I've mentioned it a time or two on the boards before, but quite a while ago, I started my players into The Forbidden Arch (I don't remember which one, but it's irrelevant; read on). Early in the adventure, a guard is scripted to wander into town and collapse from his wounds. The way the story is written, he doesn't recieve a cure spell, but rather, is hospitalized for some time, allowing the character to do a bed-side questioning for some quest information.
Unfortunately, when the man collapsed and wasn't immediately brought back to normal with a cure spell, he volunteered his services. Being underprepared for the adventure and realizing this would cause some complications, I had the priest (of Procan, I believe, or maybe Osprem) try to gently refuse aid, but the player was insistent. He used a cure spell, and I said it didn't get the guard back up. Surprised, he used another. I don't remember how I resolved it after this point, but since then, I've been grappling with an issue.
Almost every adventuring party will quickly become well-stocked with healing supplies, from whatever source. This quickly makes scenes with dying characters obsolete, unless the death is coming from something other than hit point damage, which is relatively rare and if used overly much, will become transparent as an arbitrary DM tool.
It also removes from the game the possibility of bed rest and healing. I know there are books which say many small towns only have an herbalist with ranks in the Heal skill, but come on? When was the last time that actually happened in the game? And it still doesn't help in places that would definitely have clerics, like a city. Now, one could say that the clerics don't regularly prepare healing spells, so there aren't any on ready supply, but then, what in the world do they prepare?
So, it became obvious to me that more story options would be opened up if healing became more difficult somehow. I will outline some of my thoughts below before coming to the main argument, just so that other readers can see what I've already considered and rejected.
The initial thought was to reduce the potency of healing spells. This I quickly threw away. Reducing the amount of help one can get from a potion or cleric can turn a moderate challenge into a lethal one. I really don't want to change the hit point system, or the challenge level of the game, so nerfing cure spells immediately left the building.
I then considered giving the spells a different effect, such as healing someone over X amount of time. However, that still wasn't good. I would then have to decide what "effect" I was going for when I determined the time period, and, more importantly, it destroys one of the most important elements of cure spells: turning the tide of battle.
Anyone who survives a combat with even 1 hp can just sit around and heal up for a few days. Heck, they can even do that if reduced to 0 hp, just so long as they don't take a standard action. However, what parties need is instant recovery, particularly at low levels. There are numerous times when the party looks to be down and out, but then the healer gets to the wizard or fighter-type, casts a cure spell with just enough effect to get them up again, allowing for one last attack which destroys the foe. I certainly don't want to take this element away from parties, as it would drastically increase TPK rate and overall character death rates. Another no-no in my book.
All I'm looking for is to reduce their utility on NPCs to open up story options.
So then I came to some more viable options. Route one is attunement, and route two is XP costs.
Attunement would go something like this: whenever a healer prepares a healing spell, they list a number of creatures equal to 2 x their relevant ability score). These are the creatures that may recieve the spell. The spell's duration would change to 24 hours, and its casting time increased to a minute or so. At any time in those 24 hours, the cleric can touch one of the attuned creatures, and as a standard action, heal his wounds just as cure spells by the RAW.
This way, a cleric with a 16 or 17 in Wisdom can declare 6 people, larger than the normal party and still inclusive of unusually large parties, while it still limits the utility to more or less just the party. If the players have an NPC companion or two that they care for or are taking with them, the cleric will typically have "room" to include them when next he prepares spells.
And, it stops clerics from automatically curing otherwise fataly-wounded NPCs whose death benefits the story. Note that the clerics can still make an attempt, but they will actually have to try using the Heal skill to stabilize and then treat the "patient," which actually sounds like a good way to incrase drama in the story. Think of war movies where a soldier is gunned down and the combat medic struggles frantically for several minutes to save his life, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. However, the "main characters" still get the easy, 99% effective benefit of a cure spell.
Bards and other spontaneous casters of cure spells can make things a little more complex, but not overly so. It does remove the option of blasting an undead creature with the positive energy, though, (since the casting time would be prohibitive) which isn't my intent. However, I can't really remember the last time this happened, and I imagine that holds true for many people, making this a rather obscure side effect.
Route two is a minor XP penalty. Something small enough that the cleric would like to be judicious with his spells, but not overly stingy to the point of letting a party member die. This would also encourage them to use the Heal skill on wounded NPCs. However, it doesn't do anything to help with the issue of NPC death scenes, since any good-aligned character, or any player who didn't want to loose important plot information, wouldn't hesitate to bust out a small amount of XP to save a specific NPC. Additionally, the price of potions of cure light wounds just sky rocketed.
There is also the possibility of combining the two; rather than limiting cure spells to only those so attuned by the caster, the caster simply incurs an XP penalty on non-specified individuals. This sounds like some type of mobile phone plan, however. "Make sure your friends are all in the Cure-All Network!" "Ah, man, you're not in my network. Healing you is costing me a fortune!" Also, it doesn't amount to anything really different than expressed in route two.
