Is the cleric's "Channeling" ability a mistake?

[Drowbane]

In my group the clerics tend to use Channeling as Post Combat healing, similiar to using a Wand of CLW. Or in fights vs Undead.

I have a slight problem with Channeling having to be toggled between Healing Living and Hurting Undead... why doesn't it do both? It would certainly be more useful... and the fluff makes no sense for it being selective. "This positive energy heals the living but doesn't effect the walking dead!" "This positive energy (same ability no less!) hurts the walking dead, but doesn't heal the living...".

What? Why? I think this will be house-ruled next session... I'll talk to my group about it.

 

[Wik]

The reason it doesn't do both, mechanically, is because it makes clerics turn into a no-brainer again. You're stuck spamming the same tactic - close with the undead, and then you simultaneously heal your friends and hurt your enemies. Which makes the cleric boring again.

 

[Empirate]

The reason it doesn't do both, mechanically, is because it makes clerics turn into a no-brainer again. You're stuck spamming the same tactic - close with the undead, and then you simultaneously heal your friends and hurt your enemies. Which makes the cleric boring again.

And that would be terrible, because then they'd be almost as unfun as playing a Fighter or Rogue in the first place. RULE CASTORZZ!

 

[ImperatorK]

There is a feat that gives PF Cleric Turning Undead.

 

[DaveMage]

Count me as a fan of challening over turning.

The best part about it is how easy it is to use without having to deal with the "Turn Undead" table of 3.x. Anything that makes 3.x/Pathfinder combat faster is a big + for me.

 

[Wicht]

Mark me up as a huge fan of channeling in Pathfinder as well. As for why it does not both hurt and heal at the same time, -that was tried in the beta playtesting but it was simply too good.

May I also suggest that those who would like to use channeling to even greater effect should check out The Secrets of Divine Channeling.

 

[milo]

I was never impressed with Turn Undead unless you took the sun domain or went with the Radiant Servant of Pelor prestige class. It always seemed to be lacking to me. The mechanic for it was always a little iffy too. I don't know if I ever saw it used without the book being opened to figure it out.

 

[Squire James]

My players generally had no problem healing their enemies along with themselves. The other party members could easily do enough damage to the wounded targets to overcome that little bit of healing. The cleric usually moved around to heal only 1 or 2 enemies anyway. Selective Channeling is nice, but hardly a necessity until the healing's become significant.

Generally, if (allies healed - enemies healed) is +2 or more, it's worth throwing.

 

[Adimus]

Count me as a fan of challening over turning.

The best part about it is how easy it is to use without having to deal with the "Turn Undead" table of 3.x. Anything that makes 3.x/Pathfinder combat faster is a big + for me.

Yeah count me in, that chart was a nightmare.

My group likes channeling too, and rarely has the cleric had to use it in combat. I really think it was an elegant way to replace the cheesy CLW wands everyone had (which had no style and made no sense) and to present an alternative to 4e's healing surges that UTILIZED healing classes instead of making them more or less obsolete.

 

[Epametheus]

In 3.x I'd found Turn Undead to be pretty worthless (especially since a lot of undead had massive amount of hit dice, making them functionally immune to the power), but the divine feats eventually salvaged it. Basically, Turn Undead was crap until you had feats that let you burn up turning attempts for stuff actually worth doing (like caster level boosts or healing at range).

Channel energy is useful right out the box, and it's just a feat to get a more reliable version of turn undead. The PF turn undead is simply a saving throw vs. fear by all undead in the area, instead of all the crap with the chart and turning damage and whatnot.

Selective channel is a little annoying for being a "must-have" feat though. But channel energy has worked great for every party I've had with access to it, and I've often found myself cursing the fact that my nature oracle doesn't have it. It's not massive healing, but getting all party members at once makes it really, really handy.