How do I handle having a party without a Healer? I have a Healer character ready but not a player for her, and I don't know how well I could handle playing her as a GMPC when I have another character I'm already playing as a GMPC.
I'm using a combination of books and rules from Pathfinder and 3.5 where the following are used.
- Pathfinder core rules
- 3.5 PHB2
- Dungeon Master's Guide
- Tome of Battle
- Draconomicon
- Complete Divine
- Complete Warrior
- Complete Arcane
- Races of Eberron
- Weapons of Legacy
The party is
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Human Duskblade/Warblade (my GMPC)
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Sorceress/Wizard
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Human of either Ranger/Rogue or Ranger/Fighter
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Changeling Cleric/fighter with trickery and healing (from a pantheon of my own creation).
I want to have the main 3 but don't know how I can handle running the game for a group that is missing a PC Healer. I don't really want to explicitly have a GMPC (from advice I've read) but I am the host and the only one of us three that has read information about D&D before, so I have to be GM.
Generally, How do I handle having a character and being DM? I'm not asking how to balance them, or how to weaken them, or how to prevent me from using DM powers to help them. I'm asking how I handle playing it without forgetting something or slipping up an important detail of being a DM.
I am also now using a yogsquest 2 style perks and derps system.
each character has 5 hero dice per day that they can use to add to a roll or use one of their perks.
A Perk is a special ability action that you get 3 of at character creation, one is a once per turn ability and two are abilities you spend hero dice to use.
For example from the original. (though it's a scify thing it's an example to base it on
Simon 5000: Race: robot Class: Cleaning robot
once per turn: protocol 294A: Classified (actually activated when the captian reaches 1hp and turns him into a giant battle robot
hero dice action: hacking probe: Make a computers roll to control a piece of machinery or robotics from a distance.
hero dice action: super clean: clean 1d6 squares to a very high standard.
derp: pacifist: cannot attack.
Whilst the specific abilities can't be used in fantasy pathfinder, the concept is the same. You can use abilities specific to your character.
I'm adding this because it may mean a lot about the answers to it.
Best Answer
Answering the question as posed in your title (how to run a game for three players without a healer), you have two main options:
Offload the mentally-taxing parts of running a GMPC
I've played in three groups that didn't have a PC healer. In two of them, the DM assigned an NPC companion character to one of the players. The DM did the majority of the RP for the NPC (e.g., speaking, making out-of-combat decisions, etc), but during combat the assigned player managed the character. This works because combat tends to be the most DM-resource-intensive part of D&D/Pathfinder, and you want your attention as DM focused on that rather than on the NPC.
It sounds like this is your first time DMing, so I'll pass along a general tip: DMing is incredibly mentally taxing. Fun and exciting, yes, but exhausting. One of the many reasons GMPCs are not recommended is because, frankly, the DM already has enough on her plate and adding the responsibility of a PC just makes things more difficult for her.
That said, since you're planning to play at least one GMPC, healer or no: look for ways to offload as much of the thinky bits of playing the character as possible. Reduce the healer's stat blocks to just a healer; I can't remember what the class name is right now but there's a 3.5 healer class that literally only does healing. (Its name might actually just be "Healer".) That's the class one of the NPC companion characters used in my example above, and it made things simple because all his choices were "Who to heal and by how much", rather than tactical things like "heal vs attack vs tank vs control". This reduced the mental load on the DM, plus made it easy for one of the group's other players to take over the NPC in combat.
Use items and skills to make up the difference
The other way to handle this situation is to simply ensure that the players have sufficient Use Magic Device, minor spellcasting, and items/cash that they don't need an explicit healer. This is what we did in the third group I played in without a healer. We were a multiclassed bard/fighter (got some small heals from the bard half, plus UMD); a ranger (also some minor spellcasting, plus general toughness); and a rogue (craploads of UMD, wands, and scrolls). Our DM made sure to drop lots of healing potions and wands as treasure, and to have lots of places where we could also buy healing items. We didn't need a healer because our own minor spellcasting and UMD abilities worked just fine.
Looking at your group's breakdown, you could likely do something similar, since you've got quite a bit of spellcasting/UMD power. Just make sure, as DM, that you drop lots of healing items as treasure. The players will figure it out from there.