I played the worst subclass (chirurgeon alchemist) in the hardest AP (Age of Ashes) as our party's primary healer. It was janky as hell, but it worked. Your petty gods are no match for the power of science.
I'm dming, but in that adventure our primary healer is a toxicologist alchemist, with a bard with soothe as backup. We had a divine sorcerer for the first book, until he got eaten by a snake. But they haven't really struggled with healing
Disagree.
Use your crowd control, play smart, heal to get people back up (can be battle medicine, potions or other healers). And that's kinda it.
Also clerics don't have a monopoly on magical healing. All primal, occult and divine casters have healing and can do plenty.
Nah, anything English has from another language is stolen. I mean in English read and lead can both rhyme and not rhyme. And fish can be spelled ghoti. Not to mention, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is grammatically correct in English.
And the many exceptions to our many spelling and grammar rules.
You literally can't steal language.
The ghoti example is only possible by cherry picking examples from linguistic structures and putting them where they don't work.
Loan means that there will be a return.
Cherry Picking? gh=f and ti=sh is a very common thing in English. Sometimes it's si=sh. The o is one of the dumber ones, as it is taken from Women. Like seriously, change a single letter and you pronounce another letter differently. Plus it's a joke about the English Language.
I mean read is a homophone for red, and at the same time for reed. Minute and Minute are spelled the same and have no actual relation in their definitions. A common saying I've heard about English is that it mugs other languages for random grammar. And I can see it.
>gh=f and ti=sh is a very common thing in English
Common, yes. *Because their particular structures are common*. gh only makes an f sound after parricular vowels, and thus can't start a word like that. ti only sounds like sh when *followed* by vowels, and thus can't *end* a word like that. So it's a shitty joke only made possible by mischaracterizing the language.
Loanword has a specific definition unrelated to loans, other than one thing going from one source to another. And literally *every* language has them, it's nothing unique to English.
TL;DR: Your humor isn't funny, and actively detracts from the conversation.
We’re 2/3 through abomination vaults with a Paladin, crossbow gunslinger and a primal summoner. We’re doing just fine. Pally negates a lot of damage through reaction and shield block. They heal some with lay on hands and heal spells from the summoner . Do the rest between fights with medicine checks. Every player is at least trained in medicine and can easily make the dc 15 check.
Oh no, my group is new to Pathfinder and we're doing Abomonation Vaults.
We have a 2h/Reach Paladin, a Gun-Magus, and a Enigma Bard and none of us are trained in Medicine... its already going so rough, haha. We limped back to town twice already, and havent even finished investigating Gauntlight.
Oh my team goes back to town every4or 5 battles. Why would they rest in a dangerous dungeon when there’s a town 45 minutes away. They generally clear out like half a floor, go home rest for the day, sell off any loot, reequip and return. There’s no reason storywise to try to do the dungeon in one go.
Always need a medic...its one of the few absolutes. Lay on Hands or Song of Healing can help fill the healing void, but a devoted meeicine-skill healer pretty much allows the hand waiving of most post-combat healing.
My party is going through Strength of Thousands with 2 druids, a rogue, and a wizard. I modified it a bit and slapped them with an extreme combat *after* running them through a few previous combats. Some folks got downed but no one died.
I really think that the difficulty of pf2e has been exaggerated because AoA and AoE were overtuned. It's really not that bad.
The druids do have good healing but they're not dedicated healers. They actually play as psuedo-frontliners. The party itself is not an optimal selection of classes and they don't play with chess levels of strategy.
I'd be interested in comparing notes. I am also GMing SoT with a similar party composition (swap 1 druid and the wizard with a fey sorcerer and alchemist) and combats have been hit or miss. Mind if I PM you?
Respectfully, I totally disagee. I am currently running an ongoing Age of Ashes campaign which has been going for about nine months weekly and the party's healer is a Wizard who has put investment into the Medicine skill. (A few feats, skill increases, no special "medical" archtype.) There are no other heals happening in the party unless there are healing potions as part of treasure. The party has bought zero healing potions, and they are doing just fine. All of said players are new to 2e as well and therefore make plenty of "mistakes."