There is also the consideration of inflict spells. The two tend to run parallel to each other, but this would significantly distance them. Though I'm not sure this would neccessarily be detrimental to the game, it does seem a bit odd and isn't something I'm really striving for.
I now turn the discussion over to you, Oh Lords of Ye Boardes (because throwing an E on the end makes it rustic and cool)!
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I like the option of Attunement to certain individuals. I don't think it would make potions skyrocket in cost (they already are extremely expensive to commoners(CLW) and the higher level Cures are way out of reach for anyone making a few silver a day in pay) and you could just rule that healing spells work as inflict spells on all undead without attunement due to the energy being channeled to harm an undead. Makes finding and rescueing an NPC a cool adventure if the torturer has whipped them into negatives and the party is out of potions/scrolls. On that note you could have scrolls only work on those who are attuned to the reader, but allow potions and ointments to still work on anyone's wounds.
I will be stealing this idea for my own use.
FH
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BTW, I hate XP costs for things. Hate it for scrolls and spells. I don't mind it for items as I can see a crafter giving some of his own lifeforce to embue an item with power, but scrolls? Just make the material used to scribe them a bit more expensive to procure. Still haven't figured out an alternative to THAT problem yet.
FH
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Now, one could say that the clerics don't regularly prepare healing spells, so there aren't any on ready supply, but then, what in the world do they prepare?
Entirely ancillary to your excellent post, but all good clerics and many neutral clerics can heal without preparing healing spells in the first place.
Now that I've nit-picked, I really dig your attunement idea. I suppose I would recast though as a consent type event. Not only does the caster need to attune himself to the particular person, but the person must give the caster something personal (bit of hair, piece of clothing, etc) to be fully effected by the healing spell. This attunement process takes one hour and once complete, need only be redone once a month.
The catch is that due to the material connection, the attunement also makes the person more vulnerable to the cleric's inflict spells. They are effectively empowered against that individual. The intent here is to keep people from willy nilly attuning to each other because each attunement carries a risk of betrayal.
The caster has the option to try and heal somebody who he is not attuned to, but doing so requires a Heal check DC 20 + the level of the spell to be cast. Failure indicates that the recipient actually suffers a point of damage. Success indicates that the recipient heals 1 hp per die of the spell cast.
For undead, the cleric doesn't particularly care about being attuned to the creature, he just floods it with positive energy (same goes for an inflict wounds spell and a non-undead creature). The reason the cleric has to attune is to make sure the energy correctly bonds with the individual; no such concern attaches when the energy is being used to inflict harm.
Potions are a sticky wicket, and the way to handle those would be to say that they are brewed specifically to overcome this issue. Another alternative would be to require that the potion be attuned to a particular person, but then you face substantial bookkeeping costs.
Those are my suggestions, but I'm really just standing on the shoulders of the excellent work you've already done.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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BTW, I hate XP costs for things. Hate it for scrolls and spells. I don't mind it for items as I can see a crafter giving some of his own lifeforce to embue an item with power, but scrolls? Just make the material used to scribe them a bit more expensive to procure. Still haven't figured out an alternative to THAT problem yet.
I've done away with xp in my latest campaign. As a result, I am giving the players a pool of pseudo-xp each level to use in creating items (similar to the way the artificer works). The pool is refilled each level and excess amounts cannot be saved (the intent is to encourage item creation through a use it or lose it mechanic). We'll see how well it works out...
I like your ideas about the empowered inflict spells! Perhaps the material component needed could be a drop of blood from the attuned recipient? That might make it somewhat unsavory to uneducated commoners, much like certain early medical practices.
The only problem I have with the attunement is that it begins to sound more like a class feature than a spell. Oh, well, if it works, use it. Most of that can be addressed with proper wording of the language, as well.
For those involved that may read this, I won't be applying this to the online game (whenever it gets going).
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I like your ideas about the empowered inflict spells! Perhaps the material component needed could be a drop of blood from the attuned recipient? That might make it somewhat unsavory to uneducated commoners, much like certain early medical practices.
*sound of forehead being smacked*
Blood is perfect.
I think the place to put the concept of attunement would be in the general description of healing, rather than the spells themselves.
Nice work.
Now, one could say that the clerics don't regularly prepare healing spells, so there aren't any on ready supply, but then, what in the world do they prepare?Entirely ancillary to your excellent post, but all good clerics and many neutral clerics can heal without preparing healing spells in the first place.
Yep. It occurs to me that one could solve the problem proposed by spontaneous casters while retaining the cleric's flexibility in spontaneously casting cure spells by making a single attunement apply to all cure spells they cast, and then making cure spells function normally (other than the obvious targeting restrictions)
With the model you suggest of one hour to attune, and the requirement that a character be willing, this would keep newly introduced NPCs from just being raised to full health and cheerfully going about their business, and encourage a modicum of trust within the party. Or, at least, it would encourage the PCs to trust the cleric.
The caster has the option to try and heal somebody who he is not attuned to, but doing so requires a Heal check DC 20 + the level of the spell to be cast. Failure indicates that the recipient actually suffers a point of damage. Success indicates that the recipient heals 1 hp per die of the spell cast.
