Healer

The Healer, abbreviated as Hea, is one of the roles available for a hero in NetHack. Their corresponding player monster is the @ healer. The guidebook says of them:

Healers are wise in medicine and apothecary. They know the herbs and simples that can restore vitality, ease pain, anesthetize, 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.

Healers can be humans or gnomes, and are always neutral.

Starting equipment

Each Healer starts with the following equipment:

• 1001-2000 gold pieces
• a +0 scalpel (wielded)
• an uncursed +1 pair of leather gloves
• 5-10 uncursed apples
• a blessed spellbook of healing
• a blessed spellbook of extra healing
• a blessed spellbook of stone to flesh
• 4 non-cursed potions of healing
• 4 non-cursed potions of extra healing
• wand of sleep (4-8 charges)
• an uncursed stethoscope
• an uncursed oil lamp (¹⁄₂₅ chance or 4%)

Healers start with knowledge of the potion of full healing's randomized appearance.

The Healer's default starting pet is a little dog or kitten with equal probability.

Intrinsics

Healers gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:

• Level 1: Poison resistance
• Level 15: Warning

Attributes

The Healer's starting attributes are distributed as follows:

Attributes	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma	Remaining
Minimum attributes	7	7	11	7	13	16	14
Distribution percentages	15%	15%	25%	20%	20%	5%
Mean w/ standard deviation (human)	9.31±1.46	9.17±1.42	14.55±1.63	9.87±1.57	15.77±1.40	16.56±0.73

The means and standard deviations were calculated via simulation, whose source code can be found on the role article's talk page, and assumes that all given roles are played as humans—non-human races will have different attribute means as a result of different attribute maximums.

Human Healers start with 13 HP and 3-6 Pw, while gnomish Healers start with 12 HP and 4-7 Pw.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Per commit 33556788, Healers and other roles that start with a level 1 spell will always have a minimum of 5 power in order to enable casting it.

Skills

Healers have the following skills available to them:

Healer skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: saber, mace, polearms, spear, trident Combat: bare hands
Skilled	Weapons: dagger, short sword, club, sling, shuriken
Expert	Weapons: knife, quarterstaff, dart, unicorn horn Spells: healing

Healers start with Basic skill in knives and healing spells. They use the wisdom stat to cast spells, and their special spell is cure sickness.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Per commit 296a3ac2, the scimitar skill is merged into the saber skill.

Special rules

Healers get a +1 alignment record bonus for healing pets and peaceful monsters. They can identify the wand of undead turning by zapping a corpse with it, even if they cannot see the corpse currently.

Healers can only gain a multishot bonus for reaching Skilled in a weapon skill with knives, though they still get the normal multishot bonus for Expert skill with any weapon. This means that gnomish Healers do not get a multishot bonus with crossbows.

Healers only take ¹⁄₂ damage from breaking wands by applying them.

Healers have a +3 bonus to casting emergency spells.

Healers do not suffer damage or attribute loss from quaffing a potion of sickness and are immune to their vapors, though quaffing the potion will still cure hallucination.

Nurses will not damage Healers with their attacks.

A Healer is given bonuses and unique outputs when applying a stethoscope in certain situations:

• A Healer applying a stethoscope to a statue can determine whether it contains items or is on a statue trap.
• A Healer applying a stethoscope to a corpse can determine whether it will revive.
• A Healer can more reliably apply a stethoscope to themself while engulfed by a whirly monster.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Per commit a3f0b54a, Healers gain experience points by casting the healing or extra healing spells on pets. The amount of experience points is equal to the number of HP the pet was healed for (so it doesn't give any experience if the pet was at full HP).

Per commit 4b30e3fa, Healers get a damage boost with knives (including their starting scalpel) depending on how many times the target's species has died. Specifically, Healers get a +1 damage boost for every 6 monsters of that species killed, capped at a +3 damage boost.

