Aid and Healing Question

[Cloppy Clip]

I was looking through the 4E core book, and was wondering why Aid and Healing changed so much in between editions. In 4E they were one power, 5 points per 1d6 with Healing being a -1/2 Limitation on Aid, that also didn't fade away over time. Then in 5E it changes to two separate powers, each one 10 points per 1d6 (although Aid for some reason doesn't cost END in this edition), and now Healing has the re-use limit on it, which carries forward to 6E, in which Aid goes down to 6 points per 1d6 and costs END again.

 

So I can guess that Healing was considered too strong back in 4E, but that's a pretty steep change to make all in one go. Was it really that unbalanced in play for those who used it at the time? Or could this have been a bit of an over-correction? And why was one power split into two? I can see how intuitively it makes sense for Healing to be its own power, since people will look for it under that name, but was there a mechanical problem to having it be a part of Aid?

[Hugh Neilson]

4e Healing Aid was a problem.  Consider 1d6 Aid, 0 END, Healing Only, Persistent.  Now put it on STUN and END.  Every phase, the character recovers 1d6 STUN and 2d6 END .  For a 5 SPD Super, that's 17.5 STUN and 35 END back a turn.  Why buy REC at all?  Having all Aid also Heal made STUN and END Aid extremely powerful overall.

 

Aid costing 0 END was an outlier for attack powers - that was one key reason for restoring the END cost in 6e. 10/1.5 for Costs END was 6.67 points per die anyway, so 6 points was not much change there.

[Cloppy Clip]

Thank you, Hugh. Is this the sort of thing that worked all right for what the designers intended (Xd6 Aid, Healing Only for example), but quickly broke down when Advantages like Reduced Endurance and Persistent were applied? Or was the ability to repeatedly heal someone without having to wait 24 hours too powerful on its own?

 

And that's an interesting note on why Aid costs 6 points. Since all the other attacks are multiples of 5 I'd wondered about that. Now I know, so thank you for that tidbit!

[greypaladin_01]

Also I am a little less clear on 3rd edition and earlier, but Healing was it's own thing then and 4e folded it into Aid.   There were restrictions on how Healing worked in the older editions too.  5e I think was moving things back to earlier systems.

 

Don't have all the rules to compare for sure though.

[Cloppy Clip]

That's interesting. I only have the 4E core, and nothing from 3E or before, so I'd assumed earlier editions would have used the Healing-as-Aid model too. When you say restrictions, do you mean the same as 5E and 6E, or did it work in a different way to those editions?

[greypaladin_01]

You'll forgive me for going on very fuzzy memory on the difference between editions, others will hopefully correct me where wrong.   3e Healing required you to track each injury that a character takes because it could only heal on a per injury basis... or perhaps the most recent one.   I will try to dig out the older books and find more specifics later today.

[Hugh Neilson]

Unlimited healing is a major change to the dynamic in games where BOD damage is relevant.  BOD damage is pretty rare in most Supers games, but unlimited healing in a Fantasy or Sci-Fi game game tends to be more of an issue.  When all you need is 1d6 BOD healing, Extra Time - 1 turn to have the whole team hale and hearty 5 minutes after any battle, BOD damage becomes a lot less problematic.

[unclevlad]

Champions III has Healing, and it is as grey notes:  you have to keep track of each injury separately, because you can only Heal a particular injury once, and if you rolled higher than the BODY...it was wasted.  Of course...it was rolled as normal damage...you got back the pips of STUN, but only the BODY count in BODY.  So pretty much 1 pip of BODY for 10 points.  Yeah, PITA.  They clearly DON'T want it in the game.  C III, page 29:

 

Quote

Another reason Healing is optional is that it will change the dynamics of game play.  Characters will be more likely to fight while hurt if they know there's a Healer in the group.  Characters may be more likely to harm bystanders if they know they can fix them up afterwards.  The GM should be very selective about which characters can use Healing;  he may, in fact, want to restrict its use only to NPCs.

 

Wow.  So take some BODY, you're expected to back out?  That's not very heroic.  Yeah, some players might be less concerned about collateral damage, but this feels like tossing the baby out with the bath water.  

