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Make the body adapt and become dependent on this healing factor if overused. Over time, while still under the influence of the oil, the body's natural healing response slows down to what it used to be before the user started applying the substance, effectively developing a metabolic resistance to it. The body will no longer not only heal faster anymore, but will actually heal at an even slower pace than it would have been if the character hadn't used it at all. If you use the oil sparingly, it will have tremendous effects from time to time. If you start using it all the time instead of healing naturally, the effect is greatly diminished and leaves you permanently weakened.

Love this idea honestly. Thank you.

Hi there! Health/medical person here with a few thoughts based on real medical conditions. Body overactivates fever response —> altered mental status and risk of death by encephalitis (brain swelling) Body overactivates clotting cascade —> Disseminated intravascular coagulation (I.e. the body starts throwing random clots in the bloodstream, freaks out, overcorrects and causes severe internal bleeding leading to organ failure. Unmitigated cell regeneration/replication —> tumors Over activation of multiple immune cascades in response to infection —> sepsis (~50% fatal, no particularly effective treatment - fever, difficulty breathing, low blood pressure, fast heart rate, and mental confusion) If the potion is poisonous in larger quantities… Dizziness, difficulty breathing, altered mental state, altered skin color indicating lack of oxygen (cyanotic) or liver damage (jaundice) Excess vomiting —> hypovolemic shock Vomiting blood after stomach lining is damaged Kidney failure Neurological damage- tremors, disorientation, headaches, eye abnormalities (trouble seeing, constricted or blown out pupils, pupils that don’t match in size), hearing issues, altered sense of taste or smell, agitation, hallucinations Improper wound healing: Chronic wound that reopens after healing Excess and painful scar tissue Swollen limbs Mis-colored skin Nerve damage, chronic pain, loss of sensation, tingling in extremities You could also have it trigger an autoimmune disorder where the immune system begins to attack its own organs because it mistakes them as foreign material. OR a neurological chronic pain disorder like fibromyalgia where the nervous system chronically overactivates pain response because it mistakes the body as being injured all the time.

This is all both awesome, *and* terrifying. Thank you so much, medically experienced writers are always so cool because it keeps things brutally realistic. The clotting thing was brought up before, which I feel would be... the most common, probably. And the tumor thing is interesting to think about too, since healing inherently means that cells are either being created or repaired, and... that can lead to incorrections, and yeah. Cancer. So this is all great! But not for the characters. And unfortunately for them, they do not live in a world with advanced modern medicine. So, I may consider some of these things being a risk. But as the plant is considered to be canonically "magical," I may omit these drawbacks just for the sake of not killing a character young. Again, thank you so much for the realism. But reality's sometimes *too grim* for a fictional story, haha.

Haha well I’m glad for your characters that they won’t suffer some of these 😂 that would be pretty grim

I see you have my chart. Sometimes my body speed heals things and I get an overgrowth of scar tissue with too many nerve endings and blood vessels. It's always painful and disfiguring. The solutions are deal with it or risking worse outcomes with surgery. I usually deal with it but when it's over a joint the surgery risk has been worth it sometimes.

Taking notes. I always prefer a bit of realism when it comes to drawbacks to things in my universes. These are wonderfully horrifying. Thanks!

Something like reducing their strength could help? Despite being able to get back on their feet, they aren't able to hit as hard or move as fast? Something like that. Because the ingredient is fast-acting, it's more like getting an adrenaline rush than actual bedrest. There's still mending and healing that needs to happen, but they push through it. Maybe something like a berserker mode? They get really aggressive and blood-lusty because they think they can take on the world, but it's just the affects of the plant? Eventually, the adrenaline would wear off, and they would suddenly weaken quickly and would need to find bedrest. So, it could invoke a sort of 'against the clock' vibe -- you know when a character chugs a potion that they only have a limited amount of time before they're gonna be useless, so it would make it tense if there was a big battle happening. Or, if you want something more long-lasting -- pull a One Piece. You can use this potion, and it's gonna bring you back from the brink and let you become powerful again, but you're taking off chunks of your life-span along with it. Every time someone drinks a potion, it cuts down on their life-span. This can be well-documented or not -- maybe the way it's brewed in the tea allows it to be more healing/not as detrimental, but how it's crafted as a potion it can't be introduced to heat or it ruins the plant's healing compounds, and because of that, it's like...stealing your life at the end of your life to revitalize you in the present. Something like that!

