Why Heal?

[2samspan]

I have been pondering this, and I have found no reason for people to use classes just to heal things. Wouldn't it just be more effective to attack, and then use potions. Just an observation I had.

[TaiLiu]

I have been pondering this, and I have found no reason for people to use classes just to heal things. Wouldn't it just be more effective to attack, and then use potions. Just an observation I had.

Potions...?

No, no. Wands are more cost effective.

[Slipperychicken]

Your opinion is almost exactly that of the entire forum. Just add on "potions suck, use a freaking CLW Wand or Healing Belt".

[NotScaryBats]

Or, Wand of Lesser Vigor, or DMM Persist Mass Lesser Vigor on your party

[Sucrose]

I have been pondering this, and I have found no reason for people to use classes just to heal things. Wouldn't it just be more effective to attack, and then use potions. Just an observation I had.

It's generally agreed that in-combat healing isn't all that effective as a primary role, yes. Tends not to scale enough to keep up with enemy output, and you're essentially burning resources just to tread water.

That said, a well-optimized healer can still be a strong participant in battle, and a few spells, such as Heal and Mass Heal, manage to keep up with or exceed most enemy damage output. And in certain circumstances, like giving your wizard the opportunity to regain consciousness and cast a critical spell or something, even a lowly Cure Light Wounds can be a lifesaver.

As for potions, they aren't nearly as cost-efficient as wands of healing spells used by someone who can, nor myriad other healing items.

[Jane_Smith]

Or just pitch in the money to buy your fighter a ring of regeneration and/or use persistent vigor on him each morning.

[Agincourt]

Or just pitch in the money to buy your fighter a ring of regeneration and/or use persistent vigor on him each morning.

Well, you don't want the 3.5 version of the Ring of Regeneration. I believe it healed 1 hp/round in 3.0, but in 3.5 it heals 1 hp/hour, but the price is still 90,000 GP. No one wants that.

Pathfinder fixed it (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/ring-of-regeneration) to being a worthwhile purchase again.

[Slipperychicken]

ring of regeneration

Oh gods no. That thing is horrible. It doesn't even give Regeneration. 1 hp/hour for 90,000!? That's about as efficient as getting his mommy Cleric to tuck him in at night with a DC 15 Heal check. At least that's free.

[Jane_Smith]

Wait, you guys actually believed they really made it 1/hour?!! I thought that was a joke and ignored it all these years. Kinda like how blade bracers from sword and fist had 13-20/x2 crit range. Some things you just gotta ignore. :P

[Slipperychicken]

That's exactly what they did (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rings.htm#regeneration)


Regeneration
This white gold ring continually allows a living wearer to heal 1 point of damage per level every hour rather than every day. (This ability cannot be aided by the Heal skill.) Nonlethal damage heals at a rate of 1 point of damage per level every 5 minutes. If the wearer loses a limb, an organ, or any other body part while wearing this ring, the ring regenerates it as the spell. In either case, only damage taken while wearing the ring is regenerated.

Strong conjuration; CL 15th; Forge Ring, regenerate; Price 90,000 gp.

Note that it doesn't give you actual regeneration either. It's worthless.

[Agincourt]

Wait, you guys actually believed they really made it 1/hour?!! I thought that was a joke and ignored it all these years. Kinda like how blade bracers from sword and fist had 13-20/x2 crit range. Some things you just gotta ignore. :P

It's not a "belief." I'm looking at my 3.5 DMG right now. It heals 1 hit point of damage each hour, and 1 hit point of non lethal damage every 5 minutes. There is no errata for the ring.

[Jane_Smith]

Nono i mean people actually used that ruling in actual gameplay? I figure people would downgrade back to the 3.0 one rather then even think of tossing that garbage in a game. Same way with the like gloves of the tactician from 3.0 are better then the gloves of storing and massively cheaper.

[Agincourt]

There are a lot of magic objects in the DMG that are overpriced. It's easier just to ignore them instead of repricing or repowering them.

That being said, if I happen to be DMing and a player wants to buy the 3.0 version, I would allow it.

[Bonzai]

Early on, in combat spot healing can save a party. Once delay death becomes available, not so much.

[Story]

Why would you ever get a Ring of Regeneration? That's one of the most hideously overpriced items in the game. Just get a Healing Belt.

Edit: 3x Swordsage combo

[Starbuck_II]

Wait, you guys actually believed they really made it 1/hour?!! I thought that was a joke and ignored it all these years. Kinda like how blade bracers from sword and fist had 13-20/x2 crit range. Some things you just gotta ignore. :P

Wait, what? Bladed Guantlet was 17-20/x3, unless you keen it then it could be 13-20.
It wasn't naturally 13-20.

[Baroncognito]

That's exactly what they did (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rings.htm#regeneration)



Note that it doesn't give you actual regeneration either. It's worthless.

That looks like it says 1 point per level per hour. By the time I have 90,000 gp (or even 45,000) I typically have far more than one level.

Let's see... 1 hitpoint per level every hour... that's 600 rounds. You only have to be level 601 and then the new ring is better than 1 hit point a round.

[Jane_Smith]

Wait, what? Bladed Guantlet was 17-20/x3, unless you keen it then it could be 13-20.
It wasn't naturally 13-20.


ah my friend, but whoever in there right mind "WOULD NOT" get keen/improved crit with those beauties? :smallamused: Kinda mandatory.

[JaronK]

Some classes are decent at mid battle healing. Crusaders are an obvious choice. Binders with Zceryll can likewise do it. DMM Persist Clerics can do it via Lesser Mass Vigor or Vigorous Circle. But yeah, generally it's better to just kill your enemies.

As for healing items, wands of Lesser Vigor are my favorites.

JaronK

[Slipperychicken]

Nono i mean people actually used that ruling in actual gameplay?

Yeah, you know, those people who 3.5 introduced to roleplaying. Well, no one used it in actual gameplay because that ring is such hot garbage that it would ignite a landfill.

To us who haven't played 3.0, it's just another trap option, like Toughness (the +3 hp version), Overrun, and Monkey Grip.

[2samspan]

I did not realize the entire forum had that opinion. However, I am noticing you can only heal through magical means. What if you were in a campaign where, say, there was no magic, SLAs, and the like?

[Kane0]

Healing can be viable in some cases.

Pathfinder Clerics can heal in a 30' starting at level 1, really handy but drops off at later levels.

Though it is very true that damage mitigation far supersedes healing.

[MesiDoomstalker]

I did not realize the entire forum had that opinion. However, I am noticing you can only heal through magical means. What if you were in a campaign where, say, there was no magic, SLAs, and the like?

That would result in a complete lack of non-natural healing. The number of ways to heal outside of magic of any kind is incredibly slim. There are a small handful of races that get non-Supernatural Fast Healing or Regeneration. I can't actually think of any off the top of my head, but I know a few exist. I think Hydra's have EX Fast Healing. Regardless, for PCs this equates to lacking any ability to recover after a single encounter.

[Answerer]

I did not realize the entire forum had that opinion. However, I am noticing you can only heal through magical means. What if you were in a campaign where, say, there was no magic, SLAs, and the like?
Then you are not playing Dungeons & Dragons, especially not the 3.x edition, or any game based upon it. 3.5 is incredibly high magic, and cannot model low- or no-magic settings at all. Attempts to do so go into exactly one of two categories: 1. horribly naive attempts to do so that end up horribly for everyone involved, or 2. such extensive revamps of the entire system that they can no longer be called 3.5. There is no other way to do such a game.

Also, nonmagical healing? We're having a pretty lengthy discussion of whether or not such a thing is even allowed to exist in the Tome of Battle - Why? thread, and so far only one class has been found that can do so. Otherwise, the only nonmagical healing available are racial Fast Healing, which is unavailable on any PC race, and natural healing, which is incredibly slow. Healing is actually a fairly big factor (but by no means the largest one) in the above paragraph.

