A Thought On Healing Magic

[Arcane]

Below is what the rules have to say about magic and recovering from Consequences:

The  main  advantage  of  healing  magic  in
the  game  is  in  providing  justification  to  begin
the  recovery  process  (page¤ 220)  without  any
other  effort.  Use  the  shift  value  of  the  conse-
quence  (which  you  can  stack  together  for
multiple consequences) as the spell complexity.
Remember, the recovery time can’t be shortened
with these kinds of magics—the target still has
to go through the healing naturally.

Now, it occured to me that while the recovery time for a particular consequence can't be shortened by magic, the nature of the consequence one is recovering from can be altered by magic.  For example, if one suffered a moderate consequence of "DOG TIRED," using the appropriate ritual or administering the appropriate potion could change it to "TWEAKED AND EDGY."  The level of the consequence would still be the same, and thus the same recovery time would be required, but the nature of what the character had to cope with in the meantime would be different.  It would basically be the magical equivalent of medicine which alleviates an unwanted symptom but intills side effects in the patient.  So you could have healing magic "cure" or "heal" a specefic consequence, but the fact that a consequence of a certain level had to be recovered from would remain.  

Of course, you couldn't just chage any consequence to any other kind of consequence you wanted.  The new consequence would have to make some sort of sense as a side effect for treating the previous one.  And of course, while it could be plausible to treat physical and mental consequences (and have side effects that change a physical consequence to a mental one or vice versa) it makes no sense to be able to treat social consequences with magical medicine.

In any case, the above would give magical types a way to use their magic for healing (and in the case of magical potions, even healing mid-battle) without having such healing magic be equal or better to Recovery Powers.  When you heal via magic, everything is a tradeoff.

[Tedronai]

Eh, a sufficiently complex and powerful ritual (almost certainly lawbreaking) ritual should probably be able to affect a social consequence.  It just wouldn't be addressing the issue from the same sort of angle as 'healing' magics.

[darkfire14]

Why can't magic "Heal" consequences? For instance mend a "Broken Leg" severe physical consequence. its MAGIC goddammit, it should be able to do such things. I woulden't make it easy of course (Probably a 6 shift evocation or thaumaturge spell). After all if (CHANGES SPOILER)

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Queen Mab could heal Dresden of his broken back

, then certainly magic can cure consequences.

[Drachasor]

Why can't magic "Heal" consequences? For instance mend a "Broken Leg" severe physical consequence. its MAGIC goddammit, it should be able to do such things. I woulden't make it easy of course (Probably a 6 shift evocation or thaumaturge spell). After all if Queen Mab could heal Dresden of his broken back, then certainly magic can cure consequences.

In the books it is far from easy, though I'd say it is SLIGHTLY better than what they have in YS.  In the game it would have to be really expensive, on the order of a ritual that's 3-5 shifts of power for each shift the consequence absorbs.  So a mild consequence would be a 6-10 shift ritual, a moderate would be 12-20 shifts, a severe would be 18-30, and an extreme would be 24-40.  That feels about right -- most of the time it just wouldn't be worth it, but for someone like Mab, they could do it easy.

[Sanctaphrax]

6 shifts seems a bit too cheap to me.

In theory, I'm fine with magic removing consequences. But I think that it should be very hard, and the difficulty should be determined on a case by case basis to avoid nonsense.

A BROKEN LEG severe consequence might be easier to heal then a RUPTURED STOMACH severe consequence. Hopefully, a touch of unpredictability would ensure that magical healing never becomes trivial.

In other news, the OP's idea sounds good to me.

[Arcane]

Why can't magic "Heal" consequences? For instance mend a "Broken Leg" severe physical consequence. its MAGIC goddammit, it should be able to do such things. I woulden't make it easy of course (Probably a 6 shift evocation or thaumaturge spell). After all if Queen Mab could heal Dresden of his broken back, then certainly magic can cure consequences.

It's not that MAGIC can't "heal" consequences.  It's just that mortal magic can't speed the recovery of consequences.  Or at least, that's what the rules say in regards to the types of magic that PC's could potentially have access to using.  Queen Mab is basically beyond stats and not bound by such limits.

[Drachasor]

6 shifts seems a bit too cheap to me.

6 shifts for a consequence that ends at the end of the next scene?  I don't think that's really too cheap when you're going to need to prepare for the ritual.