I like your ideas a lot, and thanks for your comment. I think the idea of having reduced strength does make a lot of sense to me, since in the main tea form, it makes the user very sleepy, drowsy, and drained of energy. Because of that, the tea's usually paired with a period of time where the character's allowed to rest a lot to make a speedy recovery in a few days, always under a week. The only issue I see is that the plant also energizes and restores the user's stamina and eliminates exhaustion. So for that reason, I do kind of like your "berserker" idea, or at least... feeling like there's a rush of adrenaline, and feeling overly energized for a while until it wears off. It could make the fighters reckless too, and encourage them not to use it unless they seriously need to. It's why the tea is way more effective, due to no energy bursts. And as much as I do like the whole "healing but it eats your life force" thing that so many series and stories use, I do want to avoid that, solely because... it's a plant, I don't think it'd be *that* severe. It's something for me to consider, though!

Some random thoughts somewhat based on biology: Accelerated healing leading to depletion of minerals and ions in the body, leading to cramps/weakness/dizziness/what have you.  Accelerated healing = high cell turnover, so repeated use of the substance increases the risk of cancer.  Over exuberant healing leading to keloids (hypertrophic scars) — this is more of a cosmetic issue than anything. 

To play off someone elses suggestion that it uses up the bodys minerals, my immediate thought went to molly. Molly basically tells your body to release all of its happy chemicals, then the next day you're EXHAUSTED. Like totally drained. If you drink like vitamin water, or lots of water and lick rock salt or something it helps replenish some of the chemicals used up, but even so you're pretty tired the next morning. You could have the healing pots do something similar. Using one helps speed up healing recovery, but maybe it uses a lot of the bodys resources so the next day, or like 12 hours later, the user is insanely hungry, tired, and maybe dehydrated. It would make something like using one while on a trip or camping with limited resources a last ditch effort. Sure you might heal a fatal wound, but will you survive long enough the next day to find food and water while you're dehydrated and weak?

Definitely gonna add this to *both* versions of the medicine, the tea and the vial. However, the tea is obviously still far superior, as characters will have the chance to actually feed themselves and be advised to drink tons of water during their recovery days. Whereas the vial? It'll kick in more sharply, and out on a battlefield, finding food and water may be more difficult. Thanks for your suggestion, I dig it.

You could make it painful. To heal quickly requires sacrifice. It could hurt so much to heal that it stops you in your tracks.

Cancer

When an injury heals, there's a bunch of wicked-cool biological stuff that happens. Platelets plating up, T-Cells killing infections, all manner of neat things. Sometimes, the injury is so greivous that a long-lasting reminder remains- scars, lingering pain, etc. Play around with what happens when that's done at an accelerated rate. So your healing tea puts the drinker into a lethargic state while their body re-knits itself together completely. For the healing flask/potion... If they chug the Dark Souls Sunny D the damage from the injury is corrected, but the body has not recovered. A character breaks their leg in 3 places and drinks the flask, maybe the bones have set their placement (which is painful in itself), but the bones have not knit themselves back together completely. If it's a bleeding wound, maybe the organs and parts of the circulatory system that are damaged have repaired, but the capillaries and flesh have not knit back together, so they're still bleeding, but not profusely. Just a thought.

Thanks for your comment. This is all great too, the idea of the vial/flask being a faster but less effective or incomplete overall healing effective is definitely something that I’m gonna finalize.

