Would excessive magical healing have psychological side effects?

[Scalenex]

I'm running a home brew system but I have observed this phenomenon in many different published game system too.

One of my characters really min-maxed his character for healing but cannot fight his way out of a paper bag. That's all fine and good. I just noticed at the climax of the dungeon in the battle between the PCs and an insane lich. The lich and his undead minions inflicted enough damage to kill the PCs two or three times over but the healer kept them all alive. A lot of fights are along these lines.

The thought occurred to me that adventurers or warriors who regularly sustain a lot of serious injuries and then have the injuries magically removed might develop psychological problems.

They could develop phobias or PTSD from all the pain endured. They could go the opposite route and could become insensitive to pain or develop masochistic tendencies. Maybe they lose all sense of fear and become insane risk takers. I feel like I'm scratching the surface.

Some of these issues might be pure role playing concerns. In severe cases this could result in in-game penalties. Thoughts?


That's just normal healing. I imagine coming back from the dead, regrowing amputated limbs or recovering from energy drain attacks would have their own issues.


Beyond pure psychology it's possible (though probably a bit ganky) that a body that gets a lot of supernatural healing would lose it's natural healing ability similar to how an artificial source of endorphins can stunt a body's ability to generate endorphins.

[MoiMagnus]

Addiction to magical healing seems the most natural consequence.
(The feeling of being magically healed + whatever substance the healing generate in your body)
This could even induce some masochism tendencies in order to have a good reason for being healed.

PTSD could also come, though I would not classify it as a consequence of excessive magical healing, but more as a consequence of living a life where you need magical healing to survive every other day, i.e. the life of a d&d adventurer.

Though I'd say resurrection has a chance to let you with a PTSD of some kind.

Also, since psychic damage is a type of damage, does that mean healing spells also heal mental damages like a PTSD? And can the spell "cure disease" cure some mental diseases like a depression?

[Crazyfailure13]

I would say you are on track with the insensitivity to pain/fear/danger. Maybe even in a literal sense.

I would liken it to cracking joints, over the course of your life you might start by cracking your knuckles and the sensation being overwhelming, painful. But over time it becomes refreshing. The problem comes after that, when even if your nerves are perfect and healed your brain reads what was once terrible as rountine or blatantly ignorable.

Of the opposite, where healing might be refreshing the nerves slowing over time, not quite as fast as the fresh injuries but certainly all that overflow positive energy goes somewhere. The nerves slowly become newborn, with bouts of overload. The more healing the more it happens, a breeze might become stabbing blades, sunlight a searing stove, eating becomes as euphoric as doing hard drugs as all those flavors become magnified.

Both lead to a loss of sensation in one way or the other, either from conditioning or in an attempt to stay sane. One flies into conflict and bloodshed as quickly as the raging barbarian, though half as durable. The other sits in a dark room, eating tasteless mush crying each time they shift too much in their clothes or against the material around them.

[Jay R]

It's an interesting idea to think about, but I can't see how it would help the game in any way.

I recommend that you keep it as a thought experiment, and never use it in a game.

[Hellpyre]

I have to agree with Jay R here. In a game that isn't meant to revolve around mental trauma, introducing them as a consequence of regular play seems counter-productive.

By all means, if your players want to explore characters traumatised by repeated pain without long-term physical injury, let them. But don't force that on them.

[sktarq]

One could also have real issues with how a person sees their own body or even reality.

Congrats you were holding your own liver 7 seconds ago and now...nope its fine....your hands are still slicked with your own blood and some grease that was your sternum before the negative energy strike.
Just the sheer back and forth signals there could get you to not really believe anything your body tells you...you body is not reliable, its utterly pliable from forces beyond your control. That would help drive a separation between ones own body and one's sense of self, at least for some people.
So yeah...body not being real, or not mattering could also be an issue.
oh and if they got fooled by a couple of charm person spells (which could also really mess up one's sense of self and social anxiety) and some illusions....well at that point perceptions of reality may well totally break down.

While probably not viable to bring in mid-game such things as the horror checks, sanity checks, etc exist as optional rules...I would think "any battle where you loose more than your max HP" could count as trigger for such a check pretty well even if not RAW. I'm kinda partial to the 2e Ravenloft rules and homebrewing off of those personally. So use those?