Great idea. This would provide reason to put ranks in the Heal skill, and allow high level clerics to pull strangers back from the brink of death quickly, by taking a risk and sacrificing efficiency.
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I rather like the concept I saw (at the WotC boards, IIRC) of allowing fatally wounded (HP -10 or lower) characters time for a final speech. The idea being that everyone can see that the character is past help ("They done killed me, ma."), so there is no hope for a healing spell, but still conscious and able to communicate for the dramatically required few seconds.
This has the advantage of allowing dying speeches to PCs as well, which can be memorable and affecting.
I agree, though, that the whole issue of healing (and resurrection) is problematic in D&D. When money is no object, say for nobility, royalty, great merchants, and the like, there's really no way to keep them dead. And keeping them dead is sometimes important to telling interesting stories.
"The king has been killed by an assassin and it is your job to find his long-lost heir before a civil war breaks out."
"Right then, we raise him."
"Who?"
"The King, of course."
"The assassin didn't leave enough of the body."
"Resurrection, then."
"The body parts were inadvertantly swept up by the cleaning staff and fed to the moat monsters."
"Fine. True Resurrection."
"Well ..., actually ..., the king doesn't seem to want to come back."
"If he doesn't care, neither do we. Have a great day, now."
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Plus, they are admissible into evidence despite being heresay.
(well they are)
Would that still be true in a world with resurrection?*
8-)
* IIRC, the much of the reason dying declarations are admissible is that a dying person has no reason to lie**. In a world of, "Well, yes, your honor, I died. But I got better.", this might not be compelling reasoning***.
** Which understates the power of spite, I suspect.
*** Yes, I'm overthinking.
I always figured that what stops the average commoner from going to the local cleric is the gold cost for having a spell cast on you- they don't see a lot of gold. PCs aren't going to charge that though unless they're really mercenary. Healing attunement seems like the best route of those presented to keep PCs from heading into the hospital and hitting everyone with cure serious just to see what they know. I don't think you'd have to alter inflict spells- they may function similarly under the current rules but the intent is very different. Healing being more difficult than harming doesn't seem that bad.
Oh, other people want to limit healing powers too, what sick puppies are we :) (thread I started also yesterday, [url]http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/gaming/dnd/itWillBeASickSadW orld[/url] )
I like the idea of attunement. Maybe one thing could also be that you cannot cast spontaneous cures to people you haven't attuned to...of course that would also take away the inflict effect against those undeads and for evil priests. But still, it would require bit more planning for the adventuring priest (non-adventuring healing priests most likely would always pray for a healing spell or two).
In past issue of Dragon, cannot remember which one, there were some suggestions to limit raise dead, resurrection etc. When I am DMing players don't use those spells that much since they know how much I hate them but would be nice to come up with some mechanism, nice quest or something which needs to be done if someone needs to be ressed.
I was kicking this idea around myself. What I came up with is that magical healing auto-stabilizes, but only lends TEMPORARY hit points, which last for 24 hours. Thus, players still have the "oh crap, save me" aspect of magical healing, but they still need to rest and recoup unless the healer is gonna keep casting spells on em each morning. And if you go below 0 HP and are magically healed, you are fatigued until you can rest. Thoughts?
Interesting take--I'll use that attunement idea in some sessions and see how it works. I don't think I'll limit the number of people that can be attuned, or up the caster time to a full minute (that basically would mean you've got one healing spell in a combat). Perhaps the attunement is for a specific focus item as well, which could be lost. The ritual will take an hour, requires a blood component, must be renewed weekly, and cannot be changed once completed for that full week. So, we've got a village cleric that performs his Rite of Healing each week. All the faithful come into the church, offer up their blood (which is kept in a blessed chalice) and donate what they can to support the ministry. Gives some nice RP options...an enemy that can get that chalice can do awful things to the community for instance. The community has a source of healing, but the PCs can't just pop into random town X and get healed up after monster bashing, and the PCs can't heal random NPCs as easily (I'll likely use that Heal check variant here as well).
Also, I've never liked the "we charge for healing" angle from churches of Good deities. The spell costs nothing physically (there is opportunity cost, I know...) so why is the priest who espouses justice and goodness asking peasants to cough up gold? Nah, healing's free at Good temples (and some Neutral ones) unless your an obvious, known enemy of the deity.
So, wrapping some game mechanics around this:
Rite of Healing (Su): Any character with a spell from the Healing subschool on the character's list of spells known gains the knowledge to perform this rite as a class ability. The character must gather a specific personal material component (such as a drop of blood) from each person the character wishes to affect with a spell from the Healing subschool. The material component is placed in a specially prepared focus component (such as a chalice). This focus component costs 1 gp for every person that will be covered by the Rite of Healing. The character must designate a specific day each week on which to perform the Rite of Healing. On that day, the character spends one hour in prayer and meditation to attune the focus component to the character. At the end of this time, the character makes a DC 15 Knowledge (religion) check; the character may choose to take 10 on this check. With a successful check, the focus component becomes attuned to all people contributing to the rite (including the character) for the purposes of casting spells in the Healing subschool.
