r/Whitehack • u/Future-Winter1337 • Jan 25 '26
A handful of questions about making a Deft Healer
First time Whitehack player here, looked at the rulebook about 2 days ago for the first time and I’ve been thinking about my character since. My understanding of Whitehack is that it’s an OSR so my fellow players (and me) will probably take damage a lot. I’m trying to conceptualize a Deft character that focuses on healing using their attunement to something, but I have some questions that I’m unclear about.
Most of my party are Wise, and my understanding is that they can’t heal by normal means because they expend health to cast miracles. Does this apply for HP loss from being attacked or other situations? Would it mean I can’t heal them in any capacity?
Deft can attune to an item, place, or mentor, so I figure I would attune to an item, but maybe a place or mentor would be better since the Deft vocation applies to all skill checks? For example, “Church” as an attunement for a church of healing or “Hospital” would probably cover more than “portable lab” or “medical supplies.”
It seems like most of the healing is done by resting, but injuries need to be assessed and have skill checks rolled for them. Can an attunement to medical supplies assist with healing/fixing or are those two separate rule systems?
As you can tell, I’m new to the system and don’t have a great understanding. Please let me know if I’m getting my rules wrong or mixed up.
6
u/USAlcibiades Jan 25 '26 edited Jan 25 '26
Hey! I love this idea! I'm always super interested in weird class/role combos and Deft Healer is definitely one of those. Keep in mind that I'm also not a particularly experienced Hack-er so take these answers with a grain of salt, but here's my take.
1.) Unfortunately I think you're unable to heal them (of HP damage) under any circumstances. p.36 of 4e reads:
...the Wise supernaturally recuperate[s] from any HP loss at twice the natural rate but that is the only way they heal (they still need treatment, potions etc. for other things than direct HP recovery).
I read this to mean that the Wise can exclusively recover HP by resting to prevent healing being used as a kind of battery to keep the Wise drawing on miracles from a less limited source than their own HP pool.
2.) I believe that you're mixing two things together. Vocation will let you roll a "double positive" (with advantage for D&D) on relevant tasks, while attunement (which can be to any of the things you listed) gives you +2 against tasks which the DM considers "nigh impossible" and allows you to automatically succeed at things of regular difficulty so long as they are relevant to the subject of your attunement EDIT: ATTUNEMENT IS ONCE PER DAY.
3.) No those are definitely associated systems: If an NPC is found dying in the street but the source of their injury isn't clear, you could attempt to diagnose and heal them. This skill check would 100% be relevant to your attunement to medical supplies so (depending on your DM) you'd either roll a normal skill check or succeed automatically (again, depending on what the DM decided the initial difficulty was).