 

In Champions 3rd edition, there is no Aid or Healing in the core book, so the general antipathy remains.  There is Power Drain, but it's expensive with figured characteristics...DEX is 3 points per, so 6d6 of Drain DEX, for 60 points, only gets 7 DEX.  It's also very volatile;  the default is that the power recovers at a rate of 1 PP per *segment*, starting the segment after the Drain.  There's an adder to slow that down, but unless you really want to put a heckuva lotta points into it, it's not going to last.

 

In Hero 4E, we get a Drain that can actually last...so now there's need for Aid to counter it.  My thought is, they priced Aid as the reverse of Drain, to act as its counter, and didn't recognize the advantageous angle.  Yeah, if I'm reading it right...1d6 STUN Aid, Constant (+1), Persistent (+1)...15 points.  As Healing, 10 points.  1d6 BODY, same features?  10 points...for Regen that happens per phase.  Repeat END.  To be rude and obnoxious?  Put em into an EC.

 

So...yeah.  5E actually has a sideboard about the cost shift on page 133.  I don't know why they went to 0 END...perhaps they thought at 10 points per die, costing END, it was gonna be too hard to use.

 

So I'd say the changes from edition to edition reflect serious flaws in the earlier rules, potentially as well as ongoing attitude shifts towards healing in general.

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

5 hours ago, greypaladin_01 said:

You'll forgive me for going on very fuzzy memory on the difference between editions, others will hopefully correct me where wrong.   3e Healing required you to track each injury that a character takes because it could only heal on a per injury basis... or perhaps the most recent one.   I will try to dig out the older books and find more specifics later today.

 

 

It also had the stipulation that it healed STUN.  That it what it did.  You paid more to Regeneration, also a separate ability, which healed BODY.

 

Honestly, all the "problems" that were fixed in the newer editiin didnt exist until someone shoehorned them all into Aid in the first place.  It wasnt cost-effective under the old models to do what could be done using rhe Aid-derivative versions.

 

 

[Cloppy Clip]

Thank you for the added context, everyone. So it seems that 4E was something of an aberration when it came to Healing mechanics, which is a bit misleading when that's the earliest book I own!

 

12 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Unlimited healing is a major change to the dynamic in games where BOD damage is relevant.  BOD damage is pretty rare in most Supers games, but unlimited healing in a Fantasy or Sci-Fi game game tends to be more of an issue.  When all you need is 1d6 BOD healing, Extra Time - 1 turn to have the whole team hale and hearty 5 minutes after any battle, BOD damage becomes a lot less problematic.

 

Does that mean that, if I'm playing in a game that doesn't depend on attrition, unlimited healing would be mostly fine? As long as you're happy for characters to start each fight in top condition, which I feel is more accurate to a lot of genres we could use as inspiration, I think the main concern would be that Healing doesn't outpace damage. Is that accurate?

 

On 5/27/2023 at 4:53 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

4e Healing Aid was a problem.  Consider 1d6 Aid, 0 END, Healing Only, Persistent.  Now put it on STUN and END.  Every phase, the character recovers 1d6 STUN and 2d6 END .  For a 5 SPD Super, that's 17.5 STUN and 35 END back a turn.  Why buy REC at all?  Having all Aid also Heal made STUN and END Aid extremely powerful overall.

 

11 hours ago, unclevlad said:

In Hero 4E, we get a Drain that can actually last...so now there's need for Aid to counter it.  My thought is, they priced Aid as the reverse of Drain, to act as its counter, and didn't recognize the advantageous angle.  Yeah, if I'm reading it right...1d6 STUN Aid, Constant (+1), Persistent (+1)...15 points.  As Healing, 10 points.  1d6 BODY, same features?  10 points...for Regen that happens per phase.  Repeat END.  To be rude and obnoxious?  Put em into an EC.

