Why no healers?

There are no characters whose main purpose is to heal the team.  That said, there are a few characters that can heal themselves very well, and some characters who can heal others slightly.  Having a character whose main purpose is healing would probably make the heroes a bit too strong, I would think. (It's not exactly an RPG where you have to survive with decent HP to make it through the many monsters in the dungeon and such).

Spiff, this is a very good question. One that we considered in the initial development for a long time, and made the decisions we did for very specific reasons. I will write a nice long post here about it next week, but I am currently en route to the demos in Indianapolis that have been discussed on the forum, and this is about as long of a post as I might want to make from my phone.

For the TL:DR crowd, give me a few days and I'll reveal all of our trade secrets!

Maybe you can tell me personally in a half hour from now.

I'd imagine TheJayMann is on the right track. As it currently stands, the game plays pretty fairly: I don't find myself winning or losing by a gross majority of the time. It seems that adding a large amount of healing from a character would tip the balance.

As a quick aside, I've been playing a lot of the iPhone adaptation of the dice rolling adaptation of Arkham Horror, and it's really, brutally difficult. In this game, they have two healing characters, and the balance is still on the side of the game.

I totally buy the game balance idea especially since one of the cool, novel aspects of this game is the ability of 'incapacitated' heroes to maintain an active role. The first thought I had though was that I couldn't think of any standard comic heroes who are strictly or even mainly healers.... are there some that I am not aware of?

Furthermore, a large part of the fun of the game is the ability to hurt, hinder, or otherwise mess with the villain. I don't think playing a "support" hero would be as much fun.

Phase 1: select tempest.
Phase 2: ? ? ?
Phase 3: profit

oh, right Phase 2 was "play cleansing downpour."    Now he's about as good of a healer as there is in the game.  Tempest can only ever use 1 power a turn (without help from embolden, environments, etc)  so he can also be about as dedicated of a healer as you can get. 

Incidentally though, if you did happen to have Fanatic on the team,  you could have her throw down an Embolden on Tempest, and Tempest could play *two* Cleansing Downpours (they're not limited cards) and you could have tempest heal twice every turn.  Actually that might be a pretty good combo, to have fanatic be healing for 4 damage every turn, considering how she can sacrifice her health to do more damage. 

So if you wanted a cleric, tempest in a support role would be a pretty good choice.  I imagine the lack of a healer was less for balance and more for because being a healer is considered dull by a lot of people.  I mean sure,  you could mix in some direct damage,  environment control, maybe a few party help cards and stuff so it wouldnt be all healing all the time...  but then... you know what you've got?  Tempest.  =p.

I think Chris put it best when I asked him about the heroes at Gen Con -- in a big fight against a villain, it doesn't seem very likely that there would be someone hanging back and healing everyone. All the heroes are more focused on fighting the villain, not healing. They can heal, but they're not going to take the time to fully heal themselves. Also, as everyone else said, healers would just make it too easy.

Well, by this point, most of the reasons have been covered by many of you, but I'll go into it anyway, since I said I would.

When we set out to create all the heroes of Sentinels of the Multiverse, having a healer archetype character was certainly something we considered.  Part of the reason was certainly that it's not as dynamic and exciting to play a dedicated healer, which is why there are characters that have secondary healing abilities, such as Tempest, Legacy, and even Fanatic a little.  Additionally, characters that it made sense for, thematically, can restore their own HP, such as Haka and The Wraith.  So, while some healing is certainly advantageous and can even be dynamic and exciting, such as when Tempest manages to pull a character back from the brink of death with Cleansing Downpour, a dedicated healer didn't fit the feel of the original team.
However, the biggest reason that we did not want to have a dedicated healer hero is that one of the core concepts during the creation of the game was that there would never be a "correct hero" or a "correct team".  There are heroes that people prefer to play, heroes that help their allies more than others, heroes that deal more damage, and even heroes that are somewhat better against certain villains, but there should never be a single hero which is always correct to play, or even more so, any hero that a team should NOT be without.  If there was a dedicated healer hero, it would certainly be incorrect, at least tactically, to play without that hero.
Regardless of whether or not we succeeded in our goal to not necessarily make all heroes equal but all heroes TEAMS equally efficient, it would have very much skewed that.  All the best teams would include "Medico, Healing Energy Personified!" and the game would no longer be a 30-60 minute game, as even if the villains were putting out massive damage, Medico could significantly stretch out a losing battle by keeping the heroes alive longer than the game mechanics are balanced to support.

