Hello everyone,
I am fairly new to DnD world (but not afraid to explore) and I am starting to play with few of my friends this weekend. They all have decent experience in playing DnD so they'll be able to keep me up to date on anything that I missed in regards to rules and stuff.
What I am looking for is a suggestion for a good healing cleric 3.5 (core - no aditional "expansions" -or how is it called? 
- such as Complete Divine).
Any general tips on feats/skills? Or any good builds around? Was thinking of taking Healing and Sun domain (Pelor)... Is that viable? Any recomandations on what else to take to be better healer or any other tips on domains that will get the job done?
Thanks!
To sum it up: healer is not a needed partyrole in a DnD group. clerics have much better possibilities to help their group. Healing is a nice secondary benefit you get from your class. But you should nearly never focus on it.
A good start for getting a good cleric is looking here: brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.p...
or mor generally for a good start, give this link a try: brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.p...
One spell might kill the monster, while healing a fellow player just means that the monster can hit him again next round.
You might also want to look at Druid.
Any Cleric is a good enough healer. Just the ability to spontanously convert a spell you have into a healing spell is enough. Any spell you have left is always a potential healing spell. (unless you're an evil cleric, but I'm assuming not) You don't really need to invest in it beyond that.
You want to invest in either making your spells better, a certain kind of spells better, or making your character better at fighting but with somewhat weaker spells.
If you want to go and hit then focus on feats, items and spells that make you hit better.
Or if you want to stand back and have the spells do the work, then focus on the spells, maybe a specific kind of spells, like Monster Summoning.
First, Healing Is Not Essential To 3.5. (At least, not in combat, in the vast majority of circumstances). If you can remove a foe from battle one round earlier by attacking him (through weapons or magic - and this doesn't necessarily mean killing him if you pick the right spells (Sor/Wiz list there, but it'll set the tone for what you're looking for)), then you effectively "healed" the party of any damage or condition that the enemy would have done on his next round. Since enemy damage goes up much faster than the strength of your healing spells, this method actually prevents MORE overall damage than simply being a curebot.
Subnote: If you do have to heal, heal wisely. That's what that first guide will provide (although it's missing Panacea, a 4th level spell that's a miniature Heal in most non-HP respects and can really save your bacon). Things you should consider removing are massive action-economy effects (i.e. if you're not capable of taking down the monster and the only guy who is is currently stunned, remove the stun before his turn), by and large - so conditions like stun, daze, nausea, higher levels of fear, and so on. Things you should more or less ignore in battle are hit points - there are situations where saving someone's life would work, but these will be rare except at the lowest levels.
As for WHY HP recovery in battle gets stale very early on, there's two sides to that. The first was already mentioned: incoming damage scales faster than your healing spells. The second is that allied HP also scales faster than your healing spells. Here's that demonstrated, for every core healing spell out there being used to heal a standard DMG-statted NPC fighter at every level. (This should also show you why the Healing domain sucks - you can cast almost all of those spells spontaneously anyway, and all its granted power does is it lets you hit their caps one level early (this will only matter if you're in a severely low-level, level-limited game, and even then it's of marginal benefit).
Second, Clerics Have Better Things To Do, typically filed under "I Kick Ass For My God." What you can do here is almost unlimited, and we really need some more guidance than that to help. At the bare minimum, we need your starting level.
Also, healing is kinda lame. The real men go off and fight and you just patch up their wounds? Wus!
And actually, even healing in combat can be handy (especially at low levels again, and unlucky roll can leave an ally bleeding on the floor who mightn't normally be. If that was just a freak accident, getting him back to 1+ hp might not be bad, since he can probably stay there. It's only when their damage is outpacing your healing... well, better to try and kill them and lower that damage). However, again, it's situational, and again, you can convert spontaneously. That makes you be able to play a real character and still be able to heal decently when necessary.
Personally, I much prefer Magic and Darkness (probably why Set (I think) has so many followers). Knowledge is nice, but I'm not sure I'd want it as one of my two for a non-Cloistered Cleric. In fact, if your "Core" is not "SRD" then no Darkness either, but there are better things IMO than Healing.
- books avaible(you said core, does that mean DMG/PHB/MM1? because i also met some people, calling DMG2 and PHB2 also core)
- starting level
- intended playstyle(cause, as the post above showed, healing is not a needed role). Typical roles for a cleric would be meleemonster, group protector or buffer. But there are other possibilities too
- any preferences you have. Like: "i want to play a dwarf for overmanly beard awesomeness"
- any houserules (most importantly, how you determine your abilityscores(point buy or rolled or anything else?) and if you roll, what are yours?)
For the buffer/group support I assume you want to play, a generally good feat would be craft wondrous item and craft arms and armors. Another would be extend spell, for long buff durations, but on the other hand, rod of extends are cheap.
