Fatigue Recovery from Last Gasp and Magic

[Icelander]

In Pyramid #3/44 Alternate GURPS II, the 'Last Gasp' article by Douglas Cole introduces much more severe recovery rules for long-term fatigue, as well as the complex, but realistic Action Point rules for shorter term fatigue.

I'm using these rules in my high-powered fantasy campaign, where the PCs started out as gifted, but naive beginning adventurers (around the year 2005 in our world) and are now somewhere between MCU and DCEU superheroes and mythic heroes like Hercules or Perseus. Without all their magical gear, they are about the scale of Conan the Cimmerian, but with it, they are easily into superhero scale.

In any case, with healing spells from GURPS Magic, like Minor Healing, Major Healing and Great Healing, as well as the Healing Advantage and potions and elixir, healing injuries is usually fairly quick. And dedicated spellcasters usually don't use FP to power their abilities, they have an Energy Reserve that is a lot larger than their FP pool and often some way to recover them at a decent pace (e.g. Recover Energy spell at 20, for 2 minutes per point).

Recently, however, a PC and his allies spent more than two days running, fighting and performing various heroics. They were consuming a lot of orcish draught at the time, which helped them deal with not eating, sleeping or resting a whole lot, but such quasi-magical/alchemical/herbal solutions usually have a cost in that once you stop using them, the accumulated fatigue hits you like a ton of bricks.

This is the first such extremely extended exertion that a PC has performed since I started to use the Last Gasp rules and now I find myself wondering how to adjudicate recovery.

For one thing, the PC spent 15 FP on powering the Healing Advantage, which is a recent gift from a friendly god. I'm pretty sure that using FP to power supernatural abilities should be fundamentally different to losing them to exertion. For one thing, I don't allow Breath Control to aid in recovering FP spent to power magic. By the same token, however, Recover Energy does work on FP spent on magic, but not on FP lost to exertion.

So, maybe I should not count those FPs as part of the determination for whether the PC is experiencing mild, severe or deep fatigue. They'll just recover at the usual rate for a magic-user without Recover Energy, at 1 FP per 10 minutes.

The PCs actually managed to eat three meals per day, albeit gulping food during short stops and never managed to eat quite enough. He lost 'only' 3 FP to starvation, largely because his heroic physique requires Increased Consumption.

During the past 72 hours, the character slept for eight hours. That's 12 FP, but I don't know if it should be reduced to 6 FP for Very Fit. It's been pushed away due to the orcish draught, but now that he's at an inn, well-fed and into his third bottle of wine, I expect it to hit 'Brash' Mickey hard, possibly even interfering with his long-awaited debauch.*

I've ruled that Potions of Healing, Extra-Healing and Superhealing have no effect on lost FP, at least not if they've been spent on magical stuff. I suppose if severe or deep fatigue really represent minor damage to muscles and the body in general, magical healing ought to help.

In any case, in a world where Healing potions that heal 1d HP exist, there ought to be potions that recover FP spent on exertion.** Should they be more or less expensive or rare than Healing potions?

Should there be a widely known priest spell, comparable to Minor Healing, that helps recover from severe or deep fatigue faster, perhaps in a single rest overnight?

In general, how does using the 'Last Gasp' rules for fatigue recovery affect typical Dungeon Fantasy -esque potions and magic for curing adventurers?

*He's got Compulsive Carousing, it's been five days since he's done more than sing a little around a campfire and the common room of the inn currently houses some five ladies of apparent friendliness and quite a bit more comely than the dwarves, orcs, wereboars, angry ghosts and hobgoblins he's seen in the past three days.
**Paut covers FP spent on magical stuff.

[Harald387]

This feels like a GURPS forum thread, not a DFRPG thread.

If Paut is already a thing, I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to offer the same for exertion: either from the same source ("Paut just makes you less tired"), or a different but similarly-priced potion for each 'cause' (Paut for magical use, a different potion for general FP expenditure, a different one that restores FP lost to missed meals, etc)

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Harald387

This feels like a GURPS forum thread, not a DFRPG thread.

Yeah, totally my bad. Wrong sub-forum.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Harald387

If Paut is already a thing, I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to offer the same for exertion: either from the same source ("Paut just makes you less tired"), or a different but similarly-priced potion for each 'cause' (Paut for magical use, a different potion for general FP expenditure, a different one that restores FP lost to missed meals, etc)

Ok, what about GURPS Magic spellcasters and those using the Healing Advantage?

How does healing mild, severe and deep fatigue with those methods work?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I'm pretty sure that using FP to power supernatural abilities should be fundamentally different to losing them to exertion.

That's what Energy Reserve is for. Have one of those to power supernatural abilities, allow buying Advantages to speed up the recharge as you prefer, and continue to use the Last Gasp rules for FP and physical exertion, without involving the supernatural.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

That's what Energy Reserve is for. Have one of those to power supernatural abilities, allow buying Advantages to speed up the recharge as you prefer, and continue to use the Last Gasp rules for FP and physical exertion, without involving the supernatural.

