Pacifist Cleric help [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

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Nightgaun7

2014-02-12, 03:12 AM

Gavran

2014-02-12, 05:08 AM

Hmm. He should be quite accurate, really... losing +1 from starting Wis 16, but throwing out a -2 to all defenses on an attack that has a built in +2... I'd be more inclined to suggest the player is forgetting some of the modifiers than that there's a mechanical problem. I'd also swap the Power of Life feat for Superior implement training (for that accurate implement that's already there but currently shouldn't be giving the bonus :P), but that's pretty minor.

That all comes to a +9 for implement attacks, -2 if they're under the seal, and +2 if using the seal. Spamming Astral Seal could hit on a 1 against low Ref enemies.

As for a more general build critique, it's boring and goes overboard on the healing (as pacifist cleric builds tend to do) but isn't exactly useless outside of healing. As is, it's providing a fairly strong debuff/buff and some control. If the player wants to keep the pacifist healer style, I'd only really change three powers... those being:

Sacred Flame - to Lance of Faith or Gaze of Defiance, depending on party size and damage output of various party members.

Life Transference - to Bless. Already have tons of healing, it just isn't necessary to have more.

Consecrated Ground - to Weapon of the Gods, but only if there's a multi-attack weapon based striker in the party or someone else granting attacks to a weapon based striker.

Astral Seal spam is boring and does no damage. His other At-Will should be his go-to spam, adding some more damage to the party (probably more overall, and of course more for him personally) with Astral Seal as an option for Bloodied targets, times when Bless or some other power bonus to attack is active, or (combined with turn delaying) when someone needs surgeless healing.

Edit: And assuming you're the DM, if he really likes the healer play style you could always tweak lethality a little bit. Take a bit of monster health off and add a bit of damage, see how it works out.

Kimera757

2014-02-12, 06:51 AM

Just started a new irl game, and one of the guys wants to play a healer cleric. Problem is, he's only got healing. Here's his current build:

Level 5
Kalashtar, Cleric (Templar)
Cleric Option: Battle Cleric's Lore
Kalashtar Option: Heal Bonus
Missing Master (Missing Master Benefit)
Theme: Knight Hospitaler

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
STR 10, CON 12, DEX 12, INT 8, WIS 19, CHA 19

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
STR 10, CON 12, DEX 12, INT 8, WIS 16, CHA 16

AC: 21 Fort: 15 Ref: 15 Will: 20
HP: 44 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 11

TRAINED SKILLS
Diplomacy +11, Heal +15, Insight +14, Religion +6

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +2, Arcana +1, Athletics +1, Bluff +6, Dungeoneering +6, Endurance +2, History +1, Intimidate +6, Nature +6, Perception +7, Stealth +2, Streetwise +6, Thievery +2

POWERS
Basic Attack: Melee Basic Attack
Basic Attack: Ranged Basic Attack
Knight Hospitaler Utility: Shield of Devotion
Kalashtar Racial Power: Bastion of Mental Clarity
Cleric Feature: Divine Fortune
Cleric Feature: Turn Undead
Cleric Utility: Healing Word
Cleric Attack 1: Astral Seal
Cleric Attack 1: Sacred Flame
Cleric Attack 1: Bane
Cleric Attack 1: Moment of Glory
Cleric Utility 2: Life Transference
Cleric Attack 3: Hymn of Resurgence
Cleric Attack 5: Consecrated Ground

FEATS
Level 1: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Pacifist Healer
Level 2: Mark of Healing
Level 4: Power of Life
Level 5: Holy Symbol Expertise
Level 5: Improved Defenses

ITEMS
Ritual Book
Create Holy Water
Gentle Repose
Accurate symbol of the Holy Nimbus +1 x1
Rebuking Chainmail +1 x1
Healer's Brooch +1 x1
Holy Healer's Mace +1 x1

In our first encounter, he pretty much just spammed Astral Seal while waiting for someone to get injured enough to need healing, which largely didn't happen. What could he take to be a more well-rounded character while retaining the core concept? He's ok with doing some damage, but he's not looking to be as much of a murderbot as the rest of us.

