Defending Regeneration Power

Some people says that regenerate is a too powerful adept power to have in the game but after playing one i’ve come up with the following interesting notes:

First, the power:
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Regeneration
Cost: 0.5 per level
An adept with Regeneration rapidly heals any Physical damage. An adept with Regeneration rapidly heals any Physical and Stun damage. At the end of a Combat Turn, make a [Power + Magic] Test. Each hit regenerates 1 point of Physical or Stun damage. Maximum net hits are equal to lvl of ability. Damage modifiers does not apply.

If an adept has already taken enough damage to enter into Physical damage overflow, the adept is not considered dead until he has had a chance to make a Regeneration Test. After an adept has made a Regeneration Test, if the damage overflow is still greater than the adept's Body attribute, then the adept is dead.

Certain types of damage cannot be regenerated from this power. Damage to the brain or spinal cord (for example, from a called shot to the head) cannot be healed this way. Likewise, magical damage from weapon foci, combat spells, critter/adept powers, or other magic may not be healed through Regeneration. If the adept has an Allergy, the adept cannot regenerate damage until the allergen’s presence is removed.
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So, a maxed out adept can roll 12D6 and gain a max of 6 boxes a combat turn. Not that impressive when someone with 3-4 IP have you targetted with everything they got - especially if you add in some things that can hinder you. It also costs half your adept power points to do just that…

1.You heal either physical or stun in a turn – we rule that physical damage always heal first as the body prioritize its survivability.

2.The following things cannot be healed
*Spell Damage (Stunbolt...lots of those around)
*Damaging Adept powers (Killing hands etc)
*Critter powers (Toxic spirit engulf damage for example)
*Spinal or head damage (self explained)
*Weapon Foci
*Stuff that is covered in magical aura (FAB3 bacteria or awakened matter that the weapon ahve been coated with.)

3. Some other fun effects to think about
*Toxins and sedatives burn out faster – painkillers might be a bit ineffective
*Docwagon – after 15 false alarm of you being dead your contract cost doubles
*Plastic surgery just got a wee bit more difficult
*Ghouls would just LOVE unlimited food supply – cut something off and it might be back after 3 seconds…
*Medical corporations might also LOVE a test subject that doesn’t die
*Torture can take AGES now
*Oooh, Blood mages can sacrifice you more than once as long as they cut out your hearth with a regular knife
*NOT being able to die is not always a good thing

I feel you are lacking the most crucial one, Drain. Spirits do not suffer Drain, Adepts can and its definately magic damage and thus under the category that should not be possible to regenerate.

Else you can make the Mystic Adept energizer bunny of doom.

The trouble with this power being available for only 0,5 PP is that every single adept will take minimum 1 rank in it. Never mind that you are capped at 1 box pr. combat round, it'll drastically shorten down-time and make for a much more fast-paced adventure.

Perhaps move it to be a Inititation earned Metamagic, where the limit on boxes healed is equal to Initiation Grade. Perhaps even make it an advanced form, requiring you to first have something else.

*Looks up in the books* On page 58 of Street Magic, you have Somatic Control, that "extends the adept’s conscious control over her own
body, allowing her to overcome natural physical limitations and to magically redistribute her body’s resources and energy".

So Regeneration Metamagic could be placed as an Advanced Metamagic, requiring Somatic Control as a prerequisite.

In addition it should/could require a tutor or research into magical knowledge of some kind. (quest).

There, now its placed outside reach of most adepts, but are still attainable.

Savvy?

Drain is a nobrainer as no drain can be healed by magic.

As a player with a character that has the power it IS actually overrated because as soon as a powerbolt hits me for 6 boxes of damage im gonna have to visit a hospital or when an adept cuts of an arm with a weapon foci.

I truly don’t believe everyone would get something just because it is good. Sure, the munchkins will ALWAYS get it but they are and will be the exceptions.

Regeneration is handy but there are so many ways to get shafted.

Limiting it the way you suggest is going too far.

As a sidenote the usual regeneration power uses Magic X2 with no limit on hits so this version is rather tame.

There is already a rapid healing adept power. Adds to body for healing checks. On the basis of this power regenerate is too pokey. Of course, there are folks who think adepts are underpowered considering the costs of powers and the powers available.

