Class that has healing abilities?

[Filegethiel]

I'm starting a new campaign with my husband and I'd really enjoy a new class. I've played through all the basics in the past and some random classes from other books I have. I'm wanting to find something that can heal party members, preferably with magic, that isn't a cleric and isn't a class that wears medium to heavy armor. We're playing in Eberron, but we can use any classes from any of the 3.0 / 3.5 / Pathfinder books and magazines. I tried sifting through things on my own for a few hours and can't find anything that sparks my interest. My main issue I'm having is I like druid, but my character is going to have a metal arm and I've never played a druid with metal weapons / armor. Is there a druid variant? Maybe something similar? Anything non-evil would be great. Going back to flipping through my books and googling stuff.

[Buufreak]

Dragon shaman, take the aura of vigor. It heals all party members up to half, constantly, no action required.

As for the druid thing, they are forbidden from using metal armor. Nothing about metal weapons/limbs.

[Telonius]

Eberron, medium to heavy armor, magical, not a Cleric ... How about Artificer? They can be complicated to play, but they're certainly capable of getting any healing you might need.

Other than that, something like Favored Soul is an option. It's basically, "Sorcerer but with Divine magic."

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I mean, a warforged Druid, possibly going into Landforged Walker, works pretty well for an "Eberron metal-armed druid" concept... except that you'd have a metal everything instead of just a metal arm (ask your DM to refluff a little?). Being a warforged doesn't violate your oath unless you take e.g. Adamantine Body (but you could definitely take Ironwood Body).

[Noxangelo]

you could try healer from the miniatures handbook, that seems to fit the bill.

it is a divine class, but in the Eberron campaign i'm running now, i've homebrewed them to be an arcane class developed by house Jorasco which makes more sense to me considering Eberron's distant gods and the arcane focus of the houses.

[Angrith]

Since pathfinder is available, I would consider the life oracle. Oracles in general are super flavorful and customizable. Life oracles in general are also some of the best healers in Pathfinder being able to not only heal it, but redistribute it too.

[Gavinfoxx]

You should be aware, you don't necessarily need an appropriate class to heal in 3.5e

http://web.archive.org/web/20160912230001/http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2710

[NotASpiderSwarm]

A good question here is, what do you mean by healing? There's 3 basic types of healing in 3.x:
In-combat healing. Generally considered suboptimal, but not a bad idea to have access to it for emergencies.
Out-of-combat healing. A Wand of Lesser Vigor can solve this, as can plenty of other options people can point to, but ability to cast the spells is not bad.
Condition removal. Stone-to-Flesh, Remove Curse, (Lesser) Restoration, Break Enchantment, etc. This depends on your DM, starting level, and how often he uses permanent debuffs/Save-or-Dies. If it's pretty rare, a couple scrolls might be enough. Anything more than that, you need a caster with the proper spell list. Archivist, Artificer, and Favored Soul all can fill this role, but it was made for the Cleric.

Knowing nothing else, I will say the Artificer has a lot you can do with it while being perfectly able to make a scroll overnight to fix whatever happened to your party, but it is somewhat more complicated than, say, doing your taxes. Check it out.

(also, Miniatures Handbook healer sucks).

[RNightstalker]

If Forgotten Realms is allowed, Spellfire can be used for healing.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Archivist (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20051007a&page=3) is an Int-based divine caster that learns and prepares spells like a wizard, using a prayer book. You can learn Cleric spells when you level up, and you can learn any other divine spells (domains, druid, ranger, paladin, adept, divine bard, etc.) from scrolls or magical writings you find. The class features it grants are good enough to keep taking it until at least its 11th level, unlike most other spellcasting classes that you're better off taking a full casting prestige class asap.

If you're starting at 5th+ level, a Psion (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/classes/psion.htm) (Egoist) with the True Healer (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070314a) ACF is pretty good. You could also play an Ardent from Complete Psionic and get that mantle at 1st level, if using Ardent you always want to use Substitute Powers (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a).

If you prefer Druid spells, the Spirit Shaman in Complete Divine is worth looking into. You can even pick up Wild Cohort (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a) for an animal companion!


