Re: HEAL spell?
 

I don't believe I said they were an issue; what the real issue is that after a couple of hours of dungeon bashing in TFT, everyone needs to go to the local chirurgeon to get his bones set, and the local phsyicker to get his infections cured, and then spend the next couple of weeks healing -- which allows the bad guys the same amount of time to import more strength, repopulate the dungeon, build new traps and hidden access points, bore a few murder holes in the walls, and so on. Which means you go back in, things are even tougher, and you come back out without having accomplished anything for another three weeks of healing, while the baddies set new traps, bore more murder holes, improve their marksmanship, etc., etc. Meanwhile the good guys have long since blown their opportunity to rescue Princess Peach from the Dungeon of Doom, and her sacrifice on the Alter of Slime summoned the Cthuluvian Tentacle Beast From Beyond to ravage the Kingdom...

Do you really not see the level of frustration that sort of thing engenders? Or is the GM supposed to just pretend that the baddies will ignore those pesky dungeon adventurers and just play knucklebones during their three week break? What would Little Jess do, do you think?

In effect, you're saying that I have to play the bad guys as idiots, instead of playing them the way they would really operate, but even you say "maybe they fix weak spots in their defense." Well, yes, that's EXACTLY my point. I'm not sure why this issue is so hard to understand.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Well, your adversaries might have finite resources, in which case if you can keep hitting them they'll weaken. Of course, that may mean they just abandon the location.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Hmmm, two points about this.

First, maybe the party, just like in real life, needs to be able to accomplish their mission in one strike.

If they can´t pull it off, they fail at it. If dungeons are some sort of super store filled with goods that are continually looted, I would expect they would harden the target or quit storing stuff there. If someone is being held hostage, they probably would move them. If you smash up a town, they´ll come after you.

That´s not playing the NPCs stupid, it´s playing them smart! My point is that the PCs have to be better and smarter, and if not, then they may not succeed. The level of challenge is ultimately up to the GM, and doesn´t require a fast healing in the system to allow this.

Secondly, if the party can magically heal, so can the NPCs! The tech is generally the same for everyone, so the adventure should depend on the Players´ cleverness and skill to separate success from failure.

And why not turn this around? The PCs have to protect someone, or have set up camp in a cave, or a base in a dungeon, or town, or whatever and the NPCs try to kidnap, destroy, steal, etc. from the PCs. Is it fair that the invaders should never be ¨frustrated¨by the PCs and have to run back to heal for a few weeks, while the PCs try and figure out a how to improve their hiding place, protection, relocate, etc. while the NPCs heal?

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Al of which are totally good ideas...and do nothing to address the overall issue.

I like Steve's Spell.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I guess what you are saying is that you want to mostly win without potentially deadly consequences or in spite or poor planning, and just go charging around a hole in the ground without thought or strategic or tactical issues getting in the way of collecting shiny loot. Otherwise I don´t see that there is an issue.

It´s a way to play that might be facilitated with a healing spell, but it´s not a style of play that is all that interesting to me.

I much prefer an intriguing and difficult world where decisions count and sometimes things happen that are deadly. We don´t spend much time crawling around in dungeons, anyway, for good reason.

I don´t want a magical rescue every time things go south.

But that´s just our group, I know D and D style play is fairly prevalent since TFT hasn´t been available for decades.

I am hoping that can change for newly exposed players, and a healing spell of any major consequence could change what makes TFT a unique and interesting game and not just another poorly designed role playing game.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

That looks like a pretty unfair characterization of anyone's play style to me. Give JLV a little slack, maybe?

For us, combat and puzzles were fun but the story was the point.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

That's what we call a "strawman" argument there Kirk. You set up an argument that no one ever made and then proceed to knock it down and take yourself a victory lap.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

The issue isn't the potentially deadly consequences; a basic healing spell doesn't cure dead. The issue is the inconvenient consequences.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

One of the more interesting things things to me about time spent resting, is that the world and other people in it get an opportunity to do things during that time, which I find potentially very interesting and significant, and part of experiencing a game world as a world rather than as a static obstacle course for the PCs.

It also means that whoever the PCs' adversaries or competition are, they get to do things while the PCs recover from their wounds, which is both very interesting to me, and also more fair and challenging and again, more like a real world and less like an artificial setup designed to let the players be victorious without actually doing something that makes sense to achieve things.

During down-time, opponents can heal, recruit reinforcements, move around the world, lay traps, devise new schemes, make progress on current schemes, evacuate places the PCs have attacked but not looted yet, etc etc. Tollenkar's Lair has some good suggestions about this.

And non-opponents can also do various things, bringing up new opportunities and challenges.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

All you've shown is that (1) you engage in logical fallacies, (2) don't care about dungeon crawls, and (3) don't think that those who do deserve the tools to do it.

Since you drew a nice strawman to target, let's torch it with the actual extant rules.

