No Healing (or so they say..)

[ChudoJogurt]

I am running a campaign, which includes few houserules.
Among them
1. Players have a limited, or almost no access to Divine magic (as the gods have been dead so long that the characters civilization did not know they existed until recently, and the only god they know is a Good deity who is so far not highly accepted in the Evil empire or the Evil party. Think early Christians in Rome - lions, catacombs, all that jazz).
No druids or spellсasting rangers either.

2. Wands do not exist. This one is not setting-related, I'm just not a fan of "wand for every occassion" hoarsding.
Staves, runestaffs, scrolls - everything else is on the table, and with somewhat simplified magic item creation rules, but no wands.

Thus there are no healbot clerics, and wands of Lesser Vigor.

As a result my players give me repeated pushback about there not being enough healing, and them often feeling that they have to ration their healing and their health points.

The party of three 7th level adventurers has three Belts of Healing, and a Runestaff which includes Cure Medium Wounds, all presumed to have been created via Bardic magic.
Plus party includes Crusader, who has "heal 2hp per successful attack" stance and a "heal 1d6+5 when hit something as a standard action" strike, which we agreed to not abuse by hitting things that don't present a challenge.
No one has the Heal skill.

We generally would have two-three encounters on a heavy adventuring day, and there is usually few adventuring days and then some generous downtime between them for social/political parts of campaign or just party travelling.

Are they right and lack of in-combat and between-combat healing is serious impediment and I should either give out more healing items or scale down encounters?
Or is it fine?

[RatElemental]

How have druids, rangers, archivists and ur priests been affected by the lack of deities, if at all?

[ChudoJogurt]

Just generally there us no divine magic.
Archivists cant study ancient relics and prayerbooks since there arent any left. Ur priests cant steal the power of deities they dont know exist.
So those classes are not available to characters until they encounter deities or at least find some surviving archives in-game, and they are very rare for NPCs, most of whom will not be very inclined to help the party, since, again, atm they are in place where Good deities used to rule, and both the party and their country are leaning Evil.

Rangers are all wildshape variant rangers (boosted to have Druid wildhsape progression, and in-universe usually seen as precursor to going into MoMF), and there are no druids, because I swiped that under the general "no divine magic" rule, essentially saying that all natural places of power died when the Nature Goddess croaked.

[RatElemental]

Well as far as ur priests go, tapping into dead gods is a thing they're noted as being able to do, but I digress. This sounds like a setting I kicked around an idea for a while back, where the gods had all died. The thing was I intended to make this clear up front to the players, so they would know they'd need to depend on a bard, specialized magic items or mundane healing to get their booboos fixed, and I only weakened divine magic derived from natural sources (as well as let archivists and ur priests do their thing, but again, I digress).

A simple-ish fix would be to give arcane casters in general the bardic version of healing spells, perhaps shifted up a spell level or two.

[StSword]

There are rules to increase the healing rates of characters you might want to take a look at.

Maybe try reserve points (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/reservePoints.htm) rules?

Or take a look at the wounds and vigor system (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/wounds-and-vigor/) from pathfinder, which separates damage into "nonserious damage you can sleep off in a day" and "serious damage that will take a while to heal."

[Vizzerdrix]

Their is alchemical healing salve.

They can hunt a hag for her stone.

Get a pet elisian(sp?) thrush to boost sleeping rest.

Spellfire channeler feat can heal. I think some dragonmarks as well. Allow a side quest or something to gain it.

Psionics have some healing options as well.

[ChudoJogurt]

The thing was I intended to make this clear up front to the players, so they would know they'd need to depend on a bard, specialized magic items or mundane healing to get their booboos fixed, and I only weakened divine magic derived from natural sources (as well as let archivists and ur priests do their thing, but again, I digress).


Yeah, it was all discussed before the game. So they have Healing Belts and the Runestaff, they just moan that its not enough.


dragonmarks as well. Allow a side quest or something to gain it.

Psionics have some healing options as well.
No dragonmarks and no psionics yet (psionics will be available later if the characters choose to pick them up)

And correct me if I'm wrong, but a healing salve is silly expensive, on par with healing potions.

Elysian thrush is a great idea, though.

[Fizban]

I am running a campaign, which includes few houserules.
Among them
1. Players have a limited, or almost no access to Divine magic (as the gods have been dead so long that the characters civilization did not know they existed until recently, and the only god they know is a Good deity who is so far not highly accepted in the Evil empire or the Evil party. Think early Christians in Rome - lions, catacombs, all that jazz).
No druids or spellсasting rangers either.

2. Wands do not exist. This one is not setting-related, I'm just not a fan of "wand for every occassion" hoarsding.
Staves, runestaffs, scrolls - everything else is on the table, and with somewhat simplified magic item creation rules, but no wands.
You make changes, you're responsible for the consequences.

