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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreatLemur" data-source="post: 2447567" data-attributes="member: 28553">Quick thoughts on how to limit an "unlimited" healing power:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Require the expenditure of some purchased resource for each healing, such as incense or gold dust or some other kind of ritual component (yeah, I thought of this after seeing Jackelope King's weapon-destroying healing power).   </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Make the "healing" temporary, and actually cause some small amount of additional damage once it wears off.  That way, it's only useful in the midst of combat, and can't be used to top the party up between fights.   </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Make the healer burn his own hitpoints in order to heal others (probably at a favorable rate of exchange).  Obviously, this "damage" can't be undone by the same healing power, not even by another healer.   </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Make each use of the healing power provoke the risk of some lasting harmful effect.  For example, the healer might be forced to make a Fortitude save (DC based on the damage healed, of course) to avoid losing her divine warlock powers for a day.  (Naturally, this is only an effective limitation if your players aren't the types to just say that they stay camped for the whole day, doing nothing while the healer recovers.)   </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Saddle the healing with some kind of negative side effect.  An example of this kind of thing that I thought of a while back was a cleric who performed healings by asking his deity to share its own flesh with the injured character, replacing damaged tissue with divine.  The drawback here was that the deity was some kind of dragon/serpent entity, and the replacement flesh was conspicuously scaly.  The healed (and disfigured) characters would regain their normal appearance by "re-healing" the borrowed hit points through either natural means, or more normal magical healing.  If scaly healing and a Bluff/Diplomacy penalty doesn't faze your players, then maybe the new flesh is stiff and clumsy, imposing a DEX penalty based on the amount of damage healed.  Or maybe the more a character is healed, the more she will "owe" the deity behind the healing, becoming obligated to tithe treasure or go on pilgrimages? </li> </ul>These are all fairly half-assed ideas, and I'm not perfectly happy with any of them.  Still, there might be something useful, here.Another thing to think about is that maybe it's no so bad for a party to be able to heal itself fully in between fights.  I've noticed that both pen-and-paper RPGs and MMORPGs seem to be heading towards faster, simpler post-combat healing, so that players only need to worry about their hitpoints in the middle of a fight, not after it.  Something to think about, I guess.</blockquote>

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