Healing as a super power

[dsatow]

Does it make sense for superheroes to be out about fighting as superheroes if they have healing?  A long time ago, friends I gamed with in a modern superhero game basically said, if you think about it, if you can heal and wanted to be a superhero, you'd do work in a hospital emergency center or a clinic.  What do you think about this comment?

[Tjack]

   Oh!  You mean Healing Useable On Others!  I didn’t understand the sentence at first. 
  As to the question, in game terms that would be a great Psychological Disadvantage.  And it would be a great roleplay opportunity. 
  And for the “real world” part, no one should be forced to take on such an emotionally draining calling against their will.  Ask yourselves if it would be fair for someone to be given tests in school highlighting their strengths and then being assigned a career track.   Divergent and Handmaids Tale come to mind.

[csyphrett]

I'm reading a web serial where the heroine had no powers at first, picked up healing of herself and others, and became one of the most powerful people around. She is at the point now where she can heal almost total annihilation of her body

CES 

[Mr. R]

Super strong guy, why are you not in construction?

 

Fly guy with LS and TK, why are you not helping place satelittes in orbit and getting debris down?

 

Underwater swim guy, can you go down and check on all those oil wells and make sure they are all up to code?

 

M. Millionaire, why are you using your money to fund a violent fantasy lifestyle?  

 

We could go on!

 

Even better:

 

Healer kidnaped to be personal slave to billionaire.

 

The reason we don't do that is because this is a wish fulfillment medium.   Real world,... well we can imagine RW (take Marvel Mutants and dial it to 11)

 

So if someone made a healer type (and I did have one in my old game.  Healing, FF and NND EB) this type of conversation would be of the ARE we talking about possible Plot Points OR is this just some passive aggressive griping?

[Asperion]

This effectively gets back to the occupation question for various characters.  Just like RE people are often drawn to professions that are outside their body types (body builders working in IT) the same would happen in a game world.  In this case,  the character with healing powers might be drawn to some other profession (eg construction). If that's the case,  then let them have that other occupation instead of forcing them into something that they wouldn't like. 

[Grailknight]

Yes.

 

Superheroes are the ultimate first responders. So being able to save that life on-site rather than as it comes into the hospital is going to be more effective in most cases. Dying in transit and in some cases even hospitalization can be averted which will free up more resources for everyone.

 

Plus most superhero healing is of physical trauma and not poison or illness. The healers that can do those are rare and they are the ones whose stories will touch on the ethical issues you bring up. Empathic Healing (like in the classic Trek episode or even stronger versions such as Redo Of Healer) isn't something that one should be forced to perform. Overuse often causes exhaustion and PTSD or death and insanity at the extreme. And then we get the thorny issue of deciding who gets healed and in what priority? Is it the healer? Is it monetized? Or are they under the orders or coercion of a third party? You can tell good stories here but they are usually darker than the standard genre deals with.

 

I'm reminded of a web-comic where a heroine had super regeneration. She voluntarily allowed her internal organs to be removed and used as donors and lived  in the hospital between her daily surgeries. Even though she voluntarily does this most of the other characters wanted to stop her or considered her insane. Imagine how horrific this would be if she was imprisoned and forced to this instead.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

The best way to use healing (and similar powers) in a game is to utterly disregard the ethical and broader implications.  Otherwise it ends up a miserable guilt fest with the hero spending all day healing everyone at a hospital and wandering the world 23 hours a day using their powers on everyone.  In order for superhero stuff to work, you have to disregard a lot of the "how could I use this power best and most nobly" stuff for "how can I have fun adventures using this power".

[Tom Cowan]

How would a healer get there medical license? I could see some if not most medical boards trying to shut the hero down because they can not heal the same way and the hero may not have even gotten a PhD.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

I could see some if not most medical boards trying to shut the hero down because they can not heal the same way and the hero may not have even gotten a PhD.

