I’d like help balancing a physical adept ability. It came up when a player wanted to base a character off of a character with extreme rapid healing.


Regeneration
3 or 6 points

A character with regeneration rapidly heals any Physical damage.

At the first level the character makes a Magic + Body test at the end of a Combat Turn. Every two hits heals one point of Physical or Stun damage. At the second rank its one hit for one box.

If the character has taken enough damage to enter Overflow, they are not considered dead until they have had a chance to make a Regeneration Test. If after the test the overflow is still greater than the body test then they are dead. Certain types of damage cannot be regenerated from. Damage to the brain or spinal cord cannot be healed likewise; magical damage from weapon foci, combat spells, critter/adept powers, or other magic may not be healed.

I personally like it at .5 per rating, regeneration works like the critter/spirit power, but instead of Magic+Body, roll Rating+Body. Pretty simple and granular.


Barring that, go with what you have, but just make it 3 pp for regenerate hits per combat turn. No need for two ratings.


It's definitely not worth the full 6 points, because really if you think about it, most fights are only going to last 1, maybe 2 combat turns anyway. Regeneration will net you around 2-4 boxes of health on average, which is a nice pick me up in combat, but it's not going to make you immortal, especially with all the dumb restrictions it comes with (no self-healing through magic-based abilities? Ugh). Mostly it just helps with out of combat healing (especially when paired with empathic healing... though now that I think of it empathic healing might trigger the magic based damage and not be healable, thus stopping that before it starts), and between First Aid and the Heal spell, out of combat healing was never really a big issue anyway.

was someone trying to make a wolverine? :3

You could base it off the Wolf Shapeshifter.

They have regeneration, alternate form, and improved senses for 55 BP, with vulnerability and allergy silver to balance it out.

We can assume that the majority of the 55 BP is probably going to regeneration, so value it at about 40 BP. Therefore, to balance for an adept, a similar level of investment should be required.

Powerpoints are about 10 BP each, so 3 power points seems a little low, but you have weakened it a little so that's okay. 6 power points for the full power seems too high. Maybe make it 3 power points for the 1st rank and 4 power points (one additional) for the 2nd rank.

I would not recommend offering a very cheap 0.5 or even 1 power point version, unless you want a halo style of play where the character is ducking behind cover so that their 'shields' (health) can recover.

If going for this, it should be 2/4 BP. Half the cost for half the benefit.

Well, to be fair, for a Free Spirit, it costs 5 if I remember correctly...

Deadpool actually.

Or 2.5/5 points, which honestly was my first instinct.

Honestly 4 points is already on the border of too expensive. 5 points is absurd. You would have an adept for whom this is literally his only capability.

A Mage can do this, but better, without killing his veratility in the worst possible way, with 2 initiations.

This I like.

The idea is just too powerful, IMO. If I were the GM, I wouldn't even allow it.

I would guess they would not go up vs anything with that power either then? but.. how is it overpowered? I mean the mage can just cast heal and whamo. :/

But for those who wish to allow it, I would make the player pay dearly for such an ability, considering how powerful it is.

Cost: 1 PP / Rating
Effect: Player rolls Rating Dice. Each hit heals one box of damage.

Of course they would, but they will also probably end up going up against creatures that can drain essence, cause infection, and weather control. Should the adept be allowed to have these powers too?



That's fine because the mage has dedicated an immense amount of resources to it: Magic Points, Spellcasting Skill, Purchasing of the Spell; and then there are the limits on the spell: Reduced effect based on target's Essence, Limited dice based on mages damage, Limited hits based on Force of Spell, Can only be cast once on any one set of injuries, requires a period of time longer than one Complex Action, and of course there is still the drain on top of it.

As opposed to a physad ability that will work every combat turn, will not cause drain, is only limited by the number of dice, and will not require the immense dedication of resources. The only limitation is that it would only be usable on the physad himself.

Also, creating a regeneration power pretty much makes the rapid healing power defunct.

I suppose you also ban possession spirit traditions/invocation? And really, the Heal Spell/First Aid as well, those cover the major use of Regeneration.

Regeneration is good giving characters a chance to survive cases where they might otherwise die. But it works too slow (combat turns rather than passes) to be particularly meaningful in combat, usually providing a couple of extra boxes of health, in a game where characters regularly go from full to unconscious/dying in a single pass. Its main use is free out of combat healing, which honestly just isn't that big a deal in SR4. It's cool flavor but "This is too powerful for player characters" or "This needs to be 5-6 PP it's so strong" are knee-jerk reactions that I can't agree with.

