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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 829295" data-attributes="member: 3087">A well thought-out point. I'd missed the whole versatility thing. Thanks.Though I appriciate you putting the thought into it you did I'm not actually looking for more dramatic.I'm looking for a way to slow down the game a bit, and remove the emphasis (tactically and strategically) on healing, which I think will help me reap dividends on the story front.speedIn the previous game people advanced at unholy rates of speed. We had one week and a half of game time (7 or 8 games) where peoples levels basically doubled. Lowering Xp rewards has been the subject of feirce debate so I've been looking for alternatives. I think that if people have to rest between battles then that might stretch things out.resources & resource managementHealing is really powerful. The amount of access a group has to standard clerical healing has a tremendous impact on their power level. In the first part of the prior campaign (set in the Scarred Lands) the group didn't have a cleric. The groups effectiveness and power jumped tremendously once they got a clerical cohort. By comparison many of their enemies didn't have clerics (it's a Scarred Lands thing) and they suffered for it.A groups fighting prowess isn't really dependant on the warriors so much as it is on clerics. Which is great for D&D and fits in well with the crusader midevial kind of D&D motif.I don't see healing and healing magic as playing such a large role in OA. By making it less effective other feats (dodge even) and abilities become more useful.I guess that doesn't make a whole lot of sense but that's the train of thought.Yup. Shaman's spontaniously cast so that any unused spell is going to go into healing.I'll probably make the spontanious spells the ones that turn damage into subdual damage. Either way for the first few levels they'll basically be turning damage into subdual damage. You are right about the cure minor wounds spell. But I think that if you can nerf healing spells as much as I am and they are still going to be used more than any other spell then that's a key indication of the power of the cure spells.An xp cost is a good idea. For real cure spells an xp cost of (1xcharacter level of recipient) xp per point of healing might be a good idea.To be honest games with lots of healing tend to get weird for me on two levels.1. They are very forgiving of, and thus encourage, bad tactics. No matter how badly a battle goes some players feel like they can just get healed at the end of the fight. Or wait until tomorrow. So they tend to play it very loose. If they're successful then the next time it encourages them to do the same sort of thing. If they're unsucessful then they're dead, often the group is woefully over extended. etcetera. The game gets de-railed as everyone tries to get raised, complains about being lower level, etc.Basically the cleric (or whoever) can cover for anything bad that happens to you, and the expectation is that they will.2. On a macro-social level the power over life and death isn't often worked into campaigns. If healing is common and people aren't to worked up about being hurt. The town drunk gets involved in a fight, goes to the church of Kord or whoever likes brawlers, the next day, makes a little donation and they patch him up.Another example:Rich people never die, unless there's some sort of old age limit. Assassination isn't a big deal, major figures are just raised.  There are people out there who run "raising loan" business. You know, a young person gets killed and they offer to raise them in exchange for a portion of their earnings over the next ten years. I -don't- really want to deal with the repercussions of this kind of stuff.  It's not a goal in this game for me.In addition Churches/divine healers are nessessarily some of the most powerful forces in the game. I see the OA game I want to run as being not focused on organized religon, or religion so much in general. (Partially because the last game was gods, gods, gods pretty much all the time). By limiting their power to heal and harm I think they can play their role as "outsiders on the fringes of society" much more reasonably.</blockquote>

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