[Guizonde]

*along wobbles a newbie*

i like healers. sure, i like 'em equipped with a flamethrower(or fireball, or both...), but i love white magic all the same. i think that it depends on the style of the dm, really. with my dm's, playing without a designated healer is suicide. i've foregone munchkinism and optimization to build redundancies just to counter everything thrown at us. (like being a healing cleric with 15 ranks in healing - medkits are a boon, crafting them is too good to pass up).
you're just meant to remind yourself constantly that if you're the one frontlining or outdamaging everyone else, you're not doing your job right.
yes, battle-healing kinda blows, but when you've got a 5 minute respite between two hordes, you need some heavy white magic.

maybe i'm not experienced enough to know all the combos and subtleties, but afaik, playing the medic suits me fine and ensures that i take the brunt of the dm's wrath, leaving the more dangerous parts of the party free to save my bacon, so i can heal them later. by this i mean that the dm is too concentrated on trying to scrag me to remember that his monsters are battling more or less heavy duty characters. i'm not a frontliner, i'm the bait in the rearline. just like you should always take out a caster first in a straight fight, we take out the regen potential, then the caster (if we can't do both simultaneously)
it's a different playstyle, methinks. you're built from scratch to be a team player.
oh, and remember "revive kills undead". my dm didn't. once.:smallamused:
*runs away*

[Slipperychicken]

I did not realize the entire forum had that opinion. However, I am noticing you can only heal through magical means. What if you were in a campaign where, say, there was no magic, SLAs, and the like?

Crusaders and other nonmagical healers would become quite important. Troll Blooded might be taken more often.

Characters recover hit points naturally, at an incredibly slow rate (1 hit point per level, per 8 hours complete rest. A Heal check doubles this amount). This is more realistic, but would make for an extremely slow-paced and lethal game.

[Malak'ai]

I did not realize the entire forum had that opinion. However, I am noticing you can only heal through magical means. What if you were in a campaign where, say, there was no magic, SLAs, and the like?

In this case, and I have played in a game similar to this (very low magic with no full casters), then the DM has to come up with some other mundane way of assisting healing.

Back in I.C.E's MERP there were healing herbs and berries that either healed between 3 and 20hp or gave a boost to natural healing. You could also make "potions" or ointments from different non-magical ingredients that also aided in hp recovery, knitting muscles back together, mending broken bones, reducing blood lose, regenerating internal organs and anything else you could think of... This is the sort of thing that I'd consider bringing in if you wanted mundane healing.

[mistformsquirrl]

Eh, while it's not the most efficient, I admit I like healing. There's just something about the role I find appealing. That said I'm working on a homebrew project and one of the things I'm considering doing is improving the Cure and Inflict lines of spells significantly, as right now they're just not that great.

[Hiro Protagonest]

ah my friend, but whoever in there right mind "WOULD NOT" get keen/improved crit with those beauties? :smallamused: Kinda mandatory.

...Your reading of the rules seems to be making a lot of assumptions on how people play.

[JaronK]

Crusaders and other nonmagical healers would become quite important. Troll Blooded might be taken more often.

Crusader healing is Su... not sure if that works. I'd probably go with Tomb Tainted characters and then trying desperately to find some Black Sand.

JaronK

[Deophaun]

Crusader healing is Su.
No. No it is not.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Crusader healing is Su

*shakes head*

It's Ex. Which is where a lot of the railing against ToB comes from, the fact that Devoted Spirit (AKA the second discipline, right after the firebending one) incorporates effects that are fluffed as supernatural (divine stuff) and some of the mechanics have only been on supernatural things (healing, more importantly healing others), but it's Ex. So a lot of people claim it's WotC trying to veil magic as something else and turning warriors into mages, while others just flat-out say it's weaboo fightan' magicks.

[Slipperychicken]

Crusader healing is Su... not sure if that works. I'd probably go with Tomb Tainted characters and then trying desperately to find some Black Sand.

JaronK

Martial Spirit is not Supernatural, nor is Crusader's Strike, or Rallying Strike, or Revitalizing Strike, or Strike of Righteous Vitality. All the Devoted Spirit healing maneuvers and stances default to Extraordinary. There's also Iron Heart Endurance (Iron Heart 6) one which is the same.

EDIT Swordsage x2 Combo. But I did research so that totally means I'm more relevant.

[Story]

Bitterleaf Ointment can help a little with natural healing.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Crusader healing is Su... not sure if that works. I'd probably go with Tomb Tainted characters and then trying desperately to find some Black Sand.

JaronK

It's a common enough houserule, I suspect, but normally they're EX.

It's not being ninja'd if you know you're being redundant.

[tiercel]

There's actually a handbook on this very subject:

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

As has been noted, at very low levels in-combat healing is potentially relevant, and once you get a spell like heal.

A special case is the bard ACF "healing hymn" (CC) which gives a hefty boost to any healing spell cast from class spellcasting abilities (but NOT from items). Note that the hefty boost is significantly heftier if you conveniently forget to check / refuse to use the CC errata on this point.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I did not realize the entire forum had that opinion. However, I am noticing you can only heal through magical means. What if you were in a campaign where, say, there was no magic, SLAs, and the like?

In spite of answerer's objections this -can- be done. It takes a far more skilled DM than average and isn't generally worth it though.

You'd do much better to simply adjust d20 modern to the time-period you prefer.

The AEG supplement Magic of Rokugan can allow you to create a campaign in which there are no spellcasters with minimal system changes if that's what you're after. It has a rule-set for allowing everyone to obtain magic items that function only for themselves and a PrC that allows the smithing of powerful, non-magical arms and armor without spellcasting ability (though there's one in races of stone that allows you to make magic items without spellcasting ability.)

[Newoblivion]

This ring can regenerate limbs. I think the price for it is quite fair. It might not have any use in combat, but the concept itself is quite powerful IMO.

[TuggyNE]

This ring can regenerate limbs. I think the price for it is quite fair. It might not have any use in combat, but the concept itself is quite powerful IMO.

Given how rare it is to be able to lose limbs (you pretty much have to either get hit by flesh to stone and then damaged and patched wrongly before stone to flesh restores you, or get hit by DM fiat), this isn't really all that amazing. Especially since a scroll of regenerate is a ton cheaper for those occasions you do need it. (2275gp vs 90000? Yeah, that's not even a question.)

[Kelb_Panthera]

This ring can regenerate limbs. I think the price for it is quite fair. It might not have any use in combat, but the concept itself is quite powerful IMO.

It's a nice ability in the extremely rare event that it comes up, but the rarity of such events is such that the price simply can't be justified.

I did see this ring used in one of the cleric quintet set of novels. In that scenario the ring could even regenerate you back to life if you'd suffered wounds that should be fatal. If the game version did that it might be worth the cost.

As is it might be worth half or even as little as a third of the listed 90K.

[Newoblivion]

I know that other items might be more powerful. But in the middle of the dungeon you might not be able to obtain a scroll or even be at high enough level to cast such a spell.

In my experience anything that can recover HP without using the group's resources is good. Aspecially in a long (more then a few days) dungeon crawl or other remote and dangerous place when HP recovery is mostly the domain of the groups divine caster.

[Mnemnosyne]

It's a nice ability in the extremely rare event that it comes up, but the rarity of such events is such that the price simply can't be justified.

I did see this ring used in one of the cleric quintet set of novels. In that scenario the ring could even regenerate you back to life if you'd suffered wounds that should be fatal. If the game version did that it might be worth the cost.

As is it might be worth half or even as little as a third of the listed 90K.
That's how it works in 2nd Edition. If you were wearing it when you died, it'll bring you back to life. Won't do anything if you put it on someone that's already dead, I don't think. But it does heal wounds that were taken when it wasn't worn, just as long as you're not already dead at the time it was put on. 1 hp every 10 rounds back then (although there was a 1/round version also, in the Encyclopedia Magica).

