An Attempt at a Healing Power

[Theogony_IX]

I've seen some discussion about healing powers and how difficult they can be to model.  Here is an attempt at one related to faith powers.

Edited version:

Savior's Calling [-2]
Description: The strength of your faith has called you to stand between the darkness and those it would attempt to harm enabling you to accept and heal the injuries that are meant for others.
Skills Effected: Conviction
Effects:
Aegis. Once per scene, if an ally would be forced to take a consequence, you may take that consequence instead.
Laying on of Hands. Once per scene, given the time to pray, you may roll using Conviction to take from another player any number of consequences with a combined value no greater than your roll.  You must immediately accept those consequences and fill any available boxes to soak up the total value in consequences.  If you do not have enough consequences available, then you are taken out. 
You may choose to divide the value of a consequence and only accept part of it.  If you do, the severity of the consequence is reduced for the person you are healing by one step for each 2 shifts you accept from that consequence (This does not change the slot that the consequence is in, only the time it takes to recover from it).
Faith's Reward. Once per scene, you may clear away a mild consequence accepted through this power as a supplemental action.  Out of combat you may recover from consequences accepted through this power as if they were one level lower in severity. You must still seek medical attention or its equivalent to start the recovery process.
Stacked Recovery. Any additional recovery powers that may apply to consequences accepted through this power may further reduce the time it takes to recover by one additional level of severity.  This means that for the purpose of recovering from consequences accepted through this power, the benefit gained through having Supernatural Recovery would be the same as the benefit gained through Inhuman Recovery and the same for any other recovery power.
All other recovery effects that would apply to a consequence taken with this power apply as they normally would.

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Savior's Calling [-2]
Description: The strength of your faith has called you to stand between the darkness and those it would attempt to harm enabling you to accept and heal the injuries that are meant for others.
Skills Effected: Conviction
Effects:
Aegis. Once per scene, if an ally would be forced to take a consequence, you may take that consequence instead.
Laying on of Hands. Once per scene, given the time to pray, you may roll using Conviction to take from another player any number of consequences with a combined value no greater than your roll.  You must immediately accept those consequences and fill any available boxes to soak up the total value in consequences.  If you do not have enough consequences available, then you are taken out. 
You may choose to divide the value of a consequence and only accept part of it.  If you do, the severity of the consequence is reduced for the person you are healing by one step for each 2 shifts you accept from that consequence (This does not change the slot that the consequence is in for the person you are healing, only the time it takes to recover from it).  In addition to healing the consequences of another, you may choose to accept any permanent damage that would remain after recovery allowing the person you are healing to recover completely (this does not include extreme consequences).
Faith's Reward. Once per scene, you may clear away a mild consequence accepted through this power as a supplemental action.  Out of combat you may recover from consequences accepted through this power as if they were two levels lower in severity.  Any permanent damage that would remain after recovery that is accepted cannot be recovered from through this power.


The way I have this priced out is a -1 for Aegis and Laying on of Hands, and a -1 for Faith's Reward.  Aegis and Laying on of Hands are only redistributing consequences not removing them, so that seemed like a -1 kind of thing, but without testing I can't be sure.  Faith's Reward was tricky since it is a combination of Inhuman Recovery and Supernatural Recovery minus some things from both.  You get the out of combat healing from Supernatural Recovery, but the in combat healing from Inhuman Recovery.  You also don't receive the Total Recovery benefit or the Endurance benefit from either.  So I priced the effect at -3, and then gave it a Catch of +2 for only affecting consequences accepted through the power.

Thoughts, questions, critique?

[Taran]

How would it stack with a recovery power?

[Theogony_IX]

Hmm, I suppose something like this.

Stacked Recovery. Any additional recovery powers that may apply to consequences accepted through this power may further reduce the time it takes to recover by one additional level of severity.  In addition, you may clear away a second mild consequence accepted through this power as a supplemental action.  This means that for the purpose of recovering from consequences accepted through this power, the benefit gained through having Supernatural Recovery would be the same as the benefit gained through Inhuman Recovery and the same for any other recovery power.

[Taran]

To price it out, you could take Lay on Hands, then add the appropriate recovery power -

Say supernatural recovery, with a Catch of "everything except consequences caused by 'Lay on Hands'."


BTW, there's a few faith healing powers on the custom power list.  Some I'm not fond of.

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Faith Healing [-2]
Musts: You must have taken the Guide My Hand and Righteousness powers in order to take this ability.
You may use your Conviction skill to declare justification for your own or another character’s recovery from moderate or severe consequences of any type, even without access to proper facilities, given time to pray and (for another character) lay hands upon the character in question. In addition, you may spend a Fate Point to allow another character to heal from a Consequence as though it were one level lower in severity. So, the subject would recover from moderate consequences as though they were mild, etc. Consequences reduced below mild are always removed by the beginning of a subsequent scene.

