Classes that change the way D&D is played:

[Thrawn183]

So I have been a part of two campaigns that included a Healer. One of the things I notice is just how differently the campaigns that included a Healer played out from every other campaign I've ever participated in.

Generally speaking, the greatest problem I've seen in designing encounters is the action economy. A single threatening enemy just can't keep up with an entire party. A Healer doesn't threaten that. A Healer may erase all of the effects of a fireball that just hit the entire party, but they don't actually prevent the BBEG from doing whatever the DM wishes them to do. A Healer may stop multiple party members from being gibbed by a dragon's full round attacks and breathe weapon, but they don't actually stop the dragon from doing interesting things. The same applies for beholders, mindflayers and any number of other squishy enemies.

Frankly, I think the Healer is one of the best things to have ever happened to 3.5 and I wish more people would play the class, or other classes that have similar effects upon encounter dynamics.

[cakellene]

Thread title and text seem very incompatible.

[sideswipe]

i think the same can be said from buff classes. e.g. marshal, dragon shaman, buff spec casters.

i have played that role. and it can be incredibly fun. especially if you multi class between them.

[Devronq]

Thread title and text seem very incompatible.

I disagree how do you feel that way?

[cakellene]

I disagree how do you feel that way?

The post is talking about how the healer class doesn't change way things are done.

[Spore]

A healer holds the status quo so if you are winning, healing is clever enough. More often than not however even the healer character should have some tricks up his or her sleeve to push the fight into a status where you're winning and then stabilizing it there.

If you play a healing character, you play it to limit casualties and remove pain form the game. Have a small array of buffs and with your other actions, minimize the impact of enemy actions. So, in my books, Prayer, Dispel Magic, Delay Poison, Find Traps or Resist Energy are perfectly fine healer spells that support the theme.

Other types of characters that change the gameplay style:
- Blaster vs. Battlefield controller (kill the minions with a Fireball or let them kill each other with Confusion?)
- Archers (that are able to snipe the enemy spell casters)
- Buffers (strong on few strong enemies) vs. Debuffers (strong on many weak enemies)
- Social vs. Combat (talk about it or kill them?)
- Damage Dealers vs. Combat Maneuver Monkey (outright kill or disable with Trip/Overrun etc.)

[The Trickster]

The poster is saying that a healer is a great class because it provides healing, but unlike the cleric/druid, doesn't have the ability to do everything else.

I disagree, only because I think healers are boring. They can heal and...thats it. It gets old very quick.

[Eldan]

Mostly, it's just boring to play a purely reactionary class. You can't do anything proactive. The enemy does something and you undo it, until either side runs out of resources.

[Red Fel]

The poster is saying that a healer is a great class because it provides healing, but unlike the cleric/druid, doesn't have the ability to do everything else.

I disagree, only because I think healers are boring. They can heal and...thats it. It gets old very quick.

I'm inclined to concur with Purple's outcome, but not the reasoning.

I acknowledge that Healer is basically Cleric or Druid minus offensive spellcasting, melee ability and survival skills. It is very much a weaker-tier class, but the same can be said of many weaker-tier classes.

Where I disagree is not that Healers are boring. I happen to think it makes for very interesting fluff. Rather, Healers are a poorly-designed class, because, in combat, healing is a poor strategy.

I will explain. When you are in combat, any enemy alive and able on the field can injure you. A Healer can mitigate that harm, but doing so does not in any way prevent the enemy/ies from inflicting more harm in the interim. It becomes a game of attrition, and those are always losing odds. The best way to prevent injury in combat isn't to heal it, but to disable/kill your opponents before they can cause further harm. Ironically, a Crusader's Devoted Spirit maneuvers, which allow it to heal while it kills, make the Crusader - a beefy, martially-minded class - a better combat healer than the Healer.

When you are out of combat, a Healer's abilities don't hold a candle to the basics - scrolls and wands. Anybody with access to a Cleric or similar spell list can use efficient, inexpensive scrolls and wands to heal the party's injuries and ills.

Basically, all of the Healer's class abilities, with the exception of Healing Hands, Skill Focus, Effortless Healing and Unicorn Companion, can be duplicated with spells. In fact, they explicitly say "as if casting a X spell." Further, even those features listed above can be duplicated to some extent by clever use of feats and other class features. The spell list is limited and unimpressive. The class, in short, can be outperformed at its job by core classes, such as Cleric.

Back to the OP, however. It sounds like you're saying that a Healer changes how D&D is played by having no impact on the action economy - that is, it's like they sit there doing nothing. That's not a good thing. As Eldan points out, being purely reactionary, to the point that any impact you have on combat is either to negate other actions or to have your own negated, isn't desirable in the slightest.

There are classes that change how D&D is played. Incarnum classes. Psionics. Druids. ToB classes. Binders. Other Druids. The Healer in no way changes how the game is played, because the class in no way impacts gameplay. It doesn't do anything. It's barely successful at its own job.

Perhaps the OP could explain what, if anything, he meant by suggesting that Healer changes how the game is played. Because I, for one, am at a loss.

[The Trickster]

I'm inclined to concur with Purple's outcome, but not the reasoning.

More stuff.



l basically agree with what you said. The "boring healer" thing is mostly opinion.

