Pathfinder 2E Healing in PF2

[MerricB]

G'day, folks!

I've just come from a couple of months of playing PF2 with a group that really didn't want to be playing that system. That's fine - plenty of other games to play.

But some of my experiences have made me wonder what groups who enjoy the game have discovered about the best way to play. And one thing I was particularly interested in was healing.

In "old" D&D, healing was limited and attritional combat common - so that you'd go into combats without all your hit points.
During 3E, things really changed and the designs became "you're foolish if you go into combat without full hit points." And with things like the wands of cure light wounds, it was trivial to heal up afterwards.

Our experience of PF2 was "you get hurt a lot" (which sits in the "you are foolish to start combats without full hp" camp), and also that the main way of healing was using the Medicine skill to treat wounds... which would mean the party spent a lot of time after each combat healing up. (Clerical healing magic was good but very limited in quantity). In retrospect, I believe we got the Medicine rules wrong... so we actually healed MORE quickly than was intended.

So, what's the experience of people who are actually good at playing the game? How much do you need to heal, and what methods do you use?

(For those interested in my incredibly negative experience with the game, you can read them here. But I also know that it was less than ideal conditions for us to play the game).

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Retreater]

It's assumed you completely heal between encounters. In fact, the assumption is so strong and integral to the system that many GMs just hand wave healing as long as the characters have paid the "feat tax" and have time.
Attrition, for better or worse, doesn't have a place in PF2. Encounters must be thrilling individually. It's not a style for everyone, but it's hard to get balance without it.

 

[MerricB]

It's assumed you completely heal between encounters. In fact, the assumption is so strong and integral to the system that many GMs just hand wave healing as long as the characters have paid the "feat tax" and have time.
Attrition, for better or worse, doesn't have a place in PF2. Encounters must be thrilling individually. It's not a style for everyone, but it's hard to get balance without it.

Is there a better way of healing than using the Medicine skill, or is that the primary method used at all levels?

Cheers,
Meric

 

[!DWolf]

You were playing Abomination Vaults I believe?

I found that when running Abomination Vaults (and other dungeons, note that I am fairly “old school” with dungeoneering) healing works as a sort of “press your luck mechanic”. After every fight the party has a strategic choice to make:

1. Heal in place. This is risky because the place is laid out so that adjacent monsters can wander in and interrupt. But if the party is only lightly injured they may be able to defeat the opponents. Otherwise they will have to retreat. In these cases I make character roll and keep track of cooldowns.
2. Retreat back to a safer area to heal up. This is less riskier but slower. It also gives the enemy time to plan and respond. The existence of multiple routes, teleporters, and stuff also make this interesting strategically. In these situations I just handwave it as long as they have one source of resourceless healing. I also give the enemies enough time to do whatever they are going to do.

Edited to add: I use a dice to determine how likely the characters are to be interrupted in the first scenario and I usually telegraph it, unless the opponents are unusually sneaky.

 

[Kaodi]

A couple of classes also have focus abilities that contribute to out of combat healing: the good* champion's healing touch and the archetype born from its focus spells, the blessed one. The inventor also has a similar ability, though it is a level 2 feat: searing restoration. For other classes it is more limited to self-healing, like the monk's wholeness of body. And some ancestries also have feats that allow you to get extra healing in a 10 minute rest.

But the main thing is that you ruthlessly exploit your DM's willingness to allow you to heal up to full no matter how improbable that circumstances would allow it.

 

[MerricB]

You were playing Abomination Vaults I believe?

I found that when running Abomination Vaults (and other dungeons, note that I am fairly “old school” with dungeoneering) healing works as a sort of “press your luck mechanic”. After every fight the party has a strategic choice to make:

1. Heal in place. This is risky because the place is laid out so that adjacent monsters can wander in and interrupt. But if the party is only lightly injured they may be able to defeat the opponents. Otherwise they will have to retreat. In these cases I make character roll and keep track of cooldowns.
2. Retreat back to a safer area to heal up. This is less riskier but slower. It also gives the enemy time to plan and respond. The existence of multiple routes, teleporters, and stuff also make this interesting strategically. In these situations I just handwave it as long as they have one source of resourceless healing. I also give the enemies enough time to do whatever they are going to do.

Edited to add: I use a dice to determine how likely the characters are to be interrupted in the first scenario and I usually telegraph it, unless the opponents are unusually sneaky.

I actually complained about AV that there wasn't a wandering monster mechanic to make the time spent healing risky.

My default goes back to old D&D where you roll a 1d6 every 10 minutes to see if there's a monster wandering by - the suggestions in the AV basically boiled down to "use DM fiat to interrupt your players" which really seemed a bad way to do it.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[!DWolf]

Mechanically, each party I have GMed for has used different methods.

• Party one hired a doctor to travel with them and had a cleric for in combat healing. This party was most often in overland encounters and struggled a bit when facing dungeon type situations.
• Party two relies on healing spells and abilities from the divine sorcerer and Druid with the occasion treat wounds check. They are actually pretty effective in dungeons since they don’t really depend on cooldowns and can get up to near full very fast.
• Party three is my Abominable Vaults party and they have a dedicated medic (medic archetype plus skill feats), a good champion, a monk with wholeness of body, and a wizard with an alchemist dedication. They have to retreat a lot because they don’t have a lot of very fast healing. But with a safe place to recover they can go all day. Usually what stops them is the wizard running out of resources or it getting so late in the day they risk fatigue.

