Priestly Healing

[General Kong]

Hi there, folks!

Not new to the game (or gaming) but new to the forum. I am thinking of stating a Palladium Fantasy campaign (maybe 1st edition, maybe 2nd) and I have a question regarding the Healing powers of priests.

If I understand either rules correctly, to become a Prist of Light all you have to have a strong decotion and conviction reagrdaing your god(s). That might not be so very common if you understand that conviction as almost saintly - I guess not every run-off-the temple priest qualifies for the O.C.C. "Priste of Light", but maybe they are more common than saints in church history.
Other than that no high stats or anything else is needed.

So, as soon as you qualify you can heal - in 1st edition from 2. Level, in 2nd edition right away - every other round. No other limit.

Does that not mean that in battles fought in RAW-style you have either dead soldiers or fully healed soldiers, ready to fight again the next days? At least in abattle Good Kingdom against Evil Tyranny the goody-two-shoes should have a great advantage. I, as a rulers would never enter a battle without my set of Priest of Light securely shuttled away to heal like there is no tommorrow.

How does this play out in your campaign?
Has there ever been a problem with "too much healing power" on the side of the adventures?
Or has there been a plot destruction? "Baron Boris has been severely injured - but there he is after 10 minutes of healing. Better than before!"

I don't mind healing magic, bit unlimited healing is something I do dislike.

[kiralon]

I play a heavily house ruled first ed.
Priests in my game can heal every second round, but it takes a full round where the priest can't parry, or dodge while he heals as he has to keep his hands on his target, same with his target as if they lose contact the healing has to start again next round.
He can do it for free for followers of his god/pantheon if they give regularly to the church.
For non-believers he has to be paid for healing, but yes, out of combat he can return the party to full hp, but is a lot more limited in combat.
The 1st ed healer (which i have added more powers to at higher levels) however can heal every action for more, and can choose to be paid, or not as he likes.
However he uses ISP, so is limited in how many times he can heal, but is a lot more useful in combat, as he can get 2-3 heals off in a round, and its just a touch to heal so doesn't interfere with combat.

[Veknironth]

Well, RAW, the priest can heal every other round. So, yeah they can just heal everyone up to full. They can't do much else but they can heal like none other. The only limit is the GM deciding that the god no longer wants to grant that power to the priest. A priest in a group means that after every battle they are instantly healed up to full in minutes to an hour. It's...unbalanced.

-Vek
"But, in a group it does allow a PC to attempt to dictate the other players' behavior by withholding healing."

[kiralon]

"But, in a group it does allow a PC to attempt to dictate the other players' behaviour by withholding healing."

I find this tends to not work if the healer doesn't have a reason to not heal (as its the priest/healers job), as the others then don't help the priest in combat (fighter/mage job).
But if the god says no as they aren't followers, the players do not blame the priest.

[Soldier of Od]

I have played/GM'd multiple campaigns in which a priest was included in the player group, and have personally found it very beneficial. Being limited to every other melee round means that the healing touch has limited value during combat, with (in my experience) likely only a couple of touches possible before the combat is over. And if there are more adversaries running down the corridor, there may be no time for more healing - quick, let's get out of here! - maybe grabbing one or two more touches as the group flees, hides, or prepares for another battle. But, once all the excitement is over, and the party can find a place to rest up for a while, being able to heal up to full before the next encounter has proven to be good for the adventure - it allows for more encounters, more battles (if that is what you are into), and more adventure. Healing without magical or clerical intervention is painfully slow in Palladium Books' games, and without a priest on board, the game can sometimes feel like each encounter is a war of attrition, whittling you down each time until it is no fun anymore. In my opinion, it doesn't lessen the threat of dying - there is still plenty of danger even at full HP!
Also note that goody-two-shoes don't get an advantage - the bad guys can heal too!
If you want to impose a limitation on it, perhaps you could say that it takes two melees to perform; focussing on the power in a similar way to the trances required for many psionic healing abilities.
If a particular character in the group seems to be receiving a great deal of the god's favour in this way, perhaps the god may request that the beneficiary completes some sort of task for them, in return for their generosity?
Or maybe the priest giving the healing may request that the recipients join them in prayer to thank their god for this boon - and maybe some characters refuse, having conflicting beliefs, unwilling to pay homage to another god? Is praying to another too big a price to pay for healing? Some religions are very exclusive; some more willing to accept other beliefs. That puts the decision ultimately in the hands of the player being healed, as opposed to the priest refusing to heal. Some roleplaying opportunities there.

