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Other limits for Healing


mhd

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Let's talk about limiting healing. You don't want to make it too easy, so that's a pretty common concept in campaigns.

 

The default is 'once per person per 24h period'.

 

In my current campaign I do it by having a Side Effect (always active) where END cost equals BODY restored, and the END  reserve has Slow Recovery (1 day). I ditch the once/24h limit.

 

The last campaign was in the Iron Kingdoms, where the gods are a bit stingy with their boons. I had a total BODY limit there, with unbelievers counting more (50% more the more beneficial god, double or triple for the more rat-bastardly). Plus empathic healing, where the healer takes on the damage and then regenerates it.

 

And I think one of the HERO campaigns had "healing" that just was a STUN + REC Aid.

 

Any other cool ideas or own builds? Right now there's little to no divine healing magic, so it's mostly done by wizards, but the next more D&D-ish campaign will surely come, so I'm interested in all kinds of suggestions.

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The general rule I use for my fantasy world is that magical healing just temporarily "fixes" the injury, and allows the person so healed to function until they can naturally heal the damage. Think of it like a cast which allows a person to use a broken arm - just better. The in-game rationale of this is that you can only take so much magical healing at any one time - a spell can patch up a cut or a broken limb, but the injury is still *actually* there: the spell simply holds everything in the body where it should be and strengthens the injured part. So a PC with (say) 2d6 healing could heal his comrades up to 6 BOD - but that's their lot. Until they have naturally healed some of that back, they can't get any more magical healing, unless they find a better healer, because his spell is already doing what it can to support their injuries.

 

It also means that healing can be dispelled (evilgrin).

 

This has the effect of making healers useful, without making them overwhelmingly powerful - for every BOD a character heals back naturally, the healer can give him another point of magical healing, essentially doubling people's healing rate. This makes even a low-level healer a boon - especially in situations where you have bed rest and good conditions - people can recover at a miraculous rate. It also means that when a party first goes into an adventure- when everyone is fresh and unwounded, the healer can relatively quickly patch up their wounds. However, that capacity degrades - as the PCs become wounded and then healed, the capacity to receive fresh healing is lost - meaning that they can't romp through encounter after encounter, getting hurt and then fully recovering. Essentially healers can cover for those unfortunate incidents where someone gets badly hurt, but you can't rely on them to allow your meatshield to get beaten up and then push him out to the front again over and over.

 

I use this approach because it gives me simple book-keeping (as GM, I only need to track two totals per PC: current BOD and current magical healing) and it permits substantial but not unlimited healing: my experience has been that if PCs can rely on continual healing, they become pretty lackadasical about actual physical danger. If they know that healing is a limited resource, they try to plan to avoid injury instead of just bulling their way through. I like to encourage and reward planning :). I also like to avoid the whole adventure suddenly stopping because one PC has suddenly taken an unfortunate wound that incapacitates him - but still want to be able to inflict meaningful harm on the PCs when appropriate to the story.

 

A rarer (and more expensive in terms of points, which means it's generally limited to dedicated healer-types) form of healing is empathic healing where the healer takes someone else's injury and then heals it up later personally. Unlike the approach above, this is "real healing" - the injury is transferred away and the person healed is 100% healthy. For this I used the stop sign "regeneration usable by others" power, to provide "unlimited healing" - the limit in practice being how much damage the healer could take personally.

 

Again, there's a mechanistic rationale for this: as the game became higher level, PCs faced more powerful foes and players had more and more invested in their characters, I wanted a way to save characters who might otherwise be one-shot killed by massive trauma - but I still didn't want danger to be a thing casually accepted. With this approach, the healer could give out a very large amount of healing, even to someone already carrying around magical healing - but at the cost of becoming injured him or herself. Again, that made it a precious resource, not something that was done after every fight.

 

Last of all, I allowed healers to enter a healing trance, in which they regenerated - though this was limited to REC/hour, meaning it would normally take them a day or so to recover from major injuries (such as the use of empathic healing). Same rationale as before: allowing access to sufficient healing that the adventure didn't stop for a couple of weeks, while our heroes hobbled off to the hospice, while still not making physical danger trivial.

 

cheers, Mark

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My thought was: why isn't it broken in D&D?  The answer was that in D&D each use is a once per day slot, with some casting time and other limiting bits.  So I've tweaked it to require X amount of Limitations from the following list (Extra Time, Gestures, Incantations, Increased END Cost, Charges, Expendable, etc.) (edit:) and adding those makes it fully cumulative with no limit.  Basically if you can only do your healing three times a day and it takes a minute to do each one, those are essentially natural limits on Healing and they make it not a problem.  