> Then there's the second form, which is basically just... a healing flask/potion from Dark Souls or Elden Ring. It's made from the plant's extract oil, and is meant as a faster but weaker way to heal. The fastest administration methods for that are going to be, roughly in order, injection (drawback: what happens if your opponent bashes up your needles? *Or gets in a hit while you've got one in your vein?* ...hell, try accurately getting a needle in your in combat), inhalation (drawback: you need a pipe, with much the same drawbacks as above), insufflation (try snorting a line off your arm in the middle of a fight and see how well *that's* gonna go for you, although a more snuff-like method might be viable, you're still leaving yourself dangerously open and decreasing your ability to breathe), and sublingually (drawbacks: can't really talk while you've got something under your tongue, reduced breathing ability and thus combat capacity - and you gotta have it under there for a while). Realistically, nothing you just swallow is going to take effect within less than ten minutes (that's about the minimum for pure alcohol, which is one of the fastest-acting oral route drugs), and every other method of getting the stuff into your system is going to have drawbacks, as mentioned above. > I was thinking something to do with: "if you drink too many, something happens." Like, maybe a drawback with the body's reaction to healing so fast? Ingesting too much of it makes you sick, or... something metabolic, biological, maybe? I'm thinking more along the lines of "the faster you want this stuff in your system and start working, the more breathing room and safety you need during combat, and you disadvantage yourself (either leaving yourself open or reducing your ability to breathe) more the faster method you use", based on realistic methods of administration. > immense drowsiness and lack of energy, and require the user to sleep a lot to let the body heal. This is the "slow but most effective" way. I love this idea. It also tracks with that same "the faster you want this stuff to work, the more risk you're going to be taking" idea. As a (relatively) safe and legal example, there's an enormous difference between how fast crushing a caffeine pill and snorting it, taking the same caffeine pill (even if you chew it and wash it down with something), chugging a Red Bull, and having a couple cups of coffee gets the stuff into your system, even though it's the same amount of the active chemical.

The major drawback I can see with super fast healing is that your scars would be worse, because they haven’t had the time for the skin to regenerate . And you’d need to set a bone straight away otherwise it could heal crooked. Let’s say it’s life or death and a rib has punctured a lung, you’d need to put the rib in place and then take it otherwise the rib would be permanently in the lung. If you’re feeling really gruesome about it you could add characters who haven’t done it properly

The bone example is great, because the main character at some point shatters their arm, and it’s healed completely by using the slower but far more effective tea method, and only after the bone was properly set and put into a cast. I figured if she had taken a vial instead in the heat of combat, they’d regain function of their arm, but the bone might be incorrectly aligned, be painful to the touch, and would also probably not be fully healed, like maybe having microfibers that make it more brittle and susceptible to breaking again. Essentially, their arm would need further treatment. Which was honestly the direction I was going in for the vials/flask. Heal fast and stay in the fight now, worry about the damage and fix it later.

Using the oil makes the tea less effective over time

Isn’t the drawback already that it’s weaker healing? Like it stops bleeding but could cause a heart attack due to blood clots or does nothing to take away the pain. Faster but weaker also seems a bit contradictory. If it makes you heal faster then how is that weaker?

I guess I was thinking more so in the "healing" aspect and not the "time to heal" aspect. Like for example, a character got impaled 100% from front to back by a large blade. With the tea, they were able to make a full recovery in about a week. But, if that were to happen and they drank this fast-acting vial instead, it would heal much faster of course, but... not "completely" if that makes sense? Internal organs are still damaged, not fully functional, still feel tons and tons of pain. Like the character will be able to stand up and walk at least, and not bleed externally, but that's about it. Whereas the tea makes it as if nothing even happened.

Make it addictive. If you come to rely on it too much, it gets to the point where if you stop using your body will start degrading and then you have to heal that damage with it. The only way to get off of it is to only use the tea version for a long time, but you'll be out of commission for a while as the degradation will happen faster than the tea's healing until the benefits have built up enough.

I like this idea too. I may combine it with another idea some other commenters have helped me establish, the idea that the body becomes reliant on it, and the user's natural healing ability becomes weaker if the vials are overused, resulting in a slower and diminished ability to recover without using Senzu.

I think one drawback could by tied to ultra fast healing is improper healing that would require surgery to correct. If a bone isn’t set properly, and it heals in place, it can cause malformations and functional issues. Soft tissue, if it heals too quickly, can create limitations on range of motion. Even breaks in the skin, if they healed too quickly, could trap contaminates within the body, causing long-term health issues. Just some ideas…

These are great too, especially the first thing you said. Usually, the fast-acting vial will heal basic flesh wounds and such, but if a wound is more severe, while it is still live-saving, it'll require further medical attention to fully correct, like the tea treatment and days to recover.

You could explore a Ship of Theseus Problem where the characters begin to become paranoid about who they are if all of their cells are constantly being regenerated, especially if they're healing something like head trauma. If I'm regrowing my brain cells, how do I know I'll be the same person afterward? If I lose memory or speech from a head injury, and the healing replaces those, how do I know they're my own and not randomly created, or maybe they belong to the plant? It'd be interesting if you had a character that had used the healing plant so much for repeated head trauma that their entire mind had been replaced with the thoughts and feelings of the plant, and now they're a plant learning how to live in a human body.