He also missed a fair bit, so if anything is lacking there, point it out. I gave it a once-over and didn't see anything glaringly missing there.

I'm surprised at his low Wisdom. He should have started with an 18. Do kalashtar get a Wisdom bonus? Astral Seal is very accurate though, so he should at least be hitting with that.

Pacifist clerics don't do damage. If they attack a bloodied enemy, they get stunned, a pretty nasty punishment. As they can't really contribute to damage, you might want to ask the player why they wanted to play a pacifist.

I've noticed a lot of higher-level cleric powers that do the same thing as pacifist cleric powers but with damage added on. For an extra 1d6 + 3 healing, it's not really worth it. A devoted cleric would heal almost as well, but with a much greater variety of things they could do. (There's nothing preventing a devoted cleric from taking Astral Seal if they really want to.)

When it comes to mitigating the very high healing, I've found ongoing damage works well. Lots of different types on AoE attacks. This means the healer doesn't know when or even who to heal, and if the ongoing damage is very high then Astral Seal cannot entirely mitigate it.

Kurald Galain

2014-02-12, 07:06 AM

At level 5 you really shouldn't be spamming an at-will all the time. You have three encounter powers that you should generally be using before that, plus you can open half the fights with a daily power. That means there's usually no need for at-wills until the 3rd or 4th round of combat, and combat tends to be over after the 4th. This is 4E's design, after all; you have encounter powers precisely because many players don't like spamming at-will powers.

Gavran

2014-02-12, 07:17 AM

Yeah, Kalashtar can get +2 Wis +2 Cha. Went with the 16/16 for healing riders, presumably. Definitely not ideal but understandable I think.

Also to be clear I meant just meant when he wanted to use an At-Will, he should be defaulting to using the non-Astral Seal one. Definitely not that he should ignore encounter powers/dailies. :P

Wymmerdann

2014-02-12, 11:38 AM

Is there a specific reason you want to deal with this "problem"?

If you want to move him away from healing, I would advise against moving him toward dealing damage unless you want him to drop the pacifist healer feat (the core concept of the character) and avoid the paragon paths that play to it (messenger of peace). The stun penalty makes anything like a normal (or even low) damage output pretty unfeasible for the pacifist cleric, that's simply not what it does.

If healing gets boring, the build should really be branching out into debuffing or controller-lite powers. Powers like Cause Fear may not directly cause damage, but they have the potential to lay low an enemy faster than any equivalent level power.

A party with a pacifist cleric shouldn't really be doing less damage overall (except compared to a party with a warlord perhaps), because the damage that the cleric isn't doing is made up for by a party that is always conscious, with plenty of available saves, and solid debuff/buffing ensuring a large asymetry in hit-ratios.

A DM then has the opportunity to either:
A) Take off the kid gloves. No need to worry a mildly imbalanced encounter will wipe the party by accident.
B) Test yourself. Actually develop strategies that are vaguelly level-appropriate and not part of a dm fiat that could lay low a pacifist cleric buffed party (penalty points for splitting the cleric off and having him eaten by a troll).

Kurald Galain

2014-02-12, 11:59 AM

Note that the feat Superior Will goes a long way towards mitigating the downside of Pacifist Healer. That might not be what the player is looking for, though.

Nightgaun7

2014-02-12, 04:34 PM

First, I'm not the GM of this game. Just trying to help a newbie avoid being bored.

Pacifist clerics don't do damage. If they attack a bloodied enemy, they get stunned, a pretty nasty punishment. As they can't really contribute to damage, you might want to ask the player why they wanted to play a pacifist.

He wants to do a lot of healing, for whatever reason, and I guess he thought a pacifist cleric was the best way to do so.

I've noticed a lot of higher-level cleric powers that do the same thing as pacifist cleric powers but with damage added on.

I'm not even sure what really constitutes a pacifist cleric beyond one feat. What powers do they get?

Also to be clear I meant just meant when he wanted to use an At-Will, he should be defaulting to using the non-Astral Seal one. Definitely not that he should ignore encounter powers/dailies. :P

He was spamming Astral Seal in part to help the other players hit their targets. Lot of missing this first session.

