A Wizard that Heals?

[I'm A Banana]

It's all about niches....

You've got:
* Big Guy with Sword (Melee Damage - fighter)
* Little Guy for Treasure (special forces - rogue)
* Weak Guy with Kaboom (damage-dealing - wizard)
* Defender (healing, armor - cleric)

Any time you're messin' with those stereotypes, you're messin' with a big part of the feel of D&D. Why be a cleric, if wizards can heal? Why be a Rogue, if Fighters could find traps? Why be a Rogue if they can Cast Fireball?

There's a tentative balance in 3e that allows a Fighter to find traps, or a Rogue to cast fireball, or a Wizard to heal, or a Cleric to dodge, if they want to....they just have to work hard at it, because it's not their niche.

As far as balance go, if you're not affraid of the cleric being largely pointless, you can give wizards healing...roughly, to maintain the vague balance, at one level higher than their clerical counterparts (wizzes get CLW as a 2nd level spell, for instnace). Of course, you could get rid of clerics all together, but then you'd be missing Armored Spellcasting, which may be iffy....

 

[Creamsteak]

Here's a fairly interesting alternative wizard spell-list that includes healing:

here

I'm also sorta fond of the "wizards with psionic style healing" that converts normal damage to subduel damage at a slow rate.

 

[Erratic K]

I've always seen it as:

Clerics are to white magic as Wizards are to black magic.

Healing just isn't part of the Wizardly archetype...

-E

 

[Creamsteak]

Then what's the evil cleric? What about the wizard diviner?

 

[ergeheilalt]

What if a bard with Scribe scroll writes a Cure spell down. Can the wizard use it?

Yes and no.

If he has ranks in use magic device - yes.

Otherwise, no. Scrolls are spell completion items. Basically, a druidic scribed scroll of summon nature's ally II would be divine, but unusable by a cleric.

....

As for wizards that heal, I haven't given it much thought. While I don't think it would be hugely unbalancing or unfair, I'd like to leave well enough alone. If a wizard really wants clerical healing spells, he might as well go MyTh.

My 2 cents,
Erge

 

[Mach2.5]

There was an old Dragon magazine article that gave some nice ways for wizard's to heal, without breaking what a wizard actually is thematically. It was somewhere around 126-136 (give or take a few, and no, I'm not diving through the sets looking, at least not till I get the CD-Rom).

None of the spells worked like a simple clerical cure spell. It was either temporary healing (illusion), transfering hit points from one being to another (and only the highest level of spells came close to a 1 to 1 ratio), restoring limbs with shadow versions of the limb (illusion again). It was definately a great article that an old DM of mine used extensively for a no gods homebrew. If someone can confirm the magazine number for me, I'd appreciate it alot.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I agree that it's a sacred cow of DnD... simply the way it's been done for years. Don't really see a problem with changing it*, but it does change the flavour of DnD, which is why it hasn't been done... yet.

I think Unearthed Arcana takes a swipe at this one with the Gestalt character classes. IIRC, the spellcaster class is much like a sorceror, but picks spells from the wizard/cleric and druid spell lists.



* - Other than wizard PCs 'having' to learn the spells. Or put up with the whinging when another PC wants healing and figures the wizard 'wasted' a spell slot on fireball rather than cure serious wounds. But that's another separate issue.

 

[S'mon]

I was thinking...why can't wizards heal? I mean, they can kill people and do magnificant things, why not heal? So...here's what I was thinking...why can't a Conjurer take Cure spells (cure spells are conjuration, for some odd reason)? Granted, cure spells are not on a wizards spell list, but I can't think of any reason they shouldn't be. What are your thoughts on it?

Gygax made it that Magic-Users can't Heal, possibly as an early form of Game-Balance. Personally I see no problem with letting wizards use the Cure spells, as the variant Witch class does. It would let a party do without a Cleric, which I reckon is a good thing. Really I don't even see a problem with arcane casters using Raise Dead; they can do it anyway once they get Wish. Most of the divine spells could be transferred to the Arcane list and the Cleric class eliminated without harm to the game IMO.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Wizards can actually heal someone by using polymorph. It isn't terribly cost effective but they recover hit points as if they had rested for a night (or some similar form of words) so they can recover their level in hit points.

 

[Plane Sailing]

My next D&D game will have only one spell list, a la Arcana Unearthed. I despise the division between "divine" and "arcane" magic and the sooner I can get rid of it the better.