 

I notice in both cases of 4E Healing being broken we're using 1d6 Aid with modifiers to keep it going all the time for free; does that mean that the problem was mostly with turning Healing into a cheap Regeneration, and not so much with the Healing itself? The page unclevlad mentioned in 5E Revised even says characters with Aid should be grandfathered in unless the GM found it unbalancing, which implies to me that for a lot of groups it wasn't too bad in play if you avoided the builds that gave you infinite Healing for free. But, of course, I wasn't playing at the time, so I don't have any firsthand experience myself.

[Doc Democracy]

Actually, my key issue with healing is during combat.  Damage outside of combat can be a bore.

 

I want the frisson of danger in combats, healing in combat takes away some of that and risks combats being even longer.

 

In combat, healing should be for avoiding death (rolling up a new character is a bigger bore than a long combat!).

 

My solution to the healing thing would have been to slap long times on it, hours to achieve unlimited healing.  Remove bureaucracy of tracking wounds, make instant stuff VERY expensive and allow the players to move on to the next interesting thing.

 

Doc

[Cloppy Clip]

That's a perspective I hadn't considered, Doc, and one that I think highlights the trouble of healing. You want healing to be difficult in combat, and don't mind it being easy to heal up out of combat. Someone else wants healing to be limited out of combat, but is all right with it keeping up with damage in combat. And a third person might just want healing to be easy full stop. It looks to me like there's not going to be one solution that suits all groups, which might go a way to explaining the different approaches to healing over the editions.

 

This thread's responses seem to say to me that, as long as it suit's the group's goals, there's no right or wrong way to go about it. 4E Healing might work for a larger-than-life superheroic game that doesn't mind protracted combat, while 5E and 6E Healing seems more suited for the attrition-based gameplay where characters wear down over the course of the adventure. So that seems to answer my original question of why they changed so dramatically: the designers just had different ideas in mind of how healing should play out.

 

I hope my threads asking questions like these don't wear too thin, but your collective experience with the game does really help me build a picture of things, so thank you very much, everyone!

[Doc Democracy]

Am always happy with folk coming in with questions.  Us old-timers have done all our talking, know our positions and so it can be kinda dull if new folk don't come round stirring things up! 🙂

[Hugh Neilson]

5 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

Actually, my key issue with healing is during combat.  Damage outside of combat can be a bore.

 

I want the frisson of danger in combats, healing in combat takes away some of that and risks combats being even longer.

 

In combat, healing should be for avoiding death (rolling up a new character is a bigger bore than a long combat!).

 

My solution to the healing thing would have been to slap long times on it, hours to achieve unlimited healing.  Remove bureaucracy of tracking wounds, make instant stuff VERY expensive and allow the players to move on to the next interesting thing.

 

That's basically the current model, IMO. Re-use times provide some in-combat utility, but after that, you are waiting a long time, or spending a lot to decrease the re-use time.  There are optional rules like tracking wounds, but there are lots of optional rules that rarely see use in Hero.

 

One very easy fix to out of combat healing would be a "cinematic healing" genre rule for specific campaigns.  Some published characters have "cinematic healing" powers of slow regeneration so BOD recovers outside combat much faster that 1 REC/month.  If it were, say, REC/day for this campaign, BOD damage would still be serious in combat, but a bit of down time, rather than a lengthy hospital stay, would deal with it.

 

BTW, my "1d6 Aid" example was a speedster with a heightened metabolism whose Aid was on "all characteristics below starting levels". The problems weren't realized until they became evident in play - such as "-45 STUN" for a 6 SPD character recovering 1d6/phase (21 STUN per turn) isn't very "a long time" any more.

[unclevlad]

You don't necessarily have to spend an arm and a leg for out-of-combat healing.  The key here is that when the re-use duration has expired, the maximum effect rule gets reset.  You're back to zero applied.  So:

 

Healing 1d6+1 (13 points);  let's use Standard Effect, so 4 pips, or 2 BODY.

Decreased Re-use...take your pick.  5 minutes is +1;  1 turn is just +1 1/2, which is still just 32 points.  

