Is the cleric's "Channeling" ability a mistake?

[ForeverSlayer]

When Pathfinder dropped the 3.5 Turn Undead ability for the "Channeling" ability it was a mistake, in my opinion.

Let's look at Channel Energy:

Channel Energy (Su): Regardless of alignment, any
cleric can release a wave of energy by channeling the power
of her faith through her holy (or unholy) symbol. This
energy can be used to cause or heal damage, depending on
the type of energy channeled and the creatures targeted.
A good cleric (or one who worships a good deity) channels
positive energy and can choose to deal damage to undead
creatures or to heal living creatures. An evil cleric (or one
who worships an evil deity) channels negative energy and can
choose to deal damage to living creatures or to heal undead
creatures. A neutral cleric who worships a neutral deity (or
one who is not devoted to a particular deity) must choose
whether she channels positive or negative energy. Once this
choice is made, it cannot be reversed. This decision also
determines whether the cleric casts spontaneous cure or
inflict spells (see spontaneous casting).
Channeling energy causes a burst that affects all
creatures of one type (either undead or living) in a 30-foot
radius centered on the cleric. The amount of damage dealt
or healed is equal to 1d6 points of damage plus 1d6 points
of damage for every two cleric levels beyond 1st (2d6 at 3rd,
3d6 at 5th, and so on). Creatures that take damage from
channeled energy receive a Will save to halve the damage.
The DC of this save is equal to 10 + 1/2 the cleric’s level
+ the cleric’s Charisma modifier. Creatures healed by
channeled energy cannot exceed their maximum hit point
total—all excess healing is lost. A cleric may channel
energy a number of times per day equal to 3 + her Charisma
modifier. This is a standard action that does not provoke
an attack of opportunity. A cleric can choose whether or
not to include herself in this effect. A cleric must be able to
present her holy symbol to use this ability.

I can see where they were trying to go with this ability but in actual play it is sorely lacking. It works okay at low levels but you really have to invest in feats to make it even remotely mediocre. Let's look at a few things.

• You "need" the Selective Channeling feat in order to heal your people and not the enemy.
• It doesn't scale enough with damage.
• It doesn't scale enough for healing.
• It's pretty much only good when it act's like a wand of Cure Light Wounds.

I would rather Paizo stick with 3.5 Turn Undead than this mess.

 

[Anguish]

I'm just guessing this is now pouring out of the thread on Paizo's forum, since really, the premise isn't getting much support there. There's a couple die-hard legacy rules supporters but the vast majority seem to accept the new rule.

The "need" for Selective Channel isn't one. Many encounters start with more PCs than foes. One a four-on-one or similar combat, being able to heal multiple friendlies simultaneously - even if you're also healing the one foe - is weighted towards the PCs. Even in a multiple-foe situation, by the time the party has taken enough damage that a cleric stops doing offensive actions and starts healing, it's likely that the enemy has been whittled down to small numbers. It doesn't matter that you start at four-on-four... by the time you're nearly dead, you should have eliminated several of your enemies.

The same concept applies to the idea that the healing doesn't scale with damage. Yes, by 10th level you're looking at some characters having over 100 hit points, and a cleric is channeling 5d6 for an average of 17.5. The point though is that a cleric is delivering that healing to as much of the party as is within 30ft of him. This is right around when he's getting access to cure light wounds, mass, a spell I have yet to see cast, ever. This is also around the acquisition of heal. If you need to heal large spikes, you use your spells. If your entire party has somehow taken 60+ damage in a couple round combat, you're... doing it wrong.

Channel is intended to buy you time, extending a party's durability. It works very, very well in actual play.

I don't get the point of these two threads. Paizo isn't going to rescind a rule change three years after publishing it. Doubly so when it's been almost universally accepted for those three years. It really sounds like a couple long-time 3.5 players have recently migrated to Pathfinder and are going through the same distrust we all did during PFRPG beta. We've all had three years to play with these rules and discover they work very well on the table. For you, there's two options... give channel a try at your table, or house-rule. Posting I-don't-like-this-rule threads at this late juncture doesn't really do anything for anyone.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I'm just guessing this is now pouring out of the thread on Paizo's forum, since really, the premise isn't getting much support there. There's a couple die-hard legacy rules supporters but the vast majority seem to accept the new rule.

