Heal skill instead of Cure spells

I put together some additions to heal to replace the cure spells in my campaign world. There aren't any clerics in the world so I wanted to have something in place to help the characters out.

Additions to the Heal Skill:
One can now use the heal skill to heal hitpoints and to remove
ailments. A character can take a full round action that provokes
attacks of opportunity to cure hitpoints(Cure Action). This action
requires doses. Doses can be gathered using the survival skill.
Using the survival skill in this manner is equivalent to gathering
food. Doses can also be acquired from a healing kit. The standard
dose in a healing kit is equivalent to 5 doses when used with this
application of the skill.

When using this skill a character may add a portion of the amount they
exceed the skill check to the hitpoints they heal.

Normal Use
Doses Effect DC
1 d4 (+ max 5) 12
1 2d4 (+ max 5) 14
1 3d4 (+ max 5) 16
1 4d4 (+ max 5) 18

Use with a healing kit or the Advanced Healer Feat
Doses Effect DC
1 d6 (+ max 5) 12
1 2d6 (+ max 10) 14
1 3d6 (+ max 15) 16
1 4d6 (+ max 20) 18

The following appliations of the skill use the greater of the casting
time of the spell or a full round action.
Other applications of the skill :
Doses Effect DC
2 Restoration, Lesser 14
2 Remove Disease 16
3 Restoration 18
4 Restoration, Greater 24

Feat: Advanced Healer [General]
The user of this feat treats all does as if they came from a healer's
kit when using a Cure Action. A Cure Action is also considered to be
a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunty for the
character. Lastly, a character with this feat gains the heal skill a
class skill.

Looks interesting. A couple of points:
Are the any divine casters in the game? Are there bards? Without clerics, the "lesser healing" classes become much more significant in the world.

By your system, it's easier to heal someone 1d4 hp than it is to stabalize them.

Also, it doesn't quite balance out with the standard system (assuming that's your goal). The standard healing magic system limits the amount of healing someone could do in a day. By your system, a skilled healer with moderate resources can perform virtually unlimited healing.

Think of a 1st level character with 4 ranks in Heal and a 14 Wisdom--that's a +6 to their heal check. They take 10 on a heal, and get a 16--that's 3d4. With a 50gp healing kit, they can perform that action 100 times in 10 minutes. That's better than just about any high-level cleric I've ever seen.

I might suggest looking at the existing clerical healing abilities first (as well as the costs of potions and scrolls of various cure spells). Then reverse-engineer a comparible (if slighly weaker) system using the Heal skill from that.

Spider

Here's my thinking:
The Heal skill already has rules for treating disease and poison. Indeed, it's pretty easy for a higher-level character with a decent wisdom and heal skill to cure any disease or poison by taking 10 on their check. Unless there's a really good reason, I'd leave them as they are.

The skill allows neither HP nor ability damage to be restored.

Assuming they use all their spells for it (except Orisons), and they've got a wis of at least 16:
A 1st level cleric can typically heal 2d8+2hp/day. (1d8+1 x2)
a 5th level cleric can typically heal 16d8+45hp/day. (1d8+5 x4) + (2d8+5 x3) + (3d8+5 x2)
They can also cure diseases magically, and Restore ability damage.
a 10th level cleric starts to get fuzzy, as they can cast Heal. They can also Raise Dead, Restore level drain, etc.

Since a cleric has to use up their spells to do these things, I think the healing from a cleric should be substantially more useful than healing from a skill. This utility can be reflected in material costs, amount healed, time required, uses per day, skill ranks, and even feats.

There should be a pretty significant limitation on how much they can heal someone in a day. Off the top of my head, I might suggest that a target can normally only be healed by a number of HP equal to your ranks in the Heal skill.

For example: Joe the barbarian takes 8 hp during a fight. Phil the monk tries to heal him. He makes his checks, spends some time, and is able to heal Joe 4 hp (since Phil only has 4 ranks in Heal). Barbara the wizard comes over to see what she can do, but she can't help any more (since she's also only got 4 ranks in Heal). If they go visit a 5th-level healer (who has, say, 8 ranks in Heal), Joe can be healed up to full hp.

Not many characters that aren't divine spellcasters have a high wisdom. Let's assume someone wants to play a monk who's also a pretty skilled healer. They've got a Wis of 16.

They max out their heal skill, take 10 on checks, and consistently get a 17 at 1st level. So a 17 should be enough to heal someone, but certainly not more than 2d8+2 hp. Being able to heal one person for 4 hp at 1st level seems pretty reasonable.

