Magic Healing and Its Effect on the Game World

Magic Healing and Its Effect on the Game World

There are many aspects of this subject that can be talked about, especially the worldbuilding implications.

A short recap of my old approach – D&D healing and GURPS healing are very different, as there are no levels in GURPS, and the HP represent actual “meat points,” so healing is much more impactful in GURPS. On the other hand, D&D has no active defenses, and if an enemy hits you, you take damage. In GURPS, you can actually defend yourself, and every injury counts, which again makes healing more impactful. Easy access to healing magic greatly reduces stakes and investment into the game, which I find to be a detrimental factor to the overall enjoyment. In addition, it usually makes mundane medical skills, such as First Aid, Physician, Diagnosis, Surgery, and others obsolete.
                To limit the availability of magical healing, I restrict it to priests of deities that have healing in their portfolio, certain monastic chi and druidic traditions, and to good incarnates. All these require pretty limiting disadvantages. However, I still allow alchemists to brew healing potions, but those require a lot of money and/or time, which makes them much less prone to abuse, so I'm okay with that.
 
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the worldbuilding implications and then talk about some mechanical stuff. I bet all of you have gotten sick many times in your lives, and you know that sometimes it takes a while to recover even with the modern medicine. In a fantasy game, a simple healing spell can cure injuries, neutralize poisons, cure disease, and do it instantly. More powerful spells can mend bones, regrow limbs, and even resurrect the dead. Combined with the fact that at low TLs, diseases contributed a lot to the mortality rates, this makes healing magic incredibly impactful on the world. Widely accessible healing magic would make mundane medical skills irrelevant, disease would stop being a danger. In general, people would live much longer and population would grow at a significantly higher rate, which would lead to the expansion of civilization and eventually to the elimination of all the monsters that used to prevent such expansion. And we need to have adventurers running around slaying said monsters, right?
    GURPS Thaumatology says that if any mage can learn healing spells, then it’s very likely that there would be no mage adventurers – they’d get paid so much that they would simple live very comfortable lives by healing people.
    So, we need to limit healing magic in a way that doesn’t make it too prohibitive, doesn’t make it affect the world too much, and keeps it relevant - – we do want adventurers taking risk, but to a reasonable degree. Let’s see our options.
1.       Restricted access. Remember D&D? Not every class had healing spells on their spell list, and I like that. In my games, arcane spellcasters are unable to cast healing spells. Only priests of deities of healing can do that, and such deities require certain disadvantages as part of their dogma. In this case, mundane medical skills remain relevant, but the general well-being of population is still affected, but not to the same degree as with unrestricted healing magic. Priesthood of deities of healing would probably be welcome in any settlement and generally beloved and respected. As such, they’d probably have Social Regard (Respected) and maybe even high Status and/or Wealth. Their temples would probably collect a tithe from the general population. If their dogma forces them to administer healing only to those who have the same worldview, then the faith would probably become very popular thanks to its sheer utility. But even an altruistic faith wouldn’t be able to fix all the problems. Perhaps, there would be different “priorities” for different social classes. Gary Gygax’s Living Fantasy describes such approach.
a.       Aristocrats who have a higher Status than the clergy would be able to donate a lot of money to the temples. They’d probably be the only one who gains access to resurrection and limb regrowth spells.
b.      The middle class would be able to afford normal healing, poison neutralization, and disease removal.
c.       As for the lower class, there would be much more demand for healing than supply. Availability of healing depends on many factors. Is the person in question a true believer of the temple’s dogma? Does he pay the tithe? Does the injury prevent him or her from performing his or her normal duties? Was the injury caused by an injustice done to the person? Will it affect many (in case of contagious diseases)? I suggest using the Request for Aid reaction table from GURPS Social Engineering for this. You also have to set prices for such services, but I’ll talk about that later.
2.       Alternatively, or additionally, you could increase the casting time. This will make healing spells much less useful in adventuring situations, but keep them a viable option for downtime activities. In this case, healing spells still will significantly affect the society, unless the casting time is in days or months. However, I think that a casting time of even an hour will make such spells significantly less powerful. Mundane medical skills will have to be used to prevent the victim from bleeding out, and such casting time will greatly decrease the number of people a healer can heal per day. Curses, limb regrowth, diseases, and to a lesser degree poisons will be less affected by this change.
3.       You also could increase the cost of healing magic. If this means FP costs, then that will have basically the same effect on the game world as increasing the casting time. However, costs could include, for example, expensive material components or even character points. In that case, healing services would only be available to those who can afford them. You might remember the D&D resurrection spell requiring powdered diamonds, but even something like Cure Disease could require something expensive, such as incense. This way, only the wealthy would be able to afford such spells, and the majority of population would have to rely on mundane remedies.
4.       GURPS Thaumatology also suggests some ways to change the effects of healing spells to make them less overwhelming. For example, healing spells might be powerless against injuries dealt by fire or silver. But what I like the most is allowing healing spells to only restore half the HP of injury of each wound. This way, serious wounds would require a lot of natural healing. However, additional bookkeeping will be required, as you’d have to track each individual wound. But if you are using certain other optional rules, you might already be doing that. If you’re using the Healing advantage, I’d price this limitation at -20%. You can combine it with special requirements. For example, a normal healing spell would only be limited to healing half of the injury, but if you use raw magic or spend a character point, then you can heal all injury.
5.       You can combine mundane skills with magical healing. For example, GURPS Thaumatology suggests limiting the skill level of healing spells to the caster’s Physiology skill. Thus, he won’t be able to heal what he doesn’t understand. Coupled with the various physiological modifiers, I think that this is very cool. For diseases, I think that Physiology should be replaced with Diagnosis, and for poisons – with Poisons.
6.       Instead of straight up restoring HP or curing diseases and poisons, healing magic could instead boost natural healing. Thus, the spells won’t be based on the Healing advantage, but rather Affliction that grants Rapid Healing, Resistant to Disease, or Resistant to Poison. This still will have an effect on society, but to a much lesser degree. However, it would make adventurers less prone to taking risks, unless healing potions that instantly restore HP are widely available.
7.       Another interesting take can be found in Pyramid #3-13. “Salving Magic” is an article that provides alternative spells for the vanilla magic system. While true, permanent healing spells are available only to clerics, these so-called salving spells are available to wizards. They heal damage and stave off diseases and poisons only temporarily, and each wound taken has a chance to dispel all the ongoing salving effects. Give it a read, it’s interesting. I’m sure you can do it with magic-as-powers as well.
 
