Non-combat healing is not cheap

[Belial_the_Leveler]

It has been stated, repeatedly, that non-combat healing not coming from spells (usually those of a cleric or druid) is, or should be, cheap usually through the use of cure light wounds wands or similar magic items.

Let's look at a wand of CLW. It costs 750 gp to make and heals an average of 275 points of damage. It is the cheapest form of healing available in core. Let's see how long does a wand of CLW last.

A group of PCs should have 4-5 encounters at their CR per day, resulting in roughly 15 rounds of combat without rest and the last 5 rounds just before rest. In ECL 5, the average noncaster encounter can deal at least 10 damage per round. The average caster encounter can deal at least 20 damage per round-though usually spread over more than 1 PC. So in 15 rounds of combat, nearly 200 points of damage should be dealt and healed. That's more than 2/3 our CLW wand. That means 550 gp cost per day on average. Loot for 4 CR 5 encounters is 4500 gp. So the cost for our CLW for the day is a bit more than 12% the group's loot. That would be, ofcourse, IF the day's loot contained a CLW wand. Much more often than not, they will not. So, the group will have to sell the loot to buy the wand. That results in double the cost in the end so 25% the group's loot. A quarter of the loot would go into healing every day for our ECL 5 group.

A group of ECL 10 PCs needs more healing than that. The average noncaster encounter can deal easily 30 damage per round with the average caster encounter dealing nearly 100 usually spread over the entire group (e.g. a fireball or firebrand or dragon's breath or whatever). That means nearly 900 points of damage because rest is not cutting it for the last 5 rounds before rest-the damage amount is too large. This means three wands of CLW or the equivalent of 4500 gp in loot. Luckily, 4 encounters at CR 10 mean 36.000 gp in loot. That means only 12% of the loot would be spent in CLW so healing is cheaper-or so it would seem.

What many people saying noncombat healing is cheap do not realise is that healing includes poisons, diseases, ability damage, ability drain, curses, negative levels and similar effects. If we try to put into noncombat healing costs the above-even for once per day-prices skyrocket.

In the end, in a running campaign, trying to do all your healing through either items or rest is expensive. It might be as low as 10% of your loot in high levels if you do not encounter serious threats beyond mere HP damage (unlikely) but even 10% of the loot is still a considerable cost, especially considering the time it takes to find merchants to sell the loot, get the gold then find merchants from which to buy those CLW wands en masse. You'd probably be spending considerable time hunting down CLW merchants. After all, most merchants don't have a magic item more than once and you need 3-4 of them per day.

[Human Paragon 3]

No, non-combat healing is actually free. You have your cleric cast cures on everybody until you're at full health, then rest 8 hours.

Why would anybody spend money on a healing item when you can just do this? Also, I heard there's this nifty healing belt that will do basically the same thing.

[Reel On, Love]

A Wand of Lesser Vigor heals 11 HP/charge. An Eternal Wand of CLW, for 800-odd GP, casts CLW 2/day; at higher levels a bunch of those are cheaper. And that's disregarding unused spell slots going into healing at the end of the day.

[sikyon]

No, non-combat healing is actually free. You have your cleric cast cures on everybody until you're at full health, then rest 8 hours.

Why would anybody spend money on a healing item when you can just do this? Also, I heard there's this nifty healing belt that will do basically the same thing.

The idea is that the part doesn't have a cleric or druid.

Say a 4 member wizard party.

On the other hand, a 4 member wizard party can take things of way higher level, so they get a ton of loot, and probably don't get hit much anyways.

Anyhow, the point is that healing for a martial party is expensive.

Edit: Also, how much does a ring of command-word activated cure minor wounds cost?

[Crow T. Robot]

No, non-combat healing is actually free. You have your cleric cast cures on everybody until you're at full health, then rest 8 hours.

And if a party has no druid or cleric? My current group has a pally and the best he can do is stop people from bleeding out. Other then that it is potions, wands, and scrolls. They accept payment in the form of healing after some jobs. Recently "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" has taken hold and they blow their money on higher AC. Which is very expensive as well.

[OneWinged4ngel]

Belial... your numbers are just wrong. You're setting arbitrary amounts of damage, and for some reason putting casters at higher damage than noncasters (Why?), and giving us things like "ECL 5 deals 10 damage a round" which are just kinda silly. I mean, seriously, a level 1 orc can beat ten average damage per round. And of course, there's always the chance of defenses and alternative modes of attack (for example, when talking about spellcasters doing so much more damage, the reality is that primary casters tend to actually do more controlling and disabling than HP damage). So: How do you expect to move our opinions with seemingly randomly fabricated numbers?

