Waazraath
2023-03-20, 03:04 PM
A short guide to healing in combat
This guide (mini handbook?) is dedicated to healing in combat. Though in general not a good idea, sometimes you have to. It will cover:
pitfalls of healing in combat
how to avoid the pitfalls
conclusion & suggestions
Pitfalls
Yeah, combat healing sucks, it has been said before. In general, two pitfalls of healing in combat are:
probably you won't heal as much hp as the monster you're fighting does damage on its turn, making it a bad investment
there are often better things to do with a turn then healing, like, killing what does the damage in the first place
For a large part, they are correct. Then again, something that is true most of the times, still sometimes is not.
When a character is almost certain to die due to hp-damage in the next round, it's worth to heal. This can be due to being in negative hp, because you know there'll be area damage, because a monster is around whose turn is nigh and that is quite sure to do lethal damage, or any other reason. Otherwise, you might face an opponent immune to almost everything the party can throw at it. The (usually sucky and resource draining) tactic to have one character do some damage to the opponent, and have the other characters undo damage done by the opponent, might in the long run still kill it. More stuff on the action economy and if combat healing is worth it can be found here: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1520.msg13787#msg13787
But this handbook isn't to discuss when combat healing is viable, or necessary. Let's just say there are situations when it is called for. The purpose of this guide is: how to do it without falling into the above mentioned pitfalls?
How to avoid the pitfalls
1) heal a lot in one go
Or in any case, spend your turn healing as much hp as possible, preferably more than the monster your fighting dishes out. There are several ways of healing a lot of hp in one go:
the heal spell, or variants (mass heal, strike of righteous vitality maneuver) like it. Note that arcane casters can get access to heal with levels in Wyrm Wizard or recaster, and can use it to heal several allies with 5 levels in the war weaver class.
the lay on hands ability (from the paladin and certain prestige classes). This requires a paladin with quite a high charisma, but at high levels it can suffice to bring a party member from -9 to full hp. 1 use/day ability though. With the unicorn pendant (MIC) a paladin counts as having a charisma 4 points higher.
touch of vitality (dragon shaman). The same goes as for lay on hands, it relies on a high charisma score, and can be used up all in 1 go to fully heal someone back to full. Charisma is less important for dragon shamans then for paladins, but touch of vitality works with 2x level x cha, instead of 1x for the pally.
empower / maximize healing: though there are definitely better spells to maximize or empower, metamagic works with cure spells and allows them to improve their amount of healing. The Radiant Servant of Pelor gets this for free with its domains spells of the healing domain, which is pretty good (and the prestige class is a full caster that doesn't lose anything significant and gains a bonus domain and some other nice stuff). The feat Master of Day and Night (PGtE) maximizes all cures and inflict spells cast, which is very good.
feats that augment healing: the feat sacred healing increases the amount of healing you can do (divinde feat, PHB2); augment healing (Complete Divine) also increases the amount of damage you heal with each spell.
honerary mention: the combo revenance & revivify heals someone that died and then keeps him/her alive, which is quite awesome.
Important: though for healing out of combat the vigor spells are superior to cures, this doesn't go for healing in combat, obviously, when you want to cure as many hp as possible in one go.
2) heal without wasting (much) actions
In case healing doesn't take an action, or only a swift action, or can be combined with other actions, the second pitfall is avoided. You are doing something more useful than healing, but you're healing as well. Also, the first pitfall isn't that bad: maybe you aren't healing as much as the damage that is done by team monster, but hey, if it's a bonus, who cares?
There are several ways to do this:
Devoted spirit maneuvers: crusader's strike, revitalizing strike, rallying strike, strike of righteous vitality. All of these are normal attacks, do standard damage, and heal as well.
The Martial spirit stance: every successful attack heals 2 hp, good in a build with many attacks, doesn't cost anything.
The Vampire Torc (MIC) gives 2/day swift action the ability to heal half damage of the next melee attack. Good with attacks that deal a lot of damage, for instance in smiting or mounted charge builds, or for martial adepts that can deal a lot of damage in one strike.
Some spells and powers do damage to an opponent and heal yourself. Vampiric touch is a common example, but also the power empathic transfer (hostile) works. These options are inferior (from a healing perspective) to the devoted spirit maneuvers because the only heal / give temporary hp to yourself.
Swift action healing. The hellreaver prestige class offers decent swift action healing (divine succor) within a small range (20 feet) on self or a good aligned ally, for 10, 20 or 30 points. The healing devotion feat gives yourself fast healing as a swift action, and for the casters there is always quicken spell. Paladins can choose the feat battle blessing to cast all their spells as a swift action. (If you are lucky with your DM and play really high powered campaigns, cleric with prestige paladin and battle blessing might get all cleric spells quickened for free, though this is highly controversial) Hellreaver is superior cause it works at range, though it is so only in a good party. Quicken spell can obviously also quicken a cure or heal spell. The Unicorn Pendant (MIC) gives one cure moderate wounds/day as a swift action
swift action healing 2: shadow sun jinja level 1 gives the ability to do negative energy damage with a touch, equal to base unarmed damage + wis; next turn, as a swift action you can heal that amount of damage. The number can get quite high, with effects like enlarge and / or greater mighty wallop (from races of the dragon). You can only do this every other turn though, so for in combat healing it's only 50% reliable.
