Healing feats and Heal skill

[ProudGrognard]

Dear co-forumites,

I have been thinking that the poor Heal skill needs some well deserved love.I would like to see more characters using, and relying on their healer's kits, rather than CLW wands. Thus, I thought I would run by you the two following Feats. Their purpose is to allow even high level adventuring parties use the Heal skills, and for characters to continue to invest in the skill.

what do you think?


Doctor
Many people know how to treat wounds. You, on the other hand, have received extensive education on the subject, for many years.


Benefit: You gain a +2 to your Heal skill. You can substitute Intelligence for Wisdom in any Heal check if you so wish. The skill works better for you in the following ways.


Long-Term Care

Providing long-term care means treating a wounded person for a day or more. If your Heal check is successful, the patient recovers hit points or ability score points (lost to ability damage) at three times the normal rate: 3 hit points per level plus their Con modifier for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 6 hit points per level plus twice their Con modifier for each full day of complete rest; 3 ability score points for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 6 ability score points for each full day of complete rest.

You can tend as many as six plus your Wis modifier patients at a time. You need a few items and supplies (bandages, salves, and so on) that are easy to come by in settled lands. Giving long-term care counts as light activity for the healer. You can give long-term care to yourself, but then you can only tend half the normal amount of people.

Treat Deadly Wounds

Note: You expend the normal amount of uses from a healer's kit to perform this task.

When treating deadly wounds, you can restore hit points to a damaged creature. Treating deadly wounds restores 2 hit points per level of the creature. For every 4 points you exceed the DC, you add your Wisdom modifier and the creature 's Constitution modifier (if positive) to this amount. A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day.

Time: 1 hour.


Treat injury

Once per day, you can restore ability damage to a creature as if it had rested for 8 hours. For every 4 points you exceed the DC, add one to the amount of ability restored.

Time: 1 hour.

Treat Poison

To treat poison means to tend to a single character who has been poisoned and who is going to take more damage from the poison (or suffer some other effect). Every time the poisoned character makes a saving throw against the poison, you make a Heal check. If your Heal check exceeds the DC of the poison, the character receives a competence bonus on his saving throw against the poison equal to your ranks in the Heal Skill +3.

Time: 1 standard action.

Treat Disease

To treat a disease means to tend to a single diseased character. Every time the diseased character makes a saving throw against disease effects, you make a Heal check. If your Heal check exceeds the DC of the disease, the character receives a competence bonus on his saving throw against the disease equal to your ranks in the Heal Skill +3.

Time: 10 minutes.


Strong as an Ox
Your strong constitution enables you to heal far faster than most men.

Benefit: You heal at twice the normal rate, treated or untreated, and you add your Constitution modifier to it. Once per day, you can rest for 10 minutes and regain 1d8+level+Con modifier.

Note: If a character has the Strong as an Ox feat and is treated by someone having the Doctor feat, then he gains 4 hps per level plus twice their Con mod for an 8 days rest. For a full day's rest, that becomes 8 HPs per level plus thrice their Con modifier. The benefit extends to Treating Deadly Wounds.

[hymer]

I have something similar as a house rule. One is simply allowing the Heal skill to heal hp damage once per day on any given character; the better the Heal result, the more hp you regain. This takes ten minutes, keeping it as an out-of-combat thing, and vulnerable to interruptions.

The other is a very similar system, allowing people with Endurance to recover hp once per day, using Survival or Vigor (Climb+Jump+Swim skill) as the skill roll rather than Heal. This also takes ten minutes of rest and a little something to eat and drink. This was mostly to give Endurance something that feels genuinely useful.

Note that these are straight-up improvements, no additional feat investment is required.

[Afgncaap5]

I'm actually playing a Healer right now, and I agree that the Heal skill could use some attention. It came in *really* handy when I went to a location where magic was illegal. I'd used lots of Cure Light Wounds on fighting a crazy undead-ish giant and had to prove that I didn't use magic later by healing dozens of people without any magic at all.

One house-rule I've been toying with is the ability to use a Heal check in conjunction with the Healing Salve alchemical item to add more than the 1d8 cured. I'm still not quite sure the best way to go about it, though... either something like adding half or a third of the Heal check restored through "precise application of the healing salve" to the total. The only other alternative I can think of to that would be somehow calculating an "effective caster level" for the person applying the Healing Salve. I'd like it to, ultimately, be reasonable to assume that a talented healer could out-heal someone using Cure Light Wounds, but probably not Cure Serious.

