2026-09-30 20:07:36 UTC#1
A Cross-System Look at Healing and Support
Over the course of the Beta, I’ve ended up testing a fairly wide spread of the healing and support systems side by side – Medicine, Toughness, Music, and the ways they overlap in actual combat.
Rather than break those observations into several isolated suggestions, I wanted to collect them in one place so the numbers, strengths, weaknesses, and possible tweaks can be compared directly against each other. Most of the ideas below are still modular and could stand on their own; I just think they make more sense when viewed as parts of the same support ecosystem.
Any who have alternative experiences with these, please give your input as well.
1. Bandage Speed / Scaling
After testing Medicine throughout the Beta, here's my observations.
Currently:
- A Dirty Bandage heals 10 HP at any Medicine/Intelligence level.
- A Lichen Bandage heals 20 HP at any Medicine/Intelligence level.
- Applying one costs 20 Focus.
- At 25 Medicine, application appears to take roughly 25 seconds.
- Every 5 points of Medicine removes about one second, which would reach roughly 10 seconds at 100 Medicine.
- Healing somebody other than yourself appears to shave another 5 seconds off (thanks bandit punching bag!).
- Messages such as “shoddily” or “expertly” applying the bandage appear, but the amount actually healed seems fixed by bandage type.
The biggest issue is simply the starting speed. Twenty-five seconds is an eternity in combat.
Archin floated a much faster progression that I think would fit better:
25 Medicine — 6 seconds
50 Medicine — 5 seconds
75 Medicine — 4 seconds
100 Medicine — 3 seconds
With that much faster baseline, I would not also keep the current bonus for treating somebody else, since that would quickly reduce the application to effectively instant. She may have intended that list to mean when healing others, though, so increased time bandaging self could be still considered.
As a tradeoff, I would also enforce what I believe was the original intended restriction: both hands must be free to apply a bandage.
At the moment I can apparently perform field surgery while holding a guitar in one hand and smoking a pipe with the other, which is impressive but perhaps not ideal for balance.
I also would not make the amount healed depend primarily on bandage quality. Dirty bandages already have their own downside through Illness. Instead, I'd hope that healing could scale with the medic's Intelligence like Steeling Strum does for music.
As a rough example:
10 base healing + 1 HP per 10 Intelligence
That would range from around 10 HP for a very low-INT character to 20 HP at 100 INT. Less than toughness, but faster and can be stacked with their efforts.
Medicine skill would still improve application speed, while Intelligence would improve quality of treatment.
The existing “shoddily/expertly applied” messages could potentially tie into the amount healed somehow too.
1.5 Bandages as Healing Over Time
A more substantial alternative would be to change what happens during the bandaging timer.
Rather than requiring the medic to remain beside the patient for the entire application, the medic could apply the bandage instantly and the healing itself would resolve in pulses over the next six seconds. This would help adjust for the extreme movement speed of Icebound mobs.
Taking damage during treatment could reduce or cancel individual pulses, with the chance perhaps still influenced by the medic's Medicine skill rather than impacting speed. Total could still scale with Intelligence.
That keeps bandaging vulnerable to combat pressure without requiring two players to remain glued together while Icebound's over-energetic wildlife chases them around.
I think this is the more ambitious alternative to #1, and it may be harder to code well. Simply making the current application model substantially faster may already solve most of the problem without encroaching on Toughness's in combat self-healing niche.
2. Toughness and Emergency Self-Healing
Toughness currently fills a very different niche.
It only heals yourself, but you can use it with your hands occupied and it does not require another character to remain nearby.
From my testing, the healing seems to be roughly:
- Around 7 HP near 25 Toughness
- Around 16 HP near 65 Toughness
- That probably makes it roughly 23 to 25 healing at 100.
Application currently takes roughly 5–7 seconds depending on Intelligence. Around 25 INT it's 7 seconds, around 80 INT it reaches 6, and around 100 INT it reaches 5 seconds.
It also uses Resolve, and the Resolve pool gets quite large. At around 65 Toughness I have roughly 340 Resolve available, enough that ordinary Toughness healing can stretch for hours, and it regenerates quickly in town. I have never run out.
I think the existing heal works well as Toughness's reliable, economical recovery option.
What might make the skill more interesting in combat would be a second ability around 50 or 75 Toughness that trades efficiency for immediacy to use up some of that resolve pool.
Something like:
Second Wind
Instantly recover HP.
Costs substantially more Resolve.
Has a meaningful cooldown.
That would give Toughness an emergency button without replacing its slower, efficient self-heal.
Archin also floated a possible 100 Toughness capstone, which I think fits the skill extremely well. Something like:
Relentless Endurance
Once per hour, if you would drop to 0 HP, automatically recover to 25 HP instead.
That gives Toughness a fun progression: ordinary slower self-healing, Second Wind for an emergency recovery you choose to use, and Relentless Endurance as the true capstone.
3. Field Tonics
Beyond bandaging, I also think Medicine could benefit from some additional active combat support.
