Getting Fast Healing

[Yaitanos]

So, I'm trying to build a super beefy tank. I can get a str of 30 and +5 nat armor pretty easily. As well as regeneration 1. But that tricky fast healing is slipping past me. This character will eventually be going war hulk from the minitures handbook. He'll also have the iron legs feat and at least a level in battle dancer so he has a better unarmed strike.

I've got him basically planned out save for a fast healing ability. Sure I can emulate it with expensive magic items, but I'd kinda like to make this guy as low magic as possible, so was wondering if there were any low lvl adj. templates that would give fast healing? Or perhaps feat chains?

[Silva Stormrage]

Feral Template (+1 LA from Savage Species) is probably a good option.

There is also the draconic aura feat. It can give you the draconic aura "vigor" which gives you fast healing. It only can heal you up to 1/2 your HP though. I would suggest feral, it seems to fit your character too.

[Yaitanos]

Somewhere along the line I heard they errata'd feral to be like +3 or something. Is that not true?

[Immabozo]

Barbarian (or some form of rage) qualifies you for Bear warrior, which qualifies you for War shaper. War shaper is a good class, and, among many other nifty benefits, warshaper 4 gives you fast healing 2 and the ability to do a concentration check = to damage taken, plus 10 to heal 10.

[Yaitanos]

Barbarian (or some form of rage) qualifies you for Bear warrior, which qualifies you for War shaper. War shaper is a good class, and, among many other nifty benefits, warshaper 4 gives you fast healing 2 and the ability to do a concentration check = to damage taken, plus 10 to heal 10.

I'll be going into war hulk asap, a second PRC doesn't fit into the plan unfortunately.

[Immabozo]

I'll be going into war hulk asap, a second PRC doesn't fit into the plan unfortunately.

I do like War Hulk. I am curious, what race did you use to qualify for War Hulk?

Also, regeneration is better, isn't it? Why not just get more regeneration? But fast healing and regeneration are underwhelming for in-fight healing, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Unless you have fast healing 20 or so, it isn't worth worrying about.

Think about it like this. In a 5 or 6 round combat, fast healing 5 will give you 25 or 30 extra hit points, not that impressive. If you have regen 1, which I believe you said, you auto-stabilize, which is the most important one.

I wouldn't worry about it

[MadGreenSon]

It's +5 LA but Unholy Scion gives Fast Healing 4 among other things.

It's a lot of LA but on the other hand, you get to be Damian from the Omen and have your mom as a familiar, more or less.

Isn't that worth a little LA?

[Yaitanos]

I do like War Hulk. I am curious, what race did you use to qualify for War Hulk?

Also, regeneration is better, isn't it? Why not just get more regeneration? But fast healing and regeneration are underwhelming for in-fight healing, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Unless you have fast healing 20 or so, it isn't worth worrying about.

Think about it like this. In a 5 or 6 round combat, fast healing 5 will give you 25 or 30 extra hit points, not that impressive. If you have regen 1, which I believe you said, you auto-stabilize, which is the most important one.

I wouldn't worry about it

Going to be using the half ogre template to be large sized. And as for regeneration vs. fast healing, regeneration turns all damage (save for overcomes it like fire on a troll) into non-lethal damage and recovers non-lethal damage at the rate given. Regeneration cannot heal lethal damage while fasting healing can, but fast healing can't regenerate limbs or non-lethal damage.

It isn't so much about in combat healing that I'm worried about, as I doubt with this build that it will last very long. It's more along the lines of "Yes! We're finally making leeway on the brut- wait, are his wounds healing? Holy crap they're healing! Shoot him with fire! Oh noes it doesn't work either!"
And I wanna be able to justify why this guy has lived so long being the horrible abomination that he is. The whole you-can't-easily-kill-him combined with his freakish strength, makes a lot of sense.

Course I just now realized that he's gonna be large sized, able to rage, green skinned, able to leap enormous distances AND bench press an elephant. I'm making a tusked Hulk. Completely unintentional I swear.

[NoACWarrior]

If you got some extra feat spaces you could go the Combat Focus (PHB2) route:
Combat Focus at Lvl 1, Combat Stability at Lvl 3, and Combat Vigor at Lvl 9.

You'll need to at least have Combat Focus to get Combat Vigor (which also requires a 9BAB) but it will give you Fast Healing 2/4 during combat (4 if you picked up Combat Stability, 2 if you didn't).

This is all assuming you have full BAB progression. The reason why I recommend getting Combat Stability as well is the fact that you can easily resist special attacks (a +8 is nothing to scoff at) and you power up both Combat Vigor and Combat Focus's effects.

[Yaitanos]

If you got some extra feat spaces you could go the Combat Focus (PHB2) route:
Combat Focus at Lvl 1, Combat Stability at Lvl 3, and Combat Vigor at Lvl 9.

You'll need to at least have Combat Focus to get Combat Vigor (which also requires a 9BAB) but it will give you Fast Healing 2/4 during combat (4 if you picked up Combat Stability, 2 if you didn't).

This is all assuming you have full BAB progression. The reason why I recommend getting Combat Stability as well is the fact that you can easily resist special attacks (a +8 is nothing to scoff at) and you power up both Combat Vigor and Combat Focus's effects.

Heh, War Hulk doesn't give ANY BAB at all. So combat focus feats are kinda... out.

[Doc_Maynot]

Depending on your alignment and open feat choices, you could get the saint template(Book of Exalted Deeds). It provides Fast Healing equal to half of your Hit Dice (Max 10) among other things. It requires two exalted feats (Sacred Vow> Vow of Chastity would have the benefit of giving you +4 to charms and phantasms and +2 to diplomacy. Also if you are fighting with your fists at all there is Touch of Golden Ice, also Nymph's kiss is always a good one,) and a sacrifice of some kind.

