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Cure Disease, an alternate


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So, Cure Disease.

I've typically built this as a transformation: target into exact copy of target, but cured of disease.  That's a bit like dialing a phone with a set of 300 ton waldoes, though. Its overbuilding.

 

It seems to me that if you can heal someone to regrow a limb you can heal them to end diseases or poisons in their system in a similar manner.  So just buying the "can heal limbs" advantage ought to be enough. A limitation of "only to cure disease" (-1, since it restores no body and cannot be used to stick a toe back on) seems proper.  The character gets none of the stats back they lost from the disease, but is no longer sick.

 

I dunno, this seems cheap but reasonable.

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Cure (but not Heal) Disease: (Total: 10 Active Cost, 4 Real Cost) Life Support (Immunity: All terrestrial diseases), Usable As Attack (+1), Grantor pays the END whenever the power is used (10 Active Points); Limited Power Only confers immunity for diseases the target happens to be suffering at the time of casting (-1), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Incantations ("You're not sick anymore" ; -1/4) (Real Cost: 4)

 

Target becomes immune to diseases already present, and suffers no further harm from them.

 

Heal (but not Cure) Disease: (Total: 45 Active Cost, 10 Real Cost) Healing whatever ails you 1d6+1, Can Heal Limbs, Characteristics Powers or Abilities lost to disease (+1/2), Expanded Effect (x3 Characteristics or Powers simultaneously) (+1) (45 Active Points); Damage Over Time, Lock out (cannot be applied multiple times) (9-12 damage increments, damage occurs every 1 Hour, -1 1/2), Extra Time (1 Minute, Only to Activate, Character May Take No Other Actions, -1), Gestures (Requires both hands; -1/2), Incantations ("You'll feel better tomorrow" ; -1/4) (Real Cost: 10)

 

Repairs the ravages of disease, but doesn't stop a disease from continuing to ravage.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wants to cure a ham and heel a dog

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The problems with the Life Support version are several.

 

1) If you have any sort of "spell slots" system in your game, you've just taken one up for every cure you cast.

2) You have to make the life support outlast the disease, which can last weeks

3) It doesn't actually cure the disease, so if dispelled before the disease time is up, it comes back.

 

Because as I see it, LS doesn't heal anything, it just prevents you from being affected by it.  Kind of like how if you give someone LS vs sleep, they just don't need to sleep... while the spell is in effect, then are tired when it wears off.  Or LS vs breathing, they need to start breathing again when its gone.  LS vs heat: they're immediately hot and damaged again by the heat around them.  Its not a cure, its a temporary pause.

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Curing Disease is a problem area because there is no official advise for how diseases should be built or represented with Game Elements. It is really hard to counter something without some idea of how it is supposed to be built. As such, Transform is the most common method because Transform is a catch-all power.

Off the top of my head, I feel like most diseases should be constructed such that they can be targeted by an appropriately built Dispel power, since Dispel is the power most mechanically suited to ending what is principally a abnormal continuous effect.

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Yes, which means if the cure is dispelled, the character can get sick again. But that doesn't mean they stay sick. They're NOT sick. They're immune to being sick. They stop being sick. Then later, of course, they can GET sick again.

 

But if you want it as part of Healing I would say instead of using "Regrow Limbs" I'd make it a Custom Adders priced at whatever you think appropriate.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

If I have Life Support: Need No Sleep and Immune to Disease, I will never get sick and tired of palindromedary taglines.

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My problem with dispel is that it is a push.  It's just as powerful as whatever the campaign maximum is, for the same points.  For 60 points I can either have a 12d6 blast, or stop a 12d6 blast.  In Hero metarules terms, the "defense" is as expensive as the attack.  It takes so many dice to get a fairly small effect (or get really lucky) that its expensive to remove even a small effect.  Let's say you give someone the sniffles: ½d6 drain CON, END, REC, and DEX, DOT 1 increment every day for 3 days, recover per week.  They're just gonna feel achey and ill, but otherwise can act.

 

But that's 24 active points, which means on average to reliably dispel it I need 7d6 of Dispel, or 21 points.  Sure, I could roll well and just use 4d6, but I have to roll all 6's to get there.  I can even roll all 1's and/or 2's and do nothing with the 7d6.  To make that affect any sniffles-based power, it costs even more (+½ for 31 points).  Dispel is, in my opinion, too expensive for what it gives you.  And consider: how often do you see it used in any game, anywhere?  Fantasy Hero people have a dispel magic, but where else?  Sometimes someone has a fire extinguisher.