[Savith9]

It's generally agreed that in-combat healing isn't all that effective as a primary role, yes. Tends not to scale enough to keep up with enemy output, and you're essentially burning resources just to tread water.


I've made a few cleric primary healers for my party before and usually the people that say the healing doesn't scale enough have never built one right
Augment Healing, Touch of Healing, and Sacred Healing should be your first 3 feats sacred healings a bit more iffy and is fairly dificult to work with sometimes, yes its a strait forward feat and is good at low levels but higher up its bad so if your dm lets you do retraining pick it up otherwise no. Point being with only those two feats your ahead of the curve. I was doing a primary healer/buffer for a party of 13 and the only one that could heal at that and nobody ever droped below half.

We had

4 Barbarian's
2 Fighter's
1 Cleric (me)
3 Rogue's
2 Wizard's/Sorc
1 Monk (yes I know they suck)

[Socratov]

to the OP (and disregarding healing items, since they can be more expesive and the money better spent at offensivce or niche items like rope, sovereign glue and unversal solvent): that's why the best healers are bards: they only need a few of their precious spells and trade away inspire competence (useless anyway) for healing hymn making for a fairly competent combat healer as well as useful at just about every other role the bard sees fit to fill (caster->SC, IC/DFI, partyface, snowflake wardancer). A healing heavy cleric would be better playing in an undead campaign since the only good reason for him to be there as a healer cleric is to be a RSoP and turning the crap out of everything (and be good at healing as well).

[Kelb_Panthera]

I know that other items might be more powerful. But in the middle of the dungeon you might not be able to obtain a scroll or even be at high enough level to cast such a spell.

In my experience anything that can recover HP without using the group's resources is good. Aspecially in a long (more then a few days) dungeon crawl or other remote and dangerous place when HP recovery is mostly the domain of the groups divine caster.

Except for certain special kinds of damage there's always an available option for healing that burns no resources; natural healing. It's gods awful slow, but it's always available and absolutely free.

There's simply no justifying that 90k. The magic item compendium suggests that you shouldn't even consider purchasing it before 18th level and then as your single most expensive item. This falls in-line with a similar suggestion in the DMG on page 199 that a character shouldn't spend more than a quarter of his WBL on any one item. (I knew that little nugget was tucked away somewhere.)

By that level, HP damage is fairly minor and trivial to fix.

[Alienist]

People don't like it because of the action economy. you could heal yourself, or you could kill the thing that's taking away the hit points in the first place, easy choice, right?

But it turns out that thinking is suboptimal.

Let's say that I dish out 15 points of damage per round, and my barbarian friend dishes out 25. My barbarian friend is about to go into negatives, and drop out of the combat. If I heal him and he stays in for one more round because of it, then for that round I effectively increased my damage output from 15 to 25.

With a healing spell. That's game theory. You're welcome.

Addendum: also there is battle blessing, which allows healing without violating the precious sanctity of the action economy, and mastery of night and day, which is a free maximise for cure spells, which gets you ahead of the action economy curve (where the thinking is that you need to cost them two actions worth of damage for your one action worth of healing).

[Kelb_Panthera]

People don't like it because of the action economy. you could heal yourself, or you could kill the thing that's taking away the hit points in the first place, easy choice, right?

But it turns out that thinking is suboptimal.

Let's say that I dish out 15 points of damage per round, and my barbarian friend dishes out 25. My barbarian friend is about to go into negatives, and drop out of the combat. If I heal him and he stays in for one more round because of it, then for that round I effectively increased my damage output from 15 to 25.

With a healing spell. That's game theory. You're welcome.

Addendum: also there is battle blessing, which allows healing without violating the precious sanctity of the action economy, and mastery of night and day, which is a free maximise for cure spells, which gets you ahead of the action economy curve (where the thinking is that you need to cost them two actions worth of damage for your one action worth of healing).

Sorry, but no.

You've given up 15 points of damage to maybe gain 25 at the end of the fight. That's only a net of 10 points and only if there was a chance that the creature would drop him if the 15 you gave up that round wouldn't have prevented the creature from attacking in the first place.

That's a lot of caveats for netting less damage than you were capable of doing on your own.

If 15 now and 15 after the barbarian dropped would suffice, then you can heal the dropped but not-yet-dead barbarian outside of combat and waste no action economy at all.

Basically, using a healing spell in combat is a gamble. You're betting that it'll be sufficient to squeeze one more round out of an ally during a drawn-out fight. If you win, hey great! If you lose you've completely wasted an action. Doing damage or limiting the enemies' ability to do damage, on the other hand, -always- shortens the battle.

Most people consider the guaranteed effect to be the more optimal choice than the gamble that probably won't pay off. (offense in high-op games is devestating enough that victory or defeat is determined in a single round, maybe two, with HP's often being an afterthought.)

[Savith9]

Just to add in a bit of humor though one of the two groups’ I’m running with right now healers have a bad track record and somehow die within a game or two. Come to think of it so do rogues lol. Have one guy he’s made like 6 clerics of pelor because they keep dyeing... One crawled into a dumbwaiter slipped fell and got stuck halfway while everyone was a few rooms over, another tipped over a statue to get crushed by it, and one triggered an explosive magical trap and failed his saves.... lol

[Morph Bark]

Nono i mean people actually used that ruling in actual gameplay? I figure people would downgrade back to the 3.0 one rather then even think of tossing that garbage in a game. Same way with the like gloves of the tactician from 3.0 are better then the gloves of storing and massively cheaper.

As my group has never had access to 3.0 books, we never used it.

[Newoblivion]

Except for certain special kinds of damage there's always an available option for healing that burns no resources; natural healing. It's gods awful slow, but it's always available and absolutely free.


What kind of healing burns no resources and is always available? and the whole idea of this ring is to make natural healing even better. So after a long day of fighting and the entire group is very low on hp and the divine caster have nothing more to give at list the fighter will wake up the other day healthy and ready to fight. I can't see how this item is not powerful.

[Andreaz]

What kind of healing burns no resources and is always available? and the whole idea of this ring is to make natural healing even better. So after a long day of fighting and the entire group is very low on hp and the divine caster have nothing more to give at list the fighter will wake up the other day healthy and ready to fight. I can't see how this item is not powerful.The healing reserve feat is as resourceless as it gets, as it does not expend anything to be done other than time and witholding a single spell from being cast.

[Agincourt]

Although I agree that it is generally better to help bring the enemy down, there is one thing to keep in mind. Healing is sometimes a sure thing.

For example, a 6th level cleric has one melee attack that could deal 1d8+6 +1d6 acid. On average, if he hits, he will deal 14 points of damage. Or he could get to the barbarian that is about to go down and heal him for 3d8+6 for an average of 19.5 hit points. Assuming the cleric can get to the barbarian without an attack of opportunity, it may be worthwhile to sacrifice this round.

Usually, though, it does not work out that cleanly. It ends up that the cleric would have to spend 2 rounds to get to the barbarian, or he will suffer multiple attacks of opportunity. Under most circumstances, it's a poor choice.

[Story]

You could buy two Healing Belts and heal more than the ring for 1/60th the cost.

[Newoblivion]

The healing reserve feat is as resourceless as it gets, as it does not expend anything to be done other than time and witholding a single spell from being cast.

It heals up to half the hp. Which is great while crawling in a dungeon. Though sooner or later the entire group will travel with half hp. Don't take me wrong though, this feat is great. I still think that the ring great for making sure that at list one party member heals much faster.

[Person_Man]

Yeah, in most games, it makes more sense to kill enemies every round, instead of wasting your action on trying to heal yourself or an ally. Combat is just too short, and in general it only take 1 round to kill an enemy (or be killed).

