Transform Magic: hiterto unspoken unlimited healing...? [3.5 (mostly)]

[Aotrs Commander]

As I was looking over the Enlightened Spirit warlock prestidge class (I'm transforming it into an archtype), I happened across Transform Magic, gained at 9th level (so you'd get it a level 14 in default 3.5).




Transform Magic (Sp): Gained at 9th level, this invocation (Greater; 6th) allows you to deliver a targeted greater dispel magic with your touch. You or any ally within 30 feet of you can heal 5 points of damage for each spell level dispelled by this touch (the spell level is determined by its caster's class). For example, if you successfully dispel a wall of ice, you or an ally can heal up to 20 points of damage. You can't transform your own invocations.



It's basically a thinly veiled tweak to Devour Magic.

Except.

Devour Magic gives you temporary hit points, and it makes a point saying they overlap and replace each other and only last a minute, and that you can't devour you own invocations. Okay, fine.


Transform Magic... Doesn't have that kind of restriction. Meaning all you need it literally one other person with an at-will SLA or another invocation user, and you have unlimited out of combat healing.


Kind of a problem. Unlimited healing is not something I really want to introduce (if I did, I'd have let Cure Minor Wounds work like a normal Pathfinder cantrip and be usuable all day.)


I have been rather surprised to google search and find... No-one ever seems to have talked about it. I mean, I know enlightened spirit is kind of bad, but... I surely can't be the first person to have noticed this, right?




Does anyone have any experience in dealing with this situation (or just some suggestions on ho to modify it to be... Not as abusable?)




It's not the first time, granted, I've encountered the odd one of these unlimited healing glitches before; Tome of Battle's Shadow Sun Ninja did it in an actual party with Touch of the Shadow Sun, because said party happened to have a dread necromancer/plae master in it; so the ninja could tap a skeleton to deal negative energy damage (healing it) and then tap someone else next round for heal them. (Yes, it explictly says the negative touch heals undead, so that was clearly an intention, though I suspect the writer simply never considered the combination of living and undead in a party...) It was kind of a problem, though I'd have been worried about it if the module wasn't so crap (3.5 lost Caverns of Tsjocanth) that the Crusader broke it in half by having level-appropriate armour and shield. As it stood, in that campaign, I really didnt care, or I'd have tried to work out if there was a fix for that too.

[tyckspoon]

I haven't made a note of that particular one, but I would guess nobody is terribly fussed about it because out of combat healing is -already- available in a number of very cost efficient ways for anybody who cares (Touch of Healing reserve feat/Dragon Shaman healing aura provides 'free' recovery up to half health at the cost of only a single feat or class level, Wands of Lesser Vigor providing 550 HP of healing/750 gold assuming you buy them full price with no cost reductions, Healing Belts restoring up to 6d8 health when used in the most efficient fashion for the same price, being a Dread Necromancer + some means of healing from negative energy, using Summon or Calling spells to summon things with healing Spell Like Abilities or casting abilities)

So dedicating 14 class levels in a mostly bad class +mostly bad prestige class + having a secondary source of repeatable spells to cannibalize in order to restore health between fights just.. isn't really impressive. If 'no cheap healing' is a desired design goal of your variant it might be something to look at, but I have a real hard time considering this to be a problem, and would place this one under the category of "Your player took this class this far because they thought this was cool and would enjoy doing it, let them."

[Aotrs Commander]

I haven't made a note of that particular one, but I would guess nobody is terribly fussed about it because out of combat healing is -already- available in a number of very cost efficient ways for anybody who cares (Touch of Healing reserve feat/Dragon Shaman healing aura provides 'free' recovery up to half health at the cost of only a single feat or class level, Wands of Lesser Vigor providing 550 HP of healing/750 gold assuming you buy them full price with no cost reductions, Healing Belts restoring up to 6d8 health when used in the most efficient fashion for the same price, being a Dread Necromancer + some means of healing from negative energy, using Summon or Calling spells to summon things with healing Spell Like Abilities or casting abilities)

With the exception of the Dread Necromancer (and that's a something I ought to consider), none of those are completely unlimited (well, healing to half hit points is, but it IS only to half, which is still a level of restiction).




So dedicating 14 class levels in a mostly bad class +mostly bad prestige class + having a secondary source of repeatable spells to cannibalize in order to restore health between fights just.. isn't really impressive. If 'no cheap healing' is a desired design goal of your variant it might be something to look at, but I have a real hard time considering this to be a problem, and would place this one under the category of "Your player took this class this far because they thought this was cool and would enjoy doing it, let them."