Rank titles

The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:

• 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

Gods

The Healer pantheon is based on the mythology of ancient Greece.

• Lawful: Athena
• Neutral: Hermes
• Chaotic: Poseidon

Quest

The Healer's quest sees them fighting the Cyclops for The Staff of Aesculapius, an artifact quarterstaff. It grants hungerless regeneration and drain resistance while wielded, and deals double damage to all monsters without drain resistance and drains levels from them on each hit - this life-draining applies a further +1d8 damage to the target's current and maximum HP, and restores half of that damage to the wielder's current HP. Invoking The Staff of Aesculapius heals the user by half of the HP needed to return to full health, and cures sickness, blindness not caused by gunk (e.g. from a cream pie) and sliming.

Strategy

While Healers are strong spellcasters and especially proficient with healing spells, they are one of the trickier and more difficult roles in the game: they start with a weak weapon, minimal armor and low strength, and also cannot train their skill in any spell school outside of healing.

Character creation

Healers are always neutral, so the primary consideration outside of gender is the hero's race and its impact on the already-perilous early game. A common early-game goal for a Healer is to run the protection racket and reach the Minetown temple to buy protection from its aligned priest, while gaining as few experience levels as possible and optionally increasing their gold via credit cloning: A gnomish Healer's relatively peaceful Mines and infravision make this goal significantly easier to achieve, and a skilled (or lucky) gnomish Healer can reach the temple without attempting a single attack—conversely, a human Healer has a much harder Mines, but can reach the maximum strength bonus without wearing gauntlets of power, which impose a significant spellcasting penalty unless worn with a robe.

Early game

Although Healers have excellent HP growth and do not have to fear poison, their initially poor fighting skills make the very early game quite difficult for most players; the Healer's starting scalpel is equivalent to a rustproof, half-weight orcish dagger, and is not a particularly good weapon. Fortunately, the starting equipment includes several combat aids: the stethoscope is a good way to read an enemy's HP and gauge whether to fight or retreat; the wand of sleep is helpful both offensively and defensively; and the healing potions can make up for otherwise lethal mistakes. Healers are also the role best suited for the pacifist conduct play by far.

The starting money can be used to buy solid weapons and armor if you find an early shop that sells them. For early Healers not attempting the protection racket or the atheist conduct, one possible strategy is to fight until damaged to the critical HP threshold, then pray—critically low HP is a major trouble, success will fully restore HP and boost maximum HP; this can be done as early as turn 101, depending on when the hero starts their game. Another strategy is to immediately quaff the starting potions of extra healing, which will boost maximum HP by 2 (or 5 for blessed potions).

In terms of primary weapons, the short sword, aklys, dagger, and elven dagger all improve the hero's average damage versus small monsters, and are generally worth seeking out as soon as possible. For ranged weapons, a Healer has four options:

• Knives are easily trained with the starting scalpel and can be advanced to Expert, making them the only ranged weapon that Healers can multishot 3 of. However, the base damage for a knife is low, and knives are unlikely to be generated in large quantities; monsters such as soldiers, barrow wights, Mordor orcs, and orc-captains can all carry knives, but appear far enough into the dungeon that assembling a reasonable stack can be time-consuming.
• Darts are far more plentiful, can be poisoned by dipping them into a potion of sickness, and Healers can advance them to Expert, but they have the same low base damage as knives and are breakable.
• Daggers are similarly plentiful, re-usable and deal slightly more damage—they are also heavier, cannot be poisoned, and Healers are capped at Skilled.
• The aklys can be tethered and thrown as a re-usable weapon, though it can fail to return or slip loose of its tether upon returning. An aklys can reliably be found early in the Gnomish Mines in the hands of one of the resident gnomes—Healers can reach Skilled in clubs, and it can be trained up quickly since it doubles as a melee weapon.