Also: it's probably not exactly helpful for what you're looking at, but I'd recommend looking at the Healing Hands skill trick in Complete Scoundrel. It's not a big thing, but it has the potential to turn a character who can stabilize someone into a character who can get another character back into the fight. Not a game changer, but definitely a handy trick for a doctor to have up his or her sleeve.

[ProudGrognard]

Well, the idea behind the first feat is that a night's rest can really make a difference now.

A 3rd level fighter with Con 14 will retrieve, with a Heal check, 11 HPs, which is more or less two CLWs. The same warrior will benefit in the day from a Treat Wounds that will heal him of 6 HPs, with a good probability that this will go up to 11, if the healer is a Cleric with a Heal Skill of 11 (3+3+2 from Wis+2 from the skill) and a Wisdom of 16, which will easily roll a 21. Again, pretty good.

The second feat could well work for a fighter, since it will allow him to routinely heal (in the above example, with someone with the Doctor feat around) 14 HPs per rest.

[Ruethgar]

I like that salve idea, perhaps giving something to the order of Iaijutsi Focus to a heal check with the salve.

As to the OP, it is a nice thought, but I would rather use wands than have to take feats to heal better overnight. Were it a low magic setting I might take them, but not otherwise.

[The Random NPC]

I think there's a typo in Strong as an Ox, you end up healing more from a full day of rest than from 8 days of rest. Also these don't go far enough to justify using up a feat, especially when wands of Cure Light Wounds and Vigor, Lesser are so cheap.
I suggest something like DC 10 heals 1d4 +1 per point over the DC, usable every 10 min. If you have a +5 Wis modifier, max ranks, and a MW tool, you'll heal about 1d4 + 30, not as fast as Vigor, Lesser or Cure Light Wounds, but it's free.
EDIT: If you don't want Heal to be that powerful, have it turn lethal damage into nonlethal damage. You'll heal at a rate of 1 point per level per hour, but magic is much better.
EDIT2: My suggestion is for the Heal skill to just do that naturally. No feat involved.

[SinsI]

The question is, how much gold should a feat save you?
Strong as an Ox is worse than Healing Belt - so you are wasting a feat to save 750 gp...

[bekeleven]

If you're playing a healer, first off I'm sorry. Second off, how about the ability to use any healing item as though made with CL = your heal check, and the ability to expend an immediate to apply this to any healing item being used within 30 feet?

For healers at least, also allow breaking of level caps. So your wand of CLW heals 1D8+Roll all the time instead of 1D8+5.

[ProudGrognard]

The thing about the proposed feats here is that they are not meant to replace standard magical healing, just to work alongside it.

But I also agree that they are a bit superfluous when healing is so cheap and necessary in standard Pathfinder (and more so in DnD3.5, with Vigor and Healing Belts).

[HaikenEdge]

Doesn't this belong in the Homebrew forum?

That aside, feel like Doctor should have a Heal req (ie, you can't be a Doctor without some knowledge of healing). The Treat Poison subfunction will get massively ridiculous at higher levels (+5 to saves at 2nd level seems fine, but +13 at 10th level is kind of ridiculous); most poisons will have a DC under 30 (only 7 are above 30), and that's basically doable at about level 10, by Taking 10 (Take 10 + 13 ranks + 2 masterwork tool + 5 Wisdom modifier), which means a +16 bonus to the save against the poison. I haven't looked at a list of diseases, but if the save DCs are similar, then the bonuses will be similarly ridiculous.

Strong as an Ox has clumsy wording; you might want to rewrite it so it's more clear.

[ProudGrognard]

All of the above are valid points.

The thing is that, I want poisons and diseases to be shred apart by an experienced Doctor. Someone at 10 level should be one of the best doctors in the area. Very few poisons should be able to stand in his way.

[HaikenEdge]

I'm not sure if you want to go for realism, or just to make the skill more useful, so I'm not sure how a real-world example will apply to this, but in the real world, even expert Doctors have a hard time dealing with poisons if (A), they cannot identify it, and (B), if they do not have an antivenom for it; even the best doctors in the world can't really save you if the correct antivenom cannot be found in time.

Sure, there are miraculous recoveries without antivenoms, but in a world full of doctors who likely are doing everything in their power to save their patient, that's the outlier and not the norm.