I played in a game once where the DM had a house rule - when you're killed, you are always reduced to -1 hit points and dying, unless you are killed by massive damage (50 points or more). And combat was often filled with waves of mooks, tended to last 7-10+ rounds, and in general was quite brutal. Half the party was knocked out on a regular basis, and there were more then one time when it got down to 1 player. This made combat healing very important (though not as important as smart tactics, battlefield control, and good area of effect abilities), because the remaining non-knocked out players were often incapable of winning without their allies.

[Kelb_Panthera]

What kind of healing burns no resources and is always available?:smallconfused: I just said in the very post you quoted: natural healing. It costs nothing and is always available to every character. It just takes a gods-awful long time to employ.


and the whole idea of this ring is to make natural healing even better. So after a long day of fighting and the entire group is very low on hp and the divine caster have nothing more to give at list the fighter will wake up the other day healthy and ready to fight. I can't see how this item is not powerful.

If you have to wait for the casters to recharge, the resources the ring saves are miniscule. A 750gp wand of lesser vigor is worth 550hp's. A 20th level character would heal that in 28 hours if he had that many HP's and was just this side of dropping when the healing began. That'd take 3 nights of waiting for the casters to recover to make up.

For 90k you could buy 120 wands of lesser vigor. That's 66000hp's of recovery which would take 412.5 days to recover, not counting the contribution of natural healing. You'd have to adventure every day for 1-1/3 year and nearly deplete your 550 hp's for the costs to even out.

A 20th level fighter will have something to the effect of (con 20 [14 natural amulet +6]; 1d10 [5.5hp's per level]; 9.5hp's per level *20=190 +4.5[maxed first HD]; give or take 20 to 40 for racial con bonus) around 194 to 234hp's. The upper end of this effectively doubles the length of time you'd have to wear the ring to recoup the cost compared to using wands of lesser vigor instead, making it just over 2-2/3 years of adventuring yourself nearly to death. Every. Single. Day.

It'd take a week just to do more than a single wand of lesser vigor.

[Socratov]

People don't like it because of the action economy. you could heal yourself, or you could kill the thing that's taking away the hit points in the first place, easy choice, right?

But it turns out that thinking is suboptimal.

Let's say that I dish out 15 points of damage per round, and my barbarian friend dishes out 25. My barbarian friend is about to go into negatives, and drop out of the combat. If I heal him and he stays in for one more round because of it, then for that round I effectively increased my damage output from 15 to 25.

With a healing spell. That's game theory. You're welcome.

Addendum: also there is battle blessing, which allows healing without violating the precious sanctity of the action economy, and mastery of night and day, which is a free maximise for cure spells, which gets you ahead of the action economy curve (where the thinking is that you need to cost them two actions worth of damage for your one action worth of healing).

and even that is sub-optimal thinking:

the list of priorities is such:


1) can I remove the threat immedeately?
2) Is there anyone more competent then I in dealing damage to provide for #1 in need of support?

Yes->support; No->continue to removing threat

The reason #1 is in place is that often DM's describe what happens to the creature during combat (bloodied etc.) instead of randomly falling down due to damage. If however you can remove the thread you can heal more easily and maybe expend less resources (and resourcemanagement is golden in DnD)

[Answerer]

:smallconfused: I just said in the very post you quoted: natural healing. It costs nothing and is always available to every character. It just takes a gods-awful long time to employ.
Which is fine in this case because so does the Ring of Regeneration. By the time you can afford it, it's slower than freaking long-term care.

[Mnemnosyne]

At level 4, long-term care (with only 8 hours per day, not using the full day bedrest option) matches the healing rate of the 3.5 ring of regeneration as far as hp per hour. At level 8, natural healing matches the healing rate, while long term care is double per hour. At level 12, long term care (again, only the 8 hour option, not full bedrest) matches the healing rate of the ring for the entire day.

In addition to that, the heal check can be supplanted with the Magic Bedroll, from page 163 of the Magic Item Compendium, which costs 500 gp. It gives you 1 more point of healing per level with a full nights rest. This means that at level 12, a 500 gp item and a good nights sleep does the same healing per day than a ring of regeneration. At level 13 and higher, you're actually getting more healing out of the nights sleep and the bedroll, than the 90,000 gp ring. Keep in mind that at 12th level, you can't afford a ring of regeneration, and at 13th, it would take all of your wealth by level except for 20k.

[Newoblivion]

:smallconfused: I just said in the very post you quoted: natural healing. It costs nothing and is always available to every character. It just takes a gods-awful long time to employ.


Natural healing is a given. The group rests they gain hp. With the ring they will just gain more hp that is all. If I have a fight every one hour natural healing is not going to help me. The ring on the other hand will give me my level in hp every hour, its not an amazing world breaking healing but it's more then nothing.

I agree that the cost might be too high though.

[Savith9]

For example, a 6th level cleric has one melee attack that could deal 1d8+6 +1d6 acid. On average, if he hits, he will deal 14 points of damage. Or he could get to the barbarian that is about to go down and heal him for 3d8+6 for an average of 19.5 hit points. Assuming the cleric can get to the barbarian without an attack of opportunity, it may be worthwhile to sacrifice this round.


Depending on how he’s feated it could be considerably more +2 if he has healing domain and touch of healing then plus another 2/spell level if he has augment healing in addition reach spell makes your touch spells 30' range spells at the cost of 2 spells slots higher or healing ray does the same thing only for healing spells without the spell slot inc. so its possible to make a ranged healer.

[Deophaun]

Natural healing is a given. The group rests they gain hp. With the ring they will just gain more hp that is all. If I have a fight every one hour natural healing is not going to help me. The ring on the other hand will give me my level in hp every hour, its not an amazing world breaking healing but it's more then nothing.
It's worse than nothing, because it cost you 90k that could be spent on other things. If you got it for "free" in a dragon's horde, then it's still tying up 45k in value that could also be used for other things. Things that make you not get hit in the first place. A single +1 bonus to AC is going to do more than that ring, even at those high levels when AC can be practically obsolete, and that ring costs way more than a full +5 set of armor.

I agree that the cost might be too high though.
You cannot evaluate the effectiveness of an item without taking its cost into consideration. If it cost 100 gp, we'd be talking about how broken it is.

[Savith9]

It's worse than nothing, because it cost you 90k that could be spent on other things. If you got it for "free" in a dragon's horde, then it's still tying up 45k in value that could also be used for other things. Things that make you not get hit in the first place. A single +1 bonus to AC is going to do more than that ring, even at those high levels when AC can be practically obsolete, and that ring costs way more than a full +5 set of armor.

You cannot evaluate the effectiveness of an item without taking its cost into consideration. If it cost 100 gp, we'd be talking about how broken it is.

True just by selling it thats another item there

[Kelb_Panthera]

Natural healing is a given. The group rests they gain hp. With the ring they will just gain more hp that is all. If I have a fight every one hour natural healing is not going to help me. The ring on the other hand will give me my level in hp every hour, its not an amazing world breaking healing but it's more then nothing.If you're in a fight every hour, you're screwed anyway. Only martial types and invocation wielders with some sort of regenerative ability have the unlimited offensive resources such rigorous adventuring would require.

As the poster before me noted, it is, in fact, worse than nothing by being a huge resource sink that gives back far less than it detracts.


I agree that the cost might be too high though.

There's no might about it. 90k is far too much. I'm honestly not sure my 30k suggestion is reasonable.

[Savith9]

I would say its much better to just modify the item back to its normal 1/round that makes it a bit more worth the price

[Answerer]

I'm honestly not sure my 30k suggestion is reasonable.
I certainly don't think so. 750 gp heals 3d6/day, average of 10.5. This heals 24/day. Three Healing Belts are better than a Ring of Regeneration, at 2250. Your 30,000 gp is nearly fifteen times that.

