Healing Touch

If someone is seriously injured, it seems like you could get a situation where a player wants to use Healing Touch on them up to six consecutive times to heal them completely. That's kind of an unusual situation for this game, where one roll usually resolves a problem. I'm concerned both that it could be unbalancing if a player with Healing Touch could gain up to six experience per injured person after a fight, without taking any moves that don't seem justified by the fiction, and it's also just kind of clunky and time intensive to play through that many rolls, each of which could require another acting under fire roll.

Am I confused about how this move works and there is a reason why the wouldn't happen? I know it's a risky move, but I don't think that alone will mean it doesn't get used like this, since it's worth taking risks to save a dying character and could take four rolls to stabilize someone on death's door. Assuming it is a problem, how would you fix this move? I have a couple ideas but I'd like to hear some suggestions.

Generally, just don't give one player six moves in a row. If they're sitting they're, doing nothing but healing, that sounds like a silver platter opening for you to make a move.

And you don't gain experience, you gain Hx.

If you have Weird highlighted you gain a ton of experience and Hx, right? Sorry I didn't make that clear, but my concern about experience was when someone has this move and also has Weird highlighted. If they don't have Weird highlighted that's not an issue.

I don't like the idea of a player making six moves in a row, either, and that's exactly my problem with this move. But it doesn't sound like a silver platter for me to make a move, to me. In fact if they are in a safe environment, there is nothing I see that suggests this move takes a lot of time, so why wouldn't it make complete sense for them to just use them more six times quickly, before addressing anything else?

To be more concrete, imagine we're back at the holding after a battle, and one of the player has taken six harm and is on death's door. I could let the healer make four moves to stabilize them, which doesn't sit right with me. I could make a move each time between each move- that doesn't make sense to me on a successful roll because they aren't looking for me to say anything, they know exactly what they want to do next. But suppose I do find an appropriate move. After that's resolved, they will return to healing the dying player, because otherwise they will die. If I make a move that prevents them from healing the dying player, I've ensured their death which doesn't sit right with me. If I make a move but they are able to return to healing afterwards, they are still making four rolls, and I've stretched out the amount of time it took and given the healer even more screen time, which seems like it only makes the problem worse.

You don't have to be the one making the moves each time, either; the idea of letting a player have 6 moves in a row (or really, more than 2) seems bad to me because it means the other players aren't making moves, not because I (the MC) am not. I feel like if the other players are around, just giving them the opportunity to do things with their characters is likely to provide enough distraction.

If your worry is that you feel trapped in a decision between "either I sit here and do nothing or I make this PC die", well, I think that's why debilities exist.

If your worry is that you feel trapped in a decision between "either I sit here and do nothing or I make this PC die", well, I think that's why debilities exist.

That's part of it. I'm not sure how debilities help. If you take a debility, you will slow down death, but will still die eventually unless you are stabilized. Since you can't stabilize yourself by taking debilities, either those four rolls get made, or the character eventually dies, it just might take longer. And besides "either I sit here and do nothing or I make this PC take a debility" doesn't seem great, either.

You don't have to be the one making the moves each time, either; the idea of letting a player have 6 moves in a row (or really, more than 2) seems bad to me because it means the other players aren't making moves, not because I (the MC) am not. I feel like if the other players are around, just giving them the opportunity to do things with their characters is likely to provide enough distraction.

I guess that's a little better since the other players aren't bored, but it now takes the healer most of the session to stabilize someone. Again distraction doesn't seem like it improves the situation, I think the real problem is that stabilizing a dying person is really a single action in the fiction, just like you can make one roll to shoot someone for 3 harm rather than three separate rolls. The angel kit rules handle it that way, and the fact that this move doesn't treat it that way is kind of weird and causes some problems.

Well, whenever Burroughs the Angel uses the healing touch, it's an event because he is invading your flesh and nervous system with his mind.

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=608.msg8683#msg8683

So make every Move impactful and you won't have this happen six times in a row.

Huh, I guess we were playing debilities wrong; we kind of played them like, any time your health would change, you can take a debility and set your harm to 9:00 and stable.

It looks like you're only supposed to take them at the moment your health crosses 9:00; I kind of liked what we were doing though.

Huh, I guess we were playing debilities wrong; we kind of played them like, any time your health would change, you can take a debility and set your harm to 9:00 and stable.

It looks like you're only supposed to take them at the moment your health crosses 9:00; I kind of liked what we were doing though.

I have always found the language used a little unclear, but my understanding was that when your health crossed 9:00 you could take a debility to stop there, but would not be stable- you must still be stabilized by an Angel or healed to 6:00 with Healing Touch to prevent death.
I like the way you describe having it work, but even if you could use it after the fact, wouldn't it set you to 9:00 but you'd still be unstable?

Well, whenever Burroughs the Angel uses the healing touch, it's an event because he is invading your flesh and nervous system with his mind.

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=608.msg8683#msg8683

So make every Move impactful and you won't have this happen six times in a row.

Yeah, I don't buy that. Remember I'm not (just) talking about topping off an already stable character, but also cases where you need to stabilize someone who is at death's door. It'll be an event, for sure, but you'll either decide it's worth invading their flesh and nervous system with your mind four times to stabilize them, or not. I can see why you wouldn't use the move frivolously, but it's hard to imagine you wouldn't use it to save someone's life- or if the consequences were that dire, it's hard to see when you would use the move, ever. The problem still seems to me to be that it takes up to four rolls to stabilize someone.