Part of the problem is that I am filing more serial numbers off the fiendish bits of the warlock to make it more flavour-friendly. Today's job was looking at the enlightened spirit's special invocations and working out how to put them in the list, since I don't want them in, like the classes document, they want to be in with all the other invocations. Up to Transform Magic, I was just shrugging and moving them straight into general warlock invocations (well, an adding additional alignment options) and doing stuff like merging Fell and Celestial Flight (as Eldritch Flight) since there's absolutely no earthly point in having to completely identical abilities with only flavour differences. And, on looking at Transform Magic compared to Devour... I could see that if both were options one would be very much more preferrable to the other, I feel.

But... Eh, your point about Dread Necromancers is well-made, especially as I not long ago back-ported Pathfinder 2's skeleton race, so that's infinite healing for one character from level 1. So for the moment, maybe I just leave Transform as it is, and resign to the fact that if anyone chooses to take it and there's more than one invoker, it is effectively an unlimited healing option.

I suppose in reality, my better option would be "make sure there are decent choices for invocations that are competative..." Lest all Warlocks have Fell Flight, Walk Unseen, Black Tentacles etc. (Though I will at some point soonish be finishing of a pass of kineticist to my own rules, and having made that an invocation class, I am hoping I can cross-pollinate the invocations a bit anyway.)

[Troacctid]

Unlimited healing is an issue at level 5, but it's much less of an issue at level 14, especially considering it's only healing yourself. It's only a little bit better than devour magic. The fact that it caps at your max HP means you can't do the trick where you have your lantern archon cast an arbitrary number of continual flames on an object and then dispel all of them at once at the start of combat to make it functionally impossible to kill you with HP damage that fight.

[Aotrs Commander]

Unlimited healing is an issue at level 5, but it's much less of an issue at level 14, especially considering it's only healing yourself. It's only a little bit better than devour magic. The fact that it caps at your max HP means you can't do the trick where you have your lantern archon cast an arbitrary number of continual flames on an object and then dispel all of them at once at the start of combat to make it functionally impossible to kill you with HP damage that fight.

...

On the one hand, you've convinced me just to put Transform Magic in the warlock general list and not worry about it.



On the other, I'mma juuuuust gonna go put an actual cap on the amount of hits/healing Devour/Transform can provide with a single casting...

(100 should be more than fine. Fairly unlikely to hit it during normal operations, not too bonkers to be abusable.)



Trust me the PCs will thank me, because they won't want it coming back the other way anymore than I'd want it coming from my end...

[Darg]

Transform Magic has the weakness of requiring being hurt/having enough missing HP in the first place to benefit. Devour Magic has the weakness of being dispellable, self only, and only lasts for 1 minute. Honestly, I can't really see either being abused in a reliable manner unless you pile tons of buffs on all opponents your players face which is like having every enemy being undead for an all cleric party. Theoretically it CAN be abused, but like shapechange free wishes just don't allow it. If you really want to limit it, instead of limiting the maximum (temp)HP, limit the number of effects that the invocations can register. A number between 5-10 is an appropriate cap; the party themselves would never be able to effectively abuse this unless they cannibalize their own resources but it also wouldn't arbitrarily hit the invocations with an unnecessary nerf to in combat effectiveness.

[Anthrowhale]

As another datapoint, persistent mass lesser vigor is potentially available at level 5.

[Chronos]

Unlimited healing is definitely a thing, in 3rd edition. The binder vestige Buer gives it directly, no questions asked, no trickery required. It's a 4th-level vestige, which means it becomes available at level 5 (or level 7 if you're one of those weird binders who doesn't take Improved Binding). The main cost is that, at that level, you only get one vestige at a time, and can only change once per day, and Buer does very little aside from unlimited healing.

Another binder option is Tenebrous, which gives you a Turn Undead use every 5 rounds, and there are a variety of feats to turn that into healing. Tenebrous is also a 4th-level vestige, but gives you other options (though in this case you're using up a feat to get healing out of it).