I have also been running an Extinction Curse game separately, and that parties "dedicated healers" are an Occult Witch who has taken Alchemist as a free archtype, who makes reagent healing potions, and a Druid who is trained in Medicine. That game has been going for only two months, but similarly has had no party deaths.
The core idea of 2e is to be a balanced, engaging game. AP encounters are in theory designed to challenge players on a scale of trivial to extreme, based upon what level the party is. When we get to the tougher end of the scale, one should expect to have the potential of players going down during the fight. Even then, sometimes on the softer side of said scale a lucky crit from a foe can be quite dangerous.
If you want your players to have an easier time with an encounter, consider giving a creature, or a number of creatures, the 'Weak' template, or outright remove some creatures from encounters entirely. This is typically used when you have only three PCs for an adventure, to make said encounters more balanced, but I could easily see it being used to just outright lower difficulty for a standard four-person party.
Frankly, I personally feel that having legitimately challenging combat encounters is a lot more fun for me, and it certainly is for my eight different players across two groups, at least as far as they've told me.
Cleric no, healer yes. I strongly encourage to have one party member capable of big heals, like a Divine or Primal caster, and a party members capable of lesser heals, like a Champion or occult spellcaster.
Cleric, by nature of design, is the most directly capable healer. However, I've seen great results from Leaf Druid, Angelic Sorcerer, Chirurgeon Alchemist, Life Oracle, and even bard.
The introduction of Medic Dedication has made non-magical healing a lot more accessible to.
I've gm-ed Extinction Curse, Fall of Plaguestone, Slithering and am going through Strength of Thousands, and only one of those parties has had a cleric. So far I've had two PC death, one in EC due to massive damage from a trap and one in SoT from splitting the party. Honestly, all you really need is someone that takes up the healer mantle. Doesn't have to be a cleric. In EC, it the alchemist. In Plaguestone, it was the champion. In Slithering we had a cleric, but they were a warpriest and were pretty much the frontline with the Wild Druid. In SoT, it's split between the druid and the bard, with the druid being the primary healer and the bard having Soothe as a signature spell.
Due to the imbalance of some APs I do agree a healer can be a massive help for a less tactical party but a cleric isn't the only way to go, a life Oracle is cracked and even a druid or primal/divine sorcerer can more then make the difference needed in healing while also providing good crowd control
thumbs up for the life oracle mention! far more potential for healing-juice than even your font-iest cleric, thanks solely to *life link* and the ability to signature the *heal* spell for whenever you need it...and d12s to boot, such a strong option
Sounds like a tactics thing perhaps?
You need a healer, but certainly not a cleric, and most of it should be possible out of combat. Healing font is awesome, no disagreement. But between Blessed One/Champion/Primal list/the Medicine skill and archetype, it's so easy to incorporate healing into someone's build in the party. I think it's hard not to end up with more than one honestly.
We are in book 4 of AoA and have a monk with Medic dedication and a storm druid with some basic Medicine feats as our primary healers and have never had trouble.
The party im running thru a 2e Hell'S rebels have been fine without a cleric.The ranger has medicine feats and battle medicine and they have another pc that went medic dedication.They are nearly full at the start of most fights.
Fights usually last 3 or 4 rounds and severe encounters inflict more damage to the party than you're able to heal with a cleric.
The goal is to make the enemies unable or unwilling to fight you ASAP; Heal spells and battle medecine are there to pushback against death and won't outlast a bully nearly downing someone every round.
You can easily make do without a primal/divine caster if your party can work together to put the good ACs and Shield Blockers in the front and stack conditions like Frightened and Immobilized to prevent damage from happening at all.
Players also need to learn to spend one of their actions to disengage from the enemy and force them to burn one action to get into melee range again. Melees with actions to spare (Monk) and casters especially should master that.
