I’m trying to create a magic item that grants fast healing and I’m somewhat uncertain about balance. After looking at current spells, feats and equipment that grant fast healing I have two rough ideas.
1) permanent fast healing equal to half item level
2) once a day fast healing equal to item level
My party has access to lay on hands and a master in medicine with multiple medicine skill feats and an alchemist with healing elixirs. 10 or 20 minutes after every fight they’re back to full so I personally am unconcerned with the out of combat consequences of permanent fast healing. I’m more concerned with having it for every encounter vs one encounter a day.
It's a fairly high level feat (9th; Vivacious Conduit) for a Gnome to restore Con x 1/2 level over the span of 10 minutes, which would be a metric for out-of-combat healing.
For an item to heal enough to make a difference in combat, that's really strong. Compare to 8th level Barbarian feat Renewed Vigor; one action, must be in Rage, Con + 1/2 level, but only temporary hit points. So an item is effectively opening up that feat to every class, giving them that feat, making it real hit points, and for zero actions (so along the lines of being Quickened permanently, yet in a way that stacks w/ other Quickened abilities which are quite temporary or 20th level feats).
So yeah, that's quite a difficult item to balance, or even make worth buying once balanced if the party has so many alternate sources.
The life boost focus spell is actually what got me thinking that permanent fast healing might be acceptable. A focus point is easy enough to regain making life boost available for every encounter. And the duration is is long enough to last a full combat 90% of the time. So I didn’t see permanent fast healing as a big leap.
What about a reaction the trigger being your turn begins and the effect is you gain hp equal to the item level?
More of a pseudo fast healing.
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The life boost focus spell is actually what got me thinking that permanent fast healing might be acceptable. A focus point is easy enough to regain making life boost available for every encounter. And the duration is is long enough to last a full combat 90% of the time. So I didn’t see permanent fast healing as a big leap.
Life Boost does come with the opportunity cost of casting other focus spells with that focus point though. And for Witch specifically it also comes with the drawback of not being able to cast a different Hex that round too. But that one is generally less of a problem. Running out of focus points during the combat is the bigger limit.
I could get Life Boost running on all four members of a 4-stack party, but it would cost me all of my focus points, including the one that Farien, my familiar, would have to recharge mid-battle. And it would take me 4 rounds to get running.
With equipment providing that instead, there is no burden on other uses of focus points, and everyone in the party could get that piece of equipment for themselves.
It sounds like what you are looking for is some sort of permanent healing item. Currently we have consumable healing items in the form of Healing Potions and Elixirs of Life. There is also the Healer's Gloves.
If I were to try and put Life Boost into a permanent item, I would probably give it a 1-minute interact activation (to prevent it being used in combat) with a 1-hour cooldown afterwards that provides an immediate amount of healing based on item level and approximately equivalent to what Life Boost would give. Then an additional 1/day 1-action interact activation to use in combat to give the same effect as Life Boost. Higher level items could have more daily uses of the in-combat activation, but would have a 10 minute cooldown so that it can't be used multiple times in the same combat.
This is still a boost in power (and definitely a homebrewed item) because you are only spending gold for access to the benefits of the Life Boost spell instead of having to spend class feats getting Life Boost, Lay on Hands, Hymn of Healing, or spell slot healing spells.
But I also don't think that this amount of healing outperforms anyone who actually has Life Boost or even Medicine skill, Battle Medicine, and Continuous Recovery.
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You can also use the "Pearly White Spindle" aeon stone as a metric: "When you invest this aeon stone, it slowly starts healing your wounds, restoring 1 HP every minute." On a 3rd level item seems like a good basis for scaling, you could ramp it up to 1 HP per round (or to put another way, fast healing 1) at say, level ~7, 2 HP per round at level ~13, and finally 3 HP per round at level ~17. That's just my idea without really thinking about it too hard for too long, but that is another (PFS legal I might add) item to use as a template.
Modeling the fast healing progression on shield hardness is a great idea!
Item 4
Reaction: Trollblood something something something
Trigger: Your turn begins and you have not taken acid or fire damage since your last turn.
You regain 5 hit points
Item 7
You regain 6 hit points
Item 10
You regain 8 hit points
Item 13
You regain 9 hit points
Item 16
You regain 10 hit points
Item 19
You regain 12 hit points
That is 60% of hardness of each sturdy shield
Additional Pros
- can be used after taking damage from a source that doesn’t trigger shield block
- has no upper limit like the break threshold
- can be paired with a two handed weapon
- no shield hp pool to track
Additional Con
- uses the reaction immediately after regaining it meaning the player has no reaction for an entire round taking a layer of depth out of combat and a removes a reason for the player to pay attention (waiting for reaction triggers) when it’s not their turn.
As to your point of a shield block preventing a fatal blow I would counter that if you had used the troll regen thing at the top on your turn you’d have the hp to withstand the blow.
The biggest reason I like using the reaction is the player must be conscious meaning it can’t be used to self pick up players while dying
What if this was an armor rune. Does the fact that it takes up one of a limited number of armor rune slots make it more balanced?
What if this was an armor rune. Does the fact that it takes up one of a limited number of armor rune slots make it more balanced?
I think an armor rune that doesn't eat your reaction, or eats the reaction to give a more than 1 round duration effect sounds pretty reasonable. That would move the power budget to a more contested area, and thus allow a little more power without making it overwhelming.