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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4872535" data-attributes="member: 1054">The NPC issue does pop up if you're in a campaign where players interact with, and occasionally try to help, NPCs. Having rules for PC healing and no rules for NPC healing can create odd disconnects. (In general, the fact that PCs and Everything Else plays by different rules can cause issues, even if they're relatively minor. In campaigns which follow the apparently default assumption that there's NPCs with stats that you kill, and NPCs without stats that you talk to, these are minor. But if you have a recurring cast of characters that needs to interact mechanically with the PCs and their enemies, the differences between PCs and NPCs quickly become apparent. Between fewer powers, or powers no PC of the same "class" can use, it just starts feeling a little weird and artificial.)In terms of healing, if the PCs see a wounded NPC lying in a hospital, and one says, "What the hell, I'll use Majestic Word (or whatever)" on the NPC, what happens? He probably has one healing surge to spend, so, he spends it... and is he then healed? Can one PC clean out a whole hospital with his encounter powers in an hour or so? Figure 2 uses, minimum, of healing per 10 minutes, so 6 people cured per hour... it adds up.) What does restore missing eyes or lost limbs? Normal healing? A ritual? "Just make it up" or "Whatever the story requires" are profoundly unsatisfying to me. The player might not know what will happen, but the character, who lives in the world, ought to know what to expect, and the world itself ought to be shaped accordingly. I could say that "real" wounds cannot be healed by typical PC-style magic or martial healing, and that the kind of "wounds" PCs heal are, by the nature of the hit point system, only minor cuts, scrapes, and the like, plus fatigue. So using a healing spell or ability on someone who is seriously gutted might end their pain, heal their bruises and minor scrapes, and help the wound heal cleanly and with less scarring, but won't cause the wound to suddenly close up. A Martial character using healing could be seen to be giving encouraging words and/or herbal remedies, to the same end. Figure that "True healing" requires an expensive ritual, and you allow for there to be wounded people slowly healing even as adventurers get better with a nice little nap.It's not a game breaker, but it would be nice to see the issue addressed, even in the form of guidelines, as opposed to assuming it will never come up because you go into dungeons to kill things, and go into towns to talk to people, and there's no need to worry about how combat mechanics interact with out-of-combat adventuring. An article in Dungeon would be very nice.</blockquote>

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