If healing gets boring, the build should really be branching out into debuffing or controller-lite powers. Powers like Cause Fear may not directly cause damage, but they have the potential to lay low an enemy faster than any equivalent level power.
Any that are particularly good to recommend?

Note that the feat Superior Will goes a long way towards mitigating the downside of Pacifist Healer. That might not be what the player is looking for, though.
Duly noted; it's good anyways, so no reason for him to avoid it.

windgate

2014-02-12, 07:31 PM

Pacifist Healer Advice:

Short Version: Dont do it
Longer Version: As others have stated, the 1d8 + Cha extra healing is not worth very much unless your party is getting the **** beaten out of them every round. Getting Stunned makes fight even more boring for you.

Pacifist Leaders (/w the feat) shine really in only 2 circumstances. (1) only leader in partiess of 6+, and (2) The fights are scaled at least party level +4.

Player Side advice,
Consider a Mutliclass with Bard, eventually for the Life Singer paragon Path. That PP is all about becoming extremely accurate with non-damaging powers.

DM Advice:
This will sound scary but it has been effective and enjoyable for all participants in the games I run.

The DM makes one house-rule: All damage is doubled (Monsters and Players)

Damage dealers start feeling more bad*** because bloodying enemies becomes substantially easier. The downside is that a high rolled hit from a Brute, can flat out drop a controller character and seriously bloody a non-defender. Those brutes become scary and it forces the players to use teamwork tactics to survive.

The cleric will suddenly feel his power upgraded, as someone can always use the heals. (The party of my current players don't actually have a leader but uses strong controller to lock down the major threats).

Kimera757

2014-02-12, 08:25 PM

I'm not even sure what really constitutes a pacifist cleric beyond one feat. What powers do they get?

There aren't any powers specifically labeled "pacifist", but if they have lots of debuffing or surgeless healing and do no damage at all, they're pacifist powers.

windgate

2014-02-13, 11:12 AM

There aren't any powers specifically labeled "pacifist", but if they have lots of debuffing or surgeless healing and do no damage at all, they're pacifist powers.

yup this is it in a nutshell. High control and healing with no damage

Elkreeal

2014-02-13, 01:02 PM

I don't see what the big problem is, the player deliberately chose those powers.
I rather like the Pacifist Cleric, why would every cleric be hellbent on being aggressive and violent? He get's to pick whatever he wants.

With Pacifist Healer he only gets stunned for damaging bloodied enemies, he can use at-wills for a round or two, maybe even switch out sacred flame for Gaze of Defiance, so he deals a little more damage, he can even pick the Kalashtar feat that gives out +2/3/4 with psychic if he has room for it. Headband of Intellect for accuracy with psychic attacks and Resplendent Gloves for +2 damage with attacks against will. At least with retraining of the at will at level 6 and with the gloves and the feat and a +1 implement that's 1d8+9, and it's far better and a little more respectable plus he's giving out a +1 to hit for allies against that target and if the going gets though for him it turns into +3. Making it a light catch 22 for the target, with Psylock it gets even better.

Superior Will as it's been said before can mitigate the effect of the stun, but as soon as he sees an enemy becoming bloodied he can start using Bane for safe measure, Astral Flame with Power of Life is worth it after a few rounds of combat because he's actually healing now. He might not be doing much damage be he sure as hell can guarantee that your party members hit. Weapon of healing is good for him also, just for the property, he will probably never use it.

Nightgaun7

2014-02-13, 01:32 PM

What could he take to be a more well-rounded character while retaining the core concept? He's ok with doing some damage, but he's not looking to be as much of a murderbot as the rest of us.

Just wanted to highlight this, some people seem to be insinuating that I'm trying to remake him into a death machine.

I just want to give him some advice to avoid boredom and ineffectiveness (which often go hand in hand)

Elkreeal

2014-02-13, 04:54 PM

[passive aggressive] Sorry if you think I was talking to you [/passive aggressive], go back and read how many people simply said in short "no, don't" "no damage, it's a trap", and re-read what I said.

I was even suggesting a way to have a more reliable and damaging at-will that will have a good bonus/debuff with a slight catch 22, a "hit me and they certainly hit you"-kind of thing.