For healing advice in general, you probably want to do most of your healing outside of combat. The Touch of Healing reserve feat in Complete Champion is pretty good for sustainability, and a Wand of Lesser Vigor heals 11 hp for 15 gp per charge (standard 1st level wand at caster level 1).

[Zaq]

Truenamers only get light armor out of the box, but they're decent HP refillers and they can easily pick up heavier armor by multiclassing (marshal is a good 1-level dip) or just by blowing a feat. If you're in Eberron, you could even go halfling and take the Mark of Healing to get the ability to remove conditions in addition to refilling HP.

[Fizban]

I'm wanting to find something that can heal party members, preferably with magic, that isn't a cleric and isn't a class that wears medium to heavy armor.
Define "heal party members." You're gonna get a lot of suggestions that say "healing isn't a role you don't have to play one," and what you mean by "healing" is kinda important. Do you/your party expect Cure spells in combat? If so, is this only if people are about to hit zero, or whenever they've taken enough that the cure won't have wasted overheal, or just every round? Do you need status removal, or does the DM make sure that any status effect monsters you fight are immediately preceded by consumable items which will let you recover? Does your party need other immediate action life-saving and/or resistance and immunity buffs?

In short, do you need a full caster with access to all the main cleric spells, or is your group specifically ready to change game and play styles to accommodate a party that lacks the most important pillar of the game's design, the safety valve on the Cleric -?

The Mini's Handbook Healer gets a ton of flak, but it does exactly what it says on the tin. It has all the major heals both hit point and status, and it has some of them a level sooner than usual, and it only has light armor. It also has a number of status removal spells as 1/day Supernatural abilities, making them interruptible only by a DM that has built an enemy with the specific feat required to interrupt Su abilities- you can de-paralyze yourself, for example; and you always have those even if you didn't prepare copies in your spell slots.

There's also the Archivist, which is basically a trap- a Wizard that can learn any divine spell, at the cost of the hit points, BAB, and armor that divine casters are given to compensate for being the support role. It takes a ton of spells to actually cover all the healing, status removal, and prevention, but now you have to pick and buy spells- most people recommending Archivist are thinking of hypothetical scenarios where you're allowed to just buy nearly any spell because they said so, thus getting various cheesy exclusive and reduced level stuff. I don't like it, but maybe knowledge skill int-healer is what you're looking for.

The Artificer can sort of do it, depending on how far you wish to go. They can provide resistances and immunities via Armor Enhancement, with gp cost components, if you know the right book or have a list of everything. They can craft the healing items that can support the early game for parties that can avoid need for in-combat healing, as well as the Ablative Armor infusion (Magic of Eberron). They can cast any spell of up to 4th level using their Spell-Storing Item infusion, which only costs a 1st level slot (you need enough caster level though), but the UMD check can fail- this will get you your basic status removal up through Restoration, but no Heal. Anything past that depends on what kind of items you're allowed to make: with a Scepter (from Lost Empires of Faerun) or Staff containing Heal and the Power Surge infusion for free charges, you can just spam Heal as soon as you can craft or obtain one.

But the Artificer's power level is all over the place and I usually wouldn't recommend it for a group that is asking the question of "Who's going to be the healer?" Contrary to popular presentation, it absolutely *can* be played without spreadsheets, tons of crafting, or heck even any crafting at all if you don't want to, and be perfectly fine. But it's actually more of a "wizard" than the Wizard, potentially having a perfectly curated bag of items and massive lists of things it can immediately cast without preparation, and has free metamagic options on top of the rest.

Otherwise, yeah Pathfinder has like a bajillion different spellcaster versions with access to healing spells while being surrounded with trappings of something else. IIRC, Oracles are basically divine sorcs with various themed feature and bonus spell sets, same as their Sorcerer. Dragonlance also has a light armor divine sorc (Mystic), but it's as plain as the 3.x Sorcerer, and again if you're comparing to Pathfinder there's hardly any reason to use non-Pathfinder casters.

We're playing in Eberron, but we can use any classes from any of the 3.0 / 3.5 / Pathfinder books and magazines.
If you're playing with published Eberron and Pathfinder content, then the Mini's Handbook Healer is going to be pretty dang underpowered (along with a bunch of other stuff of course). I have a tweaked version that fills out the abilities and spell list with splatbook spells while making it match a standard healer build, which I posted here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?575573-3-5-Did-I-miss-a-healer&p=23575653&viewfull=1#post23575653) in a past Healer thread.

