Is there a way to harm AND heal with the same use of channel energy?

[flamewolf393]

Mostly looking for feats, but classes considered for dip. Is there a way, in the same use of channel energy, to both harm undead AND heal your allies at the same time?

[137beth]

I don't know of any. Channeling to harm isn't usually your best choice during combat, though.

[grarrrg]

Mostly looking for feats, but classes considered for dip. Is there a way, in the same use of channel energy, to both harm undead AND heal your allies at the same time?

No, the main issue is that when Channeling you choose whether you are targeting Living or Undead. There is no way to "target both".

So you'd have to get your Allies to count as Undead creatures for targeting purposes, but still count as Living for effects. That way you could "Positive Channel > Undead" and do what you want.
But there are no such abilities as far as I know.
The closest you could come is the Quick Channel feat, then you could Channel once as a Standard, and again as a Move and hit Living with one and Undead with the other, but this would cost you THREE uses of Channeling.

[Hexmonk21]

Actually, If you have your whole party play Dhampirs, they get healed by negative energy. Against non-undead foes, you could use just use your channel energy to deal negative energy damage to the bad guys and heal your party of vampire children.

There's a 3.5 feat from Heroes of Horror called "Tomb Tainted Soul". If you are non-good and spend the night in a crypt, you get healed by negative energy and harmed by positive energy. It was mostly awesome because it made Dread Necromancers an awkward healing and support class instead of a garbage necromancer class, but if your DM lets you take it in your game, then power to ya; You could all play whatever race you wanted and still get healed by a negative channel energy.

[grarrrg]

Actually, If you have your whole party play Dhampirs, they get healed by negative energy. Against non-undead foes, you could use just use your channel energy to deal negative energy damage to the bad guys and heal your party of vampire children.

That's all well and good, but the OP wanted to know about harming Undead, which is quite a bit different problem.
(you also don't need everyone to be a Dhampir, there are a variety of ways (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?301038-Pathfinder-Ways-to-be-healed-by-Negative-Energy) to count otherwise)


If harming/healing the Living is what's needed, there is also the Envoy of Balance (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/e-h/envoy-of-balance) PrC, which lets you use Positive and Negative energy in the same Channel (recommend you take Selective Channeling feat for this though), but you still target only Living, or only Undead.

[Hexmonk21]

Oooh grarrrg, that link has a bunch of neat things in it for negative energy healing. I'll take notes! :D

Also I realized that I didn't completely understand what Channel Energy did. My bad for posting advice based on incomplete knowledge of the subject. :(

[Kurald Galain]

You can take Quick Channel and at least do both during the same turn. Although it'll cost you two daily uses, of course.

[Coidzor]

Funnily enough, I was just playing around with an idea for a houserule to alter Cleric's Channel Energy so that they got some further abilities beyond increasing the number of dice they throw around when doing it a few days ago.

I had them gaining the ability to selectively target who is effected by their Channel Energy within the burst at either level 2 or level 3 to make it more worthwhile at low levels as a source of emergency in-combat healing and then getting the ability to target undead and living targets with the same use of Channel Energy around level 4-6, hadn't decided exactly on what level to give each ability.

You might run the more conservative level options, level 3 selectively target Channel Energy and level 6 affect Undead and Living with Channel Energy at the same time, by your DM or talk him into allowing both abilities as a scaling Channel Energy feat.

[BWR]

Funnily enough, I was just playing around with an idea for a houserule to alter Cleric's Channel Energy so that they got some further abilities beyond increasing the number of dice they throw around when doing it a few days ago.

I had them gaining the ability to selectively target who is effected by their Channel Energy within the burst at either level 2 or level 3 to make it more worthwhile at low levels as a source of emergency in-combat healing and then getting the ability to target undead and living targets with the same use of Channel Energy around level 4-6, hadn't decided exactly on what level to give each ability.

You might run the more conservative level options, level 3 selectively target Channel Energy and level 6 affect Undead and Living with Channel Energy at the same time, by your DM or talk him into allowing both abilities as a scaling Channel Energy feat.

That's a pretty decent option.
If the OP's DM thinks that's too powerful, I don't feel that a homebrew feat that allows you to both heal allies and harm undead at the same time is overpowered.

[ericgrau]

Dunno about channel energy but mass cure light wounds is nice for harming undead while healing your allies. Combine with shield other to spread out damage. CLW doesn't seem like much but mass CLW doesn't have the caster level cap that CLW does so it's effectively like mass normal-CMW (but not like mass CMW). Also combines well with spell level based healing boosts since it's 5th level, dunno if PF has those like 3.5 does. And with CL boosts. And with healing boosts in general since it's all X times party members.

IIRC it's something they avoided on purpose because evil undead clerics and their parties could be devastating against the living that way. So it's unlikely that Paizo will do it but who knows how far power creep can go.

[Coidzor]

That's a pretty decent option.
If the OP's DM thinks that's too powerful, I don't feel that a homebrew feat that allows you to both heal allies and harm undead at the same time is overpowered.

Thank you. :smallsmile:

I was just thinking what's something I could do with that to make it more useful and give some minor class feature expansion on the dead levels of PF Cleric without actually making them all that more powerful or able to do anything more than they already technically could.

And I thought, well, one of the problems with their healing is they can't selectively target it, if I read it correctly, so despite appearing to be one of the better options for in-combat healing on the base chassis of the ability (ranged, heals multiple people for the same action), the lack of selectivity means that using it in combat means having no effect on the actual relative HP values of each side unless there's been sufficient use of BFC/terrain/ranged weaponry, so the first thing to make it a fair choice for in-combat healing rather than just out of combat healing would be to selectively target only one's allies (though I may make an exception that throwing it down will stabilize dropped creatures that are bleeding out regardless of whether they count as allies or not, at least for when I transfer over the ability to Healers).

Then I figured, well, what's better than being able to heal your allies with a standard action for action economy and making healing worthwhile? Being able to attack (some of) your enemies while also healing your allies with a standard action as the Crusader showed us. Since it already has the base ability to harm undead it seemed in line with the capabiliites of 4th to 6th level characters to have the ability to harm undead and heal the living at the same time come online then.

I was thinking later levels would give them the ability to harm Outsiders that oppose their alignment or their Aura based upon their deity instead of healing living/damaging undead, although this would encourage alignmental extremism amongst clerics so that they can harm both Evil and Chaotic or Evil and Lawful or Good and Lawful or Good and Chaotic outsiders, I think, but not to an especial extent because usually it's fiends, fiends, and more fiends. Followed by the ability to do all three of healing the living, harming undead, and harming outsiders opposed to one's alignment with Channel Energy around 2-4 levels later.

Except that maybe Outsiders dealt with by one's clerical powers in this way would be banished for some amount of time(so they couldn't just heal up and then come right back a few rounds later) instead of killed/destroyed if they got dropped.

Possibly Turn>Destroy/Rebuke>Control Undead would get folded back into the base progression rather than requiring a feat, but at a higher level, and Turning>Banishing Outsiders opposed to one's alignment/Aura might be added in via a feat or even further along in the progression around ECL 12-14, maybe, and then getting Rebuking>Controlling Outsiders of one's alignment/Aura at a later level with the feat or around ECL 16ish as part of the base progression. Possibly refluffed in this case to be a bit less mind-rudisplorky and more overawing and impressing them enough that exemplars weaker than the cleric that have ideals in common with them will choose to serve them.