Healing and You! A Guide on (hopefully) Not Dying

 

We encourage guest posts from players and owners across the Larp genres.  They will not always express our views or fit every game. If you would like to do a guest spot, please email us here with your idea!  Dave Jurns has been Larping for several years and has served (and continues to do so) as a Plot person for WAR (Rage Hollow).  

Like basically everything else in WAR Accelerant, healing is going through a pretty radical shift and I think it’s going to take a little processing to wrap our heads around the differences.  Hopefully, we can work though some of that today.

Big Change #1:  Healers can’t heal forever. 

This is big, and it’s going to be weird for those of us (me included) who are used to making it rain “10 Elemental Healing”. 

“But Dave,” you may be saying, “I couldn’t heal forever!  I was using up components, and I’d have run out eventually!” 

No, you wouldn’t have.  LCO components, at least in my neck of the woods, fell from the sky like manna.  I don’t even know if anyone used them for anything but cantrips.  Everyone I can think of just called them “cantrip fodder”.  You get the idea.  The point is, with a system like that healing was effectively infinite.

No more.

Healing resources are going to be a little bit tighter, and the straight-up NERO style “backpack” just isn’t very feasible.  Basic healing requires attribute expenditure and there just isn’t that much to go around.

But, (deep breaths here) it’s cool.

Header Spotlight: Healer

The Header Spotlight segment is a way to deliver some information about the specific Headers and to highlight their strengths and weaknesses.

Today, we'll be covering the Healer Header. 

The Healer is a staple in Fantasy games, and this game is no different.  If your character is hurt or has been hit with some nefarious effect, hopefully there's a healer to back you up.  While many Headers have means to remove certain effects or perform limited healing, none of those come even close to the usefulness of a Healer.

While you can choose to adventure without a Healer, it's really not suggested.  Every team that's serious is going to have at least one person who goes deep into Healing.  Healers can Cure practically any Effect and most of the standard Traits, provide exceptional healing, and even Cure Death.  What's not to like!

The Prolonged Healing ability gives the Healer the option of saving Attributes by delivering Healing in a slower, more controlled fashion.  But when stuff starts to get ugly, they've got a slew of abilities that they can dump their attributes on.

Finally, remember that not every healer has to have everything!  It's perfectly viable to have a Healer that is specialized in Healing instead of Curing, or a Healer that's great at spot removal of effects, but isn't generally as useful when removing trait effects.  Feel free to spread it out amongst a few people if you don't have anyone who wants to be a dedicated Healer.

Bound High Magic: Call Forth Spirit, Create Haven, New Lineage, Unfinished Business, Vampire's Bane

Good Header Combinations: Cryomancer (Water Mastery leads to powerful Healing), Shield Bearer (Defend yourself while helping others), Infusions (Plenty of useful spells in the Healer Header for Wands)

Pro: It's healing.  You're going to need some healing in your group.  As a Healer, everyone will want to be your friend, and you'll have plenty of opportunities for adventure. 

Con: Unless you pick up some offensive headers, it can be pretty difficult to defeat an enemy as a healer.  And even if you do, every Attribute you spend taking someone out is an Attribute you don't have to heal your friends.    

How many Healers will your team have?  If you are going Healer, what type of Healer are you focusing on?  Let us know in the comments!