Chapter Two Hundred and Ten – A Broken Power

Unlimited Cure V's at will, every six seconds, in service to her Special Purpose of Thwart the Hag Curse.

She had chosen that Special Purpose with the clear idea that it put her solidly against all Hags, their plans, minions, and allies, AND it also meant supporting Hagchildren, the cast-offs of the Curse, and their plans, minions, and allies.

So, for example, it included me, all my Ironblood, and anyone fighting beside me.

Reach was one of the two Ranged Spell Metamagicks in the system. Distance, the first, doubled the range of a spell, and was basically used on long range spells to make them just ridiculously long range... or, if Weirded, to double the range of any spell for no cost.

Reach extended the range of a spell by one category, from Touch to Close to Short to Medium to Long, each increase costing an additional Slot to power the effect. A Touch Spell was effectively turned into a Ray, delivering the effect elsewhere. It couldn't be Weirded, unlike Distance, but that hardly hurt its power.

She was saying that she could use a Cure spell in a V Slot, with Reach. That meant there were five variations on the base spell she could use.

The V Valence Cure spell was Cure Deadly Wounds. It healed up to 5d8+5x Caster Level, max 75, hit points, meaning both/either Soak and Health. It also could return someone to life who had died within the past minute, making it truly able to cure deadly wounds.

The Heal spell was also a V, but both healed more damage and removed a lot of conditional effects, like disease, blindness, deafness, and the like. It couldn't bring back anyone who was dead, and it wasn't in the Cure line of spells, although it was in the Healing Sphere for Divine Casters.

There was also a Mass Cure Light Wounds effect, sort of like bomb healing. Roughly fifteen feet in radius, up to one person per Caster Level, a d8+CL in healing to all of them.

Being Soulbonded increased her effective Caster Level to 15 or so, so that's what her effects had been boosted to. They could go to 20, but Crafting reflected Reality, and I couldn't Craft in a CL higher than my Ranks. The spells had caps in effective Caster Level, but still...

Cure Deadly Wounds at touch, 5d8+75 Healing.

Cure Critical Wounds up to sixty feet away, 4d8+40.

Cure Serious Wounds up to a hundred and twenty-five feet away, 3d8+30.

Cure Moderate Wounds up to two hundred and fifty feet away, 2d8+20.

Cure Light Wounds up to one thousand feet away, d8+5.

Mass Curing of up to fifteen individuals in a circle up to fifteen feet in radius, d8+15, up to sixty feet away...

Repeatable endlessly...

-Is there a cap on this?- I /asked softly. Because this unlimited amount of healing magic was really, really broken. Healing Traps had unlimited use, but would only work once a Renewal for anyone.

Being able to zap me once every six seconds for 100 points of Healing, and even bring me directly back from dead? Health Qi could take a hike, I'd basically be unkillable except to a massive one-hit... and then be right back no more than six seconds later!

-I don't think so..?- she /replied, uncertain, and I breathed out despite myself.

-There's almost no way it's not, Trem. Positive and negative energy have some severe restrictions on them. I'm sure there's going to be a resonance effect of somewhere from three to five times a Renewal per person.-

-What? But I could have fireballed or lightning bolted all day!- she /protested.

-Which amounts to something less than five times a day per individual, right?- I /added knowingly. She made a strangled /sound.

-Okay, so Healing Edge isn't redundant. I'll start to work on it again promptly.- She sounded very disappointed. In the meantime, I could always use Doc in its setting on Stand. The girls had grown past needing him.

-Don't be unhappy. You're capable of saving an unlimited number of people from dying in combat, if you get to them fast enough. You've got area heals, incredibly long-range target heals, and incredibly powerful touch heals. You're literally as powerful as a dozen Ten Healers going at it, if not moreso. By yourself, you could heal an entire army in under an hour, and keep them on their feet during combat.

-It might not have unlimited use in personal combat with me, but you know what? You can save me from dying several times a day. That is huge all by itself. I'm fully capable of restoring my Soak over an extended fight, gradually, and with this kind of safety valve, I'll be doing fine. Get that Healing Edge back for eternal staying power, and we'll be fine.

-And you know what?-

My /voice had that conspiratorial edge she loved. It meant she was going to find out something else about the rules of the world that could be exploited. -What?- she /whispered back.

-Transfer Wounds counts as a Cure spell, right? But you're transferring the damage, not healing it, so there's no resonance...-

The star sapphire on the Sword at my back glittered with cold light. -Combine Healing Edge with Transfer Wounds, and we could heal others all day...- she /realized.

-It isn't like I don't have a stupid amount of Health, and if we turn Healing Edge into a cyclic pumping effect... well, it's not stupid broken for myself, but if I'm fighting with others, they are going to think so!-

Tremble shivered behind me, letting out a nasty /cackle I approved of tremendously. The Ironblood were going to get another notch on the unkillable cockroach scale when she and I were around.

