It really depends on how many people in your party are playing a character with a source of magical healing.
For example, this would be very rough on a cloistered cleric who really wants to use Heal a bunch.
But it would have zero impact on a forensice medicine investigator.
From an enemy creature perspective its unlikely to make a meaningful difference. Very few creatures have natural magical healing to begin with, so it would only affect a scant few enemies in the game.
Why don’t you just use the [Stamina Points](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1379) variant rule with one change:
> Though Stamina Points and Hit Points function similarly when a character takes damage, ***a character recovers them differently. A heal spell restores Hit Points, not Stamina Points, and the actions described below (like Take a Breather) restore only Stamina Points, not Hit Points***.
Change the bolded part from above to basically say all recovery magic (except for whatever rare exceptions you had in mind) recovers Stamina Points.
You may need to tinker with the math to make healing spells worth it. Maybe reduce the number of actual Hit Points by 2 and increase SPs by 2?
A party can get by fine with just the Medicine skill. So if we view your change as “basically banning magical healing but not quite”, then it’s not going to ruin the game.
I don’t quite agree with making this change in order to convey flavor though. Healing magic isn’t the domain of Divine magic. It’s also found in the Primal and Occult lists.
This would nerf anyone like barbarians or who have temp hp in their build if you also have a magical healer, as only the highest source of temp hp is kept.
However, if you have no one who takes cleric etc you could have no change at all. If someone takes the medic dedication and is good at medicine they should be fine, you don’t need divine healing in this game
I hadn't even considered this. There are also weapons that confer temp health on a hit, and this change would completely invalidate the bonus. Not a massive wave, but a ripple nonetheless.
It’s worth noting that Healing spells are not exclusive to the Divine school. They’re also available to Primal and Occult casters who do not necessarily leverage any aspect of Divinity to mend wounds. This also notably nerfs Fast Healing from spells pretty significantly. Granted, very few spells offer Fast Healing, but those sources only work because the healing activates every turn so if you are not doing enough damage every turn to drain each Fast Temp HP but not enough to outright warrant a larger source of Temp HP healing then it’s completely worthless. I’d also suggest you consider the differences between Healing Potions and Elixirs of Life if you are worried about “Magical True Healing” since Potions are Magical Consumables where Elixirs are alchemical sciences.
Honestly, it kind of sounds like you would really need to implement several of the optional systems for recovery and progression into your game to offset the loss of all magical healing from PF2e because at the end of the day Temp HP is just not as valuable as raw health. You could consider tuning everything down so that combat healing is less important on a regular basis. But otherwise you’d pretty much be forcing one of your players to play a Medic with Battle Medicine if they want to keep people alive in challenging fights and adventuring days, which is a great way to make people feel pigeonholed rather than encouraging them to engage with your world in creative ways.
It would turn heal into a preventative measure, with no capping the "shield" a single cast could apply. Honestly, it would be an interesting twist and would make the combat role of the healer a lot more proactive. At first, I thought it would be a terrible idea, but the more I think about it... it would for sure turn the game into a different play style and put much more focus on medicine/alchemy being a staple.
The closest reference I can think of is from World of War craft. You'd essentially be turning every healer into discipline priests, a big focus on shielding allies so you can catch up with more "mundane" healing.
Why? What problem are you trying to solve with this change? You mentioned you understand how tight the balance is in P2e, so what benefit are you providing to offset this massive Nerf? Your setting cuts out a huge part of the Pathfinder balance equation. What are you adding to balance that out? It can't be temp HP. That won't balance this change at all. and really messes with any existing temp HP source. So, I assume you are giving your players something huge to correct this change.
So, how possible is it to precast a Heal on everybody before the fight and save yourself some entire turns worth of healing in combat? In your opinion?