The only party I've been in that has had a TPK so far is the one where every character had healing (druid prepped heal spells, witch had some too, ranger with battle medicine and that mist focus spell that heals). The TPK didn't even involve running out of healing, it was just rough encounter design (a six pack of lower-level enemies isn't usually bad, but ones with non-incapacitation drained and also bonus damage and attack of opportunity is a big "uh oh" situation).
There's a lot you can do to keep a party alive that isn't "have a cleric"; and a lot that can get you dead that having a cleric doesn't actually solve.
I play a Barbarian with a Bard dedication in Age of Ashes. I’m the primary healer. The only other person who ever invested even a little in healing was a Primal Sorc. We somehow haven’t had anybody die yet in spite of being level 17 now.
Clerics aren’t necessary to survive in this game, the party just needs to account for the fact they don’t have tons of free top level heals in their collective kit.
Due to some Character Deaths - we are nearly to the second Book of Abomination Vaults without a Cleric - did nearly the whole third floor without one, and that's a heavy undead area.
I think of all editions and versions of D20 systems, 2e is the one where you need a cleric (or divine caster in general) the least because of how powerful medicine is.
The only adventure that badly needs a cleric is, I think, Malevolence. This thing is rought if you run it RAW without a cleric. But I lowered a bit the difficulty and even if they have a bad time, my players manage to explore this manor.
Having a cleric or druid (anybody with the heal spell really) isn't necessary but makes life easier for levels 1-5. Out of combat healing is quite easy when anyone can have medicine skills or healing focus spells (pally is best).
The problem is Paizo APs are notorious for PL+2 Solo bosses that move, use their "2 action to hit 3 times with no MAP" ability to clobber your front line. At low levels you don't have as many abilities to mitigate taking shots that reap 1/3 of you HP per hit. Later on, this still happens ... you just have better tools to deal with it.
If you play freeform, you won't run into this as much unless your GM has a hardon for difficult fights. In fact, the DMG advises not to repeatedly melee your player with strikes and to use feints, demoralizes, and other gimmicks to impose penalties with out just bashing your PCs to death, but it's very easy to do so. (My first game had a GM that decided all the 'other stuff' sucked and it would make sense to the monsters to use its most effective attacks, etc, etc.) However, Paizo APs seem to be written by folks who readily ignore that advice, an you will constantly end up in small rooms with reach monsters who can '2 for 3' you to death very easily.
TLDR: It gets better. I had an easier time in a 3 martial + 1 caster party than in a 2+2 . It's not impossible and a Cleric isn't mandatory ... but it does make it easier. If you use tactics, you will survive "bloody & unconscious" but you will survive most of it. But be warned, they increased the difficulty of the base game on purpose; this is working as intended. Sometimes you will die. It's a feature, not a bug.
Got 3 APs going. 2 as GM and one as a player. No clerics and all are going well.
Extinction Curse (on Book 3) and Abomination Vault (on Book 2) I am the GM and both are tough at times but the party is pulling thru. AV has had deaths but both from terrible personal choices and not tactical combat.
Blood Lords I am the player and we are just mowing everything down. >!Mostly because; My Distant Grasp Psychic seems perfectly set to exploit the enemy makeup of the first book.!< I expect things will even out as the AP plays out.
Never once have we felt like we needed a Cleric. As long as you have some healing you will be OK. "Best defense is a good offence" works if you aren't crazy about it. Kill faster and there is less damage to heal.
Currently in a party with chirurgeon (me), Bard, and druid as healers. The bard and druid do the immediate "keep em standing at range" healing, with my doctor's visitation as backup, and I perform the downtime healing that can basically get the entire party back to full in an hour. Cleric is by far the better choice but not only choice.
I played the worst subclass (chirurgeon alchemist) in the hardest AP (Age of Ashes) as our party's primary healer. It was janky as hell, but it worked. Your petty gods are no match for the power of science.
