[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Healing

[johndallman]

Healing [30] is an exotic mental advantage, giving you the ability to heal other people from injury and disease. The basic advantage is an out-and-out superpower, with considerable scope for enhancements and limitations. It is based on the Healing power from GURPS Aliens, and Faith Healing, from GURPS Voodoo, both for 3e, but the mechanics are different.

The basic power has touch range, and requires a second of concentration and an IQ roll to activate, with a ‑2 penalty if the subject is unconscious. If you succeed, you can heal 2 HP per FP you spend, with no upper limit. Any failure costs 1d FP; critical failure costs the subject 1d HP. You stop bleeding if you do 1HP or more of healing. You cannot bring back the dead, or restore lost limbs. You can repair crippled limbs, if you heal all the damage to the crippled limb and succeed in an IQ‑6 roll, but you only get one try at this.

Alternatively, you can try to cure a disease. The IQ penalty is set by the GM, from +1 for the common cold to ‑15 for AIDS and similarly insidious diseases. The FP cost is twice the penalty, minimum 1.

Powers adds the ability to negate Afflictions, with FP costs and IQ penalties driven by the enhancement value of the affliction.

You can limit this advantage to any one of the three forms, should that seem appropriate, and it is frequently taken with a Power Modifier.

Healing imposes penalties for multiple uses on the same person in a short time. You are at ‑3 for each successful healing of the same person within the past 24 hours. This penalty is calculated separately for each type of healing; having cured an injury does not interfere with curing a disease. This penalty follows that of the Minor and Major Healing spells, and there doesn’t seem to be a modifier to buy it off.

While Healing doesn’t work on yourself, without a +50% enhancement from Powers, it works on “similar” species, in a setting-dependent way. You can expand on that with the variable-cost Xenohealing enhancement, or limit it to your own species. A variation on that is Faith Healing, powered by a deity or something approximating to one, which works on anyone your god approves of, but requires you, and your subjects, to maintain appropriate behaviour and morality. You can also cap your FP expenditure, which seems appropriate to someone learning to use the advantage, or modify it to work by transferring problems to yourself. If you can only heal yourself, you have Regeneration and/or Regrowth, rather than Healing, and Afflicting those advantages can partly replace Healing.

Healing is a common advantage for divine servitors, relics, spirits and psychics. Banestorm has a spirit with an interestingly limited version, but DF Psi can’t do Healing at all. Powers: Divine Favor has a version with Cosmic: No Die Roll Required, +100%, but that is limited to IQ/3 uses/day, and The Weird has a way of doing real healing with illusions. Psionic Powers has too many Healing abilities for quick summary, and Psis has more examples.

I like playing characters with medical skills, and did quite a bit of character building round this advantage for a magic-returning-to-the-world campaign. It came out like this:

Healing, with an Either/Or limitation ((Injuries Only, -20%) or (Affects Self +50%, Diseases Only -40%, Limited Use 4/day -10%) or (Affects Self +50%, Affliction Only -40%, Limited Use 4/day -10%)) total +0%.

Other limitations were Immediate Preparation Required, -30%; Magical, -10%; Trigger (Woundwort and first aid kit), -20%.

This comes out at -60%, net cost [12], which is pretty good value. I also took Regeneration (Slow) as an Alternative Ability, which cost a further [2].

How has Healing saved the day for you?

[AlexanderHowl]

I like characters that have both Healing and Leech. For the Healing, I will often give them Healing (Empathic Healing, -50%; Injuries Only, -20%) [9]. For the Leech, I will often give them Leech (Accelerated Healing, +25%; Blood Agent, -40%; Steals FP, -25%) [15]. In effect, the character will heal their target from their HP and recover their HP by draining the FP of a volunteer (or their own FP). At 24 CP, it ends up being an effective combination and gives a logical reason for the character not to offer their services willy-nilly.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I blogged about this advantage a while back.

[coronatiger]

I'm not sure I'd allow Regeneration as an alternative ability to any insta-use advantage. Regeneration heals so and so many HP in a day, and won't be noticeably affected by switching it off for a few seconds.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by coronatiger

I'm not sure I'd allow Regeneration as an alternative ability to any insta-use advantage. Regeneration heals so and so many HP in a day, and won't be noticeably affected by switching it off for a few seconds.

I started a thread that asks about this.
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=2358445

[Plane]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If you can only heal yourself, you have Regeneration and/or Regrowth, rather than Healing, and Afflicting those advantages can partly replace Healing.

It feels like it should be possible to take "self only" Healing, it's just not clear if such a massive discount like the -80% for "One Person Only" should be given for it.

It should definitely be worth more than the -20% for "Own Race Only" though.

You could get -40% total if you can tack on "only on women" or "only on men" so I'd think at least -50%.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Plane

It feels like it should be possible to take "self only" Healing, i%.

You could do that in 3e Psionics. It was a -30% iirc.

[Plane]

Something came to mind: I think I've seen certain Innate Attack limitations applied to healing like Contact Agent or Blood Agent (but not Melee since Melee is how it works by default)

Would it then make sense to allow "Requires Grapple" ?

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You could do that in 3e Psionics. It was a -30% iirc.

Is that on top of the +50% you pay to be able to heal yourself, or including it?

If it includes it (like "Insubstantial Only") then that actually sounds like -80% bringing 50 down to -30

I guess we should also keep in mind that aside from whatever discounts this provides that stuff like "Contact Agent" is a LOT less limiting when affecting oneself.

If you had that, then you should have to touch an uncoverd part of yourself I guess?

Wheres with Touch-Based Reversed you'd need to remove your glove even to heal yourself...

and then there's some bit about both kinds combining (ungloved hand, exposed skin on target) which I think is -30 instead of the -20 for one extreme of either

Diminishing returns, kind of like how the discount you get for "only 25% of population" isn't as much as double the discount you get for "only 50% of population" accessibility.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Plane

S


Is that on top of the +50% you pay to be able to heal yourself, or including it?

.

Neither. Being able to Heal yourself with Psionic Healing was the default. Not beign ab;le to Heal yourself was a Limitation. Also -30% I think.

It was otherwise very similar to what the OP laid out for 3e. 3e's Psionics book may not have come before Aliens but definitely did come before Voodoo.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Neither. Being able to Heal yourself with Psionic Healing was the default. Not beign ab;le to Heal yourself was a Limitation. Also -30% I think.

So if that set "not myself" and "only myself" as having the same value on something which affects both...

"Not Myself" is basically -50% to cancel out the -50%, so "Only Myself" being -50% (instead of -80 or -100) could be fair.

Especially since this could be on top of a bunch of stuff you could easily skirt when targeting oneself like Requires Grapple / Touch-Based Reversed / Contact Agent.

Something like Blood Agent or Blood Agent, Reversed on Healing intended for oneself (or Affliction: Regeneration) is also an exploit we should keep in mind when pricing self-only stuff.