[Powers] Healing Attack concept

[Otaku]

This is probably my ignorance showing, but can someone explain to me why healing needs to be significantly more expensive/difficult than harming? Other than, in the real world (and many settings), the capacity to create (or heal) rather than destroy is far easier to come by?

In other words, I am quite interested in some kind of "Innate Attack" that heals instead of harms. Even the existing variations on Innate Attack (like Crushing, Cutting, etc.) may have some merit applied to healing attacks. Less so than with damage, but if DR needs to be subtracted from "healing damage", then someone backing up troops in armor (or high DR supers) probably shouldn't get "Innate Attack (Crushing Healing)".

Yes, I know my terminology is confusing; I'm sure you all can come up with something better. :)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Otaku

This is probably my ignorance showing, but can someone explain to me why healing needs to be significantly more expensive/difficult than harming? Other than, in the real world (and many settings), the capacity to create (or heal) rather than destroy is far easier to come by?

I think the primary reason why there's an inclination to limit healing abilities is due to how it can be used outside of combat. The combat use is fine - you're giving up your turn to heal your side rather than to take out the enemies. The issue is that even an ability that restores 1 HP makes it so that any HP damage your party takes - due to combat, traps, hazards, accidents, etc - is likely to be gone within minutes or even seconds if the ability functions like Innate Attack - just touch them on an unarmored portion (even with someone wearing full body armor they can probably remove/shift their visor, helmet, gauntlet, etc) and heal them at 1 HP/second by spamming the attack.

Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing! It does mean that things like Regeneration may be overpriced if Healing Innate Attacks are available, but a campaign where the characters can be expected to be uninjured for every encounter is certainly a playable one (I know at least with That Other Game a lot of parties will keep everyone in tip-top shape and just stop delving and hunker down - or even return to Town if that's an option - if the Cleric runs out of healing spells; meanwhile, in a lot of JRPG's once I have healing magic I'll tend to keep my party's HP full and then go back to an inn if my healer runs out of MP). But that's quite different from the typical GURPS default. Arguably, a bigger issue is what this implies for the world as a whole if there are people with such capabilities; in the thread I linked earlier I mentioned the idea of making it so the healing was only guaranteed to work within a short time after suffering the Injury, and after that most people would have a low chance (a bit under 5%) of the healing working. That prevents a lot of the world-shaking effects.

[Otaku]

Thank you Varyon, that does help.

One thought I had, where this approach might actually be as easy or easier to manage than the Healing Advantage of Base Set or the Healing College of GURPS Magic. Unless Limitations are taken or Spells forbidden, those can cure disease (and much more, for the Spells). I didn't think the Advantage or the Spells had to worry about DR, the Advantage requires making physical contact, the Spells prefer to be in physical contact but can be used at range (with the appropriate penalty)...

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Thank you Varyon, that does help.

One thought I had, where this approach might actually be as easy or easier to manage than the Healing Advantage of Base Set or the Healing College of GURPS Magic. Unless Limitations are taken or Spells forbidden, those can cure disease (and much more, for the Spells). I didn't think the Advantage or the Spells had to worry about DR, the Advantage requires making physical contact, the Spells prefer to be in physical contact but can be used at range (with the appropriate penalty)...

In my previously-linked thread, I initially had Healing able to cure curses/debuffs simply by healing the virtual injury that initially caused them. In theory, for diseases and the like, you could treat them as though they were a curse that had inflicted virtual injury equal to something like 6xHP (enough to instantly kill the character if it were real injury) and require healing that (optionally, a disease that's still incubating might only be at 1xHP or so, making it easier to cure). However, I think in both cases that's too powerful for Healing - better to have a separate ability (probably an AA if you already have Healing) that does virtual healing, then require an Enhancement for each curse/debuff/disease/whatever it can cure (the value of which would probably be +1% per [-1] the negated Disadvantage would be worth). Once all the virtual injury that caused it is gone, you're cured. If you want a "cure anything" ability but don't want to figure out and pay for* every single Enhancement ahead of time, I believe Extra Effort allows you to pay 1 FP and take a penalty to add a fresh Enhancement to this use of a power; I forget if it's -1 per +5% or -1 per +10% (I know it's -1 per +5% if it lasts a full minute, which implies it should be -1 per +10% if it only lasts for a single use, but attack abilities are different here). Alternatively, if you want your ability to just be able to cure everything, I'd eyeball that as around +1000%. In my linked thread, I had that ability as Bless, and had it also serve for buffing characters.

*Note if you do want to pay for some of them - so you don't have to spend FP and suffer a penalty - you should be able to save points by taking them as Alternate Enhancements; you'll only be able to fix one at a time, however.