What are some interesting ways to roleplay a healing-focused character aside from the "goody-two-shoes pacifist who is...

This is pretty close to what I was gonna suggest.

Just, like, a pragmatist who took up healing because everyone else fights like a jackass.

Alternatively:
>pervert who uses it as opportunity to get close to others' bodies
>cheering fanboy/girl who comes along for the ride and heals allies so (s)he can keep seeing their awesome fights
>town medic/reluctant friend or family member forcibly dragged along because no one in the party could be arsed to learn healing themselves
>undead or construct who heals for the same reason people build ships in bottles

I once played a cleric of Kelemvor, the Lawful Neutral god of death of the Forgotten Realms, as a bitter, cynical asshole who followed the party (who were a bunch of horrible murderhobos) around because Kelemvor hated their guts and didn't want to have to deal with them.

In short, I was the party healer because these guys were so annoying that the god of death didn't want them to set foot in the afterlife.

That's pretty funny. I like that.

That's a little far stretched. But it sounds adventure-worthy.

I played a Mon Cal doctor in an EotE game who was basically forced out of med school halfway through by Imperial pressure. Wracked by depression at having his dream stolen from him,he practices medicine for hire in the Outer Rim, stitching up blast holes and reattaching cyber limbs, no questions asked.

One who specializes in dealing with the dead. A zombie hunter and anatomical researcher. He really only heals on the side, and is of the opinion that the dead are better patients than the living. Mostly because the dead don't squirm. As much.

Basically sees healing as a perk of his skills and research, though it quickly turns to annoyance when it keeps him away from "proper" research. Is in the process of writing The Definite Anatomical Guide to The Races of the World.

Someone genuinely excited when they see someone get hurt because it means they can show off their medical skills.

They get an intense high from using healing spells. If the rest of the party doesn't get hurt, they end up trying to heal the enemy so they can get their fix. They act like they're in withdrawal if there's absolutely no conflict, and if extremely desperate, probably would hurt someone to heal them.

There's always this archetype. Dissects the dead (and vivisects the living if he can get away with it) to constantly improve his understanding of physiology and anatomy.

Igor from the Discworld books springs to mind. The man is an excellent churgion, but he keeps spare body parts alive and on hand, er, not, literally on his hand, you understand, he's-
The man has a fish tank full of eyeballs with little fins and tails, he has a potato covered in noses and grows ears off a kind of anemic shrub he keeps in a flowerpot. Also, as far as Igor's go... yes, discworld has a race of people who are all called Igor, and they are all *very* good with a needle and thread, and the odd limb... stitched up scars and disproportionate bodies, and a kind of immortality, after the fact, in that no matter whether they live or die, their heart will go on... probably in a 2nd cousin's body.

That's great.

Like this maybe?

Submissive slut forced to service the party medically as well as sexually.

Since someone was going to say it, it might as well be me.

Kids like to take stuff apart to see how it works.
Dad was a butcher.
Kids like to put stuff back together.
Mom was a nurse.
Kids like to see if they can build new things with the parts instead.
Party doesn't need to know about that part.

Sadistic experimentator with some "mad mechanic" vibe

I basically decided to go with alchemy professor turned insane lovecraftian protagonist (antagonist?) for an upcoming game

You can't experiment on living adventurers if they die, user. For the benefit of science, your lab rats need to live.

When not being politicaly correct towards patients in order not to get sued, doctors are generally dry, sarcastic, cynical and jaded. They feel they're doing something good, but they also usually have to shield themselves from it because if you're vulnerable to the good emotions of doing something good, then you're also too vulnerable to when you fail. Most I know act relieved when things go their way, and not just in medicine, and act fatalist when they don't. Try making a character that seemingly has no outer emotions, just does his job, and has a dry sense of humor.

"goody-two-shoes pacifist who is a friend to all living things" are pretty rare and far between. Either that or they're racist and still kill or allow wanton killing of 'evil' monsters.

Like a Medic in Battlefield 3. Shoot things most of the time, sometimes take a moment to heal/revive people.

I played a guy that wanted to find out the perfect way to kill someone. Since the party kept getting into trouble, he figured that either one of them would do it, or have it done to them. Might as well keep them alive until it happens.

