Is there a way to modify the cure spells to make them better balanced vs Vigor?

[INoKnowNames]

Title.

I'm wondering about this, making Cure Spells actually useful, and thus making In Combat Healing a bit more practical, rather than just ignore it and hope no one dies and vigor everyone later

The best way seems to be adjusting them do multiple dice per CL, rather than just +1 point per CL, like most spells. For the most part, they're stronger that way, but I worry if they're too strong, so I wanted to compare them to the -average- damage dealt by monsters / spells at the level the spell would be gained.

I also wonder if it would be better to modify the mass versions as well, making gained at lower levels but heal not as much to a single target as the regular (but offset by being able to heal multiple people). As the better level heals are gained, so are gained the better mass heals.

The first two questions that come to mind are:

1) What would be the best to compare them to, damage wise, for each level they would be gained. Something designed to do damage, but not specifically optimised to Uber-Charge. Would spells be better, or are monsters generally decent on their own for damage?

And 2) Is this thread better in homebrew or on here? I'm fine with it either way; I'm just used to asking questions about the system here.

*edit* For the most part, I'm honestly just looking at the basic numbers. Other affects are nice, but the main thing I'm concerned with is that they can't do their primary job.

To wit, a few calculations.

Spell Level: 1
Cure Light Wounds: 1d8+1 per CL (Max+5), Total:13, Average:9
Lesser Vigor: 10+1 per CL (Max+15), Total:25

Spel Level: 2
Cure Moderate Wounds: 2d8+1 per CL (Max+10), Total: 26, Average:18

Spell Level: 3
Cure Serious Wounds: 3d8+1 per CL (Max+15), Total:39, Average:27
Vigor: 2x(10+1 per CL (Max 25)), Total:70

Spell Level: 4
Cure Critical Wounds: 4d8+1 per CL (Max+20), Total: 52, Average:36

Spell Level: 5
Greater Vigor: 4x(10+1 per CL (Max 35)), Total: 180

Spell Level: 6
Heal: 10 hp per CL (max 15), Total: 150

For the most part, while the Vigor line takes longer, they still will always heal more for their cost. And that's not looking at the group healing spells, in which the issue in balance when it comes to numbers is even more off.

[Answerer]

The Legend approach was to allow the various Cure spells to also remove a few status effects, depending on how strong a Cure you used.

[demigodus]

One thing you could do, would be to make it a swift action, that lasts rounds/CL.

Every round it lasts, you can use another swift action to heal someone else. That way, a single cure spell could last the entire fight, meaning it is no longer the most efficient to vigor it up post-fight, and you can do something else in the meantime, like hitting people. Yet the heal per round rate doesn't increase, to deal with potential game breaking issues.

PS: I more or less made this up as I wrote it. It is likely to be extremely flawed.

[Quellian-dyrae]

My go-to house rule for the cure spells is that they heal a flat 2/4/6/8 hit points per caster level, plus casting modifier.

[Dire Panda]

I houseruled healing a few campaigns ago and never looked back. Here's the system that works for us:


Healing spells work better when cast by someone with medical knowledge. Take the spell's base damage and multiply by the caster's Heal check, then divide by ten. A novice cleric just squirts positive energy into the subject and hopes for the best, but a skilled medic can recognize what organs and tissues are injured and will better direct the spell's energy. This damage boost doesn't apply to undead or anything else harmed by positive energy. If you've got skill-boosting munchkins in your party, you might want to cap the boost at 3x or 4x - still enough to make in-combat healing worthwhile.
All of the above applies to Repair spells used on constructs, but the skill check is Knowledge (Architecture/Engineering).
The Heal spell and variants are independently good, so none of the above applies to them.
The caster can sacrifice a certain amount of healing to cure status conditions. I've tweaked the specific amounts per condition campaign-by-campaign, but a good rule of thumb is to knock rounds off the duration of things like stun, nausea, daze, etc. rather than cure them altogether. For example, losing 10 points of healing to reduce a stun effect by one round is a pretty good mechanic: it gives the healer more tactical decisions to make, lets the formerly stunned PC participate, and helps prevent certain critters from delivering TPK's.
(Optional, but helpful for certain playstyles) Healing spells can save the recently deceased, even if you don't have Revivify yet. A dead character must be brought back up above -10 to be restored to life; unfortunately, this becomes more difficult with each round that passes, since dead/dying flesh doesn't respond to healing spells as well as living tissues does. In the first round after death, each point of damage beyond -10 takes 4 points of healing to cure. This increases to 8 in the second round, 16 in the third, and so on. Dying characters saved in this manner are treated as exhausted for the rest of the encounter and may suffer some permanent injury at the DM's discretion. This houseful lets characters without access to Revivify have some chance of surviving otherwise fatal wounds, though at severe resource cost (even Heal can't restore a character to consciousness in the third round, but it might just save his life!). I consider this mechanic essential for my E6 games, since standard methods of raising the dead don't exist.

[TuggyNE]

There was a useful thread on MinMax Boards a while back about percent-based healing (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=5025.0); mostly, it was based on Heal checks, somewhat like Dire Panda's system (and for basically the same reason).

[Aemoh87]

The problem here is not the spells, its just how bad flat heals are! League of legends, they are bad. World of Warcraft, they are bad. Every game (even if you can heal ridiculous amounts), they are bad.

How do you fix this? Well we aren't experts but the people who make games claim they are. World of Warcraft used heal over time or HOTs. League of legends most of the healing spells coming with added benefits, such as buffs. You see that fix in fourth ed. too!

Infact most spells in D&D just plain old lack versatility while the ones considered the best such as the polymorph ones give you tons of it! So make heals with buffs attached that the player can choose (easy if you use the psionic power points system) and boom. Healing is now interesting and useful.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I'd consider making heals over-heal with a duration of minutes/level. They don't heal enough to keep up with damage output, so you're trading actions inefficiently. Effectively allowing them to be used in advance as temporary HP buffs would make them more effective against alpha-strike-style monsters and prevent losses in the action economy.

[ericgrau]

They are still useful in emergencies. Even though you could prevent more than you heal by killing something, it doesn't matter unless every single foe is engaging the dying target. The party takes more damage but your target doesn't die. So basically heals increase the chance of a TPK while decreasing the chance of a single party member death. Generally adventurers are on the winning side and the second problem is 100 times more common.

