A Heretical Suggestion for Healing and Resonance

[thorin001]

Instead of basing healing primarily on the level of the caster we make it primarily dependent on the level of the recipient? Say 1d6 per level of the target.

This way healing scales with level and avoids the issue with the most economical healing is to spam lots of low level items. That is the primary issue that resonance was developed to address.

[MaxAstro]

To clarify, you mean to have healing items scale that way as well? So basically the idea would be that there is really only one "healing potion" and it just gets more effective the higher level you are?

Or maybe something like "cheap healing potions heal 1d4/level, expensive healing potions heal 1d8/level", that sort of thing?

[The Once and Future Kai]

I've played systems that used percentile healing items in the past (even saw it in some 3.5 campaign houserules). It worked fine. Functionally, this change sounds like it would be a bit more random but otherwise similar.

Scaling healing items doesn't really break the game so much as render dedicated magical band aids obsolete - which wouldn't be an issue if dedicated Healers had more dynamic options (e.g. more spells cast on reaction like Breath of Life, stronger/thematic buffs like Deathless, more battlefield control, etc).

[thorin001]

MaxAstro wrote:

To clarify, you mean to have healing items scale that way as well? So basically the idea would be that there is really only one "healing potion" and it just gets more effective the higher level you are?

Or maybe something like "cheap healing potions heal 1d4/level, expensive healing potions heal 1d8/level", that sort of thing?

Yup.

[MaxAstro]

Yeah, I actually kinda like this option. I think the gold scaling will still mean that buying lots of cheap potions is the way to go, but you could use this system together with Resonance and I think that would be okay. It certainly would make item-based healing more meaningful, which would help with the "every party needs a healbot" issue.

I still prefer buffing the Medicine skill's out-of-combat use instead, though.

[Sanmei]

I'd love to see percentile healing, but calculating it on the fly would bog down games far too much. This could be a decent middle ground -- healing based on the level of the recipient. Works best when options for healing are limited, as they currently are.

The two big things I'd like to see added to healing though:

1) An option for healing which takes an extended length of time, such as a minute per use, which restores a significantly greater amount of HP

2) Such abilities adding the recipient's CON bonus to their healing total as well as relevant stats from the person performing the action. You can heal well and you can be a person who is naturally robust and healthy. Nowhere other than an RPG does having a lot of constitution equate to also being a sponge that devours tons of magical resources before feeling optimal once again.

[Madame Endor]

This would make a lot of sense in terms of being more analogous to real world effects. If someone gets 20 times the amount of combat experience and training as a novice, they don't 20 times the amount of health and don't need to take 20 times the doses of medicine or use 20 times the ointment to get the same percent of healing effects. In a lot of ways, it's completely ridiculous that a higher level character has to take many times the number of the same level of cure potions or elixirs to get up the same percentage towards full health as a lower level character.

[Lucas Yew]

It's not heretical, it's revolutionary. And I feel dumbstruck on why I've never thought up of this...

[Boojumbunn]

I have seen it used before where healing magic heals a percentage of the persons life... So a full heal potion would heal all their HP, a half heal would heal half their total HP, etc. Of course, this would mean that at low levels you would only get 2-4hp per 1/4 heal potion, which would be the least expensive... but 4 of them would get a person up to full.

[Ironeyess]

I see some issues with it.

Healing doesn't really scale with the level of the caster. It scales with the level of the spell slot powering it.

Let's say you scaled it such that each spell level was worth 10% max hp. That would make a level 1 spell slot essentially worthless for healing. You'd need to scale back damage dramatically at low levels because low level parties wouldn't have access to meaningful healing.

As the system currently stands, a 1st level Heal is a good chunk of healing for a low level character, but a pittance to a high level character.

In the case of healing being 1d6 per recipients level, I can imagine it leading to some really ridiculous scenarios where, instead of a cart of CLW wands, the party just carts around a group of level 1 clerics they hire on.

As to high level healing being unrealistic, I think that's merely a symptom of high level hit points being unrealistic. No real world person could survive being caught dead center in multiple fireballs, much less continue fighting unimpeded, but a high level fighter can do just that. (Don't get me wrong, I prefer hp systems for their ease of use; I simply don't consider them to be very realistic.)

[Luceon]

Lucas Yew wrote:

It's not heretical, it's revolutionary. And I feel dumbstruck on why I've never thought up of this...

Revolutionary? I hate to rain on your parade, but this actually snowballs one of the problems that the designers were addressing. Buying low level healing consumables like a Cure Lt Wounds stick. This idea makes it even heal more now. Or am I misunderstanding his theory?

[Malk_Content]

Luceon wrote:

Lucas Yew wrote:

It's not heretical, it's revolutionary. And I feel dumbstruck on why I've never thought up of this...

Revolutionary? I hate to rain on your parade, but this actually snowballs one of the problems that the designers were addressing. Buying low level healing consumables like a Cure Lt Wounds stick. This idea makes it even heal more now. Or am I misunderstanding his theory?

It reduces the narrative problem of pinging a low quality wands dozens of times. Auto scaling of levels could also allow a rebalance of the gold costs if we are only considering dice size changes over the more valuable dice amount changes.

[Tridus]

Boojumbunn wrote:

I have seen it used before where healing magic heals a percentage of the persons life... So a full heal potion would heal all their HP, a half heal would heal half their total HP, etc. Of course, this would mean that at low levels you would only get 2-4hp per 1/4 heal potion, which would be the least expensive... but 4 of them would get a person up to full.

The problem with that is that at low level the weak potions are barely healing anything due to the percentage. So what tends to happen is games use a higher percentage and then put a cap on what it can do, thus requiring the next tier of potion eventually to get past the cap.

It winds up being complicated for a tabletop game where a computer isn't doing the math for you.