 

[!DWolf]

I actually complained about AV that there wasn't a wandering monster mechanic to make the time spent healing risky.

My default goes back to old D&D where you roll a 1d6 every 10 minutes to see if there's a monster wandering by - the suggestions in the AV basically boiled down to "use DM fiat to interrupt your players" which really seemed a bad way to do it.

Cheers,
Merric

Disclaimer: I enjoy play where sides use strategy and tactics (in and out of combat) to try and win. If the party press their luck and decide to heal in place, and the ghoul the next room over sneaks off, gets a bunch of his buddies, and then hits them with overwhelming force… well that’s what happens. The players will have to deal with it.

That being said, what I currently do is make a map of each of the levels with the monsters (and allies) marked on it in red (or green), so that I can see at a glance what is near. Then, if the PCs make a lot of noise or attract attention, I look at the map to see what can respond. If the monster would be inclined to investigate, it does.

I roll the dice to see mostly how long it takes (and thus how much healing occurs) and in what order multiple creatures might respond (or to add tension if nothing is going to come looking). I do this because I think (having worked in dungeon like locations) having monsters instantly respond with high degrees of coordination and universally suicidal aggression is unrealistic. So I use random numbers to make it a little more realistic. I also have a result where they get a more powerful monster from further away to occasionally make things spicy (my party had to retreat from a wandering Volluk multiple times).

But roleplaying the monsters without use of dice to randomize things (GM fiat) can work just as well as long as you have players that are expecting older style play. You just have to think realistically on what the monsters would do in that situation and not always have them primed and ready to charge into battle if they hear a pin drop.

 

[Retreater]

Is there a better way of healing than using the Medicine skill, or is that the primary method used at all levels?

My party does pretty well with focus spells - the champion's lay on hands and the druid's goodberry.
As you get higher levels, you get more training and feats to make Treat Wounds more reliable and potent.
Additionally (though I haven't used it) there is the Stamina point system in the Game Mastery Guide, which splits HP into actual Wounds and quickly recovered Stamina.
If you had a repetitive, shallow experience with PF2 and were playing Abomination Vaults, I understand - the same thing happened to a group I was running. For all the praise it gets, I don't think it's a great adventure.

 

[Kichwas]

Is there a better way of healing than using the Medicine skill, or is that the primary method used at all levels?

Cheers,
Meric

Primary out of combat healer paths:

Medicine with the Assurance Feat and Ward Medic plus Continual recovery.
Blessed One dedication feat
Champion class
Druid of Leaf order (only works if there are fresh berries in the area).
Or any other option I may have missed that provides a healing focus spell. I think there is one in Oracle.

In Combat Healers:

Cleric beats anything for now. This "Might" change when the remaster lets you refocus all focus points, letting 'focus spell healers' have 3 in combat heals every fight - which will outpace a Cleric if there are multiple encounters per day.

Any other prepared caster class with access to the divine or primal spell lists (for the Heal spell).
Any prepared caster class with access to the Occult spell list (for the Soothe Spell).
- Spontaneous casters are a very distant third and fourth because they have to learn the Heal spell over again for each spell rank they want it in.

Alchemist: This one is tricky. You can outheal ANYONE if you can get to targets in melee. There IS a ranged item called Life Shot that lets you shoot people with healing elixirs - and now you need to make attack rolls to pull that off. At this point you're playing a certain Overwatch character.

Gunslinger with Munitions Crafter and Alchemist Dedication feat: Now your ability to hit with those Life Shot heals is absurdly accurate so you will be routinely getting criticals. This however has the problem of your advanced alchemy level not moving up and life shot comes at 2, 6, 10, 14, 16, 20. So you're burning more feats to boost up that advanced alchemy rank. You will not get sniper healing until level 6. You will be able to spam criticals with it - but at level 6 you will have 12 heals per day at are sadly only 1d4. Your melee heal will start at level 1, as 1d6, and jump to 3d6+6 a level 8. This is not effective for throughput.

So flip it - Alchemist with Gunslinger dedication. You need that Gunslinger to be trained in firearms. Now you want to get things onto your gun to boost accuracy because you will start to fall behind as Alchemist has very poor advancement here... but you will get the strongest ranged heals - and you can mostly carry melee heals with your ranged as a fallback. That said... by level 6 you can spam out 20 3d4+3 heals per day... No cleric can keep up with that. You just need to be able to hit your allies when your attack bonus is 4 lower at level 6 than the gunslinger was, 2 less than most martials. Still good odds, but you won't be spamming crits.

The power combo? You're a gunslinger and there's an alchemist in the party who wastes their infusions making you Life Shot ammo. But then that alchemist has given up much of their own role just to be your 'ammo caddy'.

Downside of the two alchemy paths is it's single target healing. No AoE heal like the heal spell. That can matter, but not often. When you need AoE heals, it's usually because you went one room too far in the dungeon for your level.

The big plus of this alchemist build is you're "different" than what people expect. It will be fun to play - even when you miss a to-hit roll on one of those heals.

Another way to do this would be a regular alchemist with a familiar that has flight and manual dexterity. Your familiar flies around delivering healing potions for you... You don't get to be 'Ana' from Overwatch, but you're still potent until somebody targets the familiar... oops.