Can Undead Benefit From Healing Spells?

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

As I said upthread...

Which has nothing to do with whether or not Unhealing precludes magical Healing.

Also nothing in the Healing College precludes using a healing spell on the undead or undying.


So... sure. Use Healing spells to heal your undead minions. It's better than that "negative energy heals the undead" nonsense in D&D.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Which has nothing to do with whether or not Unhealing precludes magical Healing.

"Depending on your nature you might be able to regain lost HP unnaturally... or exotic means (healing spells...". So Unhealing can prevent healing spells from working depending on the metaphysics of undeath. Repairing corpses as objects is something else entirely and may or may not work, again based on the specific metaphysics.

Healing spells don't specify that they only work on the living but I suspect you would agree that there are classes of things with HP that they probably never should work on, yes? Can you cast Minor Healing on a broken toaster?

[Flyndaran]

I get your point, but toasters already have repair spells. Without anything stating the contrary, undead by RAW alone should be healable with healing spells.
I would likely houserule a new repair undead spell to avoid the issue, but that's not the same thing.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I get your point, but toasters already have repair spells. Without anything stating the contrary, undead by RAW alone should be healable with healing spells.

Unhealing says that healing spells might work, but they certainly could not as well. It isn't obvious to me that they should work on the undead. It certainly seems likely they aren't intended to heal every thing with Unhealing.

I always treated Healing spells as specific to living animals, to the extent that I thought that was explicit somewhere, but I can't find it now. That Heal Plant and Repair exist at all seems to imply that Healing spells don't work on either plants or inanimate objects.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I would likely houserule a new repair undead spell to avoid the issue, but that's not the same thing.

In my game it would depend on the setting.

[adm]

A simple fix would be to take the Healing spell of choice, and add "for undead." on the end of it, and bump the FP cost up a point or two to overcome the "dead" part.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by adm

A simple fix would be to take the Healing spell of choice, and add "for undead." on the end of it, and bump the FP cost up a point or two to overcome the "dead" part.

Or not as the PC is already wasting more points on on a new spell that only works in a limited fashion.

[Dragondog]

I would say that healing spells do work on the undead. They are "alive" after all.

In particular, if a PC could become undead, with Unhealing, healing spells existed in the setting, and becoming undead didn't automatically turn you into an NPC, I would definitely allow healing spells to work on them.

[Varyon]

I can easily see paradigms where undead are affected normally by healing spells (being that they are sorta-kinda alive), being harmed by healing spells (being the unnatural opposite of alive; note this implies the existence of spells that specifically heal the undead and would harm the living), or requiring spells that repair objects (the undead being essentially golems made from flesh). You could even make it so undead cannot be healed by magic, either slowly degrading away into nothing or having to feed in some way off of the living to heal.

And, while the names "negative energy" and "positive energy" aren't ideal, personally I like the D&D paradigm (which you will also find elsewhere, such as in Final Fantasy) the most, which is the second of the above. I prefer combining this with undead that don't heal on their own like the living, but can heal by feeding on the living in some way (so kind of a combination of option 2 and option 4, above).

[Kromm]

Outside of a specific setting where it's forbidden, Healing spells do work on the undead. In plain-vanilla GURPS Magic, Healing spells work on anything animate and corporeal, including not just natural living beings (regardless of IQ, biological kingdom, etc.), but also unnatural living beings (from faerie, through bioroids, down to oozing slimes), demons, elementals, undead, etc. The only things strictly excluded are entities without bodies (such as intangible spirits), artifacts (like cars, robots, and toasters), and agglomerations of inanimate matter (puddles, shed snake skins, stones, etc.).

Specific demons and undead might be exceptions to this rule. If so, that's grounds for a Divine Curse or Weakness disadvantage. For an example, see the hellhound on p. 36 of Dungeon Fantasy Monsters. Absent such a trait, Healing spells just work and do not cause harm.

As for Unhealing, that trait is very specific in its meaning: "You cannot heal naturally." Generally, Healing spells do work on Unhealing beings. The qualifier "depending on your nature" refers mainly to the "animate and corporeal" vs. "either incorporeal or inanimate" dichotomy, and to beings with specific disadvantages that cause Healing spells to not work or do harm. This is never a property of Unhealing in itself, though, which simply switches off the body's ability to recover from injury outside of specific conditions (-20 points) or altogether (-30 points).