Yeah... no. Your argument doesn't show that the regeneration power is balanced, it just shows that it's not too terribly powerful. I think you're ignoring a crucial fact though: it's automatic, guaranteed rapid healing of all damage. Combine that with empathic healing, and no mage could come close to an Adept's healing ability. Combine it with Mystic Armor and anti-trauma ware, and you have an Adept that takes very little damage and heals what he does take within a few turns, i.e. virtual invincibility. I think that you can make the argument that, in a vacuum, regeneration is not broken. But your argument falls flat on its face when you consider the various combinations that devious players will use to exploit this ability.

Also, compare this power to every other one. Even if it's not broken, it's underpointed. 0.5 power points, with other powers, gets you ONE die for a combat skill, ONE die on defense and surprise tests, ONE HALF of a persistent one point physical attribute increase... Regeneration might be balanced at 2 power points per level, because that would make it so expensive that nobody would take it. Or you could put it at 1 power point per level, and limit it to rating 3.

I'm not opposed to Adepts having some sort of healing power, but it shouldn't be copy/pasted from spirit powers. And keep in mind that even regular spirits, which can be incredibly powerful, do not have it--they must be great form PLANT spirits. Not exactly common. And you propose to make it available to all physads... I somehow don't think your campaign would see any mundane combat characters, they would all be Adepts with at least a few points of regeneration, even if they used the rest of their magic on cyber to become effectively immortal sammies.

This whole thing, as an attempt to make Adepts more powerful, is yet another example of the limited archetype-based thinking in SR4. People think "samurai" or "adepts" are character classes, and propose house rules that would make a particular character class, if it existed as such, better. But they forget that there are no classes, and something that one archetype can make balanced use of will often be twice as broken when another archetype yoinks it to create the hybrid from hell. In short, this is a very bad idea.

One fix.

Sudden stop from a very long fall.

Regenerate from a Grease Stain on the Permacrete!

If you want your Adept to heal faster, take Rapid Healing. There's already a canon way for Adepts to (comparatively) quickly heal, proposing a new one -- and doing so as defensively as you have -- is not a good idea.


Oh no, poor you!

Like everyone else?

On the other hand, whenever you get shot and cut and beaten and stabbed and whatever by non-magical means, you do not need to visit the hospital. Just check how many pieces of bioware this power surpasses even at a level of 1, then compare the BP costs.

I agree, not a good idea, at all...
Someone with body 8 could be 1P away from death and be back at full health in one minute for only .5 PP?
Sure, the hits are capped at the rating, but with magic 5 and rating 1, you'd have to try hard to not roll 1 success...
It's not the "hey look, I can still die" that people are most worried about, it's the fact that it replaces other actually balanced powers and skills...

EDIT: Man... Back of the line again...

Yeah, but as stated, if Ghouls found out about this, well, someone just became a Happy Meal!

I can see your line of reasoning, the power is not a problem but how quickly it works.

A heavily built troll tank with regen can be a gambreaking problem while a non-combat medic is more of a non-threateaning problem for the GM as they are less likely to become gamebreaking.

What would people think about this version then?

You can also increase the time depending on damage.

Net Hits equal hours for healing one set of wounds. After that set of wounds are done they can roll again. Basically you get one box an hour.

Compare it to Rapid Healing (SR4, p. 189).

So, lets see if i understand this correctly.

Rapid healing adds Rating of power X2 to your body attribute for healing tests.

Healing tests are Body X2 extended test. A Body 2 character gets a body rating of 14 at rating 6 of the power and rolls 28D6 for the healing test that day since you double the body attribute.

In that case I would add the regenerate power as a complement to the rapid healing and use rapid healing as a prerequisite and you cannot have a higher rating to regenerate than your rapid healing ability.

Regenerate
Cost: 0,5/Lvl
The characters ability to heal is even more extreme and can regenerate lost limbs and organs at an astounding rate.

The character gains an additional +2 to body per rating and halves the needed resting time for healing tests. They don’t get to make an additional test per day but they can function normally.

Chopped off limbs regrow within 24 hours.

End Result:

For 4,5 points you can get +24 to body which confers into +48 dice for healing tests (If my interpretation of rapid healing is correct).

No. Rapid Healing adds 1 die per level to your body for healing tests. It does not help with resistance tests against injury, toxins or pathogens, just helps recovering from their efects.

DOH! Should teach me from reading through our houseruled powers - ours is slightly tweaked.

Still, how does it add to body?

Would it add to bodyX2 + Power or (Power+Body)X2

(Power+body)x2, from the wording, although I am not sure if that's correct, or if there was an errata or FAQ.

what about a Damage Controll metamagic, similar to the body/somatic controll. allows the adept to shift boxes of damage between phsyical and stun. shift a gunshot wound to stun for the duration of the fight, then shift it back so your mage can patch you up.