Once healing outpaces damage you hit a different problem, where it's better to not hit things and just be a heal bot. This is boring.

Swift action healing more or less adds a flat pool of HP to the party total equal to (healing amount) x (rounds of significant combat). It's nice because it lets the healer do other things at the same time, but the healing itself is still about as dull as giving everyone more hp to begin with.

So overall I'd say why have a healer class in the first place? Players keep trying it in D&D and it's dull. Video game makers keep trying to make it and it's also dull. They're kinda fun to design, but after that's done playing one is "Anything need healing? [Y/N]" Yes? Ok I heal it.

If your'e dead set on buffing healing I can think of a couple options. Look at the damage output of the party or the monsters they face, which varies based on optimization level. Make healing better but still a little worse than damage. That way it's still better to swing a weapon but in an emergency saving a PC's life isn't a futile attempt. Another option is to boost it above damage but try to make it more fun somehow. Make chain heals, healing auras, heals with odd shapes like lines, heals that have special effects if targets and/or foes are arranged the right way. Temp HP, bonus con, granting life steal. Targettable mirror image or displacement on a divine caster. Heals that are only sometimes better than damage if you can set them up right. So there's strategy involved and so it doesn't dominate 100% of the time making the party not bother with damage. Etc.

[panaikhan]

One way might be to give the spells a radius by sacrificing dice.
Every dice of healing sacficed gives the spell a 5' radius, which heals any allies in it's area effect (very similar to the alternative druid power from PHB2).
OK, you are healing less in one go, but are effecting more people. This way, even a lowly CLW at max power can potentally heal 5HP to 8 allies (and yourself)

[Zaq]

Taking a leaf from 4e's book, making them all swift actions seems like a start. That way, casting a cure spell doesn't mean that you spent your entire turn doing nothing else. It greatly lessens the opportunity cost of using them in combat . . . which inherently makes them a better choice, since you're no longer making the decision between "well, I could cure my friend, or I could spend my action to just kill/neutralize the thing that's damaging him."

This does make casters, specifically Clerics, more powerful, but to be honest, letting them heal more doesn't seem like the worst thing you could do.

You'd probably also want to tweak the actual numbers on them as well, but it's a start.

[Khosan]

The problem here is not the spells, its just how bad flat heals are! League of legends, they are bad. World of Warcraft, they are bad. Every game (even if you can heal ridiculous amounts), they are bad.

It's not specifically flat heals. Flat heals work perfectly fine in WoW.

What makes a healing spell good is reliability and magnitude. It's why spells like Lesser Vigor and Heal (and Vigor for psionic classes) work pretty well, because they give you a non-random and significant amount of healing for your level. It's why the Cure line is as unpopular as it is.

[Khedrac]

Odd, I don't find them that bad, thogh definitely sub-par for druids etc where the spell level is higher. If you want them to cure status effects then cast Augment Healing first - which at a 10 min/level duration is quite a good spell.

[Answerer]

Odd, I don't find them that bad, thogh definitely sub-par for druids etc where the spell level is higher. If you want them to cure status effects then cast Augment Healing first - which at a 10 min/level duration is quite a good spell.
The Cure spells are provably, mathematically, a bad choice unless they will definitely make the difference between someone living and dying in this round. Since they heal so little, that happens very rarely. If someone is going to live or die anyway, you are always better off doing something else, because you will never heal more than the damage dealt.

[Ravens_cry]

My group uses xd4+4+CL instead of xd8+CL's for cures.
Combined with Pathfinder's xd6 40 foot burst, and I generally keep everyone up to snuff.

[Agincourt]

My go-to house rule for the cure spells is that they heal a flat 2/4/6/8 hit points per caster level, plus casting modifier.
Doesn't that significantly weaken Cure Light Wounds?


My group uses xd4+4 instead of xd8's for cures.
Combined with Pathfinders xd6 40 foot burst, and I generally keep everyone up to snuff.
Did you get rid of the caster level bonus to healing? I'm not sure that's only a slight improvement without the caster level bonus.

[Telonius]

Heals run into a related series of problems in higher levels.

First, there's the "Up or down" issue, where you're either fully ready for combat, or incapacitated, with nothing in-between. There are some ways around this ("bloodied" mechanics and the like), but they tend to gum things up by adding yet another set of modifiers you have to keep track of.

Second, there's a fairly small window between unconscious and dying. 0 to -10HP is not a lot, especially as you go up in level, and things are hitting you for much more damage than that as a matter of course. It's fairly rare that you'll have the chance to heal somebody up from dying to combat-ready. There are ways of handling this (using -CON score as the death point, varying it based on the size or number of HD), but it's a fine line between "makes it interesting" and "nobody ever dies."

Finally, there's the issue of opportunity cost. You could heal the Fighter up from dying, or you could kill a monster who's about to eat your Rogue. Why heal, when you can prevent damage through offense? Unless Fighter is at -9 (a situation that is even more rare than just being unconscious), it just doesn't make tactical sense.

[Ravens_cry]

Doesn't that significantly weaken Cure Light Wounds?


Did you get rid of the caster level bonus to healing? I'm not sure that's only a slight improvement without the caster level bonus.
I apologize for being unclear. No, we did not.

[Hecuba]

Ultimately, to establish a good baseline for healing/round, you need a good baseline for damage/round.

If you're legitimately looking in the neighborhood of [1d8+ strength per 6 levels or part there of], then they only need a slight boost.
If you're looking at more standard combat, you need to be looking at status effects and scaling against power attack, metamagic, and a collection of elemental damage or the like from the weapon.
If you're looking for healing efficacy against an optimized charger, you need a hp or damage system redesign.

The second 2 seem more pertinent.

[eggs]

The spells aren't too bad as they are. It's the tactic that's bad. Spending actions not killing things instead of spending actions killing things mean the things have more time to do nasty stuff to the players.

If you want it to make in-combat healing worth doing, the spells can't compete with actions that would make monsters die. That could mean reducing casting times to swift/move actions, or it could mean wrapping them with other spell effects (like "heal 4d8+CL and get Haste+ 4 str for a round" from one spell).

[INoKnowNames]

I'm honestly just looking at the basic numbers. Other affects are nice, but the main thing I'm concerned with is that they can't do their primary job.

