waaaaahh HEALS HUH YEAH.. whut are they good for?

[Kenneth]

Ok, unlike all the otehr homebrews I have posted on this forum, this is something that is 100% just now created in my brains. I know that the concesnsus is across the vast majority of 3rd ed players that in combat heals are a waste of resourcesm unless in the most extremem of circumstances, like oh noes your druid just got knocked unconscious.

Well I have my own theroies on that.
Yes healing for the most part in 3rd ed games are all but pointless after level 1 (maybe 2 but that is kinda stretching it) and the reason for that for me is 2 fold. (maybe 2.5 fold?)
While Hit points and damage (minus spell damage forn evocation spells) have grown exponetially.. Healing has not. in this regards healing is in teh same exact boat (see my proposed evo fix Here) basically everything else in the game went up dramatically but Healing ( and evocation) stayed at teh same exact level. so it went like this
you had a 5th levle healing spell that could heal you for anywhere form 25%-35% of your max life as a20th fighter.. now that same spells only heals you for about 10%-12.5% as a 20th fighter.. notice teh big disparity?


anywyas, i had normally just upped teh bonus to teh base heal ( i.e +2 per level instead of +1) but now that I re-read my evocation fixes for no particualr reason i thought. 'well maybe i try my had and making heals good again!"

so here is my try. I am going to leavve Heal and Mass heal alone as, i feel they are already decent.

First up the Healing Domain, lets look at teh granted ability. OH NOES my heals heal for 1 more point of damage for teh biggest par of my characters career and then it heals for 10 when I DO finally get heal.. LAME!! lets ante this up a bit and PIYAO!!!

Healing Domain

Granted Power

Healing spells you cast heal for an additional 20% this effect stacks with Empower and Maximize..

Healing Domain Spells
1.Cure Light Wounds: Cures 1d8 damage
2.Cure Moderate Wounds: Cures 3d8+1 damage
3.Cure Serious Wounds: Cures 5d8+5 damage
4.Cure Critical Wounds: Cures 7d8+9 damage
5.Cure Light Wounds, Mass: Cures 1d8 damage +1/level (max +25) for many creatures.
6.Heal: Cures 10 points/level of damage, all diseases and mental conditions.
7.Regenerate: Subject’s severed limbs grow back, cures 4d8 damage +1/level (max +35).
8.Cure Critical Wounds, Mass: Cures 4d8 damage +1/level (max +40) for many creatures.
9.Heal, Mass: As heal, but with several subjects.

BOOM SHAKALA!!! whut, so now you cast heal as a healing cleric and you heal 12 points of damage per level.. nice!.

now on to teh healing spells, i never understaood how channeling life energies was conjuration as that is pretty much what Necromancy is all about so you betcha I put healingback where it used to be! OHH YEAH!!

Cure Light Wounds

Necromancy (Healing)

Level:
Brd 1, Clr 1, Drd 1, Healing 1, Pal 1, Rgr 2

Components:
V, S

Casting Time:
1 standard action

Range:
Touch

Target:
Creature touched

Duration:
Instantaneous

Saving Throw:
Will half (harmless); see text


Spell Resistance:
Yes (harmless); see text

When laying your hand upon a living creature, you channel positive energy that cures 1d8 points of damage.

Since undead are powered by negative energy, this spell deals damage to them instead of curing their wounds. An undead creature can apply spell resistance, and can attempt a Will save to take half damage.

Cure Moderate Wounds

Necromancy (Healing)

Level:
Brd 2, Clr 2, Drd 3, Healing 2, Pal 3, Rgr 3

This spell functions like cure light wounds, except that it cures 3d8+1 points of damage

Cure Serious Wounds

Necromancy (Healing)

Level:
Brd 3, Clr 3, Drd 4, Pal 4, Rgr 4, Healing 3

This spell functions like cure light wounds, except that it cures 5d8+5 points of damage.

Cure Critical Wounds

Necromancy (Healing)

Level:
Brd 4, Clr 4, Drd 5, Healing 4

This spell functions like cure light wounds, except that it cures 7d8+9 points of damage.

