Healing w/Damage Over Time Advantage

[Steve]

How would the following power build work exactly?

 

Healing BODY 4d6, Damage Over Time (4 damage increments, damage occurs every 20 Minutes, +1/4) (50 Active Points)

 

I've never tried adding DOT to Healing before so wasn't sure how it would affect the base ability.

 

I'm thinking you could be healed, then, if you got injured again after the first application of Healing was applied, you'd get automatically healed again twenty minutes after the first healing occurred, then you could get injured again then healed again twenty minutes later, and so on for a few iterations. This setup seems to function a bit like using the Decreased Re-Use Duration advantage without actually taking it.

 

Has anyone ever playtested this sort of Healing construct?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Damage over Time should probably have been called Effect Over Time, because pretty much any power that has a die roll can be worked through using DOT.  However, I suggest a few things be done if you allow HOT (Heal over Time) powers in your game.

 

First, HOT's ignore the once per day limitation on Healing.  Kind of like how DOT's ignore recovery times until they're finished cycling, HOTs are considered to be one slowly acting power, not a bunch of separate powers going off in sequence.

 

Second, treat Healing as an Adjustment Power so that it is subject to the "defensive powers" rule which limits the effectiveness of HOTs somewhat.

 

This gives you a pretty balanced, effective, useful, but somewhat expensive manner of healing people over a time period without the kludge of applying regeneration as an attack etc.

[unclevlad]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Second, treat Healing as an Adjustment Power so that it is subject to the "defensive powers" rule which limits the effectiveness of HOTs somewhat.

 

 

Healing is an adjustment power.

 

To OP:  far as I'm concerned, what this is attempting to do is sidestep Decreased Re-Use Duration...cheaper.  DRD for 20 minutes is a +3/4;  HD says this DoT is only +1/4.  And it allows the healer to be separate from the target, and only pay END once.  That alone bounces it;  DRD is the clearly preferred method.  When you try an oddball build ONLY to sidestep the direct method for cheaper?  No.

 

Logistically, my example also points out that DoT isn't Trigger.  The power's applied after the first attack, it heals all the damage.  There's nothing left over.  30 minutes later, take 9...well, that won't be healed until the next time increment, which is 10 minutes away.  You can argue that this reduces the effectiveness...true...but the counterbalance is that the healer might well be gone in any case.  

 

I'll grant that I hate DoT.  It's a very awkward construct that IMO has a place, modeling certain specific effects...but that doesn't mean it's one that should be considered for Anything I Want To Apply It To.  It's NOT effect, it's damage over time...that's clearly embodied in the fact that "target's defenses only apply the first time" is a major cost adjustment.  Defenses don't apply to beneficial effects.  

 

And hey...there's a big yellow warning sign on DoT...so it seems the designers agree with me, at least to some extent.