Help balancing homebrew reduced healing effectiveness

[Dukai]

First things first: Ryan, Kari, James, and Mark stop reading now please.

I'm going to be starting a gestalt campaign in the near future with some friends. As both part of the story as well as a balancing factor, I am causing healing to be more or less malfunctioning. Essentially, all healing will always heal the minimum amount. ie - CLW heals 1+1/lvl rather than 1d8+1/lvl.

However, I am going to be including some alchemical "medicine" in the game from time to time which will function like a regular CLW (and CMW, CSW, etc). While the alchemical "medicine" fits very nicely into the first module I'm planning (set in Alkenstar), the later modules will have much less connection to the area. What I'm wanting are some creative ways to provide healing for the party. I don't want it to be easily/readily accessible at all times, but I'm okay with limited use magic items and other ideas people may have.

Another issue I'm trying to figure out is Heal and fast healing effects. Heal is an issue because it is not variable beyond caster level. I'm thinking it might always heal for 5/caster level instead of 10 or that is has a base heal of 1/caster level with a chance to heal for more (likely a % role to see how effective it is). However, I am open to other ideas. Fast healing on the other hand is more complicated because it generally provides only 1hp at a time. I still want it to be viable, but I want to limit its usefulness and am currently at a loss of how to do so. As a side note, I'm allowing temporary HP spells to function as normal as there are generally fewer of them and cannot be stacked.

Any help with any of these concepts, items, or rule adjustments would be most appreciated. Also, I realize this should possibly be in the homebrew forum, but since I'm asking for help I decided to post here.

[Dukai]

As before, my players please stop reading here.

I suppose I should provide a small amount of explanation as to why healing isn't working very well. The whole concept of the AP is that Sarenrae's tears have been stolen. Her tears symbolize her compassion which is the source of her ability to heal (all of this is made up btw in case you're wondering where I got this information). Having been brought to the material plane, the tears crystalized into 6-7 small artifacts. The first of which has made its way to Alkenstar. Across the world, healing isn't working as well, diseases are spreading, and crops/livestock are dying.

The party will be gathered in Absolom to attend a meeting to decide what to do about the problem as members of the delegation from wherever they choose to be from. An alchemist from Alkenstar will volunteer that since his city is located in the Mana Wastes (an area devoid of magic), his researchers have been working on alternative methods for healing. The work looks promising but is still in the early stages of research. He invites the leaders of the meeting to send a group to Alkenstar to aid him in his research and hopefully proliferate the results throughout the world should they prove successful.

The party will take a TP circle to Nex and travel south to Alkenstar where they will discover an outbreak of an apparently "incurable" disease. Additionally, there is an uproar within the city because signs of magic are returning to the city (due to the presence of the tear). Therefore the party will need to help with the research, get to the bottom of this disease outbreak, and figure out why magic is suddenly working inside the city walls.

That was more than a simple explanation as to why healing is limited, but it gives more context to the first module and the theme of the entire AP. Essentially, the party will be collecting the tears and eventually restore them to Sarenrae (at level 17-18ish...long way down the road). The majority of the campaign will take place in Alkenstar, Nex, and later on Geb with planar travel in the last module or two.

[Darkwolf117]

Once the party is no longer able to readily get access to your alchemical remedies, you could introduce some kind of plant that, without any refinement, provides some amount of healing. Say it only grows in (whatever) area and becomes inert X hours after being collected and it'll be entirely up to you how often the PC's have access to it.

As far as fast healing goes, limiting it by altering its rate is pretty straightforward, the simple question would be how much. If you want it to still be viable in combat, you can have it kick in every 2-3 rounds instead of every round. If you want it to have a noticeable effect for creatures that have it constantly, you could lower the frequency to once per hour, so they do recover much quicker than normal, but not nearly as fast as would generally be the case.

Alternatively, you can simply roll a chance for it to kick in every turn, depending on the frequency you would want (30%, 60% or what have you). Success, you get the healing as normal. Failure, it's a no go. Repeat next round.

So, there's some thoughts. Incidentally, the setting sounds pretty cool.

[Dukai]

Thanks for the feedback. Actually the plants work really well for the next module. I'll definitely be using that idea. I may go with the % chance for fast healing to work. It's like the connection is fuzzy, so it goes in and out but no rhyme or reason.

[Weirdo]

Very cool concept. Here are some thoughts on how it might effect your game, though I haven't played with such a houserule and am only theorizing:

Expect to see a big difference in the way combat runs. It'll probably be more dangerous and costly if injuries can't be healed with a standard-action spell. Your group might spend more time looking for non-combat options such as stealth or diplomacy, and they'll probably be more worried about maneuvering for a strong victory rather than risk injury.

Expect to see no in-combat healing, except in dire emergencies - there's already some debate over whether healing in combat is worth it compared to killing the enemy faster, and if healing is weaker this calculation overwhelmingly tips in favor of killing the enemy.

If healing is overall reduced (all spells heal minimum HP) rather than just slower to take effect, then expect to see more waiting between combats, as the party can't just heal up and move on to the next thing. They might in some cases need days for natural healing to kick in. If you need them moving forwards on a time limit, be ready to provide them with alchemical remedies to get them back on their feet.

If you're reducing the effectiveness of condition-removing spells like Lesser Restoration, Remove Disease, Restoration, etc. then these conditions will become similarly more dangerous. You'll have to be extra-mindful about throwing things at the PCs that inflict conditions that a normal party would be able to remove.

The Heal skill will become much more useful if magical healing is weak. So will any abilities that boost the rate of natural healing.

You'll also need to keep an eye on interactions with other abilities. For example, the Healing Domain lets you automatically Empower cure spells as a granted power. Will this still work if Cure spells are effectively non-variable? What about feats or abilities like Fey Foundling - do they give the normal benefit (making them extra-good choices) or will they also be reduced?

In general it shouldn't reduce the power of divine classes too much, since they already have a good number of magical options that don't rely on healing spells. However, I'm not sure whether it would cause such characters to avoid healing-based powers (since they are now weaker) or focus on them (since healing, being rarer, is more valuable). I'm inclined to think they'd avoid healing because as mentioned earlier it's more efficient to kill the enemy first, but as I've tried to play a non-optimal healer I can vouch for the fact that some people will find it unnerving not to have an effective healer and will try to compensate. Paladins will probably feel the biggest hit, since LoH is a big thing for them and with it weakened they'll be somewhat more vulnerable.