Dragon shaman, take the aura of vigor. It heals all party members up to half, constantly, no action required.
If the party is accustomed to having a Cleric or Druid around, the playstyle change required to make do with walking around at half hit points and with no major emergency healing until 6th, which can only be converted into small amounts of certain status removal at 11th? Pretty rough. The Dragon Shaman can't compete with Pathfinder or Eberron monsters.

So if you want to look at that, you should probably pick a homebrew fix too. The class has been hit with all the downside of a Paladin and Bard, rather than actually following one or the other, so boosting it to full BAB and armor and whatnot or making the auras actually powerful are the two main paths. It's a more basic fix, but since you said you don't want medium/heavy armor you probably don't want a dragon-paladin.

You should be aware, you don't necessarily need an appropriate class to heal in 3.5e
And going magic-items only will of course be even more jarring than trying to use a non-caster. In particular, these guides like to just go nuts over the Healing Belt. Sure, it's a powerfully undercosted low-level item. And it won't carry you past low levels, leaving you stuck with what- burning scrolls of Heal with UMD checks every time something bad happens? Heck, most of the linked guide is just listing non-Cure-Wounds Cleric and Druid spells.


If the DM wishes to convert to a more item-based healing paradigm, it's easy enough to change the price of healing potions to 15gp*spell level*caster level instead of the usual 50gp, making them the same price as single wand charges. Make potions brew in an hour instead of a day, and remove the spellcasting requirement, and the party can make their own easily. Make treasure mostly hard magic items that you know the players won't want to sell, so there's not so much cash that potions feel "free," and with cheaper consumables you can presume they will be used rather than sold as pricey vendor trash. Thus, you can give out most of the healing the party needs without mucking up WBL- like a videogame that has health drops instead of healing characters, with good level design one could make it work. This can continue up until 10th or 12th, but past that point the existence of the Heal and Raise Dead spells mean that monsters are allowed to be a lot more swingy, while your particular party may or may not be able to mitigate this. You can convert the game out of the Cleric role, but it relies on a combination of changes and recognizing that high level monsters/"rocket tag" put a ceiling on how far you can take it.


Also, honorary mention to the Incarnate with its Lifebond Vestments and Theraputic Mantle. Sure, you could get the ability to more than double the efficiency of healing items (by adding a bonus to effects that heal you, and using a heal on others that *is* allowed to go past 1/2 but also deals 1/2 of the damage to you). And all it will cost you is playing an Incarnate, with a 1/hour limit on that 1/level heal effect until 14th level, and all the other problems of the Incarnate.

No honor to mention of the Binder with the Buer vestige though- vanilla binder is even lamer than vanilla incarnate, and pidgeonholes you even worse.

Pathfinder has its own incarnum-like (Veilweaving) and vestige-like (dunno the name) splats, which might have better non-caster healing options than the 3.5 versions.

[Psyren]

If you really want something that plays differently than a cleric, I recommend the Witch class from Pathfinder. They start with the various cure spells baseline (plus staples like Raise Dead, Resurrection and Heal), and if you pick the Healing patron, you get the other essentials like Remove Disease, Restoration, and Greater Restoration. Throw in your other spells and hexes, and you'll have all kinds of fun things to do when healing isn't required.

If you want to be even more dedicated to healing, consider the Hedge Witch archetype, which will let you spontaneously convert your spells into cure spells so that you don't have to worry about preparing enough healing ahead of time - but that archetype isn't necessary, if you see a more fun one you'd want to take instead.

[Filegethiel]

Since pathfinder is available, I would consider the life oracle. Oracles in general are super flavorful and customizable. Life oracles in general are also some of the best healers in Pathfinder being able to not only heal it, but redistribute it too.

Where would I go about finding the class stats and description for Oracles or Life Oracles? I tried doing a quick Google Search and I'm having some issues on that. I haven't seen this one before, but if the name is anything like the normal definition of an Oracle, that would be interesting.