A close-to-unlimited option is to combine any of the heal-up-to-half abilities (draconic vigor aura or Touch of Healing reserve feat), together with Incarnate. The Lifebond Vestments soulmeld lets you heal others by taking half that damage yourself, so once everyone in the party is at half, you can get them up to full and then get yourself back to half. By default, you can only use it to heal any given creature once per hour, but if you can bind it to your Heart chakra, that limitation is removed. It gets even better if you're using Vitality Belt, because with Vitality Belt and a heal-to-half ability, you can bring yourself up to more like 3/4 (which is probably still more than the full health of anyone else in the party).

[Aotrs Commander]

Transform Magic has the weakness of requiring being hurt/having enough missing HP in the first place to benefit. Devour Magic has the weakness of being dispellable, self only, and only lasts for 1 minute. Honestly, I can't really see either being abused in a reliable manner unless you pile tons of buffs on all opponents your players face which is like having every enemy being undead for an all cleric party. Theoretically it CAN be abused, but like shapechange free wishes just don't allow it. If you really want to limit it, instead of limiting the maximum (temp)HP, limit the number of effects that the invocations can register. A number between 5-10 is an appropriate cap; the party themselves would never be able to effectively abuse this unless they cannibalize their own resources but it also wouldn't arbitrarily hit the invocations with an unnecessary nerf to in combat effectiveness.

Five to ten is potentially 25 to 50 times spell level, though; and regardless of how unlikely it is, I'm not willing to put something on the table that could potentially grant 450 hit points (temporary or otherwise); that's three times what it ought to do, frankly. That they didn't consider a maximum limit is another facet of how badly by the warlock was implemented, really, though ironically in the opposite direction of the usual "being completely terrified of the sort of damage easily exceeded by a rogue's regular full attack..."

100 is quite sufficient as a limit; as a quick check, that was about the level you'd get from dispelling all the standard active buffs from the last party (at level 18) - e.g. Elation/Good Hope/Haste/Righetous Wrath of the Faithful/Brilliant Aura (off the top of my head, may not be 100% correct), which is 20 levels or 100 hit points. I think that's pretty reasonable enough a ceiling to cap out a bit beyond general usage but without opening up to potential cheese.

(It really just saves me the hassle of saying to a theorhetical player "no, mate, sorry, I don't care what the rules say, yer not doin' that." Hell, I wrote an entire bit of the rules - Long Term Exhaustion, shamelessly cribbed from Rolemaster - which I fully intend to never actually have to use, but exists in case someone says "this doesn't use resources, I can do [this thing, be it hack at wall with axe/neem with EB or spam cantrip /invocation forever, whatever] all day!" to politely have a tacit "no, you can't.")




As another datapoint, persistent mass lesser vigor is potentially available at level 5.

I mean, I'm going to be using Owlcat!Mythic next campaign, so 24-hour buffs are going to be very much on the table; but that stacks against the fact that my games are in an environment when mandatory procedure is everything that can load a Dispel will load a Dispel.

(In the same way as everything that can carry a ranged weapon will carry a ranged weapon. Them that does not prepare for dealing with extremely common occurances like magic and flight, deserves everything they get1.)

But persistent spells take up resources to set up (and restore when they taken down) and are not something that can be just spammed at will.


Unlimited healing is definitely a thing, in 3rd edition. The binder vestige Buer gives it directly, no questions asked, no trickery required. It's a 4th-level vestige, which means it becomes available at level 5 (or level 7 if you're one of those weird binders who doesn't take Improved Binding). The main cost is that, at that level, you only get one vestige at a time, and can only change once per day, and Buer does very little aside from unlimited healing.

Another binder option is Tenebrous, which gives you a Turn Undead use every 5 rounds, and there are a variety of feats to turn that into healing. Tenebrous is also a 4th-level vestige, but gives you other options (though in this case you're using up a feat to get healing out of it).

A close-to-unlimited option is to combine any of the heal-up-to-half abilities (draconic vigor aura or Touch of Healing reserve feat), together with Incarnate. The Lifebond Vestments soulmeld lets you heal others by taking half that damage yourself, so once everyone in the party is at half, you can get them up to full and then get yourself back to half. By default, you can only use it to heal any given creature once per hour, but if you can bind it to your Heart chakra, that limitation is removed. It gets even better if you're using Vitality Belt, because with Vitality Belt and a heal-to-half ability, you can bring yourself up to more like 3/4 (which is probably still more than the full health of anyone else in the party).

Never looked at any of the incarnum stuff, I'm afraid, so that was somehting I'd never given any consideration.




