Maximizing Channel Energy?

[Palanan]

Is there a way to maximize the healing benefit from a use of Channel Energy?

I’m specifically looking for a way to replicate Sacred Boost from 3.5, which allowed the cleric to spend a turn attempt to maximize the next healing spell cast nearby. That won’t work as written in Pathfinder, so I’m interested in whether there’s a feat, archetype or other ability that maximizes healing from Channel Energy.

Please note that I am not interested in a discussion of how poor a choice this may be; I’m just interested in whether the option exists. I’m open to all official Pathfinder sources, thanks.

[Psyren]

It's not powering up the channel itself, but Quick Channel lets you burn extra uses to channel as a move action, thus letting you channel twice per round and boosting the overall healing that way.

Channeling armor increases the healing dice by one, 3/day.

Glory Medallion lets you turn a 1 on your channel into a 6.

[Palanan]

Okay, thanks. Looks like there’s no direct way to do this in Pathfinder, although those are some interesting alternatives.

Is there any reason that Sacred Boost couldn’t be tweaked a little, allowing for a certain number of maximized channels per day? The original Sacred Boost was limited only by the number of turn attempts per day; what would be a good parallel in Pathfinder? Just the number of channels available?

[grarrrg]

No idea if any of these will really help you, but they're random enough you might find something. Nothing specifically 'maximizes', although the Mythic option comes close.

Archetype: Sacred Servant Paladin (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo-paladin-archetypes/sacred-servant/), starting at level 5 they can heal an extra +1d6 when Channeling. Up to an extra 6d6 at level 20 (for 16d6 per Channel).

Feat: Seductive Channel (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/seductive-channel), must worship Calistria, 1/day those you heal can choose to get an extra +CHA to the amount healed, in exchange they take a (likely pointless) penalty.

Trait: Blessed Touch (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/faith-traits/blessed-touch-faith/) +1 total healing when Channeling/Lay on hands/Cure spell (total, not per die, but traits are cheap).

Item: Phylactery of Positive Channeling (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/phylactery-of-positive-channeling/) +2d6 to Channeling.

Mythic: Hierophant (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/mythic/mythic-heroes/mythic-paths-paizo-inc/hierophant/), 3rd Tier, "Life Current", the first time you take it you can treat all 1's as 2's when Channeling. If you keep taking it you can get up to all 1/2/3/4's become 5's. So effectively you can't roll less than a 5.


Is there any reason that Sacred Boost couldn’t be tweaked a little, allowing for a certain number of maximized channels per day? The original Sacred Boost was limited only by the number of turn attempts per day; what would be a good parallel in Pathfinder? Just the number of channels available?

The easiest thing would be 'number of Channels', but that seems kind of self-defeating:
I can spend 1 Channel to do -average- damage, OR I can spend 2 Channels to do -maximized- damage. Average x2 = Maximized (not exact, but close enough)

Most Channeling classes have spells, possibly burn spell slots instead? (although give the Paladin a reduced penalty/extra bonus due to having worse spells)

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by grarrrg
No idea if any of these will really help you, but they're random enough you might find something.

Aha, thanks—these are some interesting options. I’m familiar with Sacred Servant, and that phylactery has been mentioned before (possibly by you) but the others are new to me.


Originally Posted by grarrrg
The easiest thing would be 'number of Channels', but that seems kind of self-defeating:
I can spend 1 Channel to do -average- damage, OR I can spend 2 Channels to do -maximized- damage. Average x2 = Maximized (not exact, but close enough)

Hmm…I didn’t mean directly spending a channel to power the maximizing, but rather capping the number of maximized channels at some arbitrary value. Maybe one maximized channel per point of Wis bonus? For most clerics that would be 2-4 maximized channels per day at lower levels, which seems like a decent return for a feat.

[grarrrg]

...rather capping the number of maximized channels at some arbitrary value. Maybe one maximized channel per point of Wis bonus? For most clerics that would be 2-4 maximized channels per day at lower levels, which seems like a decent return for a feat.

Tying it to WIS bonus might make it a bit TOO Cleric oriented. If that's the goal, then great, otherwise the Paladins and Oracles (and whatever other archetypes) don't get to play unless they had really good rolls.
Probably don't want to tie it to CHA bonus though, as that would directly scale with your Channel uses, making the "limit" semi-pointless.

[Florian]

Is there a way to maximize the healing benefit from a use of Channel Energy?

Not as such, no. You can do a lot of things with channel energy, but nothing that resembles meta magic feats. You´ll also find that most items and feats that concern healing are for the recipient.

[Geddy2112]

Depending on your deity, you can pick up a channel feat. Grarrrg mentioned seductive channel, which adds more oomph to your healing ability.

If you count "healing" as more than HP damage, then clarifying channel is pretty incredible as it allows all healed to get a re roll vs a charm/complusion with a bonus from your charisma mod.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by grarrrg
Tying it to WIS bonus might make it a bit TOO Cleric oriented. If that's the goal, then great, otherwise the Paladins and Oracles (and whatever other archetypes) don't get to play unless they had really good rolls.

