How do you feel about healing in RPGs?
What if healing magic wasn’t reliable, and adventuring parties brought surgeons with them, just as was done on voyages of exploration in previous centuries.
Let’s say that a cleric tries to heal a thief, and the cleric’s god flat out refuses to grant a miracle due to the amorality of the thief. Perhaps their god’s attention was diverted elsewhere to more interesting events; or the cleric has recently committed an act of blasphemy and their god has abandoned them.
Would mostly utilising tools instead of spells for healing party members lead to a compelling and entertaining time at the table?
There’s no reason that a surgeon couldn’t also learn some magic that could replicate surgical instruments and procedures.
Would this work with Hit Points, or would it be better with a different system? It could be good for minor injuries, but anything major would require time after the surgery for the patient to recover. if within a dungeon, this would either force the character to leave the dungeon or rest within the dungeon somehow.
Are there any supplements or RPGs that have explored this idea?
What do (You) think about it?
Smells like a content farming thread to me. Present your own work first, and we'll go from there
Fine.
A surgeon would be required to bring with them all the tools required for surgery, as well as possess a keen eye and a certain level of ingenuity so as to scavenge and craft supplies for their group.
Common spells used by Surgeons could be things that enhance their vision, disinfect things, and clean wounds.
Something that allows them to see through their own eyes like a microscope, or something that turns their eyes into an eye/centipede hybrid that moves out of their sockets and inspects wounds for them.
A surgeon could summon maggots to clean wounds, or animate the dead flesh and have it remove itself from the patient.
Protective wards could be cast to keep evil bacteria away.
High level Surgeons could temporarily transfer their consciousness to another character’s immune system so as to better direct it towards internal threats.
A Surgeon player would need to manage their resources wisely, as the other players lives rest in their hands. Maybe even keeping histories of the other players medical histories in case of disease and infection. This would affect important decisions; do we stay in this dungeon or return to town and resupply?
Some interesting items for a Surgeon to have could include cursed masks that summon forth phantom nurses, or necklaces that put the wearing into a deep slumber that’s impossible to awake from without removing the necklace.
Happy?
These sorts of magic spells feel inorganic as choices and just make me think he should have learned a healing spell instead.
>But what if healing magic doesn't work/exist?
Why wouldn't it? The baseline assumption for magic is that if you can have something that can summon living beings, animate the dead, disinfect, clean, give microscopic vision, or literally possess immune systems, there's no reason there couldn't be a spell that just heals wounds.
Most importantly though, nothing is actually interesting about any of this. It just doesn't add anything to gameplay scenarios or anything new to interact with.
I explained why the magic might not work in the OP
But fine, let’s say that you just use a healing spell. Something goes wrong and now the patients arm has split in half from the cut you were trying to close. Or there could be a curse on the area that greatly weakens healing magic. Or you could heal a player too much, overloading their system and causing them to have a stroke or go into heart failure.
It could add more choices to a game over just using a healing spell and healing for x hit points. Oops, out of spell slots? What now?
Managing the health of your party sounds like it could be an interesting time for those that are inclined that way.
And you could still use healing spells, you just now have more options.
>I explained why the magic might not work in the OP
I read it, and it's a dumb reason when other magic works without issue.
>But fine, let’s say that you just use a healing spell. Something goes wrong and now the patients arm has split in half from the cut you were trying to close.
This is another example of that. You would have someone literally turn their eyes into centipedes, but healing magic doesn't work because it can randomly invert and sever a limb? Stupid.
>Or there could be a curse on the area that greatly weakens healing magic.
Plausible, but why would you have a curse like that? How can you achieve this without it feeling contrived?
>Or you could heal a player too much, overloading their system and causing them to have a stroke or go into heart failure.
Just use a weaker spell.
>It could add more choices to a game over just using a healing spell and healing for x hit points.
No, it restricts itself to fewer potential scenarios, because you can't perform surgery in most situations, especially in combat, the way you can just use something quick and convenient like a spell.
It's also just not really different from healing spells when it does go off. Eitherway you recover meatpoints and probably expend resources while you're at it.
>Managing the health of your party sounds like it could be an interesting time for those that are inclined that way.
It already works that way.
Health isn't very interesting to manage in most games though, since it's one major resource you don't have much direct control over and can't predict the usage of with any reliability.
>And you could still use healing spells, you just now have more options.
So, the way it already works.
I never said out magic works without issue. There could be issues, they just aren’t as big a deal potentially as it would be with healing magic, as when you want something healed you’d want it healed properly. There are definitely spells outside of healing that could be deadly if something goes wrong. Cast a fireball with your hands? Unless you have fire resistance, you now have stumps.
The centipede eye spell was a random idea I came up with on the spot that could have some cool thematic flavour. The general idea was just giving better eyesight, which isn’t the most powerful thing in the world.
