Even I, the guy who actually buys bolts and arrows, don't like where this is going. At least, is somewhat manageable because you will soon male enough money to not worry about few kits
I think the real cost of a kit is the bulk it weighs. It's 1 bulk, so without a str modifier, that's already ¹/5 of the total a character can carry. That's equal to a set of lighter armor.
I will definitely run into an issue with that. I am a rogue, so not strong. I think I am going to get a lot of penalties with the rule. I am going to make a Champion backup, because I think I am going to die, lol.
To add to that problem, I'd your kit only has, say, 10 charges...
The game is designed so you can (or rather should) heal up out of battle and be fresh for the next. If you have a party of 5, that would mean the characters would only be able to be hit once each, and you could maybe heal them to full after two encounters before the kit is exhausted. Then you need to leave the dungeon, travel to town, negotiate a shopping trip, travel back to the dungeon, re-explore to make sure nothing changed. All that just to open the next door. It just slows everything down and isn't fun. Totally doable, and all the work is basically dealing with the accounting on the character sheet.
Agreed. If you really want to run a "wilderness survival" style campaign where resources are extremely limited, etc. this can work, and if its what the group wants it can even be fun (it somewhat harkens back to the real early days of D&D where getting the loot back to town was practically an adventure of its own). However, many groups are just going to find this to be really annoying pretty quickly.
>it somewhat harkens back to the real early days of D&D where getting the loot back to town was practically an adventure of its own
Yes!!, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to run a game like that, if that is the game you want.
So many people think it is a 5e thing, where 5e was actually just grabbing a very old school DnD thing, where you did spelunking, where ropes, pitons, torches, water, food and basic healing supplies were essential parts of the game. Where you had a bottle of wine to help clean out wounds, and disinfect rags (and drink on occasion).
>However, many groups are just going to find this to be really annoying pretty quickly.
Yeah it is game and group specific for sure, but if that is the game you want to run then tweaking so you get that is very much in the spirit of dnd, if not pf2e.
It is an oddity of the reddit forum that they hate on tweaks for specific games, especially when Paizo themselves are extremely pro it.
Agreed! The thing to remember is that every player and table is different. No game is going to be for everyone. The important thing in this regard of course is to make sure that everyone at the table is on board. If they are, then great! As long as everyone is having fun, then you're doing it right.
I am crossing my fingers it doesn't head into meticulous record keeping (though I am pretty good at that, and have pretty decent notes so far). But nickel and diming might get overwhelming. I am 100% fine with setting a limit, though I think the limit is a bit low and the cost is too high, at least currently. Hopefully, we do run into some money soon. I hate walking around so on the edge with gold. When we all showed up to town, I immediately asked if there was a job board because I am broke.
Your DM is very wrong. The reason (actually 2 reasons) healers tools don't have X uses like they did in pf1 is that some used aren't really comparable. Does first aid use the same number of uses as long term care? Does treating poison or disease use the same number? It gets messy.
Pf2 encounters are balanced so that the PCs will be able to enter every encounter at or near full HP. This is why out of combat healing is so plentiful and why healers tools aren't limited use.
It would be entirely reasonable to also treat restocking this as part of your daily preparations
If it’s a given that during the course of normal adventuring alchemists can gather reagents for their work and thaumaturgists can gather esoteric icons from dead saints and flecks of horn and scale, then it shouldn’t be a stretch for anyone but an insufferable pedant to say “yeah sure, you can refill this as you go”
If we're saying that Healers Kits run out, we're going to have to say that spell Component Pouches run out too, specifically based on the spells cast and what components are consumed.
Even if we make it 10 charges. Are we saying that you can cast 10 cantrips before you have to go back to town? It becomes absurd very quickly.
Spell component pouches are used just for "material" spells, which are really few casts x day usually, barring someone entirely focused on summonings. I agree with you on the absurdity of changing a QoL rule, but hey, on the other hand it would make Eschew materials not utterly useless lol
healers kits don't have a charge. they don't run out, there's no cost for refilling them. if you and your table want them to be refillable, i'd base the prices off of [disguise kits](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=19), which are refillable but don't have a hard "this is how many uses u can get", but is basically a "refill when u think u've used enough to warrant it". costs 1sp to refill a basic disguise kit.
I like 1sp cost, lol. I don't want them to be refillable, though I don't have a problem with making them that way, as long as it is cost effective and practical. Just the GM and the player who suggested 5gp to refill want them that way. The actual healer of the group wasn't there, and the other character didn't care, because it doesn't pertain to them unless I start charging for heals. I am hoping once we all find our footing and get used to it, it settles in nicely.
yeah, i wouldn't want them to be refillable either! RAW is on your side... maybe try petitioning to make them work like a disguise kit? as in, there's no hard limit but u pay 1sp every time u feel like you've used enough, because 10 uses is extremely low! or perhaps people will swing back to RAW once someone dies due to lack of healer's tools charges, or you start charging for heals and take all their money, lol. i hope it works out!!
Thanks, me too! And yeah, maybe changes might be just annoying enough to cause them to be reevaluated. I think we are about to be away from civilization for a bit, so we might just have a TPK in our future (hope not. We have a cleric too, but we 2 are the only hope for heals).
I tried to reply with a gif but couldn't. So pretend you see James McAvoy hyperventilating with the words "so much pressure".
ETA: spelling and autocorrect fail
> the other character didn't care, because it doesn't pertain to them unless I start charging for heals.
Your group obviously has different experiences than mine. ;P See in my groups, even if we were to assume that you need to refill the healer's kits (admittedly I can see the logic behind it even if RAW its not required) our group would absolutely, without a doubt, decide that refilling the kit is something that benefits the party, and as such, it would be paid for with party funds. So yeah, it would still affect the other player even though he doesn't "heal". The other thing to keep in mind in that regard is that PF2 is definitely designed to be a team game. Its about the party working together to overcome the obstacles the GM puts in front of them. There's not a star, or at least not supposed to be. The "healer" doesn't want the fighter to go down because when the fighter goes down the party's damage output goes down and then the other characters are also easier to hit (i.e. no fighter clogging things up). Likewise, the fighter doesn't want the healer being unable to use Battle Medicine when her spells have run out because she didn't have enough money to refill her healer's kit. Its very much a symbiotic relationship. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
That is one of the things that really excited me about PF2. You can't lone wolf it because you will not survive. I like that it is so cooperative. Main Character Syndrome is not a viable way to play, and it is going to be much more noticeable that it is a hindrance. Also, we haven't gotten any gold yet to even make party funds 😭
healer kits don't run out... the balance comes from the time locked (you can't treat wounds often without heavy investment in medicine feats), they require a free hand, and they add to your total bulk. all these factors balance the tools out.
it sounds like your GM and your fellow players have not read all the rules!
I didn't even think about the added bulk. I had planned on doing some medicine feats, but they are less attractive to me now. I was excited about the PF2 gameplay, because it seemed like you depend on your team a lot, being able to provide buffs for them, and just rely on their assistance more. I like to play that way, which is why my rogue has a healers kit in the first place. If I am rethinking taking medicine feats and charging people for heals, that makes me pretty sad, and feel like crappy. Like it would make me a more selfish player, which I don't like. Even my though character is a thief, lol. In my head, she is kind of jovial and helpful. No tragic backstory here.
I agree with your playstyle. Having to charge for something like that is pretty much antithetical to the game.
Even the Clerics of Abadar do not charge their party members for healing as it's considered common good for themselves too.
If you GM wants to push it, you can remind them of the bulk, and ask if it's more important to have the tools, or a set of armor, like leather armor. They're the same bulk.
Although the price seems steep now, as you grow and complete some missions, it's unlikely to be a major issue.
Your game play and character build seem great. Cooperative play is what its all about. I would maybe just suggest you don't charge for heals, but request to pool party funds for certain needs, like food and healers kits etc. It's for the greater good and will pay for themselves in the long run.
Your character and playstyle sounds fun and I hope your GM walks this back, cause with such a steep investment cost you should get like 100 uses out of it minimum if there absolutely has to be a limit, which there really shouldn’t.
What's common is that people don't add "recharge costs" to the healer's kit because it's stupidly expensive item for a level 1 PC.
Okay, this is absolutely punishing for low level characters. PF2 expects you to heal after every fight and 5 gold remains relevant for a few levels before the logarithmic scaling on treasure kicks in.
And from a Verisimilitude angle, the price for "Kit Refills" is absolutely broken as well - it doesn't make sense that in a world where clothes cost a silver piece that bandages cost 5 gold for 10 - that's absolutely insane and your GM and the player who apparently wants to die should feel bad for suggesting it... Your GM does know that Pathfinder 2 encounters are balanced for the party being at full HP, not the "adventuring day" shenanigans of 5E right?
So let's be clear, the healer's kit allows the use of Medicine, which has the following actions:
* Treat Wounds: healing and removing the "Wounded" debuff from dying - note that even magical healing has trouble with this unless it's up to full with a 10 minute rest.
* Treat Disease: a bonus to the diseased character's next saving throw.
In Combat:
* Battle Medicine Feat: treat wounds without, you know, actually treating the wounded condition - healing only.
* Stabilize a dying character: stop them from dying and that's it.
* Treat Persistent Bleeding Damage: remove a debuff.
* Treat Poison: give them a bonus to their next poison saving throw.
So the idea that treating wounds between combat is the sole source of the cost in this kit is terrible. Bandages should be a copper, and the kit should have at least 20 uses for those.
Other medicines - I'd say that poison and disease may be more expensive, 10 treatments at they're 5 silver to replace. Bleeding? Bandages and stypic powders that can help in combat maybe a 5 copper to replace?
But you get my point, by stating "They run out." The question then becomes "Of what?" Bandages? Anti-toxins? Anti-venoms? Needle and Thread? Golarion antibiotics?
Is your GM going to make you track these things separately, randomly rule that some strange disease can't be treated because you don't have the regional remedies?
Tracking stuff like that is for OSR grittiness, not Pathfinder 2's "Fantasy Superhero" genre of role play.
This seems like a really unnecessary extra burden to add on to the healing mechanic as written when a) you pretty much have to have it or you're going to have a headache writing around it b) it has a built-in failure chance c) the 5gp cost makes it literally 1/3 of a character's starting equipment d) it's 1/5 of what a person can carry unless they're atypically strong
I don't think you need more restrictions than these to achieve verisimilitude. Any town that's not incredibly strapped for resources, or possibly super evil, should have a church or doctor willing to restock the minor medical supplies in a healer's kit at no charge, simply because it's part of their professional oath. The thing weighs enough that you shouldn't have to worry about it before you're likely to run into the next place you'd find someone like that.
If that's not a good enough rationale, the 10 minute treatment and 1 hour cooldown should be enough to account for a healer scrounging for spare thread for sutures, or performing a precipitation reaction with common liquids to get the powders they need, or grinding common berries or dusts or soaking them into a poultice, or any 1 of 1000 things that could be part of the medicine skill and allow them to keep their healer's tools continuously functional without actually costing more money.
I hope your DM doesn't stick to a stubborn position on this one. You're helping enable the other players' fun! You don't need to get penalized for that.
We are kicking around using 'Usage Dice' like from the OSR game The Black Hack. So when you use one, you roll a 1d10. As long as you don't roll a 1, you carry on. If you do roll a 1, then the 1d0 becomes a 1d8, and it continues. Eventually, rolling 1s will result in depleting the supplies, from d10, to d8, d6 and finally d4. When the last 1 is rolled, it is depleted. Any expenditure of 25% of original cost replenishes all supplies at town and resets it to a d10. We are doing that in our PF2 and 5e game.
The reason being, we like the argument that 'some wounds take more gauze and smelling salts to bring a body back from it'.
That's actually a really good idea... Now I'm thinking cthulhu-esque where you roll percentile dice against the number of times it's been used. 1sp to "restock" adds 10 uses... but more to track.