 

I also allow unlimited (edit) cumulative Healing of STUN and END, the rationale being that those ordinarily come back quickly enough out of combat that unlimited Healing there is also not a problem.  

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The STUN/END unlimited model fits well with the "once natural healing would have done the trick, healing works again" model.

 

I don't see extra time to cast being too major a limit - it does move healing out of combat, but typically, trying to heal up teammates is not as effective as adding some damage to end the battle faster.  Charges can certainly do the trick.

 

In D&D 3rd Ed, healing is trivial - "Two cases of Cure Light Wounds wands, please".  In other editions, "we're out of healing so stop adventuring until we cure and recharge" is a pretty common mindset.  Healing should be restricted (or not) based on how you want the game to work. 

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STUN and END recover so quickly, that I have never really had any demand for healing for that: as Hugh points out, it's normally more effective to do something else in combat time, and out of combat it usually is irrelevant. That said, I'd have no problem with making it cumulative in this case, since the benefit is so small.

 

Cheers, Mark

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My thought was: why isn't it broken in D&D?

It isn't?

 

I can't count the fixes anymore: Wound/Vitality, second winds, convert any spell into healing spell, 5E "hit dice", complete recovery every rest, reserve points...

 

But speaking of STUN/END, that's also a good source for limitations: Convert restored BODY to STUN (e.g. each point to 1d6 NND), then combat healing might become a risky preposition. You might want to recover a bit before the cleric comes a-laying.

 

Outside of combat that's obviously not that harming, although LTE might be a good option of something that actually heals, but does drain.

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It isn't?

 

I can't count the fixes anymore: Wound/Vitality, second winds, convert any spell into healing spell, 5E "hit dice", complete recovery every rest, reserve points...

tl; dr (previously known as Executive Summary): It’s no more “broken” than in Hero. And it’s only “broken” or “not broken” when assessed relative to a specific desired play result.

 

I think each of these speaks to the fundamental issue. That is not “is healing broken?” but “do the healing rules fit the game I want to play?” Wounds/Vitality separates “STUN” and “BOD”. The others are directed at changing the speed of healing, and at making the Cleric more than “medic someone has to play”.

 

How has healing worked in Hero? Well, at one time we had Aid being used as Healing (prior editions had different powers for different genres), IIRC. Aid below your maximum stayed. Unlimited healing, which was a problem.

 

So Healing got split out, and capped. With, at inception, no indication of how long the cap stuck around (Sorry, 25 years ago he healed you for his maximum, so it will never work again). Then we got the 24 hour cap. But that was too long for some gamers, so we had to have an advantage to reduce the re-use time. But, as we see from this thread, that is way too long for STUN and END, and is viewed as too quick by some for BOD (“you must recover normally to let healing work again” mitigates both).

 

Of course, if BOD is hard to heal, we don’t want to take BOD. Hence, we build characters defended against BOD, including constructs like Combat Luck to be allowed to take rDEF. Then comes the faction who finds Hero combat is not lethal enough, a subset of which (addressed in a current thread) is “how do we make the mooks die?”

 

Then, of course, we have Regeneration – which we have used for cinematic healing (1 BOD per day or per hour to speed the process). Raising the question why one would buy 2 BOD per day when 1 BOD per five hours is better and cheaper.

 

And, of course, linking Regen to Healing was among the most reviled changes between editions.

 

That lack of a limit on Regen is pretty potent, though. So much so that we had to rule that Regen cannot be Usably by Others because, well, it just can’t – orphan rule. Oh, but the healing-based Regen is also too expensive, so it is simultaneously too powerful and not powerful enough.

 

And so it goes.

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Which is fine, but it is also an arbitrary limit placed on the Regeneration power itself because "Regen usable on others" somehow needs a special limit.  It seems a reasonable Limitation for the ring, but not a mandatory limitation to this one combination of powers and advantages.  A Spell of Regeneration seems pretty useless with that limitation.  Or, if I slap a Trigger on that Regen, Usable on Others (triggered by taking BOD, say) then I can cast it on everyone when we break camp, and re-cast after any combat where significant damage is taken.  He's "wearing" the Regen spell when he got hit.

