Custom magic item advice

[Dusktail_]

Hey all, newish DM here and I just wanted a little advice on an item before I intro it into my homebrew campaign. Current campaign has 2 players, monk and rogue, and a distinct lack of healing so I've been loading them up with potions, boring.
Current story mcguffin is an orb that has linked their souls, my idea was for it to also function as essentially a weaker version of the life transferrance spell and allow them to transfer their health to the other person.
Initial ideas was, for one action can do one of the following
-transfer up to 5+level in health to the other person if conscious or,
-transfer 1/2 current health to revive an unconscious person to sacrificed hp

I haven't dmed enough to know if the numbers seem OK, I'm worried reviving like that might be overpowered, but I'd really like them to have a way to heal at range and life transference seems like a way to balance the power.

Cheers for any advice.

PS. Also if anyone has any advice to share for running a game with 2 players, all my previous experience is running modules for 5+ players.

[jjordan]

Hey all, newish DM here and I just wanted a little advice on an item before I intro it into my homebrew campaign. Current campaign has 2 players, monk and rogue, and a distinct lack of healing so I've been loading them up with potions, boring.
Current story mcguffin is an orb that has linked their souls, my idea was for it to also function as essentially a weaker version of the life transferrance spell and allow them to transfer their health to the other person.
Initial ideas was, for one action can do one of the following
-transfer up to 5+level in health to the other person if conscious or,
-transfer 1/2 current health to revive an unconscious person to sacrificed hp

I haven't dmed enough to know if the numbers seem OK, I'm worried reviving like that might be overpowered, but I'd really like them to have a way to heal at range and life transference seems like a way to balance the power.

Cheers for any advice.

PS. Also if anyone has any advice to share for running a game with 2 players, all my previous experience is running modules for 5+ players.
First, Cool!
Second, I'm unsure the second ability is required. Just allow them to transfer HP. I would suggest taking a tax of half the HP they transfer. So character A spends 6 HP to transfer 3 HP to character B regardless of whether or not they are conscious.

[Dusktail_]

Yeah fair enough, I wanted to make reviving someone more costly to incentivise healing before that point. Coming from 3.5e to 5e has made it really obvious that a lot of the time the best thing to do is let someone go down to 0, then heal them up and I really hate that from a rp perspective. I'm worried that a taxed 2 for 1 trade might be too much considering they don't have a lot of hp to spare at this level

Maybe if the item levels up along with them and improves? The item itself is semi sentient so it works thematically.

[Catullus64]

One of my favorite concepts to apply to healing in custom-made spells or magic items, is that of "unstable" healing; an effect which provides a big burst of hit points restored, but then those HP tick down over time. So maybe the HP transfer could be doubly effective (You give 2d6, that person receives 4d6), but then they suffer 1d6 necrotic damage at the start of turn for the next 4 rounds. This makes it essentially a powerful healing tool, but one that's only useful for keeping somebody going in combat.

[jjordan]

Yeah fair enough, I wanted to make reviving someone more costly to incentivise healing before that point. Coming from 3.5e to 5e has made it really obvious that a lot of the time the best thing to do is let someone go down to 0, then heal them up and I really hate that from a rp perspective. I'm worried that a taxed 2 for 1 trade might be too much considering they don't have a lot of hp to spare at this level

Maybe if the item levels up along with them and improves? The item itself is semi sentient so it works thematically.
I share your point of view on yo-yo healing and don't have a good solution. It's pretty much a core game mechanic which players view as a feature and all the attempts to resolve the issue that I've seen, including the tools offered by D&D itself, are perceived by players as un-fun. You can definitely go with the higher cost to revive the unconscious player if you want but I'm not sure it will have the effect you want and the core rule of 5e is really 'Keep it simple'.

If the item is semi-sentient then I feel like that adds weight to the tax idea. If the item is a parasite that feeds on the HP that passes through it then it could definitely grow more powerful over time and actually become a threat they have to deal with. Maybe the big bad was with them all along. At higher levels it allows them to drain hp from opponents? Communicate psychically but also starts to figure heavily in shared dreams? Maybe affects their view of reality so they aren't sure what's real and what's not? Lots of opportunity there.

[Segev]

If it's linked their souls, you could just make it so that they share a pooled hp...pool. Damage and healing both apply to the shared pool, which has a maximum equal to the sum of their maximum hit points. If you find that's too powerful or otherwise want an extra point of concern for them, you could also make the orb itself share in that hp pool, so any attacks on it deal THEM damage. You could add the orb's own hp to the pool if you want to make that a minor benefit, too.

[KoDT69]

Ok so let's consider 2 major points to start.

1. You have a party of 2 instead of the 4+ the game normally is geared toward.
2. Neither is a caster of any sort.

They are completely dependent on magic items to heal. It's very easy to add in extra items or NPC's to help out when you overshoot the difficulty. Your orb has some real potential. Since they are already underpowered, I'd think allowing a 1 to 1 transfer would be fine. Now to play on the other posters thoughts about the item being intelligent or being the BBEG, I'd say just have it also linked to the BBEG telepathically so that it's really helping them but feeding info back to the BBEG. As they grow in power, have extra abilities awaken. Make it like a Wisp, guiding them when they are lost. Gain their trust. Have it gain something simple like 1hp every time they use the transfer. At the final fight, the orb will change color and float back to the true master, bestowing all those saved HP as a boost to the BBEG and maybe acting as an Ioun Stone or something like a spell focus on top of that. Either way, don't worry about healing being overpowered. You are the gatekeeper so it can be given or taken as the challenge dictates.

[brian 333]

Perhaps it is a larva and is eventually going to undergo metamorphosis, (at about the time the PCs don't need it anymore.)

This allows you to remove the item with a, "Look, it's a butterfly!" story rather than something like breaking the orb. (It could as easily be a wasp as a butterfly.)

This would allow an essentially passive crystal object to transform into an energy being.