Magical Healing, it's not for Clerics.

[VR Dragon]

I am working to make a special healer for my game. I will be using hit location rules so I wanted to add something other than the cleric healing people. so I want the empath.

 

Empaths are highly attuned to other living creatures, allowing them to heal the wounds of others with a touch. Such powers have their drawbacks, however; since Empaths are so close to the pain of the living beings around them, if they so much as try to harm another living creature they will lose their ability to heal for a time. If they kill, such ability can be lost forever.

 

That doesn't mean, however, that Empaths are barred from combat. Many choose the path of the Battle Empath, with defensive skills and abilities often outstripping those of the hunters they seek out to heal.

 

 

 

How do I build something like this using the Hero System?

 

Spell ideas I have had... Healing causes scar tissue for extra flavor. All these spells are self cast only unless otherwise noted. The empath must touch the victim and any healing is done by the empath taking the wound unto themselves.

 

 

External Wound Healing

The External Wound Healing spell will repair external damage to your body.

 

Internal Wound Healing

The Internal Wound Healing spell will repair internal and nervous system damage to your body.

 

External Scar Healing

The External Scar Healing spell will repair external scarring.

 

Internal Scar Healing

The Internal Scar Healing spell will repair internal scarring and permanent nervous system damage.

 

Regenerate

The Regenerate spell, as the name suggests, encourages your body to rapidly recover from minor wounds and scars. But takes some as it is full body and not limited single area, limb, etc.

 

 

Blood Staunching

The Blood Staunching spell temporarily halts the flow of your blood for a time. This is not stopping your heart beat but prevents bleeding to death.

 

Cure Disease

The Cure Disease spell will seek out diseases in your body and aid your immune system in eradicating them.

 

Flush Poisons

The Flush Poisons spell will assist your immune system in quickly ridding your body of dangerous poisons.

 

Heart Link

The Heart Link spell establishes a connection between your heartbeat and that of your patient. You can use this link to slow down the rate their heart beats, and how fast they bleed. This allows the empath to stabilize someone who is critically wounded and gives the empath time to work on the poor sucker.

 

Death's Sleep

All bleeding, poison, and disease in the bodies of those under the spell will be slowed significantly. Still, be careful that those you cast this spell upon do not bleed to death while asleep.

 

 

Any ideas, advice, questions, or comments?

[Shadowsoul]

Re: Magical Healing, it's not for Clerics.

 

By 'taking the wound into themselves' I assume you mean the empath experiences the pain of the wound, because a healer who simply takes the wound off of your body and puts it onto their own is not going to last very long, unless the regenerate spell is used only on the empath i.e. he/she heals the wound more or less instantly and then staggers off to regenerate the damage to him/herself.

I would suggest that the Empath suffers 1 stun damage per body healed and must pass an ego roll, (possibly reduced by the amount of body healed e.g. -1 per 5 body healed), for any direct healing spell. The regenerate ability could be less taxing to the empath but might cost the target 1 end per body healed, (this end recovers at an increased rate of e.g. 1 per 1-6 hours), this would represent the empath forcing the target's own body to expend its energies to heal itself.

Another amusing aspect of healing that I have come across in 1 or 2 settings is the idea that any time a wound is healed by magic the target experiences all the pain they should have had throughout convalescence in a single moment. That sounds like an ego attack to me.

There was also a spell/power in the Dragoncrown series that undid all magical healing on a target, effectively reinflicting all mystically healed wounds at once. This, incidentally, led to the creation of magical 'cyborgs' with armour and metal patching up their wounds instead of healing and who were thus immune to the spell.

Hope that gives you some food for thought.

[tancred]

Re: Magical Healing, it's not for Clerics.

 

For empathic healing, you can use the Side Effect Limitation.

The severity of the Limitation depends on how much damage the Empath takes.

If he takes the full amount of the damage he heals, use the Extreme Side Effect level (a -1 Limitation).

If he takes about half as much damage as he heals, use Major Side Effect (-½).

And if he only takes a quarter of the damage, or only takes STUN but can heal BODY damage, use a Minor Side Effect (-¼).

 

Note that you'd take all of these as Always occuring when you use the power.

 

You can apply this to any type of healing you allow the Empath to buy.

 

Also note that you have to specify WHICH Characteristic you apply Healing to. This is a change from older editions.

You could represent removing scars as a Heal to COM.

Alternately, you also mentioned having Healing producing scarring.

This could be a second Side Effect on the Healing.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Magical Healing, it's not for Clerics.

 

Here is a super hero that has sympathetic healing that you may be able to get some ideas from:

 

Triage

Triage Character Sheet

[Evil Steve]

Re: Magical Healing, it's not for Clerics.

 

If you can find it, examine Rolemaster (Iron Crown Enterprises). They have two styles of Healer, one of which heals as you describe. The Spell Law book may be the one you want, but check out Character and Campaign Law as well.

 

After they take the wound onto themselves, they reflexively autocast the apropriate "heal self" spell. Makes the buggers darn near impossible to kill at even middle levels of experience.

 

Down side of looking at Rolemaster is looking at Rolemaster. I've played it for years and still only understand about 25%.