Healing and Decreased Immunity Enhancement

[Tyneras]

Healing (Basic p.59) has a -3 modifier for every successful healing on the same subject, resetting after 24 hours from the last success. Would Decreased Immunity (Power-Ups 4 p.13) be a valid enhancement to remove this penalty? And if so, what level? It is most similar to Level 2 ( Cumulative -2 penalty lasting one day) but is a bit stronger, would this be Level 2, Level 3, or Level 2.5?

In the past I used Cosmic: No Repeat Use Penalty, +100% which would be the same as 2 levels of Decreased Immunity.

[kirbwarrior]

I used a +50% to get rid of it before and it honestly felt like overkill. Now I just rule that the Healing advantage (not spells like Minor Healing) don't have the daily penalties at all and have it be a -20% limitation to keep it.

(I've seen Kromm and PK talk about how it was a holdover from Magic to put it on Healing and it wasn't enough of an issue to consider changing it later, based on that conversation and the fact that everyone always wants this enhancement I just changed things).

[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

- - -

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.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Healing (Basic p.59) has a -3 modifier for every successful healing on the same subject, resetting after 24 hours from the last success. Would Decreased Immunity (Power-Ups 4 p.13) be a valid enhancement to remove this penalty? And if so, what level? It is most similar to Level 2 ( Cumulative -2 penalty lasting one day) but is a bit stronger, would this be Level 2, Level 3, or Level 2.5?

In the past I used Cosmic: No Repeat Use Penalty, +100% which would be the same as 2 levels of Decreased Immunity.

Yup. That's what I did here. It works out perfectly and within the rules.

[Kallatari]

The play around with the 24-hour cumulative -3 penalty, just use the Decreased Immunity/Increased Immunity modifiers as is, except you replace the -2 penalty of the modifier with the inherent -3 of Healing.

As others have pointed out, this works out to 2 levels of Decreased Immunity worth +100% to eliminate the cumulative penalty, which conveniently matches the +100% Cosmic modifier for "breaking the rules", which is to me the right level. This therefore, in my opinion, supports the fact that the existing modifiers are the right price to use for making any type of change to the cumulative penalty.

(For what it's worth, I replaced the cumulative -3 penalty to Healing with a -2 penalty in my games just to match the Increased/Decrease Immunity penalty, but that change is purely a house rule. On average it gives them 1 extra successful heal in a 24 hour period, which to me isn't a big deal.)

[Tyneras]

Thank you all for the feedback. I've been building a lot of new abilities lately and reviewing a lot of old ones. Lot of odd jury-rigged stuff and old work arounds I'm cleaning up with modifiers that didn't exist at the time or I overlooked.

[Plane]

The trick to cheap healing is make it resistable with a will roll -10% and then Easy to Resist. It will not help heal scared townspeople but your allies will be fine

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Plane

The trick to cheap healing is make it resistable with a will roll -10% and then Easy to Resist. It will not help heal scared townspeople but your allies will be fine

I'm not sure I'd allow those. The healing spells (I think anything that's a strict upside) in Magic already let you resist with no roll if (for some reason) you don't want to be healed and I'd apply that to the Healing advantage. (And without Multiplicative Modifiers, you might not be saving that many points anyway)

On a note, No Roll Required does wonders and is even better without the daily penalties.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

On a note, No Roll Required does wonders and is even better without the daily penalties.

Absolutely, but now we're talking in the vicinity of 90 points. If you have that many points, that's great but 90 points is a lot. At least at the power levels I'm talking.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

The healing spells (I think anything that's a strict upside) in Magic already let you resist with no roll if (for some reason) you don't want to be healed.

Cannot seem to find this tidbit, anyone know the page?

It almost seems like the reverse, a lack of 'Resisted' meaning you can't really do anything to stop it short of switching on Magic Resistance, using Ward or putting up a Spell Shield.

While I'm looking at that sectin... in terms of rule of 16 on M14 sapient I know is IQ6 but wondering what "living" is statistically. I guess a minimum of 1 in all primary (iq/dx/ht/st) and secondary (will/per/hp/fp) attributes might be a good guideline? Sorry Body of Air/Fire.