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Martialists who can heal while attacking?

For discussing role-playing video games, you know, the ones with combat.
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Val the Moofia Boss
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Martialists who can heal while attacking?

Post by Val the Moofia Boss »

Since RPGs are about fighting and you win by killing the enemy and lose if your HP is reduced to zero, you almost always want a healer in your party to restore damage taken if possible. However, I prefer my heroes to be cool martialists, fighting in melee range with their weapon arts and techniques. I don't really like characters in robes with staves who stand in the back throwing pretty sparkles at the cool heroes in melee. It's not cool, and it feels like a waste of a party slot. Unfortunately, there seem to be very few RPGs where you can have a full party of just martialist heroes fighting in the thick of it while still being healed. I am not talking about games where you can slot a healing spell onto a martialist, as they still have to stop fighting to cast a spell and throw sparkles at people, rather than healing while fighting. Off of the top of my head, the only examples I have seen are:

World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria: Mistweaver Monks, if they take certain talents for a build called "Fistweaver" by the community, they will spend most of their playtime punching enemies while passively healing the party, with minimal standing around casting sparkle heals on people. I don't think there was an explanation for how exactly punching enemies also heals your friends.

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Final Fantasy XI: there are two ways to be a martialist healer. The first way is to main a martialist class like samurai or dark knight, and to then equip the dancer job as a subjob. Dancer gives you access to cheap, 100 TP instant abilities (TP being the resource for martialists, as opposed to MP for casters) that can heal a target or the party and cleanse debuffs. One of the Dancer abilities applied a debuff to the target that caused any party member who attacked that target to get healed. The player does not have to stop to cast a spell, nor is he prevented from using his 1,000 TP offensive weaponskills. However, your heals will not be as powerful as a maining a healer class, so your party will either need to pull weaker mobs, or be constructed to be tankier and/or have other players who also bring healing abilities (or bring healing potions, often overlooked). The other way is to main the Puppetmaster job. The player becomes a fistfighter with a little robot pet at their side that can be customized to either maximize damage, tank, or cast healing spells.

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A Puppetmaster and accompanying automaton.


Trails into Reverie and Trails Through Daybreak 2 each have one swordsman party member with a swordmanship ability that stabs the enemy and also heals the whole party (as well as giving everyone CP, allowing them use more expensive weaponskills). This is quite effective, and when you jack up that character's speed and give them CP regenning equipment, they can spam this move every turn very fast and put out powerful healing, only needing to stop attacking to revive someone if that happens (though your party will occasionally want to cast spells to increase evasion). I was able to beat both games on the highest difficulty with a full party of martialists this way. However, there is no lore explanation behind these techniques, so it can feel a little arbitrary that this one mid-tier swordsman can swing his sword at the enemy and that will somehow, inexplicably, heal the party when all of these other swordsmen with much higher training can't.

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Not pictured are other characters getting healed from this magical stab.


Guild Wars End of Dragons: this expansion added the Untamed elite specialization for the Ranger class. During the launch patch, Untamed rangers who wielded a two handed hammer and using a certain combination of equipped abilities, traits, and stats could become extremely powerful healers while whacking the enemy. IIRC the way this worked is that the player would summon ranger spirits that would passively heal the party, and then during the Untamed's rotation he would drop a puddle of water on the floor, and one of the hammer abilities would swing down and "blast" that puddle of water, healing the party. So I suppose there is some magic involved. It's not explained. Rangers can also get pets with the ability to heal the party, though the healing was insignificant so you could pick whichever else you wanted. This was strong enough to be viable in the 10 man challenge mode boss fights. Unfortunately a year later the ranger spirits were reworked, and then Untamed got a rework, so I don't think this build is possible anymore.

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Warhammer Age of Reckoning had the Warrior Priest class who had to whack enemies in melee to build up charges cast healing spells.

Genshin Impact: The swings of the swordswomen Jean and Noelle will also passively heal you (for Jean it is a trait you have to unlock that gives her attacks a 50% chance to heal, for Noelle you have to press a button to use an ability that causes her attacks to heal). Again, no explanation for how this is supposed to heal people.

Lord of the Rings Online: Beornings while in bear form have the Relentless Maul ability that also heals the party, though how exactly this is supposed to heal the party isn't explained. LotRO calls its HP bars "morale", so perhaps swordsmen are supposed to be filled with courage by seeing their allied bear clawing orcs? Why aren't these swordsmen being filled with courage seeing each other fight orcs? For reference, the baseline healing class Minstrel would play songs to raise people's morale/heal.

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Somehow, this will restore your HP bar.
Last edited by Val the Moofia Boss on April 12th, 2025, 07:43, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

D&D cleric was, by design, meant to whack people in the head with a mace.
The idea of a robed healing character came later. Not quite sure what popularized.
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Post by Pizza »

In some Pokémon games, there's this type of fighting attack that a few Fighting-type Pokémon can learn; it's called 'Drain Punch.' It heals you by half of the damage you inflict on the opponent.

