No Cure for Evil

Redcloak: Send a squad of clerics to the south immediately!
General: Very good, sir. The extra healing may well turn the tide.
Redcloak: Healing? No, they're going so they can zombify our dead. We're the bad guys, remember?

— The Order of the Stick

Just as Good characters aren't allowed to have Bad Powers, Evil characters are not allowed to have Good powers — or, more specifically, healing powers. In short, characters on The Dark Side are generally incapable of using powers, skills, spells, or abilities that would serve to restore or protect rather than destroy.

The reason is simple: healing abilities are almost exclusively used to help others, which means that any use of such powers is almost inherently seen as selfless or kind. As such, the Big Bad can't exactly cast "Cure Critical Wounds" to heal his Mooks and still seem really Evil, despite the fact it is in his self-interest to have his mooks alive to take hits for him. Likewise, Antiheroes are likely to lack healing magic or powers. Another reason for this happening, at least in video games, is that an enemy with healing powers can get annoying very quickly. This is especially true for bosses, whose Hit Points generally far outstrip the player's; several of the most annoying bosses have healing powers. When video games avert this trope and enemies have access to health-recovering abilities, it's often designed around it.

The two exceptions to this clause are self-regeneration and necromancy—regeneration because it only applies to themselves, and necromancy due to Immortality Immorality and the general creepiness of The Undead. Many examples of the former tend to have powers that vampirically drain other people's Life Energy to heal the user. Not infrequently, "good" healing magic is actively harmful to the undead.

Not to be confused with There Is No Cure. This trope has nothing to do with actually "curing" evil — for that see Heel–Face Turn. Contrast with Good Powers, Bad People, for villains who not only get "good" powers, but use them for evil. See also Harmful Healing for one application of aversions to this trope. Contrast Healing Boss, which is about a boss that is infamous for restoring their own health.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Subverted by The Doctor in Black Cat who's probably the most evil version of The Medic that you'll ever meet. His whole schtick is keeping Creed's army up and running, so that the world wide revolution can continue. And so that he can keep doing twisted experiments For Science!!
• Inversion (of sorts) in A Certain Magical Index: Touma is not evil. The good guys (well...) can heal though magic. He can cancel out magic. That means healing magic can't heal him or his friends while he's in the proximity. Talk about your Blessed with Suck.
• Averted by Kirei Kotomine in Fate/stay night. From birth Kirei felt joy only in wicked acts. He was resurrected by an evil artifact, drained orphans under his care of life to feed his Servant for a decade, and ends up an enemy in every scenario... But his natural talents in magical surgery make him the best healer in the story. After a lifetime of trying and failing to find enjoyment in helping others, by the time of the story he sees it as some cosmic joke.
• In Gate Keepers 21, the Darker and Edgier sequel, the Ghost Girl has the Gate Power of Consumption. When Ayame rejects her, Ghost Girl's rage warps her Gate into a Black Gate; which forces her power to do the opposite. In this case, Resurrection, which pushes the Reset Button and actually does the impossible, restores everyone the Invaders have recently consumed. Whether this was intended or not is debated; even by the characters in the story.
• Holy Corpse Rising: The evil witches lack any ability to heal others. The First Witches can heal, and seeing this convinces some members of the Church that they are not the enemy.
• Inuyasha: Sesshoumaru's father leaves him a sword that can bring people back to life but not kill; it's implied that he did this in an effort to teach him compassion and the value of life. It works... eventually.
• Exception: Kabuto in Naruto is a master Combat Medic, but still a villain who uses most of his medical knowledge to help Orochimaru with his attempts to prolong his own life.
  • Pain/Nagato is something of a Double Subversion, as he had a healing power that could work on anyone, but didn't use it for anything but (functional) self-regeneration until after his Heel–Face Turn.
• Once, while Negi of Negima! Magister Negi Magi was in a critical condition, Asuna turned to the powerful mage Evangeline to help reverse the petrification effects, but Eva can regenerate literally any damage she suffers, and her partners are a Robot Girl and a Perverse Puppet, so she has no reason to know healing magic..
  Evangeline: H-Healing spells aren't exactly my strong point. I am undead you know...
• Defied in Yu-Gi-Oh!. Every arc villain has a way to regain Life Points during a duel, justified because it makes them harder to beat. The biggest examples include Yami Marik (who needed them to power up Ra so many times), Yami Bakura (whose Dark Sanctuary healed him every turn) and Dartz, whose ridiculously broken deck eventually raised his Life Points to 20,000, a record that would hold until Zexal.

Comic Books

• Spider-Man:
  • Symbiotes do have the power to heal people, but some things need permanent bonding. Faced with dying of cancer or becoming one with his symbiote Eddie Brock chose suicide. (Someone got to him in time)
  • In Spider-Girl it heals May after a weapon has been driven into her chest and out the other side, but by that point it's not remotely evil.
• Averted in Star Wars: Legacy; Cade's healing power, which can heal almost anything insanely fast and bring back the recent dead, is a Dark Side power: it works by forcing the Living Force into a person rather than working with it. The fact that Cade can use the Dark side of the Force in this manner makes him of great interest to Darth Krayt, who is desperately trying to cure himself of a deadly parasitic infection.
• Averted by Raven of the Teen Titans. She is a half demon and uses dark/shadow magic, but one of her magic abilities is to heal people by taking the inuries into her own body and then healing herself. This can often prove to be very painful.

