I've been reading over different powers and looking at their use in our last few campaigns, and for the most part I think they're pretty well balanced. The one big exception for me is the heal power. We've had two characters in different campaigns take it now (one of them was mine) and in my opinion it is really overpowered.

I'm looking at making a doctor/medic character for a future campaign. Just for fun I built it out to about 750 xp, nearly maxed out medicine, the doctor tree, and the medic tree. After all that I realized, one jedi with heal rendered this characters biggest abilities completely superfluous. Stimpack specialist, bacta specialist, and surgeon, who cares, our current Jedi heals 8 or 9 points plus force pips 5 times. She brought somebody from the brink of death to full health in a few actions. That doesn't even get into the fact that she can do it to multiple targets at once.

With most force powers I feel that a comparable non force PC can accomplish similar results with skills and talents, but Heal is pretty hard to top. The only thing it can't do is heal crits, and boost attributes with Stim Application. The talent trees seems pretty underwhelming when you consider the power can heal strain, remove status effects, and resurrect the recently deceased. Not to mention damage people if you're feeling evil.

I acknowledge that Heal-Harm is REALLY expensive to build out, but once you have it you've pretty much eliminated the need for any other medical personnel. If I were to play this doctor character I'd ask in our session 0 that any of our force users please refrain from taking the power. Luckily our group is pretty understanding so I doubt thereàd be a problem, but I don't like limiting people to the inferior ability due to game mechanical weirdness.

Thoughts? Am I missing something?

I would think that excessive use of the Force to heal would be conflict worthy. If someone is 5 over the 20WT and you heal them for 8 three times in a row then that seems to me to be pushing boundaries.

Suposedly the Force should be used only when necessary, so once the targets wounds are less than half their WT I would probably give the Force user some conflict for “Excessive use of The Force”.

2 hours ago, Split Light said:

I've been reading over different powers and looking at their use in our last few campaigns, and for the most part I think they're pretty well balanced. The one big exception for me is the heal power. We've had two characters in different campaigns take it now (one of them was mine) and in my opinion it is really overpowered.

I'm looking at making a doctor/medic character for a future campaign. Just for fun I built it out to about 750 xp, nearly maxed out medicine, the doctor tree, and the medic tree. After all that I realized, one jedi with heal rendered this characters biggest abilities completely superfluous. Stimpack specialist, bacta specialist, and surgeon, who cares, our current Jedi heals 8 or 9 points plus force pips 5 times. She brought somebody from the brink of death to full health in a few actions. That doesn't even get into the fact that she can do it to multiple targets at once.

With most force powers I feel that a comparable non force PC can accomplish similar results with skills and talents, but Heal is pretty hard to top. The only thing it can't do is heal crits, and boost attributes with Stim Application. The talent trees seems pretty underwhelming when you consider the power can heal strain, remove status effects, and resurrect the recently deceased. Not to mention damage people if you're feeling evil.

I acknowledge that Heal-Harm is REALLY expensive to build out, but once you have it you've pretty much eliminated the need for any other medical personnel. If I were to play this doctor character I'd ask in our session 0 that any of our force users please refrain from taking the power. Luckily our group is pretty understanding so I doubt thereàd be a problem, but I don't like limiting people to the inferior ability due to game mechanical weirdness.

Thoughts? Am I missing something?

Don't forget that Heal is subject to limits on usage per person per day of 5 before it becomes ineffective. To quote:

Quote

This means a single target may only benefit from five uses of Heal over a twenty-four-hour period, and his uses of Heal also count against · the limit on uses of stimpacks (and vice versa) (p. 291-292)

So while yes, it does out strip stimpacks eventually, there is a hard cap on its use just like for stimpacks.

2 minutes ago, TrystramK said:

Don't forget that Heal is subject to limits on usage per person per day of 5 before it becomes ineffective. To quote:

So while yes, it does out strip stimpacks eventually, there is a hard cap on its use just like for stimpacks.

He did mention that, just buried in the post

2 hours ago, Split Light said:

Stimpack specialist, bacta specialist, and surgeon, who cares, our current Jedi heals 8 or 9 points plus force pips 5 times.

I took that to mean the jedi used force pips 5 times.

I'd say that while the Heal power's threshold for healing is much higher, it is still subject to the force roll and potentially taking conflict/strain and flipping a destiny point. The ranks in the abilities always provide their benefits, no randomization.

It should also be noted that those Jedi healing 8 or nine WP per Heal attempt also need to have several ranks of Medicine in order to accomplish that, since the Control upgrades that allow for more than three WP per Heal use requires ranks in Medicine to accomplish. So, what you're talking about is a Jedi medical doctor; a dedicated Healer .

They've spent the points to be good at something, you can't fault the player for that. There are lots of ways to handle someone who is so focused.