How about this:
Feat: Medic [General]
Prerequisites: At least 1 Rank in the Heal skill
The user of this feat can use the Heal skill to cure damage. The target cannot be healed this way for more HP than the medic has ranks in the Heal skill during a 24-hour period. Each use of this ability requires 2GP worth of herbs, bandages, and the like to perform. A standard Healer's Kit provides 25 such uses, and provides a +2 bonus on all heal checks.
Curing HP in this way requires a standard action.

DC 10: Heals 1 hp
DC 15: Heals 1d4+1 hp
DC 20: Heals 2d4+2 hp
For every additional 5 points of the heal check, the medic can restore 1d4+1 additional hp.

Feat: Greater Medic [General]
Prerequisites: At least 8 Ranks in the Heal skill, Medic feat
The user of this feat can use the Heal skill to cure ability damage
Curing ability damage in this way requires 1 hour per check. It requires 10GP worth of medical supplies to accomplish.
DC 20: Heals 1 ability 1 point
DC 25: Heals 1 ability 1d4+1 points
DC 30: Heals 1 ability 2d4+2 points
For every 5 points of the heal check, the medic can restore 1d4+1 additional ability score damage.
Furthermore, this feat allows the medic to cure a target a number of HP equal to twice her ranks in Heal.


So, what does this mean?
Our 1st level monk can pretty easily heal his friends 1 hp during combat. Outside of combat, he can heal each of his friends by 4 hp each day. It costs him a feat and some skill points, but he can at least help his friends out.

At 6th level, he can take the Greater Medic feat and be able to heal his friends even more. He can easily cure up to 9 points of ability damage to his friends, although that would take 9 hours. Furthermore, he can now heal his friends up to 18 hp/day pretty easily. Not great, especially considering that his friends probably have a lot more total HP than that. But good enough.

It might even be worth creating a third feat in the chain, that would allow the curing of blindness, creation of non-magical healing salves, etc.

Spider

Thanks for your evaluation

I'm using the Arcana Evolved Magic system in a homebrewed world minus any curative spells. Maybe the skill check can be the number of d4s available.

I'll do some more work on this. I definitely don't want to leave my players with out the ability to heal themselves but I don't want to create a system that even clerics would instead of cure spells.

No problem! This is something I've been thinking on a lot lately, as all the gods get killed at some point in my campaign's history.

Spider

Hwo about if you required different herbs and balms for different things they're trying to do? Like, a Restoration would require a more special salve than curing a couple hp.

Might I suggest this simple rule:

You may only be healed once for a single injury.

ie - every time you get hit, keep a tally of it, as well as the damage done. Then the healer makes a single heal check, rolls out the healing x the number of individual injuries you took and you're done until next fight.

This means that the characters will still get worn down if they take significant wounds all in a single shot, but they're likely to be at full health after a mook fight and some recovery time.

The other possibility is to turn all the damage healed by skill use into subdual damage - that way badly injured characters will still be down some unless they take a long time to heal up, but they're less likely to die.

Variant Heal

I have been thinking of this all morning.. well, at least the 2.5 hour drive up to my weekend work

I came up with an idea, which is kinda rough and I have not talked them over with anyone yet..unless I count y'all.

Addition to the Heal Skill description:

Emergency Care:
Convert some damage from Lethal to Non-Lethal within the 'Golden Time' shortly after the character is wounded.
With a successful Heal check vs DC 15 and 2 full round actions spent within the 'Golden Time'
from when the character was wounded, you convert a number of damage points from Lethal to Non-Lethal. This number is a Cure Roll, detailed below. While performing this action, you and your patient are denied DEX and you must have both hands free to tend the wounds.
You must also be able to reach the wounded portion of the patient.
If you take damage while performing this skill use, you must make a Concentration check DC 5 + all damage taken that round. Failure extends the time required to apply Emergency Care by 1 Full round action.
You cannot 'Take 10' or 'Take 20' as use of Emergency Care may cause damage to the patient.
Retry: A failed check increases the DC by +5.
Any previous successful attempts that day increases the Cure Roll penalty to the amount of hit points converted. {Essentially, it becomes much harder to improve on natural healing and easier to mess up}
Hurried Care: You may hurry the attempt, increasing the base DC to 25 and reduce the check to one full round action.
Hasty Care: You may work even faster, increasing the base DC to 35 and reduce the check to a standard action.

'Golden Time': Emergency care must be provided within 1 minute (10 rounds ) of the injury

Cure Roll: A negative results in the character losing that number of hit points and begins Bleeding 1 hit point per round until stabilized.
The base penalty is 2, which may be increased by previous succesful cures {as noted above}.
The Base Die type is 1D4.

