World of Warcraft®

Now that you mention it, other people have characterised Elune as being downright bratty.

http://woweh.com/?p=918

So, yeah. I don't find it that hard to imagine a god getting short with folks who bother them too much. "Here have this scythe. Yes, it's perfectly normal. Are we done?"

Heh, well I never expected I'd need academic referencing in a wow forum thread. Okay then, here's one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia
(Yes, any university worth its salt will flunk a wiki essay on principle, lucky this isn't a university and I doubt the average blizzard forum goer wants to read Aristotle just to validate my position.)

The concept of petty, flawed gods is a pretty damn old concept. History is loaded with stories of the gods' petty squabbles and revenge tactics. Zeus chained Prometheus up to a rock for eternity to have his liver eaten out by an eagle every day because he felt ripped off. That does not sound like the actions of a divine entity to me.

Considering blizzard's standards of pinching cultural stories to power their lore department, I still don't consider it too far a stretch to imagine gods that become fed up with the constant whining of their devotees.
"Wah wah wah, we're not immortal any more, help us!"
"Yeah? Stiff. Look at what you bozos did to my pal Cenarius. You guys are on your own."

That's why Hyjal is a big deal, the demigods had a tendency to get killed when they got involved in the affairs of the mortal races, or seriously injured. It's only because Raggy has brought the war to their front yard that they're stepping up. The player races of Azeroth are not entitled to the divine protection they claim. Hell, it was the dark iron dwarves that summoned Ragnaros to the physical plane to begin with! Now they're having tea and biscuits with Varian Wrynn! That should NOT go over well.

I think one of the things that bugs me about RP is that a lot of folks seem to lose perspective when they get invested in their own character. Try to make it fit in with the lore- really ask yourself, 'why the hell can I just call on this power whenever I want?'. What does the holy light owe you?

01/08/2011 3:52 PMPosted by Darkmane

@Tessele: Have you done the newest Forsaken quests since the Shattering? The priest trainer explains in poetry:
A Forsaken priest is a curious beast, her path an unusual course.
Her shadowy rites cannot come from the Light, so she seeks a more sinister source.
I think the idea is that her power indeed comes from her own will, but that's just my interpretation.

Yeah, so it's their own power, not the Light. That's what I meant.

This is a topic very near and dear to my heart, so much so that I wrote my own treatise on this back in the day. You're very astute in recognizing the reasons why limiting healing and death is good for roleplay; if death is frequent and temporary, the world holds no real danger for you, and everyone becomes a suicidal maniac because nothing matters.

I'll spare you the entire thing unless you really want to read it, but my piece has something that adds to your viewpoint fairly well. The theme of the piece was that damage sustained in combat and subsequent healing, so long as you aren't reduced to zero health, is far less dramatic than you might imagine. Hits that do damage might not actually be hitting you, but rather slowing you, tiring you, forcing defense, and similarly warding you from an otherwise offensive position. The swings you take are taken by parries, dodges, and indeed the occasional scratch, but generally leave your character unhit. It's only when you run out of health (in game terms) that you take your first real hard blow - a firm crack to the skull, a debilitating stab through the shoulder, maybe getting sent to the ground with the wind knocked out of you, maybe even a fatal strike leaving you in your final moments. The character "death" need not be a real death as you might just be KO'd or windless.

This means that healing spells are similarly less dramatic. Individual healing spells might be so subtle as an invigorating wind to boost your morale, or a bit more oxygen in the blood so you feel less tired. Classes can theme these healing spells as well - a Power Word: Shield is a powerful psychological tool in that the next committed strike will be effortlessly deflected, giving the receiver of the shield an opportunity to press the advantage. A shaman's Healing Wave might be a temporary boon from the very earth you stand on to help you keep your footing. A hunter's Mend Pet heal might be nothing more than a few encouraging words from the master to the pet ("Go get 'em, boy!"). Resurrection spells are similarly toned down to something that can, with a good amount of effort, actually close a wound or bring back to consciousness, but not something that can easily and quickly reverse even recent death. Depending on your purposes, you might even disallow such healing in favor of a scar, a coma, or a permanent death.

