Cleric Healing and Healing Potions curiosity

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

It makes for some interesting imagery.

Perfect for a NPC drunken master (and then the PCs find the 80 proof healing potions).

[Mister Negative]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The successive -3 is a way to prevent infinite healing at zero resource cost. If the party can heal fully after every battle, with the only cost being downtime to recover FP afterward, they'll turtle up after each clash until everyone has full HP and FP. Sitting around like that is boring; not having to ask "How many Healing spells can we safely cast?" and "How many healing potions can we afford?" (they aren't cheap) eliminates important decisions; and never having to enter battle wounded means there's no such thing as being worn down (which among other things makes fodder monsters pointless, as they can neither drain resources nor become dangerous in their own right to a sufficiently tired party). In short, the penalties serve the purposes of drama.

If you disagree with those assumptions, you can change them!

But as others have said, I'm wondering whether the issue isn't to do with how individual characters were built and/or how the party was put together. In my experience, you usually have a couple of healers in a party – or one healer with spells and Faith Healing. Those using spells go for better than baseline skill to absorb the penalties, plus enough Power Investiture to exploit Talent and Effect. Faith Healing has the penalties but is open-ended on HP healed, so the healer can dump FP and ER to fix almost anything. Lesser scratches are handled with First Aid. If there's a barbarian, that person snags Very Rapid Healing. And nobody has the cash to blow through healing potions . . . those are held in reserve for when the healers are rolling at such huge penalties that critical failure is assured.

But I suppose it's possible to have a party with just one understrength cleric who's counting on Power Investiture 3 and Major Healing-14 for everything . . . and where everybody traded quirk points for extra gold and bought 20 minor healing potions. As long as the players chose that, though, I'm not seeing a problem. The player of the cleric opted to be something other than a heal-bot – maybe that person prefers smiting and turning – so the "healer" niche isn't being invaded because it was never selected. And the other players enabled this choice by using their points for potions instead of durable gear or abilities, so they have no room to complain about their "sucky healer."

This is EXACTLY what I was asking (albeit poorly).

I've played GURPS since 1989 or so, and Dungeon Fantasy (a bit, but not a lot), but not any DFRPG. Many spells in Magic were omitted or altered for DFRPG, and I get that a lot of those were done because of the constraints of the material (no points costs for monsters, etc), or to bring the spells more in line with the genre conventions.

Even though most OSR games still have some sort of 'spells per day' mechanic, DFRPG does not, except for Healing spells. It seemed odd to enforce that genre convention for one specific set of spells, and not any others, and I wanted to know why.

Mechanically, I and my players knew how to operate under a 'day-limited healing paradigm', and have done so for a long time in GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy. So we weren't looking for advice in that vein.

I was curious about the rationale for retaining the penalties in DFPRG, which was less beholden to legacy rules from GURPS Magic. Hearing from Kromm helps a lot in both understanding the rationale, and in seeing the 'default' assumption for DFPRG Clerics.

We had been looking at a Cleric with ample Energy Reserve, PI3, and Turning (roughly). So he was a HUGE help vs. Undead, and could cast a great number of spells (kind of like a wizard, but more protection and buffing). So the build was skewed towards being able to cast a lot of spells during or immediately before/after an encounter, but wasn't optimized for either 'option' for Healing (higher skill/Faith Healing). The character seemed really flexible and useful (and it was in limited play), but it wasn't really focused on the right niche. We seldom have 5 (and never 6) players, so it's rare for us to get a second healer in the mix in any game we play.

Since the Cleric bandied about in our group was useful and effective on paper (lots of spells that helped in lots of situations, to buff or protect or remove afflictions) we didn't see it as poorly designed, and were kind of confounded. But seeing the need for multiple healers or a more focused healer to meet with the genre helps.

[Kromm]

Fun is king and play style is the power behind the throne. You might not want multiple clerics and/or multiple healers – maybe nobody wants to play those roles. Nevertheless, the DFRPG assumes healing is available to the PCs on the regular. Strictly by the book, options are:

• Cleric with the Faith Healing ability.
• Cleric with Healing spells.
• Somebody with extra money (from Wealth and/or quirk points) invested in healing items: healing potions, balm of regeneration, scrolls bearing Healing spells, etc. Druids are especially capable here due to access to half-price healing potions.
• Somebody with Esoteric Medicine or First Aid, capable of bandaging. This typically means someone with good IQ – bard, cleric, druid, thief, or wizard – but martial artists with high Chi Talent have a back door. A good kit helps, too.

