Should an exalted sorcerer be allowed to heal?

[smootrk]

You may want to come up with a few spells or variant spells that effectively heal. One with a few drawbacks.

Maybe like a Transfer Vitality spell: Transfers 1d8+1/level (like Cure Light) to the recipient from the caster's hp pool... then the caster slowly 'heals' the loss at a rate of like 1 point per round (or longer).

Variations like this would (for any level cure spell) be viable alternatives, and have drawbacks to keep standard clerical healing more preferable. Keeps the clerical types from shouting 'no fair, thats our schtick.' It even seems more sorcerer-like IMO.

 

[ARandomGod]

I vote to let the sorc heal. But then again I've gone and put a few variations of arcane healing in my game-worlds already...

 

[Voadam]

The arcane don't heal theory is a silly tradition IMO and contradicted by bard arcane healing spells, and even sorcerer spells like polymorph, and limited wish.

Having the healing spells available to more classes benefits the game IMO.

Mystic theurges gain tons of spell slots and can draw on any cleric spell so they don't have to waste sorcerer known ones on overlap ones like scry or, in this variant, healing ones. I don't think it would be unfair to allow healing spells onto a sorcerer list in general.

 

[Levi Kornelsen]

In general terms, I don't see a problem with adding to the spellcasting list of the sorcerer, so long as something is lost in return, or something is paid for the change.

Adding one Cleric Domain's worth of spells, cast in the normal Sorcerer's fashion, from whatever list, strikes me as having the value of about one feat. Possibly just a tiny bit more, but close, so I wouldn't make it an "opening" feat - I'd put a prerequisite on it appropriate to the spells being gained.

Alternatively, simply altering the sorcerer's spell list can be a very entertaining option.

I have, in the past, run sorcerers that had alternate spell lists - quite possibly the strangest variant I ran allowed them all of the Witch spells from the 3.0 DMG, all of the Druid spells from the 3.0 PHB, and an odd assortment of about three or so further specific spells at each level, mostly interesting evocations. This worked well, for me.

Adjust as desired, always. But ensure that the player has paid for any improvement with something lost, or something actually paid.

 

[Warbringer]

There's a bard in the party, but she chose not to take healing spells. Druids aren't viable only because of location--the party's in an area in which druids are not found natively (IMC, races & classes are often regional), so a druid's player would need a really good reason for why he'd be in a foreign land in an urban setting.

But she can use healing items

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

clerics and grace

Magic items aren't generally available for purchase in ForceUser's game (they're 'priceless'). So, buying a wand of CLW/CMW wasn't really an option.

To get back to the discussion of the merits of making clerics behave as paladins:

There's a metagame issue. Clerics are already a thankless class to play; it simply isn't as much fun to spend the whole combat healing as it is to use spells to do more interesting things (including killing monsters and taking their stuff!). For one thing, you're pretty much casting the same spell over and over again.

People play D&D as escapism, and there's an element of wish fulfillment -- be the hero, the trickster, the marvelous wizard. I think part of the problem is that nonreligious, secular people don't find playing clerics to be especially fulfulling in this regard..

A paladin has the same issue -- most people don't romanticise being a humble servant of the order who scrubs floors in his off time. But paladins, unlike clerics, get to take point, kill monsters , bash down the door and charge in -- they get glory.

In our group, at least, attempting to hold the cleric to the same standard as the paladin, resulted in no one being willing to play a cleric.

When we started the campaign, it wasn't clear to me that a goblin cleric could be affiliated with Chaos, rather than Grace. To be honest, in hindsight that would have been a really fun character to play (I played a goblin rogue).

Ken

 

[abri]

Well, yes and no.
I would allow the sorcerer to get healing spell, but not as a freebie and not as many as he wants.
Basically he'd have to take the arcane disciple feat (complete divine) and choose the healing domain. This also means that being exalted isn't enough: he needs to have a strong connection to his god and the god must be a god of healing.
The way I see it, it doesn't matter how exalted you are, if you worship the god of strength, he ain't giving you healing power that easily...

 

[Hypersmurf]

[blink blink]

Wait, wait. The player doesn't want to play a cleric because clerics are held to the same standards of behaviour as paladins...

... so instead he wants to play an exalted character?

-Hyp.

 

[ForceUser]

[blink blink]

Wait, wait. The player doesn't want to play a cleric because clerics are held to the same standards of behaviour as paladins...

... so instead he wants to play an exalted character?

-Hyp.

Haffrung is over-generalizing; several players in that group have expressed to me a willingness to play a divine spellcaster, and in fact the party had one before an unfortunate incident with a troll. The player in question has no problem with playing one either, he just happened to roll a sorcerer instead.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

hmm

Perhaps I did over-generalize. Sorry about that! But I hadn't realized that several players had expressed interest in exalted characters. We ended up with one, a sorcerer.

And what do you mean about him 'rolling up' a sorcerer? We use a point buy variant... I don't understand.