Healer

The hurts of the world are manifold. Minor accidents are common, and usually easily dealt with. However, when conflict and allout warfare occur, they leave misery and hurt in their wake that can stagger the imagination. While good-aligned clerics are called upon to heal, their complex obligations and abilities often get in the way of pure solace and remediation. Not so the healer. One of the healer’s great purposes in life is to provide protection, and failing that, healing, to all good people who require her aid.

Empathetic, a healer is adept both at detecting the ailments of allies and understanding the coarse, unruly thoughts of beasts. Her way with animals wins her friends among otherwise savage creatures of the wild.

Adventures: The healer provides aid to members of her adventuring company, the soldiers of her religion, or the alliance to which she is pledged. When a battlefield is strewn with wounded allies or an expedition team’s members are sorely hurt, a healer cures the injuries of the faithful and those who have allied themselves with the side of good. A healer might accept a commission to escort a company or warband on a dangerous mission, making herself available to cast divine protections and offer divine healing. The healer is much revered for her services, and she may ask her companions for daily praise to her deity—or at least an equal share in any reward garnered after the successful conclusion of the adventure or military action.

Characteristics: Healers are masters of curative magic, outpacing even clerics in this regard. This focus on healing comes with a trade-off: A healer’s spell list is sharply constrained, and it lacks destructive magic and violent spells.

Healers have some combat capability and are familiar with basic weapons and some armor.

Alignment: Dedicating one’s life to curative magic requires a good alignment.

Religion: Healers revere good-aligned deities or righteous causes.

Background: Some healers are unofficially attached members of religious organizations. Others wander the lands freely, either alone or in adventuring companies. Many also take up service in armies that combat evil, repel invasions, or otherwise “fight the good fight.”

Healing all allies⁠—​no matter their philosophy⁠—​while at the same time eschewing the use of violent spells requires a selfless quality and dedication to good. A healer must be gentle, but also strong in her convictions.

Races: The need for healing knows no racial boundaries, and healers include members of all the common races. Adventuring healers are most often humans and elves. Healers are less common among the dwarves, who would rather prevent wounds (by smashing the enemy) than cure them.

Other Classes: The healer is rarely snubbed in an adventuring company. All realize that her presence could be the advantage that enables them to see their next quest through to the end. Healers sometimes clash with clerics, since clerics represent a more dogmatic view of faith and reverence toward the deities.

Role: A healer is easy to spot. She moves about behind an adventuring company or combat unit, applying her divine skills to bring relief to the injured. After she passes, the wounded press forward with renewed vigor, and the fallen may yet rise again.

Game Rule Information

Healers have the following game statistics.

Abilities: Wisdom determines how many spells a healer can cast per day. Charisma determines how effective the healer’s spells are. A high Constitution improves her hit points, allowing her to brave combat and letting her spend fewer healing spells on herself.

Alignment: Any good.

Hit Die: d8.

Class Skills

The healer’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Profession (Wis), Sense Motive (Wis), Spellcraft (Int), and Survival (Wis).

Skill Points at 1st Level: (4 + Int modifier) × 4.

Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier.

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the healer.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Healers are proficient with all simple weapons and with light armor. Additionally, a healer who uses metal armor or any kind of shield is severely hampered. The armor of a healer is restricted by traditional oaths, not simply training. A healer knows how to wear light metal armor and could become proficient with medium or heavy armor, but wearing metal armor or bearing a shield would violate her oath and suppress her healer powers. Her ethos requires a certain vulnerability that allows her to more fully empathize with those in their care. A healer who uses prohibited armor is unable to cast healer spells or use any of her supernatural or spell-like class features while doing so and for 24 hours after the armor is taken off.

Spells: A healer casts divine spells (the same type of spells available to clerics), which are drawn from the healer spell list. A healer must choose and prepare her spells in advance (see below).

To prepare or cast a spell, a healer must have a Wisdom score of 10 + the spell’s level (Wis 10 for 0-level spells, Wis 11 for 1stlevel spells, and so forth). The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a healer’s spell is 10 + the spell’s level + the healer’s Charisma modifier.

Like other spellcasters, a healer can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. Her base daily spell allotment is given on the Healer table. In addition, she receives bonus spells per day if she has a high Wisdom score (see Table 1–1, page 8 of the Player’s Handbook).

Healers do not acquire their spells from books or scrolls, nor do they prepare them through study. Instead, they meditate or pray for their spells, receiving them through their own strength of faith. Each healer must choose a time at which she must spend 1 hour each day in quiet contemplation or supplication to regain her daily allotment of spells. Time spent resting has no effect on whether a healer can prepare spells. A healer may prepare and cast any spell on the healer spell list (see below), provided she can cast spells of that level, but she must choose which spells to prepare during her daily meditation.