Each option has its strengths and weaknesses.

Faith Healing suffers -3 per repeated use but has no cap on HP healed. A cleric with enough FP and Energy Reserve can fix any wound. It's hard to get better at it: Buy more IQ or more PI. Still, a stock starting cleric is rolling at 17, which is higher than the 14 the same cleric would have in Major Healing, which heals the same 2 HP per energy point.

Minor Healing and Major Healing have -3 per repeated use, too – but these accrue separately for each spell, and you can raise your level with just one (probably Major Healing) cheaply, to eat penalties. While they're capped, Power Investiture pushes the cap up; someone with PI 6 can heal 50% extra per Major Healing, 100% extra per Minor Healing. There are contingency options: Healing Slumber, Lend Vitality, Share Vitality, and Stop Bleeding . . . Don't overlook "You and I each cast Major Healing and Share Vitality on Fred the Barbarian, we each cast Major Healing on each other, and Fred gets the benefit of four Major Healings at no penalty." Great Healing is always there as a backstop.

(I'll pause here to note that the above two options stack nicely. If you have Faith Healing and spells, you can do a lot of healing before any one of your tricks starts suffering penalties for repeated uses.)

Healing items are costly, are often heavy and fragile, and don't regenerate on their own (like FP or ER) or reset each day (like penalties). But they don't fail; even scrolls just work ("This requires no skill roll unless the spell is cast at a distance and/or Resisted."). Standard healing potions cost no energy, either; balm of regeneration drains the user but can heal a lot. Most scrolls also drain the user, but they're efficient; the cheapest healing potion costs ~$34/HP, while a scroll of Major Healing costs a mere $10/HP if a cleric has to read it or $20/HP if universal. Charged scrolls are still worth it for the cleric ($25/HP), and aren't draining – but even a universal charged scroll ($50/HP) is a better deal than a greater healing potion (~$71/HP) and equal to a major healing potion ($50/HP).

At 1d-3 HP, bandaging is slow (30 minutes) and mostly a stopgap, but it's still worth trying before wasting other resources. At its best (3 HP), it can save you a Minor Healing spell or minor healing potion at trivial resource cost. Don't forget that its effect is a dice roll, so Luck can influence it . . . not a huge factor, but a nice perk for heroes trying to wring maximum value from Ridiculous Luck (chances are that if you're stopping for half an hour, other players' actions will take long enough to resolve for 10 minutes to pass).

And while it isn't healing per se, don't overlook that two professions (barbarian and knight) can naturally hit the 20+ HP mark to double the healing power of all of the above. Half-ogres can extend this benefit to other professions if they focus on ST/HP. And barbarians also have access to Very Rapid Healing, which further enhances healing. These things are worthwhile goals: When Skeeve the Wizard with HP 10 and Fred the Barbarian with HP 22 and VRH each sustain a 20-HP injury, Skeeve is at death's door and needs 20 HP worth of resources, while Fred can still walk and needs 6-7 HP worth of resources.

Going off the reservation, there are house rules. I've named a couple:

• Give the druid or martial artist a new special ability equivalent to Faith Healing (hereafter Nature's Renewal or Chi Restoration, respectively).
• Add Healer level to HP restored by bandaging.

I'd counsel using those only in a campaign where nobody especially wants to be a cleric, so there's no "hard" niche invasion.

Druids have can have FP up to 1.5×HT (round up) and up to Energy Reserve 20 (Druidic), so giving them Nature's Renewal can turn them into mega-heal-bots. Martial artists with Chi Restoration will bounce back from FP costs rapidly thanks to Breath Control.

The optional rule for Healer moves bandaging out of the stopgap category. It's something only clerics and druids are likely to exploit, but the 1d+3 a maxed-out cleric could heal averages 6.5 HP and approaches a free Major Healing spell or major healing potion in value. A druid is looking at just 1d+1, but that's still better than a minor healing potion or Minor Healing spell.

