Healing and Decreased Immunity Enhancement

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

I get what you are saying, but that same reasoning could let there be a death bolt that doesn't allow resistance because it's a missile spell.

What's a "death bolt"?

[Plane]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

What's a "death bolt"?

best guess is Death Touch w/ Throw Spell

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

What's a "death bolt"?

A theoretical missile spell that kills what it touches and wouldn't need a resistance roll because it's a missile spell. You could even 'justify' it further by saying it merely does the target's HP x 6 in damage.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

A theoretical missile spell that kills what it touches and wouldn't need a resistance roll because it's a missile spell.

No, the same reasoning would not let such a missile work that way because that IS a spell that is cast on the character rather than a spell just creates a mundane cause of injury to be used on the character.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No, the same reasoning would not let such a missile work that way because that IS a spell that is cast on the character rather than a spell just creates a mundane cause of injury to be used on the character.

That was why I added the second part. Just make it a damage spell that happens to do damage equal to the target's HP x 6. DR and such can still get in the way.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

A theoretical missile spell that kills what it touches and wouldn't need a resistance roll because it's a missile spell. You could even 'justify' it further by saying it merely does the target's HP x 6 in damage.

Death Spells has rules for making them (pg 8 +2 energy) and among examples, Lethal Lightning requires a HT roll which gives you a heart attack if you fail it by enough.

Being a missile spell doesn't mean there can't be a resistance roll.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Plane

Being a missile spell doesn't mean there can't be a resistance roll.

I agree. I was only pointing out a specific sentence and pointing out how it didn't work blanket.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

I used a +50% to get rid of it before and it honestly felt like overkill.

It's at least less of an overkill than +100% though.

There was a 2011 proposal to use +50% by jcurwin at http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=84329 and PK okayed it, plus referred back to it in 2015 at http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...06&postcount=7 under the same "no cumulative penalty" name.

I'm only just noticing now on B59 a couple details I don't tend to remember:
1) the penalty only cumulates after a SUCCESSFUL healing
2) the accumulation is tracked separately for each TYPE (injury or disease)

This brings up an interesting way you might do Limited Enhancements on the cosmic (whether you set the base price at 50 or 100) since you could do "No Cumulative Injuries Penalty" for 40/80, "No Cumulative Diseases Penalty" for 30/60

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There's a third type (afflictions) introduced in Powers so I assume the -2s would also accumulate separately there.

Given that Heal Affliction is not a base use of the advantage I'm not sure about the pricing for a limit enhancement though... do you take +60% for Cure Afflictions and then -40% for Affliction Only (net +20%) or is AO like "Insubstantial Only" where it has "Affects Insubstantial" built into it, so it's actually a net -100% ?

If it's a net -100% then I think via Limited Enhancements you'd need to only apply -80% worth, meaning it would be a +20 or +40 cosmic.

I also wonder with P51 "capped" note ("incurring the usual -3 per previous successful healing") if special consideration should be taken for the pricing w/ capped.

Like for example instead of giving the full discount for capped, what if you only applied it as a limited enhancement to the +50% cosmic so that it provides half the usual points savings? You're only suffering one drawback of capped (the lost time) since capped is no longer creating a "previous successful healing" penalty.

OTOH that's just for wounds: "limits the severity of the diseases you can cure" would still apply since you can't just spam 1 FP heals to cure a big disease, like you can spam 1 FP heals to cure a big injury. Same w/ Afflictions if using that new option. So maybe giving the full discount for Capped is fine.

Does anyone know how Capped would interact with Reduced Fatigue? If you have RF2 for example (you spend 0 FP to heal 4 HP) and take -25% for a cap of 2 FP, does that limit you to healing 4 HP for 0 FP (you can never spend FP) or does it limit you to spending 2 FP (counting as 4 HP) to heal 8 HP?

- -

Also wondering if you could take "All or Nothing" for healing (you can't incrementally heal wounds: either you restore them to 100% HP or you can't heal them at all) or something like "Not Variable" (you can't set the amount of FP you spent / HP you heal: it's always the same amount, perhaps what you buy via Capped?)