But, taking into account what everyone has said, aside from sticking the aforementioned maximum-in-one-go limits on both Devour and Transform (which really, they should have had ANYWAY), I'm just going to stick Transform Magic into the general warlock invocation list and not worry about it.




1Learned that in AD&D. Only took that one fight with the evil cleric with a party member that could fly (homebrew sylph race) to illustrate Why You Always Carry A Ranged Weapon...

(A moment immortalised in the early work of now-professional cartoonist and illustrator Brendan Keeley (then a player), when he done me a manga-style recap of that campaign for the second stage (which moved into 3.0):

https://photos.smugmug.com/Primary-Gallery/i-89nkHZx/0/142ca43a/X3/CarandaManga11-X3.jpg (https://aotrscommander.smugmug.com/Primary-Gallery/i-89nkHZx/A)

[Darg]

Five to ten is potentially 25 to 50 times spell level, though; and regardless of how unlikely it is, I'm not willing to put something on the table that could potentially grant 450 hit points (temporary or otherwise); that's three times what it ought to do, frankly. That they didn't consider a maximum limit is another facet of how badly by the warlock was implemented, really, though ironically in the opposite direction of the usual "being completely terrified of the sort of damage easily exceeded by a rogue's regular full attack..."

100 is quite sufficient as a limit; as a quick check, that was about the level you'd get from dispelling all the standard active buffs from the last party (at level 18) - e.g. Elation/Good Hope/Haste/Righetous Wrath of the Faithful/Brilliant Aura (off the top of my head, may not be 100% correct), which is 20 levels or 100 hit points. I think that's pretty reasonable enough a ceiling to cap out a bit beyond general usage but without opening up to potential cheese.

(It really just saves me the hassle of saying to a theorhetical player "no, mate, sorry, I don't care what the rules say, yer not doin' that." Hell, I wrote an entire bit of the rules - Long Term Exhaustion, shamelessly cribbed from Rolemaster - which I fully intend to never actually have to use, but exists in case someone says "this doesn't use resources, I can do [this thing, be it hack at wall with axe/neem with EB or spam cantrip /invocation forever, whatever] all day!" to politely have a tacit "no, you can't.")

You're looking more at the theory rather than the practicality. If you are sending your players where they get 450 HP any time they cast the invocations that's a you problem, not the invocation. It's your game and you can do what you want, but take into account that heal can heal 10 hp per caster level without the requirement that it successfully dispels something.

[noob]

As I was looking over the Enlightened Spirit warlock prestidge class (I'm transforming it into an archtype), I happened across Transform Magic, gained at 9th level (so you'd get it a level 14 in default 3.5).







It's basically a thinly veiled tweak to Devour Magic.

Except.

Devour Magic gives you temporary hit points, and it makes a point saying they overlap and replace each other and only last a minute, and that you can't devour you own invocations. Okay, fine.


Transform Magic... Doesn't have that kind of restriction. Meaning all you need it literally one other person with an at-will SLA or another invocation user, and you have unlimited out of combat healing.


Kind of a problem. Unlimited healing is not something I really want to introduce (if I did, I'd have let Cure Minor Wounds work like a normal Pathfinder cantrip and be usuable all day.)


I have been rather surprised to google search and find... No-one ever seems to have talked about it. I mean, I know enlightened spirit is kind of bad, but... I surely can't be the first person to have noticed this, right?




Does anyone have any experience in dealing with this situation (or just some suggestions on ho to modify it to be... Not as abusable?)




It's not the first time, granted, I've encountered the odd one of these unlimited healing glitches before; Tome of Battle's Shadow Sun Ninja did it in an actual party with Touch of the Shadow Sun, because said party happened to have a dread necromancer/plae master in it; so the ninja could tap a skeleton to deal negative energy damage (healing it) and then tap someone else next round for heal them. (Yes, it explictly says the negative touch heals undead, so that was clearly an intention, though I suspect the writer simply never considered the combination of living and undead in a party...) It was kind of a problem, though I'd have been worried about it if the module wasn't so crap (3.5 lost Caverns of Tsjocanth) that the Crusader broke it in half by having level-appropriate armour and shield. As it stood, in that campaign, I really didnt care, or I'd have tried to work out if there was a fix for that too.

Healer gets at will healing at level 1 and despite that is T5 or T4 depending on the inclusion of sanctified spells or not.

