Tips for a Healing Bard?

[Greysect]

A friend of mine is playing as a level 3 Changeling Bard in an upcoming game. The DM bans most divine classes and she wants to take the role of healer. Assuming she is unable to multiclass, what feats do you suggest to improve her healing ability?

[Vladislav]

A Wand of Cure Light Wounds.

[HunterOfJello]

A Player's Guide to Healing (and why you will be Just Fine without a Cleric to heal) (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871786/A_Players_Guide_to_Healing_%28And,_why_you_will_be _Just_Fine_without_a_Cleric_to_heal%29)

For the bard:
Wands of Cure Light Wounds
Blessed Bandages
Touch of Healing (Reserve Feat, Complete Champion pg 62) - heals up to half health

and if they have even points in UMD then they need to grab tons of:
Wand of Lessor Vigor
Wand of Resurgence

[Greysect]

A Wand of Cure Light Wounds. Oh...I hit my forehead in embarrassment. Thank you very much, I'm going to go now.

[Tvtyrant]

Wands of Cure Light Wounds and scrolls of the higher stuff for emergencies. Healing straight from spell slots is an emergency system; your much better off healing off of items if you can.

That being said healing isn't worthless and emergencies do come up. The real question is what this Bards wisdom is; if it is 16 then she can take the Arcane Disciple feat from Complete Divine and gain the Healing Domain, which includes Heal, which I believe is not on the Bard spell list. It gets rid of almost all status ailments and cures 10 points of hp per caster level, maxing at 150 hp at level 15. This is incredible in dealing with emergency healing.

Edit: I have been swordsaged!

[Urpriest]

However, an important point needs to be made here: if the DM bans divine classes, find out why. It might be because the DM doesn't want the party to have access to magical healing.

[faceroll]

Check out the ACFs in Complete Champion. There's a really good healing one for bards.

[Greysect]

The DM banned Divine Classes so that alignment is less prevalent and so the party doesn't have access to heavy-duty healing spells. I thought the Bard having some feats to improve healing would still not be considered "heavy-duty" by my DM.

[gorfnab]

Take a look into the prestige class Combat Medic from Heroes of Battle. A bard could easily get into the class if you can find a way to get Heal as a class skill.

[JeminiZero]

Spend your level 1 feat on Precocious Apprentice: Cure Moderate Wounds. You can then use that spell to power Touch of Healing at level 1 (if taking flaws or human bonus feat) or 3. Otherwise Bards would normally have to wait until level 6, to pick up Touch of Healing.

[TurtleKing]

Since you are looking for feats that can help with healing check out Augment Healing from Complete Divine. Get four ranks in heal and you can add 2 hit points per spell level to the amount healed. So a Cure Light Wounds at level two when you can likely get it results in 1d8+2 for caster level+2 for spell level. This means you could heal between 5 hit points and 12 hit points with a Cure Light at level two. A Cure Critical Wounds could heal between 22 hit points and 50 hit points at level ten.

The Vigor spell line benefits from this all the more as the +2 applies to each round. A Vigor Lesser without Augment Healing can heal 15 hit points at level five. Lesser Vigor with Augment Healing could heal 45 hit points since Lesser Vigor is a level one spell. A Vigorous Circle w/o the feat would heal 120 hit points, and w/ the feat would heal 600 hit points! Vigorous Circle also is affect an area so up to ten people can be affected by the spell. The only problem with the Vigor spell line is it is Cleric and Druid spells. So good luck on getting access to the spell line.

[HunterOfJello]

In general, healing in combat is a bad idea unless someone has access to the Heal spell or better. Your time spent healing could be used to make the fight end faster. The times when healing is useful are usually just to keep a character alive until the fight is over. This can be accomplished best and cheapest with Wands of Cure Light, Blessed Bandages and Healing Belts.

Bards are already starved for feats and are better off grabbing feats like Song of the Heart to help their allies than to waste them on out-of-combat healing.

[Vladislav]

Spend your level 1 feat on Precocious Apprentice: Cure Moderate Wounds. You can then use that spell to power Touch of Healing at level 1


Since you are looking for feats that can help with healing check out Augment Healing from Complete Divine.

People, please stop guiding the OP astray. He should not be blowing his hard-earned feats on healing, unless for some reason he wants to gimp his character. A 750 gp item will answer most of the party's healing needs, and the bard can spend his feats on what bards need to do, ie. being blindingly awesome, generating insane combat bonuses, and casting mindwarping enchantments with devilishly difficult save DCs.


In general, healing in combat is a bad idea unless someone has access to the Heal spell or better. Your time spent healing could be used to make the fight end faster. The times when healing is useful are usually just to keep a character alive until the fight is over. This can be accomplished best and cheapest with Wands of Cure Light, Blessed Bandages and Healing Belts.

Bards are already starved for feats and are better off grabbing feats like Song of the Heart to help their allies than to waste them on out-of-combat healing.
Finally someone who gets it.

[Gabe the Bard]

Since bards have the line of cure spells, they make decent secondary healers without any additional feats. But there are much better spells to put on your list than cure spells, which you can just get on scrolls and wands. A bard doesn't get as many spells per day as a cleric, wizard, or sorcerer. So he probably wouldn't use his limited spells per day to cure his allies as much as he would use a wand or scrolls. Arcane cure scrolls cost a little more than their divine scroll counterparts, but that might be in keeping with your DM's campaign if he wants to limit divine spell casting.

[holywhippet]

In general, healing in combat is a bad idea unless someone has access to the Heal spell or better. Your time spent healing could be used to make the fight end faster.

Sometimes yes, but if a fighter type has just hit negative HP a healing spell to get them back into the fray (assuming you DM doesn't rule them as being unconcious) might be just the thing you need.