So like this, but with more fantasy Jesus?

what's that from?

Googling helped me. Google first, act for sauce second.

Be an unhelpful jackass third?

What about "goody-two-shoes pacifist who either heals the rest of the party or we turn him and his fengkuang de pigu sister into the authorities?"

Divinity: Dragon Commander.

It's a simple but very fun game, I highly recommend it.

...

A lust-driven pansexual who only heals his party members in hopes of gaining their favour and eventually their virginity.

I got fucking destroyed in this game, on the first level. How do you even play?

Croaker from the Black Company comes to mind.

A morbid self-appointed scientist studying the finer functions of living flesh.

I'm no DDC pro, but for me it was a matter of adjusting backwards to 1990s RTS.
Hotkeys? Laid out by someone blind and possibly retarded.
Unit AI? Hilariously inept.
Although the computer doesn't have to deal with the hotkeys, it retains the bad unit AI on top of its own idiocy.
So, as long as you engage intelligently on the strategic layer, you shouldn't see any serious defeats on the tactical layer.

Might as well post
m.youtube.com/watch?v=36lSzUMBJnc

Have him be some sort of masochist, who hurts himself when he heals people so that he can "take their pain"

Or at least that's how I'm playing my epidromancer in unknown armies who's obsessed with fixing people.

Contractually obligated health provider who will provide excellent care up to the level you have paid for.

Who also charges extra if the party wants exclusivity, otherwise solicits his services to the enemy as well with varying levels of discretion once again based on the amount paid for.

What, you thought that mid boss kept surviving by luck alone?

Defensively.

Land grab as much as possible on the first level as quickly as possible then hold on to it as hard as possible, stack up your forces into an unbreakable wall and wait for their assault.

Capture the islands to the south as early as possible helped me.

Once they have depleted their armies on your defences you assault in one great push on a single county. Then you hold there and do the same. You keep doing this again and again but don't assault their capital.

Once all but the capital is taken you farm the map for maximum gold and research points. Both of which are capped at 50 because the game designers weren't complete fools.

Then build taverns and farm mercenary cards.

Start the next level with shit loads of mercenary and other cards.

Play the next level in a similar manner to the first but with the added bonus of being able to call upon FUCKING LEGIONS WORTH of mercs.

Or that's how I played it.

I also never once went into battle personally and instead trusted my generals to do all that tedious war nonsense, as a good king should. I just stacked the deck massively in their favour.

...

Wilson?

...

A sadist who takes pleasure in the fact that he holds their lives in his hands, threatens to withhold healing unless they beg for it, and enjoys joining in on the fight to finish off enemies that are already down thanks to the work of his allies.
He's a perfectly normal (for an adventurer) and kind guy otherwise, but when it comes to certain situations he just gets too excited about it to continue acting proper. He'll always eventually pull the good guys back from the brink of death and only coup de gras people you were already planning on killing, but with the way he acts you can't help but wonder each time if that's going to change.

Could you guys recommend some interesting fighter-healer archetypes that don't deal with magic? I'd like to play a healer who also knows how to fight

The way Valve has taken this man has just slowly gone down the path of more and more horrific.

Stealing the undead/construct idea because fuck you I love it.

>thinking anything in Hat Simulator is scary
t. troper

How about a LE megalomaniac who performs medecine and surgery as a front, putting other PCs into his debt and in-turn service?

Not my idea, but a character from a one-shot I was in had an evil healer. His culture was based around death worship, so the most evil thing a person could do was to prevent death, by keeping the party alive.

pompous snob with a massive stick-up-his-ass

Or his cousin!

Take it. That's why I posted it.

It still amazes me how good this short is. It's pretty much fucking perfect.

The music especially never fails to impress me. Those horns, goddamn.

Be a cleric of a lawful order of sworn public servants and protectors. It doesn't necessarily pay well, but the pension and benefits are well worth it and you're only two weeks from retirement! Of course, you got dragged in to teaming up with the party, and even though you're too old for this shit, you've got to see through this one last job.

Idea I got from reading this thread:
Someone who longs for or forced into adventure/gold/companionship, but is either afraid of getting dirty themselves or of getting hit. What better way to live with these than by treating the party as all-purpose fighting machines that just need maintenance once in a while? (Machine imagery not intended, but it works either way.) The healer would get to go on an adventure and get a share of the loot without having to do the dirty work. Maybe throw some buffs and fire a few arrows once in a while, but who's counting?

