The Healer | Gamer Guides: Your ultimate source for all g... (2024)

The Dedicated Divine Caster aka “The Healer” is much like the Caster in that it’s a relatively simple, unglamorous build. It’s a sad fact that, despite the best efforts of your tank(s), you’re going to take some damage at some point, and this damage must be repaired. It will take far too long to rely on natural healing, or even various sources of secondary healing, so a primary healer is a necessary member of a party who doesn’t want to get bogged down every time the enemy gets lucky or targets somebody you’d rather they didn’t. Later on, your healer will become capable of wiping away even grievous wounds with a single spell, perhaps changing the course of battle.

Aside from healing, you’re also going to want access to several divine spells - mostly buffs, but there’s also an assortment of debuffs and direct damage spells that’ll give your healer more utility. For the most part, however, you shouldn’t expect your Dedicated Divine Caster to contribute too much to control or damage output.

Like our Caster, there are some tricks we can pull to get the most out of our Dedicated Divine Caster. We want a more or less pure caster and have no desire for them to mix it up in combat - for better or worse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a game that almost demands specialization, leaving little room for a well meaning Cleric with mediocre combat stats on the front lines. To that end, we opt for the Cleric (Ecclesitheurge) class, which, like the Caster disposes of all pretenses of combat prowess in favor of a foes on spellcasting. We’ve got pets for that, after all.

Pick Gozreh as your deity, and when you’re picking your domains, make sure to pick the Water domain as your primary and Animal as your secondary. This will allow you to prepare domain spells from the Water Domain in your normal spell slots, including a variety of direct-damage spells like Snowball and Acid Arrow and useful debuffs like Stinking Cloud and Slowing Mud. Picking the Animal Domain will grant you an Animal Companion, albeit at 4th level. It’s a bit of a delay, but you’ll still get your pet well before you really need it, and its combat prowess more than makes up for your healer’s absence from the front lines.

Cleric (Ecclesitheurge): The Ecclesitheurge forswears the use of armor in favor of divine protection, which functionally makes them more of a Wizard with divine magic than a proper Cleric. Which is fine for our purposes - we have tanks and pets to hold the line, anything subpar is just a squishy body in the way. For general combat, give your Dedicated Divine Caster a crossbow and don’t expect too much.

Their real purpose is casting spells, and this they do admirably. There are some things an arcane caster just can’t do, or at least, can’t do nearly as well, and one of those things is healing. There’s also a variety of Cleric-specific buffs you’ll want to use from time to time, like Shield of Faith, Barkskin and Prayer. Through the selection of specific domains we’ll be able to add some direct damage, debuffs, and summons to the mix.

Pick Gozreh as your deity, positive energy as the type of energy you channel, then the Water and Animal Domains (in that order!) to achieve the results we’re looking for: the Animal Domain will get us an Animal Companion at 4th level, which will more than make up for our Ecclesitheurge’s lack of melee presence.

Ability Scores: Like with the Caster, one stat matters for our Dedicated Divine Caster more than the rest - their spellcasting stat, Wisdom. Wisdom will determine your Ecclesitheurge’s bonus spells and Save DCs, and is worth sinking most of your points into. Other than that, give them a bit of Dexterity to help their ranged attacks (they’ll probably always be hopeless with ranged weapons, but ranged touch attacks are always a consideration) and Constitution (to boost their HP and avoid having to rest every five steps).

As with the Caster, many races will work for your Ecclesitheurge, and while Human might be the best pick for the extra feat and skill points, anything with a bonus to Wisdom is a viable alternative. Yes, even a Dwarf!

Race: Human is the winner here, as that extra feat, skill point per level and ability to crank your starting Wisdom to 19 is just great. The Dwarf isn’t too far behind, and neither are several Aasimar variants. You can make Tiefling work, too, but some of their stat penalties make them less appealing.

Alignment: Your alignment doesn’t matter here, but your devotion to Gozreh demands you retain some form of neutrality, so your options are Neutral, Neutral Good, Neutral Evil, Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Neutral. Doesn’t really matter which you pick.

Deity: We pick Gozreh as a deity for the sole fact that he has access to both the Water and Animal Domains.

Channel Energy: This is your dedicated healer. As such, you want to channel Positive Energy, which will do two things. First, it’ll allow you to use an AoE healing burst that restores 1d6 HP in a wide area (2d6 at 3rd level, 3d6 at 5th, 4d6 at 7th and so on). It doesn’t discriminate between friend or foe, however, so be wary of using it in a fight… unless you’re fighting undead, in which case it’ll harm them! Channeling Negative Energy does the opposite - hurts living critters in an area, and heals the undead. Not something you want for your party’s healer. Second, it’ll allow you to spontaneously swap out prepared spells for healing ones of the same level, so you can scrap that Animate Dead you had memorized for a Cure Serious Wounds on the fly. An obvious boon for a healer.

Domains: You picked Gozeh for the Domains that deity offered, specifically for the Water Doman and the Animal Domain. The former will allow you to cast a variety of direct-damage spells like Snowball and Acid Arrow, which are… Fine… But what you’re really here for is the debuffs like Stinking Cloud and Slowing Mud. As for the Animal Domain, it’s all about that Animal Companion. Pick a Leopard, Smilodon or Wolf, and you’ll have effectively made a two-for-one character.

Skills: The Dedicated Divine Caster doesn’t really need any skills, so pick something your party needs. As an Ecclesitheurge, they have Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (World), Lore (Nature) and Lore (Religion) as class skills, and with a high Wisdom score they’ll gain significant boosts to both Lore skills. No reason this character can’t focus on all or most of these skills so somebody else doesn’t have to. They can also specialize in Perception, thanks to their high Wisdom, even though it’s not a class skill - you really need Perception in this game, so if you don’t have another, better character, use your Dedicated Divine Caster.

Feats: Like the Caster, the Dedicated Divine Caster is here to cast spells and chew bubble gum, and they’re all out of bubble gum (RIP Roddy), so Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus in Conjuration and Evocation will help their debuffs stick. Boon Companion will make your pet stronger (always nice) and Extra Channel will increase the number of times they can use their healing burst, which, as an AoE healing effect, is one of the major selling points of this class.