[Filegethiel]

If you really want something that plays differently than a cleric, I recommend the Witch class from Pathfinder. They start with the various cure spells baseline (plus staples like Raise Dead, Resurrection and Heal), and if you pick the Healing patron, you get the other essentials like Remove Disease, Restoration, and Greater Restoration. Throw in your other spells and hexes, and you'll have all kinds of fun things to do when healing isn't required.

If you want to be even more dedicated to healing, consider the Hedge Witch archetype, which will let you spontaneously convert your spells into cure spells so that you don't have to worry about preparing enough healing ahead of time - but that archetype isn't necessary, if you see a more fun one you'd want to take instead.

See, I saw a light description for the Witch, but I couldn't find a reference for which book it's from and all the online stats I found weren't consistent. Is the Hedge Witch going to be in any of the pathfinder books or is there a reliable source / website for it? I do enjoy the idea of something witchy as long as it's not stuck to an evil alignment. I found something yesterday in one of my books, pretty sure not a pathfinder book, for witches but they weren't my cup of tea. If it's able to be neutral I'm all in on this.


If Forgotten Realms is allowed, Spellfire can be used for healing.

Isn't this a feat? If so, I'm pretty sure I have the book for this, I'll just have to go find it.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Eberron, medium to heavy armor, magical, not a Cleric ... How about Artificer? They can be complicated to play, but they're certainly capable of getting any healing you might need. I like artificer archers for this. Use aurorum dye arrows (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/weapons/weapon-descriptions/ammunition/ammunition-bow-arrows-common/ammunition-bow-arrow-dye/) with spell storing to stock up on healing dye arrows, buffing dye arrows, and debuffing and damaging dye arrows (all ranged touch attacks). Feel free to get you some raptor dye arrows for debuffing and direct damage at higher levels.

Essentially casting multiple spells per round as a standard action by firing arrows at allies and enemies? Yes, please.

[Kaleph]

The "healer" in my party is a vanilla egoist psion using vigor+empathic transfer(+share pain, optionally), supported by the artificer. It has been working decently so far (levels 6-7).

I like psionic classes in general, and I can totally recommend playing one (egoist or ardent, as already proposed by another playgrounder) that invests some limited resources for healing capability.

[stack]

With pathfinder psionics (3rd party), you could go vitalist. I believe there was a 3.5 version, the world-thought medic? Anyhow, to get armor you need feats or a dip, but as far as being a focused healer goes, it is excellent.

[Fizban]

Links to Oracle (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/oracle) and Witch (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/witch) on d20pfsrd.

[RNightstalker]

Isn't this a feat? If so, I'm pretty sure I have the book for this, I'll just have to go find it.

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has a snippet, Magic of Faerun has a more in-depth how-to and the PrC Spellfire Channeler, and Player's Guide to Faerun has the Spellfire Hierophant epic PrC.

[Angrith]

Where would I go about finding the class stats and description for Oracles or Life Oracles? I tried doing a quick Google Search and I'm having some issues on that. I haven't seen this one before, but if the name is anything like the normal definition of an Oracle, that would be interesting.

Info on the Oracle is here (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/oracle/). The life mystery is here (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/oracle/mysteries/paizo-oracle-mysteries/life/). The lifelink revelation is particularly cool as it allows you to transfer damage from an ally to yourself. Also, there are options for swift casting cure spells at the cost of an extra slot, or even healing anyone who moves through your space. The Oracle learns spells from the cleric list but like a sorcerer/favored soul.

[Telonius]

I like artificer archers for this. Use aurorum dye arrows (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/weapons/weapon-descriptions/ammunition/ammunition-bow-arrows-common/ammunition-bow-arrow-dye/) with spell storing to stock up on healing dye arrows, buffing dye arrows, and debuffing and damaging dye arrows (all ranged touch attacks). Feel free to get you some raptor dye arrows for debuffing and direct damage at higher levels.

Essentially casting multiple spells per round as a standard action by firing arrows at allies and enemies? Yes, please.

