Healer equivelent to Warlocks and Warblades?

[Asmor]

I'm a huge fan of the classes that get abilities they can use in every encounter. I've never really cared for the whole "limited resources" spell casting paradigm. I love the Warlock and that Adept thingie from Dragon Magic, and I love the classes in the Book of Nine Swords. I think they make the game more interesting and less static. There's no worries about wasting precious spell slots, and there are better alternatives than "5-foot step and full attack" every round.

So I'm thinking that I'd like to run a campaign using these newer classes and getting rid of the base classes. Big problem, though, is that there's no healer with abilities similar to these that I'm aware of. Before I go off and try to come up with something, I just want to make sure I'm not reinventing the wheel. Is there a healer-type who fits this new model?

 

[Moon-Lancer]

the shamin or whatever from phb 2 gets an aura of regeneration up to med hit points. Its an option... and its the only thing i can think of besides being that angel thing from savage specease that can use cure light as a su or sp unlimited times.

 

[Kurotowa]

It's really hard to pull that off, when a declining store of HP is essential to the current game setup. Being able to heal fully after each encounter would mean having to rebalance the entire game. That said...

The Dragon Shaman from the PHBII is probably the best there is. They have an aura that gives Fast Healing to anyone at less than half full HP, and a fairly robust Lay on Hands style supplimentary healing.

The next best is an Incarnate from MoI. With the right combination of soulmeld choices you can heal others by absorbing the damage at a 2:1 rate, boost the effect of any healing spell on yourself, and get enough UMD to wave a Wand of CLW. It's a little round about, but it works.

 

[frankthedm]

At best a healing ability usable every round should convert Damage to non lethal damage. Otherwise there is far to much healing going around, evem for the for way this edtion of D&D is balanced.

A cleric with a party that routinly buys him a stick of cure light wounds would be the closest to what you seek.

 

[Blue Sky]

I don't think unlimited healing per day is a bad thing, and wouldn't really break the game, especially if all the classes are balanced for a per-encounter game.

That said, the binder from Tome of Magic, can, as early as 5th level, bind Buer, who gives fast healing 1 and a Cure Light Wounds-ish ability usable every 5 rounds. Depending on what level you plan on starting, that could work for you.

 

[kerbarian]

It's really hard to pull that off, when a declining store of HP is essential to the current game setup. Being able to heal fully after each encounter would mean having to rebalance the entire game. That said...

The Dragon Shaman from the PHBII is probably the best there is. They have an aura that gives Fast Healing to anyone at less than half full HP, and a fairly robust Lay on Hands style supplimentary healing.

The next best is an Incarnate from MoI. With the right combination of soulmeld choices you can heal others by absorbing the damage at a 2:1 rate, boost the effect of any healing spell on yourself, and get enough UMD to wave a Wand of CLW. It's a little round about, but it works.

Hmm. You could actually combine those two classes for even better healing. Use the incarnate ability to heal other party members to full (by spending your own hp), and then let the dragon shaman aura continually bring you back up to 1/2 hp. That lets you get the whole party up to full hp except for the healer himself, who ends up at 1/2. The healer could then use regular spells or the dragon shaman's touch of vitality to top himself off.

Unfortunately, the multiclassing doesn't seem to combine very well except for that combo, and the incarnate healing has limitations. You can only heal a particular target once per hour, and the amount you can heal each time is roughly 3x incarnate level.

 

[Particle_Man]

You might want to throw in the "reserve hit points" rule from Unearthed Arcana.

I had thought of an "all non-core base classes" campaign too. Or a more limited "PHB II and DMG base classes only" campaign.

 

[Asmor]

Thanks, I'll have to take another look at the Dragon Shaman. I just sorta glossed over it the first time around.

 

[Ilium]

Also, just because you don't want PCs of the PHB classes, that doesn't mean they don't exist in the world. Wands could be created by cleric NPCs, then used by your warlock with his excellent UMD ability. Expensive, I admit, but combined with a Dragon Shaman in the party it should work out ok.

 

[AuraSeer]

At best a healing ability usable every round should convert Damage to non lethal damage. Otherwise there is far to much healing going around, evem for the for way this edtion of D&D is balanced.

We tried something like this in our previous campaign, in a low-magic world. It seemed a cool idea at the time, but it didn't work for us because we removed regular cures entirely.

In that world, each cure spell was replaced by a "close wounds" spell one level lower, which converted the same number of d8s of lethal damage into nonlethal damage. (That is, close light wounds was a 0-level spell that converted 1d8+level points.) The problem was, this type of healing turned out to be useless during combat. If you've got 20 hit points and have taken 19 points of damage, changing all that to nonlethal damage doesn't help you; you're still going down after the next hit.

We players got frustrated and asked to restart in a new campaign. If anyone else manages to get this type of ability to work and be balanced, I'd love to hear about it.