Healing Hands (Ex): Whenever a healer casts a spell that cures hit point damage, she adds her Charisma modifier to the amount of damage healed. For instance, if a 5th-level healer with an 18 Charisma casts cure light wounds, she cures 1d8+5 points of damage normally, plus an additional 4 points of damage due to her Charisma bonus. This bonus applies only to spells of the healing subschool that she casts as a healer, not to those that she may have by virtue of levels in another class.

Skill Focus (Heal): A healer’s focused training grants her Skill Focus (Heal) at 2nd level. If she already has that feat, she may choose a different one.

Cleanse Paralysis (Su): A healer deals with certain kinds of maladies so often that eventually she can cure them without resorting to a spell. At 3rd level, a healer gains the ability to cleanse paralysis once per day, as if casting a remove paralysis spell.

Cleanse Disease (Su): At 4th level, a healer gains the ability to cleanse disease once per day, as if casting a remove disease spell.

Cleanse Fear (Su): At 5th level, a healer gains the ability to cleanse fear once per day, as if casting a remove fear spell.

Cleanse Poison (Su): At 6th level, a healer gains the ability to cleanse poison once per day, as if casting a neutralize poison spell.

Effortless Healing (Ex): At 7th level, a healer has learned to cast spells of the healing subschool with minimal effort. She may cast such spells without provoking attacks of opportunity. This ability applies only to spells of the healing subschool that she casts as a healer, not to those that she may have by virtue of levels in another class.

Unicorn Companion (Ex): When a healer attains 8th level, the deities recognize her devotion and grant her a celestial unicorn companion as her mount and aide. The unicorn, a symbol of healing and purity, serves the healer willingly and unswervingly. (See The Healer’s Companion.)

Once per day, as a full-round action, the healer may magically call her companion from the celestial realms in which it resides. The companion immediately appears adjacent to the healer and remains for 2 hours per healer level. It may be dismissed at any time as a free action. The companion is the same creature each time it is called, though the healer may release a particular companion from service to gain a companion of a different kind. Each time the companion is called, it appears in full health, regardless of any damage it may have taken previously. The companion also appears wearing or carrying any gear it had when it was last dismissed. Calling a companion is a conjuration (calling) effect.

A healer of 12th level or higher may select from alternative lists of companions. Should she select a companion from one of these alternative lists, the creature gains abilities as if the character’s healer level were lower than it actually is. Subtract the value indicated in the appropriate list header from the character’s healer level and compare the result with the healer level entry on the table in the sidebar to determine the companion’s powers. (If this adjustment would reduce the healer’s effective level to 0 or lower, she can’t have that creature as a companion.) For example, a 12th-level healer could select a lammasu as a companion. The lammasu would have characteristics and special abilities as if the healer were 8th level (taking into account the –4 adjustment) instead of 12th level.

Should the healer’s companion die, it immediately disappears, leaving behind any equipment it was carrying. The healer may not call another companion for 30 days or until she gains a healer level, whichever comes first, even if the companion is somehow returned from the dead. During this 30-day period, the healer is distraught and takes a –4 penalty on attack rolls and weapon damage rolls.

Cleanse Blindness (Su): At 9th level, a healer gains the ability to cleanse blindness once per day, as if casting a remove blindness/​deafness spell.

Cleanse Spirit (Su): At 10th level, a healer gains the ability to restore a creature to health once per day, as if casting a greater restoration spell.

Cleanse Petrification (Su): At 13th level, a healer gains the ability to restore a petrified creature to health once per day, as if casting a stone to flesh spell.

New Limb (Su): At 15th level, a healer gains the ability to regrow a creature’s lost or damaged body part once per day, as if casting a regenerate spell.

New Life (Su): Once per week, a 20th-level healer can bring a dead creature back to life, as if casting a true resurrection spell.

Ex-Healers

A healer who grossly violates her ethos (such as by refusing to heal an ally or a good-aligned creature) loses all spells and class features (except for proficiency with simple weapons and light armor). She cannot thereafter gain levels as a healer until she atones (see the atonement spell).

Human Healer Starting Package

Armor: Leather (+2 AC, speed 30 ft., 15 lb.).

Weapons: Longspear (1d8, crit ×3, 9 lb., two-handed, piercing).

Light crossbow (1d8, crit 19–20/×2, range inc. 80 ft., 4 lb., piercing).

Skill Selection: Pick a number of skills equal to 5 + Int modifier.

Feat: Scribe Scroll.

Bonus Feat: Toughness.

Deity: Pelor.

Gear: Backpack with waterskin, one day’s trail rations, bedroll, sack, and flint and steel. Case with 10 crossbow bolts. Scroll of cure light wounds. Wooden holy symbol. Bullseye lantern, 5 pints of oil.

Gold: 2d4 gp.

Source: Complete Arcane, page .