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When I was in the process of scouring the D&D 3.5 landscape to build my Goliath Cleric, and reading the splat book, reading the online handbooks, listening to pod casts, reading the forums, and so on and on, one thing seems to be the same through out all of it.
YOU ARE NOT A HEALER
Now, don't get me wrong, I get the thinking behind it, clerics are some of the most versatile classes in D&D history so limiting them to just being a healer is cutting off a fairly good portion of your abilities.
Hell, I'm not even disagreeing with the mindset.
I just don't understand why with all the various ways to build characters and with D&D built around the idea that YOU are roleplaying an entity YOU created that there is just no support for the idea of a healer.
I was actually really taken back when I read one of the handbooks, I think it may have been on the old brilliantgameologists posts, in regards to some healer ability or whatever saying if you do this, you are doing it wrong.
Sorry, I call BS, there is no WRONG way to play this game.
Is it so wrong to want to heal? Is it not viable? Aside from the optimization and well obvious reasons for not limiting yourself, why is it treated like such a bastard child?
Will it just not work to spam heals all day long if that is what you WANT to do?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gotterdammerung
I weep for all the GM's and players who come here for help and instead get taught how to be prejudice towards classes. D&D is supposed to be a game that plunges you into a world of imagination and instead people around the world are standing around a table arguing over "tiers".
There's nothing wrong with playing how you want to play.
Ultimately I feel it boils down to this:
Are you having fun? Is the group having fun? If the answer to both questions is "Yes"; then nothing else needs be said. There's no 'wrong' way to play D&D.
Is it so wrong to want to heal? Is it not viable? Aside from the optimization and well obvious reasons for not limiting yourself, why is it treated like such a bastard child?
Will it just not work to spam heals all day long if that is what you WANT to do?
Of course you can play a healer, and it can be quite viable. What people are usually taking about is that healing is often suboptimal - but that may not be a big concern for you if you aren't going for optimization.
Why is is suboptimal? Because most of the "Cure X" spells heal less than what a character typically takes in damage during a combat round. Therefore, it may be argued that you would be better off trying to either damage the enemy or contribute in some other way, since standard healing cannot generally keep up with damage anyway.
There are exceptions to this, such as the Heal spell which dramatically increases the viability of in-combat healing. But you don't get that until pretty late in the game.
Essentially, the majority of guides (both here and elsewhere) assume a fairly high optimization level where a healing cleric just isn't all that viable. At higher op levels, there's no guarantee that there will be damage to heal in the first place (with so many save-or-lose spells thrown about), and any that is taken will be in such large chunks that a cleric won't be able to do much good in-combat.
Will it just not work to spam heals all day long if that is what you WANT to do?
If it's the basic, unmodified, Cure X Wounds series of spells? No. Monster damage significantly outpaces the amount these spells can restore- it's a losing race. You wind up spending extra spell slots keeping your Fighter standing and then even more after the fight to top him off for the next one, when a single well-chosen non-Cure spell (say, Blindness or Bestow Curse or even buffing him with better AC) could have prevented him from ever suffering most of the damage in the first place.
If you want to *build* to be a healer, you can do that- there's a variety of effects that improve healing spells, and when you combine them together you do get pretty effective healing. But the *default package* of a Cleric isn't actually much good at healing, and it's not the Cleric's fault; the basic math of damage in vs. damage restored is weighted against you.
At the same time what wasn't touched on is you are the only healer in the group, and you only have one action. There might be multiple opponents and all their actions will outweigh your one-therefore you cannot heal the damage that they dish out until you reach level 6 spells which can keep up with damage dealt.
Again action economy is a big issue-If you are playing a cleric or druid to their full tier 1 ability then they will have more to contribute to the combat than just heal-they can then worry about healing after combat is finished.
That is to say some healing hasn't lost it's place-look at the pathfinder oradin build posted a while ago -that is a healer build which can do more than just heal during their turn, making it more effective.
