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

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

DFRPG explicitly expands the effects of Very Rapid Healing to give a +1 to "healing rate" in all situations, not just when rolling for natural healing. It probably wouldn't break anything to have it work that way in GURPS as well.

So, is this something like 2 HP (instead of 1) for bandaging, 1d-1 for Treating Shock (instead of 1d-2), 1d healing potions instead heal for 1d+1, etc?

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

A simple house rule I have that increases the benefit of Rapid Healing is that I do daily healing rolls, but they have a penalty based on how strenuous of a day you have had, rather than requiring complete rest for the day.

This can be as much as a -5 penalty for strenuous physical activity while injured.

I've found that once this is known, the bonus from rapid healing starts looking very nice, especially in settings where supernatural healing is not common place.

Yeah, I suggested this as an option upthread; good to hear it appears to work well in actual gameplay. I think between that and keeping in mind the +5 to resist crippling makes Rapid Healing well worth it (moreso for characters with modest HT, where that bonus helps*, but even with high HT the fact it lets you still readily heal while on the move is likely worth it).

*I've long considered a houserule for crippling to be treated more like unconsciousness/death, with mounting penalties as the limb takes more damage, which would make the bonus useful even for characters with high HT; I may make another thread to discuss that, as it would be quite the tangent for this one. (EDIT: and it's up)

[awesomenessofme1]

[QUOTE=Varyon;2463889]So, is this something like 2 HP (instead of 1) for bandaging, 1d-1 for Treating Shock (instead of 1d-2), 1d healing potions instead heal for 1d+1, etc?/QUOTE]

No. I couldn't figure out how to phrase it succinctly, but by healing rate, I meant it gets multiplied like with high HP. So x2 at 19 or less HP instead of x1, x3 for 20-29 instead of x2, and so on.

[RGTraynor]

Rapid Healing shows up very occasionally at my table, but I admit I use it a good bit more often for the aforementioned Tough Guy NPCs.

To the best of my recollection, only one PC has ever taken Regeneration.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

No. I couldn't figure out how to phrase it succinctly, but by healing rate, I meant it gets multiplied like with high HP. So x2 at 19 or less HP instead of x1, x3 for 20-29 instead of x2, and so on.

Oh, so it's basically something like HP +10 (Only for determining healing rates)? That implies that Limitation would be worth around -50% (Very Rapid Healing costs [10] more than Rapid Healing, and the only additional effect it has is increasing restoration).

[Pursuivant]

At 5 points, Rapid Healing is a cheap and useful advantage for PCs in a low-tech, no-supernatural healing campaign. It's right up there with other traits like Luck and Resistant (Disease) when it comes to keeping PCs alive. As others have pointed out, it's effectively +5 to recover from Crippling (but not severing) injury.

It becomes less useful if the GM uses the very common house rule of ignoring daily HT rolls to recover HP and allows them to be healed automatically.

Regeneration is more of an aliens/supers/boss monster trait. Rather expensive for what you get, but sometimes useful. At high levels, it starts to look "not so good" compared to levels of Unkillable.

The point cost for Regrowth is widely considered to be crocked, as others have pointed out. Despite that, it's a standard "hard to kill alien/monster" advantage.

With suitable power modifiers, all of these traits can be used to model magic or psionic fast non-combat healing powers.

[ericthered]

I've had a PC stick very rapid healing on a character with regeneration and convince me that RAW was it applied to regeneration. I don't remember the logic, and checking the books it doesn't hold up, but I remember it and don't mind it as a house rule for letting characters buy more granular regneration rates.

I stick regeneration on a lot of foes. I've got a bunch of demons in a game right now that have it, some faster than others. I've stuck it on would-be gods, alien gangsters, DF-style monsters, and I don't remember what-else.

Most PC's I've seen with it are lycanthropes in Monster Hunters Games, as monster hunters is my back-up genre.

The campaign never got past about 10 posts, but I once built a spellcaster Genie with 150 points in FP regeneration, only to be told that unlike HP, FP did not come back faster as you bought more of it. That was a 1000 point character, and I expect he would have been terrifying: he also had a lot of FP, high IQ, and modular abilities aimed at buying spells.

[JulianLW]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

No. I couldn't figure out how to phrase it succinctly, but by healing rate, I meant it gets multiplied like with high HP. So x2 at 19 or less HP instead of x1, x3 for 20-29 instead of x2, and so on.

I have ... thoughts on the issue of Very Rapid Healing being nerfed in Dungeon Fantasy RPG and Monster Hunters. I started a thread about it a couple of years ago, and I've bolded a couple of points I wanted to draw special attention to.

Originally Posted by JulianLW

I'm sure someone has discussed the logic of this before, but if so, I'm not finding it anywhere, and it makes no sense to me.

On B79, Very Rapid Healing says you heal 2 HP instead of 1 when you roll to recover lost HP. On B424, "High HP and Healing," it says you multiply HP healed by 2 at 20-29 HP, 3 at 30-39 HP, etc. By this logic, a character with VRH and HP 20 should heal 4 HP whenever he rolls to regain a HP. 4 HP is 20% of 20, just as 2 is 20% of 10.