 

 

Yeah if you wanted to do a really gritty, grim sort of game you would have that kind of thing happen.  Hospital administrators fearing lawsuits and angry at the loss of revenue.  Doctors upset that the healer makes them look bad and isn't using "proper medicine".  Insurance companies suing because they fear liability when some healer fixes a problem and it goes wrong.  Patients suing healers and attacking them because while you healed their broken leg, they later got the flu and its your fault, somehow.

 

All reasons not to have that kind of thing in a game that's allegedly about having fun.

[Echo3Niner]

As I posted in another thread:  You mean, "What if this wasn't a comic book?"  If this was real life, and some people had powers, can you imagine how bad that would go?  Comic books are  what they are, for a reason...  They cater to all our inner desires to imagine ourselves heroes, in all the myriad forms that can take.  But, that is not reality...  That's why they're called "escapism"...

 

The movies Chronicle, Brightburn and series The Boys anyone?  And frankly, those are light weight as to what I think it would really be like...  Caligula, with unstoppable personal power vs. political?

 

How are "faith-healers" treated, until their "healing" is proven untrue?  Now, what if they could really do it?  None of these people are working in a hospital; that's far too small scale, and not controlled by anyone "important"...

 

It would depend on how much healing, and how common it was with other supers...  If you could basically make someone immortal, and you were the only one?  EVERY. SINGLE. super-villain, just "plain-ole" villain, rich person, powerful person, dictator, father who's child is dying, etc., etc., etc. would be trying to force the "hero" to save them/theirs.

 

It would be post-apocalyptic on a scale hard to imagine.

 

 

[Grailknight]

I don't really see it as post-apocalyptic as much as I see an elitist totalitarian dystopia. Nothing stops charismatic supers from taking control of the government legally and changing it over the course of a generation or two. This would be especially true if the possibility of becoming a super was random, spread across all ethnic groups and occurred in over 5-10% of the population. If supers are numerous enough they will become a de facto ruling class. Would there be violent resistance? Yes, but That same resistance will face legal ramifications if they don't secure the government. So I see two outcomes, supers being an elite ruling nobility or supers being enslaved and tightly pressed by the state. Neither is truly hopeful although they both can have improvements and reforms over time but I don't see a total societal breakdown.

[Christopher R Taylor]

For me, this kind of thing is good for background: why things are the way they are now, and now the heroes fight against this setting to fix it.

[Echo3Niner]

On 1/3/2022 at 8:37 PM, Grailknight said:

I don't really see it as post-apocalyptic as much as I see an elitist totalitarian dystopia. Nothing stops charismatic supers from taking control of the government legally and changing it over the course of a generation or two. This would be especially true if the possibility of becoming a super was random, spread across all ethnic groups and occurred in over 5-10% of the population. If supers are numerous enough they will become a de facto ruling class. Would there be violent resistance? Yes, but That same resistance will face legal ramifications if they don't secure the government. So I see two outcomes, supers being an elite ruling nobility or supers being enslaved and tightly pressed by the state. Neither is truly hopeful although they both can have improvements and reforms over time but I don't see a total societal breakdown.

 

Perhaps in some countries...  But, the "this or that" scenario you paint is a very "western-centric" way of thinking.

 

Imagine your scenario again; only this time imagine it all over the Earth, right now...  Think of all the other scenarios where this could happen...  How about just Somalia as an example?  No functional government to speak of, run by war lords - now add supers to the mix?

 

Let's not even get into the middle East?  The islands of SE Asia?  Just imagine...

[Grailknight]

59 minutes ago, Echo3Niner said:

 

Perhaps in some countries...  But, the "this or that" scenario you paint is a very "western-centric" way of thinking.

 

Imagine your scenario again; only this time imagine it all over the Earth, right now...  Think of all the other scenarios where this could happen...  How about just Somalia as an example?  No functional government to speak of, run by war lords - now add supers to the mix?

 

Let's not even get into the middle East?  The islands of SE Asia?  Just imagine...

 

In those situations Supers would likely ascend to the ruling class, be they warlords, generals or "elected" leaders for life. The Middle Eastern countries might be able to reign them in and place them under government control but not if they are too numerous or individually powerful.

