What if primary melee classes were the healers?

[gooddragon1]

Fighters, barbarians, warblades, etc. are on the front lines dealing out the damage. What if they had all the healing abilities of clerics and somewhat of an action economy boost enough to use them to some extent? I was just wondering about this anyways. Not sure how it'd be implemented.

[ryu]

Depending on how you define healing ability and what the action economy boost is it may well bring some of the lower tiers to low 3 and solidify the position of those already there. I don't see it breaking T2.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

You do have the Crusader.
He is melee with healing.

[Necroticplague]

Crusaders already are basically exactly what you describe, in all their game-breaking glory.

[gooddragon1]

Crusaders already are basically exactly what you describe, in all their game-breaking glory.

They lose a little bit of firepower and don't have spells to do it outside of combat. I mean basically stapling on the cleric's spellcasting with spells known of the healing (removing debuffs as well) sort. No multiple ability dependence though and a sort of action economy boost.

[Necroticplague]

They lose a little bit of firepower and don't have spells to do it outside of combat. I mean basically stapling on the cleric's spellcasting with spells known of the healing (removing debuffs as well) sort. No multiple ability dependence though and a sort of action economy boost.

Martial Spirit works outside combat, lacking the ' This foe must pose a threat to you or your allies in some direct, immediate way.' clause that the Strikes have.

[Eldan]

If you look at it cynically, that's already pretty much the case, just the other way around. The best healing classes (except the Healer, but no one talks about the Healer) are also the best melee classes: Druid, Cleric, Crusader, in probably roughly that order.

I mean, if you made a fighter useful in combat and also gave him healing of some kind, it would hard to make him look different from either a specialized cleric or a Crusader.

[gooddragon1]

Martial Spirit works outside combat, lacking the ' This foe must pose a threat to you or your allies in some direct, immediate way.' clause that the Strikes have.

I have suggested this earlier (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?232171-Is-it-possible-to-use-martial-spirit-stance-like-this), but it is somewhat iffy on whether a dm would allow it as it is infinite healing up to full.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

I have suggested this earlier (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?232171-Is-it-possible-to-use-martial-spirit-stance-like-this), but it is somewhat iffy on whether a dm would allow it as it is infinite healing up to full.

I will allow it if you RP it.
Like taking out a dummy and saying this is the perfect time to train your resolve.

[Psyren]

Some healing, particularly self-healing, being martial? Yeah I'd be on board with that. It would probably go over better if you reconfigured how health works - say a "hit points + Resolve" model like Starfinder uses, so that the martial characters "heal" through inspiration, tactics, leadership, or just plain imparting luck. You're not actually repairing someone's body in that case, but rather refreshing their own innate ability to mitigate and avoid damage.

But some forms of healing remaining squarely in the domain of magic seem sensible to me, like raising the dead or regenerating someone else's lost limbs. A martial character can help keep you from needing stuff like that, but once you actually do take that kind of damage, it makes sense to me that magic should be involved in fixing it. This is not to say that puts it out of the range of martial characters entirely though - some of them should get access to supernatural or spell-like powers at higher levels too.

[Cosi]

Healing is a fundamentally reactive ability. Yes, it would make martials better. But it doesn't fix their problem of not having non-combat abilities that advance the plot. You don't solve an adventure by casting cure light wounds. restoration isn't on par with teleport.