Healing Effects & Durations

So in discussing the effects of food we ventured into how it might impact healing. There are several different methods we can use that are either confirmed or can be safely assumed. I thought it would be interesting to discuss and compare the options.

Natural healing. Potions. Spells. Food. Non-magical healing skills. I think that list pretty mush sums up the options. So I came up with the following as a starting point strictly as a starting point for comparison.

Let's say you need to heal 100 HP.. normal healing rate is 1 per minute

You're well fed with good food and drink.. healing rate improves by 50%.. Healing rate is now 1.5 per minute for a full day.
You drink a healing potion you it's now 1 per second (plus the 1.5 per minute if you've got it) for 1-3 hours
Someone casts a healing spell on you it's now 10 per second for 30 seconds..

Non-healing skills is getting pretty off topic but for comparison..
A skilled healer applies medicines and bandages.. healing rate is say.. 1 per 5-6 seconds until fully healed unless you take more damage. I think we need a new thread for this if we're going to continue on the subject.

I think it's good to make a comparison to get an idea how effective we want food to be in this regard. Perhaps food bonuses for healing purposes should be a multiplier rather than an additive?

I should also mention Redfish's idea of limited recovery from lack of rest. That is if you don't rest you can only recover your health up to a point. So let me throw resting in as part of natural healing.

Let's say actively resting improves your healing rate by a multiplier.. say x2. Obviously if this comparison held through into the game the numbers would have to be tweaked for balance.

 

What about something like in The Wheel of Time, where healing spells drain your energy and make you super hungry and tired? In many games it is assumed that 'Heal' takes care of these issues too, but what if it actually worsened them. This could help to balance the power of instant heals.

 

Interesting.. there is actually some logic to that depending upon how healing magic is supposed to work. If the spell forces the body to heal itself say.. the implication is that the body is providing all of the resources in order to heal and that could be exhausting.. on the other hand you could say that the spell provides the necessary energy.. but not necessarily the nutrients or any combination thereof.

The only problem I see with that is what happens when someone heals you in combat? You've got your health back but if you're tired you can't move you're more or less screwed. So balancing that effect for use in combat could be very tricky. You could possibly make it function of skill and mana (or whatever we'll be calling magical power). More powerful healing that supplies that energy to the body requires a higher skill level and requires a certain extra mana to provide the energy the body needs.

I suspect that most PvPers would prefer to not have to worry about it though. "I might be half dead but don't heal me because I still have a fighting chance".

 

We could even have a hidden "fuel tank" stat, which you replenished by eating, and drained over time, but also put very large drains on by receiving heals, as well as a few other effects (attack spell, "exhaust"?), which would make players really FEEL the need for food, instead of making it a routine event upon logging in or camping.

 

I'd be inclined to say that being hungry in combat is not such a massive disadvantage. If the debuffs for fatigue and starvation require days to accrue, and don't trigger automatically, then the healing problem wouldn't really matter, and adrenaline and desperation could explain why your combat effectiveness doesn't drop, it works for animals in the wild.

That would allow all the healing in combat you want/need, as long as the victor is willing to sit down and chow after big fights. For tank type players in group play this would likely be after EVERY SINGLE fight, but that might still not be a big deal.

 

I'd rather not see big heals in combat. To me it would be:

Some accelerated regen rate (e.g. x hp / second) and this can be achieved through many different ways which don't stack
Out of combat healing, also achievable many different ways

 

I honestly agree. Having played on many occasions as that tank getting the big heals, when I would otherwise drop dead in seconds, but am somehow able to fight on unimpaired because two or three people are blasting me with heals, it really messes up the experience. No realism, or immersion, or plausibility, and I as the player start to feel like less of a hero and more of a conduit for the healers to outdo the monsters.

I prefer the model that @Bowen Bloodgood suggested, that everything is heal over time, no big splashes. It makes the value of mitigation so much higher. Suddenly, it's not enough that I'm threatening and big, there ARE NO HEALS that can keep me up without armor, dodge, parry, block, shields, absorbs, rolling, and whatever other mitigations I can procure. So someone who is taking a beating WILL die, whereas someone who's build and gear are set up to stop and prevent damage will be able to live long enough for the healing to really kick in.

This also helps with something I've seen happen in PvP. Magical heals cast by a player are often ranged. Frequently, they don't have super flashy animations. Even when the animation IS distinctive, you can do things like hiding in bushes, or being in a graphically busy spot, to prevent it being seen. From all these factors, comes a horrid pairing: an aggressive, high damage character, and his partner, the covert healer. I have seen situations where the aggressive player was able to engage and kill six or seven players all at once, because they didn't realize he was getting healed. Personally, I think that's ridiculous. I'm all for healing being valued in PvP, but it shouldn't allow someone to go 100% offense, and still be unkillable. If, however, all heals were heal over time, and not really that big, then a 100% damage character just could NOT stand up to three other players beating on him, even with healing.