Dragon Warriors
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A more indepth look at healing?
http://www.libraryofhiabuor.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=324		 Page 2 of 3
Author:  Damian May [ Sat Feb 24, 2018 10:57 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
WodenKrait wrote:
Damian May wrote:
I always just start them again if they get injured during their recovery period....life sucks, bed rest and recovery is their best option.


The problem is the four day thing doesn't mean anything and if it is intended to discourage characters from adventuring while wounded, its a bad way to do it. A penalty to healing rate when doing so makes more sense. The four day thing is arbitrary, counterintuitive, and dumb.

Damian May wrote:
That said it has worked pretty well for me over the years so I don't see any need to change it.


That's what Americans say when people ask them why they still use the Imperial system of measurements. Just because you can get by with one system is no reason not to switch to something better.

Cheers,

-Kyle


Well, I know when I've been told. Enjoy your discussion.
Author:  Cobwebbed Dragon [ Sat Feb 24, 2018 11:46 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
Acoma wrote:
Elementalists and Mystics could expend magical energy to gain 'Healing Points', which then turn to Health Points in another character (Elementalist: MP -> HP, Mystic makes a +4 PF check for 4-5 HP for something).

Whilst I tend to remove most magical healing from my games (my sorcerer's spellbook, for example, has no healing spells), I do like the idea of a Mystic being able to meditate to recover health faster than simple rest and might incorporate some form of that into my games.

Thanks for the inspiration, @Acoma.
Author:  Cobwebbed Dragon [ Sat Feb 24, 2018 11:55 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
Starkad wrote:
By way of comparison, King Arthur Pendragon RPG has a natural healing rate of (STR+CON)/10 per week and virtually no magical healing! That really puts combat into perspective. Maybe the DW healing system isn't so bad after all? It's a compromise between the realism of long-term recovery and playability... I find it's always worth remembering that DW is a game, after all. ;)

The difference with Pendragon is that each adventure represents a year in your character's life and tends to have far fewer combat encounters, whereas a series of DW scenarios may happen over a much shorter time period and involve more combat - the DW mechanics reflect that.

In my own campaigns, I reduced the time it takes to start healing from four days to one day (although the rate at which one heals is the same - i.e., 1 HP per Rank per day). I also have a first aid skill that can be attempted on an injured character immediately after suffering the injury.

However, I have also significantly reduced the amount of magical healing available to a typical adventurer, so the adventurers should probably get good at bandaging their own wounds if they want to survive a trap-laden monster-infested dungeon crawl. Or avoid combat through more creative means :).

An old draft of my combat rules are available from the Forest, for anyone interested:

http://www.cobwebbedforest.co.uk/librar ... Wounds.pdf
Author:  Starkad [ Sat Feb 24, 2018 12:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
Quote:
The problem is the four day thing doesn't mean anything and if it is intended to discourage characters from adventuring while wounded, its a bad way to do it. A penalty to healing rate when doing so makes more sense.

The four day rule has worked for me for a very long time now. It is (as far as I know) unique to DW and I retain it because my players understand it (and its limitations). There is nothing to stop individual GMs from using different rules in their games, of course.

You could use a variant on the Pendragon healing rate (which I detailed above). You could, for example, have (STR + HP)/10 = Healing Rate (HR). The HR would then apply after every few days of rest (you could have it as every week or, to be more heroic, every 3 days).
Note that I'm thinking of the character's maximum, rather than current, Health Points to obtain the HR.

I've literally just thought that up, so feel free to come up with something else (or a different time period for the natural HR)!

Regarding the "penalty to healing rate", you could instead use something akin to the Pendragon rules for Aggravation. For those not familiar with that game, I'll quote part of the Aggravation rules here:

"Gamemasters inevitably face situations where knights who should be resting insist on activity – perhaps "to travel just for a few hours" or for "just one good fight." In other cases during a scenario, an injured character may be forced to leave his sickbed for several days, then rest, then ride many miles, then rest again. The rules for aggravation take care of this...
...Aggravation means making a condition worse by undertaking excessive activity while ill or injured. Each incident of aggravation causes 1 or more points of damage directly to current hit points; no wound is recorded. Aggravation damage occurs immediately after the activity is completed unless the Gamemaster decides otherwise. The extra damage may cause a character to become unconscious immediately after his rash action."
(Aggravation should not be confused with Deterioration - which is the loss of Health Points through blood loss, dehydration, infection, illness, and more.)

HR is not affected by either Aggravation or Deterioration. It just means the Health Points you end up are less than they would have been had the character continued to rest.