The problem here is that normally Stun damage cannot be healed via magic. If you allow Stun to be shifted to Physical, then it could technically then be healed with a spell.

if ghouls catch anyone, they're screwed, whether they have regeneration or not. honestly, ghouls wouldn't particularly care. feral ghouls won't have the intelligence to figure it out, intelligent ghouls will be smart enough to realise that it's easier to just buy scraps from a hospital.

likewise with the rest of the so-called 'disadvantages'.

medical corps don't want people with regeneration to experiment on, because it's really fragging helpful to know whether or not that super-awesome new drug you came up with would kill a normal person. a person with regeneration who doesn't die just means that you don't know for sure if it would have killed a normal person. that's not a benefit at all.

your docwagon premiums won't go up any more than anyone else's, because 10 seconds after the false alarm, your biomonitor will tell them that you aren't dead, and they'll stop the call. the vehicle may have already been out on the streets anyways, this just means they have to cancel a call before their teams really even do much to start responding to it. assuming you even bother *having* a docwagon contract, that is.

torture can already take ages. simsense means that no actual physical damage need be inflicted on the subject.

blood mages aren't going to drag around a highly trained combat monkey to use as a sacrifice anyways, no matter how reusable he is. you honestly think they care about renewable resources?

i will allow the plastic surgery point is a drawback. nothing a good disguise skill can't mostly negate (and i consider a good disguise skill to be a fairly good investment anyways), but it is at least *something*.

probably, if i was going to declare something as a drawback to the regeneration power, i would rule that you can't get any 'ware. that would probably be the most significant drawback, and it is definitely one that fits the power, imo.

I have a PC in my SR3 game who is also looking for a similar adept power.

What I'm throwing around at the moment is something like this (comparing to the SR2 shapeshifter power):

Cost: 3 points (I may consider increasing this to 4)

Every round, the adept may make a body test against a TN equal to the number of boxes of damage done + 2. If successful, he heals 1 box of physical damage. This does not heal any damage caused by magical sources, including weapon foci, magical creatures or drain from magical activities.

As an aside, I ONLY use the SR3 main book, no M&M and such. Probably makes a slight difference

If you apply the wound modifiers it would help to blance things out a lot. Makes sense that recovering from worse wounds is harder while a knick from a knife would heal almost instantly. Makes it worthwhile to invest in extra ranks, if you just dip for that 1 rank you'll end up rolling at best 7 dice to start, and can easily end up with 1 or less dice each time with 3-5 dice being pretty normal.

Also look down the road, if a character goes up to Magic 12 with 12 ranks in this power you're looking at 24 dice each round for healing with a max of 12 hits.

I think the power is too much for a Shadowrun game, and if incorporated should cost at least 1 pp per rank.

One way to handle it would be to have each rank reduce the interval by half for healing tests instead, maxing out at 3 or 6 ranks. 3 ranks would be healing stun every 15 minutes and healing physical every 6 hours. 6 ranks would be stun every 2 mins(aprox), and physical every 45 minutes. that ain't too shabby.

I designed a Regeneration spell for use in a game I play in. It is a very powerful spell, of which I am still looking for ways to tone it down without ruining it. It has the downsides of high drain, sustaining, and dispellable.

As an Adept power? No.

For one thing the power is very limited. In 1 combat round the fighting is pretty much over and you are either dead or dying. Why are people all about gimping the adept? They have to spend quite a lot to raise their ability to gain a single power point, which can give you.... um... some limited ability to do a few interesting things. A mage raising their magic allows them to do one more damage of effect on their spirits and spells w/o taking physical, and every mage can cast heal on themselves and others.

