There's one spell in FC that obviates the need for hours of rest between encounters, and doesn't waste the mage's spell points: Touch of Light. That one tiny spell makes it so that the mage just spends a minute or two healing everyone back up, then they continue on with their day. Most mages can even cast it consistently without a roll after a few levels, so if it REALLY matters, just calculate how many rounds it'll take to heal everyone, assume he casts the spell every round, then move on.
Yes, and when you think about it it's a stupid image - the party mage, sitting next to you poking you every 6 seconds for the next 4 minutes. I'm not saying I have a problem with the spell, just that the idea of using it 130 times after every fight doesn't sit right with me. "[Vitality] is a measure of your character's ability to avoid injurty" - so by the book (page 28) you aren't injured. So why have it linger? It's just more bookkeeping, more "the mage casts 130 spells because you are all down 30-40 VP" and it doesn't mean your group needs a Mage to avoid hours of sitting around healing between fights.
i never had that problem in 3.5 with healing people. especially at higher levels with access to spells like mass cure critical and mass heal. and then the spontaneous heal for clerics.
At higher levels (with Heal) it's not as big an issue. At lower levels though you're always better off attacking, it's just the way the math shakes out - all the way up to heal (beyond it in FC, because the spell "Heal" doesn't actually heal any hit points - and healing wounds is
orders of magnitude worse).
Vitality resetting to full at the end of a scene should be a fundamental mechanical baseline.
I'm not sure if I would go that far. That means if you want the fatigue that robs vitality to be part of scenario then it all has to be in once scene. Unless some other mechanic will be dreamed up by that?
Not sure what you mean here? The
Fatigued condition wouldn't change by having vitality refresh automatically - it'd still stick around as normal. Unless you mean you want the players to start the next scene uninjured, but with increased possibility of injury? If that's the case a simple condition would fill that need - something that makes them refresh to [Percentage] of maximum vitality for the next scene. Probably magically inflicted, or as a critical injury (or even as a result of "death").
Of course, if you really wanted to remove healing just run a campaign that had no arcane or divine magic in it and see how it runs from there.
Which totally works for campaigns that don't have magic sources. My problem is that in a campaign with magic, healing
sucks. You're better of using the Medicine skill to fix wounds then you are magic (even without any sort of kit). Even when healing vitality you're better of attacking and using Touch of Light later on. The fact that the only truly useful healing spell (as in, for actual hit points) is a 0 level spell is something I consider a problem. Plus using a 0 level spell a whole bunch is the opposite of heroic fantasy - the other guys are impaling people on their spears, shooting Qi blasts from their hands, and being total badasses in general. As a magical healer, you poke your mates ever 6 seconds between fights - not badass.
---------
Got a little wordy there. May have repeated myself a little. Sorry.
On an different note: I'd like to see more distinctive options - Crafty did an excellent job of it, and I'm told Pathfinder did a reasonable one too. The difference between "I hit it with my Axe" and "I hit it with my Sword" is vastly different for a trained user in FC, not so much in D&D. Same goes for other non-weapon systems - I'd like to see Divine and Psionics that isn't just "Magic in a different hat" (again, Crafty did a great job with Paths, and I'd love to see their take on Psionics now that they're 2 editions more experienced).
Author