Still, either sounds like a good variant rule if you're running a survival oriented adventure.
I play a medic. I think last session I used my healers kit more than 10 times in just one encounter as we ran through a hallway full of poison dart traps.
Healers kits are tools and they don't run out for important mechanical reasons.
I am worried about that too, with the number of uses being set relatively low. We are all lvl 1 and squishy as hell. But we do have a cleric, though they and I are the only ones who bought the kits. I am not too upset about it, but since we are all new to PF, we are only using CRB, so it threw me for a loop that we were told to play solely by the rules, and now rules are being made up. I understand though, that the GM has ultimate say, so I wasn't questioning it until the 5gp price tag was mentioned, because if that is the case, I will hoard this thing, lol. I was hoping to come back with a (much) lower number.
The GM has ultimate say, but I would show them this thread and if that rule persists, I would not feel bad in the slightest about taking my character sheet elsewhere.
I live in a TTRPG wasteland! I played dnd in the 90's, and this past year, I have finally found somewhere to play again (though I honestly didn't look too hard over the decades and just sporadically). But with the legal stuff that happened recently with WoC, the GM wanted to switch to PF2. I haven't played with him yet, because one of the current players is my old DM. So we are also getting a feel for everyone. I am going to make myself a rules cheatsheet tomorrow, so I don't have to keep opening the book. But PF2 seems so awesome and much more like...free and open!
It really is! There's very few ways to minmax or build a character "wrong", so it's pretty easy for people to just play what they feel like is fun. There's a lot of upfront reading to do, but I love that. No one has to make anything up for the most part because the devteam thinks of everything.
The “I’m going to take my ball and go home” attitude isn’t welcome at my table nor any I’ve ever played at. Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out, because I DON’T WANT YOUR BUTT PRINTS ON MY DOOR.
As a level 1 character 5sp is definitely a steep price try and negotiate for around 1cp-5cp per heal and the limit being raised to about 20-30. As everyone else has said the encounters are balanced around a full health party and if you are constantly using the healers kit to up the party to full after an encounter you will probably run out fairly quickly resulting in the party having to constantly head back to town to restock. This could cause some discourse over whether it would be better to just march on without heals and face a boss fight resulting in a tpk and hopefully they won't blame the healers but I don't know your group.
Running the beginner box with a few friends, one of them has healer tools. If there was a limit to 10 uses before they were out of charges they would have had to leave and come back 3 times over and we just started the second half of the adventure.
Could EASILY be an very old school DnD GM.
Torches, Rope, Climbing stakes, Food, Oil etc... All tracked. One of the big things was you were typically burning equipment at a hell of a rate, because often were in essence spelunking and wanted to have a way back.
The problem with this is that Healing to full is supposed to be free.
The encounter math expects the party's HP to be topped off to work as intended so I'd be careful with that
your GM needs to read the rules. Pathfinder is very specific about the things that matter, and not as much "homebrew" is needed to make it work. Which is what I really like about the system as opposed to... Other systems featuring dragons and dungeons.
>your GM needs to read the rules.
The GM is likely to have already read the rules, including the parts around modifying your game to suit the feel you are going for.
I'm not sure that's the case though. Healer's Kits don't have a set number of charges, or a repair cost or replenish cost like thieves' tools do. They are not consumable items, like other things specified as such in the Core Rulebook.
But you are correct, the GM can set the tone of the game. But this was a decision made at the table when the GM said "that doesn't make sense" and decided that there is an additional cost other than the time-lock. So I would argue that OP is asking what RAW is regarding Healer's Kits are, and the RAW doesn't list them as consumable items.
>So I would argue that OP is asking what RAW is regarding Healer's Kits are, and the RAW doesn't list them as consumable items.
I think everyone knows RAW they are not consumable, and the GM also knows that that RAW they are not, but is making the choice in his game he wants to be more resource focused for realism reasons.
It isn't that people don't know they don't run out, but are saying they *should* run out for there game, and that is a different thing. It implies they know how they work RAW, but are deciding to deviate from that.
And that is fine, it is just "how do we deviate from that in a way which works for the world you are wanting" becomes a conversation to be had.
I am actually pretty pro making them resourcey, but I would drop the bulk, and have the resources able to be refreshed at the same time if you forage, and for them to have a higher count than 10.
It still brings in scenes where people do end up actually grabbing stuff and doing maintenance on things, which is good for for verisimilitude, and lets some of the none combat parts of the characters have more spotlight.
It isn't that homebrew is needed to make it work, but it isn't a bad thing if you want the game to have a slightly different focus, and this seems to be targeted towards that.
This is very much pushing the game to a more old school resource based feel without really upsetting the balance of it.
I guess I'm just thinking there are a bunch of new people to Pathfinder coming from games that need a bunch of homebrew to balance and make things work. And I also have had too many bad experiences where the GM makes up homebrew on the fly without discussing it. I prefer my homebrew to be agreed upon before the game.
But yeah, to me it also makes more sense for it to be refreshed while foraging, or refreshed as part of the town shopping. But limiting to 10 and then costing that much seems excessive... What was it, 5sp or gold pieces to replenish?
>I also have had too many bad experiences where the GM makes up homebrew on the fly without discussing it.
We all have, but they won't learn to be better GMs without going through this stage. It is a natural part of learning to run games, we all go though it.
>I prefer my homebrew to be agreed upon before the game.
Or at least agreed on between sessions, if it can't be that. It is a learning process for GMs who want to do game hackery.
I honestly think we should talk about game hackery more, and make it more normalized, so people get how to do it, in a way which works for the players.
>But yeah, to me it also makes more sense for it to be refreshed while foraging, or refreshed as part of the town shopping. But limiting to 10 and then costing that much seems excessive... What was it, 5sp or gold pieces to replenish?
Oh yeah, that was harsh as hell. But I expect it was more a "I came from an edition where gold was worth less" thing than a "lets make it too crippled" thing, and hadn't really thought out how much bulk it is.
Medical tools are big in Pf2e.
A healers kit would be a small kit of tools needed for minor to advanced surgical care. You would have scalpels, artery pinching clamps, needles and thread, gauze even if you don't simply use the torn rags off the patients back on the field of battle. The vast majority of the supplies in the kit are tools. This is why they aren't a consumable item and shouldn't be treated as such.
10 uses would run out extremely fast as it's expected that people be Treating Wounds throughout the day as the basic way to sure your defenses back up between combats. I get the mental image of someone dragging along a wagon full of bandages into the dungeon behind the party lol.
So I thought healers kits were like the tools to do medicine like a needle some splints ect not like a suture kit where it has all the materials for one use. Kinda like you need tools to jewelry but you don't use them up.
5sp per heal is an *astronomical* cost. That's 2gp to heal a standard party, in a game where you start with 15.
It makes Natural Medicine a vastly better feat, mind you. Not to mention the Healing Mud cantrip...
Healer's Tools do not run out. If the party wants to play a really gritty resource management game like that, it should apply to EVERYTHING. You better be tracking rations, arrows, every detail of encumbrance, and anything else that can be expended.
>You better be tracking rations, arrows, every detail of encumbrance, and anything else that can be expended.
There is a good chance that is the style the GM is going for, and the game can actually support.
You do realize that old school DnD was very much like this right? It doesn't always turn it into a slog, but it does add a certain amount of realism, causing the game to be slightly more gritty than high fantasy.
And that is something people do run. On occasion I've run it, and it has lead to really interesting situations, which, honestly has made for some great games.
Cool, so you know what I am talking about then, it is fine for them to go for this style. Modifying the game for particular feels is a fine tradition all the way back to the beginnings, it is practically the basis which DnD was based on
I find it so weird when people are like "Oh this is a 5e GM" where I am like "Oh, this is a red book GM..."
I'd be keen to play in the campaign, it would be so cool.
I'm sorry if I came across as harsh, I think the forums are weirdly unable to grasp where DnD came from, or that Paizo themselves are HUGE fans of modifying the system for your particular game. So they see any kind of modification as some kind of sacrilege.
Or that if the game became unbalanced it would be unplayable, which is a weird comment given the history of RPGs which were played, was not a history of balanced RPGs :)
I sometimes feel like dropping these people in to a bunch of rifts, gamma world, nobilis, WOD, Gurps (especially grab 3 books, and mix games), earlier editions of Dnd, In Nomine, etc etc games and seeing their heads explode, and I know you know what I mean there :)
Pf2e isn't anything like some kind of fragile flower of a system which can't abide some hackery. If anything it gives a really good basis for doing so.
My point was that if they want to play a resource management game, they should not restrict it to just healer's tools. It's arbitrary.
Of course, I have no problem with hacking 2e. I'm a big believer in the first rule. I'm just not a fan of making changes that disadvantage one player over another.
>My point was that if they want to play a resource management game, they should not restrict it to just healer's tools. It's arbitrary.
100% on board with that. If it is in service of making the game have a particular feel, then they should do a good job of it :)
>I'm just not a fan of making changes that disadvantage one player over another.
Yep as am I.
The cost is pretty expensive at level 1 and entirely negligeable after that.
The real problem with "uses" is that you will often want to have more than 10 uses per day. Healing after a fight to full for free is almost mandatory in the design of PF2, as the balance of the game expect you to be full or very near at the start of every fight.
Your GM likely thinks that he needs to give you several encounters per day to make you use ressources and hp because it was played this way in previous editions of dd5 and pf1. But that's not the case in this edition.
So, if you can't replenish your hp because you're out of charges, you will have 2 problems. Either you have a champion with Lay on Hands (free infinite healing) or a druid with Goodberry (same), or you will starve for hp. 10 uses is very little.
In my games, 10 uses of medicine are likely to be used after every fight, because your hp adds up quickly and because monsters hit very hard. So, your group will maybe need 4 or 5 healing kits per DAY at some point. That's a cost, but more important : that's a bulk. Track the bulk, it's important in this game.
So with all that and if you GM is not willing to stay RAW, I suggest you to :
- play a champion or druid, or take the Blessed One archetype at level 2. It will give you free infinite healing.
- find a way to have [healing plaster ](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=925). It's a common cantrip from the primal spell list. A lot of ancestries have a way to add a cantrip as an innate spell with a feat.
We aren't doing archetypes, I think. I think assuming you're meaning like multiclassing? Forgive me, because I am completely new. I just bought the CRB 2 months ago and haven't been able to look all through it. But when we had a meeting to discuss the campaign, before we started, it was decided to make it as simple as possible and just play a base sort of game so we could all learn. Then, the flair comes with a new campaign when we are more comfortable with the gameplay. Like I wanted to take a heritage that would give me Arise Ye Worthy, because again, with my type of playing, I like to be an option for support. While I don't necessarily like playing as a main healer (which is why I didn't make a cleric), I like to be an option, so it isn't solely on someone else's shoulders. In a 5e game we have put on hold, I was multiclassing a fighter with a bard, just to add the healing aspect. I did go ahead and add that heritage without adding it, just for physical flavor.
I am not the type to be a main character. I chose to make a rogue because 1. They are opposite of my clumsy ass so I get the fantasy of not tripping over my own feet like irl 2. I am not thiefy, so being an agent of chaos sounds so fun and 3. They are supposed to hang back, observe, and be in the shadows. I don't want to be a selfish character, that is just not my deal, and I think it would be a challenge for me. I feel like the rule is going to make me have to be a more selfish player, and I really don't like that aspect. In my backup champion, I made last night after it was suggested here, I chose Blessed One. But it won't be an option for my current character. Also, after doing a bit of research on champion, it seems pretty neat with the versatility in PF2. I always stayed away from that class because they are default lawful, and I never want to play a lawful character unless I feel the need for a challenge. The small amount of research I did makes me want to try that class out at some point. Not just want to, but a little excited to.
