Suggestion: Change Healing Kits to Temporary Hit Points

[Truthiness]

If healing kits are touched in any way to be used out of combat, provide temporary HP or anything else that would be considered a nerf, people will just rely more heavily on Heal potions. Heal potions shouldn't even be a thing, as the lowest spell level you can get Heal to is 5, which is higher than the spell level you can brew potions at.

Heal potions are about 10x as expensive, but weigh 1/10th the weight, require no skill investment, and still heal for 110 regardless (which is about 2 heal kits or more on a 33 heal character). Even on my character fully invested into heal (Fenix), I still carry around 20 or so heal potions on him, because they weigh so much less and are so much more efficient (outside of cost). The only reason I lug around those 1lb healing kits on him is that they're cheaper and you can use them in stealth.

Funnily enough, not once in this thread has anyone mentioned using healing kits while stealthed, which is one of the most useful things you can do with them. Getting out of combat for stealthers is easy enough, you just enter it and not be spotted for a short duration. So changing healing kits to be used only out of combat would only minorly effect one of the best ways you can use them. If there is a change to have healing kits break stealth, then most sneaks invested into Heal will likely just drop the skill entirely and carry around more Heal potions, as outside of strength rangers, most sneaks don't have the highest strength.

Whatever is done, it needs to have plenty of thought put into it, and consider healing options across the board. If any change is done to healing kits, it would have to be one where they are still viable, and not one where the change would mechanically brick the skill (temp hp) compared to other healing methods. The suggestion to make them only usable out of combat and being a regeneration effect could be nice (with it being removed if you get into combat), although the healing per kit would need to be drastically increased (heal+d20 a round for 5 rounds, non-stacking) to make them a good choice out of combat over other alternatives.

[Kitunenotsume]

I suppose the underlying idea is that clerics, and more generally spellcasters with healing spells, should be the best at healing instead of consumables ?

In practice, a fighter with a crate of potions or even something as simple as a Wand of Cure Critical Wounds will always have more spells than a cleric of equal level. Potions of Heal simply skew that dynamic even further. One could opt to apply the MA Elixir Toxicity to potions to prevent spamming, but that becomes both impractical and would be generally reviled by the community.

Clerics, and spell-casters with healing spells, also tend to be the characters inclined to invest in the Heal Skill (as it is often also a class-skill), but short of carrying about wands or a boatload of scrolls are far more limited in healing per day/rest than vorpal blades can go snicker-snack. Particularly when those same spell slots are better used providing a +5 AC bonus to prevent damage than mitigate it after-the-fact.

you can only use 2 kits per round... combat is slightly real time but a round is still only 6 secs mechanically, 3 kits per round would have gotten more complaints ages ago

Testing with Thealis indicated potions can be consumed at about 2/round (even in combat), and Healing Kits were somewhere between 2 and 3 uses per 6 seconds. Definitely faster than 2 kits/round, but we ran out of HP to heal well before we could get a proper sample size.
On the skeptic principle, I do not trust that mechanics being favorable to players should ever be assumed to get reported for fixing.

[Rhifox]

Changing kits to only work outside of combat is fine, provided their stabilization function works normally even in combat. Admittedly most people who go down in a fight will die by mob long before anyone could actually stabilize them, but still.

[Blackman D]

Testing with Thealis indicated potions can be consumed at about 2/round (even in combat), and Healing Kits were somewhere between 2 and 3 uses per 6 seconds. Definitely faster than 2 kits/round, but we ran out of HP to heal well before we could get a proper sample size.
On the skeptic principle, I do not trust that mechanics being favorable to players should ever be assumed to get reported for fixing.

well like i said earlier, my cleric 2 manned the white dragon with a fighter, i can definitely tell you it is only 2 kits per round and i had plenty of hp to heal during that

you would also be surprised on how many exploits get reported, especially when its something so widely used

[c2k]

I still don't think its worth changing healing kits. I usually stop using healing kits around mid level range and just opt for healing potions because I don't put points in healing on most characters. I only keep 1 or 2 healing kits on me to stabilize in party member which is rarely needed. Basically, nerfing healing kits is an indirect nerf to people who invested the points in the heal skill.

[Valefort]

Hold your horses anyway because technically the possibilities are limited as far as I can see.