Cure Grievous Wounds

Necromancy (Healing)

Level:
Brd 5, Clr 5, Drd 6

This spell functions like cure light wounds, except that it cures 9d8+13 points of damage.


Cure Light Wounds, Mass

Necromancy (Healing)

Level:
Brd 5, Clr 4, Drd 5, Healing 5

Components:
V, S

Casting Time:
1 standard action

Range:
Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)

Target:
One creature/level, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart

Duration:
Instantaneous

Saving Throw:
Will half (harmless) or Will half; see text

Spell Resistance:
Yes (harmless) or Yes; see text


You channel positive energy to cure 1d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +25) in each selected creature.

Like other cure spells, mass cure light wounds deals damage to undead in its area rather than curing them. Each affected undead may attempt a Will save for half damage.


Cure Moderate Wounds, Mass

Necromancy (Healing)

Level:
Brd 6, Clr 5, Drd 6

This spell functions like mass cure light wounds, except that it cures 2d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +30).


Cure Serious Wounds, Mass

Necromancy (Healing)

Level:
Clr 6, Drd 7

This spell functions like mass cure light wounds, except that it cures 3d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +35).

Cure Critical Wounds, Mass

Necromancy (Healing)

Level:
Clr 7, Drd 8, Healing 8

This spell functions like mass cure light wounds, except that it cures 4d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +40).



anyways, what do you think, while it is still not as potenat as say teh wizard casing grease and preventing a lot fo damage, the choices sure do look better for useing a heal during combat instead of aftarwards.

[SlashRunner]

Don't have time to PEACH right now, but one thing I'd work on at a quick glance is spelling, the large number of mistakes were distracting to me. However, I always welcome improvements to healing, and at a quick glance nothing seems unreasonable, so keep it up!

EDIT: I realized just how much space that quote took up, removed it.

[Seerow]

Cure Light:
Normal: 1d8+(1-5) (avg 5.5-9.5)
New: 1d8 (avg 4.5)

Change: -1 to -5


Cure Moderate:
Normal: 2d8+(3-10 )(avg 12-19)
New: 3d8 (avg 13.5)

Change: +1.5 to -5.5


Cure Serious:
Normal: 3d8+(5-15) (avg 18.5-28.5)
New: 5d8 (avg 22.5)

Change: +4 to -6

Cure Critical:
Normal: 4d8+(7-20) (avg 26-39)
New: 7d8 (avg 31.5)

Change: +5.5 to -7.5

Cure Grevious:
Normal: Doesn't exist to my knowledge, but following pattern would be 5d8+(9-25) (avg 31.5-47.5)
New: 9d8 (avg 40.5)

Change: +7 to -9



All of the mass versions are identical to normal since you didn't bump up their dice. Every other spell here is slightly better at low level than normal (except CLW), and worse at high level. Either way the difference is hardly enough to bring healing up to a point where it's worth using in combat.

I guess maybe now they work better with metamagics?

[Kenneth]

there, i added in some more oomph to the cure X wounds and i did change the mass versions around dropping them all a spell level lower. I felt that as an AOE heal it should not be as powerfuf as a single target heal on 1 target.. but heal over all MORE than a sinlge target should. since at 7th levle you are casting cure ciritical for 7d8+9

Spoiler

Show

now

with an avg of 40.5
or you culd be casitn mass cure light for 1d8+7 avg of 11.5 per pseron heals and since stard D&D is a 4 man party that 46 , though if your like me you prefer to play with 5 or 6 people.

[Seerow]

I'm curious, why are you going out of your way to use caster level scaling? Is there any particular reason?

[Kenneth]

I'm curious, why are you going out of your way to use caster level scaling? Is there any particular reason?

i am confused as to what you mean by that precisely

[Seerow]

Most spells scale with the caster's caster level. The normal cure spells cure xd8+1/caster level (with some cap). Wizard blasty spells deal xd6 per caster level (with some cap).

Here you're making the spells stuff like 3d8+1, rather than 3d8+1/level (max+10), or 1d8/level (max 10d8).


Is there any particular reason for that decision?