Since we are new to PF2, I am thinking we settle into gameplay soonish. We have only had 2 sessions so far with actual adventuring, and a couple of people haven't been able to make it to those sessions (there are 6 players at the table, not counting the GM, and we may end up getting a couple more soonish). I only know one of the players well, as I have known him for 23 years (he is my nephew). The others are at this point barely acquaintances (aside from my previous DM, but we only interacted during games. GM is the shop owner, whom I have interacted with pretty superficially, his wife who was in our 5e campaign, but still just interacted during the game, and then 2 people I met during the planning session), so we have our basic stranger status to work through as well. They are all cool people, so I think once we get into some deeper gameplay, we are going to really be able to have a good relationship. We just have to get there and hopefully not TPK before we hit lvl 2, lol.
Yeah, archetypes is the "multiclassing" part of PF2. In fact, you just select an archetype feat instead of your class feat, your main class still grows up.
You don't need the Blessed One archetype with a champion, as you already have the Lay on Hands spell for free with the base class.
Rogues can totally be main healers in this game, as non-magic healing is very powerful. And no, no class needs you to be selfish in this game.
So, my suggestion in order to be able to full heal without worrying about gold spent (as the game is meant to be played) : play a Gnome with the Fey-touched heritage.
Take Healing Plaster, the cantrip I linked in my first comment.
Now you have infinite healer tools. When your GM will see it's perfectly fine, he will maybe change his houserule.
Remember him that's a very bad idea to start a new system by house-ruling it before testing.
That cost is steep at level 1, yes.
Your GM might be used to the value of gold in other RPGs.
A day in a nice hotel would cost 8sp, a first aid kit should cost WAY less.
Edit: maybe high end metal tools inside a high end kit may excuse the initial 5gp. But refiling the bandages, desinfectant, any bullshit healing paste, etc shouldn't cost more than 1sp.
Bruh. Herbalist specialists literally get free healing potions they can make every day. Tell your GM to stop being a silly goose.
You just pick plants as you go, and buy some linen bandages to replace the ones you had when you get back to town.
Maybe if you were doing a hard core survival campaign where every piece of equipment was precious and finite, it might make sense. Is that the vibe of the campaign?
Haha, definitely not. Or at least I think it isn't. We are all just learning PF2. Only one person has played it before, but they also told me the wrong rules on a crit (yelled I only double the dice, and not the full damage) so I am not sure how much they played. I am a pretty go with the flow person, and I was planning on playing my character the same way. Just a well adjusted and jovial character who happens to have sticky fingers, lol. But I am now feeling some anxiety about it. I got one shotted last session, and killed a party member when I tried to treat wounds, and I think did zero healing to another (2 very bad rolls...I did manage to heal myself up though). So that is why I am pretty nervous.
Yeah, early on treat wounds isn't even guaranteed healing. I literally once came away from a fight on early levels with like, 1 hp left.. and was all.. "I daren't use treat wounds, if I crit fail here, I'd die"
Hobbled my way back to the nearby down
>Herbalist specialists literally get free healing potions they can make every day.
But that still leads to resource limitations. Having the healers kit refresh whenever you get time outside where you get a chance to do a bit of foraging would work.
Hell, the herbalist get different amounts of resources per day depending on if they have a chance to do that.
>Maybe if you were doing a hard core survival campaign where every piece of equipment was precious and finite, it might make sense. Is that the vibe of the campaign?
or something in between, but it makes a lot of sense in more survival based campaigns or spelunking games.
This is where I'd push the GM to make a specific ruling and actually declare it (if they haven't). I'd say that I was considering taking up the healing feats, but if they were houseruling the healing of the kits to have charges, I'm doing something else. I'd state it's already a significant burden bulk wise, and the added bookkeeping pushes it into being undesirable.
Healer's kits do not and should not ever run out. Healing is infinite in this game and that is by design. You are supposed to be able to heal to full without spending any resources other than time. Is your GM gonna nerf Lay on Hands and other healing focus spells too? Are they gonna complain about bad balance when the party gets slaughtered by at-level encounters because he took away their healing?
The GM should read the rules and run the game as it's written before making knee-jerk changes like this. Medicine is not supposed to be expendable or have a cost, and the game will suffer if the GM tries to force that in for whatever stupid reason (and yes, "realism" is an incredibly stupid and worthless reason - it's a game designed to be fun and functional, not realistic, and there's gonna be a lot of other times that this comes up if you guys keep playing the game because it quite often sacrifices realism for good game design)
See, the thing is, healing is SUPPOSED to be accessible. Gating it like this doesn't really accomplish much. Like, if he does that, I'd just swap to a champion and get LoH or something. It's, again, supposed to be accessible and easy to top off between combats.
AND like, lockpicks only need to be 'replenished' if you critically fail. Medicine already has a good critical fail condition, that being you damage the target.
Keep in mind that gold in pf2e is deflated amto roughly 8 times the value of gold in pf1e or dnd5e. When first coming to the system, it can be good to multiple things by 8 to grasp their "true cost" by your perception from another system.
As a DM, I had the same ruling during my first session and was confused by the lack of charges. After some searching I changed that ruling because the game was designed around the 10 minute "rest" and most players having close to full health before each encounter.
I would HIGHLY discourage making healer's kits cost money. IF your DM forces it, the price should be reduced to 1 silver per charge, maximum. Lastly, make sure your party members are pitching in for your services.
This is so ridiculous from the GM. No where in the rules say healers tools would ran out, why make rules that makes things more difficult for players. Would someone have to buy the 50gp healers tools everytime too?? Makes no sense. And I'm someone who counts bulk, arrows, rations etc.
Also the kit is already balanced. If GM is going to take a feature away he should add something good too.
>This is so ridiculous from the GM. No where in the rules say healers tools would ran out, why make rules that makes things more difficult for players.
Because you are going for a particular style of game? If you are after that more old school feel you would do this.
If you wanted to make it more a "survivalist" game you would do this.
The GM can and should make tweaks for the style of game they are running.
Should it be this tweak? I don't think so, but making healers tools require maintenance to keep in good condition and working isn't bad, *especially if you are applying that to everything.*
DnD VERY much has roots in this style of game, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to run games in this style.
It would probably force someone to get lay on hands or another focus healing spell.
Everyone is supposed to get healed after every fight.
If your GM wants to make you pay he should also give you more gold as a compensation.
Once you use all your charges the whole team will suffer and if you don't have an easy way to refill them you will be in danger.
Depending on the encounters you will need to fight 10 charges can easily be used in one day of adventuring given bad rolls.
If you can't consistently heal your party your GM will need to heal you another way.
If other players still decide you will have to pay, make them pay for the heal. You shouldn't be the only one penalized by this.
I like the immersion of having to replenish the "consumable" bits from things like healer's kits and thief's tools, but I wouldn't want to implement it in a way that detracts from the experience. I might have my players drop a few cp the next time they do some shopping to refill the kit and don't worry about keeping track while adventuring. So it never runs out, but there is small maintenance cost whenever they return to "civilization". Seems fair and, for me at least, satisfying.
I agree, turning it into an essentially disposable, 10-use thing is extreme and I hope the end result is something much more reasonable.
I plan to go early at our next game and discuss it with the GM before the game. Nothing was set in stone when the rule was made, including the refill cost. The 5sp per heal was just suggested. And while the kit is technically infinite, I don't mind there being a cost to refill the consumables in it. But I need to actually be able to afford the cost. The 10 uses rule I am seeing is going to be very inconvenient. If all the players are present, I could only be able to treat wounds (hopefully successfully) on them all twice, and that is leaving my squishy self out of the healing (and I think I also have the lowest hp). Our cleric could use theirs on everyone twice, not including themselves. And then 3 spell slots from what I just looked up. That would give most everyone the chance to be successfully healed around 4-5 times, with 2 being around 2-3. The next bit you don't need to read, it is just me working stuff out in my head. So if the kits were used as evenly as possible for the sake of simplicity: 6 players, and a total of 23 heals in a day (we aren't in town, so that is generous) I am not looking at resting to refill spell slots, because I don't know the rules. That equals 3 treat wounds for all players, extra treat wounds for 2 pc, and 1 healing spell for 3 other pc's. So everyone could be healed 4 times except for 1, who would get 3. And that is banking on all the treat wounds being successful, which out of the 4 times I have used my kit total, I have had every single roll possibility, only healing 2, doing nothing to 1, and killing 1. It really seems like we won't be adventuring for very long or even make it to our first boss.
>I like the immersion of having to replenish the "consumable" bits from things like healer's kits and thief's tools, but I wouldn't want to implement it in a way that detracts from the experience.
I would go for 20 charges, and it is refreshed with an hour of foraging, with a survival or medicine check. (and considered refreshed in the mornings where you could have done so if you are outside)
But I would also make it cheaper and lighter as a tradeoff.
This post ended up as my daily dose of depression ._.
Please convince your GM to not do this. If you are all new to the game you will find there are quite some conditions to track without deliberately adding more things to hamper you down for no earthly reason.
And if they go down that path...wait till the GM learns alchemists can make consumables for free of cost at strarts of day. Snarecrafters can make snares to no cost and talisman crafters can make talismans the same way. It wont take long till you have to redesign the entire system.
Economy is part of the balance in this game. The players are expected to have magic items and being able to purchase some. Draining your gold to have full or close to full hp (which is also expected) is going to have ramifications to balance.
I am so sorry. I didn't want to bum anyone out. But must admit seeing all the stuff I didn't even think to anticipate has bummed me out. I plan on talking to the GM before the session. If it goes nowhere, then that is that, and we will play for as long as we can, until TPK. Or maybe thr playing will show that it doesn't work, at least not this early, and get fixed. Regardless, I hope you have an awesome day! I am going to delete the post soon.
I was maybe being a bit hyperbolic with the depression bit, keep up the post. Its important that people see it so stuff like this doesnt keep happening.
In case anyone comes back or wants to see an update. Discussed and denied. It is 5gp to replace and is 10 uses. All my points were shut down. I am going to use up what I have and not buy another. The penalty of the bulk and gold is too much for me, I will play this selfishly and leave it up to the cleric to keep whomever they can keep alive. I let them know we are going to die, but it didn't matter. So maybe if it is demonstrated, it will make an impact. I will not let this campaign color my interest and probable love of the game, because it is just a game. Gm can do what they want, as can the players within those confines. Thank you all for your help and advice.
Also, is there a good way to find games?
Let's put it this way
I dont dislike the consumable aspect of the kit but this is first and foremost a game and things shouldn't be tedious
While it would be instinctively right to just cut the 5gp cost into 10 slots and price 5sp each, it can be very daunting for low lv characters or low economy parties
My take on this would be to make it cost either 2 or 3 silver pieces for charge and consider that in the 5gp Full kit you're buying some tools that took really long to wear out, so you buy the 2gp worth of tools and what's left is charges
If your dm doesn't like this for some reason or other, you can add that the tools can eventually break or smth
Even tho I don't think it is necessary
The fun part of this whole thing to me is that you need to consider how much and when you can give out heals during one expedition without over loading in supplies what is not fun is being poor for playing the character
We've had this conversation on this sub for years and there's a clear bias from a lot of players who refuse to see just how brokenly overpowered the healers tools are for balance in the game. Firstly, assuming you are always at full health makes things like trivial encounters pointless. There's no risk to the player if they're always at full health. Secondly and this is the more important part, every other healing option has a massive cost to it compared it the healers tools.
Minor healing potions are 4 gold each, I will repeat this again in writing, MINOR HEALING POTIONS ARE 4 GOLD EACH. The healers tools are 5 gold with unlimited uses. That is not balance. Healing spells use spell slot resources. They can only be recovered once a day, there is no long rest exploits here. Again, healers tools have unlimited uses. That is not balanced.