When the character casts a spell from the Healing subschool, the spell effect is determined by whether or not the caster and target(s) are attuned to the focus component. If both are attuned to the focus, the spell functions normally. If both are not attuned to the focus, spells with variable results have minimal effect that are not improved by caster level (for example, cure critical wounds only cures 4 points of damage and lesser restoration only cures 1 points of temporary ability damage) and the effect takes the longest time possible (for example, regeneration takes 10 rounds if the severed members are not present). If both are not attuned to the focus, and the spell does not have variable results (such as heal and remove disease) the spell has no effect at all.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Would that still be true in a world with resurrection?*8-)
* IIRC, the much of the reason dying declarations are admissible is that a dying person has no reason to lie**. In a world of, "Well, yes, your honor, I died. But I got better.", this might not be compelling reasoning***.
** Which understates the power of spite, I suspect.
*** Yes, I'm overthinking.
Yup, the truthfulness of deathbed statements is a reason they are admissible in spite of being hearsay (an out of court statement offered for to prove the truth of the matter asserted). There are all sorts of extra rules regarding the dying declaration: you've got to think you are dying and the staetment must be about the cause of your death. I can't remember if you actually need to die or not. Anyway, in a world with ressurection, their might be an additional requirement that you believe you won't be ressurected.
I ran a game once where a doppleganger was confessing to all sorts of terrible things and implicating the PCs in the process. They rolled into court, brimming with "we'll just cast zone of truth" attitude only to find out that, just as real world courts are skeptical of polygraphs, my D&D courts are skeptical of divinations.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I ran a game once where a doppleganger was confessing to all sorts of terrible things and implicating the PCs in the process. They rolled into court, brimming with "we'll just cast zone of truth" attitude only to find out that, just as real world courts are skeptical of polygraphs, my D&D courts are skeptical of divinations.
Man, playing a legally-oriented RPG with an honest-to-god LAWYER as your DM would simultaneously be the most harrowing and the most incredible gaming experience I can imagine.
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Unearthed arcana has a 'slower healing' variant. I don't think it quite solves your problem, but it was interesting anyway. Essentially, when you had a healing spell cast upon you it turned your damage into non-lethal and then you healed that at the normal rate(ever 15mins). Adds to the downtime between fights and it makes it much more likely for someone to be captured unconscious.
This attunement idea is cool, but I'm not gung-ho about it myself just because it adds a little more complexity to an already massive system.
Here's my suggestion: If you really need an NPC to deliver their info and then die every once in a while, make it a kind of divine thing. The commoner walks into town (cleric rolls a heal check) and should obviously not be breathing, let alone walking! When he sees the PCs, a resonating female voice speaks through his mouth: "Farmer Maggot's dying wish is to inform others of the circumstances of his death, etc...So say I, Wee Jas the Lady of the Dead, into whose arms Farmer Maggot is now welcomed." And with that the commoner drops to the ground, finally at rest.
I'm going to take an entirely different tact here that might not be popular with some. I personally think that Saern hit the nail on the head when he said he was underprepared for the adventure. He also used an adventure that incorporated a bad plot device for a high-fantasy game. If used in a low-magic setting with no healing this would have been great, but in a normal D&D setting a dying or wounded NPC with vital information is just looking for trouble. It's why DUNGEON adventures haven't used this type of plot device in aeons (not in the way the Saern describes it anyway).
I don't think a new attunement power would help. It would probably backfire when the PCs really needed healing or really needed to save somebody's life. What about an adventure where a dying NPC must relay some information to the PCs and they can't heal him in time due to the attunement power? Oops! Though I guess that's what speak with dead is for ;)
Attunement is good for a class feature, but probably needs some powering up in a standard D&D setting.
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Yeah, I’m with Phil on this one (with no offense intended to Searn – I probably would have made the same mistake). I think this was a fairly poorly conceived plot hook given the proliferation of healing magic in the average d&d game. I think it also touches on the problem that a couple of other posters have identified, about how to deal with the ability to raise the dead in a d&d game, but I suppose that’s another topic.
In my opinion, you either need to change the availability of healing magic (which may have serious repercussions on your campaign and world), or accept that healing magic is gonna happen and work from that base assumption.
I ran a long term campaign where healing magic was extremely rare – this was a viable option for that campaign, and really changed the way I and the players had to think about healing spells and attitudes towards them. But I know this isn’t a feasible option for many campaigns.
Another approach I have taken for a game in the past is that the gods are very demanding of their priests and followers. Some results of this are that a healing spell (or beneficial clerical spell) would only work (be granted by the gods) if the recipient was of the same faith as the caster. This doesn’t totally solve your problem (and has other implications, such as the faiths of members of the adventuring party), but it might be something to think about.
There is also the “gods are fickle” approach – usually clerical spells work fine, but sometimes the gods choose not to grant them for reasons of their own. Of course this option (and to some degree the previous one) takes a lot of power and control away from the PCs and puts it in the hands of the DM which may not be a good thing. You’d need to be very upfront about this option with your players and use it sparingly.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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In my opinion, you either need to change the availability of healing magic (which may have serious repercussions on your campaign and world), or accept that healing magic is gonna happen and work from that base assumption.