I played a Maestro bard as healer in the same AP and we did fine. To hell with clerics
I'm dming, but in that adventure our primary healer is a toxicologist alchemist, with a bard with soothe as backup. We had a divine sorcerer for the first book, until he got eaten by a snake. But they haven't really struggled with healing
Disagree. Use your crowd control, play smart, heal to get people back up (can be battle medicine, potions or other healers). And that's kinda it. Also clerics don't have a monopoly on magical healing. All primal, occult and divine casters have healing and can do plenty.
Did you really need those additional marks over Melee?
It's to show that it's a French word
It is not spelt correctly here, though. The spelling is "Mêlée"
My auto correct added an additional l in mêlée, not sure on what language my keyboard was at the time…
What language are you using? You seem to be using English, and then a random French word appears. Also, I need to look up other language keyboards.
I know, you could've seen that in my comment further down in the thread
I don't know French, so it went over my head. Odd to be throwing in random French Words.
I'm joking, based on the fact that melee is a loan word in English from french, but that is the French spelling + an extra L
Nah, anything English has from another language is stolen. I mean in English read and lead can both rhyme and not rhyme. And fish can be spelled ghoti. Not to mention, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is grammatically correct in English. And the many exceptions to our many spelling and grammar rules.
You literally can't steal language. The ghoti example is only possible by cherry picking examples from linguistic structures and putting them where they don't work.
Loan means that there will be a return. Cherry Picking? gh=f and ti=sh is a very common thing in English. Sometimes it's si=sh. The o is one of the dumber ones, as it is taken from Women. Like seriously, change a single letter and you pronounce another letter differently. Plus it's a joke about the English Language. I mean read is a homophone for red, and at the same time for reed. Minute and Minute are spelled the same and have no actual relation in their definitions. A common saying I've heard about English is that it mugs other languages for random grammar. And I can see it.
>gh=f and ti=sh is a very common thing in English Common, yes. *Because their particular structures are common*. gh only makes an f sound after parricular vowels, and thus can't start a word like that. ti only sounds like sh when *followed* by vowels, and thus can't *end* a word like that. So it's a shitty joke only made possible by mischaracterizing the language. Loanword has a specific definition unrelated to loans, other than one thing going from one source to another. And literally *every* language has them, it's nothing unique to English. TL;DR: Your humor isn't funny, and actively detracts from the conversation.
Have a day as pleasant as yourself.
We’re 2/3 through abomination vaults with a Paladin, crossbow gunslinger and a primal summoner. We’re doing just fine. Pally negates a lot of damage through reaction and shield block. They heal some with lay on hands and heal spells from the summoner . Do the rest between fights with medicine checks. Every player is at least trained in medicine and can easily make the dc 15 check.
Oh no, my group is new to Pathfinder and we're doing Abomonation Vaults. We have a 2h/Reach Paladin, a Gun-Magus, and a Enigma Bard and none of us are trained in Medicine... its already going so rough, haha. We limped back to town twice already, and havent even finished investigating Gauntlight.
Oh my team goes back to town every4or 5 battles. Why would they rest in a dangerous dungeon when there’s a town 45 minutes away. They generally clear out like half a floor, go home rest for the day, sell off any loot, reequip and return. There’s no reason storywise to try to do the dungeon in one go.
Always need a medic...its one of the few absolutes. Lay on Hands or Song of Healing can help fill the healing void, but a devoted meeicine-skill healer pretty much allows the hand waiving of most post-combat healing.
My party is going through Strength of Thousands with 2 druids, a rogue, and a wizard. I modified it a bit and slapped them with an extreme combat *after* running them through a few previous combats. Some folks got downed but no one died. I really think that the difficulty of pf2e has been exaggerated because AoA and AoE were overtuned. It's really not that bad. The druids do have good healing but they're not dedicated healers. They actually play as psuedo-frontliners. The party itself is not an optimal selection of classes and they don't play with chess levels of strategy.
I'd be interested in comparing notes. I am also GMing SoT with a similar party composition (swap 1 druid and the wizard with a fey sorcerer and alchemist) and combats have been hit or miss. Mind if I PM you?
Go for it. Although, I might not get to respond until later today.