I'm pulling off a similar healing trick with a Warlock/Cleric/Eldritch Disciple. Also have a level of Rogue, Craven, and using the Darkness/Blend Into Shadows trick. So the first person to get hit with a Healing Blast gets my Eldritch Blast plus sneak attack healed, then Eldritch Chain to other "targets." (Unfortunately I can only pull this off with direct healing, not other buffs).

[Psyren]

See, I saw a light description for the Witch, but I couldn't find a reference for which book it's from and all the online stats I found weren't consistent. Is the Hedge Witch going to be in any of the pathfinder books or is there a reliable source / website for it? I do enjoy the idea of something witchy as long as it's not stuck to an evil alignment. I found something yesterday in one of my books, pretty sure not a pathfinder book, for witches but they weren't my cup of tea. If it's able to be neutral I'm all in on this.

Yes, Witches can be any alignment, including Good. They are found in the Advanced Player's Guide, i.e. Pathfinder's first splat book, or you can follow the links Fizban helpfully provided below.

The Hedge Witch archetype is in Ultimate Magic (and also is on the same website Fizban linked.)


Links to Oracle (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/oracle) and Witch (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/witch) on d20pfsrd.

[FaerieGodfather]

Bard has all of the cure spells up to 6th level-- at their appropriate levels-- and neutralize poison. PF1 has a couple of different Bard Archetypes that allow them to generate powerful healing effects with Bardic Music.

Witch has arcane healing spells and a ton of neat special abilities.

Back to 3.X, the Shugenja from Oriental Adventures and the Rokugan Campaign Setting (and Complete Divine) is a Charisma-based divine spontaneous spellaster. The Water element contains healing spells, so Water, Air, and Earth Shugenja can heal-- Air and Earth have the advantage of also casting direct damage spells, and AIr Shugenja can cast mobility/divination spells and healting and blasting.

It's lacking in features by PF standards. Maybe replace the Orders with Cleric Domains? AIr+Travel, Earth+Protection, Fire+Destruction, Water+Healing.

[Kaleph]

Bard has all of the cure spells up to 6th level-- at their appropriate levels-- and neutralize poison. PF1 has a couple of different Bard Archetypes that allow them to generate powerful healing effects with Bardic Music.

Witch has arcane healing spells and a ton of neat special abilities.

Back to 3.X, the Shugenja from Oriental Adventures and the Rokugan Campaign Setting (and Complete Divine) is a Charisma-based divine spontaneous spellaster. The Water element contains healing spells, so Water, Air, and Earth Shugenja can heal-- Air and Earth have the advantage of also casting direct damage spells, and AIr Shugenja can cast mobility/divination spells and healting and blasting.

It's lacking in features by PF standards. Maybe replace the Orders with Cleric Domains? AIr+Travel, Earth+Protection, Fire+Destruction, Water+Healing.

Talking about OA, the shaman is an under-used class that deserves some attention.

[Aotrs Commander]

See, I saw a light description for the Witch, but I couldn't find a reference for which book it's from and all the online stats I found weren't consistent. Is the Hedge Witch going to be in any of the pathfinder books or is there a reliable source / website for it? I do enjoy the idea of something witchy as long as it's not stuck to an evil alignment. I found something yesterday in one of my books, pretty sure not a pathfinder book, for witches but they weren't my cup of tea. If it's able to be neutral I'm all in on this.

In addition to the PFSRD aforelinked, if you want to be mega-official, it's also worth noting the Archives of Nethys (https://www.aonprd.com/) as well, which basically has ALL of the offical PF stuff, because Paizo are incredibly smart peoples who are also awesome.

(I was going to mention Witch myself, but Pstren beat me to it; I've spent the last couple of days working through converting witch to my houserules, so it's kinda been on my brain!)



Other PF options might include the Inquisitor and Alchemist (though only to 6-level casting) or the Shaman.

[Falontani]

Eberron Healer... Hmm there is House Jorasco Halflings with the Dragonmark of Healing. With a three feat investment (but see below) you get a bonus on mundane heal checks, a few healing spells as spell likes, and an entire healer's guild behind you. They usually charge, but if you have the favored in house feat you can ask for a favor every once in a while, relying on scrolls/slas/items when not abusing your favors.