[Spore]

It's an interesting idea to think about, but I can't see how it would help the game in any way.

I recommend that you keep it as a thought experiment, and never use it in a game.

That. If you want to hint at it, you can repeatedly point out the incredible change brought upon by healing magic. But only follow up on it if the player strongly hints at enjoying to RP this kind of stuff.

Often the reverse is true. Healing can give you hope on seemingly unwinnable scenarios, and if the source of healing is divine, it might even mean the character can influence others to follow their way. If I were a fatally injured NPC or player in a game, and my convictions concerning gods are not iron, I might as well pick up the cleric healer's faith as a simple thanks for their and their god's service and aid.

[Palanan]

There was a recent thread in the 3.5 subforum about a pit fighter who's addicted to healing magic, which was a great character concept. Might be something for the OP to consider.

[OldTrees1]

In minecraft everyone has contingent true resurrection. There are plenty of times people have suicided in minecraft as a way to teleport. That is one big psychological side effect. Those Steves and Sams take life for granted because they are given an infinite supply.

[HappyDaze]

Before considering the psychological side effects of magical healing, consider what it would mean to live in a world where any injury that is not immediately life threatening was gone after a single night's rest. That's the world of 5e D&D...

[Elbeyon]

Before considering the psychological side effects of magical healing, consider what it would mean to live in a world where any injury that is not immediately life threatening was gone after a single night's rest. That's the world of 5e D&D...

That's because in 5e hp no longer represents only physical well-being. It is also luck and stuff. A person only has so much luck a day. If hp only recovered at some type of natural healing rate then some people would think it was only physical.

[Scalenex]

Addiction to magical healing seems the most natural consequence.
(The feeling of being magically healed + whatever substance the healing generate in your body)
This could even induce some masochism tendencies in order to have a good reason for being healed.

PTSD could also come, though I would not classify it as a consequence of excessive magical healing, but more as a consequence of living a life where you need magical healing to survive every other day, i.e. the life of a d&d adventurer.

I guess magical healing and living a dangerous life style are tightly linked.

Also, since psychic damage is a type of damage, does that mean healing spells also heal mental damages like a PTSD? And can the spell "cure disease" cure some mental diseases like a depression?

I'm building a homebrew system (though it's based heavily on D&D), so I've been pondering this myself. Can healing magic cure mental diseases. Right now I'm leaning towards the answer being "sort of." I'm thinking that if a person has a deep seated psychological disorder or a curse that requires a quest or some special task to remove the curse, a healing spell will not actually cure the disease or curse but it will give the healer insight on how to fix it.

A weak roll on someone with depression might impart "he's having romantic woes." while a strong roll on the same person might impart "the woman he loved chose his rival instead of him and this brings up bad memories of his mother dying when he was a child."

I would say you are on track with the insensitivity to pain/fear/danger. Maybe even in a literal sense.

It just so happens that the most healed character (a half-orc ranger) in the group happens to be the most reckless and insensitive to fear and danger though it's for meta reasons. The other two players are very methodical and careful, the half-orc's player says she wants to move the story forward. "You guys are so careful that I need to be bold and move forward, so you don't spend an hour checking for traps."

I would liken it to cracking joints, over the course of your life you might start by cracking your knuckles and the sensation being overwhelming, painful. But over time it becomes refreshing. The problem comes after that, when even if your nerves are perfect and healed your brain reads what was once terrible as rountine or blatantly ignorable.

Of the opposite, where healing might be refreshing the nerves slowing over time, not quite as fast as the fresh injuries but certainly all that overflow positive energy goes somewhere. The nerves slowly become newborn, with bouts of overload. The more healing the more it happens, a breeze might become stabbing blades, sunlight a searing stove, eating becomes as euphoric as doing hard drugs as all those flavors become magnified.

Both lead to a loss of sensation in one way or the other, either from conditioning or in an attempt to stay sane. One flies into conflict and bloodshed as quickly as the raging barbarian, though half as durable. The other sits in a dark room, eating tasteless mush crying each time they shift too much in their clothes or against the material around them.

Those are intriguing ideas though perhaps a bit more extreme than I was aiming for.

It's an interesting idea to think about, but I can't see how it would help the game in any way.

I recommend that you keep it as a thought experiment, and never use it in a game.

