[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Slow Healing

[johndallman]

Slow Healing [-5/level] is a mundane physical disadvantage. You heal damage more slowly than normal, doubling the interval between HT (or Physician) rolls to recover hit points for each level of this disadvantage. This disadvantage appeared during the 3e period, and was revised several times.

Normal humans are limited to one level of Slow Healing, and there is a maximum of three levels. Take Unhealing if you heal more slowly than that. Characters with 20-29 HP (see “High HP and Healing” on p. B424), could plausibly use one level of Slow Healing to recover only one hit point at a time, rather than two. You can’t have Regeneration, at least not for hit points, if you have Slow Healing.

Slow Healing is extremely rare on published character templates, for obvious reasons. It’s a possible result of Freakishness in AtE, and of defective genetic engineering or cyborging in Bio-Tech. DF Necromancers have it as an option, and Magic has a Slow Healing spell, whose effects are worse than the disadvantage. Slow Healing is a possible effect of lasting injury to the vitals in Martial Arts, but is prevented by Taboo Trait: Genetic Defects in Transhuman Space: Changing Times. An Ultra-Tech regeneration ray can cause it on a critical failure, and can do worse things.

The impact of this disadvantage is rather variable, depending on the setting. If there’s magical or ultra-tech healing readily available, then it won’t have much effect, but if the only way to recover from injury is natural healing, it will be far more significant. While it’s generally a poor idea for adventurers, it’s worth having in the system as a defect or consequence of injury.

Has this disadvantage ever been sighted in your games?

[Rupert]

I've made a number of racial templates for elves over the years, and a number have included it, often along with Regrowth. The logic being that they heal more slowly than humans, but without scarring, and with regrowth, at least of small extremities (fingers, etc.). Of course, being elves and well provided with magic slow natural healing wasn't the problem for them that it would be for people with less magic available.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Rupert

I've made a number of racial templates for elves over the years, and a number have included it, often along with Regeneration. The logic being that they heal more slowly than humans, but without scarring, and with regeneration. Of course, being elves and well provided with magic slow natural healing wasn't the problem for them that it would be for people with less magic available.

Do you mean Regrowth?

[ericthered]

I rarely even use healing rules. My games are usually either low combat or feature magical healing. Neither game style would be enhanced by slow healing.

Unhealing, on the other hand, I've used quite a bit.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

Do you mean Regrowth?

I do. Fixed.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I rarely even use healing rules. My games are usually either low combat or feature magical healing. Neither game style would be enhanced by slow healing.

Unhealing, on the other hand, I've used quite a bit.

Well, there are quite a few robots on some worlds the campaign has seen, and they'd just about all have Unhealing. It's never really mattered, though, and the android NPC that's with the party at the moment has self-healing, having a very high-end body.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Characters with 20-29 HP (see “High HP and Healing” on p. B424), could plausibly use one level of Slow Healing to recover only one hit point at a time, rather than two.

Is that mentioned anywhere? I'd figure you'd still have to wait a 2-day interval even if you get 2 HP per successful HT roll.

This makes me wonder... even though you shouldn't be able to take Very Rapid Healing / Slow Healing (inverse taboos or whatever you call them) there isn't any exactly any balance reason to forbid it, since VRH + SH1 is basically just normal Rapid Healing except you paid 10 points for it instead of 5.

Originally Posted by Rupert

I've made a number of racial templates for elves over the years, and a number have included it, often along with Regrowth. The logic being that they heal more slowly than humans, but without scarring

Do you recall where advantages preventing scars is mentioned?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Plane

Do you recall where advantages preventing scars is mentioned?

AS far as I know there isn't one. I allow that Regrowth can as a side effect, but it just as well might not, depending on the mechanism. I'd allow a racial perk "doesn't scar".

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Plane

Do you recall where advantages preventing scars is mentioned?

The Algonaut in Transhuman Space: Deep Beyond (Page 112) has Regrowth (small extremities only, -50%) [20] and the text says:

Cellular modifications inspired by salamanders enable the Algonaut to regenerate lost extremities – it can lose fingers, toes, or even its tongue and grow them back in a few weeks or months, while skin quickly recovers from dermal scarring.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Characters with 20-29 HP (see “High HP and Healing” on p. B424), could plausibly use one level of Slow Healing to recover only one hit point at a time, rather than two.

Originally Posted by Plane

Is that mentioned anywhere? I'd figure you'd still have to wait a 2-day interval even if you get 2 HP per successful HT roll.

It was a suggestion by me, rather than being from any book, which is why I said "plausibly".

If a character has 20-29 hit points, and Slow Healing 1, then by the book, they get a chance to recover hit points every two days, and if they succeed, they get two hit points. I was suggesting they could, instead, get a chance every day, but only recover one hit point on a success.

That seems less artificial, because healing injury is generally related to sleep, which happens daily. Remember that hit points are an abstraction of an essentially continuous and many-faceted scale of injury and recovery.

This makes me wonder... even though you shouldn't be able to take Very Rapid Healing / Slow Healing (inverse taboos or whatever you call them) there isn't any exactly any balance reason to forbid it, since VRH + SH1 is basically just normal Rapid Healing except you paid 10 points for it instead of 5.

However, it's convoluted, unnecessarily expensive, and if both VRH and SH are due to ordinary biological causes, fails a plausibility test.