The party's cleric *won't* heal your character?!

[TheAuldGrump]

I have played the cleric who was unwilling to heal a member of the party. The DM allowed mixed alignment parties, and I was a Neutral Good cleric who had just discovered that the Chaotic Evil thief (1st ed.) had tortured someone to death for information. I would have let him die after that. Most of the rest of the party felt the same. Then we all went down in a TPK so it did not matter. (The DM was also fond of picking monsters at random from the MM, and our 3rd level party was 'lucky' enough to encounter a black dragon...) The game did not last too long after that. Too bad, aside from the overly random random monsters he was a decent DM, but having to roll up new characters every few weeks was just too big a pain. We never did make it above 3rd level.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Oddly enough the Lawful Evil cleric in the group got along well with everyone, only being 'evil' when he felt that it was the only way. To this day I feel that he was closer to Lawful Neutral. He wanted to kill the thief then and there... Funny how memories pop up sometimes.

 

[genshou]

A way to help alleviate this is to allow wizards to cast healing spells

I got this route. I'm using Elements of Magic - Revised, so anyone who wants to can cast spells if they feel it is thematically appropriate to the character, or just want to cast it regardless. What's really challenging for me as a DM is when every single PC can cast healing magic.

 

[Chimera]

As I said to a new player today, who was considering playing a Cleric;

"As for either Cleric concept, I can easily leave Healer John with the group
as an NPC if you do not wish to focus so heavily on healing. Honestly,
that's the CORE reason why I think people don't like playing Clerics -
because they always get side-tracked into being the Healer 'Bot rather that
doing all the other fun things that Clerics are capable of."

He decided on a Bard.

I'll leave the NPC Cleric with the group. He can fight (Str 14, War Domain), but he also has the Augment Healing feat and thus always ends up as the Healer 'Bot. (Hence the name)

I don't run him. One of my players runs him in combat situations and he does very little outside combat unless someone says "Healer John should do X".

 

[SteveC]

While I agree with almost every part of your post, I gotta pull this out and say:

There is nothing more mature about dealing with interparty conflict in character than dealing with it out of character. In many cases I would consider it to be more mature to just flat out say "The way you are playing your character is making my character/my expereince of the game less enjoyable to me. Are you willing to make changes?" than to "handle it in character" which can easily turn into a highly immature PvP and "revenge character" creation. If your character's behavior is making life difficult for another character but all the players are still having fun, in character is the way to go. If your roleplaying choices are making the game less fun for another player there is no reason to artifically constrain the issue to "in character" discussion.

Oh I agree with you 100%! What I was referring to was the fact that in some games, the thief can be a heel, the cleric or paladin can call him on it, maybe there will even be combat, but the players can take it all in stride and not have it affect life outside of the game or their friendships one bit.

I don't know if that would necessarily be a more "mature" game, but I didn't have a better word for it. You're right, however: talking about all of this outside of the game in a direct manner is the best way to handle things once there is a problem.

So it was merely my lack of clarity in writing...we're on the same page.

--Steve

 

[Numion]

Tell that to the front line fighter with 71 hp when the enemy can do 2d8+10 damage per round and gets 2 attacks per round. (7th level fighter with 18 con vs. a CR 7 hill giant). If your buddy isn't at full hp, he might be going down next round. And, this kind of damage isn't such a rare occurance that you can make that kind of generality.

Sure, don't heal unless you have to. That's cool. Watch the fighter die because "offense is better than defense?" Not cool.

It'd be cool if the cleric, instead of standing there like a doofus, killed the giant as quickly as possible with the fighter.

That would save the fighters hit points much better. If you heal, you aren't doing anything to defeat the enemy.

 

[danzig138]

I think it's arrogant for a cleric to not heal his buddies, but expect his buddies to get him out of a jam when it happens to him. I mean, really, it's not the fighter's fault someone got a crit on him with an axe.

Why is everyone assuming that this "Hold back the healing" cleric is going to expect his buddies to get him out of a jam?