 

I find it difficult to believe Regen is balanced because Larry Lizardman paid his own points for it, but becomes hugely unbalanced when Perry Priest wants to slap "Usable by Others" on it as a spell.  If the reason the spell is hugely unbalanced is because Healing is vastly inferior to Regen, then I think we need to examine why two different powers that accomplish the same basic game effect would be built and priced so differently.  5e resolved this by building Regen out of Healing, resulting in moans of despair that now "regen is too expensive".  Maybe it was priced commensurate with its value.  Maybe Healing with a reduced re-use time was overpriced and should be cheaper.  Maybe "self only" needs a higher limitation value. 

 

To me, however, if we build the same ability two different ways and the costs are markedly different, something is wrong in the pricing of one of the constructs,

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I always wanted to try the Wheel of Time style healing wherein the subject healed paid a heavy LTE (and possibly Stun) Side Effect. It was also limited to one use of Healing per wound, That would get pretty cumbersome though, so I imagine a max Body Healed = Max Character Body. Never got to use that.

 

Reading Markdoc's entry, I had to smile. I have been working on a temporary healing system almost word for word like is. It was for a Ravenloft inspired game and healing was also a violation of the natural order and had an automatic side effect of transforming the healer closer to something evil. Sort of like the Dark Powers checks only it was inexorable. The transformation Body healed over the month as normal and I was to have an "interaction" bonus involved. Basically, the idea that interacting with people and doing positive things would help the character hold onto his humanity. Once a stage in the journey was reached, however, it was permanent. The setting never really materialized and I did not actually ever get to play it.

 

I've also drawn inspiration from an old Conan module for D&D, wherein there was no magical healing. Every character recovers Body at the rate of REC per week instead of per month. That campaign lasted all of two sessions before falling apart for other reasons.

 

If I ever do run again, I also want to change the Adder that heals Impairing wounds, Disabling wounds, and Can Restore Limbs. I would actually increase the value of that Adder to +5/10/15. Since I tend to run pretty low point games, this option would be an important decision for the healer character to make. I think that I would also make healing as Regeneration, Usable on Others with a long Time Limit and a lockout for other healing powers while it is in effect. 

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The biggest issue Hero has with healing is the difference between in-combat healing (which is okay) and non-combat healing (which is far too cheap).  The second biggest issue is that there's still no really clear guidance as to how to handle healing with optional rules like bleeding and hit location.  Is healing per-wound or per-person?  Is it cumulative or can you only heal up to the max possible on the dice?  What if there's another source of healing, then what?

 

I always got some sick pleasure out of putting horrible limitations on healing spells, like massive stun drain ("this is gonna hurt") or transfer ("I'll just need a piece of your soul") or even transform ("frogs heal quickly, trust me").  But I was never forced or encouraged to do so, by the rules or by any GM.

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The last two editions of HERO system have specifically prohibited Regeneration UbO*, so maybe the game designers think it is unbalanced/overpowered also?    So if we're ignoring the rules anyway, I'd say we're already pretty far into "arbitrary" territory.

 

That said, I think Old Man has stated the problem pretty well.  Combat healing is OK, non-combat too easy.  Especially if you don't even have a 'maximum that can be healed' cap, because you're using the Regeneration UbO Allowed house rule.   Getting one body per turn back in combat is nice, I suppose, but not really that powerful when you're getting 2-3d6 killing attacks thrown at you every phase.  Getting one body back every 12 seconds when you're out of combat means you're completely healed up in little enough time that the GM probably doesn't even keep track of it.  And out of combat regen spells can really have the limitations piled on, since many of them aren't really nearly as limiting out of combat.

 

As to the Larry the Lizardman situation, yeah, regeneration is a really powerful in a Fantasy game.  That's why I generally don't allow it for player characters at all, or tone it down immensely from the "superhero" level that is standard to the rules.  Yeah, Lizardmen Regenerate.  You heal TWICE as fast as a human, and can regrow lost limbs!   Regen is bought per week with the regrow limbs adder.  Its nice for Larry in the long term, but no, he's not completely healed up from near death (or really from any wound) in the time it takes Bob the Barbarian to "freshen up" behind the bushes.    The thing you have to remember about HERO system is that it was originally built to be a superhero roleplaying game, not a fantasy one, and the rules sometimes show it.

 

 

 

*5th Edition, pg 120, last paragraph:  "Regeneration is normally bought with the Reduced Endurance (0 END) and Persistent Advantages, and must take the Limitations Extra Time (1 turn: -1) and Self Only."  Seems pretty clear that, while Reduced END and Persistent are optional, Extra time and SELF ONLY are not.

