strange lot that like things in their games others like yourself may find tedious or unnecessary, but they are very important to a segment of players that may not vocalize much but will react if such immersive storytelling elements are removed.

[SuperBidi]

Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:

Off-topic: what is missing in current adventures that you want to see in the new ones?

That'd be a really really really long post, and I'm not sure I'd be able to state it very politely (due to the emotions as I really miss early PF2 adventure design). And it's definitely not the place to speak about it. If you really want to read it, you can PM me, I'll take the time to make a clear answer.

[Tridus]

The Raven Black wrote:

I think a Medic shines when they put PCs back on their feet in combat, ensure PCs get rid of nasty side effects like poison or disease and when they quickly give back a lot of HPs when in wave encounters or similar on the clock situations.

Not when they do the healbot fastidiously rolling dice for 30 minutes or more.

I don't know. Having had groups where no one could do that and recovery took the PCs well over an hour of in-game time (because Lay on Hands was as good as it got), even someone who can do it in 30 minutes feels dramatically more effective with any kind of time pressure whatsoever.

You don't even need to go full wave battle. "We have one day to clear this place" demonstrates the value of someone who can do downtime recovery quickly by making that time constraint effectively a non-factor, whereas when it take an hour just to get the Barbarian back to full, you feel the ticking clock much more readily.

(Also if they have 30 minutes, why are you rolling dice for it? If the party has someone capable of doing it, I estimate their recover per 10 minutes and just say "okay you take X minutes and you're full healed." That keeps the game moving without a bunch of dice rolls that frankly don't matter unless there is time pressure.)

[Tridus]

There's a lot of takes on this. As a GM, here's the roles I see come up a lot that have an impact when they're missing. PF2 characters are pretty capable and can often do more than one at once.

1. Big Damage Dealer. This looks like a lot of different things and generally everyone is capable of doing damage, but having someone (or a couple of someones) you can set up who then bring big damage really speeds thins up.

2. Damage Mitigation (aka: tanking or debuffing). This also looks like lots of things. The most straightforward one is features that simply negate damage like Champion Reactions or Shield Block. But someone who Trips enemies so they have attack penalties and less options to target more vulnerable party members are also doing this. Hell, one time I had a Champion player stop a creature from trampling (and doing a lot of damage) by grappling it. It effectively had to attack him instead of trampling the two Bards behind him.

Debuffer casters excel at this by reducing enemy effectiveness so they don't hit as hard (or at all). Alchemists can even do this with things like Numbing Tonics, which add up quickly at high level.

I find a party with none of this that is constantly getting blasted has a rougher time and leans a lot harder on healing.

3. Damage Recover (aka: healing). How much in-combat healing you need really depends on how much mitigation you have. Less damage happening means less healing needs doing. But every group needs some way to recover after battle (which takes on lots of forms) and it's helpful if people in a group have a way to get someone back up in a fight or keep them from dying. A full on healer can simply undo enemy turns and make up for a reckless party that isn't doing anything to hinder enemies offense.

4. Party face. Almost every adventure involves talking to people at some point. Someone being good at that will be useful.

Nice to haves:

5. Someone who knows stuff relevant to the adventure. This is the recall knowledge person, but it tends to matter with certain skills more than others. A wide array of knowledge is nice, but a lot of adventures have a key skill or two where things get a LOT easier if you can figure stuff out with them. But in my experience there's not a lot of adventure writers who make it mandatory to be able to recall knowledge to complete the adventure.

6. Trap disarming. A nice to have, but there's not a lot of traps in PF2 that are actually lethal (some haunts are worse frankly) and there are other ways around most of this stuff. My Spore War group literally has no one past trained in Thievery and so we tend to go the "smash it" method instead.

7. The Sneak. Stealth is handy in all kinds of ways. Stealth is not mandatory in a party.

8. Buffing. Bards and such make everyone else better and are great. But your group works fine without one.

[YuriP]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

I think a Medic shines when they put PCs back on their feet in combat, ensure PCs get rid of nasty side effects like poison or disease and when they quickly give back a lot of HPs when in wave encounters or similar on the clock situations.

Not when they do the healbot fastidiously rolling dice for 30 minutes or more.

You keep focusing on the rolls. The rolls don't take 30 minutes. That's all arbitrary. It takes at most a few minutes of game time.

The time is all arbitrary like refocusing or using something once every ten minutes.

The time is a random number of minutes chosen by game designers. Not a real absolute of the game world from a storytelling perspective.

For storytelling, what's important for something like healing is that you know there is a skilled medic in the group who does the healing after battle that you incorporate into the story when necessary.

Just as the amount of time spent refocusing isn't important to the story, just that you convey that the abilities are powerful enough they require some time to recover from.

You can write that any way you want such as tending wounds or patching wounds or what not just as for refocusing you can write it as a meditating to recover from mental strain or regenerate elemental energy in you or what not.

