Healing, operation and game balance

[Aversill]

How does healing work in Fantasy Hero if multiple characters have access to healing magic and/or equipment?  And, I guess, does that matter?

 

So, scenario.  If I am at -9 body, I roll 2d6 healing, and I heal 3 body.  Can I turn around and just roll again on my next phase?  If so, should I just consider that the power gets its maximum, non-combat, so long as I can spam it like that?

 

It seems like the rules are set up to keep people from spamming healing, but one of my players can heal 2d6 body (halved) per hour, which doesn't seem that out of line for a healer.  The end result is that if the players rest for a couple hours, the entire party is back up to full body.  Is that right?

 

Does the maximum effect rule cover multiple sources of healing.  For instance, if this same character then took a healing potion, would that go against the maximum effect from the other healing or does it work independently?  Does it matter if it's his potion of healing, or whether it is, technically, somebody else's?  Would that change if it weren't a potion but, say, a character's power?

[Christougher]

Healing does have a cap - that 2d6 Healing will only heal a maximum of 6 Body per person per day.  The reuse interval can be changed, though I don't remember the cost of that offhand.  Multiple sources of healing aren't affected per se, but will still cap out at the larger amount.  I don't recall offhand if it's official or a house rule that followup healing rolls must exceed the previous roll to increase effect.

 

Chris.

[Chris Goodwin]

It is official.

 

It's a common house rule that if you can spam a Healing power out of combat you can automatically hit the maximum. I also have a house rule that if your Healing power is sufficiently limited it can be fully cumulative (think a D&D cleric's healing spells).

[mhd]

Healing does have a cap - that 2d6 Healing will only heal a maximum of 6 Body per person per day.

Shouldn't that be 12 (as per 6E1 233)?

 

Personally, I'm doing the "per wound" option, which worked out alright (esp. because currently "spamming" uses isn't really an option for the players). I'm still looking for a good replacement for the "per day" restriction, as I don't really like such artificial limits in general.

[Asperion]

It seems like the rules are set up to keep people from spamming healing, but one of my players can heal 2d6 body (halved) per hour, which doesn't seem that out of line for a healer.  The end result is that if the players rest for a couple hours, the entire party is back up to full body.  Is that right?

 

While END & STUN will return per turn, the BODY will return at a rate of REC/Month.  As a result, someone with REC 5 who lost 7 BODY will need 2 months to make full recovery (unless the GM rules otherwise with medical treatment/magic/skill rolls/etc.)  Yes it does take a LONG time to properly recover lost BODY - that is why most of the time PCs will have strong reserves of healing supplies like potions/regen power/aid power/applic skills/etc.

[Old Man]

FH has always been pretty schizophrenic about healing. Can you cast multiple heals on someone? Do they stack or do you just get the higher roll? What if you're using hit location? Is healing per wound or overall? What about general injuries like burns or poison?

[Chris Goodwin]

Shouldn't that be 12 (as per 6E1 233)?

It would be 6; that paragraph received errata. (Mentioned here; the errata doesn't seem to be available at the moment.)

 

Personally, I'm doing the "per wound" option, which worked out alright (esp. because currently "spamming" uses isn't really an option for the players). I'm still looking for a good replacement for the "per day" restriction, as I don't really like such artificial limits in general.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Per wound is another one of the options to improve the use of Healing.

[Aversill]

I get how healing works, generally.  The book's pretty clear about until the point where multiple healing sources are involved.  So, let's say I get healed 2d6 by someone who can only use the power once per day.  The next person comes up and they can heal you once per day.  Can they use their power?  Is it commulative or do they suffer from a maximum effect thing? 

 

Now let us say that the 2nd character can heal once per turn (I can't remember if that's possible), when does the maximum effect reset.  Say the 24 hour healer heals 4 body.  The next guy, assuming maximum effect, will have to roll over 4 body to heal anything, but one assumes that, after a turn, the maximum thing starts over for the 2nd guy and he no longer has to worry about the first guy's maximum effect.  Does it start over for the first guy since he's now contributing to a new maximum effect?  Yeah, see the problem?

 

And what if guy 1 and guy 2 are actually the same guy, but he's got multiple healing powers, or what if he's duplicated?!  Essentially, with 2 healing powers with the decreased re-use time can halve re-use time and they can do that with every character in the healer's party.

 

And finally, how do you deal with this in your game...  Do you just assume that a healer in the party means that between encounters, a healer with two powers can, with very little rule manipulation, get the party back up to full Body without much effort.

[Ternaugh]

I use the wound tracking method. Multiple applications of Healing are limited to the maximum possible on the dice, even if multiple casters are doing the healing. I don't allow decreased re-use duration (I usually run 5e, where it's not even mentioned).

