Band-Aid
There is nothing wrong with tending the wounded. If you’re playing in a game with hit points, you want some way to make those numbers go back up. Potions, healing wands, and dudes in white robes are a mainstay of the hobby for a reason. They help you to avoid the dreaded 15-minute adventuring day, and can get an ally back in the fight when combat gets hairy. If you happen to identify as a healer though, there is one critical thing to keep in mind: you must be more than JUST a healer.
Before we go any further, I’m going to quote the redoubtable Treantmonk. His thinking on the subject of healz has influenced me personally and the community at large. I doubt I could put it any better if I tried:
Spending your action to maybe-possibly-hopefully counter an enemy action puts you, on average, at a net loss. That’s why Pathfinder’s heal spell is the gold standard in the system. It typically heals more damage than monsters can dish out in a turn. For similar reasons, 5e’s counterspell is far more devastating than dispel magic. They both have their place, but spending your reaction rather than your action to blank an enemy turn puts you ahead in terms of the action economy. This is what Treantmonk is getting at in terms of healing and efficiency. I would go a step further though. I believe that the reactive/proactive divide runs deeper than questions of combat effectiveness. It gets to the very soul of gaming: what makes something fun?
In answering that question, let me ask you another. When you’re watching a nature documentary, who do you root for? The fox pouncing face-first into the snow, or the field mouse hiding invisibly in its den? The bear or the salmon? The marlins or the bait ball? We tend to identify with the active participant, and that holds true in gaming as well as the Discovery Channel.
When you’re on offense, you can point towards a demonstrable effect that you had on the world. I killed the monster. I buffed the fighter. I walled off the threat. When you’re sitting back on defense, it’s a lot harder to point at the thing that didn’t happen. I healed you for 25! I mean, the monster died before its next turn, but better safe than sorry! My point is that your actions in combat represent a piece of your overall ability to affect the world. When it’s your goal to prevent the world from changing (read: keeping your buddies alive) your impact might be enormous, but it feels lesser. I think this might have something to do with Oracle’s bad attitude in today’s comic.
Consider this. When the oradin build first hit the net, people absolutely lost their shit over how cool it was. That’s because they could suddenly do the healing thing while still kicking ass. It was the “non-healbot healbot,” and people ate it up. Same deal with 5e’s much-loved healing word. Everyone wants a bit of emergency healing in the party, but only so long as they can…ya know…actually do stuff too. So when I say “be more than just a healer,” I mean that you want to be able to be proactive as well as reactive. You want to have the option to point at the battlefield and say, “I summoned a friggin’ elemental, and I got your barbarian back on her feat. It was a good day at the office. Dibs on the staff of awesome.”
So what do you think? Have you ever been satisfied as a “pure band-aid?” What’s the best healer you’ve ever seen in action? Let’s hear your tales of magical medics down in the comments!
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This is why I love spiritual weapon. It allows you to cast mass heal and stab people at the same time.
Back in my second D&D game (and the first one where I understood the rules), I played a cleric. At first, I was up alongside the paladin in the front lines, stabbing with the same gusto as him. Eventually, as the levels climbed higher and monsters grew tougher, I found myself slowly heading towards the back as I needed to cast more and more healing to keep the party on their feet. I did enjoy healing, I loved the feeling of helping the others, but eventually, by level twenty, I was having to spend a heal or mass heal every round to keep the party alive, and a single greater dispel magic could remove 20+ buffs that the sorcerer and I put up. Basically, what I’m saying is: 3.5 was great at the low levels, back when I could stab and throw in a cure wounds if things got bad, but at the higher levels, things start to break down as I never got the chance to cast anything but healing and buffs.
Funny but also sad story: my turn came up during a fight that was going particularly well, so I said, “Who needs healing this turn?”. A few negative replies returned, and I discovered that no-one had taken more than ten damage. I was so unused to people not needing me to bring them back from the brink, that I had to spend a solid minute figuring out what the heck I could do beyond be the band-aid.
Recently, I decided to revisit high-level clerics in a 5e game, and it was great! I got to spiritual weapon every round, toss some dispel magic and guiding bolt at the enemy, and cast heal whenever someone started to get low.
Score one for bounded accuracy I guess.
Were the CRs out of whack in your 3.5 game, or was it just straight up rocket tag even in “normal” fights?
The CR was definitely out of whack, although I’m not sure what ‘rocket tag’ is. (It sounds pretty cool, though).