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Post by Tweed »

The flagellant in Darkest Dungeon thrives on dealing and taking damage, then healing himself or allies.
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Post by Norfleet »

rusty_shackleford wrote: April 12th, 2025, 07:43
D&D cleric was, by design, meant to whack people in the head with a mace.
The idea of a robed healing character came later. Not quite sure what popularized.
Mostly, the issue of the D&D cleric being OP. I mean, you've got a guy who's almost as good a fighter as the fighter, being that he can wield weapons and wear heavy armor, while simultaneously also having a spell repertoire almost as good as the wizard's, with healing on top.

Balancing therefore demanded downgrades to these other abilities. I think the earliest example of this rebalance was probably White Mage.
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Post by Demonic Fate »

Basically every game with a "vampire" race/class or "vampiric" skills/items/buffs.
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Post by J1M »

This can be a good mechanic if it only allows you to get back to 20% HP or recover recently lost health.
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Post by UltraFan123 »

3.5 OGL has the [Vampiric Touch] spell that arcane casters can use, but it's temporary HP rather than true recovery.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

rusty_shackleford wrote: April 12th, 2025, 07:43
D&D cleric was, by design, meant to whack people in the head with a mace.
The idea of a robed healing character came later. Not quite sure what popularized.
@Val the Moofia Boss do you play any of the 'core' western CRPGs?
e.g., Infinity Engine games?
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Post by Val the Moofia Boss »

rusty_shackleford wrote: April 12th, 2025, 18:46
rusty_shackleford wrote: April 12th, 2025, 07:43
D&D cleric was, by design, meant to whack people in the head with a mace.
The idea of a robed healing character came later. Not quite sure what popularized.
@Val the Moofia Boss do you play any of the 'core' western CRPGs?
e.g., Infinity Engine games?
Not BG, Fallout, Arcanum, Planescape, etc. I have played three CRPGs that looked the most appealing to me, having finished Shadowrun Dragonfall, got most of the way through Hong Kong, and tried Sept-Terra Core, but I just don't feel them. I found the dialogues to be boring as characters stand around doing nothing with static portraits and paragraphs of text to read through. The battles are not engaging to look at (though I do find it novel that they take place in the same actual environments you are walking around, so you can use that corner to break line of sight). Music is forgettable. I didn't like the writing. Didn't like the UI. Etc. So I wound up just realizing that Western CRPGs weren't for me and stopped trying to "like" them.
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Post by Valter »

Val the Moofia Boss wrote: April 12th, 2025, 19:08
rusty_shackleford wrote: April 12th, 2025, 18:46
rusty_shackleford wrote: April 12th, 2025, 07:43
D&D cleric was, by design, meant to whack people in the head with a mace.
The idea of a robed healing character came later. Not quite sure what popularized.
@Val the Moofia Boss do you play any of the 'core' western CRPGs?
e.g., Infinity Engine games?
Not BG, Fallout, Arcanum, Planescape, etc. I have played three CRPGs that looked the most appealing to me, having finished Shadowrun Dragonfall, got most of the way through Hong Kong, and tried Sept-Terra Core, but I just don't feel them. I found the dialogues to be boring as characters stand around doing nothing with static portraits and paragraphs of text to read through. The battles are not engaging to look at (though I do find it novel that they take place in the same actual environments you are walking around, so you can use that corner to break line of sight). Music is forgettable. I didn't like the writing. Didn't like the UI. Etc. So I wound up just realizing that Western CRPGs weren't for me and stopped trying to "like" them.
What about BG3?
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Post by Val the Moofia Boss »

Valter wrote: April 12th, 2025, 19:17
Val the Moofia Boss wrote: April 12th, 2025, 19:08
rusty_shackleford wrote: April 12th, 2025, 18:46


@Val the Moofia Boss do you play any of the 'core' western CRPGs?
e.g., Infinity Engine games?
Not BG, Fallout, Arcanum, Planescape, etc. I have played three CRPGs that looked the most appealing to me, having finished Shadowrun Dragonfall, got most of the way through Hong Kong, and tried Sept-Terra Core, but I just don't feel them. I found the dialogues to be boring as characters stand around doing nothing with static portraits and paragraphs of text to read through. The battles are not engaging to look at (though I do find it novel that they take place in the same actual environments you are walking around, so you can use that corner to break line of sight). Music is forgettable. I didn't like the writing. Didn't like the UI. Etc. So I wound up just realizing that Western CRPGs weren't for me and stopped trying to "like" them.
What about BG3?
Haven't played it. I don't like the aesthetic, be it the characters or the clothing or the environments. From what I have seen, it's more top down stuff, and the combat looked boring. I haven't heard anyone praise it for its soundtrack. And it sounds like the story is abysmal and it is very difficult to make a full party of characters you really like. People seem to only kinda like Shadowheart. IMO I struggle to think of many characters from Western RPGs that I liked. It having a bunch of classes theoretically sounds nice but I don't know how meaningful that would be in terms of actual aesthetics and gameplay. Maybe I'll get around to it eventually.
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Post by Tangerine »

@Val the Moofia Boss A lot of your "What about X feature?" questions have already been done in Western RPGs. I appreciate you're trying to start conversation, but if you're seriously interested in game design, you need to step out of your comfort zone and play games that don't aesthetically appeal to you.