 

Healing as a spell is extremely rare in my FH games, and it's very possible for characters to have to actually rest to heal (usually after the adventure; they are likely have some damage on them during the adventure's later acts). Use Hero as a toolkit, and adjust the fine parts as necessary to tell the stories you and your group want to tell. If a rule looks like it's being abused or misused, change it.

[Aversill]

Okay, if you don't do healing in your games or if you have house ruled healing or you use some really complex way to track healing, I appreciate that that's how you've solved the problem, but...

 

I need to know how it works unmodified in games (see my previous post).  I have a character who is literally at -9 Body.  He has healing that he can use once every 4 hours.  He has used it and maxed it.  Someone hands him a healing potion.  Can it work?  Does it automatically work?  If it only works sometimes, what are those conditions? 

 

Unable to make hide nor hair of the rules as they stand, and not wanting to add an extra layer of book-keeping to what is, already, a complex game.  I think I'm deciding to rule that Maximum effect is for the healed, and not the healer, and that the system cannot work with the Decreased Re-Use duration (or whatever that's called).

 

I say this, but I would really love for someone to explain to me the rules as they are meant to be used.  They do not make any sense to me as soon as multiple healers, multiple re-use durations are involved.

[Chris Goodwin]

Per 6e1 p. 232, each character uses his own duration to determine when his Healing power resets. In your example, the healing potion would work on the character.

[Tasha]

FH has always been pretty schizophrenic about healing. Can you cast multiple heals on someone? Do they stack or do you just get the higher roll? What if you're using hit location? Is healing per wound or overall? What about general injuries like burns or poison?

Per Wound healing has been a common optional rule since 1st edition. Though with all of the extra bookkeeping involved. I would just allow Healing to be cumulative, though I would want to keep the dice low and limited.

[NuSoardGraphite]

I do maximum on the dice, plus a character can only cast 1 effective healing spell per person, per day. so to hit their maximum, it might take multiple days of healing.

 

Multiple healers can add their effects together, but only the maximum of the highest dice counts, and each healer is only effective 1 per day per patient.

 

I also only have healing effect body and stun. the penalties from impairing and disabling wounds dont go away from that. this requires a Transform effect, returning the target from wounded to hale. otherwise, wounds take the weeks it would normally take for the penalties to go away.

[Chris Goodwin]

The thing is, Healing is a pretty heavily restricted Power, with a bunch of optional ways to make it less restricted.  It's sort of expected that you'll make use of one or more of those ways, especially in a fantasy game, to get the sort of flavor you're looking for.  To buy a Healing power's reset time to One Turn it's a +2 Advantage; to add Extra Time: One Turn on top of that is a -1 1/4 Limitation.  1d6 of this would be 30 Active and 13 Real Points, or you could buy 2d6 of this for 60 Active and 27 Real.  For a fantasy game you'd be most likely adding things like Gestures, Incantations, maybe an OAF (Holy Symbol); this puts at -2 3/4 total Limitations, which would get you 1d6 for 8 Real or 2d6 for 16 Real Points.  Be aware though that that Healing, 1d6 BODY, will average 1.75 BODY per Turn, and if you're spamming it out of combat 8.75 BODY per minute, or 525 BODY per Hour.  Even a reset time of 1 Minute on that 1d6 (now 27 Active, 11 Real with 1 Minute casting time) lets you heal an average of 105 BODY per Hour.  

 

That honestly doesn't sound too bad to me as a player.  As a GM I'd probably try to limit it even more, but YMMV.  

 

Also note that the reset time is per healer and per target.  And the house rule I suggested about maximizing your Healing is actually an optional rule in the book rather than a personal house rule (6e1 p. 233, last paragraph on the page).  

[Chris Goodwin]

Per Wound healing has been a common optional rule since 1st edition. Though with all of the extra bookkeeping involved. I would just allow Healing to be cumulative, though I would want to keep the dice low and limited.

If you compare it to a D&D cleric's healing spells it's not so bad. From the GM's standpoint, Charges pays for itself here especially; 3d6 Healing (fully cumulative) five times a day would let you max out at 45 BODY per day.

[Aversill]

You've sort of hit the nail on the head here.  Either the power is waaaaay too powerful for it be allowed in Fantasy Hero, or it isn't powerful enough.  Either the character can get the advantages and heal 100s of body per turn or you limit the advantage and the dying character who was healed an hour ago is SOL.

[Tasha]

I am actually less concerned about healing out of combat. In fact I wouldn't mind allowing PC to completely heal between combats. During Combat I would want to limit healing so as to not trivialize the combat.

 

Also, I am really a fan of Simplified Healing. That Heals using Normal Dice, Pips healing stun, 2-5 healing 1 body and 6's 2body, 1's healing no body.

[Markdoc]

You've sort of hit the nail on the head here.  Either the power is waaaaay too powerful for it be allowed in Fantasy Hero, or it isn't powerful enough.  Either the character can get the advantages and heal 100s of body per turn or you limit the advantage and the dying character who was healed an hour ago is SOL.

