Suggestion: Change Healing Kits to Temporary Hit Points

[zhazz]

Hi there,

Just like the title says, I think it would be beneficial to RP, immersion, and even possibly server economy, if Healing Kits no longer provided actual healing, but rather just gave non-stackable Temporary Hit Points.

The reasoning for this comes from what a Healing Kit actually is. See below. Or stop here, if you just wanted the TL;DR of the above.

A healer's kit contains various herbs, bandages, and salves, all of which can be used in conjunction with the Heal skill to heal wounds, cure poison, or remove diseases.

Herbs, bandages, and salves — that's what a Healing Kit contains.

Compared to actual healing, which either requires prolonged rest, magic, or a potion with restorative properties (Cure Wounds), the contents of a Healing Kit are more appropriate for battlefield triage. Similar to what a combat medic might be carrying. Tools to get the injured either back in the fight for some time, or at least well enough to get back home for further treatment and rest.

Therefore my suggestion is this:
Change Healing Kits to provide 1d20 + Heal skill + Kit Bonus of non-stacking Temporary Hit Points to the target, up to a maximum of missing real Hit Points.

Example:

Darryl has 300 Hit Points, and gets injured during a fight, dropping him to 285 Hit Points before the fight is over. He quickly pulls out a Healing Kit+1, and due to his 30 Heal Skill gains 51 Temporary Hit Points. He is only missing 15, however, so he that's all he gains. His total Hit Points are now at 300, out of which 15 are Temporary.

Carl, on the other hand, only has 200 Hit Points, and was injured far more, dropping him to 120 Hit Points. He too pulls out a Healing Kit+1 as well, but has 0 Heal Skill. It still bumps him up to 141 total Hit Points, out of which 21 are Temporary.

Darryl sees that Carl is still injured, and helps him recover, by applying a Healing Kit+6 to Carl. With his 30 Heal SKill, and a +6 Bonus from the Healing Kit, Darryl gets Carl back up to 176 total Hit Points, out of which 56 are Temporary. Whatever Temporary Hit Points Carl gave himself were replaced by the ones from Darryl.

With such a change actual healing magic, whether through a spell or a potion, are now much more impactful. Gone is the Healing Kit spam after or even during a fight to regain Hit Points, and the only way to spam back up to full heath is through Cure Wounds potions, a Potion of Heal, or their respective spell counterparts.

Healers, as in characters investing into the Heal skill. now also gain more of a benefit from that investment. Healing Kits used by them now has much more value than when used by others, who don't invest into the Heal skill. Without making them near-unkillable due to Healing Kit spamming, where they currently heal the target up to 70 or more per use.

Clerics, druids, paladins, favored souls, bards, and spirit shamans — the classes able to cast healing magic — will also find more use in having actual healing spells in their spellbook through this change. This simply due to the removal of spamming Healing Kits to regain lost Hit Points. Now they have to manage their spells more to maintain resources for a fight, rather than be simple buff-bots prior to said fight.



Considering the cost for a stack (10) of Healing Kits+1 is about 800 gold, they are far superior to any other form of restoration magic for their cost, even more so with the aforementioned investment into the Heal skill.

A Potion of Heal costs about 1100 gold, and heals 110 Hit Points.
A Cure Disease Potion costs about 250 gold.
A Lesser Restoration Potion costs about 60 gold.

Combine all three, and the total cost is about 1410 gold. Without any investment into the Heal skill, the same can achieved for about 480 gold (6 kits), or about a third of the price. Granted, it takes twice as long, with 3 potions taking 3 rounds, whereas 6 kits take 6 rounds. However, for the sake of argument we're only looking at the gold cost here, since most Healing Kit usage is outside of combat, where time is less of a factor than in-combat.