So, in DW, you could have it where characters have a constant, unchanging HR based on their physical attributes (I used Strength and normal Health Points, but you might disagree); but they can cause themselves further loss of Health Points by not resting, and might even lose further Health Points through illness, &c.

I'll leave that there as a suggestion for you to consider.

Quote:
Just because you can get by with one system is no reason not to switch to something better.

This presumes that what you're switching to is, indeed, better... ;)
Author:  Starkad [ Sat Feb 24, 2018 12:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
Quote:
The difference with Pendragon is that each adventure represents a year in your character's life and tends to have far fewer combat encounters, whereas a series of DW scenarios may happen over a much shorter time period and involve more combat - the DW mechanics reflect that.

Very much so; they are quite different games. That said, I have played in Pendragon scenarios that were quite... intense and did test my characters's healing rate.

Quote:
However, I have also significantly reduced the amount of magical healing available to a typical adventurer,

A trade-off, then? Less magic healing, but access to first aid to compensate...*
* This is where my own rules for first aid came from - the first game where there was no magical healing available but combat still occurred.

Quote:
An old draft of my combat rules are available from the Forest, for anyone interested:

Thank you for sharing! :D
Author:  Acoma [ Sat Feb 24, 2018 5:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
Starkad wrote:
Quote:
Thoughts?


Hmm. I think you have to be careful with this one…

You can always add a skill here, a spell there, beef up the healing available to the PCs, or even create a dedicated healer. The trouble is, once you’ve done that you might as well have a "Cleric" or "party healer" and then you've effectively got a D&D adventuring party on your hands.
(So, really, it's down to what kind of game you prefer – if you like combat-heavy dungeon crawls, then beefing up the healing in DW may well be necessary.)



The decrease in HP or Strength points in the healer would stop a single character becoming a 'party healer', they'd just even out the HP within the party.
Author:  Starkad [ Sat Feb 24, 2018 7:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
Quote:
The decrease in HP or Strength points in the healer would stop a single character becoming a 'party healer', they'd just even out the HP within the party.

Surely that's precisely what they would become? They'd find any other role in the adventuring group (beyond social skills/interaction) difficult...
Author:  Acoma [ Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
OK, while they might become the party healer, it wouldn't just be 'everyone back to full health within 3 CR so we can kill more monsters' kind of thing.
Author:  WodenKrait [ Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
All this talk of Pendragon makes me curious about the healing rules in other games. I know a few which are noteworthy:

Maelstrom (a fairly obscure game from the 80s which some of us on this forum remember fondly) had healing applied to each wound, not the sum total. Although this meant you had to keep track of every wound you sustained, it also meant you took a lot longer to recover from a single major injury than from a lot of little ones, even if overall they added up to the same amount of damage. This seems more realistic to me although I have nothing to back up that impression!

Twilight 2000/Traveller TNE/Dark Conspiracy had a system of wound levels (scratch, slight, serious and critical) with escalating impact on their performance. Healing takes place in descending order through the wound levels, with the time taken for this to happen, all things being equal, are one week (to go from critial to serious), four days (for serious to slight), three days (for slight to unwounded, skipping Scratch). The maximum time for somebody to heal, therefore, assuming rest, is two weeks. On their own, scratch wounds take 24 hours to heal.

Good old D&D 3rd edition (the only version I ever played): 1 hit point per day of rest per level, or 1.5 hit points with full bed rest. If you conduct any spellcasting or fighting during a given day, no hit points are recovered that day.

GURPS (3rd edition, the only version I've actually played extensively): Varied in healing from setting to setting but in the historical setting I played in you simply rolled against your health attribute each day, and if you succeeded you recovered a hit point. Various modifiers could be applied to this roll.

Anybody know any other systems and how they deal with healing?

Cheers,

-Kyle
Author:  Starkad [ Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A more indepth look at healing?
Quote:
Anybody know any other systems and how they deal with healing?

Tirikélu (Dave Morris' game set in Tékumel) uses wound levels: Light/Heavy/Grievous/Fatal – the severity being based on how many Health Points are lost in one blow. Penalties apply as the wounds get more serious. Full rest is needed for natural healing and a Stamina check is made every 2 days to recover a percentage (10% on critical success) of total Health Points. There are modifiers if there’s a physician on hand or, conversely, if the character does something active. Modifiers are cumulative.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2nd Ed) has Wounds (i.e. Health Points) then Critical Hits. You’re fine losing Wounds, but Critical Hits have specific effects depending on severity and location struck.
Healing is based on how injured the character is – either lightly or heavily wounded.
Lightly Wounded (more than 3W left, but less than full): recover 1W/day.
Heavily Wounded (3W or less): recover 1W/week.
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