Now, with Fatigue recovery being much faster than wounds... 4:1 is not instant back, not even close. It's 1 point per hour per caster. (AW, p. 39)

Physicker is more potent; 5 minutes for 2 points (ibid)

There are healing potions, which are instant. $150 per dose, each dose is 1 hit restored. (AW, p. 24) Their bulk is a limiter... plus a cruel GM might note the fragility of the containers.

Since there is already magical healing, having a healing spell isn't a big deal.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

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.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Here's another reality check, just to answer my own figure of 32 points...

A master physicker has the potential to heal WAY more damage than that per day. It just depends on how big the group is and how many combats they have.

The Death Tests have from 11-15 combats or so and allow 15 minutes of rest per room. For a group of 3 or 4 characters, a physicker could potentially heal 9 damage per room potentially healing a whopping 135 points of damage in one day.

This is for Death Test, course: probably more combats than a group would normally see in one day but physicker's are also artificially limited to healing only three times per combat, so a fourth injured group member is out of luck. Something tells me, though, that dungeon-heavy adventures will have a lot of combats :).

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Wow! This thread is FULL of ideas. I'm looking forward to testing some of them next time my brother and I get together for some online TFT.

I saw one or two brief, peripheral mentions of permanent limb damage.

I'm not suggesting this for the basic rules, but my RPG campaigns are likely to feature crushed or removed arms and legs, lost fingers, ruined eyes, etc. That seems like a nice balance to some of the "easier" magic healing.

"My hand! Why didn't you fix my hand?"

"Sorry, Clive. The troll ate it."

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Yes, if 3 party members each take 3 points of damage in every battle... But physickers can only heal damage that hasn't yet been treated, while magic healing so far has no such restriction. And most competent parties will strive to have both physickers and a healing wizard backed up by people with Aid.

And a master physicker generally means a non-wizard had to take IQ 14, which in Death Test means a fighter spent 4-6 points in IQ rather than ST + DX (or an IQ 14 wizard skipped 8 spells to be a physicker), and you can only take 4 figures into Death Test. With the healing spell, it means you took a wizard at IQ 14 and took the healing spell, which doesn't detract from your combat ability (well except in that Death Test it only lets you rest 15 minutes so your spell use needs to be rationed - in campaigns there are often hours or days between combats).

If Anders gets skewered for 11 points of damage, a master physicker can heal 3 to bring that down to 8... and that's it. Barring magic, that character is now actually seriously injured and wants 16 days of bed rest. But if there's a magic spell that says nothing about already-treated wounds, those remaining 8 points can be zapped up pretty quickly, especially if there are people with Aid available - with enough, he can be fully healed immediately. If Anders is a combat monster, that's a very powerful effect.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Yeah, we used both of the optional hit location rules in Advanced Melee, and that certainly adds to the carnage and can produce combat consequences despite healing magic. At least until someone suggests a Limb Restoration spell... well, Rick actually already has one in his house magic spells, though that's the only part I probably wouldn't use in his spells. I think lost limbs add character and significance to adventure results.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Unarmed combat III and up needs IQ 14, I'll have to try it with a UC physicker.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

LOL! What fun would TFT be without a few missing limbs or getting your eye poked-out ;-D

Seriously, those Aimed Shots and Optional Hit Location Rules in our experience were devastating. The only time we used them was for enhanced dramatic purposes; and on a *very* limited basis, and *only* when it served to add excitement and color to the story - because putting a crossbow bolt through the Goblin King's throat, just after he croaks-out: "Destroy the Surface-Dwellers!!" is just too cool!

JK

Re: HEAL spell?
 

An issue here is that the relative value of Healing and Physicker is hugely different in a one-fight-a-week outdoor campaign, compared with a ten-fights-a-day underground campaign. So there's no simple answer.

But Healing has the excellent feature that it will reasonably quickly remove all damage short of death. Physicker removes some damage very quickly but it's only a complete solution if the wounds are minor. The breadth of problems it can solve makes Healing a huge change: in my opinion a mostly desirable one.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I'm a little rusty on TFT do you roll 3d6 vs IQ for successful casting?
If you do, maybe you could make it 4d6, 5d6 etc for subsequent casting on the same individual in the same 24 hour period? In GURPS I think you have minuses which have the same effect.

Yes, this makes logical sense.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Steve's Heal is a thrown spell so it's 3/DX at -1 for each hex away starting with the adjacent hex (same hex is -0).

Re: HEAL spell?
 

The RAW say everything is against DX, though I've always thought rolling against IQ made a bit more sense in terms of the background story...

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Making DX a free dump stat for wizards, and letting them use lots of armor because who cares if AdjDX is 4, has definite balance issues.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I'm all for a Healing spell. I think it just adds to the flexibility of creating interesting characters. I was just pondering what a Critical Failure roll of 15,16,17, or 18 would do when casting this spell <chuckles>. I might have to create a chart especially for that instance, because I know someone will blow it, really badly, at some point.

Anyone have any thoughts on some nasty critical failure results for a Heal spell?


Yours, in rascality,
Tolenkar

Re: HEAL spell?
 