When looking for armor, use the stethoscope to check a monster's AC and determine if it has any enchanted armor, e.g., a dwarf in the Gnomish Mines with 4 AC or better may have at least one enchanted piece of armor and/or a dwarvish mithril-coat. While early metallic armor can interfere with your casting success, all but one of the emergency spells are healing spells and Healers get a +3 bonus towards successfully casting them, which can somewhat offset the resulting penalties. Additionally, it is usually possible to retreat to relative safety and remove the offending armor before healing yourself and/or your pet(s); mithril-coats only require one turn to put on or take off compared to other suits of body armor. Gauntlets of power may be especially worthwhile to wear, since they provide such a huge boost to damage and carrying capacity for an early Healer.

An unusual technique for training a Healer's skills is to find a gas spore with sufficient HP, maneuver it into a corridor, and hit it with the unskilled weapon: apply the stethoscope to see when its hit points are close to zero, then cast a healing spell at the gas spore before resuming combat, and take extreme care not to hit too many times, since a gas spore's explosion is frequently capable of wiping out a low-level Healer. Pets are another aid in training healing spells specifically, since Healers that cannot find reliable equipment may depend on them to stay alive, and a starting or found pet can quickly surpass them in damage output. Regularly monitoring and healing a pet will also increase the pet's survival odds against troublesome foes.

At experience level 3, Healers can reliably cast stone to flesh, which converts boulders into huge chunks of meat. This can remove annoying boulders blocking passageways, and alleviates the threat of starvation, allowing players to act slower and more cautiously—it also typically results in being "oversatiated", which is still displayed on the status line as "Satiated". While oversatiated, it is best to avoid eating anything at all until your nutrition returns to normal in order to avoid choking (unless you are wearing an amulet of life saving or magical breathing). Stone to flesh can also convert rocks into meatballs to tame carnivorous domestic pets and train their apport.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

As mentioned further above, commit 33556788 ensures that Healers will always have a minimum of 5 power to cast healing with, in turn making it likelier that they can survive attempted protection rackets and the early game in general.

Mid game

The Healer quest has a large number of dragons that are created upon generating each level and make it dangerous to visit without reflection, particularly if there are any black dragons that cause cut your journey short with their disintegration breath. The abundance of moats also make crossing difficult and introduce a significant chance of drowning from the sea monsters lurking within—depending on the hero's specific circumstances, it may be more ideal to get the Castle wand of wishing first. However, the Quest also represents a chance at silver dragon scale mail or gray dragon scale mail for a Healer skilled and savvy enough to out-maneuver and successfully kill a dragon, even if they are not yet capable of accessing the rest of the branch. Scrolls of earth like the guaranteed ones from Sokoban can also make crossing over the moats less potentially lethal.

The Cyclops is the Healer's quest nemesis and can be incredibly tough: It is unwise to melee him while he is wielding the Staff of Aesculapius, and the wand of lightning that generates on his starting square is dangerous as well; fortunately, the Cyclops respects Elbereth and the scroll of scare monster, and has no MR score, making him especially vulnerable to wands of death or wands of sleep (which Healers always start with) if they can hit through his AC.

For their primary weapon, Healers may consider switching to either a unicorn horn, or else to the Staff of Aesculapius after clearing their Quest. The Staff itself inflicts doubled damage and life drain against monsters without drain resistance and can significantly heal the hero when invoked. Healers may also find it useful to conserve skill slots, e.g. by not advancing their unicorn horn skill to Expert and leaving the slot free for the Staff later. As for spellcasting, long-term spell usage is somewhat limited outside of their namesake school: despite the Healer's great natural spellcasting ability, they are restricted in all non-healing spell schools, making it difficult to cast any non-healing spell of level 3 or higher. Thankfully, spells such as magic missile, sleep and drain life can be somewhat reliably cast and are more than powerful enough for their level.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

The scroll of scare monster on the ground no longer scares any unique monster.