 

Yeah, this has always been a problem: in D&D healing was kept in check by three facts: 1)you only had so many spell slots 2 )you really wanted to use them for things other than healing and 3) as you started to get up over 100-150 hp, being able to do 1d8+10 didn't get you too far, so the lower level healing became largely irrelevant. Hero's ability to let you use healing repeatedly causes some problems: if you let it be used repeatedly, or stack, it's way too powerful. BOD damage become far less relevant, for PCs who can spam healing, since anyone who isn't dead goes straight back to full strength after any fight. If you don't, it's relatively ineffective, leading to paperwork exercises like tracking each wound (not fun with 6 or 7 PCs, I can promise you!). The fact that we need something like that (which I regard as an ugly kludge) shows how poorly the healing power works.

 

My own approach (which I freely admit is also a kludge) is to allow characters to carry as much healing as the healer can deliver, but no more, until they naturally heal back some of the magical damage. In other words if the healer has 2d6 healing, he can eventually repair 6 points of BOD, but once a PC is carrying 6 BOD of magical healing, he can't get any more until he has naturally healed back at least 1 BOD - then he can get another BOD of healing. Essentially that lets a healer provide some emergency patching up (to his limit) and thereafter, essentially double the rate of natural healing (which, if he has a decent place to put the patient and they take full bed rest, can be quite swift). A second healer can only improve on that if he has more dice of healing. That still requires extra paperwork, but much less than tracking wounds - the GM just has to track one number: how much magical healing each PC has received in total. This system means that PCs who have been in a serious fight or two can't just stop for an hour's healfest and then carry on, but they can - if they have the leisure to stop for a few days - get everybody functional again.

 

Still, this approach is a band-aid, so to speak. Anyone got suggestions on how to model healing so that it's not either "BOD damage is irrelevant" or "BOD damage almost always cripples the PCs for a session"? It doesn't have to be based on the current healing power. I have played around with the idea of Aid to REC, so that the target simply heals faster, but I have not playtested that.

 

Cheers, Mark

[Aversill]

I like that Mark.  In fact, I'm going to take it one further.  Healing works in FH if...

 

1.  The amount a person can be healed (the number to be beat on future heal rolls) is character dependent.  I've been healed 7 body, I can't be healed again until someone else gets to 8.

 

2.  My max resets when I get a natural point of body back (day of rest, essentially)

 

3.  Decreased Re-Use Duration only allows people to roll so as to try to get up the to the limit; it does not reset the limit.

 

In my campaign, spells have an AP limit of 55, which is 5d5 healing.  That range makes it feasible for people to want to re-roll those healing powers.  I have had to outlaw regeneration for rather obvious reasons.

 

By the way, Tasha, I would agree with you if I were going for a less gritty feel, something like D and D 4e, but I'm trying to create a game where the characters have good reason to avoid giant fights. 

[mhd]

I've been thinking a bit about this, as I'm about to move back into HERO with a rather large group (and there's a lot of them, too!). So I'll probably have to move away from my general simulationist urges...

 

The impact of damage (and/or wounds) in games varies wildy. At one end you've got systems/settings/styles, where it's no problem healing everything after each fight, and often even within one. So quite often the limiting factor of wounds is taking away in-combat actions from healer PCs or just limiting the amount of combats per day (Recent D&D editons favor this).

 

And on the other extreme, you've got games where injuries have to be avoided at all cost, as they're going to take you out for weeks or longer -- if you make your gangrene rolls.

 

There's also the question whether the damage system should contain a "death spiral" and debilitating injuries. HERO treads lightly here, even with the impairing/disabling optional rules...

 

So the first decision I'd have to make is where I want to position myself on this axis, and what "special effects" wounds should have. That depends highly on how common magic is. If it's basically guaranteed that each group and possibly each village has magical healing available, nobody really cares about the natural recovery rules. But in a campaign where that's not the place, one has to consider the contrast between natural and augmented healing.

 

One game I'm about to start again features relatively little magic (with the PCs as commoners slowly learning it), but plenty of hostiles and exploration. Some people have no problem putting in extended rest in such sandbox-style games. I'm not overly fond of those, as they mean glancing over longer stretches of time and they don't really work for times when things are supposed to move along at a faster pace. So natural healing alone doesn't quite cut it.

Right now, augmented healing consists of healing plants (a resource that can be hoarded for high-pressure events), and minor magics. We're doing the per wound option, but it doesn't really matter that much, as the newly-minted priest's god doesn't like being asked the same thing over and over again, i.e. successive spells of the same kind entail a casting penalty. So it's mostly 1-3 injuries per day. (Of course, such limits aren't an option for campaigns where magic is flowing much more freely)

 

Now, one thing that I'm pondering is distinguishing between short- and long-term injure. Similar to END and LTE. We already have a bit of that with STUN vs. BODY, but that's on an even shorter time scale. What I'm picturing would be a bit like the RoleMaster distinction, where you recover pretty fast from bruises and blood loss, but injuries tend to stick a while. Let's say REC per day for one type, REC per month as usual for the other stuff.