Why gimp the adept, especially on a power that is very limited in its scope? They can't cast spirits, they can't cast spells, and their powers are good... but not amazing. Why not gimp both mages, and adepts so that they can be on the same level with mundanes. I think the power is totally fine. Most people shoot for the head as it is the easiest way to kill someone, and that is why the power is basically useless.

ummm... no. the reason the original proposed power is a problem is that it makes it so that in between fights it only takes you maybe a minute to heal what would normally probably take a few days to heal. it is true that some adept powers are really expensive, but it is also true that many of the adept powers can do some really cool things. more to the point, a perceived lack of power of the adept archetype is not a valid reason to start handing out stuff that's broken. i mean, sure, i might think that mages overcasting stunball and taking minimal drain is probably a little powerful... but if i feel that's a problem, i don't solve it by giving sammies a piece of 'ware that lets them act 10 times before the mage goes once, i do something to limit overcasting.

finally, i don't know what gave you the idea that most people shoot for the head, but you are wrong. most people shoot for the center of mass (ie the torso in most cases) because a hit in the center of mass is much more likely to hit, and is often enough to stop the target anyways. shooting for the head is the kind of thing that people do when the target is completely unaware, and they have a lot of time to set up a good shot. and probably the target wouldn't be moving either. using BS like that as the basis for balance is ridiculous. it's about as logical as saying your players are allowed to have access to nuclear weapons because you're just about to have a great dragon drop a thor shot on them and they're all going to die and there's nothing they can do about it anyways. the fact that you apparently regularly have your players die suddenly and without any significant chance of doing anything to stop it from happening (which is what regularly getting shot in the head by snipers does) is not a valid basis for balance in my game.

I was more thinking that Shadowrunners aim for the head. Sorry for not being clearer. Anyways the power has a lot of things that make it not take effect. Sure if they only get in firefights taking damage then hell it is an awesome power. I feel that my point was blown way out of proportion, and I feel that the first poster makes a valid point. It's not a broken power in my opinion, because if you survive the gunfight and there is someone with first aid and someone with heal on your team you are probably going to be ok in a few combat rounds anyways. All it means is that if an adept faces normal types of fire/weapons, and does not get hit in the head or spine they can bounce back fairly fast. If you feel thats broken then fine. I feel there are more pressing powers and spells that need to be addressed then something that a gm can easily work their way around w/o having to resort to GM fiat or bull, or nuclear weapons.

Also at no point did I say make everything else stupid crazy powerful to make up for a pretty powerful adept power like you pointed out so please less with the over reaction would be nice.

Personally, I hate SR4 regeneration. I hate it because compared to the awesomeness that was SR3 regeneration (which gave a character a (Σ -1≤k≤∞ 6(1/10)^k)% chance to reconstitute himself from chunky salsa in three seconds) it sucks horribly. One of my preferred house rules is restoration of regeneration's former glory.

Still, even nerfed, it is broken as an adept power. Even double-nerfed, it is broken as an adept power. Regeneration was always only meant for the most dangerous of critters. It is always going to be broken for PCs, even horribly gimped furry PCs.

well, here's what you did say:

translation: it's ok if adepts get a ridiculously amazing power, because mages are powerful too.


allow me to rephrase then: a bullet in the head kills anyone. it doesn't matter if they have regeneration or not. furthermore, not even all shadowrunners (or even necessarily most) would aim for the head, especially not against other shadowrunners, because you are still a lot more likely to miss, and missing means that you do 0 damage no matter what your target was. furthermore, suggesting that something is balanced because opposing shadowrunners can counter it with a tactic you claim as being common (which claim can only be anecdotal evidence by the way, and means absolutely nothing in any other person's gaming group) is still BS, because shadowrunners are not the standard opposition anyways.

my point, however, is that something is not 'ok' just because you're going to always use a tactic that renders the power useless anyways. because that just means there's no point in even adding the power into the game to begin with, and you'd have to be an absolute moron to take it, because that power will never be useful. you may as well blow the BPs on a background knowledge in underwater basketweaving, because it's about as likely to be useful in that case.

seriously, i don't know why people think that horribly broken overpowered 50% of the time + completely useless waste of resources 50% of the time = 100% balanced. that's not how it works. what you get instead is a power that you never want in the game, because the only time it's not making things a cakewalk is when it's doing nothing at all and wasting resources. neither of those 2 things are desirable individually, why the hell would i want them in my game combined into one power that is either going to suck beyond comprehension by being useless, or suck beyond comprehension by making the game not fun for anyone else who doesn't have that power?

All I'm saying is where the hell do you draw the line? If mages rock and adepts get some powers that rock (well at least adepts have the potential to get extremely powerful over time as well) and mundanes get...... um... the cyber monkey? I mean why be anything else? All I was saying is if you have beef with the fact that adepts get a broken power then there must be a lot of things that need toning down in your game.

Anyways I'm done talking about this now. You have your stance, and I have mine. Lets leave it at that.

What are you even talking about?

How about instead of deciding "Adepts are underpowered, let's throw them this admittedly overpowered bone so they feel better," you just look at the power in question and comment directly on it?