A character I did play:
Alexei, a 5e cleric who thought he was a fighter. He carried around several bottles of vodka, which he would hand to allies when they got hurt in case they wanted to drink to numb the pain a bit and/or sterilize the fresh wound. What he didn't know was that he subconsciously cast Cure on each handoff, but never stuck around long enough to see that the wounds healed before they drank it.

Instead of a pacifist, someone working for civilization and against barbarism. Trying to help and unify all humanoids that will civilize and support society instead of pillaging it.

>inherently unnatural undead abominations of nature
>hardcore social conservatives

I don't understand.

But what about the forbidden brother?

Just because you die doesn't mean you gotta change your beliefs

I once played a cleric in a godless world that worked as a mortician. The city was in quite a dangerous mountainous area, and was a city of magic users and scholars, so there was a lack of people who could do menial labor. The morticians were to be necromancers that could also heal the living and dead.
My character spent all of his time in the morgue and with the undead so he was EXTREMELY awkward around the living, but plot happened and he joined the party with his zombie "friend" (all of the undead were mindless so it was essentially decaying backpack holder). I played him as terrible in social situations, and for the most part he made everyone aware that even if he failed to heal them their corpse would be quite a good companion.
Oh, and since he had no God he drew his power in believing that death and undeath was sacred: going so far as to freak out when faced with an immortal big bad, and considered him an abomination.

Horrific does not mean scary. Repulsive, disturbing, and questionable at best, yes. Not necessarily scary. A man with messy facial burns may look horrific, but not necessarily scary.

Franken Fran: literally built to be a healer, has a strict code to keep people alive and generally reduce pain/suffering (of the patient). Low wisdom (will perform any operation regardless of morality) and no regard or perhaps willful ignorance of what happens to patients after you're done healing them.

Or Billy from Venture Bros. You're an incredibly gifted healer with no money or credentials pressganged into service of a bunch of murderhobos. You act like you're resentful of being kidnapped, but in reality this is the best adventure you've ever been on

Like this.

Hey, I wound up playing something similar once. A shaman petitioned by the local psychopomps to prevent a particular group of lunatics from causing damage in the spirit realm by keeping them alive

I really like the evil!Mercy theory. The death of her parents instilled in her a deep fear of death. She's in Overwatch to be able to test her ideas on how to stop death, that's were you get Genji and Reaper. That's why she has no pulse, it worked. But you can always be /more/ safe.

Basically Techno-Necromancer that does inhuman experiments to stop death but thinks they're doing the right thing.

>Everything is D&D

>I hate everyone and is indifferent
>but I'm also the only competent doctor here

>not liking homosexuality
>"hardcore" social conservative.

What a load of utter shit. I cringed hard.

>Has not embraced the perpetuity of the bone
>Is unblessed by The Seven
>Questions the divine natural order of things

Heresy gross and foul!

Actually the mmo-healer isn't that bad an idea. You could have the healer character be hired by the rest of the team and getting payed based on how long they can keep them alive. As such the healer could be quite disdainful of the idiocy of the team-members whenever they do something stupid that risks his or her pay. For this character money is everything, and the only reason s/he bothers with the other adventurers is because s/he is going after the big payout that would follow on him/her keeping them alive during the whole adventure. The healer would also propogate for going after any lucrative deal coming the parties way.

Fucking yes this!

Forgot to add that the healer would also always try to convince the party to take the least physically dangerous option availible in any decision. The only thing that could convince him/her otherwise would be a significant economic incentive.

It's really easy actually.

Play a doctor who cares little to not at all about his charges and only cares about his craft in the abstract. Picks really dicey, weird or interesting healing or surgery that is super risky to the patient instead of simple shit that coudl easily save them purely for your own morbid curiosity. Act Surprised when people want you to actually save lives.

I love settings that have ?G necromancers. Deathspeakers, planned hauntings, recycling the body someone left behind because they aren't in it any more and thus don't need it. It's a fun alternative to Ravenloft-itis to just have this cozy little tribe that lives totally without fear of death.

