I'm at work and dont have my materials handy, so please bear with me...

I believe priests have a tiny healing spell (only heals something like 1 wound with a recharge), but once out of combat they could, effectively, reset the party to no wounds? Or is there some limitation I missed on healing spells/near-infinite casts out of combat?

That seems to take a lot of the 'oomph' of combat out of any party with a healer.

Zug said:

I also don't have the books with me, so can't comment from a rules point of view, but surely any God (even Shallya) wouldn't be inclined to keep providing favour for the priest to use with impunity.

Surely heavy penalties (in the form of <P> dice on other actions) would be applied by said God, until the priest began to see the error of his ways.

I thought that as well, but what about equilibrium? Assuming +1 favor/turn...they could let their levels rise 'naturally' without currying favor. Still seems to change the game with a single class.

I think the new rules tend to suggest GMs have a mandate to arbitrate the system as they see fit (i.e. as what makes sense given the setting and their story). I would be inclined to add misfortune to priests who constantly rely on divine intervention to get through the day (i.e. casting healing spells constantly).

I know that's not an official answer, but to be honest, I think this can easily and fairly be arbitrated by the GM in the absence of official rules.

While I wholeheartedly agree in principle (and I love the less rigid bonus/penalties for actions), this is actually a major point. This would almost require playtesting to find an appropriate mechanic.

Curry Favor would be easy enough to deal with (if not actively 'doing' something in service to your god (eg. smashing baddies, incense/praying), you cannot curry favor).

However equilibrium is automatic (and although I've heard it comes back at a rate of 1/turn, I've also read in the forums that it may not go up at all, only down...also have read that the rules dont specify 1/turn...just 'very slowly').

Trying to inject a rule of this magnitude on players who play RAW may lead to more squabbles that anything.

I'm curious how others are restricting it during live games or how FFG played it during playtesting.

Well if they are playing a more "warrior priest" character like a priest of Sigmar or Ulric then as a GM I would say they can only curry favor for their healing spells while in combat or something like that. Otherwise first aid or normal rest would have to be used. Basically I am just saying as a GM don't let your players abuse certain things if it will decrease the tension in the game.

I was looking at it and I would likely use a similar restriction to First aid, I would let one casting of the heal spell per "injury" (and maybe once per day)

So say 1 combat occurs, pc takes 5 wounds, cast heal reduce to 4 wounds - cannot cast again.

2nd combat occurs, pc takes another 2 wounds (7 total) can cast again, pc at 6 wounds.

(then possibly)

pc sleeps and recovers some number of wounds but still has some remaining in the morning, allow another casting - this part I am not sure about

I put in a query to FFG to see how they playtested it.

In the meantime, how about:

every heal spell results in the addition of [bB] (I think thats Nez for '1 misfortune die'). This takes the issue off currying favor/piety/equilibrium and puts it onto the casting effort.

I think [bB] is 2 black dice, would be one.

but I don't know, im not down with the cool naming conventions I guess =P

Kaptain O said:

Perhaps add a <P> for each extra benefical spell (of the same type) over the first cast on the same recipient per day, or maybe a if people think <P> is too harsh.

Nah, I like once per "wound" (I dont mean per wound card, I mean since last wounded). That way it works like first aid, you ask your god to heal the wound and either he does or he doesnt, that is sigmars will (or shallyas will), you dont go back to him and say "Excuse me, Mr Heldenhammer, that wasn't good enough, could you try again?" BUT, if your buddy takes an axe to the face after you heal him you can go back and ask him to heal again without penalty.

Of course every GM can play it differently but thats the house rule I will go with if anybody cares

This is interesting because in 2nd edition if you had a healer mage/priest...it resulted in the exact same thing. The healing test was something pretty low so you could just take your time and roll 1d10 so as to avoid miscasting. It really took all the sting out of the game.

That being said, I thought about the same thing in 3rd edition. I may have even said, "Aww...man!"

But note one important thing before you house rule: None of the spells (that I could see) touch criticals. They say either normal wounds or wounds. But I presume that without saying critical wounds, they cannot heal them.

I think wounds are meant to be easy come and easy go. They seem to literally mean scratches and scraps, bumps and bruises. But criticals are serious injuries. Therefore, I've no problems with spells healing normal wounds with impunity. But that they do not touch criticals (until we see a rank 3 spell)

Leave the grit in without having the party completely unable to function.

According to the ToA and the structure of an adventure, I don't think there really is any "downtime" to just say "OK, I cast my piddly healing spell 23 times to heal everyone up." They point out that a 'round' could cover a character's actions for an entire day, depending on the scope of the Encounter in question. It would be similar to the limits placed on administering with First Aid; characters can use it in the story during encounter mode or between Encouters or Episodes.

It helps to think of your WFRP stories as a novel or a movie. Each encounter is its own chapter in the book, or scene in the movie, and can cover a huge range of time (like a montage,) or a very little span -> Like the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone: Act 1, the Earps arrive, Rally step as everyone stares and tension builds; Act 2, the shooting starts, Rally step as the red sashes prepare to flee; Act 3, cleanup as they try to run away. If you used the healing spell during the encounter, even more than once, that's fine; but then you can use it once after the encounter is over and before the camera cuts to the next scene.

