there has to be a way to heal faster then that with magic.
In The Dresden Files healing magic seems to be nonexistent, at least for humans (Listens-To-Winds does have some capability in this matter, but he's a Senior Council Member and regularly goes back to medical school). Magic can be used to staunch a wound or keep someone alert, but not in any more direct fashion. Very powerful beings like the Faerie Queens can do more, including fixing a broken spine and. According to the RPG, Summer Magic can be used to heal people (at least, better than most people) as the magic grants some kind of instinctive knowledge of physiology. Miss Gard's Runic Magic and certain forms of Necromancy can also stave off death.(click to show/hide)
Since almost no one is going to resist healing it should be easy to apply to others.
Listens-To-Winds does have some capability in this matter, but he's a Senior Council Member and regularly goes back to medical school.I think there are two sides to this. It's not only the caster himself who has to know precisely what he is doing, but the patient, different from what regular medicine can do, has to let it happen to a certain degree. If he doesn't, I think it acts sort of like a threshold (not linked to a special skill, just an inherent part of a human being that allows him to withstand magical changes to his body), reducing the effectiveness of the spell. Since the healing spell itself already requires a lot of power, an unwilling patient will make it pretty much impossible for all but the most dedicated of mortal practitioners. Fae, if they have a hold on you through a bargain can either ignore this or can simply overpower this inherent threshold, like Lea did in... I want to say GP?
I think there are two sides to this. It's not only the caster himself who has to know precisely what he is doing, but the patient, different from what regular medicine can do, has to let it happen to a certain degree. If he doesn't, I think it acts sort of like a threshold (not linked to a special skill, just an inherent part of a human being that allows him to withstand magical changes to his body), reducing the effectiveness of the spell.
My group doesn't let consequences be completely removed, but does let them be lowered a step. The cost is 4+value of consequence to reduce to down to one. Mild consequences can be removed this way.
6 shifts to remove mild.
8 to make moderate mild.
10 to make severe moderate.
Extreme consequences cannot be recovered this way.
So, if you wanted to let them completely remove the consequence, I'd add the two together. Removing a moderate would then be 14 shifts. Removing a severe would be 24.
If we didn't want to build up a threshold-style subsystem, perhaps this be a good opportunity for the GM to Invoke (or Compel) an Aspect to make such a spell easier, harder or impossible? Like "Harry Has My Back" could be Invoked for a bonus (or just to allow the spell to happen), whereas "Trusts Nobody" would be something interfering with the process.
If we didn't want to build up a threshold-style subsystem, perhaps this be a good opportunity for the GM to Invoke (or Compel) an Aspect to make such a spell easier, harder or impossible? Like "Harry Has My Back" could be Invoked for a bonus (or just to allow the spell to happen), whereas "Trusts Nobody" would be something interfering with the process.Sure, that could work. Though I wasn't proposing a subsystem. I was mainly thinking out loud my theories about how the magic works in the Dresden world in narrative terms. What that actually means in mechanical terms is depending on how hard you want healing magic to be. Not having a trusting relationship could double the difficulties. Or triple it. Or even make it outright impossible.
We already have a threshold style system; it's called the stress track + consequences.That doesn't really work for healing, though.
My group doesn't let consequences be completely removed, but does let them be lowered a step. The cost is 4+value of consequence to reduce to down to one. Mild consequences can be removed this way.
6 shifts to remove mild.
8 to make moderate mild.
10 to make severe moderate.
Extreme consequences cannot be recovered this way.
So, if you wanted to let them completely remove the consequence, I'd add the two together. Removing a moderate would then be 14 shifts. Removing a severe would be 24.
That doesn't really work for healing, though.
When this came up for me in "Defending the Borders", I used the same basis as what you have above (derived from the Reiki Healing spell in YS) but I calculated it a bit differently for completely removing a consequence.
So this was the same...
But this wasn't, since I only added the +4 once (treating it as a base cost to do this on a human at all). So completely removing a moderate was 10 shifts (4 base + 4 for moderate to mild +2 to remove mild) rather than 14.
A severe consequence didn't get removed in that game, but if it did, by my rules it would be 16 shifts (4 base + 6 severe to moderate + 4 moderate to mild +2 remove mild) rather than 24.
IMO this makes it difficult enough, because if you look at the spells in YS even a 10-12 shift spell is a fairly big deal in the fiction (though, yes, if you allow endless declaration stacking things certainly can get crazy).
EDIT: removed repetition accidentally introduced when writing the post
The stress/consequences system doesn't work too well for healing.
Doesn't work too well for consensual transformation, either. It turns being tough into a disadvantage, and introduces some weird incentives/implications.
Maybe some forms of magical damage resistance should impede consensual transformations.
But not all. Toughness can take many forms.
And when you look at the mundane stuff, it just makes no sense at all. People with better health are harder to heal? That's totally backwards!
Consequences are screwy too. A PC with 20 shifts of consequences being ridiculously harder to heal than an NPC with 0 is weird.
Well, that's why I said it shouldn't work that way for healing. Harder to transform into a dog? Maybe a bit more plausible.
You're not forced to take consequences, so they should never affect the difficulty of any consensual spell.
I don't think everyone who uses the stress + consequences model agrees with you there.
And I can kind of see why. 5 complexity is enough to push through any mundane stress track, and that's not very much complexity. Seems too easy, unless you add another cost.
There's an argument that you don't need a fp for temporary powers because you use the free tag on the aspect.Fred's comments are relevant:
Has there ever been any consensus on this?
Possibly not -- I can't speak to what other people think about it -- but I don't see any rules reason you would be required to take consequences to avoid a result you don't want to avoid...
EDIT: Going by book examples of thaumaturgy it would be max possible defense roll + stress track + 1. So probably more like 9-13 rather than 5.
There's an argument that you don't need a fp for temporary powers because you use the free tag on the aspect.
Has there ever been any consensus on this?