Looking for some evil non-cleric healer

[Shin Okada]

I need an opponent healer in an encouter. Possibly CR 15-18 or so.

As I am tired of controlling long spell lists and spell-like ability lists of higher level opponents, I want something much simple comparing to a Cleric, yet effective as a healer.

The encounter involves Red Dragons, so I checked Dragon Shaman. But their healing ability is very limited comparing to that of clerics. And it seems that there is not much effective method to bump up their healing ability.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-3r...ase-amount-dragon-shamans-touch-vitality.html

Are there some good alternative healer build?

She must overcome dragons' SR if she uses spells or spell-like abilities. So, in that case, she must cast something like Assay Spell Resistance (or use a wand of that spell).

 

[Runestar]

Is there a reason you can't just take a normal monster, invest in UMD, and outfit him with scrolls of heal/mass heal, and other restorative magicks such as revenance?

A martial adept could work as a secondary healer, using strike of righteous vitality, though it is not very consistent (because you need to successfully hit a foe to get the benefit). A choker warblade for instance, could potentially use it every round (strike as standard action, then refresh with extra standard action).

 

[Shin Okada]

Is there a reason you can't just take a normal monster, invest in UMD, and outfit him with scrolls of heal/mass heal, and other restorative magicks such as revenance?

Possible. The problem is that only few monsters have UMD as their racial class skill. To use a scroll of heal (at least CL11), the critter must roll 31+ in UMD.

True Dragons have UMD as their racial class skill. But I am not sure if they can manipulate scrolls.

Maybe some monster rogue or warlock?

 

[Runestar]

You could further boost UMD by giving a custom item which grants an enhancement skill bonus, or having it take feats such as skill focus.

If you are comfortable with psionics, you could try the sangehirn. I know you said no long spell lists, but given the spontaneous nature of psionic manifesting, it shouldn't be that difficult. You can use him to give the dragons a good buff of temp hp using vigor, then heal using empathic transfer and body adjustment. I am not sure how efficient this is though. Share pain lets your dragons transfer damage to one another, so your PCs are effectively dealing with a shared hp pool, useful in that focus-fire is no longer as effective.

The Mind's Eye: Sangehirn Prestige Class (v.3.5)

 

[Shin Okada]

Hmm. For me, psionic needs more work to use. Though I do not strictly ban Psionic in my campaign, almost no players have used psionic since the release of 3.0e (we had only 1 psychic warrior PC in early 3.5e campaign several years ago and that is all). And I have never used psionic NPCs or monsters.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Is Favored Soul still too complicated?

As for overcoming SR, if you use teamwork benefit rules in the game already, I see no reason why a new teamwork benefit that gives a major bonus on overcoming a willing ally's SR (who would need to qualify as a team member for the benefit) would be unbalanced. There's already one for a guy with Evasion to give it to his friends and another to half-share (ie, only have a -2 penalty) the benefit of Precise Shot, iirc.

 

[Alzrius]

This is stretching the rules a bit, but what about a Healer (from the Miniatures Handbook) with a helm of opposite alignment on? Technically, that might make them an ex-healer, but you could say that happens after they've had the item removed, until they atone?

The healer spell list is pretty small, so it's not like it'd be that much of a burden.

 

[Shin Okada]

Thank you all for replies.

Regarding Favored Soul, I have used some in my games and found that they do not lessen the burden of a DM much.

FS has more spells known comparing to Sorcerer. Even if I fill up the list with healing spells, they still know many more spells. But as FS needs Wis for spell save DC and Cha for casting spells, FS is not good at casting attack spells. As a result, FS tend to be more "buff-happy" type character comparing even to clerics. More buff spells = more tracking.

Healer with opposite alignment or "fallen" Healer could be an alternative. Once I thought to make it a NPC class. With some evil steed instead of unicorn maybe? But as players will meet "fallen angel" in the adventure before that one, it may not be a good idea to continually use "good person turned evil" type again.

Now I am leaning toward something with high UMD and wands and scrolls, maybe warlock or rogue.

 

[irdeggman]

How about an artificer?

Int for infusions (the base infusion list is not that large really), Cha for UMD (necessary for the class to pretty much do anything).

Or a warlock? UMD is a class skill and they get a fairly early take 10 UMD check class ability (even when threatened).

 

[Mark Chance]

Just tack fast healing 10 onto the dragon and bump its CR +1.