Not only is this a very narrow way to define the options, the suggestions you provide are variations on work arounds as well. As rare as healing magic is in the world at large, it is going to be common in your adventuring party or you're going to have to change the way the game works from the ground up. The nice thing about the attunement fix is it can operate in the core rules without creating a lot of disturbance. Making the gods fickle, or requiring that the recipients of healing spells be the same alignment/faith, or almost any other fix I've seen is more arbitrary and less compatable with the core rules than attunement. At my table, we call that DM fiat, and it's a lot less workable than a systematic defined rule.
The plot hook is just one example of this problem. A great deal of drama arises due to injury and the risk of death. D&D, by its nature, mitigates those risks in order to allow for its absurd combat-laden premise. Most attempts to re-inject the risk of injury/death focus on reducing the ability to combat injury/death in general; the innovative thing about this discussion so far is that it has focused less on reducing the ability and more on making it less common outside the adventuring context while still staying true to the principles of the core rules.
The worst criticism that can be said about this system is that it adds some bookkeeping for a marginal increase in realism/drama. That trade off may not be worth making, but saying that the trade off is unworkable is incorrect. Solutions that involve making healing magic inaccessible/rare to adventuring parties are less workable, and solutions based on old fashioned DM arbitrariness or completely worthless outside the bounds of a particular table.
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Sebastian, I agree with some of your comments, and I probably made two big mistakes in my post – firstly saying “you need to” (which of course is not true – Searn doesn’t “need to” do anything I or anyone here suggests, and it implies, incorrectly, that I don’t think the attunement idea is a good one); and secondly not commenting on the attunement idea, which I’ll come to in a moment.
It’s possible though that in taking exception to my turn of phrase (which was a little heavy handed admittedly), you missed the point of my post a little.*
I suppose to me, the attunement idea may have solved the particular problem that Searn mentioned in his original post, but as Phil L. pointed out it may cause additional problems, and I don’t believe it is a holistic solution to the general “healing magic is readily available” problem. In fact, now I think about it further, it doesn’t even necessarily solve the original problem – what if the party paladin had laid on hands, or one of the generous party members had poured a potion of cure wounds down the guard’s throat? (unless these things are subject to attunement as well).
I don’t mean to claim that my suggestions would solve every problem either, that they are fantastic solutions to the problem presented, or that they weren’t “work arounds” to some degree. In fact I mentioned some problems with them (particularly their arbitrary nature), and I do agree that they may not work outside of a particular DM’s game (which I also touched on).
I merely presented some ideas that had worked fairly well for me in the past, and seemed, to some degree to address the original question of reducing the utility of healing magic on NPCs to open up story options. Now, not saying my suggestions totally do this, but they’ve helped me similar quandaries (that healing magic seems too readily available to make some story options viable) in the past.
To attunement. I agree with your comments on this Sebastian. It works pretty well within the rules, would tend not to reduce the PCs access to healing magic (much), there’s only a slight increase in book keeping, its not an arbitrary system.
Some possible things to consider with this system; as erian_7 touched on, if the PCs (or anyone) turn up at the local temple needing to be healed by the resident clerics, they will need to wait for said healing to be attuned to them (so there may be a potential impact on the PCs if their resident healer is out of action for some reason). As Phil L. mentioned, this system may preclude some story options just as it may open up others, so it’s something to keep in mind whilst designing adventure hook etc. Also, consider how this works with healing potions, wands of cure etc. Do these also need to be attuned? Does this happen at the time of creation or (in the case of spell trigger or completion items) at the time of use? For ease of gameplay it might be best if these items can be used on anyone without attunement, but does that make sense given the requirement of attunement for spells? Will that be a problem for story opportunities?
I probably don’t have answers to all of these, just throwing them out there for consideration.
*Edit: or in fairness maybe my point wasn't totally clear or as well made as it could have been.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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It’s possible though that in taking exception to my turn of phrase (which was a little heavy handed admittedly), you missed the point of my post a little.*
I admit, I did not see much of a point to your post or (still) any to Phil L.'s post.
In fact, now I think about it further, it doesn’t even necessarily solve the original problem – what if the party paladin had laid on hands, or one of the generous party members had poured a potion of cure wounds down the guard’s throat? (unless these things are subject to attunement as well).
Those do remain problems. The biggest rebuttal I have undercuts the whole wounded-guy-plot-hook thing which is that I like that there is a cost to healing (in this case, the potion or wand). That player's are willing to pay the cost means that the wounded dude could still get through and, I admit, if that is one of the key focuses of attunement, by that measure it fails. This is not to say you couldn't apply the concept of attunement to magical healing items, but at that point you start to infringe on their operation within the party (e.g., the ability of the rogue to pour a healing potion down his buddy's throat).