That’s quite a list, huh? It’s up to you to pick and choose from it, depending on what effect you want healing magic to have in the setting. But I believe that regardless of the limitations, healers would have Social Regard (Respected), and, perhaps, a level of Status in some societies. If they are strictly divine wonder workers, then they only need to have their healing spells and religious skills, but if they have a limit based on Physiology or other skills, then their temples might be places of learning, with tomes of medical knowledge. If expensive components are required, they may be buying them from adventurers or growing them in the yard, if they can be grown. If spells take a long time to cast and do not guarantee success, or if they simply boost the natural healing abilities, then the temples might be actual hospitals, where a sick person can stay for days. But in most of the cases, the healers will ask for monetary compensation for their service. How much?
GURPS Fantasy has the Hedge Wizard job that requires the Minor Healing spell, supports Status -1, and Wealth level of Struggling. GURPS Banestorm has the Healer job that supports Status 1 and the Comfortable Wealth level. But how much does each specific healing spell cost?
I’ve found some D&D prices – you can see a table from Cityscape and a table from Gary Gygax’s Living Fantasy, but they won’t tell us much. To find healing costs in GURPS, we have to dig deeper. There’s one book that I keep returning to despite initially believing it to be useless for me – GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown. It has a price list for various magical services, including healing, and implies that the average waiting time at the temple is two hours.
To me, these prices seem way too low. A healer at this rate would probably be Struggling, like the GURPS Fantasy hedge wizard, but I prefer healers to have Comfortable Wealth instead. In that case, I think it’s much better to quadruple the prices, or maybe even multiply them by 5. Even with this increase, temple healing still will be cheaper than alchemical healing potions, but will remain affordable. If you have a better pricing scheme, please tell me in the comments.
 