The active part of this sort of methodology to the roleplay doesn't come up all that much - it's typically something that you keep in mind in the back of your head as combat plays out. It might, however, effect how your character acts at various points in combat, acting winded at high health totals, and perhaps wiping some blood from yourself at more critical totals. Really at the heart of this is the idea that wounds and death ought not be tossed about lightly and without real consequence.

I've just seen the new casting animations for Resto shamans coming in patch 4.06 {spolier warning, stop now if you mind}.

The old leafy green casting animation has been replacing with water (including a splashy sound effect). Now I agree this does fit more with the elementalist background, but it leaves me wondering about whether this would change anything regarding our character's methods of healing. In this post above, a few people seem to agree with me that the "green" healing of shaman and druids was more of a natural healing process (albeit sped up) than that of the Light (/insert higher power here). Now it seems like the shaman is drawing their healing power from the element of water itself. Water, especially fresh water such as from a natural spring, has often been touted as having healing properties so this does make sense in a way, and is still a "natural" process.

Anyone else have thoughts to share on this?

Yeah, I dont see how the different animation needs to change anything.

Water is still nature, so it's still natural healing. It just looks prettier.

01/18/2011 1:26 PMPosted by Miralorae

Yeah, I dont see how the different animation needs to change anything.

Water is still nature, so it's still natural healing. It just looks prettier.

Well by that thought then the holy healing of paladins and priests is the same as the natural healing of the druid and shaman. Gamewise this is so, it's just healing, but in RP I think it can inject a little class flavour.

I always felt that in healing via the Light or Divine Magic could be more easily equated to "faith healing" found in the real world. Essentially its kind of a magic placebo. It takes faith on the part of the Healer and on the part of the recipient for it to work. If you don't believe the light can heal you, then how could it? Additionally I've felt that in battle healing was more of a stopgap, kind of an emergency triage that could sustain you long enough to wrap up the battle and get a more permanent medical attention from a Doctor (otherwise why would there even be doctors/surgeons in-game if you can just go to your local church and get patched up).

As for nature healing (Shaman, Druid), I've expected it to be just as most have described helping the body heal itself. However, a small caveat would be that the power healing done would be subject to both the power of the healer AND their specific anatomical and physiological knowledge. Can't cure a poison that affects the heart without knowing how a heart works. As such shamans and druids who specifically use their powers to restore other people to health would be some of the most intelligent and well-learned people on the planet.

Lastly about scars. Lets look at this from a practical point of view. There are 10 classes. Of those classes only 4 can heal others, and there are 17 sub-classes that are designed exclusively to deal damage leaving only a relatively small percentage of the actual player population ready and willing to heal. That said on a huge battlefield there are bound to be exponentially more people getting hurt than getting healed so it stands to reason that most of the healing done isn't done on the battlefield by magic healers, but by field dressing and first aide, both of which leave scars. So scars would still be fairly common even if there are healers present to patch people up.

Now, please ignore me if this is considered a bad idea, or if it doesn't fit in with other possible healing alternatives...

But I have an idea. Now, I'm a bit of a Doctor Who fan, and one of my favorite things about the series is the main character's ability to "regenerate"-completely heal themselves of mortal injury at the cost of forcibly and permanently changing into a different person. They are still the same "Doctor" at heart, but with a completely separate personality and face/body/etc.

Would something like this be a possibility in RP?

Eg. An ally/close friend/lover/etc. is mortally wounded in battle. Precious minutes of life flow out of her as you desperately cut through the enemy's ranks to reach them. Once you finally reach their side, you realise it is too late for medical aid or conventional healing techniques. They are severely wounded, and their organs are damaged, and the only way to heal them of their wounds is to completely recreate vast parts of their body, changing their appearance...and mind...permanently.

? Possible ?