Touch of Healing [Reserve] feat from Complete Champion Excerpt

[AllisterH]

"Unless he has a higher fire spell (which is not a certainty"

Huh? The mage that took the Reserve Feat which grants him unlimited fireballs and you think somehow he'll forget to prepare that? I mean, maybe if they are battling inside a volcano or on the Elemental Plane of Fire, but short of that, expect the characters to use their feats.

And some people do have a problem with the concept of a Wizard able to chuck 5d6 'firebursts' all day long (until he actually has to use his Wall of Fire, or whatever higher level fire spell he memorized).

Ah but you didn't read the rest of my post.

Why would people have problems with a 10th level mage casting 5d6 firebursts all day long since, quite frankly in combat they won't do ANYTHNG useful. Using this reserve feat at levels 1-5 is a huge step up for the wizard but at 10th level, what type of mook gets taken down by a 1st level damage spell?

Hell, would the mage even get XP on such a scenario given that if the mooks can be blown away by a 1st level spell, they have to be seriously below the CR and thus aren't likely to have XP by RAW?

Personally, I like the current reserve feats (except of course for the alter self one---damn, polymorph magic is simply broken....) since they allow me to scale back the power of the arcane classes at high levels but not screw them unintentionally at lower levels.

As for the balancing by encounter vs encoutners per day, I tend to prefer the former as I find the only scenario the latter excels at is the "BBEG is about to complete the ritual, we don't have time to rest". which can still work in the former paradigm.

 

[Technik4]

Why would people have problems with a 10th level mage casting 5d6 firebursts all day long since, quite frankly in combat they won't do ANYTHNG useful. Using this reserve feat at levels 1-5 is a huge step up for the wizard but at 10th level, what type of mook gets taken down by a 1st level damage spell?

I refuse to believe that a 5d6 fireball (with a 5' radius and 30 ft range) is useless at 10th level. Now, it certainly isn't great - I'm not arguing that the wizard will single-handedly take down whole encounters through use of the feat, but considering that it is really good when you acquire it at lower levels (and basically works like "sacrifice a spell slot of X level to throw Xd6 firebursts at will") I would not want to play with it in a game. Additionally, giving you another die of fire dice (10d6 fireballs at level 9) is just gravy for an already-awesome feat.

Honestly, with things like reserve feats I don't see how anyone can argue against power creep in the game. Compare a 3.0 wizard with feats selected from supplements before 3.5 to one afterwards. The potential power is noticably higher.

 

[AllisterH]

I refuse to believe that a 5d6 fireball (with a 5' radius and 30 ft range) is useless at 10th level. Now, it certainly isn't great - I'm not arguing that the wizard will single-handedly take down whole encounters through use of the feat, but considering that it is really good when you acquire it at lower levels (and basically works like "sacrifice a spell slot of X level to throw Xd6 firebursts at will") I would not want to play with it in a game. Additionally, giving you another die of fire dice (10d6 fireballs at level 9) is just gravy for an already-awesome feat.

Honestly, with things like reserve feats I don't see how anyone can argue against power creep in the game. Compare a 3.0 wizard with feats selected from supplements before 3.5 to one afterwards. The potential power is noticably higher.

Hmm?

Not sure how you figure this though? I mean at level 10, the situations where a 5d6 fireball would win are also situations where you wouldn't get any XP. What it does do is ust give a mage more fluff at the high ends and more power at the low ends. I do agree that it is an increase in power of mages but only at a pt in the game where they actually need it and yes, I do think mages need to be scaled back at the lower ends.

As for power creep, that's not really happening since people tend to focus on ONLY the options that increase power. Take the PHB II for example. An increase in power for fighters certainly since they get a lot of new tasty high level fighter feats but look at the new druid variant.

That's a siginifcant decrease versus the core-druid yet no-one mentions this. How about the new classes introduced in the PHB II? Not one of them even matches the original big 4 from the original PHB yet again, no one mentions this as a decrease in power?

There are simply more options which of course means more potential abuses. If 3.5 has 100 feats but only 5 of them are uber whereas in 3.0 only has 10 feats but 1 of them is uber, it looks like 3.5 is more powerful since players don't like playing with weaker options (and I can't see how WOTC is to blame for this).