Fan Works

• Fankil, the main antagonist of The Heart Trilogy, is a powerful demon as the son of Morgoth himself, being able to fight efficiently despite his limping leg. However, he doesn't seem to have self-healing powers. In Heart of Ashes, he gets his arm dislocated, and it still hasn't healed by the time of Heart of the Inferno sixty years later. This is ironic considering the fact that he poses as a physician for a good deal of Heart of Ashes.

Film

• The killer robots from Terminator films have an extensive knowledge of human anatomy. While it's actually meant to make them more efficient in killing, it could also be used to treat wounds, making this a subversion.

Literature

• The Hunter in the Coldfire Trilogy sacrificed his humanity for his power and immortality. If he ever tried to do anything associated with life and light, such as Working fire or Healing, his immortality would be forfeit. He's able to work around this in the first book since he still possesses actual medical knowledge: he uses coldfire to clean a gangrenous wound before bandaging it up.
• Averted in Dragon Bones. The hero doesn't enjoy the Healing Hands healing much; he'd rather not be touched by such people.
• The Dresden Files has Kumori, an Anti-Villain necromancer who uses her necromantic abilities to keep a man from dying until the paramedics can show up to help him. It hurts like a bitch, but it works.
• Averted in The Lord of the Rings, where it's revealed that Orcs do have medicine of a sort: a nasty-tasting but revitalizing liquid and some sort of healing gunk they smear on wounds.
  
  Indeed, the Word of God states that the orcs have highly sophisticated medical knowledge that is designed to get the patients into fighting condition as quickly as possible. It's uncomfortable and leaves nasty scars, but extremely effective. They also make better weapons than any humans outside Gondor.
• Averted in the companion book series for the TCG Magic: The Gathering, where Yawgmoth of Phyrexia is also one of the greatest healers in existence...If you don't mind being turned into a Magitech cyborg monstrosity.
  • Yawgmoth was not a great magical healer. He was a great surgeon. This distinction is made clear almost from his first appearance in the book to gradually deliver a big Science Is Bad message. His ability to heal was used late in the book to put living people together in bizarre ways that prevented healing magic from working so he could keep them as hostages against healers. A gouged-out eye might be regrown by magic, but not when it's still circulating blood, wiggling on the person's chest.
  • This trope is sometimes averted in more recent MTG novels, however; see the Tabletop entry.
• In Masques, the Big Bad is handicapped by being an user of human magic; users of "green magic" are better at healing. However, he also enforces this trope by not teaching his apprentices much of what healing magic a human mage can do. Though, as he intends to use magic to heal himself to immortality, it's probably more due to his wanting to keep it to himself than actively disliking it.
• Averted and lampshaded in Night Watch (Series) to underline that the Light and the Dark Ones aren't that different.
• Inverted in The Paper Magician. Excision (magic involving the manipulation of flesh) is the best magic for healing, and also the only form of magic to be presented as evil.
• In A Practical Guide to Evil, villains can use healing spells just fine, but only the side of good (via Angels and the Gods Above) is capable of actually bringing the dead back to life properly. The bad guys have to make do with necromancy.
• Used interestingly in the books and comics of the Star Wars Legends. The Empire, in adaptations that aren't wholly simplistic, isn't simply evil. They tend to have access to the same level of technology that The Rebellion/New Republic has, including medical technology, which they use whenever it's needed. This includes prosthetics. But while the Rebel side likes to heal wounds and/or replace limbs with prosthetics covered in synthskin that look as close to the original as possible, the Empire is somewhat more likely to just mech everything up, not caring quite so much about how it looks. This is a bit odd, considering the prejudice against cyborgs, which is more blatant in the Empire, but that's how it goes. Naturally this is not a hard and fast rule.
  • In addition, some Sith possess the ability to keep grievously injured beings alive for far longer than should be possible, but don't seem to possess true healing powers. Note the Emperor in Revenge of the Sith, who is able to keep Anakin alive long enough for him to be cyborged but does nothing to repair his extensive burns.^note The reasoning here is to keep Darth Vader dependent on Sidious and the poor cybernetics keeping him alive. It makes Vader less likely to kill his master and take his place. Darth Sion from Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is this power taken to extremes—sheer force of will is the only thing keeping his broken body alive, and boy is it doing a good job at that... but not at making it look anything approaching natural.
  • Shadows of the Empire goes into this slightly more. For a brief point it shows Darth Vader's POV where it is stated that he could heal himself with the power of the dark side, except the moment it begins working, Darth Vader instinctively feels positive and lets go of the hate needed to fuel the power.
  • In Star Wars: Allegiance, Mara Jade is the Emperor's Hand, a sort of all-purpose Force-sensitive agent with some training. An ally of hers is horribly wounded and slowly dying, and she's helpless to do anything but try to take him to a medical capsule. The narration states that the Emperor has taught her techniques to heal herself with, but nothing she can apply to someone else.
• In the Stones of Power series, the Sipstrassi stones start out neutral, able to be used for any kind of magic, but if a stone is ever repowered using Blood Magic, it can never again be used to create food or heal injuries.
• The Stormlight Archive: The Fused can use Voidlight to heal themselves in the same way that Radiants can heal themselves with Stormlight. However, while the two orders of Radiants who bind Progression can use it to heal others, no known Fused brand or Regal form can do so. Even the Fused brand that binds Progression uses it to enhance their own bodies rather than to heal others.
• Averted in the Wheel of Time novels. In the first few pages of the first book, The Dragon Ishamael uses a healing weave fuel by the True Source to heal Lews Therin's mind—brutally horrific healing, yet effective.
  • Also, the Forsaken Semirhage is the greatest Healer in the world, in either the Second Age or the Third, and a sadist as well—she causes great pain and suffering to her victims in the short time her healing takes. Joined the side of the Dark One because the Aes Sedai intended to bind her from her pleasures with an unbreakable and life-shortening bond. Further refined her abilities under the Dark One, to the point of being able to torture victims to death by careful overstimulation of pleasure centers in their brain.