Okay, thanks. In this case I’m okay with it being cleric-specific, since the feat I’m trying to replicate (Sacred Boost) was itself pretty cleric-oriented.

So, would a feat allowing for maximized channelling, limited to a number of times per day equal to the Wis bonus, be a reasonable feat? I understand it’s on the lower end of all possible feats, just trying to get a sense of whether it’s worth the feat slot.


Originally Posted by Florian
You can do a lot of things with channel energy, but nothing that resembles meta magic feats.

Well, there’s Selective Channel, which seems to partway emulate Sculpt Spell from 3.5, but I’ll take your broader point.


Originally Posted by Geddy2112
If you count "healing" as more than HP damage, then clarifying channel is pretty incredible as it allows all healed to get a re roll vs a charm/complusion with a bonus from your charisma mod.

This is definitely pretty nice, although it does seem fairly situational. Although I could see this as a bread-and-butter necessity in a fey-heavy campaign.

[Kurald Galain]

If you count "healing" as more than HP damage, then clarifying channel is pretty incredible as it allows all healed to get a re roll vs a charm/complusion with a bonus from your charisma mod.
Meh, way too situational.

But in that line of feats there's Milani's which gives the entire party +2 to hit and saves. And the hilarious one from Asmodeus that says "convert to my faith now or no healing for you!" (which admittedly is also way too situational, but also funny).

[Elder_Basilisk]

Combat medic archetype let's clerics add paladin-style mercies to their channels.

Warpriests have channel blessing which lets one person forgoe the healing in order to benefit from one of their blessings which is better than it sounds because there's usually one all who has little use for the healing and warpriest blessings are pretty good. The only downside is that it eats through fervor like it's going out of style-ended if you try to bring quick channel into the mix.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kurald Galain
But in that line of feats there's Milani's which gives the entire party +2 to hit and saves.


Originally Posted by Elder_Basilisk
Combat medic archetype let's clerics add paladin-style mercies to their channels.

These sound useful on their own, and this raises something else I was thinking of. Would it be too much to add a rider effect to a maximized channel?

I’m thinking something like the deity-specific feats already mentioned, or similar to the Imbued Healing feat from 3.5, which had a whole smorgasbord of (mainly meh) options depending on your domains. Would both a maximized channel and a rider effect be too much for one feat to provide?

[Kurald Galain]

These sound useful on their own, and this raises something else I was thinking of. Would it be too much to add a rider effect to a maximized channel?
I'm not seeing a problem with that. Note that a maximized channel is effectively double the healing, and Quicken Channel is also double the healing, so I suggest basing your costs (or usages-per-day) on that. Note also that the Merciful Healer archetype has a sizeable drawback in its forced domain choice.


I understand it’s on the lower end of all possible feats,
No it's not.

And the reason for that is action economy. There is a huge difference between healing one party member for a standard action (which is not so great) and healing the entire party for a single action. People who blandly repeat "combat healing sucks lol" should keep that in mind.

[Florian]

Right. The ability to channel energy, how you can modify it with feats and archetypes and the available equipment is grossly underestimated.

[Sagetim]

I just want to point out that there was a baseline design difference in cleric between 3.5 and pathfinder. In 3.5, they realized at some point after they released the 3.5 book that turn undead kind of sucks. It's sometimes useful at low to mid level, then it just kind of drops off the usefulness meter entirely. So their solution was to start putting feats in various splatbooks that would make those turn undead uses, you know, usable to do other things. This is where we got such ridiculousness as Divine Metamagic from. It's also where we got the proto channel energy from, Sacred Healing? Divine Burst? I don't remember the name off hand, it's 5 am. Anyway, point is, that was like, 1d8+wis mod positive energy in a radius around the cleric and it would heal the living and harm undead, cuz positive energy.

So when they were building classes for pathfinder and said 'man, we don't want any class to have a class ability that just kind of stops being useful forever after a certain point, what can we change about the cleric to fix that for it?' and so instead of turn undead, the highly situational capability, we got a scaling version of the feat that used to burn turn undead uses, and now It was the baseline ability, Channel Energy. Now with a feat for turning or commanding undead by blowing channel uses.

So, with this structure logic in mind, it would seem kind of odd to have maximizing channeling costing extra channel uses. I'd probably go with it just being a use per day feat with wis mod in uses, min 1, or 1+wis mod in uses per day. For people with really high stats, that's going to be a lot of uses per day, but for people with a more average adventurer stat spread, it will be a pretty reasonable amount of uses per day, and you'll probably still have more channels per day than feat uses. If it turns out to be too powerful an option, you might want to nerf it down to 1/2 wis mod per day, minimum 1, which would make it more limited, but...you know, that's okay. After all, it might undercut the specialness of being able to maximize your channel if you can do it for like, 7 out of 9 channels per day, and then the party comes to expect it, and you come to expect it, and it goes from being this cool thing you can do because you invested a feat to a baseline assumption and your group's expectations of power creeps a little higher.