As a result my players give me repeated pushback about there not being enough healing, and them often feeling that they have to ration their healing and their health points.
Is this an intended effect? You removed the usual healing sources, but didn't say anything about wanting to reduce healing.


The party of three 7th level adventurers has three Belts of Healing, and a Runestaff which includes Cure Medium Wounds, all presumed to have been created via Bardic magic.
Plus party includes Crusader, who has "heal 2hp per successful attack" stance and a "heal 1d6+5 when hit something as a standard action" strike, which we agreed to not abuse by hitting things that don't present a challenge.
No one has the Heal skill.
What level are you expecting this game to go to? Healing Belts are already past their useful period, and Bard slots won't keep up either.


We generally would have two-three encounters on a heavy adventuring day, and there is usually few adventuring days and then some generous downtime between them for social/political parts of campaign or just party travelling.
Are they expending approximately 20% of their daily resources (significant spell slots, hp and healing, daily abilities, etc) on level appropriate encounters? You've mentioned one of their classes but not the other two, but I must presume that if they're using a runestaff of healing spells that could only have been created and used by a bard, they have a bard. A 3-person party should have a harder time than a 4 person party. This can be somewhat mitigated if the party uses proactive defenses so every member is on offense from turn 1. However, you've removed the Cleric class, which is the one with the defensive buffs that make it possible to proactively avoid taking damage in a fight, the safety net the game expects in the standard party. And their source of spells would appear to be a Bard, which just flat out has fewer spells per day than actual full casters.

There's no conversion for a 3-person party- just using encounters 1 level lower isn't necessarily right, but if they use 30% of their resources against EL= level then that's probably appropriate (and if they're burning Bard spells to use a Runestaff that won't take many spells to hit). And it will feel like they're getting wrecked because they're spending 50% more resources than the game normally expects for a 4 person party.

Are they right and lack of in-combat and between-combat healing is serious impediment and I should either give out more healing items or scale down encounters?
Or is it fine?
In-combat healing is not something the game expects. Out-of-combat healing is also not expected. If you've got the AC and resistance immunity buffs, it's entirely likely you don't need to heal at all against many encounters. What is expected is that every encounter consumes some resources.

This party is clearly taking damage, but they also have a character with per-encounter healing abilities. If they've built to take damage and then recover, then they shouldn't be surprised about that. And their repeatable healing ability is completely out of date (and I really wonder why a 7th level Crusader who complains about healing doesn't have the 3rd level Revitalizing Strike, along with as much defense as they can get).

Another question is what sort of things they're fighting. Are they fighting level appropriate monsters? Do those monsters have magic attacks they can't block due to their lack of Cleric? Are they fighting classed humanoid NPCs, who can be optimized to put out even more damage and nova all their daily abilities with no remorse?


There is no simple answer to the question, but in general, if your players don't like the feel of your combat, you should figure out how to make them like it more.


And correct me if I'm wrong, but a healing salve is silly expensive, on par with healing potions.
The alchemical Healing Salve? Yeah, it's officially 50gp for 1d8 hit points. Of course, there's no reason you can't change it to 15gp, making it the same cost as a 1st level wand charge. And make a different version that heals 10 hp over time. Or just 10hp flat (see the Faith Healing spell). If all you need is to replace healing wands, that's so easy it's barely a problem.

[Vizzerdrix]

Yeah, it was all discussed before the game. So they have Healing Belts and the Runestaff, they just moan that its not enough.


No dragonmarks and no psionics yet (psionics will be available later if the characters choose to pick them up)

And correct me if I'm wrong, but a healing salve is silly expensive, on par with healing potions.

Elysian thrush is a great idea, though.

50 gp to buy. Less to craft. Heals like a minor potion, but beggars can't be choosers.

[ChudoJogurt]

Is this an intended effect? You removed the usual healing sources, but didn't say anything about wanting to reduce healing.

Kinda, yes. Removal of Wand of Lesser Vigor option was intentional, as I wanted the party to manage their resources carefully.
Removal of easy access resurrection was also intentional.
On the other hand, I did not thibk much about removing in-combat healing, as it is I believe, considered a subpar option anyway, and when I initially planned the campaign I expected that players would be Good and would be picking up various healing abilities by about lvl 7.


What level are you expecting this game to go to?
14.
Though divine magic and healing would become more common by level 9.


healing spells that could only have been created and used by a bard, they have a bard.
Beguiler and Hexblade.
Beguiler uses the runestaff via UMD.
I suggested the Revitalizing Strike to the Crusader, but they refuse, I think because they already feel their damage output too low.
They do have really high AC, though.


Are they fighting level appropriate monsters? Do those monsters have magic attacks they can't block
A standard encounter is about CR 6
A "boss" battle may be up to CR 9
The only ability they would need a cleric for is usually poison and only on the boss or pre-boss fight.