Several of the current Music abilities feel more naturally suited to Medicine, particularly injury protection, burst Stamina recovery, and the temporary stat increases.
The current +STR / +DEX / +INT effects are awkward as six-second musical pulses because those stats also affect maximum HP, Stamina, and Focus.
If the buff drops for even a moment because of lag or a song restarting, the associated HP/Stamina/Focus max drops. When the buff returns a second later, the character then has to regenerate the missing HP/Stamina/Focus again.
Those effects seem much better suited to longer-duration Medicine buffs.
My thought would be a generic consumable called a Field Tonic, with different Medicine abilities determining how the doctor administers it -- and they would be actively administering the doses based on the situation they see, not handing them out as potions.
The fantasy is less “drink a potion” and more Victorian field medicine, with a healthy dash of period snake oil and questionable restorative science. The doctor assesses the situation and applies a dose of their Medicine appropriate to the patient.
The Field Tonic would represent one generic medical preparation rather than several separately crafted consumables. In-character, it might be crafted into a vial (an existing under-utilized craftable) using any of the doctor's preferred wines, stimulants, depressants, and assorted restoratives.
Mechanically, I would deliberately keep it generic so Medicine does not become dependent on a long Chemistry/Botany/Cooking preparation chain for every individual ability.
The doctor brings Field Tonics; their Medicine skill determines what they can do with them.
50 Medicine - Fortifying Dose - Field Tonic, +20 STR
50 Medicine - Quickening Dose - Field Tonic, +20 DEX
50 Medicine - Clarifying Dose - Field Tonic, +20 INT
75 Medicine - Energizing Dose - Field Tonic, burst Stamina recovery
100 Medicine - Stabilizing Dose - Field Tonic, reduced Injury/Illness effects
The stat buffs could last something like five minutes rather than repeatedly pulsing.
Other Field Tonic abilities could also be added later using the same generic resource. Or it could require no hard Field Tonic resource at all, and just be a focus-using ability.
4. Moving Existing Music Effects into Medicine
The corresponding Music abilities to be removed would be:
Graceful Bowing – +INT
Drumroll Fury – +STR
Zephyr's Tune – +DEX
Rallying Blast – burst Stamina recovery
Soothing Rhythm – Injury/Illness mitigation
The Stamina split in particular feels natural:
Music: Steady Beat provides sustained Stamina regeneration.
Medicine: Energizing Dose restores a burst of Stamina immediately. That's some good coffee.
The former feels like keeping everyone's momentum going; the latter feels like the doctor getting somebody back on their feet.
4.5 Possible Music Tier Cleanup
Removing those abilities would leave some holes in the new shared Music tiers, so this might also be a convenient opportunity to redistribute the remaining abilities according to usefulness rather than their original instrument requirements.
It also leaves Music with a clean healing niche of its own: Gentle String provides sustained HP regeneration at Tier 1, while Steeling Strum is the dedicated, stronger direct party heal at Tier 3 instead of Tier 2.
Tier 1 – 25 Music
Gentle String – HP regeneration
Steady Beat – Stamina regeneration
Restful Sonata – Resolve recovery
Battle Hymn – Physical Resistance
Chord of Warmth – Cold Resistance
Tier 2 – 50 Music
Vengeful Harmony – Enemy Stamina damage
Breezy Melody – Party Focus recovery
Echoing Note – Long-distance signal
Whispering Wind – Self Focus recovery
Tier 3 – 75 Music
Harmonious Rest – Fatigue recovery
Heroic Resonance – Sanity protection
Steeling Strum – Party heal
Music Composition – Custom sheet music
Tier 4 – 100 Music
Discordant Note – Combat disruption
Thunderous Crescendo – HCI bonus
Marching Cadence – Movement speed
Twang of Surprise – Reveal hidden characters
That leaves a fairly even 5 / 4 / 4 / 4 distribution.
Marching Cadence feels powerful enough to justify Tier 4, while Echoing Note has a useful niche but never really felt like a capstone. Music Composition also feels more appropriate as a substantial Tier 3 specialization reward than something a town musician necessarily needs to be a complete master of before being allowed to use.
This is only downstream cleanup if the Medicine abilities move; it is not necessary for any of the healing changes above.
Overall
The broad goal would be to give each form of healing a clearer role and limitations.
Toughness keeps yourself alive economically and could gain an expensive emergency burst plus a true last-stand capstone.
Medicine provides support healing (either HoT, or quicker support) and longer-duration buff support, balanced by needing free hands, proximity, Intelligence, Focus, bandages, and/or Field Tonics.
Music supplies slow constant regeneration and a party-wide burst heal. This is balanced by occupying hands with an instrument, aggressive durability hits, medium proximity, Intelligence, and Focus.
None of these changes need to arrive as one package, though. The bandage numbers, healing-over-time alternative, Toughness burst heal, Toughness capstone, Field Tonics, and Music redistribution can all be considered independently.
The main goal is simply to make the different healing skills feel useful for different reasons rather than making one of them the obvious answer to every situation.