Re: HEAL spell? --> Healing potions.
 

Not if they're found in the dungeon the way they were in the programmed adventures!

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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.


"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).

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Usually, lack of healing means 'you should avoid any combat that might be interesting'.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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

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.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Ak_Aramis, do you see that as paid for as Fatigue, Damage, or Fatigue *and* Damage?

JK

Re: HEAL spell?
 

EXACTLY! We should have a "+1" button (or a thumbs up) for statements like this! ;-)

A very clever solution!

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.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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?

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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.