Warlock question.

[Zellsantal]

Ok on a game I am playing a game right now were I am trying to be the healer of the party. What I was working on was to try to make a healer warlock in order to use my eldritch blast to be a unlimited heal bot. As it stands I am a 4 levels of warlock and 1 level of Cloistered Cleric. The game set up is of a diablo campain so mostly fighting undead and demons.

The DM recamend I go the Enlightend spirit prestige because of spirit blast. The way I understood from him it did both healing and positive energy, however after reading it all I see it doing is damage to undead. looked over to the Eldritch Disciple and seen it have healing blast and wonder if maybe he got the prestige class's mixed up. I have level up three levels so I am trying to figure out which of these prestige class I sould be taking.

That said I have a few questions to better undersanding of the two Prestige class's.
1. Could spirit blase both healing and damageing? Or just damage undead?
2. For healing blast do I have to use a turning undead on every turn in order to use it?
3. Depending what is said with question one and two, I was thinking of taking two levels of Disciple and go Spirit all the way. Do you think that would work or just streight out on only one of them?

[ATHATH]

You don't HAVE to be a dedicated healer, y'know. Most parties can get on just fine with a Wand of Lesser Vigor or the like.

How attached are you to Warlock? Binders have similar flavor, and can bind Buer at level 5 (level 7 if you didn't take Improved Binding for some reason), who just flat-out gives you at-will healing abilities (that should mostly be used out of combat, of course).

You could even be both a Warlock and a Binder at the same time. Be a human with two flaws and take 1 level of Binder, the Improved Binding feat, the Magical Training feat, the Precocious Apprentice feat, and a metamagic feat. Take a level in Warlock as your second level and head into Anima Mage (which can advance Warlock casting) at third level. After you finish Anima Mage, consider heading into Hellfire Warlock- it synergizes incredibly well with Naberius (a vestige). After taking all 3 levels of Hellfire Warlock, consider finishing your build off with Uncanny Trickster or Legacy Champion, which can progress your Hellfire Warlock super-damage past the normal 3 level limit of the class (Hellfire Warlock).

[Telonius]

1 - The only thing that Spirit Blast does, is extra damage to undead. It grants no extra healing.
2 - Yes. Healing Blast (and all of the other Gifts of the Divine Patron) costs a Turn Undead attempt to activate it.
3 - Of the two, I'd go with Eldritch Disciple.

Enlightened Spirit is really not that great of a PrC. It gives almost no advancement for your Invocations, and doesn't advance your spellcasting either. All it advances is Eldritch Blast damage. For the features, you're getting a bunch of little bonuses that don't make up for what you're losing. It's another one of those PrCs that sounds wonderful as a concept, but ends up making you a lot less powerful in the long run. Eldritch Disciple advances four things you care about: invocations known, Eldrtich Blast damage, Cleric casting, and Turn Undead. About the only advantage Enlightened Spirit has over it is the skill list; Spirit has UMD, and Disciple doesn't. (Able Learner can fix that, especially if you're going Cloistered Cleric, but if you didn't take it at first you're kind of stuck).

[Fizban]

Enlightened Spirit is what happens when someone can't tell where to draw the line at mechanics and fluff. The default warlock fluff is waa evilz, so naturally the only way to be good is to take a special PrC that specifically says your fluff changes to good, and because it's not warlock anymore it has to stop increasing invocation mechanics and instead duplicate all the abilities with separate things that have new goody fluff. And that is the only way, you hear me!?


So, point one: while healers (as in healing in-combat) are not as bad as people make them out to be, it does take a certain amount of optimization that a warlock can't touch: trying to do it as a warlock RAW is never going to work. If you want to be able to heal as a warlock, get together with your DM and make some healing invocations to take as a warlock. Only you know how much healing is the right amount for your game, weather it needs daily limits or should just be constant stream of hp, and how much should go out per round.

