Healing spells/items are lazy game design for RPGs.

[DragoFireheart]

I'm not talking about characters camping somewhere, eating food, sleeping, and then fully recovering. That's good design because it forces the player to plan out ahead of time when they wish to rest, if it's safe, etc. My gripe is with "instant healing" ala potions/stimpacks/cookie of healing +1. They break the game and cause game imbalance. Battles that could require tactical placement or choices of your party are mitigated entirely by healing items. Make a mistake? Heal up! Took a big hit? INSTANT HEAL STIMPACK OH YES MY COCK IS HARD! Now if these items were of limited supply that would be fine, but almost every single rpg I have played has such healing items in very large quantities. There is generally no limit to how many you can carry and many times they heal MANY TIMES more than what an enemy could damage you for. Newer RPGS are just retarded and forgo that shit and/or supplement it with auto-healing after combat, which is fucking retarded. If it's so easy to stock up on these fucking potions, then why the fuck do you need me to save the world? Just give some retard a bunch of potions, enough weapons to slug it out, decent armor and let them do it. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY ITEM MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE? Some games do limit healing items early on but they typically load you with so many healing items that you could heal an fucking army.

It's fucking stupid and I wish game developers would get creative with creating strategy other than "fight, heal, ad nausem, become stupid".

 

[Excidium]

Yes.

But there are ways of making potions less overpowered:

-Intoxication to prevent potion chugging (Twitcher)

-Drinking potions mid-combat leaving you open to get raped (Risen)

 

[DragoFireheart]

Yes.

But there are ways of making potions less overpowered:

-Intoxication to prevent potion chugging (Twitcher)

-Drinking potions mid-combat leaving you open to get raped (Risen)

Sadly those are the exception and not the rule. The pathetic thing is the strategy of "fight, heal, ad nausem" works very well in just about every kind of RPG. Fuck, even in WoW, most fights resolve around that idea. It's fucking boring.

Edit: I do approve of those ways of making potions limited as it causes the player to think about what the fuck they are doing and not just mashing the heal button when they get desperate. It's one of the reasons I like hardcore mode in F:NV. Sure, the game is relatively easy, but the regen healing forces you to take cover so you can heal up. There have been a few times when I couldn't take cover and died regardless of healing. I pay for my mistakes, which is good design.

 

[Excidium]

It's boring indeed, and it is something so easy to fix it is ridiculous.

 

[J1M]

I think it is interesting and a little ironic that the 'grand decline' of 4th edition D&D actually handles this mechanic rather well, and I would argue, better than 3rd edition.

Each player has a number of 'healing surges' which are determined primarily by class and constitution. These are essentially the number of times per day that you can be healed and are expended when you use powers, potions, or short rests to heal. (There are a few specific exceptions which allow another player to consume their personal healing surges to heal another, such as Lay on Hands.)

Whether or not the player's are stressed by the healing surge resource is influenced by encounter design. We could argue whether or not the number of surges per day in 4th edition is too high, but the general system is sound and prevents potion chugging.

It's sad that we will never see a turn-based 4th edition CRPG. As many have pointed out, it seems tailored to work well in such an environment.

 

[deuxhero]

Final Fantasy V had only a handful of very small points where healing outpaced damage, and only then because your heal spell was new and thus took up most of your MP. Even with a gold hairpin (half MP use) healing was only worthwhile out of battle.

This meant healing straight up with White Magic wasn't too useful (Vampire+White Wind on a Blue Magic user could heal most of your HP, but took too long and Blue Magic had much sexier things to do in a boss fight). The game worked this well, with bosses having low HP to compensate for their high offense, and a lot of class abilities giving you insane damage output if you thought about it a bit (generally equipped boosting items).


Dungeons and Dragons 3.x (and ToEE by extension) also made healing worthless for in-combat, and made it so that a cleric was better off neutralizing the hostiles instead of healing (Unless someone was KOed)

 

[villain of the story]

No generalisations please. Some games just work great with it. Fallout was better for it. It wasn't a survival simulation anyway. It was very gamey due in part to this.