Besides the already well covered point of "Healing isnt good because the investment of spellslots is too severe"
The only good healing classes in the game are Serenity+Divine Spirit Paladin and Crusader. This is because they both get healing of similar effectiveness to the heal spell, and have ways to heal in combat without spending valuable actions when compared to a cleric.
Optimization guides want you to squeeze every drop of power out of a character. This is why that, even though Wizards are vastly more powerful than everyone at everything, being an Evoker will get you laughed at. You're not ridiculously powerful enough.
But yeah, if you want to be a healer, you could play a Healer. You know, the class? Which competently does exactly what it says on the tin?
It is too bad really. It could have been a very wide area they could have explored.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gotterdammerung
I weep for all the GM's and players who come here for help and instead get taught how to be prejudice towards classes. D&D is supposed to be a game that plunges you into a world of imagination and instead people around the world are standing around a table arguing over "tiers".
Heal (the spell, for in combat)
Mass Heal (at high level)
Lesser Vigor pretty much at-will (for out of combat)
aaaaaaaaaaannnnnd that's about it... Everything else having to do with hit points is pretty lousy and not worth their spell slots. In that sense, you should either go Archivist to get access to Heal a spell level early, or take the Domain Substitution with the Healing Domain (Healing Domain?!?!?! Blasphemy!!!) so that you can spontaneously cast Heal and Mass Heal.
A few other spells that can come in handy would be:
If you really want to heal, then at least go the route of being a healer+buffer or healer+debuffer or healer+diviner. Just don't spend all of your time sitting on a large prepared spell list full of Remove and Restore spells that you aren't even likely to use all day. Get yourself in the position to cast the Heal spell spontaneously as a Domain Subsitution Cleric or as an Archivist/Dweomerkeeper or something. Then use your spells to debuff the crap out of enemies or buff the crap out of your friends or divine the future so that your friends don't get into extra ****ty situations in the first place.
Healers are hated the most because they sit on an amazing bag of tricks that they may refuse to use at all just because they only feel like curing their dying ally who wouldn't be dying at all if they divined the situation beforehand, buffed him up better, or gave the enemy a Curse at the beginning when they had the chance.
Is it bad to want to heal? No. Is it bad to want a game where magic items don't exist? No. Is it bad to want to incorporate economics into an urban campaign? No.
But 3.5e does all these things very, very poorly - so while you may want to, without heavily houseruling or a very specific style of DM'ing, it may be bad to actually incorporate them into the game.
Do note that healing its much, much better in an unoptimized game. There's a much smaller gap between Cure X wounds and damage output when both players and enemies are primarily doing 2d6 + Strength mod per round, compared to 2d6 + Strength mod boosted with items + pounce + power attack.
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Healing Starts out as a viable tactic. At lv 1, things are lucky to deal 1d8+1 per round, and you keep up just fine. Enemies have problems hitting Player AC as it is, with the average enemy boasting +2 to hit and the average player's AC being 16. So supposing you're fighting 10 enemies, at CR 1/4th or so, with your party of 4. you're looking at average 2 hits for 1d4-1 at most. So a cleric can keep up with that, no problem.
Then you hit lv 3. Now you can heal for 2d8+3 damage at max, but level 3 encounters start being able to deal significantly more damage. Same situation as before, but now it's 8 CR 1 Orcs. Your AC scaling is less at this point- average AC has only actually increased one point. Sure the Fighter might be rocking a 22, but the Wizard is still sitting there with a 12. The Rogue probably has an 18. You're still sitting on a 16 more than likely, maybe an 18. The orcs have what, +5 to hit? And when they DO hit, now it's 1d8+4. So now even though the same number hit (2 on average) you're looking at 17 damage. You heal 2d8+3, average of 12. You aren't doing terrible, and it's still useful, but you're beginning to fight a losing battle.