To wit, a few calculations.
Spell Level: 1
Cure Light Wounds: 1d8+1 per CL (Max+5), Total:13, Average:9
Lesser Vigor: 10+1 per CL (Max+15), Total:25
Spel Level: 2
Cure Moderate Wounds: 2d8+1 per CL (Max+10), Total: 26, Average:18
Spell Level: 3
Cure Serious Wounds: 3d8+1 per CL (Max+15), Total:39, Average:27
Vigor: 2x(10+1 per CL (Max 25)), Total:70
Spell Level: 4
Cure Critical Wounds: 4d8+1 per CL (Max+20), Total: 52, Average:36
Spell Level: 5
Greater Vigor: 4x(10+1 per CL (Max 35)), Total: 180
Spell Level: 6
Heal: 10 hp per CL (max 15), Total: 150

For the most part, while the Vigor line takes longer, they still will always heal more for their cost. And that's not looking at the group healing spells, in which the issue in balance when it comes to numbers is even more off.


My go-to house rule for the cure spells is that they heal a flat 2/4/6/8 hit points per caster level, plus casting modifier.

Makes them all a bit more stable like Heal. That's an option, I suppose. A bit boring without any dice involved, but it's better than the basic cures.


I houseruled healing a few campaigns ago and never looked back. Here's the system that works for us:

Healing spells work better when cast by someone with medical knowledge. Take the spell's base damage and multiply by the caster's Heal check, then divide by ten. A novice cleric just squirts positive energy into the subject and hopes for the best, but a skilled medic can recognize what organs and tissues are injured and will better direct the spell's energy. This damage boost doesn't apply to undead or anything else harmed by positive energy. If you've got skill-boosting munchkins in your party, you might want to cap the boost at 3x or 4x - still enough to make in-combat healing worthwhile.
All of the above applies to Repair spells used on constructs, but the skill check is Knowledge (Architecture/Engineering).
The Heal spell and variants are independently good, so none of the above applies to them.
The caster can sacrifice a certain amount of healing to cure status conditions. I've tweaked the specific amounts per condition campaign-by-campaign, but a good rule of thumb is to knock rounds off the duration of things like stun, nausea, daze, etc. rather than cure them altogether. For example, losing 10 points of healing to reduce a stun effect by one round is a pretty good mechanic: it gives the healer more tactical decisions to make, lets the formerly stunned PC participate, and helps prevent certain critters from delivering TPK's.
(Optional, but helpful for certain playstyles) Healing spells can save the recently deceased, even if you don't have Revivify yet. A dead character must be brought back up above -10 to be restored to life; unfortunately, this becomes more difficult with each round that passes, since dead/dying flesh doesn't respond to healing spells as well as living tissues does. In the first round after death, each point of damage beyond -10 takes 4 points of healing to cure. This increases to 8 in the second round, 16 in the third, and so on. Dying characters saved in this manner are treated as exhausted for the rest of the encounter and may suffer some permanent injury at the DM's discretion. This houseful lets characters without access to Revivify have some chance of surviving otherwise fatal wounds, though at severe resource cost (even Heal can't restore a character to consciousness in the third round, but it might just save his life!). I consider this mechanic essential for my E6 games, since standard methods of raising the dead don't exist.

Figuring out the exact mechanics for this seems sorta interesting. I'm a bit more focused on the basic spells and basic numbers, but this system, especially the optional revival system, intrigues me a bit.


There was a useful thread on MinMax Boards a while back about percent-based healing (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=5025.0); mostly, it was based on Heal checks, somewhat like Dire Panda's system (and for basically the same reason).

A combination of the two... percent healing based on one's heal check.... maybe....


I'd consider making heals over-heal with a duration of minutes/level. They don't heal enough to keep up with damage output, so you're trading actions inefficiently. Effectively allowing them to be used in advance as temporary HP buffs would make them more effective against alpha-strike-style monsters and prevent losses in the action economy.

Wasn't there a negative condition involving being filled with positive energy and almost dying from it?

Other wise, I suppose that's something else that could be considered.


One way might be to give the spells a radius by sacrificing dice.
Every dice of healing sacficed gives the spell a 5' radius, which heals any allies in it's area effect (very similar to the alternative druid power from PHB2).
OK, you are healing less in one go, but are effecting more people. This way, even a lowly CLW at max power can potentally heal 5HP to 8 allies (and yourself)

Doesn't CLW only have 1 dice to sacrifice period? And you'd have to have everyone clustered together, totally vunerable to a fireball or what have you.
Interesting idea in theory, though.


What makes a healing spell good is reliability and magnitude. It's why spells like Lesser Vigor and Heal (and Vigor for psionic classes) work pretty well, because they give you a non-random and significant amount of healing for your level. It's why the Cure line is as unpopular as it is.

Magnitude is the main thing I'm looking for. I personally am fine with the idea of it being not -always- 100% full power healing, and even the chance of a critical fail, provided the spell is balanced to not -suck- compared to other spells, at least on average. As demonstrated earlier, the Cure Line is patheticly insignificant compared to the Vigor Line, and probably compared to most spells at each level, too.


Odd, I don't find them that bad, thogh definitely sub-par for druids etc where the spell level is higher. If you want them to cure status effects then cast Augment Healing first - which at a 10 min/level duration is quite a good spell.

I can't find that spell. Care to provide a link?


My group uses xd4+4+CL instead of xd8+CL's for cures.
Combined with Pathfinder's xd6 40 foot burst, and I generally keep everyone up to snuff.

What does that do for the higher level Cures? Each one of the d8s is cut in half and the other half is made a constant 4?

It makes them more average, if I'm understanding it right, although they're still much weaker than Vigor, since the total amount possibly healed never changes.

What's this pathfinder ability?


Heals run into a related series of problems in higher levels.

First, there's the "Up or down" issue, where you're either fully ready for combat, or incapacitated, with nothing in-between. There are some ways around this ("bloodied" mechanics and the like), but they tend to gum things up by adding yet another set of modifiers you have to keep track of.

Second, there's a fairly small window between unconscious and dying. 0 to -10HP is not a lot, especially as you go up in level, and things are hitting you for much more damage than that as a matter of course. It's fairly rare that you'll have the chance to heal somebody up from dying to combat-ready. There are ways of handling this (using -CON score as the death point, varying it based on the size or number of HD), but it's a fine line between "makes it interesting" and "nobody ever dies."