We house ruled that for critical failure, wizards take 1 die damage and armor doesn't protect, just like a bare handed fighter would.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Except, of course, they still need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time ("Oops, you slipped on that banana peel and fell off the bridge -- roll 8d6 for damage since you fell umpty-dozen feet"), and that the rules specifically limit their ability to wear "lots of armor" because it interferes with their spell-casting ability; but yeah, otherwise you're right.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Yeah, I've done a few versions of such a table to counter the GURPS Magic healing spells. As much as I dislike strong/fast healing magic, it can be fun watching players get scared of potential bad side-effects from over-use of it.

I like systems where moderate use is mostly safe, but the more you push it, the riskier it can get, and you can't entirely rule out serious complications, so it gets used when needed but shouldn't be over-used.

There are so many possibilities... but it's yet another play style preference category - the people who want a super-fast healing spell don't tend to want their buzzsaw to include medical side-effects...

Re: HEAL spell?
 

One of the things mentioned on this forum in the past has been a "magical backlash table" for exactly this kind of effect. There was one published in the Space Gamer eons ago that was pretty good. I've always liked that sort of thing too. I think magic should be dangerous! I mean, you're messing with powers that "man was not meant to know" when you start zapping people and teleporting and all that sort of thing...

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I agree that this idea does have an exciting appeal; however, we are not completely without this same effect, as represented by the Critical Failure(s) at 16, 17, and 18. Impromptu creativity on the part of the GM on describing how those failures manifest in the game may be the better place to look for improvement without altering the rules-set. Perhaps a sub-table of random prescribed typical-hazardous-effects incurred for when a Critical Failure occurs for a Wizard would be a solution.

JK

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Hi JLV,
I totally agree. That said, I like that the higher IQ spells are more dangerous than the lower IQ spells. However, doing so adds complexity...

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I'm confused--when did HT get separated from ST? I thought damage was done straight to your ST, and a Wizard's use of ST to power spells was basically the same. What am I missing?

Re: HEAL spell?
 

They are during combat, but Advanced Wizard (see last page) has exhaustion/fatigue from spell-casting recover at 1 point per 15 minutes (and is recoverable with the Drain Strength spell), while injury (the part remaining after physicking, see ITL) heals at 1 point per 2 days.

(A common house rule is also to not have wizards die unless their actual wounds go up to ST, not wounds + fatigue, but that's not what the original rules say.)

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Three issues enter in here:

One, "HT" doesn't exist in TFT, only "ST." HT was a GURPS invention, and doesn't actually apply to TFT.

Two, the AW "fatigue" versus "damage" rules open a huge bag of worms that never was clearly resolved in the original TFT, which led to a lot of back and forth among players and a lot of house-ruling on the topic.

(Digression: We solved it by using little square boxes underneath the ST section of the character sheet. You got one box per point of ST. Basically, if you took a "fatigue" hit, you marked off the box with a slash (/). Once you had all the boxes with slashes in them, you were exhausted and passed out, but could begin recovering the fatigue hits at the rate of one every 15 minutes (later we houseruled that to an hour per point). If you took an actual wound, you marked the box with an "X". (If you already had a slash in the box, you just added the backslash (\) to make the "X".) Those were real wounds, and took the normal time to heal. As your wounds grew, your "fatigue" points correspondingly shrank -- so if your ST was 12, you had 12 boxes, and if you had four actual wounds (boxes marked with "X"), then your maximum available "fatigue" ST was 8; which was all you could use to cast spells or expend for other "fatigue-related" issues. This turned out to be a really nice visual way for people to instantly grasp their limitations...)

(2nd Digression: Later on, we added a rule that effectively doubled the power of Wizards -- they DIDN'T fall unconscious when fatigue reached zero, but instead could continue casting. The problem was that each point of extra "fatigue" they spent added the backslash to one of their fatigue wound boxes (it could only be applied to a fatigue wound box, not a regular wound box), and converted the fatigue damage into real wounds. This meant that in a crisis, the Wizard could keep casting, but this time he was literally killing himself to do so. It seemed like a nice compromise between the original Wizard rules and the exhaustion/fatigue rule in Advanced Wizard, plus, low-point Wizard characters didn't run out of juice and become useless quite as fast.)

Third and finally, a lot of people on here mix apples and oranges and talk about things in their house rules which other people on here are not familiar with -- which tends to create precisely the confusion you are suffering from.

Bottom line; if you can't find it in your copies of AM/AW/ITL, then it's probably a house rule that someone is somehow assuming everyone is familiar with...

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I found a minor healing anf healing spells on some randon TFT fansite and the drawback to their use was that the spells each took ten (10) MINUTES to cast. Good luck doing that in combat.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I think a heal spell is a good idea because magical healing is frequently an important part of any fantasy story. I'm in favor of the 4:1 ratio for fatigue to healing. Consider the limitation of requiring the wizard to touch the target. Maybe a Lesser Heal requiring touch and can only heal one point, while a Greater Heal has variable amounts of healing.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I agree with this entirely. Perhaps a Greater Healing Spell costs 8 fatigue to cast, and grants 1-3 hits being healed. (The 8 points pays for the average of 2 hits healed, and if you only heal 1 or if you manage to heal 3, well, sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you!)

