Neonivek: Tell me, how does healing magic work IRL? Frauds take your money and leave town before you wise up.
Magic doesn't exist in real life and Simulation doesn't nessisarily refer to real life circumstances. It means that the game is first and formost a simulation in otherwords it is trying to simulate something.
When a simulation includes effects that can only be decribed as "Gamey" then you are taking the game outside it simulation aspects. The key is to allow a game to have balance while at the same time allowing that balance to be organic. Giving healing magic its own unique flaws is a very game idea but not a very good simulation idea because there is no reason why it should be that way.
In DF, we can and probably should make healing magic balanced against not having it, ie mundane healing
That is looking too close to the picture and being unable to see the entire thing. The first and foremost image you should have is for the whole game and balance healing magic as it is in respect the everything else.
If healing magic completely topples mundane healing then all that means is that it completely topples mundane forms of healing and you do not need it anymore. No different then not needing fishermen because there is no water.
This is low fantasy, and having a few dwarves who can easily patch up any dwarves who didn't die within minutes of getting injured(and, if deployed into the field, many or most of those) would ruin both the low fantasy and the grittiness of DF, IMHO
Your statement however was that Low Fantasy was the sheer number of people who have magic. This arguement would make sense in my "It is about how important magic is to the setting" however in this case it is not.
So "Low Fantasy" is irrelevant. So let us rewrite this
"having a few dwarves who can easily patch up any dwarves who didn't die within minutes of getting injured(and, if deployed into the field, many or most of those) would ruin the grittiness of DF, IMHO"
The Grittyness of the setting is still contained and is no different then if you had legendary doctors capable of curing and wounded individual, remember this is also an "Epic" game and thus legendary life saving doctors are perfectly in its perview. The key to battles is that people are going to be killed, maimed, and injured. Something that doesn't change.
Make a high fantasy mod
Mod arguement, instantly invalid
If there's only one good choice, there's less of a game
Choice is not a possitive or negative in it of itself, nor is the limitation or expansion of choice. There are plenty of instances within dwarf fortress where there really is "One good choice" and where the strategic decisions are dictated to you because of circumstance.
This isn't a negative this is the cornerstone of what we call strategy.
If healing magic is overly easy, say if it just takes a day of dorftime, it would make doctors less useful than beekeepers
Yes but why is that a bad thing? There are professions even more useless then Beekeeping in the game already. Should we, for example, require dwarves eat cheese to live in order to give the Cheese makers a job?
Cheese makers are very useful, just not for a fortress. Doctors would also still be very useful, just not to a fortress supplied by a magicial expert in the art of curative arts.
After all, doctoring requires everything from time to lye to thread to potential labor, and has chances of failure, AND requires four or five skills, AND is rather limited in what it cures
Effort doesn't always equal pay off. Many of the alloys in the game are a waste to make but are only there out of choice. As well once again it would mean that doctors are not helpful for your fortress.
The problem isn't an issue of "easier vs. harder," it's about a single thing having the power to save your fort if used and to kill it if not
Then once again we are talking about strategy. Healing becomes useful and thus healing becomes part of the games strategy.
As well you are seriously overblowing the importance of healing. Healing will not save dwarves in the midst of fighting. It is a aftersiege healing method almost strictly. Unless we are to overblow healing magic to the point where a healer can spam instant heals from a mile away non-stop in bulk... but that is an exageration at best.
Imagine if every injured dwarf, from the legendary axedwarf with his arms amputated by a dragon to a hauler whose finger got broken by a flying boot, could be made very quickly good as new--not crippled, no loss of productivity, no chance of later death from infection or neglect. If you don't see the difference this would make, I'm not sure that we're playing the same game. For me, lots of useful dwarves would have been saved.
It would certainly make a very large difference but not the kind of difference you are thinking of. You will have to send those dwarves out, get them killed against enemy armies, and the game is only going to be getting more deadly.
A lot of this idea of "Lots of survivors" comes from the way the game is currently where sieges are a very safe prospect and where megabeasts are rather simple beasts outside the few super toxic ones.
Now, since we're Bay12, imagine what happens WHEN we give four or five clerics defensive training and steel armor before sending them into battle alongside the militia.
You would have dead Clerics and then you would have no more healing magic and you would have to rely on your doctors that I hope you kept up with training because they are useful.
As well this relies on the clerics functioning on the same wavelength as Necromancy (as in, instant spammable nonstop magic). If they had to do as much as a touch in the middle of battle that would be a huge risk. Can they just fling their healing? Well I hope they don't get swamped while they are taking cover. Healing isn't going to cure terminal battle disadvantage because you thought your charge was unbeatable because you trained four battle healers.
As well five healing mages/clerics? If this is a world where a fortress can throw five clerics with potent healing magic out into the middle of battle... They you deserve every bit of healing magic you obtained.
The soldiers would be healed as they're harmed, and unless healers are given a conspicuous immunity to healing magic, they'll heal each other
The healers probably can heal themselves. Of course given how the game goes it means the cleric is pretty much going to die.
Imagine an evil biome, but the corpses have metal arms and armor, quite possibly superior to your own.
Actually I have no objection to this. Toady you should make this happen.
Mind you I know what you mean. Except you know what? In this situation the game simply has to be made to recognise that healing magic exists. Healing isn't going to, for example, douse fire off a man.
Healing magic shouldn't be the core of your medicine when you get it, but it shouldn't be worthless either
Sure it can be the core of your medicine. The objection of "Mundane magic should be important even with healing magic" is very much based upon "Dwarf Fortress as it is right now" rather then "dwarf fortress as it moves on". If something comes along and outdates a profession because of its sheer might then allow it to. If you embarked on a land where trees give soo much fruit that your fortress will never grow hungry again then just allow it.
The key is if the game will recognise the importance of what this means.
There should be situations where it's useful and situations where it's wasteful or even harmful.
Certainly but those situations should flow from the fact that it is a simulation informed with balance.
It shouldn't be balance for balance sake as well it shouldn't be an arbitrary balance made only to make Healing magic a terrible thing. You have to allow people to rake in their rewards.
If everything in the game came at equal negatives then there is no point in developing something. What is the point of developing healing magic if all that is going to happen is the game is going to saw "Yeah sorry, in order to keep the doctors employed your healing spell just caused that dwarf to explode"
Part 1 finished