Poll: Strictly support, no Offense

[efrate]

Celdia and I, back in the days of yesteryear, played a MUD called dragonrealms.  The healer class, Empath, was totally non-combative, and could do nothing but heal, on the other hand , they were the only ones who could.  They could not even attack, subdual or not, no debuffs, no actions that directly or indirectly effect the enemies.  

They healed by transferring wounds from others to themselves, then could magically heal themselves.  This took some time, depending on the skill of the empath and the severity of the wounds.  It offers amazing RPing potential, and would be a better healer (on him/herself) than a cleric of equal level (cure light wounds as a 0 level spell, cure mod as a lvl 1, etc).  They would receive little (or no) benefit from magical healing from someone else, though it would be possible if they were unconscious, etc.  

They must have physical contact to heal, and take a full round to transfer wounds before they can heal themselves.  The amount they take would be based on a skill check, but they must take the maximum their check result in, so they could potentially hurt or kill themselves.

Would you play a class as such?  Let me know, hit me up in IRC with thoughts, or PM me, though I don't do much on the site outside of hanging in IRC.  Thanks for your time.

[st4rw4k3r]

Um hell yeah.
I looooove that idea so much.
transfer wounds to you then heal them, and no combat. I love that idea.

[efrate]

Also could depends people please leave a reason why and on what it depends?

[dinosaur]

I like supporting units, they are my favorite because they are so helpful :]

I think extremes are good (for characters).

[efrate]

The depends explained to me in IRC, so no worries, for the future please list what your conditions are.  Also, tell your friends.  Wanna get a decent bit of feedback on this.

[st4rw4k3r]

I think the idea is grand.
My only problem is that they could die fast.
Taking in damage, then someone comes up behind them and hits them, that could be quite bad.

[efrate]

They will have some self defensive spells and abilities to prevent that, and they can wear heavy armor, and will have a d12 HD. 

[st4rw4k3r]

Crap, that sounds like some nice stuff there.

Alright. Well I see no problems with it now. I'll have to test it out to find anything.

[Taichii]

hmmm. if that is the case then surely at the start of the battle, if a player sees a supporting character, it will surely be the first target.
well that's at least what i think.. if its purpose is to heal the wounds of the others then killing it first would shorten the time span of battles.

[efrate]

would you, someones whos only thing to do is reduce the suffering of others?  even if those others are you enemies, would you slay someone with that dedication, for following what they believe is right?

[Kaijyuu]

Depends on the game.

I assume we're talking about tabletop games (this being the RP forum and all), so my criteria for playing a total support character would be thus: The game can't focus on combat, and must be quite freeform. Combat can exist, but I'd rather be giving my ally a buff that lets him shoot a fireball that destroys the entire building than give my ally +1d6 fire damage on their next attack. Giving my allies numerical bonuses is plain boring. Letting me make up random and wacky buffs at a whim would be incredibly fun.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I actually really dislike this class, and I'm very much pro-specialization.  Its healing sounds much too slow to actually be useful in battle, from what I can tell. (Cure Light Wounds might be L0, but it essentially takes me 2 turns to cast.) its the kind of class that can easily get itself killed by being forced to do multiple damage transers without having the time to heal itself before getting itself shanked by the most worthless enemy ever.  It's also not quite as fun as a basic Cleric - your allies aren't hurt all the time, and if they're not, it sounds like you'll have very little to do besides pick your nose and maybe hand out a buff.  You have no means of being useful outside that in that early game scenario, and no way to switch gears if the situation demands more DPS.  While it may have some good RP potential, it sounds like the in-battle gameplay of such a class would get a bit too boring unless the person playing didn't care about spending entire turns essentially doing nothing, which isn't a preference you can just assume people have since doing nothing sucks.



Note that I say all this, and yet I think I know exactly how I'd want to use this class.   Haha.

[formerdeathcorps]

I hate specialization in general.  I'm also a player who prefers offense to defense (at a 2:1 ratio).  Thus, this class would be utterly boring for me to play as.

[Ryqoshay]

My Berry Mama creation/character/thing was intended to be support only. Granted, to get such a character the way I would want it to be, I would have had to home brew a lot of stuff, and the starting levels of the characters in Celdia's game would have had to have been higher, and we already had a healer, but I would have enjoyed playing the character. The point has been made that 'doing nothing' in combat is boring, but I believe I would have found a way to entertain myself while still 'doing nothing.' I entertained myself playing a paranoid pixie running low on spells and effectively 'doing nothing' useful in several rounds of combat, so I'd like to think it's possible. I honestly believe it all depends on several factors, the first of which is the DM, whom, I believe we all can agree, can make or break any game. The second factor is the player. Some people do not enjoy specialization, and thus would not enjoy playing such a character. I, however, do enjoy specialized characters with stats specifically designed for said specialization, but I'm weird like that. The third factor is the other players in the game. Are they willing to put up with a character who does nothing offensively? Are they willing to put up with a player that may find 'strange' ways of entertaining themselves while 'doing nothing'? If all the factors line up right, I believe someone could find immense satisfaction playing a support only character.

As far as the proposed class, Empath, is concerned, I would point out some game mechanic difficulties, but it would seem those have already been pointed out by others, so I shall digress. Nonetheless, I answered 'Hell yes' in the poll because I, personally, would happily play a support only character, though perhaps not the Empath as it is currently presented.

((On an unrelated note, it feels extremely odd to be posting something without something in bold so I added this.))

[EmmaNigma]

Wizards are cowards ಠ_ಠ

[lirmont]

Attacking such a character in an unhealed state (re: after transfering one or more wounds but prior to self-healing) could result in the attacking player needing to save against an automatic wound transfer to them. To prevent abuse (intentionally injuring yourself and then not healing yourself), there could be a penalty for not finishing the ritual. If the per-wound damage is tracked, that could even make way for transferring specific wounds (say, in the order of most damaging to least damaging). That means that other players would be aware mostly of how dangerous it would be to attack such a character. The sense of this is that, if the character has just transferred a large wound, the character is very dangerous to attack. If the character has only small wounds, it may not be very dangerous to attack this player. If the character is in a healed state, it may be something like a 50% chance that whatever damage they do to the character is transferred back to them immediately afterward (returning the attacked character to the healed state).

[efrate]

Good ideas lirmont, I'll be working on this this week, specific to 3.5 DnD for the record.  I may throw ideas around in #basement or #ffh, but I have a good idea in mind about how I plan on implementing it. 

[Celdia]

((On an unrelated note, it feels extremely odd to be posting something without something in bold so I added this.))

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Sorry, I have nothing new for related content. I already bugged you on IRC about all this. If anyone cares my vote runs with the depends on too many other things mindset.