[Blackman D]

not going to happen from the simple fact that temp hp stacks and i highly doubt its not a hardcoded property

and even if its not, there are other things that grant temp hp that you would potentially be conflicting with and making something not work the way its suppose to

healers kits are one of the strongest things in game, i really dont think you wanna mess with them at all

but if were trying to make them make more sense (and destroy their usefulness at the same time) then you would only have to change it from healing to a +1 regen for x rounds

healers kits -do- actually heal in pnp; however, to get the healing from it you have to treat someone who is injured for long term care, at which point your natural regen when resting is doubled restoring 1 extra hp, but it requires a successful heal check

so if you really wanna ruin healers kits, you can leave the poison/disease check as is and change the heal to a regen and have it require a heal check of like 10 + targets level so basically only real healers will be able to put a regen effect on high level toons

or we can be thankful they implemented healers kits the way they did and leave it be

[Kitunenotsume]

One slight adjustment to your calculations: Using a healing kit is a 2 second action, with a 4 second effect delay.
As a result, you can use 3 healing kits per round.

Secondly, most purchased cloaks have a Regeneration component that trivialize out of combat healing anyway given a few minutes RP.
This is notable, as in my experience it is a minority that lack passive Regeneration - after all, it's basically free healing for standing around and saves weight and cost from items.

Thirdly, Healing Kits are 1lb each. 10 potions are also a pound. Weight for healing, potions are superior by far, but more expensive.
Assuming a heal of 30 like your example, +10 Healing Kits are 50 HP/lb on average (1d20+10+30) whereas Elixir/Potions of Heal are 1100 HP/lb (110*10).

Personally, while I agree that Healing Kits are overly functional, I disagree that investment in the Heal skill should result in purely temporary combat contributions. Practically any character can purchase or use a potion, wand, or scroll of magical healing, but Heal is a permanent investment over other skill choices and ultimately represents a greater sacrifice on a per-character level than a frankly trivial quantity of cash.

On a previous server I played, there existed "Bandages" of various qualities that restores HP over a minute. Higher quality and heal checks resulted in a greater net healing, but the effect was broken if the target was-engaged or engaged-in active hostilities (they made an attack or got hit). Those also removed the poison/disease cure components for "cheap" between-fight rapid healing. It's an direction one could go, but ultimately is probably too low-power for the server as it exists here.

[yyj]

Healing kits restore disease but they don't heal ability score damage.

Healing kits seem fine.

[c2k]

Agreed that healing kits are fine. If you have to use them in combat, you are rolling a random d20, and even then, its likely to be inefficient compared to a potion unless the character in question invested a lot of points into Heal, which at that point, they deserve decent returns.

[Rhifox]

Temporary hit points makes no sense. This would result in people using healing kits as a buff before entering combat.

If you wanted to nerf healing kids, then either:

A) Make them function like pnp: They are not consumed on use, but in combat they can only be used to stabilize, treat poison, and treat disease. Higher tier kits would only give a higher bonus to the roll to cure them. You could still give them an HP-healing mechanic, as they have this in pnp, but it should require multiple rounds to do, and thus not be a viable option in combat. You could also add their pnp ability to restore ability score points when used in this after-combat fashion.

B) Keep them as they normally are, consumed and such, but again, only allow it outside of combat (via lengthier use times or whatever), except when stabilizing someone.

C) Just add a cooldown, increase the cost, or prevent them from stacking if you just want to avoid carrying a bunch to spam.

D) BMD and Kitsunetsume's suggestions of it being a regeneration effect rather than a straight heal is a nice, clean one, too.

E) Allow healing kits to work as they normally do, but the healing component should require passing a DC to even work (not just for amount of HP gained), thus only those who invest in the Heal skill can actually use them.


Regardless of which, healing kits should be full round actions, that take up your turn. Being able to use 3 healing kits per round, as Kitsunetsume pointed out, is problematic. They should also provoke an AoO and be interruptible (I'm not sure if they are already, but I don't think so?)

[Kitunenotsume]

They should also provoke an AoO and be interruptible (I'm not sure if they are already, but I don't think so?)