The big thing with adept powers is you can make them less powerful by increasing the price. If it costs 4 power points, that means he'll only have 2 power points for anything else. He can swing a sword and regenerate, perhaps. Or walk silently and regenerate. He won't have a significant boost in speed or other mystical skills. You can't really do this with spells, since at most a spell costs 6 karma (to learn it at force 6).

Seriously though, would anyone complain if there was a character in their game who was almost completely mundane, uncybered and non-spectacular, except that he just wouldn't die? It's a catchy character concept, cute, but hardly game breaking. He'll make a terrific bullet shield, but not very much else (actually, only a mediocre bullet shield, since he's so slow anyone can step around him).

As a player of such a character i can say that sure she can heal herself very quickly but anyone shooting her more than once might very well kill her. Unless she manages to heal overdamage immediately she's dead. Not to mention all the amount of magical things that can hurt a person. Is she powerful? Perhaps, but she's not a combat person and she has her weaknesses.

So, they are not immune to excessive damage.

I can see the problem with pure combat monsters and if someone goes with the "It's good so i take a lvl 1 just because it IS good" then it is entirely up to the gm to ask WHY - does it fit the archetype or concept of the adept?

And sure, you have a lvl 1 regenerate and you STILL die from a few well places shots that gives you one or two boxes of overdamage. The power itself is not a problem but rather how palyers approach the reason for the adept to HAVE that power.

Would EVERY adept in the world have it "just because it is good" or because it fits the concept or background of the character? How would a GM handle it?

We dont have a problem with the power and our game works because very little of our games are about combat and more about interaction.

But yes, i can see a problem with twinked out munchkinite characters designed for such a purpose - but they can ALWAYS be shot down by their shortcomings.

In case I've not been entirely clear, my problem is that there is already a similar adept power (quick healing), compared to which this power is ludicrously good. You could say that quick healing is not good enough, but then you might as well rework all the adept powers, which is far more effort than I'm willing to go to.

Suggesting that the OP's regenerate power is not broken because "being shot in the head can't be healed" is no good because SR4 (and to my knowledge SR3 too) lacks a hit location mechanism. You can make a called shot to bypass armour, or a called shot to increase damage or a called shot to a specific location. You could make the connection that a called shot to increase DV is the equivalent of a called shot to the head, but per the rules it's all abstracted out.

Finally, although I've not read every thread on Dumpshock, I'm pretty sure that I've seen the adepts are underpowered/magic is too powerful threads before, and no real consensus was reached then either. It might be quite interesting to resurrect one or two of those, and see what new minds think of the old arguments, but noone is actually going to convince anyone else against their convictions, so we might as well agree to disagree before the flaming starts, and nazis get bandied about.

Non-invincible does not mean non-broken. The fact that you can still die is totally irrelevant, because everyone can die, that's not some special vulnerability. The fact is, regeneration lets someone heal up any level wound within minutes. While some characters might have to spend a week in the hospital after being put into overdamage, your character can stand up and walk away perfectly fine within five minutes. That's what's broken about it.

Now, it sounds like your character doesn't end up broken, because you haven't really tried to cheese out the power. Your character sounds like a weak person who would die very easily, except that she happens to have this super special regeneration power which lets her survive most things.

It also sounds like you have very strong GM control over chargen. Like, you might have the regeneration power available, but the player has to jump through hoops to prove to the GM that it makes sense for the character, whatever that means... In that kind of a situation, it really shouldn't matter if there are broken powers or not, because the GM will make sure that the characters are not powergamey regardless. But you have to recognize that most games are not like that. Most GMs let their players do whatever they want within the rules, assuming that if the rules allow it then it isn't broken. If you just plop a truly broken power into that situation, you have automatically fubared the game. Just because you have not used the regeneration power to powergame doesn't mean that it isn't broken. It just means you're not a powergamer.

My (highly fragmented) thoughts:
This version of the power is definitely overpowered.
The fast healing adept power in the book is definitely underpowered.
I really like the idea of replacing this version of regeneration with the version Valrus suggested. Each level of the power cuts all healing times in half (probably still not applying to magical/drain damage, to prevent the most obvious abuses)
I think that version keeps the power interesting at any level, isn't particularly broken at any level, and, as an added bonus, makes the existing fast healing adept power potentially much more useful, if used together. (I'm not sure about that last bit, really, I suspect fast healing still sucks, but if you really wanted to make the healing monster it would have a place)