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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Set" data-source="post: 4944938" data-attributes="member: 41584">The Scarred Lands had a Monk PrC called the Brother of the Scarred Hand that had a pool of healing energy it could tap into to heal itself or others, and could also draw upon the life-force of others (as well as himself) to use for healing.  The idea was sweet, but the mechanics were pretty dire. A life-force transferring Monk would be very thematic, and maintain a certain level of spirituality connected to healing magic (even if not spirituality connected to a diety, specifically).  Alternately, using a form of psychic healing (which could still be flavored as ki or life-force transfer or whatever) could also work, with healers using special crystals and trances to work their mojo.  A healer might be a bit of a witch doctor, whether monk, psychic, spiritualist or necromancer, inflicting wounds and harm with the one hand, and purging them with the other, and there are two neat options to take here; 1) For every wound taken away, a wound must be given.  A good healer will accept these wounds himself, or, in the case of good friends, allow a healthy ally (or parent, or spouse) to 'share the pain' of an injury with a weaker one (or child or other loved one). 2) To heal, the spiritualist must do no harm.  He has a tiny store of healing energy at default, but in times of danger, he builds up 'good karma' or something by abstaining from violence.  As long as he takes actions to heal, buff, protect or defend, and inflicts no hit point harm (and casts no spells that require saving throws), he gains extra healing energy for each round of combat.  If he takes violent action, he loses not only any energy remaining, but also his default healing energy until he meditates and re-centers himself (basically for the rest of the day), although, even after a spate of violence, he still builds up 'mercy' or 'benevolence' during later combats during the day, just lacking the 'free' default healing energy he normally can tap into. 3) Both exist.  There are pacifist healers who draw their strength from their vows of non-violence and there are darker souls, who inflict harm to steal ki from others, to use to enhance themselves (or heal their allies).  Other options would be to place some healing magics in the arcane spell lists.  I'd eliminate the Conjuration (healing) idea, and make healing magics come in two forms; Necromantic (which would involve a lot of transferring of life-energy, stabilization and the purging of disease, infection, etc.) and Transmutation (which would cause flesh and bone to weave and fuse together, but still leave trauma behind, only converting lethal damage to nonlethal).  You could also have healing be more heavily skill-based, with the Heal skill actually being useful for healing hit point injury (imagine that!), perhaps with a special Feat that a dedicated healer could take to greatly increase the efficacy of their Heal checks.  Adding in Herbalism options inspired from the various herbalism articles that have been around since 1st edition could also be an option, and Alchemy could also have a Healing Salve option that healed 1d4 or 2d4, depending on whether you get the cheapo version or the top-shelf label-brand.  If you completely want to do away with magical dependency on healing, you could use a Wound Points / Vitality Points system (everyone has Wound points equal to their Con score, and then their class dependent hit dice are Vitality points, which come back like nonlethal damage.  Vitality points are taken first, with Wound points being taken when you run out of Vitality, or from certain scary spells like Finger of Death.). If you go the Wound points / Vitality points route, you can also mix things up with ideas from Monte's Book of Experimental Might and allow a character in the middle of combat (but at no other time!) to 'Take a Breather' and restore Vitality points equal to their level + Con mod or something, allowing any character to self-heal a little bit by taking a round off during combat to catch their breath.  Many of these could be combined, depending on what you're looking for, and by mix-and-matching them, a Rogue could rely on Herbalism and Heal checks to keep himself up, while the Wizard uses necromantic or transmutation healing spells, and the Fighter 'Takes a Breather', while the dedicated Ki Healer type does the life-force transfer stuff, drawing power from the harm he's doing to others, or drawing purpose and affirmation from his personal commitment to the tenets of doing no harm (and possibly has a Feat that makes his Heal skill checks work more effectively than those of a less-specialized person).  Just make sure to balance them out so that healing doesn't become a joke, if you want to mix and match and allow a little bit for everyone.</blockquote>

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