Live-Action TV

• In Charmed, this trope is partially invoked, as, though there is no evidence that evil beings cannot heal one another, it is a known fact that Whitelighters are unable to heal demons (initially an unfortunate implication for the then-part-demonic Cole).
• Exception: Heroes villain Mr. Linderman has healing powers.
• Wraith in Stargate Atlantis have healing powers (infusing Life Energy stolen from other victims), the good guys don't.
  • The Goa'uld can heal their hosts; only the nonevil ones, the Tok'ra, are willing to risk entering a dying host just to heal them.
  • The Ancients can heal. They just aren't allowed to.

Tabletop Games

• Averted in Dark Heresy: while basic medical equipment is usable by anyone, there are a few psyker abilities that pertain to healing, and messing with the Warp is generally the road to corruption and evil.
• In Dungeons & Dragons (specifically third edition):
  • The Cleric class lets Good clerics (and some Neutral ones) cast Cure Wounds spells spontaneously as an exception to their usual Vancian Magic, while Evil clerics are stuck with Inflict Wounds and have to prepare their healing magic in advance. This can be an advantage if the cleric has The Undead in their entourage (or is undead themselves), since Inflict spells heal them.
  • The blackguard, the Evil Counterpart of The Paladin, has a more limited Healing Hands ability that only works on themself or their fiendish mount, and has minimal general-use healing magic.
  • The healer class requires a Good alignment. Becoming Neutral, let alone Evil, results in a loss of all class abilities.
• Played straight with the 'Healing' and 'Anti-Healing' magic powers in the old ElfQuest role-playing game (a combination best embodied in Winnowill); the system was percentile-based and there was a ceiling on the total of percentiles the same character could have in both, so past a certain point improving Anti-Healing would reduce skill in Healing and vice versa.
• The Abyssal Exalted do get Medicine charms, just like all other Exalted... but theirs generally involves stitching parts from dead bodies onto the people they're trying to heal. Have it done to you too much and you effectively become undead. Hey, it's called Necrosurgery for a reason!
• Played with in GURPS as most of the really evil-ish powers (killing with a touch, becoming a Lich) available through the magic system require the ability to heal others first.
  • GURPS: Powers plays it straight. The Good Power gets healing, Evil does not.
• In Magic: The Gathering:
  • Of the five colors, green and white are most associated with good (though the standard caveat applies) and are the only sources of unconditional healing for the player. Black, the most typically evil color (if not necessarily), can only gain life by draining it from creatures and players first.
  • The kithkin from Shadowmoor are among the Light Is Not Good exceptions; they have competent healing magic, but they're bigoted assholes at best.
• Pathfinder gives clerics the same healing magic as D&D and pairs it with the ability to channel positive energy (for healing or undead-frying) or negative energy (for the opposite) for Good and Evil clerics respectively.
  • One aversion exists in that the evil spell Infernal Healing allows fast healing over time, and not only is the spell evil, but causes the beneficiary to detect as evil for the spell's duration. The spell requires anointing the target with devil's blood, which can either be taken forcibly, or offered freely by a diabolical spellcaster.
  • Second Edition mixes things up by making it so that clerics of deities with the right themes can break this paradigm. For example, clerics of Lamashtu can choose to have a healing font, throwing players who were expecting this trope for a loop.
• Princess: The Hopeful: Princesses have one of the better healing-other-people powersets in the Chronicles of Darkness setting, with Charms that can heal wounds, cure diseases or poisons, regrow limbs, and more at reasonable cost and with minimal side effects. By contrast, about the only healing power the Darkness offers is the Flesh of My Flesh Caligo, which only heals the Darkened himself and requires fresh human flesh to replace the damaged tissue.
• Averted in Sentinels of the Multiverse, where, while not all villains can heal, there are still several with access to recovery effects for themselves, and the Biomancer is ridiculously good at keeping himself and his minions alive - as a result, even though he only has 18 HP (for comparison, that's lower than even the most fragile solo hero card), it's possible that he'll be one of the last villains you deal with out of his team; that way, everyone can focus on him.
• In the Revised Star Wars d20 RPG and Saga Edition, healing is generally a Light Side power and is impeded by having a Dark Side score. Dark Siders can still enter a restorative Force trance, heal themselves through Vampiric Draining, and use the potent Dark Transfer power for healing that can outstrip its Light Side counterpart, though requiring another being to drain/transfer from rather than being able to heal entirely autonomously. Vampiric draining and self-regeneration are generally exceptions to this trope, so it's still played straight.
• Averted in Warhammer, where Chaos and the Undead may not have access to the healing spells available to other armies but they make up for it with some unique ones of their own.