I've never liked the whole "I live only to heal you" cleric idea that so many people have. I can think of quite a few legit reasons for a cleric to withhold healing, and that's not counting "Because Bob's the fighter's a pain in the arse."

It's not really an issue IMG, however. Why? Because each deity has its own spell list, and restrictions on who gets what. Many of the gods don't let priests throw spells on non-believers, and most of them don't provide access to healing spells anyway.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Is this a type-o or am I misreading it?

Remember that I'm responding to people who think its okay for the cleric to never heal in combat.

To clarify: The hill giant closes on round 1 and hits the Fighter. The Fighter can no longer withdrawl from the giant, so he takes 2 attacks on the giant's next turn. The cleric could heal him between those two attacks or attack the giant himself, but if he attacks the giant, and the gaint doesn't die before its next action, the Fighter has around a 50% chance of dying. If the cleric heals him, then the giant probaby won't kill the Fighter next round, giving the party 1 entire extra round to kill the giant with no casualties.

That's why healing is better than offense, tactically, as a cleric.

You can quote things like "offsense is better than defense," but in the end, survival is most important.

It'd be cool if the cleric, instead of standing there like a doofus, killed the giant as quickly as possible with the fighter.

And I'm sure the dead fighter will appreciate the hill giant going down one round early.

But, since you're betting on the fighter surviving two rounds of abuse by a hill giant (which I give 50/50 odds on), lets say that the giant managed to close with the 12 Con ranger who specializes in bows and ranged attacks, knocking him down to 22 hp? Heal him? What if its the wizard?

That would save the fighters hit points much better. If you heal, you aren't doing anything to defeat the enemy.

That is completely untrue.

Like I said above, healing increases the possible fighting by rounds, for the entire party. If you can make the fighter live one extra round vs. the enemy, you're increasing the total actions against the enemy by one per other PC before the giant moves onto another PC. That's one extra Sneak Attack, one extra Full Attack, one extra wizard spell, or whatever the party is made up of.

If you can make the enemy's target live an extra three rounds...

So don't heal if its not what you want. But, don't kid yourself into thinking you're tactically superior.

 

[Numion]

But, don't kid yourself into thinking you're tactically superior.

Most of the time offensive play with clerics is superior to medic style of play, in my humble experience. In combat we try to end it as soon as possible, and then heal between the fights with Cure Light wands. Sometimes it's good to heal in combat, though.

This became evident to us during our first 3E campaign which went from 1st to 16th level. All our campaigns since (One from 1-23 levels, next 1-13 and last one 1-15) have seen 'battle' clerics. That's quite a bit of D&D. So I don't consider myself to be 'kidding'

 

[DarkKestral]

However, there's still the forgotten assumption about the CLERIC. Assuming the cleric is lvl 7, he/she has access to 4th level spells. Therefore, the cleric quite possibly has divine power active on him/her. If the cleric is using the same weapon as the fighter, then the cleric/fighter are essentially equal in damage-causing potential, delivering up to 4 attacks in a single round by themselves. 8 over two rounds. At +9/+4 for two people w/o Str bonuses to attack, then we're talking probably at least 2 hits, closer to 3. For a decently buffed party, that means they'll likely deal something like a third of the total HPs of the hill giant by themselves. With an arcanist and perhaps a rogue backing them up, they should be rather capable of taking down the giant within a round or two. If they were by themselves, that is an over CR-ed encounter by 2, which means it's entirely legit that the encounter could almost take them down, regardless.

 

[Kurotowa]

I think one of the troubles is too many people get caught up in an either/or view of clericals. You don't have to choose between healing and fighting. Your first job is to keep the PCs alive. Which is, really, the first job of ALL the party memebers. Everyone should be striking a balance between taking out the enemy and covering their friends. If the fighter has to stop hacking to pour a Cure potion down someone's throat, sure. If the wizard has to decide between blasting and laying down a Wall spell, great. If the cleric has to juggle healing the party and popping a Divine Power to lay the smack down, no problem. As long as you don't get stuck on one thing you should be fine.