Immediate action healing is even better then swift action healing. Close wounds (spell compendium) is a cleric 2 spell that heals 1d4 + CL (max 5), can be used in reaction to damage to prevent the damage. Delay Death (cleric 4, spell compendium) is also an immediate action that can prevent someone about to get a lot of damage from dying for 1 round/level. Need diehard or similar effect to keep fighting though. The amulet of emergency healing (MIC) also allows immediate action healing1d4+5 points, and can be used in respons to a potential lethal attack, on self or an ally in 30 feet.
The fortunate fate spell (cleric 7, spell compendium) is basicly a contignent heal spell; for 10 minutes/level, a heal will trigger if somebody would be reduced to -10. This doesn't cost an action in combat (since the caster has taken place earlier) and heals a lot, which makes this a great way to avoid the 2 pitfalls of in combat healing.
The mass versions of cure and heal spells are much more efficient then healing characters one at a time, especially in situations where area affecting spells or abilities are used a lot.
The amulet of retributive healing lets you 3/day as a swift action heal yourself as much as you heal somebody else, so double the healing for only 2k gold
'cure' spells are often touch spells; that means that when a player is down or in need of immediate healing, it takes a move action to get to it. There are several abilities to heal at a distance (divine ward from PHB2, reach spell from complete divine ), this saves you at least the move. Mass spells also work for this.
the draconic aura 'vigor' (PHB2) gives fast healing to all allies in 30 feet radius, up to half hp, this doesn't cost any action. There is some discussion if by RAW this aura accessible with the draconic aura feat from Dragon Magic. According to one of the other handbooks on healing (see below) it isn't, but after reviewing the arguments (see the discussion thread) and looking at the rules again, I think it should be. Probably depends a bit on the DM though.
Other fast healing obviously works on self, without action cost. The feat Sacred healing (from Complete Divine) gives all living creatures in a 60 feet radius fast healing 3 for a number of rounds fo cha + 1, could be worth it when fighting undead. Not to be confused with the feat sacred healing from PHB2).
Positive honorary mention: if you're healing anyway, might as well do other stuff, like removing negative status effects. The feat Invigorating Spellcaster (Dragon Compendium 147) allows you to remove any or all of the conditions dazed, exhausted, fatigued, sickened and stunned from someone you target with a spell that cures hp damage. No further cost. So you can do this with close wounds as an immediate action 2nd level spell! The spell healing lorecall (spell compendium) also allows to remove status effects when using conjuration (healing) spells, if the caster has ranks in the healing skill (5: remove dazed, dazzled, or fatigued; 10: remove exhausted, nauseated, or sickened). It also can slightly increase the amount of damage healed with cure spells.
Negative honorary mention for the 'healing by potion' method: from this perspective it's awful. Other handbooks will advise against it also because they are too expensive, but they also take too much time. Distributing a potion to a fallen ally is a full round action, so reaching and healing someone in the negatives will take at least two turns, when not already adjacent or in possession of swift action teleports or something. Pretty annoying when somebody is at -9HP. Avoid.
Conclusion & suggestions
As a conclusion: healing in combat is not a party role. Stuff mentioned above should help when you need to. If you really want to make it something your character is good at and wants to focus on, I'd recommend the following:
crusader, with divine spirit healing maneuvers
paladin, with the battle blessing feat and a high charisma for lay on hands
dragon shaman with both aura of vigor and reasonable high charisma score for touch of vitality
hellreaver in a good aligned party, with swift action healing
cleric / radiant servant of pelor with either reach spell or divine ward, mass versions of spells and ways to maximize, empower and or quicken them. In Dragon 311 there is a cleric variant (Benefactor) that can spontaneously cast all manner of healing spells as well as buffs, which can be worthwhile.
healer (miniatures handbook) with either reach spell or divine ward, mass versions of spells and ways to maximize, empower and or quicken them.
But next to healing in combat, also these characters really should be able to be useful in and out of combat (lockdown, charger, diplomancer, entangling breathweapon, etc.)
For more information on healing, see also the already mentioned band-aids for dummy's: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1520.msg13787#msg13787 and A Player's Guide to 3.5 Healing: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=2710
That's all folks. Comments, ideas and suggestions please in the appropriate discussions thread can be posted below, and credits to all the kind people who posted usefull stuff who added relevant information (both here and over a decade ago at min/maxboards where I posted the original version of this guide).
