Help with healing!

[Skaalar]

Yeah, I'm pretty much a bitter green newcomer to actual DnD gameplay and I'm gonna try out in a friend's game very soon. The issue is that they want me to play a healie character, and I have no problem with that except I have no idea how to make a really good one... (Good as in proficient, not good/evil :P) Any suggestions for a newb? Any help would be appreciated!

[sreservoir]

the key to healing is to do something more effective.

this will usually save more hp than healing will restore.

[Assassin89]

Play a cleric. A good or neutral aligned cleric is able to spontaneously cast cure spells, meaning that you can fill your list of daily spells to those meant to help kill things more quickly. Depending on which books are available to you, there are feats which can improve cure spells.

[Yuki Akuma]

Buy everyone Healing Belts. Get yourself a Wand of Lesser Vigor (or Cure Light Wounds, if you don't have access to Spell Compendium). Never cast a healing spell in combat unless it's to save someone from bleeding out. Focus on buffs and smacking enemies into paste.

[Treblain]

To give a longer answer:

The Cure X Wounds spells don't heal enough to be worth healing in combat. Plus, if you can spend your turn stopping your enemies instead of healing, you prevent them from dealing damage at all. Though the Heal spell does heal a good amount, it is still often better to kill enemies or aid your allies than healing.

Out of combat, there isn't anything stopping you from buying a Wand of Cure Light Wounds and spamming it until everyone's healed. A Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Bard, or anyone with Use Magic Device can use a wand as well as a Cleric.

That said, the Cleric is still a strong class, and good-aligned ones can spontaneously cast healing spells in a pinch. If you play a good cleric, NEVER PREPARE CURE SPELLS.

[Yuki Akuma]

Lesser Vigor is the same spell level as Cure Light Wounds, and, per charge, heals more. It's just slower, but outside of combat, who cares?

(One casting of Cure Light Wounds, from a wand, heals between 2 and 9 damage, average 5.5. One casting of Lesser Vigor, from a wand, heals 11, over a period of 11 rounds.)

[Skaalar]

Woot! Thanks peeps! I was about to go out and treat this like a WoW raid... Also, I was thinking on what kind of race to play, and I found these creatures called Uldra, +2 to wisdom, darkvision, and they can add ice to their own weapons. Or should I stick with some of the more normally used races?

[sreservoir]

they have level adjustment, so not the best idea.

[Urpriest]

they have level adjustment, so not the best idea.

To give further explanation, Level Adjustment +1 means you count as one level higher than you actually are, so if all your friends have two class levels you'll just have one.

[Niceman]

Going with a normal race is usually better. Especially if you're new to things... no need to fill up on extra things to keep track of. You might go just straight human. Will let you concentrate on learning your healing duties (and so less chance of making a clerical error :P (couldn't resist) ), but also humans get an extra feat and extra skill points which will let you craft him to suit his job a bit easier.

For example, with the advice of save the healing for out of combat and emergencies, what type of support should you be? You could concentrate your spells on enhancing the party... bull's strength, aid, bless, etc.... you could also be one of the ones in the forefront. We were fighter-shy in our campaign so my cleric was the main combatant... his spells were geared to immobilize or damage the enemy. In our current game our cleric is full-on anti-undead. With each of these there are skills and feats that you can pick that will help out these roles, like Extra Turning or Combat Reflexes or such. If your group is damage rich you might go for the healing enhancing feats, but there are going to be times where you have to fight and you can't heal if you're the one that's dead ;)

Also, there will be times when you are going to run out of spells and there's still healing to do. Don't forget the healing skills. Sometimes a bandage and diagnosis an illness can go just as far as a cure spell. Playing a human here makes that even easier with the bonus skill points they get.

[Chilingsworth]

If you want an exotic race, go with lesser assiamr. +2 wisdom, +2 charisma. They're in player's guide to faerun.
As for classes, definately go with cleric. If you really want to focus on healing, go for the Combat Medic prestidge class (From Heroes of Battle.) It's a five level prestidge class that gives full casting, some miscellaneous goodies, and the ability to sontaneously convert your 6+ level spells into heal spells.

I also recomend you consider the feats touch of healing (basically, lets you heal everyone up to half hp without spending a single spell) and mitigate suffering (lets you relieve the effects of ability damage effectively indefinately without spending a single spell,) both in complete champion.

Also, Welcome to the Game!

