[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Rapid Healing, Recovery, Regeneration and Regrowth

[zoncxs]

I think you are all forgetting "High HP and Healing" on page 424.

"The healing rates given for natural recovery, first aid, magical healing
spells, the Regeneration advantage, etc. assume someone with
human-scale Hit Points; that is, with fewer than 20 HP. Those with
more HP heal in proportion to their HP score. Multiply HP healed by 2
at 20-29 HP, by 3 at 30-39 HP, by 4 at 40-49 HP, and so on, with each
full 10 HP adding 1 to the multiple."

With that, I would side with the ruling that VRH increases your natural recovery by 1, as if you had +10 HP.


Also note, Regen states:

"You recover..., in addition to normal
healing."

That applies to all levels of regen.

So VRH does not increase that tick of healing. Someone with Regen (Regular) and VRH would heal 1 HP per hour, and then at the 24 hour mark, with a successful HT roll, 3 HP (1 from the regen tick and 2 from natural recovery).

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

I think you are all forgetting "High HP and Healing" on page 424.

"The healing rates given for natural recovery, first aid, magical healing
spells, the Regeneration advantage, etc. assume someone with
human-scale Hit Points; that is, with fewer than 20 HP. Those with
more HP heal in proportion to their HP score. Multiply HP healed by 2
at 20-29 HP, by 3 at 30-39 HP, by 4 at 40-49 HP, and so on, with each
full 10 HP adding 1 to the multiple."

With that, I would side with the ruling that VRH increases your natural recovery by 1, as if you had +10 HP.


Also note, Regen states:

"You recover..., in addition to normal
healing."

That applies to all levels of regen.

So VRH does not increase that tick of healing. Someone with Regen (Regular) and VRH would heal 1 HP per hour, and then at the 24 hour mark, with a successful HT roll, 3 HP (1 from the regen tick and 2 from natural recovery).

Except that in DFRPG, which was the original context in which that part was brought up, it explicitly does increase all healing.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Would you stop accusing me of being a rules lawyer!

That was more the plural "you," although I did assume you were arguing that the VRH rate should apply to the referenced ritual, and I would indeed consider "This one really obscure ritual that didn't even exist in Basic Set happens to involve the recipient rolling against HT to recover HP, so the VRH boost should apply" to be a bit rules-lawyery. Apologies if I were mistaken.
EDIT: Upon further thought, if the ritual is actually something more like "the character gets to roll twice (or more) to recover HP for each day of rest," that's a bit of a grey area where I might be inclined to have the pre-MH/DFRPG version of VRH apply. It's actually a case of natural healing, it's just that you're using a spell that speeds up said natural healing... and +1 would be a bit hard to judge (maybe something like "VRH gives +1 to HP restored only to the first successful natural healing roll for the day").

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The part about characters with with 20 HP already getting 2x the healing any time they receive healing isn't anybody's House Rule. It's a very fundamental part of the 4e rules and has nothing to do with VRH.

I've never argued that the High HP and Healing rules (I think that's the name of the entry) were a houserule - indeed, I favor going a step further, and treating every 1 HP healed as 10% of HP healed instead (so a character with HP 15 has 1.5 HP restored for each 1 HP nominally healed), although that would certainly be a houserule. Your posts seem to be assuming that I do consider it as a houserule, which I think is why I've been confused as to what you're arguing for here.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

That was more the plural "you," although I did assume you were arguing that the VRH rate should apply to the referenced ritual, and I would indeed consider "This one really obscure ritual that didn't even exist in Basic Set happens to involve the recipient rolling against HT to recover HP, so the VRH boost should apply" to be a bit rules-lawyery. Apologies if I were mistaken.
.

From p.150 of Gurps Thauamtology

"In addition, if the ritual works, the patient gets six rolls per day to recover lost HP wile the effects last and these are at HT+1."

Because there is a roll to recover lost HP, the VRH increase does apply to it and I do not consider it rules-lawyerly to apply it as the rules instruct you to do.

[JulianLW]

The problem for me is that VR Healing gets demoted by DFRPG and Monster Hunters. Here's exactly how:

Rather than natural healing rolls giving healing of 2 HP rather than 1 HP, as stated in Basic (which should, again, according to a very plain-text reading of Basic in "High HP and Healing," have a multiplier effect on natural healing, i.e. you can heal 4 HP per day at HP 20+) the change in DFRPG turns VR Healing into +1 healing - for ALL healing.