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I'd prefer any lasting healing spell not be practical to cast during combat. I'd probably make it (Special) rather than (Thrown), require touch and have a fairly long casting time, too.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Really, any healing spell with a ratio worse than 1:1 is not practical to cast during combat, so it's mostly moot.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

What if the Healing spell is a bit of a crap shoot for the wizard casting it?

The wizard casts the Healing spell and touches the target.
The wizard then makes a 2 die roll to see how much ST is spent and the spell heals the target 1/4 of the ST spent rounded down (min 1).
ST spent casting the Healing spell counts as damage to the caster.

It hurts to heal...
 

Hi Melichor, everyone.
I like the Death Spell style spells (which do damage rather than costing fatigue ST), since they give more variety and allow powerful spells to have lower IQ levels.

So let's consider a healing spell:

IQ 9
D ... Death Healing.
The wizard takes 1 point of damage, but can heal 4 points of damage on the subject. This spell can not heal the casting wizard.
This damage is done directly to the wizard, by passing all armor, mundane and magical. This damage is distributed widely thru the wizard's organs and can not be healed by physickers. It MAY be healed with healing potions. Death type spells use thrown spell range adjustments.
COST: 1 ST damage.

He, he. This is a healing spell with some bite. It is powerful enough to be used in combat, but gives damage to the wizard. Worse, damage also costs the wizard a fatigue, so it is a long term loss of magical power. (You might want to increase it's healing power to 5 hits, btw. Four might not be worthwhile given the very high casting cost.)


***

Getting back to your spell Melichor, I really like that it costs the wizard damage. But I'm less keen on it healing a random amount of hits. Also it does far too much damage to the wizard. Death Spell style magics are killer, they have to be powerful enough to make people want to take them.

If I wanted to give the spell, random healing, I would suggest...


IQ 9
D ... Melichors Healing.
Named after the altruistic wizard who created this spell.
The wizard takes 1 point of damage, but can heal 1d+1 points of damage on the subject. For double the cost, 2d+3 damage is healed. This spell can not heal the casting wizard.
This damage is done directly to the wizard, by passing all armor, mundane and magical. This damage is distributed widely thru the wizard's organs and can not be healed by physickers. It MAY be healed with healing potions. Death type spells use thrown spell range adjustments.
COST: 1 ST damage or 2 ST damage.

I think that despite it being a Death Spell type magic, 'Melichors Healing' would tempt people.

(Note that all Death Spell style spells use the same text as is in italics, so if these spells becomes a thing, the spell write ups can be simplified.)

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Not if you have a great hero or wizard equipped with magic items (and Aid spells and whatever) who is almost impossible for the enemy to hurt. In that case, you might very well want a healing wizard, assisted by people casting Aid on the healing wizard, to heal the hero during combat. It multiplies their survivability and effectiveness, and requires the enemy to do even more to take that person out, and do it before anyone can cast healing on them.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Yes, any version that has the caster take damage to heal someone (as long as that damage can't be treated by a physicker) would solve the mega-healing issue and reduce the spell to the "category B" that I don't think is a problem. That's because it eliminates the use of the fatigue recovery rate, and assistants with the Aid or Drain Strength spells, to provide massive healing rates.

I like the unpredictable mechanic too, but it's really the damage aspect that would have it stop the super-fast healing.

Re: It hurts to heal...
 

Rick, if those spells are low-IQ like that, they can (and would logically) be used by players and other despots to get underlings to cast them on themselves and their champions. You get the problem I described to Anthony, where the most powerful and hard-to-kill people can be zapped back to full ST during combat (and between combat). The injury cost might be significant if it requires a very high-IQ wizard to take the 1 or 2 damage to cast it, but if it's just a slave, hobgoblin, hireling, or other pawn, then that's probably their purpose for being brought along. It also effectively adds their healing rate multiplied by the spell's efficiency to the strongest/most-influential people.

Fast healing converts damage to fatigue loss?
 

Hi everyone, Skarg.
Thinking about what you said about fatigue recovery rate, perhaps ALL of these healing spells should convert damage into fatigue ST (fST) loss.

For example a wizard takes 5 hits and is healed with some sort of healing spell. Under current rules he gets the damage back AND the 5 fatigue ST back at the same time. We might want to say that the 5 damage goes away but the wizard keeps 5 fST loss. (Because healing is exhausting.)

I've never worried about it before because my healing spells are not fast enough to heal people in combat. But if we have spells that heal so fast that it can be done in combat, damaging wizards, (normally a big deal because this lowers the fST that can be used against you), becomes more meaningless.

If you are able to do 6 damage verses an enemy wizard, you WANT him to have 6 less fST to use for the rest of the fight. Fast healing can eliminate this advantage that you have earned.

Thoughts anyone?

warm regards, Rick.

