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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: blues.soldier on June 17, 2010, 10:17:32 PM
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For the record, I'm not running a DFRPG game. I'm running a fantasy story in a homebrew world, using a mashup of Legends of Anglerre and DFRPG rules. FATE is beautifully modular that way.
In any case, my game is not so gritty as the Dresdenverse: starting with 3 Stress per track, increased by Skills, etc. Still very dangerous, but my characters aren't going to get their teeth kicked in or stay injured quite so often as Harry does.
My question is this: I'm debating how to use/apply healing magic, specifically consumable items such as potions/poultices/etc. These aren't going to be potions of cure light wounds ala D&D--rather they will be important, strategic items that are hard but not impossible to come by. I'll likely be using them as story or quest rewards--something worth risking your neck for, in other words.
What mechanic should they use? I am very familiar with the reiki spell rules, and I'm using that as a baseline for what a spellcaster can do solo on a regular basis, but that doesn't seem quite potent enough for what I'm looking for. Should the potion remove consequences entirely? Remove a number of damaged stress boxes? Remove ALL stress boxes but leave consequences? This is my sticking point.
Any help would be appreciated.
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Well, you might look at Blood Drinker and Emotional Vampire, and what they do when you kill an opponent. That's the only mid-combat healing available at the moment, and a potion providing it sans killing someone seems appropriate (ie: people are walking healing potions for a vampire).
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A simple option would be to model them as maneuvers. So, a potion of cure really minor wounds would create a temporary aspect "revitalized" on the imbiber - which can then be tagged on the next hit they take to reduce the damage by two. Of course, if you didn't have at least a two stress hit (or any consequence) already marked off, the maneuver would fail because there's no injury to recover from.
This won't remove consequences, but effectively lets you "heal" stress hits. Of course, since stress goes away at the end of the scene anyhow, this doesn't quite fit your image of "important strategic item".
A more powerful variant would be to use the rules for temporary access to an Item of Power, and have a potion grant, say, Inhuman Recovery for a scene. Used in combat, that would instantly clear a single minor consequence; used out of combat, it could dramatically speed up recovery from even more serious wounds. I'd probably even go so far as to waive the fate point cost - but would only hand such an item out at major plot intervals where I could have given a fate point instead anyway.
Some combination of the two might work nicely as well.
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A more powerful variant would be to use the rules for temporary access to an Item of Power, and have a potion grant, say, Inhuman Recovery for a scene. Used in combat, that would instantly clear a single minor consequence; used out of combat, it could dramatically speed up recovery from even more serious wounds. I'd probably even go so far as to waive the fate point cost - but would only hand such an item out at major plot intervals where I could have given a fate point instead anyway.
For a more powerful item, I'd go with wyvern on this one.
For a less powerful healing potion, I'd go with an actual potion, and have it clear out stress equal to and below it's rating. So if you had a 4-shift potion, it would clear out your first four stress boxes (or circles, as Harry points out many times :p)
-EF