 

[Excidium]

No, it was awful in Fallout. Made the combat easier than it already was, there were so many stimpaks in Fallout 2 that I it could be used as currency.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

the clear answer to this unrealistic and unbalanced feature is regenerating health

 

[Metro]

As much as I like Risen it's pretty easy to chug potions in combat by simply backstepping/retreating for a few seconds.

 

[Excidium]

It's also pretty easy to get rid of intoxication in Twitcher by drinking White Honey, but it's more the ideas I'm talking about, not the implementations.

 

[Surf Solar]

No, it was awful in Fallout. Made the combat easier than it already was, there were so many stimpaks in Fallout 2 that I it could be used as currency.

True, I've been thinking of this before but came to no solution. Maybe add similar effects like superstims, so stim overdose would downright kill you? Or not more than 3 stims each turn etc...

Good thread anyway!

I liked JA2s approach. You COULD instantly heal your soldiers, but these items were rare and had backdrops. Everything else had to be healed through first aid or severe wounds with time consuming doctor...

 

[Daemongar]

Well, I think the problem is that most RPG's dont have a complete "system" in place. Healing instantly/resurrection doesn't fit too well in any world, so they go a cheap route of just placing healing items there as if they were part of every environment.

Most rpgs just plain have healing potions falling from the sky, and it is the rare game where enemies use them rather than die. Say what you want about stimpacks in Fallout, at least they had enemies using them once in a while.

 

[Excidium]

No, it was awful in Fallout. Made the combat easier than it already was, there were so many stimpaks in Fallout 2 that I it could be used as currency.

True, I've been thinking of this before but came to no solution. Maybe add similar effects like superstims, so stim overdose would downright kill you? Or not more than 3 stims each turn etc...

I think the stim overdose is a pretty good idea, maybe something more severe like reducing maximum health temporarily or other penalties that increase with repeated use.

 

[someone else]

As much as I like Risen it's pretty easy to chug potions in combat by simply backstepping/retreating for a few seconds.

Risen 'fixed' the potion drinking problem in the first 3 Gothics where you cannot move and drink. Potions are infinite but I don't think money is.

 

[RK47]

Someone teach me alchemy in Daggerfall?

That game is nearly unbeatable without some kind of 'magic' usage. Even running around in one dungeon without free action is instant death once you met a spider who paralyzes you.

I still remember getting raped by zombies while I was in a rogue, restricted to leather. Fuck that shit. There's no sense of dodging or reflexes. You simply get in, slash, back off, repeat. And hope you didn't get two shotted. That was only the second quest I undertook to dispatch a wereboar in a dungeon.

All that shit net me 153 gold pieces. Wheeeeee....

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I hate that crap. I modded my copy of Fallout to make stimpaks have very limited effects (5-10HP) and be more expensive.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

the realities of no-bullshit hard mode healing in a low magic/scientific knowledge game

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... sy-setting

Several things to keep in mind about real medieval medicine:

1. No Sterilization - infection was rampant
2. very few specialists - mostly wisewomen and barbers. A genuine surgeon was bloody rare. A Medical Doctor was in fact extremely rare, and in many places, a criminal!
3. Very little of actual systemic issues known.
4. Lots of herbal remedies merely mask symptoms; a few actually work on problems.
5. No scientific research of note.
6. Few effective anesthetics.
7. Most didn't believe animal studies relevant - veterinary care was often in fact better!

The issue of specialists is important: Romans had surgeons and also healers, and some priests who did healings. Surgeons/Chiurgeons/Chirurgeons basically cauterized wounds and set limbs. Healers treated systemic disorders with herbal and chemical remedies, but generally avoided blood. Priests used potions and prayers, as did some wisewomen.

Post-Roman, the research was all but killed off; prohibitions on human vivisection, dissection, and autopsy, coupled with the loss of many medical texts, resulted in what little knowledge had been accrued being generally lost. Without vivisection and/or dissection and/or autopsy, little was known about the internals, and less about their operation. Further, given the choice between the later, better, Roman book by a noted hardline Christian Era pagan, and the pre-Christian era scholar who was known to have it wrong by the later Romans, typically, the earlier source was the one used.