Video Games

• Discussed in Advance Wars: Dual Strike. The heroes are actually horrified that Black Hole would be so bold as to actually have units that can repair other units, simply because... they're evil. Sasha wondering out loud if the existence of these repairing units means they have decent people in their ranks, foreshadowing Hawke and Lash's eventual Heel–Face Turn.
• In Baldur's Gate, two of the special abilities the player character gains if they've been nice are Cure Light Wounds and Slow Poison. Their "evil" counterparts are Larloch's Minor Drain and Horror.
  • Minor Drain still heals you when you cast it on yourself albeit a pitiful amount. It still abides by the selfish nature of evil.
• In The Battle for Middle-earth, only the Good factions have healing structures, abilities, and spells. The only healing done for the Evil factions is the heroes' self-regeneration.
• In Battle for Wesnoth, the only default factions which get healers are the Loyalists, the Rebels, and the Drakes. The Undead and Northerner factions fall squarely into this trope, while the Knalgans don't get one because they have good defense and resistances and they would be too hard to kill if they had healers.
  • Actually mildly subverted in that the saurian healers that the Drake faction gets are of chaotic alignment (despites the drakes themselves being lawful) and fairly strongly implied to be using black magic. Meanwhile, of the three factions with access to healers it's actually the 100% lawful Loyalists who have to go to the greatest lengths to actually acquire one; until it can advance one or more Mages to White Mages, a Loyalist force only gets healing from resting and villages just like everybody else, while Rebels and Drakes respectively can recruit Elvish Shamans and Saurian Augurs right away.
• Averted in Bonfire. Mournfolk Priests (Ephrem's Evil Counterpart) and Oakhearts can heal their allies, and Failures, as Mirror Bosses, copy your healing abilities as well. Some monsters are also capable of healing themselves, and regeneration is a possible starting buff for all enemies.
• Bravely Default has various aversions, subversions, and straight-players.
  • Aversions: Holly Whyte, Fiore DeRosa, and Victor S. Court are all White Magic users, allowing them to heal themselves and (in the case of Holly and Victor) their allies. Those two are also subversions in later worlds, which reveal them to be rather less antagonistic; DeRosa remains still a flat aversion.
    • Played straight: Erutus Profiteur entirely lacks his Merchant job's Pharmacy ability, and Salve-Maker Qada will never Compound a healing item.
  • Subversion: Gigas Lich is undead, and thus susceptible to Revive Kills Zombie, but gets around it by absorbing Earth-elemental damage and having access to the Quaga spell.
• City of Villains averted this with the healing-oriented powerset Pain Domination for villain archetypes as a counterpart to the hero-exclusive Empathy powerset (the most healing-oriented Support powerset in the game, where most Support powersets are more oriented on buffs and occasionally debuffs). Pain Domination is described as, well, manipulating the pain of others, which has a decidedly more villainous slant than the concept of having empathic powers. In practice, the two powersets were extremely similar, with the six of the nine powers in each set being nearly identical to the other except for power names, visuals, and some secondary effects. And then somehow averted even more in later updates when archetypes were no longer morality-specific, so you could create villainous Defenders or Controllers with Empathy and heroic Corruptors and Masterminds with Pain Domination.
• Done to some degree in the Command & Conquer series. ^note These examples are about faction-specific abilities, and ignore building capture mechanics.
  • In Command & Conquer: Red Alert, only Allies can train medics.
  • In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, Yuri's faction lacks a Service Depot, replacing it with the Grinder, which actually kills units entering it for a cash refund.
  • Downplayed in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3; only the Allies have their own way of healing infantry (through the Engineer's triage tent), but all factions have the means to repair mechanical units through repair drones.
  • In Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, only GDI has the means to heal infantry through the Armory.
• Inverted in Control, as only the Hiss has units with the Healing Hands - you have to make do with what the enemy drops. Unless, of course, you master Seize, in which case you can Mind Control those Healing Hands units to heal you instead.
• Zig-Zagged in Dawn of War: The first game gave the (evil) orks a healer unit, but Chaos has nothing (the Space Marines and eldar have healers). In the following expansions, the (good) Imperial Guard never got a healing spell/unit, the Necrons just resurrect their dead troops, while Dark Eldar have only one unit who can Leech Life from enemies. The Tau aren't all that evil, but only one of their units can heal itself (by eating dead bodies). The Sisters of Battle have a fast-healing spell, but it's tied to a single squad and costs resources.
• In the Disciples series, the Legions of the Damned and the Undead Hordes don't have healing support units. Strangely, this also applies to the Mountain Clans, whose mages can only amplify other units' attacks. The closest they have is the Druidess, who can cure debuffs. The Empire and the Elven Alliance have classes dedicated to healing.