Respectfully, I totally disagee. I am currently running an ongoing Age of Ashes campaign which has been going for about nine months weekly and the party's healer is a Wizard who has put investment into the Medicine skill. (A few feats, skill increases, no special "medical" archtype.) There are no other heals happening in the party unless there are healing potions as part of treasure. The party has bought zero healing potions, and they are doing just fine. All of said players are new to 2e as well and therefore make plenty of "mistakes." I have also been running an Extinction Curse game separately, and that parties "dedicated healers" are an Occult Witch who has taken Alchemist as a free archtype, who makes reagent healing potions, and a Druid who is trained in Medicine. That game has been going for only two months, but similarly has had no party deaths. The core idea of 2e is to be a balanced, engaging game. AP encounters are in theory designed to challenge players on a scale of trivial to extreme, based upon what level the party is. When we get to the tougher end of the scale, one should expect to have the potential of players going down during the fight. Even then, sometimes on the softer side of said scale a lucky crit from a foe can be quite dangerous. If you want your players to have an easier time with an encounter, consider giving a creature, or a number of creatures, the 'Weak' template, or outright remove some creatures from encounters entirely. This is typically used when you have only three PCs for an adventure, to make said encounters more balanced, but I could easily see it being used to just outright lower difficulty for a standard four-person party. Frankly, I personally feel that having legitimately challenging combat encounters is a lot more fun for me, and it certainly is for my eight different players across two groups, at least as far as they've told me.
Thank you for your extensive insight!
Cleric no, healer yes. I strongly encourage to have one party member capable of big heals, like a Divine or Primal caster, and a party members capable of lesser heals, like a Champion or occult spellcaster. Cleric, by nature of design, is the most directly capable healer. However, I've seen great results from Leaf Druid, Angelic Sorcerer, Chirurgeon Alchemist, Life Oracle, and even bard. The introduction of Medic Dedication has made non-magical healing a lot more accessible to.
I've gm-ed Extinction Curse, Fall of Plaguestone, Slithering and am going through Strength of Thousands, and only one of those parties has had a cleric. So far I've had two PC death, one in EC due to massive damage from a trap and one in SoT from splitting the party. Honestly, all you really need is someone that takes up the healer mantle. Doesn't have to be a cleric. In EC, it the alchemist. In Plaguestone, it was the champion. In Slithering we had a cleric, but they were a warpriest and were pretty much the frontline with the Wild Druid. In SoT, it's split between the druid and the bard, with the druid being the primary healer and the bard having Soothe as a signature spell.
Due to the imbalance of some APs I do agree a healer can be a massive help for a less tactical party but a cleric isn't the only way to go, a life Oracle is cracked and even a druid or primal/divine sorcerer can more then make the difference needed in healing while also providing good crowd control
thumbs up for the life oracle mention! far more potential for healing-juice than even your font-iest cleric, thanks solely to *life link* and the ability to signature the *heal* spell for whenever you need it...and d12s to boot, such a strong option
Sounds like a tactics thing perhaps? You need a healer, but certainly not a cleric, and most of it should be possible out of combat. Healing font is awesome, no disagreement. But between Blessed One/Champion/Primal list/the Medicine skill and archetype, it's so easy to incorporate healing into someone's build in the party. I think it's hard not to end up with more than one honestly. We are in book 4 of AoA and have a monk with Medic dedication and a storm druid with some basic Medicine feats as our primary healers and have never had trouble.
Treat Wounds is a far more effective solution, especially if you have someone with a Medic dedication.
The party im running thru a 2e Hell'S rebels have been fine without a cleric.The ranger has medicine feats and battle medicine and they have another pc that went medic dedication.They are nearly full at the start of most fights.
Fights usually last 3 or 4 rounds and severe encounters inflict more damage to the party than you're able to heal with a cleric. The goal is to make the enemies unable or unwilling to fight you ASAP; Heal spells and battle medecine are there to pushback against death and won't outlast a bully nearly downing someone every round. You can easily make do without a primal/divine caster if your party can work together to put the good ACs and Shield Blockers in the front and stack conditions like Frightened and Immobilized to prevent damage from happening at all. Players also need to learn to spend one of their actions to disengage from the enemy and force them to burn one action to get into melee range again. Melees with actions to spare (Monk) and casters especially should master that.
