HEALING FOR HEALTH AND MANA AND BURST AND RAGE AND BREAK AND TP AND SP AND -

Uh, every spell in that list is a healing or defensive spell. This topic was never just about pure HP-healing spells. It was about support characters. Did you stop reading the topic name after the third word?

If you don't think amazing synergies, multiple special effects per spell, and eight very different pure healing spells alone on the same character is at all interesting, then I'm curious what quality you're looking for in "interesting" abilities.

Ashriot: I'll admit to having not raided since I beat Naxxramas. If spells are less interesting now than they were during my heyday in Burning Crusade, I suppose it doesn't surprise me at all.

Yeah, the specifics of those spells won't necessarily translate perfectly to an ATB system, and even worse to a pure turn-based system. But the theories will translate fine:
- Make sure that every spell the player can cast is useful. If one spell is better than another in almost every situation, fix the worse one. Give it some sort of extra benefit.
- Time, power, and mana cost are three effects that can be balanced against each-other. If a spell is better in one area, it should be worse in at least one of the other two.
- Costing less mana doesn't count as making the spells useful if the player doesn't have to care about their mana in hard fights. You need to either limit their MP recovery options, or make the spells be useful for other reasons. Or, preferably, both.
- Spells can be better if they have cooldowns. Maybe just a couple rounds, maybe longer.
- You cannot fully heal the party in one cast. You cannot even fully heal one target in one cast. Having the ability to do so would make the amount of damage done by enemies almost meaningless. The healer should be struggling to keep up with enemy damage, not waiting until his allies are almost dead.
- In a boss fight, the player should probably be expected to use at least ten to fifteen different spells. If you're only using a few, it's really boring. We give the players lots of different spells, and we make them all useful in various situations... so let's make sure that those situations pop up all the time.
- If spells have effects that build off of each-other, then that's way more interesting than having a bunch of spells that are just good on their own for different reasons. If things are good for different reasons but have no interplay, then a player in a certain situation will always cast that situation's best spell over and over. But if they have interplay, then the player casts lots of different spells all the time, which engages them in the game more.
- Because the spells build off of each-other, on long fights the player can get a "rotation" going of their optimal spells. However, due to the nature of healing, things are quite going to go wrong and cause the player to have to cast other spells, which will put them in a constant struggle to maintain this optimal rotation.

I like the approach of healing in the Shin Megami Tensei games - getting to full health isn't quite a problem (the full-heal spell Mediaharan is obtainable at mid-game range, though it does make the heal boost ability near useless), but MP is almost impossible to restore - and Mediaharan costs a ton of MP. So it is very useful, but it runs out quickly (which is a bad thing especially in a boss fight). I do think the weaker/stronger spells can coexist, but the MP cost for the latter should be way over the one for the former.

But my idea is to give the healers a small side-profession, as they're usually dead weight while the group is at full health.

I would agree that healing should be made as interesting and well rounded as possible. In too many games a healer class just feels like a waste of a character while at the same time feeling like a mandatory inclusion. You won't survive without them but you only need them part time. Giving healing classes other defensive spells, or the ability to summon or use spells like Holy helps, but that only fixes the character and does nothing for the problem of healing to begin with. More often than not, healing just isn't fun. Games are supposed to be fun. Almost all of the ideas stated in this topic though really help to improve the fun level of healing and I think that IS important. We can't ignore this when designing games. A generic attacker for some reason always seems ok to play. A generic mage is livable too. A generic healer though? I can't stand it personally.

One alternative though to making more creative healing I think is to find a way to take it out of the game entirely. Perhaps heal your player after every battle. This adds a level of strategy to the game too I think because they then need to really think about being defensive in some battles and the choice between attack or defend really becomes more pronounced. Or maybe have a passive healing effect on your characters that always slowly heals them allowing them to forget all about needing to heal except in the worst situations. In which case items should suffice.

The thing is for me, I feel like abandoning a feature is never preferable to improving one. That's just the way I see it though.

author=heisenman

You won't survive without them

Why not?
In most games healing items are more than affordable and are quicker to use than casting healing magic, without consuming MP and being accessible by every class at every moment.

Well that's fair. I guess I should be more broad in saying that you need some system for healing or you won't survive in most games. If you give the player enough items and make them good enough you could go without a healer character, but you wouldn't be going without healing in any major way. I guess that's more what I mean.