Assuming those are from sourcebooks ..... never used em'.

street magic and digital Grimiore both have possession traditions

also this power is limited, no head or spinal trauma can be mended nor that of magic damage, there are your restrictions. also once per combat turn, no pass. its almost like having supernatural toughness at that point. instead of being dead in 2 shots, you can scrape by and manage to live. also, if other metahumans can use and gain those powers then so too, should the PCs. powers spirits and other creatures have would be a stretch to get and some just pure impossible. (unless you are a magician)

I think that 3 Power Points is fair for the 1:1 style.

I would also add the effect that Infected suffer… All cyber and bio-ware are violently expunged from the character unless it is delta-grade and the character can no longer accept non-delta upgrades.

But that’s just me.

yeah, with losing access to cyber and bioware (and i would even disallow deltaware unless you're allowing it for critters, which is an optional rule), 3/6 would seem reasonable.

at least, for those of us who don't apparently play in games where first aid can reliably take you from nearly dead to completely healed with not so much as a scratch, anyways. in the event that your group does in fact somehow regularly benefit from access to a dozen hits on first aid tests in very non-ideal conditions (as is apparently being claimed), thus negating the value of anything spent on virtually unlimited out-of-combat healing, then you can go ahead and reduce the cost. because frankly, if people are throwing ~36 dice on first aid in your group, then regeneration has definitely lost some value in your game.

lol you're insane



It's not just first aid, it's the combination of the first aid and heal spell, which may both be used on the target. And between those getting 8-10 boxes isn't totally unreasonable. Which means anyone who wasn't on the ground bleeding out is pretty much fully healed given a minute or so out of combat. And even SR4's out of combat healing system besides that isn't too onerous.

How about this. If you have rapid healing you can roll that alone to determine how many boxes you heal. The power would only be three points.

Except that it's implied that magical healing and first aid are mutually exclusive. Since you cannot use first aid on any set of wounds that has been magically treated. True it's not expressly forbidden to magically heal someone that's already been treated with first aid, but we've always read it as either or.

Treating it as either or is not what the rules actually are though. Your house rules have no real bearing on how the game works, unless you're aware of the OP following the same house rules you do, which would affect the balance of things.

I mean I could go on about how I house rule things so that first aid doesn't heal damage at all, and just removes the damage penalties, and actual healing takes much longer. But that's nothing but unintelligible off-topic bs that doesn't help the OP who likely doesn't use those houserules.

Pg. 252 SR4A- First aid may be used to treat stun and physical damage. Whether it can treat both is unclear since you can read it as allowing you to treat either stun or physical damage or it allows you to treat both simultaneously. The second case seems more likely, that you can treat both simultaneously (in which case it is not clear whether you remove the physical or stun boxes first, but the precedence for natural healing is that stun is removed first). (not a houserule)
"Characters with the First Aid skill may immediately help reduce the
trauma of wounds (Stun or Physical)."

Pg. 252 SR4A- First Aid may not be applied if the magical healing has already been used and it can only be used once. (not a houserule)
"First Aid may only be applied to a character once
(for that set of wounds), and it may not be applied if the character has
been magically healed."

Pg. 208 SR4A- Heal can only be used once for any set of injuries. (not a house rule)
"A character can only be magically healed once for any single set
of injuries."

Pg. 207 SR4A- Heal cannot fix stun. (not a house rule, just something that is helpful to remember)
"No techniques currently known to magic can erase Stun
damage or cure psychological conditions."

At this point it is clear, from the rules, that you cannot heal then first aid. It is unclear if you can go in the opposite order first aid then heal, since it has not been expressly forbidden. If you play by the "anything that's not expressly forbidden is allowed" line of reasoning than you can and that's fine, but it is also open to the interpretation that if you're not allowed to do it one way they did not intend for you to do it the other way either and the lack of an explicit prohibition is an oversight.

The assumption throughout the text seems to be that it is an either or. In augmentation for example they talk about recieving "medical or magical healing" for severe injuries instead of "medical then magical" healing.

I hope that clears up any misconceptions and avoids the inevitable RAW/RAI debate.

p. 242 SR4A "Characters with the First Aid skill may immediately
help reduce the trauma of wounds (Stun or Physical)."

Does the equivalent
Characters with the First Aid skill may immediately
help reduce the trauma of wounds Stun.
OR
Characters with the First Aid skill may immediately
help reduce the trauma of wounds Physical.
also imply you can treat both simultaneously?


In order for First Aid Then Heal to even exist and be allowed, Heal must be allowed after First Aid.