".. Need a healer" - What are the options?

[JusticeZero]

In the thread about op, I noted that I have a special issue with being asked to be "the healer". This implies ability to refill HP, and to fix stuff like level loss or death.
In the usual core only game, that means Cleric, which is T1, possibly a Druid, also T1.
What are the other alternatives, along with tier, source, and basic tips?

The only one to spring to mind right now is the Pathfinder Vitalist in the Psionics material.. though that's because I've been playing psionics-only for months and nothing else. I think that is T3,and has potential for combat either by life leeching or by tossing status effects around.
One Tactician build has access to the powers too. Same source, similar tier probably.

[haplessvictim]

Have you considered the Oradin (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=257365), a Oracle/Paladin hybrid? He or she can fight well and heal and there's enough flexibility in the build for interesting customization. The next time I play a PF healer, I definitely will give it a try,

[Hytheter]

If you're specifically avoiding tier 1s, you could play Favoured Soul. It's tier 2, and is to cleric as sorcerer is to wizard +some other assorted class features.

[Crustypeanut]

Hedge Witch with the Healing Patron and Healing Hex is another good choice - you get plenty of restorative and healing magic, while still being an arcane caster.

Nothing beats healing people then vomiting a swarm to kill your foes. :D

[SciChronic]

the most efficient healing would simply to have your party all buy Healing Belts and pool money for a wand that someone (probably a skillmonkey) can use.

The thing about D&D is that its much more effective to just prevent damage over healing it after the fact.

though if you're specifically looking for a "healing" class, i've always found psionic healers to be interesting. You burn some power points to cast an augmented Vigor, then you use the power that heals the target by transferring the damage to yourself and letting the temporary HP eat it all.

[Derjuin]

Paladin can sort of heal too - you can grant Fast Healing by expending Turn Undead (via divine feat - I forget its name). They're not very good at it, but can heal a variety of things if you take the Curse Breaker ACF too. They're (kinda high) Tier 5. Better at other things, their healing is kinda tacked on.

Healer is actually not a great option for healing, despite having access to 9th level spells. I don't know if there's even any support for it outside its book (Miniatures Handbook). It's tier 5.

You can try Crusader from Tome of Battle, picking mostly Devoted Spirit maneuvers that heal (up to and including the 9th level one, that actually casts Heal when you hit with it) and White Raven maneuvers that buff or prevent enemies from attacking. Crusader is tier 3. In order to heal, they need to hit things, so you kinda get away with two roles at once :smallbiggrin:. However, because their healing requires hitting things, you might not be able to use it outside of combat (unless you buy like a Tiny dagger or something that deals 1 damage).

Alternatively, you can use Artificer (Eberron Campaign Setting) to craft healing potions and wands and hand them out to your allies :smallwink:. Artificer is tier 1.

As someone is no doubt going to bring up, the best way to heal is to prevent the damage from ever happening in the first place. You can do that by buffing, debuffing, or killing things quickly. In non-core, you can probably do all three on a Cleric if you pick your spells right, and if you're Good aligned (or neutral with positive energy) you can still spontaneously convert to healing spells in case one is ever needed.

[Hytheter]

You can try Crusader from Tome of Battle, picking mostly Devoted Spirit maneuvers that heal (up to and including the 9th level one, that actually casts Heal when you hit with it) and White Raven maneuvers that buff or prevent enemies from attacking. Crusader is tier 3. In order to heal, they need to hit things, so you kinda get away with two roles at once :smallbiggrin:. However, because their healing requires hitting things, you might not be able to use it outside of combat (unless you buy like a Tiny dagger or something that deals 1 damage).

There's no way to use it outside combat, since the target of the attack "must pose a threat to you or your allies in some direct, immediate way."

The crusader's healing is pretty good though, in that you can attack and heal at once. Also you don't have to be right next to your ally to heal them (though that's not an issue for the mass cures anyway).
The downside compared to the Cure spells is that the maneuvers heal less damage (D6 instead of D8), you don't get any equivelant to Cure Critical Wounds, and the Crusaders Heal Spell thing doesn't kick in until level 17 at the earliest.

Definitely not a terrible in combat healer though; just puts the emphasis on combat.

[Dimers]

Paladin can sort of heal too - you can grant Fast Healing by expending Turn Undead (via divine feat - I forget its name).

