Help please: Healing harms the undead

[Terwox]

I'm not sure how to handle this. Last night I had the players use lay on hands to damage a wraith. I ruled that it did a healing surge worth of damage and ignored insubstantial, and also dealt radiant damage.

Thing is, I used a healing surge from the wraith, so it did 1/4ths his hps. Not a great call, but I was trying to move the combat along -- it was more of a story device than a real fight.

Anyway, I want healing to damage the undead in my game. I am thinking that it should simply deal the character's healing surge value in Radiant, and cost a healing surge from the character to use if it does not generally cost one. (That is, for things like healing word.) This is not much damage, but healing is generally a minor action.

Any thoughts on the balance of this? It seems like a small option to give a small bit of extra damage per round against undead, at the cost of surges. I am not sure if it is balanced though, and I think it may favor the players too strongly -- shorter adventuring days are somewhat normal in my world so far.

 

[generalhenry]

Bah.

Clerics and paladins have radiant damage powers for a reason.
and warlords making undead go poof doesn't make a whit of sense.

 

[Maximillian]

I am thinking that it should simply deal the character's healing surge value in Radiant, and cost a healing surge from the character to use if it does not generally cost one.

Here's some considerations I can see:

• Radiant damage generally deals extra damage to undead, who are vulnerable to it.
• If your leader types are spending more healing surges to damage the monsters, they will be running out faster--they don't have as many as the defenders they're normally healing. If you have something like a warlord or a battle cleric, they'll be using them between encounters, too.
• I think the "divine energy hurts undead" concept is cool, and well founded in a lot of sources, but are you anticipating that a warlord character will be able to inspire wounds in his undead foes? That's harder for me to visualize.
• Of course the players are taking their own lives in their hands here, but the number of healing powers a party has in a day is severely limited in 4e: moreso than the 3e cleric who can swap any spell for a bit of wound closing.
• Would a cleric have to spend a healing surge to use a power that normally doesn't force the character to spend one? Cure Light Wounds (utility 2) for example?

Hope any of this helps.

 

[Terwox]

Ug, yeah, the way warlords heal, though I like it, should not damage the undead. (They could heal the undead normally though, I would say.)

So, I imagine I would limit it to a divine power source, as that resonates better.

Anyway, my party doesn't include a warlord. I'm just interested in a rule that will work for this party, anyway. (Paladin/cleric/fighter/ranger/wizard.)

Cure Light I would probably let off the hook as it is balanced by being a daily power, and a standard action besides that.

And yeah, I'm thinking this should not trigger the radiant vulnerability. (I let it trigger on the wraith, though.) Might make it a bit too good when things start getting larger vulnerabilities to radiant.

 

[stamhaven]

Another thing to keep in mind is that there is normally some sort of attack roll and I think wis or cha vs reflex or will is reasonable in this case. I might bump the action to attack an undead foe with this sort of power is always a standard action and not a minor to mitigate things. You're adding offensive powers where it didn't exist before so i think some mitigating factors are in order (and surge values of players can get quite large on paragon level dwarves and dragonborn especially).