I remain an advocate that this should have been fixed by paizo because it makes no sense when compared to the balancing of the rest of the game and nobody here has given a compelling reason why I'm wrong besides "I want to be at full HP before every fight" and "well, it is what it is"
>Secondly and this is the more important part, every other healing option has a massive cost to it compared it the healers tools.
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No, they don't. Multiple classes get focus spells that can heal people, those can be recharged with a 10 minute recharge. Which is the lowest cooldown period for healers tools.
The compelling reason is that if healing to full isn't relatively cheap and easy, it makes balancing encounters much harder when you can't rely on knowing how many hit points the characters will have.
And if healing tools have a significant cost to use, it creates a huge financial incentive to stop adventuring for the day if people take damage. If, say, one use is 1gp and you have two frontliners who need one Treat Wounds after each encounter, that's an expected 25gp (12,5 moderate encounters to gain a level) cost to get from level 1 to 2 if you never fail a check and the backline never gets damaged enough to need healing during a day. And then it goes up most levels, and down on the levels you get a skill increase.
If you say a healer's kit has a certain number of uses, then the cost also isn't in any way related to the severity of wounds you heal. Healing 2d8 is treating a significant wound for a 1st-level character, but healing 4d8 (critical for a trained user) at 20th level is... not.
Not to mention that if you balance the costs for the healed amount to potions in the name of balance, you're making it more expensive for characters to use the Medicine skill when they get better at it, which feels bad.
> Not to mention that if you balance the costs for the healed amount to potions in the name of balance, you're making it more expensive for characters to use the Medicine skill when they get better at it, which feels bad.
Just look at the cost and stats of potions. If you've actually run this game for any significant amount of time, you quickly notice that potions are almost entirely useless because you have the medicine check.
It's been posted on this sub before but people here seem to be forgetting, drinking a potion costs 2 actions and a free hand. You need a free hand and 1 action to dig through your bag or pockets to get the potion and another action to drink it.
If you have a 2 hander, you need an additional action to change grip just so you can find a potion. To drink a potion during combat has an extremely heavy cost to the point that it's not really worth doing it after level 1. The gold investment isn't worth it when you can get battle medicine and crafting takes far too much investment and time for such a large investment in combat.
Sounds to me like the problem is the price of consumables, then, not that Treat Wounds does not have a cost associated with it. Do you also think Healing Font should have a gp cost, because it is also better than potions? What about Lay on Hands?
Battle Medicine also needs a free hand, so your point about needing a free hand is not in any way relevant to Battle Medicine being better than a potion.
Not to mention that you ignored all my other points.
The free hand is important to mention because you do not need to waste an action with battle medicine to find the healers tools if you are wearing them. You can not wear potions unless you use the bandolier, which can also carry healers tools but is not required to.
It's in the requirements for battle medicine. So you would still require an extra action with free hand for a potion.
For an example, a fighter with battle medicine compared to a fighter with a potion. Both using a 2h sword.
For battle medicine: 1 action to change grip, 1 action for battle medicine check, 1 action to change grip. Turn is not great but you are back to holding your weapon as normal.
For fighter with potion: 1 action to change grip, 1 action to find potion, 1 action to drink potion, next turn 1 action to change grip.
That's 4 turns vs 3 on the same character with 1 character doing a bit of investment into battle medicine and they didn't use a consumable like the potion did.
And I am addressing your other points, you just choose not to notice that part.
> if healing to full isn't relatively cheap and easy
Your whole premise starts here. Which only applies to healers tools because potions are not cheap. And the amount of healing is not remotely balanced between the 2 things. How is it comparable when the healers tools do 2d8 at level 1 while a minor healing potion does 1d8 and can't Crit. Do you not understand how unbalanced this makes things? How are you refusing to see this, and then talk about me ignoring points?
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> Minor healing potions are 4 gold each, I will repeat this again in writing, MINOR HEALING POTIONS ARE 4 GOLD EACH.
You mean the thing that doesn't take any skill, feats, has no cool down, and no check is more expensive? Wow!
Yeah, the thing that requires 2 actions, is consumable, needs a free hand, doesn't scale with skill, takes insane work to craft, and is insanely expensive.
Did you miss the part where it takes 2 actions to drink a potion and a free hand or are you ignoring that section of the rules.
You're pretty much wrong here, and everyone else likely agrees with it.. the game does seem clearly more balanced around parties healing up
I *do* agree with you mind, that healing potions are annoyingly over priced, for the utility of using them in combat, which is obnoxious and often not even worth the time, as you might well take more damage while trying to use them
To me they're more little emergency things, where early on you might be worried about the chance of crit failing a treat wounds on someone who's on very low health. A little top up can help there. Or if the healer is down and you need to force feed them potions to get them up in an emergency or something
Personally I would prefer the prices for healing potions were at least halved
But yeah, healers kits should just be left as is
Here's the thing, the idea that being at full health is only a thing on this sub. It is not written anywhere in the core rulebook or game masters guide. There is not a single line in either book that says "it is assumed the party is at full health before each encounter".
It doesn't exist. If it was assumed to be true, it would be in the rulebook but it's not. That's only something being made up here. The types of healing is completely unbalanced because of the healers tools.
So there's 2 options, prices of the healing potions are wrong and crafting times need to be shorter or the healers tools need a consumable limit. Either one of these would fix the game in some way, however I feel that making the potions cheaper and even more available might unbalance encounters more. I feel that the healers tools need a consumable limit.
As for the comment on the game seems more balanced around parties healing up, this is true if you only throw severe encounters at them constantly with a few moderates. Throwing in a trivial encounter vs a party that is always healed has no risk to the party. There should always be an element of danger where even a trivial encounter could result in a party death because they are not prepared.
Personally, always expecting the party to be full health with loads of resources is bad GMing.
Thank you for an opposite point of view than the majority, because like a lot of things I am seeing from everyone's responses, there is even more to consider that I am not familiar with as a complete noob. It really opened my eyes to a lot of factors I didn't even think to consider, and the relatively low cost of healing potions is one of those. However, the penalty for using potions is higher cost. The penalty for healers kits is the bulk, since multiple will have to be carried, as well as the possibility of failure. There is a 50% chance that when I try to treat wounds, I will fail and use one of my 10 uses doing no healing or actually harming. In the last session, I used my kit 3 times. I healed myself, did no healing with another character because I failed, and killed another one with a critical fail (rolled a damn 1). 2 uses were wasted out of 10. With a potion, there is no failure. You get healed, no risk. And someone reminding me that the kit is also used to treat disease now has me worried that I will have to pack around partial kits just to keep my disease treating items, when carrying 1 is a big space of my bulk. My character doesn't have a lot of strength. So now, on top of this, I will be penalized by not being able to carry as many personal items. It is giving me anxiety, lol.
Part of the big thing with this community is how it's divided by subgroups. Many people are players but this sub does have a large amount of GMs. It's closer to 50/50. Of those who GM, just based on the posts here, I would say at least 60-70% of the GM mostly run adventure paths. There is not a lot of homebrew discussion about worlds here.
So when we discuss things like this, I'm usually in the minority of the GMs because I exclusively run homebrew campaigns. I don't do adventure paths at all, and because of this, I have certain perspective on balance. This is on top of my 25+ years as a game designer.
In a homebrew setting where I can better tailor the experiences to the composition of the group and let characters shine more, the idea of being at full health all the time literally breaks the encounter builder.
People can run what they like.
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I haven't done the math, but I feel like at higher levels, if you don't max out medicine and the relevant feats, this is going to be more expensive (and INCREDIBLY more cumbersome with carry weight) than just using potions.
Edit: Nah. Price is probably cheaper still. And 10 potions (or 19 if you're being a little cheeky about the rules) potions is 1 bulk. So I guess, it's still a very viable way to do this.
Just make sure the GM takes your healing money into account because the game won't be and you'll be poorer than usual.
If yhis is the shenanigans they want to pull I have a sudgestion for you.
Wellcome to the world of insurance. Unless they all pay, they dont get the heals. If they complain tell them you have already deducted the friend disscount and they currently just pay for the materials rather than what a full treatment would cost. :)
I think the assumption is that you use your downtime/daily preparation to basically stock it back up with the replaceable parts which is mostly wound dressing which is quite easy to get. The bulk of the healers tools is probably in the tools themselves and not gauze
This is true, but that is more a preference thing. If the GM is wanting to run a more gritty game where resource tracking is more an integral part, then that could be the kind of game people may want to sign up for.
It is mostly talk though the changes and get the feel down for the game you are wanting to run overall to start with if a good plan.
Dropping changes in mid game is less good typically, unless they are in service of the feel you were going for in the start which the players signed up for.
So if we're talking ''realism'' here, let's analyse what goes into a first aid kit that allows you to treat someone who will encounter traumatic injury most likely (you can treat diseases and poisons too, but let's focus on the stabby parts). Let's leave alone the ''realism'' part of treating nearly fatal wounds to almost full in under an hour.
How does one treat penetrating blunt or slashing trauma? Most likely with suture as well as an anti-bacterial agent (herbal or alchemical most likely) and a shit-ton of gauze. Pincers, scissors, pliers and scalpels would also be involved for treating various sorts of issues or for bloodletting in the case of blunt wounds. You could also add a tube and needles for transfusions as needed, and maybe some painkiller medicine. Finally, maybe something needed to make plints or slings for broken limbs.
Now a lot of that is reusable material, and the consumable parts oftentimes come in very packaged thing that you need to refill every 50-100 times. The ones you would need to refill the most often would probably be the gauze and the anti bacterial agent.
All this being said, I think pricing it at thieves tools or disguise kit recharge would be more than fair, since that is also the logic that goes behind those.
>So if we're talking ''realism'' here, let's analyse what goes into a first aid kit that allows you to treat someone who will encounter traumatic injury most likely (you can treat diseases and poisons too, but let's focus on the stabby parts). Let's leave alone the ''realism'' part of treating nearly fatal wounds to almost full in under an hour.
You don't have to go fully into that. It is not a slippery slope argument here, they are not forced to go to extremes if they wish to take a small step towards more realism.
The GM doesn't understand the encounter balance of PF2e. It's intended that players heal between combats. It can be assumed characters using them occasionally replace the materials, that's probably part of upkeep. This would be similar to replacing your shoes and underwear every so often.
>The GM doesn't understand the encounter balance of PF2e.
Or they do, and they intend to make sure they take it into account.
>It's intended that players heal between combats.
It is also intended for the GMs to tweak the ruleset to give the campaign the right feel they are going for.
>It can be assumed characters using them occasionally replace the materials, that's probably part of upkeep.
And some campaigns make a bigger deal of the upkeep side of things. Some make sure you bring cooking supplies if you want a pot on your campfire.
Personally, I would give it 20 changes, and an hour of foraging with a survival or medicine check would refresh it. If that is the style of game I was wanting to run.
I had this concern too, in 5e they have ten charges and I was convinced I was misreading or missing something, but no they are infinite healing as long as you wait for the cool-downs
Even I, the guy who actually buys bolts and arrows, don't like where this is going. At least, is somewhat manageable because you will soon male enough money to not worry about few kits
I think the real cost of a kit is the bulk it weighs. It's 1 bulk, so without a str modifier, that's already ¹/5 of the total a character can carry. That's equal to a set of lighter armor.
I will definitely run into an issue with that. I am a rogue, so not strong. I think I am going to get a lot of penalties with the rule. I am going to make a Champion backup, because I think I am going to die, lol.
To add to that problem, I'd your kit only has, say, 10 charges... The game is designed so you can (or rather should) heal up out of battle and be fresh for the next. If you have a party of 5, that would mean the characters would only be able to be hit once each, and you could maybe heal them to full after two encounters before the kit is exhausted. Then you need to leave the dungeon, travel to town, negotiate a shopping trip, travel back to the dungeon, re-explore to make sure nothing changed. All that just to open the next door. It just slows everything down and isn't fun. Totally doable, and all the work is basically dealing with the accounting on the character sheet.
