About Xenohealing

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Pbuckley

I am curious about something that has been bothering me for quite some time now. The healing advantage is already a 30 Point Advantage, then if you want to heal anything that is not human (Or "Humanoid" in the case of Fantasy settings) you have to pay extra points.

Now there could be two reasons for this, either it could be for game balance, after all healing is quite a potent power, and can run the risk of trivializing potential dangers. However I feel like the cumulative -3 per use a day, solves that problem pretty solidly, and it's not like not having Xenohealing is going to keep you from healing 90% of player character. So I feel like it has to be based on the latter.

Which is that some advantages are priced differently based on how rare they would be. The problem I see with this logic, is that I cannot conceive of many healing powers which would narrow your capabilities in such a manner. I mean I can easily see needing to take an enhancement for say Anything Animate, or Anything Alive. Heck I could even see Anything Animate being at the +100% modifier it's currently at. I could even be able to see All Carbon Based Life, even if I feel like it's a bit of a stretch. Yet in my experience, I find myself always applying Faith Healing, or All Earthly Life to Healing, every time I make a Healing Power either as a player, or as a GM when making pre-made Spells/Powers, I often even heavily suggest it to players whene they make their own Spells/Powers, as it seems absurd for such a power not to have this modifier.

Like I can understand taking penalties for using healing on non-humans, and non mammals, due to the creature physiological makeup, but not being able to heal them at all, just does not make sense to me. Sure, I am more than willing to grit my teeth and put up with this as a player, but it feels scummy doing this to players as a GM simply because it does not seem to make sense to me.

I guess what I am asking is, does anyone know WHY this decision was made? How much would it break the game to alter Xenohealing, so All Earthly Life is standard, while Only Same Family, and Only Same Species are limitations? Could anyone make suggestions on how this ought to effect the prices overall?

This is how I think healing might change at my table in the near future...

Base Healing
• By Default, Healing functions on all Earthly Animal Life.

Enhancements:
• Xenohealing (All Earthly Life), +20%
• Xenohealing (All Carbon-Based Life), +40%
• Xenohealing (Anything Alive), +50%
• Xenohealing (Anything Animate), +100%
• Xenohealing (Heal/Mend Anything), +150%

Feature:
• Plant Life Only
• Mend Objects

Limitations
• Restricted (Only One Family), -20%
• Restricted (Only One Species), -40%

I don't know that this is the actual case, but I would suspect that it is based on treating Healing as equivalent in effect to Surgery and Diagnosis skill but somewhat enhanced, so you don't need the formal training. Healing does require an IQ roll, and that roll is at a penalty if the patient is unconscious, suggesting that the healer does make an assessment as to just what is wrong with the patient which is harder if the patient can't tell you what symptoms he's suffering/where it hurts. This in turn suggests that the restriction on Xenohealing is based on reality rather than game balance.

In the real world, back when anatomy books were based on the anatomy of monkeys because human dissection was forbidden, people died because organs and other body parts weren't where the diagrams said they should be. Likewise, diseases, even ones than can jump species behave differently in those species. AIDS/HIV was a virtual death sentence at first, but the original SIV was relatively harmless to African green monkeys.

An argument could be made that Xenohealing represents knowledge of the anatomical differences and pathogenic differences between species.

In my opinion, Healing already gives a pretty big sop to players by not requiring Xenohealing for anyone outside their own species, e.g., dwarfs, elves, orcs, halfings, etc. for humans.