Empathic comes to mind for non-Variable to: like you need to take ALL injuries/afflictions/diseases instead of specifying a small portion of them (which I would assume you could do as that's how healing normally works)

Empathic being a "package deal" seems like a must if the Affliction you steal is actually Symptoms (P51 includes that among "Symptom-like effects") since those effects are tied to a loss of FP or HP...

which begs an interesting question: since Symptoms is based on a PERCENT of loss instead of a fixed amount: when using Empathic Heals Affliction, does your HP or FP drop to the required % to sustain the Symptoms based on your HP?

Or is the amount of "Symptoms Damage" needed to maintain it on you whatever the fixed number it was to maintain it on the original target you healed?

On the note of that being how Healing operates: how exactly do you know how much FP to spend? There's nothing about being able to sense how much HP is missing, how serious a disease someone has, etc. Is it possible you might be "flying blind" and underspent/overspend the required FP by misdiagnosing a target's ailment?

Kind of like if I used "Affliction: Negated Disadvantage: Innumerate" (spending 10 FP on attempt) on someone who can't learn math, but it turns out that actually have the more serious condition of "Cannot Learn" so they don't benefit at all? Or maybe they gain "Can Learn Numbers but Nothing Else" as some kinda pseudotrait where you split the difference?

- - -

Another example is if a character think someone is suffering Severe Pain (+40% Affliction) and make an unpenalized IQ roll and spend 1 FP (per P51 it's per FULL 50%) but it turns out they're actually suffering Terrible Pain (B36: +60%) and aren't showing signs (they have High Pain Threshold) so I would've needed an IQ-1 roll and 2 FP to cure it.

Rather than it being a complete waste because I misdiagnosed the pain, it seems like it might be fair to just allow that to reduce it (60%-40%=20%) to Moderate Pain +20% which I could then completely remove with another 1 FP and unpenalized IQ roll?

Or even more of a concern: what if you spend 2 FP and take IQ-1 for Terrible Pain because someone is really carrying on, but they're actually only suffering Moderate/Severe and have Low Pain Threshold? Seems like taking the penalty/FP for the worse pain should also cure lesser pain even if you don't specify it.

Many afflictions don't have partial levels though. There's tipsy 10 / drunk 20. If targeting the higher removes the lesser you'd never have any incentive to target just tipsy since it's 1 FP / no penalty either way...

Is there maybe some way to make it a -1 penalty per 10% of Afflictions instead of 50%? This might be some variant of applying "Hard to Use" on the "Cure Affliction" enhancement, except instead of a fixed penalty it's like a penalty multiplier... if I can increase it to -5 per full +50% then making it -1 per full +10% would be a natural supposition.

- -

There doesn't seem to be an "FP multiplier" for healing, just a "static add". So costs of 2/4/6 can become 4/6/8 with a "Costs Fatigue 2" but not a 2/8/16 with a "Costs Fatigue x2" and penalties suffer the same issue, meaning you can't have the worseness scale up...

If Healing was actually bought in levels you could do declining enhancements (ascending limitations) but since it doesn't I'm thinking maybe the closest would be to approximate "levels" via the "Capped" limitation somehow...

if I start out with -25% for capped 2 fp (level 1) it seems to work out to +5% per "extra level" of 2 fp (4hp) where there are five more tiers (total 6) capping out at what should be 12 fp for 24hp except it's unlimited.

Wouldn't actually mind making healing inherently capped like this and letting people just keeping paying +5% for 2 fp they want to be able to spend.

If we made Hard to Use a bit more generous (like -1 per -5%, instead of -3) then you could get -4 for -20% reducing it to +4% per level, which is 1/25 of total value. Not enough to help something like Affliction w/ base 10 but enough to help something like Healing with base 30.

Maybe an easier way to do this would be to take Reliable which gradually went up more Capped:

"reliable +4 using 10 FP or less" = +19%
"reliable +2 using 8 FP or less" = +9%
"reliable +1 using 4 HP or less" = +4%
"reliable +5 using 2 HP or less" = +15%

I can't help but wonder, if we don't make Healing resistible, if maybe it should be avoidable via some other means like DR though. If DR subtracted from Healing then you could have healers take "Armor Divisor" to help heal people through armor. Just having a "you can't stop healing" policy kinda limits options, especially since Healing can be used to remove (or even steal) BENEFICIAL afflictions.