 

That'll fit easily into a Healing/Aid MP.  Heck, make it 2d6, so 3 BODY using Standard Effect for convenience, is 50 points.  Combat healing can hit 50 active pretty easily...4 dice, 1/2 END.  That's probably too much for some genres but it's still reasonable for higher-end fantasy, and certainly for mid-level supers.

 

For another approach for combat healing...APG has a couple alternate rules.  First is extra time for full effect.  In exchange for moving a step down the time chart, the Healing automatically gets the max result...pretty much saying, the healing gets applied twice.  That gives everyone one good round of healing.  Option 2:  allow Cumulative on Healing, with the proviso that you can't apply the increased maximum that Cumulative has.  You're still limited to maximum effect.  3d6 Healing with Cumulative would let you heal 9 BODY total, for 45 points.  This feels better than the extra time rule.

 

A house rule might be that you can't use Cumulative and Decreased Re-use  together...or, you can't use Decreased Re-use down to the combat scale, 1 turn for sure, possibly 1 minute. Even 5 minutes is too long to be considered combat use.  2d6 Cumulative, Re-use 1 turn is 60 active.  NOT cheap, I grant, but that'd be 6 BODY per turn, should that much be needed.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

Another device is to house rule that allows healing to be built in a DOT.  Because of the structure of the advantage, it ignores certain rules such as duration between reuse.  That lets you build a fairly low die heal that repeats applying its self over and over across a time period like a regeneration.

[Cloppy Clip]

Thanks for the tips, everyone. Christopher, I'd seen the Damage Over Time advantage, but I think I must have misinterpreted it (I took the quote "assuming the GM were willing to waive Healing's rule about repeated use" to mean the advantage wouldn't work with Healing without explicit GM fiat, but that it was possible for the GM to ignore the Re-Use rule entirely). But if you can just apply DOT to Healing without needing to jump through hoops then that makes the Regeneration UOO power build (that is explicitly turned down by the book) much more straight-forward to build, so thank you!

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its an extrapolation from the way it treats Drains: they don't start to fade until the DOT is finished.  In other words, while the damage over time advantage is active, it ignores normal rules of fading and duration, because its still an active power.  So the re-use duration doesn't take effect until the DOT is finished its increments, at least that's how I read it.

[unclevlad]

And recognize these are all patchwork solutions because there's no good general solution.  RAW hates cheap healing because it practically eliminates any real threat.  OTOH, too little healing is tedious as heck.  Anyone who's had their characters sit around for 2 days...in the middle of the dungeon...while the cleric heals them up, is familiar with the issue.  So the trick is to try to strike a balance between the extremes.  This gives rise to the Goldilocks problem..."too hot...too cold...just right!"  Balancing out competing factors is ALWAYS a major PITA and hard to get right.  It's also, in a situation like this, highly subjective/context-sensitive...our notions of "just right" won't be the same.

 

So IMO you're just better off figuring out how you want it to work, then back-engineer the mechanisms without regard, necessarily, for what's in the rules now.  Like maybe 1d6 Healing is 5 points per d6, counted as normal damage...the BODY gives the BODY healed, the pips give the STUN.  However, it takes, let's say, a full phase...or even an extra phase.  Integrated into the base cost.  It can be re-used at once per minute;  if you want once per turn, that's at least a +1/2 in my book.  The heck with the halving rule.  It's NOT an "adjustment power."  Or if that's too cheap for you?  How about 7 points?  If you want to limit Healing, then how about saying Healing always runs off an "END Reserve" since it costs END anyway.  The reserve has a number of points equal to the active point cost of the power...or, nastier maybe, to the REAL cost.  If you wanna shave points off, it won't last as long.  The Reserve is free...but you can't buy it up.  The reserve has a non-improvable REC of 1 per minute, or something along those lines.  Oh, and you can't buy Reduced END for your healing.

 

So what that it's not uber-flexible?  Sure, this'd be overly restrictive for most game elements, but the whole freeform approach has major problems of its own.  Sometimes a narrow approach is NOT a bad thing.