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Healing Light [-2]
Description: By channeling your supernatural energy into somebody else you allow them to begin the healing process, and may even help them recover to perfect health.
Skills Affected: Conviction, Scholarship
Effects:
Starting Recovery. You may use this power to make scholarship declarations to justify the start of natural recovery from physical consequences, just as if they’d gone to a doctor or the hospital.
Healing Pool. You have a pool of healing power equal to your conviction.
Healing Surge. You may spend a fate point to allow somebody to recover from all of their physical consequences up to severe as if they where a mild. Subtract the value of the highest consequence so affected from your healing pool.
Healing Backlash. At the end of the scene you must roll against a hunger attack with a value equal to the number of negative points in your healing pool. If you have used other powers attached to your feeding dependency during the course of the scene, this (positive) value is added to the overall strength of the hunger attack you would suffer from use of your powers instead.

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Magical Healing [-1]
Description: You are trained in the ways of healing, and can work healing more effectively than most mages.
Musts: You must have thaumaturgy, evocation, sponsored magic, or some other form of magical ability. Sponsored magic grants certain bonuses as part of its cost, and that may include this power as a large part of it.
Skills Affected: Conviction, Discipline, Lore
Variations: This spell clears physical stress but varieties could exist for mental or social stress.
Effects:
Treatment: You may clear a stress box on you or an ally by casting a spell with at least as much power as the number of the box in question. A 4 power evocation could clear any of a character’s first 4 stress boxes. You may justify beginning recovery on a consequence with a power of spell at least equal to the consequence’s value.
Cure: You may clear multiple stress boxes at once, and even reduce the severity of consequences by 1 step by summoning enough power. The chart below lists effects.
1 Power: Clears 1st stress box.
3 Power: Clears first 2 stress boxes.
6 Power: Clears first 3 stress boxes.
10 Power: Clears first 4 stress boxes.
12 Power: Clears all stress boxes and all minor consequences.
16 Power: Same as 12 power, plus lowers a moderate consequence to mild.
22 Power: Same as 16 power, plus lowers a severe consequence to moderate.
30 Power: Same as 22 power, plus lowers an extreme consequence to severe.
40 Power: (With GM approval) Revives a character from death assuming character’s body is still in relatively good condition. The character comes back with all consequence slots filled but a clear stress track. Additionally, he must take a [-1] Stunt Back from the Dead Which grants no bonuses. If the revived character lacks the refresh, he may trade in one of his stunts or powers to make up for it. Note: excessive injuries raise the difficulty. Having the head cut off raises it to at least 50. Someone’s who’s burnt to ashes just isn’t coming back even with 1000 power.
Note the Second: Death is a continuum in Dresden Files, not a set point. Even after “death” a few of your cells are still alive for awhile. A revivification spell provides enough juice for them to replicate and reconstruct the body. This shouldn’t be a violation of the 5th law, though wardens may not see it that way.
Final Note: Just because the chart lists power levels for certain amounts of healing doesn’t mean you’re not abusing the rules to get those shifts of power.

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HEALING [-2]
Description: You possess the magical ability to heal others. Perhaps you can help people recover from psychological trauma with your musical genius, or perhaps you can knit flesh and bone back together through sheer faith.
Note: This power uses one skill and applies to one stress track. Choose which skill and which stress track when you take this power. Any combination is permissible as long as the group is not offended by it.
Skills Affected: Pick one.
Effects:
Heal. You may use your chosen skill to heal consequences of your chosen stress track. In order to heal a given consequence, you must exceed its shift value on a roll of your chosen skill. Healing a consequence increases the speed of its recovery by one step, or by two steps if your roll is twice as good as it needs to be, or by three steps if by some miracle your roll is three times better than it needs to be. If an attempt is made to heal a consequence that has already been healed, the second attempt replaces the first. This power may or may not affect extreme consequences; GMs should handle such issues on a case by case basis.
Widened Healing [-1]. You may use your chosen skill to heal consequences from another stress track of your choice. This option may be chosen multiple times.

[Theogony_IX]

To price it out, you could take Lay on Hands, then add the appropriate recovery power -

Say supernatural recovery, with a Catch of "everything except consequences caused by 'Lay on Hands'."

That's sort of what I did.

-4 for supernatural recovery
+2 applies to only a specific thing

I realized though, that since you can only accept a consequence through the power once per scene mid combat, then the ability to clear out more than one mild is somewhat useless because you'll never get more than one.  At least not mid combat anyway.  I didn't think that warranted a full point of refresh rebate, so I included less of the recovery power to make up the difference . . . and also to set it apart.  That way if the person wanted a recovery power, they wouldn't be purchasing the same things twice.  It ended up like this.