Now, there's a LOT more you can do with using Divine Metamagic to Persist spells but even just that Persisted Vigor is enough to fulfill your "duties" as party healer. Doing that lets you be more free to explore the rest of the Cleric spell lists which are full of buffs and other juicy tidbits, heal non-hit point based injuries/damage/debuffs, or to exploit your ability to hit people in the face on the front lines. I've never had a DM get angry at Persisted buffs when they are applied to the rest of the party; since it brings the entire party's performance up, you never outshine them in combat. I tended to think of that party role as being a walking magic item myself...
Universal Advice/Goodies:
Divine Metamagic: Use Turn attempts equal to 1+spell level increase to apply a chosen metamagic feat to a spell. Complete Divine pg. 80
Persistent Spell [Metamagic]: Spell with fixed or personal range's duration becomes 24 hours. Adds 6 levels to the spell. Requires Extend Spell. Complete Arcane pg. 81
Vigor (and related spells): Imparts Fast Healing X onto a target. X varies based on the level of spell used. Spell Compendium pg. 229
Belt, Monks: Add Wis+1 to your AC as a monk (and other abilities). Great for exploiting that ridiculous Wis you'll want. Dungeon Master's guide pg. 248
Divine Power: Your Base Attack Bonus becomes equal to your character level, you gain a +6 enhancement bonus to strength and 1 temporary hit point per caster level. Players Handbook pg. 224
Cloistered Cleric variant class: Gains Lore, expanded skill list, additional skill points, Knowledge domain, and an expanded spell list. In exchange CC's suffer reduced Hit Dice of a d6, a poor Base Attack bonus, and proficiency in only Light Armor. Good for use with a Monk's Belt and Divine Power especially if Persisted. Unearthed Arcana pg. 50
B) You forgot Righteous Might, also in the PHB.
(This should also show you why the Healing domain sucks - you can cast almost all of those spells spontaneously anyway, and all its granted power does is it lets you hit their caps one level early (this will only matter if you're in a severely low-level, level-limited game, and even then it's of marginal benefit).
I kind of like Healing for use with the spontaneous domain casting alternative class feature, simply because it means you no longer have a need to prepare even heal just in case you need it (sadly, panacea doesn't appear to be on any official domain list of which I'm aware).
But it's pretty darn bad as a standard domain option, especially since it doesn't even give any spell level advantages.
A Dread Necro with Shape Soulmeld: Lifebond Vestments can also heal pretty cheaply (i.e. for free, with one feat); retrain later (completely irrelevant to the discussion, but hey). In Core, a Bard or Rogue with a Wand of CLW is probably your best bet. Not much good at L1, since you can't afford those things, but by L2-3 the Rogue should be healing, the Cleric fighting, and the Fighter springing traps.
Spontaneous heal is cool.
A Dread Necro with Shape Soulmeld: Lifebond Vestments can also heal pretty cheaply (i.e. for free, with one feat); retrain later (completely irrelevant to the discussion, but hey). In Core, a Bard or Rogue with a Wand of CLW is probably your best bet. Not much good at L1, since you can't afford those things, but by L2-3 the Rogue should be healing, the Cleric fighting, and the Fighter springing traps.
If you want noncore healing stamina, Draconic Aura: Vigor is probably a better choice. Gives everyone near you who's under 50% of their max HP Fast Healing 1, at no action cost for you, and that amount scales with your HD if you're of the dragonblood subtype. Won't top anyone up, but even at half HP they've got a decent chance of surviving a surprise encounter - and it does lighten the load of out-of-combat healing effects.
I concur with you about core healing in principle, though - a wand of CLW is so good at out of combat healing that it remains a viable (though not the best) choice even in an all-books-allowed environment. Whoever's triggering it doesn't matter so long as they can trigger it reliably - early on (level 2-3, for instance) you might be better off letting the bards, clerics, druids, paladins, or rangers use it, since the rogue would have something like +8ish or so UMD, which isn't enough to consistently trigger the wand without wasting charges (DC 20), and if the rogue ever rolls a 1 on that check (and UMD isn't one of those skills you can take 10 on as a rogue, at least before level 10), then he can't use the wand for the rest of the day, which is a liability.
Draconic Aura is pretty cool, but at low HP, 1/2 may not be enough. Still, it can save you a lot of cash.
And yeah, Bards can use CLW no bother, so that might be better. But then, you might well have a Cleric or Druid instead of a Fighter, and they can be the healer as well.
It is useful to be able to refresh someone below 0, though. At -ve hp, they can't contribute. Your CLW might mean they can continue to shoot/buff from a safe distance, which in a fight expected to last could be far more useful than saving your one action. Healing in combat is just situational, and not what a lot of people think. That doesn't mean it should never be done, but it should be done judiciously.
... umm ... a Wilder with Recharge is Core. That's good healing.
so says CPsi.It's Core if you think of the SRD as Core, but the strict definition is PHB, DMG and MM... no XPH.
This is all true. "Core" really means the big three and that's all.
Note that the Illithid is a "core" monster but it doesn't show up in the SRD. A number of other things are "core" but not part of the OGL and because of that shouldn't be in the SRD.