Dantia/Testing/Impact of Shock on Regen and Heal

Overview

I wanted to know more specifically how each level of shock affects the efficacy of both the Heal and Regenerate spells.

The Heal spell is a pulsing spell that, each pulse, focuses on healing the "most severe" wounds or scars until the power of the spell is depleted. My original understanding of this spell (before doing this test) was that the spell should continue to work at all levels of shock, but at a progressively less effective rate for each level of shock.

The Regenerate spell is pulsing cyclic spell that continues to heal wounds until either healed fully, or the caster runs out of attunement to support the cyclic cost. My original understanding of this spell (again, before doing this test) is that Regenerate should also work at a reduced efficacy for each level of shock, until at maximum shock ("perma-shock") you lose access to the spell completely.

Wounds vs Scars Caveat

All of the below testing was done on scars, not on wounds. Why? In order to do this testing, I needed a way to quantify the amount of healing experienced. Players already quantify wounds on a severity scale of 0-13 (13 being the maximum), with Empaths having access to the most detailed account of wounds using PERCEIVE HEALTH SELF. It's generally accepted that there is probably a range within each of these severities. For example, there might actually be wound levels of 1.15 and 1.45 which might both reflect in PERCEIVE HEALTH SELF as 1/13.

Due to (what I suspect is) rounding, plus maybe some other unknown factor(s), sometimes 1 severity worth of wound does not heal directly to 1 severity worth of scar. In fact, sometimes a wound does not appear to heal any severity, but you now have 2 severity of scar. This variety would make quantifying the efficiency of Heal and Regenerate over the different levels of shock inconsistent. Therefore, I opted to work only with scars for this test.

Methodology

• Empathy is at 1750.
• Spell stance is 100/100/100.
• Besides Heal or Regenerate, no other spells were up.
• Use test-only "hurty thing" to apply 11/13 or 5/13 scars on internal and external head, neck, arms, legs, hands, chest, abdomen, back, eyes, and skin (28 total locations).
• Cast Heal at certain level of mana and wait until Heal wears off, record total severity healed, use HEALME to heal to full. Repeat 20 times for that level of mana.
• Or cast Regenerate at certain level of mana and wait for a single pulse, record total severity healed, use HEALME to heal to full. Repeat 20 times for that level of mana.

Test 1: Baseline Heal

The first test was to establish a baseline for how effective Heal is at no shock / shock level 0. Heal can be cast anywhere between 15 and 100 mana, so I tested at 5 mana increments 20 times each.

The outcome was that the effectiveness of Heal scales fairly linearly with the amount of mana put in. That meaning, for every additional point of mana you put in, regardless of if that's from 5 to 6 mana, or from 99 to 100, you will see a roughly even amount improved efficacy. In daily practice, this means that Heal should always be cast at the maximum mana level possible for the maximum results.

[Data available here], on sheet "Heal / Mana".

Test 2: Baseline Regenerate

The second test was to establish a baseline for how effective Regenerate is at no shock / shock level 0. Regen is a cyclic spell that can be cast anywhere between 5 and 25 mana, so I tested at 1 mana increments 20 times each.

The outcome was that at least on scars, the effectiveness of Regen does not scale linearly with the amount of mana in. In fact, there are ranges of mana (notably 7-12 and 15-21) where there is no difference in efficacy. The major breakpoints in efficacy for Regenerate appear to be at 6, 7, 14, 15, and 23. Also, notably, there appeared no difference in the efficacy between the top two levels of mana, 24 and 25. In daily practice, this means that in many cases, a lower level cast of mana can be as efficient as a higher mana cast.

Data available here, on sheet "Regen / Mana".

Test 3: Shock Effects on Heal

My third test was to evaluate how much less effective Heal is at each level of shock (1 through 8). I did this by starting with 11/13 wounds on all internal and external body parts, for a total severity of 308. I then cast Heal at max mana (100 mana) and waited for the spell to wear off. Then, I calculated how much severity Heal had healed at that shock level.

I anticipated that Heal would show a roughly linear degradation in efficacy for each level of shock. However, this proved not to be the case. The efficacy of Heal reduced:

• From shock level 0 to 1: 1.52% total reduction (effectively none)
• From shock level 1 to 2: 12.12% total reduction
• From shock level 2 to 3: 22.73% total reduction
• From shock level 3 to 4: 25.76% total reduction
• From shock level 4 to 5: 25.76% total reduction (no change from previous shock level)
• From shock level 5 to 6: 25.76% total reduction (no change from previous shock level)
• From shock level 6 to 7: 25.76% total reduction (no change from previous shock level)
• From shock level 7 to 8: 25.76% total reduction (no change from previous shock level)

To put these percentages in perspective, a max cast of Heal at shock level 0 will heal 66 worth severity of scars (approximately 4.71 scar severity across every available body part, internal and external). At shock level 4+, a max cast of Heal will still heal 49 severity worth of scars (approximately 3.50 scar severity across every available body part, internal and external).

This means that at it's most reduced efficacy, an Empath with shock level 4+ only experiences a 25.76% reduction in efficacy of their Heal spell as compared to a shock level 0 Empath. This data directly contradicts this GM statement made in 2012 after the Shock rewrite, which states that a "150th empath [sic] who is 99% shocked will heal pretty much as badly as a first/second circle empath[sic]."

Data available here, on sheet "Heal / Shock".

Test 4: Shock Effects on Regenerate

My final test was to evaluate how much less effective Regenerate is at each level of shock (1 through 8). I did this by starting with 11/13 wounds on all internal and external body parts, for a total severity of 308. I then cast Regenerate at 5 mana increments from 5 to 25, waited for a single pulse, and recorded how much was healed.

I anticipated that Regenerate would work in a similar manner as Heal, in that it would have a reduced efficiency from shock level 1 through 7, before being unable to cast at shock level 8. However, this also proved not to be the case. From shock level 1 through 7, Regenerate performed as efficiently as shock level 0. At shock level 8, I was unable to cast Regenerate at all.

This data also seems to contradict this GM statement made in 2012 after the Shock rewrite, which lists Regenerate as an example of a healing spell that should reduce in efficacy before being lost completely at full shock.

Data available here, on sheet "Regen / Shock".

Data

Data available here

Takeaways

• Whether by design or by bug, the reduction in healing capabilities of the Heal spell are, at maximum, only 25.76%.
• Whether by design or by bug, there is no reduction in the healing capability of the Regenerate spell, until it is lost completely at maximum level shock.