Talk:Guide to RP healing

Excellent initiative. A few random notes on what I use/have stolen to add RP flavour to magical healing, or mixing it with the natural sort:


 * A lot of my characters claim magical healing is only as effective as the patient wants it to be. This is a handy RP tool that lets you negotiate situations where healer and patient have different ideas on how effective healing should be. It basically lets the patient decide on how well they want to be after treatment (preserving their RP) while still giving the healer an explanation for why their talents do or don't work as expected (preserving their RP).


 * Auburn is a crappy healer, so I've often said her Light-magic healing only works immediately after the injury was sustained. So, while in battle she can heal injuries instantly and miraculously, as if they never happened, if you bring her a wound you got two hours ago then at best she can make it hurt less and not kill you. She also won't waste Light on trivial stuff - cuts, bruises, sprains, basically anything that won't kill or at least incapacitate you - because Light is always a miracle, and miracles shouldn't be wasted on trivial crap.


 * My feral druid shamelessly copied Silnaen's healing: she claims bodies know what shape they should be, and talking to them will make them be like that again - but healing hurts, and healing fast hurts more, because all the broken bits have to die and rot away so new working bits can grow. When she heals serious stuff, it generally take minutes, involves a lot of screaming on the patient's part, and leaves them exhausted and hungry (because healing takes a lot of the body's energy). When she heals little stuff, it itches like mad until it's over.

Finally, I always feel that magical healing should exist to facilitate RP, not to make injury and sickness trivial. Just because it's magic doesn't mean it should be either fast, cheap or easy. In day-to-day, it means adding RP flavour (as above) to magical combat heals. In extreme cases, it means special plots. I had huge fun with the plot where Aubs, Silnaen and Anadurion gave Elizabetha a single new eye (its not like she needs two, and one's hard enough to make). It wasn't just the healing scene -- it also involved tracking down the right magic, then using it, then fixing the damage it did to the druid who cast it. For the curious, story version of it here:.