That does give me a different idea, actually...


Ultimately, to establish a good baseline for healing/round, you need a good baseline for damage/round.

If you're legitimately looking in the neighborhood of [1d8+ strength per 6 levels or part there of], then they only need a slight boost.

If you're looking at more standard combat, you need to be looking at status effects and scaling against power attack, metamagic, and a collection of elemental damage or the like from the weapon.

If you're looking for healing efficacy against an optimized charger, you need a hp or damage system redesign.

The second 2 seem more pertinent.

..... Doesn't an Optimized Charger do enough damage to instantly most players several times over even the hardiest Fighter's HP?

I'm looking more at standard combat, scaling against spells (possibly with metamagic) or against power attack.

I wonder if it's worth making a second thread to ask for and to gather a list of status affects generatable by spells and standard monsters, and at what level range one would expect such affects, including the various conditions healed by Heal...

[GenghisDon]

one could remove the vigour spells, or

cure light wounds d4/L, max 5d4
cure moderate wounds d6/L max 7d6
cure serious wounds d8/L, max 10d8
cure critical wounds d10/L, max 12d10
mass cure light 9d4
mass cure moderate 11d6
mass cure serious 13d8
mass cure critical 15d10

might be a thought. cure light is worse at L1-2, but the rest matter more, lots more.

[tyckspoon]

Wasn't there a negative condition involving being filled with positive energy and almost dying from it?

Other wise, I suppose that's something else that could be considered.


It's a specific risk of the Positive Energy Plane, not a general possibility of receiving healing/temp HP/positive energy.. and even if you did generalize it from the planar trait, you have to get temp HP equal to your total normal max HP before it happens. You'd have to be overhealing *really hard* for that to be a significant risk on most characters.

[Endarire]

Rebalancing cure spells (and healing in general) requires rebalancing HP and damage all around. The cure spells are still healing the same (or close to the same) amounts of HP as they did in 1E and 2E. Damage has increased. A lot.

Single-target healing has to be tremendous (a full heal or close) for it to be viable compared to, say, destroying the one dealing the damage. Healing needs to be doable at range (I like 30') so as not to endager the healer. For healing to be useful most the time, it needs to be multi-target modest heals, possibly with rider effects like ailment removal or minor buffs.

Until that happens, stick with lesser vigor or cure light wounds items after battles or other injuries.

[Hecuba]

..... Doesn't an Optimized Charger do enough damage to instantly most players several times over even the hardiest Fighter's HP?

Yes, which is why a more systemic redesign is necessary if you want be able to heal it.


I'm looking more at standard combat, scaling against spells (possibly with metamagic) or against power attack.

While I think his statement may be a little broad, eggs is fairly close to the mark here. Your healing needs to do significantly better than breaking even. Given what breaking even means, that's a problem.

If we're balancing under the assumption that the top level spell slots are used for this healing, then we are, essentially, counting on one such spell (or less) per encounter (until level 19). Under those constraints, a healing spell cast needs to cover (very roughly):

1/2*(rounds per encounter)*(damage per round) damage, rounded up

Even under a fairly conservative optimization, however, this runs afoul of HP totals: if we measure against an un-saved disintegrate and 3 round combat, the total that the heal would have to cover is 4d8 per caster level, which is safely above most characters health pools.

This would still only break even. Even if the the HP pools could absorb that much damage, this would still not be a tactical sound action. For that you would need to go even higher.

[killianh]

my house rule for healing is usually no dice, but heals work as if you had gain con=2 per caster level (with normal caster level limits in place) so a minor one (max CL 5) would grant 5 hp per HD based on the hit die of the recipient

[GenghisDon]

Rebalancing cure spells (and healing in general) requires rebalancing HP and damage all around. The cure spells are still healing the same (or close to the same) amounts of HP as they did in 1E and 2E. Damage has increased. A lot.

Single-target healing has to be tremendous (a full heal or close) for it to be viable compared to, say, destroying the one dealing the damage. Healing needs to be doable at range (I like 30') so as not to endager the healer. For healing to be useful most the time, it needs to be multi-target modest heals, possibly with rider effects like ailment removal or minor buffs.

Until that happens, stick with lesser vigor or cure light wounds items after battles or other injuries.

HP has increased alot, at HIGH levels. It's not that different otherwsie (except for monsters). Cure spells ARE much higher in d20.
in 1e & 2e , CLW did d8. the L4 CSW did 2d8+1 & the L5 CCW did 3d8+3. That's for clerics, druids had it worse in 1e.

Some damage has increased, but not all.

I agree in general with your take, however.

[elpollo]

Something I've been considering is having the basic Cure spells (Light to Critical) heal an additional d8 for every 5 caster levels, up to a maximum CL stated in the spell. For example, from levels 1-4 Cure Light Wounds heals 1d8+CL damage. At level 5 it heals 2d8+5 damage. At level 10 it still heals 2d8+5 damage, as the caster level cap is 5. Cure Serious Wounds now heals 4d8+5 damage at level 5, 5d8+10 at level 10, up to 6d8+15 at level 15.

This means that the healing per caster level increases at 1+(4.5/5), or 1.9 damage per caster level (well... on average), meaning that it is now increasing faster than the Channel Energy ability of clerics (at 1.75 damage per caster level). I'm not convinced there's quite enough difference between a Cure spell and the Cure spell below it, though, and am considering allowing rerolling low dice for the higher level spells (so Cure Moderate Wounds would reroll 1s, Cure Serious Wounds would reroll 2s or lower, Cure Critical Wounds would reroll 3s or lower).

The later Mass Cure spells seem like they would need significantly more oomph per level, and perhaps could instead add an extra d8 for each: 4 CL for MCLW (2.125 damage healed per CL); 3 CL for MCMW (2.5 damage healed per CL); 2 CL for MCSW (3.25 damage healed per CL); and 1 CL for MCCW (5.5 damage healed per CL). I'd probably not bother rerolling low values for these, since there will end up being too many dice.