Sacred Healing, in Complete Divine. It operates for ChaMod+1 rounds at a time, and ChaMod also improves how many times per day you can use it. Since Charisma does other nice things for a paladin, this is a reasonable method. It's slower than spells/wands (and not available until 5th level due to skill ranks), but it can be plenty potent -- Charisma 20 gets you as much as 144 hit points per day ... for each party member. Paladins can also lay on hands and can use curative wands.

"The healer" needs a reliable way to prevent or cure ability damage, ability drain, poison, negative levels, and possibly disease. They might or might not also be given the party role of fixing curses, petrification, short-term paralyzation, confusion, fear and all kinds of other debuffs and disables. Depending on what varieties of nastiness your DM likes to throw at you, potions and wands might cover most of that, or you might need a dedicated full-caster to do the job.

My 3.5 DM's game has serious ability damage about every second combat, so paladin or ardent just wouldn't cut it for us. I didn't want to play a cleric to fill my party's healer role, so I tweaked spirit shaman until it fit the role and the campaign, including making it a normal spontaneous caster. The fourth-level spell panacea helps a lot in flexibility, and I got access to early big-burst healing with rejuvenating cocoon. The Augment Healing feat from Complete Divine has proven pretty valuable, too -- it adds ten hp for all targets of mass cure light wounds and four hp every time I use close wounds to improve my action economy.

When building that character, I rejected bard and Sacred Healing paladin (not enough big-burst available), ardent (decent for hp but not for fixing debuffs), cleric and druid (didn't want Tier1), favored soul (delayed spell level gain sux and the special abilities are bland), and Healer (didn't want Tier5 either).

[Dictum Mortuum]

Blessing of the Godless, from Exemplars of Evil.

It's a ceremony feat and you can have up to 6 participants. This feat is perfect for out-of-combat healing: it provides the participants (up to six, if your party is less than that number use intelligent companions, e.g. familiars) a pool of healing equal to the number of the participants x your level. The ceremony lasts 6 minutes and after that you can just recast it :D

The best part is that since each party member can draw hit points equal to his class level from the pool, you can split the healing points optimally, which is not the case with mass healing normally (everyone is healed almost equally).

[JusticeZero]

"The healer" needs a reliable way to prevent or cure ability damage, ability drain, poison, negative levels, and possibly disease. They might or might not also be given the party role of fixing curses, petrification, short-term paralyzation, confusion, fear and all kinds of other debuffs and disables. Depending on what varieties of nastiness your DM likes to throw at you, potions and wands might cover most of that, or you might need a dedicated full-caster to do the job. This. Very much this. Eventually I need to fix a mountain of status effects and a CLW wand just isn't enough.

[Yuki Akuma]

Artificer(/Bard/Rogue/Expert) with maxed UMD and lots of wands/staves. :|

[GameSpawn]

Adept?

Probably not actually a great choice, but it is core. It's actually listed as Tier 4, but if you're more concerned about being a good healer than having some variety to your abilities, I'd imagine Healer is better.

[Hecuba]

I can't really comment on the pathfinder side, but for 3.5 content, here's my 2 bits.

Presuming you're looking at actually casting the spells directly:

Base Class List By Tier

Cleric, Druid, Archivist, Erudite
Favored Soul (CD), Psion, Spirit Shaman, Spontaneous Cleric/Druid variants
Bard (divine variant is preferable)
Adept
Paladin, Healer


There are several PrCs that can push this capacity up or down a level.

Of particular note is Combat Medic from Heroes of Battle.

Alternately, any PrC with independent casting which covers the spell list from the classes above will work.

You can also build out an arcane caster to take the role if desired. Arcane Disciple and the "Spontaneous Healer" feat allows you spontaneous conversion as a cleric. You'll still likely have to find a way to grab Restoration and the other relevant status removers.

Regardless of class, the feats below are particularly valuable if you want to be doing significant in-combat healing:

Mastery of Day and Night (ECS)

Free Maximize on Cures

Prophecy's Shepherd (MoE) or Battle Blessing (CC, Paladin only)

Free Quicken on Cures or Free Quicken on Paladin Spells (respectively)

Prophecy's Shaper (MoE)

Free Empower

Spontaneous Healer (DMGII)

Cure conversion as cleric.
Converts from spell list, not spells known. This makes it particularly valuable for spontaneous casters.

Divine Ward (PHBII)

Ward a creature for 24 hours, allowing you to cast touch spells on them at short range.
Costs a turn attempt for each creature warded beyond the first.


______________________________________________
My preferred path for a tier 3 healer is to build one of the tier 2 options into Prestige Paladin and/or Hospitaler.