The way you creatively write it is limited only by your imagination. It's put in to provide some sense of verisimilitude.

Whereas everyone is perfectly healthy after every battle for no reason and every class and ancestry can just somehow be ok after every single battle. Wounds are not real at all. No one ever gets hurt enough. You just heal.

Even MMORPGs like Everquest and WOW put in the game healing taking time and they are video games. They usually put in food or unlimited healing spells or some other ability so you have to do something to heal up. Even those games the farther they move away from providing that immersive experience, the more they have been bleeding customers to other...

I think there is some difficulty here in grasping the point Raven Black is making.

I understand all the roleplay aspects behind out-of-combat recovery. But when we stop to analyze it dispassionately as a game:

Someone (other than the rogue) who has invested in Medicine—especially if they have Wisdom as their key attribute:
- Lvl 1: Can heal an ally for 2d8 with a 1-hour cooldown, but spends only 10 minutes treating each ally; this allows them to heal up to 6 allies before needing to try again, with a 50% chance of success, a 15% chance of healing double the amount, and a 5% chance of dealing 1d8 damage.
- Lvl 2: Can heal an ally for 2d8 with a 1-hour cooldown, but spends only 10 minutes treating each ally; this allows them to heal up to 6 allies before needing to try again, with a 50% chance of success, a 20% chance of healing double the amount, and a 5% chance of dealing 1d8 damage.
- Lvl 3: Can heal an ally for 2d8 with a 1-hour cooldown, but spends only 10 minutes treating each ally; this allows them to heal up to 6 allies before needing to try again, with a 50% chance of success, a 35% chance of healing double the amount, and a 5% chance of dealing 1d8 damage.
- Lvl 4: Can heal an ally for 2d8 every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 50% chance of success, a 40% chance of healing double the amount, and a 5% chance of dealing 1d8 damage. - Lvl 5: Can heal an ally for 2d8 every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 45% chance of success, 50% chance of healing double the amount.
- Lvl 6: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8 every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 40% chance of success, 55% chance of healing double the amount.
- Lvl 7: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+10 (DC 20) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 45% chance of success, 50% chance of healing 4d8+10.
- Lvl 8: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+10 (DC 20) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 40% chance of success, 55% chance of healing 4d8+10.
- Lvl 9: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+10 (DC 20) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 30% chance of success, 65% chance of healing 4d8+10.
- Lvl 10: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+10 (DC 20) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 25% chance of success, 70% chance of healing 4d8+10. - Lvl 11: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+10 (DC 20) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 20% chance of success, and a 75% chance of healing 4d8+10.
- Lvl 12: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+10 (DC 20) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 15% chance of success, and an 80% chance of healing 4d8+10.
- Lvl 13: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+10 (DC 20) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 10% chance of success, and an 85% chance of healing 4d8+10.
- Lvl 14: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+10 (DC 20) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 5% chance of success, and a 90% chance of healing 4d8+10.
- Lvl 15: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+30 (DC 30) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 40% chance of success, and a 55% chance of healing 4d8+20.
- Lvl 16: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+30 (DC 30) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 35% chance of success, and a 60% chance of healing 4d8+20. - LvL 17: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+30 (DC 30) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 25% chance of success; 70% chance to heal 4d8+20.
- LvL 18: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+30 (DC 30) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 15% chance of success; 80% chance to heal 4d8+20.
- LvL 19: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+30 (DC 30) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 10% chance of success; 85% chance to heal 4d8+30.
- LvL 20: Can heal all allies (Ward Medic) for 2d8+50 (DC 30) every 10 minutes (Continual Recovery) with a 50% chance of success; 45% chance to heal 4d8+50.

A Chirurgeon Alchemist, in addition to the healing above (using Crafting), also heals using Versatile Vials and Elixirs of Life:

- LvL 1-3: Heals each ally for 1d6 every 10 minutes + up to 20 HP using 2 Soothing Tonics.
- LvL 4: Heals each ally for 2d6 every 10 minutes + up to 20 HP using 2 Soothing Tonics.
- LvL 5-9: Heals each ally for 2d6 every 10 minutes + up to 60 HP using 2 Soothing Tonics. - Lvl 10: Each ally heals 2d6 every 10 minutes + up to 100 HP using 2 Soothing Tonics.
- Lvl 10: Each ally heals 2d6 every 10 minutes + up to 100 HP using 2 Soothing Tonics.
- Lvl 11: Continuously use Versatile Flasks until each ally has healed half their health; then, each ally heals 2d6 every 10 minutes + up to 100 HP using 2 Soothing Tonics.