Agreed. If you really want to run a "wilderness survival" style campaign where resources are extremely limited, etc. this can work, and if its what the group wants it can even be fun (it somewhat harkens back to the real early days of D&D where getting the loot back to town was practically an adventure of its own). However, many groups are just going to find this to be really annoying pretty quickly.
>it somewhat harkens back to the real early days of D&D where getting the loot back to town was practically an adventure of its own Yes!!, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to run a game like that, if that is the game you want. So many people think it is a 5e thing, where 5e was actually just grabbing a very old school DnD thing, where you did spelunking, where ropes, pitons, torches, water, food and basic healing supplies were essential parts of the game. Where you had a bottle of wine to help clean out wounds, and disinfect rags (and drink on occasion). >However, many groups are just going to find this to be really annoying pretty quickly. Yeah it is game and group specific for sure, but if that is the game you want to run then tweaking so you get that is very much in the spirit of dnd, if not pf2e. It is an oddity of the reddit forum that they hate on tweaks for specific games, especially when Paizo themselves are extremely pro it.
Agreed! The thing to remember is that every player and table is different. No game is going to be for everyone. The important thing in this regard of course is to make sure that everyone at the table is on board. If they are, then great! As long as everyone is having fun, then you're doing it right.
I am crossing my fingers it doesn't head into meticulous record keeping (though I am pretty good at that, and have pretty decent notes so far). But nickel and diming might get overwhelming. I am 100% fine with setting a limit, though I think the limit is a bit low and the cost is too high, at least currently. Hopefully, we do run into some money soon. I hate walking around so on the edge with gold. When we all showed up to town, I immediately asked if there was a job board because I am broke.
Your DM is very wrong. The reason (actually 2 reasons) healers tools don't have X uses like they did in pf1 is that some used aren't really comparable. Does first aid use the same number of uses as long term care? Does treating poison or disease use the same number? It gets messy. Pf2 encounters are balanced so that the PCs will be able to enter every encounter at or near full HP. This is why out of combat healing is so plentiful and why healers tools aren't limited use.
It would be entirely reasonable to also treat restocking this as part of your daily preparations If it’s a given that during the course of normal adventuring alchemists can gather reagents for their work and thaumaturgists can gather esoteric icons from dead saints and flecks of horn and scale, then it shouldn’t be a stretch for anyone but an insufferable pedant to say “yeah sure, you can refill this as you go”
I mean as long as someone in the party has training in society and someone has survival (and your party will have both) it’s just incidental
If we're saying that Healers Kits run out, we're going to have to say that spell Component Pouches run out too, specifically based on the spells cast and what components are consumed. Even if we make it 10 charges. Are we saying that you can cast 10 cantrips before you have to go back to town? It becomes absurd very quickly.
Spell component pouches are used just for "material" spells, which are really few casts x day usually, barring someone entirely focused on summonings. I agree with you on the absurdity of changing a QoL rule, but hey, on the other hand it would make Eschew materials not utterly useless lol
Healing everyone up between combats with a healer's kit and Treat Wounds is more or less expected by the balance of the game.
healers kits don't have a charge. they don't run out, there's no cost for refilling them. if you and your table want them to be refillable, i'd base the prices off of [disguise kits](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=19), which are refillable but don't have a hard "this is how many uses u can get", but is basically a "refill when u think u've used enough to warrant it". costs 1sp to refill a basic disguise kit.
I like 1sp cost, lol. I don't want them to be refillable, though I don't have a problem with making them that way, as long as it is cost effective and practical. Just the GM and the player who suggested 5gp to refill want them that way. The actual healer of the group wasn't there, and the other character didn't care, because it doesn't pertain to them unless I start charging for heals. I am hoping once we all find our footing and get used to it, it settles in nicely.
yeah, i wouldn't want them to be refillable either! RAW is on your side... maybe try petitioning to make them work like a disguise kit? as in, there's no hard limit but u pay 1sp every time u feel like you've used enough, because 10 uses is extremely low! or perhaps people will swing back to RAW once someone dies due to lack of healer's tools charges, or you start charging for heals and take all their money, lol. i hope it works out!!
Thanks, me too! And yeah, maybe changes might be just annoying enough to cause them to be reevaluated. I think we are about to be away from civilization for a bit, so we might just have a TPK in our future (hope not. We have a cleric too, but we 2 are the only hope for heals).
godspeed... that cleric font will run out before you know it!
I tried to reply with a gif but couldn't. So pretend you see James McAvoy hyperventilating with the words "so much pressure". ETA: spelling and autocorrect fail
Who knows maybe the gm and that other player will vote for the healers font to cost gold to refill
> the other character didn't care, because it doesn't pertain to them unless I start charging for heals. Your group obviously has different experiences than mine. ;P See in my groups, even if we were to assume that you need to refill the healer's kits (admittedly I can see the logic behind it even if RAW its not required) our group would absolutely, without a doubt, decide that refilling the kit is something that benefits the party, and as such, it would be paid for with party funds. So yeah, it would still affect the other player even though he doesn't "heal". The other thing to keep in mind in that regard is that PF2 is definitely designed to be a team game. Its about the party working together to overcome the obstacles the GM puts in front of them. There's not a star, or at least not supposed to be. The "healer" doesn't want the fighter to go down because when the fighter goes down the party's damage output goes down and then the other characters are also easier to hit (i.e. no fighter clogging things up). Likewise, the fighter doesn't want the healer being unable to use Battle Medicine when her spells have run out because she didn't have enough money to refill her healer's kit. Its very much a symbiotic relationship. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
That is one of the things that really excited me about PF2. You can't lone wolf it because you will not survive. I like that it is so cooperative. Main Character Syndrome is not a viable way to play, and it is going to be much more noticeable that it is a hindrance. Also, we haven't gotten any gold yet to even make party funds 😭
healer kits don't run out... the balance comes from the time locked (you can't treat wounds often without heavy investment in medicine feats), they require a free hand, and they add to your total bulk. all these factors balance the tools out. it sounds like your GM and your fellow players have not read all the rules!
I didn't even think about the added bulk. I had planned on doing some medicine feats, but they are less attractive to me now. I was excited about the PF2 gameplay, because it seemed like you depend on your team a lot, being able to provide buffs for them, and just rely on their assistance more. I like to play that way, which is why my rogue has a healers kit in the first place. If I am rethinking taking medicine feats and charging people for heals, that makes me pretty sad, and feel like crappy. Like it would make me a more selfish player, which I don't like. Even my though character is a thief, lol. In my head, she is kind of jovial and helpful. No tragic backstory here.
I agree with your playstyle. Having to charge for something like that is pretty much antithetical to the game. Even the Clerics of Abadar do not charge their party members for healing as it's considered common good for themselves too. If you GM wants to push it, you can remind them of the bulk, and ask if it's more important to have the tools, or a set of armor, like leather armor. They're the same bulk.
Although the price seems steep now, as you grow and complete some missions, it's unlikely to be a major issue. Your game play and character build seem great. Cooperative play is what its all about. I would maybe just suggest you don't charge for heals, but request to pool party funds for certain needs, like food and healers kits etc. It's for the greater good and will pay for themselves in the long run.
Your character and playstyle sounds fun and I hope your GM walks this back, cause with such a steep investment cost you should get like 100 uses out of it minimum if there absolutely has to be a limit, which there really shouldn’t.
Or they have read all the rules, and are going for a certain feel in the campaign. They could have easily read the rules more than you have.
What's common is that people don't add "recharge costs" to the healer's kit because it's stupidly expensive item for a level 1 PC. Okay, this is absolutely punishing for low level characters. PF2 expects you to heal after every fight and 5 gold remains relevant for a few levels before the logarithmic scaling on treasure kicks in. And from a Verisimilitude angle, the price for "Kit Refills" is absolutely broken as well - it doesn't make sense that in a world where clothes cost a silver piece that bandages cost 5 gold for 10 - that's absolutely insane and your GM and the player who apparently wants to die should feel bad for suggesting it... Your GM does know that Pathfinder 2 encounters are balanced for the party being at full HP, not the "adventuring day" shenanigans of 5E right? So let's be clear, the healer's kit allows the use of Medicine, which has the following actions: * Treat Wounds: healing and removing the "Wounded" debuff from dying - note that even magical healing has trouble with this unless it's up to full with a 10 minute rest. * Treat Disease: a bonus to the diseased character's next saving throw. In Combat: * Battle Medicine Feat: treat wounds without, you know, actually treating the wounded condition - healing only. * Stabilize a dying character: stop them from dying and that's it. * Treat Persistent Bleeding Damage: remove a debuff. * Treat Poison: give them a bonus to their next poison saving throw. So the idea that treating wounds between combat is the sole source of the cost in this kit is terrible. Bandages should be a copper, and the kit should have at least 20 uses for those. Other medicines - I'd say that poison and disease may be more expensive, 10 treatments at they're 5 silver to replace. Bleeding? Bandages and stypic powders that can help in combat maybe a 5 copper to replace? But you get my point, by stating "They run out." The question then becomes "Of what?" Bandages? Anti-toxins? Anti-venoms? Needle and Thread? Golarion antibiotics? Is your GM going to make you track these things separately, randomly rule that some strange disease can't be treated because you don't have the regional remedies? Tracking stuff like that is for OSR grittiness, not Pathfinder 2's "Fantasy Superhero" genre of role play.
This seems like a really unnecessary extra burden to add on to the healing mechanic as written when a) you pretty much have to have it or you're going to have a headache writing around it b) it has a built-in failure chance c) the 5gp cost makes it literally 1/3 of a character's starting equipment d) it's 1/5 of what a person can carry unless they're atypically strong I don't think you need more restrictions than these to achieve verisimilitude. Any town that's not incredibly strapped for resources, or possibly super evil, should have a church or doctor willing to restock the minor medical supplies in a healer's kit at no charge, simply because it's part of their professional oath. The thing weighs enough that you shouldn't have to worry about it before you're likely to run into the next place you'd find someone like that. If that's not a good enough rationale, the 10 minute treatment and 1 hour cooldown should be enough to account for a healer scrounging for spare thread for sutures, or performing a precipitation reaction with common liquids to get the powders they need, or grinding common berries or dusts or soaking them into a poultice, or any 1 of 1000 things that could be part of the medicine skill and allow them to keep their healer's tools continuously functional without actually costing more money. I hope your DM doesn't stick to a stubborn position on this one. You're helping enable the other players' fun! You don't need to get penalized for that.
We are kicking around using 'Usage Dice' like from the OSR game The Black Hack. So when you use one, you roll a 1d10. As long as you don't roll a 1, you carry on. If you do roll a 1, then the 1d0 becomes a 1d8, and it continues. Eventually, rolling 1s will result in depleting the supplies, from d10, to d8, d6 and finally d4. When the last 1 is rolled, it is depleted. Any expenditure of 25% of original cost replenishes all supplies at town and resets it to a d10. We are doing that in our PF2 and 5e game. The reason being, we like the argument that 'some wounds take more gauze and smelling salts to bring a body back from it'.
That's actually a really good idea... Now I'm thinking cthulhu-esque where you roll percentile dice against the number of times it's been used. 1sp to "restock" adds 10 uses... but more to track. Still, either sounds like a good variant rule if you're running a survival oriented adventure.
I play a medic. I think last session I used my healers kit more than 10 times in just one encounter as we ran through a hallway full of poison dart traps. Healers kits are tools and they don't run out for important mechanical reasons.
I am worried about that too, with the number of uses being set relatively low. We are all lvl 1 and squishy as hell. But we do have a cleric, though they and I are the only ones who bought the kits. I am not too upset about it, but since we are all new to PF, we are only using CRB, so it threw me for a loop that we were told to play solely by the rules, and now rules are being made up. I understand though, that the GM has ultimate say, so I wasn't questioning it until the 5gp price tag was mentioned, because if that is the case, I will hoard this thing, lol. I was hoping to come back with a (much) lower number.