[Aotrs Commander]

You're looking more at the theory rather than the practicality. If you are sending your players where they get 450 HP any time they cast the invocations that's a you problem, not the invocation. It's your game and you can do what you want, but take into account that heal can heal 10 hp per caster level without the requirement that it successfully dispels something.

I mean, until it's been actually on the table and at play in my specific environment, theory IS the only thing I can look at, with a side-nod to the previous and active parties for practical analysis.

But that was my point of balance, actually; it can heal to up 150 hit points (and other stuff) but also isn't a Dispel. Regardless of other concerns, Transform Magic should not be healing more hit points than Heal does, because it does other things as well (i.e., removes the opportunity cost of having to spend an action to heal, and allows simultaneous healing at the same time as performing, basically an offensive action1 and at the same time potentially provides healing for an ally at range). I think 100 is a sensible cap, not too high, not too low and in-line generally with damage of other spells of that level (and factoring in that it is usable at-will, which in scenarios where the cap is going to matter is a factor).




1You say "heal without the requirement is successsfully dispels something" where as I view it as the opposite; Transform Magic allows you to heal damage as well as performing a greater dispel.

[Anthrowhale]

I mean, I'm going to be using Owlcat!Mythic next campaign, so 24-hour buffs are going to be very much on the table; but that stacks against the fact that my games are in an environment when mandatory procedure is everything that can load a Dispel will load a Dispel.


Yeah, the real trick is getting persistent spells with a high caster level. Persistent Suffer the Flesh is expensive but possible at level 5 and at level 7 persistent Consumptive Field becomes potentially available. So, by ECL 7 or so you can be playing with caster level 18 or so, which is pretty difficult for dispel magic.

[Tyndmyr]

With the exception of the Dread Necromancer (and that's a something I ought to consider), none of those are completely unlimited (well, healing to half hit points is, but it IS only to half, which is still a level of restiction).

By level 14, it essentially is. If you want "truly unlimited", well, eternal wands work. Each only works twice/day, but a sack of wands will get you there, and for not much money. Realistically, I tend to blend eternal wands with regular wants for the most cost effective healing, but anywhere past about level ten, I'll generally have all the out of combat healing I could reasonably need.

The Troll Blooded feat also works, and accomplishes it all within 1 handy feat. Regeneration 1 at first level. Yeah, it's slow, but...it is infinite. The only annoying part is the Toughness prereq.

There's a sixth level Iron Heart Endurance maneuver that does the "approximate half, free" trick too. Eats a swift action, and...not even wholly an out of combat thing.

Vital Recovery and a sack of mice would also do the job.

Combat Vigor also works. Fast healing 2 or 4, depending on your feat loadout.

Martial Spirit also works, and it isn't self only. 2 hp per successful attack, either to yourself or an ally. You do have to hit an opponent, but the sack of chickens also works here.

These, however, have caveats. I can see why you'd say that some are not wholly infinite. That's cool, we can get cheesier.

I'm going to skip detailing the usual metamagic persist shenanigans. You probably already know them.

Aura of Triumph heals you AND an ally for 4 points each. You do have to attack an evil target. Note that it does not specify opponent. Take your favorite evil magic item out, and smack it around for sweet, sweet healing force. Better yet, a grapple starts with an attack roll. Just grapple your way to health. If you have an evil party member, that works too. Infinite sweaty wrestling healing for everyone.

A lot of these are, while amusing, not good enough to bother with unless your build happens to lie relatively close to them for other reasons...but they are all a great deal less bad than throwing 14 levels at something. That's an interesting trick, but not a balance problem, I wouldn't even blink at allowing a player to do that. There's likely at least a dozen ways to get this that I'm not thinking of. Simply trolling for ways to get Regeneration would probably find a few more.

Anyways, just devoting a trivial amount of wealth to wands is so much easier than almost every party settles on that.

[Troacctid]

Healer gets at will healing at level 1 and despite that is T5 or T4 depending on the inclusion of sanctified spells or not.
Healer is T3–T4, not T4–T5. I'm not sure where the at-will healing at level 1 is coming from though.

[Darg]

1You say "heal without the requirement is successsfully dispels something" where as I view it as the opposite; Transform Magic allows you to heal damage as well as performing a greater dispel.

And you give up a lot to get it. You don't have to value that, but it is a massive cost and can pigeonhole the player if you aren't really fighting things that can be dispelled.

