Using Herbal / Therapeutics on Mages

I always play tech characters without magick followers so I never noticed this before, but mages have an unfair advantage when it comes to edible items.

If a tech character drinks a magick potion or uses a magick scroll he is penalised by the magick / tech balance i.e. the more tech he is the less the potion does.
If a mage uses a tech edible then he gets the full effect.
Tech character heals 20 from healing salve.
Magick character heals 20 from healing salve.

Doesn't this seem a bit unfair?

The tech items make use of "tech spells". I could fudge in a balance system relatively easily.
Example (one I've already done):
Healing salve heals 20 points if you are between neutral and 100 Tech.
It heals less the more magickal you are until it heals nothing at 100 Magick.

Unfortunately making it scale between neutral and tech is not possible within the spells e.g. healing salve heals neutral character for 20 but heals 30 for 100 tech character. It could be done with a crap load of hexing though.
But should it scale between neutral and tech, given that the human body makes use of natural laws?

So, gimme some feedback people.

 

Tech characters have that disadvantage, although my mages never use tech pots anyway, simply because they heal so little to begin with. Why chug a tech pot for 40 MP when I chug a 100 MP magic one?

Also, tech characters get advantages when fighting-- mages deal almost no damage to tech guys and to technologica devices, but I have never had any trouble killing mages as a gun-wielder.

 

Mages can't use tech devices without penalties. Techies can use magic devices quite fine, they just don't get the benefits. Fair or not?

 

I think the armour and weapon balance is ok. The different ways they are penalised makes a lot of sense. Magick items losing their power whereas tech items either work fine or blow up in your face. It's true to the setting.

It's just the potions / therapeutics that are unfair.

 

Solaris: Wrong.
If a mage uses a tech-item, he get's a higher procentage to crittically fail when he does something.
And that about a gunslinger beating a mage... What about "tempus fugit" or "disintegrate".

 

I've also noticed that medical arachnid heals either a mage or a tech with quite similar success.

 

I found it strange that the arachnid heals mages as well as it heals tech characters but then I thought about the arachnid itself. The arachnid is 100% tech. So even if you are completely magickal then it still evens out so there is no penalty. That's how I explained it to myself in role-playing terms anyway.

The weird thing is the medical arachnid actually casts a spell to heal. It generates scrolls and casts a spell from these scrolls. I don't know why they did this when they could have just used a tech healing salve.

 

Because now it can heal both magical and technological characters?

 

If it just used healing salves or cure alls it would heal both tech and magickal characters. If a mage uses a tech healing supplement, they can recieve the full benefit. However, if a Techie tries to heal through magick, they have a higher probability to either negate the spell, or recieve almost nothing from it. The medical arachnid is very confusing to me now, seeing as it's a machine that casts spells.

 

Which I've done my best to correct by using reverse spells.

I think you need to ignore that from a role-play perspective and just accept that one of the designers decided to use scrolls knowing that no player would ever see them.

 

Yeah, but it's still weird, now that I know how it works.

 

mages are in tune with the trees etc, herbology is use of the herbs etc.. Mages, therefore, still benefit because of the tie to the nature the salve is made from

 

I was talking about how the medical arachnid heals using scrolls of healing.

 

I was responding to the original question

That ... well if it is a physical wound it should be able to be healed physically

 

OH! I'm sorry. But, about the mages being connected to nature and stuff...yeah, ok, but they don't understand why the healing salve and things work, so they shouldn't work on the mages, or at least not well. They've coached themselves to use their will in such a way as to warp reality and/or nature. Why would something from nature work on them, unless they did something to it themelves?