Further, there are plenty of tools besides wands of Cure Light Wounds, including Wands of Faith Healing, Wands of Lesser Vigor, castings of Vigor spells, various sources of regeneration, Healing Belts, Eternal Wands, and so on and so forth. In addition, it is entirely possible for players to be able to attain healing items for less than market price (and common in loot where the DM isn't arbitrarily random and gives the NPCs nonsensical things.) For example, you could have a crafter, or you could have an affiliation with organizations, or you could have a social character who has a way of negotiating lower prices. Heck, you could even have a Rogue with sticky fingers ;)

Furthermore... I have always said that prevention is better than cures, and that's why it's more important for parties (with or without a cleric or druid!) to focus on things OTHER than healing in combat. And of course, this conserves resources better than taking every hit that comes at you, hoping you survive (you WON'T unless you ACTUALLY have a game where CR 5 creatures seriously do only a pitiful ten damage), then healing up after the fact.

Aaaaannnnd on top of all that... even if out of combat healing was taking a QUARTER out of your funds... if you were of the opinion that healing was a necessary party role in and of itself, and it's being covered for only 25% of your party loot (instead of 25% of your PARTY) then that only supports the idea that healing wasn't a necessary party role (since giving up 25% party loot is less of a cost than 25% of your party roster)

[Frosty]

Buy a Wand of Infinite CLWs for like 1800 or 2k gold. Simple.

[KillianHawkeye]

Which book are these infinite/eternal wands from?

[Reel On, Love]

The unlimited item is the fruit of custom item creation rules; a command-word at-will item of Cure Light Wounds is 1 (Spell level) * 1 (caster level) * 1800 (at will command word) gp. But that would never fly in a game.

Eternal Wands are in the Magic Item companion; they're a lot like regular wands, but for arcane spells only; any arcanist can use any Eternal Wand, regardless of his spell list, and they work 2/day rather than having 50 charges.

[bignate]

The unlimited item is the fruit of custom item creation rules; a command-word at-will item of Cure Light Wounds is 1 (Spell level) * 1 (caster level) * 1800 (at will command word) gp. But that would never fly in a game.

Eternal Wands are in the Magic Item companion; they're a lot like regular wands, but for arcane spells only; any arcanist can use any Eternal Wand, regardless of his spell list, and they work 2/day rather than having 50 charges.

i dont see any problem with allowing the unlimited use items when following the rules. i mean really, even for 1800 gp do you really think unlimited cure light wounds at 1d8+1 per round is broken?

[Citizen Joe]

I don't think you can make a continuous use item from a spell with no duration (instantaneous).

[martyboy74]

It's not continuous; it's command word. That means that there're activating it every round.

[Machete]

A Dragon Shaman(is it?) with Aura of Vigor at level one is fairly cheap to hire and keep around as a hireling.

For everything else you've got potions or scrolls.

[Jack_Simth]

i dont see any problem with allowing the unlimited use items when following the rules. i mean really, even for 1800 gp do you really think unlimited cure light wounds at 1d8+1 per round is broken?

It shifts class balance, in favor of those who's daily resources are primarily their HP - Fighters & Rogues, and to a lesser extend Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers, and Monks (also similar, non-core classes) - and away from those classes who's daily resources are primarily non-HP based (Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, and to a lesser extent, the Bard), PROVIDED the DM throws a lot of encounters per day at the party.

It also removes the "healer" role from the party outside battle (which may or may not be a good thing) and seriously crimps the danger in endurance runs (the horde of infinite mooks can now be dealt with by the high AC Fighter that takes a round out to heal up every now and again).

[bugsysservant]

I never understood the advantage of buying an infinite item of CLW. Even though its dirt cheap, by the time you get it, you probably won't be using it in combat. You may as well just go for the infinite command word ring of cure minor wounds, for 900. Sure, it only heals 1 hp, but if you have some time to kill, and after combat you probably do, its much better.

[martyboy74]

It's about saving buffs. A infinite CLW item heals you 5.5 times faster than an infinite CLM item, for only 900 gold more. If you have a minutes/level buff, that's going to be a major difference. Say your tank got ambushed and took 150 points of damage over the encounter. With an item of CLM, that's 15 minutes. A minute/level buff is probably gone by that point. With a CLW item, that's gone in 28 rounds; your buff's still going strong.

[Dausuul]

It shifts class balance, in favor of those who's daily resources are primarily their HP - Fighters & Rogues, and to a lesser extend Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers, and Monks (also similar, non-core classes) - and away from those classes who's daily resources are primarily non-HP based (Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, and to a lesser extent, the Bard), PROVIDED the DM throws a lot of encounters per day at the party.

