Creating a Baseline for Healing Magics

[Lukas the Dead]

My favorite rule bender has elected to take up healing, which means I need to come up with some baseline numbers and rulings I can whip up at a moments notice.

The DFRPG rules are kind of brief when it comes to healing magic, mostly cause it doesn't really come up that often in the books. So, as the potion making wizard of the group is looking to become the group healer, I've attempted to come up with some guidelines and baselines for what is possible.


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Brain Dump Starts
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Minor Consequence are easily heal-able by anyone with magical skills, they go away quickly on their own anyway. . .you might just want to get a bottle of aspirin.

Moderate consequence requires a little more, a shaman or faith healer or herb gatherer or someone with basic first aid knowledge. Still within reach of most practitioners, but only if their willing to put a little effort into it. This is where Reiki healing falls.

With medical training someone can use biomancy could *start* the healing process on a serious consequence, but downgrading such damage is beyond even the best healers we've seen in the Dresden Files. EMT or Nurse or Medic training at the very least.

Extreme Consequences are a plot device. While biomancy could be part of the recovery process and physical therapy, it's a long road to heal the effects of such damage. A full MD is required to even start aiding in this level of damage. We are also talking about treating cancers or crippling illness/injuries or anything that requires a regiment of treatments . . . Wizard MDs do enjoy greater success in some areas, but mostly because they can be less invasive (Issues such as infection and complications tend occur less with magical treatment). At this point, treatment has moved into the realm of transformation. . .and that should just start to give one an idea of the difficulty involved.

To answer a question about what I see this costing, here are the numbers I have roughly in mind.

Transformation Complexity + Consequence Cost

Serious and above, downgrading is not possible.

2 + 2 = 4  Base to start a mild consequence healing (Yes, even mild consequence need a justification to start healing. Reduced transformation cost)

4 + 2 = 6 (Base Mild Consequence Removal)
2 + 4 = 6 (Base Moderate Physical Starts Healing. Reduced transformation cost)

(2 + 4) + 4 = 10 (Base to Reduce Moderate to Mild)

(4 + 2 + 4) + (2 + 4) = 16 (Base Moderate Removal, if allowed. I likely won't)
(2 + 4 + 6) + 6 = 18 (Base to Start Serious Healing, no more reduced cost)

(2 + 4 + 6 + 8) + 8 = 28 (Base preform a single treatment on the effects of an Extreme)

All of these are rough base values, additional complications (for example, needing to remove a projectile, cleansing a wound of toxins, infection,dirt,etc) can increase the cost. A wound that has been magically treated cannot receive additional magical treatment without reasonable time passing in-between treatments.

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I'd love feedback and suggestions. Thanks much.

[Becq]

I think that the term 'consequence' was chosen very deliberately, and the choice to take a consequence should require some thought.  By allowing consequences to be 'healed' readily, my guess is that those consequence boxes will be treated as nothing more than additional stress boxes, to be checked off then healed by the party healer after the fight.  That said, I think that a limited form of consequence reduction is not unreasonable, and the ability to change the nature of a consequence might work, too.  Here's my thought on how magical healing could be used:

1) Magical treatment of injuries.  This just starts the character onto the natural healing process, but doesn't speed things up.  Mechanically, this is just a "Thaumaturgy Simple Action" (YS264) applied to the rules for the mundane medical version of treating consequences (YS220).  The complexity would therefore be 2, 4, or 6 for mild, moderate, or severe.  This application would only actually be of use to characters that do not have Wizards Constitution or one of the Recovery powers, as they don't need anything to jump-start the healing process.

2) Consequence reduction.  This speeds the healing process; any 'healed' consequence is treated as being one level less severe for purposes of healing time (though it still occupies the original consequence 'slot' until the consequence goes away).  Mild consequences would disappear right away.  Mechanically, use the Reiki Healing spell rules (YS300).  The comments for using the spell on higher wounds was not entirely clear to me, but I think the intention was basically to add the numbers above to a base complexity of 4.  So 6, 8, or 10 for mild, moderate, or severe.  I'd be tempted to say that these numbers are low, I'd probably make the difficulties cumulative, which would be 6, 10, 16, instead.  (I.e., serious would be 4 (base) + 2 (mild) + 4 (moderate) + 6 (severe) = 16)

3) Consequence modification.  As one final option, it might be reasonable to allow magic to change the nature of a consequence, thereby re-wording the consequence.  The consequence takes the same amount of time to recover from.  An example might be to 'heal' someone with a Broken Leg (severe consequence), rewording it to Limping Badly (still severe).  Now the character can walk on his leg without crutches, but still has trouble.  Mechanically, nothing's changed, but in DFRPG the 'flavor text' can be important.  I think the complexities would be similar to #2, noting that the magic would be in addition to #2 and would work on the original severity of the consequence.  If you want to do both, then double the consequence level before adding to the base.

As a note, this seems most applicable to physical consequences.  I could see it being used for mental consequences ... but keep in mind that this is

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*exactly* what got Molly in trouble

.

[blues.soldier]

I'm working on a fantasy game using DFRPG rules, and the issue I keep running into is that easy access to healing magic completely removes the "sting" from the system for one major reason: when stress tracks reset at the end of a scene, the adverse effects of any magic castings are removed unless the caster himself takes consequences from the casting. It's a revolving door of healing-- the caster heals up his buddies, takes some C's doing it, then heals himself of those C's.

I haven't figured out how to make it work yet. I'm not sure that I'm going to. It might be that I'm just going to let the C-slot be taken up, but allow it to be reworded as a C of the next lower level. Broken Leg to Limping Badly, Broken Ribs to Sore Ribs, etc. Otherwise it just makes things too easy.

[wyvern]

Actually, for a fantasy setting where the ability to heal is important, I'd go the other direction: instead of adding some way to heal consequences, I'd remove the normal reset of (physical at least) stress tracks at the end of each scene - but make it relatively simple to heal physical stress with a basic thaumaturgy ritual.  So, the end result in a balanced group is the same - a five minute rest restores stress - but it makes having a healer (or a good supply of potions) important.

[Becq]

Actually, for a fantasy setting where the ability to heal is important, I'd go the other direction: instead of adding some way to heal consequences, I'd remove the normal reset of (physical at least) stress tracks at the end of each scene - but make it relatively simple to heal physical stress with a basic thaumaturgy ritual.  So, the end result in a balanced group is the same - a five minute rest restores stress - but it makes having a healer (or a good supply of potions) important.

The problem, though, is there is now no limit to how much you can do in a conflict.  So long as you win, you will be back to 100% after a short rest, and you can continue the cycle all day long without any repercussions.  There is no reason *not* to burn your consequences every fight.  Imagine if Clerics in D&D had unlimited slots to cast healing spells between fights, or if 4thEd didn't require you to expend ... whatever it called those recovery slots ... each time you get healed?

You can certainly do that in your game, but I think that without the threat of some form of lasting effect, DFRPG would lose a lot of what makes it interesting.

[wyvern]

You can certainly do that in your game, but I think that without the threat of some form of lasting effect, DFRPG would lose a lot of what makes it interesting.

You're misreading what I said.  I explicitly said *not* adding any better healing for consequences; I posited making *stress boxes* difficult to recover without healing magic.

[Becq]

Oops!  I guess I was stuck on the 'revolving door of healing' that Blues was talking about.

[Lukas the Dead]

Becq, Thanks for the ideas! I'm going to go with your numbers, but I'm also going to keep the educational requirements for the more difficult healings.