Re: Healers in Swenstown

From: Mike Holmes <mike_c_holmes_at_...>
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 08:18:17 -0500

>From: Jane Williams <janewilliams20_at_...>
>
>Personally I dislike the "all or nothing" healing,

Yeah. Does major healing actually represent how healing worked in Glorantha prior to RQ? Or is major healing just a replacement for RQ's instant healing abilities?

I find complete instant healing only occurs in other (non-Glorantha) fantasy source literature when somebody does something like a heroquest. Never once happens in Middle Earth, for instance.

>Of course, the length of time it takes to "cast" the
>spell is unspecified. Maybe it's a week-long ritual?

Well, technically all magic is more or less capable of instant use according to the rules. But, yeah, I can see healers taking their time and using long rituals as the standard in order to bring about more consistent results in their healing. I mean, if it's potentially life or death, or even has long-term health implications, I think they'd be as careful as possible, generally. So everyone may expect them to take a week or something.

Now, if they don't have a week, then they can still use the ability. But they might feel "rushed" to only have the non-ritual (or a shorter ritual) amount of time that they normally expect. This could add a lot of drama. "Do we have time for the standard full-length ritual, or should we rush it due to other pressing issues?"

That actually happened in a large-scale wargame I was doing. One general ordered his people's shamans to start trying to summon this massive river spirit to flood the river to prevent the advance of the enemy. I asked how long he wanted them to take with the ritual, pointing out that the longer they took, the greater the chances of success. So he had to try to figure out how long he had before the enemy started advancing again.

I'm also allowing an order he sent to be allowed: if the enemy is sighted, the shamans are supposed to bring the ritual to a rapid close. I said if they do that, then they'll lose most of the bonus for the ritual as rituals are not designed to be variable length.

Mike

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