The "need" for Selective Channel isn't one. Many encounters start with more PCs than foes. One a four-on-one or similar combat, being able to heal multiple friendlies simultaneously - even if you're also healing the one foe - is weighted towards the PCs. Even in a multiple-foe situation, by the time the party has taken enough damage that a cleric stops doing offensive actions and starts healing, it's likely that the enemy has been whittled down to small numbers. It doesn't matter that you start at four-on-four... by the time you're nearly dead, you should have eliminated several of your enemies.

The same concept applies to the idea that the healing doesn't scale with damage. Yes, by 10th level you're looking at some characters having over 100 hit points, and a cleric is channeling 5d6 for an average of 17.5. The point though is that a cleric is delivering that healing to as much of the party as is within 30ft of him. This is right around when he's getting access to cure light wounds, mass, a spell I have yet to see cast, ever. This is also around the acquisition of heal. If you need to heal large spikes, you use your spells. If your entire party has somehow taken 60+ damage in a couple round combat, you're... doing it wrong.

Channel is intended to buy you time, extending a party's durability. It works very, very well in actual play.

I don't get the point of these two threads. Paizo isn't going to rescind a rule change three years after publishing it. Doubly so when it's been almost universally accepted for those three years. It really sounds like a couple long-time 3.5 players have recently migrated to Pathfinder and are going through the same distrust we all did during PFRPG beta. We've all had three years to play with these rules and discover they work very well on the table. For you, there's two options... give channel a try at your table, or house-rule. Posting I-don't-like-this-rule threads at this late juncture doesn't really do anything for anyone.

This isn't about getting Paizo to change their minds. It's obvious they aren't going to change their minds but it is fine to point out that this ability was a mistake, in my opinion. We don't only talk about things if they have a shot of being changed.

 

[Crothian]

I've found this to be a great ability. We don't use the healing in combat, we use other healing in combat most of the time. This type of healing though is great when the group all gets hit with an area spell or effect. But better after combat to quickly heal everyone in the group. It's way better then a wand of cure light wounds and faster.

Verse undead I like it because it does something to them. The old system was way too much all or nothing. It made combats either really easy or very hard when it failed.

 

[SteelDraco]

I like channeling far more than turning undead.

• The party cleric won't have to spend as many spells slots acting as a healer if they have a general ability that can heal the whole party. This allows them to do other interesting things with their spells, rather than seeing his interesting choices disappear over the course of the day to patch up his friends.
• Turning undead was a boring, boring power. It made encounters with undead non-fun. Either the party cleric wiped out a significant chunk of the encounter, or they feel like they wasted their action doing something that is already a fairly restricted power anyway. If you only get to use a class power against a certain type of enemy, then it doesn't work when you encounter that type of enemy, you're going to feel cheated. In practice, it meant that all undead encounters had a huge group of mooks for the cleric to blow up before the real encounter started, which pretty much had to be with a small group of undead that was powerful enough that the cleric couldn't turn them and auto-win the fight.

I don't particularly care for Selective Channeling, just because it's a pretty compulsory choice for someone who wants to use channel energy in combat. I'm not a fan of no-brainer choices like that. You can get away with not taking it as a cleric, I suppose, but I think you'll really suffer for it. Channel energy keeps the whole party on its feet a little longer, and works pretty well for that and out-of-combat healing. (The "six-pack of wands of cure light wounds" problem bothers me, I actually like healing surges or a reserve point system for out-of-combat healing)

One thing that I did like about the 3.0/3.5 rules better - divine feats. These were some of my favorite feats for a divine character. You could do the same thing mechanically now, spending channel energy uses, but I liked the variety of abilities that you could take with divine feats. Most domains include a power you can use 3+Wis mod per day, which is similar in functionality, but the option of divine feats for anybody with turn undead was neat.

 

[N'raac]

Let's look to the criticisms:

- it doesn't heal enough. No? As pointed out above, it averages 17.5 per party member, henchman, animal companion, Paladin's warhorse, familiar, etc. With four wounded allies, that's 70 points healed with a single action. Fact is, healing in combat is typically a sub-optimal approach to winning the combat, then healing. This doesn't alter that result.