[Library Ogre]

With regards to "Will the PC priest heal the other PCs", I tend to go with "So long as they aren't disrespectful to the deity in question."

First of all, it's kind of a dick move.
Secondly, the other PCs are usually helping further the priest's gods goals as much as the priest themselves... because the other PCs, by helping the priest, are helping advance the god's goals.
Thirdly, if your priest is withholding healing, the thing that priests are best at... why are you hanging around this priest? What are they contributing to the party to justify their share of the treasure?

[Veknironth]

Well, obviously it depends on the group, but I think the priest witholding healing to try to influence behavior is a great role-playing opportunity. There could be a bloodthirsty savage in the group who wants to solve all problems with a sword and the priest of Isis wants to curb the violence. Or, the priest demands that they all donate a portion of their earnings to churches of that priest's deity, or at least pray to the deity. There ends up with a push/pull between the priest who wants to help shepard this group in a particular direction and uses the healing as a carrot, or witholding some of the healing to influence behavior. Maybe he doesn't heal up to max HP/SDC every rest? The group has to decide, as <s>Mark</s> Library Ogre said, whether the priest's sermons and sanctimony are worth the healing. Do they become adherents to the faith, fake it enough to get by, or just decide to not worry about it? The opposite could work for a priest of Dark, who tries to corrupt the paladin or whatever.

There are also tactical considerations that require protecting the unarmored priest (although every priest likely has Armor of Ithan as soon as possible), so that you can refresh after a battle. Rather than run out and rack up kills, you have to be careful about how you attack.

We had a priest of light in our most recent game who was sanctimonious and had several heated discussions with my soldier about tactics, disingenuous questioning techniques, etc. but he needed my character to keep him alive when the demons attacked. It was fun.

Now, as Dark Elf said, the priest isn't great at healing in combat. But, no one really is. You just can't heal large amounts of damage quickly enough. Psionics, magic, and divine healing restore a relatively small amount of damage when compared to weapons (looking at you overpowered Battle Axe) and any PS bonuses. It can help stabilize someone who dropped in combat so that they don't bleed to death, but it is unlikely to keep someone up. This is compounded by SDC. If someone has chopped through your SDC and into your HP, they have either hit you hard or hit you repeatedly. A piddling 2d6 won't help a great deal.

What the priest does is offer a free reset after most combat scenarios. It takes away a lot of potential drama with a wounded group having to survive, but it can make for happy powergamers who don't want to be diminished before any fight. It also can save on bookkeeping. Fight over, everyone is back to max. No need to keep track of various SDC and HP amounts. Priest healing is free, per the book, and just requires time.

From a world building perspective, people could always be running around with full health. Cancer does 1d6 damage directly to HP every day. No sweat, Father Renar can swing by at lunch and have me hale and hearty. All of those evangelical healings would be common place. The priest wouldn't even need to ask what was wrong with the person. Just heal them for 1d6 or 2d4. Everyone in the village is back to perfect health in 2 hours.

-Vek
"I don't care for the priest being able to bring everyone back to full health."

[kiralon]

Priest healing can be free or can be charged, it has little as 5 gp to 1d6x100gp depending on the church and circumstance is what it says in the book.
It generally only being free for followers gives the players a good reason to worship the God the priest follows with them being able to choose not to if they don't want to. It gives good RP opportunities, and as people can follow multiple gods, they can choose to get free healing or choose not to get free healing, and making it standard like that means the other players do not grumble about it as it was their choice.
In saying that the Priests of healing gods tend to do it for free, but it isn't a real problem in society as the worshippers of a place tend to match the churches there.

