How Do I...? "Stop Healing" Spell Build

[Black Rose]

Here's the fluff as I envision it. Evil-nasty necromancy spell that "prevents" its victim from healing. Natural healing simply doesn't work. Any kind of assisted healing can try to "fight" the spell and get through to heal the victim. If you "win" the fight, the spell is weakened a little, and eventually dissipates.

 

Here's some crunch: every time you try to regain BODY (Paramedics, Heal spells, etc.) there's some kind of Skill vs. Skill contest (I wanted it to be less about "big honkin' Heal spell!" and more about effort). If the Healing side wins, you regain however much BODY and the Spell side gets a little weaker (kinda like Ablative). Eventually the Spell side is gone.

 

Any ideas for how to put this together? Aside from "Major Transform 8d6 (person to person with the affliction I just described; heals back after being chipped away enough)"?

[Doc Democracy]

The Transform route looks the way to go though, you get a lot of flexibility in how it works. And you can include natural healing with the more proactive sort. 

 

An alternative might be POW Def, only versus healing and dispelling magic, always on, persistent, 0END, usable as an attack.

 

You then apply the limitation that it ablates under certain conditions. 

 

A big enough dispel would get rid of the curse. 

 

The big issue is that it does not prevent natural healing.  You might want a reasonably sized suppress REC only for healing purposes.

 

Doc

[LoneWolf]

Allowing damage negation vs healing would be the way I would do it.  Use the Damage Reduction as Immunity option.  Probably need UAA and persistent.  It would require the GM’s approval and not sure how it would handle normal healing.

 

Another way would be to simply buy an attack that does damage that is triggered by healing.  Put the limitation only as much damage as healed.  Use a RKA with NND, Does Body as the basis for the power.    Probably need Constant and uncontrollable and Cost END only to activate on it as well.   At 64 active points it will be expensive.   You will be able to apply the only to prevent healing (including recover) -1.  That brings the cost down to 32 points per die.
 

[LoneWolf]

Unable to delete the double post for some reason.

Edited June 13, 2023 by LoneWolf

[Christopher R Taylor]

I agree that Transform is the easiest way to do this, it has a natural mechanic to fade away and can be defined however you want.  You could also use a very long-term suppress effect that affects REC and any healing effect done to the character, with limitations defining that it can be overcome and ablated, and one that has it fade naturally over time.

[Chris Goodwin]

The Skill vs. Skill part sounds like Change Environment.  Negating natural healing could be as simple as a REC Drain.  Power Defense can work against Aid and Healing if the character wants it to... so Power Defense, Usable As Attack, controlled by the grantor, would do just that.

[dmjalund]

i find if you want a defense used as an attack, modifying Entangle might work

[DentArthurDent]

This sounds really interesting! It also sounds like a mechanic that could be used in other creative ways. Very cool.

[Cloppy Clip]

That's a really cool concept for a power, and it would work wonders for all sorts of spooky necromancy-type villains so I can see it getting a lot of mileage. I don't have much to add, but out of the methods suggested I think I like Power Defence UAA the most. That feels like an elegant way to use the game mechanics to get the desired effect.

 

For the Skill contest part, though, is there any way you could tweak the Requires a Skill Roll rules to resolve with a contest instead of a straight roll? I don't know if that's an option in one of the Advanced Players Guides or something, but it seems like the natural solution.

[Gauntlet]

I definitely would have to say that Transform is the best but another option might be drain both Recovery and Regeneration with an advantage to make it take much longer to return. I have used it in one of my games with the following writeup:

 

Ray of UnHealing

Drain REC & Regeneration 2d6, Expanded Effect (REC & Regeneration) (+½), Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per Season; +3) (90 Active Points); OAF Expendable (Very Difficult to obtain new Focus; Flesh from Undead Creature; -1 ½), Side Effects (Same Power on Caster; -1), Extra Time (Full Phase, -½), Requires A Roll (Magic roll; -½), Gestures (-¼), Incantations (-¼), Unified Power (-¼), Can Be Deflected (-¼)

Cost: 16

END: 9

 

Of course, this is assuming that you require all spell casters to have a magic roll.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Gauntlet
Had to update Writeup.

[Ninja-Bear]

I was thinking Suppress REC only vs Natural Healing: Body.

[Duke Bushido]

While I would proba ly go the Damage Negation route mentioned above (it's just clean, and it avoids T-form), I can't help but think "Cause Grevious Wound: 8D5 KA, trigger: assisted healing; auto reset, Sticky.

 

 

Becauae it is hilarious.

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

7 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

While I would probably go the Damage Negation route mentioned above (it's just clean, and it avoids T-form), I can't help but think "Cause Grevious Wound: 8D5 KA, trigger: assisted healing; auto reset, Sticky.

 

Because it is hilarious.

 

I have an attraction to the Damage Negation route, though the limitations you would need to add, to model the degradation of the curse and the need to be able to apply it to someone else, and to be useful against healing and not other attacks, and where it exists, independent of the caster etc is likely to make it less clean!  It also needs additional stuff to negate natural healing which damage negation would not touch. 

 

Sometimes a Transform is the right answer because it avoids very complex builds...

 

The best narrative thing about the triggered damage is that healing could make things worse for the cursed one and it would take a VERY confident healer to take it on, believing they were more powerful than the curse.