Without anesthesia, and without sterilization, the risks of infection were immense. Honey-based salves and poultices were used, and known to work, but why wasn't. (Honey is naturally antibiotic.) Leaching of swellings would reduce them, but provided another infection route. Amputation risked contamination with incompatible blood types, as well as infection.

Cauterization was the common mode of cleaning wounds. It was rather effective, but extremely painful and often did damage all its own in addition.

Surgery was oft prohibited inside towns, due to noise and stench.

"I tried this game called Fallout 3 and it's so...gritty and realistic!"

(sleeps on bed and heals all broken bones)

 

[Destroid]

In Eve online, the 'healing' modules draw from the same energy pool you use to fire (most) weapons, operate your ECM modules, afterburners, or pretty much anything else. It also (generally) costs a lot more energy to repair damage than to deal it.

 

[Daemongar]

the realities of no-bullshit hard mode healing in a low magic/scientific knowledge game

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... sy-setting

The more I read about healing in games, the more I realize just how damn good Wasteland was...

 

[7hm]

I'm not talking about characters camping somewhere, eating food, sleeping, and then fully recovering. That's good design because it forces the player to plan out ahead of time when they wish to rest, if it's safe, etc. My gripe is with "instant healing" ala potions/stimpacks/cookie of healing +1. They break the game and cause game imbalance. Battles that could require tactical placement or choices of your party are mitigated entirely by healing items. Make a mistake? Heal up! Took a big hit? INSTANT HEAL STIMPACK OH YES MY COCK IS HARD! Now if these items were of limited supply that would be fine, but almost every single rpg I have played has such healing items in very large quantities. There is generally no limit to how many you can carry and many times they heal MANY TIMES more than what an enemy could damage you for. Newer RPGS are just retarded and forgo that shit and/or supplement it with auto-healing after combat, which is fucking retarded. If it's so easy to stock up on these fucking potions, then why the fuck do you need me to save the world? Just give some retard a bunch of potions, enough weapons to slug it out, decent armor and let them do it. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY ITEM MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE? Some games do limit healing items early on but they typically load you with so many healing items that you could heal an fucking army.

It's fucking stupid and I wish game developers would get creative with creating strategy other than "fight, heal, ad nausem, become stupid".

Roguelikes mostly do healing properly. Primarily because of the significant penalty when you fail to use them.

Without permadeath, healing is pointless. You might buff up for a big fight, but in games like BG or Arcanum, I always end up with a shitload of healing pots because who cares. If I die I can just reload.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Yes.

But there are ways of making potions less overpowered:

-Intoxication to prevent potion chugging (Twitcher)

-Drinking potions mid-combat leaving you open to get raped (Risen)

Also, have them regen instead of insta healing, so you can't rely on them during combat. New Vegas hardcore mode tries to do this, but it's still too fast.

No, it was awful in Fallout. Made the combat easier than it already was, there were so many stimpaks in Fallout 2 that I it could be used as currency.

True...I usually forgot about First Aid and Doctor because of this. Why learn to wrap bandages when you can just jam a syringe you found on a bathroom's floor into your arm?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Yes.

But there are ways of making potions less overpowered:

-Intoxication to prevent potion chugging (Twitcher)

-Drinking potions mid-combat leaving you open to get raped (Risen)

Also, have them regen instead of insta healing, so you can't rely on them during combat. New Vegas hardcore mode tries to do this, but it's still too fast.

No, it was awful in Fallout. Made the combat easier than it already was, there were so many stimpaks in Fallout 2 that I it could be used as currency.

True...I usually forgot about First Aid and Doctor because of this. Why learn to wrap bandages when you can just jam a syringe you found on a bathroom's floor into your arm?

It would be nice if properly using stimpaks would require the first aid/doctor skill.

 

[Destroid]

They do take up your AP though. Especially if you need to access inventory. You can't just slam em down like potions in Diablo.

 

[Excidium]

Opening the inventory costs only 4 AP and you can use as many stimpacks as you want...barely makes any difference.