I hope that helps give you all more of a feel for our process!  Feel free to ask any follow-up questions.

I demand a full background and character art for Medico. I'm imagining something like this.

http://bite-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Action-Doct...

But give him a little mask like the lone ranger.

Yes!

Well, the Medico I had in mind when I made him up off the top of my head for the purpose of that post, I stated that he was "Healing Energy Personified!"  I did not intend that figuratively.  Rather, Medico would be a being created of living restorative energy.

...if he was even a character.  But he's not.  I just made him up.

Possibly he looks like that picture when he's not in his Living Healing Energy form.  And other such speculations.

Just so long as he has a Lone Ranger mask, I think I'm happy. :P

Don't say I never did anything for you.

Even if it's just him as a background character on a card with no meaning at all, he needs to be on a card.

Man now I wish I had a spare $200 to pledge for a mugshot.

And to think I almost said "modus operandi" but thought that might be too high brow.

Adam is a living, merciful god who gives his worshipers what they want. Praise him.

I was browsing the old forum posts, and found this old gem. Looks like they found a way to make a healer after all! The progression of Dr. Medico is really cool...

Starting as just Medico in 2011, the theoretical being of made of healing energy.

https://greaterthangames.com/sites/greaterthangames.com/files/forum/attachments/Medico.jpg

Released as Dr. Medico, three years later in 2014 as part of The Sentinels! Part of their bio reads: "Nick called himself “Dr. Medico”, which Jackson thought was a dumb name." I wonder if that happened in real life too.

http://sentinelsofthemultiverse.com/sites/sentinelsofthemultiverse.com/files/cards/images/Dr%20Medico.png

Dr. Medico trains at Ft. Adamant

http://sotm.wdfiles.com/local--files/heroes:the-sentinels/votmsentinelspromo.jpg

And becomes a member of the Void Guard!

https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/005/363/590/f746125f9bbe46d38f0c0f8e68912168_original.jpg?v=1455557032&w=639&fit=max&auto=format&q=92&s=ed72c47a6ef04b7bca97f3c35346ca25

And finally, we get Doctor Medico: Malpractice.

https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/005/363/595/1b7e1f69b1a266b678da3718ce88d367_original.jpg?v=1455557101&w=639&fit=max&auto=format&q=92&s=9022ddd4d8d9d9f47c7a1b29fdb3fa63

It also seems poetic that the some of Medico's first and last reveals are sketches:

(Looked over the rules, could not see anything about bringing back old threads.)

There are none -- you're fine.

Excellent find!

Glad you found this and brought it back to the forum's attention.

This makes me think that Malpractice won't be a dedicated healer after all =)

I imagine he's just gonna kinda phone in the healing, no dedication at all.

I have a healer I created that is on the bgg website. He is not bad. 

Malpractice
Power: 1 target regains 2 HP, then Doctor Medico deals that target 2 psychic damage. Doctor Medico's player spends the remainder of this round in court.

To be fair, while dedicated healers are a common character class/type in RPGs and videogames, they're really rare in comic books.  There are lots of comic book heroes with personal healing/regenerative powers and a bunch of who can heal others as a minor secondary secondary power, but almost no main characters whose primary power is that of healing others.  So to me, the lack of a Healer felt right in a game that's simulating a comic book world.

I always thought there are no healers so that the games end quicker. When you can just heal all the damage the enemy does but don't do enough damage yourself then the game runs long and loses excitement. 

It's cool to have healing, and even a character that qualifies as an at least somewhat dedicated healer, but I am glad the game is not designed around needing healing.

I could see him having a time-limited version of Hippocratic Oath, where his damage is converted to healing for a round.

I'm going to quote this first because I thinkg that this is a very valid reason and as you say, it is the main reason for the decision.

This part I would really like to point out is strictly opion.  I think every game I've ever started from D&D to WoW I've wanted to play a healer and people use this argument to try to get me to play something else.  "Healing is WoW isn't dynamic, you just stare at health bars the whole time" etc, etc.  However, for my personal preference those people have been wrong in every instance.  I LOVE playing a healer, and I have little desire to be a damage dealer, I like to support.  It didn't take me long in either of my example games to switch to a healing and stick with it.  Now whenever someone says that I just say "not in everyones opinion" and make a healer anyway.