 

I don't see those regions as fostering some type of apocalyptic exchange. A ruling class of Supers wants to reduce the WMD's because that would be the major threat to them. Barring a madman or religious fanatic, conquerors want to rule not raze.  I don't doubt that there would be massacres and atrocities but in the kind of scenarios you propose, the civilians will capitulate to the winning supers before both sides are eliminated.

[LoneWolf]

If healing is the only power they have it might not make sense for them to be out fighting as super heroes.  If on the other hand the healing is only one of their multiple powers it makes more sense.

[Christopher R Taylor]

There is a good reason why so few healer characters exist in the comics and its because of all the ethical concerns as well as making a lot of dramatic concerns trivial.

[steriaca]

16 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

If healing is the only power they have it might not make sense for them to be out fighting as super heroes.  If on the other hand the healing is only one of their multiple powers it makes more sense.

Well, if a healer can heal with powers, then they can "unheal" also. If they heal limbs by picturing in there minds a mot broken arm, for example, they can picture a broken leg and cause an enimie to have a broken leg.

 

With enough practice and knowledge of what broken insides looks like, the healer can be a powerhouse in battle. Smoker's Lung. Broken back. Diabetic kidneys. Swollen prostrate. Heart attack. Brain damage. 

[dsatow]

Interesting takes by people.

 

I was only thinking about the philosophical implications.  If a hero wanted to help others (i.e. a Superman style of motivation), would they really reach as many people to help going out and stopping crime.  To be honest, my answer to this after some thought was that many physical traumas can be serviced by normal medical professionals.  But its hard to help people whose skin can bounce bullets.  The superhero with healing is there for those heroes and may help the normals in hospitals when not doing superhero duty.

 

 

[DoctorImpossible]

Having the physical capacity of a healing super-power doesn't mean that they have the psychological inclination towards, or a desire for, a position in a hospital or any of the other IRL "healer" jobs. 

 

On the other hand, having no super-power that seems very combative or whatever is no impediment at all to many, many people who have gone on to be nonpowered but still a super-hero or super-villain. You are actually already a step up the power list, as a person who *does* have super-powers.

[unclevlad]

On 1/7/2022 at 2:47 AM, dsatow said:

Interesting takes by people.

 

I was only thinking about the philosophical implications.  If a hero wanted to help others (i.e. a Superman style of motivation), would they really reach as many people to help going out and stopping crime.  To be honest, my answer to this after some thought was that many physical traumas can be serviced by normal medical professionals.  But its hard to help people whose skin can bounce bullets.  The superhero with healing is there for those heroes and may help the normals in hospitals when not doing superhero duty.

 

 

It is tricky, but a superhero doesn't have to be about fighting crime per se.  As Grailknight wrote...supers are the ultimate first responders.  So perhaps they don't "fight crime" in the normal sense.  But should regular supers be doing that routinely, as a focus?  That's what cops are for.  The best exploration on this, IMO, is Marion G. Harmon's Wearing the Cape books.  

 

So in the context here...a healer would clearly be immensely valuable in an accident situation, where time can be critical.  Or if there's a high risk of a throwdown between some heroes and wrong-minded supers, the risk of collateral damage is high.  Perhaps they don't get involved in the fight per se, unless necessary, but there's a high risk that innocent normals will get caught up in it.  

 

But these don't happen that often.  So what does the healer do for the rest of that time?  There are so few examples in comics that we don't think of the SFX of a healer, and thereby, the limitations.  Can the healer neutralize poisons, cure infectious diseases?  How about genetically-linked issues, or breakdown-related conditions like diabetes?  Yeah, it was pointed out:  digging TOO deep can be not-fun...but laying down some ground rules can also help define how healers and healing can work in the campaign, especially if there *are* some parameters and bounds placed on what healers generally can do.  