Some possible things to consider with this system; as erian_7 touched on, if the PCs (or anyone) turn up at the local temple needing to be healed by the resident clerics, they will need to wait for said healing to be attuned to them (so there may be a potential impact on the PCs if their resident healer is out of action for some reason). As Phil L. mentioned, this system may preclude some story options just as it may open up others, so it’s something to keep in mind whilst designing adventure hook etc. Also, consider how this works with healing potions, wands of cure etc. Do these also need to be attuned? Does this happen at the time of creation or (in the case of spell trigger or completion items) at the time of use? For ease of gameplay it might be best if these items can be used on anyone without attunement, but does that make sense given the requirement of attunement for spells? Will that be a problem for story opportunities?
I missed the comment re: showing up for healing, which is a good point. The magic item thing is a problem no matter what, if all you end up doing is raising the price of healing that poor dude who comes running up to you in armor, then not much has changed and your justification for the rule has thinned. That being said, I think a significant part of the appeal is the off-camera effect. It inserts a cost into the process of healing and puts a barrier between the non-adventurer and eternal life without creating too big a burden on the adventurer. Generally I still like it, but there are definitely holes to be filled re: magic items and NPCs healing PCs. I'm much less concerned about lay on hands because it's easy enough to apply the same attunement rules to that ability.
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I admit, I did not see much of a point to your post or (still) any to Phil L.'s post.
That’s fair enough.
My point (and I think perhaps Phil’s) was to look at (though perhaps not fully address) the original problem from a different point of view.
But I concede that by that point (and to be honest, by halfway through the original post) the discussion had moved past that and onto critiquing the attunement concept. So to come in with something different at this point could either be considered thinking outside the box, or so left field as to be completely irrelevant and unhelpful, depending on your point of view.
Hopefully there was a bit of the former in my ramblings, but if you only got the latter, that’s cool, I can respect your opinion.
So, apologies for the off topic discussion Searn. The attunement idea sounds good in principle to me, just be aware of the potential complications that I and others have mentioned. As ever, taking on board the helpful suggestions earlier in the thread and then lots of playtesting will probably give you your answers.
I completely agree that wands and potions blow away most of the requirements of attunement, and that problem should be addressed. However, it was hard enough coming up with the idea of attunement, which, as pointed out above, was done with the explicit desire to leave the game mechanics virutally unchanged for the party while making certain exciting plot elements viable in the game again.
The ideas we've come up with here only require an off-screen hour of downtime, and the party is good to go with healing, just as if it was the RAW. However, it makes NPCs springing back from -9 to full hit points very unlikely. If the party needs to heal an NPC and don't have him attuned, well, they can still try it, but there's a risk involved. However, considering the nature of adventuring parties, this risk is fairly small, unlike for common people, which is exactly what I'm going for.
Yes, dying NPCs are a bad plot device where full recovery is just a murmmered prayer away. This is an endeavor to come up with rules to change this situation. It seems that this is a case where the mechanical needs of the game are impinging upon story-telling, and that rankles me somewhat. Just a matter of taste.
I like the idea of variable healing spells and fickle gods- makes for great plots in movies and literature. However, characters in those media can't balk at DM fiat, which is what I would dread at my tables. I could just never bring myself to do it, but if you can and the players go with it, great.
And, regarding the cost of healing spells as a prohibition to the common populace- I agree that clerics charging for them is ludicrous. A cleric of Pelor spends nothing to use any cure spell. It's not like in the real world where there are material costs to deal with and cover. The guy is devoted to a god whose main concern is healing, and he can do it almost effortlessly, and he is filled with compassion for his fellow living beings. I'm not seeing that as warranting a hefty fee, especially when someone's life may be on the line. Once again, that seems like the rules getting in the way.
I like the additional comments that have been thrown around. To those who say it's too complicated, I reiterate that the whole premise is that the changes aren't noticeable at all for the party, and can be taken care of by simply dedicating an off-screen downtime hour once a week in the game. And, I ask for help from anyone who can offer it to come up with a solution to the problem that wands and potions pose to this new system that's being developed.
I'd like to say that I (like Mothman) have nothing personally against the attunement ability. It is actually a very well thought out game mechanic that some DMs are going to implement and might very well appear in a published format some time in the future (considering that publishers and writers read these boards from time to time). I was merely troubleshooting the ability and playing devil's advocate a bit. It wasn't a pot shot at Saern (he was aware he was underprepared for the game), but rather a denouncement of the adventure he chose to run (since it didn't take the PCs abilities into account).
Since people like Sebastion are obviously touchy about such things, I'll try to be more objective and constructive in my criticism. Here's a few things for Saern to consider (and if he thinks back Saern will realize that I have helped him in this way before or at least agreed with his standpoint).
1. Paladins. They should have to attune their lay on hands ability as any cleric would with their healing spells, using Charisma as the key modifier.
2. Spontaneous cure spells work no differently from other spells. They can still only be cast on attuned individuals.
3. Mass cure spells only affect those attuned to the cleric (or druid, etc).
4. Scrolls and wands function using the caster's attunement (as Fake Healer has already pointed out).
5. Potions could be attuned to a particular individual upon creation (which can be very problematic) or the cleric in the party needs to attune the potion to the PC (by holding the potion and speaking a mystical phrase upon it, etc).