Sol

2014-02-14, 09:24 AM

Pacifist healing is a neat trick, but the difference the feat itself makes doesn't really scale with level. At level 1, an extra 1d6+4 (an average of 7.5) healing is almost always going to be more than an additional healing surge worth of damage healed. At level 30, 3d6+8 (18.5 average) is worth half of a surge or less.

There are some very flavorful/powerful power options that not caring about personal damage opens up, but really, any cleric could take those, and the best of them don't start appearing until paragon.

So I do sort of think its a trap, doubly so because inexperienced or anti-optimization players often come away with the impression that it's overpowered (rather than severely limiting your power), and are tempted to give you even further restrictions or ban the feat. But it's not the worst feat you could take, so long as you make other intelligent choices alongside it.

Wymmerdann

2014-02-14, 11:54 AM

Pacifist healing is a neat trick, but the difference the feat itself makes doesn't really scale with level. At level 1, an extra 1d6+4 (an average of 7.5) healing is almost always going to be more than an additional healing surge worth of damage healed. At level 30, 3d6+8 (18.5 average) is worth half of a surge or less.

Keep in mind, a high level cleric should be handing out multiple surge-heals per round, whereas a level 1 cleric is handing out 2-3 per encounter (discounting Healer's Mercy, which has a high degree of variance).

For a lot of builds, damage doesn't scale well with level, and they rely on getting multi-attacks and minor-action attacks to make up for that. The Pacifist feat assumes the same for healing abilities.

Sol

2014-02-14, 08:13 PM

Keep in mind, a high level cleric should be handing out multiple surge-heals per round, whereas a level 1 cleric is handing out 2-3 per encounter (discounting Healer's Mercy, which has a high degree of variance).

For a lot of builds, damage doesn't scale well with level, and they rely on getting multi-attacks and minor-action attacks to make up for that. The Pacifist feat assumes the same for healing abilities.

Except that player hit points and enemy damage scale almost precisely according to level, such that the number of surges required-to-be-spent per encounter tends to hover around the same number for the entire campaign. A leader based around tossing out the maximum possible number of healing surges is also severely limiting the number of encounters/day his or her party has surges available for, since non-CON builds will have exactly one more surge at level 30 than they did at level 1.

It's absolutely true that a level 30 leader has had more opportunities to pick up additional healing powers, but, by and large, the native 3 post-16 is enough to get most parties through combat most of the time. There's enough other amazing utility powers that stacking all of the healing granters is ill-advised, and healing attack powers are almost universally a trap compared to options that make the enemies die faster or controls them. I almost always pick up one additional healing power, if only to use out of combat to maximize surgeless healing bonuses.

Also relevant here, the difference between an entirely heal-centric cleric and one who ignores all healing items and feats is the difference between a single-target surge+6d6 Healing Word and a two-target immediate-reaction surge+11d8+CHA+WIS+CHA+5*Enhancement Bonuses+25+all allies gain CHA+6 THP. Assuming +8 wis and cha mods, that's an average of surge+128.5 per person and before the THP. It's also not even including things like Last Legion Officer or any of the defense granting feats.

At that point, is the 18.5 from pacifist really worth its limitations? Is the upgrade from d6s to d8s worth miracle worker being otherwise kind of mediocre?

FWIW, I don't think there's a universally right answer to that, but surge+130 is pretty unnecessary, even if cool.

(and Messenger of Peace is by far the better pacifist paragon path)

Wymmerdann

2014-02-15, 09:27 AM

Apologies in advance for the formatting. It became a little rant-like so I didn't want to clog things up.

Except that player hit points and enemy damage scale almost precisely according to level,
Does it, in the case of damage? Maybe my maths is fuzzy. Unlike to-hit modifiers, or defences, damage mods don’t get a half-level boost. I mean, sure if you’re a striker or mba focussed defender, then items like iron armbands of power are a no brainer, but even once you’ve picked up your +6 item bonus (which frankly, a lot of builds won’t be able to) you’re still assuming a weapon focus feat, which again, a great deal of builds don’t have the space for (especially early in their career). Exceptions would be the awesome racial feats like Githzerai Blade Master or Dwarven Weapon Expertise, except that they’re usually good enough to be frontloaded in a build and scale less effectively than the linear model you seem to be expecting.