Why would I have a curse like that? Why not. Enemy magic users would use it without a second thought to get an upper hand against adventurers.
RPGs use dice to determine random results. When you try to heal a character in many games, you roll to see how much you heal them by. This idea was a play on that, and makes healing spells riskier to use spur of the moment, instead of performing some kind of ritual that consumes items. Also having multiple versions of one spell that function identically is something I find boring.
It forces players to approach combat differently. You can’t just rely on a healing spell to top you up when you get low on hit points. Players would need to actively make choices that help them avoid injury while still progressing. This could bring forth a more strategic style of play that isn’t just rolling dice to hit.
Health isn’t interesting to manage in most games because it entirely depends on how many times someone can cast a heal. It not being something that can be easily predicted is what makes it fun. If the outcome was already known then why even play the game?
Not the way it already works, healing spells now have risk.
This is different to the way things are usually done. That’s the point.
I feel like I’m trying to pitch a movie to a dumbfrick investor that hasn’t seen a film in 50 years, you narrow minded midwit.
>I never said out magic works without issue
It was implied and healing magic specified, so yeah you kinda did.
>There could be issues, they just aren’t as big a deal potentially as it would be with healing magic
Same problem. The exceptionalism is stupid and feels contrived.
>The centipede eye spell was a random idea I came up with on the spot
So? It's still pretty lame and stupid in the context of a magic system as broad as what is implied.
>Why would I have a curse like that? Why not.
Non-justifications just make it feel even more boring.
>Enemy magic users would use it without a second thought to get an upper hand against adventurers.
Disabling their own ability to heal themselves doesn't give them an "upper hand". If anything it's worse for them because they can't retreat out of a dungeon and heal up in safety, while adventurers could.
>This idea was a play on that, and makes healing spells riskier to use spur of the moment
It doesn't really, it just makes it feel dumb and so that you wouldn't use a healing spell if you were already too close to max HP. This doesn't really add anything or change how healing works.
>Also having multiple versions of one spell that function identically is something I find boring.
I agree, but your idea would literally give rise to that. If overhealing is bad and a huge problem, of course magic users would want to have a spell that doesn't risk overhealing. I don't know why this idea escapes you, but I get the feeling you have trouble with push back and problem solving.
>It forces players to approach combat differently.
Not really.
You have the most boring type of autism imaginable.
Go spend your time trying and failing to visualise an apple.
I’m tired of asking you to think, only to be answered with “no”
Asking basic questions is autism, but an uninspired take of "What if remove one specific magic that annoys me???" and asking if that would make a game more fun or interesting is, of course, totally normal behavior.
kek what the frick is wrong with you
The 2 things I shouldn’t have expected /tg/ to be capable of doing are thinking and playing games. I should have realised that included myself.
Now I’ve fallen for bait and have some guy calling everyone autistic in my thread
I’m just going to take my idea and develop it on my own while studying for med school
>Present ideas
>People point out they have issues
>"They just aren't real thinkers like me, they have no idea that this would be great if they actually played games, which nobody but me does anyways"
Why you gotta be like this man
(Cont'd)
>You can’t just rely on a healing spell to top you up when you get low on hit points.
People already don't. Healing is mostly a factor in how much potential vs current health you have.
If you're a Fighter with 20 HP but the Cleric has two 1d4+3 Healing Words, then you actually have 28-34 HP. He's better off making sure you stay close to the top (Without waste) anyways, so waiting to the last moment only matters at low levels.
>Health isn’t interesting to manage in most games because it entirely depends on how many times someone can cast a heal
Incorrect. Healers that have to weigh how they're using their actions and who they decide to focus their heals on in combat is already more interesting than the alternative you proposed of just not actually having that. Maybe you'd understand this better if you played more games or tested out how healing actually functions in various systems.
>It not being something that can be easily predicted is what makes it fun.
Not really, but your proposition doesn't help this at all so it's irrelevant. Heals are already random and can beget decision making. But having it be reduced to surgeons removes ALL of that, making it non-interactive.
>If the outcome was already known then why even play the game?
One of the most popular games in the world is Chess. Most people don't really agree with your outlook on random chance.
>Not the way it already works, healing spells now have risk.
I was talking about removing healing magic as a viable option in favor of surgery, but even with "risky" healing, it still doesn't change it. You don't want to overheal eitherway. It just went from a bad choice to an unthinkable choice, which is kinda boring.
>This is different to the way things are usually done.
The surgeon stuff is. The rest is not. But the surgeon stuff still isn't interesting even if it's "different".
Have you ever considered that sometimes your ideas suck?
Mechanically speaking, would these abilities amount to anything more than a bonus to your healing/medicine check?
Another stupid autist. Just frick off.