[Yaitanos]

Depending on your alignment and open feat choices, you could get the saint template(Book of Exalted Deeds). It provides Fast Healing equal to half of your Hit Dice (Max 10) among other things. It requires two exalted feats (Sacred Vow> Vow of Chastity would have the benefit of giving you +4 to charms and phantasms and +2 to diplomacy. Also if you are fighting with your fists at all there is Touch of Golden Ice, also Nymph's kiss is always a good one,) and a sacrifice of some kind.

Eeehhh, sainthood doesn't seem like it would be easily obtainable by this concept. He's more of a dumb (will end up with a -8 to int) brute who just smashes his way through things. Not exactly the saint type.

[NoACWarrior]

Well then, how about Karsite from Tome of Magic?

Its not REAL fast healing, but a combination of SR and healing on a spell successfully resisted. The only issue is the LA of 2.

but here -
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=175763

if you use the next wizards link you get the following 2 or lower LA templates:
Saint +2 LA (BoED)
Feral +1 LA (Savage Species)
Shadow +2 LA (Lords of Madness)

And Feats which you can get access to under certain conditions:
Brand of Nine Hells (Glasya), feat, ecl?, Fiendish Codex II, fast healing 3 for 10 minutes 1/day, see text
Devil's Stamina, feat, Fiendish Codex II, variable 1/day, see text
Healing Devotion, domain feat, Complete Champion, fast healing 1, see text

[Necroticplague]

Somewhere along the line I heard they errata'd feral to be like +3 or something. Is that not true?

Nope, its not. It remains a good +1 template for melee characters.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

There's a graft that gives fast healing. It is expensive but it isn't subject to antimagic or dispelling. I think it's Aboleth Blood or something.

[TuggyNE]

Also, regeneration is better, isn't it? Why not just get more regeneration? But fast healing and regeneration are underwhelming for in-fight healing, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Unless you have fast healing 20 or so, it isn't worth worrying about.

Think about it like this. In a 5 or 6 round combat, fast healing 5 will give you 25 or 30 extra hit points, not that impressive. If you have regen 1, which I believe you said, you auto-stabilize, which is the most important one.

You want regeneration 1 not because you can auto-stabilize (you can't, that's fast healing), but because it turns a great deal of damage non-lethal. 1 point is worth vastly more than 1 point of fast healing because of that.

However, once you have regeneration in any capacity, getting more is substantially less efficient than getting fast healing, since one can heal lethal damage and the other can't. FH 1 + Regen 1 is a lot better than either FH 2 or Regen 2 by themselves, and may even be better than FH 3 or Regen 3.

[Necroticplague]

There's a graft that gives fast healing. It is expensive but it isn't subject to antimagic or dispelling. I think it's Aboleth Blood or something.

Silithar Healing Blood. Big fan of it myself.Pricy, but well worth it.

[Bullet06320]

paragon template from ELH, technically no LA, but a DM is nuts if he allows as such, lol

[Rijan_Sai]

I'm going to second (third?) Feral template. The special qualities (Darkvision and Fast Healing) get better as you gain more HD (with FH topping out at 5 at 12HD).
There's some debate as to whether the Special Attacks also increase, due to one line referring to "Monster Hit Dice," which some people believe means Racial HD; (The SQ section does not have that line, and so is accepted that any HD increase those.) FWIW, Hero Forge does increase the SAs with class HD, but that would be best left in a "Ask your DM" spot.

[Jack_Simth]

paragon template from ELH, technically no LA, but a DM is nuts if he allows as such, lol
It theoretically does, oddly. There's a table in the Epic Level Handbook, on page 156, that lists ECL for many of the critters in the book, including the Paragon Mind Flayer (ECL 26). When you subtract the ECL of the Mind Flayer (15 - 8 racial hit dice, +7 LA, per MM I), you find that Paragon is an LA +11 template.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Saint Template gives fast healing 1/2 HD for +2 among many delightful benefits, but it does have some ugly restrictions.

[docnessuno]

So, I'm trying to build a super beefy tank. I can get a str of 30 and +5 nat armor pretty easily. As well as regeneration 1. But that tricky fast healing is slipping past me. This character will eventually be going war hulk from the minitures handbook. He'll also have the iron legs feat and at least a level in battle dancer so he has a better unarmed strike.

I've got him basically planned out save for a fast healing ability. Sure I can emulate it with expensive magic items, but I'd kinda like to make this guy as low magic as possible, so was wondering if there were any low lvl adj. templates that would give fast healing? Or perhaps feat chains?

If it's durability you are looking for, The mineral Warrior template (La +1) would give you DR 8/Adamantine, far outweighing the benefit of fast healing in most scenarios.

[Rijan_Sai]

If it's durability you are looking for, The mineral Warrior template (La +1) would give you DR 8/Adamantine, far outweighing the benefit of fast healing in most scenarios.

Except for Fire and Acid damage, which would generally bypass DR entirely, while being the only things that cause lethal damage.

That said, if you can afford it, (and aren't planing on any form of natural flight speed,) buck down and get both! Fast Healing 2-5, plus DR 8/Adamantine? Plus the other juicy benefits of those templates? For +2LA? Yes please!

[Fouredged Sword]

Mineral warrior can be bought of AFTER you buy off the rest of your LA as well, meaning that three levels after you buy off your normal LA, you slap on the template and buy it off immediately.