 

Now, the problem is where you'd draw the line between the two types? Just doing fast-recovery BODY and the rest with impairment would be possible, but that would probably mean tweaking the probabilities or durations of them. And yeah, bookkeeping. Never mind that this would probably be a "tighter" death spiral.

[Markdoc]

I like that Mark.  In fact, I'm going to take it one further.  Healing works in FH if...

 

1.  The amount a person can be healed (the number to be beat on future heal rolls) is character dependent.  I've been healed 7 body, I can't be healed again until someone else gets to 8.

 

I like that Mark.  In fact, I'm going to take it one further.  Healing works in FH if...

 

1.  The amount a person can be healed (the number to be beat on future heal rolls) is character dependent.  I've been healed 7 body, I can't be healed again until someone else gets to 8.

 

This is how I run it (and is also in accordance with the rules as written), but that's only relevant for in-combat healing. Out of combat, you have the time to max out those rolls, so post fight, I just let the players heal the max.

 

I think it's important to have fluff as well as rules: the healing house rules that I use are explained by saying that healing magic does not physically heal back the damage - it simply patches the damage up like magical sutures and saline, so that you can continue to function. It might look partly healed, but there's a limit to what can be done with simple healing. Healing won't replace a lost eye, or let you stick a sliced limb back on again, for example. But it will protect a damaged limb or a cut stomach so that it is usable. It's still damaged though: somebody hits you with a dispel, and that magical healing that's holding you together is going to stop, for example. That's why magical healing has a limit - if the underlying tissue is too damaged, there's simply not enough to actually hold together with healing magic.

 

As an aside, I allow regeneration under strict control, as a more powerful way of healing. In the last game the team's healer learnt a secret cult spell as a special thank you from one town's temple. It was a sympathetic healing spell which gave the healer Regeneration UBO, but with the side effect that he took the same damage. That gave him massive healing potential, but it was something he could really only do once a day. Later he learned a healing trance spell (regeneration again) that let him heal himself up to REC BOD/hour, but he was in a 0 DCV trance while he did it. That meant that given a couple of days, he could get the whole party healed up if he worked at it, by taking their wounds himself and then trance-healing them away, but it wasn't a stunt he could pull off in the middle of most scenarios.

 

For me that hit a balance so that we did not lose the dramatic tension of wounds, but at the same time didn't have to stop the plot for a week after a big fight to let people heal up.

 

Cheers, Mark

[Chris Goodwin]

Characters recover Stun quickly enough out of combat that I'm not sure I'd ever bother with a Simplified Healing. In a 30-45 Active Point game, you can afford 4d6 of BODY Healing, which maxes out at 12 BODY.  Over two days that's 24 BODY, which should be pretty much enough to bring any character almost to full over a two day period, especially using the per-wound and max roll out of combat rules.  Buying up the decreased re-use time to per 5 Minutes gets you 2d6, or 6 BODY, or 72 BODY per hour.  

 

I'm starting to re-think whether anything needs to be changed at all.  

[Aversill]

You lost me.  72 Body an hour sounds like a good reason to house rule healing.  One thing that I consider for my games at least is that the monsters often are as powerful as the characters, especially the bosses.  How would my players feel about a boss dragon rocking healing without modification?  I don't think that they would appreciate it. 

[Chris Goodwin]

You lost me.  72 Body an hour sounds like a good reason to house rule healing.  One thing that I consider for my games at least is that the monsters often are as powerful as the characters, especially the bosses.  How would my players feel about a boss dragon rocking healing without modification?  I don't think that they would appreciate it. 

 

Quoting the relevant part...

 

Buying up the decreased re-use time to per 5 Minutes gets you 2d6, or 6 BODY, or 72 BODY per hour.  

 

This seems to be a good reason to disallow Decreased Re-use Time, which (along with the standard 1 day re-use time) came about with 5th Edition Revised.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Like Tasha, i too use the simplified healing option. thus, 2d6 of "healing" doesnt heal 12cp or 6 points of body. it heals up to 4 body and 12 stun. 6d6 heals up to 12 body and 36 stun.

 

If you want life saving healings to be available, but dont want your characters to be able to spam them, put a limitation on your healing spells that require the patient to rest as many hours as there is body to be healed. (Delayed effect? ) that way, the cleric can administer a life saving heal spell at a crucial moment during combat, but if the character healed leaps back into the fray, all that body that was healed goes away due to the strenuous activity.

 

But with this method, characters are only out of comission for hours rather than days or weeks.