Sarim Rune said:

Calming Touch, Rank 1 Shallya Blessing

4 Favour, Conservative side, 2 successes - recover a critical wound with severity 3 or less

Cure Wounds, Rank 2 Shallya Blessing

6 Favour, Conservative side, 1 Boon - convert a critical wound with severity no higher than the total number of boons generated

Healing Hand, Rank 1 Sigmar Blessing

5 Favour, Conservative side, 3 successes - recover a critical wound with severity 3 or less

Kaptain O said:

That'll teach me to look at the 'red' side of the **** cards...

Le sigh.

I think then it should be allowed once per Rally step. It's artifical but so is the Rally step.

Well, from the rules, first aid and immediate care can only be attempted once per Act/Scene.

Healing draughts can only be used once per day.

I would limit healing spells to once per day, or once per Act/Scene should new wounds be inflicted.

Sarim Rune said:

They explicitly can't be used in the Rally step. Personally, I'd be inclined to treat downtime healing magic as Long-Term Care.

dvang said:

That's what I'll be doing until anything more official becomes known (and I doubt it will, because this is likely to be one of those "GM's perogative" areas of the game that FFG have imlpemented)

dvang said:

Thats what I said =P

Mordenthral said:

This is the mechanism my compadres and myself are using. From a literary perspective, even after being 'healed', the hero carries wounds across many chapters. Unfortunately, this opens up other issues that players may get annoyed at (eg. 'while Jo-Jo is haggling with the merchant, why CAN'T I heal Gumby ?').

Profanity angers the gods Iwould let the Priest heal as often as he would like (Say yes to your Players )but ad everytime a Purple Dice. Every failed Spell seems to be a bad omen 1 Black Dice for the following healing.

Profanity angers the gods Iwould let the Priest heal as often as he would like (Say yes to your Players )but ad everytime a Purple Dice. Every failed Spell seems to be a bad omen 1 Black Dice for the following healing.

We really need an official ruling on this, essentially at the moment the rules totally ignore healing (via priest invocations) outside combat. Since that can have a huge impact on the game (if a PC is a priest of Shallya), the rules must give some sort of baseline for this.

Essentially, this game cannot be played without house ruling some important stuff at the moment. This is not acceptable. I can run/play any other modern game that comes to mind "out of the box" without any sort of house rules. At the moment, this game requires them.

The larger issue is the fact that the rules totally ignore the use of action cards (be they normal actions, invocations or spells) outside Encounter mode. This causes a lot of problems.

You could take the stance that Action cards can only be used in Encounter mode... but that creates a lot of nonsense situations. Priests would only be able to use Invocations in combat (patently ridiculous especially for priests of pacifist healer gods), mages would only be able to work magic in combat (also ridiculous), etc. Oh, and some Action cards are clearly useless if they are no allowed to happen outside Encounter mode.

On the other hand, using the Action cards as-is also runs into ridiculous situations. Asses the Situation would let you insta-remove all stress and fatigue. Shallayan invocations would let you insta-heal any amount of damage, with zero risk. Etc. Not good.

There needs to be a middle ground, but the rules (at the moment) totally ignore the issue. Leaving it as "GM fiat" is absolutely not acceptable (see "game requires house rules in order to work" above), especially since the GM decision in these cases can have a vast effect on overall game power and balance. Is healing instant or something that takes days/weeks? Etc.

We need a "designer intent" set of rulings on these things. At the moment, the rule set has a huge hole in it, and it's causing many people a headache.

Lots more discussion on this on rpg.net, where I mostly lurk.

I'll cut+paste one part of the discussion on rpg.net here, since it illustrates the problem:

..and a specific example of a problem: take Shallayan healing invocations.

Shallaya is a god of peace and pacifism (among other things). Saying that she only provides help during combat makes no sense. Her invocations must work outside Encounter Mode, in some fashion.

However, the Invocation card powers, as stated, cannot really work "as is" in Story Mode, that would result in instant healing of pretty much anything, which also makes little game world sense.

So the "real answer" must be something in between. Having a Shallayan priest must provide for significantly better and faster healing than just having a normal doctor providing care, but neither can it be instant-heal.

So how fast does a person recover if there is a Shallayan priest in attendance, doing his/her best to provide a cure? No idea, and the rules are no help here either. And the thing is: these things matter . Rates of recovery tend to be critically important factors in games like these (especially if you have a PC priest). Funny that.

At the moment, I'd be tempted to rule that Curry Favor can be used much less often outside combat, since it's not a crisis situation (the gods don't like constant interruptions unless it's an emergency). This solves the insta-heal problem, since without constant incoming Favor you cannot spam heals. However, how much less often should Curry Favor work outside combat? No idea. What should the result be to a priest who tries to "curry favor" more often? No idea. The game doesn't provide a "The Gods Are Pissed Off" result, the cards don't provide any really bad results for these things.

Sure, as a experienced GM I can handwave in some of this stuff, but on some other stuff I really don't know what to do. We get zero help from the rules themselves, we have no idea what the designer intent is.

...which comes back to the points: a) this game has bad gaps in the ruleset and b) at the moment, this is not a game I would recommend to an inexperienced GM.

To clarify: I generally (very much) like the ruleset; the dice pool + stance + cards mechanics are really cool and work nicely. I think this game shows a lot of promise.

It just has gaps, which can be very jarring. The use of card-based powers outside Encounter mode is the biggest omission, and one I hope future rulings, clarifications and/or expansions will fix.