No, from page 166:

Bran's player: "Damn. Well, shit. When I cross 9:00, I can take a debility instead, right? I'm going to take 'crippled.' That'll put me at 9:00, not dead?"

It will, exactly right.

He'll still be harmed to 9:00, which means that his wounds won't get better by themselves, but also won't get worse.

I see. I had thought since the Angel had a move to "stabilize and heal someone as 9:00 and past" that 9:00 was unstable, but it looks like if you are at 10:00-12:00 it stabilizes you and sets you to 6:00, and at 9:00 you are already stable but the same move can set you to 6:00. Do I have it right?

That would mean you need at most three moves to stabilize someone instead of four, but that's still three consecutive moves to achieve a single goal (stabilizing someone on death's door.)

It's also your job as the MC to frame scenes. So, if a) it's a matter of life and death, or is otherwise urgent, and b) rolling the same move six times in a row is boring (and it is), allow the player to roll it once and then cut the scene. Then frame a new scene later on when the injured PC is better. Put them in a new situation, ask them why they are there, ask them what they did in the meantime--or ask them why they didn't get anything done! Just because you have wounds on a character sheet suggesting a certain situation to you, doesn't mean you are beholden to that situation.

Likewise, the MC is responsible for setting the scope and range of a scene, so if some wounds require a long, long session of laying on hands, that's the MC's decision to make. Maybe laying on hands takes a moment in the middle of a battle, where everything is happening in a rush, and maybe it takes several hours, just as long as it takes the cannibals to break the door down. Wounds are all different.

It sounds like you are suggesting that the healer be able to stabilize the dying character and resolve that conflict with a single roll. That's not a bad way to change the power so it acts more like the angel kit. But by the book, that's not what the move does, you only heal a single level of harm.
I'm not sure what your point was with regard to different wounds taking different amounts of time. Are you suggesting that multiple levels of harm could be healed but the single roll might represent a longer period of time?

This is a little bit of a digression, but I was surprised that you thought that it is the MC's responsibility to frame scenes and decide their scope and range. A lot of the time I have seen the MC ask questions while the player frames the scene. The rules are pretty explicit about MC responsibilities, but I don't think this was addressed.

Also, I found it odd that you don't think we should be beholden to the wounds on the character sheet. If we're going to ignore them, why are we tracking them in the first place?

The actual wording of the move ought to make spamming of Healing Touch a non-issue. Quite simply, even under the best of circumstances, there's a really good chance of stuff going wrong and ruining the healer's day. If you only get a minor hit, you're acting under fire, and even if you get a minor hit on your Act Under Fire, interesting and possibly hurtful stuff happens.

In practice, using Healing Touch six times in a row is a near guarantee of one very, very messed up angel. And with a probable handful of hard choices and worse outcomes, a really interesting situation. Even if you haven't actually blown it ripped open yourself and the patient to the maelstrom...

One of the things that makes this move interesting is that it lets an Angel heal the first two levels of harm quickly, which they couldn't normally do. Making it so dangerous that you'd never want to do that seems unfortunate. But suppose that it's already so dangerous by the book that it's not worth using except to save a dying character, or that we can treat it as such a high impact move that it becomes something you only want to use in such circumstances.
Then, we still have the problem that it sometimes takes two or three uses to stabilize a character who is at death's door. That's not as bad a six rolls, but still feels kind of clunky and at odds with how the rest of the system works.

The default angel kit moves never require more than a single roll (and possibly a second acting under fire roll to deal with the consequences) since if someone is past 6:00 a success sets them to 6:00, and a roll isn't required to speed up healing the first two harm.  I think the problem with this move is that it heals one level of harm at a time, instead of stabilizing someone in a single roll. But I'm not sure that making it work exactly like the angel kit is the best way to go either, I think the fact that it isn't exactly the same as the angel kit is what makes it a useful move for an angel to take.

A lot of the advice I'm getting feels like variations on "make the move such a hassle that it will only be used sparingly", which really isn't doing it for me. If the move is so clunky that I don't want it coming up in play, I'd rather redesign it to work better than discourage them from using it. And the life and death situations where you'd use a move even when it was a big hassle include the situation where the move feels especially clunky, and in those situations I think a lot of these approaches might make things worse.

Hi, Angel player here. I luuuurve my Healing Touch.

Removing those two last harm levels is convenient, it's not interesting. Using the fact that the world is fucked up and wrong to tear down the barriers between the mind and body of someone that you're trying to save and your own, to put yourself on the line, THAT'S interesting.

It's still a strong move, because the thing about stock is, it runs out if the shit hits the fan. Happens for my Angel pretty often, and then, without Healing Touch, people would just up and die. Sure, it's a desperation move, but we're talking Apocalypse World here!

Also, if it were just free healing to the point of spammability, that one move takable by every weird playbook would eclipse the Angel playbook and using stock. Sure, you can use it to send people into combat unhurt, if your Angel is feeling a bit self-destructive. So, is your Angel into self-sacrifice for the greater good? Now, that sounds like an interesting kind of question to me...