Question for the SotM folks: the heroes in the game cover the spectrum of team member types you’d expect to see – ranged blasters, melee scrappers, support-type team buffers, etc. But there are no heroes whose main job is healing the rest of the team. I have to imagine that this was done on purpose rather than being just an omission. Was there a conscious design decision made to not include anyone whose powers focused on healing the rest of the team, and if so, why?
There are no characters whose main purpose is to heal the team. That said, there are a few characters that can heal themselves very well, and some characters who can heal others slightly. Having a character whose main purpose is healing would probably make the heroes a bit too strong, I would think. (It’s not exactly an RPG where you have to survive with decent HP to make it through the many monsters in the dungeon and such).
Spiff, this is a very good question. One that we considered in the initial development for a long time, and made the decisions we did for very specific reasons. I will write a nice long post here about it next week, but I am currently en route to the demos in Indianapolis that have been discussed on the forum, and this is about as long of a post as I might want to make from my phone.
For the TL:DR crowd, give me a few days and I’ll reveal all of our trade secrets!
Maybe you can tell me personally in a half hour from now.
I’d imagine TheJayMann is on the right track. As it currently stands, the game plays pretty fairly: I don’t find myself winning or losing by a gross majority of the time. It seems that adding a large amount of healing from a character would tip the balance.
As a quick aside, I’ve been playing a lot of the iPhone adaptation of the dice rolling adaptation of Arkham Horror, and it’s really, brutally difficult. In this game, they have two healing characters, and the balance is still on the side of the game.
I totally buy the game balance idea especially since one of the cool, novel aspects of this game is the ability of ‘incapacitated’ heroes to maintain an active role. The first thought I had though was that I couldn’t think of any standard comic heroes who are strictly or even mainly healers… are there some that I am not aware of?
Furthermore, a large part of the fun of the game is the ability to hurt, hinder, or otherwise mess with the villain. I don’t think playing a “support” hero would be as much fun.
Well, a healer hero wouldn’t need to only have healing abilities any more than Legacy or Visionary only have support abilities, so a healer should be just as fun to play as anyone else.
Phase 1: select tempest.
Phase 2: ? ? ?
Phase 3: profit
oh, right Phase 2 was “play cleansing downpour.” Now he’s about as good of a healer as there is in the game. Tempest can only ever use 1 power a turn (without help from embolden, environments, etc) so he can also be about as dedicated of a healer as you can get.
Incidentally though, if you did happen to have Fanatic on the team, you could have her throw down an Embolden on Tempest, and Tempest could play two Cleansing Downpours (they’re not limited cards) and you could have tempest heal twice every turn. Actually that might be a pretty good combo, to have fanatic be healing for 4 damage every turn, considering how she can sacrifice her health to do more damage.
So if you wanted a cleric, tempest in a support role would be a pretty good choice. I imagine the lack of a healer was less for balance and more for because being a healer is considered dull by a lot of people. I mean sure, you could mix in some direct damage, environment control, maybe a few party help cards and stuff so it wouldnt be all healing all the time… but then… you know what you’ve got? Tempest. =p.
I think Chris put it best when I asked him about the heroes at Gen Con – in a big fight against a villain, it doesn’t seem very likely that there would be someone hanging back and healing everyone. All the heroes are more focused on fighting the villain, not healing. They can heal, but they’re not going to take the time to fully heal themselves. Also, as everyone else said, healers would just make it too easy.
Well, by this point, most of the reasons have been covered by many of you, but I’ll go into it anyway, since I said I would.
When we set out to create all the heroes of Sentinels of the Multiverse, having a healer archetype character was certainly something we considered. Part of the reason was certainly that it’s not as dynamic and exciting to play a dedicated healer, which is why there are characters that have secondary healing abilities, such as Tempest, Legacy, and even Fanatic a little. Additionally, characters that it made sense for, thematically, can restore their own HP, such as Haka and The Wraith. So, while some healing is certainly advantageous and can even be dynamic and exciting, such as when Tempest manages to pull a character back from the brink of death with Cleansing Downpour, a dedicated healer didn’t fit the feel of the original team.
However, the biggest reason that we did not want to have a dedicated healer hero is that one of the core concepts during the creation of the game was that there would never be a “correct hero” or a “correct team”. There are heroes that people prefer to play, heroes that help their allies more than others, heroes that deal more damage, and even heroes that are somewhat better against certain villains, but there should never be a single hero which is always correct to play, or even more so, any hero that a team should NOT be without. If there was a dedicated healer hero, it would certainly be incorrect, at least tactically, to play without that hero.
Regardless of whether or not we succeeded in our goal to not necessarily make all heroes equal but all heroes TEAMS equally efficient, it would have very much skewed that. All the best teams would include “Medico, Healing Energy Personified!” and the game would no longer be a 30-60 minute game, as even if the villains were putting out massive damage, Medico could significantly stretch out a losing battle by keeping the heroes alive longer than the game mechanics are balanced to support.
I hope that helps give you all more of a feel for our process! Feel free to ask any follow-up questions.
I demand a full background and character art for Medico. I’m imagining something like this.
http://bite-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Action-Doctor-Lucas-Lee.jpg
But give him a little mask like the lone ranger.
Yes!
Well, the Medico I had in mind when I made him up off the top of my head for the purpose of that post, I stated that he was “Healing Energy Personified!” I did not intend that figuratively. Rather, Medico would be a being created of living restorative energy.
…if he was even a character. But he’s not. I just made him up.
Possibly he looks like that picture when he’s not in his Living Healing Energy form. And other such speculations.
Just so long as he has a Lone Ranger mask, I think I’m happy. 
Even if it’s just him as a background character on a card with no meaning at all, he needs to be on a card.
Man now I wish I had a spare $200 to pledge for a mugshot.
And to think I almost said “modus operandi” but thought that might be too high brow.