Or 750 gp heals 11/charge, with 50 charges. That's a total of 37,500 HP healed for one Wand of Lesser Vigor. You would need more than 4 years and 3 months to heal as much HP with a Ring of Regeneration. If you use all of the healing, every day.

[Deophaun]

I certainly don't think so. 750 gp heals 3d6/day, average of 10.5. This heals 24/day.
24 * Level/day. It's bad, but not that bad.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I certainly don't think so. 750 gp heals 3d6/day, average of 10.5. This heals 24/day. Three Healing Belts are better than a Ring of Regeneration, at 2250. Your 30,000 gp is nearly fifteen times that.

Or 750 gp heals 11/charge, with 50 charges. That's a total of 37,500 HP healed for one Wand of Lesser Vigor. You would need more than 4 years and 3 months to heal as much HP with a Ring of Regeneration. If you use all of the healing, every day.

I'm thinking you should get some sleep or coffee or something. You've somehow multiplied 11 by 50 and come up with 37,500.

[Slipperychicken]

I'm thinking you should get some sleep or coffee or something. You've somehow multiplied 11 by 50 and come up with 37,500.

He (accidentally?) multiplied 750*50 = 37,500. It looks like he confused the gold price and hp healed per charge.

[Answerer]

Yup, wow. That post was full of astonishing levels of failure.

[Story]

If you're in a fight every hour, you're screwed anyway. Only martial types and invocation wielders with some sort of regenerative ability have the unlimited offensive resources such rigorous adventuring would require.

Technically, you can slap Trollblooded on any character with a Con score, and reserve feats give spellcasters unlimited blasting. But you're right that only Crusaders and Warlocks get endurance out of the box.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Technically, you can slap Trollblooded on any character with a Con score, and reserve feats give spellcasters unlimited blasting. But you're right that only Crusaders and Warlocks get endurance out of the box.

Troll-blooded is a regenerative ability of some sort, yes?

I admit I did forget about reserve feats for a moment there but I said martial types, not martial adepts. The former is a catch-all that includes the latter but also includes fighters, barbarians, rangers, etc.

[Karoht]

Clerics in Pathfinder gain Channel at level 1, which is an AoE burst of healing. It scales not half badly. It is also a separate resource from spell casting, which is nice.
Quickened Channel is excellent. Move action to heal rather than a standard. Yes, it prevents the Clericzilla from using a full attack, but it doesn't stop a Cleric from casting a spell.
Lay on Hands for Paladins is excellent. Swift Action. Heal yourself, beat the heck out of bad guys. And with Mercy's, it removes various status ailments as well. Excellent action economy really.

My two cents:
I'm terrible with melee classes. Regardless of optimization, I just plain roll poorly, pretty much all the time. If my party member is better at reliably dealing damage, I'd rather make sure that the party member is alive and kicking than gamble that I can drop the bad guy. It may be a waste of an action after all (I could still roll decently and eliminate the threat) but it's the safer course of action. Healing is Win-Win because my party member is more likely to survive, and the bad guy is more likely to die as a result.
Again, my two cents.

[Deophaun]

My two cents:
I'm terrible with melee classes. Regardless of optimization, I just plain roll poorly, pretty much all the time. If my party member is better at reliably dealing damage, I'd rather make sure that the party member is alive and kicking than gamble that I can drop the bad guy. It may be a waste of an action after all (I could still roll decently and eliminate the threat) but it's the safer course of action. Healing is Win-Win because my party member is more likely to survive, and the bad guy is more likely to die as a result.
Again, my two cents.
Which is fine. Sometimes, it's safer to heal, and some people do, for whatever reason, evoke the ire of the dice gods. However, that doesn't mean that a combat healer is the best option. Being proactive with combat buffs or battlefield control is better than being reactive with healing.

Now, if you can do both at the same time, that's fantastic. But such in-combat healing is the cherry on top of the cleric sundae, not the ice cream.

[Slipperychicken]

Yup, wow. That post was full of astonishing levels of failure.

Don't sweat it :smallbiggrin:

[Eldariel]

If you're in a fight every hour, you're screwed anyway. Only martial types and invocation wielders with some sort of regenerative ability have the unlimited offensive resources such rigorous adventuring would require.

Persistomancy and permanent minions would make such days doable. It just requires a bit higher level of optimization, is all. A DMM Cleric can make the whole party able to.

[Story]

Troll-blooded is a regenerative ability of some sort, yes?

I admit I did forget about reserve feats for a moment there but I said martial types, not martial adepts. The former is a catch-all that includes the latter but also includes fighters, barbarians, rangers, etc.

At the cost of two feats (it has Toughness as prereq) you get Regeneration 1/Fire, Acid. You're also fatigued in sunlight, but that's easy to work around.

Also, you can only take it at level 1 for obvious reasons.

[ericgrau]

This came up recently but then someone did an odd thing that many people don't often do. He selected a heavily melee focused monster and showed that its damage was greater than a cure spell of the appropriate level. Except there was one flaw in his example... the monster does less damage than the cure spell. The error was that the monster only hits most of the time, whereas the cure spell always hits.

Cure spells are worth it.

I can see how in high optimization you might do way more damage and therefore cure spells may not keep up, but at the baseline with PHB builds or builds of without power creep it does keep up.

On top of that there's the matter that healing someone is better than paying for a resurrection, even if it prolongs the fight a bit and might make others take more damage. I used to say to only heal in emergencies until someone put up an example with numbers and unintentionally showed that healing is always great in your basic PHB vs. MMI fights.

[Gnaeus]

This came up recently but then someone did an odd thing that many people don't often do. He selected a heavily melee focused monster and showed that its damage was greater than a cure spell of the appropriate level. Except there was one flaw in his example... the monster does less damage than the cure spell. The error was that the monster only hits most of the time, whereas the cure spell always hits.

Cure spells are worth it.

I can see how in high optimization you might do way more damage and therefore cure spells may not keep up, but at the baseline with PHB builds or builds of without power creep it does keep up.

On top of that there's the matter that healing someone is better than paying for a resurrection, even if it prolongs the fight a bit and might make others take more damage. I used to say to only heal in emergencies until someone put up an example with numbers and unintentionally showed that healing is always great in your basic PHB vs. MMI fights.

Assuming your numbers are correct (Cleric x can heal more than monster x can damage) your conclusion does not necessarily follow.

In any fight where PCs are not about to die, simple action economy says that you are better off ending the fight more quickly and then wasting time healing when it is not important.

In any fight where PCs are about to die, you aren't really weighing the cleric healing versus the monster damage, you are weighing the cleric healing versus the other options the cleric has. Is it better than a save or lose or buff or summons or wall or attack spell or an attack with weapons or a turn attempt or something else? Because:
someone put up an example with numbers and unintentionally showed that healing is always great in your basic PHB vs. MMI fights.

would more or less require an analysis of healing versus all the clerics other abilities at a range of levels with a range of opponents. Pretty clearly, for example, Hold Person is sometimes better (A humanoid opponent with a really bad will save and good damage).

[Karoht]

Which is fine. Sometimes, it's safer to heal, and some people do, for whatever reason, evoke the ire of the dice gods. However, that doesn't mean that a combat healer is the best option. Being proactive with combat buffs or battlefield control is better than being reactive with healing.

Now, if you can do both at the same time, that's fantastic. But such in-combat healing is the cherry on top of the cleric sundae, not the ice cream.
Bingo. In the instance of heal someone or hurt someone, I choose heal because it is the decision I am more comfortable with. I'm more willing to take a risk healing than I am trying to drop a bad guy.