Re: It hurts to heal... Minion slaves casting healing.
 

Hi Skarg,
Very good points! Did you read my previous post about converting damage to fatigue damage to avoid combat exploits?

I don't think I would worry too much about despots and other evil people who act like PC's. It is just good tactics to buff the super powerful people in the party, and make them more effective. (So long as all the minions don't die too fast.)

I would rather tweak the buffing spells so that such exploits are less useful in combat. A slow casting time could do that. Or my suggestion that fast healing turns damage into fatigue loss might be enough.

One thought, if the Big Bad Guy has a slave who is supposed to cast healing on him, and the slave hates him enough... when the paladin is beating the big bad guy and the big bad REALLY needs the healing, the minion might just roll a 16 a few turns in a row... ;-D

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I hadn't before, but have read it now.

Your idea to convert healed damage to fatigue is cool and would stop the abuse of the spell during combat. I think it's a great suggestion both as a cool crunchy way to handle healing and not making "poof you're healed" a thing during combat, IF you are happy with "category C" healing rate on a longer-term basis (i.e. parties can heal up from major wounds in a few hours' time).

It just doesn't limit it category "B" (improved but some wounds still take days to heal fully) which some of us prefer.

It's a good and fun point that some healing minions might resent and sabotage their masters sometimes.

And yes, some GMs may be fine with only having PCs do certain smart things with spells. That would not fly far with me or my players, and I expect my players might even come up with exploits I have not thought of. One of the main lessons I was taught by GM'ing TFT is that many things (especially magic) can seem fine, until a clever player comes up with a clever way to use them that goes way beyond the expected abilities of anyone, and smart folk such as high-IQ wizards with guilds (and local powemongers) would certainly also exploit. In the case of healing spells where the only real limit is fatigue, my players would all be learning Aid, hiring healing wizards and more people with Aid, having wagons where people can rest all day while traveling so they can cast Aid on healing wizards faster, etc. And, I can't ignore that practically every organized military or aspirant to power would probably be well-advised to have a similar practice... and it could be interesting to play out, but also seems cumbersome tracking all those resting/casting cycles, and not like the way I want play to go by default unless I want that to be a significant aspect of managing a group of people that tend to get injured.

Re: It hurts to heal...
 

That's a lot of healing for little cost to the wizard.
Aid gives a 1:1 boost to the target, but it only lasts for 2 turns max.
A permanent boost should cost significantly more or at least have the potential to cost more.

Re: It hurts to heal...
 

Yeah, I agree. Even moreso for spells at IQ 9 (like Aid is) or 8... which is what makes the healing-minions exploit easy.

Also another exploit for spells that damage the wizard and can't heal the wizard himself but have 1:1 or better efficiency of power to healing, is to get two healing wizards together. They heal each other, so only the final casting does lasting damage. Of course that can be curtailed by having the spell unable to heal its own damage, though that leads to a new type of damage to track and have "what gets healed first" rules about. Although, the suggestion I made a while ago would cover this, which would be to have healing spells be unable to heal wounds which have already been treated (either by physicker or by magic).

Re: It hurts to heal...
 

Hi Melichor,
The spell you are suggesting has to compete with Steve Jackson's healing spell (see the start of this thread), which instantly heals in combat time at a 3:1 ratio. Your spell HAS to be better than his, since you were suggesting it does damage, rather than costing fatigue ST (fST) to use.

I generally figure spells that cost damage have to be about 3 times better than the old spells that cost fST. (Of course, if I adopt Steve's easy 3:1 healing, the damage dealing spells have been made a LOT easier to recover from.)

The spell you suggest would never be taken if SJ spell is in play. If you assume that SJ reverses himself and players have your spell or nothing, then I don't see anyone taking it, except town wizards who never expect to fight.

EDIT: I thought of another point. Part of the reason I made this an IQ 9 spell is that I ASSUMED I was competing with SJ's super easy healing spell. If the regular healing spell was more like my healing spells, then it could still be a Death type spell, but the IQ could be higher.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: It hurts to heal...
 

It is clearly inferior to SJ's originally proposed spell (you take 2d damage in exchange for healing 1-3 points on someone), which is why I assumed it was an alternative to that spell, for a situation like original TFT where there is no alternative spell.

It would still be applicable for people who value someone else's health more than their own (e.g. because they're getting rewarded (or not killed/tortured/etc) for doing so.

Re: It hurts to heal...
 

Hi Skarg,
Yes, you are right. If I had thought about it, I would have realized that Melichors spell was intended to replace SJ fast healing, 3:1 spell. (That spell and the low attribute cap are dominating my thinking about the new TFT.)

I half thought that his spell had a typo since the damage was so steep. Also, if you roll high for damage, there is a good chance that the spell would kill you, which would mean it would not get used much, and likely never learned.

On the other hand, it doing random damage to you, makes it deadly dangerous to the caster – much like the original Death Spell.

8-O

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I'm confused by your comment, Skarg.