[sonofzeal]

The Cure spells are provably, mathematically, a bad choice unless they will definitely make the difference between someone living and dying in this round. Since they heal so little, that happens very rarely. If someone is going to live or die anyway, you are always better off doing something else, because you will never heal more than the damage dealt.
lolno. "Proven mathematically"? I don't think that phrase means what you think it means.

Let's give you one example. Say a 3rd lvl party is fighting a pack of wolves. There's four PCs and four wolves. Note that this is actually an EL 5 encounter, meaning it should be rather difficult. Each wolf is dealing 4.5 damage on a hit, with a 50% or less chance to hit against most PCs, whereas a lvl 3 Healer (just to choose a low-op example) might be casting Cure Light Wounds for an average of 12.5 healing (1d8+3 from the spell, perhaps +3 from Charisma, and another +2 from Augment Healing because what else are Healers going to take) with a 100% chance.

A lvl 3 healer can outheal an entire EL 5 encounter, assuming average rolls. With a first level spell. This is what "proven mathematically" means - I take actual examples with actual numbers, and show that healing does indeed keep up.

Let's look higher up. Make it Ogres against a lvl 5 party, which is still supposed to be fairly deadly. Your average Ogre is dealing 16 damage, with a higher attack bonus than the Wolves, but PC defences have likely gone up too and high teens AC should be fairly standard. Again, the Healer can negate an entire successful hit a round, with a first level spell. A Cure Moderate or Serious obviously does more, especially with Augment Healing, but once you account for wiff rate, that Healer can still effectively remove the influence of two of the Ogres, which is half the fight, and a CR-appropriate encounter all by itself.

Much past that, you start getting up towards Heal, and even naysayers admit the effectiveness of that spell.

"Healing" sounds weak. For all you God-Wizard lovers out there, call it "Retroactive Action Denial". My standard action is: your entire last turn retroactively accomplished nothing. And you don't even get to roll to defend against it.

Parties don't need a healer. There's plenty of ways to restore hitpoints between fights that don't rely on a dedicated bandaid box. But I've played a Healer in a real campaign for a year or more, and in all but boss fights I could heal faster than they could lay out damage, and could generally do so with lower level spells.

[Diarmuid]

I think big imbalance with the Vigor spells is in the level cap being so high. I dont see why Lesser Vigor's max level based variable is 15 while CLW is 5.

IMO, make the level variables even and the spells come out pretty close. You trade the higher overall output of Vigor for the bigger boost right now of a Cure spell. You also still have the versatiliy of converting spells to Cures, where the vigors have to be memorized.

This does nothing to deal with the ability of the spells to adequately handle the damage output coming at the group, but I just have never seen that big a problem with choosing the offensive now and heal up later approach either.

[Psyren]

My group uses xd4+4+CL instead of xd8+CL's for cures.
Combined with Pathfinder's xd6 40 foot burst, and I generally keep everyone up to snuff.

This is basically ours as well.

[Big Fau]

One of the house rules I have in place is Cure spells provide temporary HP equal to the damage they healed, whereas the Vigor line does not. ANother one is bumping the healing spells down a level (Cure Minor heals 1d8+1/CL, Cure Critical is a 3rd level spell, etc).

[Eurus]

Personally, I agree with making Cure spells swift or even immediate actions, that can be delivered at Close range rather than touch. The way I see it, Vigor has a solid lock on out-of-combat healing. Cure spells seem like more of an in-combat thing, an emergency band-aid. But as many (many) people have noted, in-combat healing is just not very good. So instead of just cranking up the numbers, perhaps try to reduce the opportunity cost of spending actions on healing. With immediate-action ranged heals, you can apply it exactly when you really need it to keep someone standing and keep most of your actions for more relevant things.

That being said, the numbers are awfully low for anyone who doesn't really spec in it. A boost to the scaling would definitely be nice. But I think that should come as a compliment to the more fundamental changes.

[Ravens_cry]

What does that do for the higher level Cures? Each one of the d8s is cut in half and the other half is made a constant 4?
It makes them more average, if I'm understanding it right, although they're still much weaker than Vigor, since the total amount possibly healed never changes.

That's exactly what I said.


What's this pathfinder ability?

Channel Positive Energy (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/cleric#TOC-Channel-Energy-Su-) 1d6 every two levels to all living creatures within a 30 foot radius burst, and a feat lets you exclude enemies.

[Eldonauran]

Stuff...

:smallsmile: Never understood this "Healbot iz the bad" thing myself. I've never seen a problem with healing keeping pace inside of low-mid opt games.

[Downysole]

Going back to the OP, I'm not sure that Cure spells are out of balance against Vigor spells. Sure, the totals are different, but Vigor heals over time and Cure heals now. It seems pretty simple to me.

If you are at low hp and you're still getting hit, you go with a Cure spell. It keeps your hp up and you can keep fighting. This is the more efficient choice for healing now.

If you want to recover after a fight, or heal slowly during a fight because you have enough reserve hp, use Vigor spells. They're more efficient at healing over time.

Where does the balance shift towards Vigor spells during battle?

[Mnemnosyne]

I think big imbalance with the Vigor spells is in the level cap being so high. I dont see why Lesser Vigor's max level based variable is 15 while CLW is 5.
Lesser vigor's level based variable is also 5. It's just that lesser vigor lasts 10+1/level (max 5) rounds, which means it does a minimum of 11 healing. The cure line has the random component, making the minimum healing for a level 1 caster...2. 1 from the d8 and 1 from caster level.

If the cure light wounds spell healed 8+1/level HP rather than 1d8+1, it might make the cure line more worthwhile. Indeed, with a difference of only 2 hp healed, cure light wounds would then be superior to lesser vigor in almost all situations since it's instantaneous, and can be spontaneously converted.

Going back to the OP, I'm not sure that Cure spells are out of balance against Vigor spells. Sure, the totals are different, but Vigor heals over time and Cure heals now. It seems pretty simple to me.

If you are at low hp and you're still getting hit, you go with a Cure spell. It keeps your hp up and you can keep fighting. This is the more efficient choice for healing now.

If you want to recover after a fight, or heal slowly during a fight because you have enough reserve hp, use Vigor spells. They're more efficient at healing over time.