What this means is that, instead of 2 HP instead of 1 HP, applied to any healing, VR Healing becomes +10 HP (Only for healing -50%). This is, by my lights, a HUGE nerf, especially compared to the relative value of those 10 CP for ANY CHARACTER TO WHICH THIS MIGHT APPLY, i.e. a character that has already spent 20 or more CP for extra HP. Now that character who has invested in high HP actually starts to heal MORE SLOWLY because he's invested in more HP than a totally average character with VR Healing. And it gets progressively worse the more the character invests in HP, so that a supers character, let's say, with 50 or more HP AND VR Healing actually heals at about the same rate (relative to HP total) as a character without VR Healing! What?! That's NOT Very Rapid!

The more a character invests in HP, the less valuable those 10 points spent on VR Healing become, to the point at which they would be far better spent on 5 more HP, which at least increase crippling rates and decrease the rate for death checks, etc.

Okay, but let's incorporate magic, for DFRPG and Monster Hunters. Now we have a situation where that extra 2 for 1 HP SHOULD, I ARGUE be a multiplier for all healing, rather than simply a +1. The argument that it should be only a +1 because of balance issues doesn't stand up, in my opinion. Why? Because for 30 points, you can buy the Healing advantage. For 25 points, you can buy Regular Regeneration. The more you spend on high HP to capitalize on a multiplier, the more unbalanced the healing alternatives become, and any game where a PC might have 20, 30, or more HP is likely a game where these kinds of alternatives might be available: i.e. supers, psionic, or magical settings.

Again, the character who spends 80 points on HP 50 and 15 points on VR Healing has spent 95 points to turn 1 HP healed into EITHER 6 HP healed (by DFRPG rules) or 10 HP (by my reading of how VR Healing should work) - that's per day, with only natural healing, by the way. By comparison, the character who has spent only 5 more points to get fast Regeneration [100] heals 1 HP per second (i.e. 86 thousand per day), and he doesn't need anybody to cast a healing spell on him. He regenerates that in the middle of combat, whatever.

So the idea that VR Healing is demoted from 2, not 1 HP, to +1 HP due to point balance issues just doesn't seem logical to me at all. And I don't think my wanting VR Healing to be a multiplier rather than a +1 addition is munchkinny or rules-lawyering, either.

I think my reading was the most plain-text reading possible given the write-up in Basic.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

From p.150 of Gurps Thauamtology

"In addition, if the ritual works, the patient gets six rolls per day to recover lost HP wile the effects last and these are at HT+1."

Because there is a roll to recover lost HP, the VRH increase does apply to it and I do not consider it rules-lawyerly to apply it as the rules instruct you to do.

Ah, thank you for that. Yeah, given it appears to be using the normal Natural Healing rules, but giving you 6 rolls instead of just one, I'd be inclined to allow VRH's increase to apply - and I'd also have a character with RH or VRH rolling at a net HT+6 (the +5 from Rapid Healing seems like it should apply here). My apologies; I was under the assumption this was just a ritual that more-or-less instantly healed the character, but required them to make an HT roll.

Originally Posted by JulianLW

Rather than natural healing rolls giving healing of 2 HP rather than 1 HP, as stated in Basic (which should, again, according to a very plain-text reading of Basic in "High HP and Healing," have a multiplier effect on natural healing, i.e. you can heal 4 HP per day at HP 20+) the change in DFRPG turns VR Healing into +1 healing - for ALL healing.

I feel this was answered in the thread you linked earlier, but to reiterate - Basic gives no guidelines as to how to combine VRH and High HP and Healing. Treating it as "Heal 1 additional HP for VRH, then multiply by (HP/10, round down, minimum 1)" is a valid interpretation, and so is "Multiply by (HP/10, round down, minimum 1), then heal 1 additional HP for VRH." And, honestly, my inclination would indeed be for the first interpretation.

Originally Posted by JulianLW

What this means is that, instead of 2 HP instead of 1 HP, applied to any healing, VR Healing becomes +10 HP (Only for healing -50%).

This is where you deviate from the text in Basic. VRH is very clearly about natural healing, not all healing. So if you were having VRH work this way prior to the publication of MH/DFRPG, you were already in houserule territory... so there shouldn't be an issue with just keeping your same houserule in spite of those publications. If the issue is more that the way those clearly spell out how things interact means you can no longer Fast-Talk (perhaps without realizing it) your GM's into using your houserule, I don't think that's really the fault of the books for clarifying things.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

Rapid Healing never seemed to get used at all :/

It's extremely common in my games. Players love it for the +5 vs crippling. The faster natural healing is just a nice bonus.

[sir_pudding]

I also give the bonus to bleeding rolls, which also makes it attractive.