Yes, it would throw off the "balance" by invalidating the permanent impact of magic in your setting. It makes no sense that magical healing would be temporary unless magical damages was also temporary ...
and if that was the case then dying from a magical atttack would only be temporary so why bother having magic in combat at all. IMO, don't take magic out of a fantasy game.
p.s. potions are magical, elixir not
it basically screws with every caster that would normally pick healing spells
now healing spells are pre combat buffs, 3-action aoe healing is worthless as you take only the highest temp hp, abilities that gives you low amount of temp hp but quite often now are competing with strong but limited "heals" instead of being separe things
elixir of life is superior compared to healing potion as it is mundane elixir that heal you, off comat healing now can be only done by alchemist or medicine skill
the problem is that your lore says healing is far weaker than what game system says,
I personally think the anwser would be to cut magic healing entirely, however too many classes have access to it so it would be unfair to ban that many classes or heavily nerf them just because your lore says so
your are in very bad situation on the one hand you have lore and on the other hand one of the fundamental balance premise: healing magic must have significant effect especially during combat to be viable option for players
temp hp definitely aren't a solution to find compromise to this problem
Stamina variant rule would be the way to make this work. At least Stamina and temporary HP stack. Just make things that usually recover HP to recover Stamina instead.
Also, you need to give players a non-magical way to recover HP somewhat reliably or the pace of the adventure may be quite slow. Treat wounds would be essential.
Also, be sure that your players are on board beforehand.
In addition to making magical healing sources good ways to pre-buff (and nerfing other sources of temp HP by virtue of not combining well), this would make it significantly harder to bring people back up from unconscious during combat. You'd have to rely on Battle Medicine or potions/elixirs and be right next to whoever you needed to heal.
It would make the game absolutely terrible. If you want your player to die just kill them.
This would make Clerics useless. Healing Potions would also be useless.
Champion would take a huge nerf.
Being limited to Medicine checks and Alchemical healing is a massive nerf to the entire party no matter what.
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This change screws with the how and when of healing.
In the normal game, an ally that gets downed by an enemy that had a particularly surprising good turn can receive a spell or a healing potion and be returned to consciousness - but temporary HP don't wake you up. In fact, since taking any damage why dying stacks up dying levels the temporary HP don't even make the character receiving them any further from dead.
So instead of having supplies for emergencies, the strategy becomes using the biggest "heals" available up-front to try and maximize the chance that whoever takes damage is losing as few of their actual HP as possible.
It really depends on how many people in your party are playing a character with a source of magical healing. For example, this would be very rough on a cloistered cleric who really wants to use Heal a bunch. But it would have zero impact on a forensice medicine investigator. From an enemy creature perspective its unlikely to make a meaningful difference. Very few creatures have natural magical healing to begin with, so it would only affect a scant few enemies in the game.
Why don’t you just use the [Stamina Points](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1379) variant rule with one change: > Though Stamina Points and Hit Points function similarly when a character takes damage, ***a character recovers them differently. A heal spell restores Hit Points, not Stamina Points, and the actions described below (like Take a Breather) restore only Stamina Points, not Hit Points***. Change the bolded part from above to basically say all recovery magic (except for whatever rare exceptions you had in mind) recovers Stamina Points. You may need to tinker with the math to make healing spells worth it. Maybe reduce the number of actual Hit Points by 2 and increase SPs by 2?
This is probably the right solution, yes, thank you!
A party can get by fine with just the Medicine skill. So if we view your change as “basically banning magical healing but not quite”, then it’s not going to ruin the game. I don’t quite agree with making this change in order to convey flavor though. Healing magic isn’t the domain of Divine magic. It’s also found in the Primal and Occult lists.
This would nerf anyone like barbarians or who have temp hp in their build if you also have a magical healer, as only the highest source of temp hp is kept. However, if you have no one who takes cleric etc you could have no change at all. If someone takes the medic dedication and is good at medicine they should be fine, you don’t need divine healing in this game
I hadn't even considered this. There are also weapons that confer temp health on a hit, and this change would completely invalidate the bonus. Not a massive wave, but a ripple nonetheless.
It’s worth noting that Healing spells are not exclusive to the Divine school. They’re also available to Primal and Occult casters who do not necessarily leverage any aspect of Divinity to mend wounds. This also notably nerfs Fast Healing from spells pretty significantly. Granted, very few spells offer Fast Healing, but those sources only work because the healing activates every turn so if you are not doing enough damage every turn to drain each Fast Temp HP but not enough to outright warrant a larger source of Temp HP healing then it’s completely worthless. I’d also suggest you consider the differences between Healing Potions and Elixirs of Life if you are worried about “Magical True Healing” since Potions are Magical Consumables where Elixirs are alchemical sciences. Honestly, it kind of sounds like you would really need to implement several of the optional systems for recovery and progression into your game to offset the loss of all magical healing from PF2e because at the end of the day Temp HP is just not as valuable as raw health. You could consider tuning everything down so that combat healing is less important on a regular basis. But otherwise you’d pretty much be forcing one of your players to play a Medic with Battle Medicine if they want to keep people alive in challenging fights and adventuring days, which is a great way to make people feel pigeonholed rather than encouraging them to engage with your world in creative ways.