I have to agree with Jay R here. In a game that isn't meant to revolve around mental trauma, introducing them as a consequence of regular play seems counter-productive.

By all means, if your players want to explore characters traumatised by repeated pain without long-term physical injury, let them. But don't force that on them.

That. If you want to hint at it, you can repeatedly point out the incredible change brought upon by healing magic. But only follow up on it if the player strongly hints at enjoying to RP this kind of stuff.

I got two players who like to explore this kind of deep role playing and I have one character that wants to smash things while doing a lot of cool stunts (the half-orc's player). I wouldn't make a player address this stuff if the player was uninterested in it.

I am also (slowly) working on my own fantasy novel and I likely to make the protagonist a healer so that's my motivation here guess.

Often the reverse is true. Healing can give you hope on seemingly unwinnable scenarios, and if the source of healing is divine, it might even mean the character can influence others to follow their way. If I were a fatally injured NPC or player in a game, and my convictions concerning gods are not iron, I might as well pick up the cleric healer's faith as a simple thanks for their and their god's service and aid.

This is certainly a good characterization direction for my novel, thank you.

One could also have real issues with how a person sees their own body or even reality.

Congrats you were holding your own liver 7 seconds ago and now...nope its fine....your hands are still slicked with your own blood and some grease that was your sternum before the negative energy strike.
Just the sheer back and forth signals there could get you to not really believe anything your body tells you...you body is not reliable, its utterly pliable from forces beyond your control. That would help drive a separation between ones own body and one's sense of self, at least for some people.
So yeah...body not being real, or not mattering could also be an issue.
oh and if they got fooled by a couple of charm person spells (which could also really mess up one's sense of self and social anxiety) and some illusions....well at that point perceptions of reality may well totally break down.

These are good ideas. I think some characters would be able to handle this but characters that already have a tenuous grip on their identity

While probably not viable to bring in mid-game such things as the horror checks, sanity checks, etc exist as optional rules...I would think "any battle where you loose more than your max HP" could count as trigger for such a check pretty well even if not RAW. I'm kinda partial to the 2e Ravenloft rules and homebrewing off of those personally. So use those?

My homebrew system is D&D through the mechanics of White Wolf's d10 system though. My current thought is if the player and game master agree that circumstances warrant taking on a psychological flaw due for story reasons that I would award experience points equal to the value of the flaw as long as the player role plays their new condition well.

Again, I wouldn't make a player deal with this if the player was uncomfortable or uninterested in this.

There was a recent thread in the 3.5 subforum about a pit fighter who's addicted to healing magic, which was a great character concept. Might be something for the OP to consider.

It is an interesting idea.

Before considering the psychological side effects of magical healing, consider what it would mean to live in a world where any injury that is not immediately life threatening was gone after a single night's rest. That's the world of 5e D&D...

I subscribe to the school of thought that "hit points" are an abstraction for a warrior's stamina in battle and only critical hits represent actual injuries.

But I'm not playing D&D 5th edition right now.

My home brew system gives most heroic characters and major villains 10 health levels and most supporting characters 5 health levels. Attacks typically inflict 2 or 3 levels of damage, but with her magic axe and souped up combat pools, the half-orc can routinely do 7 or 8 health levels of damage in one blow. The players have responded with the reaction ("hmm, we can theoretically die because a lowly NPC warrior gets a really lucky hit, so I'm investing my treasure in buying magical armor!"

[Spore]

That's because in 5e hp no longer represents only physical well-being. It is also luck and stuff. A person only has so much luck a day. If hp only recovered at some type of natural healing rate then some people would think it was only physical.

A problem that comes up is mundane healing (i.e. Medic feat, Healer feat), not only in the narrative (are the wounds only bandaged? do smelling salts suffice? do you use disinfectant? what about disease? what about poison?) but also in the speed of applied medicine (healer feat is an action for d8+4+HD healing, which is weird for someone slapping a bandaid on you).

You can't go "Ellie slapped a Flintstones bandaid on my booboo, so I now feel better immediately" all the time for some kind of hybrid between psychological and physical healing, nor does "Ellie rubbed some pain reducing ointment on me to make me feel luckier" make any sense. And I tend to take notes on my group's injuries on my healers, to RP the wound appropriately. Can't really bandage a bruise, or cool a spear piercing your shoulder.