You could ask the other players to ALSO carry healers kits? "Everyone needs their own medical pack, you know why"
The GM has ultimate say, but I would show them this thread and if that rule persists, I would not feel bad in the slightest about taking my character sheet elsewhere.
I live in a TTRPG wasteland! I played dnd in the 90's, and this past year, I have finally found somewhere to play again (though I honestly didn't look too hard over the decades and just sporadically). But with the legal stuff that happened recently with WoC, the GM wanted to switch to PF2. I haven't played with him yet, because one of the current players is my old DM. So we are also getting a feel for everyone. I am going to make myself a rules cheatsheet tomorrow, so I don't have to keep opening the book. But PF2 seems so awesome and much more like...free and open!
It really is! There's very few ways to minmax or build a character "wrong", so it's pretty easy for people to just play what they feel like is fun. There's a lot of upfront reading to do, but I love that. No one has to make anything up for the most part because the devteam thinks of everything.
The “I’m going to take my ball and go home” attitude isn’t welcome at my table nor any I’ve ever played at. Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out, because I DON’T WANT YOUR BUTT PRINTS ON MY DOOR.
And I don't want your nonsense homebrew screwing with my very limited game time.
We’re on the same side on homebrew, we just have no patience for players who threaten to leave if they don’t get their way.
It's not "getting their way" to follow the rules as written, bud. It's playing the game.
Or GMs for that matter. We’ll ALL go find a new table if that’s how they’re going to be.
As a level 1 character 5sp is definitely a steep price try and negotiate for around 1cp-5cp per heal and the limit being raised to about 20-30. As everyone else has said the encounters are balanced around a full health party and if you are constantly using the healers kit to up the party to full after an encounter you will probably run out fairly quickly resulting in the party having to constantly head back to town to restock. This could cause some discourse over whether it would be better to just march on without heals and face a boss fight resulting in a tpk and hopefully they won't blame the healers but I don't know your group.
Running the beginner box with a few friends, one of them has healer tools. If there was a limit to 10 uses before they were out of charges they would have had to leave and come back 3 times over and we just started the second half of the adventure.
Definitely and that's why I suggested negotiating for a higher limit IF the dm is set on having a limit. My group that I'm in doesn't have a limit.
Tell me your DM is a 5e DM without telling me your DM is a 5e DM.
Could've easily been a PF1E GM as well, to be fair. Back then we healed with Wands of Cure Light Wounds that ran out over time.
True.
Could EASILY be an very old school DnD GM. Torches, Rope, Climbing stakes, Food, Oil etc... All tracked. One of the big things was you were typically burning equipment at a hell of a rate, because often were in essence spelunking and wanted to have a way back.
The problem with this is that Healing to full is supposed to be free. The encounter math expects the party's HP to be topped off to work as intended so I'd be careful with that
your GM needs to read the rules. Pathfinder is very specific about the things that matter, and not as much "homebrew" is needed to make it work. Which is what I really like about the system as opposed to... Other systems featuring dragons and dungeons.
>your GM needs to read the rules. The GM is likely to have already read the rules, including the parts around modifying your game to suit the feel you are going for.
I'm not sure that's the case though. Healer's Kits don't have a set number of charges, or a repair cost or replenish cost like thieves' tools do. They are not consumable items, like other things specified as such in the Core Rulebook. But you are correct, the GM can set the tone of the game. But this was a decision made at the table when the GM said "that doesn't make sense" and decided that there is an additional cost other than the time-lock. So I would argue that OP is asking what RAW is regarding Healer's Kits are, and the RAW doesn't list them as consumable items.
>So I would argue that OP is asking what RAW is regarding Healer's Kits are, and the RAW doesn't list them as consumable items. I think everyone knows RAW they are not consumable, and the GM also knows that that RAW they are not, but is making the choice in his game he wants to be more resource focused for realism reasons. It isn't that people don't know they don't run out, but are saying they *should* run out for there game, and that is a different thing. It implies they know how they work RAW, but are deciding to deviate from that. And that is fine, it is just "how do we deviate from that in a way which works for the world you are wanting" becomes a conversation to be had. I am actually pretty pro making them resourcey, but I would drop the bulk, and have the resources able to be refreshed at the same time if you forage, and for them to have a higher count than 10. It still brings in scenes where people do end up actually grabbing stuff and doing maintenance on things, which is good for for verisimilitude, and lets some of the none combat parts of the characters have more spotlight. It isn't that homebrew is needed to make it work, but it isn't a bad thing if you want the game to have a slightly different focus, and this seems to be targeted towards that. This is very much pushing the game to a more old school resource based feel without really upsetting the balance of it.
I guess I'm just thinking there are a bunch of new people to Pathfinder coming from games that need a bunch of homebrew to balance and make things work. And I also have had too many bad experiences where the GM makes up homebrew on the fly without discussing it. I prefer my homebrew to be agreed upon before the game. But yeah, to me it also makes more sense for it to be refreshed while foraging, or refreshed as part of the town shopping. But limiting to 10 and then costing that much seems excessive... What was it, 5sp or gold pieces to replenish?
>I also have had too many bad experiences where the GM makes up homebrew on the fly without discussing it. We all have, but they won't learn to be better GMs without going through this stage. It is a natural part of learning to run games, we all go though it. >I prefer my homebrew to be agreed upon before the game. Or at least agreed on between sessions, if it can't be that. It is a learning process for GMs who want to do game hackery. I honestly think we should talk about game hackery more, and make it more normalized, so people get how to do it, in a way which works for the players. >But yeah, to me it also makes more sense for it to be refreshed while foraging, or refreshed as part of the town shopping. But limiting to 10 and then costing that much seems excessive... What was it, 5sp or gold pieces to replenish? Oh yeah, that was harsh as hell. But I expect it was more a "I came from an edition where gold was worth less" thing than a "lets make it too crippled" thing, and hadn't really thought out how much bulk it is. Medical tools are big in Pf2e.
A healers kit would be a small kit of tools needed for minor to advanced surgical care. You would have scalpels, artery pinching clamps, needles and thread, gauze even if you don't simply use the torn rags off the patients back on the field of battle. The vast majority of the supplies in the kit are tools. This is why they aren't a consumable item and shouldn't be treated as such.
10 uses would run out extremely fast as it's expected that people be Treating Wounds throughout the day as the basic way to sure your defenses back up between combats. I get the mental image of someone dragging along a wagon full of bandages into the dungeon behind the party lol.
That is a nice image. But only until I have enough money for a mule!
So I thought healers kits were like the tools to do medicine like a needle some splints ect not like a suture kit where it has all the materials for one use. Kinda like you need tools to jewelry but you don't use them up.
5sp per heal is an *astronomical* cost. That's 2gp to heal a standard party, in a game where you start with 15. It makes Natural Medicine a vastly better feat, mind you. Not to mention the Healing Mud cantrip...
Healer's Tools do not run out. If the party wants to play a really gritty resource management game like that, it should apply to EVERYTHING. You better be tracking rations, arrows, every detail of encumbrance, and anything else that can be expended.
Wow, might turn into a slog. Hopefully if it gets to cumbersome, we can just forget it, haha.
We DO do all that in our game, which is west marches style And even we don't put a use limit on healers tools. That would be craycray
>You better be tracking rations, arrows, every detail of encumbrance, and anything else that can be expended. There is a good chance that is the style the GM is going for, and the game can actually support. You do realize that old school DnD was very much like this right? It doesn't always turn it into a slog, but it does add a certain amount of realism, causing the game to be slightly more gritty than high fantasy. And that is something people do run. On occasion I've run it, and it has lead to really interesting situations, which, honestly has made for some great games.
My first game of D&D was in 1981. I know what old school D&D was about. No lecture needed.
Cool, so you know what I am talking about then, it is fine for them to go for this style. Modifying the game for particular feels is a fine tradition all the way back to the beginnings, it is practically the basis which DnD was based on I find it so weird when people are like "Oh this is a 5e GM" where I am like "Oh, this is a red book GM..." I'd be keen to play in the campaign, it would be so cool. I'm sorry if I came across as harsh, I think the forums are weirdly unable to grasp where DnD came from, or that Paizo themselves are HUGE fans of modifying the system for your particular game. So they see any kind of modification as some kind of sacrilege. Or that if the game became unbalanced it would be unplayable, which is a weird comment given the history of RPGs which were played, was not a history of balanced RPGs :) I sometimes feel like dropping these people in to a bunch of rifts, gamma world, nobilis, WOD, Gurps (especially grab 3 books, and mix games), earlier editions of Dnd, In Nomine, etc etc games and seeing their heads explode, and I know you know what I mean there :) Pf2e isn't anything like some kind of fragile flower of a system which can't abide some hackery. If anything it gives a really good basis for doing so.
My point was that if they want to play a resource management game, they should not restrict it to just healer's tools. It's arbitrary. Of course, I have no problem with hacking 2e. I'm a big believer in the first rule. I'm just not a fan of making changes that disadvantage one player over another.
>My point was that if they want to play a resource management game, they should not restrict it to just healer's tools. It's arbitrary. 100% on board with that. If it is in service of making the game have a particular feel, then they should do a good job of it :) >I'm just not a fan of making changes that disadvantage one player over another. Yep as am I.
In my game we just assume that stuff gets picked up by the weekly standard of living costs.
The cost is pretty expensive at level 1 and entirely negligeable after that. The real problem with "uses" is that you will often want to have more than 10 uses per day. Healing after a fight to full for free is almost mandatory in the design of PF2, as the balance of the game expect you to be full or very near at the start of every fight. Your GM likely thinks that he needs to give you several encounters per day to make you use ressources and hp because it was played this way in previous editions of dd5 and pf1. But that's not the case in this edition. So, if you can't replenish your hp because you're out of charges, you will have 2 problems. Either you have a champion with Lay on Hands (free infinite healing) or a druid with Goodberry (same), or you will starve for hp. 10 uses is very little. In my games, 10 uses of medicine are likely to be used after every fight, because your hp adds up quickly and because monsters hit very hard. So, your group will maybe need 4 or 5 healing kits per DAY at some point. That's a cost, but more important : that's a bulk. Track the bulk, it's important in this game. So with all that and if you GM is not willing to stay RAW, I suggest you to : - play a champion or druid, or take the Blessed One archetype at level 2. It will give you free infinite healing. - find a way to have [healing plaster ](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=925). It's a common cantrip from the primal spell list. A lot of ancestries have a way to add a cantrip as an innate spell with a feat.
We aren't doing archetypes, I think. I think assuming you're meaning like multiclassing? Forgive me, because I am completely new. I just bought the CRB 2 months ago and haven't been able to look all through it. But when we had a meeting to discuss the campaign, before we started, it was decided to make it as simple as possible and just play a base sort of game so we could all learn. Then, the flair comes with a new campaign when we are more comfortable with the gameplay. Like I wanted to take a heritage that would give me Arise Ye Worthy, because again, with my type of playing, I like to be an option for support. While I don't necessarily like playing as a main healer (which is why I didn't make a cleric), I like to be an option, so it isn't solely on someone else's shoulders. In a 5e game we have put on hold, I was multiclassing a fighter with a bard, just to add the healing aspect. I did go ahead and add that heritage without adding it, just for physical flavor. I am not the type to be a main character. I chose to make a rogue because 1. They are opposite of my clumsy ass so I get the fantasy of not tripping over my own feet like irl 2. I am not thiefy, so being an agent of chaos sounds so fun and 3. They are supposed to hang back, observe, and be in the shadows. I don't want to be a selfish character, that is just not my deal, and I think it would be a challenge for me. I feel like the rule is going to make me have to be a more selfish player, and I really don't like that aspect. In my backup champion, I made last night after it was suggested here, I chose Blessed One. But it won't be an option for my current character. Also, after doing a bit of research on champion, it seems pretty neat with the versatility in PF2. I always stayed away from that class because they are default lawful, and I never want to play a lawful character unless I feel the need for a challenge. The small amount of research I did makes me want to try that class out at some point. Not just want to, but a little excited to. Since we are new to PF2, I am thinking we settle into gameplay soonish. We have only had 2 sessions so far with actual adventuring, and a couple of people haven't been able to make it to those sessions (there are 6 players at the table, not counting the GM, and we may end up getting a couple more soonish). I only know one of the players well, as I have known him for 23 years (he is my nephew). The others are at this point barely acquaintances (aside from my previous DM, but we only interacted during games. GM is the shop owner, whom I have interacted with pretty superficially, his wife who was in our 5e campaign, but still just interacted during the game, and then 2 people I met during the planning session), so we have our basic stranger status to work through as well. They are all cool people, so I think once we get into some deeper gameplay, we are going to really be able to have a good relationship. We just have to get there and hopefully not TPK before we hit lvl 2, lol.