As for the specific power increase in wizards, might I remind you about the spell DC shenanigans that a 3.0 wizard had? Even at this point in 3.5, a wizard isn't going to have his spell DCs jacked up as much as his 3.0 counterpart and again, this seems to get ignored.

 

[Technik4]

There are simply more options which of course means more potential abuses. If 3.5 has 100 feats but only 5 of them are uber whereas in 3.0 only has 10 feats but 1 of them is uber, it looks like 3.5 is more powerful since players don't like playing with weaker options (and I can't see how WOTC is to blame for this).

That's the whole point really. It wouldn't matter if every feat in the Complete Champion was weaker than the average feat in the PHB (which is high doubtful) - the fact is there is this one feat that will definitely change how many groups play and if you come back to the game in 2 years (assuming that 4e hasn't come and changed things) you'll find things are pretty different than they were before things like Book of 9 Swords has come out.

I still have friends that lament that the intricacies of THAC0 are gone - they liked the complexity of earlier editions and think that 3rd edition is too lax in some areas. I'm not trying to convince anyone this is true, but it is true the game is being changed in favor of more flexibility, more gas for spellcasters (which seems ironic given the huge buff decreasing from 3.0-3.5, reducing the durations of bull's strength et al), and classes that can be 'fully prepared' for each encounter.

And Spell Foci feats, Spell Power, and spell DC inflation was nerfed before 3.5 came out (though haste was a real powerhouse until the revision and there were many houseruled variants).

 

[Blue]

The design philosophy at WotC has changed over the last few years. It used to be that the group adventured from X number of encounters to X number of encounters. Casters had to pace themselves to make it through X number of encounters before having a chance to re-charge.

Now, however, the philosophy is to balance against one encounter. Recharging totally between encounters seems almost expected. In the midst of a combat, healing a few points is useful, but it is not game breaking, as a typical attack will often take off more than is healed.

I think I agree that the philosophy is shifting, but I also see that as a good thing. For instance, as a DM who runs exceedingly few classic dungeons, most usual is only 1-2 encounters per day (if there are any encounters on a specific day). This allows casters to "go nova" and blow through resources. A friend of mine had a nice balance - sometimes 1 encounter, sometimes 5 or 6, and you never really knew which.

I think allowing things on a per encounter allow the DM the flexibility to run the type of campaign they want. The only thing I'm not so happy about is the definition of encounter. Everything seems focused on encounter = combat. An encounter could be an RP encounter with repercussions, it could be a trap, etc.

I do find one thing different in my games then you experience - healing in combat is crucial. We've had a number of character deaths recently in one game I'm in because we couldn't get healing to the right place at the right time. In the game I'm in good healing has prevented deaths. So my experience is that in-combat healing is crucial. So you still need healers capable of appropriately large healing spells that they are useful in combat, this feat just moves the out-of-combat reliance from items back to character abilities, which I like.

Cheers,
=Blue(23)

 

[Patlin]

I'm hoping for a limited number of heals per recipient per day (or hour.) The devil is usually in the details, and without reading the whole thing I'm not at all certain we know enough to comment.

Tons of possibilities exist. The feat might heal the recipient but fatigue them, for example.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Hmm?

Not sure how you figure this though? I mean at level 10, the situations where a 5d6 fireball would win are also situations where you wouldn't get any XP.

This seems like you are saying an ability is only useful as an instakill. The point is not for the 5d6 fireball to "win" the encounter, anymore than the point of improved disarm is to "win" the encounter. The point is to contribute, and a 5d6 fireball can certainly contribute to a XP worthy encounter.

The whole point of the reserve feats, IMO is to move away from the mindset where the spellcaster is either dominating an encounter or useless and towards a middle ground of consistent contribution with the occasional moments to shine.

 

[Twowolves]

You do realize that there may be different levels and forms of resource management, right? It's not a case of all or nothing.

People play the game differently and appreciate different parts of it. I, for example, am not a big fan of resource management and generally try to minimize it in my game. Doing so doesn't affect my ability to challenge the PCs or create interesting and varied encounters (which may, sometimes, have some emphasis on resource management for a change) or run a successful long-term campaign. But if resource management is important to your game and helps it, I'm not the least bit surprised, say more power to you and heartily recommend that you don't use the feat. Is it that difficult for you to understand that some people might not play the way you do?