This guide (mini handbook?) is dedicated to healing in combat. Though in general not a good idea, sometimes you have to. It will cover:
pitfalls of healing in combat
how to avoid the pitfalls
conclusion & suggestions
Pitfalls
Yeah, combat healing sucks, it has been said before. In general, two pitfalls of healing in combat are:
probably you won't heal as much hp as the monster you're fighting does damage on its turn, making it a bad investment
there are often better things to do with a turn then healing, like, killing what does the damage in the first place
For a large part, they are correct. Then again, something that is true most of the times, still sometimes is not.
When a character is almost certain to die due to hp-damage in the next round, it's worth to heal. This can be due to being in negative hp, because you know there'll be area damage, because a monster is around whose turn is nigh and that is quite sure to do lethal damage, or any other reason. Otherwise, you might face an opponent immune to almost everything the party can throw at it. The (usually sucky and resource draining) tactic to have one character do some damage to the opponent, and have the other characters undo damage done by the opponent, might in the long run still kill it. More stuff on the action economy and if combat healing is worth it can be found here: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1520.msg13787#msg13787
But this handbook isn't to discuss when combat healing is viable, or necessary. Let's just say there are situations when it is called for. The purpose of this guide is: how to do it without falling into the above mentioned pitfalls?
How to avoid the pitfalls
1) heal a lot in one go
Or in any case, spend your turn healing as much hp as possible, preferably more than the monster your fighting dishes out. There are several ways of healing a lot of hp in one go:
the heal spell, or variants (mass heal, strike of righteous vitality maneuver) like it. Note that arcane casters can get access to heal with levels in Wyrm Wizard or recaster, and can use it to heal several allies with 5 levels in the war weaver class.
the lay on hands ability (from the paladin and certain prestige classes). This requires a paladin with quite a high charisma, but at high levels it can suffice to bring a party member from -9 to full hp. 1 use/day ability though. With the unicorn pendant (MIC) a paladin counts as having a charisma 4 points higher.
touch of vitality (dragon shaman). The same goes as for lay on hands, it relies on a high charisma score, and can be used up all in 1 go to fully heal someone back to full. Charisma is less important for dragon shamans then for paladins, but touch of vitality works with 2x level x cha, instead of 1x for the pally.
empower / maximize healing: though there are definitely better spells to maximize or empower, metamagic works with cure spells and allows them to improve their amount of healing. The Radiant Servant of Pelor gets this for free with its domains spells of the healing domain, which is pretty good (and the prestige class is a full caster that doesn't lose anything significant and gains a bonus domain and some other nice stuff). The feat Master of Day and Night (PGtE) maximizes all cures and inflict spells cast, which is very good.
feats that augment healing: the feat sacred healing increases the amount of healing you can do (divinde feat, PHB2); augment healing (Complete Divine) also increases the amount of damage you heal with each spell.
honerary mention: the combo revenance & revivify heals someone that died and then keeps him/her alive, which is quite awesome.
Important: though for healing out of combat the vigor spells are superior to cures, this doesn't go for healing in combat, obviously, when you want to cure as many hp as possible in one go.
2) heal without wasting (much) actions
In case healing doesn't take an action, or only a swift action, or can be combined with other actions, the second pitfall is avoided. You are doing something more useful than healing, but you're healing as well. Also, the first pitfall isn't that bad: maybe you aren't healing as much as the damage that is done by team monster, but hey, if it's a bonus, who cares?
There are several ways to do this:
Devoted spirit maneuvers: crusader's strike, revitalizing strike, rallying strike, strike of righteous vitality. All of these are normal attacks, do standard damage, and heal as well.
The Martial spirit stance: every successful attack heals 2 hp, good in a build with many attacks, doesn't cost anything.
The Vampire Torc (MIC) gives 2/day swift action the ability to heal half damage of the next melee attack. Good with attacks that deal a lot of damage, for instance in smiting or mounted charge builds, or for martial adepts that can deal a lot of damage in one strike.
Some spells and powers do damage to an opponent and heal yourself. Vampiric touch is a common example, but also the power empathic transfer (hostile) works. These options are inferior (from a healing perspective) to the devoted spirit maneuvers because the only heal / give temporary hp to yourself.
Swift action healing. The hellreaver prestige class offers decent swift action healing (divine succor) within a small range (20 feet) on self or a good aligned ally, for 10, 20 or 30 points. The healing devotion feat gives yourself fast healing as a swift action, and for the casters there is always quicken spell. Paladins can choose the feat battle blessing to cast all their spells as a swift action. (If you are lucky with your DM and play really high powered campaigns, cleric with prestige paladin and battle blessing might get all cleric spells quickened for free, though this is highly controversial) Hellreaver is superior cause it works at range, though it is so only in a good party. Quicken spell can obviously also quicken a cure or heal spell. The Unicorn Pendant (MIC) gives one cure moderate wounds/day as a swift action
swift action healing 2: shadow sun jinja level 1 gives the ability to do negative energy damage with a touch, equal to base unarmed damage + wis; next turn, as a swift action you can heal that amount of damage. The number can get quite high, with effects like enlarge and / or greater mighty wallop (from races of the dragon). You can only do this every other turn though, so for in combat healing it's only 50% reliable.