A "healer" build that I would suggest: take a few levels of Warlock and enter Dragonmarked Heir. That will quickly help you grab your slas as well as get more uses, an increased caster level, and favored in house. Then enter Nosomatic Chirugen. Iirc it has a trick that will advance your Warlock casting while simultaneously granting you the adept casting (which has several of the weaker restorative spells). Add in Poison Healer and the soulmeld that deals damage to you to heal others, and you've got a fun healing character. Combat wise depending on your split you have Warlock invocations, and can sacrifice a use of a spell like ability (like your invocations) to cast an inflict spell of equal level.


If you don't like that option. Magic of Eberron has the prestige class: Renegade Mastermaker. Or something like that. Iirc it advances infusions, if it advances arcane instead you could go Knight of the Weave. Either way get a battlefist. Use knight of the Weave or artificer to heal. If artificer I suggest getting construct essence for your allies. Or possibly turning them into half golems if your evil. You could probably do a psionic version of the class and transplant their minds into construct bodies.

[FaerieGodfather]

In addition to the PFSRD aforelinked, if you want to be mega-official, it's also worth noting the Archives of Nethys (https://www.aonprd.com/) as well, which basically has ALL of the offical PF stuff, because Paizo are incredibly smart peoples who are also awesome.

Yeah. Paizo is legally required to make their content Open Gaming Content to comply with the Open Gaming License... but they're not legally required to make it anywhere near as easy to use their OGC as they do, and a lot of 3.X-era publishers didn't. They deserve recognition for the time and money they put into fostering the community surrounding their products.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Any spellcaster can use Craft (Alchemy) to make healing salves at 1/3 base price, so that's a thing.

[nijineko]

Perhaps I missed it in someone else's post, and some consider it sub-optimal, but the Adept NPC class has a wide range of abilities, including healing.

[Gavinfoxx]

Perhaps I missed it in someone else's post, and some consider it sub-optimal, but the Adept NPC class has a wide range of abilities, including healing.

I prefer Religious Adept with the Renewal domain! Possibly Religious Urban Adept with the Renewal domain!

[PoeticallyPsyco]

A "healer" build that I would suggest: take a few levels of Warlock and enter Dragonmarked Heir. That will quickly help you grab your slas as well as get more uses, an increased caster level, and favored in house. Then enter Nosomatic Chirugen. Iirc it has a trick that will advance your Warlock casting while simultaneously granting you the adept casting (which has several of the weaker restorative spells). Add in Poison Healer and the soulmeld that deals damage to you to heal others, and you've got a fun healing character. Combat wise depending on your split you have Warlock invocations, and can sacrifice a use of a spell like ability (like your invocations) to cast an inflict spell of equal level.


Ooh, that Nosomatic Chirurgeon trick is clever. It could also work with Shadowcaster (though that delays your entry because of its worse BAB). Either way, you need some method for adding Heal to your class skill list, though. Maybe dip Dragon Shaman (gold) at 1st level to grab the Aura of Vigor and Heal as a class skill, then Warlock 4/ Nosomatic Chirurgeon 4-5. Unfortunately, you can't easily follow up with Eldritch Theurge or Eldritch Disciple, since the former requires arcane spells and the latter Turn/Rebuke Undead (and Adept doesn't have the required spells for Sacred Exorcist to get T/R Undead). With a Shadowcaster base, you could finish it off with Mystic Theurge, though.

[Ruethgar]

Spheres of Power, easy access to healing. The other aspects of a healer are a little more resource intensive, but Spell Dabbler and Spell Adept can cover that. Vitalist is great for spreading out the healing, especially if you got long lasting fast healing and Wellspring of Life from Spheres.

Made a fun character with Wrathful, Sculpt Self for Martial Spirit Stance with double healing side effects for 2d4+2 healing per hit. Vitalist and then a flurry monk-like build.

[pi4t]

Since pathfinder is allowed, and iirc psionics normally exists in Everton, I'm going to suggest the vitalist of it's an option. Normally, as others have explained, healing isn't a good option in combat in 3.5/P for various reasons: the main one is that it's too slow to be worth doing, even if you've specialised, and then there's a host of more minor issues like every spell being touch range so you often have to move next to the enemy before casting, which is particularly problematic for specialised healing classes which don't tend to be designed to survive the front line. The vitalist is specifically designed to avoid these problems. Its healing capacity per round grows quadratically, and so comfortably keeps up with the enemy damage. It lets you split your healing between everyone in the party, so if your power would give me more healing than I need you can give the extra to someone else. You can use all your healing powers at range. The main downside is that you can't do a great deal else other than healing and a bit of buffing, but if that's what you want your character to do anyway then that's not really a problem.

