Positive Energy Poisoning

[Epsilon Rose]

Hey, I'm currently working on a bit of homebrew, and I was hoping someone could help me find something in one of the settings book.

A large part of what I'm doing is re-balancing the magic system and part of that is going to be changing the resource system. I'm currently toying with using either Mana Based Casting (http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Mana-Based_Spellcasting_%283.5e_Variant_Rule%29) or a recharge system. I think overall, the recharge system will result in a more elegant and approachable system, but I'm a bit worried about mages defaulting to infinite out of combat healing. That said, I seem to recall someone telling me about a setting were characters started taking negative effects from receiving too much healing in a short amount of time. Does anyone know the actual rules for this and/or the setting it's from.

On a slightly related note, does anyone have any thoughts or experiences on the recharge magic variant from UA?

[Angelalex242]

That would be the positive energy plane you're thinking of, but it's not poison.

Instead, the plane gives you fast healing 5, and it doesn't shut off when you reach max hp. Instead, it keeps going, and when you reach double your max hp in temporary hitpoints, you explode.

If you wish to incorporate this sort of mechanic, just state if you got healed over your max hp on accident, you end up with Fast Healing 5 and on your way to exploding.

[Emperor Tippy]

That would be the positive energy plane you're thinking of, but it's not poison.

Instead, the plane gives you fast healing 5, and it doesn't shut off when you reach max hp. Instead, it keeps going, and when you reach double your max hp in temporary hitpoints, you explode.

If you wish to incorporate this sort of mechanic, just state if you got healed over your max hp on accident, you end up with Fast Healing 5 and on your way to exploding.

The thing is though that constructs and undead don't explode. Never throw a Zombie onto the Positive Energy Plane, because after a day it will have something like 60,000 HP.

[Epsilon Rose]

That would be the positive energy plane you're thinking of, but it's not poison.

Instead, the plane gives you fast healing 5, and it doesn't shut off when you reach max hp. Instead, it keeps going, and when you reach double your max hp in temporary hitpoints, you explode.

If you wish to incorporate this sort of mechanic, just state if you got healed over your max hp on accident, you end up with Fast Healing 5 and on your way to exploding.

No, this is something different. It wasn't a matter of being healed over your maximum hit points and exploding, it was dependant on how much you were healed in a given period of time, regardless of your final HP or how much damage you took in between healings.

[Spore]

The only thing I can think of is fel corruption in the Warcraft RPG, but that is restricted to arcane spells with the [Fel] descriptor. I am pretty sure, that thing counts as disease (same rules as drugs, you need your regular fix of fel magic, which worsens your save rolls against it and corrupts you even more).

[TuggyNE]

I think overall, the recharge system will result in a more elegant and approachable system, but I'm a bit worried about mages defaulting to infinite out of combat healing.

Technically, it's not infinite by any means, just endless. And setting the recharge high enough can easily constrain the total healing per day to something sane, without requiring in-combat nerfs.


That said, I seem to recall someone telling me about a setting were characters started taking negative effects from receiving too much healing in a short amount of time. Does anyone know the actual rules for this and/or the setting it's from.

I've never heard of such a thing, but it sounds interesting. However, unless it scales differently from the recharging (i.e., based on the Fort save or other stats of the healed character) it would seem rather redundant.

[Epsilon Rose]

Technically, it's not infinite by any means, just endless. And setting the recharge high enough can easily constrain the total healing per day to something sane, without requiring in-combat nerfs.

I've never heard of such a thing, but it sounds interesting. However, unless it scales differently from the recharging (i.e., based on the Fort save or other stats of the healed character) it would seem rather redundant.

My intention is more to constrain how much healing a character can receive, from all healing subschool spell, not how much they can give and I wanted to make the timescale rather long (measured in hours). Since it's based on the receiving character's stats, I don't think modifying the recharge time will achieve the effect I want, but it will definitely scale separately from the casting character's abilities.

Edit: If no one knows what I'm talking about, let me ask a different question. How much healing do you think is reasonable for a character to receive over a given period of time and what penalty do you think they should receive on a failed save for excess healing?

Currently, I'm toying with the idea of having a maximum safe healing = constitution*level per 4 hours using their full constitution. If they exceed this they need to make a fort save DC (15+the the number of multiple of their con over their limit) or suffer 1 ability burn to a random attribute.

[Fouredged Sword]

I think that a character should only be able to receive their full HP in healing each day, if you are going to restrain healing. Maybe they bleed HP/25 positive energy points per hour.

Ok, here is a shot at a mechanic.

Characters receive 1 positive energy point for each point of magical healing they receive. These points bleed off at a rate of HP/25 points per hour. Bed rest doubles this rate. A character can safely hold up to their maximum HP in positive energy points. A character only gains positive every build up if they actually receive healing. Healing a character with already full HP does nothing.

When a character's positive energy exceeds their maximum HP they become sickened until they have bleed off enough energy to restore equilibrium. Once the buildup of positive energy exceeds 2x their maximum HP, they become nauseated.

This mechanic provides a penalty to a person who receives too much healing, and basically removes them from combat non-lethally if it gets too extreme. This will restrain characters to try to avoid healing more than their total max HP each day without completely removing their ability to fight if they do. Past 2x their maximum HP, they are likely to be removed from combat for a while.

[Lord Vukodlak]

The thing is though that constructs and undead don't explode. Never throw a Zombie onto the Positive Energy Plane, because after a day it will have something like 60,000 HP.

Unless your DM rightfully reasons that because positive energy kills undead there is no sane reason for an undead to do anything but lose hp every round its on the positive energy plane.

[Angelalex242]

Yes, that. Positive energy would give undead negative fast healing 5, and that's assuming they don't die as if turned by a level 100 cleric.