• Averted in Disgaea; not only are there fallen angel clerics who heal their comrades just fine, but Succubi have a skill called "Evil Healing" which restores the target's HP. It's not exactly clear what makes this different from "Good Healing."
  • Later installments instead call it "Sexy Healing" or something to that effect, which is more appropriate.
  • Of course, you can eventually gain use of almost any non-boss unit yourself. As well if you use the master-student function they can actually learn healing spells, excluding 3.
  • The class details do make an offhand comment about this here and there. In the first game, for instance, it's mentioned male Clerics wear dresses lined with barbed wire as penance for performing an act as 'good' as healing.
    • This one bears some expanding: according to the supplementary material, it was Celestia that created healing spells. When many of these angels ended up falling to the Netherworld, they spread the knowledge of said magic. In fact, the only people in the games that have innate access to healing abilities generally have some level of angelic ancestry. The female healers are outright stated to be descended from those fallen angels, and the Succubi are also implied to have a similar bloodline.
• In Dragon Age, you can't be healed by normal means when using Blood Magic (which is effectively evil Black Magic in the setting). This is likely for balance reasons, since the whole point of Blood Magic is to Cast from Hit Points. You are, however, perfectly allowed to cast healing spells, they just don't work as well on you.
  • Subverted in Dragon Age II. Your blood mage companion cannot learn healing spells; she cannot even learn the spell tree they are in, meaning she also doesn't have the useful Heroic Aura and Haste buffs. However, Merrill isn't evil; she's actually one of the nicest people on the team. Meanwhile, Anders, the mage who's literally possessed by a demon of Vengeance and is guaranteed to commit at least one act of great ruthlessness, has a form of the Spirit Healer specialty and is in fact the only non-PC mage to have revival and mass-heal spells.
• Averted by a few creatures in the Dragon Quest series; for example, healslimes, cureslimes, and the Elysium Bird all heal other creatures (and have poor attacks themselves), and at least one creature in Dragon Quest VIII that will cast a suicidal spell that revives or heals the rest of its party. Bosses generally heal themselves but not others.
  • One of the grotto bosses in Dragon Quest IX (Shogum, a gigantic slime knight) doesn't cast healing spells himself... instead, he can summon a king cureslime. What makes this really nasty is that king cureslimes can cast Omniheal, which heals all enemies for 999 (a very sizable section of his 3600 HP health bar). Here you definitely want to Shoot the Medic First!
• Averted and inverted in Dungeon Crawl. Both good and evil gods give methods of healing to your character. On the other hand, spells that heal you are only contained in Necromancy school, which the good gods forbid you from using.
• Subverted in Dungeon Keeper. Healing is an important spell, especially to prevent heroes from dying during torture.
• Averted in The Elder Scrolls series. Necromancers and enemy wizards have access to the same spells you do and can heal anytime they have the magicka to.
• Inverted in Epic Battle Fantasy 5: Natalia's, special status effect, Undead, prevents healing through skills or the Regen status effect (but not items), and causes revivals to revive players with 0 HP.
• Averted slightly in Eternal Sonata. Several of the monsters in the game have healing special attacks. In addition, bosses will sometimes resurrect monsters that accompany them into battle.
• Applies in the first Fable game: Heal Life was a Good spell and Drain Life was the Evil healing spell.
• Averted in Fallout 4. If an NPC has stimpaks, they will use it when their health is low enough. Kill them quickly enough, though, and the stimpak is yours.
• Aside from "Benediction if I feel like it" Absolute Virtue and other mobs with self-healing, there are many Final Fantasy XI enemies that play the role of The Medic. One of the best/worst examples is during a Campaign Battle in enemy territory: There are little imps that both cure and buff the Beastmen units, and do nothing but that until attacked. Oh, and every time they cast, the spell has a wide area of effect. Considering how many of the little assholes are there when a fight starts, they're the first to die.
  • Subverted in the original Final Fantasy. Most of the foes that the Light Warriors face off against indeed cannot cure themselves. So when Chaos randomly uses the best healing spell in the game, it comes as quite a shock. And it heals him fully.
  • Ahriman in Final Fantasy III can cast Cura on himself. Considering that's the second weakest healing spell and he's fought on The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.... Yeah, it's not doing him any good.
  • The Magus Sisters in Final Fantasy IV have access to the same type of white magic that you can use. Sandy will cast Reflect to shield Cindy from magic, Mindy will use revive spells to resurrect her fallen sisters, and she can also cast Reraise so that her allies get back up should they be slain.
  • Final Fantasy VI has another boss trio that are an Expy of the Magus Sisters with similar gimmicks, and one of the final bosses before fighting Kefka also has access to Life 2/Arise.