Next level of healing is at 5. You heal 3d8+5. Things deal more than that individually. If you were to be fighting a CR5 solo enemy, you could potentially keep up. A group of CR 2's lead by a 3 or 4, though, and you rapidly lose ground. Also, things now are going to start dealing ability damage/drain, or inflicting status effects, meaning you have to choose between fixing conditions or hit points. Between levels 5-8 are where Healing as a strategy REALLY earns it's sub-optimal designation. You get Restoration at 7, but again, that's healing HP OR ability damage, you don't get to channel for it, and you might need to address more than one party member.
Then you get Heal. Heal makes everything better. Heal can carry you all the way to lv 15 before it starts losing ground.
The Cure X Mass, however, suck. Bad. Fireballs outdamage the healing done by Cure Critical Wounds Mass. For the same slot level, it could be Maximized, Empowered, and have Fell Drain tacked on.
So really, healing as a strategy is good for the early game, poor for the mid game, OK for the late game, and poor for the end game.
Plus, in all circumstances, it is binary. Either people require healing or they do not. You could have an encounter where nobody takes damage because Wizard. That's great, but now you as a player aren't contribuiting, and that's causing the Wizard to lose more of his prepped spells. Next encounter, it could be a real slog if all you do is heal and he can't shut down the fight.
Personally, I have the strategy that damage is a tax. If you make a poor decision? Damage. Did not prepare for an eventuality? Damage. If your tactics were not applicable? Damage.
A healer is someone who goes out donating to people who have to pay that tax, which encourages poor decision making. By playing a healer, you may be enabling poor play, which will make things harder the longer the game goes on.
It's backlash against two or three decades of "YOU MUST HAVE A HEALER OR YOU WILL DIE".
Dedicated healers are detrimental to parties. It's like getting a half character, or an NPC that demands a full share of xp and treasure. Healers are a liability because they are action inefficient. Action efficiency is what gives the party edge, and throwing away a quarter of it kind of sucks if you're attached to your character. I try to discourage people from playing monks for the same reasons. It's a team game, and if you aren't contributing, I am going to get frustrated.
So yeah, healing is kind of detrimental to the party, except at very low levels where mean damage, hp, and heals are about equal, with high variance.
There is nothing wrong with playing a "healbot". It is a viable tactic. There is more to it than just healing and buffing others. It is fine to cast the occasional attack spell or buff yourself and go hog wild into the fray with your morningstar.
Casting a Cure Wounds spell during combat is not always a smart thing to do but neither is it always a dumb thing. Whether what you would heal is more than the damage the opponent does is irrelevant. What is relevant is the amount you heal plus the current hit points of the party member you are healing is more than the damage the opponent does. Healing another party member is to keep that party member active in combat for at least one more round. That party member can then do something. It is not your obligation to always be the one to get the killing blow or some other I Win The Combat action. Clerics are capable of that; they just aren't required to.
Bad guys make their saving throw sometimes. Your attack spells are never, ever guaranteed to work every time all the time. Buffing yourself to go into the fight works well enough. Buffing another party member sometimes is the better choice. Cast Greater Magic Weapon on the ranger's arrows. He will love you forever. Cast Bull Strength on the fighter and watch him smile with glee as he piles on the Power Attack. Cast Shield of Faith on the barbarian so he can rage all he wants and effectively not lose AC. The paladin will not shy away from Eagle's Splendor, especially when fighting enemy spellcasters or in Pathfinder with improved Smite Evil. That's part of "healing" as well, to be a healbot.
As for the actual healing itself, it's not about getting a party member to full hit points. That's an almost unachievable happenstance until you can cast Heal. It's all about keeping him conscious and enabling him to do stuff. Let the wizard go all Voldemort against the bad guys. You keep his hit points well above 0, you're equally contributing. Worse comes to worse, keep him conscious so he can Teleport the party to safety.
The point of the optimization guides is that only healing is a waste of the class. I think the sour attitude behind the guides comes from an old school mindset where the cleric was the heal-bot. Even if the player wanted to cast another spell, Fighty McFighter at half health would cajole the Cleric into healing him. The guide gives the Cleric's player solid evidence that the Cleric effectively negates more damage to the Fighter by casting better spells, meaning he isn't locked into a traditionally "boring" role. Now, if you like healing, more power to you. Just note that healing is just one of many things a cleric can do, and general cleric guides focus on the most powerful specialties. I also would like more niche guides, but considering 3.5 is out of print I'll appreciate what I have.