EDIT:  to reduce combat effectiveness...the DOT notion isn't bad, just...make it the rule.  Healing is like Regen...a slow process.  It's 1d6 points...per phase, or per turn, your choice...for a number of phases equal to the purchased amount of the power.  +1 or half die?  Another phase.  So 4d6, 4 phases;  5 1/2 d6, 6 phases, with the last being the 1/2 die.  The healer can walk away, the END is all paid up front by the healer.  Note that this is intended to keep some lethality in play, by not allowing "here, let me just fix you all up right now."

[Doc Democracy]

This thread has been interesting reading and @unclevlad makes a lot of good points.  I am leaning toward a slowish healing out of combat and combat healing coming with drawbacks, potentially being either hugely tiring to cast or actively damaging the healer.

 

That means out of combat things get better reasonably quickly but healing in combat is a fine balancing act unless it comes from some kind of magical item.

[Cloppy Clip]

Hopefully resurrecting this thread isn't a problem, but I've been mulling over an idea for healing and would appreciate some feedback. And I might need some help expressing this idea in HERO terms, as I so often do!

 

The gist of the idea is pretty simple: you buy Healing normally, but you also buy a naked advantage for Decreased Re-Use Duration with a limitation that replaces the attrition aspect of Healing. My ideas were some sort of Long-Term Endurance payment or a Side Effect where you take the damage healed, but I wasn't sure what the exact limitation values for these would be. I haven't been able to find anything about Costs LTE in the books, unless you're meant to do a Drain LTE Side Effect. And Side Effect's value seems to depend on how expensive the power used to deal the damage is, which depends on how you build said power.

 

So how do these ideas sound? Are the limitations sufficient to put characters off Healing to the same extent as the Maximum Effect limit, or could they use a little tweaking? And are there any other good examples of limitations that could be placed on Healing like this?

[unclevlad]

My take would be, don't mess with LTE outside the very narrow confines in 6E2.  Lowering LTE is basically Drain END with a return rate at 5 points per hour...not exactly, but close enough, and that's a clear, concise expression.

 

The mechanism of wound transferal healing is straightforward, but that means the healer can't heal himself.  It can also be offset with Regen, which'd be an essential purchase for a wound transferal healer.

 

The healer is taking the LTE hit, right?  Well, 5 points per hour is +1 3/4.  1d6+1 Drain, 5 points per hour, is 36 points...I suggest d6+1 because Standard Effect would then be 4.  If you're adhering to standard adjustment powers, that gets cut in half...2 points, so 10 END.  Pretty clean at the table, which is nice.  You'd get -1/2, probably, since you're only applying this to the Decreased Re-use advantage, which is pretty expensive, but not that bad.

 

But I'd have to ask, what's the goal?  What is the problem you're trying to solve, and how does this accomplish the solution?  What do you *want* Healing to be able to achieve?  

 

One of my favorite superhero worlds is Drew Hayes' Super Powereds.  Healers are fairly common and extremely highly valued.  Extensive healing generally has a side effect a lot like an LTE reduction...on the person healed.  His explanation is that the body does have major physiological reactions to severe pain and broken bones, and OK, healing fixes the injuries, but not necessarily the indirect effects from those reactions.  It's an approach I like, so I hear where you're coming from...it gives characters a reason to avoid *needing* a lot of healing because of those lingering effects.  It promotes caution while leaving healing as a sweet, powerful adjunct.  Now...what is it replacing?  Probably max effect.  Note that decreased re-use time is mostly of importance because we're dealing with game mechanics, and the points tracking of character sheets.  Because it's a set of books, so the purpose of any power set is completely different.  Points, schmoints.  Balance?  Get serious.  Building characters for a game is itself a massively contrived exercise because of the constraints of the at-table environment, where balance is often a central consideration.  That simply doesn't exist in the comics, movies, or UF or superhero fiction...unless the writers invoke a deus ex machina to give the wimps a chance.  Think FF vs. Galactus and the Ultimate Nullifier.  Or a ridiculous, contrived weakness like firing the missile down the vent tube to blow up the Death Star.  It goes straight for 90 bleeping MILES, not encountering any obstacle, and staying on track????  YMMV but I *loathe* these. 

