R P G A M E R . C O M   -   E D I T O R I A L S

Defense Versus...Healing?

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Derek 'Roku' Cavin
STAFF EDITORIALIST

Healing is a vital part of RPGs. Without the ability to recover HP mid-battle, victory would often be very difficult, if not impossible in many cases. Of course, many games allow items to heal players, but heroes generally need to rely on skills for much-needed regeneration. These skills often vary in cost and effectiveness from game to game, but there are a few RPGs out there that add a minor hurdle to the healing process.

In most games, healing abilities are reliant solely on the power of the user. After all, why would the recipient want to resist, say, a cure spell for example? Doing so would be a waste of effort for the defender and make the caster work harder. Yet in some games, this is exactly the case. Healers will cast powerful regenerative spells, but a high level/high magic resistance character will receive minimal effect. It is hard to believe that this would ever be intentional, so it is very likely to be an oversight.

What makes this often especially annoying is when it shows up in Tactical RPGs such as Vandal Hearts. If healers fall too far behind the pack, or some characters simply equip an especially strong armor, their usefulness diminishes significantly. What good is a healer that can barely "scratch" their targets in a positive way? This is hardly fitting in games that pride themselves on tactical battles.

What then, about magic barriers that appear in a lot of other RPGs? In general, this isn't as much of an issue. Magic barriers are generally a special status effect that indiscriminately lessens the effect of magic used on the target. It makes a lot more sense for them to decrease healing by a certain margin than for a target to willfully resist it.

In the end, it appears that this problem seems to be caused by an oversight. Rather than adding a few more lines of code that negate resistance when the effect is positive, healers are left to grow somewhat useless, should they fall too far behind the pack. Such an omission is a mark against these RPGs, especially the Tactical RPGs that should pay extra attention to vital combat details.