Lay On Hands

UnknownQuantity

I decided to play a Cavalier as the kit appealed to me and I wanted to play a more standard Paladin then the Inquisitor. Though I like the Cavaliers abilities lay on hands seems mostly useless. It might be semi useful on a lower difficulty, but on higher ones the monsters do to much damage to even worry about a 2 point per level heal once per day. It makes me think the Undead Hunter might have been a better choice as they retain the semi useful turn undead, but sacrifice (not much of one) the fairly poor lay on hands. If I do the math correctly you can probably only heal around 30 points of health at max level in BG2. I already have 60+ health on the Cavalier at level 5 I believe. They should have made it 3 or 4 points per level instead since you can only use it once per day.

bigdogchris

LoH benefit comes from the instant heal rather than the amount. Sometimes it's the difference between life and death when you're waiting for the healing spell to land.

One of the few things I like about 3rd Edition is how they applied your CHA bonus to enhanced your innates.

UnknownQuantity

I notice that even with a large amount of health I often am almost dead in one or two hits. Even with instant cast the lay on hands heals so little it's not worth even the wasted time of an instant cast. During that time something could finish me or a party member off with a lucky roll. It's almost always better to keep fighting. Even the cleric heals don't heal enough to make healing worth while during a fight generally in BG1. In BG2 it's another story.

Humanoid_Taifun

Actually, Lay On Hands improves until the end, so a level 34 cavalier can heal instantly for 68 HP.

Mechalibur

Yeah, the fact that it's instant recovery is what's important about the ability. It also gets really powerful in BG2, when you only start getting 3hp/level, and your lay on hands still goes up by 2.

It's also one of the reasons I really like Mazzy, since she can use it twice, and will have more levels than an equal experience paladin.

Ragnarok

Since the game follow mostly the second edition ruleset of DnD, it would make little sense to change the LoH heal capacity to fit our munchkin characters!

Aasimar069

It's worth it because at level 4 it heals as much as a cure light wound spells (8HP).

It can buy you time to kill your opponent or to quickly restore a NPC's health.

UnknownQuantity

Good point. I think that would probably be around 1/3 or 1/4 of your life, but it's still probably better to try and finish off your opponent than to heal for that amount.

Bigity

Uh, ok. Except your next swing might take as much as 11 seconds (depending on when your last swing took place), and instant spells are instant.

Look at it this way. If you are dead, you can't finish anyone off.

UnknownQuantity

Bigity said:

Uh, ok. Except your next swing might take as much as 11 seconds (depending on when your last swing took place), and instant spells are instant.

Look at it this way. If you are dead, you can't finish anyone off.

The only problem as I noted is that the heal amount is to small to save you regardless. If something hits you once and you lose over half your life even if you heal instantly for 10 hp out of 60 that isn't going to stop your opponent's next hit from killing your. Playing on the hardest difficulty I find most mobs taking my hp down faster then I can heal it up. If I stop to try and heal with lay on hands or a cleric spell it usually hinders more then helps. The casting time may be instant, but it seems that it takes longer to get the next attack off while pausing and casting it. Regardless it just doesn't heal enough. If it healed half of your life and allowed you to take one more hit then it would be useful, but it doesn't do that unless your are playing on lower difficulty levels.

Bigity

It's AD&D. For a good while, any attack does half your life in damage, or more.

The next attack might do 1 damage, you never know.

Why isn't your cleric casting a heal while your fighter is still whacking away? LoH is instant, but it does take your action for the round.

UnknownQuantity

Bigity said:

It's AD&D. For a good while, any attack does half your life in damage, or more.

The next attack might do 1 damage, you never know.

Why isn't your cleric casting a heal while your fighter is still whacking away? LoH is instant, but it does take your action for the round.

Once is a while I cast a heal during combat, but cure light wounds isn't that great for combat either. I think the only one I use in combat is cure serious wounds as I don't have access to fourth level spells yet. I only have one slot for 3rd level spells though.

Bigity

Yea all the heals are pretty lackluster as far as amounts go for long periods of time, or you devote most of your slots to them.

But there are gobs of potions in BG (or at least BG2) so you can chug those all the time.

KrO

Pretty happy I picked a Paladin actually. Got mine to lvl 6 and hes a straight killer. The LoH heal is OK, its instant and I think it goes up 2 heal points at every lvl.