Well, there are some characters who have newly acquired supernatural powers, but very small Energy Reserves. As FPs cost the same as Energy Reserves, they probably ought not be noticably inferior as the fuel for supernatural gifts, though a proper spellcaster will obviously learn to do perform his magic from Energy Reserves in preference to FPs, if only because reducing Energy Reserves doens't cause penalties to literally everything.

There's also the fact that if the supernatural can help fast recovery of torn muscles, stress fractures and cellular death from oxygen deprivation (HP damage), it makes sense it should be able to help with faster recovery from severe and deep fatigue as well, as those are similar, but lesser effects.

But as the 'Last Gasp' was written after most DF-esque spells, potions and healing Powers, I could use some guidelines on how magic affects long-term FP recovery.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Running a campaign at a magic school, I am also very interested in the interactions between physical exertion and spending FP on spells without giving everybody an energy reserve (learning magic should be somewhat exhausting).

Obviously, Recover Fatigue as written has to be changed to work only for FP spent on magic, same for Lend Energy.

For interaction with Last Gasp I've written up the following spell:

Deep Breath
Regular
Restores the target’s fatigue points lost to physical exertion (including Extra Effort). This costs 2 energy per FP restored, but can be regenerated through Recover Energy. If using the Rules from The Last Gasp (PY3/44), the cost is 3 energy to restore 1 mild fatigue, 6 energy to restore 1 severe fatigue and 12 energy to restore 1 deep fatigue.
In any case each target can only benefit from one casting of Deep Breath per day and the caster is limited to Magery x 3 energy. The target needs to rest during the casting, but a caster can cast the spell on themselves.

Time to Cast: 15 s per energy invested
Duration: instantaneous
Cost: see above
Prerequisites: Lend Energy

Douglas Cole's two methods to deal with magical fatigue expenditure (top of p. 13 in PY3/44) sort of work, but do change things quite a lot. Constant Duration means there's next to no reason to use low-cost spells (unless you assign them fractional energy costs) as the lowest you can go is 1 new FP, which translates to 8 old FP. Using 1 AP instead of 1 FP (or any other rate of conversion) works for some fictional example, but not for all. It means your magic users can throw around spells with abandon each encounter. And changing nothing is not really an option either

Maybe using a hybrid of both systems would be the best? Each spell has an energy and an AP cost? Means a lot of reworking, though and doesn't actually touch on recovery, my bad.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

Running a campaign at a magic school, I am also very interested in the interactions between physical exertion and spending FP on spells without giving everybody an energy reserve (learning magic should be somewhat exhausting).

I actually do give everyone Energy Reserves and don't feel any need to make spellcasting exhausting by default, but one PC is Selfless and now that he has a magical Healing Advantage, it's hard to prevent him from burning through his small Energy Reserve and into his actual, physical FPs. Actually, no matter how much Energy Reserve he had, he'd probably always use FPs as well, given that the character used his magical Healing to save a dog from dying when he was still in danger and could really have used his FPs.

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

Obviously, Recover Fatigue as written has to be changed to work only for FP spent on magic, same for Lend Energy.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

For interaction with Last Gasp I've written up the following spell:

Deep Breath
Regular
Restores the target’s fatigue points lost to physical exertion (including Extra Effort). This costs 2 energy per FP restored, but can be regenerated through Recover Energy. If using the Rules from The Last Gasp (PY3/44), the cost is 3 energy to restore 1 mild fatigue, 6 energy to restore 1 severe fatigue and 12 energy to restore 1 deep fatigue.
In any case each target can only benefit from one casting of Deep Breath per day and the caster is limited to Magery x 3 energy. The target needs to rest during the casting, but a caster can cast the spell on themselves.

Time to Cast: 15 s per energy invested
Duration: instantaneous
Cost: see above
Prerequisites: Lend Energy

I'm guessing that this spell is meant for a campaign where magical healing is either non-existent or at least much, much more difficult to do than in vanilla GURPS Magic?

I mean, it feels really odd if broken bones or life-threatening wounds can be cured in a matter of seconds with a spell that costs under 10 FP to cast, but physical trauma from exhaustion is somehow orders of magnitude harder to cure.

[Flyndaran]

Even in RAW, fatigue points are more expensive than hit points. In Last Gasp, fatigue is significantly more valuable and sensitive.

But it sounds like your player wants to suffer for their altruism nice and martyr-like. Softening the blow with "easy" spells may actually hurt their enjoyment.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Even in RAW, fatigue points are more expensive than hit points. In Last Gasp, fatigue is significantly more valuable and sensitive.

Yes, but a ratio of 2 HP per 1 energy for healing spells, but 12 energy per FP of deep fatigue sounds a lot more than the 50% difference in point cost in the RAW.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

But it sounds like your player wants to suffer for their altruism nice and martyr-like. Softening the blow with "easy" spells may actually hurt their enjoyment.

Well, I have to decide how the campaign world works.

If clerics of a war god who conduct forced marches or shamans of orc tribes where endurance hunting is practiced can use magic to heal wounds, it makes sense that they'd also be able to help warriors recover from extreme fatigue. After all, trauma to the body that takes ten days to recover from sounds very much like injury, even if it might be caused by cumulative exertion rather than external force.

I want Lend Energy to work for magical Energy Reserves, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed to healing spells that repair the ravages of extreme exertion.