From what I'm reading of Rick's Spell, it gives anywhere from 2-7 hit points of healing in exchange for a single point of damage, and it gives anywhere from 5-15 points of healing for a mere two points of damage. If anyone thought Steve's Spell was "overkill" in the healing department, this one approaches nuclear Armageddon by comparison!

The nuke of healing spells - a balance of power.
 

Hi JLV,
I've used spells that do Damage rather than costing fatigue ST, before, and I generally like to make such spells 2 to 3 times more powerful than the regular spells. But in my campaign, I don't have any fast healing (other than healing potions), so doing damage to yourself is a big deal.

But if we have Steve Jackson's fast, 3:1 healing spell, that short circuits the spells that do damage to you. It is too easy to heal what is supposed to be a heavy cost. Also, if this spell can can heal the damage you just gave to yourself, the wizard could always heal up to just one point of damage. (I assumed that this couldn't be done in the first draft, but forgot to write it down.)

So let's try again to balance the nuke of Healing Spells:

IQ 12
D … Death Healing.
You take 1 point of damage, but can heal 1d+1 points of damage on the subject. This spell may not be cast on yourself. For double the cost, 2d+3 damage is healed. Damage healed is converted into fST loss.
(Example, you have taken 5 hits, and someone else uses this spell to heal you fully. All the damage is removed, but you are still down 5 fST.)
This damage is done directly to you, by passing all armor, mundane and magical. This damage is distributed widely thru your organs and can not be healed by physickers, magical healing or healing potions. To recover from these wounds requires lengthy rest (natural healing from resting). Death type spells use thrown spell range adjustments.
COST 1 ST damage, or 2 ST damage.


The rule about nothing heals this damage (no magic healing, no healing potions), came from Thomas Fulmer. This spell could still work with Healing potions, if you wanted it to. They are expensive and (presumably) in short supply.

The rule that says that healing magic does not heal the death magic wounds, means that this spell can work with campaigns which include either fast or slow healing. The long natural healing demanded to pay for Death Magic spells, returns them to a scary wound.

As for the rule that converts the healed damage into fatigue ST lost, I now think EVERY form of fast healing should have this limitation, for the reasons given a few posts ago.

(I'm not intending on putting this into my campaign, I'm just playing with ideas. I like having a few Death Spell type magics in the game, but I've never tried to make such a healing spell.)

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: It hurts to heal...
 

There seems to be some very vocal concern over adding any Healing spell into the game. I've never been very liberal with tossing healing potions into my game, like any other magic they are rare. The Healing spell we used was the same as what Steve has proposed 4:1, so I'm okay with it.

My idea wasn't intended to compete with anything, it was just a thought I had while thinking about why people are so opposed to adding a Healing spell.

I think magic should have a layer of uncertainty.
If I added this spell to my game I would probably limit the wizard to taking damage equal to 1 less than their remaining ST. A safety net that still leaves the wizard in a vulnerable position.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I don't know Rick, it still feels like way too much. Plus all those people kvetching about "D&D-ish styles of play" will undoubtedly have massive heart attacks over this one...

Re: It hurts to heal...
 

Hi Melichor,
Steve's spell is actually a fast, 3:1 heal spell, not 4:1. (Or are you saying YOUR home version is a 4:1?)

OK, I misunderstood. You want magical healing to be barely possible so this spell has a really high cost. But rolling two dice of damage as the cost (and then healing 1/4 (round down, minimum 1), is a spell I would never take.

Let's say have a wizard with a ST 10. 1/6 of the time I roll damage over my max, so the spell fails. (Do I lose the full 9 points of damage as well has having the spell fail?)

The wizard is the guy that we least want to take damage. If I roll perfectly, my wizard takes 8 points, in order to heal 2. This spell can't be used in combat (obviously), so it can only be used when I am in a safe place. But how safe is safe? If there is a small chance that you might get into a fight in a safe place, having the wizard hurt as well as another PC hurt is bad.

***
If I'm in a safe place I want to speed up healing. So I heal 2 points from Grog, the barbarian. This saves him 4 days of healing. But I've taken 8 damage which will now require me to heal for 16 days!!! This seems bad, but are there exact levels of damage on Grog, which would make this work?


Let us say that Grog has 5 points of damage. If I roll perfectly and heal 1, then he is at 4 damage and I am at 4 damage. The time for the party to heal has gone from 10 days to 8 days.

Or if he starts at 9 points of damage. If I roll perfectly and heal 2, then we end up with him at 7 and me at 8. Now the time for the party to heal has gone from 18 days to 16 days.

But other than these specialized situations, and assuming that the player rolls perfectly, the spell normally makes things worse.

As a typical worse case, let us say that Grog is at 4 damage and I roll imperfectly, a 9. I heal 2 points but take 9 points of damage. So the healing time has gone from 8 days to 18 days!!!

***
I can't imagine that anyone would take the spell as designed. It would just be simpler to not have any healing spell.

Warm regards, Rick.

Nuke of healing spells. Kvetching.
 