 

*6th Edition, vol 1, pg 274, last paragraph; "Characters cannot apply the Usable by Others Advantage to Regeneration."

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The last two editions of HERO system have specifically prohibited Regeneration UbO*, so maybe the game designers think it is unbalanced/overpowered also?    So if we're ignoring the rules anyway, I'd say we're already pretty far into "arbitrary" territory.

Pretty sure that is what I said. Let's check...

 

Yup - "cannot be usable on others is an arbitrary limit placed on regeneration". It is arbitrarily placed there in the rulebooks.

 

If this wee an artifact of Supers genre, then it would logically say "in many genres, rapid healing is problematic, so Regeneration should be restricted in such genres". It could also indicate that "no reuse limit" healing is similarly problematic in some games. Instead, we have a Regeneration power which is an exception to the rules, whether 5e's "look the other way - it's not limited", 5er's "build it properly with reduced re-use time" or 6e's "back to its own special power".

 

6e slaps a caution on it - so why "NO you can never have Regeneration Usable by Others" rather than an extra caution that this multiplies the issues Regen can cause. Of course, nothing stops me buying 1d6 Healing (BOD), Decreased re-use (+1 1/2 - per turn), 0 END (+1/2), AoE Radius (+1/2) for 35 AP. That will bring the whole team back to full BOD pretty quick. Really, the 0 END is a bit of a waste since I can use it once per turn and accept whatever roll comes up with no real harm. May as well slap Variable Effect on for a 40 AP power. I could even limit it to being only usable once per turn, since there's no huge benefit to rolling multiple times every turn.

 

Uncontrolled Constant gives me some options as well.

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Ah, I think i misread your first statement about 'arbitrary limits' being in reference to my house rule about having to have the regeneration running when the wound was taken.  Didn't realize you were talking about the 'arbitrary limit' in the actual rules.

 

As to your "Poof, Everyone is Better" Healing spell, yeah, that seems to be perfectly legal in 6th Ed, now that I look.  Seems I need to look more closely at 6th, but its hard to get the motivation when I haven't had a game for several years.  If I were GM, I wouldn't allow it since I don't particularly care for "Poof, Everyone is Better!" but that would just be an arbitrary house rule.

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Ah, I think i misread your first statement about 'arbitrary limits' being in reference to my house rule about having to have the regeneration running when the wound was taken.  Didn't realize you were talking about the 'arbitrary limit' in the actual rules.

There's an arbitrary house rule which is overriding the arbitrary by the book rule ("Regen can be UBO but only in object form and only with this added limitation").

 

As to your "Poof, Everyone is Better" Healing spell, yeah, that seems to be perfectly legal in 6th Ed, now that I look.  Seems I need to look more closely at 6th, but its hard to get the motivation when I haven't had a game for several years.  If I were GM, I wouldn't allow it since I don't particularly care for "Poof, Everyone is Better!" but that would just be an arbitrary house rule.

This begs the question, however, where the difference lies between "an arbitrary house rule" and a campaign setting. For example, in this game, there is no "Poof, Everyone is Better" healing. BOD damage is serious, and recovers slowly. While magic can help the process, it is not limitless. No Healing can reduce its re-use time below every 6 hours, and similarly Regeneration cannot be purchased above X BOD per 6 hours.

 

The arbitrary RAW removes a single avenue of rapid healing, but does not actually prevent rapid healing. I submit it is a poor RAW as it imposes a specific restriction across the board. In a game where "Poof you are Healed" is acceptable or even desirable, there is no reason to force that Healing construct instead of Regen usable by others, so why remove it under the standard rules and let GM's impose restrictions on healing (or not) to fit the desired campaign style and tone?

 

The rules should permit "any character you can imagine". The campaign/setting/house rules impose restrictions on which imagined characters may be appropriate to the game in question. I can imagine an undead sorcerer, a super-strong flying mutant and a post-apocalyptic sentient venus flytrap. All can be built with Hero rules. None are appropriate in a realistic game of cold war espionage.

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I do healing a couple of different ways.