All that said, some optimized clerics indeed are significant healers; they just don't use cure spells to do it. Soul of Light (Dragon Magic), combined with DMM Persisted Mass Lesser Vigor gives Fast Healing 7 to everyone, all day. Vigorous Circle bumps that to Fast Healing 15. Two spells and one overpowered feat combination and presto, you're the party healer and you can do whatever you want in combat.
.Sorry to say on these boards there is a general consensus that no matter your build, you are doing it wrong. Everything from race, to class, to skills, to feats, and even spells. Why should a rogue put ranks in open lock when he can UMD a wand of knock. Why bother with search/disable device when a reserve feat can give infinite summons to trigger traps. Why did the wizard take that reserve feat the rogue should handle it. You want to play mele well you better be either a)tripper...and if you do prepare to be screwed. B) grappler...prepair to fail past level 7 because EVERYTHING has FoM. C) Ubercharger...be screwed by terrain and if you take the strongest PRC for the concept your party will quit because you are a waiting TPK to happen. There are many more examples that need not mentioning.
As for healing: if you want to dedicate to it, go for it. Though, i will agree with the others, bring some other fun to the table. Once you have augment healing, maximize spell, magic of the land, mastery of day and night, and maybe that divine feat that gives FH3 for cha mod+1 rounds in a 60ft burst you don't have many healing feats left and as a human with 2 flaws you have them all by lvl6. You can bring some buffs and BFC to the party.
Also that setup is nice. +4hp/spell level (+2hp/spell level if it isn't a healing spell), all heals are maximized for free.
If you add combat medic and healing hand of Mishakal it only gets better. +cha mod to heals, auto quicken and empower for free, temp hp, 1 round sanctuary, and some other minor bonuses to your heals. So you can do it well and seriously spread the feel of "My friends will never die" if you want to.
Long reply, but the misunderstanding here seems fundamental enough to need it, so:
It is completely OK to want to play something which is (for the most part at least) mechanically ineffective, as long as you're not playing your character so ineffectively that s/he becomes a serious drain and liability to your party. Just as it is completely OK to play something which is extremely mechanically effective, as long as you are not making your character so strong that s/he outshines everyone else all the time*. Most optimisers will tell you that.
But optimisation guides do not exist to validate your personal choices and preferences. They exist mainly to give readers an idea about the (mostly mechanical) strengths and weaknesses of a class, and the effectiveness of the various tactics said class can employ. No one will hunt you down and burn your character sheet if you don't use the advice.
Healing in combat is (bar some very specific circumstances) not a very effective tactic, because the damage the enemy deals in a round is usually greater than the amount of hp you are able to heal in a round, meaning that you will end up saving more resources by focussing on taking the enemy out of the fight quickly, or buff your comrades to enable them to do it. Again, that does not mean you cannot focus on healing, just that it is not (as a rule) very effective, and therefore, optimisation guides will advice against it. And because the cleric is so often presented as a primary healer, optimisation guides tend to advice against it even more strongly, to get the point across that it is not the best way for a cleric to contribute. If it was more common for people to believe a cleric's biggest strength was its skill points, most guides would probably highlight that YOU ARE NOT A SKILL MONKEY instead.
Most handbooks and online advice is not about roleplaying and personal preferences, not because those are not important, but because they are a lot more personal and not something most people need advice for, especially not from strangers on the internet. Highlighting what you think are the most mechanically effective feats for a character to take is usually pretty uncontroversial, even for people who disagree, but presenting one way of playing a character as an inherently superior roleplaying choice is just offensive. Which is why most people prefer to discuss mechanics over roleplaying on many forums, and optimisation guides are a lot more common than roleplaying guides.