EDIT: Corrected Divine ward typo.

[PaintByBlood]

If you like Psions, an Egoist can carry a good bit of healing weight (in addition to being a metamorphing beast and such). They can pick up an ACF from Mind's Eye at level 5 that gives them a good boost to their ability to do this, too.

[The Viscount]

A Binder (ToM) who's bound Buer has unlimited healing, though you have to wait until 7th level (or 5th with Improved Binding) before it's an option. Binder's Tier 3, most say 2 if you add in the online vestiges. This is a rather sub-optimal use of binder, since one cannot bind 2 vestiges until level 8, and Buer can't really do much besides be healer.

For any healers who can do hp but not other status ailments, caduceus bracers are a great tool.

Dread Necromancer (HoH) can make a healer of sorts, but it requires that everybody be nongood and burn a feat on Tomb-Tainted Soul, which isn't exactly optimal. DN's Tier 3.

[yougi]

the most efficient healing would simply to have your party all buy Healing Belts and pool money for a wand that someone (probably a skillmonkey) can use.

The thing about D&D is that its much more effective to just prevent damage over healing it after the fact.

That for HP.

And I'd like to say that the Dragon Shaman is one of the fun healers to play (at least I think so) because, much like the Crusader, he doesn't need to take his turn to heal with his Aura. Plus, Touch of Vitality is Lay on Hands v2.0, which can be used to heal ability damage and some other ailments.

It's not optimal (god no!), but it hadn't been named yet.

[gorfnab]

Nightstalker - Dragonlance: Races of Ansalon.

[Firechanter]

"The healer" needs a reliable way to prevent or cure ability damage, ability drain, poison, negative levels, and possibly disease. They might or might not also be given the party role of fixing curses, petrification, short-term paralyzation, confusion, fear and all kinds of other debuffs and disables.

QFT.
I think I have already said it in the other thread, but using Spont Cleric / Favoured Soul as written for the Healer niche is problematic. Due to having so few Spells Known to select, you'll pretty much have to burn ALL your selections on curative spells.

So if the character picks all the necessary spells, it's a pure Heal-bot with very little else to it, and thus boring to play, and most players will simply refuse to do that.

So, my idea is to use the Spontaneous Cleric and give him all the curative spells (i.e. that cure HP as well as all of the quoted conditions) for free, _in addition_ to their own Spells Known picks.

[Big Fau]

Have you read one of the handbooks on this topic (OW4's or Sinfire Titan's)? Those are good places to start.

[Feytalist]

So, my idea is to use the Spontaneous Cleric and give him all the curative spells (i.e. that cure HP as well as all of the quoted conditions) for free, _in addition_ to their own Spells Known picks.

Dragon #311 has a section with Cleric variants. One (dammit I forget what it's called now) has an extended Spontaneous list. I seem to remember restoration and other curative spells on there.

[Telonius]

Artificer(/Bard/Rogue/Expert) with maxed UMD and lots of wands/staves. :|

Or, Artificer (or Wizard, or Sorcerer) with a party of Warforged and a bunch of Repair Construct.

[JusticeZero]

I hadn't seen either guide; where would I find them?
In any case, the thing i'm looking for is all the ways that I can make someone who

A: can obviously heal the party - even if mainly in downtime and
B: be able to deal with status, ability damage, levels, and the like,
C: without bleeding too much WBL constantly and while
D: having other things to do, all while
E: not being a Tier One who will accidentally go Godzilla on everything.

Vitalist, Egoist Psion.. Both of those are banned in a lot of games because "psionics are overpowered (dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ForumsPro/viewtopic/t=2700.html)", even though i'm looking at them to reduce my power level and not be playing Tier One.
I haven't really had any experience with the things that have been mentioned so0 far - looks interesting! But how are they with fixing things other than refilling HP?

[fryplink]

If you have something that can get rid of conditions, then buying a couple hundred feet of healing belts give you broader options on the character. Sheesh, if you include eternal wands and healing belts, you can have a party that lacks a traditional healer with almost as much healing as a party of bards and clerics.

[Dr. Yes]

You might take a look at Pathfinder's Alchemist and Inquisitor. They're both 2/3 casters with a combat buffing/debuffing focus and both get access to Restoration, Neutralize Poison, and Remove Disease; Inquisitor also gets Remove Curse. They also both have CLW, so the classic wand thereof is on the table for hit point healing.