  • Averted with a vengeance in most fights with Caius in Final Fantasy XIII-2, who is one of very, very few enemies in the game to have access to a Regen effect that, to add insult to injury, cannot be dispelled (the heroes have nothing comparable), although it can be cancelled out by inflicting him with Poison. He also has Reraise, but that's less a healing mechanic in his battles and more a case of Gameplay and Story Integration; most of his battles end as soon as it kicks in (and in the battles it doesn't, when Reraise kicks in, Cauis loses any other statuses he has, including Regen. Particularly infuriating incarnations of Caius have him perform the Regen effect immediately prior to unleashing a barrage of attacks whose priority levels do an excellent job of tossing the heroes around like ragdolls—and by the time the attacks stop, the Regen has restored him to full health.
  • A few Final Fantasy Mystic Quest monsters, such as Mages and Thanatos (a weakened form of the late-game boss Dullahan) have access to Cure magic, but they only tend to use it on themselves when low on HP. The final boss, the Dark King, will occasionally shoot himself with Cure Arrows when transformed into his Multi-Armed and Dangerous second form.
• Even the Big Bads have Priests or similar classes on their side in Fire Emblem. In fact, the closer you are to the final battle, the higher the probability is that the enemy has at least one Priest/Bishop with Physic (long-range healing) or Fortify (heals all units of the same affiliation within a ten-tile range, or in some cases, all units on the map). Some bosses also have self-regenerating abilities, most notably the three final bosses of Radiant Dawn, who possess the Mantle skill.
• Gears of War has the Kantus, the spiritual leaders of the Locust Horde. They can revive and heal their fellow Locust using their screams, similar to the Archvile from Doom. Naturally, it's a good idea to kill them first.
• Averted in Golden Sun: Many a player has been unpleasantly surprised to see Saturos cast Cure and Menardi casting Wish in the final boss fights. Menardi in particular gets some Fridge Logic since Wish is a Mercury spell and she's a Mars Adept (maybe she has an Upgrade Artifact... or some Mercury Djinn). Granted, given that they only heal about 80-300 health, all it really does is buy them maybe half a turn, as spells like Wish and Cure are far more effective when used on a player who will maybe have close to 3-500 hitpoints by the end of the game. (Saturos and Menardi have about 3,000 each.)
  • Aaaaaaaaaaaand played straight when the sequel revealed they weren't necessarily evil. In fact, the only Mars Clan enemy who can't cast any healing spells is the only one who plainly shows evil intentions (Agatio).
  • Alex still counts as an aversion, having been trained as a medic before his Face–Heel Turn in the backstory, and retaining his skills throughout the series.
  • The Dullahan is even worse, not only does he heal 200 HP every turn, he also has a life-draining attack.
• Undead heroes in Heroes of Might and Magic can in theory learn healing spells just like anyone else, though they are the most unlikely to get the required skills and spells offered from their respective sources. But even if they do, they don't work for their undead troops, but Raise Undead takes the role as healing spell instead, and their vampires have life-draining attacks. Demons are likewise handicapped, without the benefit of Raise Dead — but at least healing spells do work on them if the hero manages to get them.
  • In the fourth game, every faction has a different spell set associated with it. Life gets healing as soon as possible, and Nature has some regeneration abilities. Death's only healing spell is at the highest power level—it sacrifices one unit to heal another. Mind you, if you're playing as Death, you take Life Magic as a skill, and you conquer and build a mage tower in a Life or Life-allied city, you can learn proper healing and use it on your infernal troops.
  • In the sixth game, the Haven and Sanctuary are the only factions that have healing units in their roster and can use all the available healing spells. The Inferno faction is shortchanged since the light-based heal spells actually hurt them and they have no healing units — though they make up for this with the ability to summon extra units on the battlefield. The Necromancer faction in this game is a rather spectacular aversion. They get a healing unit, a special ability that can heal troops, and a special town building that can bring back lost troops.
  • Very downplayed in Might and Magic VII: aligning with more moral Path of Light gives you access to Light Magic, which has a powerful healing spell... as its ultimate spell. It completely refills health, mana and clears status ailments, but imposes the cost of aging the caster a decade for every casting, so except in an extreme emergency you are more likely to rely on basics like the Heal spell — which is a low-level Body Magic spell, and hence available to almost every cleric, Light, Dark or uncommitted. Even liches can be healed by it. Plus, the ultimate spell of Dark Magic also heals the party, though it's through Life Drain thus healing depends on the damage done.
• Killing Floor: Two of the bosses (The Patriarch and Dr. Hans Volter) are capable of self-healing after taking severe damage; The Patriarch will throw up a stealth field and run away to use a healing stim, while Volter will attempt to Life Drain from one of the player characters. Justified, because the bosses were former higher-ups of the same corporation that invented your healing stims. Also, some game modifiers give the enemies limited health regeneration - at the cost of turning them into literal balloons.
• Played with in Kingdom Hearts; the Green Requiems are enemies that are able to cure their allies. They have no attack abilities, however, so they could even be considered "friendly" Heartless.