It also removes the "healer" role from the party outside battle (which may or may not be a good thing) and seriously crimps the danger in endurance runs (the horde of infinite mooks can now be dealt with by the high AC Fighter that takes a round out to heal up every now and again).

Actually...

...shifts balance away from primary casters, and toward non-casters?

I might have to introduce something like that if I happen to run another D&D campaign before 4E arrives.

[TimeWizard]

I seem to remember a ring of constant regeneration at 1 hp/round. Is that something actually priced out? And if not, what is it's price? I'm simply terribly at these kinds of things.

[brian c]

i dont see any problem with allowing the unlimited use items when following the rules. i mean really, even for 1800 gp do you really think unlimited cure light wounds at 1d8+1 per round is broken?

Um... that means that all of your out-of-combat healing ever only costs 2000 gold. That's a bit overpowered.

[OneWinged4ngel]

The unlimited item is the fruit of custom item creation rules

There's a mistake here. Those aren't rules, they're guidelines. They are not considered part of the RAW, and any item created with them pretty much amounts to houseruling.

Thus, the unlimited healing item suggested by the above poster fails. However, there ARE RAW unlimited healing tricks that are very cheap (both in the monetary and abusive sense). That's just not one of them

(Seriously, they're not hard to find. At least one is core only, and at least one is just one item in the MiC that's *PROBABLY* a typo. But it's not like WotC ever erratas worth a damn)

[Frosty]

My GM allows them. The cleric has better things to do than waste CLWs all day long outside of combat. We regularly get 7 encounters a day.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Belial... your numbers are just wrong. You're setting arbitrary amounts of damage, and for some reason putting casters at higher damage than noncasters (Why?), and giving us things like "ECL 5 deals 10 damage a round" which are just kinda silly. I mean, seriously, a level 1 orc can beat ten average damage per round. And of course, there's always the chance of defenses and alternative modes of attack (for example, when talking about spellcasters doing so much more damage, the reality is that primary casters tend to actually do more controlling and disabling than HP damage). So: How do you expect to move our opinions with seemingly randomly fabricated numbers?

They are not fabricated. They are the average damage taken from a CR 5 creature attacking in meele, factoring in attack bonus and average PC AC at that level. That does NOT mean a single attack does 10 points of damage. It may do 30 points of damage (2H PA barbarian for example). If, however, only 1 out of 3 attacks hit vs AC then it results in 10 damage per round. And casters indeed do a great deal more damage than noncasters. A fireball that hits the group from 150 ft away does 5d6-an average of 17 points per PC. Factoring in saves and evasion and the possibility that 1 PC may not be in the AoE then adding up the damage, we have a total of 15-20 points of damage per round for ECL 5 fireball. Acid arrow or scorching ray could do more against a single PC with no save-but they don't always hit. As for primary spellcasters doing more control than damage, suuuure. ECL 9, maximised scorching ray. Wizard eats 72 points fire damage, no save, and dies. Enemy wizard takes out his lesser rod of quickening (maxed scorching ray counts as a 2nd level spell) and cleric eats another 72 points of fire damage and dies. Or, empowered fireball, empowered fireball. Eat 30d6 damage for the entire party. Average 105 points of damage, 2 reflex saves DC 20+ for 53 damage. I'm quite sure even the rogue will fail one of the two. And guess what? Double Fortitude save DC 15 or die instantly because they took more than 50 points of damage. Even the fighter will have a fort save of +10 so there's a 2x 25% chance of failure. So, TPK in one round from an encounter equal to their ECL? Yeah, wizards go for control all the time... And just so I can "support my argument" you will note that the caster damage for ECL 10 is 100 spread over the entire party. Assuming a single round of empowered fireballs in an encounter, the total damage it will do will be around 500. Spread over 5 rounds, it surely is 100 per round. So, I counted mr wizard going 1 round nova and doing 4 rounds control. So I am still within your "casters usually go for control" assessment if we use it.

Further, there are plenty of tools besides wands of Cure Light Wounds, including Wands of Faith Healing, Wands of Lesser Vigor, castings of Vigor spells, various sources of regeneration, Healing Belts, Eternal Wands, and so on and so forth. In addition, it is entirely possible for players to be able to attain healing items for less than market price (and common in loot where the DM isn't arbitrarily random and gives the NPCs nonsensical things.) For example, you could have a crafter, or you could have an affiliation with organizations, or you could have a social character who has a way of negotiating lower prices. Heck, you could even have a Rogue with sticky fingers.

