Upgrading Healing Potions

[Tywyll]

So one of the problems with TFT is that characters aren't very durable. This prevents characters from going on extended adventures and makes dungeon delving difficult. With no core healing spell and potions only healing 1 point, this is real problem. So real, in fact, that in the company published modules you often find healing potions that break the rules (1d3, 1d6, or all heals).

What if healing potions just were better. Instead of 1 point per $150, make them heal 1d3?

[MikMod]

Originally Posted by Tywyll

What if healing potions just were better. Instead of 1 point per $150, make them heal 1d3?

:) Yup. That's exactly what we did.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by MikMod

:) Yup. That's exactly what we did.

Same here. It worked just fine.

[Skarg]

We just used the "physickers heal every wound individually" system, and then didn't really see a need or desire for better healing potions. We did allow multiple doses of HP per flask, but having HP at all was a luxury that tended to get used up even if you started with a bunch of it.

Our parties had at least one physicker who was kept out of harm's way, and had enough companions (often several NPCs) so that the party could have some people resting while on adventures, and part of challenge, limit, realism, and interesting developing situation of going on an adventure was dealing with people who get injured and need serious time to heal.

It means that sometimes a party needs to back off and rest, but that seems a good and desirable feature of the game, and not something that prevents long adventures or large dangerous destinations if the players learn how to usually avoid getting maimed and manage for that possibility.

[JLV]

Perhaps the real difference among us on this issue revolves around player style. My player groups frequently, for some reason, seem to tend towards hyper-aggressive combat as a preferred solution (possibly because several of my players were SCA members, one went on to be a Green Beret, and several were either former Marines or Army Ranger types) -- which tends to put them on the (literally) bleeding edge of survival. To that end, I always sought solutions that increased their ability to heal more quickly than the base rules allowed.

Perhaps other groups are less inclined to solve their problems with a sword?

[Anthony]

Preference for easy or difficult healing depends mostly on the type of fights you find interesting.

If healing is difficult to obtain, the difference between "we won while taking 2 damage" and "we won while taking 4 damage" actually matters, which makes the easy fights seem important. On the other hand, fights with a real chance of losing are pretty well limited to once per adventure, because even if you win you're so beat up you can't go onward.

If healing is easy to obtain, those easy fights become boring trash fights that it's tempting to just elide over, but you can actually have multiple hard fights per adventure.

Thus, if you like multiple hard fights per adventure, you want easy healing. On the other hand, if you find 'how can I beat this group without taking any net damage' an interesting challenge, you want harder healing, and if you are fine with only one fight per adventure you don't much care.

[Axly Suregrip]

Originally Posted by Tywyll

What if healing potions just were better. Instead of 1 point per $150, make them heal 1d3?

Basically doubling the effectiveness of healing potions. I have not tried this but I love simple elegant solutions in TFT. This is one.