As for "what classes change the way D&D is played" debate, they honestly all do. A game with a monk will change the game just as much as having a wizard would (well, almost anyway).

Most good DM's will alter their games to match what their players are doing. If you have a group of mostly melee characters, and you want to challenge the group, throw a flying bad guy at them. But you would't expect that flying guy to be as big of a challenge against a magic using heavy group.

Hope that makes sense. I am at work, typing on a phone.

[Azoth]

While I do not ever advocate playing a purely heal based character, if you think about it, having someone go full blown "White Mage" can change how a particular game runs its course. We have seen several builds where we have dedicated healers able to fully keep up with enemy damage out put for little resources. Most of these builds have room for the player to pick up useful buffs and counterspelling measures.

This can turn one character into a "I said NO!" for enemies. Removing their ability to meaninfully damage or hinder the party in any fashion. They aren't locking down the battlefield with BFCs or buffing the party to nines so that even a lvl1 commoner could go toe to toe with Big T and put him down, but they have made the party basically immune to enemy attempts to hinder or harm them.

I have seen people get great enjoyment from these types of characters and I personally welcome them into a party I play in. They may not be slaughtering the enemy hordes, but they ensure we don't die or become incapacitated. To me that is just as valuable.

[Urpriest]

I think for the OP, the exact same reason that Healer is a bad class is why it makes things more fun for the DM.

The idea is that, because the Healer isn't doing stuff to the enemies or helping the PCs kill the enemies faster, they give the enemies more time to do interesting stuff. And that's true, but it's true because the enemies are stealing spotlight time that the Healer's player would normally have. The Healer is doing a boring thing rather than an interesting thing, thus the enemies have a chance to do another interesting thing.

[Phelix-Mu]

I think for the OP, the exact same reason that Healer is a bad class is why it makes things more fun for the DM.

The idea is that, because the Healer isn't doing stuff to the enemies or helping the PCs kill the enemies faster, they give the enemies more time to do interesting stuff. And that's true, but it's true because the enemies are stealing spotlight time that the Healer's player would normally have. The Healer is doing a boring thing rather than an interesting thing, thus the enemies have a chance to do another interesting thing.

Emphasis mine. I think we should let the Healer's player decide whether or not they are "doing a boring thing." I have had a couple different players who found the idea of their character keeping their friends alive very fulfilling to their character concept, and more or less the opposite of "boring."

If the DM is, in fact, cheating a player out of the spotlight, that clearly isn't cool. But I think the OP's dynamic can exist without that necessarily being the case.

That said, the Healer's spell list should likely be expanded as per the Spell Compendium recommendations (and some other homebrew suggestions that can be found on this forum), and I also support removing what little MAD is in the class, and a couple other small tweaks to increase versatility a bit (like an earlier hitting Unicorn companion ability, along with options for alternate companions).

[Emperor Tippy]

Emphasis mine. I think we should let the Healer's player decide whether or not they are "doing a boring thing." I have had a couple different players who found the idea of their character keeping their friends alive very fulfilling to their character concept, and more or less the opposite of "boring."

The problem is that a Healer doesn't actually keep his friends alive.

Psion and Wizard (ideally Psion with a number of wizard spells as powers) are the two classes that can really make "using magic to keep your friends alive without directly killing the enemy" work.

The only worthwhile combat healing is a Craft Contingent Delay Death + Heal combo (ideally done from a magic mantle ardent using Link power to link Heal to Delay Death). Everything else is so situational as to pretty much be totally worthless.

[TroubleBrewing]

The only worthwhile combat healing is a Craft Contingent Delay Death + Heal combo (ideally done from a magic mantle ardent using Link power to link Heal to Delay Death). Everything else is so situational as to pretty much be totally worthless.

While I agree that healing isn't useful in-combat, I think this is exaggerating a bit.

[Phelix-Mu]

We're measuring potential player feelings against optimization potential. One can be determined objectively, the other cannot.

I agree that I'm not sure the OP is necessarily saying anything that changes the way the game is played, but it certainly is not accurate to assume that
"playstyle X =/= optimized, so you aren't doing it right." It takes all kinds.

[Darth Stabber]

Healer changes nothing, a better class could have taken measures to prevent damage then helped end the fight sooner. Keeping fights going longer is objectively poor strategy, the long a fight is the more variables are introduced. The exception is using strategies that severely impede the enemy, as removing an enemy's ability to contribute meaningfully is effectively victory in an art of war sense, since killing them is then a matter of formality.

Healer does nothing cleric and druid can't do just as well/better while also having useful options. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and a all healers have is cure, where as non-terrible caster classes have pounds of prevention and cure. Even warmage is better, because the absolute best a healer can ever do is stalemate (until they get gate), where as blastomancy at least brings the fight closer to conclusion. A cleric/radiant servant of pelor is significantly better than a healer at the healer's shtick while still being a cleric. In combat healing is terrible, heal up after the fight. Unless you are casting heal or a spell that heals almost all of the damage, and undoing more than one round's worth work.

Healer changes the game, but not in a good way for PCs. Having a healer over any other class capable of healing is putting your party behind. Even adept is better, healer should really be a NPC class.