There is no script governing the use of a heal kit, it's a built-in action and there doesn't seem to be any way to tweak it.

Doing a completely custom healing feat making use of the heal kits (or any item really) is possible, however it will break stealth, no way around it.

[zhazz]

Testing with Thealis indicated potions can be consumed at about 2/round (even in combat), and Healing Kits were somewhere between 2 and 3 uses per 6 seconds. Definitely faster than 2 kits/round, but we ran out of HP to heal well before we could get a proper sample size.
On the skeptic principle, I do not trust that mechanics being favorable to players should ever be assumed to get reported for fixing.

well like i said earlier, my cleric 2 manned the white dragon with a fighter, i can definitely tell you it is only 2 kits per round and i had plenty of hp to heal during that

you would also be surprised on how many exploits get reported, especially when its something so widely used

While I don't consider that an exploit, but rather clever use of game mechanics, such usage of Healing Kits is what the suggestion was aimed at preventing.

At some point the number of salves and bandages put on someone through Healing Kit makes it more of an embalming process than actually healing them. Layers upon layers of bandages, slathered in salves.

Some of the ideas mentioned here are quite good. Such as making Healing Kits non-combat only, or having them apply a strong short-term regeneration effect, which fades upon attacking, being hit, or casting a spell.

[Kitunenotsume]

Hold your horses anyway because technically the possibilities are limited as far as I can see.

There is no script governing the use of a heal kit, it's a built-in action and there doesn't seem to be any way to tweak it.

Doing a completely custom healing feat making use of the heal kits (or any item really) is possible, however it will break stealth, no way around it.

I spent about an hour looking last night too, and all I could see was an abstract method in nwnscript.nss for "itemproperty ItemPropertyHealersKit(int)".
I didn't have the means to pull open the toolset and try to find where that method was actually enumerated though.

I do suspect this was why my other server just had complete custom Bandages instead.

[Valefort]

But I imagine those bandages did break stealth.

EDIT: Got confirmation that heal action is built in, there might be ways to do a completely custom mechanic while not breaking stealth though.

[Thaelis]

Hold your horses anyway because technically the possibilities are limited as far as I can see.

There is no script governing the use of a heal kit, it's a built-in action and there doesn't seem to be any way to tweak it.

Doing a completely custom healing feat making use of the heal kits (or any item really) is possible, however it will break stealth, no way around it.

Why would healing kits breaking stealth be bad?

Heck, drinking a potion already breaks stealth; doing emergency medicine would surely attract more attention than that.

[Blackbird]

Why would healing kits breaking stealth be bad?

Heck, drinking a potion already breaks stealth; doing emergency medicine would surely attract more attention than that.

Depends on how you view stealth. If you're looking at it from a mostly mechanical place as in you're literally standing next to enemies, then yeah. If you're considering stealth to be something more RP-wise (ex. dodging around a corner and hiding; tossing sand into an enemy's eyes and jumping behind a pillar, etc.) then it makes very little sense. Applying some bandages doesn't make some kind of ear-piercing alarm or flashing light that tells everyone where you are.

Even potions breaking stealth is kind of weird, but I guess you can play that off on the sound of a cork being popped and hyper-vigilant enemies.

[Theodore01]

Why would healing kits breaking stealth be bad?

Heck, drinking a potion already breaks stealth; doing emergency medicine would surely attract more attention than that.

Depends on how you view stealth. If you're looking at it from a mostly mechanical place as in you're literally standing next to enemies, then yeah. If you're considering stealth to be something more RP-wise (ex. dodging around a corner and hiding; tossing sand into an enemy's eyes and jumping behind a pillar, etc.) then it makes very little sense. Applying some bandages doesn't make some kind of ear-piercing alarm or flashing light that tells everyone where you are.

I wonder how one can enter stealth at all - if you're groaning with pain and spraying your blood all over the place.

[Blackbird]

I wonder how one can enter stealth at all - if you're groaning with pain and spraying your blood all over the place.

Stoicism and misdirection.

[JIŘÍ]

This suggestion has a meaning on a server where everything is dictated by immersion.

BG has too many abstract things in every aspect, for this to have a sense other than trolling players of melee characters.

[JIŘÍ]

If people really insist on nerfing healing....


...lets remove all regeneration items.

The need to heal up every lost single hp will impact healing kits more than anything else.