Rocket tag is exciting, but perhaps too much so: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RocketTagGameplay
I’m the best healer I’ve ever seen in action. But I could’ve built her better.
Pei Zin Practitioner oracle with the Life mystery is literally just Oradin but without multiclass. They replace a couple revelations to get Lay on Hands at full scaling, with a unique mercy system that uses Profession Herbalist.
With Boots of the Earth and Life Link she heals everyone to full between battles. With Healer’s Way and Shield Other she tanks everyone’s damage for them. And all this is complete with full Oracle spell progression so I get fun stuff like Breath of Life, Blessing of Fervor, and Prayer without delay. Fey Foundling for more self healing of course as with the oradin.
As for how I could’ve built her better, I discovered afterwards there’s actually a crazy good synergy if you go Variant Multiclass into Cavalier. After 8th level, your channel energy and lay on hands increase by 1 level for every 2 cavalier levels… which with VMC are equal to your total level. So a 10th level Oracle would have channel and lay on hands as if they were 15th level. This costs them half their feats of course however. This also works insanely good for paladin too, as it means they get both Smite and Challenge.
Even without the order of the star however, my character still made such a big impact to the party. I created her out of spite because my DM said the campaign would have a lot of death, and I was basically like “No.” We fight monsters at +3 CR without too much trouble from time to time. (a crag linnorm at 11th level was fun, DM said it would’ve been a TPK for the other party he DMs) because my healing and protection effectively doubles everyone’s HP and gives them fast healing 5 until I go down, which I won’t because my self healing is so good.
That definitely sounds satisfying!
How much research did you have to do while you were building her?
Not a whole lot actually. I just took Pei Zin Practitioner and built a standard healer build. The order of the star thing took more research after she was already built.
Ooh… I was looking for ways to make an Life Oracle 7 / Holy Vindicator 10 more interesting. I think this may be it. Cheers for the build idea!
I have never played a pure band-aid, or seen anyone play one, but i would say that for all his horrid luck till the late game, my old bard Elliot the unlucky made amazing use of healing word, though thats not due really to skill as much as its incredibly good at just getting someone back on their feet since health doesnt go below 0 in 5e. I do play with one guy who played his cleric as more of a in combat band aid then he really should have, using spell slots and actions on cure wounds that would be a lot better used on other spells like bless, but he never went followed the bandaid role too much.
Any examples of situations where this cleric friend of yours over-healed? What is a situation where healing is a suboptimal action?
Well one thing my ally did often, was use cure wounds instead of healing word as a 1 st level spell in combat at level 11. At that point, if he had used toll the dead, which had around a 60% success rate, and did on average 24.5 damage, while also using healing word, which only heals 2 less health on average, he would have been much more effective, particularily when that damage would likely have been enough to bring down an enemy. Similarily, he did stuff like use cure wounds as a second level spell to heal kn average 14 health on a ally who wasn’t too low, when he could have instead done a large amount of damage consistently over the battle with something like spirtual weapon while also using a cantrip that turn for alot more damage that would likely have prevented future damage in turn. I don’t think he ever actually cast spells that provided a consistent benefit really like bless or spiritual weapon besides insect plague a few times, though thats getting off topic.
Right on. That is exactly the sort of play I’m talking about. It’s great having a healer in the party. When that’s all they do though, it begins to feel like a waste.
When it comes to healing that campaign was pretty funny, as everyone in the party could heal. Both me and that player were playing clerics, we had a paladin, we had a celestial warlock which gets pretty decent healing, and we had a monk who due to a god was forced to attune to the mandolin bard magical instrument against his will and gained a bit of healing from that, as well as wholeness of body for more self healing. Later on after my cleric died I became a bard for a bit less, but still very significant healing. What was really nice was that everyone either had access to a bonus action heal, or had abilities to heal a significant enough amount at once to make it worth the action, as well as just being great out of combat. We pretty much never went into a fight with much less then full hp, which was great since the dungeon was fill with tons of horrifying traps and ambushes.
I believe TreantMonk described healers best in their guide:
“The party Gimp gets to use up all his resources “servicing” the party between combats. Sound pleasant? That’s why he’s the gimp.”
That said, with Short rests 5E doesn’t need a dedicated healer. Clerics, Druids, and Bards can do plenty else.
Sure they can. They should. You’ll still run into guys that want to heal instead of doing that more-useful “anything else.” See Naneek Epoh’s comment above.
