MortalSorcery/Healing

The Path of Healing

Healing in the world of Exalted is a slow, difficult process. Even during the First Age there was little magic that could directly put the human body back together any better than it was itself capable of, and so the sorcerers focussed on speeding the healing processes of the body. This is a philosophy that holds true in the Second Age, with healing magic bolstering the target’s body.

System

Fast Healing

Standard Test: Intelligence + Occult (1 Willpower): Successes indicate damage healed, starting with highest wound penalty (Inc, then –4, then –2, etc…). Only one test is allowed – further damage must be suffered by the subject before another attempt at magical healing (other than through Exalted sorcery and/or Charms), and should the sorcerer be interrupted while working his magic any healing already accomplished remains, but extra successes are lost. On a botch an extra unsoakable level of Lethal damage is inflicted upon the target and the sorcerer himself suffers dice of unsoakable Lethal damage equal to the number of health levels of damage that the target had suffered (including the extra health level inflicted by the botch).

Example:Hekara was sorely wounded in a fight with a trio of bandits, having taken one –2 health level, two –1 levels and a –0 level of lethal damage. His friend Greyflower is a sorceress of some note and she tries to use her magic to heal some of his wounds. Her player rolls Greyflower’s Intelligence + Occult for a total of eight dice and also spends an extra point of Willpower for an automatic success. She gets a total of five successes, and over the course of the next 90 minutes Hekara heals the –2 health level and one of the –1 health levels of damage that he has suffered.

|| Wound Level || Successes || Time per Lethal || Time per Bashing || || -0 || 1 || 10 minutes || 5 minutes || || -1 || 2 || 30 minutes || 10 minutes || || -2 || 3 || 1 hour || 30 minutes || || -4 || 4 || 2 hours || 1 hour || || Incap || 5 || 4 hours || 2 hours ||

Slow Healing

Extended Test: Intelligence + Occult: Successes indicate damage healed, starting with the highest wound penalty. Each roll covers a period of eight hours during which the sorcerer cannot perform any other actions – any interruption ends the magic instantly. Before the third and successive tests the sorcerer must make a reflexive Stamina + Endurance test to continue, the difficulty for which begins at 1 and increases by one with each further test. Should the sorcerer fail this test then he collapses into a deep sleep, from which he will not wake for a period of at least half the time spent healing the subject, and is unable to try again without at least a full day’s rest. If any test results in no successes then the healing spell is aborted at that point, and the sorcerer cannot try to heal his subject again for a full day. If a botch is rolled, then the spell is not only aborted, but all damage that had thus far been healed is re-inflicted and the sorcerer himself suffers a number of dice of Lethal damage equal to the target’s wound penalty at the time the spell was initiated.

Example:Wounded in another fight some weeks later, Hekara staggers into Greyflower’s house before collapsing unconscious at her feet. Seeing that his wounds are far too serious to heal quickly (he is Incapacitated) she resolves to begin a long healing ritual. After eight hours of continuous chanting Greyflower’s player makes an Intelligence + Occult test, but only gets four successes, not even to even remove Hekara’s Incapacitated status. Eight hours later another test takes place and she attains another five successes, removing his incapacitated status and leaving him on a –4 status. This continues for another full day before Greyflower fails her Stamina + Endurance at difficulty 3, leaving Hekara with his damage track filled up to his first –2 health level.

If the target has suffered even one health level of Aggravated damage then mortal sorcery cannot help with the healing process until that level has been removed.

Questions

There's a bit of an oddity with a -0 Lethal healing more quickly than a -0 Bashing. Any reason that Bashing couldn't just heal the same as lethal, but treated a level less severe on the chart? DS

Umm, I'm not sure what you mean. Bashing damage heals at 5 minutes/box, regardless of the penalty. A -0 Lethal level heals in 10 minutes using Fast Healing. - Moxiane

It's a combination of 'Bashing can be harder to heal than Lethal' which strikes me as odd- Bashing consuming 2 successes every time flat, while Lethal consumes 1 for -0 and 2 for -1 -and a seemingly deep underplay of how bad extreme levels of bashing damage are. Someone at Incapacitated from Bashing has been beaten into unconciousness; it seems too casual, to me, to play it off as so much easier than Lethal. DS

Ah - getcha. :) Yeah - I can see your point, from Incap in Bashing to perfectly fine in 35 minutes does seem a little fast. I'll have to think on this some more. Possibly expand the table but give it a double scale for Bashing or Lethal damage, or use two different time-scales. - Moxiane

Well, my inital impulse was just to treat Bashing as one degree less serious than Lethal, with -0 Bashing healing in 5 minutes for 1 success. Helps keep Bashing with some degree of seriousness, but not nearly as severe as Lethal. You might also consider letting someone spend successes above and beyond what are needed to heal a level of damage to heal it faster- so that I can spend 5 successes to heal a -4 HL in an hour instead of two.

Additionally, the 'no re-Healing until the subject takes damage again' would lead to the curious phenomena of stabbing the subject after every bout of Healing, inflicting one level of Lethal (or better, beating them with a stick for a level of Bashing), which is certainly not how I would percieve mortal healing as working. Frankly, it'd probally be best just to fiat a 'Healing attempts only once a day, regardless of anything else' as a general rule. DS

Added a separate column for bashing damage, which actually seems to make a lot more sense now. And I told my players that if they tried that stab & heal trick I would slap them upside the head with my Judge Dredd LE book (bound in stainless steel, weight about 7lb).