Now, I’d like to also talk about some mechanical aspects of healing that are rarely talked about in much detail. Restoring HP is more or less clear, and so is curing disease. Healing magic can also restore crippled, but whole limbs, and so can the Healing advantage. But what about restoring lost limbs or other organs? Such things can be done via Affliction that grants Regrowth and, possibly, Regeneration to hasten the process, or that Negate Disadvantages. However, additional questions arise. Imagine that your character lost an arm in combat. Now he has the One Arm [-20] disadvantage. His ally casts the Regeneration spell and restores the arm. All is good. But what if you took One Arm [-20] at character creation? You got 20 bonus character points for that, and as soon as the game starts, you get your arm restored with a spell. That’s unfair, isn’t it? To solve this problem, I suggest forcing the subject or the healer to spend unspent character points to buy off the disadvantage. You can do it partially, if you cannot afford to do it at once, and compensate by adding limitations or disadvantages. For example, a healer might restore a limb, effectively removing -20 points of disadvantages, but also impose -20 of other disadvantages to compensate, until the subject buys them off himself. This could be something like Chronic Pain, limited Bad Grip, Ham-Fisted, Maintenance, or a combination of them. The subject can buy them off gradually, which will represent gradually regaining proper control of the regrown limb. Alternatively, you can regrow a fully functional limb, but make the subject enter a point debt, so he will be forced to forfeit the next 20 character points he gains in the game. It’s all up to you.
Resurrection is a similar deal, but I will talk about it in a different video.
 
So, with all that, let’s make a healing spell! Let’s call it Cure Light Wounds, just like the D&D spell, even though it won’t work exactly like it.
 
Cure Light Wounds
Keywords: None.
Full Cost: 20 points.
Casting Roll: Skill. Cannot exceed Physiology.
Components: V, S, M, DF.
Cost: 2 FP.
Casting Time: 10 minutes.
Range: Touch.
Duration: Instantaneous.
 
By making physical contact with a subject, you may immediately heal him 1d HP. This also automatically stops any bleeding.
You casting skill cannot be higher than your Physiology skill. Physiology modifiers (p. B181) are applied. In addition, your casting roll is at -2 if the subject is unconscious. In addition, if used more than once per day on a given subject, you are at a cumulative -3 per successful healing. Failure costs you 1d FP instead of the usual 2 FP!
Material Component: An ounce of incense ($16).
Statistics: Healing (Affects Self, +50%; Cannot restore crippled limbs, -10%; Capped, 2 FP, -25%; Divine, -10%; Immediate Preparation Required, 10 minutes, -45%; Injuries Only, -20%; Nuisance Effect, Physiology Limit, -5%; Requires holy symbol, -10%; Requires magic words, -10%; Requires gestures, -10%; Trigger, Incense, -20%; Xenohealing, Anything Alive, +80%) [20]. Note: The 4 HP of healing has been converted to dice per p. B269.
 
I based it on the Minor Healing spell from Sorcery. As you can see, it now costs 2 FP instead of one, has the Divine power modifier instead of Magical, and the casting time is 10 minutes instead of 1 second. The increased casting time makes First Aid important – you have to stop bleeding or roll HT ten times. So, this is a non-combat spell. The physiology limit was introduced. Components mean that the caster must recite a prayer – that’s the verbal component, perform ritual gestures – that’s the somatic components, have a holy symbol in hand – that’s the divine focus component, and also have an ounce of incense in hand – that’s the material component. Incense costs $16 per ounce, as per GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables, and this price corresponds well with the quadrupled healing prices from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown. Unlike the Sorcery Minor Healing, this spell can heal any living creature, not only those of similar races. Casting Roll mentions skill, but that’s because I have clerics use VH Domain skills for spellcasting. You can simply use IQ instead.
                This spell is just a thought experiment, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to use it in my games. It ended up being cheaper than Minor Healing from Sorcery, and I didn’t even apply that optional rule that magic healing can only heal half of a wound – that would bring down the cost to 14 points. I’m still not sure about this rule.