I guess if they’re having fun, then more power to ’em. It just frustrates me a bit when I see it happening in my own party. I’ll just be sitting there like, “I fine, ya dingus. Hit the thing!”
Battlefield control, and smart tactics can prevent the damage entirely.
Cure Wounds heals xd8(s)+mod where x is the slot level for one slot. A swing with your average 1 handed martial weapon does d8+mod for no cost, and you might be able to do it multiple times a turn.
Compare this to saaaaaayyyyy Bless. While you’re hashtag blessed you add a d4 to all your saves which can prevent half/all the damage on save effects. It can effect X people where X is slot level+2.
Shield of Faith is a bonus action and can protect people from direct attacks.
Basic math tells us what a bad idea being a healbot is.
I should probably correct myself a bit, when I said the ally did it often, I don’t mean for almost every action, I just meant like once or twice a fight when he shouldn’t have. Still a good bit more then was smart and efficient, but not too a severe degree. What frustrated me most actually about his gameplay was he only ever cast 1 buff spell the entire campaign, holy weapon on the paladins sword, when cleric gets really good ones like bless and spiritual weapon. Typically in combat he would just through out cantrips.
I enjoy playing the healer when my actions aren’t tied up into ONLY healing. For this reason I enjoyed playing the Path of War class: Warlord (by dreamscarred press). By taking the Silver Crane discipline, I was able to heal party members by attacking enemies.
I have also enjoyed healers that gave the entire party fast healing with a single casting (or ability, such at the Dragon Shaman’s Aura of Vigor), which then leaves my character open to actually participate for the rest of combat.
I’ve always wanted to try out that healz frog build. Just go vitalist for “transfer wounds”…
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/vitalist/
…then lick people back to health with your tongue:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/racial-feats/agile-tongue-grippli
It’s gimicky and goofy and looks like a blast.
Funny you bring that up. About a year ago I was playing some Pathfinder and the party encountered a black dragon. We were about 9th level. It opens up with its breath, as its wont to do, and the party takes an assload of damage. Heck, our Cavalier pretty much dies instantly until the GM notices he’s using the wrong tier of level and retroactively knocks it down a notch.
So we’re beat up but we gotta get into melee with what’s basically a wood chipper the size of a party bus. My summoner steps up, and he summons 1d3+1 Bralazi Azatas. Each of those bad boys has Cure Serious Wounds twice per day. So that’s around 9d8+9 healing on my turn. And the bad boys are up again on my next turn, so they can do that while I actually lay down buffs.
And of course I’ve got about 9 summons per day at this point, so the good vibes keep flowing. Playing emergency medic can be cool. Especially if you can multitask while you’re doing it.
Summoning is so popular on account of this action economy business. When you’re high enough level to get summons that are also casters, you’re basically getting quickened (whatever) every single round. That’s nothing to sneeze at, even if it’s “just” healing.
After being an Inquisitor and while being an evil wizard hellbent on repairing a broken world, I decided to cleanse my palate by creating the most purely benevolent character I could. So, I made Dobri, currently a Ghoran Blossoming Light cleric 3/Sensei monk 1. He has a couple of buffs, but besides the 1 level monk dip, 80% of his combat role is Channel Energy. In a low-artifact setting where potions are rare, this is a literal godsend for the party. My noncombat role is as a Face and a teacher, and I’ve tried my best to emulate Mr. Rogers and Dobri Dobrev, the late Bulgarian ascetic from whom his name is taken. He is -incredibly- satisfying to roleplay, withhis life goal to make everyone around him better than they were the day before in a way that will make a difference the day after.
Props for using the word “literal” correctly.
I’ve always wanted to try out the Sensei archetype for the RP element. My character concept: https://i.imgur.com/RholFzW.png
Not exactly a Sensei but Sensei-like, I once had a concept that was a mix of Holy Tactician Paladin and Bard. He was a gruff ol’ police sergeant, and his superpower was yelling. With Oratory-based Bardic Performance, he could yell at his men to make them do better. With the Holy Tactician’s version of Smite, he could yell at his men to focus fire on a particular enemy, granting them bonuses to hit and damage. With the power to share teamwork feats, he could yell at his men to use advanced tactics. With his Intimidate skill he could yell at enemies to get on the ground, unnerving them or forcing a surrender. With his Diplomacy skill, he could yell at his superiors or the press to make them understand why what happened was in no way excessive force. He was so forceful in his yells that he could even inform an enemy that they were now filled with Unnatural Lust for something, and they would obey the instructions for a few seconds before snapping out of it. Clearly, the man was a natural-born leader.