[bekeleven]

Haiken. I think Proud's goal is to move Heal from the likes of Gather Information and Appraise into the likes of Ride and Jump, or even Iaijutsu Focus and Concentration. It makes sense that it should be possible to do things that are... extraordinary.

[HaikenEdge]

Haiken. I think Proud's goal is to move Heal from the likes of Gather Information and Appraise into the likes of Ride and Jump, or even Iaijutsu Focus and Concentration. It makes sense that it should be possible to do things that are... extraordinary.

I don't know, maybe I play in a very different kind of game, but Gather Info checks are basically a slower Knowledge checks when other people are around, and a rushed Appraise check can give you an idea as to how well-equipped the NPC participant in encounters are.

Meanwhile, Ride is only useful for people who want to ride things (which isn't that useful in reality), and Jump is superceded by flight by mid levels. As for Iaijutsu Focus and Concentration, Iaijutsu Focus is only situationally useful (albeit there are a lot of ways to create the situation), and Concentration requires a number of things to be made useful (Martial Maneuvers, for example).

Honestly, I'd much rather Heal be made useful on the same level as Gather Information or Appraise, and less like Ride and Jump, both which lose usefulness mid-game, or even Iaijutsu Focus and Concentration, the former of which does only one thing, and the latter needing outside help to be particularly useful. If there's a desire to improve Heal, it should be given additional functionality as well as improvements to its existing functionality; for example, an high Heal check to notice a creature's previous injuries (a minor limp when they walk, how they favor one side over the other) and provide combat benefits (say to confirm crit), or allow the user to resuscitate a recently deceased character (like CPR) at -9 HP and stable. Not those things, necessarily, but an improvement of Heal needs to see what it does expanded, and not just improved.

[bekeleven]

I don't know, maybe I play in a very different kind of game, but Gather Info checks are basically a slower Knowledge checks when other people are around, and a rushed Appraise check can give you an idea as to how well-equipped the NPC participant in encounters are.

Meanwhile, Ride is only useful for people who want to ride things (which isn't that useful in reality), and Jump is superceded by flight by mid levels. As for Iaijutsu Focus and Concentration, Iaijutsu Focus is only situationally useful (albeit there are a lot of ways to create the situation), and Concentration requires a number of things to be made useful (Martial Maneuvers, for example).

Honestly, I'd much rather Heal be made useful on the same level as Gather Information or Appraise, and less like Ride and Jump, both which lose usefulness mid-game, or even Iaijutsu Focus and Concentration, the former of which does only one thing, and the latter needing outside help to be particularly useful. If there's a desire to improve Heal, it should be given additional functionality as well as improvements to its existing functionality; for example, an high Heal check to notice a creature's previous injuries (a minor limp when they walk, how they favor one side over the other) and provide combat benefits (say to confirm crit), or allow the user to resuscitate a recently deceased character (like CPR) at -9 HP and stable. Not those things, necessarily, but an improvement of Heal needs to see what it does expanded, and not just improved.

Ride has its place in many martial builds, and jump is used with leap attack for unmounted martial builds. Concentration has to be, if not maxed, at least reasonably ranked for casters (+14+max spell level is nice) while Iaijutsu Focus is free damage for most melees that want it, although those that don't build for it might only get it once per encounter.

Meanwhile, I've literally never seen a played character with more than 1 rank in gather information. And the 1 rank was from factotums. Other examples include Profession, except backstory reasons (and most backstories would rather work in craft, strictly superior for PCs), knowledge (History) besides bards (I'm the only person I've seen take more than 1 rank in this), and Climb or open lock which, unlike ride and jump, have absolutely no use by midlevel (but at least matter until then).

[Greenish]

a rushed Appraise check can give you an idea as to how well-equipped the NPC participant in encounters are.That's not a bad idea.

[Edit]: Though even rushed Appraise check takes a round, so it's of limited utility outside ambushes etc.

[Phelix-Mu]

The problem with poisons and diseases are that the RAW ones aren't as dangerous as one might expect. Most poisons available to PCs would be very difficult to acquire/make/buy as a normal person. Some of them can be quite lethal to commoners, but there are plenty that are going to be more of a serious inconvenience. The same goes for many of the core diseases that aren't caused by spell effects. Low DCs, piddling damage, and natural heal rates with RAW Heal assistance make these much less worrisome than lots of the more serious of irl poisons/diseases (like cyanide or ebola...those don't really exist in the game in a manner resembling their real-life effects).