Immediate action healing is even better then swift action healing. Close wounds (spell compendium) is a cleric 2 spell that heals 1d4 + CL (max 5), can be used in reaction to damage to prevent the damage. Delay Death (cleric 4, spell compendium) is also an immediate action that can prevent someone about to get a lot of damage from dying for 1 round/level. Need diehard or similar effect to keep fighting though. The amulet of emergency healing (MIC) also allows immediate action healing1d4+5 points, and can be used in respons to a potential lethal attack, on self or an ally in 30 feet.
The fortunate fate spell (cleric 7, spell compendium) is basicly a contignent heal spell; for 10 minutes/level, a heal will trigger if somebody would be reduced to -10. This doesn't cost an action in combat (since the caster has taken place earlier) and heals a lot, which makes this a great way to avoid the 2 pitfalls of in combat healing.
The mass versions of cure and heal spells are much more efficient then healing characters one at a time, especially in situations where area affecting spells or abilities are used a lot.
The amulet of retributive healing lets you 3/day as a swift action heal yourself as much as you heal somebody else, so double the healing for only 2k gold
'cure' spells are often touch spells; that means that when a player is down or in need of immediate healing, it takes a move action to get to it. There are several abilities to heal at a distance (divine ward from PHB2, reach spell from complete divine ), this saves you at least the move. Mass spells also work for this.
the draconic aura 'vigor' (PHB2) gives fast healing to all allies in 30 feet radius, up to half hp, this doesn't cost any action. There is some discussion if by RAW this aura accessible with the draconic aura feat from Dragon Magic. According to one of the other handbooks on healing (see below) it isn't, but after reviewing the arguments (see the discussion thread) and looking at the rules again, I think it should be. Probably depends a bit on the DM though.
Other fast healing obviously works on self, without action cost. The feat Sacred healing (from Complete Divine) gives all living creatures in a 60 feet radius fast healing 3 for a number of rounds fo cha + 1, could be worth it when fighting undead. Not to be confused with the feat sacred healing from PHB2).
Positive honorary mention: if you're healing anyway, might as well do other stuff, like removing negative status effects. The feat Invigorating Spellcaster (Dragon Compendium 147) allows you to remove any or all of the conditions dazed, exhausted, fatigued, sickened and stunned from someone you target with a spell that cures hp damage. No further cost. So you can do this with close wounds as an immediate action 2nd level spell! The spell healing lorecall (spell compendium) also allows to remove status effects when using conjuration (healing) spells, if the caster has ranks in the healing skill (5: remove dazed, dazzled, or fatigued; 10: remove exhausted, nauseated, or sickened). It also can slightly increase the amount of damage healed with cure spells.
Negative honorary mention for the 'healing by potion' method: from this perspective it's awful. Other handbooks will advise against it also because they are too expensive, but they also take too much time. Distributing a potion to a fallen ally is a full round action, so reaching and healing someone in the negatives will take at least two turns, when not already adjacent or in possession of swift action teleports or something. Pretty annoying when somebody is at -9HP. Avoid.
Conclusion & suggestions
As a conclusion: healing in combat is not a party role. Stuff mentioned above should help when you need to. If you really want to make it something your character is good at and wants to focus on, I'd recommend the following:
crusader, with divine spirit healing maneuvers
paladin, with the battle blessing feat and a high charisma for lay on hands
dragon shaman with both aura of vigor and reasonable high charisma score for touch of vitality
hellreaver in a good aligned party, with swift action healing
cleric / radiant servant of pelor with either reach spell or divine ward, mass versions of spells and ways to maximize, empower and or quicken them. In Dragon 311 there is a cleric variant (Benefactor) that can spontaneously cast all manner of healing spells as well as buffs, which can be worthwhile.
healer (miniatures handbook) with either reach spell or divine ward, mass versions of spells and ways to maximize, empower and or quicken them.
But next to healing in combat, also these characters really should be able to be useful in and out of combat (lockdown, charger, diplomancer, entangling breathweapon, etc.)
For more information on healing, see also the already mentioned band-aids for dummy's: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1520.msg13787#msg13787 and A Player's Guide to 3.5 Healing: http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=2710
That's all folks. Comments, ideas and suggestions please in the appropriate discussions thread can be posted below, and credits to all the kind people who posted usefull stuff who added relevant information (both here and over a decade ago at min/maxboards where I posted the original version of this guide).