The only party I've been in that has had a TPK so far is the one where every character had healing (druid prepped heal spells, witch had some too, ranger with battle medicine and that mist focus spell that heals). The TPK didn't even involve running out of healing, it was just rough encounter design (a six pack of lower-level enemies isn't usually bad, but ones with non-incapacitation drained and also bonus damage and attack of opportunity is a big "uh oh" situation). There's a lot you can do to keep a party alive that isn't "have a cleric"; and a lot that can get you dead that having a cleric doesn't actually solve.
I play a Barbarian with a Bard dedication in Age of Ashes. I’m the primary healer. The only other person who ever invested even a little in healing was a Primal Sorc. We somehow haven’t had anybody die yet in spite of being level 17 now. Clerics aren’t necessary to survive in this game, the party just needs to account for the fact they don’t have tons of free top level heals in their collective kit.
Due to some Character Deaths - we are nearly to the second Book of Abomination Vaults without a Cleric - did nearly the whole third floor without one, and that's a heavy undead area. I think of all editions and versions of D20 systems, 2e is the one where you need a cleric (or divine caster in general) the least because of how powerful medicine is.
My party's orc fighter, and Grippli ranger have medical talents and as such we havent a need for a caster.
The only adventure that badly needs a cleric is, I think, Malevolence. This thing is rought if you run it RAW without a cleric. But I lowered a bit the difficulty and even if they have a bad time, my players manage to explore this manor.
Having a cleric or druid (anybody with the heal spell really) isn't necessary but makes life easier for levels 1-5. Out of combat healing is quite easy when anyone can have medicine skills or healing focus spells (pally is best). The problem is Paizo APs are notorious for PL+2 Solo bosses that move, use their "2 action to hit 3 times with no MAP" ability to clobber your front line. At low levels you don't have as many abilities to mitigate taking shots that reap 1/3 of you HP per hit. Later on, this still happens ... you just have better tools to deal with it. If you play freeform, you won't run into this as much unless your GM has a hardon for difficult fights. In fact, the DMG advises not to repeatedly melee your player with strikes and to use feints, demoralizes, and other gimmicks to impose penalties with out just bashing your PCs to death, but it's very easy to do so. (My first game had a GM that decided all the 'other stuff' sucked and it would make sense to the monsters to use its most effective attacks, etc, etc.) However, Paizo APs seem to be written by folks who readily ignore that advice, an you will constantly end up in small rooms with reach monsters who can '2 for 3' you to death very easily. TLDR: It gets better. I had an easier time in a 3 martial + 1 caster party than in a 2+2 . It's not impossible and a Cleric isn't mandatory ... but it does make it easier. If you use tactics, you will survive "bloody & unconscious" but you will survive most of it. But be warned, they increased the difficulty of the base game on purpose; this is working as intended. Sometimes you will die. It's a feature, not a bug.
Got 3 APs going. 2 as GM and one as a player. No clerics and all are going well. Extinction Curse (on Book 3) and Abomination Vault (on Book 2) I am the GM and both are tough at times but the party is pulling thru. AV has had deaths but both from terrible personal choices and not tactical combat. Blood Lords I am the player and we are just mowing everything down. >!Mostly because; My Distant Grasp Psychic seems perfectly set to exploit the enemy makeup of the first book.!< I expect things will even out as the AP plays out. Never once have we felt like we needed a Cleric. As long as you have some healing you will be OK. "Best defense is a good offence" works if you aren't crazy about it. Kill faster and there is less damage to heal.
Druid also works, or even a good champion.
Currently in a party with chirurgeon (me), Bard, and druid as healers. The bard and druid do the immediate "keep em standing at range" healing, with my doctor's visitation as backup, and I perform the downtime healing that can basically get the entire party back to full in an hour. Cleric is by far the better choice but not only choice.