If you have 5 ranks in the Heal skill and use a Healers kit, you increase the Base Die by one step.
You can use either Herbology *or* Alchemy to improve the benefit of a Healing Kit:
If you have 5 ranks in the Herbalist skil, and use a Herbalist Bag, you increase the Base Die by one step.
If you have 5 ranks in the Alchemy skill and use an Alchemist Bag, you increase the Base Die by one step.
{these bags cost 1/2 the price of a normal Healers kit.. more detail on them is floating around in my head somewhere }

If you have 5 ranks in Religion and use Blessed Sacrements, you increase the Base Die by one step, however the patient must have faith that this will work. They must make a Devotion Check, a WILL save modified by Knowledge: Religion ranks vs DC 20, or the Cure has no effect. Making this save indicates a devotion to the attendee's diety and can have negtive impact on divine casters abilities. The patient can choose to fail this save.
{Blessed Sacrements can be made using a 1st Level spell similar to Magic Weapon. It can affect up to 50 sacrements, normally wafers of bread, or one object. If used on a single object, that object becomes a Holy Symbol. still, more in my head on that one...}

Feats:
Expert Healer: General
Requirements: 5 ranks of Heal.
Benefit: The 'Golden Time' you can use Emergency Care in expands to 1 hour
Normal: The 'Golden Time' you can use Emergency Care is 1 minute {10 rounds}

Surgeon: General
Requirements: Expert Healer, 5 ranks in either Alchemy or Herbalist
Benefit: You can use additonal Cure Rolls equal to your INT modifier. For each additional Cure Roll you use, you cause 1 point of CON drain to the patient.
Normal: You only have 1 Cure Roll per use of Emergency Care.

Faith Healer: General
Requirements: Expert Healer, Religion: 5 Ranks
Benefit: You can use additional Cure Rolls equal to your CHR modifier. For each additional Cure Roll you use, you cause 1 point of WIS drain. If your Patient is willing, they automatically make the Devotion Check.
Normal: You only have 1 Cure Roll per use of Emergency Care and a Devotion save is required to benefit from a religious healing.
{I am thinking of adding a benefit along the lines of:
You can trade Cure rolls for various miraculous healing. However, when doing so, you cause 1 point of WIS Damage for each Cure Roll used in this manner.
1 Cure roll to Negate Poisen
2 Cure Rolls to remove Blindness/Deafness
3 Cure Rolls to remove Paralysis.
.. etc.. not very sure on the cost/benefit of this ...}


Interaction with Magical Healing:
Emergency Care is ineffective if the patient has received Magical Healing for the wounds, altho a negative Cure Roll will still cause damage.
Any converted damage must be healed, either by natural recovery of non-lethal damage or by spending magical healing points on it, before lethal damage can be repaired through magical means.
=======================
This grants a focused faith healer the abilty to reliably heal 1D10-2 points of damage to his allies once a day, presuming they are of his faith.

Hope that all makes as much sense to you as it does to me

I've always been fond of this little formula:

HP returned = [(result - 10) / 2]

I require a healing salve (5 gp) to be used in conjunction with the check so as to put some cost into the equation. Then I allow unlimited to be used each day. It provides for fairly effective healing without being too overpowering or stepping on the toes of more powerful methods.

The thing I enjoy most about it is that at low levels you can actually cause damage becaue of ineffective healing techniques, but never so much as to be absurd.

I always put the time required as 1 minute, but perhaps you could incur a -5 (or 10?) penalty to reduce it to an action that could be done in combat.

Heres my take on the healing skill. I still have clerics i just thought that not every battlefied medic should have to be a divine spell caster and the heal skill should actually be worth spending skill pts on. Lol a side affect of this has been at least one character takes a bunch of heal skill ranks in each campaign.

Heal ( INT )
This skill is used to set broken bones, cure deseases and poisons, aid in long term, and cure damage.
Set broken bone: DC 10. Without being set a broken bone wont heal right and half of the ability damage will be permanent.
Cure desease: DC= save DC. A success here counts as a successful save.
Cure poison: DC= poison save. A successful save here halves the length of the poisons course and counts as a successful save if the recipient failed his initial save.
Long term care: DC 10. The healer can treat 1 target plus his INT bonus. Those under the healers care heal naturally at double the normal heal rate.
Cure damage: DC 15. This takes one minute. It heals one pt of damage for every 5 pts over 15 on the check per HD the target possesses. Double that amount for subdual damage. Each character can only have their HP healed in this way once per day.