Constructs, being neither positive nor negative, may be simply unaffected by the positive energy plane....

[Big Fau]

Edit: If no one knows what I'm talking about, let me ask a different question. How much healing do you think is reasonable for a character to receive over a given period of time and what penalty do you think they should receive on a failed save for excess healing?

Currently, I'm toying with the idea of having a maximum safe healing = constitution*level per 4 hours using their full constitution. If they exceed this they need to make a fort save DC (15+the the number of multiple of their con over their limit) or suffer 1 ability burn to a random attribute.

Noncasters should be allowed to heal to full HP between encounters. They have a hard enough time contributing to encounters at the mid-levels as-is, limiting their healing just makes it even worse.

Well-played casters aren't going to even care about their HP totals unless something goes horribly wrong.

[Arbane]

Unless your DM rightfully reasons that because positive energy kills undead there is no sane reason for an undead to do anything but lose hp every round its on the positive energy plane.

Common sense is not RAW.

[Jack_Simth]

No, this is something different. It wasn't a matter of being healed over your maximum hit points and exploding, it was dependant on how much you were healed in a given period of time, regardless of your final HP or how much damage you took in between healings.
You'll want to use Google's ability to search a specific site to check the homebrew forum here... I recall seeing it too, but it was very far from official rules.

That said:
If you're using Recharge Magic, making some kind of limit on how much healing people can take in a day is being exceedingly mean to the mundane characters in the party. The Wizard can use Vampiric Touch on the result of a Summon Monster spell every hour, and have basically as much HP as needed, fully able to 'top off' whenever he's got 1d6+2 rounds (or less, past about 6th level) to burn, only needing a small amount of healing from the party Cleric periodically. His spells are his primary limited resource, and you just removed that resource limit. The Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, et cetera have similar options. The poor Rogue, Paladin, Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, et cetera have their HP as their primary resource ... and when you add Positive Energy Poisoning to Recharge Magic, you are exacerbating the gulf between casters and non-casters.

Unless your DM rightfully reasons that because positive energy kills undead there is no sane reason for an undead to do anything but lose hp every round its on the positive energy plane.


Yes, that. Positive energy would give undead negative fast healing 5, and that's assuming they don't die as if turned by a level 100 cleric.

Constructs, being neither positive nor negative, may be simply unaffected by the positive energy plane....
That may very well be what it *should* be... but that's not how the rules are actually, you know, worded.

[Epsilon Rose]

You'll want to use Google's ability to search a specific site to check the homebrew forum here... I recall seeing it too, but it was very far from official rules.
Actually, I was told in person and they made it sound like an official rule for some setting or another. I kinda doubt I'd be able to find it by limiting my search to this site, because I wasn't able to find it when I did a general search.


That said:
If you're using Recharge Magic, making some kind of limit on how much healing people can take in a day is being exceedingly mean to the mundane characters in the party. The Wizard can use Vampiric Touch on the result of a Summon Monster spell every hour, and have basically as much HP as needed, fully able to 'top off' whenever he's got 1d6+2 rounds (or less, past about 6th level) to burn, only needing a small amount of healing from the party Cleric periodically. His spells are his primary limited resource, and you just removed that resource limit. The Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, et cetera have similar options. The poor Rogue, Paladin, Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, et cetera have their HP as their primary resource ... and when you add Positive Energy Poisoning to Recharge Magic, you are exacerbating the gulf between casters and non-casters.

And this is why I ask questions here before I just go and do things.

Technically, under this system, the mundanes would be able to get vampiric touch pretty easily and I could also add a healing descriptor to vampiric touch and other, similar, spells. At this point, however, I'm beginning to question if that's actually a good idea. The only reason I wanted to include it was to try and minimize combat getting trivialized.

[tyckspoon]

Actually, I was told in person and they made it sound like an official rule for some setting or another. I kinda doubt I'd be able to find it by limiting my search to this site, because I wasn't able to find it when I did a general search.

The only thing I can recall that is anything close to this was actually another poster asking about how to deal with his DM's houserules that meant that his modestly-optimized Healer was actually *too good* at healing, and became a threat to his own party and any random NPCs he tried to heal because of it. He did not enjoy the experience.





Technically, under this system, the mundanes would be able to get vampiric touch pretty easily and I could also add a healing descriptor to vampiric touch and other, similar, spells. At this point, however, I'm beginning to question if that's actually a good idea. The only reason I wanted to include it was to try and minimize combat getting trivialized.

Recharge magic lets your casters have all their best combat spells available for pretty much every fight. That will do more to trivialize combat than any amount of HP restoration could ever hope to. (It also makes Sorcerers almost completely pointless, since the Wizard now only ever needs to prepare one copy of any spell to cast it as many times as he wants, while the recharge locks the Sorcerer out of his 'I can just keep spamming this until it works!' thing.)

[Epsilon Rose]

The only thing I can recall that is anything close to this was actually another poster asking about how to deal with his DM's houserules that meant that his modestly-optimized Healer was actually *too good* at healing, and became a threat to his own party and any random NPCs he tried to heal because of it. He did not enjoy the experience.
Right, so not doing that.





Recharge magic lets your casters have all their best combat spells available for pretty much every fight. That will do more to trivialize combat than any amount of HP restoration could ever hope to. (It also makes Sorcerers almost completely pointless, since the Wizard now only ever needs to prepare one copy of any spell to cast it as many times as he wants, while the recharge locks the Sorcerer out of his 'I can just keep spamming this until it works!' thing.)

I'm actually doing a pretty major overhaul of the magic system, so it's not quite that bad and mages will be doing more rolling, but I will need to think about how to limit them. You can see the beginnings of an early version of what I'm doing if you click the maick overhaul link in my sig.