The Healing Blood (Custom Power)

[ways and means]

I have tried to do something like this before (can't remember how long ago) but the basic idea is anime style healing vampire blood and any other life gifting healing magic. The aim for the power is basically allow someone to play the role of healer, I don't feel it is game breaking but it would devalue consequences what do people think?   

Healing Blood [-2]
Mechanics: Your blood has a powerful curative effect, you can heal allies consequences (excluding extreme ones) by inflicting a Blood loss consequence of the same severity upon yourself and feeding the injured ally your blood as an action. The blood loss consequences are effected normally by recovery powers.

Flavour: Repeatedly being healed by this power could qualify as a justification for picking up physical powers.Those with this power's blood is often seen as a panacea or a powerful ritual component and those who have this power are very likely to be hunted because of it.

[Haru]

I have a few problems with these kinds of powers.

As soon as I have a character with a recovery power, it's a no brainer to take this power as well. With supernatural recovery you can refresh the whole group's moderate consequences without suffering any drawback, which is huge.
It also devalues the character with the recovery power, because that's no longer his defining trait, as I think any power a character takes should be. The powers of individual characters can and should interact, of course, but they should still be recognizable as an individual contribution.

Sure, if the character is somewhere else the power is gone as well, but that can usually be avoided. And why would more than one character ever take a recovery power if one character can just take one and give it to everyone else with this? Just feels wrong.

I would go one of two ways with this.

1) Make recovery baseline. In your game people just heal faster and if someone takes a recovery power, they heal even faster than that.

2) Having a guy around that can heal you like that is a great justification for a recovery power. The catch would be that you have to regularly drink the vampire blood to keep it active and you have to drink it in order to quickly recover the consequence as the power allows, but you have to pay for it out of your own refresh.

[ways and means]

I have a few problems with these kinds of powers.

As soon as I have a character with a recovery power, it's a no brainer to take this power as well. With supernatural recovery you can refresh the whole group's moderate consequences without suffering any drawback, which is huge.
It also devalues the character with the recovery power, because that's no longer his defining trait, as I think any power a character takes should be. The powers of individual characters can and should interact, of course, but they should still be recognizable as an individual contribution.





Sure, if the character is somewhere else the power is gone as well, but that can usually be avoided. And why would more than one character ever take a recovery power if one character can just take one and give it to everyone else with this? Just feels wrong.

I would go one of two ways with this.

1) Make recovery baseline. In your game people just heal faster and if someone takes a recovery power, they heal even faster than that.

2) Having a guy around that can heal you like that is a great justification for a recovery power. The catch would be that you have to regularly drink the vampire blood to keep it active and you have to drink it in order to quickly recover the consequence as the power allows, but you have to pay for it out of your own refresh.

I not so sure its such a good power really, two refresh is fairly substantive and you can only heal one set of consequences at a time. 

[Haru]

With supernatural recovery you can heal a moderate consequence on someone else, then heal it on yourself in a matter of moments, then heal another, and so forth. Maybe not mid-fight, but you'll speed up the healing afterwards quite significantly.

[ways and means]

With supernatural recovery you can heal a moderate consequence on someone else, then heal it on yourself in a matter of moments, then heal another, and so forth. Maybe not mid-fight, but you'll speed up the healing afterwards quite significantly.

Well if you have taken a lot of consequences you won't have space to heal someone elses until your recover your own consequences and you can't heal two people with the same level of consequences in the same scene its useful but if you have taken this up this power and a decent level of recovery then you are making healing a focus and so it seems it pretty reasonable that you would be good at it.

It would change the feel of a game and nudge the risk and reward paradigm but in of itself it isn't the most broken thing you can do mechanically with your refresh.   

[Haru]

Selfhealing, yes. That's kind of what I mean. You buy stuff with refresh that makes you more badass. This power is meant to make other characters more badass. Which can be great, but I feel like it goes against the spirit of the game.

Another example: If I have a wizard and a knight, I could have the wizard put all his points towards making items and the knight will use those items. That would be the most powerful built, certainly. However, I would not do it like that. I would have the knight pay for the items he gets from the wizard and let the wizard do his thing. That might still be items, but it's items for himself, not for the knight. Otherwise the wizard is basically a magic item to the knight.