"Healing" to me, isn't just the Hit Point juggling game. It's proactive and reactive. It's proactive in terms of buffing/resistances/immunities, and it is reactive in terms of removing debuffs/topping up hit points/adding in new buffs as needed.
When all those needs are satisfied, or at the beginning of combat, then it's time to be proactive in terms of dealing damage or dropping battlefield control. However, battlefield control tends to be the realm of other people, but I see no reason why I can't BC and Heal. As far as damage is concerned, I've always been a fan of Toppling Spell + Spiritual Weapon/Ally. Move and a Swift respectively, does more attacks than I do, and each hit causes a knockdown. Force damage as well. The bad news is the Spell Resistance, but whatever. I can do that, and do whatever I want on my Standard action this way. I can hold my standard action to counterspell, I can use Dispel Magic to strip off enemy buffs and effects, I can throw out the save or X spells. Or if need be, I can heal.
Part of why I'm a huge fan of Life Mystery Oracles in Pathfinder.

At later levels, I consider healing to be more and more of a waste of time still. It becomes a puzzle of sorts, to protect the party to the point where I don't need to heal as often, and once I find the sweet-spot, I find myself healing less and less.

EDIT: More of my experience comes from Pathfinder, where DMM and Persist = All day buffs does not exist.

[Jane_Smith]

Though, clerics in large scale battles with several mooks can be completely and overwhelmingly stupid with a few aoe buff spells like mass bear's endurance and channel energy (if pathfinder) or mass cure light wounds/etc. If a soldier is not instantly killed in one hit, your giving an army of 30+ mooks 9-10 extra lives worth of hit points in a sustained battle each.

I believe there was a circle of healing spell or something that a runecrafter (divine magic users only) or someone could craft that granted healing over time/fast healing to anyone within like the 20 foot wide area? Its been so long I have completely forgotten the details, but I know it exists, somewhere. I also know that races of stone had a similar version, and stronghold builders guide I think. And I think it was on par with the price of the 3.0 ring of regen, but could heal multiple people at the same time in its area. Good for hospitals or phalanx/defense points.

Also, people forget there are ways to support/buff your team while healing. For example the feat Imbued Healing; if you got a domain and heal someone, they gain a bonus for 1 min/spell level of that healing spell. If you have the healing domain, you grant them temp hp equal to there level/hit dice. If you got the good domain, they get DR 3/evil.. and this feat can be taken at LEVEL 1. Suddenly you cure light wounds gives your level 1 character DR 3, or a level 20 character 20 temp hit points (for the cost of a 1st level spell thats not shabby!).

http://www.realmshelps.org/cgi-bin/featbox.pl?feat=Imbued_Healing


Also, to help ease the burden of the "dice gods" fury on your healing dice, there are the feats Augment Healing (3.0/3.5), though my dms and when i dm, usually buff it to +4-5 per spell level instead of +2. There was a feat in dragon magazine called "Cure Boost" that increases the healing dice of the cure spells by one step, and in a pathfinder supplement there is also a feat called Mystic Healer, which adds 1d4 up to like 4d6 bonus healing to any healing effect you create based on your level/hit dice (so level 1 = +1d4 healing, level 17-20 = +4d6 I think?). The fun thing is in pathfinder, the mystic healer feat applies to your channel energy aoe, so level 1 you could heal everyone in 30 feet for 1d6+1d4. The only difference in these feats is, mystic healer can NOT be used to harm undead, only heal the living, though augment healing and cure boost works on anything they normally apply to.

And to top it all off, there is the radiant servant of pelor prestige class that can be easily fit into ANY setting with a light/sun/over god, like Sarenrae from pathfinder. FREELY maximized/empowered healing spells, and bonuses vs. undead, etc. Never roll another dice again for your cure spells!

Heck, dip just ONE LEVEL into healer from complete miniatures just for getting your charisma bonus to healing spells like a warmage gets there charisma to damage spells, if you absolutely positively have to milk every hit point out of a cure spell to up the minimum amount. It applies to all conjuration [healing] spells, even from other classes, and you keep the feature even if you break the healer's code (but you lose the spells from that 1 class level). You could also take up to 4 levels in healer and take practiced spellcaster on your primary casting class so you only miss out on higher level spell slots for a little while.

Also there is a +0 Spell adjustment metamagic feat, i forgot the exact name, but its like for lawful users only? It allows you to take average for all dice rolled, kinda like skill mastery for spells. A fireball that deals 10d6 can just automatically do 30, so on. Not the BEST feat in the world, but stability can prevent those "Oh crap why u hate me dice?!!" moments.

And lastly; I believe there is a feat from eberron that allows you to apply metamagic feats to wands and staffs you have. Combined with radiant servant, a staff of healing or wand of cure light wounds becomes the greatest thing sense sliced bread, and undead just have to bend over and surrender, cause looking at you gets them instantly killed even if they SUCCEED on there will saves/etc to take half damage.

[Ravens_cry]

You know, it really depends on optimization level. Sure, in rocket tag D&D, where you either were missed or you saved, or you're hit or you failed and you are dead, a few extra d8+CL isn't much, it makes more sense to go for things that stop combat all together, but that is hardly the only way to play.
Even when in-combat healing doesn't undo damage altogether, it still can slow the downward progression until combat is over, at which slow but cheap means can be used to top off for the next combat.

[ericgrau]

would more or less require an analysis of healing versus all the clerics other abilities at a range of levels with a range of opponents. Pretty clearly, for example, Hold Person is sometimes better (A humanoid opponent with a really bad will save and good damage).
Except the general argument is that damage is more than healing. More importantly, at least some kind of analysis was done. If everyone is going to say healing is worthless, it would be nice to actually put together an analysis first. Instead of snowballing off of the last person who said it.

As for what to do in general... well I'd say it varies of course.

[Vaern]

Or just pitch in the money to buy your fighter a ring of regeneration and/or use persistent vigor on him each morning.

Based on the DMG's pricing guide for creating new magic items, a ring enchanted with lesser vigor would cost 8,000 gold for fast healing 1. If your DM will let you get one of these, it will be easily affordable long before you have the high-level spell slots to burn on persistent vigor.

[Gnaeus]

If everyone is going to say healing is worthless, it would be nice to actually put together an analysis first. Instead of snowballing off of the last person who said it.

As for what to do in general... well I'd say it varies of course.

I think I am in the moderate anti-heal camp. I certainly agree that it isn't worthless. I just think HP healing is not very often the best thing a cleric can do with his turn (and even less often good for most other healbots, like druids). The actual Heal spell is often an exception, as it can often bring a downed party member fully back to fighting status. Low levels are often an exception, where if you prepped Resist Fire and Hold Person or other spells that are not immediately useful you may want to convert to a heal.

But optimizing for it I think is rarely if ever going to be a good idea. And once you hit mid level I think casting cure x spells in combat is very rarely your best option unless you have been totally shut down by some other method (like you have no holy symbol, or your best spells are SR yes and your enemy has high sr.)

[Vaern]

Except the general argument is that damage is more than healing. More importantly, at least some kind of analysis was done. If everyone is going to say healing is worthless, it would be nice to actually put together an analysis first. Instead of snowballing off of the last person who said it.

As for what to do in general... well I'd say it varies of course.
It seems to me that the argument against healing generally assumes that you're a high enough level to cast save-or-die spells, that the target will fail its save. If you're against anything with a decent bonus to fortitude, your turn may be better spent healing a willing ally rather than wasting your turn to have a spell resisted.
I don't think that a party needs to have someone there just for healing, but I don't believe it should be regarded as an entirely useless ability simply because of the existence of a few magic items capable of healing.

[Starbuck_II]

Based on the DMG's pricing guide for creating new magic items, a ring enchanted with lesser vigor would cost 8,000 gold for fast healing 1. If your DM will let you get one of these, it will be easily affordable long before you have the high-level spell slots to burn on persistent vigor.

Nah, a Ring of Lesser Vigor unless use activated would only heal 11 hp/day for 8K (similar to weapon/armor crystals are limited/day).
Use activated would also be 4K (cheaper as you must mentally activate as a standard action every 12th round).