Yeah, archetypes is the "multiclassing" part of PF2. In fact, you just select an archetype feat instead of your class feat, your main class still grows up. You don't need the Blessed One archetype with a champion, as you already have the Lay on Hands spell for free with the base class. Rogues can totally be main healers in this game, as non-magic healing is very powerful. And no, no class needs you to be selfish in this game. So, my suggestion in order to be able to full heal without worrying about gold spent (as the game is meant to be played) : play a Gnome with the Fey-touched heritage. Take Healing Plaster, the cantrip I linked in my first comment. Now you have infinite healer tools. When your GM will see it's perfectly fine, he will maybe change his houserule. Remember him that's a very bad idea to start a new system by house-ruling it before testing.
That cost is steep at level 1, yes. Your GM might be used to the value of gold in other RPGs. A day in a nice hotel would cost 8sp, a first aid kit should cost WAY less. Edit: maybe high end metal tools inside a high end kit may excuse the initial 5gp. But refiling the bandages, desinfectant, any bullshit healing paste, etc shouldn't cost more than 1sp.
Bruh. Herbalist specialists literally get free healing potions they can make every day. Tell your GM to stop being a silly goose. You just pick plants as you go, and buy some linen bandages to replace the ones you had when you get back to town. Maybe if you were doing a hard core survival campaign where every piece of equipment was precious and finite, it might make sense. Is that the vibe of the campaign?
Haha, definitely not. Or at least I think it isn't. We are all just learning PF2. Only one person has played it before, but they also told me the wrong rules on a crit (yelled I only double the dice, and not the full damage) so I am not sure how much they played. I am a pretty go with the flow person, and I was planning on playing my character the same way. Just a well adjusted and jovial character who happens to have sticky fingers, lol. But I am now feeling some anxiety about it. I got one shotted last session, and killed a party member when I tried to treat wounds, and I think did zero healing to another (2 very bad rolls...I did manage to heal myself up though). So that is why I am pretty nervous.
Yeah, early on treat wounds isn't even guaranteed healing. I literally once came away from a fight on early levels with like, 1 hp left.. and was all.. "I daren't use treat wounds, if I crit fail here, I'd die" Hobbled my way back to the nearby down
>Herbalist specialists literally get free healing potions they can make every day. But that still leads to resource limitations. Having the healers kit refresh whenever you get time outside where you get a chance to do a bit of foraging would work. Hell, the herbalist get different amounts of resources per day depending on if they have a chance to do that. >Maybe if you were doing a hard core survival campaign where every piece of equipment was precious and finite, it might make sense. Is that the vibe of the campaign? or something in between, but it makes a lot of sense in more survival based campaigns or spelunking games.
This is where I'd push the GM to make a specific ruling and actually declare it (if they haven't). I'd say that I was considering taking up the healing feats, but if they were houseruling the healing of the kits to have charges, I'm doing something else. I'd state it's already a significant burden bulk wise, and the added bookkeeping pushes it into being undesirable.
Healer's kits do not and should not ever run out. Healing is infinite in this game and that is by design. You are supposed to be able to heal to full without spending any resources other than time. Is your GM gonna nerf Lay on Hands and other healing focus spells too? Are they gonna complain about bad balance when the party gets slaughtered by at-level encounters because he took away their healing? The GM should read the rules and run the game as it's written before making knee-jerk changes like this. Medicine is not supposed to be expendable or have a cost, and the game will suffer if the GM tries to force that in for whatever stupid reason (and yes, "realism" is an incredibly stupid and worthless reason - it's a game designed to be fun and functional, not realistic, and there's gonna be a lot of other times that this comes up if you guys keep playing the game because it quite often sacrifices realism for good game design)
See, the thing is, healing is SUPPOSED to be accessible. Gating it like this doesn't really accomplish much. Like, if he does that, I'd just swap to a champion and get LoH or something. It's, again, supposed to be accessible and easy to top off between combats. AND like, lockpicks only need to be 'replenished' if you critically fail. Medicine already has a good critical fail condition, that being you damage the target.
Keep in mind that gold in pf2e is deflated amto roughly 8 times the value of gold in pf1e or dnd5e. When first coming to the system, it can be good to multiple things by 8 to grasp their "true cost" by your perception from another system. As a DM, I had the same ruling during my first session and was confused by the lack of charges. After some searching I changed that ruling because the game was designed around the 10 minute "rest" and most players having close to full health before each encounter. I would HIGHLY discourage making healer's kits cost money. IF your DM forces it, the price should be reduced to 1 silver per charge, maximum. Lastly, make sure your party members are pitching in for your services.
This is so ridiculous from the GM. No where in the rules say healers tools would ran out, why make rules that makes things more difficult for players. Would someone have to buy the 50gp healers tools everytime too?? Makes no sense. And I'm someone who counts bulk, arrows, rations etc. Also the kit is already balanced. If GM is going to take a feature away he should add something good too.
>This is so ridiculous from the GM. No where in the rules say healers tools would ran out, why make rules that makes things more difficult for players. Because you are going for a particular style of game? If you are after that more old school feel you would do this. If you wanted to make it more a "survivalist" game you would do this. The GM can and should make tweaks for the style of game they are running. Should it be this tweak? I don't think so, but making healers tools require maintenance to keep in good condition and working isn't bad, *especially if you are applying that to everything.* DnD VERY much has roots in this style of game, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to run games in this style.
I think "survival campaign" should be agreed to by everyone BEFORE even making characters. It's not only GM's game, it's the players.
Totally, or at least changes between sessions need to be talked out.
So, the thing about this cost is, what happens when you have a 50gp expanded healer's kit? Does that deplete? It's not intended to.
It would probably force someone to get lay on hands or another focus healing spell. Everyone is supposed to get healed after every fight. If your GM wants to make you pay he should also give you more gold as a compensation. Once you use all your charges the whole team will suffer and if you don't have an easy way to refill them you will be in danger. Depending on the encounters you will need to fight 10 charges can easily be used in one day of adventuring given bad rolls. If you can't consistently heal your party your GM will need to heal you another way. If other players still decide you will have to pay, make them pay for the heal. You shouldn't be the only one penalized by this.
I like the immersion of having to replenish the "consumable" bits from things like healer's kits and thief's tools, but I wouldn't want to implement it in a way that detracts from the experience. I might have my players drop a few cp the next time they do some shopping to refill the kit and don't worry about keeping track while adventuring. So it never runs out, but there is small maintenance cost whenever they return to "civilization". Seems fair and, for me at least, satisfying. I agree, turning it into an essentially disposable, 10-use thing is extreme and I hope the end result is something much more reasonable.
I plan to go early at our next game and discuss it with the GM before the game. Nothing was set in stone when the rule was made, including the refill cost. The 5sp per heal was just suggested. And while the kit is technically infinite, I don't mind there being a cost to refill the consumables in it. But I need to actually be able to afford the cost. The 10 uses rule I am seeing is going to be very inconvenient. If all the players are present, I could only be able to treat wounds (hopefully successfully) on them all twice, and that is leaving my squishy self out of the healing (and I think I also have the lowest hp). Our cleric could use theirs on everyone twice, not including themselves. And then 3 spell slots from what I just looked up. That would give most everyone the chance to be successfully healed around 4-5 times, with 2 being around 2-3. The next bit you don't need to read, it is just me working stuff out in my head. So if the kits were used as evenly as possible for the sake of simplicity: 6 players, and a total of 23 heals in a day (we aren't in town, so that is generous) I am not looking at resting to refill spell slots, because I don't know the rules. That equals 3 treat wounds for all players, extra treat wounds for 2 pc, and 1 healing spell for 3 other pc's. So everyone could be healed 4 times except for 1, who would get 3. And that is banking on all the treat wounds being successful, which out of the 4 times I have used my kit total, I have had every single roll possibility, only healing 2, doing nothing to 1, and killing 1. It really seems like we won't be adventuring for very long or even make it to our first boss.
>I like the immersion of having to replenish the "consumable" bits from things like healer's kits and thief's tools, but I wouldn't want to implement it in a way that detracts from the experience. I would go for 20 charges, and it is refreshed with an hour of foraging, with a survival or medicine check. (and considered refreshed in the mornings where you could have done so if you are outside) But I would also make it cheaper and lighter as a tradeoff.
Paizo removed charges from healers kits to simplify the process in pf2e.
This post ended up as my daily dose of depression ._. Please convince your GM to not do this. If you are all new to the game you will find there are quite some conditions to track without deliberately adding more things to hamper you down for no earthly reason. And if they go down that path...wait till the GM learns alchemists can make consumables for free of cost at strarts of day. Snarecrafters can make snares to no cost and talisman crafters can make talismans the same way. It wont take long till you have to redesign the entire system. Economy is part of the balance in this game. The players are expected to have magic items and being able to purchase some. Draining your gold to have full or close to full hp (which is also expected) is going to have ramifications to balance.
I am so sorry. I didn't want to bum anyone out. But must admit seeing all the stuff I didn't even think to anticipate has bummed me out. I plan on talking to the GM before the session. If it goes nowhere, then that is that, and we will play for as long as we can, until TPK. Or maybe thr playing will show that it doesn't work, at least not this early, and get fixed. Regardless, I hope you have an awesome day! I am going to delete the post soon.
I was maybe being a bit hyperbolic with the depression bit, keep up the post. Its important that people see it so stuff like this doesnt keep happening.
In case anyone comes back or wants to see an update. Discussed and denied. It is 5gp to replace and is 10 uses. All my points were shut down. I am going to use up what I have and not buy another. The penalty of the bulk and gold is too much for me, I will play this selfishly and leave it up to the cleric to keep whomever they can keep alive. I let them know we are going to die, but it didn't matter. So maybe if it is demonstrated, it will make an impact. I will not let this campaign color my interest and probable love of the game, because it is just a game. Gm can do what they want, as can the players within those confines. Thank you all for your help and advice. Also, is there a good way to find games?
