TFT: Healing Spells

 The Fantasy Trip is a pretty lethal game. Healing is not as easy as taking a nap and waking up, refreshed from horrendous wounds. Without magical aid of some sort, wizards can restore from the fatigue of casting spells at 1 point for 15 minutes of resting. Physical wounds heal at one point every 2 days! 

There is the physicker who can heal 2 points after the battle, and the master physicker who can heal 3 points. This assumes they are carrying around their medical kits, but that is a safe assumption! 

There are healing potions that heal 1 point of damage. I have my version for my group that consists of a d4 in a little bottle I found, the "big boy" healing potion that heals 1-4 points. I like to watch them shake the bottle and roll out the die. 

A lot of RPGs have your cleric, with the laying on of hands. The Fantasy Trip has no classes other than fighter and magic user, and all those do is adjust how much skills or spells cost to learn. There is no laying on of hands as per the paladins in DnD. I have to say that I do like the simplicity of the rules a great deal.

Working with a friend of mine to translate his priest into the Fantasy Trip. And while we can play around with the stats, skills, spells, weapons and armor, we wanted to have a way to lay on hands for healing.

I found this home rule at this site (inthelabyrinth.org) and tweaked it a bit.

Laying on of Hands Healing (IQ 12) will heal up to 4 points of damage for a cost of 3 ST from the user. However, as this is a blessing from your deity of choice, we're using a variation of the to hit rolls:

• roll 5 and it only costs 2 ST
• roll 4 and it only costs 1 ST
• roll 3 and there is no cost to the cleric

Laying on of Hands Major Healing (IQ 15) Will restore up to 8 points of damage; 2 ST is restored for every 3 ST put into it. Depending on the roll:

• roll 5 and it only costs 2 ST per 2 ST healed
• roll 4 and it only costs 1 ST per 2 ST healed
• roll 3 and there is no cost to the priest

Now in my pantheon, I may use this for the paladins or clerics I am working with. So far I've used enchanted weapons which are entirely within the rules. I've also got a DnD character we've moved to a microlite game (see this post) I may get around to converting him to The Fantasy Trip and use as an NPC.

The priest's weapn of choice is a pair of matching great hammers. These are blessed (aka enchanted) to do 2d+3 (vs 2d+2) damage, and also have a +1 to hit. I am also thinking about making them contain powerstones that can hold a 3ST so that in theory he could do 2 healings a day without cost. While I don't think this would unbalance the game, we're still discussing it. I like the lethality of TFT: it makes players think a bit more. Or should, but since creating characters is not complicated...

In the end, I think the costs work well and don't break the idea of the Fantasy Trip, but also allows for some blessings if the player rolls well.