Eat your heart out R Lee Ermey.
I think you could apply the “don’t be just an X” to a lot of different roles- you might be a great party face but if your useless in combat, fail all other skill-checks, and can’t cast, then you’ll spend a lot of time sitting on your hands.
How specific a character is acceptable depends a lot on your group. Look at some of the melee-classes, especially PRCs, where your might think of yourself as a “damage dealer” but you ended up really only being half-decent at dealing damage to one specific type of enemy.
If the Wizard could only throw fireballs, people would say that the Wizard was to restrictive. Except in 3.5 the Wizard had access to every single type of magic ever thought up. The Healer though, was kinda like the pyromancer of casters because it only pumps out one type of energy, while lots of classes can pump out the same amount of that energy PLUS other types.
EVERYONE should have something else to fall back on when your primary schtick isn’t optimal. Some classes make that easier than others, but I think it’s also up the GM to encourage and guide their players towards that playstyle.
Currently I’m playing a 5th edition Druid, and I think it makes a fine healer, because I have other damaging and CC spells I can use, too, and with Wildshape I can pro-actively prevent damage to the party by throwing 400 pounds of enraged bear at the enemy’s faces.
From my “rejected scripts” file:
Title: Flame Retardant
Text: Some monsters are resistant to elemental magics. This is usually freaking obvious.
Pic: Magus blasts a bunch of fire elementals with a fireball. Ranger and Inquisitor face-palm.
Dialogue:
Magus: What? Why are these beasts of living flame unphased? That was my most powerful fireball!
Scrollover: In other news, drowning water elementals is also ill-advised.
Ah, so THAT’s why my plan against the water weirds didn’t work…
We have a Hobgoblin kineticist in our Rise of the Runelords game with fire as his element. When he gets the chance to choose a second element he’s going to take fire again. I sense a lot of fire-immune foes in our future.
Then again, the other week our GM gave us an encounter with some trolls, which was very generous of him.
Well hey, it’s an AP, right? Random encounters notwithstanding you get what you get.
Apparently it’s about the 10th time our GM’s run the AP, and he’s alluded to the fact that he’s changing a lot of things in it in response to the party and to keep things interesting for himself.
The Module of Theseus, eh? Fair enough.
This reminds me of a rather unfortunate effect.
Often fantasy settings will have groups with some cool flavor text, a connection to a in-universe culture and society and some thematic powers that you might want to make your character a member of, if you are playing in that setting.
For instance something like “The Order of the Frozen Heart” might be a group of ice mages common to the far northern realm of Iushya where they serve as impartial Judges and protectors of the people in exchange for a bit of social standing.
So far so good, except that the same places that it makes sense to put such an order, are the same places where it makes sense to for ice-based creatures and monsters to live, which mean that they will often be resistant to the very Ice powers of said ice mages.
As a result, if you are actually playing a campaign set in Iushya people are punished for playing a normal member of The Order of the Frozen Heart, while if you are playing in an diametrically oppossed region, like say the burning deserts of Kazark, suddenly you’d be very unlikely to face someone resistant to ice magic, and might in fact face enemies that are extra weak to said powers.
And really that’s a shame, because now people only want the thematic powers of the group that doesn’t fit in with where the campaign is set.
I’ve had similar thoughts myself, and the best in-universe explanation is usually something like “we derive our power/magic from the study of strange monsters and/or the land itself”. Out-of-universe obviously it’s just from the story writer sticking to close to chosen theme.
I’d consider it perfectly logical to find ice-mages in the desert and fire-mages on the tundra.
I guess you could make up some mess about “an environment in equilibrium” and “outside elements disrupting nature” to justify fire mages wrecking face in the tundra. Alternatively, you could follow the logic into a Pokémon style home brew in which fire snakes chase ice rats across the arctic.
That’s actually a pretty good hook, too. I can see it as setting up some sort of arcane (wizards) vs. divine (clerics & druids) dispute over what and how magic should be used.
And then the players stumble into this delicate situation with all the grace of an angry, arthritic water-buffalo 🙂
My best healer moment was way back, when I was something like 11, and was playing in a Warhammer Fantasy campaign, where I was a Cleric.
Now, if I’m being honest, I have basically no memories of the mechanics… What I do remember, was that I was able to provide healing – something incredibly valuable, as Warhammer Fantasy is brutal, and wounds normally take a long time to heal.