 

Why not?  Because it takes up a phase to use, costs a lot to work, and someone can just turn the power back on.

 

But that doesn't mean they stay sick. They're NOT sick. They're immune to being sick.

 

 

Well, bear with me here, maybe I'm thinking too literally.  But being immune to something doesn't make it go away.  If I light you on fire, and then you become temporarily immune to heat damage, the fire doesn't go out.  If you have a disease on you (a DOT or something) and you become immune to it temporarily, that doesn't make the disease power go away.  In game terms and in logic terms... all you did was have a temporary protection from the disease.  Then you are suffering from it again when the Life Support goes away.

 

Life Support isn't a dispel or a heal, it just gives you the ability to temporarily ignore the effects of your environment.

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To me, and this is purely my own aesthetic, Curing a disease and Healing the damage done are two very different stages. For a really simple example, if a disease does Body damage and is Cured after doing 5 Body, then the character would still have to Heal another 5 Body. To Cure the disease, I would use Dispel versus however I have the disease power written up. To Heal, would be the Healing power or even natural healing. If the disease causes some sort of permanent disfigurement, the Healing would have to have the Heals Limbs adder.

 

I like the Immunity part, but I would literally have that be a linked effect as sort of a "flu shot" effect to whatever cure spell is applied. Consider that stolen if I should ever use that.

 

That entire model is predicated on a somewhat realistic expectation. To do both at once, I might have the disease power built with the "reasonably common method of being turned off" be a healing spell/gadget with a "Cure Disease" adder. I prefer the first method, but in games that are more cinematic/comic book-y, then having a simpler option on the table would be appropriate.

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 If I light you on fire, and then you become temporarily immune to heat damage, the fire doesn't go out.

Doesn't it? If its fuel just became nonflammable, why does it NOT go out?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says that's the burning question

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Doesn't it? If its fuel just became nonflammable, why does it NOT go out?

 

 

For two reasons:

 

1) you didn't use a dispel on the power

2) the fuel of a continuous flame attack is the END paid into it, so its irrelevant if you're immune to fire or not

3) if it wasn't built as a continuous END attack, your clothing etc isn't immune to fire, so it can keep burning.

 

Life Support doesn't delete attacks or dispel anything.  Its only 3 points for a reason.  Whether the special effect "makes sense" that it should go out, that doesn't rewrite game mechanics.  I understand the thinking: if you're immune to a disease, it can't take hold in your body and goes away.  But that doesn't work in game terms.

 

Which brings us to a related concept: how do you cure blindness?  Flash is an instant attack, it does segments of blindness, but the attack is gone, there's nothing to dispel.  Its like a blast that deals body, you can't dispel the blast, because it was instant.  So how do you remove those segments?  The 6th edition rules suggest this:

 

At the GM’s option, a character may buy a form of Simplified Healing that uses the Standard Effect Rule to restore Senses temporarily lost due to Flash. Each “Normal Damage BODY” rolled on the Flash Healing dice removes 1 Segment of Flash effect.

 

 

In other words, you can choose to use healing to heal something which ordinarily has no regular manner of eliminating in the game.  I would suggest that this system is grossly expensive, though: 10 points to maybe eliminate 1-2 segments of flash?

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Life Support (Safe In Heat) doesn't protect you from attacks with the Heat/Fire special effect, it simply makes you immune to the effects of higher than comfort zone Temperature Levels. Likewise if a Continuous NND Attack Power has its defense defined as "Immunity To Poison", the power doesn't fail to activate, or deactivate if you gain the appropriate defense because nothing in the rules says it does. You simply don't take damage from being subject to the effect for as long as you have the appropriate Defense. Once you lose the defense, the power will start damaging you again if it is still active.

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Ooh! Reading this I had a crazy idea...

 

What about 1pip killing attack, one hex area effect, only against <disease causing organisms>??

 

You kill all the bacteria, viruses, nematodes etc in that one hex....that cause disease...

 

I think you can hand wave the detail of commensalistic microflora and microfauna or you can require the healer to first identify the disease, through relevant sense power, then kill the blighters....

 

 

Doc

 

Ps: you might need indirect to reflect the fact that the disease is within a host, or perhaps NND? Still does not amount to a great deal of points....

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Cure (but not Heal) Disease: (Total: 10 Active Cost, 4 Real Cost) Life Support (Immunity: All terrestrial diseases), Usable As Attack (+1), Grantor pays the END whenever the power is used (10 Active Points); Limited Power Only confers immunity for diseases the target happens to be suffering at the time of casting (-1), Costs Endurance (Only Costs END to Activate; -1/4), Incantations ("You're not sick anymore" ; -1/4) (Real Cost: 4)

 

Target becomes immune to diseases already present, and suffers no further harm from them.

