Healing vs. Cure Disease

[Facial Tentacles]

The Cure Disease spell: spend 4 FP or less, roll vs skill, unmodified with use of Diagnosis.
The Healing advantage: spend 2 x modifier FP, roll vs IQ, modified by difficulty of disease (possibly -15)

Why would a healer bother with Healing?

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Facial Tentacles

Why would a healer bother with Healing?

If they don't have Magery or if the standard-spell-system isn't in use.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by Facial Tentacles

The Cure Disease spell: spend 4 FP or less, roll vs skill, unmodified with use of Diagnosis.
The Healing advantage: spend 2 x modifier FP, roll vs IQ, modified by difficulty of disease (possibly -15)

Why would a healer bother with Healing?

Because the GM doesn't like the GURPS magic system.
Because Healing isn't stopped by a no-mana zone and becomes no more difficult in low ones.
Because for those 30 points you can heal damage as well and restore crippled limbs.
Because by adding reliable you can raise your effective skill by +1 per CP, much cheaper than buying up Diagnosis and Cure Disease, and its prereuqs.
Because the character may not be able to justify having Diagnosis skill.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by lexington

Because the GM doesn't like the GURPS magic system.
Because Healing isn't stopped by a no-mana zone and becomes no more difficult in low ones.
Because for those 30 points you can heal damage as well and restore crippled limbs.
Because by adding reliable you can raise your effective skill by +1 per CP, much cheaper than buying up Diagnosis and Cure Disease, and its prereuqs.
Because the character may not be able to justify having Diagnosis skill.

To add to this list:

Because Healing can take Reduced FP cost (as well as Reliable), which benefits HP healing as well as disease healing.

Because Healing does NOT take increased cost for large SM characters, while all Regular spells do.

[Facial Tentacles]

What's "Reliable?"

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Facial Tentacles

The Cure Disease spell: spend 4 FP or less, roll vs skill, unmodified with use of Diagnosis.
The Healing advantage: spend 2 x modifier FP, roll vs IQ, modified by difficulty of disease (possibly -15)

Why would a healer bother with Healing?

Well one reason is because if Cure Disease fails, that's it. No trying again. That particular disease in that particular patient will forevermore be incurable by that healer. Which can be nasty if you failed your Diagnosis roll, which is unnecessary when using Healing. Healing should always be at +5 because you paused and took those 30 seconds to feel up your patient. Cure Disease will be at -5 any time you run into something you don't know, which should be frequently at TL 3- unless your diagnosis skill is really good.

Another reason is that Healing can be cheaper than Cure Disease, if you got it as an Alternate Ability to your Heart Attack Affliction and your Toxic Attack.

Another reason is that you might be in a place or a campaign where magic spells just plain don't work.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Facial Tentacles

What's "Reliable?"

(Powers, pg 109)

[Lamech]

A good "healer" is probably cheaper to do with just healing, than by getting the spell. For the healer, and max reliable, and some energy reserve and a bunch of do-overs can heal any disease. The total cost is 65 points assuming you limited the energy reserve. (Only recharges at day/night+ only for healing for example) It does a much better job of healing HP damage since their is no upper limit, and you start at twenty. It heals crippled limbs on a 14 or less.

Lets compare this to the cost for spells. You need lend energy, lend vitality, minor healing, major healing, restoration, instant restoration, relieve sickness and cure disease, and two magery. You need to get cure disease up to get instant restoration up to 14, cure disease and diagnostics up to 16 for comparable success rates. AND some way of getting 50 energy. This is far and away above 65 points. Curing disease will be quicker, but you HP restoration will be lacking.

It seems to me that being able to heal is best done by healing if you wish to build a dedicated healer. Now if you already have a big bag of magery/IQ, the spells are a better choice. But if you have a bio-control malediction then an alternate ability "healing" is the better choice.

[Facial Tentacles]

Originally Posted by Lamech

A good "healer" is probably cheaper to do with just healing, than by getting the spell. For the healer, and max reliable, and some energy reserve and a bunch of do-overs can heal any disease. The total cost is 65 points assuming you limited the energy reserve. (Only recharges at day/night+ only for healing for example) It does a much better job of healing HP damage since their is no upper limit, and you start at twenty. It heals crippled limbs on a 14 or less.

Lets compare this to the cost for spells. You need lend energy, lend vitality, minor healing, major healing, restoration, instant restoration, relieve sickness and cure disease, and two magery. You need to get cure disease up to get instant restoration up to 14, cure disease and diagnostics up to 16 for comparable success rates. AND some way of getting 50 energy. This is far and away above 65 points. Curing disease will be quicker, but you HP restoration will be lacking.

It seems to me that being able to heal is best done by healing if you wish to build a dedicated healer. Now if you already have a big bag of magery/IQ, the spells are a better choice. But if you have a bio-control malediction then an alternate ability "healing" is the better choice.

A Healing healer can't do anything about lost body parts though, and hasn't started down the path of learning Resurrection.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Facial Tentacles

A Healing healer can't do anything about lost body parts though, and hasn't started down the path of learning Resurrection.

The energy required to restore lost body parts (or resurrect!!!) costs so much, one way or another, that the Healing healer will also be able to buy those abilities by the time the wizard gets his spell-powered act together.

For instance, take the 65 point Healer previously discussed.

Repairing lost body parts is doable simply by adding Cure Affliction (powers p51) (cost increase of 18 points), which benefits from all the investments he's already made in his Healing advantage. Note that curing anything from a missing finger through severed arms up to Blindness or quadrapalegia is only 2 FP and -1 to skill. Compare THAT to Instant Regneration.


(NB: At this point, he's probably better served for not buying more ER, and instead taking some Reduced FP cost on his Healing advantage - 5 reduced fatigue cost costs 30 points (compared to 10 unlimited ER), but you NEVER have to worry about recharge times - so you can heal everyone in a 5 man party for 10 HP of injury EACH in a 5 second time period, put peoples arms back on for free, and otherwise waltz around like the ultimate healbot)

Resurrection Lite (Powers Divine Favor p 13) is 58 points (12 points as an alternate ability of your Healing) and lets you bring one person back from the dead with no FP cost - they loose 25 points in misc disadvantages as if they retroactively bought Extra Life.

Resurrection (Powers Divine Favor p 16) is 228 points, so you'd make Healing an Alternate ability of IT - but costs NO FP/ER to cast. You just bring them back in a hurry. Adding "Costs 50 FP/ER" to it saves you 25 points, which I'm not entirely sure is worth the hassle.