Two magic items

Arachnid Servants of Hypnos

Four silver spiders in a velvet bag; when the bag is opened, the spiders swarm forth and envelope up to four willing creatures with their webs.
The cocooned creatures fall asleep for 1 hour. Their dreams are sweet and filled with the sounds of the wind playing the web’s strands as a harp. The creatures are completely unaware of their surroundings and cannot be roused by any means. This 1 hour sleep mechanically counts as a full rest in terms of healing, spell memorization, etc. Furthermore, each affected creature regains 1 HD worth of hit points.
After the 1 hour, the webs dissolve, and the four spiders crawl back into the velvet bag.
However, there is a flat 1-in-6 chance for each affected creature to fall into a week-long coma (and possibly gain a spiderific mutation). Delay Poison grants a save vs. poison to counter this effect.

Soap of Absolute Cleanness

This inconspicuous bar of soap removes all curses, diseases and similar ailments if someone washes themselves with it.
However, each time it also scrubs away one of the seven layers of the skin of the user. Repeated use leads to serious consequences as the person’s skin is eroded. This can only be healed by miracle-level restorative magic. The soap is good for 1d8 uses.

Layers of skin left	Effect
6	No effect yet
5	Can no longer wear armor heavier than leather
4	Can no longer wear any armor, -1 on Reaction and Loyalty rolls
3	Double damage from fire, acid, and similar sources
2	Can no longer wear clothes; skin now almost completely transparent; double damage from any kind of attack
1	Uncle Frank from Hellraiser
0	Death

Just a quick thought about healing magic

I like weird, low fantasy settings, where magic is alien and dangerous. So I'm not a fan of the instantaneous, no-risk magic healing that's a staple to fantasy RPGs. I wrote about this before.

So, if I want magic to be inherently alien, and opposed to the natural order of things, the easiest way to go is treat a "benevolent" healing spell as you would a curse: the target of the spell must make a save or a resistance roll. There is no option to "let the spell take effect". If a character can shake off a curse or hex, then why should the reality-bending, flesh-mending healing be different?

Consequently, if the character rolls a save against poison, then why not roll against healing potions as well?

Plant-growth serum side effects

Recently, I wrote up some ideas foralternative healing potions. One of them is actually a plant fertilizer / growth serum, but used by adventurers as a healing drug. In my original post, its side effect is a rapidly growing plant scab monster sprouting from the treated wound. In this post, I offer more side effects when using a plant-growth serum as a healing potion.

Main stats reference OSR/LotFP rules, [5e mechanics in square brackets].

Plant-growth serum

Effect: Heal 1d12 hit points [heal 2d4 + Constitution modifier hit points]

Side effects: Save against Poison [make a DC 15 Constitution save], or roll 1d8:

1	Cough up seeds for 1d8 - Constitution modifier days (min. 1). The seeds belong to a grain or plant common to regional agriculture, can be eaten or planted.
2-4	Become mildly/strongly/hopelessly addicted to the serum. Each 3/2/1 days without it, add 1/2/3 points to the total Encumbrance rating [add 1/2/3 levels of Exhaustion]. Every time this result is rolled, increase addiction level. If addicted, Save against Poision [make a DC 15 Constitution save] every day/week/month. On success, lower addiction rating (mild addiction goes away for good). Negate daily effect with minor healing spell etc., cure addiction as strong disease.
5	Fertile sweat! All items in prolonged contact with the body during the day of consumption (clothes and armor worn, weapons held, the bed slept in, etc.) become covered in nasty mold.
6	Skin takes on a greenish hue for 1d6 days.
7	Experience strong changes in taste and eating habits (crave a food that was previously hated or something generally not considered edible, covet a food that’s a religious taboo, eat soil).
8	Beautiful, but vile-smelling flowers sprout from the healed wound (or, if there was no open wound, from the orifices of the consumer). If torn or cut, a very bad mood sets in for 1d3 hours.

Healing potion ideas

I'm not a fan of instantaneous magical healing in fantasy RPGs. I want it to be witchcraft, with consequences and weird side-effects. The same goes for healing potions: I find the standard "drink-and-recover-1d8-points" or whatever solutions bland. I tried to come up with some interesting potions to offer to my players. Some of them are connected to a pseudo-historical 17th century setting, but not necessarily.

Relieving dew
This simple folk ointment is applied to the person's wounds before rest, and tied over with bandages.
Ingredients: honey, butter, assorted herbs and plants like yarrow, elderberry, etc., mixed and fermented for a week in a copper vessel.
Price: low. Requires recipe.
Effect: During the resting period, the normal healing rate is doubled. However, the strong sweet smell of the ointment attracts insects. A LOT of them. ALL of them. There is a 1-in-6 chance that it attracts not only the natural fauna of the area, but also some sort of a strange, exotic, or supernatural creepy-crawly as well... The smell lasts 24 hours.

Weapon salve
This is based upon a real practice. According to the theories of sympathetic magic, a connection is formed between the wound and the weapon that caused it. The healing of the wound is accelerated by applying the salve on the weapon, not to the wound.
Ingredients: skull lichen (moss from the skull of a hanged man), urine, gypsum, pine resin. Before application, add the blood of the wounded to the salve.
Price: moderate. Requires special knowledge and recipe to create.
Effect: If this is accomplished, during the next rest period the wounded person recovers as much hit points, as the standard damage of the weapon (roll for it).

Green blessing
Invented during the "Tulip mania", this solution is used by florists to increase the life-span of their beloved bulbs. However, as usual, the pesky adventurers found an alternative use for this serum!! Turns out, when sprinkled on a fresh open wound, it induces the growth of a weird plant scab, which fuses with the person's body, closes and heals the injury.
Ingredients: petals of exotic tulips (at least three different colors), sulfur, various salts, etc.
Price: very high. Requires special knowledge, recipe, laboratory.
Effect: 1d6 rounds after application, the wounded person recovers 1d12 hit points.
Then save against Poison. If failed, the scab continues to grow rapidly. It takes 10 rounds for the plant to completely cover a human adult. Each round it does 1 damage to the person, and gains +1 hit point. To stop the spreading, the plant has to be reduced to 0 or less hit points. Any damage is divided equally between the plant and the infected person.
On the 11th round, if the plant still has at least 1 hit point, the infected person dies.

What kind of healing potions do you use?

Go!

[LotFP & the rest] Weirding up Cure Light Wounds?

It can be interesting to take a good ol' spell that everybody knows and uses, and thinking of ways to make it more weird. I mused about Mirror Image recently, so let's take a look at something else.

Cure Light Wounds is a staple Cleric spell in all iterations of D&D and OSR games, the main reason for "bringing the Cleric along", and so on. There are advocates of getting rid of this spell (and other instantaneous healing effects, like health potions, etc.) to facilitate a more perilous, horrific game environment, where hazards are more "real", because you cannot rely on a quick and easy method of getting those meager amounts of HP back.

Now, I was thinking about making healing spells more interesting. My main line of thought is to make them stand out, make them significantly different from "natural healing". A couple of ideas:

1. Healing spells leave weird scars. Geometric patterns. Scabs in the shape of occult sigils. They mark the healed person as an object of witchery.
2. The accelerated supernatural healing process doesn't get rid of foreign objects (arrowhead, bullets, etc.), but incorporates them into the healed person's body. This might lead to medical complications later on...
   So, magical healing as mutation. Turn this up to eleven -- magical healing is body horror! Make sure you drop your weapon, otherwise you risk fusing with it when the Cleric heals you!
3. And generally, subverting magical healing is an awesome way to horrify your players. If you are using Taint or Corruption like mechanics, make magical healing a source of this malevolent effect.