Carnivale-style Healing

[Plane]

There is this TV series Carnivale where the main character heals people by 'moving life', he sucks vitality out of some living things to heal wounds in others. This could be plants, animals, or other people. I've seen it kill corn, fish and birds, while he tries to get other humans far away so they won't be sucked dry.

Is there a way to take "Costs HP" on Healing but have it be someone else's HP instead of yours? Like by using 'Affects Others' so that you can touch something and force that thing to use Healing for you?

[Flyndaran]

I think the most straightfoward way to do that power is with an area Leech healing an Energy Reserve that powers the Healing ability.

Your idea if it would work at all in Gurps sounds like the damage and healing have to happen simultaneously.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Plane

There is this TV series Carnivale where the main character heals people by 'moving life', he sucks vitality out of some living things to heal wounds in others. This could be plants, animals, or other people. I've seen it kill corn, fish and birds, while he tries to get other humans far away so they won't be sucked dry.

Is there a way to take "Costs HP" on Healing but have it be someone else's HP instead of yours? Like by using 'Affects Others' so that you can touch something and force that thing to use Healing for you?

I created a modifier to base it on the subject's FP instead of the healers, I don't see why you couldn't increase that by, say, +20% and have others able to donate FP to the cost of healing. If it's pulling HP instead maybe use Empathic Healing instead and add the modifiers together as a single package. The problem is that this is really two abilities - likely with a link: Healing and Leech. If it were just causing environmental issues I'd just say it's Healing with "Temporary Disadvantage, Lifebane."

Hmmm. Leech is worth 25 points for level 1 and another 4 points per HP stolen. Healing is worth 30 points. Theoretically, you can heal an unlimited amount per time, but if we cap it at 10 points that's not too out there. So Leech that pulls 10 FP at a time is worth 61 points by itself. I think there is potential here to create a new modifier.

So you'd have Leech as:

Leech 10 (Accelerated Healing, +25%; Accessibility, Only to heal targets, -10%; Area Effect, 1 yard, +25%; Cosmic, No Grapple Required, +50%; Link, +10%) [122]

That will allow you to drain everything in your hex that's alive - which includes plants, bugs, etc. Since this is about 4x as much as Healing that's basically a +400% modifier.

So you'd get something like:

Rejuvenative Drain: Instead of paying FP to heal a subject, you instead drain HP from the surrounding area (including people other than you and the subject. This causes plants to die, insects to desiccate, etc. within your hex when you restore the subject. If multiple subjects are in your hex when this occurs split the HP drained evenly among them as possible. Treat all local plant life as one subject for this purpose. +400%.

Add Selective Area (+20%) if you can choose which targets you affect in an area. Add Selectivity (+10%) if you can heal normally or this way. To increase the area you pull from add Area Effect (+50%).

That's a bit off the cuff, but that's probably what I'd do to mimic said power.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I think the most straightfoward way to do that power is with an area Leech healing an Energy Reserve that powers the Healing ability.

Your idea if it would work at all in Gurps sounds like the damage and healing have to happen simultaneously.

I’m not familiar with Carnivale, but from the description, it sounds like draining human sized HP isn’t necessary for the healing.
Healing with a nuisance effect (kills small plants and animals), plus a +10% link of an area toxic innate attack sounds right. if the power kills people, make the innate attack big. Simple build, and seems right effect-wise.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I think the most straightfoward way to do that power is with an area Leech healing an Energy Reserve that powers the Healing ability.

Definitely the -80% version of Special Recharge in that case, he wasn't able to hold onto the life energy, he had to spend it almost immediately, forcing the leech targets and the healing target to be in somewhat close proximity.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Your idea if it would work at all in Gurps sounds like the damage and healing have to happen simultaneously.

Or nearly enough. I thought about Link+10% but I'm not sure if you can split targets that way. The greater problem is that we need some way of turning off Leech as an attack if wounds aren't being healed.

I've never seen it used to just take life force out of someone without having a wound to heal with that force. One of the climaxes was to try and kill a villain he had to keep him nearby while finding a bunch of ailments to heal, bit by bit transferring their ailments to the villain.

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

I created a modifier to base it on the subject's FP instead of the healers, I don't see why you couldn't increase that by, say, +20% and have others able to donate FP to the cost of healing.

It doesn't appear to need to be a voluntary donation though, it can be stolen without consent and there doesn't seem to be much that can be done to stop it other than attacking the user.

The malediction version of Leech has a resistance roll, so it might just be a case of the user's willpower being stronger than the will (or HT, or whatever else gets targeted) of the one the HP is stolen from.

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Theoretically, you can heal an unlimited amount per time, but if we cap it at 10 points that's not too out there.

I wouldn't mind it being 1 HP per second, the healing always seems to take a lot of time to do. Any faster speeds could be covered through extra effort rules.

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Add Selective Area (+20%) if you can choose which targets you affect in an area.

I don't think he got that until the final episode :) Even then it might've been a unique capability due to a certain attunement with a villain, I can't remember seeing him being able to select certain targets for HP drain aside from that, to exclude them he just moved away from them or had them move away.

The only exception being the user, and the target of the healing, since they are not drained in doing the healing.

Originally Posted by Culture20

Healing with a nuisance effect (kills small plants and animals), plus a +10% link of an area toxic innate attack sounds right. if the power kills people, make the innate attack big. Simple build, and seems right effect-wise.

Would you even need the nuisance if the toxic damage would kill the animals and plants?

This sounds like an interesting approach. The effect of the ones you heal not taking damage from the Toxic Attack could just be that since they are Linked and happen simultaneously, even if they took enough damage to die, they're being healed at the same time so you'd only take the net difference of TA minus healing.

The problem with the mechanics of that though is I think it could still cause healing even if there was noone else around to harm. He could never harm himself to heal others, only harm other things.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Plane

It doesn't appear to need to be a voluntary donation though, it can be stolen without consent and there doesn't seem to be much that can be done to stop it other than attacking the user.

The malediction version of Leech has a resistance roll, so it might just be a case of the user's willpower being stronger than the will (or HT, or whatever else gets targeted) of the one the HP is stolen from.

Yeah. That was what I was thinking.

Originally Posted by Plane

I wouldn't mind it being 1 HP per second, the healing always seems to take a lot of time to do. Any faster speeds could be covered through extra effort rules.

The problem is that you run into the -3 penalty for repeated tries for Healing. Better to get it in a single sum (or remove the penalty with the use of Cosmic).

Originally Posted by Plane

I don't think he got that until the final episode :) Even then it might've been a unique capability due to a certain attunement with a villain, I can't remember seeing him being able to select certain targets for HP drain aside from that, to exclude them he just moved away from them or had them move away.

The only exception being the user, and the target of the healing, since they are not drained in doing the healing.

Right, I was just offering additional choices.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

The problem is that you run into the -3 penalty for repeated tries for Healing. Better to get it in a single sum (or remove the penalty with the use of Cosmic).

I was talking about Leech 10, pretty sure there's no cumulative penalty to leech someone in following seconds unless you take that as a limitation

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Plane

I was talking about Leech 10, pretty sure there's no cumulative penalty to leech someone in following seconds unless you take that as a limitation

Ahhh, I thought you were using the two abilities simultaneously. If that's not the case then sure Leech + ER + Healing is the best route to take.

[Plane]

I do need to prevent the Leech attack from working unless it's going into healing, so the "only to heal targets -10%" limitation you'd used sounds right, though mechanically I'm not sure how to use it since Healing would be done following the filling of the energy reserve. Something like: as you lose stored energy (1/second) in the reserve, the stolen HP goes back to who you stole it from?