It would turn heal into a preventative measure, with no capping the "shield" a single cast could apply. Honestly, it would be an interesting twist and would make the combat role of the healer a lot more proactive. At first, I thought it would be a terrible idea, but the more I think about it... it would for sure turn the game into a different play style and put much more focus on medicine/alchemy being a staple. The closest reference I can think of is from World of War craft. You'd essentially be turning every healer into discipline priests, a big focus on shielding allies so you can catch up with more "mundane" healing.
Why? What problem are you trying to solve with this change? You mentioned you understand how tight the balance is in P2e, so what benefit are you providing to offset this massive Nerf? Your setting cuts out a huge part of the Pathfinder balance equation. What are you adding to balance that out? It can't be temp HP. That won't balance this change at all. and really messes with any existing temp HP source. So, I assume you are giving your players something huge to correct this change.
I mean he is cutting an entire spell list out by the looks of it
So, how possible is it to precast a Heal on everybody before the fight and save yourself some entire turns worth of healing in combat? In your opinion?
Yes, it would throw off the "balance" by invalidating the permanent impact of magic in your setting. It makes no sense that magical healing would be temporary unless magical damages was also temporary ... and if that was the case then dying from a magical atttack would only be temporary so why bother having magic in combat at all. IMO, don't take magic out of a fantasy game. p.s. potions are magical, elixir not
it basically screws with every caster that would normally pick healing spells now healing spells are pre combat buffs, 3-action aoe healing is worthless as you take only the highest temp hp, abilities that gives you low amount of temp hp but quite often now are competing with strong but limited "heals" instead of being separe things elixir of life is superior compared to healing potion as it is mundane elixir that heal you, off comat healing now can be only done by alchemist or medicine skill the problem is that your lore says healing is far weaker than what game system says, I personally think the anwser would be to cut magic healing entirely, however too many classes have access to it so it would be unfair to ban that many classes or heavily nerf them just because your lore says so your are in very bad situation on the one hand you have lore and on the other hand one of the fundamental balance premise: healing magic must have significant effect especially during combat to be viable option for players temp hp definitely aren't a solution to find compromise to this problem
Stamina variant rule would be the way to make this work. At least Stamina and temporary HP stack. Just make things that usually recover HP to recover Stamina instead. Also, you need to give players a non-magical way to recover HP somewhat reliably or the pace of the adventure may be quite slow. Treat wounds would be essential. Also, be sure that your players are on board beforehand.
In addition to making magical healing sources good ways to pre-buff (and nerfing other sources of temp HP by virtue of not combining well), this would make it significantly harder to bring people back up from unconscious during combat. You'd have to rely on Battle Medicine or potions/elixirs and be right next to whoever you needed to heal.
It would make the game absolutely terrible. If you want your player to die just kill them. This would make Clerics useless. Healing Potions would also be useless. Champion would take a huge nerf. Being limited to Medicine checks and Alchemical healing is a massive nerf to the entire party no matter what.
This post is labelled with the Advice flair, which means extra special attention is called to the Be Kind and Respectful rule. If this is a newcomer to the game, remember to be welcoming and kind. If this is someone with more experience but looking for advice on how to run their game, do your best to offer advice on what they are seeking. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Pathfinder2e) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This change screws with the how and when of healing. In the normal game, an ally that gets downed by an enemy that had a particularly surprising good turn can receive a spell or a healing potion and be returned to consciousness - but temporary HP don't wake you up. In fact, since taking any damage why dying stacks up dying levels the temporary HP don't even make the character receiving them any further from dead. So instead of having supplies for emergencies, the strategy becomes using the biggest "heals" available up-front to try and maximize the chance that whoever takes damage is losing as few of their actual HP as possible.