Are there any interesting healing powers that make the role more interesting than "pressing Q to heal x damage?"

Are there any interesting healing powers that make the role more interesting than "pressing Q to heal x damage?"

If there are, what are they and which system is it from?

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I liked the vitalist from pathfinder. Being able to "take" wounds from others is a neat way to go about healing, plus psionics are awesome.

I once ran an Evil fantasy game in nWoD where I told players they could more or less cast any kind of magic, with the difficulty check reaching infinity the more implausible or against the game's thematics it got.

One player rolled his healing spells by tearing the flesh from dead enemies and fusing it onto his allies' wounds.

I once read some book on demonology where a wizard took the fatal injury from a man into himself, then passed it into a dog.

Dunno if its a good mechanic but its certainly more original than "q to heal"

GURPS has a optional rule called "Salving", where magical healing doesn't actually heal, it's more like a magical 'cast' that holds the wound together. Every time you take significant damage after that it can potentially break (better mages can cast better salving spells), which means you can literally have characters who are mortally wounded but are held together with magic, and if it fails all those wounds re-open, bones come apart, etc. It's my favourite kind of healing magic as a GM because it means the players can be attrition'd down.

4e stuff, for a few reasons.

First, healing is almost always a minor action, so you get to do something aside from healing.

Second, every heal came with a secondary effect, on top of being a heal. Could be things like shifting an ally around, or giving a boost to attack/defense, removing a status effect etc.

Third, healing is very limited, but also heals a lot, so you have to decide when to use it to not waste any.

Fourth, you got some alternate heals like Paladin lay on hands (which is more like HP transfer) or the Artificers' Healing Infusions (one of which is a temp HP shield instead of a heal, which is pretty damn good and a lot more tactical/exciting gameplay-wise than restoring health).

Just play a modern setting where healing involves multiple actions: stitching wounds, applying bandages, preventing lung collapse, treating shock, and so on. It's not hard to GM evocatively either, just look up some first-responder pictures for inspiration. It ain't pretty.

In?

Like:

And how's that an "interesting power" in game?

The power of first-aid knowledge
My homebrew

...

This.
You want interesting healers? Every healer in 4e is interesting.

Except pacifist healer, but thats in the name.

Shitposting aside though, just take any system you want to use, drop HP as a mechanic, have damage be narrative, and use multiple rolls to fix wounds as appropriate, rolling, in all likelihood, DEX and INT. e.g. Ally takes a non critical direct hit from a gun? He doesn't lose 50HP, he takes a chest wound, a small opening out of which blood is irregularly gushing. Medic assesses [INT], stops the bleeding [DEX], but now he's coughing hard and blood is coming up, what did you do wrong?! Dammit the bandage wasn't airtight, his lung is collapsing as his breath draws air into his chest cavity through the wound [INT]! Redo the bandage, this time creating an airtight seal so that no more air can enter through the wound [DEX]. You leave one edge of the seal unstuck so that air already in the chest cavity can exit through the wound, but no more can enter [INT+DEX]. But you've spent so much time on him that the next casualty looks critical, he's moaning for his mother, better get there fast!

Much more exciting than healing rays of any variety IMO.

I kinda like the at-will prayer that just makes an enemy easier to hit, and gives the first party member to hit them a little healing.

I had an idea for a blood mage who restores health to his allies by stealing it from his enemies, combining an offensive and defensive casting role.

Another interesting healing mechanic from 4e:
I once played a cleric who could cast spells on enemies that'd heal the next person that attacked that enemy. Works really well for a commander type character who doesn't get their hands dirty themselves, but designates targets for their team and give incentives to attack them.

bump

So in one of Umberto Eco's novellas this thing called sympathetic powder which was apparently based on a true 17th century quack medicine.

Also, somewhat some spoiler for the "The Island of the day before"

Quoting from wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_of_sympathy
>Powder of sympathy was a form of sympathetic magic, current in the 17th century in Europe, whereby a remedy was applied to the weapon that had caused a wound in the hope of healing the injury it had made.

>...

>The concept of the powder of sympathy plays a significant role in the plot of Umberto Eco's novel The Island of the Day Before. In the novel, set in the 17th century, the protagonist learns of the powder, and gives a lecture on it in a salon. He is then ordered by Cardinal Mazarin to spy on a secret English Pacific voyage to test an unknown application of the powder to solve the longitude problem. The method attempted in the novel involved a dog wounded with a weapon; the weapon would then be heated every day at noon in London. The men on the ship would interpret the dog's simultaneous suffering far away as a sympathetic response, and thus would be able to calculate the difference between local time and London time.

Basically the point is that wounds are intrinsically linked to what caused them, which gets used to make a sort of 17th century radio in the book but is also used for healing.

Powers that are varied in art. Prevention, regen, damage control, redirection, other effects...
If I were to make a class, perhaps give major theme of prevention of damage by temporary hitpoints and creating areas which grant resistance to damage types. Actual healing could be weaker. Of course, they would also need some offensive capability.

Or perhaps a surgeon, who does not heal in combat, but has great ways of patching up people off-combat, inoculating and enhancing them.