Then what do they grant? Simply a roleplay opportunity? A problem presented by the GM for the player to solve?
It makes the game more interesting by making you recover health in a different way.
A slower but, presumably, more reliable way?
I wouldn't think of medieval surgery as reliable, especially if you're playing in some dark setting where this can happen:
>you just use a healing spell and something goes wrong and now the patients arm has split in half from the cut you were trying to close
But I get the impression the support magic is meant to help with reliability.
Yeah, you're just an autist. Frick realism and frick you.
Not realism, it's about theme.
It appeared to be that abhorrent results of healing magic was possible so it implied a cruel or dark setting theme but now it appears this is done to prop up surgery as the savior or enlightened method of healing. Thematically speaking.
Prolly misinterpreted the theme, though.
The abhorrent results of healing magics was more an example of an idea that could be implemented into a setting.
Healing magic could be completely safe, but isn’t useable because the recipient worships a different god than the healer, or instantaneous healing magic could be harder to successfully pull off.
This has all just been for thinking up ways to create a different type of healing for fantasy RPGs and giving healing spells more nuance and risk for more exciting gameplay. These different excuses could possibly be applied over many different settings.
The type of surgery and medicine available would depend on the setting itself. Is it medieval or 17th century? What types of real and fictional medicinal plants are available?
This wouldn’t be using D&D as a system, so there would be no healing/medicine check
So what do they do in-game, then? Y'know, the G of RPG.
>"fine … happy"
Weird.
I thought you were interested in this topic. You should be more than happy to provide your own contribution to something you're interested in, right?
Unless, of course, there's another motivation for posting this thread.
Who gives a shit if it's content farming? People sometimes need help, and giving them a prompt may trigger a decent talk.
Frick off
Your youtube channel sucks
And your life is miserable, but how is that related?
>who gives a shit if someone who has no initiative makes money they don't deserve off of a bunch of work that they didn't do themselves
? ? ?
Tired of you acting like such unbearable schizo pieces of shit over one irrelevant gay's youtube channel
It's been fricking years
Go leave these shitty posts on his videos not on /tg/, morons
Natural healing exists in rpgs in various forms. The most obvious point is that the consequences of taking damage, any damage, become far more serious since healing can take days or even weeks. This isn't bad per se but it creates a vastly different tone compared to the instantaneous healing. For example taking damage would become a serious fail state that would change dramatically the way the players engage with the game, either by outright removing a character for days of in game time, inflicting debuffs or making the threat of death graver.
So this kind of thing could maybe be good if you want to run a game in a west marches style
A game with a lot of players, and even more characters, where death is around every corner, but the reward justifies the risk
It's a stupid idea to apply to a dungeon crawl because of the time scale.
It's a very boring idea to apply to most RPGs the way they seem to be played, as it would just mean any injury resulted in a several week time skip while they recovered.
I doubt you have actually stopped to think about this idea at all, because you're an idiot.
Why not, you stupid bastard?
Explain your reasoning and assumptions.
Works well in the warhammer games, methink
>What do (You) think about it?
Great idea. For a mudcore game.
First aid, such as bandaging, cleaning wounds and popping arms and fingers back in place is necessary and something I like to roleplay every once in a while.
If we're talking dnd, I dont really see the point of bringing a surgeon. An alchemist who can make healing potions, however...
Knowing how to heal people is a paramont and core skill of an in game archetype (ie; "class"). Healing in this case also includes all other forms of defense and curing- such as healing injuries, expelling or banishing spirits, lifting curses, protecting against the evil eye, and so on.
You can heal people simply by bandaging them up, cleaning their wounds with water, giving them invigorating salts to smell, and so on. The healing effects are very strong and immediate, regaining most of the lost hit points. While the wound has not technically "healing" under the bandage yet a it wouldn't in real life, it has been stabilized and the wounded person has regained their strength enough that it doesn't impact their performance anymore. Really good healers do this as well, with wounds they bandage up bleeding less and feeling less painful even using the same medicines and wrappings as a less experienced healer, as they are simply "better" at healing.
https://themansegaming.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-healing-system.html
Here's a write up of a slightly more crunchy version, but you can just do something simple for your games like taking a rest restores 1d6 hit points if you have bandages to spare or what have you.
Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff.
I never thought of using invigorating salts in my games before.
Unfeasible. Real medicine, even modern, is just way too slow. A wound would take a person out of combat for days, maybe weeks, and you'd have to cancel the entire expedition because someone got hurt. The medic wouldn't really be working to put him back in the saddle, but to save his life and restore his previous quality of life in a distant perspective.
>What if healing magic wasn’t reliable, and adventuring parties brought surgeons with them, just as was done on voyages of exploration in previous centuries.
>Would mostly utilising tools instead of spells for healing party members lead to a compelling and entertaining time at the table?