So, while making Heal cooler is a goal I well ascribe to, you should beware, lest a network of doctors obliterate all mundane disease via superior care or some other undesirable result.

I also allow Heal to be used for surgeries and the resolving of deformities and such that should logically be within the realm of capability for skilled doctors. The DCs can be quite high (especially if done without a proper facility), but nothing that a low-to-mid level pc couldn't ace with some devotion of resources.

[HaikenEdge]

Ride has its place in many martial builds, and jump is used with leap attack for unmounted martial builds. Concentration has to be, if not maxed, at least reasonably ranked for casters (+14+max spell level is nice) while Iaijutsu Focus is free damage for most melees that want it, although those that don't build for it might only get it once per encounter.
I concede on Jump, as I forgot leap attack, but Ride for mounted martial builds are suboptimal at best. Concentration is used only really for Concentration to avoid losing spells (unless you've also got Martial Maneuvers), and Iaijutsu Focus builds that get it multiple times pretty much focus on it almost exclusively, to a point where it's their featured ability.


Meanwhile, I've literally never seen a played character with more than 1 rank in gather information. And the 1 rank was from factotums. Other examples include Profession, except backstory reasons (and most backstories would rather work in craft, strictly superior for PCs), knowledge (History) besides bards (I'm the only person I've seen take more than 1 rank in this), and Climb or open lock which, unlike ride and jump, have absolutely no use by midlevel (but at least matter until then).

On the other side, I've pretty much never seen a character in play take Ride for any reason besides prereqs, whereas I've seen multiple characters make great use of Gather Information, by asking the correct questions and gaining from the wisdom of the herd. Profession is actually fairly useful for certain games, depending on how it's being run, as a profession check isn't just used to count how much money a character earns in a week, but is also called upon when asked to perform a task linked to the skill (Profession [Gambler] when being involved in a game of chance, or Profession [Ditchdigger] when being made to dig for something). Also, Climb and Open Locks are both useful at midlevel, if you have no desire to draw attention to yourself by using magic.


That's not a bad idea.

[Edit]: Though even rushed Appraise check takes a round, so it's of limited utility outside ambushes etc.

Combat isn't the only kind of encounter.

[Powerfamiliar]

Hmm might steal some of those ideas. Currently for I use these house rules for heal:

Patch Up: Takes 5 minutes. Heals 1d6 hit points at DC 15 and an extra 1d6 for every 5 points you go over 15. It cannot heal past half maximum hit points. Uses up 1 heal kit charge. If you take 20 healing is also maximized (still can’t go past half maximum).

Treat Deadly Wounds: Treating deadly wounds restores 2 hit points per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your WIS mod (if positive) to this amount. You may also heal 1 point of ability damage. A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day. Uses up 2 heal kit charges.

That is for an E6 game where wands of CLW don't exists. I'm torn between changing 'Path Up' to a set number instead of D6s. I just like D6s.

[Seerow]

Honestly, the time constraints on this keep it from being useful.

With a wand of Vigor, I can heal 10 hp per minute. Recovering 100 hp takes 10 minutes. In an hour, you're able to recover more HP than most 20th level characters will have.

By comparison, to recover the same 600 hit points that a wand can put out in that time, even with a +10 wis mod and +10 con mod on the recipient, you're needing to hit a DC127 heal check. To be comparable in rate of healing with a 1st level spell.

Now while that exact level of healing isn't necessary, ever really, the rate of the healing is the bigger concern to me. If you want to be a viable option compared to carrying around wands of lesser vigor, or even CLW, you need to be able to top off your party given 10-15 minutes, at most. This means allowing treatment of wounds be something you can do to multiple people at once, and making it possible to complete much faster. Say take a +5 to the DC to cut the time it takes in half. So with a DC25 check, you can do your healing in 15 minutes. DC30 can do it in 7.5 minutes. In effect, you're trading out healing (at +15 DC you're losing roughly 4*(wis+con)) in exchange for going much faster.

[ProudGrognard]

As I said, this is not an attempt to go against healing wands and such like (though now that I think of it, if the Heal skill and the Treat Wounds thing worked every after battle, and not just once, it sort of could).

This is an attempt to do something useful when the party is at the end of the day and the cleric is out of spells. Knowing that with a bit of rest you can regain 3hps per level plus con could save some spells and wands from being used.

But making the Treat Wounds work after every battle.... hmm. And making it heal 2/level+Wis of the healer + Con of the healed, scalable. That could work, in a way.