 

(I've got a "shifter-healer" concept.  Think Shape Shift (human only, body only) that's also "usable on others" defined as healing.  Set broken bones?  Yes.  Remove bullet fragments?  Probably.  Close wounds without stitches?  Absolutely.  Cure diseases, counter poisons?  Not so much...but the first extension, that might not even need an explicit power, is a touch-based Sense that guides the Healing.  Where are the bullet fragments?  Where and how did the bone fracture?  (Which is why it need not cost points, as it can be viewed as implied by the Healing power.)  Well, maybe the healer can't cure a disease, but CAN be an awesome diagnostic tool.  Here, he works with the doctors, which would also alleviate at least some of the tensions and issues with licensing over time.  

 

Also of note:  "he fixed my leg but this happened!!" would resolve fairly quickly, if there's cooperation in place between the normal doctors and the healers that's developed over time.  Much of the antagonistic aspects discussed early in the thread would resolve themselves.

 

Finally...another point commonly made in urban supers lit...supers are generally rare.  Healers are just a subset, so they're even more rare...the degree is at GM discretion.  Maybe most can't handle the really big stuff as well;  another common element is that there's a hundred people who can flip a car, for the one that can flip the tank.  So maybe there's just a handful of healers in the entire US, that can do practically anything.

 

 

[unclevlad]

BTW, to avoid the "healer is going through hospitals 16 hours a day"...require that Healing, which does cost END, is powered from an END Reserve.  The size is variable;  base it on the number of full-power Healings.  But keep the REC *way* down...1 per minute, or even 1 per 5 minutes.  So maybe the healer can apply full power 6-8 times...that should be fine for a combat situation...but he's out of juice for a couple of hours, potentially.  A corollary is, he's not gonna burn all his juice on a regular basis handling routine cases...he'd always keep something in the tank for a true emergency.

[dsatow]

One solution to the problem, is magical healing.  If you go to hospital, you might have problems with magical healing.  Here are some issues:

 

1) Magic is believed not to exist.  Hospitals are all about repeatable proven scientific results, which is why most do not go in for homeopathic or hearsay cures.

2) Magic is the work of the devil.  If a born again Christian was healed by the power of "Azarath Metrion Zinthos", a law suit again as well as protests and boycotting.

3) Magic is dangerous.  If a hospital used "magical" healing and things didn't turn out right, they'd be in for a law suit.  So even if it does work, the plantiff can say that the magic also made them impotent and are suing for damages and emotional distress.

[Echo3Niner]

I find it interesting; this whole "because they've got X powers, wouldn't they have to do Y?"  "Have to do"?

 

I have Designated Marksman training.  I went to Sniper School.  I have used those skill in war zones.  No one came a long and said; "Hey, since you have these skills and training, you have to go join a police force now and be a sniper."

 

I also don't hunt; because frankly it isn't a challenge; no one has made me.  I'm actually an IT guy...

 

Does the Human Torch have to go around starting BBQs and camp fires?

 

Does Hydro have to go around fighting fires?

 

If you follow this logic - why doesn't Reed Richards have to put his brilliance to work solving global climate change, the trash problem, or curing cancer?

 

Why doesn't Storm have to go around stopping every tornado, hurricane, etc. from causing any damage or loss of life?

 

Why doesn't Tony Stark and Forge have to build clean energy and then share it with the world?

 

I could go on and on, there are a gazillion examples.  I have a very simple answer; based on my initial point about my personal skills; because it's not realistic, it doesn't happen - and second, because it would be a boring comic book, if that's all the heroes ever do...

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well there is an ethical difference between "I have a skill" and "I can save lives"

[dsatow]

I think there is a misunderstanding.  It's not must do, it's why would they not do this instead of this.

 

Say you have a deep desire to stop Martians from taking over the Earth.  You have a rather unique ability, say 1 in 10,000,000 of being able to see these aliens.  No one else can see the aliens.  Specialized machines can target these aliens, but the machines only takes photos and the photos take an hour or two to process.  Like humans, the aliens tend to move around and can be killed with conventional weaponry if they are detected.  You say you want to fight aliens by driving trucks for soldiers to areas where the Martians are but NOT get involved in the actual spotting or fighting of the aliens.  You are not a pacifist or have any moral ground against killing the aliens.  Aliens can be bombed by the air force so long as they stay in a general area they have been detected.  Is this the correct action of a character who wants to fight aliens?