For all noncore methods of healing, there's a very big problem: they may not exist. I don't mean not exist in the campaign. I simply mean that the stores won't usually have them. What is the chance of a store having a specific noncore item? 100/number of noncore items. That means less than 0.1% chance most of the time. As for the crafter or organisation, a crafter needs 1 day work for each wand minimum and the party will expend on average more than 1 wand per day. So you need more than 1 crafter. And crafters need to spend their XP to make the items continiously. Consider this: would a party member want to continiously spend XP over making items for healing? Most probably not. The crafter has much fewer opportunities for XP gain than a party member-he'll either eventually run dry (usually in only a few days' worth of healing items) or refuse to continiously craft for you at only market price. For organisations, it is up to the plot. You also need to spend time in the organisation and accept responsibilities as allies of said organisation-something incompatible with many quests.
For loot, not really. The vast majority of enemies don't have UMD or cleric levels so they'll take potions for healing, not wands. Or they'll use their own spell slots if they need to. (wizards: polymorph. anyone else: cure spells)

Furthermore... I have always said that prevention is better than cures, and that's why it's more important for parties (with or without a cleric or druid!) to focus on things OTHER than healing in combat. And of course, this conserves resources better than taking every hit that comes at you, hoping you survive (you WON'T unless you ACTUALLY have a game where CR 5 creatures seriously do only a pitiful ten damage), then healing up after the fact.

I was talking more for after combat. For inside combat, prevention is better than cure if you face casters. If you face noncasters that they do pretty low amounts of damage per round because many attacks miss due to high AC you will surely be better off using a 90 HP heal spell in combat. That's why you need a cleric during combat for more than buffing.

Aaaaannnnd on top of all that... even if out of combat healing was taking a QUARTER out of your funds... if you were of the opinion that healing was a necessary party role in and of itself, and it's being covered for only 25% of your party loot (instead of 25% of your PARTY) then that only supports the idea that healing wasn't a necessary party role (since giving up 25% party loot is less of a cost than 25% of your party roster)

I never said it was a nessecary party role. Only that it was not cheap. Consider this though: a party without a healer over a long campaign will end up with only 75% of the magic items and resources of the party with the healer. In the end that makes quite a difference in defences-and the party without the healer will be needing more healing thus higher and higher costs.

[Saph]

If you're playing core-only, the most effective way to heal is to combine the two. Have a Cleric, and have a bunch of Wands of CLW as well. The Cleric can heal in battle when necessary, and can convert his unused spell slots into extra healing at the end of the adventuring day. This also breaks up the monotony of rolling 1d8+1 fifty times.

The real benefit of wands of CLW is that they can be used by half the classes in the game, even ones that can't effectively cast CLW. This spreads the healing out among the party, making the individual characters a bit more self-sufficient and stopping them from having to queue up in front of the cleric after every battle.

A more serious problem with relying wholly on wands for healing is that sometimes you DO need to heal up in the midst of combat, and don't have many rounds to do it - extended battles do happen. I've seen several fights where a cleric rapidly getting a character back on their feet made a big difference.

- Saph

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

I seem to remember a ring of constant regeneration at 1 hp/round. Is that something actually priced out? And if not, what is it's price? I'm simply terribly at these kinds of things.

It is actually worse than 1 hp/round.

Regeneration: This white gold ring continually allows a living wearer to heal 1 point of damage per level every hour rather than every day. (This ability cannot be aided by the Heal skill.) Nonlethal damage heals at a rate of 1 point of damage per level every 5 minutes. If the wearer loses a limb, an organ, or any other body part while wearing this ring, the ring regenerates it as the spell. In either case, only damage taken while wearing the ring is regenerated.

Strong conjuration; CL 15th; Forge Ring, regenerate; Price 90,000 gp.

[Dausuul]

As for primary spellcasters doing more control than damage, suuuure. ECL 9, maximised scorching ray. Wizard eats 72 points fire damage, no save, and dies.

First, a level 9 wizard does 48 points of damage with a maximized scorching ray, not 72. Read the spell description. One ray, plus one per four levels above third, means you get one ray at 3-6, two rays at 7-10, and three rays from 11 onward.

Second, there are two ranged touch attacks involved; it's not a guaranteed hit. A 9th-level wizard has BAB +4 and maybe a 16 Dex with items; that's a +7 bonus to hit, against the PC wizard whose touch AC might be, let's say 14 (+3 from Dex and +1 from a ring of protection or similar item). That means a 70% chance to hit with each ray.