[Grod_The_Giant]

The big problem with combat healing, as I understand it, is not that the spells aren't powerful enough, but that barring emergencies, it's a waste of an action. As a general rule, it's much, much more efficient to keep attacking your foes and kill the monster that much faster.

That being said, adding more value to the healing helps-- for it to be useful, you have to heal significantly more damage than the monsters are doing. I really recommend bringing back spells that scale with caster level. It might also be worth considering more spells in the vein of heal, which have flat rather than variable values. There is nothing like the let-down of casting, say, your last cure light wounds spell and rolling a one. (This is less of an issue with damage-dealing spells because they tend to involve lots of dice, so the probability curve flattens out.)

[Kenneth]

well to me, healing and by relation casuing wounds is a bit of a different sort of magic your unleaching some pure life or pure death tino somebody, and it has its own intensity. that i think is completely seperate from your caster level.

what a higher caster level does for me at least how I imagine it is you are able to in teh time given channel more of the life/death energy itno a being. so instead of it being 1d8.. its now 3d8 worth fo healing. But if you all do agree that slapping on a caster level bonus would work, then I can do that easily.

[Yitzi]

General thought on healing fixes: In order to make healing in combat worthwhile, there are essentially 3 conditions that have to be met:

1. The quantity being healed is a significant limiting factor in the party's survival. E.g. if the enemies are mostly throwing around save-or-die spells, healing hit point damage (even if the minions do do hit point damage) isn't too significant. Similarly if the enemies are throwing save-or-cure-or-lose debuffs; in such case "healing" the debuffs is worthwhile, healing hit points probably isn't.
2. You can heal the quantity in question faster than the enemy can damage it (weighted for percentage of party actions expended for healing and damaging). E.g. if you're spending your action to heal 5 points, and the enemy is spending its action to do 50 points of damage, you're counting as only 1/10th of the party; in a 4-person party, this is a problem.
3. You are not highly limited in healing capability. This is essentially a special case of the first condition; if you can only heal twice per fight, then you can't keep healing while the enemy tries to damage, as you'll run out before they do.

Things get more complicated, though, as if you fulfill those 3 conditions then fights get too easy, as the healer can heal faster than the enemies can damage, and it's pretty much a guaranteed win. Essentially, strongly effective healing turns the battle from a race (who can push their enemy to "dead" first) to a game of tug-of-war. The problem with it being a game of tug-of-war is that then if one healer is strongly effective, adding another healer will make it into an easy win.

Some possible solutions are:
1. Make healing somewhat less effective (but still effective). If your parties are 4 people, then a healer should be able to sustainably heal (and cure; by "heal" I mean healing anything the enemy can do to your party, whether hit point damage or status effects) at roughly 1/4 the rate the enemy can damage. That way, a healer cuts enemy effectiveness by 1/4, but by not helping in offense your party loses the same percentage.
2. Make healing more effective than an unbuffed enemy, but less effective than a buffed enemy, and use enemies that can self-buff. This effectively turns a fight into a race to kill the enemy before they can buff enough to overwhelm your healer.
3. Make healing more effective than damage on one target, but less effective on multiple targets, and have enemies that can do single-target or (weaker per target) multitarget attacks. Then the healer is good against focus fire (which would otherwise take out your party members), but will be overwhelmed if the enemy goes for multitarget attacks (of course, such attacks are weaker and therefore allow your party time to take out the threat.)

[Grod_The_Giant]

well to me, healing and by relation casuing wounds is a bit of a different sort of magic your unleaching some pure life or pure death tino somebody, and it has its own intensity. that i think is completely seperate from your caster level.

what a higher caster level does for me at least how I imagine it is you are able to in teh time given channel more of the life/death energy itno a being. so instead of it being 1d8.. its now 3d8 worth fo healing. But if you all do agree that slapping on a caster level bonus would work, then I can do that easily.

Everything in magic is dependent on caster level. I can't think of a single spell that doesn't scale somehow-- damage, duration, range, and so on. When we say scaling with caster level, we don't mean higher level spells have a higher base value-- we mean +x/level attached to all spells. If you want healing to be different, you could base the scaling off the heal skill, I suppose.