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.

that's all very nice, i'm sure, but this power does all that without spending any actions, and can actually heal someone from the brink of death to fully recovered, not just mostly recovered or partially recovered, and no matter if they have a total of 15 or even 20 boxes of injuries (which you may see on some trolls, when you combine stun and physical tracks).

which means that instead of sitting around for 10 combat turns in an area that was very recently a combat zone, you can get up and start moving. no actions required, no equipment required, no drain or sustaining modifier, no environmental penalties to the skill like you would have trying first aid in a combat zone, no maximum number of hits, no limitation on treating the wounds once.

it's not that great in a fight that lasts 2 IPs, and then you get away, go home, and recover. and if that describes every single fight you have in SR4 (get in fight, get lightly wounded, immediately get to a safe location with no further battles in between, and heal up), then yeah... first aid plus the heal spell (which can have some *really* nasty drain) will do just fine. in fact, most likely not having any sort of healing capabilities other than that provided by simply resting is most likely just fine, and any investment in the skill or spell is likely also a waste.

in any situation where you are wounded and then need to run, and worry about the possibility that there is still someone coming after you trying to kill or capture you, regeneration is in fact quite powerful.

and if you think it's reasonable to have your body recover from even the most severe damage (provided it isn't to your nervous system) in typically under a minute, and yet somehow still be able to have surgically implanted objects in your body without some extreme measures taken, i'm all ears as to why you think that would be. i for one feel that a surgeon would be having an awfully hard time when every time they make an incision, it heals up within a second or two.

I'm ignoring the first aid/magic heal argument because it was laid out pretty well by someone else. It can be argued by RAI they don't stack, but RAW does not support that. Any game I've played in has used the combination of both. Without allowing the combination of both, the Heal spell becomes instantly useless as a first aid kit is dirt cheap, and gives you the same or better healing as the heal spell, just as quickly.



If you're combining stun and physical tracks 20 is what you'd expect on most people. (average stat of 3 gets you 10 boxes in a track).



Provided it isn't to your nervous system, or from magic. So you could theoretically get cyber installed by using magic for the operation and thus forcing it to heal normally.

But either way, that wasn't even my point. Wanting to enforce the "no cyber" thing is fine for the regeneration power. But enforcing that AND going with 6PP as the cost is insane. Especially with the no cyber rule. You're basically telling the character "You're a bit more durable in an extended combat situation, but fuck you if you want to do anything else or have more than one action per combat until we're at 200+ karma".




An alternate implementation: Make it an adept metamagic. Now it's comparable with a possession tradition mage taking invocation and getting regeneration not just for himself, but for anyone he wants.

I actually like this idea the best. Make rapid healing a prerequisite, and roll rapid healing + magic, hits are equal to the boxes healed.

I like this way too.

From my 20 years experience of GMing (and I know I'm not the only old fart on here, lol) its better to make something new for a player that is costly or underpowered and improve on it later rather than starting too powerful and taking stuff away because you found it unbalanced. Players really hate that.



Who has? Myself and all the people I have played with throughout the years have never read it as one or the other.

this. this sounds good.

Revised as an adept Metamagic.

Regeneration (Adept Metamagic)

A character with regeneration rapidly heals any Physical damage. At the end of each Combat Turn the character makes a Magic + Rapid Healing test. Every hit heals one point of Physical or Stun Damage.

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.


One question though. What about Cyber and Bioware? would it be extruded as soon as the ability was taken, or would the fact that you had paid essence for it made it "yours'. Also could you ever get more?

I'm away from my books and don't know the rules for shifters and bioware.

IIRC Vampires and other infected with regeneration (and maybe shifters) can have 'ware, but it must be delta-grade and installed in a delta-clinic.

If it is costly or underpowered, few people will willingly use it, so even if I did make something for a player like that, I won't expect it to be used. Me? I start with canon reference points and try to extrapolate from there. Usually I try to err on the side of more powerful instead of weaker.

On the First Aid and Heal issue, I have always read that as the sequence of events is important. With the wrong sequence, you miss out on a source of healing.

I agree. I see first aid as, stem blood flow, sewing, other medical operations. if your skin is magically healed, but not fully healed how can these operations then help? half the time they would have to reopen the wound that the magic closed to do anything. first aid, then magic= best healing. let mundane means do what they can and then let magic finish what they started. at least, imo.

Hmn.

My initial reaction is this:
Regeneration is super powerful.
Regeneration is available to PC's already, but only ridiculous ones - shifters, free spirits, infected.
Regeneration is seriously expensive, but also brokenly good.