But I wasn’t a healbot though. Again, I don’t remember the exact mechanics, but I was definitely fighting on the frontlines (…after a couple levels, as I was basically an anemic twig at the start), riding my steed (which I still remember was called Requiem – a freakin’ badass name for my 11 years old self), only healing when it was absolutely required, because not only healing meant I was not attacking, magic in Warhammer is freaking dangerous to use.
My biggest moment I actually still remember (almost) clearly. My character had been drugged and sold as a slave to work in a mine; the rest of my party had come to free me, and we were fleeing through the tunnels of the mine – my character only having a loincloth and a pickaxe. We were doing fine, until we ran into several undead, including a mummy.
Mummy are nasty critters as they are quite powerful AND their attacks can give a disease that diminishes your stat PERMANENTLY (and irreversibly – you can cure the disease itself, but not the damage it did). The fight was going well, and so in desperation I tossed my pickaxe at the mummy, which was stupid, as I had very little chance of hitting with a ranged attack. It hit however, and I rolled for damage.
You know how Warhammer has exploding dice? i.e if you roll max damage you roll again, until you don’t roll max damage? It’s what caused stories like The Guy Who Cried Grendel. Well, it was my moment. I rolled a 6 (on a D6), and another, and another,… in the end I rolled well over 40 damage, pulverizing the mummy by dealing basically twice its health in damage in a single attack.
As I was a Cleric of Morr, the god of the Dead, and worst enemy of the undead, my DM had a wonderful justification ready to use for that incredibly attack : divine intervention. Yup, my poor Cleric who had just been abducted, was exhausted from heavy labor and was desperately fighting for his life, suddenly received a little bit of help from his God himself. That kinda reaffirmed his belief that Morr is cool and undead are the worst.
The campaign continued for a long time after that, I was still a good healer (by Warhammer standards anyway) and usually spent about as much time taking care of my companions as I did actively fighting. However, when we were fighting undead, this completely changed : I just dropped all healing (I was literally incapable of healing then, as I had taken an insanity which basically sent me into a blinding rage whenever I saw undead) and went into the fray – even the dwarf berseker got out of my way when this happened.
This campaign was forever ago, and I forgot most of it, but damn I still love my undead-hating cleric. Dude was a badass by the end, and little 11 years old me was giddy about it.
I see that we come from the same school of steed-naming: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-09
Crazy how it’s the moments we don’t build for or plan for that stick most in the memory. The dice do crazy things sometimes, and that as much as anything is what keep me coming back to this hobby year after year.
At least for me there is no joy in a hit point track that fills up, nor mine, nor the ones from my companions, nor even more the one of my enemies. In my group the rest neither use the cleric class, if we survive, so be it, and the challenge of staying alive is quite interesting, we use more strategy and planning. That doesn’t mean we have not problems, like the time i said:
“If they are dead they can’t damage us!!!”
“What about undead?”
“…”
“I correct myself, if they are dead-dead they can’t damage us!!!”
Also after watching Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, well all my group want even less playing that kind of pc.
In any case i have a question. After reading this comic for sometime and reading the whole archive i need to ask. Paladin being lawful-dickish is intentional or is that he is just a dick? I don’t ask because i hate this situation, in fact is a very truthful representation of the paladins form of being, in my prideful opinion 🙂
Like I said way back in this one…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fighter-vs-paladin
I don’t know. Between that backstabb to Necromancer, leaving his party to fight alone the deadly swamp lettuce and now this. I really think that if The Handbook of Heroes world has rules about character alignment shift, then Paladin now is Lawful-Dickish. Which is good that put him in direct opposition to Fighter Evil-Jerkass. I mean since Fighter axe his parents some question he has been a individual of dubious moral, still he has never put someone of his party in a mallet. Without holes to breath. Only opening that mallet when that party member is needed. As i said this is the way paladin in general work they are a bunch of saintly hypocrites, but please, is like one on my friends once said in a game:
“You believe yourself so high and good, but compared to you even that monster [my pc] is a radiating defender of goodness and mercy. What is wrong with you people!!!???”
In defense of the other guy my friend pc has some serious issues about eating with the mouth open. The discussion was not about that, but other guy manners didn’t helped him.
I’ve seen a Druid/Vitalist gestalt in action. . . It was in a drop-in drop-out endless dungeon thing I was doing. The other players had more fun when she wasn’t there, because they actually had the possibility of dying in a fight.