  • Averted in three separate cases in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. The first case, the final boss of one storyline and overall True Final Boss, can heal because he's taken control of one of the main character's bodies. The other two, the Vanitas Remnant and The Mysterious Figure, serve as the games' superbosses and have some creative ways of healing. The former has only one health bar but will automatically heal himself to full health if you use Curative magic on yourself (although Potions and Spells that attack as well as heal, such as Faith and Salvation, don't trigger the healing). The latter can either use Restore Barrier to heal some of his health if your attack lasts for too long or turn back time to before you hit him and smack you around a few times.
    • The Vile Phial is technically the Unversed version of the Green Requiem Heartless. But unlike its Heartless counterpart, it can also attack by ramming, causing poison status on impact.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, Force Heal is explicitly considered a Light Side power. While this doesn't mean that Sith are barred from using it, it does require a lot more Force Points.
  • The Dark Side counterpart to Heal is Drain Life, which saps enemies' HP and gives it to you. Nowhere near as good for several reasons. For one, it only works in a fight, as after all your enemies are dead, there's nobody to drain from, obviously. It also doesn't give as much HP as Heal does, and you can't share it with allies. You have to rely on health potions injections.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic averts this. While Jedi Sages and Sith Sorcerers have different names for their healing spells, and likely different principles behind them, the application in terms of gameplay is the same.
  • Also done in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, with healing being a light side power and drain being a dark one - it's even more apparent in Jedi Outcast, which didn't have Drain. As far as their respective singleplayer campaigns, though, this doesn't matter, since Kyle ultimately unlocks every power from both sides in Jedi Outcast without falling to the dark side, and Jaden in Jedi Academy can freely mix-and-match powers however s/he sees fit, without it affecting which ending you get (which is instead based on a Last-Second Ending Choice).
• In Lords of Magic the Death faction does get one spell that heals them faster when they remain in one place. However, every faction gets a version of this spell, and Death's is not only the weakest of them, but it's at the absolute end of that spell tree, while every other faction gets it much sooner. Their undead troops also don't heal naturally at all, except for the vampire's Life Drain attacks.
• Averted in the Mario & Luigi series. Especially Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, where three out of five giant bosses and every normal boss from the Elite Trio onwards can heal, and for a significant amount of their health. This includes the two Big Bads.
  • It's also arguably inverted, the only bosses who can't heal are the ones are aren't either affiliated with the BigBad's or evil in general. So the killer robots, villains, The Dragon and less sympathetic opponents can heal, while the ones who do a Heel–Face Turn afterwards can't.
• In the Citadel DLC of Mass Effect 3, Shepard's clone has a supply of medi-gel which must be burned through first before you can go in for the kill. They will also recover Maya Brooks with it, as you fight them together.
• All demons in Nexus Clash are permanently immune to healing by others, thanks to a curse from an angelic god that their own patron gods don't feel like reversing. They've found more than a few ways to get around the curse by healing themselves, usually at the expense of whoever they're fighting.
• Overwatch played this trope straight until Moira O’Deorain was released. She isn't just a dramatic aversion of the trope, she's arguably one of the most wicked characters in the game. Until her, the other evil-aligned women had tragic backstories (Widowmaker didn't even choose her path; she was brainwashed) and sympathetic reasons for working with the villains. As a support hero, Moira's healing is more potent than her damage, and her damage has the side effect of healing her.
• Averted in the Paper Mario series:
  • Medi Guys and White Magikoopas have the ability to heal single allies for a lot, or every ally for a little. Blue Magikoopas and Kammy Koopa, having the abilities of all the other Magikoopa types, can also heal. The latter being paired with Bowser is especially dangerous.
  • Most of the late-game bosses in Paper Mario 64 can heal themselves, namely Huff N. Puff, Crystal King, and Bowser himself.
  • In Super Paper Mario, local Mirror Boss Mr. L can use healing items just like the player can. Thankfully, you can stop him during the Item Get! animation by attacking him or even stealing the item with Thoreau. Likewise for Dark Luigi during the Shadoo fight.
• Parasite Eve averts this for the three headed mutated dog boss that can heal its heads for a few hundred HP unless you kill off the head that keeps healing. The superboss can also heal herself in the thousands of HP if you attack her at the wrong points in the fight. Parasite Eve 2 has a strong mook that can heal itself when it feels like it, though stunning it can interrupt its charge time.
• While the Pokémon games normally avert this with every type having some kind of "positive support" move, if not an outright healing move, this trope is played straight in Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness; not a single Shadow move available in that game helps the user or their allies, and Shadow power is derived by the Cipher organization for the sake of conquest.
