Augment Healing and Vigor Spells

[Bagpuss]

Augment Healing says....

Benifit: Add +2 points per spell level to the amount of damage healed by any Conjuration (Healing) spell that you cast.

Vigor, lesser (1st Level Cleric, Druid Spell) FH 1
Vigor (3rd level Cleric/Druid Spell) FH 2
Vigor, greater (5th level) FH 4
Vigor, Mass lesser (3rd level) FH 1 (multiple targets)
Vigorous Circle (6th level) FH 3 (multiple targets

Each grants Fast Healing X, but it is phrased interestingly.

With a touch of your hand, you boost the subject's life energy, granting him or her fast healing ability for the duration of the spell. The subject heals 1 hit point per round of such damage until the spell ends or she begins dying of hit point loss during that time.

Duration is 10+1 round/level, and refer to Vigor, lessers wording, but change the hit points per round.

All the spells are Conjuration (Healing), so should get a bonus from the Augment Healing Feat.

Has the been any offical ruling as to how it works?

You could read it that 1 hit point a round becomes 3 hit points for the 1st level spell. The 2 hit points becomes 8 hit points per round for the 3rd level spell. Which seems to make the feat/spell a very over powered, but technically seems correct. The spell you cast heals one point in the first round, and the augment healing then adds another 2 (for the 1st level spell). Next round the spell does the same so should/could the augment. But then over the 11 rounds assuming a 1st level caster it heals a total of 33 hit points.

The other way is that the Augment Healing effect only occurs once, perhaps on the round the spell is first cast. The spell will over all heal 1 hit point * X rounds (11 in total for 1st level caster), so Augment only adds +2 to that, for a maximum of 13 hit points.

Is there any offical ruling (I'll except Sage Advice) on this?

Of I'm going to be a playing a Cleric so I'ld really like the first option, but since I often DM, my gut tells me the second seems more balanced.

 

[Bagpuss]

Of course if you rule in the Vigor case that it only applies the once, then feat raises other issues with healing spells that effect multiple targets. Do you only apply it to the first target?

 

[Dr_Rictus]

To the best of my understanding, conventional wisdom is that granting a special ability that heals damage is not in itself treated as healing damage. So while the vigor spells are Conjuration [Healing], they are not affected by Augment Healing.

 

[Pinotage]

I'm not aware of an official ruling on this, but I'd simply apply the Augment Healing to the duration of the Vigor spell, so that a Lesser Vigor cast by a 3rd level cleric lasts 15 rounds instead of 13 rounds, and a Vigor cast by a 5th level cleric lasts 6 rounds longer than it normally would.

Pinotage

 

[Bagpuss]

To the best of my understanding, conventional wisdom is that granting a special ability that heals damage is not in itself treated as healing damage. So while the vigor spells are Conjuration [Healing], they are not affected by Augment Healing.

Well even if it is true that granting the ability is not actually healing the damage it is the ability that heals not the spell the spell is still effected by Augment Healing as it is a Conjuration (Healing) spell, it just heals 0 damage, which +2/spell level is then added. That would fit neatly with the second ruling I was thinking of.

 

[Jdvn1]

Well, Augment Healing does seem to imply that the affected spell does some healing in the first place. Since this isn't true with the Vigor spells, you could argue that it doesn't apply at all.

Having the spell heal 2/spell level on the first round doesn't seem to imbalance the game, and there isn't an official ruling on it, so go with whatever you like better.

 

[smootrk]

IMO, I would add the Augmented Healing once to the vigor spell effect, but I would add the bonus to the first round of healing and then have the duration & other effects be as written in the spell description. Gives a little boost to the healing, likely when the character needs it most, at the beginning. Seems fair to me anyway.

 

[Mahali]

IMO, I would add the Augmented Healing once to the vigor spell effect, but I would add the bonus to the first round of healing and then have the duration & other effects be as written in the spell description. Gives a little boost to the healing, likely when the character needs it most, at the beginning. Seems fair to me anyway.

Agreed. Add the extra HP in the begining. No way can you read that feat to add +2HP/spell lvl/round to the Vigor spells.

 

[Sejs]

Apply the Augment Healing bonus to the first round only. The feat modifies the total ammount of damage healed, not the damage healed per round.

 

[Bagpuss]

No way can you read that feat to add +2HP/spell lvl/round to the Vigor spells.

Well there is if the spell is healing 1 hit point a round and the Feat says it adds +2/per spell level to the amount of damage the spell heals (which it does).

This round it heals one point, next round the spell heals another point, and so on. They could be looked at as seperate events of healing, they are after all a full round apart. Other feats tend to trigger on each occurance of an event. So you could claim it triggers on each time the spell heals some damage.