Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

What do people think of potions?

Chris Brady wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2020 6:38 pm You need to play with the Healing rules.

Could you (or anyone) point me toward the Healing rules. I'd love to take a look.

Don't know if its about a specific post or a specific rule, but here is a post all about healing.

teaman wrote: ↑Sat Aug 15, 2020 6:23 am

Chris Brady wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2020 6:38 pm You need to play with the Healing rules.

Could you (or anyone) point me toward the Healing rules. I'd love to take a look.

Page 51, Healing and Rest
You get 1 HP after a good night's rest. You can increase to another if you go full bed rest for a total of 2 per day.

It's a little wonky when you're higher level, suddenly you spend more time in bed to get healed (Base healing I'd recommend adding the character's level to it, Fighters still take the longest to heal, but it doesn't cripple the game as badly). But Clerical magic helps mitigate that, however in a Sword and Sorcery/Low Magic game without it, you need the heroes active and able bounce back faster.

I still think you need a healer. Maybe increase the casting time of the cleric spells. Maybe force them to collect ingredients and brew potions. Maybe have the cleric turned into a witch having to hide his/her power. Maybe add a hit point cost to spell casting. There's a number of tweak that are possible, but buying potions at the corner store doesn't feel low magic and taking 2 weeks to heal between fights sucks.

While normal rest isn't going to cut it, handling healing doesn't have to be *that* hard.
1) Potions. They can be made by "alchemists" instead of magic-users or clerics. Or shamans. Or doctors. Whatever. The point is they are made by NPCs and available to PCs to buy and use. (Or to be provided through their patron.) Also note that potions don't have to be "potions". They can be any kind of consumable "power up".
2) Wands. There are wands anyone can use. Create one for healing and let it become available from a patron or other NPC.
3) Roots and berries. There is some "non-magic" concoction that promotes rapid healing. It has ingredients that anyone can get (though maybe with some difficulty) and a recipe that is generally known.
4) Magic items. There are magic items of some kind (or various kinds) that provides low-grade regeneration or rapid healing.
5) Rituals. Using the definition of "ritual" as "magic that anyone can cast with long casting time", provide rituals that allow for out-of-combat healing.
6) More hit points. Just give everyone max hit points every level. Doesn't directly help with the healing, but at least makes things more manageable. Would still need to pair with one or more of the above options.
7) Better natural healing. Let people heal faster. Whether it is 1 point per level per day (instead of just 1 point per day) or 1 point per hour or whatever suits your fancy. This is still fantasy, and hit points are still nebulous things; redefine "natural healing".

In the end, in-combat healing will go down if not disappear. That is not a bad thing, as it makes combat more deadly (which is usually a feature of "low magic" settings). But there are a bunch of options that keeps things "low magic" yet still allows for faster healing than 1 point per day.

Finally, remember that whatever you do for hit point recovery, you need to work on for other afflictions. Blindness, deafness, paralysis, petrification, poison, disease, curses, and more that I am forgetting will pop up and you need to make sure there is a way to deal with them other than, "bummer dude."

If I were to drop magic for the most part, I would increase healing to 2 points each day automatically, regardless of activity. Then for actual rest days, I would give 1 roll of whatever HD the character has (ie Fighters get 1d8, clerics 1d6, MU/Thief 1d4). For the full bed-rest sort of rest period, increase that to two such die rolls.

This is to keep characters from spending weeks between adventuring periods, cause that's no fun.

The important question is: How long do you want the characters to be 'down'?

In a lot of S&S the hero (and it's often singular) gets hurt, but comes back almost immediately.

For ME, I would just steal the 5th Edition Healing system.

I'm also one of those freaks who thinks that the BF fighter needs a lot more to it to be fun...