Last dungeon was: 4 bat swarms, then 3 ankhegs, a CR 7 aberration they snuck past, a CR 9 dragon they negotiated and ran away from (got a bunch of damage from it when it used breath weapon), a bit of damage from a trap I made slightly too complicated.
Then they rested, avoided bunch of encounters, fought a CR 9 boss which left them with some debuffs they could not remove without cleric, and then another CR 7 boss + three ankhegs.

[Troacctid]

My healing pro tip: get a luminary tabard (ShG) and take the Daunting Presence feat (LM). Now you can sit around in a circle telling scary stories for unlimited healing. The beguiler could also consider getting rags of restraint (MIC) and emulating the ninja's ki feature to regain a number of hit points equal to the UMD result minus 20.

If you're not into that nonsense and you just want a more combat-ready version of a healing belt, consider the helm of glorious recovery (MIC) for 5,600 gp. If you have money to burn, you could spend 21,000 gp on a healing nodules graft (MoE), which produces a potion of cure serious wounds every hour on the hour.

[tiercel]

Perhaps lean the group more toward not only elysian thrush but also Zaq’s Rest-Based Healing Microguide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?189716-Boosting-Rest-Based-Healing-A-Microguide-3-5)....

If nothing else, more separation between healing resources and combat resources (having to choose between combat spell slots and keeping some by for the runestaff, etc.) might ease the perceived pressure as much as any actual deficit in healing.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

My first question is why are they taking so much damage in the first place? Do they not have someone crowd controlling/debuffing everything in sight?

My second question is why the Crusader didn't take Hellreaver? Divine Succor is absurd, and at 11th level Heroic Sacrifice plus dipping Binder for Naberius allows him to do that nonstop, but only during combat. Only take Hellreaver to 5 and only dip one level of Binder, everything else should be Crusader. Let him use PH2 retraining rules if he wants to swap out a few levels and go this route.

My third question is why didn't someone make an Ardent with the Life mantle, or an Egoist with True Healer (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070314a)?

[ChudoJogurt]

Hellreaver requires Good alignment, the party is Evil. And there's quite a bit of time (about year real time) till they get to level 11.

Ardent/Egoist are Psionic classess, which also are restricted atm.

And I'm not sure they're taking "that much" damage. Beguiler is rarely hurt, the Crusader has very high AC (full plate + tower shield, all enchanted). Hexblade does take some smacks, to be honest, though, being a charger build.

[Quertus]

You know that by RAW you can have Clerics without deities, and that the generic Spellcaster exists, who can have all these spells as Arcane, right?


Archivists cant study ancient relics and prayerbooks since there arent any left.

Just like Wizards cannot study arcane spells, because there aren't any left?

I mean, just how much brain damage do your world's Archivists have, that they failed to archive divine knowledge? :smallamused: Even a single Archivist with Scribe Scroll would be enough to supply the entire world with now desperately-needed Archivists. Oh, look, one does some Divinations, decides to Plane Shift in from Sigil, and takes over the world (politically, if not literally).


Ur priests cant steal the power of deities they dont know exist.

Not only is that wrong, but a world where all the gods are dead is the perfect breeding ground for Ur-Priest levels, as there aren't gods actively hunting them down! Your world is a bloody dream come true for every hunted Ur-Priest. It's paradise. This is more of a face palm than the Archivists.

-----

You tried to make a cool, unique setting. I get that. Problem is, the setting is both fairly nonsensical, and isn't fun for your players. I would encourage you to have a major "reality retcon" event, in which the setting was fixed to both make sense and be more fun for your players, and your players were allowed an immediate free character rebuild (including classes, feats, items, etc).

Also, I'm sad that, even in your world where healing is king, nobody had an Amulet of Emergency Healing. :smallfrown:

[Psyren]

On the other hand, I did not thibk much about removing in-combat healing, as it is I believe, considered a subpar option anyway, and when I initially planned the campaign I expected that players would be Good and would be picking up various healing abilities by about lvl 7.

What forums consider subpar can differ (sometimes drastically) from the actual tactics your players use in a real life game. When you read a forum post about how in-combat healing is weak, several other factors are usually being assumed, such as adequate battlefield control, disposable meatshields like summons or temp HP buffs, and minimal player mistakes that negate the need for in-combat healing. If some or all of these don't actually apply to your players, a game without in-combat healing is going to be a lot harder for them than a message board might suggest.

Part of your job is to calibrate the game to challenge your players appropriately - and this can mean reducing difficulty as well as raising it. You don't have to be perfect at that on the first try, but dismissing your players' feedback as "moaning" is not going to help you improve at it either.