HI JLV,
You need to understand that I WAS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE who kvetched about D&D style healing. I finally added healing spells that are useless in combat (but sped up adventuring). I have advised Steve Jackson as strongly as I can, that he should revise his healing spell. If SJ does not revise his healing spell, I won't use it in my campaign.

I've done all I can do.

I like having a few spells that are like the Death spell in that you pay for them with damage rather than with fatigue ST. This allows kick butt spells that low IQ wizards can actually use. So I was curious what such a healing spell would look like.

My version is kick ass. But it has a saving grace. It would be far less tempting for the wizard to cast this spell again and again, than SJ's fast 3:1 healing spell.

If anyone was seriously considering using this spell, you could have it heal less damage if they want. 1 die and 2d+1? I wouldn't go lower than that,

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Should there be limitations to healing damage caused my magical means? Maybe a Physicker can not fully heal magical damage? Instead of two hits healed, just one for magical made damage. 2 hits healed by Master Physicker. Before germ theory it was common to correlate wounds that would not heal to magic. This would include wounds by magic weapons, poisons made by alchemists, bites from magical creatures, etc., but not damage cause by summoned natural creatures.

There will need to be some balance between a Heal spell with Drain Strength, Zombie, and Death Spell as all involve the transfer of life force between caster and others.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Hi Luguvalium,
I think that this is a very good idea, worth exploring.

Could you give some examples of what you would like to see?

For example, in my campaign, certain monsters and certain evil items cause wounds that can not be magically healed.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Which comment of mine?

I quite agree with you that the spells Rick just listed are in most ways much stronger than SJ's originally proposed healing spell, and I'd say they are category C or D, and definitely D if you don't fix that two wizards could heal each other.

Melichor's spell is less powerful than SJ's spell.

Re: Nuke of healing spells. Kvetching.
 

So? And yes, I understand clearly that you were one of the complainers there. Which makes this massive reversal even more difficult to understand. I think I'll just stick with Steve's Spell.

I don't really see this as a contest between Rick and Steve. And I'm glad you like those things, but I prefer to think my way through the game balance before wholesale adoption of "kick booty" spells. I've been burned too many times over the past 40 years by poorly thought out spells that imbalanced the game.

Reasonable people will beg to differ with your opinion here. I certainly do.

Re: Nuke of healing spells. Kvetching.
 

Hi JLV,
I'm not sure which opinion you are differing with. The sentence where I said I wouldn't lower its healing ability to less than 1d or 2d+1? Or the line where I said that people would be less likely to cast this spell several times compared to Steve's fast healing?


This Death Magic healing spell I won't use in my campaign, I'm sure that it won't be used in the new TFT, and I doubt it will be used in anyone's house rules. As I said, I was playing around with this spell for fun. What would a healing spell that is, '2 to 3 times more powerful that a regular fast healing spell', look like?

I enjoyed the thought experiment. I posted it to the TFT Brainiac list and Thomas F. asked some questions and suggested that the Death Spell damage is not repairable by any sort of magic. (I had allowed healing potions.) I thought that this was a worth while idea. The whole point of the Death spells, is to give a big boost, at the cost of taking hard to heal damage. Closing this loop-hole made sense.

Skarg made a good comment which got me thinking about ALL fast healing spells should convert damage to fatigue. This is a useful innovation, I think. That idea wouldn't have come up if I wasn't playing around with this. Which is reason enough to justify the mental exercise.

David B. wrote in criticism of this spell, on Brainac's list:
> "After you get hurt, do a little dance, [with SJ fast, 3:1 healing spell] wait
> a few hours and you are healthy", whereas the effect of the RS death
> healing spell is like that, only the waiting is less and the dance is a little
> more complex. I can't see the point of making the dance more complicated."

This I felt was a fair criticism. But I would make two points to it. First this is powerful enough to be used in combat which gives different trade offs. And two, if we are going to put in fast healing to new TFT, I LIKE the extra complexity because it results in not everyone being fully healed after a while. Who is not healed? The person who MOST wants to have full ST - the wizard.

Unless the Death wizard also had a different sort of fast healing, he had a non-trivial trade off to make. Take another point or two of real damage, or leave a few people down hit points? I like tough decisions. If TFT has Steve's fast healing spell, there is no trade off. You and your apprentices regain fatigue until everyone is at max.

Later David B. also wrote:
> "I think that might be a bad thing: if after healing everyone is OK except
> the healing wizard has distributed organ damage what does the party do?
> Wait around for him to get better despite everyone else being healthy
> already? Risk him being killed but try to protect him? Leave him behind
> in town? All are problematic. I suppose the best strategy might be to use
> healing to minimise the wounds of the most wounded character.

Now the result of the Death Healing is the OPPOSITE of what my healing spells aim for. (Those spells don't help in combat, but let you get on with the adventure faster.) Dave's comment here, highlights the basic reason I won't be using them in my campaign. They work at cross purposes to how I want healing magic to work.