That sounds hilarious. And it does honestly raise some questions about head trauma in particular, since you're right, brain cells are probably by far the most complex and complicated cells to "regenerate" or heal. And it's actually quite relevant, too, since... the main character gets their head obliterated at times. Might have to brainstorm more about this.

A fairly common, and sensible, drawback would be something like exhaustion and dehydration. They'll get in two days of healing, and feel like they hadn't rested for two days. Another one is that anything in the wound can still cause an abcess or complication later. Survive for now, schedule surgery for tomorrow to clean out the dirt now trapped in your flesh. Cancer could totally work too. Some stories, especially gameified ones, will have healing potions disrupt your soul, which can interfere with things like growth. In the sense of a healing potion resulting in an xp penalty.

Funny you mention this honestly, since this story *is indeed* based off a video game. Healing in a game is obviously way different than healing in a more grounded and realistic environment, hence the implementation of this plant in the first place. So... I appreciate your ideas. I like the complications and such that come later. I've already sort of decided that the faster-acting vial/flask is more so for "heal now, worry about the complications later" situations.

with the comparison to the Senzu Beans, you could go with the same drawback Toriyama gave them with always having a scarce amount available so that the characters need to limit the use. maybe the process of extracting the oil takes a long time to do, or the refining process is very precise and time consuming. other ideas could be drinking too much limits the amount you get healed over time, or maybe the body becomes dependent on it if you consume too much, causing the body to not recover on its own as the use of it weakens the immune system and natural division of cells that our bodies does to close wounds also, since you mentioned dragon ball I will assume you have at least heard of Naruto, and in case you actually haven't seen the series, you could give the same drawback as Tsunade's Creation Rebirth with how it forces cell division into overtime to instantly close wounds and restore damaged tissue and organs, however using the technique isn't healing old cells it's creating new ones, something the body can only do so many times naturally so using the technique shortens the user's lifespan, so maybe every time you heal with the oil it takes off a few weeks, maybe a month off your lifespan depending on how much you want characters to depend on the oil

I'm glad you mentioned this, because I forgot to include it in the original post. So I hope people see this. Yes, in the story, the plant itself is *also* ***very very*** *rare,* and hard to find. It also only grows in a particular part of the world, and... the story is very *faction* based, so it's usually uses as an insanely valuable trading resource, or is just... not traded or sold at all, just because of how crazy important it is. It's revered, people think it's magical, things like that. So yes, that's also a drawback to both the tea *and even more so* the fast-acting vials. You and another user have suggested that if the vials are used too often, the body would get metabolically dependent on them, and as a result, the body's natural healing speed and ability would get weakened over time. I do like that idea, because it punishes fighters for being reckless with such a precious resource and practically wasting it, *and* would make them a weaker person in the end as well. Thanks. Might go with that.

it still takes your bodies resources to heal you, just at an accelerated rate so side effects while perhaps delayed are also exponentially worse than the tea. also it doesn't replenish lost blood is a common thing among accelerated healing items/techniques

I think it might be interesting if it were incomplete healing and/or led to chronic pain afterwards. The tea might make someone good as new, but the potion is a tradeoff: you stay in the fight, but can feel your wounds aching forever afterwards. Most people most of the time would prefer the tea, but the desperate and foolhardy might rather have a potion so they can fight today; to hell with the consequences tomorrow. A seasoned old warrior who was rash and fierce in his youth might now be barely capable of basic tasks because of the pain leftover from years of drinking potions.

This is also very helpful, because I already had it in my mind that the healing *is* incomplete, because it's weaker at the tradeoff of being faster. In another comment, I explained: "a character got impaled 100% from front to back by a large blade. With the tea, they were able to make a full recovery in about a week." Using a vial would allow them to stop bleeding externally, stand up, and at least walk or jog at the most, but it wouldn't fully heal internal organs and would leave them weakened, not functioning fully, bleeding internally, and of course... pain, still lots and lots of pain. The tea is meant to be portrayed as the "always better" option. Because even though it takes much longer and requires the user to basically be glued to their bed and sleeping, it heals wounds as if they never even happened.

The faster version could be intensely painful, feeling damaged tissue suddenly repairing itself, as opposed to the tea which is a little slower in healing and the person is drowsy (kind of like anesthetic?).