I'm imagining this little chatterbox of a young kid showing the adventurers around and being like "that plow pulling skeleton used to belong to be my Uncle Tommy. Daddy says that it's about time someone used the jackass for his intended purpose but Mommy tells him to hush. Uncle Tommy says that the only thing he misses about not having bones anymore is Aunt Marissa but Mommy tells him to hush, too."

(CAPTCHA: Pickup Trucks. Headcanon ammended)

A necromancer who's really bad at his job

Parts of it are canon. We do know that she was the one who kept Genji alive and that he's thankful to her for it, though I don't believe we know for sure that she had anything to do with his (assumed) total body prosthesis.

We *do* know from an interaction she has with Reaper that he blames her for whatever happened to him, but that she seems bewildered by it.

And she *does* have an emote called "no pulse" where she checks her pulse and then shrugs at the camera. Whether she actually doesn't have one, or she's making fun of her lack of excitement or the fact that she's wearing gloves is actually unknowned, we just have the one gesture.

She also has 2 interactions with Mei where they compliment each other on their lack of visible aging. Mei says hers is due to her cryofreeze retirement but Mercy doesn't say why she seems visibly younger than she should.

I wouldn't say it's cringe-worthy but I would say it's a bit early to jump straight to "Mercy's a villain." She definitely has next-level keep-alive tech, but that's what it says on the tin to start with.

>Overwatch
>Caring about the lore
It's honestly as bad as post-WotLK WoW writing

They're stupidly conservative in the game and the only faction that's actually a theocracy, if I remember right.

Ornery git who calls you on all your shit?

I'm laughing louder than I should be

Alternate Healer Personalities:

Villain/assassin type who is hunting the party, but cursed by a deity so that every attack will cause benefit instead of harm, and he always arrives when the party needs him. (They are in a fight, one guy is about to die, assassin says "This is my chance" and jumps out to stab party member, only instead of killing, the knife seals the wound instead (or something)

Creepily maternal person, joins the party because they all look so lost and pitiful. Works best if it is a she, and is many levels over the party, but totally uninterested in the quest. She could bandage their injuries and sound sympathetic, but also chiding them for playing too rough.

Instead of divine healing powers, healer for party worships Bacchus, and brews really awesome wine and beer with restorative properties (or has a magic item which provides them. Divine bartender.

You could have an arcane marksman/priest combination, someone who poisons arrows or darts with powerful healing potions and shoots the party members from a distance. Again, they don't have to actually be associated with the party, but I like the idea that this character is just really uncomfortable with being touched or even seen. (sniper healer)

A more traditional healing character could be a paladin or crusader who, as a part of his penance, is required to follow around a party while neither using or carrying any of his gear or combat powers. He gets only priest spells, can't take any money, and must dress in rags.

Finally, for science fiction settings only, you could have a "hacker-healer", a really inept hacker who stumbled into the control codes for an orbital medical supply drop satellite. Otherwise useless for tech tasks (because he really is a bad hacker) he can, a couple or three times a day, call down a medical supply orbital drop pod for the party as though they were a group of special forces.

have an edgy jack the ripper type like Dr. Frank from the simpsons

I remember one time, as a goody-two-shoes cleric of Pelor, I was shouting

"Just kill the god damn kobolds!"

when everyone else was considering sneaking past them.

If you want to go Chaotic, like a mad scientist would be neat. Maybe someone channeling the dark arts to keep what sees as their "pawns" alive.

Why not Zoidberg?

Because nobody likes Zoidberg.

And yet they often act as a stabilizing influence against the greed of the dwarves, lawyering of the lizards, veganism of the elves and WTF levels of insanity of the imps.

So their not all bad.

The job of a good Emperor is to knock off the extremist views and desires of all factions so only reasonableness remains.

Strict laws on boning.

Apprentice surgeon who was forcibly conscripted into the army/adventuring life instead of completing their training in a cushy university.

Pic related.

>not playing every healer as Hawkeye
from the good seasons of MASH, before it got serious and shitty

I tried that once.
I accidentally made a "No Trubble" Jackie Chan type
And then the game fell apart because I didn't realize everyone else had made characters that were varying degrees of evil.

What about Strax from Dr who