Point two: the actual healer role is more about removing and preventing status effects. Restoring hp is easy, and as long as your party can hold it together until the end of the fight, Healing Belts and wands of Cure Light will do fine for quite a while. Everything else, not so much. The list includes:

-Endure Elements, Protection from Evil, Remove Fear, Delay Poison, Remove Paralysis, Lesser Restoration, Magic Circle against Evil, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Remove Curse, Remove Disease, Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, Neutralize Poison, Restoration, Break Enchantment, Raise Dead, Heal, Greater Restoration, Regenerate, Resurrection, Mass Heal, and True Resurrection

There's more buffs and utility the party is expected to have from the cleric list, but that's the status removal from the PHB. An arcanist can supply Resist/Protection from Energy, Water Breathing, Fly, but none of the status stuff except Flesh to Stone (clerics have to use Break Enchantment for that).

One of the easier options might be a Resurgence invocation- capable of removing any ongoing magical effect with enough rolls (technically even curses that resist dispelling) [you could use a wand, but fishing for 20's will burn it up reeeal fast]. Then one to remove diseases and instantaneous problems (like a lot of petrification and blindness), and another that blocks poison and negative energy (number of active wards increasing with caster level). Almost nothing in the game actually removes limbs and even if you can't just buy raise/resurrect, once you've got Imbue Item you can craft scrolls. Would probably have to put negative level removal on the disease/instantaneous one.

If you won't use homebrew (ugh, why), then Eldritch Disciple is obviously the way to go. Since you have actual spells you can take Touch of Healing, use Healing Blast to top off or as a mass heal response to AoE effects (with Eldritch Chain). With spellcasting one or two levels behind you're more likely to not have access to the spells needed for a given monster, but it is a fuzzy line that the DM can watch and you should only need a little pro-active scroll buying to avoid disaster (petrification is the big one that comes up way too early in general).

But you're not a healing warlock- you're a cleric with some warlock on the side.

[skunk3]

I myself play an Eldritch Disciple. (Warlock 3, Cleric 3, Eldritch Disciple 3 at the moment) and I can tell you that Warlocks aren't going to be great as healers in battle. With the healing blast bestowed by one of the "divine gift" class abilities, I can do a handful of ranged heals per day that heal 5d6 damage. (3d6 base, 2d6 from Greater Chausuble of Fell Power.) I can also do spontaneous healing as a Cleric but at only 5 effective Cleric levels, the heals aren't impressive. What we do in our party is try to buff up before battle and try our best to avoid damage so we can just heal with cheap wands after the fight. After all, a wand of cure light wounds is only 750 gp, as is a wand of lesser restoration. At higher levels (and with the right gear) my heals will eventually be pretty sweet but at lower levels forget about the Warlock being a healbot.

Also, Enlightened Spirit is a bit of a shame because fluff-wise it is EXACTLY what I want for my character, but if you look at the benefits it gives you as you progress, it's kind of a joke. The only way I'd take that as a PrC is if I and my DM agreed on a homebrew variant of it that makes it less underpowered / useless.

[skunk3]

1 - The only thing that Spirit Blast does, is extra damage to undead. It grants no extra healing.
2 - Yes. Healing Blast (and all of the other Gifts of the Divine Patron) costs a Turn Undead attempt to activate it.
3 - Of the two, I'd go with Eldritch Disciple.

Enlightened Spirit is really not that great of a PrC. It gives almost no advancement for your Invocations, and doesn't advance your spellcasting either. All it advances is Eldritch Blast damage. For the features, you're getting a bunch of little bonuses that don't make up for what you're losing. It's another one of those PrCs that sounds wonderful as a concept, but ends up making you a lot less powerful in the long run. Eldritch Disciple advances four things you care about: invocations known, Eldrtich Blast damage, Cleric casting, and Turn Undead. About the only advantage Enlightened Spirit has over it is the skill list; Spirit has UMD, and Disciple doesn't. (Able Learner can fix that, especially if you're going Cloistered Cleric, but if you didn't take it at first you're kind of stuck).

Which is why I plan on taking 4 total levels of Warlock for "deceive item."

[Zellsantal]

Alright, Ill talk to my dm this weekend and recape what he was talking about. I think he may be trying to make the spirit blasét into a healing one. If anything I would go Disciple and get a **** ton of Nightsticks and see if I can have them as pearls to have around me in all times, thank you all for your input.