 

The old "Simplified Healing" is used for the basic stuff....replenishing Stun and Body. Basically roll the healing dice andd read it like an Energy blast and thats how much Stun and Body is recovered. Maximum rollable on the dice is the maximum a single healer can do on a person. For example if Goldmoon has a Cure Wounds spell of 6d6 healing, she can heal a maximum of 36 stun and 12 body in an individual for that specific bout of healing. If Caramon has 16 Body and is reduced to zero Body, and Goldmoon uses multiple uses of her Cure wounds spell on him, she can heal 12 of the 16 Body and the other 4 Body either has to heal naturally, or another healer with a more powerful Healing spell (at least 8d6 healing) has to come in to heal the rest (and they must achieve their maximum amount to be able to heal the remaining 4 Body)

 

But thats just to knit the flesh back together and to reenergize the body. When actual injuries are sustained to the body (Impairing and Disabling wounds) more specialized magic must be employed which is rarer and more difficult to cast and oftentimes is costly to the caster as well.

 

Healing injuries requires a Transform spell....Heal injuries...in order to heal Impairing wounds requires a minor Transform and healing Disabling wounds requires a Major Transform. The amount of Body needed to be rolled in total is twice the amount of Body of the attack which caused the wound in question. Thus if Caramon recieved an Impairing wound to his chest location (inflicting a general -3 penalty to physical action) which did 8 Body (his total is 15), then Goldmoon needs to use at least a Heal injuries spell as a Minor Transform and achieve at least 16 Body on the Transform roll to heal the injury. Until this is done, or the wound heals naturally, Caramon would be subject to the -3 penalty from the wound, even if all the Body damage was healed by a Cure Wounds spell for while the flesh had knit together, the bones, muscle and nerves are not completely healed and pain, swelling and possibly internal bleeding and infection remains.

 

This means that Disabling wounds aree very serious and difficult to heal, even magically. And some wounds will simply be beyond the ability of some people to heal.

 

If Caramon is fighting Lord Soth and takes a critical hit to the chest doing 16 body to the fighter after subtracting armor, which is a disabling wound and Goldmoon's best healing spell is 4d6 major transform, then she is incapable of healing Caramons Diasabling wound. She CAN use her Cure Wounds spell to heal the Body damage to stabilize him, but the effects of the Disabling wound remains and Caramon is still bleeding (can be fixed with Paramedic skill) is at penalty of -5 for physical activity and can no longer take free post segment 12 recoveries. And unless they can find a temple who can handle this kind of greivous wound, Caramon is likely to be down 2.5 months while recovering (Rec of 7, recovering a 16 Body disabling wound)

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  • 4 weeks later...

This subject is near and dear to my heart, and I tried to build my solution into Narosia. 

 

1. All or Nothing Per-Wound Healing. This means you track BODY damage per wound and you must generate enough BODY, all at once, to heal the wound. Multiple attempts are allowed, but will likely cost you resources you don't necessarily want to use.  

 

2. Can Heal Disabling Effect (+1/4). I got rid of the Can Heal Limbs adder and made it a +1/4 advantage. This is important when combined with #1 above. 

 

3. Require a Skill Roll (Only to Heal Disabling Wounds, -1/4). This means that relatively minor injuries, even impairing wounds, can be healed with magic, but Disabling wounds require a little more skill and care. Failing will result in the need for a Trasnform to fix it. 

 

4. Scale the magic system within the scope of the campaign. Spells are acquired in a very specific way within the system. It is not possible to be capable of healing grievous injuries without a significant point investment. There is no 50 point healer out there that can treat your shattered arm. In the context of the setting this is significant because serious injuries require drastic action, not just a trip to the local Hospice.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

I experimented with making it more mechanistic (stats are GURPS, I abandoned this before switching to HERO)

 

 

Injuries and First Aid

In the Wajabu setting, first aid and the treatment of injuries is very reductionist, rather than the simplist Cure Wounds found in most fantasy settings. In part this is just the atmosphere of Wajabu, but it also allows players to have characters that are healers but not priests. If the GM or players find this system too cumbersome, it can be replaced with the simplified system.
There are many ushombwe (potions) to treat specific injuries. A typical first aid kit will have lots of munyu, emetics and purification incense, Woundbind, Boneknit, Burnsalve, Analgesic, Cure Disease, Poison Antidote, Snakebite and Slow Death. The Slow Death potion puts the subject into suspended animation. Provided open wounds are bound, the subject can survive without food or water for up to 30 days while the effects of diseases and poisons are suspended. It takes an expert to revive someone from this, so it is only used as a last resort.

Magical Healing

Healers often first use a fetish that casts the Body Read spell, which is similar to a CAT scan. The healer takes up several pendents in his hand and slowly moves them over the patient's body. Which pendent moves and how suddenly gives him a good general idea of what is going on inside a patient's body.