I have oft been the player more willing to be a healer-type character, it’s what I do. I’m just wired that way I suppose. however when I first started playing DnD I played pretty much any healer-type i could whilst avoiding the normal ‘cleric’ job. i just didn’t want to be that stereotype. one of my best healers though that could do many other things was in an admittedly veeeery overpowered gestalt game with some houserules in 3.5
i was gestalt cleric/ranger and on the cleric side took a few prestige classes as well like radiant servant and one other (can’t recall the name though). my GM allowed me to use zen archery and with that use my wis in place of dex to qualify for archery based feats. i had a dex of 11, but wis/cha of 20 (aasimar race) between my domains and prestige classes, i got tons of different ‘turn whatever’ pools, and took some of the divine metamagic feats that let me stack turn uses to apply metamagics on the fly. plus radiant servant makes all cure spells empowered/maximized for freeeee!
We did go to epic level in that game and i was popping out quickened, maximized mass heal spells and then using smiting spell to slap an inflict critical into a manyshot with my fancy composite bow of magical goodness, and with houserule feat was adding my wisdom to damage as well. i would like to point out though that i was not even the most powerful character in that group-and far from it. the deal with the gm was that we could all play gestalt characters only if all payers agreed, and the catch was that the gm also got to make his enemies gestalt. so we were also fighting stuff that was pretty rough even with our insanity. most of the folks i played with were also in the more concept than powergame camp and just used the gestalt to make their concepts work without weird ass multiclassing.
That game was SO FULL of fun roleplay moments as well, and i have quite fond memories of that run. the gm had a series of connected campaigns and that was the first group i was with that finished the proper ‘main’ one (put ‘main’ on pause and play side campaigns with diff chars for a diff side of the story) and we all got to ascend to godhood as a happy epilogue. it was totally rad.
Well that certainly sounds rad AF. Goood on the group for self policing power levels too.
I am in total agreement on this issue. Speaking of 5e specifically there are a few options for handling healing they’ve provided I really like.
The first is being a Druid and using your 1st level spell slots for Goodberry. It’s just the most efficient healing you can get (it’s as much as you can expect from a 1st level spell and it’s 100% consistent so no wasted spell slots on low rolls) and since it’s so horridly inefficient to try and use it as a combat heal, it sucks up 0% of your active in the battle time. (There’s also a UA Druid archetype that has a limited amount of bonus action healing as a class feature if you feel you need to be a combat medic druid.)
The second is the Grave Domain Cleric who is set up mechanically to be rewarded for waiting until PCs actually drop before playing the heal bot role. Not only does this encourage behavior that’s more active non-heal bot behavior, but also encourages behavior that isn’t the risky “I’m healing because maybe we need me to do that and we won’t know until too late and this leads me to typically wasting spell slots” method.
And best of all, it means your heals always feel important because they were the difference between someone being in the fight… or not.
5e is a little funny of course in regards to the 15 minute adventuring day. If your party is a Circle of the Moon Druid, Fighter, Warlock, and I dunno…. a Rogue or Bard you can basically go for as long as you want as long as you keep taking short rests. On the other hand if your party is Cleric, Wizard, Monk, and Ranger or Paladin, Barbarian, Sorcerer, and Mystic….. not so much. Of course sometimes short rests aren’t in the cards either so you can still wind up with no resources in situations where logically it makes no sense to stop to regain them even with the best set up party.
Grave domain sounds awesome, though I’ve never encountered one in the wild. He idea of a cleric that is built to heal only at critical moments tickles me in the happy gamer place.
I guess the short rest vs. long rest style is a compromise. It becomes a matter of taste to the individual player. That said, one or the other might become a frustrating choice given the predilections of a give DM.
Possible Critical Role spoilers ahead (I’ll keep them vague though)
As of about 3 episodes ago there is a Grave Domain Cleric features in Critical Role, so if you want to see one in action that might be a place to look.
Several hundred hours later, I’m about to finish Campaign 1. I might be done with CR for a while. 😛
I only started watching recently. I’m only on episode 17. So I likely won’t catch up to that point for a good long while. Especially since my “watching” is mostly only while I’m doing a few activities that don’t require much mental attention.
I made it though mostly on commute and gym time myself.
The cleric i mentioned my fellow player played was a grave cleric, though he mainly used it for the ability to make a enemy vulnerable and thus taking double damage from any single instance of damage or for negating crits from enemies. The vulnerability was really good vs the final boss, allowing our paladin who crit to deal almost 150 damage in a single attack with his smite. We still lost since the lich was around cr 25 or so and we were level 12, but with that and a good amount of other damage we nearly killed him.