 

Heal (but not Cure) Disease: (Total: 45 Active Cost, 10 Real Cost) Healing whatever ails you 1d6+1, Can Heal Limbs, Characteristics Powers or Abilities lost to disease (+1/2), Expanded Effect (x3 Characteristics or Powers simultaneously) (+1) (45 Active Points); Damage Over Time, Lock out (cannot be applied multiple times) (9-12 damage increments, damage occurs every 1 Hour, -1 1/2), Extra Time (1 Minute, Only to Activate, Character May Take No Other Actions, -1), Gestures (Requires both hands; -1/2), Incantations ("You'll feel better tomorrow" ; -1/4) (Real Cost: 10)

 

Repairs the ravages of disease, but doesn't stop a disease from continuing to ravage.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wants to cure a ham and heel a dog

 

I think you people are looking too hard at the rules. You've forgotten special effects play a role in this, not just the rules. To me, Lucius' build here I think is the simplest and best build.

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Going over dispel my understanding is that if I'm affected by rabies (drain) and a castor casts dispel, he can stop the power from causing further harm however any damage done is still present. Healing thou would be used to heal that damage back to normal. 

 

 

Right, dispel stops the power that's causing the damage, but the damage remains.  Its like dispelling a continuous fire damage attack, all that stun and body you took still needs to be recovered from.

 

The problem here is that people are thinking of disease as "I got the flu" rather than an actual power with a disease special effect someone put on you.

 

If I build a disease as ½d6 drain CON, BOD, and END, Damage Over Time (5 increments, once every 5 hours), and give it the special effect disease, then someone gaining life support vs disease doesn't make that DOT stop or go away.  The power is still there, no matter if I'm immune to its effects or not.  There's nothing about drain or DOT that makes it suddenly stop functioning because someone has life support.  All that does is make them not suffer its effects as long as they have life support.  

 

Life Support is not a super cheap Dispel power.  That DOT still keeps ticking off its increments until its done or dispelled (or transformed).  It just doesn't harm you as long as you are immune to its effects

 

Its the same as if I build a drain based on heat which LS: temperature extremes would render me immune to.  Its not nonexistent, just not bothering you at the moment.

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I think you people are looking too hard at the rules. You've forgotten special effects play a role in this, not just the rules. To me, Lucius' build here I think is the simplest and best build.

Special effect is largely irrelevant and can be anything, that is one of the core principles of Hero. Unless a game element references a special effect specifically (such as Damage Reduction or Vulnerabilities often do) it has no impact on the actual effect of that game element.

For example, a Dispel Summon power could be called "Banishment" and have the special effect of "sending summoned beings home". However by the RAW, it could also Dispel a Summon power whose special effect is "Created a Robot from nearby parts" unless said power took some modifier preventing it from doing so (such as Conditional). Yet said Banishment power could not Dispel a Blast whose special effect was "A demon is momentarily summoned to attack the target" even though that is totally in keeping with its special effect.

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That's looking only at the rules, ignoring the special effects. Life Support isn't a catch-all. However, the defense of a power should be cheaper than the attack (I forgot the reference). Example: a 10d6 Flash Attack costing 50 pts for whatever reason can be absolutely nullified by 20 pts of appropriate Flash Defense.

 

There is NO one way to build a disease power. One person might say it's a 2d6 Con Drain, another a Body drain, and on & on. However, what is common about them? The special effect is that it's a disease, however it's built. Special effect is not irrelevant.

 

In the same manner that someone can build a disease attack different ways, no one person will build the the defense the same way. Someone wants Dispel, someone wants LS: Disease, etc.   Everyone can build it as they like, along with the defense you think is appropriate for your campaign. No one way fits all, because that's the game system. Just don't forget special effects are very much a part of the game, not just the rules. In some cases, I say special effects overrule game mechanics: As GM, I don't care how big your Drain vs Body is (special effect being water sucked out of your body), it's not going to affect a dry rock.  Special effects have a say-so in how powers (game mechanics) operate. 

 

The fantastic thing that makes the hero system wonderful is it's diverseness. You can build an power different ways, the same goes for the defense. It depends on you and your campaign.