6. Attunement is considered a class feature for the Use Magic Device skill (DC 20). Scrolls work the same way as normal (25 + spell level).
7. Evil or neutral clerics with inflict spells. Should be treated as attacking spells, which is why attunement isn't needed for them. Makes undead spellcasters slightly more powerful, but not noticeably so.
These are basic solutions for the problems that might rise from attunement. Still, there are a few more questions with attunement that need to be answered before it can see play.
A. How many times per day can a cleric use attunement?
B. Can the cleric save his attunement power for later or does he need to attune the other PCs when he regains his spells?
C.Can a PC forgo their link with the cleric, so someone else can be attuned? How long does attunement take?
D. How does a dedicated cleric of a healing god deal with the attunement situation when he has to use his healing powers on the populace? This is related to some of the previous questions. Eg. A peasant could rush up to a PC cleric and ask for healing for a wounded friend, to which the cleric would say "sorry can't help" unless he had a wand or potion available.
E. Is attunement really necessary? Does the problem of one plot hook being neutered really need an entirely new power that might have some serious drawbacks? Really, the problem with the dying NPC plot hook is the same sort of problem that arises with mystery adventures. In a world of scrying and divinations, mystery adventures become more problematic.
To help attunement out a few feats could be implemented. Maybe something like Extra Attunement or Sudden Attunement. One would make attunement better for PCs with low ability modifiers, while the other would enable a PC to suddenly attune a person or creature already not attuned to him. If the PC takes the second feat and saves the dying NPC then more power to him for choosing the feat in the first place.
I'm done, but I'll be back!
Some interesting stuff about attunement.
That's all very good, Phil. I like it. I agree with the statements about paladins, Use Magic Device, that spontaneous spells and mass spells should work the exact same as they do now, with the exception of only affecting attuned individuals.
I would also think a good policy would be that a cleric can perform an attunement ceremony once per day, attuning any number of individuals. This attunement lasts a week. Many clerics do this as a weekly ceremony with their congregations or other important people. It would be a very interesting reason for people to go to church!
An interesting way to view attunement coincides with that I believe Sebastian said earlier in the thread, something to the effect of the positive energy has to be handled correctly. The in-game explanation could be that, just as fire can create or destroy, so can a surge of positive energy heal or harm. Therefore, to safely use the ability, healers must attune themselves to their potential patients.
The flip side of this is that blasting undead with a cure serious wounds spell still works just fine, since you're not trying to regulate or manage the flow, and inflict spells would work the same, too, since the whole point is to just flood the target with negative energy.
Potions- perhaps they could be the only way to get around attunement, or perhaps they have some level of the ceremony already built in. What if one had to place a drop of their own blood in a potion before they could drink it? This could deal 1 damage to the character, unless they or an adiministering healer succeeds on a DC 10 Heal check. But how long would this last? It would be easiest on book-keeping to assume that the party gets the potions, a cleric administers the attunement, and it's set that way forever. However, with a little more book-keeping, one could make it so that a potion only stayed attuned for a week or even a day. Not sure what would be best.
I don't think that someone should be able to forfit their attunement to give to another, at least not without a feat. Adding some feats to cover this new mechanic does sound like a good idea, however. Also, if someone needs a quick heal, remember that there's still bed rest and the Heal skill, which now becomes the default, and in a more serious situation, a cleric can try to administer a cure spell without attunement, but they have to succeed at a check or actually deal a point of damage. But, for an adventuring party, it actually shouldn't be very hard to pull off that check, making the option to deliver a muted, unattuned cure spell a viable option.
I also like the mechanics detailed above, which don't just make this for cure spells, but anything with the Healing descriptor.
I do think that this attunement issue is warranted, because there's something about instant-heal D&D that sits wrong with me. Obviously, it's needed for the party to do what they need to do, which I don't want to change. However, totally recovery in six seconds or less is something that we can't even do in today's real, high-tech world, and it seems to fly completely counter to most of the imagery that comes to mind of the pseudo-Middle Ages of the standard D&D world. It just seems to "fit" better for me (and some others, apparently).
Oh, and before I forget: It sounds redundantly simple, but it hasn't been stated so far; a cleric is always attuned to his own healing spells.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Damn, you ask that some logic attach to a bald faced assertion of opinion and suddenly your "touchy."
That being said, I'm glad something constructive has been put on the table regarding the problems of attunement. I still find the magic item issue (with a shout out to FH's solution re: wands) and the bookkeeping issue to be the most relevant and problematic. The rest of it (how many can you attune, attunement feats) is really just window dressing on the side. It's like having a feat where you can use survival to get additional food or not have to pee for a really long time. In theory, it's useful ("what if we encounter a starving peasant!") but in practice, it's really a narrow mostly off-camera ability that no player would ever choose.
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I don't like the "I can attune as many people as I like once a day" thing. I think that it should be a formula like- relative ability score X caster level. Example: 18 wisdom cleric9= 4X9 or 36 people they can attune and make it 3/week attunement.