Nowhere did I say I begrudged anyone for how they choose to play. In fact, if you read my earlier posts, I specifically state that what works for you is great for you, BUT it doesn't work for me. My problem is that with this second round of Complete books, these feats are moving the entire game towards a direction that is massively different that what I'm comfortable with, and both Henry and I see it as being the way things will probably be in the next edition of the game. At that point, I'll no longer be playing "D&D", as it will be understood, but instead playing with "the old rules", and will be getting just as much support from the industry as, say, someone playing Star Frontiers or Twilight 2000.

I don't really care if someone runs a game in which they don't keep up with food, or arrows, or hit points. That's fantastic, but I don't care for it. I have very little difficulty understanding, but thanks for assuming otherwise. Is it so hard for YOU to understand that the underlying assumptions about the limiting resources available to PCs is disaapearing with these new feats, and that it is a huge power-boost to PCs that isn't easily matched by just giving NPCs the same feats? As esplained in the sidebar about critical hits, because PCs are in more fights than any given NPC foe, anything that increases randomness hurts the PCs, but anything that lets the PCs go all day without stopping is a huge swing the other way.

Why not give the PC's magic machine guns that never run out of ammo. Because this is basically what the wizard reserve feats do. Sure, some action movies are just fine, even though the hero has just fired 24 rounds from a 6 shot revolver without reloading, but that just doesn't sit well with me, nor a lot of others.

Yeah, I can make a challenging encounter for PCs with this feat, but it gets a lot harder when they never have to rest between fights or can fire away all day long. Essentially, the foes must be capable of taking out a party at full strength, or not at all. No more the idea of mooks wearing them down as they get closer and closer to the BBEG. If PCs enter every fight at full hp every time, why have hp at all? If the foes have to drop the PCs in one fell swoop, why not use the Damage Save from Mutants and Masterminds or True 20? Both are good systems, neither are D&D. If parties are already healing to full via wands, why bother having gold pieces? I'm not advocating massive ammounts of resource management, just... the same as it's been.

 

[Twowolves]

The whole point of the reserve feats, IMO is to move away from the mindset where the spellcaster is either dominating an encounter or useless and towards a middle ground of consistent contribution with the occasional moments to shine.

I thought that's what wands were for, after all. A wizard with a reserve feat doing 5d6 every round all day long has little use for a wand of magic missiles even at CL9. So, one of these reserve feats just eliminated the need for a nearly 5000gp item. Hmmmm.... nah, not a problem, right?

 

[satori01]

One can make an argument that per encounter powers is more consistent with the storyline driven nature of the game today.
When you just fought through the evil princes elite body guards, that last thing you want to do for continuity is have to cast the Rope Trick or Mord Mag Mansion to rest up.

We all have done it, and we all have excised those incongruousness memories from the narrative fabric. Per day powers works better, when the pace of the game is assumed to be languorous exploration of a Dungeon.

That said I have some fond memories of trying to find a place to rest in hostile territory, and as a DM I love the thrill of when you shut off the supply of healing potions, and leave the players stranded in a hostile land.

Reserve feats are an interesting way to have at will powers, and resource management. I think the vast majority of players feel that spell casters should have some powers they can either use at will or always have on, and major effects should have a more limited usage per day.

The question with a reserve healing feat is healing treated w/in the system more as a combat related aspect, or utility. Monte Cook once famously said that the Sorcerer class was balanced in regards to being a "Magic Missile" machine, the system can handle the "loaded for bear" character. People had a harder time handling the utility mage, the one that had the party always buffed w/ 3.0 Haste and Improved Invisibility.

My own personal opinion, is that healing falls more under the loaded for bear category. Players & DMs alike have always never looked to hard at when a Healing wand or Potion appears just at the right time in the horde of slain monsters. A good portion of treasure resources, whether by DM placement or player creation or purchase always goes to supplying healing. To put that more firmly into the control of players, I think is essentially not that great of a change.

Moreover, more self reliant characters means equipment matters less, which is not a bad think imho. As a DM creating treasure troves and monitoring player wealth is the biggest balance factor.

Ultimately @ high levels, it is all about the heal spell anyways.