Sources of non-magical healing?

aboyd

Explorer
I have an NPC with a permanent anti-magic area of effect on him. I need to put him deep in combat, but since no Cure spells will work on him, his recovery time is going to be loooooooonnnng. I am looking for alchemical items, or feats, or extraordinary effects.

So far all I've found is Faster Healing in Complete Warrior, and Hibernate in Dragon Compendium. However, due to their wording, they won't stack at all. So right now the best I've got is maybe 60 points of healing with 24 hours of bedrest and a healer watching over him.

The NPC is level 15. He's not fully statted out, but I know his amount of HP is quite high. So I need to find a way to get this guy healed of maybe 100+ HP each night. Preferably with 8 hours of rest, not 24 hours.

Let me know if you have any ideas. Thanks!
 

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Fast Healing and Regeneration are extraordinary abilities, so depending on what you are willing to do with this NPC you could get one of those and heal his damage in a few minutes even in antimagic. There are a few templates that come to mind, Corrupted (BoVD), Feral I think (SS) and I'm sure many others.

A silthilar graft from Lords of Madness grants fast healing 2, but is not cheap (182,000 gp I think). It is alignment-neutral and has no drawbacks associated with it.

The devil-touched feat chain (FCII) offers Devil's Stamina, which grants extra hp and some minor fast healing. These are not supernatural but the benefit is based on how many DT feats you have so you'd want to be willing to commit several.

The Combat Focus feat chain (PHBII) grants fast healing while in combat focus, which means you have to fight something. Depending on the NPC, the situation, and how far you're willing to stretch the rules, you could have the NPC fight weak enemies just to gain the healing.

The DMG offered a varient for critical successes on skill checks, which suggested that a natural 20 on a Heal check could heal 1 point of damage. Over the course of a few hours, that could add up.

As far as alchemy, a Restful Candle (A&E, 100 gp) doubles natural healing rate and stacks with other things.

If you can rationalize a portal to the Positive Energy Plane (or similar positive-dominant locale) he can heal in a few minutes. Plane Shift won't work obviously but I don't believe portals are subject to antimagic.
 

The devil-touched feat chain (FCII) offers Devil's Stamina, which grants extra hp and some minor fast healing. These are not supernatural but the benefit is based on how many DT feats you have so you'd want to be willing to commit several.

He's looking for overnight healing, so even Fast Healing 1 should be more than sufficient. That heals 10/minute or 600/hour. Unless by "minor fast healing" you mean "Fast Healing X for Y rounds per day", where X and Y are both small. If X and Y are "number of DT feats", you're going to want a lot of feats.

You could also house rule that there exist alchemical items that heal hit points. An item that heals 1d8 hit points and costs 100 gold doesn't seem unbalanced. At twice the cost of a CLW potion (for slightly less effect), nobody will want them, so it's logical that they aren't well-known items. OTOH, it's perfect for this guy and at 15th level, even 100 of them aren't expensive. (Besides, what else is he going to spend his wealth on? Certainly not magic items. ;-) )
 

There is a troll-blooded feat in some issue of dragon which grants regen1/fire or acid, but fatigues you in sunlight.

The devil-touched feat chain (FCII) offers Devil's Stamina, which grants extra hp and some minor fast healing. These are not supernatural but the benefit is based on how many DT feats you have so you'd want to be willing to commit several.
You just reminded me - Mark of Malbolge lets you grow tumours which you can use for a variety of effects, including healing. Since they regrow every 10 rounds, this essentially means free, endless healing - so long as your npc is human and willing to worship Glasya. :p

I am not sure if this is an extraordinary or supernatural ability though - the text mentions nothing of the sort.
 
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Long-term care is a little helpful... levelx2 hit points a night?

Pathfinder introduces an additional effect of Heal skill use:
Treat Deadly Wounds (DC 20)

When treating deadly wounds, you can restore hit points to a damaged creature. Treating deadly wounds restores 1 hit point per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount. A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day. You must expend two uses from a healer's kit to perform this task. You take a –2 penalty on your Heal skill check for each use from the healer's kit that you lack.
 

Good call on the Mark of Malbolge; crazy powerful feat but perfect for this scenario.

He's looking for overnight healing, so even Fast Healing 1 should be more than sufficient. That heals 10/minute or 600/hour. Unless by "minor fast healing" you mean "Fast Healing X for Y rounds per day", where X and Y are both small. If X and Y are "number of DT feats", you're going to want a lot of feats.)

It's FH equal to the number of DT feats for 5 rounds, 1/day. If you have several of them, it could add up (and most of them are good feats), but no it's not going to last all night.


I also neglected psionics options; if you use those (and use psionics are different) there's a ton of stuff there.
 

There are templates that give fast healing; you could use one of those, possibly re-skinning the effects to fit the character.

The half-troll template gives fast healing 5, amongst other things; it's in Fiend Folio.

From GR's Advanced Bestiary, the following templates give fast healing: Apocalypse Swarm (probably not so useful), the planetar version of Celestial-Blessed, quasit version of Demon-Possessed (edit: which doesn't work in an AMZ, so no good), the Divine Guardian template (probably not useful, as it's tied to one site), Flesh Plant template, the war version of Four Horsemen template (in case your guy is really bad news), troll version of Half-Giant, Jotunblood Giant (N/A, unless your villain's a giant, or you just change the template), Quickling template, the Ravenous template (is your bad guy's name Hannibal, perhaps?), and the Swamp Lord template (only good if he sticks to marshes).

I just checked the one book; I'm sure there are other templates in other books that'll give fast healing.

You could also always just make up your own template that gives fast healing 1-2 (or more). That could be the only thing the template gives, or it could do more, depending on what you need/want.

Edit: FWIW, the Quickling template is +1 CR, and gives fast healing 1 plus a (a nigh-ridiculous) bunch of speed-related stuff, all Ex abilities.
 
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He could always make a deal with a devil to receive some "otherworldly" healing (DM rule 0 it to make it happen). When the NPC dies, his soul belongs to the devil and then he could potentially be a long term NPC should the PCs go plane-hopping or become a villain, etc.
 

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