[Aotrs Commander]

And you give up a lot to get it. You don't have to value that, but it is a massive cost and can pigeonhole the player if you aren't really fighting things that can be dispelled.

The warlock is not a healer, though. The fact that it can heal (like properly) is a VERY unusual ability for an arcane character (Witch (PF1) aside); but it's a bonus on top of an at-will Greater Dispel (for which you pay the price of it being reduced to Touch range). Devour and Transform Magicare Dispels first, temporary hit points and healing second.

I mean, if you are reliant on healing (either in or out of combat) with one 6th level SLA that needs you to have a dispel... The party's not going to MAKE it to that level.

("But Aotrs, UMD! Wands!" Yes, but that's true of any class that has that as a class skill (and under PF1's just unilaterally better skill system, pretty much anyone can have a reasonable stab at it). The warlock's ability to take ten is nice, but hardly mandatory. Likewise, if you're doing wands... Why bother with Transform Magic as an ability for healing anyway? Aside from, like explictly having it so that you can have unlimited healing.)

I mean, if you want to be healing... You don't play a warlock anymore than you play a wizard or a duskblade. (Or a healer, honestly, given how utterly crap they are. I am only half-joking when I say to make them a class that isn't fracking awful, you'd have to change their class feature to give you a Unicron companion...)

"But if Transform Magic not super-good, why are you bothered about capping it then?" There's a distinct line between "this ability is niche" and "this ability is niche, but can be broken if you super-optimise it in one specific way" and I aim to NOT have the latter; that is primarily the balance I care about. Some artificial cheese flavouring, but no actual cheese. Mid-high optimisation, which means strong characters... But not the sort of top-level theorhetical CharOp where "anything published in 3.5 is fair game with no limits." Which is fun to craft and even read about... But not what is fun to DM against. (What I'm prepared to do in Wrath of the Righteous, like optimise up to a 50+ DC save and Thanos-snap the penultime boss to death, is hilarous in a single-player game against the AI, but it would spoil my fun as DM if I was on the recieving end.) Take, like, Locate City Bomb, which is so hilarous I left it technically legal in my game, but no-one would ever be allowed to actually DO it. (Well, maybe a BBEG... But even then, only as basically a plot-point.)



On a personal level, I am looking at a party size of six to eight, never four. If you have a party of that many characters and nobody bothers to have anyone who can heal, there is no sympathy from the DM, any more than it would be if everyone picked characters with no ranged capability. There are now 62 character classes (BEFORE archetypes) available to my players - sufficient that it would be quicker to list the character classes from 3.5 and PF1 they DON'T have1. If I'm writing my own day quests, I will bend only so far to accomodate it.

(And frankly, having that one party where there were, like, no divine casters, the only arcane caster being a duskblade, three psionic characters, the closest thing to a scout/rogue type was the warlock solely because he could turn invisible and nobody with any kind of skills for dealing with... Anything that wasn't combat, those first couple of games - EVEN set in a wartime scenario - were hard to do, to the point I had to give one dude's NPC contuberum sidekicks class levels just so that the party could, like FUNCTION... Never again...)



The TL:DR is "(at my table) don't base your character around a single 6th level invocation that is only of situational use, since you're not going to be allowed to manipulate the situation to be able to make it cheesy."



1Sans 24 from the apparently 66 across the entire breadth of 3.5 (which means excluding anything from a campaign setting source book, Dragon, Incarnum/Tome of Magic, and Dragonfire Adept (invocations raided for warlock though), Factofum and healer; Samuari subsumed into Knight archetype, Marshal replaced with a martial adept version, Favoured soul subsumed into an oracle subtype; from PF 1, Vigilante (just will never be suited to any campaign I would ever run), the psychic magic classes (I have PF1 psionics from Dreamscarred and none of the classes DID anything interesting enough to make me add not-Mentalism-from-Rolemaster as a third branch of magic); cavalier subsued into knight archetype; kineticist has had a name-change (to not get confused with Psion (kineticists). All the available classes of which have had a pass to ensure they aren't, like crap anymore; sure there's still a caster/noncaster disparity, but it's much smaller now. (I have have possibly overtuned Hexblade and Dreadnecromancer in particular, but hey, that just means in the former's case I've straddled the gap.) But this is getting very off-topic.

