Clerics can't heal (NPCs)?

[senna]

At least an smart DM, those that puts rule 0 to use, could make the npc heal the bonus hp (1d6+CHA) because, most of the time, the npc would have a few hp. The other way is, that an npc is allied with the pcs, if the dmthinks it is an important character, it should be more stated out, in that case be buit more like a pc, and the problem for that case is over.

 

[Derren]

Just because you currently don't see a way for something to happen based on what little information we have doesn't mean it can't happen.

Imagine the following situation. The 1st level PCs are together with some (not story important) NPCs hunting, escorting, whatever when they get attacked. One of the NPCs gets bloodied and the cleric wants to heal him. How?

We might not see everything, but we know some powers of 1st level PCs including a (the?) battle healing power of 1st level cleric. And this power is not able to heal NPCs.

 

[keterys]

All the ritual would have to do is give someone else one of your healing surges. Of course, since that's how Lay on Hands works it seems less likely, but there ya go.

 

[senna]

We might not see everything, but we know some powers of 1st level PCs including a (the?) battle healing power of 1st level cleric. And this power is not able to heal NPCs.

Your vision is clouded by a realy, REALY, strict view of the raw. Before making such claims look to how you could work with the rules to achieve what you want from the game, for an example look my previous post.

 

[Kordeth]

Imagine the following situation. The 1st level PCs are together with some (not story important) NPCs hunting, escorting, whatever when they get attacked. One of the NPCs gets bloodied and the cleric wants to heal him. How?

We might not see everything, but we know some powers of 1st level PCs including a (the?) battle healing power of 1st level cleric. And this power is not able to heal NPCs.

Once again you're poking one part of the elephant. We don't know that NPCs don't have healing surges. We know that healing surges aren't in their stat blocks, and the designers have told us over and over that things which don't come up regularly in combat aren't in an NPC's stat block. That could suggest any number of things:

1) NPCs don't have healing surges, as you suggest, and the entire concept of magical healing is broken.

2) All monsters/NPCs have a fixed number of healing surges (maybe 1 for Heroic, 2 for Paragon, 3 for Epic) which isn't put in the stat block because most monsters don't have abilities that trigger healing surges.

3) There's a general rule somewhere that says "if a creature lacks healing surges, X times per day an effect that triggers a healing surge heals Y points of damage."

I'm sure other people can come up with even more alternatives, but bottom line is that unless you've seen a rule that explicitly says "only PCs have healing surges," you're groping a pachyderm. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

 

[TheLordWinter]

I think everyone is making this a bit more complicated than it has to be... a healing surge is 1/4 of your hit points. A cleric's healing word, when used on an NPC, heals them by 1/4 of their hit points plus 1d6. Was that really so hard?

 

[Derren]

Your vision is clouded by a realy, REALY, strict view of the raw. Before making such claims look to how you could work with the rules to achieve what you want from the game, for an example look my previous post.

Look at my original Post. I already said that I could houserule it that NPCs can be healed (Thats what you are doing. You are just using a different houserule). But by raw the cleric can't heal most of the people (in combat) unlike the paladin.

Once again you're poking one part of the elephant. We don't know that NPCs don't have healing surges. We know that healing surges aren't in their stat blocks, and the designers have told us over and over that things which don't come up regularly in combat aren't in an NPC's stat block. That could suggest any number of things:

I think being able to heal 25% of your HP in battle is important enough to include it in the combat statblock.

 

[Lacyon]

Look at my original Post. I already said that I could houserule it that NPCs can be healed (Thats what you are doing. You are just using a different houserule). But by raw the cleric can't heal most of the people (in combat) unlike the paladin.

Have you seen the RAW?

 

[Cadfan]

This is silly. Why not go further? Argue that because the "recover all hit point loss with a full rest" rule is only applicable to adventurers, and because heal check's and paladin abilities activate healing surges, no non adventuring NPC can ever heal an injury, ever. Cut your hand when you're 12? You'll die at 70 with that injury still bleeding. You should have taken an adventuring class.

Repeat after me: The rules of the game are not laws of physics. If you insist upon making them laws of physics, you will not have fun (unless your fun is creating wacky rules and laughing). Why is it that, when I throw a boulder at a brick wall, the brick wall takes damage but the boulder does not? Why is it impossible to break a spear shaft over someone else's head, but remarkably easy to break it over your own knee? Why does falling from a mile up in the sky all the way to the ground happen in six seconds? Why can I recover and reuse 50% of my arrows even if I fired them at a Fire Elemental bathing in a sea of lava?

Because the rules are abstractions, that's why. If and when additional verisimilitude is necessary, the human judgment of a Dungeon Master is available. Its a good part of what he's for.

 

[Kordeth]

Look at my original Post. I already said that I could houserule it that NPCs can be healed (Thats what you are doing. You are just using a different houserule). But by raw the cleric can't heal most of the people (in combat) unlike the paladin.

No, by RAR (Rules as Revealed) it appears that clerics can't heal monsters or nonclassed NPCs. Until we actually have RAW, claiming anything is "RAW" is a fallacious argument. It's like reading the preamble to the Constitution and saying "Federal troops can't be prevented from quartering at my house."