A great comparison would be Githzerai Blade Master. At level one, the damage bonus is probably about 1/3 of a character’s damage bonus (excluding striker bonuses). However, even with scaling, if we assume a linear model for damage, the +4 damage at level 30 is probably 1/7 or less. In fact the feat has decreased in value by about as much as Pacifist Healer. This isn’t even a corner case, Dwarven Weapon Training doesn’t scale at all, and so would be less than 1/15 of the damage modifier.

such that the number of surges required-to-be-spent per encounter tends to hover around the same number for the entire campaign. A leader based around tossing out the maximum possible number of healing surges is also severely limiting the number of encounters/day his or her party has surges available for, since non-CON builds will have exactly one more surge at level 30 than they did at level 1.

There’s a big problem here: I don’t think you actually thought through what a healer throwing extra heals around actually looks like. Even if an early-level leader is able to keep their party on their feet during a fight, there’s no way they’re keeping them near full health (or even unbloodied) by the end of most fights. Most low-level parties burn more surges out of combat than within them. A downed party member spends 4 to get back to full during a short rest, which is more than a low level leader has available for the encounter as a whole. So increased healing isn’t demanding the party spawn a greater surge-capacity, it’s making better use of surges that are already being used by the party (and applying the radical bonuses that ride on those surges during combat, which will indirectly lead to the party taking less damage to begin with). Once that becomes apparent, the idea that a heal-heavy leader is “severely limiting the number of encounters/day his or her party has surges available” becomes, frankly, laughable.

So looking past that red herring, those Con heavy builds make up a fair few characters; the obvious examples being some great Wardens, fighters, battleminds and barbarians; but also swordmages, wizards, warlocks, ardents, artificers etc. You could easily have a balanced party where everyone is con-dependant, but in my experience you’ll end up with 1-3 party members who are. Then you factor in things like the durability feat, which a lot of low-con wizards or rangers will be looking at in an extended campaign, and class specific feats like Armoured Warlord and devoted paladin, or racial feats like Dwarven Durability, and I think it’s safe to say that over the course of an extended heroic-epic campaign, the majority of characters surges should increase by more than 1 (often a great deal more).

It's absolutely true that a level 30 leader has had more opportunities to pick up additional healing powers, but, by and large, the native 3 post-16 is enough to get most parties through combat most of the time.

This has definitely not been my experience, and I think if we threw it open to a wider input there’d be a fair bit of agreement that this is definitely not the case. Frankly if a high-level 1 leader party is thriving (rather than hanging on by the skin of their teeth) on 3 undeveloped heals an encounter, then the campaign is probably a cakewalk.

There's enough other amazing utility powers that stacking all of the healing granters is ill-advised, and healing attack powers are almost universally a trap compared to options that make the enemies die faster or controls them. I almost always pick up one additional healing power, if only to use out of combat to maximize surgeless healing bonuses.

I think this is probably the cornerstone of our disagreement. Healing isn’t a trade-off for other roles a leader should be filling, and a Pacifist healer isn't just a heal-bot. Features like Battle Cleric’s Lore, and feats like Mark of Healing turn the Cleric’s surge-based healing into a buffing mechanism, and a damn good one at that. Every time you grant a surge-heal you’re providing saves, giving bonuses to attacks or defences, or other sweet riders. More to the point (and this comes out more clearly in the next point) there isn’t some stark choice between investing in healing and doing everything else a leader does. The level 1 encounter power Cause Fear is one example of a good controller/indirect damage power that suffers not at all from the pacifist cleric direction, or a general trend toward healing.

Also relevant here, the difference between an entirely heal-centric cleric and one who ignores all healing items and feats is the difference between a single-target surge+6d6 Healing Word and a two-target immediate-reaction surge+11d8+CHA+WIS+CHA+5*Enhancement Bonuses+25+all allies gain CHA+6 THP. Assuming +8 wis and cha mods, that's an average of surge+128.5 per person and before the THP. It's also not even including things like Last Legion Officer or any of the defense granting feats.
At that point, is the 18.5 from pacifist really worth its limitations? Is the upgrade from d6s to d8s worth miracle worker being otherwise kind of mediocre?