- it needs selective. Only if you plan on healing in combat, and even then you can move around to best target the area. As indicated above, healing in combat is generally suboptimal.

- bring back Turn Undead. Yeah, because that was so universally useful. The ability to heal your allies and injure the undead opponents as a single action makes channelling even better against Undead. Note how many 3e/3.5e feats were created to give Undead Turing attempts something to do when you weren't up against the Undead. Now, you can actually focus on other aspects of these characters and not feel you have a wasted character ability if you're not playing a Zombie Apocalypse game. Divine Feats, IMO, wre much more essential than feats to enhance Chanel Energy. The latter give more choices. The former were needed to make a very situational ability useful more frequently. [I loved the one that allowd spontaneous use of domain spells myself.]

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Let's look to the criticisms:

- it doesn't heal enough. No? As pointed out above, it averages 17.5 per party member, henchman, animal companion, Paladin's warhorse, familiar, etc. With four wounded allies, that's 70 points healed with a single action. Fact is, healing in combat is typically a sub-optimal approach to winning the combat, then healing. This doesn't alter that result.

- it needs selective. Only if you plan on healing in combat, and even then you can move around to best target the area. As indicated above, healing in combat is generally suboptimal.

- bring back Turn Undead. Yeah, because that was so universally useful. The ability to heal your allies and injure the undead opponents as a single action makes channelling even better against Undead. Note how many 3e/3.5e feats were created to give Undead Turing attempts something to do when you weren't up against the Undead. Now, you can actually focus on other aspects of these characters and not feel you have a wasted character ability if you're not playing a Zombie Apocalypse game. Divine Feats, IMO, wre much more essential than feats to enhance Chanel Energy. The latter give more choices. The former were needed to make a very situational ability useful more frequently. [I loved the one that allowd spontaneous use of domain spells myself.]

Okay, after looking at some of the responses what keeps coming up is "if you use the ability to heal in combat". Well if using it to heal in combat is not good then let's look at the damage aspect. Well creatures are allowed a save and undead have nice Will saves so they have good chance of making their Will save for half damage, especially at high levels.

Here's a few feats for ya:

Disciple of the Sun - Spend an extra turn attempt to destroy undead instead of turning them

Divine Metamagic - Spend turn/rebuke attempts to enhance spells with a metamagic feat

Divine Spell Power - Spend turn/rebuke attempts to increase your
caster level

Glorious Weapons - Allies’ weapons gain an alignment for overcoming DR

Domain Spontaneity - Spend turn/rebuke attempt to spontaneously
cast a domain spell

Elemental Smiting - Spend turn/rebuke attempt to smite an elemental

Elemental Healing - Spend turn/rebuke attempt to heal nearby elementals

Profane Boost - Nearby inflict spells are maximized for 1 round

Sacred Boost - Nearby cure spells are maximized for 1 round

There were also PrC's that allowed you to do other things with Turn Undead such as Turn fiends.

 

[N'raac]

Okay, after looking at some of the responses what keeps coming up is "if you use the ability to heal in combat". Well if using it to heal in combat is not good then let's look at the damage aspect. Well creatures are allowed a save and undead have nice Will saves so they have good chance of making their Will save for half damage, especially at high levels.

Damage undead in combat is just gravy making it easy to heal the party and slap a little pain on the undead. What's nice is healing 17.5 x 4 characters = 70 hp per channel (and bringing all the less wounded noncombatants back up to full in the process) out of combat, without using up any spells which can be used to to cool stuff in combat. 350 hp per day is more than a CLW wand [50 x 5.5 = 275 hp]

Here's a few feats for ya:

I need feats to make Turn Undead useful. Wasn't one of the first complaints the need for a feat to make Channel Energy useful?

Disciple of the Sun - Spend an extra turn attempt to destroy undead instead of turning them

Result: undead are either made immune to turning, appear in much greater numbers, or vanish from the game entirely. Wasted ability AND feat if we're fighting giants, dragons, demons, etc.