[ChudoJogurt]

Ur Priests precisely steal magic from gods by fluff. No gods -- nothing to steal. Doubly problematic if you dont know that divine magic exists in the first place to even try to develop methods to steal it.
Same for Archivists - they still employ power of gods by fluff, they just have a more analytical approach to studying it.
Either way, millenia is a lot of time when preserving stuff that may or may not be useful becomes problematic. Just ask the Greeks.

Thats the sort of stuff thatbworks if you look at the mechanics and straught up ignore what the mechanic is supposed ti describe and how it fits with the setting, which is not something I want to do for this particular game.


You know that by RAW you can have Clerics without deities,
Sure. I said no to that.
Rule 0 and all that jazz. No divine magic. Not sure why you feel that this is such a hard concept.
No gods, no other planes, no druids, no paladins, no divine magic. Full stop.
No generic Spellcasters either, thats an NPC variant class from Unearthed Arcana, there is no reason why it has to be in the game or permitted for player use.
No Artificers as well, by the way, but thats due to balance issues.

There is Arcane magic and there is Martial magic from ToB, and there are Ex/Su/Sp abilities like barbarians/factotums/wildshape rangers/monks, etc which either have separate allowed source or are considered to be offshoots of the Sublime Way.
(factotums don't get Oppirtunistic Piety, though)

Healing us available in Arcane form via Bardic spells and magic items derived from them - hence Runestaffs and Belts of Healing, and if the players wished to purchase them, then potions and scrolls as well.

Now as Psyren said, it is a fair point that since our party is smaller than expected 4 characters, and does not have good buff/control/summon backbone, healing may be more important than I expected, including in-combat healing.
Perhaps I will introduce some Incantations for out-of-combat healing, or drop a couple magic items (Amulet of Retributive healing would go a long way, I suppose)

[RatElemental]

Ur Priests precisely steal magic from gods by fluff. No gods -- nothing to steal.

It's your campaign and you can do what you want and all, but as I pointed out earlier the fluff of Ur-Priests says they can also tap into the remnants of dead gods to power their spells. There's also the servant of the fallen feat.

I bet binders would be having a field day with all the dead gods though.

At any rate, you mentioned the party has three belts of healing, correct? And that only one of them is really taking all that much damage? Are they not letting the guy taking damage use the unused charges on their own belts?

[ChudoJogurt]

I bet binders would be having a field day with all the dead gods though.

Yep, absolutely. This will be also part of the game.




At any rate, you mentioned the party has three belts of healing, correct? And that only one of them is really taking all that much damage? Are they not letting the guy taking damage use the unused charges on their own belts?
Correct, and they are.
We agreed thatvyou cant switch belts of healing around to have a bunch of them, but Belt of Healing does allow healing another with a touch, and we've been using it quite a bit.

On reflection I think the main bit of trouble happens when the party runs into people with attacks that ignore AC. Because then both Hexblade and Crusader start taking damage, and there isn't enough healing to repeatedly re-max both of them.

[Quertus]

On reflection I think the main bit of trouble happens when the party runs into people with attacks that ignore AC. Because then both Hexblade and Crusader start taking damage, and there isn't enough healing to repeatedly re-max both of them.

This is certainly the type of thing you need to evaluate if your goal is to make a fun game for your players.


Ur Priests precisely steal magic from gods by fluff. No gods -- nothing to steal.

I mean, I would want them to work that way, too, but they don't.


Doubly problematic if you dont know that divine magic exists in the first place to even try to develop methods to steal it.

The Ur-Priests of old (who started partying hard when all the gods died) didn't know that the gods existed, and didn't pass their teachings down to future generations? Given that Ur-Priest has "must be trained by another Ur-Priest" in their prerequisites, this makes the lack of Ur-Priests make no sense.


Same for Archivists - they still employ power of gods by fluff, they just have a more analytical approach to studying it.

… citation please? Reading comprehension isn't my strong suit, but I did not see anything like that in the class description.


Either way, millenia is a lot of time when preserving stuff that may or may not be useful

In what possible society was tier 1 casting - that includes curing diseases and blindness, creating & purifying food and water, healing injuries, and so many other everyday useful abilities - deemed "not useful"? :smallconfused:

Now, sure, if the world was shrouded in aggressive antimagic for the past 5,000 years¹, I'll concede that the short-lived races might no longer possess Archivists and Ur-Priests. And that Wizards, Bards, etc could be "reemerging". But you didn't mention millennia-long antimagic, or any penalties to Wizards for similarly lost knowledge, so it made your world feel unrealistically incoherent.

¹ that could also explain the death of the gods, through lack of belief when no one living remembers their miracles


Thats the sort of stuff thatbworks if you look at the mechanics and straught up ignore what the mechanic is supposed ti describe and how it fits with the setting, which is not something I want to do for this particular game.