Per commit c73595cc and commit d452242a, the spell of sleep is raised to level 3, making it more difficult to cast, while the confuse monster spell is lowered to level 1, making it a useful utility spell option. Per commit 0d508cc9, the chain lightning spell is added as a level 2 spell and can be incredibly powerful against groups of hostile monsters.

As a quarterstaff, The Staff of Aesculapius provides a small boost to spellcasting per commit 780d30ec, making it a more ideal weapon option upon completing the quest.

Late game

Some players prefer a silver saber or other silver weapon for their Healer to traverse Gehennom with during the late game, in order avoid the chances of The Staff of Aesculapius becoming cursed (though as an intelligent quest artifact it resists being cursed ⁴⁄₅ of the time). Access to curse removal is vital for those sticking with their two-handed quest artifact in order to maintain their spellcasting ability, such as holy water or a blessed scroll of remove curse that can be tipped out of a container at a moment's notice. Other good non-silver weapons include Magicbane or a highly-enchanted crysknife.

An additional silver weapon in the hands of a suitable pet can compensate for the hero's lower damage output from wielding the Staff against the drain-resistant hostiles in Gehennom, and the Staff's hungerless regeneration and other properties are valuable for survival. Additionally, because of their low base spellcasting penalty, Healers can wear metal boots and cast reliably, or wear a metal helm and cast with a failure rate of ~3%; when casting emergency spells, Healers can even wear gauntlets of power and still have 0% failure rates.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.

Per commit 42a6a5df, a cursed quarterstaff no longer impedes spellcasting.

History

The Healer is introduced in NetHack 1.3d.

The additional feedback for Healers when using stethoscopes is added in NetHack 3.6.0 via commit 29f21b48.

Origins

While the concept of a healer is ubiquitous in most forms of gaming, particularly those based on fantasy works, the Healer of NetHack is based on the idea of "Western" medicine as originating in ancient Greece, combined with modern stereotypes of doctors and physicians. The origins of the role's rank titles are as follows:

• A rhizotomist is an archaic term for a person who collects herbs and roots to make medicine, and is likely based on the epithet used for the physician Crateuas.
• In medicine, an "empiric" can refer to either of the following:
  • A physician who bases their theories on experience (as in the empiric school of classical medicine).
  • A practitioner of "quack" medicine who favors unproven or disproven theories.
• An embalmer is someone who preserves human remains e.g. for burial—the practice of embalming involves a significant amount of medical science.
• A dresser is a surgeon’s assistant who is tasked with properly covering wounds.
• "Medicus" is the Latin and Dutch term for a doctor.
• An herbalist is someone who treats diseases with the use of medical herbs.
• "Magister" and "Magistra" refer to a type of educational degree that originated in medieval European universities and was originally equal to the doctorate (which at the time was given for medicine).
• A physician is a health professional who practices medicine.
• "Chirurgeon" is an archaic term for a surgeon.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, Healers start with a wand of healing and a medical kit in exchange for their spellbook of extra healing, and also possess knowledge of some other healing and ailment-inflicting potions as well as the newly-added healthstone—they can get much better use out of the medical kit compared to other roles, especially with their starting surgery technique.

Healers are also given a sacrifice gift in Mirrorbright, an artifact shield of reflection that grants hallucination resistance and adds to their defensive prowess, but makes obtaining artifact weapons more difficult as a tradeoff.

FIQHack

In FIQHack, Healers gain similar staff bonuses to casting as with xNetHack, and have a health regeneration bonus of 0.33 HP per turn.

xNetHack

In xNetHack, the Healer benefits from two universal changes:

• Scalpels are improved to 1d5/1d7 damage.
• Quarterstaves give the hero a bonus to spellcasting success rates like a robe, and a cursed staff doesn't prevent them from casting spells, making it safer for Healers to wield their quest artifact.

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 ]

References

This page is based on a spoiler by Dylan O'Donnell. The original license is:

Redistribution, copying, and editing of these spoilers, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. The original contributors to any spoiler must continue to be credited.
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