Boosting Rest-Based Healing: A Microguide [3.5]

[Zaq]

So, it's relatively easy to forget that you recover HP overnight, since the amount healed is pretty paltry by default. I've noticed, though, that's it's relatively simple to get effects that can increase the rate at which you heal overnight. Here's what I can think of right now:

-Summon Elysian Thrush (Spell, Bard 2 / Cleric 2, SpC): Summons a bird that doubles natural healing
-Healing Hymn (ACF, Bard 1, CC): 8 hours of rest counts as 24 hours of bed rest
-Healthful Rest (Spell, Bard 1 / Cleric 1 / Druid 1, SpC): Doubles natural healing
-Restful Candle (Nonmagical item, AEG): Doubles natural healing rate, I think
-Bitterleaf Oil (Nonmagical item, RotD): Increases HP healed overnight by 1/level (max +5)
-Magic Bedroll (Magic item, MIC): Increases HP healed by 8 hours of sleep by 1/level (no cap)
-Dukar Hand Coral (Magic item, CoV): Increases HP recovered by resting by 1/level (no cap)
-Long-Term Care (Heal skill, PHB): Doubles natural healing rate

And then we have a couple feats that only work on the character taking them (as opposed to the things mentioned above, which can help multiple people, aside from the magic items):

-Faster Healing (Feat, CW): Makes you heal faster (see text)
-Mind Over Body (Feat, XPH): Doesn't affect HP restored, but increases ability damage / ability burn healed per day

Most of these should stack, and many of them are available at a very low level. Stack enough of them together (particularly if you can find a way to not need to sleep, thereby allowing you to administer long-term care to the whole party overnight) and you can actually heal a good bit of damage overnight. Sure, the usefulness drops off a bit as you increase in level (though you shouldn't underestimate the usefulness of accelerating the rate at which ability damage heals, since that becomes ever more common as your foes get tougher), but it's still an underused resource that a lot of people simply ignore.

Did I miss any other ways of boosting rest-based healing? Are there any tricky strategies I missed? Anything cool to add?

[dgnslyr]

Magic Bedroll? Adds your HD to HP healed every night, which basically doubles the base healing rate.

[Zaq]

Cool, added it. Anything else?

[Andion Isurand]

Dukar Hand Coral (Magic Item, Champions of Valor 63)

Implanted coral increases the host’s healing rate; add
his Hit Dice to the number of hit points per day he recovers
from resting (thus a character resting heals damage equal to his
Hit Dice × 2 per day, and a person resting under long-term care
heals damage equal his Hit Dice × 3 per day).


Healthful Rest (Spell, Bard 1, Cleric 1, Druid 1, SpC 111)

Doubles natural healing rate for 24 hours. (HP and ability damage)

[Runestar]

Group trance (a teamwork benefit in PHB2) lets non-elves gain the benefit of 8 hours of sleep with just 4 hours of meditation. I wonder if this stacks with all the other aforementioned abilities?

[Zaq]

OK, I added the Dukar Hand Coral and the Healthful Rest spell. I swear I was thinking of Healthful Rest when I started this thread, then I just kind of derped and forgot all about it.

Group Trance is interesting. I'm not sure how it interacts with healing via rest. Can an elf trance twice in a period of 8 hours and gain twice as much benefit? Hmm.

Anyway, check this out. Consider a level 4 glimmerskin halfling bard with max ranks in Heal and the Obtain Familiar feat. They can use Healing Hymn (bard ACF), Healthful Rest (bard 1), and Summon Elysian Thrush (bard 2), pull out a Restful Candle, and have their familiar use their ranks in Heal to provide long-term care for the party overnight (the bard needs to sleep to recover spells, but the familiar has no such restriction). That's five doublings. Even with D&D math, that's still 6 HP per level healed, with 6 ability points per score recovered. That's not bad at level 4. Hell, that's high enough that you'd actually notice it. Pretty cool.

[Necroticplague]

I thought the "two doubles equals a triple" only applied to crit increases (both range and multiplier). So if we use normal math, it's 2^5=32 times normal heal rate. Congradulations, we have now made the 15 minute workday issue even worse by allowing you to heal up all of your ability damage overnight, thus allowing you to use things that you otherwise wouldn't (like hellfire warlock), in addition to letting the fighters be ready when they get up.