So, making it into a power needs to address these issues.
Make it a Metamagic:
Change the dice pool away from Body(breakable with trolls), to Magic + Grade.
Remove the 'isn't dead from overflow until regeneration has a chance to work clause'.... unless the runner spends a point of edge for a scene. In this way, it lets the runner cheat death. Similar to Hand Of God, except without a permanent loss of attributes for burning edge.

Done


Wouldn't that make this more powerful?


Personally I really like this one.

Rating + Body: expected range: 1 for power at minimum. 4 for ork, 5 for troll. 5 softcapped human, 3 for a gunslinging elf who wants to pick it up just in case. High End: Body 9 ork, body 10 troll. Body 7 human with hardcap stat and a superthyroid. Add two if a ghoul. This gives us a range of 4-11.
11 dice on regeneration tests is comparable to what a force 5-6 spirit(great form plant or free) rolls.

As a metamagic: Magic 5(cyberware loss)+ grade 1. High end: magic 6+grade 3. Magic 7 + grade 1 or2. Expected range: 6-9 dice.
The result: Its good, but non-optimizable, and actually rolls less dice than the other suggested version. Magic is expensive as fuck to increase; grade has a scaling cost. Not tying it to physical stats makes it equally good for all archetypes as well.

This makes it good, useful, worth taking and accomplishes the goal of healing up between combats quickly ... but without rolling so many dice they are impossible to take down between combat turns because they fully heal.
From a fluff perspective, this version also does preserve the 'shit, I thought we killed him!' aspect of regeneration, but with the price of an edge, makes sure you won't abuse it constantly.

Okay, I can agree with that.

6 PP was the second tier. first tier was 3 PP, and was almost as good anyways.

considering how ridiculously expensive it is to get regeneration by essentially any other means, i don't consider 3 PP to be terribly unreasonable.

but hey, to each their own.

Idea I had while we're taking a pause (damn boy/girlfriends calling during a game )

Regneration (Adept Metamagic)
Prerequisite: Rapid Healing

<insert description>

Roll your ranks in Rapid Healing + (1/2) Initiate Grade. Threshold is 2 + 1 for every three full boxes of damage sustained (use the highest level between Stun and/or Physical). Damage boxes healed is equal to the net hits.

'ware allowed or not?

And honestly I think you could go with Grade rather than Grade/2, with the climbing threshold. Your max dice pool ends up Magic*2 if you have maxed out iGrade and Rapid Healing ranks.

I'd probably go with full grade myself. and at this level I'd allow full implants as opposed to needing Delta Grade.

I would lose the Threshold as well... Just heal up to net hits. *shrug*

I agree. First Aid comes first (that is why it is called FIRST aid . . . . well, that's not the real reason but it works as a good reminder).

I've always been a fan of first aid adding dice to the next healing test (magic or natural) based on the number of hits in the First Aid Test, rather than the current way. I've never really liked the idea that first aid can heal boxes during combat.

How about this:

Regeneration (Adept Metamagic)

Prerequisite: Adept Centering, Rapid Healing

A character with regeneration rapidly heals any Physical damage. At the end of each Combat Turn the character makes a Magic + Rapid Healing test. The threshold is 2 + 1 for every three full boxes of damage sustained. Damage boxes healed is equal to the net hits. This does not work on Stun damage.

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. They must spend a point of Edge to use this ability.

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.

They may still take cyber and bioware. Implants they received before hand are unaffected.

The fact that the threshold is 2 keeps it from getting stupid, assuming you have reasonable DP's, and not the 30 DP wonder. Average PAramedic (Professional) at that point has a DP of 12-14 (Stat 3, Skill 3, Specialty +2 and First Aid Kit +6) and with bought hits that is only 1 box healed. Average hits is 5, whic honly gets you 3 boxes, and most Characters I have seen tend to run at about 8-12 Dice for First Aid. So...

I will admit, the Wunderkind of the Paramedic society can indeed do miraculous things with their 30+DP and 8+ Boxes healed reliably. Tacking that in front of the Healer Magician with his average of 5-6 Hits is truly miraculous indeed. Though in our games, the Magician is not doing that whilst combat is in progress.

That I get. It's the whole idea that first aid is actually healing you that bothers me. First aid doesn't work that way. It's supposed to prevent the situation from getting worse and to stabilize; and in doing so benefit the actual healing process ... not actually heal a person. I guess it's just one of those things that gets my goat. Baahhhh!

Yeah, No worries, I understand that position. I can't get all that much behind it, because our table apparently dislikes First Aid for their characters. Most I have ever seen healed by First Aid is about 1-2 boxes. Healing Spells are SO much more effective.