Just ran some tests. They do not provoke, and activated too quickly even for a horde of enemies attacking to see if they were interrupted.


For what it is worth, I am of the opinion that Healing Kits can and should be a superior means of healing out of combat - we already have enough handwavium regarding in-game time simply from travel.

As far as party play, where they particularly shine is healing other people, which is also fair. If anything, I would be personally pretty content with applying a penalty to using a Healing Kit on yourself, rather than anything else and leaving it's normal functionality unchanged. After all, trying to strap a bandage over your own sucking check wound can't be easy.

Agreeing with Rhi, Including a pass/fail DC for healing based on the kit, target, or severity of injury would also go a fair way to making the skill-kit an investment, rather than an optimization.

[yyj]

What good would this change to healing kits even do?
It wouldn't increase strategy as there are many sources of regen in the game already. In fact it would actually hurt strategies and just make things less varied.

[Valefort]

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

[Blackman D]

it would stop people from buying them?

kits are heavy, remove the crazy nice heal and they are overweight cure poison/disease boxes

low strength toons and healers wouldnt notice the difference because they hardly use them typically; its usually your high strength/hp toons that carry stacks upon stacks because its the cost effective healing method between fights when you need to heal 300+ hp before you get jumped again

Using a healing kit is a 2 second action, with a 4 second effect delay.
As a result, you can use 3 healing kits per round.

and 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

tho to be fair, most interests in anti healers kit debates werent till after epic skill focus heal was added (not that its going to go away) but still, that feat has been around for several years now so even then i cant imagine the interest with trying to nerf kits

Make them function like pnp: They are not consumed on use

kits are consumed in pnp... its just that 1 kit has supplies for 10 uses, much like your typical first aid kit irl

Agreed that healing kits are fine. If you have to use them in combat, you are rolling a random d20, and even then, its likely to be inefficient compared to a potion unless the character in question invested a lot of points into Heal, which at that point, they deserve decent returns.

you have partied with my cleric lynneth before havent you? not sure if you did after she got epic skill focus heal, but yea she had a base 83 heal skill after that

her and one of molag's fighters duo'd the white dragon, only took 3 tries to get the flow down

[Blackman D]

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

even if we were to entertain that thought tho and nerfed kits, the preferred healing method would only switch from kits to heal potions which is already a thing for most due to the weight of kits, it would just cost people slightly more gold and be effective in and out of combat

[Rhifox]

Make them function like pnp: They are not consumed on use

kits are consumed in pnp... its just that 1 kit has supplies for 10 uses, much like your typical first aid kit irl

Woops, forgot about that. I confused it with other kits/tools.

[Thaelis]

A) Make them function like pnp: They are not consumed on use, but in combat they can only be used to stabilize, treat poison, and treat disease. Higher tier kits would only give a higher bonus to the roll to cure them. You could still give them an HP-healing mechanic, as they have this in pnp, but it should require multiple rounds to do, and thus not be a viable option in combat. You could also add their pnp ability to restore ability score points when used in this after-combat fashion.

I agree with this.

Secondly, most purchased cloaks have a Regeneration component that trivialize out of combat healing anyway given a few minutes RP.

And this! The Ring of Regeneration in PnP lets you heal a max. of 30 hp per hour, so what we have is already 20x stronger This + healing kits make healing spells rather trivial.

[Steve]

Healing kits should not be useable in combat (they require two hands to use!!!). Apply the same script to NOT use heal kits in combat as exists to prevent armor swapping in combat.

Heal potions, actually all potions, do cause an AoO but also should contain a chance of failure (based on either a Concentration check or a Tumble check).

Otherwise, they’re function is adequate: they heal and they are necessary to adventure on BGTSCC.

Cheers.

[Blackman D]

if nothing is changed with kits other than combat restricted, that would be fine

also wouldnt mind a chance to drop potions when threatened on a failed check