Healer

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The Healer is one of the roles in NetHack. Healers can be humans or gnomes, and are always neutral. While the concept of a healer is ubiquitous, parts of the healer’s game, such as the quest, are based on Greek legends. The guidebook says of them:

              Healers are wise in medicine and apothecary.  They know  the
         herbs  and  simples  that  can restore vitality, ease pain, anes-
         thetize, and neutralize poisons; and with their instruments, they
         can  divine a being's state of health or sickness.  Their medical
         practice earns them quite reasonable amounts of money, with which
         they enter the dungeon.

Starting equipment

Intrinsics

Healers gain the following intrinsics at these experience levels:

Skills

Healer skills
Max Skills
Basic
Skilled
Expert

Healers start with Basic skill in Knife and Healing spells.

Strategy

Early game

Objectives

  • Because healers start with a large quantity of gold, they can purchase a lot of protection from the Minetown’s priest if they avoid gaining experience beforehand. A skilled (or lucky) player can loot Sokoban and reach Minetown’s temple without landing a single blow. The loot can be increased by credit cloning.
  • Healers are also best suited for the pacifist conduct.

Armor

  • Applying a stethoscope to a monster will reveal its armor class, which in turn will give some idea of whether it has any enchanted armor. For example, if a dwarf in the Gnomish Mines has AC 4 or less, it probably has either a dwarvish mithril-coat or at least one enchanted piece of armor. This strategy is not exclusive to healers, but they are the only class to start with a stethoscope.

Weapons

Healers are restricted in the use of most big powerful warrior weapons such as dwarvish mattocks and long swords. Your starting scalpel is equivalent to a rustproof orcish dagger, and is not considered a very good weapon. You may consider upgrading to a normal or elven dagger, which have better damage versus small monsters.

For ranged weapons, Healers have three options: knives, darts, and daggers, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages.

Knives are easily trained with the starting scalpel and can be advanced to Expert. This is the only weapon type which allows Healers to multishot 2 at Skilled and 3 at Expert. However, the damage for a knife is even worse than a scalpel, and knives are not likely to be generated in large quantities until many soldiers start appearing. Mordor orcs and orc captains, both appearing earlier, have a chance to carry knives but it may take well into the game before you can put together a reasonable stack.

Darts are also a good option. They are light, can be advanced to Expert, and plentiful in the early game from dart traps and monsters. On the other hand, only two of them can be multishot at a time at Expert skill, they have the same low base damage as knives, and they are prone to breaking.

Daggers provide benefits in the early game; they are common in the Gnomish Mines and have better damage than the scalpel, but they can only be advanced to Skilled and cannot be multishot at all. It is probably only worth training dagger skill if you are planning to get Magicbane later in the game.

A useful technique for training skills is to find a gas spore with sufficient HP, maneuver it into a corridor, and hit it with your unskilled weapon. Gas spores usually have enough HP not to explode, but to be sure, apply your stethoscope to see when its hitpoints are close to zero. You can then cast your healing spell at the gas spore and resume pummelling it ineffectually until your skill goes up. Just be sure not to let it explode, as the blast will usually wipe out a low-level Healer (4-24 damage).

Spellcasting

When a healer reaches about level three, he can reliably cast stone to flesh, which can convert boulders into huge chunks of meat. Without the threat of starvation, players can adopt a very cautious and slow playing style with little penalty. A huge chunk of meat can be safely eaten when not Satiated, and will generally put you in to Oversatiated nutrition. This state is not displayed (the status line remains at "Satiated") so beware of eating ANYTHING until your status is back to normal. Eating anything while oversatiated will make you choke over your food and die unless you are wearing an amulet of life saving or magical breathing.

Stone to flesh can also convert rocks into meatballs, which work like miniature tripe rations for training the apport of pets. Additionally, the spell can remove troublesome boulders from passageways and your carnivore pet will love you.

General

  • Although healers have excellent HP growth, their fighting skills are very poor. A well trained pet can quickly surpass its owner in battle prowess.
  • The very early game is quite difficult for most players. However, due to their starting equipment, a Healer should not be afraid of combat. A good strategy if not going for the protection racket or atheist conduct is to fight until somewhat damaged, then if after turn 300, pray. You will then be healed with a boost to your HP from your god.
  • Another very early game strategy for combat is to wait until damaged, then quaff your potions of extra healing. If the health boost would take you above your maximum HP (quite common with the low starting HP of the Healer), this maximum is then boosted by 2 if the potion is uncursed, or 5 if it is blessed.

Mid game

Objectives

  • The Healer's quest nemesis, the Cyclops, can be tough if you attempt to fight him hand to hand while he is wielding the Staff of Aesculapius. Fortunately, he is vulnerable to wands of sleep or death, and healers always start with a wand of sleep. Also, the Cyclops respects Elbereth.
  • The healer quest has a large number of dragons. If one is lucky, a dragon on the first level will leave behind dragon scales which can be enchanted into dragon scale mail. Unfortunately, the large number of dragons makes the quest a dangerous place to visit without reflection, particularly if there are any black dragons around with their Disintegration breath.

Weapons

You should upgrade to a unicorn horn (with which you can achieve Expert skill), then to your quest artifact, the Staff of Aesculapius, which has the life-draining powers of Stormbringer without its tendency to attack peaceful monsters. With all these changes of weapon, healers may find it useful to conserve skill slots, for example by not advancing their unicorn horn skill to Expert, so as to leave the slots free for the Staff later.

Late game

Weapons

You also might want to pick up a silver weapon before entering Gehennom. If you find a silver dagger, take the time to enhance it to Skilled before entering Gehennom. Silver sabers and silver spears can both be raised to Basic skill as well. And of course you can always burn a wish for Grayswandir.

Good non-silver weapons include Magicbane or a highly-enchanted crysknife.

Spellcasting

In general, spellcasting for Healers is somewhat idiosyncratic. Although they have great natural spellcasting ability—they are one of a handful of roles which can reach 100% success rates without a robe—they are restricted in all spell schools except healing. Thus, they have difficulty casting spells with level greater than 2. One milestone Healers should strive for is experience level 21, at which point they can reliably cast level 3 spells in restricted schools. Level 4 and higher spells will always be out of reach, unfortunately, as will the bonus effects of being Skilled or higher at a spell school.

Because of their low base spellcasting penalty, Healers can wear metal boots and cast reliably, or a metal helm and cast almost reliably (failure rate ~3%). When casting emergency spells, Healers can wear gauntlets of power and still have 0% failure rates.

One interesting note on Healers is that with 18 wisdom and sufficiently high experience level and healing skill, they can cast their special spell (cure sickness) at 0% failure rate even while wearing metallic body armor and no robe. This is not true of any other role, even Wizards.

Rank titles

The status line shows you to be one of the following ranks when you reach the specified experience level:

  • XL 1-2: Rhizotomist
  • XL 3-5: Empiric
  • XL 6-9: Embalmer
  • XL 10-13: Dresser
  • XL 14-17: Medicus ossium/Medica ossium
  • XL 18-21: Herbalist
  • XL 22-25: Magister/Magistra
  • XL 26-29: Physician
  • XL 30: Chirurgeon

Quest

Main article: Healer quest

The Healer quest sees you fighting the Cyclops for The Staff of Aesculapius.

Encyclopedia entry

I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health,
and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according
to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this
stipulation -- to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear
to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve
his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the
same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if
they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and
that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction,
I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those
of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath
according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will
follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and
judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain
from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. [...]

[ Hippocrates' Oath, translated by Francis Adams ]


PHYSICIAN, n. One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our
dogs when well.

[ The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce ]

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