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Ninja_Ferret wrote:

This is about the feat that gives you your Cha into your lay on hands when using it on an Ally.

Strictly speaking, that's not what the feat description says, and that is my issue with it. It doesn't say "when you use lay on hands on an ally, [...]". Rather, it just assumes that's the only way you can use it.

Perhaps another (similarly ridiculous to Fish and Chips, but in a different way) example will help illustrate it. Here's a nifty new feat:

Improved Magic Missile (Wizard)
Prerequisite: Wizard, magic missile power
Benefit: When you use the magic missile power, the affected goblin takes additional damage equal to your Wisdom modifier.

That's almost an exact duplicate of the wording for healing hands, and if I saw it I'd really have to wonder what was going on. Why does it say "the affected goblin"? What if there isn't one? Does the writer think I can only use magic missile on a goblin?

When you use the word "the" to refer to something, it should be clear from the context that there is precisely one thing to which you are referring. In this case it simply isn't, since "the affected ally" may or many not make sense. You might respond by saying "it's only one word, what's the big deal?" Plenty of errata has already been issued for clarity however. And as I mentioned before, the very fact that this particular wording was used suggests to me that when the feat was written the possibility that lay on hands could be used on yourself wasn't even considered.

Note that I have never argued that healing hands should be changed because I think it should apply to lay on hands when you target yourself. I'm arguing that its current wording doesn't make sense, and should be changed to have its intent clear one way or the other. That's why I used a question as the title for this thread.