And I'm pointing out how the setting doesn't work with the setting. We're on the same track here, just not on the same page.


No divine magic. Not sure why you feel that this is such a hard concept.

"No letter 's' in my world."
"But… how do you wrote the plural?"
"No letter 's' - why is this a hard concept?"

What I'm saying is, it feels like you haven't thought through the mechanics of your mechanics.

Also, you didn't say "no divine magic" - you just said "limited", and gave a list of limits and reasons. But the reasons do not match the limits. Which is my point.

Also…
"Limited divine magic"
"No divine magic. Not sure why you feel that this is such a hard concept."

Which is… also having coherence issues.

I think that the root of our communication issues is that you have a Gamist desire ("no divine magic"), and have players with the Participationism to not look behind the curtain. Whereas you've explained it in Simulationist "cause and effect" terms, and so I have approached it that way, poking at the curtain for solutions for your players' problem of insufficient healing.


No Artificers as well, by the way, but thats due to balance issues.

… now, I'm not terribly familiar with the Artificer class, in that I don't believe that we've had one at any of my tables, but iirc, it's pegged at tier 3. Whereas you haven't said anything about banning tier 1 Wizards, or tier 5 Monks. So… was Artificer banned because it was too balanced? :smallconfused: Or is this a table-specific issue?

[Zombimode]

Are they right and lack of in-combat and between-combat healing is serious impediment and I should either give out more healing items or scale down encounters?
Or is it fine?

Short answer: no, they are just whining.

Long answer: if they are complaining then there is something that doesn't sit right with them. Since the fun of all is the ultimate goal, you as the DM can't simply ignore complaints.
As indicated by the short answer the problem is not that you provide not enough healing for the challanges*. But it does require a change of perspective and a more careful approach to combat.
The full-HP-every-combat model allows for more reckless behaviour. If hitpoints are a ressource players need to think more on the line of frustrating or negating enemy actions and attacks instead of just damage-sponging them. In addition to in-combat-tactics seeking pre-combat advantages (like choosing/altering the battlefield, setting up ambushes, acquiring allies etc.) becomes ever more important. And of course questions like "do we need to fight it?" and "should we retreat or press on?" get more poignant.

The added ressource management and the outside pressure to think more carefully, to step up your game at the tactical and stratigic level can be a great boon for players who enjoy such things.

On the other hand of course for players who don't this has the potential of diminishing their enjoyment of the game.


* I have an on-and-off group of a Thay-flavored party in the Forgotten Realms: a Red Wizard, a Thayan Knight, a Thayan Gladiator and a Thayan Slaver. None of which have any kind of healing ability. And they don't run arround with a ton of Healing Belts either, just one iiirc.
They get by just fine, and the relative scarcity of hit points has added some well received tension.

Come to think of it, the majority of my parties during the last couple of years, player or DM, had no dedicated healer: the party in my real-world mythology campaign had no healing whatsoever, but it featured few combats. But the long running Eberron campaign where I'm a player gets by with very few healing sources: sure the warforged artificier can Repair itself, and ever since my Hexblade turned undead and took a level in Dread Necromancer I have an infinity supply of out-of-combat healing for myself. But it's a far cry from having a dedicated healer for everyone.

[DeTess]

… now, I'm not terribly familiar with the Artificer class, in that I don't believe that we've had one at any of my tables, but iirc, it's pegged at tier 3. Whereas you haven't said anything about banning tier 1 Wizards, or tier 5 Monks. So… was Artificer banned because it was too balanced? :smallconfused: Or is this a table-specific issue?

Which list are you using? AFAIK, artificer is tier 1, and for good reason.

To the OP, this might be a player perception issue. Based on your description and the items they have, a dedicated healbot cleric wouldn't really add much more healing to the group than they already have. Does the aprty often come close to dying once their healing ahs already run out?

[ChudoJogurt]

So, divine magic is limited because it was not available to the players in the character creation, and it is very rare among NPCs that surround them.
And obviously I was distilling few pages of the campaign background into one forum post, so that is not exactly the full picture.
If you're genuinely interested, I'm happy to write it out, but probably in a separate topic.
For the purposes of this post, it would suffice to say that no player has, or can easily pick up, a divine magic class, and divine magic is not readily available around them.


… now, I'm not terribly familiar with the Artificer class, in that I don't believe that we've had one at any of my tables, but iirc, it's pegged at tier 3. Whereas you haven't said anything about banning tier 1 Wizards, or tier 5 Monks. So… was Artificer banned because it was too balanced? Or is this a table-specific issue?
I believe Artificer is very abusable - if all spellbooks are allowed, they get more effects at lower level than the Wizard.
As such in the game theory materials Ive seen its dubbed Tier 0.
And I have, actually somewhat constrained Tier 1classess, and strongly encouraged players to pick ToB classess insetead of Fighters/Rogues/Monks, with the purpose of balancing things around Tier 2-3.