Where does the balance shift towards Vigor spells during battle?
The balance problem is that both spells are inefficient to use during battle at all. The only time you'd ever want to use a cure spell is when someone is absolutely going to die without it, and even then it's a crapshoot as to whether you should cast the cure spell or whether you should use something like command to make the enemy that's going to deliver the killing blow lose their action and be unable to do so. Both of those tactics involve a die roll that can make the attempted action fail to complete it's objective - if you roll too low on the cure, the amount healed doesn't save the target, and if the enemy makes their saving throw, they can finish their attack.

I think I strongly lean toward making them a swift action. I'm not sure about giving them range, but that might be a good idea as well. It's still burning a valuable resource for a spell slot that might not do much good, though.

One thought is to make it a swift action cast that lets you keep trying again until you have healed the maximum the spell could have healed. You roll your 1d8+1/level. You get 1 on your d8 and heal only 2 points of damage, the spell persists. Next round you can use it as a swift action again, and you again roll your 1d8+1. This time you get 4, and heal 5 damage. That's 7 damage total, still 2 short of the max, so the spell continues to persist, and on the third round you can use your swift action to apply the final 2 points of healing.

[tyckspoon]

:smallsmile: Never understood this "Healbot iz the bad" thing myself. I've never seen a problem with healing keeping pace outside of low-mid opt games.

Well.. it just doesn't keep up if you aren't optimizing for it (like almost everything else in D&D, if you bend your resources toward HP restoration you can do it pretty well.. for example, Augment Healing + Magic of the Land + [preferably the PHB2 version] Sacred Healing gives you 4 extra per spell level + 2/die on the spell.) Let's go back to sonofzeal's earlier example with the Ogres, only this time you *aren't* a Healer and you *don't* have healing-related feats (since there aren't any in Core...) maybe you're just a poor Core Cleric and your party figures it's your job to keep them topped up.

Ogres do 2d8+7 on a melee hit; range of 9-25, average 16, discounting criticals. At the point where an Ogre is an even-CR encounter, your best HP spell is Cure Moderate Wounds. You heal 2d8+3 when you cast it. Range 5-19, average 12. You're 4 points behind the damage the Ogre does; the only way you will not come out behind on this encounter is if the Ogre rolls below average and you roll significantly above average. At level 3, you can run this losing race probably 3 times if you're willing to convert all of your level 2 slots into Cure Moderate. And you're expected to be able to do this *four times a day.*

[Diarmuid]

Lesser vigor's level based variable is also 5. It's just that lesser vigor lasts 10+1/level (max 5) rounds, which means it does a minimum of 11 healing. The cure line has the random component, making the minimum healing for a level 1 caster...2. 1 from the d8 and 1 from caster level.


The Spell Compendium I'm looking at shows Lesser Vigor as 10+1/lvl (max 15) for the duration, not +5.

Are there different versions of the SpC with different values?

[Mnemnosyne]

Max 15 rounds. The spell comes with 10 rounds by default, so only 5 of the 15 max rounds are caster level dependent. A level 5 caster gets maximum duration out of it.

[Hecuba]

:smallsmile: Never understood this "Healbot iz the bad" thing myself. I've never seen a problem with healing keeping pace outside of low-mid opt games.

One issue is that - if it's just keeping pace - your use of action just breaks even.

Another is differing values of what damage output is expected. Son of zeal's example of is on one side of that -- as I noted, if you're looking at 1d8+str scaling with iteratives, the current values aren't bad.

But let's take the other side of a cr5 encounter: a single Wizard focusing on fire evocations, but not a particularly optimized one.

Since we're judging against a healer with a couple specific feats, let's throw in a couple caster level increases. Say, Spell Thematics and the Evoker Energy Affinity variant. There are better options in the long run, but we're working at level 5 and there's no need to break out the big guns (off the top of my head, I could reasonably manage +4 at this level, or +6 for a thesis-ed spell).

This gives me two rays from scorching ray, each dealing 4d6 damage on a successful ranged touch attack. That's, on average, 14 damage to 2 targets or 28 damage to 1. (The ranged touch attack is somewhat problematic, but so is the touch range on the cure line, as it opens up delayed response and/or AOE problems).

Now let's be fair and make the healer level 5 too. That means Cure Serious Wounds is on the table: with the same tools already presented, we're looking at 3d8+10 healing, or an average of 23.5 healing.

So, under this scenario, a focused healer has burned a top level slot to almost undo one action of a similarly leveled, similarly optimized damage dealer using a non-top level slot.

Under this situation, we have a few scenarios:

Your team can put the enemy down in one round without your aid. In this case, there is little reason to burn your top slot on something that can be done out of combat cheaper.
Your team can take the enemy down in this round, but only with your aid on offense. In this case, there is an active reason to attack: if you heal the enemy's actions from this round, you will just have to heal the next round's actions later. Attacking instead make better use of your limited resources.
The enemy will get another round regardless of what you do. In this case, you are far better controlling what they can do in that round (in this case, my choice from the core cleric list would be sound burst, as it targets fort).


The only real time in-combat healing is a dominant strategy solution is if there are more opponents than you can disable and they are likely to kill a party member next round if you do not heal. This isn't impossible to do, but it's a hard needle to thread in terms of encounter design.

A lager issue is that 2x4d6 is, on average, just 2 points below what is needed to put down someone with d6s and 14 con at level 5. If there's someone in your group with d4s, you may not have the option of healing if the enemy rolls a bit high.

[Eldonauran]

Stuff...

I'll just have to disagree with you. Not your numbers, mind you, those speak for themselves. I'm just concerned that you have the cleric moving into a situation that will be extremely dangerous when there isnt any need.

Why isnt the fighter using a reach weapon and keeping the cleric 15ft away from the Ogre? Seems like common sense to me. Both of them could be using a reach weapon and the cleric makes a 5ft step back, out of range of the ogre and then laying a cure on the fighter?

Numbers are fun and you can make them say anything you want with enough effort, but tactics can greatly change the playing field.

[Invader]

There's a bunch of ways to make the cure spells better and tons have already been mentioned. Some of the ones I've like are

Give cure spells a short range instead of touch
Residual healing where the character is healed for half as much again the
following round
more AOE healing
increasing the effective caster bonus or just outright doubling it
(at 4th level CLW heals 1d8+8)

Really any small bump makes all the cure spells much more viable.