[darkfire14]

Ah I think I can see what they're getting at with the rules. It doesn't "Free Up" the used consequence slot. So you could replace "Broken Leg" with "Perfectly healed leg" as a severe consequence. It wouldn't really cause you any trouble or be compelled to any degree but it does mean that there is a Severe Consequence slot that you can use in the future until the time of recovery passes. So you with the "Perfectly healed Leg" want to take a 6 shift consequence but can't because you've got a "Perfectly Healed Leg".

[Sanctaphrax]

Wasn't talking to you.

I was replying to darkfire's suggestion of 6 shifts for a severe consequence.

You posted while I was writing.

6 for a mild is probably okay, but as aforementioned I'd prefer to avoid fixed difficulties.

[Drachasor]

Wasn't talking to you.

I was replying to darkfire's suggestion of 6 shifts for a severe consequence.

You posted while I was writing.

6 for a mild is probably okay, but as aforementioned I'd prefer to avoid fixed difficulties.

Whaaat?  People not talking to ME!?  OUTRAGEOUS!

Fixed difficulties could be problematic, unless perhaps you went with a fate point route so that the person would have to use a ritual for a temporary power and then spend fate points to power it.  That might be ok.  Probably depends on a bit on the game.  Of course, healing a severe consequence is highly questionable in any case.

Though, I suppose one might go the route of the recovery powers.  You do an expensive and difficult ritual and it just makes it heal as if it was something of a lesser severity.  That's not as big of a deal, perhaps.

That said, one would think a ritual powerful enough to kill someone, maybe with a bit of extra change, should be enough to heal them.  That's how fully transformative magic works anyhow.

In the end, I think a lot of what works depends on the particular campaign.

[Masurao]

It seems to me, going on the novels, that if magic was able to easily heal wounds,

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the Red Court wouldn't have been able to make such a successful strike against the hospital in Africa.

I can see Evocation healing minor scratches, perhaps a bruise or two and, if you're really skilled, mend a broken bone. For more difficult injuries, I wouldn't think of anything but Thaumaturgy, because the human body is so complex, you don't just 'wing it' with healing a ruptured stomach.

[Haru]

Though, I suppose one might go the route of the recovery powers.  You do an expensive and difficult ritual and it just makes it heal as if it was something of a lesser severity.  That's not as big of a deal, perhaps.

That would be the way I would go, too. Starting at 20 shifts for a transformation ritual (the sum of all consequences) plus 1 shift for each refresh worth of recovery powers.

Thing is in canon, healing with magic is possible (for example Lea healing Harry in GP), though it might be very hard for a mortal wizard. I think LtW is quite good at it, though he might be doing more magical first aid than actual healing. But I would go about a healing ritual pretty much the same way I would the recovery ritual above. 20 shifts base level plus the value of the consequence you want to heal. And I would only allow 1 consequence to be healed per ritual. The important part however is, that you can't just lay on hands and the patient is healed, you have to actually know what you are doing, so a medical degree would be mandatory (and you don't want to be on the receiving end of the compel on that one, if you go through with the ritual). Then there is the whole preparation part, which would simply take a whole lot of time for a 22-26 complexity ritual. And if preparing a dangerous and painful ritual (we are talking altering your body here) is going to take almost as long as natural healing, why bother?
The only thing I could think of where it would still be worth it would be for example to try and grow back a leg or an arm or something like that, and if you allowed that, it should probably be a plot device ritual coupled with a milestone.

[UmbraLux]

Don't forget Elaine's Reiki Healing spell.  Costs 4 shifts plus a number of shifts equal to the consequence it's healing and has it heal as if one consequence lighter.  Not bad considering you can take a moderate consequence and have it heal a scene later.  I think magical healing is effective as it stands.

[Becq]

Don't forget Elaine's Reiki Healing spell.  Costs 4 shifts plus a number of shifts equal to the consequence it's healing and has it heal as if one consequence lighter.  Not bad considering you can take a moderate consequence and have it heal a scene later.  I think magical healing is effective as it stands.

I was going to mention this one.  Which, by the way, is a RAW example that breaks the RAW quotes in the OP.

[Sanctaphrax]

@darkfire:

I dunno. I find the idea elegant from a mechanical point of view, but allowing a six-shift ritual to heal serious wounds makes D&D-style healing possible in-story.

This might be a good thing for some games, but it's a pretty massive departure from the source material.