Of course magical healing makes the narrative easier on every front, because "a wizard cleric did it" is acceptable for some reason. I have enjoyed settings where resurrection is unnatural and twists the mind, which I am all for because dying is such a drastic event, it warrants special attention. But magical healing is a weird thing because it is always just whatever the writer, or in this case DM, bullcraps into.

One of my characters really min-maxed his character for healing but cannot fight his way out of a paper bag

Honestly psychological issues should never stem from a magical source imho. This creates a disconnect between audience (be it reader or players) and character. You can link the inability to prevent damage to issues for the healer. You can link overreliance on healing magic and overconfidence on the healed (I can totally jump into that dragon's maw because my cleric is behind me).Especially if your system does not include a resurrection option you can have an important side character simply die to that, reeling in all expectation and overconfidence quickly.

[HappyDaze]

I subscribe to the school of thought that "hit points" are an abstraction for a warrior's stamina in battle and only critical hits represent actual injuries.

But I'm not playing D&D 5th edition right now.

Hit points have never been strictly about literal injuries, but there must be some of that in there. Characters do not avoid every blow but the final one. If they did, why are they having cure wounds and healing word cast on them or dringking potions of healling? Those words mean something. It's not like the cleric is casting bolster plot armor.

[Jay R]

This would be pretty much the same as playing permanent war injuries. After their first few encounters, one player has a limp. A little later, another one loses an arm.

This wouldn’t be fun. Really.

These games have lots of healing abilities specifically to avoid the real, serious, long-term effects of injuries.

We want to avoid the real, serious, long-term mental effects just as much as the real, serious, long-term physical effects.

Nobody signed up to play Traumas and Tragedies.

[Lacco]

Nobody signed up to play Traumas and Tragedies.

Sounds like a perfect campaign name for Primetime Adventures campaign.

I'd totally run that .

---

Seriously, if your players accept the premise, this could be interesting - but they have to be on boat with it.

Spoiler: Story time!

Show

As someone, who had two players - the party tanks - heavily wounded (therefore at let's say 20% fighting capacity) for 2 games due to high speed rapier-to-neck collision, I can confirm: this can work. If the players are fine with the playstyle.

They even went against a boss encounter like this, just the two of them, accepting their fate - and it made them cooperate & fight cautiously to such degree that they stood their ground until the rest of the party figured IC what was going on and saved them.

It was epic.

But they knew what they were going in for.

I would totally see some psychological traumas coming - and depending on what kind of healing magic it is, the body of some tanks would look like a blackboard that was used for 30 years - full of scratches, patches and worse.

However, the main effect of multiple ressurrections and long-term use of healing magic would - in my opinion - would be venturing into danger without having second thoughts, taking wounds as "just hit points" and disregarding personal safety ("I can do it - and if not, cleric Band'Ai'd will just patch me up!").

[Storm_Of_Snow]

I think Jay R's post kind of sums up a lot of what a lot of groups would think - magic healing's an easy way of keeping characters alive and the game going, let's not think it much further than that.

However, if your players want to go down that route (and maybe systems like Call of Cthulu would allow for it more than say D&D) and you're happy to go with them, then more power to you.

[King of Nowhere]

i prefer to see it more on the awesome perspective.
people become fearless, and mostly desensitized to pain. pain is your body telling you it's taking damage, and why would you care when you can fix that damage in a standard action? for that matter, high level people can take more damage also because the kind of wound that's crippling to someone else, they will shrug off as nothing to worry about, just ordinary business. even if it would kill them in minutes, there's still more than enough time to finish whatever they were doing and get fixed.

if there was a videogame in the kind of virtual reality wired to your brain, i'd be willing to sustain much more pain there than i would be in real life, knowing that the wounds are not real and i will be fine as soon as i shut down the thing (though not broken-bones-level pain on a regular base, admittedly). i'd not be the only one. hardcore competitive gamers, those who believe in fun through overcoming hardship, may well make it a point of pride.
in fact, characters in my games tend to have that attitude. they will get fixed as new as soon as the battle ends, and they will even get revived if they are killed. fighting for them is a sport. getting disemboweled is a weekly occurrence just during training.

[Mutazoia]

Didn't Stargate: SG1 have an episode about this? Daniel keeps getting overhealed in a goa'uld sarcophagus and starts to go a little nutty.