If you’re building a maxed out healer cleric then the penalties of pacifist healer are essentially non-existent, because your focus isn’t on killing enemies anyway. The stun effect isn’t a negative rider that will randomly ruin your encounter, it’s a penalty toward certain kinds of behaviour in a build that includes it, and if your build includes it then you’re making other choices (like the Messenger of Peace PP) that reward that kind of playstyle anyway. This doesn’t actually necessitate a max-heal build, as there are a lot of good feats that reward surge-healing through buffs, in which case the pacifist healer feat is definitely going to remain a large component of the healing.

This doesn't factor in options that some other posters have alluded to, like the Superior Will feat, which will reduce the penalty of the rider, should it somehow be something you want to induce.

Also, not sure why miracle worker is in the convo, since I happen to agree concerning the Messenger of peace PP.

Sol

2014-02-15, 10:47 AM

Mostly we're arguing tangentially instead of disagreeing about anything.

But yes, enemy damage scales with level (while yes, obviously, player damage does not), so yes, the number of surges your party needs to spend per encounter stays relatively constant, for a given encounter difficulty level and a given party optimization level. If you see it changing over time, either the DM is changing the difficulty level, or the party is changing it's optimization level.

The game math depends on this being the case, because surges as a daily resource are not one of the things that scale up with level. A max-CON build can gain +5 over what they started with (not counting items), but most of the party will only gain +1 over their career. That's why their effectiveness is tied to player health pools, such that a surge is always exactly as powerful across all levels.

Throwing out the maximum number of surge-based heals you can is silly, counter-productive, and, if you've put any effort into boosting your bonus healing numbers, entirely unnecessary. If your ally needs a saving throw, grant them a saving throw, don't ask them to burn 1/N of their daily healing capacity unless they actually need the healing. To this end, a properly built pacifist should be focused on minimizing the number of heals they toss out, to maximize party efficiency.

If your party needs 6 heals per encounter, it's because you've done a bad job of picking/using the right control and enabling powers that bring party damage back up above where it would have been if you weren't using pacifist powers, or else because the only way your DM knows how to counter your healing specialization is to throw level+8 encounters at you.

Or your strikers / controller could be really bad. Or the defender could be a cavalier, or an Assault Swordmage who thinks he's a defender. In these cases you can compensate by tossing out more heals, but that doesn't solve the underlying problem, it merely obfuscates it in a way that almost ensures the problem will persist.

Wymmerdann

2014-02-16, 01:19 AM

Mostly we're arguing tangentially instead of disagreeing about anything.

True on quite a few points, so I'll try to cut to the quick.

Throwing out the maximum number of surge-based heals you can is silly, counter-productive, and, if you've put any effort into boosting your bonus healing numbers, entirely unnecessary.

I had some pretty long responses in my last post so I'll basically summarise what I said when you raised this last time. The surges you're burning with extra healing powers are already being used by the party during short rests, largely because they can't be unlocked during encounters and so by using them in encounters, with strong bonuses, the party is actually making better use of their surge resources.

If your ally needs a saving throw, grant them a saving throw, don't ask them to burn 1/N of their daily healing capacity unless they actually need the healing.

Eh, generally I find that save ends effects are often tied to attacks powerful enough to warrant a heal, or used strategically enough by a dm so that the character is going to want the heal anyway. Ongoing damage is a good example of an effect that is always going to benefit from the heal, especially after a couple of failed saves (you wouldn't throw down a heal just to avoid the first iteration of damage). Mark of Healing is probably the best leader feat in the game, but that warrants its own thread.

If your party needs 6 heals per encounter, it's because you've done a bad job of picking/using the right control and enabling powers that bring party damage back up above where it would have been if you weren't using pacifist powers, or else because the only way your DM knows how to counter your healing specialization is to throw level+8 encounters at you.