• Averted in Ratchet: Deadlocked with Ace Hardlight, who uses nanotech to heal himself whenever his health gets too low. Fortunately, he has a limited supply and will eventually run out.
• Runescape's Ancient Magicks spellbook (Which is tied to the evil god Zaros) is made up of only teleports and sinister combat spells, and entirely lacks in the other non-offensive spells included in the Standard spellbook and make up the entirety of the Lunar spellbook. The combat spells do somewhat make up for this in that they have added effects: the Blood spells heal the caster, the Ice spells freeze opponents, the Shadow spells lower opponents' accuracy and Smoke spells poison the target.
• Shin Megami Tensei has a select group of enemies who can and will liberally use whatever annoying healing spell they like. Superbosses like Alilat and Satan have no compunctions about using Diarahan (full HP restore) when they're near death. Even lesser enemies who know the right spells are not averse to using them. Demiurge, Captain Jack and others have lesser versions (often Diarama - mid-HP restore). The Pale Rider is a particularly evil example-he summons two flunkies to cast weakening spells. When near-death, these will self-destruct, damaging everybody else-but healing the Rider. The Rider will then use the opportunity to summon more of his flunkies. The Ancient of Days will never hesitate to break out Diarahan if you either touch his weaknesses or take him to low health.
• Averted with Vyse and Co's imposters in Skies of Arcadia. Fina's imposter has healing magic just like she does, and isn't afraid to use it.
• In The Suffering, the more evil Torque is, the less healing pills work on him, and the more good he is, the more he's healed. Conversely, he can berserk more when evil.
• Averted with Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Alice, in her Dual Boss battle with Decus, uses First Aid to restore a good chunk of his health each time she uses it. A popular strategy is to take her out before Decus, even though this will make Decus become much harder.
• Onikage from the Tenchu series also averts this : if his health gets too low, he will chug a healing potion to get back to full health. Though, just like you, it does leave him vulnerable for a couple of seconds : attack him fast enough and you will both prevent him from healing and get a free potion from him!
• Used in Warcraft, but Warcraft III did away with this thanks to univeral healing abilities:
  • The Dark Horde didn't have direct healing powers in Warcraft I & II, but they made up with necromancy and an invulnerability spell.
  • Warcraft II added "Troll Regeneration" to give Berserkers a Healing Factor, while Death Knights can heal themselves with the Death Coil Life Drain spell, giving limited healing options for the Horde.
  • In the expansion set for WC2, all orc heroes had three times more health than their alliance counterparts, since if they died you lost the mission. Teron Gorefiend is also a Death Knight with tripple the health and can heal himself with Death Coil.
  • Warcraft III averts this, giving healing powers to all playable races including the Undead Scourge. The Undead Death Knight hero is indeed a very effective healer of Undead with Death Coil but it works differently from II. They can use that ability to damage the living for 1/2 the amount it would heal, making them an effective Red Mage. This Death Coil does not allow self-healing, however.
• World of Warcraft averts this by giving a number of enemy groups in an instance dungeon some sort of healer, whether for normal mob groups or even for bosses in a few cases. It's even more notably averted in one mid-level dungeon; in the Scarlet Monastery Cathedral, the final boss, High Inquisitor Whitemane, resurrects the penultimate boss, Scarlet Commander Mograine, to fight alongside her. (Given the people involved, it's clearly not necromancy.)
  • At one point a human paladin calls out to the (evil) Blood Elves as to how can they use magic of the Holy Light, only for them to reveal that they have literally enslaved one of the local Crystal Dragon Jesus creatures.
  • Also averted by playable Warlocks, Death Knights, and Shadow Priests, all Black Magic users (the first two of which use the souls of their slain foes as power for spells) who have at least minor healing abilities.

Webcomics

• Lampshaded in Adventurers!. Khrima's Chaos Healing doesn't work as well as the heroes' does; when this is pointed out, Khrima replies, "Did you actually think I was going to put a huge amount of my budget into healing research?"
• Lampshaded in The Order of the Stick. After hearing that the army is suffering heavy casualties on the southern wall, Redcloak orders a squad of clerics to the area. When his second-in-command assumes that they were sent to heal, Redcloak replies, "Healing? No, they're going so they can zombify our dead. We're the bad guys, remember?"
  • Redcloak does have healing powers (though being an evil cleric in a D&D world, he can't cast the spells spontaneously), however, but by that point he's taken some of Xykon's We Have Reserves Zerg Rush tactics to heart. Especially zombifying minions. Still, he is capable of casting all the same healing spells as a good cleric, and is even ordered by Xykon to resurrect a dead minion (admittedly, mostly so Xykon can threaten to kill him and use that guy as a replacement).
  • Much later a recently vampirized Durkon forgets that now being evil he can only convert spells to inflict wounds, not cure wounds, and accidentally or not zaps an ally.
  Durkon: ...I also haf potions

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