[Soldier of Od]

I'm not sure that a healing touch can technically bring everyone back to full "health", depending on how you define health. I don't know how cancer works in the terms of game rules, but I am pretty sure that it isn't as simple as making you lose HP. You can die from a disease (or starvation, or drowning, etc.) without losing any SDC/HP.
And as far as I know, a healing touch doesn't help with serious physical injuries like broken bones, etc. The way I play it is that, say, you lose 80% of your hit points and suffer a broken rib according to the table on page 20 pf PFRPG, the healing touch will seal your wounds and heal the flesh around your rib, bringing your HP back up, but will not fix the rib, so you are still in pain, -4 to PE, attacks halved, etc., for a number of weeks. To mend a broken rib (or fractured pelvis, torn arm muscle, etc.), you would need time, or another ability such as psychic surgery.
All a healing touch can do is restore HP/SDC, no more.

One comment I would add about "protecting the unarmoured priest", is that, the way PFRPG works, I find that is often unnecessary - a priest can wear armour just as easily as everyone else, with only a speed penalty to worry about, and some spellcasting issues that are not all that bad, and don't even affect a priest until level three. Beside, armour isn't that big a deal. And a fifth level priest with W.P. Sword is as good at sword fighting as a fifth level mercenary with W.P. Sword. Yeah, they are likely to have only basic hand to hand, but that mainly comes down to one less to strike, parry and dodge than expert, and that is before any potential bonuses from PP is taken into account - an attribute that even most man-at-arms classes can't alter much, if at all, through skill selection. In short (too late), a Palladium priest can be a perfectly capable fighter.

I like the role-playing aspects many of the posters here are focussing on - good to see that is what people here are in to!

[Kraynic]

I haven't found the healing from a priest to be problematic. I run 1E, but use the melee duration of 15 seconds from 2E. Since the priest can only use the healing touch every other melee, it really doesn't add up in a big hurry. If you go with the 1E melee duration, the priest can heal (on average) 9HP per 4 minutes. If you go with the 2E melee duration, the priest can heal (on average) 9HP per minute. Depending on dice luck, a hit from an electrical field or even something as simple as a cloud of steam might take a fair bit of time to heal if it hits several people in the group. I see it as mostly useless during combat, leaving the priest free to engage in magical or mundane combat (or whatever) until there is a break or an end to the battle. And, depending on what is going on, it may not be in the best interests of survival to spend several minutes healing up. Sometimes running for your life is the best (or only?) survival strategy.

In my games, I use and have expanded upon the optional rule for injuries (page 7 in the 1E book). This means that if someone is knocked unconscious, there is a good chance that they have an injury that is debilitating beyond "simple" hit point loss. I have made it so that those require psychic surgery to cure. I generally think of this as healing magic being fairly crude, though powerful, while surgery is more precise. Yes, healing touch may knit your damaged bones back together, but if any were broken as opposed to cracked, they won't necessarily be set straight. The surgery will go in and set things back the way they should be, remove foreign material (like those nasty bits from bone arrowheads), etc. Basically, healing is still powerful and nice to have, but it doesn't do everything.

Note that in my games I have given Psychic Surgery to the Healer OCC as a level 5 ability, so that players would not be limited to only Mind Mages to get their injuries tended.

[kiralon]

I

Note that in my games I have given Psychic Surgery to the Healer OCC as a level 5 ability, so that players would not be limited to only Mind Mages to get their injuries tended.

Ditto, and i gave psychic diagnosis at lvl 4

[Library Ogre]

Priestly Healing is strategic, not tactical. At 5 points (average, Priest of Light) per touch, healing a 1st level Man at Arms is going to be about 8 touches, which means 16 rounds, which means 4 minutes, from 0 to full (Assuming about 40 points combined HP and SDC). It is a SIGNIFICANT amount of healing; everyone is likely to wake up fully healed, at pretty much no cost to the priest except for time. But tactically? 5 points every 30 seconds is practically nothing... A slap on the butt in the middle of combat isn't going to keep you going that well.

If you have 1 priest per 20 soldiers, then that priest can bring them back from the brink of death in about an hour and a half (80 minutes). That is BIG. But it won't help them if they're already dead.