Divine Metamagic - Spend turn/rebuke attempts to enhance spells with a metamagic feat

Divine Spell Power - Spend turn/rebuke attempts to increase your
caster level

Glorious Weapons - Allies’ weapons gain an alignment for overcoming DR

Domain Spontaneity - Spend turn/rebuke attempt to spontaneously
cast a domain spell

Elemental Smiting - Spend turn/rebuke attempt to smite an elemental

Elemental Healing - Spend turn/rebuke attempt to heal nearby elementals

Profane Boost - Nearby inflict spells are maximized for 1 round

Sacred Boost - Nearby cure spells are maximized for 1 round

There were also PrC's that allowed you to do other things with Turn Undead such as Turn fiends.

And if one replaces the phrase "Turn Undead" with "Channel Energy", each and every one of these feats and PrC's are easily importted. I haven't dug through the Cleric feats, but I expect there are a bunch to affect Channel Energy, and we'll see more as time goes on. The difference is that these add options for an ability that already has a general purpose use, where Divine Feats were essential to be able to get any benefits out of Turn Undead in a lot of situations.

Even if I agreed that Channel Energy is a weak/useless ability and should be replaced, going back to Turn Undead just replaces it with a very situational ability which is a bit more powerful when useful, but much more often useless, unless augmented with other character resources (ie feats).

To pick one simple replacement option, give all clerics Domain Spontaneity for the same number of uses per day. That's useful in all circumstances. Call it Channel Energy and allow a feat to manifest Heal/Harm channel energy like the current rules. Allowing the option to replace the base Channel Energy with other models (like existing feats) seems like a good approach to Cleric archetypes.

But just give them back Turn Undead? Not unless we're dealing with an Undead focused archetype, thanks.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Okay, after looking at some of the responses what keeps coming up is "if you use the ability to heal in combat". Well if using it to heal in combat is not good then let's look at the damage aspect. Well creatures are allowed a save and undead have nice Will saves so they have good chance of making their Will save for half damage, especially at high levels.

Here's a few feats for ya:

Disciple of the Sun - Spend an extra turn attempt to destroy undead instead of turning them

Divine Metamagic - Spend turn/rebuke attempts to enhance spells with a metamagic feat

Divine Spell Power - Spend turn/rebuke attempts to increase your
caster level

Glorious Weapons - Allies’ weapons gain an alignment for overcoming DR

Domain Spontaneity - Spend turn/rebuke attempt to spontaneously
cast a domain spell

Elemental Smiting - Spend turn/rebuke attempt to smite an elemental

Elemental Healing - Spend turn/rebuke attempt to heal nearby elementals

Profane Boost - Nearby inflict spells are maximized for 1 round

Sacred Boost - Nearby cure spells are maximized for 1 round

There were also PrC's that allowed you to do other things with Turn Undead such as Turn fiends.

huh? I thought one of the problems with Channel Energy was that you "had" to take Selective Channeling to make it useful? Now its OK to take lots of extra feats to make Turn Undead useful? Turn Undead had to be the least used ability of any class across the four 1-20 level campaigns I ran in 3E. And I ran Age of Worms for one and an undead heavy game for another. The clerics would often get feats like the above to give Turn Undead a chance of actually doing something useful (Sacred Boost and Divine Metamagic being the most popular).

In the PF game I'm running right now? Channel Energy is used almost every fight , certainly between fights to heal the party and the cleric player only got Selective Channeling last level (6th).

Face it - CE is twice the ability TU ever was even with out feat taxes to make it better.

 

[Wik]

The best part about Channeling is its use outside of combat. In our game, the cleric heals 2d6 to the group at the end of every fight - they're called "greatswords of healing", because we're odd like that.

End result? The party gets to face more encounters (yay for no 15 minute adventuring day!) and the cleric can use his spells and actions for more interesting things during combat. The ability is rarely used in combat, unless the group is fighting undead... and when fighting undead, it works better than Turn Undead, because it isn't an auto save sort of thing. Turn Undead kind of sucks, because it just makes a few undead not fight for a bit... it's a "divide and conquer" sort of thing that is used against monsters you can probably beat anyway.

As for selective channeling - it comes down to the way your combats run. I've been running a wilderness-style game, which means that fights are often a bit more spread out. Using Channeling tends to encourage PCs to group together, putting them into perfect fireball position. As a result, the cleric that needs to heal fellow party members in a fight relies on single-target cures and then uses channeling after the fight to heal up the smaller cuts.