Re: [Slope: Ch 12] New Type of Healing Spell & Death Magic.

[Rick <rick_ww@lightspeed.ca>]

On Jun 19, 2018, at 11:05 AM, David Bofinger <bofinger.david@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> So what's the difference between a spell that costs fatigue and a spell that costs damage? One difference is that the fatigue comes back much faster ... except if we have spells like this that might not be true, it's conceivable the damage could actually come back faster than the fatigue. The other major difference is that wounds leave a wizard closer to death, but fatigue only leaves the wizard closer to unconsciousness.
> 
> So is that an interesting difference? It doesn't grab me.
> 
> I wonder what other costs of doing magic there could be. What if casting spells reduced your intelligence, so you lost the powerful spells first and had to decide from the beginning of the fight whether you should cast them.
> 
> Or you could lose the spell as you cast it ... oh, wait, that's been done.
> 
> --
> David

Hi David,
  I don’t know what you mean about damage coming back faster than fatigue damage.  fST comes back at one point per 15 minutes, where as damage returns at 1 point per 2 days.  That is very unlikely to change.

  But let’s say that you have two wizards with this spell, A and B.

A takes 11 points of damage.  During the fight, B casts the two damage version of this spell on A.  He rolls: 2, & a 5 for the healing, for a total of 7 plus 3 = 10 hits healed.

So now we have A at 2 damage and B at 3 damage.

This healing is fast enough that it helps during the fight.

After the fight A casts the spell on B.  Now A is at 3 damage and B is healed.

Now B casts the spell on A.  

A is now healed and B is at 1 hit.

And they stop.  No further improvement is possible.  (A is a higher IQ wizard so they would rather he be at full ST.)

Interestingly, we have a couple of wizards with this spell, but they are not able to totally get rid of the damage.


***

The appeal of Death Magic type spells (like the Death Spell which already exists), is that the cost is more dangerous, so the spells can be more powerful and at a lower IQ and still stay fair.

It also adds more variety to the game.

***

Rereading what you wrote above, perhaps what you mean is that when this spell magically repairs damage, it repairs fST at the same time.  We might want to say that this spell converts damage in to fatigue.  (So if you had 7 hits, and this spell healed them, you would be at 7 fatigue after healing.  Hmmm….)

Warm regards, Rick.