[marcielle]

WILKOMEN!
Lesser Aasimar are awesome for clerics not just because of stats, but also because they are literally descended from minor angels and the like.
Also good for clerics are humans. They are a default race that are good for almost ANYTHING except certain specialized builds. That extra feat really helps and the skill points really add up unless you are only playing for a few levels.
Of the base races, only human are actually good for clerics. Everythingelse hurts. Dwarves have Cha penalty. Elves have Con penalty(the worst kind). And halfbreeds just suck in general. Halflings dont really contribute anything towards being a good cleric but at least dont hurt.

[Big Fau]

I was going to link you to the Band Aids for Dummies handbook, but BG is down for some reason.

[hex0]

Play a Dragonborn Lesser Aasimar (probably the best LA 0 race for Cleric) and take the Draconic Aura (Healing) feat. :smallwink:

Other feats:

Augment Healing
Imbued Healing
Touch of Healing

[MesiDoomstalker]

Play a Dragonborn Lesser Aasimar and take the Draconic Aura (Healing) feat. :smallwink:

I'd like to point out that it only works when people are below 1/2 health. Not saying its not worth it, just pointing out the limitations.

[hex0]

I'd like to point out that it only works when people are below 1/2 health. Not saying its not worth it, just pointing out the limitations.

Yup. It is surely worth noting. It is always on though at least and really helps save cures after/outside of combat when you do most of your healing.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Yup. It is surely worth noting. It is always on though at least and really helps save cures after/outside of combat when you do most of your healing.

Theres a reserve feat, in Complete Champion I believe, that does effectivly the same thing but is faster. Standard action that heals 3+highest cure spell possible to cast. Costs the same but doesn't require Dragonborn. It has the same "below 1/2" clause but you can, techincally, heal above 1/2 but not by much.

[Yora]

As others have said, enemies deal damage much faster than a cleric can heal it, so the best way to keep everyone alive is to prevent your allies from getting injured and help with taking out enemies quickly, so they don't get a chance to cause damage.

So your job isn't so much to heal injuries but rather to shield your enemies from taking damage.
So here are some spells that might come in handy:

Cause Fear: At low levels this is a really good spell. You can prepare it right at first level and it will send up to 5 weak enemies running away for 1 to 4 rounds. Since combat usually doesn't last much longer than 4 rounds at low levels, you can get rid of some of your enemies and fight them after you dealt with those that didn't flee. Fighting 3 orcs and then fighting 3 more orcs right after that is still a lot easier than fighting 6 orcs at once.
Command: Affects only a single creature and only for one round, but the target can be of any level as long as it has a low Will save. Good replacement when cause fear become useless at later levels.
Cure Light Wounds: The basic healing spell. Unless you play an evil cleric, you don't have to prepare this spell at all. Instead you can just kick out any other spell you have prepared at any time and get a cure spell instead. This spell is best used after all enemies are dead or to save a seriously injured ally from death. If he has only 2 hit points left a single hit could kill him, so unless there is something better to do that would prevent him from getting hurt, this is one of the situations where you should use a cure spell while the fight is still going. Better cast the spell now than to have to find a way to get someone back from the dead.
Divine Favor: When you don't have any other spells to protect your allies in this fight, cast divine favor on yourself and help them fight the enemies with weapons.
Hide from Undead: Can be very useful or pretty much useless, depending on the situations you are getting into and how your group handles encounters. But if you get surrounded by zombies and need an escape, or want to sneak into a place guarded by undead without starting a fight, this spell can get your people through the undead horde safely. Rarely needed, but when you expect such a situation to come up, switch one of your other spells for this one. Just tell the other players that you have this option before they start planning on how to get through dozens of undead without getting killed.
Magic Weapon: Seems like an attack spell, but can be a lifesaver. There are some monsters that can only be harmed by magic weapon and if you don't have one, you have barely any chance to kill them before they kill you. With this spell you can make the weapon of the strongest warrior in the group magical so he can chop it to pieces.
Obscuring Mist: This is pretty much a smoke grenade. If your group solves problems by killing all monsters, it's pretty much useless, but if you get into situations where you have to escape, this one can hide you from archers and slow down any pursuers a bit.
Protection from evil: Provides a small bonus to armor against evil creatures, but more importantly it prevents mind control. When you are fighting creatures with hypnosis abilities or enemy spellcasters, it's a good idea to keep this spell prepared so if one of your party members gets turned against you, you can cast this spell and free him from the brainwashing until you have killed the enemy.
Remove Fear: Just as cause fear can ruin the attack plans of your enemies, it can also cause serious trouble to you. With remove fear, you can protect your allies and get them back to normal if they get paniced from fear magic.
Shield of Faith: This one gets the target a +2 deflection bonus to AC. This is better than most effects that improve armor, as it also helps to protect against attacks for which the attacker only has to touch you without penetrating your armor.
Summon monster: A very good spell, but you should leave this one for later. It takes a long time to cast and it last only for an extremely short time at low levels. When you're 4th or 5th level or so, these become interesting.