[Cloppy Clip]

Thanks for the elaboration, unclevlad. Your point about reducing LTE being effectively Drain END is a good reminder to not overcomplicate things. My goal, which I'm still trying to decide how it will take form, is to make a dedicated healer something interesting to play in a regular game. I have a friend who gravitates almost exclusively to that role in RPGs (he's the one who always wants to play the cleric in D&D for example) and MMOs, and he's expressed an interest in trying this out in HERO. The problem seems to be, as you've all pointed out over the course of this thread, that unlimited Healing will drag out fights and slow the game down too much, so I'm happy with it not being too powerful. What I'm doing trying different ideas out here is trying to make up a way he can feel like the healbot of the party without throwing the game's assumptions about combat completely out of the window.

 

This may be a tall ask, and I'm not exactly sure what form this would take in the end, so apologies for not being able to give better context. The feedback everyone's given so far has been helpful for working out where I stand with regards to everything, so please keep it coming if you may.

[unclevlad]

Make it time consuming.  Perhaps 4d6, Decreased Re-use (5 minutes)...that's long enough that it's once per combat.  Now...Extra Time (1 turn);  Gradual (1d6 per turn) (-1/4), Concentration throughout.  Side effect:  healer takes 2 points  Drain STUN and END (CP...since they're both defensive, the half effect rule applies), for every d6 healed, and the points don't start returning until the healing is over.  So 4d6 healing means 8 total CP, so 8 STUN and 20 END.  It'll take a couple extra turns to recover. 

 

Optionally, with conditions like this, you can blow off Decreased Re-use altogether.  The healer can't use this power quickly.

 

Another...4d6 Healing, Concentration, character can take no other actions.  Gradual Extra Turn...roll the effect, divide into as equal-sized chunks as possible, and the target gets that many per healer's phase, with the total healing acheved at the 1 turn mark.  So it's not totally wasted if it gets interrupted.  Same side effect both ways.

 

The points here...

--the healer can't just go bopping around healing everyone quickly

--the person healed is NOT at 100% instantly...not even close.  He can come back and help...after a turn...but hopefully he'll have to be careful about it.  

 

Remember, 4d6 is only 7 BODY.  With the time and effort issues here, the healer can certainly fix people up between fights, but not twice during a fight.  So, why bother with decreased re-use? 

 

Heck, if you want to keep it simple, Extra Time, (extra turn) and Concentration throughout are nasty, from the standpoint of the action economy.  The currency of combat is actions...what can each side do?  The root of this in Hero is, of course, SPD.  If a BBEG needs to take on 5 characters with SPD 4, well, he'd better be a LOT faster.  Or in D&D, where this was also recognized, the BBEG must have multiple attack options, or he pretty much get sliced and diced fairly quickly unless he's just insanely more powerful.  Here, the healer and the recipient are taken out for a full turn, EACH, and will be feeling aftereffects.  The underlying argument for Decreased Re-use largely vanishes. 

 

EDIT:  another simple house rule:  limit healing to, let's say, once per hour rather than once per day.  Then Decreased Re-use starts from that.  Another point...the time chart shifts are not even close to equivalent, one to the next.  There's really very little difference between 5 minutes and 20 minutes, and not much between 5 minutes and 1 hour.  On the flip side, there's a MASSIVE difference between 1 turn and 1 phase for combat powers...but next to none for out-of-combat powers.  So perhaps the standard (house)  rule for healing is re-use is, let's say, 5 minutes...that's too long for combat re-use.  +1/2 to drop to 1 minute;  +1 to drop to 1 Turn, +2 to drop to 1 phase, which basically eliminates it.  This would let you build 1d6 Healing, usable at will, for a base 30 points.  If that's too cheap for you, then adopt another house rule that to apply certain advantages, there's a minimum base point level you have to buy.  This isn't just for healing, it's for any power where massive advantages might get applied to minimal base costs.  For me...Teleport.  3", Megascale to 10,000 km...teleport anywhere on the planet.  Add any advantages you want on top of that, it won't matter.  +5 total advantage is still only 18 points.