[Kitten Champion]

Didn't Stargate: SG1 have an episode about this? Daniel keeps getting overhealed in a goa'uld sarcophagus and starts to go a little nutty.

Yeah. I believe the explanation was that despite healing someone - even from the point of death - it doesn't fully work on the brain, this is why you can't live forever with it as your mind will still deteriorate over time even if the rest of your body is fine. When used excessively and unnecessarily the sarcophagus gives you an inflated sense of your own superiority and makes you increasingly paranoid, this is implied to be part of the reason why the Goa'uld are so despotic.

It would be cool in a Darkest Dungeon kind of game if healing was folded into some kind of sanity or stress system, but I think that would need to be the established tone.

[vasilidor]

I have read stories where someone, like wolverine for instance, would do horrible things to themselves in order to accomplish their goals. "the things one will do to themselves when they know they can live through it."

[Jorren]

I agree that to tack on a mental trauma system to a traditional fantasy game along the lines of D&D is not the way to go. I remember Ravenloft's horror/sanity system and I have nothing good to say about it.

On the other hand, making a core feature of the game with strong advantage/disadvantage features designed to facilitate role-playing sounds quite interesting. But that is probably an entirely different game altogether and not what your homebrew is designed around.

[Saintheart]

The thought occurred to me that adventurers or warriors who regularly sustain a lot of serious injuries and then have the injuries magically removed might develop psychological problems.

They could develop phobias or PTSD from all the pain endured. They could go the opposite route and could become insensitive to pain or develop masochistic tendencies. Maybe they lose all sense of fear and become insane risk takers. I feel like I'm scratching the surface.

Some of these issues might be pure role playing concerns. In severe cases this could result in in-game penalties. Thoughts?


That's just normal healing. I imagine coming back from the dead, regrowing amputated limbs or recovering from energy drain attacks would have their own issues.


Beyond pure psychology it's possible (though probably a bit ganky) that a body that gets a lot of supernatural healing would lose it's natural healing ability similar to how an artificial source of endorphins can stunt a body's ability to generate endorphins.

In terms of what PTSD does to the mind, without going any further into forbidden topics I strongly recommend you have a read of the recent book The Body Keeps The Score. It addresses current thinking on how PTSD works and how trauma works on the mind.

That said, Jay R has already obliquely referred to the in-game issue that creating a system like this generates. It's similar to the problem of critical hits: if you make it easier across the entire game system for characters (PCs and NPCs) to make critical hits, this is actually a net penalty for the players - because players suffer more hits and therefore critical hits over their lifetimes than NPCs do.

Same deal here: assuming a good old level 1 to 20 grind, the average PC goes through more life-or-death situations than arguably a combat veteran at constant war does. And the nature of these threats are often not even human but extradimensional. Try a career when you're basically fighting IT (the creature, not the support line) every other week, that's the standard adventurer given a good portion of your fights are meant to be challenging for you and a not-tiny percentage of the time, lethally dangerous.

It's the sort of thing that might be interesting for a few sessions, maybe, but it has the capacity to get real old real quick.

[Spore]

It's not like the cleric is casting bolster plot armor.

Some might as well just be able to cast that. Some kind of ominous blessing. I know it is VERY difficult to balance a system without a healer in mind, and 5e did well with giving Life Clerics such a bonus, where others can only patch up, or pull people back from the dead.

But I wouldn't mind a system where clerics are predominantly priests, and are specialists in their god's portfolio, and nothing else. For one, this would give portfolio wars some kind of leverage - a healing god can heal, a harvest god can do plants, a merchant's god can do social stuff, and so forth - in the system.

A system where they don't go: "Ah yes, you are gravely injured, we will bring you to the temple of the god of merchantile, they surely know how to heal people". I mean it works with a sentence like "they will heal you but only if x" where x is varying things ranging from "you are sexy" (Sune) " you pay a price (Waukeen/most temples to be fair) "you subjugate yourself to the might of [insert evil god]"

[Lacco]

A system where they don't go: "Ah yes, you are gravely injured, we will bring you to the temple of the god of merchantile, they surely know how to heal people". I mean it works with a sentence like "they will heal you but only if x" where x is varying things ranging from "you are sexy" (Sune) " you pay a price (Waukeen/most temples to be fair) "you subjugate yourself to the might of [insert evil god]"

Love the idea.