"If you need to heal as much as this build can, then you're playing it wrong". Not really. An average party is going to have something is excess of 40 surges (I play/dm in 6 man groups with in excess of 55), so 6/encounter heals with the traditional 4-encounter/day is going to use not much over half of that. I think there's probably an extent to which your experience at the table has been pretty different to mine, but it really isn't rare to down a player in a Level+1 or Level+2 encounter, and that's 4 surges straight off the bat, unless they've got access to a leader power (or niche surge-bonuses for their self-healing). Even in a standard 5 man party, unless you've got a second leader, or a dedicated healer, you should be feeling the pinch pretty often.

On the whole "talking past each other" thing: I'm not saying you should take only healing powers, or always pick the healing option, in the same way that you're not saying upgrading the healing capacity of a cleric is a waste of time. This was originally about the Pacifist healer feat, and the tangential point that it became more effective by picking up more healing abilities later on still stands. A high level party has the capacity to get more bang for their buck with surges, not just because they scale with HP pool, but because they can bring more of them out each encounter (without relying on a larger surge pool).

Or your strikers / controller could be really bad. Or the defender could be a cavalier, or an Assault Swordmage who thinks he's a defender. In these cases you can compensate by tossing out more heals, but that doesn't solve the underlying problem, it merely obfuscates it in a way that almost ensures the problem will persist.

I'm actually playing in a campaign with a Mul cavalier right now (the party leader is a Bravura), and the bastard has something like 15 surges at level 2, so I laughed a little at this. I play in a lot of sub-optimally built parties, and frankly, I think most people do. These parties get a lot out of a pacifist cleric, and if the alternative is getting them all to trawl CharOp for optimal builds, I think I'll stick with the Pacifism.

Living_Dead_Guy

2014-02-16, 03:13 AM

Pacifist make great debuffers, combined with Kalashtar's natural telepathy they can set up novas very well.

The key is in choosing debuffing and controlling powers as often as possible. Between astral seal, and healing word you usually have enough healing to last the encounter.

A large insight bonus can help to determine who is the leader of the enemy forces, he (that is to say the cleric) can then telepathically communicate this to the rest of the party and use bane to set up a nova. Generally the first turn you want to sacred flame to give temp HP and allow the strikers a turn to set up, unless its going to be the big fight of the day then use moment of glory for the 5 resist and sustain it the rest of combat.

If it is single BBEG then he can burn an action point and combo astral seal and bane or Hymn of Resurgence with bane. This will give everyone an increased 30% chance to hit for the nova round. If there are multiple less powerful enemies he can split the bane and astral seal and instruct the party as to who should hit whom. For instance if the opposition comprised of a controller, two brutes, and three minions. And the party had a ranger, he could bane the controller and have the ranger nova the controller while astral sealing a brute or minion for everyone else to take down.

Additionally, if someone in the party wants to communicate something have them send a note to your cleric and he can telepathically communicate it to everyone else. While my cleric's turn never lasted long he was continually involved in creating the best strategy, combat was never boring despite my "seal spam."

Possible Tips
- Replace turn undead (unless it is a heavy undead campaign) with healers mercy. This will give the cleric more healing without using prayers.
- Replace Divine Favor with Favor of the Gods. An encounter reroll is great for your strikers.
- With Life Transference being a daily I prefer Bless. Plus unlike many other low level cleric powers its a buff to hit instead of a debuff.
- Considering the level of optimization I would assume that he has already read through Nausicaa's White Mage Guide (http://community.wizards.com/content/forum-topic/2632461) if not then I would suggest doing so its great for suggesting powers, items, feats, paths and she talks about how pacifists can be played like a controller.

As a side note I found that all of the debuffing increased the party's damage to the point where it did not hinder the their ability to finish a combat in the same amount of time as if I had played a class that attacked. I do agree however that adding more enemies to increase the encounter difficultly may not be the correct route due to the inherent limits in the number of times your strikers can use their encounters and dailies. I found that simply increasing the enemies damage done by 150% to 200% worked well. I don't see the benefit of increasing the parties damage by the same amount though.

tcrudisi

2014-02-16, 05:05 AM

I had some pretty long responses in my last post so I'll basically summarise what I said when you raised this last time. The surges you're burning with extra healing powers are already being used by the party during short rests, largely because they can't be unlocked during encounters and so by using them in encounters, with strong bonuses, the party is actually making better use of their surge resources.