Injuries first receive treatment with Woundbind. This can either be a salve or a fetish in the form of a needle. The fetish takes a bit of skill to use, but is never used up. In game terms, this heals about half the damage from a single serious injury and must be applied to every wound. The salve is sufficient to heal minor injuries completely and also in a perfect antiseptic, which is very important if further healing is needed.

The next step is a Heal potion or fetish. General Healing Spells do not eliminate disease or poison, and can cause great harm if used on a subject suffering from these maladies or if the wound has not been sterilized. Though the physical damage caused by a disease or poison will be healed, the disease organisms themselves receive some of the benefit. Henceforth, magical attempts at curing the disease will be at -5. Likewise, the metabolic acceleration may be harmful with poisons - after the healing, the poison will act twice as quickly, though it does not become resistant to magic. This *cannot* be used to create magically resistant diseases or super poisons - the effect is specifically limited to the subject's body.

Regular magical Healing (vs instant) takes 30mins per point of damage healed, and the subject should not be moved during this time. Any strenuous action cancels the progression of the spell. Although the spell is painless, the subject will experience intense itching, requiring a Will roll not to scratch. Scratching the area results in serious pain - Will roll to avoid crying out, but has no other effect.

These spells are dangerous for use with internal injuries if not preceded by a Body Reading spell, a Physician skill check or other form of competent inspection. Apply -3 to skill roll. Critical failures in these cases indicates unnoticed internal bleeding.

They are equally dangerous with broken bones. If the bone has not been set properly, it will heal incorrectly resulting in permanent disability. The Bone Knit spell is much safer and painless. Fixing a broken bone with Instant Healing results in a -5 to the Will roll to keep from crying out. On a modified roll of 3 or 4, the subject passes out for 10 minutes per point healed.

This spell is risky if used more than once per day  on the same subject. If you try, roll at -2 for the first repetition, -4 for the second, and so on.

Magical Healing does not prevent scarring, though use of Woundbind before general Healing with greatly reduce scars. This is actually by design, as scars from battle are very attractive in men. In the case of burns, these scars can be permanently debilitating and thus Heal Burns is the prefered solution. Heal Wounds specifically will not heal blindness or other sensory loss, brain or spinal damage.

The subject will crave protein for the next few days, but this has no game effect.

Though possible, instantaneous healing is VERY painful. The subject must make a Will roll to avoid crying out. If he is in a precarious position (climbing, for instance), he must make a DX roll to avoid catastrophe! His DX and all DX-based skills are at -3 for the next second per point healed. If the subject is in the middle of a spell requiring gestures, he must roll vs.Will or start over. High Pain Threshold gives +3 to the Will and DX rolls above; Low Pain Threshold gives -4. (taken from Pain, M36). Fixing a broken bone with Instant Healing results in a -5 to the Will roll to keep from crying out. On a modified roll of 3 or 4, the subject passes out for 10 minutes per point healed.     Caveats regarding disease, poison, internal injuries, broken bones and scarring apply as per generalized magical healing.

These spells are risky if used more than once per day  on the same subject. If you try, roll at -3 for the first repetition, -6 for the second, and so on.
If you have the Physician skill at level 15 or higher, a critical failure with this spell counts only as an ordinary failure – unless you are trying the spell more than once per day on the same subject.

Surgery

Most internal injury can be healed without surgery, but there are always emergencies. In Milikyunjovu surgery has greatly advanced due to the use of jbobafi venom, a magical poison that utterly stalls the life process. Once administered, the body enter statis - the heart doesn't beat, there is no breath, blood does not flow, but due to the magic, the patient does not die. Thus it is possible to open a patient and remove a tumor or perform a cesarean, and the blood with barely seep. The patient is sewn up and has Woundbind applied by the time the venom wears off.

Unforetunately, jbabofi venom comes only from those man sized pseudo-spiders, and they have proven impossible to domesticate. Worse, even if one is captured, it's venom looses potency after being milked only a few times.  One average sized jbobafi yields five doses, worth 10 kingombe.