Does the aprty often come close to dying once their healing ahs already run out?
Hm.
This specific party was low on hitpoints and out of healing twice so far (that would be in about... Eight or ten game sessions, I think).
Once when they got into the fight witha wizard who rolled pretty high on his fireball, and got all three of the PCs in the area, and once when they fought an optional boss without fully restoring their health and spellslots.

[Quertus]

Which list are you using? AFAIK, artificer is tier 1, and for good reason.

Iirc, I read it as tier 3 when someone posted a "spell caster tiers" list in the "solo Rappan Athuk" thread. I was surprised, but remembered that the community had just re-tiered the classes, and, knowing that I had no experience with the class, and seeing noone challenging that statement, I mentally shrugged, and decided that Artificer was now considered tier 3 for some reason.


So, divine magic is limited because it was not available to the players in the character creation, and it is very rare among NPCs that surround them.
And obviously I was distilling few pages of the campaign background into one forum post, so that is not exactly the full picture.

Fair enough. But what, exactly, was your intention? And (other than the players complaining) is the game proceeding the way you intended?

To make the game more fun for your players, you may need to change the particulars of the game, and/or you may need to change the way your game is "marketed".

Do you have any idea what your players intended the game to be?



If you're genuinely interested, I'm happy to write it out, but probably in a separate topic.

I mean, I love such things, just… as you probably can tell, I have very… exacting standards.


For the purposes of this post, it would suffice to say that no player has, or can easily pick up, a divine magic class, and divine magic is not readily available around them.

Could they retrain to a divine class, or pick one up as a cohort?

I'm now picturing a Good divine caster joining the Evil party in the hopes of one day redeeming them.

[ChudoJogurt]

I'll try to make a post describing the setting and the idea in the Homebrew section.

But as to having a cohort, etc. it's a touch harder, as the party is Evil. Not only are they evil, they're playing for the enforcers of the Ministry of Filial Piety of their Evil Shadow Empire, which is kinda magical Evil Tang China equivalent of gestapo, and rooting out the barbaric cults of local deities is one of their professions.

[zlefin]

It's a problem if the players don't know about the alternate ways to get decent healing. Getting that dragon shaman vigor or whatever it's called aura would go a long way; ensuring everyone is at least half-topped off after every battle.

If great ways of healing exist, but the players don't know about them, it doesn't help them at all. Not everyone goes to forums like this and can/will look up guides or know all the sneaky ways to access abilities.

[ChudoJogurt]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?605659-A-loose-collection-of-notes-comments-and-meditations-on-my-current-campaign-setting&p=24333326#post24333326

A very rambly description of the settings. I'll try to make it more coherent next year.

[Ruethgar]

Healing Salves heal 1d8 IIRC, also there were obscure rules for the Heal skill to heal a scaling amount once per hour or until you’ve been hit again(typically 2d6 in reasonable skill range). Expanded Knowledge can get you any healing spell as a power because StP Erudite makes them all powers. Spell Side Effects can heal 2d4 untyped on any item or magic. Repair spells are arcane IIRC so all be Warforged. The other effects are not so easy to get, but Sorcerers can learn spells from any list, and I’m sure a bloodline or two can get you some effects. Arcane Disciple, your god doesn’t necessarily have to exist, your idea of them seems like it would be sufficient. Lucid Dreaming can heal immensely, but I would advise against that suggestion beyond just inception sleeping to regain 10 nights rest per 8hr.

[Luccan]

There's certainly still plenty of access to healing if you've only removed the divine route, but it isn't as powerful as they might be used to. Additionally, they may feel forced down certain avenues to "keep up". Those avenues (Bard, Crusader, Dragon Shaman, Psionics if you allow it) have to give up limited resources in order to heal at a rate anywhere close to the traditional healing classes.

[Fizban]

Kinda, yes. Removal of Wand of Lesser Vigor option was intentional, as I wanted the party to manage their resources carefully.
Removal of easy access resurrection was also intentional.
On the other hand, I did not thibk much about removing in-combat healing, as it is I believe, considered a subpar option anyway, and when I initially planned the campaign I expected that players would be Good and would be picking up various healing abilities by about lvl 7.
Even if they had multiclassed into something with heals, it would still be outdated. Playing without access to emergency healing requires a significant change in methods and abilities.

14.
Though divine magic and healing would become more common by level 9.
Unless "more common" means "suddenly have access to the heal spell (or preferably a Cleric of full party level), that's not going to mean anything in-combat against those level of foes.

Beguiler and Hexblade.
Beguiler uses the runestaff via UMD.
I suggested the Revitalizing Strike to the Crusader, but they refuse, I think because they already feel their damage output too low.
They do have really high AC, though.