Align Weapon: Similar to magic weapon, but you probably will only need it when you fight strong demons, which shouldn't happen at the low levels of the game.
Bears Endurance: Now we're getting to the good stuff. This spell gets the target a +2 bonus on Fortitude saves and +2 hit point per level of the character. If you expect to fight a nasty beast, cast this one on the ally that might need it the most.
Bulls Strength: Also very nice. +2 to attack rolls and damage. If the target uses a two-handed weapon, it's even +3 to damage.
Death Knell: This one is nasty. You suck the life out of a mortally injured enemy to make yourself stronger, tougher, and a better spellcaster. It's evil, so it might not be something for a good character, and it doesn't really help you protect your allies. But it helps killing other enemies, so if you're neutral, it could be considered.
Delay Poison: Super important. Many poisons can kill and even if you survive they weaken a poisoned character a lot. This spell doesn't stop the poison, but it slows it down so you can find help or at least have your ally stay fighting longer before he falls over.
Hold Person: One of my favorites. The target of this spell must be a human, an elf, or an orc or something like that, but when it hits the target can do nothing but stand there and allow your allies to stab and hack at him without doing anything to defend himself. Really, really sucks when you get hit by it, and really, really nice when it happens to your enemies.
Remove Paralysis: Did an ally get hit by a hold person spell or a monster that paralysis its victims? No problem, this spell gets rid of it!
Resist Energy: When you fight something that attacks with fire, ice, acid, or electricity, this spell can be a lifesaver. Or you find yourself in a burning building or get surrounded by acid, this spell will help. It's not perfect immunity, but you should always have this one prepared. Since it affects only one target, you might also want to get a few scrolls so you can protect the whole party if needed.
Shield other: This spell doesn't prevent damage at all, but it allows you to take some of the damage that an ally would otherwise have to take. When you are fighting a single strong monster that fights in close combat with your parties warrior, but you will be standing back and probably not get targeted, this spell can get the warrior on his feet much longer. Or if you know you will all get damage but are not sure the wizard in your party would survive it, cast it on him so you take some of his damage for you. As a cleric you can take much more than him.

Those spells should get you through the first 4 levels. But make sure you explain the other players what you're doing. They probably will expect to get healed when they get injured. But they have to suck it up, it will all go over much smoother if you kill it first and then look at the injuries.

[Ifni]

Radiant Servant of Pelor, a prestige class from Complete Divine, gives you free metamagic on your Healing Domain spells - you may want to ask your GM how this interacts with the Domain Spontaneity feat. The PrC also makes you better at nuking undead - it's pretty much a straight upgrade to cleric, if you worship the right deity and you don't have another PrC in mind.

The feat Augment Healing from Complete Divine improves all your healing spells, and has decent synergy with Empower. Insignia of Healing from Races of Destiny is about as good as Mass Cure Light Wounds, but is two levels lower (it has a lower CL cap, requires some advance preparation, and can't be used to hurt undead, but is much less limited in number of targets and range).

If you have lots of Charisma, Sacred Healing (from Complete Divine) lets you give fast healing 3 to everyone by spending turn attempts - the duration also scales with Charisma, it only gets really good if you're playing a highly charismatic PC. It's for out-of-combat healing, it's just more efficient than lesser vigor wands if multiple people are getting hurt, and it doesn't have the "only heals to half HP" clause that the reserve feat / aura have.

Healing Lorecall, from the Spell Compendium, lets you add riders to your healing spells based on your ranks in Heal, to fix conditions like dazed/nauseated which are otherwise a bit of a pain to remove.

Delay Death and Close Wounds from the Spell Compendium let you stop people from dying without having to spend standard actions on it.