"Oh, you saved the village from doom? Nice, our godess of farming welcomes such deed, have a heal."
"Oh, you just went to a dungeon and were harmed by the foul creatures? Ojjighabaragh, the god of Trade and Money will accept your tithe and our priests will heal you."
"Welcome, adventurer! You were harmed in battle? That pleases Crom, but you'll have to sacrifice a bull for him to notice you and provide healing."
"Wounds? Accept the blessings of thousand beetles and you will no longer care about such trifling issues!"

Also: different gods would like different sacrifices/deeds. If you displease them, you pay extra to get healed (e.g. godess of health and healing will require you not to go into dangerous places to get wounded for next 10 days for free healing).

Again, not everyone's cup of tea: definitely. But I like the fluff/mechanic interplay here.

[HappyDaze]

Love the idea.

"Oh, you saved the village from doom? Nice, our godess of farming welcomes such deed, have a heal."
"Oh, you just went to a dungeon and were harmed by the foul creatures? Ojjighabaragh, the god of Trade and Money will accept your tithe and our priests will heal you."
"Welcome, adventurer! You were harmed in battle? That pleases Crom, but you'll have to sacrifice a bull for him to notice you and provide healing."
"Wounds? Accept the blessings of thousand beetles and you will no longer care about such trifling issues!"

Also: different gods would like different sacrifices/deeds. If you displease them, you pay extra to get healed (e.g. godess of health and healing will require you not to go into dangerous places to get wounded for next 10 days for free healing).

Again, not everyone's cup of tea: definitely. But I like the fluff/mechanic interplay here.

For any of that to matter, healing has to require more than sacrificing 8 hours on a bedroll & pillow shrine.

[Lacco]

For any of that to matter, healing has to require more than sacrificing 8 hours on a bedroll & pillow shrine.

100% agree.

It's a system rule, but there are games where healing means rolling once per week of rest and healing magic only speeds up the process/improves the chance.

[Spore]

Love the idea.

"Oh, you saved the village from doom? Nice, our godess of farming welcomes such deed, have a heal."
"Oh, you just went to a dungeon and were harmed by the foul creatures? Ojjighabaragh, the god of Trade and Money will accept your tithe and our priests will heal you."
"Welcome, adventurer! You were harmed in battle? That pleases Crom, but you'll have to sacrifice a bull for him to notice you and provide healing."
"Wounds? Accept the blessings of thousand beetles and you will no longer care about such trifling issues!"

Also: different gods would like different sacrifices/deeds. If you displease them, you pay extra to get healed (e.g. godess of health and healing will require you not to go into dangerous places to get wounded for next 10 days for free healing).

Again, not everyone's cup of tea: definitely. But I like the fluff/mechanic interplay here.

I mean I was actually telling you that people should go to healing deities for healing, and to farming/merchant/sexy deities, for crops/money/love. So they actually should NOT include healing services just because we are programmed to think holy = faith healer.

[Lacco]

I mean I was actually telling you that people should go to healing deities for healing, and to farming/merchant/sexy deities, for crops/money/love. So they actually should NOT include healing services just because we are programmed to think holy = faith healer.

Ah. I misunderstood based on the last sentence. Sorry for that.

I think some of the domains would overlap (god of war should provide some healing, but only to wounds gained in battle; godess of family/fertility should be able to raise dead and heal as far as possible) - but we have already strayed away from the topic.

On the other hand, this is an interesting topic and I'd love to discuss it more.

[Kapow]

In a web serial, I read, magical healing does just heal wounds and the like.
Basically it regenerates flesh and bone.
But if the bone hasn't been set, it will grow together wrong.
Diseases, especially infections on the other hand won't be healed, on the contrary, magical healing strengthens them.
And you can absolutely overdose on health potions, so that your system can't take them anymore - although that does not seems to be something, that comes up all that often.

The consequences in the setting are a major disregard of small or even mortally wounds, for some people, they train with real weapon, there is one character, who wants to find a way to fly and regularly jumps from high buildings and just gets healed afterwards.
There are scenes where people chew whole potion flasks, as the wounds in their mouth just heal as well.

There ARE dedicated healers, to set those broken bones. But diseases pose a major problem, as nobody really knows how to handle them.