For example:

*Try to split the party and get them to do other things so that they can feel the consequences of their choices, have a ray shield split the party away from the main group. Now they have to rely on other skills to get by.

*Hit the part with enemies who use Crit 1 weapons as they are harder to heal and impose a risk over the game session.

*If they're that good at healing, perhaps word has spread that this dude can resurrect the dead and people are taking more precaution when dealing with the party.

*Use things like Ensnare to prevent the healer from getting to the victim.

*Have the healer go down first so the encounter is a bit more challenging.

*Throw a character who uses Suppress at them so they dampen the amount that's healed.

*Hit the party with a hallucinogen effect, which is not damage but keeps them from being effective.

Thanks for the input. To clarify, I have nothing against players using what's there. I have used the power myself.

I do understand that this is probably not a huge problem, but I think I would still be a bit frustrated if I were trying to play a non-force doctor, and there was a Force Healer in the party. Its probably not an issue that is going to come up frequently.

It kinda comes down to anything though. Any time you're dealing with a force user, they're just flat better than someone that doesn't have access to the force.

Honestly the first thing is the XP sink. A normal doctor comes "online" much faster than a force user healer. If your game only goes to 300xp, its just not going to matter.

Second, for all the XP the force user had to sink to be able to use the Heal power better than a doctor, the doctor should be able to expand into plenty of other different options. Sure, they might not be the "best" healer, but they certainly should be cut out for most any job, as well they should have an expanded degree of skills.

I think with Heal/Harm's various upgrades being as expensive as they are, that's probably the primary balancing factor between the power and a PC based around mundane healing.

Of course, there's also the trade-off that in the early going, mundane healing is far more reliable, as the Force user has to hope to roll enough pips to use Heal (especially if they're invoking upgrades) and that those pips are white instead of black.

There's also the matter that Heal comes packaged with Harm, which in terms of direct Force-based attacks is pretty good for only needing Force Rating 1; no opposed check (by default) or combat check needed, just spend that Force point and deal damage that ignores soak. Of course, using Harm too freely probably means the PC can run the risk of going dark sider... which then cuts them off from using Heal on their allies (at least with the basic power).

Then again, you could have a similar issue with Influence's Control Upgrades, both the "add Force dice to pretty much every social skill check you make" upgrade but especially the mind trick upgrade, both of which can make a PC that focuses on social skills feel a bit superfluous in terms of just using those skills as the Force user gets to add more dice to their rolls than the muggle PC could hope to do.

1 hour ago, Split Light said:

Thanks for the input. To clarify, I have nothing against players using what's there. I have used the power myself.

I do understand that this is probably not a huge problem, but I think I would still be a bit frustrated if I were trying to play a non-force doctor, and there was a Force Healer in the party. Its probably not an issue that is going to come up frequently.

This isn't unique to healing. You've pretty much encountered a staple of gaming for generations. Duplication of roles makes people feel like a second chair character. And yes, that's true. There is a specific build that will make you the best long range sniper in the game. If someone else in your party built that way, and you decided to try and be a sniper, and didn't use the most effective build, that's not really their fault that you feel less effective at the thing they have super-specialized in. It's why it's an unspoken rule of gaming that everyone "fill slots" for a party, and avoid duplication of effects. It's so people don't feel left out. Personally I don't have an issue with duplication, as I can think of a handful of plot hooks where a doctor with medical training would be more useful than a magical healer. But if you're talking about tossing out heals in combat, yeah the force healer is better. He has range, multiple target capability, no diminishing returns on healing limits per use.

But I mean, that's kind of the point of the Force. There are very few Force powers, once they've been heavily invested in, that don't totally dwarf mundane abilities that are similar in nature. That's why Force users in Star Wars are so scary. They can take out entire squads solo with nothing but a laser sword, and a few hand waves. They can unleash massive amounts of lightning and kill people in seconds. They can influence the minds of people at planetary scale range bands, to make them work more efficiently as a group, and be effective in battle. Force users ARE powerful, that's the power of the Force.

Your physician guy however, doesn't have to worry about his Morality score, as Dark Side pips and Conflict aren't a thing for him. He also doesn't have to worry about being the target of a galaxy spanning death cult, with Inquisitors that will hunt him to the ends of the galaxy, for using that really handy power and being noticed.

So there are pros and cons in both situations.

But yes, I'm actually playing a Healer who is hyper focused on healing in a pbp game actually. He's got several dots in Medicine, and I invested down to the point where he can add those ranks to his healing total. And it took a LOT of xp to do it. In fact all of the Heal upgrades are significantly more expensive than their level counterpart in other Force powers, including the one that lets you pick up capital ship size objects and drop them on peoples' heads . So if I've got to pony up a ton of XP to use the power, it darn well better be good