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For rules discussions, I only look at the rules as they are actually written. Otherwise I cite when I am making up house rules. Special Effect never overrules Actual Effect (I.E. Game Elements). Special Effect only affects the operation of Game Elements when Game Elements say so. For example, you can define a 6d6 Blast as being an "Instant Sleep Deprivation" attack, but Life Support (Does Not Sleep) won't protect you from the attack unless the attack has a modifier (like Conditional or NND) that says life support protects the target from it.

If you want Special Effects to be have an impact on game play, you have back them up with the appropriate Game Elements.

 

If I am writing a spell that does Killing Damage by "breaking the target's bones", you can bet it will have a limitation stating it doesn't work on targets without Skeletons... Even if my GM thinks that is a -0 limitation, it'll still be there. Because if is isn't, by RAW I can break rocks and wood planks with it.

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For rules discussions, I only look at the rules as they are actually written. Otherwise I cite when I am making up house rules. Special Effect never overrules Actual Effect (I.E. Game Elements). Special Effect only affects the operation of Game Elements when Game Elements say so. For example, you can define a 6d6 Blast as being an "Instant Sleep Deprivation" attack, but Life Support (Does Not Sleep) won't protect you from the attack unless the attack has a modifier (like Conditional or NND) that says life support protects the target from it.

If you want Special Effects to be have an impact on game play, you have back them up with the appropriate Game Elements.

 

If I am writing a spell that does Killing Damage by "breaking the target's bones", you can bet it will have a limitation stating it doesn't work on targets without Skeletons... Even if my GM thinks that is a -0 limitation, it'll still be there. Because if is isn't, by RAW I can break rocks and wood planks with it.

 

I believe the 6th edition rules see it otherwise. See Champions Complete page 6-7. It talks about you deciding on the special effects, then states: "This has important ramifications for how you create your character and his abilities. To get the most enjoyment out of Champions - to take advantage of the enormous creative freedom it offers - you have to Reason From Special effects."

 

We see things differently, and that's okay. Like I've said elsewhere, campaigns are all different, including how the rules are used. Paraphrasing what one poster said (forgot who): No one's going to knock on your door and say 'Hey, that's not how the rules are used.'

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See Champions Complete page 6-7. It talks about you deciding on the special effects, then states: "This has important ramifications for how you create your character and his abilities. To get the most enjoyment out of Champions - to take advantage of the enormous creative freedom it offers - you have to Reason From Special effects."

I interpret that principle as a recommendation to do exactly what I've done in my examples. If the special effect of my Blast power is "breaking bones", then it is obviously going to have fewer applications than a Blast with the special effect of "spheres of force". Therefore it should have a limitation which represents that fact. That is how I choose to "Reason From Special Effects". I don't see that principle as an excuse to ignore the rules, I see it as a call to use the rules to create the effect I actually want.

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This has dissolved from the original post. We can discuss how we view rules somewhere else. However, I'll end my discussion with this: I see special effects as the ruling force and I will ignore powers when necessary when they go against the obvious special effects just because a power isn't built just-ever-quite-so-right.

 

I guess a dispel would work for cure disease but what are you going to make the dispel against? A disease could be built as a KA, so Dispel fails there. A disease of the mind could be Mental Attack theoretically. As I said, there are numerous ways to build any power, and building a Cure Disease will be different for each GM to decide on.

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I guess a dispel would work for cure disease but what are you going to make the dispel against? A disease could be built as a KA, so Dispel fails there. A disease of the mind could be Mental Attack theoretically. As I said, there are numerous ways to build any power, and building a Cure Disease will be different for each GM to decide on.

Oh that is the simplest thing. There is a modifier for Dispel which allows it to target Game Elements by their special effects. For example:

Dispel Disease ?d6, Variable Effect (Any Disease; +1/2) (? APs). Total Cost:  ? points.

is a legal game construct that will dispel any disease whose active points it overcomes. Regardless of how that disease was defined, so long as it is still active.

Naturally, any damage you suffered from the Disease remains, but:

Healing Disease ?d6, Variable Effect (Any Disease;+1/2) (? APs). Total Cost:  ? points.

is also a legal game construct that will heal any form of damage caused by a Disease (such as lost BODY & STUN, or Drained Characteristics).

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Diseases & Poisons tend to be fairly expensive too, but not always. For example, the very lethal disease possessed by the Plague Zombie in the downloads section (shameless self promotion) is only 25 APs. So you could Dispel it instantly with a Standard Effect 9d6 Dispel (40 APs using the build above).

You could probabaly bring the total cost down by using a smaller Dispel, but making it Constant, and Cumulative up to an obscene point total. You can produce some pretty crazy effects very cheaply by putting a huge number of Advantages on a low-Dice power.

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