However, in DFRPG and in Monster Hunters Power-Ups (page 13), this dynamic is altered:

"Very Rapid Healing: If you have this advantage, increase the multiple under High HP and Healing by one, to a minimum of ¥2 – that is, multiply all HP healed by 2 at HP 1-19, 3 at HP 20-29, 4 at HP 30-39, and so on."

So... the higher the hit points, the less valuable Very Rapid Healing becomes?! By RAW in Basic, my character with 20 HP was recovering 20% of his HP on a roll to recover with VRH - just like the character with 10 HP was. But in DFRPG and Monster Hunters, my character with 20 HP is now only recovering 15% of his HP - he takes LONGER to recover from a comparable wound than a weaker character! And the higher his HP, the slower he heals from the same RELATIVE injuries. Huh?!

DFRPG and Monster Hunters seems to make VRH a LOT less valuable than it originally was in Basic RAW. Why ?

Originally Posted by JulianLW

Y'all, thanks for all the thoughtful responses. The problem, as I read it, is not primarily with the relative weakening of VRH but with the change to High HP and Healing rule - which in my opinion should apply to all healing - including the extra HP from VRH.

It doesn't strike anybody else as funky that a character with VRH and 10 HP can completely heal from 0 HP in 5 days (instead of the normal 10) but a character with VRH and 20 HP takes 7 days (instead of 10)? And an even stronger character at 30 HP takes 8 days (instead of 10)?

At 50 HP or more the character with VRH actually heals only one day faster (from 0 HP) than the character without. That doesn't seem Very Rapid for a character that has invested very heavily in HP and healing. At a certain point - and that point seems to be a pretty low HP value - it seems like it would be FAR more worth your while to spend just the 5 CP for Rapid Healing and the remaining 10 CP on 5 more HP. That would raise crippling thresholds, at least.

I thought the whole point of High HP and Healing was that characters with higher HP should recover at a commensurate rate as those with lower HP. But I guess if you're playing with HP levels this high, you just go with regeneration instead, as has been suggested.

This whole rules clarification for DFRPG and MH just strikes me as counterintuitive and a weakening of either VRH or High HP and Healing - especially for characters that focus on high HP - the kind most likely to take VRH.

It seems to me that it's the 20 HP character who really gets screwed the most by this rules update. Spending the points to get to 20 HP and 15 for VRH, I think you should be able to heal at least as fast as a totally average guy with VRH.

So I guess what I'm really asking is: how many other people find this wonky and houserule that VRH and High HP and Healing work the way it seemed to me that it was supposed to work before DFRPG came out and changed it?

[Donny Brook]

Regrowth is expensive when creating a new character is free.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by JulianLW

I have ... thoughts on the issue of Very Rapid Healing being nerfed in Dungeon Fantasy RPG and Monster Hunters. I started a thread about it a couple of years ago, and I've bolded a couple of points I wanted to draw special attention to.

As I noted, it makes perfect sense if VRH is Rapid Healing [5] + HP+10 (Only for determining healing rate -50%) [10]. And I don't think I'd call the DFRPG/MH modification a nerf - my reading of VRH is that it only applies to the daily recovery roll, not things like Regeneration, Bandaging/Treating Shock, quaffing potions, receiving healing spells, etc. Having a character with VRH and HP 30 only heal at a rate of up to 4 HP per day instead of 6 HP per day is a nerf, but is more than made up for by the fact that more accessible healing options (which are available in DFRPG and MH) enjoy a boost, such that every 3 HP of such healing (1 HP nominal healing, x3 for having HP 30) counts as 4 HP (also, I suspect characters with HP 30+ are fairly rare even in such settings). That said, you could certainly try to convince your GM that having VRH double all healing is the way to go; if the GM opts to stick with how DFRPG/MH does it, just don't take VRH on your character (and if that was necessary for your character concept, well, that means your character concept doesn't work for the setting - which is unfortunate, but sometimes that's just how things go; if I were playing in a DFRPG game and the GM wouldn't let me use Weapon Adaptation to get the +2 Parry of staves when wielding a spear, I'd just... build a character other than a spearman).

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Regrowth is expensive when creating a new character is free.

Of course, a campaign where "just make a new character" is a readily-available option may create a perverse incentive to make glass cannons, then simply make a new character whenever one gets put out of commission (from crippling, death, etc). But to be fair, such a "meat-grinder" campaign could certainly be entertaining. But, yeah, Regrowth makes a lot more sense at only [10] (absent Regeneration, I think it's roughly comparable in effect to IT: Unbreakable Bones, and the latter is indeed priced at [10]).
(EDIT: And now that I look at the thread your quotes were from, I see Christopher beat me to the punch in realizing the [+10] for VRH is basically just Limited HP +10 by over 2 years...)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon;2464027
(EDIT: And now that I look at the thread your quotes were from, I see Christopher beat me to the punch in realizing the [+10

for VRH is basically just Limited HP +10 by over 2 years...)

<shrug>You're both retconning VRH to match your rationalizations. VRH is rather older than 4e's calculation of HP-based healing and DF's rules change is definitely a change.

I'm happy enough with VRH being 10 pts for "Roll for natural healing twice per day" and "For _all_ healing multiply by HP/10 (round down)". Smooshing those together is not rules clarification.