[Novawurmson]

Playing a DMPC Cleric in a mid-optimization 3.P game. His healing was vital in low levels, awful in mid levels, and now that he's got Heal, incredible. Nobody in the group has 120 HP for him to heal in a round. I think auto-maximizing the Cure line might keep them more relevant throughout all levels of play.

[Siosilvar]

"Healing" sounds weak. For all you God-Wizard lovers out there, call it "Retroactive Action Denial". My standard action is: your entire last turn retroactively accomplished nothing. And you don't even get to roll to defend against it.

Congratulations, you've taken a 4v4 fight and made it a 3v3 fight. How exciting.

:smallwink:

Not to mention that you'll run out of spell slots before the enemy runs out of full attacks. It's more efficient to use two-ish spells to stop the enemy entirely than it is to use one per round so that they can't do anything. Plus, the obvious counterpart to "retroactive" is "proactive" action denial, which takes the fight from 4v4 and makes it 4v3 or fewer, at least for one round.

And the wording wasn't "proven", it was "provably". Of course you can come up with examples where healing keeps up. There are just as many examples where it doesn't. (For the record, "countably infinite" on both.)

[ericgrau]

To the original question, I couldn't find a combat situation where cure was worse than vigor. No vigor heals more than a cure during a typical 5 round combat. They're only better between combat, in which case the only one that matters is lesser vigor. It's a better value than the rest, especially in wands. To fix this you can nerf lesser vigor or buff CLW. If a CL 1 CLW only healed 1 or 2 points less it would be a worthwhile trade-off of healing amount vs. speed.

So then I started looking at monster damage vs. healing amount to perhaps bring healing closer:


Ogres do 2d8+7 on a melee hit; range of 9-25, average 16, discounting criticals. At the point where an Ogre is an even-CR encounter, your best HP spell is Cure Moderate Wounds. You heal 2d8+3 when you cast it. Range 5-19, average 12. You're 4 points behind the damage the Ogre does; the only way you will not come out behind on this encounter is if the Ogre rolls below average and you roll significantly above average. At level 3, you can run this losing race probably 3 times if you're willing to convert all of your level 2 slots into Cure Moderate. And you're expected to be able to do this *four times a day.*

That's even CR for a party of 4. If 1 cleric can stop all of the damage from the encounter by himself that would be pretty dam impressive... and actually he can. The ogre doesn't hit every time, the cleric does. The ogre only needs to miss 25% of the time to break even. With +8 to hit that holds true against AC 14 or higher. I found similar results for cure serious wounds and cure critical wounds. Only cure light wounds is less than or about equal to the incoming damage, but at level 1 you're down in 1 hit anyway.

So even in regards to the goal of bringing healing closer to damage, it actually exceeds damage already. In core anyway. It's a bit of a surprise but you're actually better off casting a cure spell than hitting something. The next challenge would be to scale it up by optimization level, but that depends entirely on optimization level. OTOH there are feats, magic items and so on for that.

So my final answer is... buff CLW and leave the rest alone except in groups with higher optimization levels. Perhaps a non-scaling 2d8 (9 HP avg. immediately) to make wands of lesser vigor (11 HP over time) a serious decision.

[Togo]

I've found healing during combat to be an entirely viable tactic. It keeps people active and fighting, reduces risk of edge conditions suddenly killing a party member, is easy to boost with feats and spells (e.g. augment healing and healing lorecall).

It doesn't work so well for short fights, for glass cannon enemies, or for situations where getting into range is dangerous. It works very well for long fights, for high AC characters, for fights with a limited frontage and safe zone, and so on. Perfectly viable tactic. A little dull perhaps, but I've played with a tactically good healer, who tracks everyone's hp and conditions, and tries to judge the probabilities involved for the next round, juggling healing, removal of status effects, buffs and temporary hp to get the best overall advantage.

You should also consider spells like faith healing, insignia of healing, and panacea. The cure line isn't always your best option, but they're solid choices.

[sonofzeal]

Congratulations, you've taken a 4v4 fight and made it a 3v3 fight. How exciting.

:smallwink:
Please read my examples. My first one turns a 4v4 fight into a 3v0 fight. The second turns a 4v4 fight into a 3v2 if you're only using first level spell slots; it goes down to 3v1 otherwise.

And those are for ECL+2 fights. The math is even better if you work from an even-CR basis.


Not to mention that you'll run out of spell slots before the enemy runs out of full attacks. It's more efficient to use two-ish spells to stop the enemy entirely than it is to use one per round so that they can't do anything. Plus, the obvious counterpart to "retroactive" is "proactive" action denial, which takes the fight from 4v4 and makes it 4v3 or fewer, at least for one round.
...but with a chance to resist.

I'm not saying "OMG HEALING IS OP", just that it's not unviable. At most levels, a dedicated healer can keep up with damage dealt in a meaningful way.


And the wording wasn't "proven", it was "provably". Of course you can come up with examples where healing keeps up. There are just as many examples where it doesn't. (For the record, "countably infinite" on both.)
The implication of their statement was that Healing catagorically cannot keep up, which is a blatant falsehood. There are instances where it can't (full-attacking Trolls making their Rend attacks), and there are instances where it can (I gave some). On the whole though, against even-CR threats, the Healer should be able to more than balance out their weight in threat. A "defender" or "striker" or "controller" (to borrow 4e terms) can do the same as well, of course, particularly striker and controller types in 3.5e. Those two rolls tend to significantly out-perform their ECL if built right. But even the Healer is carrying their own weight against the majority of encounters.

That you can invent aleph-null encounters to the contrary - say, 1024 orcs - doesn't mean anything. Against CR-appropriate encounters, the Healer can outperform their weight much of the time, and at least contribute something the rest of the time. Unless you're playing Rocket Tag, but the game kind of falls apart there anyway.

[ericgrau]

Well if I've learned anything from this thread I learned that, most of the time (not all), healing outpaces damage. That's interesting strategically. My next battle cleric is going to have new tactics.

Not sure I helped the OP too much though, but it's fun to run the numbers and say, "Oh, wait a second..."

[nedz]

I don't think that the spells need changing at all.

The Curing spells are more effective and the Vigor spells are more efficient.

Curing has instant gratification and can be relevant in combat most likely when someone is down.

Playing a healer is just not most peoples idea of exciting, and battle-field control is a much more efficient way of using spells. Rather than spending my actions to negate the previous actions of the opposition, I can deny them actions over a number of future turns.