I'm not shy about saying when I think that something should be changed, or something should go in to the new TFT. But in this thread I explicitly said that I was not going to use this spell, and that I was just playing around with ideas.

This spell is POWERFUL. It is intended to be, that is it's sole purpose. But even so, it has interesting limitations which make it in some ways LESS useful than Steve Jackson's suggested healing spell.

I suspect that the reason you have got touchy is that I've been critizicing Steve's fast, 3:1 healing spell. (Maybe my guess is wrong, in that case, my apologies.) But if so, here we will have to agree to disagree. I think that his spell, as written, IS problematic.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

"I" got touchy? Oh. Okay.

The reason I disagree with your spell is because I feel it is unbalanced, ill-conceived, and far too powerful, not because you critiqued someone else.

Re: It hurts to heal...
 

The 4:1 proposal in mine, not SJ. Healing Spell Post #2

JK

Re: Nuke of healing spells. Kvetching.
 

I see your intention, but to get the tough decision situation you describe, you need (ongoing hazards, and) more limits on how damage (especially the 1-point damage caused by the spell) can be healed.

As written:

* Another source of healing (especially someone else with the same spell, or physicking) quickly reduces lasting damage to 1 point on the last person who cast it.

* IQ limits of 8 and 9 mean low-importance assistants and non-wizards can also get the spell, so it's not using valuable strong-wizard ST. It also spreads the injury which multiplies the healing rate by the number of people with the spell.

* Being able to treat wounds that have already been physicked raises the threshold of healing for the spell quite a bit.

* The healing ratio is quite high. Assuming a party competent enough to not get themselves seriously injured a lot, this is often effectively going to result in "the party almost never has any lastingly-injured people", except maybe the healing wizard resting a couple of days from time to time (or chugging a healing potion). i.e. it is category C or D healing.

So (like you, I wouldn't use this either except possibly in a limited high-powered adventure outside a campaign, and) in order to get the effect you describe:

* I think the damage from casting the spell would want to be entirely unhealable except by rest (or some recovery rate of its own)

* I'd raise the IQ level to at least 14-16 so it's more likely you are actually using ST of someone who could be useful in other ways.

Personally, I would also:

* I'd have it not able to heal wounds that have already been treated (my suggestion for Steve's spell, too).

* Reduce the effect per casting.

* Not allow it to be cast during combat (otherwise it becomes a force multiplier for the strongest people, giving them or their masters a VERY strong reason to always have people with this spell around you, and for the PCs, multiplying the strength of opponents they can defeat in one combat - that is, whoever your hardest-to-hurt person is, it's like you just jacked up their hit points by however much you can cast healing on them in combat).

Re: HEAL spell?
 

One reason I don't want healing during combat:

Zaxzax the Deadly
ST 16
DX 14
IQ 10
Sword, Warrior, Veteran, Fencing
Talents beyond 10, if allowed: Crossbow, Missile Weapons, Running

Magic items:
Fine Greatsword (+2, +1DX) magic + 5 DX, immunity to breaking
Fine Plate w. armor enchantment +4
Self-powered Iron Flesh amulet
Self-powered Spell Shield amulet

This guy is already able to wade through hundreds of 30-36-point opponents who lack ridiculous magic powers of their own. He can often take out three per turn with sweeping blows, and his armor etc stops 18 points per hit and is immune to missile spells, so it generally takes a lucky double or triple damage for most things to even do a little damage to him.

Each minor wound someone can inflict on ZaxZax is a triumph... which can be negated by whatever magic healing is available.

Now Zaxzax is of course an extreme example, but the same principle applies to PC parties and others with strong hard-to-kill people. It's not that hard to get someone up to total armor 8 to 10, at which point many people will be hard-pressed to injure them. If they can be healed during combat, then it's like you're multiplying their already-high durability. That's a very powerful effect that everyone smart and organized should want to do, and if you can do it during combat, then it can easily become essentially even more important to a combat outcome than who is the better combatant. I.e., combat outcomes can become largely about who has more healing magic.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

I think this problem disappears if healing converts wounds to fatigue. It's still useful during combat because it can save peoples' lives though, provided the group does emerge victorious.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Why would you attack ZaxZax when there are all these much juicier targets around? Absent aggro mechanics, people attack squishies first, and all the better if those squishies are taking themselves out at the same time.

Also, spell shield will negate healing, and if he drops it to get healed, hit him with a 10d fireball.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

What is the alternative, in rapid terms, of Magic healing, if any?

Re: HEAL spell?
 

The religion system I'm proposing can provide some pretty effective healing, mostly outside of combat.

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Woah! That is a cargo load of magical items! I played consistently for about five years and don't remember having even one magic item for a 42 point character. I think I had a +1 fine sword... and that was it. It seems to me a balancing issue more than a magical spell issue. If GM's allow the imbalance... it will be there.

Respectfully,
Tolenkar

Re: HEAL spell?
 

Surely by the time a character has reached this sort of level they'll be facing foes of appropriate danger level, like Big Giants with Big clubs doing 6+dice damage, etc.