[Person_Man]

Martial Study Feat (gives you a maneuver of your choice, usable once per combat) and Martial Stance (Martial Spirit) Feat (which allows you to heal 2 points of damage to yourself or any ally whenever you hit something). Get a Fine sized dagger (deals 1 damage), and play as a character with 10 Str. Now out of combat, you can stab others or yourself repeatedly to heal them.

Incarnate also has a couple of healing options. Soulspark Familiar gives you a tiny energy thing with Fast Healing, which you can deal non-lethal damage to with a Vampiric weapon for infinite out of combat healing. Therapeutic Mantle soulmeld also adds to any healing effect, allowing for some potent combos.

[bekeleven]

Martial Study Feat (gives you a maneuver of your choice, usable once per combat) and Martial Stance (Martial Spirit) Feat (which allows you to heal 2 points of damage to yourself or any ally whenever you hit something). Get a Fine sized dagger (deals 1 damage), and play as a character with 10 Str. Now out of combat, you can stab others or yourself repeatedly to heal them.Maneuvers out of combat is, sadly, a no-go.

[Firechanter]

Hitting your own allies should be the no-go thing here. That's just stinky cheese.

[DarkEternal]

And if your DM feels especially bastardy towards you, he'll also tell you that you can't use maneuvers whenever the enemy is held, dominated, paralysed, sleeping and so on.

[lsfreak]

It's not like unlimited out-of-combat healing is overpowered, and Martial Spirit stance lacks the clause that they must be in some way threatening you or your allies. Though if someone was trying to go this route, I'd prefer houseruling Martial Spirit to give fast healing 1 to one person out of combat for the sake of avoiding silliness.

If you're trying to avoid T1 problems, one possible suggestion would be to just self-limit: avoid all the self-only buffs (unless they boost your healing), any debuffs/save-or-X/battlefield control, and most of the summoning and blasting spells, and sink your feats into healing and buffing. If it helps you from being tempted, call yourself a healer, so the other players don't expect all the normal cleric spells. Go cleric, grab some of the healing-oriented feats in Complete Champion (Touch of Healing, Imbued Healing, Protection Devotion, Protective Ward), maybe DMM:Quicken; throw out buffs the first round, heals when needed, and Reserve feats or damage as filler. Or go a little tougher (though slower to pick up the good healing spells), cleric/crusader/RKV (normal limit to 1 extra swift action a round), and use the maneuvers for some passive healing as well. Or throw in Divine Defiance from Fiendish Codex 2, supplementing healing with counterspelling. There, you're pretty much on par with most T3 characters.

Eldritch Disciple might be another option, but I wouldn't really want to play one unless you're starting at least at 8th level. Warlock's painfully slow advancing and it gets worse if you're trying to keep your cleric side from getting too far behind on the good stuff like restoration.

[Big Fau]

I hadn't seen either guide; where would I find them?

OW4's guide, reposted. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2710)

Sinfire Titan's guide. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1520)

[Malroth]

Everybody be undead and buy a handful of black sand you keep in your shoes

[JusticeZero]

OK. Looking over the PF stuff, not seeing a healing belt, not sure if there is an equivalent item somewhere in the Pathfinder materials, since I don't have access to a 3.5 library anymore.

[Feytalist]

The spell healing lorecall allows you to remove status effects with your normal healing spells, cued off your Heal skill ranks. Sort of a two-for-one deal. Maybe carry a wand of that around?

[Big Fau]

OK. Looking over the PF stuff, not seeing a healing belt, not sure if there is an equivalent item somewhere in the Pathfinder materials, since I don't have access to a 3.5 library anymore.

The Healing Belt wasn't ported to PF, since it was first printed in an Eberron splat then reprinted in the Magic Item Compendium (neither of which are OGC).

If you don't have that, a Wand of Lesser Vigor or Faith Healing (if the party members are all worshipping the same deity, both from the Spell Compendium) would be an adequate replacement. Barring those, CLW is your best option.

[Amphetryon]

Bards make perfectly serviceable healers in 3.X, as do (if ported from, or staying in, 3.5) Favored Souls, Spirit Shaman, and Shugenja. All of these reside somewhere between T2 and T3. In 3.5, Warlocks with the right Item Creation access are also completely capable of handling healing duties out of combat. The best non-combat healer - in the right sort of campaign - may just be Dread Necromancer, whose unlimited access to Charnel Touch and good CHA for UMD combine for unlimited healing and almost zero chance of mishap on any item usage, assuming Skill point investment.