A party without a healer

[krunchyfrogg]

Wow, sounds liek a 1e or 2e game. Once 3e came out, I've never seen a shortage of Clerics or Druids.

 

[Darklone]

Wow, sounds liek a 1e or 2e game. Once 3e came out, I've never seen a shortage of Clerics or Druids.

That fighter only (ok, we had one berserker/barbarian) was 3.0. Rocked. We didn't care about this evil magicks, we smote the darn spellcasters and burnt their castles!

 

[William drake]

We played a campaign without a healer and it just made us more careful.

It came about because we all just accepted that someone had to play a cleric (just like someone had to play a thief to disarm traps), and it became a chore. So the DM said, "play what you want, you don't need a cleric." Sure, we couldn't whine to the cleric for healing (which was happening a lot before this campaign), but we all got to play exactly what we wanted.

To expedite playtime, move through the "days off healing" time periods and suggest that someone take Heal Skill (even if it's not a lot). So if the party gets hurt badly and time is not of the essence in the story, it's a matter of the players saying "We use PC B' Heal skill and rest X days until we are full up."

If time is of the essence (i.e. consequences for taking time off), have a healer in town that will help to a point (so it's not abused) or have healing potions be a large portion of the treasure.

-Suzi

I agree. Playing with a healer, or a rouge in the party everytime because you know that it's a dungeon crawl style play, gets boreing. The game should be "come as you are, and get through if you can?" And if its a story based game, like this person said, wounds a apart of it, if you dont want to get hurt and have to wait it out like everyone else, dont play. You shouldn't just play if your going to get healed like something out of a FF game. Rest, and down time amonst the towns folk, or the other players, should be important to the goup after killing the troll in the woods that ate two kids. Down time, might give them extra plot, or social standing, even just some good RP'ing with those who are thankful to the heroes.

yes, they are adventures...everyone might want a few points in heal so that they can take care of themselves, but their also smart, and cunning...if they go out becasue they know the can do it, they dont wait around for the medicade card to s how up in the mail.

Its true, without a player the game can get rough, but it also makes it a bit more exciting, and real, and demands the players play smarter...if they cant handle it, then they arn't up for real Rp'ing.

 

[William drake]

Maybe I've missed something, but isn't the heal skill a bit redundant at higher levels? From what I've gathered, you can't heal more than 2 hp/day, and that's with complete bedrest. It's enough to make a lvl 13 barbarian with CON 17 start crying.

I'll go and check out the Reserve Points that you mentioned Tharian (as well as try to remember to make sure someone got UMD next time ).

No, it should be that you heal your number of class levels, or HD per day..so a 13th barbarian would heal 13 HP a day untill his HP was filled, and then his Con, if he were so wounded that it went there, would heal after the rest of his body was up to par. And that's without aid, or a pro-healer who can boost that up with a healing kit and herbs and so on atending to him every few hours.

 

[Ry]

Use UA's Reserve Points. They're in the sage SRD at systemreferencedocuments.org too

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I would also allow wizards/sorcerers to add the cure spells and maybe the restoration spells to their spell list.

I often use this... Just slapping most of the cleric spells into the sorcerer/wizard list is usually help enough.

I also allow anyone to find traps, regardless of the DC in the case that noone wants to play a rogue.

Later
silver

 

[Set]

The 2 rogues could use UMD and Wands of CLW. The 'mage' could take Arcane Disciple and add cure spells to his list.

We rarely have a dedicated 'healer,' but several characters have that as an option. The Cleric of Wee Jas may not be able to spontaneously heal, but he's got a Wand of CLW. The Ranger also has one. The Druid is usually in animal form, but can stop to heal if anyone can get her out of the front lines...

What we *never* have is a rogue. Nobody in our gaming group can stand them, and so we tend to suck up some trap damage. Frankly, the only time we did have a rogue, she failed her Disable check and died anyway (Poor Fort save on the character that is *most* likely to get poisoned performing her class role? Brilliant design.), so it was just a waste of time. The character re-rolled as a Paladin and was much better at dealing with traps by *surviving* them.

Our standard 'look for traps' technique starts with the words, 'okay, who has the most hit points?'

 

[Crothian]

Don't change the rules for them. Let them play and adjust to the fact they can't heal as much. So, they might have few less encounters per day and need to rest in a town for a few days before going back to the dungeon. They might have to spend more money on having NPC healing spells and getting potions and wands. But it can work as long as they think a little and the DM is not one of those guys who will just TPK them and force one of them to make a healer. If you are that type of DM don't TPK them, just be honest and tell them one of them needs to be cleric.

 

[rgard]

One problem that I keep coming across is having groups without any healers. Parties with 2 rogues, 1 mage, a barbarian and a fighter, that sort of party. Usually someone ends up with volounteering a career change to something along the lines of cleric or druid, but it's happened more than once that they're standing there without anyone to mend their wounds after a fight.

In my experience this tends to slow down the game a lot, and even the weakest of enemies becomes dangerous obstacles since it takes several days to heal just one hit. This means that most dungeon crawling, storming of enemy holds or anything else that requires killing a lot of weak enemies, is quickly thrown off the table. It's just not viable.


So I'm asking you, short of carrying around an enormous arsenal of healing potions (and that's hardly likely at low levels) what other options are there when you don't have a healer? I'm asking for solutions for both players and DMs.

One of the characters could go Ur-Priest. You get the faster progression of divine spells.

Also, look at the spell caster (generic class) from UA. Spells known and spells per day works like a sorcerer, but the character can pick spells from any list.

 

[Seonaid]

We have healing in my party, but the GM has house-ruled healing a bit. This won't help the situation terribly, but it might make it more bearable.

For any healing magic, the first point of healing brings you up to 0 if you are at negative anything, and the rest of the healing is added on as positive HP. So, if you are at -9 and the potion roll is 7, you are up at 6 HP.

He likes this system because it makes sense (it's magic, after all). As I said, this won't help a lot, and it certainly is more useful at lower levels than higher, but it is one small thing the GM can do.

Edit: By the by, I am also in the camps of "let them play what they like" and "let the dice fall where the may." I have yet to GM, but if I make poor choices during chargen, I don't expect the GM to hold back on me (unless the challenges are not correctly scaled), and I don't expect the GM to modify things to "make up for" my character design.