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

[Driddle]

The news journalism editor in me usually snaps when I see Statements of the Obvious(tm) such as the latest "Character Class" tips at the WotC site. When playing a beguiler, it suggests, "Get friendly and stay friendly with your party's cleric, druid, or paladin. This character's healing spells can stave off death, especially if you mange to get yourself poisoned or suffer from some other debilitating attack."

OK. :\ Good advice.

(I'll even pretend to ignore the spelling error of "mange" instead of "manage," which has been repeated over other class columns for at least a year.)

The paragraph also suggests making an effort to stay in their good graces, which brings me to the question of this thread: Have you ever been part of an adventure in which the party's designated healer expressed reluctance or otherwise tried to avoid taking care of his injured peers?

 

[Tiberius]

Oh, yeah. A couple of times, I've played the only cleric in the party otherwise bereft of divine magic and been a negative-channeler. Gotta be a bit stingier than usual with your healing in that situation.

 

[Wikid Klown]

Blasted Lawful Good people

Yes. One of my players is very into his character, a paladin. The party rogue decided to make some extra coin and pocket a few items from the shop, thinking he got away with it. The paladin was watching him, but didn't say anything at the time to cause a scene or ruin a friendship his character had with the rogue (a very long history). When they got to the inn, he asked and the rogue lied (obviously), but he did stop to think about a small zone of truth. For 3 sessions, that rogue spent every coin he had on potions because the paladin wouldn't heal him. I don't recall him lifting while the paladin was around after that.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The news journalist editor in me usually snaps when I see Statements of the Obvious(tm) such as the latest "Character Class" tips at the WotC site. When playing a beguiler, it suggests, "Get friendly and stay friendly with your party's cleric, druid, or paladin. This character's healing spells can stave off death, especially if you mange to get yourself poisoned or suffer from some other debilitating attack."

OK. :\ Good advice.

(I'll even pretend to ignore the spelling error of "mange" instead of "manage," which has been repeated over other class columns for at least a year.)

The paragraph also suggests making an effort to stay in their good graces, which brings me to the question of this thread: Have you ever been part of an adventure in which the party's designated healer expressed reluctance or otherwise tried to avoid taking care of his injured peers?

I've seen a cleric try to do that - specifically, he tried to wait until after combat to cast spells so he could do more in combat. The player was not experienced and often wasted combat actions in combat, so no wonder they were frustrated. Plus, he couldn't remember advice in the "heat" of combat, even when we later added another cleric PC whose player was much more experienced. Naturally his stinginess didn't work; bad luck alone ensured that sometimes a character would need healing during combat.

Oh yeah, you can remind the cleric PC that, if he doesn't heal you, you won't rescue him if things turn bad in combat. A party uses team effort all the time, and there's no "I" in team.

I've twice had neutral clerics who channeled negative energy. The second time I told the player to take a feat from Sean K Reynolds' site enablling him to channel negative and positive energy for purposes of casting cure/inflict spells. Still, the character was a multi-classed rogue, so decent healing was never available.

 

[Snapdragyn]

I played a character in a short-lived campaign who was a cleric of a god of fate and battle. Basically, his feeling was that if you survived a combat, you were fated to live & he'd heal you; if you didn't, then clearly you weren't worthy of his divine healing anyway.

The only time he healed someone in battle (other than himself -- I mean, obviously his deity would've wanted his holy messenger to survive!) was when he needed a meatshield. 'Hmm, weretiger with reach 10' away, fallen comrade in front of me... I cast cure light wounds on the fallen & move back 30'!'

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

2nd ed college game, our LG dwarven cleric of Moradin refused to heal any evil characters in the party. Apparently that specialty of cleric got true sight from their diety, or something. Wasn't much of an issue since most of us were used to relying on potions anyway, since before he became a regular we'd never know if a cleric was going to be around or not.

It was amusing to most of us, who just chalked it up to IC dwarven quirkiness. To be fair to the player, I can't remember him ever letting someone die- he'd usually heal them at the last second while grumbling and saying something like, "That's your last chance, I'm warning you!" The char was even responsible for a couple of others converting away from evil.

He kept threatening that he was going to "deal with you chaotic types" next, but that never really came about. Which is fortunate, because something like 75% of the group was chaotic, and we'd have probably mutinied on his stumpy, bearded butt.

 

[el-remmen]

One time all the healers in one group conspired to limit healing on one particular monk who was very reckless all the time as a means of teaching him to be more careful.

Also, it is totally within the realm of acceptable role-playing to withhold healing for religious reasons.

 

[Umbran]

Yep.

Clerics are supposed to be devoted followers of deities. The deities have set portfolios, philosophies, and goals. The healer should be expected to heal if and when it is in the service of those goals, and should be expected to withhold aid when it would run counter to those goals.

 

[lukelightning]

I can understand the desire to avoid being a "walking band-aid" and spending all your actions in combat healing other people. Luckily the one time I played a cleric the rest of the party were super combat munchkins (I use this term affectionately) and could take a fair amount of beating.

Besides, everyone should carry a few potions of cure wounds for those situations. Clanky MacSlowspeed might have trouble reaching you.

As for withholding healing entirely, well, in that case I'm going to withhold "protecting you from that 8-headed pyrohydra" and bringing you along when we teleport out of the dungeon.

 

[Henry]

We had an interesting debate last session in which the party needed to descend a deep chasm. The cleric asked for a fly spell from the artificer, to which the artificer replied, "that'll be 200 gold, please." After a bit of in-character grumbling, the artificer settled for 100 gold.

Later, the wizard was badly hurt and down to about 20% hit points. He expressed this info to the Cleric, and the cleric's reply:

C: "Hurt pretty bad, huh?"
A: "Yes. That creature chewed me up!"
C: "Care for some healing?"
A: "Yeah!"
C: "That'll be 200 gold, please."