Just a comment on people's statements above that healing in-combat is suboptimal: this is usually true, and it's certainly true that you shouldn't make healing your sole in-combat focus - you want to have something to do when nobody's getting hurt! That said, there's often a level range (for mid-op groups that I've seen, it tends to be in the mid-high single-digit levels) where in-combat healing can be fairly effective, especially if you're empowering it for free - it's not hard to get ~60 healing out of a Cure Critical Wounds at L7, or ~30 healing for the entire party via Insignia of Healing, and that will often be enough to keep up with enemy damage (or counteract, e.g., most of the effect of the surprise-round CL 10 Empowered Fireball from ambush). At higher levels, spells other than Heal don't generally recover enough HP to be worth the trouble - it doesn't matter if you're at 20/200 HP or 60/200 HP when you're about to take a 100-HP full attack, getting the unfortunate PC out of range with mobility or battlefield-control magic is a better way to save them than Cure Critical Wounds. At the lowest levels, you don't have many spells, hitting is pretty much purely a matter of chance, and almost everyone - PC and NPC - goes down in 1-2 good hits. Take Cure Minors so you can stabilize people, but if you hit the bad guy you often have a good chance of taking them out right away, so that's usually better than spending one of your precious spell slots on Cure Light Wounds.

[marcielle]

There are actually a ton of monstrous PrCs a cleric can get into, but Cleric 20 is still one of the most powerful things you can be and is way simpler. Remember, this guy said this is his first character.....

[Ifni]

There are actually a ton of monstrous PrCs a cleric can get into, but Cleric 20 is still one of the most powerful things you can be and is way simpler. Remember, this guy said this is his first character.....

True, and if you're sticking to Core, then "straight cleric, make the party chip in for wands of CLW for out-of-combat healing, spontaneously cast cure spells and try to focus on buffing and preventing damage in combat" is good advice.

Outside Core, Radiant Servant of Pelor is about the simplest cleric PrC there is, it really is just cleric+ - doesn't give you any significantly new capabilities, doesn't wreck any of your existing class features, just makes you better at healing and turning undead in exchange for losing 1 HP/level.

[noparlpf]

The Cure X Wounds spells don't heal enough to be worth healing in combat.

With the bajeezus optimized out of the character, Cure X Wounds can actually be useful, even in combat.
However, I would suggest using something else instead and having the optimized healbot as a cohort. A couple of feats can pump your cohort's level up to either your level or only one lower; I haven't looked at Leadership and related feats in a while so I can't remember. I'd say having two or three feats give you super-healing while you can still do other stuff would be better, although the primary character would be a little weaker than normal due to the loss of two or three feats.
Even without putting more than the one feat into Leadership, that single feat gets you a healer sidekick. If your party needs healing, get one of those and a few wands. Be something badass yourself.

[Yora]

Keep in mind this is for a first time ever player. I suggest keeping it down to the very basics. Straight cleric with no multiclassing, PrC, and only core feats.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Keep in mind this is for a first time ever player. I suggest keeping it down to the very basics. Straight cleric with no multiclassing, PrC, and only core feats.

In that case, its been covered. Focus on taking enemies out is better 'healing' than actual healing as it prevents more damage than the same slot would of healed, usually. Yora provided a good list and explanation of useful spells early on.

[Snowbluff]

Crusaders (Tome of Battle) offer passive healing when dealing damage as a stance. With Idiot Crusader maneuver set up, you can also spam melee attacks that heal a team mate for a decent about, as well as deal damage to you target.

[ericgrau]

Spells
Your list has a disturbing lack of bless and prayer. Those are the best in a group. Situational stuff like remove X belongs on scrolls because you only need a couple scrolls and 80% of the days you prepare it it'll be a total waste. Exception: if you're going into the land of oodles and oodles of X, then you do prepare remove X, and perhaps multiple copies. You shouldn't prepare more than 1 or 2 buffs like divine favor or bull's strength because they're only good during buffing rounds. During the actual fight you'll do more damage if you spend that round attacking instead of casting. Agreed on shield other.

There are a lot of other good spells that depend on the campaign too, so skim through the cleric spell list every time the party enters a new area.

I will say that while offense is generally the best, healing is good in emergencies. Who cares if you totally wipe the floor with your foes if you let an ally die? Better to let the rest of your party handle it (which is more trouble without your help of course) but without losing a comrade. Unless the fight is so hard that you risk losing everyone to a TPK.

[Skaalar]

Sweet bajeezus, this is waaaaaay more than I expected! Thanks so much guys, I think I'll go with the basic human first. Gotta eat your greens before moving onto the pizza ie: exotic races and classes. As soon as I get written in I'll post how it's going! One more time, super awesome thank yous forever!