Reserve Feats for healers?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

We're months away from Complete Champion, but I'm wondering if we'll see reserve feats that work off of divine magic (probably) that give a small dose of healing at will (I dunno ...).

Is it possible to balance something like being able to heal 1d4 hit points at will with holding a potent healing/curing spell in reserve? How about 1d6 or more? What about curing poison or disease?

Arcane reserve feats can be likened to having an inexhaustible supply of throwing stars in many cases, but there's not really something comparable for healers, unless I'm missing something.

Any ideas if this can be made to work? (If you're against the idea of reserve feats in general, leave it. The resource management rant is an older thread you can bump up.)

 

[Remathilis]

Healers don't need them, they have divine feats. A couple divine feats and you can grant everyone fast healing (sacred healing), cure undead-based negative levels and ability damage (spurn death's touch), align allies weapons (glorious weapon), grant a bonus to fort saves (divine cleansing) and energy resistance (divine resistance), grant temp hps and speed (divine vigor) and bonuses to saves vs. outsiders (sacred resilience).

if complete champion expands on that, the LAST thing a cleric will want to do with his turning is turn undead!

 

[BlueBlackRed]

I would be too easily to exploit reserve healing once combat is over.
"So long as you have a 2nd level spell slot, you can heal 1 point a round..."
In combat worthless, post combat it's a heal spell.

 

[Arkhandus]

I think infinite healing would be more potent than infinite blasting or buffing. You could heal up after each battle, making sure not to waste your best spells since you know you'll just be able to fully heal afterwards (excepting the really tough battles). Fight one battle after another, as many as possible each day, and gain absurd amounts of XP and treasure every day.

See, nothing would stop the party from playing all Clerics, for instance, each focused on melee or ranged physical combat, each using reserve feats to heal themselves fully after every fight.

Really tough battles would force them to spend their spell slots and wind up at minimal effectiveness for the rest of the day, but, if they multiclass moderately or slightly (just not for a few meager levels) into Fighter or Barbarian, it won't be as much of a loss, and they'd still be fully healed after every fight as long as they didn't use up the slots for their reserve feats (even if it might take a quarter of an hour (15 minutes = 150 rounds) to passively heal each time). If not particularly compassionate, they might go clear an entire forest in a few days of wandering melee combat, or clearing out kobold warrens left and right, one every day or two.

 

[MerricB]

I wonder if that's a problem. Is unlimited healing outside of combat actually something we need to worry about?

The Dragon Shaman has unlimited healing, although only to a cap of 1/2 max hp. It is a very nice ability, even if not quite the same thing.

However, if we extended unlimited healing to clerics, then we'd somewhat lose on resource counting, but I'm not convinced that it's a bad thing.

Cheers!

 

[starwed]

A healing reserve feat sounds doable, but it would work differently than the blasting feats.

Rather than an at will ability, it would have to be something that took some down time to trigger. Maybe a feat which healed the entire party while you slept, depending on the highest level (healing) spell you had left. It rewards you for keeping back a high level spell, so it is still a reserve feat. Just not the same as the combat useful abilities, since as already noted, that would be unbalanced.

Another option would be a reserve feat which augmented (healing) spells as you cast them, possibly even from a wand of CLW.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Healers don't need them, they have divine feats.

Which don't function at all like reserve feats.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I think that for healing to be a reserve feat, it would have to be pretty minor - I would go with 1hp/level of a "cure" spell.

I'm in the camp that thinks it's probably a bad idea, but I don't think it's a completely horrid idea. The problem with the feat is that while it's good after battle, or before battle, during battle it's a pretty sub-optimal choice. Furthermore, a Cleric would have to keep a healing spell memorized - converting spells wouldn't count, I don't think. Finally, feat selection is one area where Clerics don't excel, and unless I was playing a dedicated healer, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't take that feat. So there are a few reasons why it's not a terrible idea.

All that said, I still think it would be a bad idea, and I'm hoping that there is no such feat in the book. Of course, this is Clerics we're talking about....

 

[jeffh]

What having a healing reserve feat does is move the game from a per-day model to a per-encounter model, as far as much of the resource management is concerned. This is no bad thing and is something I expect to see more of, especially in the wake of the Book of Nine Swords being by all accounts one of the most successful 3E releases. It's not your father's D&D, but I suspect it's going to be your children's.

 

[Stalker0]

My guess is you coudl do it, just say that the feat can only heal X amount per character per day. So I can heal at will, but only 5 hp per person lets say. Still a decent amount of healing saved, with none of the horrendous abuses of infinite healing.