 

Spelllist:

Stabilize
Stop Bleeding
Heal Wound 1-3 on one injury, 10min to completion
Hydrate
Restore Blood
Resist Pain
Minor Healings - up to 3hp
Set Bone (to do)
Bone Mend up to 3hp in a single bone, takes 30min/pt
Heal Scars
Heal Burns
Instant Minor Healing
Instant Bone Mend - same but  1sec/pt
Resuscitate
 

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I experimented with making it more mechanistic (stats are GURPS, I abandoned this before switching to HERO)

System is similar to Rolemaster where different types of wounds require different types of spells to heal. All of these wounds are tracked via the extensive critical hit system.

 

I took inspiration from this system for my own healing system I use with Shadow World Hero. But instead of requiring a seperate spell for each type of wound (muscular, cardiovascular, skeletal, neurological etc) i have simplified it down to the grade of wound (Impairing vs Disabling) which works to limit healig pretty well. Body and Stun are easy to heal, but internal damage is difficult to heal (and the spells for those also take minutes to cast, they are not instantaneous) and I find this to be a good middle-ground between instant healing and the grittier natural healing solutions.

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My approach (in a GURPS game, actually) was similar to some mentioned above. I mandated that the healing was relatively slow. No "Poof! You're healed!" It took about 5 minutes per point of body healed. So a mage *could* heal the whole group in a day (given resting time to recover lost Fatigue from casting the spells), but there was still an interval during which people were weakened by their wounds. An interval that left a window of opportunity for the bad guys, and sometimes necessitated retreat and regrouping by the PCs. (This might have been more problematic in a classic dungeon crawl, but we didn't do those.)

 

If you wanted, you could always opt for "but healing POTIONS work instantly!" for times when you really, really need to have Conan back on his feet now. But if they're expensive and hard to obtain, they become a limited but vital commodity.

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Healing first appeared in Fantasy Hero 1st Edition. Where it was treated like "normal dice" that healed instead of harmed. Healing in that edition wasn't stackable ie only the biggest amount of healing took precedence on a character, with an optional rule that allowed PC's to track each wound separatly for healing.

 

I wish 6e would have just allowed healing to be completely cumulative, and had limits that allowed you to tune it down for campaigns that had rarer healing or harder healing etc. Keep the toolbox open and trust in the GM's to properly limit healing in their campaigns as they see fit.

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Healing first appeared in Fantasy Hero 1st Edition. Where it was treated like "normal dice" that healed instead of harmed. Healing in that edition wasn't stackable ie only the biggest amount of healing took precedence on a character, with an optional rule that allowed PC's to track each wound separatly for healing.

 

I wish 6e would have just allowed healing to be completely cumulative, and had limits that allowed you to tune it down for campaigns that had rarer healing or harder healing etc. Keep the toolbox open and trust in the GM's to properly limit healing in their campaigns as they see fit.

 

I understand why they didn't though: whatever goes into the rulesbook becomes the de facto "standard way to do something", the "change whatever you don't like" credo notwithstanding. And fully cumulative healing as the standard way to handle BOD damage means a major, major change in game design and playstyle, because it says very explicitly that BOD damage doesn't actually matter that much. With fully cumulative healing, PCs are pretty much either completely unharmed, or dead.

 

Most Hero system games don't run that way, as far as I can work out, so it means making the "standard" - by the rules - something that isn't standard in games. Essentially it's like saying "Here's the rule: we suggest you don't use it." So it would be simpler in conception but actually make most GMs' role harder, which is almost always a sign of poor design.

 

I think that we can agree that the current healing power is a kludge, though. The fact that so much discussion has been/and is expended on it, is also an indicator of design problems.

 

It's not an easy problem to solve, however. The core of the problem is, IMO, the fact that Hero is not a resource management game, like so many other heroic level games. Powers do not, by default, come with an X-uses-per-day or per-encounter limit. But if we follow that logic with healing, it means that after every encounter, even 1d6 of cumulative healing is essentially unlimited healing. A SPD3 character could deliver 10 BOD per turn, which means that a minute after a fight, even a wounded-nigh-unto-death party of 5 could expect to be at full health again. The lack of resource management is a problem specifically with healing because it is essentially the only combat-related activity which usually takes place mostly outside of combat. Even if you added Extra time: 1 turn to the power, making it 4 pts for a d6, you still get essentially unlimited healing: adding a few minutes outside combat is essentially irrelevant in 90% of situations.  That's a pretty good deal for 4 points ... an untenably good deal in my opinion.

