NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 8080511" data-attributes="member: 12731">Back to the improved healing potions.The intention is for healing potions to become good enough to actually use, without making them practically mandatory.A level 10 warrior might have one level 12 greater Healing Potion and two level 9 moderate Elixirs of Life, but that's it. And likely only because the party found them.Now, healing 120 points of damage by using 2 actions is hopefully attractive enough (to a level 10 warrior player, or if he goes down, to his adjacent friend) for that to happen. Which then takes a lot of weight off of the party Cleric, enabling that player to do more non-Heal-releated things in combat. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />A party will still not be expected to buy these potions more than on occasion.A level 10 character can certainly afford to spend 400 gold on two hundred minor Healing Potions. But, as stated, all this means that the party gets to heal thousands of damage over several minutes. That's functionally identical to handwaving it "after the fight, you heal up before proceeding" or using my streamlined Medicine rules (where everybody heals up in half an hour if everybody takes training in the skill), or even if you insist on using the cluttery rules as written (where it might take maybe an hour).Shortening a rest period from hours to minutes is not nothing. But the player did just spend 400 gold, which isn't a trivial sum at this level, so why not simply let him? After all, the party can't afford to do this more than on special occasions except just maybe at the very highest levels...---But what if nobody in the group wants to "play the healer"...? That's the second scenario these changes to equipment is designed to enable. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />In this case the GM should probably be more generous with loot to compensate for the fact nobody is playing a character which provides healing at no gold cost. If most of this extra loot drops in the form of... healing potions(!) the problem obviously solves itself.But even if the loot comes in the form of other items or as cash the lack of built-in (in combat) healing should not be a major concern, ifa) the players get so much loot that they feel they can afford to spend some on healing potionsand/orb) the game isn't more difficult than the characters can handle (without constantly missing in-combat heals)At least it becomes possible to run the game like 5E - which specifically does not require a combat medic. Of course, the reason 5E doesn't is because of a combination of b) and c) - which lets me post the third key to the puzzle:c) healing spells aren't that great (Imagine if you remove the +8 per level from Heal)Of course 5E only gets away with this because it also implements b). 5E combats are MUCH less difficult than PF2 ones (as exemplified by official Adventure Paths).In Pathfinder 2, I expect the practical way to get a group to understand they don't have to bring a combat medic is to not only show them these improved potions, but also to make it clear you the GM are going to be generous with letting them find healing potions as loot drops.</blockquote>

Verification