[hymer]

Honestly, the time constraints on this keep it from being useful.

I disagree. My players love recovering hp via Heal checks that take ten minutes. The major point is that it's virtually free (usually about 5gp for a use of the Healer's Kit). Even the characters with the kind of healing available you write about use their heal checks just because they're very cheap. The rest use it because it's a non-magical source of healing, which is much appreciated.
Also, not every group uses the wands-healing process, and saving a spell slot or two of the cleric's is a big deal to them.

Edit @ OP: I'd suggest keeping it simple. Make it so you roll your Heal check and know how much you healed without so much hassle - like you heal an amount of hp equal to your check result minus 14.
We actually use 1 hp at DC 10, 2 at 13, 3 at 16, 4 at 18, 5 at 20 and +1 per point above that, but that's mostly to encourage rolling and ensure that even low level healers can get something consistently.

[Curmudgeon]

Concentration is used only really for Concentration to avoid losing spells (unless you've also got Martial Maneuvers), ...

Check: You must make a Concentration check whenever you might potentially be distracted (by taking damage, by harsh weather, and so on) while engaged in some action that requires your full attention. Such actions include casting a spell, concentrating on an active spell, directing a spell, using a spell-like ability, or using a skill that would provoke an attack of opportunity.
You want to use Sleight of Hand to filch an enemy spellcaster's spell component pouch? A DC 15 Concentration check will let you avoid the AoO. The same goes for throwing a grappling hook (Use Rope). These skills will see use in combat, and if one of my Rogues multiclasses with something for which Concentration is a class skill, I generally get good use of that.

[HaikenEdge]

You want to use Sleight of Hand to filch an enemy spellcaster's spell component pouch? A DC 15 Concentration check will let you avoid the AoO. The same goes for throwing a grappling hook (Use Rope). These skills will see use in combat, and if one of my Rogues multiclasses with something for which Concentration is a class skill, I generally get good use of that.

I stand corrected on Concentration, but if I've never seen or been in a situation where a spellcaster was in close enough range for a character who could reliably make the DC 20 check to lift a small item from a person to actually steal their spell component pouch, mostly because most spellcasters I've ever come into contact with wouldn't be within range to begin with. As for the example of throwing a grappling hook for Use Rope, to a point where I'd risk throwing a grappling hook, if I'm in a situation where I need to get out of dodge right away, in a situation where I'd normally need a Concentration check, I'd just use a tree token instead.

[Riculf]

Meanwhile, I've literally never seen a played character with more than 1 rank in gather information. And the 1 rank was from factotums. Other examples include Profession, except backstory reasons (and most backstories would rather work in craft, strictly superior for PCs), knowledge (History) besides bards (I'm the only person I've seen take more than 1 rank in this), and Climb or open lock which, unlike ride and jump, have absolutely no use by midlevel (but at least matter until then).

Maybe its because I've usually been in a very low-magic campaign, but I'd estimate that at least 40% of characters use gather info for Urban Tracking and as a useful means of getting plot info as well as finding the best deal, etc. Same goes for the other, less "useful" skills listed. Profession can easily be turned into bonuses by having profession: soldier used for assisting in camp placement and identifying military dispersion patterns :smallsmile:

As for heal, well, one of my favourite characters is a healerbot with massive heal and Profession: Doctor, all of which have been used in numerous different combinations and situations due to the rulings of clever DM's

[Aracor]

I actually went for a different tactic with the heal skill. I decided I wanted two things: I wanted the heal skill to actually be effective for helping people recover significantly faster than without it, and not necessarily incompatible with magic healing.

So:
Heal: Triage (trained only): Triage is a more advanced and complicated form of first aid closer to field surgery than simple bandaging. With a successful heal check, a character with the heal skill can convert hit point damage to nonlethal damage instead. The amount converted is based upon the result of the heal check:
DC 20: The character converts 1d4 hit points of damage per hit die to nonlethal damage.
DC 25: The character converts 1d6 hit points of damage per hit die to nonlethal damage.
DC 30: The character converts 1d8 hit points of damage per hit die to nonlethal damage.

Special: Providing triage to yourself applies a -5 penalty to the heal check
Action: Providing triage takes ten minutes.
Try Again: Triage can only be performed on a target once every 24 hours.

Note: This does allow (with time) healing spells to be doubled in efficiency, since a healing spell will both restore lethal and nonlethal damage simultaneously.