ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Can someone explain the mechanics of Fungal Blood to me? Every number or calculation I see, in-game or not, makes it seem like a pointlessly small heal unless you do something absurd like take the wild-gift talent that lets you reset infusions and then spam several infusions in a row just to get enough fungal power.

I MUST be missing something, here?

What you are missing is that the effect is instant.

Therefore, it adds healing and magic status curing to all your infusions.

The main interest is in the interaction with fungus/ancestral life.
Assume that you are in a difficult situation with many nasty effects on you at t=0.
So you use a wild infusion to feed fungal blood and remove an effect. t=0 as wild is instant
You use fungal blood. You get a small heal, have you nasty magical effects removed and fungal growth starts a small regen. Thanks to ancestral life, now t=-1
So you have now two new actions that can be performed for free in the next turn.
So the effects of fungal growth are limited, but using it gives you a free turn.

Wow. So to get full use out of it, you have to be wyrmic/antimagic with at least 3 points in the tree, have lots of dangerous magic effects on you, cancel your current regen infusion, use a wild infusion, use fungal blood, cancel the terrible regen, use an escape if you have one, then reapply a new regen to actually heal up if you need it.

I may just continue to stack saves...

Thanks for the replies though, it makes much more sense now that I'm not looking at it as a *heal* option.

The main interest of fungal blood is not healing.
But in theory, it can be very powerful against a foe with a poor healing.
Example :
- activate a movement infusion to reach a distant foe
- activate fungal blood. You do not care about the healing or the magic restoration. But it is instant and you get a free turn thanks to ancestral life.
- strike the foe during the free turn
- use psychoportation to escape during your normal turn.
- rest and restart until foe is dead

In all this process, the foe has NO opportunity to hit you.
In theory, a level 1 char could kill Athamaton this way (provided he has the required talents, prodigy and items, which is rather unlikely, and it will take hundreds of turns).

In theory... Actually I did not try myself and this kind of gameplay is rather tedious IMO.

Its a boost to your healing options, not a replacement.