Last dungeon was: 4 bat swarms, then 3 ankhegs, a CR 7 aberration they snuck past, a CR 9 dragon they negotiated and ran away from (got a bunch of damage from it when it used breath weapon), a bit of damage from a trap I made slightly too complicated.
Then they rested, avoided bunch of encounters, fought a CR 9 boss which left them with some debuffs they could not remove without cleric, and then another CR 7 boss + three ankhegs.
Swarms are a perfect counter to this party with no AoE blasting (though that's by their choice of Beguiler rather than something else), Ankhegs have damage that can't be stopped with AC, same with the dragon. Beguilers can do traps so dunno what's going on there, but note that traps are a binary encounter: either the trapfinder deals with it and nothing happens, or you eat the effect and it costs resources to heal up, which this game has nearly removed.



There is Arcane magic and there is Martial magic from ToB, and there are Ex/Su/Sp abilities like barbarians/factotums/wildshape rangers/monks, etc which either have separate allowed source or are considered to be offshoots of the Sublime Way.
(factotums don't get Oppirtunistic Piety, though)
To understand the problem-

This is a good example of the core issue that's actually at play: Writing a setting with reduced "divine" magic- but what defines "divine" magic?

DnD does not define divine magic as magic from the gods. No, seriously, it says that in the fluff, but that's not actually how it works mechanically. The way it works mechanically is that any PC with 11+ wis (or cha for a Shugenja) can take levels of Cleric or another divine caster at any time, without even worshiping a god, and there are all sorts of divine fluffed feats and items that often don't even properly say you need to worship a specific deity or concept to take them. It just works.

No, the way the game defines "divine" magic mechanically, is that it's all about defensive, restorative, and problem fixing spells. "Arcane" magic gets the offense as well as a bunch of stuff that sounds cool and arcane, while divine magic gets literally everything else the game expects the party to have, including duplicates of many of the "cool and arcane" effects when they're neccesary.

When you write a setting where there's no "divine" magic, using DnD's mechanical definitions of divine magic, you are literally defining the setting by the fact that the players don't have what the game expects them to. That's what most people actually mean/end up with when they decide on "no divine magic."


So, how does one make a no "divine" magic setting without messing that up? You've got to get rid of the original class spell lists that are what actually defines "divine" magic. You make very specific choices about what "divine" spells are not available, and put the other required spells on the "arcane" lists so the party still has what the game expects them to have, and especially whatever it is they need to deal with the spells you specifically removed.

In this case, the secondary definition you've got for divine magic is probably Healing, else it wouldn't be such an issue, and Bards having a few Cures wouldn't be a big deal. So you've decided that curing hit points and removing status effects is difficult in this world. That means that the "arcane" spell lists must now include all the status prevention spells: Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, Body/Soul Ward, Living Undead, Delay Poison, Delay Disease, Remove Fear (that's the weakest and only Fear one), Magic Circle (that's already on sor/wiz), etc. And probably a fistful of custom spells to cover stuff that doesn't actually have prevention spells already.

And they also need all the hp loss prevention spells: Resist and Protection from Energy/Mass, Aid/Mass Aid, Shield of Faith/Mass, Barkskin, and again probably a fistful more custom spells like Lesser Stoneskin that they can use without breaking the bank and Shield Other but so the tank can absorb damage that the squishy takes (normally the Cleric is a tank themselves).

And it'd be real nice to have that 3rd level Stone Shape, 4th level 10 min/level Air Walk, the coverage of Wind Walk, the information gathering of true Divination and reliable Commune and Find the Path and. . .

Funny thing is, a lot of stuff that other stories just call Magic, is "divine" magic in DnD, but would be done by a sorcerer/wizard/whatever they're called in a story where there's no such divide. Basically, by labeling X magic as "divine" and unavailable, you have to acknowledge that the normal class lists don't matter anymore, and the party just has two casters who should have access to everything, who then divide the jobs of offense, defense, and utility between themselves. The class system in 3.5 essentially forces that divide and rewards the player taking the defensive role, with more armor and hit points and less bookeeping (which was a deliberate choice they made because people didn't like being the squishy do-nothing healer). But characters that have limited spells known aren't actually defined by their class- they're defined by their spells known, so you can give them access to any spells you want and let them do any job you want, as long as the players make sure to cover everything (and they have enough spells known to do so).

And finally, the standard Sor/Wiz will either need some extra spells known and per day to cover that, or (more properly) the party will need to have two casters: one for offense, and one for defense.


