In general, I say that how long it takes for an injury to heal depends entirely on the narrative needs of the player whose character is injured. If you want natural healing to be important, then for some reason, the magic just doesn't heal you quickly. If you want Benediction to bring you back into the action instantly, then it does. Story considerations are key here. However, we do know one key aspect of magical healing in XIV: you can't regenerate souls with magic -- once you're dead, you're dead (excluding some supremely rare and very temporary exceptions).
Personally, I find the setting supports instant healing more than long-term injury. I find it an interesting challenge to achieve gravitas and fear of injury in a setting where the vast majority of injuries are trivial for an adventurer to deal with. This also leads to some interesting contrivances in RP, such as a trap with, say, basilisk venom; it'd be fatal to non-adventurers, typically, but those with access to magical healing would find it just an annoyance. However, I realize this isn't everyone's cup of tea, and so I hew entirely towards "the recipient of healing determines its effect." There's a lot of ways to justify that metaphysically, from "the Elementals don't will a complete healing" to "magic's just an inexact art, sometimes it doesn't work exactly right."
The one time I had a character suffer long-term injury was in City of Heroes, where my character quite literally had the skin and soft tissue of his face and much of his upper torso melted off and his skull crushed. While CoH has "magical healing," more or less, it also has more mundane hospitals, and the way I spun it was that he needed extensive reconstructive surgery (which while eventually perfect thanks to superpowers, would take some time to do safely). What I did was put the character in the hospital, set up scenes for people to visit him, and largely played an alt during his recovery time. By giving everyone confidence IC and OOC that he was being properly treated and healing up, the "medical drama" was eliminated, and people could come RP with him if they wanted without every scene being consumed by "is he going to die? Will he be okay?"
Personally, I find the setting supports instant healing more than long-term injury. I find it an interesting challenge to achieve gravitas and fear of injury in a setting where the vast majority of injuries are trivial for an adventurer to deal with. This also leads to some interesting contrivances in RP, such as a trap with, say, basilisk venom; it'd be fatal to non-adventurers, typically, but those with access to magical healing would find it just an annoyance. However, I realize this isn't everyone's cup of tea, and so I hew entirely towards "the recipient of healing determines its effect." There's a lot of ways to justify that metaphysically, from "the Elementals don't will a complete healing" to "magic's just an inexact art, sometimes it doesn't work exactly right."
(07-04-2014, 10:13 PM)Verad Wrote: Those of you who prefer lengthier healing times: How do you balance the play such that every scene in which your character is involved doesn't eventually become about the injury, especially when it's a serious one?
The one time I had a character suffer long-term injury was in City of Heroes, where my character quite literally had the skin and soft tissue of his face and much of his upper torso melted off and his skull crushed. While CoH has "magical healing," more or less, it also has more mundane hospitals, and the way I spun it was that he needed extensive reconstructive surgery (which while eventually perfect thanks to superpowers, would take some time to do safely). What I did was put the character in the hospital, set up scenes for people to visit him, and largely played an alt during his recovery time. By giving everyone confidence IC and OOC that he was being properly treated and healing up, the "medical drama" was eliminated, and people could come RP with him if they wanted without every scene being consumed by "is he going to die? Will he be okay?"
The Freelance Wizard
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Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
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