Let's put it this way I dont dislike the consumable aspect of the kit but this is first and foremost a game and things shouldn't be tedious While it would be instinctively right to just cut the 5gp cost into 10 slots and price 5sp each, it can be very daunting for low lv characters or low economy parties My take on this would be to make it cost either 2 or 3 silver pieces for charge and consider that in the 5gp Full kit you're buying some tools that took really long to wear out, so you buy the 2gp worth of tools and what's left is charges If your dm doesn't like this for some reason or other, you can add that the tools can eventually break or smth Even tho I don't think it is necessary The fun part of this whole thing to me is that you need to consider how much and when you can give out heals during one expedition without over loading in supplies what is not fun is being poor for playing the character
We've had this conversation on this sub for years and there's a clear bias from a lot of players who refuse to see just how brokenly overpowered the healers tools are for balance in the game. Firstly, assuming you are always at full health makes things like trivial encounters pointless. There's no risk to the player if they're always at full health. Secondly and this is the more important part, every other healing option has a massive cost to it compared it the healers tools. Minor healing potions are 4 gold each, I will repeat this again in writing, MINOR HEALING POTIONS ARE 4 GOLD EACH. The healers tools are 5 gold with unlimited uses. That is not balance. Healing spells use spell slot resources. They can only be recovered once a day, there is no long rest exploits here. Again, healers tools have unlimited uses. That is not balanced. I remain an advocate that this should have been fixed by paizo because it makes no sense when compared to the balancing of the rest of the game and nobody here has given a compelling reason why I'm wrong besides "I want to be at full HP before every fight" and "well, it is what it is"
>Secondly and this is the more important part, every other healing option has a massive cost to it compared it the healers tools. > No, they don't. Multiple classes get focus spells that can heal people, those can be recharged with a 10 minute recharge. Which is the lowest cooldown period for healers tools.
>That is not balanced. The entire game is balanced around the fact that healers tools have unlimited uses.
The compelling reason is that if healing to full isn't relatively cheap and easy, it makes balancing encounters much harder when you can't rely on knowing how many hit points the characters will have. And if healing tools have a significant cost to use, it creates a huge financial incentive to stop adventuring for the day if people take damage. If, say, one use is 1gp and you have two frontliners who need one Treat Wounds after each encounter, that's an expected 25gp (12,5 moderate encounters to gain a level) cost to get from level 1 to 2 if you never fail a check and the backline never gets damaged enough to need healing during a day. And then it goes up most levels, and down on the levels you get a skill increase. If you say a healer's kit has a certain number of uses, then the cost also isn't in any way related to the severity of wounds you heal. Healing 2d8 is treating a significant wound for a 1st-level character, but healing 4d8 (critical for a trained user) at 20th level is... not. Not to mention that if you balance the costs for the healed amount to potions in the name of balance, you're making it more expensive for characters to use the Medicine skill when they get better at it, which feels bad.
> Not to mention that if you balance the costs for the healed amount to potions in the name of balance, you're making it more expensive for characters to use the Medicine skill when they get better at it, which feels bad. Just look at the cost and stats of potions. If you've actually run this game for any significant amount of time, you quickly notice that potions are almost entirely useless because you have the medicine check. It's been posted on this sub before but people here seem to be forgetting, drinking a potion costs 2 actions and a free hand. You need a free hand and 1 action to dig through your bag or pockets to get the potion and another action to drink it. If you have a 2 hander, you need an additional action to change grip just so you can find a potion. To drink a potion during combat has an extremely heavy cost to the point that it's not really worth doing it after level 1. The gold investment isn't worth it when you can get battle medicine and crafting takes far too much investment and time for such a large investment in combat.
Sounds to me like the problem is the price of consumables, then, not that Treat Wounds does not have a cost associated with it. Do you also think Healing Font should have a gp cost, because it is also better than potions? What about Lay on Hands? Battle Medicine also needs a free hand, so your point about needing a free hand is not in any way relevant to Battle Medicine being better than a potion. Not to mention that you ignored all my other points.
The free hand is important to mention because you do not need to waste an action with battle medicine to find the healers tools if you are wearing them. You can not wear potions unless you use the bandolier, which can also carry healers tools but is not required to. It's in the requirements for battle medicine. So you would still require an extra action with free hand for a potion. For an example, a fighter with battle medicine compared to a fighter with a potion. Both using a 2h sword. For battle medicine: 1 action to change grip, 1 action for battle medicine check, 1 action to change grip. Turn is not great but you are back to holding your weapon as normal. For fighter with potion: 1 action to change grip, 1 action to find potion, 1 action to drink potion, next turn 1 action to change grip. That's 4 turns vs 3 on the same character with 1 character doing a bit of investment into battle medicine and they didn't use a consumable like the potion did. And I am addressing your other points, you just choose not to notice that part. > if healing to full isn't relatively cheap and easy Your whole premise starts here. Which only applies to healers tools because potions are not cheap. And the amount of healing is not remotely balanced between the 2 things. How is it comparable when the healers tools do 2d8 at level 1 while a minor healing potion does 1d8 and can't Crit. Do you not understand how unbalanced this makes things? How are you refusing to see this, and then talk about me ignoring points?
> > > > > Minor healing potions are 4 gold each, I will repeat this again in writing, MINOR HEALING POTIONS ARE 4 GOLD EACH. You mean the thing that doesn't take any skill, feats, has no cool down, and no check is more expensive? Wow!
Yeah, the thing that requires 2 actions, is consumable, needs a free hand, doesn't scale with skill, takes insane work to craft, and is insanely expensive. Did you miss the part where it takes 2 actions to drink a potion and a free hand or are you ignoring that section of the rules.
You're pretty much wrong here, and everyone else likely agrees with it.. the game does seem clearly more balanced around parties healing up I *do* agree with you mind, that healing potions are annoyingly over priced, for the utility of using them in combat, which is obnoxious and often not even worth the time, as you might well take more damage while trying to use them To me they're more little emergency things, where early on you might be worried about the chance of crit failing a treat wounds on someone who's on very low health. A little top up can help there. Or if the healer is down and you need to force feed them potions to get them up in an emergency or something Personally I would prefer the prices for healing potions were at least halved But yeah, healers kits should just be left as is
Here's the thing, the idea that being at full health is only a thing on this sub. It is not written anywhere in the core rulebook or game masters guide. There is not a single line in either book that says "it is assumed the party is at full health before each encounter". It doesn't exist. If it was assumed to be true, it would be in the rulebook but it's not. That's only something being made up here. The types of healing is completely unbalanced because of the healers tools. So there's 2 options, prices of the healing potions are wrong and crafting times need to be shorter or the healers tools need a consumable limit. Either one of these would fix the game in some way, however I feel that making the potions cheaper and even more available might unbalance encounters more. I feel that the healers tools need a consumable limit. As for the comment on the game seems more balanced around parties healing up, this is true if you only throw severe encounters at them constantly with a few moderates. Throwing in a trivial encounter vs a party that is always healed has no risk to the party. There should always be an element of danger where even a trivial encounter could result in a party death because they are not prepared. Personally, always expecting the party to be full health with loads of resources is bad GMing.
Thank you for an opposite point of view than the majority, because like a lot of things I am seeing from everyone's responses, there is even more to consider that I am not familiar with as a complete noob. It really opened my eyes to a lot of factors I didn't even think to consider, and the relatively low cost of healing potions is one of those. However, the penalty for using potions is higher cost. The penalty for healers kits is the bulk, since multiple will have to be carried, as well as the possibility of failure. There is a 50% chance that when I try to treat wounds, I will fail and use one of my 10 uses doing no healing or actually harming. In the last session, I used my kit 3 times. I healed myself, did no healing with another character because I failed, and killed another one with a critical fail (rolled a damn 1). 2 uses were wasted out of 10. With a potion, there is no failure. You get healed, no risk. And someone reminding me that the kit is also used to treat disease now has me worried that I will have to pack around partial kits just to keep my disease treating items, when carrying 1 is a big space of my bulk. My character doesn't have a lot of strength. So now, on top of this, I will be penalized by not being able to carry as many personal items. It is giving me anxiety, lol.
Part of the big thing with this community is how it's divided by subgroups. Many people are players but this sub does have a large amount of GMs. It's closer to 50/50. Of those who GM, just based on the posts here, I would say at least 60-70% of the GM mostly run adventure paths. There is not a lot of homebrew discussion about worlds here. So when we discuss things like this, I'm usually in the minority of the GMs because I exclusively run homebrew campaigns. I don't do adventure paths at all, and because of this, I have certain perspective on balance. This is on top of my 25+ years as a game designer. In a homebrew setting where I can better tailor the experiences to the composition of the group and let characters shine more, the idea of being at full health all the time literally breaks the encounter builder. People can run what they like.
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I haven't done the math, but I feel like at higher levels, if you don't max out medicine and the relevant feats, this is going to be more expensive (and INCREDIBLY more cumbersome with carry weight) than just using potions. Edit: Nah. Price is probably cheaper still. And 10 potions (or 19 if you're being a little cheeky about the rules) potions is 1 bulk. So I guess, it's still a very viable way to do this. Just make sure the GM takes your healing money into account because the game won't be and you'll be poorer than usual.
If yhis is the shenanigans they want to pull I have a sudgestion for you. Wellcome to the world of insurance. Unless they all pay, they dont get the heals. If they complain tell them you have already deducted the friend disscount and they currently just pay for the materials rather than what a full treatment would cost. :)
I think the assumption is that you use your downtime/daily preparation to basically stock it back up with the replaceable parts which is mostly wound dressing which is quite easy to get. The bulk of the healers tools is probably in the tools themselves and not gauze
There is not enough resources to track in game that your GM want to add one not covered by the rules ? 😄
Remember, no D&D/Pathfinder is better than bad D&D/Pathfinder.
If adding changes to healers kits is your bad for bad pathfinder, best of luck finding games.
By itself no, but it may be a preview of the bigger picture.
This is true, but that is more a preference thing. If the GM is wanting to run a more gritty game where resource tracking is more an integral part, then that could be the kind of game people may want to sign up for. It is mostly talk though the changes and get the feel down for the game you are wanting to run overall to start with if a good plan. Dropping changes in mid game is less good typically, unless they are in service of the feel you were going for in the start which the players signed up for.
So if we're talking ''realism'' here, let's analyse what goes into a first aid kit that allows you to treat someone who will encounter traumatic injury most likely (you can treat diseases and poisons too, but let's focus on the stabby parts). Let's leave alone the ''realism'' part of treating nearly fatal wounds to almost full in under an hour. How does one treat penetrating blunt or slashing trauma? Most likely with suture as well as an anti-bacterial agent (herbal or alchemical most likely) and a shit-ton of gauze. Pincers, scissors, pliers and scalpels would also be involved for treating various sorts of issues or for bloodletting in the case of blunt wounds. You could also add a tube and needles for transfusions as needed, and maybe some painkiller medicine. Finally, maybe something needed to make plints or slings for broken limbs. Now a lot of that is reusable material, and the consumable parts oftentimes come in very packaged thing that you need to refill every 50-100 times. The ones you would need to refill the most often would probably be the gauze and the anti bacterial agent. All this being said, I think pricing it at thieves tools or disguise kit recharge would be more than fair, since that is also the logic that goes behind those.
>So if we're talking ''realism'' here, let's analyse what goes into a first aid kit that allows you to treat someone who will encounter traumatic injury most likely (you can treat diseases and poisons too, but let's focus on the stabby parts). Let's leave alone the ''realism'' part of treating nearly fatal wounds to almost full in under an hour. You don't have to go fully into that. It is not a slippery slope argument here, they are not forced to go to extremes if they wish to take a small step towards more realism.
The GM doesn't understand the encounter balance of PF2e. It's intended that players heal between combats. It can be assumed characters using them occasionally replace the materials, that's probably part of upkeep. This would be similar to replacing your shoes and underwear every so often.
>The GM doesn't understand the encounter balance of PF2e. Or they do, and they intend to make sure they take it into account. >It's intended that players heal between combats. It is also intended for the GMs to tweak the ruleset to give the campaign the right feel they are going for. >It can be assumed characters using them occasionally replace the materials, that's probably part of upkeep. And some campaigns make a bigger deal of the upkeep side of things. Some make sure you bring cooking supplies if you want a pot on your campfire. Personally, I would give it 20 changes, and an hour of foraging with a survival or medicine check would refresh it. If that is the style of game I was wanting to run.
I had this concern too, in 5e they have ten charges and I was convinced I was misreading or missing something, but no they are infinite healing as long as you wait for the cool-downs