 

There's another catch, too. For other combat relevant activities, if you want a more effective power, you need to buy more dice, or for those powers which do use cumulative, like, say Mind control, you need to use more phases in combat to get a greater effect. In-combat healing follows this same logic, but in most cases, in reality, in-combat healing is restricted to a quick patch to prevent death - otherwise, normally PCs have better things to do in combat with their precious phases than healing wounds. So if we allowed healing to be cumulative by default, we create a power where in practice, 1d6 healing has nearly identical utility to 5d6 healing.

 

So, when you think about it, it's pretty easy to see why Healing is not cumulative by default - that's because from a game mechanics point of view, it would be a really terrible idea.

 

So how do we do it better? Healing is (as currently defined in the rules) a kind-of, sort-of adjustment power. The major differences are that a) it doesn't bring you up above starting values and b ) it does not fade. If we built Healing with Aid, a) is covered by "only restores to starting values" (-1/2) and b ) is covered by pushing the fade rate down to 5 per year (+3 1/4) for a total cost of 13 points per d6. After all, if you have any REC at all, you are going to have long since recovered the BOD healed by then. The difference between "fades after a year" and "never fades" is so small it can safely be ignored in this case. This is simply cumulative, but Aid still has a maximum (ie: the maximum you can roll on the dice). This was essentially how I ran Healing in my last campaign, under 5E rules, with the caveat that since the Aid only restored lost points, once you had recovered any points by natural healing, that cancelled the Aid for those points. This is simple, intuitive, and only requires the player (or GM) to track how much healing the character actually has (in total) at any one time. It also plays well with all the other rules about adjustment powers. It's not a perfect solution though, since it still requires tracking how much Aid the character is carrying instead of just their current BOD, and it also makes very powerful healing quite expensive (though I suppose you can argue that it should be). It also does not handle recovering from blinding, loss of limbs, etc., though those are all optional rules.

 

And it's not as simple as the suggested Healing rules for 6E, which is just "you can only use this one particular power once per day per recipient".

 

What we typically want out of healing is that it is a limited resource, but one that is easy to apply. I'd be interested to hear if anybody else has ideas about how to tackle this - either adapting existing rules or completely new ones, because I don't have a great answer.

 

cheers, Mark

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I like that approach. It suggests a magic system where the healing spell is sort of providing a temporary stand in for the body while the body has a chance to heal- like a cast around a broken limb, or an internal mesh. Hm.

 

 

Would you consider pushing the fade rate to a yearly basis to be an attempt to gain a limitation on a power that isn't limiting though?

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Most Hero system games don't run that way, as far as I can work out, so it means making the "standard" - by the rules - something that isn't standard in games. Essentially it's like saying "Here's the rule: we suggest you don't use it." So it would be simpler in conception but actually make most GMs' role harder, which is almost always a sign of poor design.

Not directly related, but that's basically what happened to the HKA. No limit to damage added by STR, but we suggest you will want to limit it anyway. I think the biggest issue is neither the default for healing nor the default for Regeneration, but the fact that these defaults have completely different results. I think the 5er approach (a single power that heals damage) was the better approach. Then we just have to assess the appropriate pricing.

  

 

So how do we do it better? Healing is (as currently defined in the rules) a kind-of, sort-of adjustment power. The major differences are that a) it doesn't bring you up above starting values and b ) it does not fade. If we built Healing with Aid, a) is covered by "only restores to starting values" (-1/2) and b ) is covered by pushing the fade rate down to 5 per year (+3 1/4) for a total cost of 13 points per d6. After all, if you have any REC at all, you are going to have long since recovered the BOD healed by then. The difference between "fades after a year" and "never fades" is so small it can safely be ignored in this case. This is simply cumulative, but Aid still has a maximum (ie: the maximum you can roll on the dice). This was essentially how I ran Healing in my last campaign, under 5E rules, with the caveat that since the Aid only restored lost points, once you had recovered any points by natural healing, that cancelled the Aid for those points. This is simple, intuitive, and only requires the player (or GM) to track how much healing the character actually has (in total) at any one time. It also plays well with all the other rules about adjustment powers. It's not a perfect solution though, since it still requires tracking how much Aid the character is carrying instead of just their current BOD, and it also makes very powerful healing quite expensive (though I suppose you can argue that it should be). It also does not handle recovering from blinding, loss of limbs, etc., though those are all optional rules.

It`s an approach, anyway. I think that many games will want the option of a decreased re-use time, though. The D&D Wand of CWL effect, for example. The ability should be possible, and individual games can set their own limits. And we still have that dichotomy that Regeneration is unlimited, where Healing essentially just doubles the character`s available BOD.

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