Note that I was only skimming the thread, so I've missed a lot. But I did read the bolded areas and, well, this is wrong.

A short rest is 5 minutes. Characters don't spend healing surges unless spending one puts them at full. Otherwise, they'll rest for 5 minutes, then let the healer, well, heal them, getting the full bonus of resources. Then they'll rest for 5 minutes so that the healer gets his heals back. So, really, as long as multiple people are not going unconscious during a fight, then there's not a "better use of surge resources" going on.

Wymmerdann

2014-02-16, 07:48 AM

I've yet to find a serious DM who will right a blank check when it comes to short rests, and it tends to wreak havoc with a sequential combat or any campaign where PC's are racing against the clock (which, honestly, should be most of them if the campaign is remotely heroic).

There's a solid amount of support for the idea that it's rules legal to take back-to-back short rests, but only in very exceptional circumstances would I allow them. If PC's are "left to their own devices" then they've got time for an extended rest, if they've got time for a quick breather, they've got time for a short rest.

Kurald Galain

2014-02-16, 07:58 AM

Well, that depends. While an extended rest takes six hours, a short rest takes only five minutes. So if the party has ten minutes of spare time, they can recharge a healing power, use it on a party member, then recharge it again to have it ready for the next combat. It may be true that occasionally they'll have five minutes but not ten, but it's hard to justify that the party will always have exactly five minutes but not ten.

Epinephrine

2014-02-16, 10:57 AM

Gavran

2014-02-16, 11:18 AM

If you* think 10 minute rests are considerably more unrealistic than 5 minute rests, okay, but it seems a bit contrived to me. More than that though, I think "no reinforcements" is more unrealistic during the combat than 6-10 minutes after it's over. It's a gameplay trumping realism thing, I think. Also, it really just depends on how long you want your party's adventuring day to last. I think that decision has a lot more factors than "does the party have a (pacifist) cleric?"

*Nobody specific

Kimera757

2014-02-16, 11:20 AM

I seems to take enemies about 6 minutes to decide to investigate the sounds they heard?

An interesting countdown mechanic: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?352136-Thoughts-on-countdowns

(No, it won't take 5 minutes to investigate.)

That actually illustrates how badly some dungeons are designed, such as Keep on the Shadowfell. It was crammed with rooms, each of which featured a "balanced" encounter (usually), but any realistic invasion of the dungeon would quickly feature level +4, level +8, or worse encounters.

IMO, two fixes were needed:

1) Separate out parts of the dungeon. (Caves are good at this. The "empty" parts are just long trapless tunnels. The interesting parts have several rooms with locks, traps, and treasure.) There's no need for the hobgoblin part to abut the ghoul part, or what not. (Why don't the ghouls eat the hobgoblins? Hobgobbos need to sleep sometime.) This would mean the PCs could fight hobgoblins without fighting ghouls simultaneously (unless that's what the world calls for).

2) Make the whole dungeon area (eg hobgoblin area, ghoul area, etc) a single large encounter. The entire hobgoblin area might be a level +5 encounter, but fortunately you're fighting them in waves instead of all at once. If you're really stealthy and/or fast at killing, you might only ever fight a subencounter (probably a below level encounter) at a time, so this rewards this kind of play.

Kurald Galain

2014-02-16, 12:21 PM

That actually illustrates how badly some dungeons are designed, such as Keep on the Shadowfell. It was crammed with rooms, each of which featured a "balanced" encounter (usually), but any realistic invasion of the dungeon would quickly feature level +4, level +8, or worse encounters.

That sounds familiar, yes. In our very first 4E campaign wasn't KOTS, but also some standard dungeon printed by WOTC. At some point, the DM decided that the goblins in some room had every reason to leave their room to investigate the noise we were making in earlier combats. This led to us fighting two encounters at the time, resulting in a TPK. Yes, it's a bad idea to design a dungeon on the assumption that monsters will never move to the next room.