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Thursday, November 12, 2015

High HP and Healing, expanded

Hate the breakpoints for HP 20 and HP 30 and healing? Annoyed that your HP 19 guy isn't getting anything until he finds 2 more points to spend?

Here is an easy option to fix that.

Round all effects down.

Instead of the rules for High HP and Healing (p. B424), use these:

HP <15: Healing is x1.0 effect. HP 15-19: Healing is 1.5x effect. HP 20-24: Healing is 2.0x effect. HP 25-29: Healing is 2.5x effect. HP 30-34: Healing 3.0x effect. Etc. HP 15 folks, rejoice! While you could just multiply all healing by HP/10, it just gets silly. The game has breakpoints - smoothing them doesn't imply the need to get rid of them. And it's easier to remember a few extra breakpoints than apply a formula per casting. And for those you who say, Bah! I want more breakpoints! Well, Christopher Rice has you covered.

6 comments:

  1. Is this a thing that we can use?! Because this is great for all us poor, point-starved adventurers.

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    1. Maybe. I'm reluctant to add another upside to high HP without any balancing problem though. Right now, in DF, high HP gets you more HP, better healing, better slam damage, higher crippling thresholds, reduced Shock, reduced effect of HP-based poisons and diseases and secondary effects, etc. but it removes the downside of higher falling damage (you have more mass). If I add this, I'd be tempted to add at least the HP multiplier for falling damage back in.

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  2. I see your post and raise you. http://www.ravensnpennies.com/2015/11/gurps101-alternate-hp-and-healing.html#.VkTITberSM8

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    1. Heh. You raise me by exactly the thing I say I wouldn't want. Just imaging this fun!

      "How many HP do you need?"
      "I've got 22, and I'm down to 3, so I need 19."
      "Okay, Major Healing for, how much?"
      "I'm SM+1 and you don't have Huge Subjects, so it's double cost."
      "Okay, so if I put 1 point in it, it costs me 2 energy, and heals 2, but that's 4.4 for you, so if I do max, it's cost 8, heals 8 times 2.2 equals 17.6, is that 17 or 18?

      I'm not even 100% sure I did the math right, either. I'd rather have "do it all then double it" or "do it all and then add half, round down" and not do the little math . . .

      I'd hate to see what you consider GURPS 201! ;P

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  3. My preferred solution is to rule that healing spells are cast on the wounds, not the person. So a healing spell just costs and fixes the base amount regardless.

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    1. What makes that an issue is all the non-spell healing - Regeneration's effects aren't proportional, First Aid is largely useless on large subjects, high-HP characters and creatures heal up from rest very slowly. That's why the change to the rules in 4e. Spells, etc. just come along for the ride.

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