(TFT) Healing Spells, Balance, and Inflation

[Thorn <edt@dopey.ne.mediaone.net>]

Until this year, I've never _seen_ a healing spell in TFT.  My first
reaction was knee-jerk, that this was somehow 'not true' TFT.

But I had seen:

 Drain Strength used in reverse, by a Deannic Priestess of the Crescent,
a point of magickal healing for 5 points of ST.  I was the GM here, and
had to defend this against Jim, who in the role of TFT purist argued
this was 'not true' TFT.  :)  But then, he was playing the Alchemist,
so... there you go.

 'Laying on of hands' by a faerie-blooded wild girl, who bought from an
indulgent GM the Master Physiker's ability to heal one ST point without
equipment, but none of the other Physiker abilities.  This character,
Sharan, was mine.  The GM?  Jim, above.  :)

 Gallons of healing potion, at 1 ST per half-gill, being stocked up by
every adventuring band with the wherewithall.

 Gallons of healing potion, at 1 ST per half-gill, in the armories, kit
bags, back pockets and bedding of some of the most well equipped dead
bandits in the multiverse.

 Healing salve, healing scrolls, healing balms... to cut the monotony of
the two above.

 Hits tracked by blow, to allow Physikers to treat per wound rather than
per battle.

 Hits tracked as 'damage' and 'blood loss', to allow some portion of
damage to return more quickly.



Clearly, there was something needed.  Players and GMs both seemed to
want more action than the game's native healing rates and canon talents
and spells would allow.  At least in my experience, the GMs role is not
that of an opponent, doing his best to kill the players, but rather that
of an entertainer, or something like a personal trainer in tactics,
providing a variable but sufficient level of challenge to the efforts of
the PCs.  Even the most sadistic of GMs see the need to keep their
victims sensate; dead can't moan.  That in mind, GMs of poor parties
tended toward placing more healing potions than perhaps made strict
sense, while GMs of rich parties tended to fall toward the 'damage as
taxation' methodology.

So why not healing?

There are lots of arguements, but most devolve into either "It's not
canon", or "It gives PCs control", or the "flavor" arguement.

As for the 'canon' arguement, I'd rather play in a campaign that's
running than bow alone before my unadulterated canon.  I simply reject
the purist arguement of 'not canon'.  OTOH, I do accept, even use, the
concept of 'TFT' or 'not TFT', the idea that whatever we do, should fit
well with the rest of the system and not require a wholesale
restructuring of the rules or the worlds that exist.  That says that any
spells should be as many as is sensible of a) weak in effect, b) rare in
occurrence, c) otherwise limited.

A word on the rarity falacy:  Rarity of a spell, critter, or whatever
only affects how much of an effect it will have on the game world.  It
is no promise of lack of effect on your game.  Regardless of how 'rare'
it is, once you actually _have_ an ambidextrous death-aspected assassin
battleaxe expert in your DragonQuest campaign (for example), he _will_
have an effect on the campaign, if not the world entire.  In the Star
Trek universe, Omega is rare.  But when you find it, it changes things.

The 'PCs in control' arguement applies more to adversarial GMs, but is
valid in all campaigns.  If your party can heal quickly, you can't use
the 'wounded and running for our lives' motivation, not long-term. 
They'll still be drained by combat, and then the healer by healing, but
they won't be weeks healing up.  But you also won't need to plant so
many healing potions around.  If you're the sort of GM who uses wounds
as a way to control PC activity, consider healing magicks carefully.  If
you have other threads to pull on; politics, social factors,
in-character motivations, etc, then you may be more comfortable giving
up the whip of wounds.

The 'flavor' issue is unique to every campaign.  Some seem to ignore
it.  And nobody is going to have the same take on it that I do.  But for
what its worth, I think that healing magics are a valid part of the
usual fantasy setting.  I also observe that at least in fiction, it is
rare for a unicorn or empath or deryni or whatever to heal _some_ of a
wound.  You either can't be healed, or you can, and you are.

Costing fST, I can see a healer stopping before a patient is healed
fully, but I do not easily accept a rested, willing healer being somehow
unable to help a wounded patient, when that same healer _could_ help
now, if only he hadn't, before?  Sounds far too legalistic.  I would
expect pushback from my players, and they'd be right.  (I _do_ have an
answer to this, see below.)

I've got a healer in a running email game just now, and although she's
got about 40 fST worth of allied mages, I didn't build her with that in
mind.  I imagined her using Drain ST, drawing down the patient's fST to
heal their wounds with Healing.  I think that in parties without so much
local magery, that approach helps limit the power of the healing.  The
warriors won't want to 'top off' after every fight, if it means the
healer's going to knock them out to do it.

It seems illogical to have a spell or other effect that can help a
natural, already ongoing process, but only so much, and no more...  How
would it know?  What if it didn't need to know?  What if it used up a
quality of the natural process it was helping?  What if a spell can heal
one ST for five fST, but cannot help that same patient again until one
point of _natural_ healing had occurred, simulating the healing spell
causing a sort of fatigue in the patient's body?  Of course, this
approach isn't going to get them back in the battle very soon, but it
would halve (or whatever, depending on the exact numbers) their
downtime.
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