How does healing "look" in your world?

[Albions_Angel]

Hi fellow DMs (and players!)

I just fancied asking how healing "looks" in your world. How does it "function"? What are its limits? Of course, the likelihood is that it functions as RAW or RAI. I am asking about the cosmetics of it. The roleplay aspect.

In my world, healing is a blunt tool, and while much faster, not necessarily better than natural healing. This is particularly true at lower levels. The Cure Wounds line will stitch together flesh, stop internal bleeding, reknit bones, but it will do so quickly and dirtily. People will be left with scars, limps, even phantom pain. When dealing with other ailments, they will often treat the cause, but not the secondary damage that might have been inflicted. You can cure someone of dysentery, but they might still die of dehydration or malnutrition. Or wipe away someone pnumonia, only to leave them with badly scarred lungs that would leave them suffering from shortness of breath for the rest of their lives. The higher the heal spell, the better it is. Heal is better than a CLW. And then Miracle and Wish can do essentially anything. Low level spells also dont do anything for cosmetic damage. Its just for RP, and it explains why people have scars, and how disease is still a problem for the general population, especially as there are quite a few level 5-10 clerics in my world.

So, what happens in your worlds? Is healing perfect, but healers rare? Are your worlds just full of beautiful people? Or have you modified the actual rules to limit them both mechanically and thematically?

[heavyfuel]

I use HP as abstract "plot armor", you're not realy hit before getting to 0 HP. I know this gets iffy when you take into account things like Injury poison, but it's ok, just immagine a small skin-deep cut instead of full blown dagger to the spleen.

With this in mind, spells that heal HP are mostly Necromancy [Healing] spells. They give you more energy to go back and keep dodging and parrying when you couldn't before, and this fiddling with life energy fits the Necromancy school better than it does the Conjuration school.

These spells can bring a character back from 0 or negative HP, but in my games there's a penalty associated with being knocked under below 0, and these penalties aren't removed. These spells also don't fix aesthetics, so you might be left with a scar or something.

Spells that cure disease/posion work as intended. You cure the disease/poison, but not the damage it's already done.

Some spells are Necromancy/Conjuration [Healing], namely, any spell that is actually creating things, like Regenerate. and Resurreciton. Spells such as these are actually recreating the lost parts of the body and, while they don't leave scars, they might be "too new". Like if you only pressure washed that one part of the body, it's not tanned, has no hair (yet), etc.

[Karl Aegis]

See that red bar above your head? See how some of it's empty? Well, the red bar goes up and is less empty now.

[Eldonauran]

I use HP as abstract "plot armor", you're not realy hit before getting to 0 HP. I know this gets iffy when you take into account things like Injury poison, but it's ok, just immagine a small skin-deep cut instead of full blown dagger to the spleen
Pretty much this, for my games. There are just too many ways for biology to interact with poisons/diseases/bleeding that I can't follow a hard/fast rule on it, so I generally create an explanation for each individual instance based on the circumstances. Everything tends to be glancing blows, bruises, or solid impacts that leave you winded for a moment as you scurry away from the deadliest part of the blow. Usually, a critical hit gets the bloody descriptions.

As for healing, it is generally soft, shimmering light that knits the flesh back together when it is a gash, cut, etc. Bruises soften and disappear as the body reabsorbs the fluids. Regeneration effects produce new flesh at a rapid pace, of course. Using the idea that HP is similar to stamina (or ability to avoid real damage), I expect the strain of avoiding deadly blows harms the connective tissues and muscles, with the healing spells repairing it somewhat beyond a person's normal sight.

[MonkeySage]

I imagine magical healing as being somewhat miraculous, on small scales. I view HP as representing a person's strength to survive, and damage to HP doesn't necessarily mean minor cuts and bruises- it also represents stamina loss. I feel certain things should be deadly no matter how much HP is lost. A warrior can have 200 hit points, but having their throat slashed with a mere dagger will still drop most anyone.

So, magical healing can create new flesh from nothing, to seal up small wounds, but also restores a person's stamina- not to the point of regrowing lost limbs or removing fatigue, though...

You get a flash of light, and small injuries are miraculously healed. Scars still form if the injury was severe enough, but otherwise, there's no scarring from magical healing.

[BowStreetRunner]

The corollary to your question is, of course: how does hit point damage "look" in your world?

[Deophaun]

Like little red crosses that materialize at the base of the person's body, then bubble upwards, getting slightly bigger, before fading out of existence. It's just clear UX design.

[Malphegor]

I’m not sure how my DM imagines it (wounds closing possibly because he has a science background), but as a Champions Online player I always imagine healing magic in all settings to be wibbly greenish yellow beams of light, like thin tendrils of holy energy, even when not from a divine source, reaching into the wounded person like flesh eating parasites

[Ignimortis]

Depends on what the healing source is.

Magical healing from potions and Cure Wounds spells is just that - small wounds knit up, big ones start healing, plus you get a boost of stamina to keep up the pace. It does accelerate healing, so next morning you're probably gonna have a new badass scar if the wound was large enough, and just fresh skin if it wasn't.

Fast healing or regeneration just regrows things completely. There's no scarring, no wound too large, no limb loss too great. Fast healing in my game explicitly allows someone to regrow a finger or an earlobe in an hour, a hand or a foot in a day, half a limb in a week and a full limb in a month or so. Teeth, fingernails and so on regrow in minutes, as do bones knit themselves. If the fast healing reaches 10 or more, this is accelerated even more - think Devil Trigger, where even life-threatening injuries aren't much to worry about, because unless you lose a limb, you're never really out of a fight.

Damage reduction sometimes functions like healing, but it's superficial - while wounds close and injuries are mended, it's a very finite resource, which doesn't work if the wound is too great, so a greatsword hit will probably end up doing something to that vampire, even though it left a scratch that's way smaller than you expected.

[Aniikinis]

Depends on the source and the level, mostly.

Source:
Divine magic is always tinged with the aura and associated colours of the deity in question(except in special cases).
Arcane magic looks like magical formulae and runic inscriptions flowing into the body.
Psionics/Innate magic is in no way obvious unless it's being used on a different creature, then mind/soul/whatever rays
Shadow magic resembles creeping tendrils of darkness deeping into the wound.
Eldritch magic bends and warps reality, causing the smallest of far realms incursions to happen in order to reweave the very fabric of reality and remove the affliction.


Level:
0: Tiny flickers of magic treating the worst parts of a wound but not doing much at all. No better than a bandaid and an aspirin.
1-3: Knitting together flesh and bone, but leaving surface scars. No better than typical medieval medical work.
4-6: Mending all the ailments/injuries but leaving minor surface scarring. No better than typical current year medical work.
7-9: Fixing all of the ailments/injuries/whatever and leaving no scarring behind whatsoever. Surpasses medical work entirely.
10+: What injury? I have no memory of such an event ever transpiring. Absolutely not, now stop asking questions and get back to protecting the casters.

[Grek]

It looks exactly like the injury happening in reverse, accompanied by a bright light.

[Malphegor]

I think this is more telling of what our fantasy backgrounds are. I'm more used to superheroic stuff which tends to be very flashy with bright lights even on the fantasy side, whilst others are used to a more gamey visual indicator that's nice and clear what exactly is going on to a player. Meanwhile some people are into the Star Wars movies version of the Force with subtle effects that happen largely silently without any visuals or with an almost earthquakey grumble in the background, whilst others are into the KOTOR discoball shiny Revan effects with sound fx too.