- Lvl 12: Repeatedly use Versatile Vials until each ally has regained half their HP, then heal each ally for 3d6 every 10 minutes + up to 100 HP using 2 Soothing Tonics.
- Lvl 13-14: Repeatedly use Versatile Vials until each ally has regained half their HP, then heal each ally for 3d6 every 10 minutes + up to 120 HP using 2 Elixirs of Life.
- Lvl 15-16: Repeatedly use Versatile Vials until each ally has regained half their HP, then heal each ally for 3d6 every 10 minutes + up to 138 HP using 2 Elixirs of Life.
- Lvl 17: Repeatedly use Versatile Vials until each ally has regained half their HP, then heal each ally for 3d6 every 10 minutes + up to 200 HP using 2 Soothing Tonics.
- Lvl 18-20: Repeatedly use Versatile Vials until each ally has regained half their HP, then heal each ally for 4d6 every 10 minutes + up to 200 HP using 2 Soothing Tonics.

An animist with Garden of Healing heals everyone for 10d4 every 10 minutes, increasing by +10d4 for each spell rank.

A bard with Hymn of Healing heals themselves and an ally for 8 HP per spell rank every 10 minutes.

A champion with Lay on Hands heals someone for 6 HP per rank every 10 minutes. A cleric with Sacred Ground and Rebuke Death heals everyone for an amount equal to their level (starting at level 4) plus 3 additional creatures (starting at level 8) for 3d6 + 1d6 per rank every 10 minutes.

A druid with Cornucopia heals for 1d6+4 per rank every 10 minutes.

An Exemplar with Scar of the Survivor and the epithet The Radiant heals themselves for 1d8 + 1d8 every 2 levels **per round** and heals each ally for 2 + twice their level every 10 minutes.

A water and wood kineticist heals:
- Starting at level 1: Heals everyone for 1d4+1 + 1d4+5 every 2 levels with Fresh Produce every 10 minutes, and for 1d8 + 1d8 every 2 levels with Ocean's Balm every 10 minutes.
- Starting at level 6: Heals everyone for 2d10+4 + 1d10 every 2 levels with Dash of Herbs every 10 minutes, and for 3d8 + 1d8 every 2 levels with Torrent in the Blood every 10 minutes.

A monk heals themselves for 8 HP per rank with Harmonize Self every 10 minutes.

A necromancer heals a creature for 1d8 + 10 per rank every 10 minutes with Song of the Soul.

An oracle heals all creatures except themselves for 6d8 (starting at level 12 with Life-Giving Form) plus 1d8 for each heightened rank every 10 minutes. A ranger heals a creature with Soothing Mist for 2d8 (starting at level 4) plus 1d8 for each heightened rank, every 10 minutes.

A runesmith with Gematria (lvl 9+) heals up to 2 creatures **per round** (or up to 5 over 2 rounds) for 20 HP plus 5 HP for every 2 levels above 9.

A summoner with Lifelink Surge heals their eidolon (and consequently themselves) for 16 HP plus 8 HP per rank (starting at rank 2), every 10 minutes.

A thaumaturge heals a creature for 3 HP per level with the Chalice every 10 minutes, increasing to 5 HP per level at level 7 and 7 HP per level at level 9.

A witch heals someone for 8 HP per rank every 10 minutes with Life Boost.

There are also various other methods provided by different archetypes—which, provided they don't rely on focus points or daily usage limits, can even be combined. Not to mention the legendary ability to carry a heap of healing scrolls and potions in a Spacious Pouch, especially at high levels where these resources are very cheap.

In short, there are so many out-of-combat healing options that restore significant HP—some at spectacular speeds—that it’s not strange to wonder: Wouldn't it be simpler to abstract it all and just create a mechanic where everyone is healed whenever combat ends in a non-attrition situation? From a roleplay perspective, one could simply claim the players carry enough resources to do so, thereby avoiding all this HP micromanagement between battles where there is no immediate threat of a new enemy appearing within seconds or a few minutes.

[Ed Reppert]

I suppose it depends on how much abstraction you want in your games. For me, less is more.

[Unicore]

So let’s say there was a hypothetical exploration activity that a character could do called “rest” that recovered 1 hp per minute, with no skills or resources needed. You can’t move or combine it with any other activity. What would change about the game?

At low level, pressure to take the medicine skill goes down unless a character is getting battle medicine early, but by mid levels most parties are still going to want faster between combat healing. Most of the focus spell healing is going to stay the same, because it has combat utility and can still accelerate between combat healing, the same as it does now.

If this is the kind of thing g people are asking for, I think it would be fine and not disruptive.

But trying to abstract all the different options into just some kind of scaling, universal system, that removed those options really traps parties and GMs into very formal units of time between encounters, that would be pretty limiting of how encounters can be connected.

Yes players might still have scrolls and spells and potions for faster healing, but the line between that and focus spell healing and kineticist healing and alchemist healing is already so blurry that it either doesn’t feel like it would accomplish anything, or it would require relatively large changes to the game and multiple classes.

Yes, between encounter healing has gotten easier and easier with additional game options. But the line between encounter healing and exploration healing has been pretty porous since at least the remaster. It is hard for me to imagine trying to streamline exploration mode healing at this point in the game’s development as something worth the headache of resolving all the connected game game mechanics.