-3 stunted supernatural recovery
+2 applies to only a specific thing

BTW, there's a few faith healing powers on the custom power list.  Some I'm not fond of.

I'll take a look.  Thanks.

[Sanctaphrax]

Not bad, but I think it's worryingly strong. The Recovery effect means that even taking on a Severe consequence isn't a big deal. And with Great to Superb Conviction, you can probably absorb a Moderate or most of a Severe each scene (would a roll of 4 let you take 4 shifts from a Severe?). So your group sheds a significant consequence every scene.

Now that I think about it, the scene-based timing could be a problem too. "We need to have another two scenes before we attack the vampire lair so that I can heal you. Maybe this would be a good time to resolve the relationship issues between Eric and his boyfriend..."

PS: What's this about permanent damage left over after a consequence is healed? DFRPG doesn't really have anything like that, unless you're talking about cosmetic stuff.

[Haru]

I think Healing as an individual power doesn't work too well in DFRPG.

That doesn't mean it can't work, but it is a game changer and I feel like it is easier to address it differently than individual powers. One of the easiest ways to go, for example, would be to give everyone inhuman recovery for free, with the catch that one specific character has to be in the scene with them. Because that's more or less what it boils down to.

Alternately, you can just generally increase the rate at which consequences go away in your game, up to just removing them after a scene.

Because consequences aren't wounds so much as they are a pacing mechanism. If you want your group to be able to go fresh into any new conflict, that's fine, but as a power, I find that rather boring, especially for the reasons Sanctaphrax already mentioned.

Unless, of course, it's during a conflict. In that case, I would simply take Recovery as a base and make a 3 tiered power.

"inhuman": 2 per scene you may remove a mild consequence on an ally that has been inflicted in the same scene as a supplemental action.
"supernatural": 2 mild, 1 moderate
"mythic": 2 mild, 2 moderate

Well, something along those lines. I increased the removing bit since the recovery bit is left out. Still, I think that's pretty powerful and should work a bit easier. The increased healing rate bit can be solved entirely off screen and without powers, I think. It makes it less prone to feeling like you have to game the system, and you can simply go on with the cool stuff.

[Sanctaphrax]

Thinking about it a bit more, healing powers would work much better within the system of the game if there was a more involved set of rules for consequence recovery. If the speed of your recovery depended on the quality of the medical care you received, it'd open up a clear place to put healing powers.

As is, you just need a bit of medicine to start the healing process. And that's not even necessary for people with Recovery.

[Theogony_IX]

If it's too powerful as written, the base effect could be reduced to Inhuman Recovery still including the stacked recovery trapping.

I actually didn't understand the effects of Total Recovery when I wrote it, so I just wrote it to mean that it doesn't apply. That's the permanent damage bit, which I actually did think was cosmetic. I only understood later that it means you start to recover immediately without medical intervention.

I've done some rewriting, take a look.

As far as healing powers not working well, that may be true. I'll probably still try this one out though.

[Taran]

Thinking about it a bit more, healing powers would work much better within the system of the game if there was a more involved set of rules for consequence recovery. If the speed of your recovery depended on the quality of the medical care you received, it'd open up a clear place to put healing powers.

As is, you just need a bit of medicine to start the healing process. And that's not even necessary for people with Recovery.

This is true.  I find stunts like Doctor to be kind of useless as well.  You could line up the Recovery Powers with types of consequences:

No Recovery Power - Can heal minor wounds with some rest
Inhuman Recover = Basic First Aid - requires a Scholarship roll of 'x' before you can start recovering moderate consequence
Supernatural recovery: Requires a medical facility and/or trip to an actual doctor or paramedic (for severe consequences) need doctor stunt and a scholarship roll of 'x' difficulty
Mythic Recovery:  (extreme consequences..?  Kind of have their own rules)

Actually, I'm not fond of how I wrote this out, but is this kind of what you thinking?

As is, the speed of recover kind of does depend on the type of medicine.  But it's completely up to the GM.  A severe heals after a session (or whatever- I forget).  If the GM doesn't feel you've gotten proper care, you can't even start the healing process, so it could take much longer than that.  But, I guess, the issue is what is 'proper care'.  The problem is consequences can be pretty much anything so one kind of severe could be much easier to tend than another.  So it's hard to make a hard and fast rule.

[sdfds68]

Uh, does this power apply to physical consequences or all consequences?

[Theogony_IX]

I originally imagined that it might apply to all consequences, but only to physical is probably a little more fitting.