Non-Magical Healing

[Vaz]

How would I go about making a non-magical healer in 3.5? One of my olayers ks thinking of some making some sort of Aragorn type character; but one without access to Magic; no wand of cure light wounds, or heal spells. Classes which can cast spells like the Ranger or Paladin use non-caster variants, or if that is not available, simply have casting abilities and SLA's stripped from them; supernatural abilities instead on a case by case.

While I can go for any old class granting Fast Healing to cure myself (600/hour), I am looking for one which can be used to patch up fellow party members in such a world without having to spend a week in bed rest every other encounter.

[J-H]

Adapt the Epic Healing rules to lower levels (alter DCs, etc)?

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#heal

[Dsurion]

You could try the Vitality and Wound Points (http://dndsrd.net/unearthedInjury.html) system.

[Story]

Bitterleaf Ointment lets you heal up to an additional +5 from a full rest.

[Psyren]

I'd go for an Alchemist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist), maybe the Chirurgeon (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist/archetypes/paizo---alchemist-archetypes/chirurgeon) (surgeon) archetype, and simply strip the magical fluff out of the extracts to make it purely (al)chemical healing. You could even pare down their list a bit, or weaken the bombs and infusions but make them usable by anyone in the party (perhaps with penalties/drawbacks if necessary for non-alchemists) to emphasize their scientific nature if you wished, but you should be just fine using the class as-is with less magical fluff.

This approach gives you a ready-made class that can handle any CR-appropriate challenge without necessarily being a "caster."

[JeminiZero]

The only source of EX healing that can be applied to party members, which I can think of the top of my head, is the Crusader's Devoted Spirit discipline. That *usually* requires some sort of enemy for you to wail on to work.

[Elbacone]

Try using the heal skill (treat deadly wounds) with the use of a medkit?

"When treating deadly wounds, you can restore hit points to a damaged creature. Treating deadly wounds restores 1 hit point per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount. A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day."

It's no way near as fast as magical healing but it beats plain bed rest.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Try using the heal skill (treat deadly wounds) with the use of a medkit?

"When treating deadly wounds, you can restore hit points to a damaged creature. Treating deadly wounds restores 1 hit point per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount. A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day."

It's no way near as fast as magical healing but it beats plain bed rest.

What's the source of that quote? I don't recall ever hearing of that before

Unfortunately non-magical healing just isn't a thing that's catered for, outside of something like being a crusader there aren't any "instant" mundane heals that I can think of, even alchemical items require spellcasting to make.

[TuggyNE]

Try using the heal skill (treat deadly wounds) with the use of a medkit?

"When treating deadly wounds, you can restore hit points to a damaged creature. Treating deadly wounds restores 1 hit point per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount. A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day."

That from PF? The OP mentioned 3.5, which does not have that option.

[Elbacone]

It is indeed from PF, sorry hadn't seen the OP mentioned 3.5. But still the skill isn't overpowered and might be a good alternative for what he is looking for.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/heal

[Erik Vale]

Healing Salve from tomb/tome of something. [Blood?].
50gp 1 use, in line with cure light wounds. [But then again my memories shocking, but I'll let you do the google fu]

[Darrin]

In Tome & Blood, there's the Healing Salve:

Healing Salve
Price: 50 GP
Weight: --
(Tome & Blood p. 72)
A potion of cure light wounds costs the same and cures one more HP, but a Healing Salve is non-magical and thus can be used in an anti-magic field or created by marvelous pigments. It's also not a conjuration (healing) effect, so it works normally on Warforged. There's also a Healing Salve in the Magic Item Compendium, but it's a magic item, and it's a lot more expensive (2250 GP) than 10 applications of this alchemical item.
Craft (Alchemy) DC: 25

You could craft these on your own, but unfortunately due to one of the stupidest rules introduced in 3.5, you have to be a spellcaster to create non-magical alchemical items. It's not clear if Rangers "count" as a spellcaster at levels 1-3... they can activate wands, but don't have an actual caster level until Ranger 4. If your player is taking a non-spellcasting Ranger variant, then by RAW he may not be able to put skill points in Craft: Alchemy. Of course, my advice would be to ignore the "must be a spellcaster" rule.

With an 18 Int (+4), masterwork tools (+2), 5 ranks of Profession: Herbalist (+2), Skill Focus (+3), a Ranger 2 can "Take 10" and hit a Craft DC of 26. With a weekly check, the Ranger could produce one Healing Salve a weak for 16.6 GP. If the character made daily checks, it would take 8 days, but this drops as the Craft check goes up. When "Take 10" = DC 29, 7 days. When "Take 10" = DC 34, 6 days, and so on.

I would highly recommend the using the "Craft Points" rules from Unearthed Arcana. Briefly: Every level, you get 100 craft points times your character level. To craft an item, pay GP = 1/2 total cost and Craft Points = 1/10 of total cost, so a 50 GP healing salve would cost 25 GP and 5 Craft Points. A 2nd level Ranger would have 300 craft points (100 for 1st, 200 for 2nd, etc.). Rather than spending an entire week crafting, this allows the Ranger to make healing salves "on the fly" as needed, with the reasoning that he's been working on these items during his "down time" and is assumed to be carrying around craft items that are "not quite done yet" but may be quickly finished with a little effort.

Between that, Bitterleaf Oil, and Healing checks, the Ranger might make a passable healer in a gritty low-magic campaign.

[ZeroNumerous]

The only source of EX healing that can be applied to party members, which I can think of the top of my head, is the Crusader's Devoted Spirit discipline. That *usually* requires some sort of enemy for you to wail on to work.