And you know what? The posters in question are not hurting anyone, including you, by doing so. And they (or actually, we) do not deserve the constant jabs from people like you about how “there is no wrong way to play the game”, as if we ever claimed so**. People who write guides, even tongue-in-cheek guides slamming mechanically inferior choices, are just delivering information. What you do with it is up to you, and I can almost guarantee you that if you walked up to one of these writers with the standard smug I'm-a-ROLEPLAYER-not-a-ROLLPLAYER look on your face and started lecturing them about how much FUN you had playing your healer cleric, they would just shrug and go “Good for you, but why do you feel the need to tell me this? ”.
Because honestly, most people DO NOT CARE if you are making a mechanically inferior choice because it makes you happy. No one is trying to stop you from doing it. But if you ask about advice for your build and your tactics (i.e. mainly mechanical advice), enter a thread about game mechanics and optimisation, or visit an optimisation handbook, you will mostly get advice on what people find to be the most mechanically powerful choices (within limits), not what is most FUN, because FUN is highly subjective.
So go ahead and have your fun, no one is stopping you. But do not call it BS that cleric guides to not include “And you should totally be healing, because killem2 finds it personally rewarding”. Most of these guides/posts are not about what is personally rewarding because most writers think highly enough of the readers to realise that they are probably better at figuring out what is personally rewarding for them than strangers on the internet are.
If you cannot figure out why people are calling healing an inferior tactic, feel free to ask why (in an inoffensive way that does not insinuate that people who give optimisation advice are all trying to claim that it is the only right way to play the game). If you have discovered an effective way of making healing a powerful tactic, by all means share it. And if you want a conversation specifically about what people personally find fun, go right ahead and start one. But asking people to account for the existence of a multitude of different personal preferences when making optimisation guides and giving optimisation advice defeats the whole purpose of this type of advice to begin with.
* the exception being if you consult the DM and the other players first and get their consent. In that case, you can play your character as weak/strong as you want.
** there actually is a wrong way to play, but it has less to do with mechanical choices, and more to do with being a jerk to people in your gaming group.
Healing is funny in that it's a role that clerics can fill, just like caster, melee fighter, buffer, ranged fighter, etc... Most cleric roles require careful feat/race selection and prestige class progression, without which they function at a highly reduced level of effectiveness, let's say 50% or so. A cleric who does not focus on healing, on the other hand, will probably be about 85% as effective at it as one who does. Healing has a relatively low optimization cap, compared to the more exotic roles which a cleric can fill (or almost any healing-capable class, for that matter).
Back when I played WoW, I took pride in playing a healer. MMO healers have more options, and healing is something of a learned art, knowing which healing "nuke" or heal-over-time spell to use. 3.5 healing is just a matter of using the biggest heal you have. And it's probably just as thankless a job as it was in the MMO's I played.
If you want to play a whip-using monk, a trapfinding druid, or a fighter who only kills opponents with the weapons he personally disarms them of, the rules exist to make such a thing possible. It just won't be very effective, and you won't find much in the way of support out there unless you specifically bring it up, and even then, prepare to be informed on how ludicrous your idea is before being given actual tips.
I kinda want to play a whip-using monk now.
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The only tool a Healer has in 3.5 is the sledgehammer. They have no alternates, options, or other things that can actually improve their functional healing. You dont have heal over time abilities or abilities that prevent loss from overhealing. there is also the problem that healing in 3.5 is rather slow and time inneficient, as compared to other games where it can be done much better.
Then there is the fact that Paladins have an ACF that has free-action healing, and Crusaders have a discipline that tacks healing onto alot of their hits.
Healers have several ways to drop both standard and swift action HoTs. They can also fire off single target, multi target, and AoE emanations to heal and HoT. There are even some spells that will give you a pool of temporary HP from their overflow. The only issue they run into is scaling up the healing. Which is why you use certain PRCs and feat combos to do it.
Hell even at level 6 using a first level slot I can make a healer pop off a CLW for 8+5+4+cha mod. So 17HP before my charisma modifier at lvl 6 out of a 1st level slot. I can easily make that 20+HP for 1 spell slot and a single standard action...lesser vigor can suck it. I can also pop off a 60ft radius burst emanation for FH3 for atleast 4 rounds as a SWIFT action. Again...lesser vigor...why?