A Ring of continous Lesser Vigor (no limit in healing/day and no need to activate): I'd wager double so 16K personally.

But that is just me.

In my next adventure on PbP I'm going to DM soon, I planned to double dice of cure spells and inflict spells (neither can drop you below 1; this synergizes with Death Knell though)
So CLW/ILW heal/deal 2d8+1 (max +5)

Although, I'm lowering wands to max 35 charges instead of 50.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Though, clerics in large scale battles with several mooks can be completely and overwhelmingly stupid with a few aoe buff spells like mass bear's endurance and channel energy (if pathfinder) or mass cure light wounds/etc. If a soldier is not instantly killed in one hit, your giving an army of 30+ mooks 9-10 extra lives worth of hit points in a sustained battle each.
Except for Channel Energy, those are what, sixth level spells? Yeah, why would I waste a sixth level spell on a dozen level 1 warriors? More importantly, how am I getting that spell distributed to a meaningful amount of warriors?
Suddenly you cure light wounds gives your level 1 character DR 3, or a level 20 character 20 temp hit points (for the cost of a 1st level spell thats not shabby!).

It's not that it's a first level spell. It's that it's a standard action. Quicken? Sixth level spell.

[Vaern]

Nah, a Ring of Lesser Vigor unless use activated would only heal 11 hp/day for 8K (similar to weapon/armor crystals are limited/day).
Use activated would also be 4K (cheaper as you must mentally activate as a standard action every 12th round).

A Ring of continous Lesser Vigor (no limit in healing/day and no need to activate): I'd wager double so 16K personally.

But that is just me.(max +5)

Although, I'm lowering wands to max 35 charges instead of 50.
A continuous effect's cost is spell level * caster level * 2000. A duration measured in rounds has a cost multiplier of 4. Lesser Vigor is a 1st level spell that can be cast at CL1. 1 * 1 * 2,000 * 4 = 8,000

Of course, as the DM you're free to adjust the price however you see fit, but this is as it's recommended in the book ^_^

[Kelb_Panthera]

It seems to me that the argument against healing generally assumes that you're a high enough level to cast save-or-die spells, that the target will fail its save. If you're against anything with a decent bonus to fortitude, your turn may be better spent healing a willing ally rather than wasting your turn to have a spell resisted.
I don't think that a party needs to have someone there just for healing, but I don't believe it should be regarded as an entirely useless ability simply because of the existence of a few magic items capable of healing.

A skillfully played debuffer caster has offensive spells for each of the three save types that somehow severely hamper or outright remove a foe from combat if they stick.

A skilled mailman style caster just nukes the poor critter to dust almost immediately except for a small gap in the levels 3-6 area.

A skillfully played BFC caster never allows more than one enemy to face his party in combat and doesn't allow him to fight unfettered if it's at all possible (it usually is).

A well built cleric can fit into any of these roles. The only one that's even particularly tough is the mailman-style.

When all that's left is clean-up, it doesn't matter who does how much damage as long as it gets done.

[Slipperychicken]

It seems to me that the argument against healing generally assumes that you're a high enough level to cast save-or-die spells, that the target will fail its save. If you're against anything with a decent bonus to fortitude, your turn may be better spent healing a willing ally rather than wasting your turn to have a spell resisted.
I don't think that a party needs to have someone there just for healing, but I don't believe it should be regarded as an entirely useless ability simply because of the existence of a few magic items capable of healing.

It's not entirely useless, in sufficiently large quantities it can be useful at times in battle. And it is always important to make sure you're entering an encounter at full health (which wands do quite well).

Also, it's not just save-or-die. It's the debuffs, the CC. Color Spray, Grease, Daze are available from level 1. All these things hamper or deny your opponent's actions, which can prevent much more damage than a Cure Light will recover. For example, a melee character who is Slowed will be unable to Full Attack, denying him much more damage than the 3d8+5 which an equivalent Cure X would heal.

[Newoblivion]

I am not sure it's useless to heal. It just really depends on what happens on the battlefield. I agree that it's always better to somehow neutralize the enemy. But, it doesn't mean that throwing a cure spell here and there is not useful.

In long fights when the group sustains low but consistent amount of damage healing can be quite useful. Especially if you know that you won't have time to regroup before the next battle. (monsters heard the fighting from the other room and will join the combat in X rounds, etc').

While on short, damage heavy fights (a dps race), neutralization/prevention is a key tactic to survive.

[Agincourt]

Also, it's not just save-or-die. It's the debuffs, the CC. Color Spray, Grease, Daze are available from level 1. All these things hamper or deny your opponent's actions, which can prevent much more damage than a Cure Light will recover. For example, a melee character who is Slowed will be unable to Full Attack, denying him much more damage than the 3d8+5 which an equivalent Cure X would heal.

Most of those spells are not on a Cleric's or Druid's spell list. Sure a Cleric with the Magic Domain could cast these from a wand or scroll, but then the save DC will be the absolute minimum. And I don't think anyone is arguing that the Wizard should give up his action to heal.

[Slipperychicken]

Most of those spells are not on a Cleric's or Druid's spell list. Sure a Cleric with the Magic Domain could cast these from a wand or scroll, but then the save DC will be the absolute minimum. And I don't think anyone is arguing that the Wizard should give up his action to heal.

Right. (reading off SRD). At first level:


Cleric: Cause Fear, SM (to absorb hits, hurt enemies. Gets better later), Command, Sanctuary.

Druid: Entangle, SNA, buffs, Wildshape.

[TuggyNE]

At level 4, long-term care (with only 8 hours per day, not using the full day bedrest option) matches the healing rate of the 3.5 ring of regeneration as far as hp per hour. At level 8, natural healing matches the healing rate, while long term care is double per hour. At level 12, long term care (again, only the 8 hour option, not full bedrest) matches the healing rate of the ring for the entire day.

I think you (and a number of other posters) forgot that it's 1/level/hour, not 1/hour. A full day of long-term care does 1/6 as much healing as the ring (4/level/day vs 24/level/day).

The ring is bad, but not quite that bad.


I certainly don't think so. 750 gp heals 3d6/day, average of 10.5. This heals 24/day. Three Healing Belts are better than a Ring of Regeneration, at 2250. Your 30,000 gp is nearly fifteen times that.

Or 750 gp heals 11/charge, with 50 charges. That's a total of 37,500 HP healed for one Wand of Lesser Vigor. You would need more than 4 years and 3 months to heal as much HP with a Ring of Regeneration. If you use all of the healing, every day.

Let's re-run the numbers here; 10.5/belt/day vs 24/level/day means you need about two, or sometimes three, healing belts for every level to equal the ring's output. At level 18 (the point at which MIC apparently recommends you spend that much on a single item), that comes out to just over 41 belts for the same amount of healing, which is roughly 30750gp. At level 13, which is the earliest you can possibly afford it by standard WBL (and if you have only a few thousand leftover for everything else), equivalent belt cost would be about 22500gp.

To be fair, the tedium of activating and switching belts is worth a bit of a surcharge, so I can reasonably see making it 30000gp; however, as pointed out, the use-activated lesser vigor gear would be a lot less by normal guidelines, so there's a bit of dissonance here.

Let's check wands now; 750gp for 50*11 = 550 HP. At level 13, matching the ring's output costs about 425gp/day (212 days of full usage to make the ring break even); at level 18 it costs about 590gp (153 days of full usage until break-even).

Switching it to 1/level/round increases the healing rate by 600 times, although it also makes it a bit hard to actually use all that healing. (1/round is obviously from 600 to 30 times faster, depending on level.)


This came up recently but then someone did an odd thing that many people don't often do. He selected a heavily melee focused monster and showed that its damage was greater than a cure spell of the appropriate level. Except there was one flaw in his example... the monster does less damage than the cure spell. The error was that the monster only hits most of the time, whereas the cure spell always hits.