Get a tiny club(1 point of damage). Attack the person to be healed non-lethally with the maneuver or stance up. You heal them slowly.

With the stance that heals 2 damage per hit, you heal them for 1 HP per attack, which means you can eventually beat them to health.

[Psyren]

With the stance that heals 2 damage per hit, you heal them for 1 HP per attack, which means you can eventually beat them to health.

While that is amusing, I personally feel those maneuvers should have been supernatural too. Actually closing the wounds of your allies through your martial prowess seems a bit beyond extraordinary to me.

[Fable Wright]

Actually, IIRC Crusader healing maneuvers can only be used to bash someone who could actually hurt you.

Interestingly enough, I found a way to pull this off. When browsing through Exemplars of Evil, I noticed the Blessing of the Godless feat. The first ritual it grants lets you use one dose of Unholy Water (which does have to be made magically, though using it isn't magic) and some dung of evil creatures to divide (character level x number of characters in party) hit point amongst the party. Unholy Water is rather cheap, and this might actually be a nonmagical way of being a healer. Of course, the fluff has you be Evil, use your own feces as part of the ritual, and be an atheist that studies religion in a world while gods are very real, so some refluffing may be in order.

[ZeroNumerous]

Actually, IIRC Crusader healing maneuvers can only be used to bash someone who could actually hurt you.

If your allies pose literally zero risk to you then you're in the wrong party, because clearly your friends are all corpses with no arms, legs, or heads.

Anyone can hit anyone on a nat-20, so everyone could hurt everyone. It's just a question of choice, and your allies happen to choose not to hurt you.


While that is amusing, I personally feel those maneuvers should have been supernatural too. Actually closing the wounds of your allies through your martial prowess seems a bit beyond extraordinary to me.

Shouda/coulda/woulda doesn't mean anything to RAW. RAW is that they are not supernatural, so they're not supernatural.

[Slipperychicken]

Get a tiny club(1 point of damage). Attack the person to be healed non-lethally with the maneuver or stance up. You heal them slowly.

With the stance that heals 2 damage per hit, you heal them for 1 HP per attack, which means you can eventually beat them to health.

Martial Spirit (Devoted Spirit 1) doesn't require you to hit a creature, or even deal damage. Just "a successful melee attack", which needn't deal damage and can be directed at anything; pillows, punching bags, the dirt, trees, yourself... the possibilities are endless. Or make harmless melee touch attacks to poke/slap people (like the ones used against invisible creatures), healing them. Take that, Lay on Hands!

Since we're going all-in RAW here, Only problem is, you can only choose a different recipient when you "hit an opponent in melee". Maybe you can keep a pet rat which you designate as your opponent and "pet" it every so often by making a Touch attack against it.

[andromax]

There's the 'Healing Hands' skill trick from Complete Scoundrel.. if were casting a wide net.

[shaikujin]

Other nice options from ToB if the OP doesn't consider them as too magical:

1) Martial Spirit Stance
- Each successful melee attack by you heals self or 1 ally's HP by 2 hp

2) Rallying Strike
- Heals all allies' HP by 3d6+Initiator Level

3) Revitalizing Strike
- Heals self or 1 ally's HP by 3d6+Initiator Level

4) Strike of Righteous Vitality
- Heals self or 1 ally's HP as the "Heal" spell

5) Shadow Sun Ninja's ability "Touch of the Shadow Sun" (while fluff mentions it's a control of "Ki" energy, the ability is SU)
- Deal negative energy damage equal to your unarmed damage to "charge up"
- Next round, "discharge" positive energy equal to the damage dealt in the previous step to heal an ally

This ability is very nice. Gives you a form of in-combat healing.

The negative energy is specifically stated to heal undead. So if there's an undead in the party (might also work on someone with the Tomb Tainted Soul feat), you can have unlimited out-of-combat healing.

Alternatively, if someone in the party has fast-healing, you basically transfer HP by damaging him, then use the positive energy healing on another party member.

6) If the character somehow still has access to Turn/Rebuke Undead, there are also some feats that allows you to convert Turn/Rebuke uses to heal allies, like Sacred Healing or Profane Vigor.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Alchemical items (such as the Healing Salve and Bitterleaf Ointment, which have been mentioned, though there are others that I have probably listed and forgotten) are probably going to be your go-to here.

Beyond that, there is the Healing Hands skill trick, which heals 1d6 points of damage when stabilizing a dying character with the Heal check.

This may or may not be cheating, but while a Dragon Shaman's aura is (Su), Marshal's auras are (Ex), and they gained, in Dragon Magic, the ability to take draconic auras (including many from the Dragon Shaman class) as auras. Vigor (which grants fast healing +X, where X is the value of your aura, up to 1/2 health) is not included in that list, unfortunately, but if you can get it as a Marshal aura somehow (the Draconic Aura feat does not bestow it in such a way, unfortunately), then you would have an (Ex) aura of vigor.

[only1doug]

How would I go about making a non-magical healer in 3.5? One of my olayers ks thinking of some making some sort of Aragorn type character; but one without access to Magic; no wand of cure light wounds, or heal spells. Classes which can cast spells like the Ranger or Paladin use non-caster variants, or if that is not available, simply have casting abilities and SLA's stripped from them; supernatural abilities instead on a case by case.

While I can go for any old class granting Fast Healing to cure myself (600/hour), I am looking for one which can be used to patch up fellow party members in such a world without having to spend a week in bed rest every other encounter.

Have you considered the Dragon Shaman class? They can grant fast healing to all within 30' (to a max of 1/2 hps) and use a Paladin like Lay on Hands from 6th level onward.