Touch of Healing [Reserve] feat from Complete Champion Excerpt

[Pyrex]

Touch of Healing
[Reserve]
Heal 3 points of damage per level of the highest-level healing spell you have available to cast

Wow.

There's *got* to be a mitigating factor in the full-text of the feat, right?

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Goodbye D&D day.

The only "mitigating" thing I see is that you might have to actually devote a slot to a cure spell if you're a good cleric.

Out of combat healing is largely a non-issue for mid to high level play anyways. you get 50d8+50 HP healed for a 750 gold (375 if you make it yourself). A wand of lesser vigor is even cheaper.

 

[IanB]

Nifty, but I'm not thinking broken necessarily. Sure you can heal 18 hp on a touch if you've got heal memorized - but only until you actually need to cast that heal.

 

[Pyrex]

IIRC, reserve feats work for spontaneous spell slots, so the Cleric doesn't even need to have a Cure spell prepared.

And with higher-level healing spells available, this reserve feat basically means the Cleric can heal CasterLevel*1.5 HP/round all day.

 

[frankthedm]

There's *got* to be a mitigating factor in the full-text of the feat, right?

The mitigating facter is some DMs won't allow it. If wands and such take enough rare material to make that a party cannot expect to always be able to make or buy a specific one, this feat should not be allowed.

I understand why is is balanced in a way, see the CLW wand example. A binder can do a similar trick.

Maybe if it "converted" 3/level lethal damge to non lethal damage, It would be ok with more folks.

 

[Shadeydm]

On the surface this would seem to be an attempt to distance the cleric from the 4 encounters per day parameters of the game. You have changed him from a finite amount of healing per day to infinite healing per day. The argument that a wand can accomplish the same thing doesn't really work because a wand is also a finite resource which can be depleted.

 

[IanB]

I think there's very clearly a design philosophy change to scale back on the 'out of spells so we have to stop' problem. You still run out eventually, but between reserve feats and the warlock, you can see the change in action pretty clearly.

4E experimentation, maybe. I'm fine with it, personally. I like the idea of a party being able to fight a really long running battle, or assault an evil temple complex in one go.

 

[blargney the second]

Yay!

 

[Wish]

Looks good to me. 3/highest spell level isn't fast enough to matter in combat most of the time beyond about 2nd level, and it has a 2nd level spell prerequisite. It is handy for not blowing all of the cleric's spells on healing, which has been a goal of the game designers since the advent of 3.0.

 

[Darklone]

First the dragon shamans Fast Healing aura, now this.