By ECL15 it is more than possible to have a build healing over 100 damage out of as low as a 3rd level slot that also tacks on several minor buffs. Or throw out a buff for the party and tack on some healing to top them off/keep them moving if they are low on health.
It is too bad really. It could have been a very wide area they could have explored.
It is possible to build a fairly efficient Cleric Healer. Between Radiant Servant of Pelor, Divine Metamagic, Imbued Healing and divine caster level boosts it's possible to gain sufficient healing ability to outpace damage you might take and to add some useful carry-over effects on it and to make the spells cost less actions (contingencies, quickens, extra actions).
If you expect HP damage to be a significant factor in the game and are willing to put work into it, you can be a healer. Just, the thing is, you need to put a lot of work into it for it to keep up with the damage you'll be taking (and you need stuff like Revivifies, Delay Deaths and such to keep people alive). And you need to be aware of the opportunity cost of being a healer as opposed to removing the things killing you.
Well, there's still a bit of a misunderstanding amongst some people that dictates that all people who can heal can or should do is heal, and this prompted a bit of a backlash to say the least.
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Originally Posted by Keld Denar
+3 Girlfriend is totally unoptimized. You are better off with a +1 Keen Witty girlfriend and then appling Greater Magic Make-up to increase her enhancement bonus.
Optimization guides want you to squeeze every drop of power out of a character. This is why that, even though Wizards are vastly more powerful than everyone at everything, being an Evoker will get you laughed at. You're not ridiculously powerful enough.
But yeah, if you want to be a healer, you could play a Healer. You know, the class? Which competently does exactly what it says on the tin?
Seconded. I love the healer class.
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Spoiler
DM: Okay so with your ridiculously high search score you find some Elven Chainmail.
Player: I attack.
DM: What? What are you attacking?
Player: The kobold wearing the chainmail.
DM: You have been sitting here this entire time, how do you not know what's going on?
Player: I heard someone say something about Kobolds...
DM: Well yea like an hour ago... okay, so you set on fire. 1dGrape damage.
But yeah, if you want to be a healer, you could play a Healer. You know, the class? Which competently does exactly what it says on the tin?
Well. It's actually worse at healing than the Cleric, so it only heals competently for certain definitions of "competently". It all depends.
I've run games where a player playing the Healer class over a strong class would likely cause a TPK fairly early. I've also run games where a reasonably built Healer could be a top contributor.
Healing is not always ineffective. I played a Crusader in a level 8 game. (He was a mishmash of fighty classes, but could use Crusader maneuvers of level 3 or higher.) Martial Spirit + Crusader's Strike + Revitalizing Strike saved the party. More than that, the party was at or near full health at the end of a long fight. And they walked in not fully prepared. How'd he do it? He kept hitting things.
Crusaders rock because you're doing what you normally do as a warrior- hit things and not die- but you heal your party while doing it. It's great!
Earlier that campaign, I played a Blue Cleric. (He died.) Determining who didn't get healed was too stressful for me, and being responsible for the party in such a direct way was way too much of a burden for me. My healing was nowhere near enough to keep up with enemy damage.
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Keeping it as short as I can...
It's not that there isn't support to healing. It's that compared to anything else you could do, healing is weak to the point you'll do a better job keeping people alive by killing threats before they hurt them.
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Originally Posted by Endarire
Healing is not always ineffective. I played a Crusader in a level 8 game. (He was a mishmash of fighty classes, but could use Crusader maneuvers of level 3 or higher.) Martial Spirit + Crusader's Strike + Revitalizing Strike saved the party. More than that, the party was at or near full health at the end of a long fight. And they walked in not fully prepared. How'd he do it? He kept hitting things.
Relevant part bolded. Your crusader was not a healer. He was a tank who happened to trickle in healing. Kicking ass is the important bit...if you had to do only healing with your standard action, it'd be just as bad.
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