[Chronos]

I'm guessing that noob is combining a houserule that cantrips are unlimited, the Cure Minor Wounds cantrip, and the healer's Healing Hands ability... but even with that houserule, it doesn't hold together. If Cure Minor Wounds works as written but is at-will, then any divine caster can get unlimited healing at level 1 (somewhat slower, but out of combat it won't matter). If it's instead replaced with something like 5e's Spare the Dying, that stabilizes without actually healing, then it won't trigger the Healer's Healing Hands ability, because that only affects spells that cure HP damage.

[Aotrs Commander]

I'm guessing that noob is combining a houserule that cantrips are unlimited, the Cure Minor Wounds cantrip, and the healer's Healing Hands ability... but even with that houserule, it doesn't hold together. If Cure Minor Wounds works as written but is at-will, then any divine caster can get unlimited healing at level 1 (somewhat slower, but out of combat it won't matter). If it's instead replaced with something like 5e's Spare the Dying, that stabilizes without actually healing, then it won't trigger the Healer's Healing Hands ability, because that only affects spells that cure HP damage.

I'm not sure myself, but as noted, I am not fully conversant with 3.5's entire breadth of published options and the interactions within, so I imagine it's quite possible somehow.



I made cantrips are will ala Pathfinder (i.e. they are not expended when cast, which is subtly different to being at will), but I explictly made some (Cure Minor among them, along with Create Water) basically only able to be cast four times before being expended. Unlimited Ray of Frosts/Detect Magics et al is fine, but there are some points where some spells become STORY-breaking (even if they are not game-mechanic-breaking);for instance, if I want to play a game with desert survival elements, I don't want to COMPETELY trivialise that aspect from level 1 for Any Party That Contains One Spellcaster (as well as unlimited out-of-combat healing). As y'know, the part about beign a desert survival is... Actually the "survival" part.

...

This reminds me, thank you, after the brief sojourn in the desert in the current campaign illustrated to me I think I actually need to slightly nerf Create Water, because even in 3.5 standards, it trivialises desert survival even at standard 3.5 levels. (The party Isn't Allowed A Wizard this time, so that will likely mostly curtail magical resting spell shaningans... Which, if I'm honest are starting to annoy me too, because, again, it completely obviates a portion of the game (i.e. night-time encounters).)

[Gemini476]

Aura of Triumph heals you AND an ally for 4 points each. You do have to attack an evil target. Note that it does not specify opponent. Take your favorite evil magic item out, and smack it around for sweet, sweet healing force. Better yet, a grapple starts with an attack roll. Just grapple your way to health. If you have an evil party member, that works too. Infinite sweaty wrestling healing for everyone.

Careful about this, though. If you have, say, an Unholy +1 Sword then that has Hardness 10+ and 5HP, sure, but if it's some kind of wand that's down to Hardness 5/2HP and if it's leather you're down to hardness 2 - or, in other words, low enough that a 1d3 damage unarmed strike still has a 33% chance of damaging the object.

And since you're a Crusader, well, changes are good that your Strength modifier is probably more than +1...

[tyckspoon]

Careful about this, though. If you have, say, an Unholy +1 Sword then that has Hardness 10+ and 5HP, sure, but if it's some kind of wand that's down to Hardness 5/2HP and if it's leather you're down to hardness 2 - or, in other words, low enough that a 1d3 damage unarmed strike still has a 33% chance of damaging the object.

And since you're a Crusader, well, changes are good that your Strength modifier is probably more than +1...

Nah, you just hit it with your (Not Improved) unarmed strike or take the penalty to convert a normally lethal weapon to nonlethal. Objects are immune to nonlethal damage.

[Troacctid]

This reminds me, thank you, after the brief sojourn in the desert in the current campaign illustrated to me I think I actually need to slightly nerf Create Water, because even in 3.5 standards, it trivialises desert survival even at standard 3.5 levels. (The party Isn't Allowed A Wizard this time, so that will likely mostly curtail magical resting spell shaningans... Which, if I'm honest are starting to annoy me too, because, again, it completely obviates a portion of the game (i.e. night-time encounters).)
Desert survival is meant to be trivialized. Most of wilderness survival is just a preparation check. If you have the thing you need, you're fine. If you don't have it, make saves. The main use case for Endure Elements and Create Water is that they are marginally better than the nonmagical equivalents that you would have otherwise had to spend a small amount of gold on (and also they save you from having to plan out all of your carry weight and rations in advance). Or, another way to put it would be that Create Water is a crappy healing spell that only works against dehydration damage, which you could have avoided by just carrying water.

