Healing

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Healing

This short thread covers the Story Team’s stance on healing and how it should be handled within lore. 

 

 

Healing, by our definition, covers healing of other players in or outside of combat. While the two do have very different nuances and feelings, they do share some similarities. We’ll go into both, and describe why the Story Team holds some caution into what types of healing are being utilized.

 

In general, we found that theres pros and cons to each different archetype of healing.

 

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Free Healing

Free healing is healing which is described as healing which often costs mild resources, if any. Energy (Mana, stamina), emotes, IRL time, reagents, faith of some kind, etc. These are your most traditional fantasy healers, like Dungeons and Dragons Clerics, or Priests in WoW.  This isn’t limited to just magic, but can be alchemical or mundane means of healing too.

 

Free healing, being the most traditional in fantasy, is often that which is coveted in lore. There’s nothing quite wrong with that, however, there comes the issue where this can easily eliminate impactful moments or character development, or stifle consequence and conflict. While it may take multiple emotes, perhaps even hours of combat, to wound someone or be in the process of wounding someone, a healer may have an ability prepared in that time which lessens, prevents, or undoes that damage quickly and without issue. This can be really detrimental, because it can completely skew a fight in the healers favour. Typically, free healing is reserved for very minor or small wounds, at a real cost which prevents a caster from using offensive capability. While fun for the healer, it can be incredibly unfun for the offending party. 

 

Not only this, but the target of healing can lack fun as well. A common issue players have is that they find themselves overwhelmed during medical RP, the healer often emote-dumping how quickly, efficiently, or effectively they can completely null wounds and effects and stabilize a wounded person. Free healing suffers from this as well, with the wounded party often simply sitting there while a free healer just cures them. This can be incredibly unengaging, and lead to nothing changing in plot, character development, consequence, and more. 

 

For in combat healing, consider how powerful an ability/potion may be in undoing a wound which is an outcome in give-and-take CRP, as a healing ability/potion that doesn’t have to. You don’t have to work with another (or yourself) narratively to heal them, only fixing what another has done to them, and what the wounded accepted as part of that give-and-take trade. Keep this type of healing costly, temporary, and unlike just fixing a wound completely.

 

For out of combat healing, consider the fact that in honesty, things do not have cost. In the term of a day, a mana cost is minimal as most often someone will get it back tomorrow. In the term of material components, most can be spawned out of thin air without difficulty, or without roleplay attached to gathering them. These are things that can’t really be changed. For out of combat free healing, consider that your resources are effectively unlimited, while in comparison, a wound is finite. Be fair, and allow narrative to develop further and characters to progress from something like this.

 

Ultimately, the resources used in free healing are inconsequential, and thus the efforts of any party involved in the conflict are made inconsequential as well. When writing your lore, or utilizing healing, please express caution into how much you feeling effective is trading others making narrative.

 

 

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Trade Healing

Trade healing is healing which follows a sort of “eye for an eye” doctrine. Trade healing is healing in which one trades wounds, their severity, their emotion, their blood, their energy, all in some effort to lessen or remove the wound or affliction of the afflicted. This can be put upon other targets unwillingly, or taken on by the healer or allies willingly.

 

Trade healing can be significantly more interesting than free healing, and can offer a more interactive roleplay experience. However, one thing players may run into is the fact their RP is notably gray. In this sense, they do not always feel like the good guy, they feel there is too much work, too much cost, etc. - While potentially true depending on the lore, this is a personal issue, although this type of healing does enable it. This is generally the safest bet for healing, and the one granted the most leeway. This allows for good character development, roleplay, and decisionmaking. This can lead to deciding where one’s power is best spent, if wounds are worth healing, and if there are alternative routes to be taken. Rather than a one-ability-cure-all, trade healing allows for more options and interactions to be utilized to encourage an actual recovery process within healing, having lasting consequence and effect on the wounded party.

 

 

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Time-based Healing

Time-based healing is healing which is very similar to free healing, but it may take multiple sessions or extended emote times for the therapeutic effect to take place on the healed target. Time-based healing often can involve more severe or traumatic wounds or wounding, such as psychological or even limb/organ damage. While this mostly works for extended, chronic effects a character has had like a lost limb or a long-time sickness, it can get really complex when one factors in short term wounding.

 

Time-based healing, given it’s similarities to free healing, can very much suffer from the same issues. Traditionally, this type of healing suffers from the issue where it can lead to the same emote dumping and unengaging roleplay that comes with free healing roleplay. Given the power often lended to this type healing, with the ability to undo great things, these abilities should be very rare, and heavily scrutinized. Consider how time-based healing can be constraining with multiple sessions, days, or people, and consider how much the effects should have on a user and how they should scale accordingly. 

 

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Overall, consider carefully healing and it’s effects on the healer, healed, and the attacking party. Consider what limitations you want to implement and what type of healing is best for your lore, if applicable. Do not be afraid of making your healing too weak! The Story Team will always tell you and help to make sure your magic is as fun to use and balanced. Try to err on the side of underpowered, rather than overpowered, and The Story Team will scale accordingly in feedback.