I've also found that the first couple of levels as a vitalist are unreasonably rough, before the quadratic scaling kicks in properly. Your healing is worse than a cleric's and you don't have the other magic options a cleric brings. If your GM is willing, I strongly recommended adding an extra 1st level healing ability that heals 1d6+level hp wismod times per day to increase the total healing you can do at low levels.

[radthemad4]

There's a somewhat roundabout option with a Beguiler, Warmage or Dread Necromancer. If you go Rainbow Servant 10 (it advances casting fully because text trumps table), you can cast spontaneously from the entire cleric list, but this comes online ridiculously late.

That said, there is a way to do a bit of healing as a DreadWarBeguiler from level 7 onwards via the substitute domain trick. Worship any deity that grants domains with healing spells on them, e.g. Healing (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spellLists/clericDomains.htm#healingDomain), Renewal (https://web.archive.org/web/20150910043951/http://home.comcast.net/~ftm3/ASMoNM/domains.html#Renewal). Take any prc that grants a domain (e.g. Rainbow Servant, Divine Oracle). Fixed list spellcasters that obtain domains in this manner add the spells on the domain to their spell list, which they know entirely. UMD Substitute Domain (Complete Champion, p. 128) from a wand (or get it via Extra Spell and cast it normally) to swap out the granted domain for one day per level (3 days if using a CL 3 wand). You have the spells from your chosen domain on your spell list while the spell is in effect.

[Telonius]

There's a somewhat roundabout option with a Beguiler, Warmage or Dread Necromancer. If you go Rainbow Servant 10 (it advances casting fully because text trumps table), you can cast spontaneously from the entire cleric list, but this comes online ridiculously late.

That said, there is a way to do a bit of healing as a DreadWarBeguiler from level 7 onwards via the substitute domain trick. Worship any deity that grants domains with healing spells on them, e.g. Healing (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spellLists/clericDomains.htm#healingDomain), Renewal (https://web.archive.org/web/20150910043951/http://home.comcast.net/~ftm3/ASMoNM/domains.html#Renewal). Take any prc that grants a domain (e.g. Rainbow Servant, Divine Oracle). Fixed list spellcasters that obtain domains in this manner add the spells on the domain to their spell list, which they know entirely. UMD Substitute Domain (Complete Champion, p. 128) from a wand (or get it via Extra Spell and cast it normally) to swap out the granted domain for one day per level (3 days if using a CL 3 wand). You have the spells from your chosen domain on your spell list while the spell is in effect.

Dread Necromancer has another roundabout way of healing, too, but that one involves either the ritual of crucimigration, or having your buddies all take Tomb-Tainted Soul. :xykon: (Also probably goes against the "No Evil" thing in the OP).

[PoeticallyPsyco]

If you can cast at least one cure spell, the Spontaneous Healer feat from Complete Divine will let you cast the entire cure line spontaneously, like a cleric.

[nijineko]

I'm fond of the Sangehirn as a healer prestige, but that's psionic instead of magic, so it doesn't match the original ask. Perhaps it could be converted to magic-based for your purposes?

[el minster]

sorcerer with arcane disciple (healing)

[Gruftzwerg]

how about a non caster healer build only wearing cloth/robes?

Race: Silverbrow Human or any other dragon blood race.

- 3rd lvl feat: Draconic Aura: Vigor (passive fasthealing up to 1/2 max hp)
- unarmed Swordsage variant 5 lvls (book: tome of blood)
- Shadow Sun Ninja (minimum 1 lvl)

The aura, gives your team passive healing every round if they are below half of max hp.
Shadow Sun Ninja has an ability to do negative energy dmg in the one round and heal for the same amount in following round. You can either build further SSN or leave after the first lvl and look for other sources to increase your monk unarmed strike (and thus your SSN heals).