[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?