Link, please? I vaguely recall this but I don't remember having personally delved into it much at the time.

[Mnemnosyne]

I think you (and a number of other posters) forgot that it's 1/level/hour, not 1/hour. A full day of long-term care does 1/6 as much healing as the ring (4/level/day vs 24/level/day).

The ring is bad, but not quite that bad.
Ack, you're right. I was going by memory rather than rechecking the item, confident that I knew just how much it sucked.

Well, at least it can't be easily replaced by a 500gp item at level 12, then. With that in mind, I would actually consider going for the ring of regeneration....if it didn't have that clause about having to be wearing it when you take the damage.

[nedz]

It's quite situational.

In the situation where someone is down, the Cleric can spend his action getting them back up and able to act. This can be crucial especially if that character's action can then win the fight. It can also be cheaper than the 5,000 gp required to raise them.

In the situation where a defensive type character is holding a bridge, say, against a horde then keeping him standing can also be useful.

In a game of Rocket tag however: fire a rocket.

[lunchbox201]

as a player of clerics i have always maintained that as a cleric you never prepare a heal spell cause you can sacrifice any other spell for a heal of the same lvl its a waste of good resources. Although a clerics weapon does less damage than most other classes he/she should never be to far way to reach your party members in more than a round. stock up on cheap cure light wound wands for the cuts and scrapes and a good practice is to equip everyone in your party with a potion for those occasions when you just cant get to them. at the end of the day when everyone is figuring out who is taking first watch use the spell slots you have left to heal the major damage then prepare you spells for the next day.
barring the bad rolls and ill fated luck if the party cant survive without constant healing then maybe the party should re-evaluate their tactics. I have always maintained that if another pc does something stupid they will have to just wait till im done healing the ones that didnt do something stupid.
as for the ring of regeneration its a joke for the price and is useless for replacing healing in your party and really has no bearing on the original post.

[Story]

Potions are a bad idea because they waste lots of actions and provoke AoOs.

[Amnestic]

Let's re-run the numbers here; 10.5/belt/day vs 24/level/day means you need about two, or sometimes three, healing belts for every level to equal the ring's output. At level 18 (the point at which MIC apparently recommends you spend that much on a single item), that comes out to just over 41 belts for the same amount of healing, which is roughly 30750gp. At level 13, which is the earliest you can possibly afford it by standard WBL (and if you have only a few thousand leftover for everything else), equivalent belt cost would be about 22500gp.

To be fair, the tedium of activating and switching belts is worth a bit of a surcharge, so I can reasonably see making it 30000gp; however, as pointed out, the use-activated lesser vigor gear would be a lot less by normal guidelines, so there's a bit of dissonance here.

Don't forget that Ring healing can be wasted very easily, while Healing Belts are generally used only when you need it, thus devaluing the ring further since it doesn't "save up" heals for when you actually need it.

Of course, belts can overheal too, but considering how it works it's not nearly as likely to do so as the ring.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Healing is important because "winning" is not enough. The party strives to win every fight with 0% fatalities. If you did not care how many died, you could go all-out offense with every action, build, character... and probably tackle higher CR encounters than a normal party could.

But MOST groups don't like to see revolving doors of PCs or having to write up new characters or sit out until there's a chance to introduce the new meat sack.

If you wish to try and have flawless victories, you're going to need some in combat healing now and then. Is it a role worth devoting an entire build or character slot in the party for? No! Is it an important secondary role that 1 or 2 PCs should be capable of doing when the need arises? Ab-so-f***ing-lutely!

[Story]

But how often will in combat healing be necessary or useful? If you devote resources to filling a rarely needed role at the expense of more useful abilities, you're weaker overall and possibly more likely to die.

[TuggyNE]

Don't forget that Ring healing can be wasted very easily, while Healing Belts are generally used only when you need it, thus devaluing the ring further since it doesn't "save up" heals for when you actually need it.

Of course, belts can overheal too, but considering how it works it's not nearly as likely to do so as the ring.

This is true; it's one of the reasons 1(/level)/round healing isn't worth anywhere near as much as you could theoretically charge for it. However, 1/level/hour is a lot easier to match to your healing needs, I think.

[only1doug]

If you wish to try and have flawless victories, you're going to need some in combat healing now and then. Is it a role worth devoting an entire build or character slot in the party for? No! Is it an important secondary role that 1 or 2 PCs should be capable of doing when the need arises? Ab-so-f***ing-lutely!

We had a new guy generating a character for our group yesterday, he said he wanted to play a cleric so he could heal people.
We explained that dedicating himself to healing people wasn't worth his time and that he should instead play a cleric built to another purpose... he eventually decided on Bard instead.

our group has a crusader and a wizard/cleric already and everyone has a healing belt.

[Karoht]

A skillfully played debuffer caster has offensive spells for each of the three save types that somehow severely hamper or outright remove a foe from combat if they stick.
A skilled mailman style caster just nukes the poor critter to dust almost immediately except for a small gap in the levels 3-6 area.
A skillfully played BFC caster never allows more than one enemy to face his party in combat and doesn't allow him to fight unfettered if it's at all possible (it usually is).
A well built cleric can fit into any of these roles. The only one that's even particularly tough is the mailman-style.
When all that's left is clean-up, it doesn't matter who does how much damage as long as it gets done.
I think there are words missing from your statements.
In a perfect world, yes, the mailman never fails to instagib something.
In a perfect world, yes, the save-or-die wizard never has targets succeed on a save and never fails to beat SR.
Etc, etc.

Players roll poorly, NPC's roll crits and nat 20 saves at the worst possible moments, players miscalculate, DM's miscalculate, and divination can't tell you everything you are going to face in a given day and how to prepare for it when the DM is pulling things out of the monster manual within your CR at random.

*remainder of reply not directed at anyone in particular*
Yes, healing is the mistake tax. You made a mistake (maybe your fault, maybe not), you lose health, you maybe even die. Someone pays the tax, be it with HP or with GP (res).
News flash, everyone makes mistakes at some point. Some people make them to a less severe degree than others.

"On average a blah blah blah can blah blah blah and do blah blah blah..."
On average doesn't mean as much as one might think it does in a game of chance. Average means there are peaks and there are valley's. Yes, the peaks offset the valley's, but the valley's still happen, and not as something that one can control. Armor, Miss Chance, Spell Resistance, Damage Resistance, Energy Resistance, and Saves, are all forms of mitigation. Healing is a reactive mitigation.

Some parties are extremely good at minimizing their exposure to such risks. Some DM's are extremely good at minimizing the effects of their party's avoidance of exposure to such risks. For some party's, a Belt of Battle is more than enough. For others it is not enough.
There is also the consideration that without a main healer in the party, the DM might be more lenient on damage output expecations than if there were a healer in the party. Some might wish to 'give the healer something to do' some might simply want to play a game that isn't rocket tag.
Anecdotal evidence and all, but I've personally noticed that when there is a cleric (or similar 'healer' type) in the party, the players encounter more bleeds, more disease, more poison, and other effects which the cleric is more than equiped to deal with. Without that cleric in the party, these effects tend to be more rare. Again, anecdotal evidence.

[Story]

I've been playing for 3 sessions so far (5 encounters) and there hasn't been a single fight yet where in combat healing would have been beneficial. And that's a hypothetical 'free' healer. When you consider that in practice a healer would have to give up attacks to heal, it would have actually hurt the party.

Heck, a Commoner holding an Eternal Wand of Mass Snake's Swiftness would have been more helpful than the average healbot.

[Psyren]

Some folks just like healing. The main thing to make an effective combat healer is to minimize the opportunity cost for them using their actions to heal. A few classes and builds do this well (e.g. Vitalist, Oradin) but the vast majority are terrible at it.

I have a small write-up on the problems of 3.P healing in my Vitalist handbook - any class that can overcome them is a good class for dedicated healing.