A 9th-level PC wizard is likely to have at least a 12 Constitution, for an average of 33 hit points. So both of those rays have to hit in order to take the wizard down. At a 70% chance to hit, that's a 49% chance to take down one PC.

Compare this to, say, dominate person on the party fighter. A 9th-level wizard ought to have at least a 20 Intelligence with items factored in, which means a save DC of 20. The fighter has a base Will save of +3, probably no more than a 12 Wisdom, and maybe a +3 cloak of resistance, for a total Will save of +7. So there's a 60% chance to both eliminate one PC and gain an ally. Much better deal.

Enemy wizard takes out his lesser rod of quickening (maxed scorching ray counts as a 2nd level spell) and cleric eats another 72 points of fire damage and dies.

Where is he getting this lesser rod of quickening? It's 35K for a lesser rod. A 9th-level PC only has 36K wealth by level, and NPCs have considerably less, even if we accept your rather dubious claim that a Maximized spell's effective level is not increased for purposes of the rod (which is a cheese tactic if I ever saw one; if you're going to use stuff like that, I'll answer with polymorph).

Mistakes like these do not inspire confidence in the rest of your numbers.

[Starbuck_II]

Where is he getting this lesser rod of quickening? It's 35K for a lesser rod. A 9th-level PC only has 36K wealth by level, and NPCs have considerably less, even if we accept your rather dubious claim that a Maximized spell's effective level is not increased for purposes of the rod (which is a cheese tactic if I ever saw one; if you're going to use stuff like that, I'll answer with polymorph).

Mistakes like these do not inspire confidence in the rest of your numbers.

Crafted it maybe? That reduces price to 1/2.

[Frosty]

Yeah. When determining whether a metamagic rod works, you use the BASE level of the spell, not the modified metamagic level. It works, thank god.

[Yakk]

L 9 Max ray: 24 fire damage x2, touch attack, takes a L 5 slot. Range is 45 feet.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/treasure.htm
EL 9 encounter: 4,500 gp
3x that might be valid (concentrating treasure from 3 encounters in 1), for 13500 gp in total budget for the gear of the L 9 wizard.

To reach 35K by that standard, you need a EL 13 encounter and 2 other EL 13 encounters that have no treasure to "fund" it.

And an encounter against casters is either going to end with a TPK or the caster dead very quickly -- the caster can cast "save or die" and "dodge or die" spells relatively fast.

In-combat healing can be useful -- but when your choice is "heal the wizard from near death" or "kill the enemy wizard"...

The L 9 wizard with 14 con has an average of 42 HP. A simple +2 stat item costs him 4000 gp, about 1/3 of his budget.

The NPC starts out with the elite array (15 int, 14 dex, 13 con, 12 wis, 10 cha, 8 str to be min-max about it). Dump the stat ups into int (or if you want to be really tweaky, int and con). So only +8 to hit with rays, base spell CR of 13+level.

Maybe some weapon focus (ray) for a +9 to hit.

Saves are:
+7 will
+5 fort
+5 reflex

plus any magic boosts. PCs of that level will have a base CR of 15+spell level: so about 2/3 of spells on the wizard will fail the save (so long as they avoid will). Two d6-per-level spells hitting the wizard kill him -- or one save-or-die/suck spell (or no-save and just suck, like black tentacles -- wizard is not reduced to standard-action no-somantic spells and must make 2 concentration rolls per spell cast).

Remember: unless this is a "boss" encounter, the PCs will have the edge. If the NPC can kill a PC in a single round half of the time, the PCs as a whole will be able to kill the NPC reliably in a single round, or you messed up the CR.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

The wizard in question is obviously getting a +1 to CL for fire spells and another +1 to CL for 1 spell per spell level from feats, resulting in CL 11 for his scorching ray. The lesser rod of quickening is crafted and personalised (specific class, specific skill, specific race) so not only it is within the wealth allotment for said NPC but also it can't be used by the PCs if they loot it-so the DM does not have to worry about exceeding wealth per encounter tables.

It seems PPL should not talk about mistaken numbers before they ask for details.

[kamikasei]

The wizard in question is obviously getting a +1 to CL for fire spells and another +1 to CL for 1 spell per spell level from feats, resulting in CL 11 for his scorching ray. The lesser rod of quickening is crafted and personalised (specific class, specific skill, specific race) so not only it is within the wealth allotment for said NPC but also it can't be used by the PCs if they loot it-so the DM does not have to worry about exceeding wealth per encounter tables.

This is what you consider "the average caster encounter"?