Feats:
Extra Attunement-doubles the amount of times a week you can perform an attunement ceremony
Greater Attunement-doubles the amount of people the caster can effect with an attunement ceremony
Substitution Attunement-use one of your weekly attunements up to allow a heal spell to work on someone who is not attuned to the caster at a rate of 1hp per level of spell + caster level(max5)
*that would allow someone with the proper feat to bring an NPC back from the brink.*
Also allow Attunement Ceremonies to overlap between several casters, so 3 clerics participating in a mass could use a "group" 1 hour ceremony and each provide their "blessings" to the congregation. So for ease of calculation say they all have a +3 ability mod, their levels are 2, 5, and 9- they could Attune up to a total of 48 parisheners during the ceremony (6, 15, and 27, respectively).
A first level caster would probably have to perform 2 attunements to cover all party members for the week but so what? They ARE first level so they should have so limits, whereas the 18th level cleric with a +6 mod could preach his sermon to 108 congregation members without feats (which would double the amount of time he could do this and the amount of people effected if he took those 2) so the 18th level guy with feats could cover over 1200 people. Sounds like a powerful priest to me.
Whaddayathink!?
FH
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I don't like the "I can attune as many people as I like once a day" thing. I think that it should be a formula like- relative ability score X caster level. Example: 18 wisdom cleric9= 4X9 or 36 people they can attune and make it 3/week attunement.
Argh! Stupid paizo website ate my post!!!
Sigh.
Anyway, here's a shorter version of what I had typed up. I'm not a big fan of limiting the number of people that can be attuned based on level. One of the selling points of attunement to me is the whole non-intereference with adventuring operations. Tying attunement to level has a pretty strong effect on low level play, which is the time when the party has little access to magic items and few hps and needs the cleric's healing ability most acutely.
Furthermore, I prefer having the cost of attunement be money or a disadvantage. I see it as requiring a 1-5 gp focus; something cheap enough to be negligible for an adventurer but expensive enough to be costly for a commoner. That puts a cost on healing and explains why everyone doesn't just go to Jozan, local cleric of Pelor, every time they get a wound more serious than a paper cut. I also like the idea that an attuned caster has their inflict spells empowered when used against the attunee. That provides an additional risk to getting attuned to every divine caster you come upon and should make everyone suspicious of free healing (after all, it might be a trick to get you to attune to a caster who now has the ability to cause you additional harm).
I suppose though it depends on how you see attunement. If you primarily see it as a means to save the injured commoner plot hook, you're going to be much more concerned with the operation on non-attuned individuals. If you primarily see it as an attempt to limit healing for the average person without moving to a low magic setting, it's mostly a piece of background information but with enough flexibility to deal with the injured commoner plot hook without resort to feats and other character building options.
I don't like the "I can attune as many people as I like once a day" thing. I think that it should be a formula like- relative ability score X caster level. Example: 18 wisdom cleric9= 4X9 or 36 people they can attune and make it 3/week attunement.
Argh! Stupid paizo website ate my post!!!
Sigh.
Anyway, here's a shorter version of what I had typed up. I'm not a big fan of limiting the number of people that can be attuned based on level. One of the selling points of attunement to me is the whole non-intereference with adventuring operations. Tying attunement to level has a pretty strong effect on low level play, which is the time when the party has little access to magic items and few hps and needs the cleric's healing ability most acutely.
Furthermore, I prefer having the cost of attunement be money or a disadvantage. I see it as requiring a 1-5 gp focus; something cheap enough to be negligible for an adventurer but expensive enough to be costly for a commoner. That puts a cost on healing and explains why everyone doesn't just go to Jozan, local cleric of Pelor, every time they get a wound more serious than a paper cut. I also like the idea that an attuned caster has their inflict spells empowered when used against the attunee. That provides an additional risk to getting attuned to every divine caster you come upon and should make everyone suspicious of free healing (after all, it might be a trick to get you to attune to a caster who now has the ability to cause you additional harm).
I suppose though it depends on how you see attunement. If you primarily see it as a means to save the injured commoner plot hook, you're going to be much more concerned with the operation on non-attuned individuals. If you primarily see it as an attempt to limit healing for the average person without moving to a low magic setting, it's mostly a piece of background information but with enough flexibility to deal with the injured commoner plot hook without resort to feats and other character building options.
Damn, you ask that some logic attach to a bald faced assertion of opinion and suddenly your "touchy."
That being said, I'm glad something constructive has been put on the table regarding the problems of attunement. I still find the magic item issue (with a shout out to FH's solution re: wands) and the bookkeeping issue to be the most relevant and problematic. The rest of it (how many can you attune, attunement feats) is really just window dressing on the side. It's like having a feat where you can use survival to get additional food or not have to pee for a really long time. In theory, it's useful ("what if we encounter a starving peasant!") but in practice, it's really a narrow mostly off-camera ability that no player would ever choose.
~astonished and shocked look~ Lawyers use LOGIC? Since when?!? ~grins~ j/k ! At least Phil took the criticism as constructive and did not get offended.