13 Things People Forget About Healing

Some healing can be done quickly, but in almost all cases it only restores three hits. An Elixir Vitae philtre, a swift cast heal spell, and the heroic Get it together and Unstoppable abilities all take effect in a short time but they only restore three hits. If you're not sure how many hits someone has just given you back, just ask.

Fully restoring peoples' hits takes time and resources. A physick applying True Vervain, or a magician casting the heal spell, restore all lost hits but they also take at least 30 seconds of appropriate roleplaying. If you make an attack or get hit while someone is healing you like this, the attempt is wasted and the physician or magician has to start again from scratch. For obvious reasons this kind of healing is best suited to moments when you aren't in immediate danger.

Using a surgical skill - chirurgeon or physick - needs both hands. While a battlefield healer may carry a shield or a weapon, they need to put them down if they want to tend to a patient. This can make healers quite vulnerable on the battlefield and as such it is often a good idea to ensure they are accompanied by someone who can defend them if the battle line unexpectedly shifts.

You automatically regain all lost hits after at least two hours of rest. This means you always start each day with all your hits, for example. How you roleplay the rest is up to you, but it might involve relaxing, eating and drinking, and chatting. Remember though that natural healing only applies to your global hits. Conditions like VENOM and WEAKNESS, limbs ruined by CLEAVE or IMPALE, and traumatic wounds do *not* get better through simple rest - they require medical attention of some sort.

Two hours is a long time, but a physick can help you recover faster even without using valuable herbs. If a physick spends at least 5 minutes roleplaying with you - tending your wounds - you will recover all your lost hits over the next ten minutes. This healing cannot be used on the battlefield however - it only works if the physick tends to you in a tent or similar building suited for use as a physick's chamber like the Anvil Hospital for example.

Marrowort is a herb that treats the roleplaying effects of traumatic wounds. It doesn't heal the traumatic wound - only a physician can do that and its time consuming and may require additional resources. it also doesn't remove the mechanical effects of the traumatic wound. More importantly, it doesn't do anything to restore a limb ruined by CLEAVE or IMPALE. As Abalyn McMullen said "I can only imagine the response to giving someone marrowart for a cleave is 'sure you *feel* fine but I can see your femur and it's pointing the wrong way!'"

The physick skill lets someone use healing herbs, but it can also be used to provide medical attention. A physick can restore a ruined limb with 2 minutes of appropriate roleplaying without needing Cerulean Mazzarine. They can diagnose and treat Traumatic Wounds, and as we've already mentioned they can help you recover from your wounds more quickly as long as they have access to a hospital.

Its easy to overlook the chirurgeon skill, but it is a literal life saver. With 30 seconds of healing roleplaying, a chirurgeon can restore a dying character to 1 hit. While someone is using this ability on you, your death count is paused - if they're interrupted you start up again where you left off. It doesn't do anything to help someone who isn't down and dying, but one nice advantage is that a physick can use it at the same time they're applying a herb to mend your ruined arm or purge your venom. In fact, they can even use it alongside a dose of True Vervain, meaning they always have time to save the life of someone who is dying.

A chirurgeon or physick can't use their healing abilitites on themselves, only on other people. This means a physick can't use a herb on themselves, for example. Obviously, an apothecary can still drink a potion they've made themselves, but that's about it. Magical healing has a slight advantage here - you *can* cast heal, restore limb, and purify on yourself.

Some characters have access to powerful healing abilities that involve using hero points. Unstoppable and Relentless let a character heal themselves, while Get it Together and Stay with Me let a heroic character restore their allies will to fight with brave words. These skills take five seconds to use, and require you to engage in appropriate roleplaying. How you roleplay is up to you - this is a great opportunity for some over-the-top heroic hamming it up! Slamming your arm against a tree to fix it (Relentless), loudly exclaiming that you feel no pain or the ever popular roar of renewed vigour (Unstoppable), urging your friend not to die on you (Stay with Me), or reminding your ally that the Empire needs them to keep fighting (Get it Together) are all good ways to indicate you're using one of these abilities. Like any form of healing that takes time, you can't make any sort of attack while using these abilities or you have to start the roleplaying again.

Dead and dying characters are often lying in places that are very inconvenient for healers to reach. You can move any unresisting character if you have both hands free - but it takes two hands to move someone like this. If you're by yourself trying to get a fallen ally to safety, you'll need to put away your shield or your sword and focus on the task of moving them - or find a friend to take on half the burden. (For safety reasons, when you're carrying someone who is unresisting IC all the locomotion should come from them not from you - nobody wants their arm yanked out of their socket by someone trying to pick them up!)

Using a potion requires 5 seconds of appropriate roleplaying. Every potion has a FORM - indicated on the lammy - that tells you how it is used. A liquid or philtre is drunk, a salve is smeared on the skin, an oil is poured on a weapon, and an infusion is burnt or boiled and the smoke or steam inhaled. If you don't use a potion in the right way it is wasted and in some cases may even have a negative effect (drinking Oil of Blackthorn makes you sick for example). The potion lammy must be attached to a phys-rep, and when you use it you should actually interact with that phys rep - touching a pouch where the potion is and then touching your face for example is not appropriate roleplaying for using a potion. Once you apply the potion, you tear open the lammy and find out what the roleplaying and mechanical effects are.

A philtre is a special kind of potion designed to be used quickly in battle. They are common enough that anyone can recognise them and knows what they do. They're represented by cards rather than lammies, but you still need to attach the card to (or keep it in the same pouch with) your physrep, and interact with that physrep when using the philtre. The main advantage of philtres is that you don't need to tear open the lammy or read the inside - you know what it is going to do, so you just rip the card and gain the effects after your five seconds of roleplaying.