Monks get there ki back on a short rest, not long. Also in my experience, thanks to the awesome existence of cantrips, any character in 5e once you get to level 5 or so can keep going for a decently long time as long as you reasonably conserve resources, though short rest people are definitely better at that. Might be wrong about mystics though as ive never seen one played so they might get screwed, but i dont have the experience to know for sure.
I always hear complaints on he boards about “my DM never lets us have a short rest!” Has that been your experience at all?
Only during the first month or 2 of our first time using 5e, due to the dm not being used to it yet, and the module we were using, horde of the dragon queen, not really being the best made for 5e either, though that was more a problem of facing enemies completely out of our league. Luckily the dm avoided those. Seriously, a decent number of those enemies we were supposed to face could have wiped out our entire team in one turn reliably with little or no counterplay.
Ah. Treantmonk quote.
Hate him and what he’s done for the community at large. Everyone I’ve ever talked to basically follows his Wizard guide to the bloody letter so I always get Treantmonk at my table. And if not his Wizard, someone playing akin to his rules. I don’t want Treantmonk, I want you at my table. “But the guide said..” Forget the GUIDE!
You can’t chase optimization away, and I don’t think you should. Some people want to “solve” the problem of the game, and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just another way to approach fun.
I think the malignant form of this (and the one that you and I both dislike) is where an optimization guide becomes the first, last, and only word on character building. I like to tell new players to START with a guide, but to take it with a massive grain of salt. Optimization guides provide some useful ways for players to approach character building, especially when they’re overwhelmed by options and need some direction.
I happen to agree with Treantmonk on this healing point. I’ve seen dudes hold their turn until damage happens and they can start healing, and that’s no bueno. If you’re making a conscious choice to play like that for character reasons, bully for you. If you’re doing it because you don’t know what else you should be doing with your turn, Treantmonk is helpful.
I will say this though: At the end of the day all those guides are only one dude’s opinion. I don’t think it’s bad that they exist, but watching summoners rather than characters pour into the field gets old in a hurry.
One dude’s opinion that seems to basically be the foundation of “How to play right” that waaaaaaaay to many people seem to take as the gospel.
Sigh I shouldn’t get mad you, I like your work and have followed the comic for awhile now. I just saw “Treatmonk” and something snapped in my head.
But the problem I have is when “Solving” the game seems to be the only way to play the game outside of my circle of friends. And wide spread guides like Treantmonk’s works don’t seem to help.
As for being “Cleric/Orcale/Healer of Band-aids”, guys. Get a crossbow. Get a spear. Make sure to have 1-2 buff spells or at the very least slap Guidance on people. I’m not saying go full “God Wizard” build here but if you could be replaced by a wand or just an NPC hireling, okay yeah something is wrong here. I should know, I’ve had to replace a few characters because of how easily replaced I was(I know, Mental/Morale spells… vs Undead/Robot/Mindless. Okay wow that was bad, switch to Alchemist)
Weirdly, I think my favorite time in the life cycle of an RPG is when no one knows what’s going on. People stumble into cool abilities, take flavorful options, and figure out new options all on their lonesome.
There’s an Exalted 2e article about “paranoia combat” that really cemented this in my head.
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/10602/what-is-exalted-paranoia-combat
It “solves” the game, and in the process makes it an unplayable mess. I had much more fun before knowing that it exists. I suspect this is what you are experiencing with Treantmonk. #sympathy
Parties I ran with always wanted someone who can handle the healing, but no one actually wants to be the healer. My most recent character that could suit this archetype was my life cleric Dormic, and he wasnt really a heal bot in the strictest sense. Because of his heavy armor profiecny as his shield he was up there with the fighter as one of the frontlines, Spamming his AoE cantrip to help set up the rest of the baddies to get taken down, if they aren’t wiped immediately from the damage.
How he healed was a little trick I learned from rule lawyering; I had him take the magic initia feat to pick up some Druid spells. Namely, Goodberry. 10 berries that healed for 1 hp and a full meal. A nice lil after battle snack perhaps. But I was a life cleric. Suddenly those berries were doing 4 HP a Pop. 10 berries for 4 HP and that’s 40 points of healing with a level 1 spell from a level 1 variant human cleric. Pass them around the party and we got lol pick me ups for when things get a little rough.
