Cleric Healing and Healing Potions curiosity

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

Have an imp weapon that can reliably cause 0 damage. Inflict a wound on a DR0 body part, it will inflict 1 HP of damage.

Cast Stop Bleeding, which gives back 1d6-3 (min 1) for 1 FP (costs zero with skill 15).

Yeah... expect to whacked with a rolled up rulebook if you try to pull that one... :P

Originally Posted by Mister Negative

It's more that the casting penalties for repeated spells make the PCs nervous about getting injured again. So we either go to the '1-encounter adventuring day', which was bad enough to avoid in Pathfinder and 4e, or we stock up on potions

Why is your Cleric not rolling in the door with a casting skill of 18 (that gives an easy 3 casting per person per day)? And then exping up to a skill of 21 asap?

[ArchonShiva]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Yeah... expect to whacked with a rolled up rulebook if you try to pull that one... :P

Reading this made me sad.

I still think of 4e rulebooks as hardcover, and this really brought out how much my favorite game line has been, undeservedly, struggling.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

However, the penalties are mostly to prevent people from recovering ridiculously fast in more down-to-earth fantasy, as well as prevent repeated 1-point heals at zero FP cost due to skill.

This.
Without the penalty Clerics would often use Minor Healing with high skill to cast 0 FP healing over and over.
That -3 skill penalty is not too severe, especially since you want high skill for lower FP costs and you can cast Minor Healing, Major Healing, or even Great Healing and different casters dont take a penalty for other casters.
So one decent Cleric is good for TWO heals per day per person, another two at -3 each (Likely still at above skill 12) for 4 heals per person per day and clerics who invested more in Healing can do better.

I havent really seen people preferring to rely on potions and instead save them for emergencies, such as when the cleric is low on FP and they dont want to risk waiting.

[Kalzazz]

For a game like DFRPG that restricts healing in a draconian fashion I'd really loosen the restrictions on using healing and/Or the restrictions on getting it

The healing rules with the per caster casting penalties and penalties to self healing really seem better balanced under the assumption any random spellcaster will pick up healing spells as are only a couple notches down the pre reg tree from Recover Energy which all casters will have

I'd also allow spending PI energy, so PI Cleric can drop 6 into Major Healing to churn 12

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I'd also allow spending PI energy, so PI Cleric can drop 6 into Major Healing to churn 12

Have a look in Spells p. 11 and read everything under the header "Talent and Effect".

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Have a look in Spells p. 11 and read everything under the header "Talent and Effect".

This is one of the reasons I don't see the problem Mister Negative seems to having in his group.

I'm betting the Cleric didn't buy up PI at the outset and thus is limited at skill 15 (instead of 18 or 21*) and not being able to pump for bigger heals.



* Minor and Major Healing are the only skills I've ever seen Players buy up above what 1 exp gets them (though they still tend to only dump 8 exp each into them).

[Taneli]

With 8 points in both Minor and Major healing, they're only two points short of raising their PI by 1 level (assuming that the GM allows this, ours does as it was pointed out in the G:DF line that this sort of munchkin behaviour is in the roots of the genre).

[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."

[ArchonShiva]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In my experience, you usually have a couple of healers in a party

This bit makes me extremely curious how that occurs. The only combo I can think of is a very specific cleric+holy warrior who selected Faith Healing, or two clerics, neither of which seems likely in a 5-person party.

Is there *any* legal way to get healing on any other character, including stuff from DFMI?

[JackShadow]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

This bit makes me extremely curious how that occurs. The only combo I can think of is a very specific cleric+holy warrior who selected Faith Healing, or two clerics, neither of which seems likely in a 5-person party.

Is there *any* legal way to get healing on any other character, including stuff from DFMI?

This was our interpretation of the rules too. You pretty much had to have a Cleric in the group. I was hoping that the Druid and Holy Warrior (i.e. Paladin) would have some lesser healing options to spread the load around.