Your players signed up for a game of D&D, not Oregon Trail. If they want to spend spell slots to opt out of the inventory micromanagement minigame, you should let them.

[Aotrs Commander]

For the record, I have always ruled that stuff like Martial Spirit explictly doesn't work unless the party is under threat (no, I don't care what the RAW says), so no beating up party members or chickens for free hit points, not at this table, anyway. (I will not even broach the massive overhaul I JUST finished for ToB, wherein Martial Spirit got modified anyway).




Desert survival is meant to be trivialized. Most of wilderness survival is just a preparation check. If you have the thing you need, you're fine. If you don't have it, make saves. The main use case for Endure Elements and Create Water is that they are marginally better than the nonmagical equivalents that you would have otherwise had to spend a small amount of gold on (and also they save you from having to plan out all of your carry weight and rations in advance). Or, another way to put it would be that Create Water is a crappy healing spell that only works against dehydration damage, which you could have avoided by just carrying water.

Your players signed up for a game of D&D, not Oregon Trail. If they want to spend spell slots to opt out of the inventory micromanagement minigame, you should let them.

I'm sorry, Troacctid, but you don't speak for my players or my game.

My players sign up to play whatever game I choose to run and if that includes me doing a campaign in which a portion is metaphorically playing Oregon Trail (or at least Rimworld), than that's what happens. (I mean, they are already playing what is fundementally an entire homebrew edition of the rules that is neither 3.5 nor PF1 and runs to probably the better part of two thousand pages at this point and I know that will upset some people.)

I mean, they are always free to say "I don't want to play the game you're running" but.... Functionally that means no game is going to be running, because I'm the only one prepared to DM and the price of my spending literally hundreds of hours1 and months of set-up for a campaign2 and working on rules and campaigns is that, like, I only run the games I want to. But... They won't say that. I've been playing with this group, in one form or another, and with inevitable shifts of membership, for thirty years. Even if the newcomers aren't interested in that, they won't have to worry about it, because the rest of the group will take care of it (the same way we do everything, like marching order, party loot and watch orders etc.)

I WANT them to have to be having to think about this sort of thing as a party. That's part of the challenge. Hell, the Deserts of Desolation module was AD&D, where you very much did NOT have any of those options at all, except for the priest or the druid using one or more of their much fewer spells. Desert survival was absolutely part of the campaign structure not something to be trivially hand-waved away.

Hell, part of the reason I just spent an afternoon/evening overhauling the food/supply system is precisely because I would, in the fullness of time, like to one day realise that campaign which is basially LITERALLY Oregon Trail, in that the party would be the leaders of a migrating alien neolithic tribe in an entirely alien campaign world. Where this sort of thing is not just important to one section of the campaign, it is the WHOLE campaign.

But this is now off-topic for this thread (and I made another on this specifically), so that's the last of that subject I'll talk about here.




1Including, like today, hours when I should strictly be Doing Proper Work.

2I've been gearing up for this campaign since JANUARY and I haven't gotten as far as actually starting to WRITE it properly yet. This is all ground work. )But groundwork for something I've wanted to do for thirty years, ever since my Dad borrowed a load of AD&D modules to read from a bloke at work one of them was Pharoah. I want this campaign to be my magus opus, before we're all to old and/or dead to be passed it.)

[Chronos]

Quoth Aotrs Commander:

For the record, I have always ruled that stuff like Martial Spirit explictly doesn't work unless the party is under threat (no, I don't care what the RAW says), so no beating up party members or chickens for free hit points, not at this table, anyway.
Yeah, this is already in the rules for the Devoted Spirit healing strikes. It's odd that they left it off of the auras.

[Remuko]

For the record, I have always ruled that stuff like Martial Spirit explictly doesn't work unless the party is under threat (no, I don't care what the RAW says), so no beating up party members or chickens for free hit points, not at this table, anyway. (I will not even broach the massive overhaul I JUST finished for ToB, wherein Martial Spirit c

this part of your reply just cuts off here. idk what happened but it seems there was meant to be more to it.

[Aotrs Commander]

this part of your reply just cuts off here. idk what happened but it seems there was meant to be more to it.

No idea, c instead of CTRL+C I guess; no idea what I was previously going to say, but the for the sake or arguement, at least completed the sentence...