Aside from that I often did subscribe to the proactive over reactive approach to healing; while I had no problems being a heal bot when it came to crunch time, I generally find it more convinent to have a powerful after battle heal over then a particularly powerful in battle one. Healing word had changed the flow of battle a handful of times, but so did a guiding bolt it whacking someone with my shelilagh powered quarter staff.
I’m thinking abou trying druidry in the near future. I am now disappointed by my hypothically comparatively ineffectual good berries. Now they’re just like…mediocre berries.
The best thing about healing word though is you can use it at the same time as shelilagh:).
I’m surprised no one has brought up Paladin insisting on annual performance reviews with what sounds like 360-degree feedback.
This is the best evidence to date that the guy plays Lawful Stupid.
——Explanation for people who haven’t worked in such situations———
It’s a HR policy that sounds good in theory, but in practice delivers a lot of bother for no actual benefit.
The idea is that every year you have a performance appraisal, but rather than being held purely hostage to your boss, you have to collect feedback from other people at the same and lower levels who work with you, and this all feeds into how you’re doing.
There are three problems with this.
1) Typically this feedback is still fed into a “stack ranking” system, which is the Lawful Evil of HR. Stack ranking is where you are ranked against your colleagues, only the highest ranked get promoted and the weakest get fired. It promotes glory seeking and backstabbing.
2) 360-feedback was a response to stack ranking that would make it more human by having your colleagues involved in deciding whether you get promoted or fired. No way that can cause needless bitchiness, right?! Despite seeming like it’s designed by the Joker, it’s popular among Lawful Stupid and Stupid Good types who say “it’s the least bad way of stack ranking”. Maybe a landmine is a less painful way of losing a limb than a bacon slicer, I’m still not happy about the prospect.
3) The biggest problems with these systems is that they turn a continuous human experience into a discrete corporate one. Specifically, pretending feedback should only happen once a year rather than being immediate and constant so you can actually improve; and believing that how someone performs at one level is an indicator of how they will perform at another. These systems enforce the Peter Principle.
Anyway, I will now cease boring you with business advice, and return to my day job – of charging people for business advice. (Discount if you mention you saw me on here).
^This guy HRs.
While not Pathfinder or D&D based, I played a Mage in Anima: beyond fantasy that the GM loved/hated. It was a pure Wizard, specializing in Creation magic. While there was lots of fluff based on being a naive young girl who claimed she heard the music of creation in her dreams, she was the most effective healer our group has ever seen. She walked in the first day, looked at the group of people she’d been tasked with traveling with by her caretaker (who were secretly her bodyguards.) and hit them all with a spell that gave them a Regeneration rate of 14. Which in Anima, means they healed 1 hp a minute, never scarred, and could stick limbs back on by holding it to the stump for a few minutes. This was maintainable by simply reducing the number of magic points I got back per day (which was insane, she was a regen build.)
The GM later told me he had a love/hate relationship with Elena because she was “too good at her job.” On one hand, he loved being able to throw really dangerous encounters without having too much concern that he would kill someone, because we had some people new to the system that game. On the other hand, it made it hard to ramp up the challenge when the little girl in the back could make new arms for people.
Shoot the medic first, man. Suddenly the game is all about keeping the healer alive.
So what’re Barbarian and Wild Magic Sorcerer chatting aboot?
Also; can’t Paladin heal?
Probably what magic items they want Oracle to craft for them next. If she’s a band-aid, she probably also plays support with Item crafting. Though, that would make the briefcase (presumably of holding?) a good place for her lab.
Hair care products.
His healing is reserved for in-combat and emergency usage.
My absolute favorite healer I’ve ever played (and I’ve played a lot, it’s my favorite role) is a Spirit Guide Oracle with the Life Mystery and the Life Spirit, for double the channel pool. Then I took the Envoy of Balance Prestige Class so I could do positive and negative channels at the same time. Along with Selective Channel (obviously), Quick Channel so I could channel as a move action, and the Fateful Channel so my allies get rerolls when I channel, I was able to keep everyone fully healed, damage enemies with my channels, and still cast buffs, debuffs, and some sweet attack spells. Can you say Hellfire Ray or Spear of Purity?
One of my PFS characters I deliberately built as a near pure healer/buffer. She has Divine Lance (anti-evil) and Disrupt Undead (anti-undead), but other than that all her spells are various kinds of heals and shields. She’s been a lot of fun to run so far.
The faster you kill the enemy, the less damage that enemy can do, means you proactively healed that much damage.
Nothing annoys me more than DMs who don’t understand that 5e revolves around this philosophy.