With both optional rules in effect, druids become serious contenders as healers: half-price healing potions, Nature's Renewal with a deep energy pool, and Esoteric Medicine (Druidic) with Healer. Of course, the point costs mean not being as good at traditional druidic stuff, but maybe the player wants to play a druidic healer – the archetype has precedents in folklore and fiction.

And yet more options remain. Even by the book, the extra HP from Heroic Might can boost a holy warrior's HP past 20 and enhance healing . . . and the GM can range further afield and let the holy warrior's Higher Purpose add to bandaging HP when patching up wounds inflicted by demons or undead. The martial artist can have the Regeneration ability and also use Body Control to self-bandage after a fight, and the open-minded GM might add Chi Talent to the bandaging HP as I've suggested doing for Healer. This kind of stuff is easy to overlook and mostly just benefits one character, but it can make a difference.

[Latro]

You could offer a magical perk to reduce repeat penalties by 1. Or you could add a healmaster advantage, half penalties for repeated healing and +1pt healed if skill is iq+pi+1, +2 pts healed for skill iq+pi+2 or higher

[Kalzazz]

It's pretty easy to make Noodlearm Inflictsnopain the Thief in other RPGs also

I remember a lot of 'in other systems' thieves as back rank shortbow plinksters as Dec was the Thief stat and the 'hurts with bow' stat

The to the way bows work in DFRPG this isn't a thing

[martinl]

You could also just rub some bacon on it.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by martinl

You could also just rub some bacon on it.

Bacon is all about the curing, after all.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Bacon is all about the curing, after all.

And helps if you are feeling salty.

...

Now I'm tempted to stat up Dwarven Bacon Bandaids...

[Mister Negative]

Just getting the 'assumptions' behind DFRPG helps a lot. I've played (and run) a lot of fantasy using GURPS, and for that, I wanted the "combat is a dangerous option" feeling that limited healing promotes, especially in GURPS. In those fantasy games, negotiation, clever tactics, and deliberately stacking the deck were all encouraged by the knowledge that combat was lethal and healing wasn't just freely available.

We had only played a little bit of DF before DFRPG came out, and we had only had one Cleric. I think we had generated a Cleric that is good for a regular fantasy game, but missed the mark for DF. I think DF (and DFPRG really tends to encourage being a "Pro from Dover" out of the box, and using your CP to broaden as well as boost your abilities.

Instead of having a DF-level GOOD healer, in a game where he would be the primary healer, we had a Cleric that was good at a lot of stuff, but not great at anything--and we needed him to be great at healing.

Now I feel comfortable, when we get through with our current (other) game, to encourage a build that maxes out on the healing, knowing that breadth of spells and other abilities can come through play. I know there's no "wrong way" to play, but we were doing this wrong. We were not constructing a character the way we needed it to play in game, thinking we were making a well-rounded character (which is fine, but we NEED a dude with heals on tap).

Plus, some of the DF blogs I have read have groups with few (or no) PC clerics, and are thus pretty dependent upon allies with Healing abilities and potions, so my internal calibration for potion use may have been getting skewed by that too.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by martinl

Now I'm tempted to stat up Dwarven Bacon Bandaids...

Hm. Might as well stat up Healing Wine as well.
Healing Wine (0.5 or 8.5 lb, variable)
A flask of healing wine is identical to a potion of healing, except that using them can cause you to become intoxicated. Every time you take a drink, you must make a HT or carousing roll, at -1 per 2 HP healed, or become increasingly intoxicated: one failure renders you tipsy, two drunk, three unconscious. Treat a critical failure as two failures. Intoxication is reduced by one step per hour. A bottle of healing wine is stored in a wineskin and contains 32 doses, which can be consumed at a rate of 1 per round (you may attempt a Carousing roll to chug two doses in one round. Success means you succeed, failure means you get one dose and waste one dose, critical failure means you get no benefit and waste two doses. This is in addition to the roll against its effects). A flask costs 3/4 as much as a regular healing potion, a bottle costs 20x as much.