HEAL spell?

[CJM]

I'm with JLV, I like the spell. If you don't want to use it then don't, easy solution. But there is some of us that would like to have the option.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by CJM

I'm with JLV, I like the spell. If you don't want to use it then don't, easy solution. But there is some of us that would like to have the option.

And that's exactly the way I feel about it. I want the option there. If it isn't used by some folks in their game, no problem; I'm not the "you must play my way, or else" police. But I LIKE the idea of a healing spell and really hope it's put in there.

[Skarg]

Again:

If the healing spell gives you 3 or so points of healing per IQ 14 wizard per day, that's one thing, and would be a great benefit above what's possible in the existing rules.

But if there's no limit other than fatigue, then every IQ 9 person with the Aid spell can add their ST plus rest up to 64 more ST points per day, and suddenly the 3:1 healing spell means up to about 24 points of healing per day per caster including the IQ 9 people with Aid.

This makes a massive difference in healing rates. Most parties will be able to heal up most injuries in one day of their healing wizard resting. Certainly if they have people with Aid helping out. People without that will still have to rest for days or weeks. Meaning everyone risking injury REALLY wants to have such a wizard, or they're at a massive healing disadvantage.

It also makes sense if you do have a strong commando unit and want to plow it through a stronghold, to have a bunch of doofuses along with the Aid spell, so you can get tons of healing immediately after each combat. Suddenly, competent strike forces with enough resources will look like a team of fighters, at least one healing wizard, and a mob of expendable people with the Aid spell who are effectively reusable walking healing potions that have to be fed, and by the way could also cast some Aid for other purposes. It becomes a fiddly and odd but VERY effective tactic.

And, any published adventures and campaign materials should be written with this sort of exploitation of a healing spell in mind, or not, because the balance of many adventures would be very different if this is available or not.

[zot]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Again:

If the healing spell gives you 3 or so points of healing per IQ 14 wizard per day, that's one thing, and would be a great benefit above what's possible in the existing rules.

But if there's no limit other than fatigue, then every IQ 9 person with the Aid spell can add their ST plus rest up to 64 more ST points per day, and suddenly the 3:1 healing spell means up to about 24 points of healing per day per caster including the IQ 9 people with Aid.

This makes a massive difference in healing rates. Most parties will be able to heal up most injuries in one day of their healing wizard resting. Certainly if they have people with Aid helping out. People without that will still have to rest for days or weeks. Meaning everyone risking injury REALLY wants to have such a wizard, or they're at a massive healing disadvantage.

It also makes sense if you do have a strong commando unit and want to plow it through a stronghold, to have a bunch of doofuses along with the Aid spell, so you can get tons of healing immediately after each combat. Suddenly, competent strike forces with enough resources will look like a team of fighters, at least one healing wizard, and a mob of expendable people with the Aid spell who are effectively reusable walking healing potions that have to be fed, and by the way could also cast some Aid for other purposes. It becomes a fiddly and odd but VERY effective tactic.

And, any published adventures and campaign materials should be written with this sort of exploitation of a healing spell in mind, or not, because the balance of many adventures would be very different if this is available or not.

Catnap sleeping could up this to around 32 points of healing per wizard or person with Aid per day. Technically you could just assert that your character is a catnap sleeper but I made a talent for it

[JLV]

Simple solution: Rule that the Wizard can only cast it a few times a day. Problem solved.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Kirk

I guess what you are saying is that you want to mostly win without potentially deadly consequences

I think an important difference here is that Kirk assumes that after the healing rules are introduced the battles will be no more difficult than they were before, and therefore risk and consequences of battles will be less. Whereas I think the GM, knowing the players can quickly recover from damage, will make the fights harder and more damaging than the GM otherwise would, so that battles result in more danger and less nuisance.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by JLV

Simple solution: Rule that the Wizard can only cast it a few times a day. Problem solved.

Yes, this would be one way to keep healing at level B.

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

... I think the GM, knowing the players can quickly recover from damage, will make the fights harder and more damaging than the GM otherwise would, so that battles result in more danger and less nuisance.

When magic healing makes lasting injuries not a thing that happens, then combats either kill people, or have no effect on them. This ups the stakes, and makes the battles where the players have no deaths have little/no consequences (which seems comparatively uninteresting and artificial to me), and this also causes some players to start to lose their sense of how dangerous things are, feel invincible and/or not take the details of combat terribly seriously. What else can happen in battle besides you win and get healed right away? Well, you can die, for variety.

One thing you can do is add characters to your party to soak some losses, and have a bit of attrition that way.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by JLV

Simple solution: Rule that the Wizard can only cast it a few times a day. Problem solved.

Perhaps even simpler would be for the Spell only to be useable once per day on any particular character.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Comments?


Heal (T) (IQ 14)
For each 3 points of ST that the wizard puts into this spell, he/she can cure one hit of damage on himself or another. Heal will also restore lost fatigue from spellcasting, etc., but rarely is it practical to use it this way.
Heal will cure HT already lost to disease and poison, but it will not cure the disease nor make a poison go away.
It is possible to place healing magic into an artifact, but such things are rare and costly, and work no better than a mage with the Heal spell and a strength battery or a corps of apprentices.
Healing scrolls, on the other hand, are common. As with other scrolls, the magic comes from the scroll and the strength comes from the caster.

Comments: There is no HEAL spell in the original game because of concerns that it would make an adventuring party too self-sufficient. I no longer think that is a big problem.
I can imagine making it IQ 13, but no easier; this should be a spell that most wizards don’t have.
Perhaps a Master Physicker who knows this spell would restore lost hits at only 2 ST each? I like synergies between Master Physicker and other kinds of healing.

I think its great, if maybe slightly too costly. I agree that there is no reason any longer to worry about characters being too self-sufficient.

Besides, its so easy for a TFT character to get one-shotted that a healing spell hardly breaks the game.

[zot]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Yes, this would be one way to keep healing at level B.

When magic healing makes lasting injuries not a thing that happens, then combats either kill people, or have no effect on them. This ups the stakes, and makes the battles where the players have no deaths have little/no consequences (which seems comparatively uninteresting and artificial to me), and this also causes some players to start to lose their sense of how dangerous things are, feel invincible and/or not take the details of combat terribly seriously. What else can happen in battle besides you win and get healed right away? Well, you can die, for variety.

One thing you can do is add characters to your party to soak some losses, and have a bit of attrition that way.

I think it's not quite as simple as that, here's why I think so:

1) Heal takes an action to cast so if someone keeps damaging a character and a wizard keeps healing them, the damage occupies both the wizard and the victim (potentially with reactions to injury). So temporary damage has an additional tactical impact, it doesn't bring people as close to death but it makes wizards "miss their turn".

2) Wizards don't have infinite ST and Heal is expensive. Damage will now create difficult choices for wizards that weren't there before.

3) Don't think that this is just a benefit to the players: enemy spell casters will definitely have Heal and that will help deplete wizard resources even more by extending duration of damage production.

4) Out of combat healing will most likely still be necessary because of the above dynamics. If a GM wants to up the challenge, they can ambush the characters before the physickers can finish healing them or before the wizards can regain enough ST for more Heals. Of course only play testing will reveal the truth of this but I think it's likely.