[sonofzeal]

Well if I've learned anything from this thread I learned that, most of the time (not all), healing outpaces damage. That's interesting strategically. My next battle cleric is going to have new tactics.
Well, do be sure to add the proper caveats on that. For healing to be effective, you don't need to be healing more than the entire enemy team is dealing out, you just need to be displacing more than your "weight". Turning a 4v4 into a 3v2 (or even a 3v2.5) is an advantage for your team, as is turning a 4v1 against a bruiser into a 3v0.5. If you can reliably tip the ratio in your team's favor, you're contributing.

Also note that healing synergizes extremely well with tanks and battlefield controllers and debuffers. A CR 5 troll that hits with every attack is dealing an average 41.5 damage, and you're unlikely to be able to heal that much. But if someone with good AC gets between it and the squishies, that number might get cut in half or lower. And if someone hits it with Ray of Enfeeblement, it might get cut in half again... at which point any lvl 5 healer-type should be able to match it with a first level spell slot.

Of course at those levels of damage you might be fine waiting for combat to be over and healing a bit more cheaply then, but a higher level party fighting a bunch of trolls might not have that luxury. But a lvl 7 Healer has Mass CLW for perhaps 25-ish for the entire party, even without any particular optimization. If you've got multiple trolls getting off those Rake attacks, you're in trouble. But if the defenders/controllers/debuffers are doing their job, that level of burst heal will go a long way, and the presence of a Healer might double or even triple the party's resiliance.

[Ashtagon]

I houseruled healing a few campaigns ago and never looked back. Here's the system that works for us:


Healing spells work better when cast by someone with medical knowledge. Take the spell's base damage and multiply by the caster's Heal check, then divide by ten. A novice cleric just squirts positive energy into the subject and hopes for the best, but a skilled medic can recognize what organs and tissues are injured and will better direct the spell's energy. This damage boost doesn't apply to undead or anything else harmed by positive energy. If you've got skill-boosting munchkins in your party, you might want to cap the boost at 3x or 4x - still enough to make in-combat healing worthwhile.
All of the above applies to Repair spells used on constructs, but the skill check is Knowledge (Architecture/Engineering).
The Heal spell and variants are independently good, so none of the above applies to them.
The caster can sacrifice a certain amount of healing to cure status conditions. I've tweaked the specific amounts per condition campaign-by-campaign, but a good rule of thumb is to knock rounds off the duration of things like stun, nausea, daze, etc. rather than cure them altogether. For example, losing 10 points of healing to reduce a stun effect by one round is a pretty good mechanic: it gives the healer more tactical decisions to make, lets the formerly stunned PC participate, and helps prevent certain critters from delivering TPK's.


My basic rule was that when used to restore hp, it is a swift action, and it heals a minimum of 10% (or whatever was rolled) for clw, 20% for cmw, 30% for csw, and 40% for ccw.

I really like the idea of the cure spells removing certain conditions, and especially the idea of it interacting with the Heal skill.

[Lans]

What feats or abilities are there for boosting healing?

So far I've found Imbued Healing(CC), Augment Healing(CD), Magic of the Land (RotW), and Sacred Healing(PH2), and empower/quicken spell, Healing domain, Healing Touch, Combat Medic and I think Radiant Servant of Pelor prestige classes, and Spell gifted

[nedz]

Well Healers get few class features, but most of them relate to conditions or unicorns.
At 1st though they get Healing Hands, which adds Cha to curing spells.

[Menteith]

What feats or abilities are there for boosting healing?

So far I've found Imbued Healing(CC), Augment Healing(CD), Magic of the Land (RotW), and Sacred Healing(PH2), and empower/quicken spell, Healing domain, Healing Touch, Combat Medic and I think Radiant Servant of Pelor prestige classes, and Spell gifted

Mastery of Day and Night (Pre-Req Maximize Spell, found in Player's Guide to Eberron)
"You can spontaneously apply the effect of the Maximize Spell metamagic feat to any cure or inflict spell you cast. Doing this has no effect on the spell's level or casting time."

Dragon Prophesier + Prophecy's Shepherd (Pre-Req Know [Arcana], found in Magic of Eberron)
"While in prophetic favor (see Dragon Prophesier), you can quicken one cure wounds or inflict wounds spell per round (see below) without any adjustment to the level of the spell. You can use this ability even on spontaneously cast spells." (Taking Prophecy's Shaper also allows you to Empower 1 spell/round while in prophetic favor).

Healer base class (Miniature's Handbook) adds Charisma bonus to all healing spells.

With every Cure spell Quickened, Empowered, and Maximized, combat healing can become decent. You also are a beast against Undead.

[Novawurmson]

Mastery of Day and Night (Pre-Req Maximize Spell, found in Player's Guide to Eberron)
"You can spontaneously apply the effect of the Maximize Spell metamagic feat to any cure or inflict spell you cast. Doing this has no effect on the spell's level or casting time."

Dragon Prophesier + Prophecy's Shepherd (Pre-Req Know [Arcana], found in Magic of Eberron)
"While in prophetic favor (see Dragon Prophesier), you can quicken one cure wounds or inflict wounds spell per round (see below) without any adjustment to the level of the spell. You can use this ability even on spontaneously cast spells." (Taking Prophecy's Shaper also allows you to Empower 1 spell/round while in prophetic favor).


These feats are perfect, thank you!

[sonofzeal]

What feats or abilities are there for boosting healing?

So far I've found Imbued Healing(CC), Augment Healing(CD), Magic of the Land (RotW), and Sacred Healing(PH2), and empower/quicken spell, Healing domain, Healing Touch, Combat Medic and I think Radiant Servant of Pelor prestige classes, and Spell gifted
The Restoration Domain granted power also boosts healing, as do all general CL-boosting tricks since most healing spells have very high CL caps compared to their peers. Fireball caps out at CL 10, while its peer CSW caps out at CL 15.

The feats "Imbued Healing" and "Invigorating Spellcaster" don't increase healing done, but add a beneficial rider effect which most dedicated healer-types will approve of.

Finally, don't forget that all Healing spells are Conjuration, and thus qualify for use with "Cloudy Conjuration" as a method of adding a free bit of BC onto all your healing.