And really, while I was away smithing, she'd be able to run battlefield healing support for any of the forces out there. I pointed this out, and she got excited all over again. The fact she couldn't give me unlimited healing didn't change the fact that she could deal out unlimited healing, as long as she could do so to different people.

It was a stupid broken Special Purpose Power, and really only possible on a Weapon.

Another thing was that negative energy destroyed resonance. So, people wounded by negative energy attacks, or fighting undead, could be healed multiple times, as the two energies rose in opposition to one another.

Mass CLW was also a mini-fireball against undead and negative energy life forms, which meant that she did have a limited unlimited offensive use to that effect. Sure, it would only wipe skels and zombies, but what did you need unlimited offensive power against when it came to undead? It wasn't like vampires occurred in the millions...

Yeah, I wasn't seeing the downside, as long as it was usable more than once a Renewal per person. I personally hoped three times, but we'd have to see...

If I could get myself a measure of Fast Healing, I'd be able to Transfer Wounds even outside of combat. Mmmm... what Templates or Classes gave that? It'd be like a back-end Healing Reserve, only really painful to Yours Truly.

Okay, Tremble had spent 50k on opening a V Slot effect with Vorpal. That Enhancement was basically only useful if you could barely hit. It required a nat 20, and ping, off with the head. The problem was, I had a x4 crit, and around a hundred damage a swing with my Grandmastery. So, it was only useful against creatures that had more than 400 Health, as a crit would kill them anyway. It would only proc one swing in twenty, and there were very, very few creatures that could stand up to twenty hits from me without a biiig pool of Health Qi... and if they had Health Qi, they could spend it to null the Vorpal effect, so it was useless against them...

Except against Jabberwocks, who had something like DR/30 and an insane regen rate against non-Vorpal Weapons. I might never run into one, but she had heard me mention it, and the V-Slot effects were... not spectacular for their cost, anyways. Still, needed them open to add in later Legendary +VI and greater effects.

Oh, yeah, demiliches, too. Hmm...

Bless the dragons for having Spellcraft Ranks equal to their Hit Dice. Inherited genetic knowledge was a such a nice thing when you had the Hit Die to abuse it...

I could now have Courageous up all the time, and with Fire and Water Discipline, was provided an extra +3 To hit, each. That +6 to hit gave me a lot of room to trade off for Power Attack and Expertise if I so desired, which was entirely the point of it. The standing +I final Slot meant Tremble would be +5 base against all creatures, which actually bypassed most DR types on the face of it, and practically insured Anathema would kick in for some extra damage on them.

If I was fighting extremely armored stuff, Umbral would mess them up badly. If I was fighting crap with extreme natural armor, Brilliant would do the same to the monsters. Umbral could be thwarted by Energized armor, but only people who hated touch attacks that ignored armor invested in such stuff. Like, oh, the Ironblood...

Speed would just increase my damage output against chaff and minions that I would hit anyways, or be good for long slog fights against bosses.

The net effect of all this was not a huge increase in damage. It did, however, mean that I was going to hit what I fought, as I could neutralize either the armor or the natural armor of my enemies completely, which was huge against specific foes.

Unless they were constructs, but that was something me and my Scarab vs. Golems could deal with...

Teleport would let me bop around and give me a bailout option in case things went really south. Very useful.

Planecutting, ah. That was a Mass Travel option. Using Tremble, I could cut the Veil to another plane and step on through, the Portal staying open for a couple minutes (150 seconds, to be exact). Then, on the other side, I could cut a Portal back through to home... or some other destination halfway around the world, if I could locate it.

Or another world or plane, if need be.

It was basically a method to move large amounts of men from one place to another. Just line them up at speed on both sides of the Portal, and run them through before it closed, then do the same on the other side. As long as I picked a 'safe' transition point, there wouldn't be any problem.

I was going to have to talk to some Celestials and see if there was a convenient marshalling ground I could use as a waystop...

If organized properly, I could move a lot of people that way. Evacuation, transport... trade... the uses were both tactical and strategic.

Tremble's power in combat had grown some, but not hugely. I was already at the almost auto-hit stage, there wasn't a lot of stuff that could avoid me in a fight. But I now had some powerful options open to me that most Powered couldn't even use.

And I would most certainly use them...

I loved time skips, and Forging Karma!

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There were a bunch of us gathered in /Marktell, including every single Ten that was Marked. Rockborn Kings who'd come out to play, elven Monarchs thirsting for another post-Ten Level, Knightly heroes, respected adventurers, powerful Casters, renowned Masters.

Before us was an extension of the Map, now centered on Yle Tyorm, as scouted out by members of the Void Brothers.

It took a powerful Forsaken to walk through the higher temporal barriers of the Zones, or some very specific magic, and only a Void Brother could take someone along with them. As they were high Stealth operatives anyways, it fell to them to make a map of the whole city in detail, and figure out what the Hags were doing.

And now we had, and it was time to make a plan.