It's not going to work unless the game is built from the ground up with an expectation that combat is rare and downtime plentiful. Healing time following natural surgery is just too long - you can't have one player sitting around for an entire session with their thumb up their ass because their character is recovering from an operation. You could maybe do something like surgery is needed to treat the wound then magic or alchemy can be used to speed the recovery time (can't use magic until the patient's bones are set right or whatever).
Similarly, the surgeon has to be able to do something other than surgery because otherwise HE'S the one sitting around with his thumb up his ass waiting for someone to get hurt (which, as we've established doesn't happen often). Also, being a healb***h is not a compelling party role.
>Would this work with Hit Points
No, obviously not. If you're trying to make combat lethal (or at least make the consequences of combat serious) and put more than a modicum of effort into making the treatment of injuries an active part of the game then you'll want the detail a location-based wound system has with the potential for location-specific effects (potentially crippling effects).
>Let’s say that a cleric tries to heal a thief, and the cleric’s god flat out refuses to grant a miracle due to the amorality of the thief. Perhaps their god’s attention was diverted elsewhere to more interesting events; or the cleric has recently committed an act of blasphemy and their god has abandoned them.
Incidentally, those are both pretty cool ideas.
>location based wound system
I’ve been working on this. Still in the early stages, but it replaces hit points and is determined by how high an attack roll is above the number needed to hit.
This kind of thing would work better when players have multiple characters sitting on the bench.
I think very professionally orientated thieves might make for good surgeons, as they would be the most dexterous in the party, and can spend time not focused on healing searching out traps and picking locks.
Thanks for the insightful response
You might benefit from looking into The Riddle of Steel/Song of Swords. Both have location based wounds, and how hard you hit someone is determined by how well you roll (And reduced by how well the other guy defends).
Thanks for the recommendation. Is it related to Conan at all?
I wasn’t really thinking of defending being something rolled for, and more just something added onto the difficulty to hit, but I’d need to experiment and see what works best with what I’m hoping to achieve.
I'm in a pf2e game, nobody picked a class that has magical healing
after the first death where someone hit 0 and we couldn't even try to stabilize him without tools, my fighter went into the medicine skill and feat line to become the main healer (everyone still has their own emergency potions if I get baleted)
he's at the point where he can top off everyone's HP with about 80 minutes of work now
I don't like PF2e's way of handling out of combat healing. Everything's fine and dandy when you've got a good, quick, and reliable source of out of combat healing. Problems arise when nobody wants to be a healer. Somebody has to do it, or else the system begins to break down, so either the whole party suffers or somebody has to bite the bullet and become the doctor despite himself. It's clear the system wants healing to be attrition-less but it feels like they weren't willing to fully commit to it for whatever reason.
>what happens if healing magic isn't reliable?
It isnt. You never rolled a d8 for Cure Light Wounds. No games confirmed.
>healer doesnt actually use magic to heal
>its just deep knowledge of medicine, alchemy and herbolary
>herbolary
Good word.
>healer has no experience treating parasites
The one, of many things, I hate about D&D magic is that it's one and done and requires no real investment. The medicine skill is a fairly worthless skill on its own unless the DM forces its use.
You'd think maybe a unique application of skill use along with a spell could make for some decent buy in and make the different class specializations for spell casters mean something.
A good example would be that using Heal to take care of superficial damage is one thing but using it to take care of a complex injury or condition could require a medicine check. To use anime as an example, I think of Naruto when Sakrua had to draw out the poison from one dude's body and had to carefully draw the poison out of the cells of his heart muscles which took a long time to do.
But that's far to high brow for most types of games I suppose.
That’s certainly a more magic orientated way of going about things. Having access to different types of healing spells that target different types of injuries could be good. Would you have each spell have its own limited number of uses? So if a healer ran out of an antidote spell for poisons, the party would have to more carefully avoid things that would poison them; or would you have it so all the spells used the same resources?
I wouldn't even make it a "spell" it'd be a class feature that has resources. I would even go the extra mile that magic itself can't fix all problems so you still have to know how to do first aid and surgery and essential medical care and knowledge with magic being a cherry on top of that.
Sounds cool. Primarily relying on tools and medicines to heal, with magic speeding up the recovery process sounds like it could work.
I think before Project Zomboid and Space Station 13, I would have said that healing magic is essential. After playing them, though, I kinda got a soft spot for balancing the maximum loot you can carry, against the mounting scratches, slashes, and broken bones you'll accumulate as you go through. Having to switch-off to a knife or drop a shield because of a crippled arm is super tense.
Plus, maybe potions and alchemists will finally get some more fricking attention.
I hadn’t considered how injury would affect weapon and equipment usage. I might have to give project zomboid a go, I think I’ve heard a bit about it before.
No clue about space station 13, however.