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Old 06-03-2018, 10:11 PM   #121
JLV
 
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Default Re: HEAL spell? --> Healing potions.

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Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post

Healing potions cost a fair bit of money...
Not if they're found in the dungeon the way they were in the programmed adventures!
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Old 06-03-2018, 10:21 PM   #122
Skarg
 
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Default Re: HEAL spell?

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
A fundamental problem for dungeon crawling games is that they include both a tactical element (the actual fights) and a strategic element (healing, resource management, picking your fights, etc), and from a design standpoint these are in opposition, because tactically interesting fights usually only occur when someone made a strategic mistake -- to get a large number of tactically interesting fights, you probably have to trivialize the strategic game. Conversely, a strategically interesting game will involve a whole bunch of uninteresting beatdowns (basically farming in MMO terms). Either one can be viable, but you do have to decide which one you're going to do.

Most RPGs have chosen to focus on the tactical game. This is not essential, but a game that chooses to focus on the strategic should usually vastly simplify the tactical rules.
It seems to me that TFT generally did a good job of having both those scales of things going on, and that the lack of healing means that tactical results impact the strategic level and vice versa in interesting and logical ways. If there's quick & easy healing, that removes that interesting interaction, which is one of the (many) reasons I don't want quick & easy healing. If the healing is strong enough, it also removes much of the feedback, deterrence and caution from players escalating to the point of getting themselves killed. And it adds another reason to kill off opponents rather than let anyone be merely nearly dead.

For example, if the players end up defeating but not quite killing a powerful and interesting opponent who isn't necessarily their mortal enemy, that opponent might beg for his life, or they might actually be humane and let him live because he's so injured he won't be a threat to them for quite a while because he'll need to heal. Perhaps the situation in changeable and he may not even be a foe two weeks in the future. But if there's a common healing spell and they can assume an influential person like that can get access to a healer and several people with Aid, they can expect that that person might be fully healed as soon as a healing team can be brought to him. That gives them a major reason to kill him off. And if the tables were turned and the PCs were the ones begging for their lives, it would give the NPCs a reason to just kill them off, too.


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Originally Posted by JLV View Post
Not if they're found in the dungeon the way they were in the programmed adventures!
"Can't be had for money" is generally considered more valuable than if they're for sale, not less, unless they're very common (which IIRC they weren't).

Last edited by Skarg; 06-03-2018 at 10:25 PM.
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Old 06-03-2018, 10:33 PM   #123
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Default Re: HEAL spell?

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Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
It seems to me that TFT generally did a good job of having both those scales of things going on, and that the lack of healing means that tactical results impact the strategic level and vice versa in interesting and logical ways.
Usually, lack of healing means 'you should avoid any combat that might be interesting'.
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Old 06-04-2018, 07:14 AM   #124
Jim Kane
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Default Re: HEAL spell?

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Usually, lack of healing means 'you should avoid any combat that might be interesting'.
Or, as Sun Tzu stated in 'The Art of War':

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior ... If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles." - Sun Tzu 545 BC - 470 BC

Where else can a guy quote Sun Tzu *and* Lewis Carroll in the same thread... but when talking about The Fantasy Trip.

JK

Last edited by Jim Kane; 06-04-2018 at 07:25 AM. Reason: Typo
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Old 06-04-2018, 06:49 PM   #125
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Default Re: HEAL spell?

Here's a thought - at base (IQ14) it is 4:1 - particularly uninspiring.
At IQ17, Healing II becomes available - 3:1
At IQ20, Healing III becomes available 2:1

Which makes it useful to forget healing I at IQ 17 and replace it with Healing II, and similar for II → III at IQ 20.
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Old 06-04-2018, 07:34 PM   #126
Jim Kane
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Default Re: HEAL spell?

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Originally Posted by ak_aramis View Post
Here's a thought - at base (IQ14) it is 4:1 - particularly uninspiring.
At IQ17, Healing II becomes available - 3:1
At IQ20, Healing III becomes available 2:1

Which makes it useful to forget healing I at IQ 17 and replace it with Healing II, and similar for II → III at IQ 20.
Ak_Aramis, do you see that as paid for as Fatigue, Damage, or Fatigue *and* Damage?

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Old 06-04-2018, 11:30 PM   #127
JLV
 
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Default Re: HEAL spell?

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Usually, lack of healing means 'you should avoid any combat that might be interesting'.
EXACTLY! We should have a "+1" button (or a thumbs up) for statements like this! ;-)

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Originally Posted by ak_aramis View Post
Here's a thought - at base (IQ14) it is 4:1 - particularly uninspiring.
At IQ17, Healing II becomes available - 3:1
At IQ20, Healing III becomes available 2:1

Which makes it useful to forget healing I at IQ 17 and replace it with Healing II, and similar for II → III at IQ 20.
A very clever solution!
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Old 06-05-2018, 07:55 AM   #128
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Default Re: HEAL spell?

One option I haven't seen listed here (but maybe I just missed it) is the one I use in my priest system: priest's healing just modifies physicker (+1 for beginning priests, +5 for max-priests). Priests can use it once per appointed time and it shares physicker's limitations except that priests don't need a physicker's kit and it works on a group (takes about 15 minutes). Working on a group evens out because of 1) physicker's limitations and 2) priests can only perform one ceremony per appointed time.

My reason for making priest's healing into an "improved physicker" talent was that physicker has already been play tested. Why not just add an optional, slight modification (preserving Physicker) instead of introducing a whole new variable?

In my system, Priest requires First Aid (heals 1 ST, same as another writeup I saw earlier in this thread), Theologian requires Physicker (which now costs 1 but requires First Aid), and Theologian 3 requires Master Physicker. This ties Priest to Physicker (but not vice versa) and makes it attractive to combine them because now you can (optionally) make a Physicker with some interesting options to go with all those points you spent on healing talents.

Note: based on the discussions here about whether physicker applies to one combat or one wound, I'd allow people to use all the points they are healed in a ceremony, potentially spreading them across several wounds, since the priest only gets one ceremony per appointed time.
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Old 06-06-2018, 12:18 PM   #129
Skarg
 
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Default Re: HEAL spell?

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Usually, lack of healing means 'you should avoid any combat that might be interesting'.
Um? I wrote "lack of healing" but I meant to refer to the lack of instant healing that mostly removes lasting injury from play. In any case, I'm not sure what you were meaning to suggest?
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Old 06-06-2018, 06:58 PM   #130
tbeard1999
 
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Default Re: HEAL spell?

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Originally Posted by JLV View Post
So what I'm getting out of this, barring the "priestly healing" part of the discussion, is that some people don't want magical healing, and some people do.

Here's an idea -- let Steve add whatever healing spell seems best to him for his game system and then either use it in your game, or don't, as you prefer.

Personally, I'll use it. Because as tomc pointed out, I like my heroes to keep on heroing too. This is a fantasy game, not Dr. Welby, MD.
One idea I toyed with was to assume that 1/2 of a character’s ST (round down; call it “body”) represents actual physical damage, while the rest of his ST (“skill”) represents, skill, luck, etc. After a combat, the skill points are recovered.

Normal figures and rabble have no skill points. This agreeably makes them easy to kill.

A tweak I considered was to allow surprise attacks (and possibly a critical hit) to bypass skill and hit ST directly.
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