Unfortunately, all of that (as important as it is), still won't help because this group has only three PCs, and only a single full caster, who is a Beguiler, which wouldn't have any of those spells even if you opened them up to the general Sor/Wiz list. But if the group knew going in that they would have a devil of a time healing anything (rather than vague promises that it would become "available" "eventually"), but they could mitigate that by bringing a defensive mage, well there's a chance it would have worked. A setting with no "divine" magic, where healing is the providence of the divine, but the party can still excel with proactive arcane defenses.

(Haven't finished catching up but food's almost ready and I've finished my main essay so. . .)

[Psychoalpha]

Rangers are all wildshape variant rangers (boosted to have Druid wildhsape progression, and in-universe usually seen as precursor to going into MoMF)

10/10, would play Wildshape variant ranger with Druid wildshape progression.


Well as far as ur priests go, tapping into dead gods is a thing they're noted as being able to do, but I digress. This sounds like a setting I kicked around an idea for a while back, where the gods had all died.

I did, as well, though I didn't do away with Divine magic entirely. More like anyone who drew magic from the Gods themselves was capped at 3rd level spells, and those who weren't risked insanity, death, or worse whenever attempting to cast 4th level or higher Divine spells. Essentially the Gods had gone to war with an invasive force from another universe, aka Lovecraftian Elder Things and what they brought with them (Aboleths, Illithid, etc). It all happened centuries before the main setting, and the deaths of the gods caused massive changes in the world, and the fabric of the planes such that most of the Alignment planes were subjected to cataclysmic destruction and sort of walled themselves off (like a cyst), with the Moral and Ethical alignments losing much of their metaphysical weight. It left things kind of grey and bleak, with Arcane magic the only real avenue to power, and remnants of both the Gods and Elder Things hunting down powerful Arcane casters to try and reclaim their former glory. No real magic item economy to speak of, as a result.

It was a pretty depressing setting, really. but the players enjoyed the idea: The PCs' 'call to adventure' had to do with them each finding seeds of Arcane/Divine/Psionic power specific to the class/theme the players wanted to develop into that allowed them to circumvent the worst side effects (corruption, insanity/death, being a beacon) along with hints of what could be done to restore or even reinvent the world to deal with its broken state.

They eventually restored some of the old gods, elevated some new ones, brought Dragons back into the world (they'd been... more or less lobotomized as a race by the ETs), etc.

None of this has really been on topic to the question, but I was just going to say basically this:


There is no simple answer to the question, but in general, if your players don't like the feel of your combat, you should figure out how to make them like it more.


Archivists cant study ancient relics and prayerbooks since there arent any left.
<snip>
Ur priests cant steal the power of deities they dont know exist.

Other people have pointed out that these are both kind of silly in several ways. You'd be better off just saying 'These things are not in use in this setting. Archivists can't study ancient relics and prayerbooks because Archivists aren't a thing in my world. Same with Ur Priests.'

Or just: These things did not exist previously. If a PC wants to pursue such a path, they would be the first <whatever> to do so. As I've said before, some stuff is only obvious after it's discovered.

[Quertus]

Kinda, yes. Removal of Wand of Lesser Vigor option was intentional, as I wanted the party to manage their resources carefully.
Removal of easy access resurrection was also intentional.
On the other hand, I did not thibk much about removing in-combat healing, as it is I believe, considered a subpar option anyway, and when I initially planned the campaign I expected that players would be Good and would be picking up various healing abilities by about lvl 7.

Though divine magic and healing would become more common by level 9.


But as to having a cohort, etc. it's a touch harder, as the party is Evil. Not only are they evil, they're playing for the enforcers of the Ministry of Filial Piety of their Evil Shadow Empire, which is kinda magical Evil Tang China equivalent of gestapo, and rooting out the barbaric cults of local deities is one of their professions.

You want the party to manage their resources. They think that they don't have enough resources to manage. Even if you disagreed, you think that they will have less than you planned soon.

Sounds to me like the party getting a cohort is easier, because they are Evil, and, not only Evil, but also working for the Ministry of Filial Piety of their Evil Shadow Empire which (is kinda magical Evil and) has collected divine relics and is working to resurrect the evil gods. So, they get assigned a prototype G-01 unit (refluffed Cleric cohort… or even the world's first Archivist, bringing order to the heathen magic based on the recovered relics (heck, I'd play that character as my PC in this setting)). Easy enough.

[Sinner's Garden]

resource management

As I understand it, the entire point of removing divine casting and wands was specifically to remove reliable player access to problem solving options, so shuffling clerics into wizards isn't actually a viable solution here. Furthermore, I feel as though the players understood this goal and were somewhat on board with it, given their fairly strict and inflexible team; they didn't bother to grab a character that had the versatility to solve or avoid common problems, despite knowing that it would be unusually difficult to obtain external solutions.

[el minster]

slightly modify the feat Arcane Disciple (Complete Divine) and give it to sorcerer to grant healing domain.

P.S.sorcerer must have high Wisdom.