I see a healing power very similarly, that's why I would implement it the way I described above.

[Dramin]

Just a thought, but since you are basing this on the idea of vampire blood healing the other character. Possibly put a downside into the power. For example, in quite a few games where I have seen a power like this, the person that takes advantage of it runs the risk of becoming addicted to the blood. You could do something similar with this. If you heal someone they suffer an effect similar to "Addictive Saliva" in addition to having their consequences healed. Treat the effect/maneuver as an automatically successful attack with a rank equal to the level of the consequence. This might be appropriate both theme wise, and if the power was thought to be to powerful.

[moireth]

Just a thought, but since you are basing this on the idea of vampire blood healing the other character. Possibly put a downside into the power. For example, in quite a few games where I have seen a power like this, the person that takes advantage of it runs the risk of becoming addicted to the blood. You could do something similar with this. If you heal someone they suffer an effect similar to "Addictive Saliva" in addition to having their consequences healed. Treat the effect/maneuver as an automatically successful attack with a rank equal to the level of the consequence. This might be appropriate both theme wise, and if the power was thought to be to powerful.

I like this. Most shows/books or anything I've seen have a downside of ingesting another things blood. Especially if it has supernatural properties.

[ways and means]

Selfhealing, yes. That's kind of what I mean. You buy stuff with refresh that makes you more badass. This power is meant to make other characters more badass. Which can be great, but I feel like it goes against the spirit of the game.

Another example: If I have a wizard and a knight, I could have the wizard put all his points towards making items and the knight will use those items. That would be the most powerful built, certainly. However, I would not do it like that. I would have the knight pay for the items he gets from the wizard and let the wizard do his thing. That might still be items, but it's items for himself, not for the knight. Otherwise the wizard is basically a magic item to the knight.

I see a healing power very similarly, that's why I would implement it the way I described above.

There is some mileage in playing a facilitator of other characters, you can with the current rules if you want to play the role of an enchanted item armourer for your party you can (this is arguably much more broken than healing with the mental stress multiplier effect). If someone wants to play a healer and it doesn't break the game (which I don't think this power does) then they should be allowed to IMO.   

[Sanctaphrax]

I can't see any good reason to prevent people from helping each other. Magic items are gift-able, it's an explicit part of their rules, and if a Wizard wants to share some of their gear then that's their right.

Similarly, you can maneuver to help other people. Or use ritual healing spells on them.

So why not a healing power?

That being said, I think this is too exploitable. Just give one person Mythic Recovery and this and the whole's group's consequences are almost meaningless. With a big Catch, you could do all that for 4 Refresh.

Healing is really hard to do right. I think the best way to make it work is to revamp consequences so that mundane medicine is important in determining your healing time. Then your healing power can take the place of supernaturally excellent mundane medicine.

[Taran]

I can't see any good reason to prevent people from helping each other. Magic items are gift-able, it's an explicit part of their rules, and if a Wizard wants to share some of their gear then that's their right.

Similarly, you can maneuver to help other people. Or use ritual healing spells on them.

So why not a healing power?

That being said, I think this is too exploitable. Just give one person Mythic Recovery and this and the whole's group's consequences are almost meaningless. With a big Catch, you could do all that for 4 Refresh.

Healing is really hard to do right. I think the best way to make it work is to revamp consequences so that mundane medicine is important in determining your healing time. Then your healing power can take the place of supernaturally excellent mundane medicine.

I would love to have some kind I mechanic around mundane healing.

As far as I'm concerned, having the doctor stunt is purely fluff and almost never gets used.   For 1 refresh, having a recovery power with a catch is much better.  Heck, most people take wizards constitution and call it a day.

Maybe having a roll to speed up recovery based on a stunt?  I'd say make it half the refresh cost of recovery but with a catch, it doesn't scale. (You could have supernatural recovery for 1 refresh)

Is it worth making this it's own thread?

[Sanctaphrax]

Is it worth making this it's own thread?

I think so.