Cure for Cancer (Healing)

[Sean Waters]

Re: Cure for Cancer (Healing)

 

I'm glad you appreciated them. Nice to see all those real-life Xp I've spent in Paramedic' date=' SS-Biology, SS-Medicine and SS-Psychology turn out useful in the geeky area, here and then [/quote']

 

Ah, I suspected as much! Kudos for all that too, then!

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Cure for Cancer (Healing)

 

Lemming: I like that, makes sense, but what about the cumulative issue? You could make it all or nothing (-1/2) and say that is the only way that such power exists in the campaign (either you cure it or you don't). In that case, curing would have the following costs, assuming that 6d6 is enough to handle the average person, on average):

 

Cosmetic: 20 pts

Minor: 40 pts

Major: 60 pts

As a +1/4 advantage on a superior transform I would allow the active points to be recalculaed to render 50% more lesser dice and 100% more for 2 steps down (e.g. 6d6 Minor with this advantage could be 9d6 Cosmetic, 6d6 Major could be 12d6 cosmetic). This would be to avoid creating a multipower to do only this.

 

That actually works for me. Simple, and direct. As a guideline then, diseases would be thus:

 

Cosmetic: typically defined as a cosmetic transform? STUN/END drains of half or less STUN/END and at most a -1 skill penalty.

Minor: drains and damage that is half or less of the affected characteristic, and negative skill levels of no more than -3?

Major: drains and damage greater than half the affected characteristic (e.g. drain STR > STR/2 or BODY damage > BODY/2).

 

Poisons:

Pretty much the same as for disease.

 

Does that work?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Cure for Cancer (Healing)

 

Lemming: I like that, makes sense, but what about the cumulative issue? You could make it all or nothing (-1/2) and say that is the only way that such power exists in the campaign (either you cure it or you don't). In that case, curing would have the following costs, assuming that 6d6 is enough to handle the average person, on average):

 

Cosmetic: 20 pts

Minor: 40 pts

Major: 60 pts

As a +1/4 advantage on a superior transform I would allow the active points to be recalculaed to render 50% more lesser dice and 100% more for 2 steps down (e.g. 6d6 Minor with this advantage could be 9d6 Cosmetic, 6d6 Major could be 12d6 cosmetic). This would be to avoid creating a multipower to do only this.

 

That actually works for me. Simple, and direct. As a guideline then, diseases would be thus:

 

Cosmetic: typically defined as a cosmetic transform? STUN/END drains of half or less STUN/END and at most a -1 skill penalty.

Minor: drains and damage that is half or less of the affected characteristic, and negative skill levels of no more than -3?

Major: drains and damage greater than half the affected characteristic (e.g. drain STR > STR/2 or BODY damage > BODY/2).

 

Poisons:

Pretty much the same as for disease.

 

Does that work?

 

 

Sounds good. As a matter of personal preference I would probably want a healer to take extra time and RSR and probably enhanced senses to detect and analyse diseases, but it depends on the sfx very much: someone who actually manipulates flesh would need to 'operate' with their powers - an angel's touch would potentially heal instantly.

[Ganesh]

Re: Cure for Cancer (Healing)

 

For a stranger idea, but one based on the real world concepts...

 

make a disease be a desolid automaton. It has clinging and various attacks to represent its detrimental effects, all with Affects Real World. The attacks may have charges which tend to be used when the "host" character is under significant stress or otherwise susceptible, refreshing each day (or more or less frequently, depending) to mete out the 'damage' at an appropriate rate.

 

The automaton would be vulnerable to things that would normally cure the disease, but might also have armor, or lots of hitpoints/extra powers to lose for particularly tenacious infections. Vulnerabilities to "being outside a host" would be common -- they'd be reasonable for things like the common cold, but lethal amounts of damage for, say, AIDs.

 

For "cure" powers, you either need EBs with the appropriate special effects (probably in a multipower with your Healing), or the diseases would have to bu susceptible to healing powers. Some would take damage from normal healing--others would be armored against that, and have Absorption to soak up the healing you throw at them and come back nastier (to make cancer nastier for regenerators).

 

Summons, or just "the natural life cycle of the disease" would result in more cropping up and possibly moving on to try and find new hosts.

 

Poisons, of course wouldn't be able to spread like diseases, but could otherwise be thought of in the same way -- an foreign thing, hiding in the body, doing damage to its host until it is 'killed' by healing, purification, or exhausting itself.

 

Now, instead of paying 200-some-odd points for a snake-venom attack, buy the 40 points required to summon the poison into your opponent, probably linked to a normal attack of some type. I'm not even sure how comparable costs would be, as the build will be entirely different, but it might be more reasonable.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Cure for Cancer (Healing)

 

Scary idea. It would also mean you could dispel diseases, I guess, which may be a mechanic that is better balanced points wise....hmmm......

[Phil]

Re: Cure for Cancer (Healing)

 

Lots of great stuff here. Kudos to everyone. RPGs arent great at reflecting disease, because disease is generally much more subtle than simply reducing characteristics. Even a simple cold will drain CON, STUN, DEX, STR, SPD, INT, PRE, COM and REC at slightly different levels. Game mechanically, therefore, while I dislike adders general as something of an arbitrary system kludge, unless you're playing Medical Hero (registered trademark of DoJ) it definitely seems the best way.

 

An early post made a suggestion that Regeneration would be a good defence against a Cancer NND. Given that cancer is, very basically, cell regeneration gone wrong, I could well see that having super regeneration could actually make things considerably worse. If you were to define it as an attack, cancer could well be a 1d6 Extra-time Drain linked to 2d6 Extra-time drain (only works on targets with regeneration). A dodgy construction, of course, but it illustrates the point