Healing House Rule?

[Khaalis]

Healing House Rule?

Ok, so after reading some the discussion HERE about Healing, it got me thinking, and I decided to bring it here for a good hashing out.

-------------- SUMMARY --------------
The Overall Issue: The need for magical healing in games with combat, resulting in the broken (both mechanically and immersion-wise) use of the “Touch of Light” spell or the “5-minute work day” syndrome. Additionally, the problem that “healing” in combat is generally a sub-optimal action choice.

#Sletchman …with d20games, healing magic sucks.  Even in Fantasy Craft it sucks.  At early levels, the caster spends their entire round doing nothing to negate maybe then the damage of a single attack.  At higher levels enemies will likely be tougher, so you haven't actually made progress (not to mention they are more likely to have multiple attacks in that round you did nothing).  In D&D, someone ends up playing a character whose entire job description is to let the characters move to the next encounter.  Even Fantasy Craft suffers from this - if no one is a mage you have players who want to "rest up" before the next possible fight which means they will want to sit around for Damage / Level hours.  Sure, as a GM you want to avoid boring sequences like that, but unless you hang a clock over them at all times it can be very hard to.  (I'm referring to a game with plenty of physical danger, this can be entirely disregarded for a political intrigue game.)

At lower levels though you're always better off attacking, it's just the way the math shakes out - all the way up to heal (beyond it in FC, because the spell "Heal" doesn't actually heal any hit points - and healing wounds is orders of magnitude worse).

My problem is that in a campaign with magic, healing sucks.  You're better of using the Medicine skill to fix wounds then you are magic (even without any sort of kit).  Even when healing vitality you're better of attacking and using Touch of Light later on.  The fact that the only truly useful healing spell (as in, for actual hit points) is a 0 level spell is something I consider a problem.  Plus using a 0 level spell a whole bunch is the opposite of heroic fantasy - the other guys are impaling people on their spears, shooting Qi blasts from their hands, and being total badasses in general.  As a magical healer, you poke your mates ever 6 seconds between fights - not badass.


#Blankbeard Even if you made Cure Wounds I cure all wound and vitality damage for the whole party wouldn't you still be better off attacking in all cases where someone isn't about to die/drop?  In all other cases the choice is between what the party can do without you while you heal and what the party can do with you.  In-combat healing is one of those things that is cool in a roleplaying sense but I don't see a way to keep it from being one of the worst mechanical things you can do with an action other than severely restricting the amount of vitality.  And if you treat it as an encounter resource like you mentioned earlier, that might not be bad at all.
After 6th level, if you're going to do healing, CW I is a great choice for Spell Secret.  10 vitality or 1 wound for 0 spell points.


The issues with “Touch of Light”
#Agent333 Touch of Light. That one tiny spell makes it so that the mage just spends a minute or two healing everyone back up, then they continue on with their day. Most mages can even cast it consistently without a roll after a few levels, so if it REALLY matters, just calculate how many rounds it'll take to heal everyone, assume he casts the spell every round, then move on.

#Sletchman Yes, and when you think about it it's a stupid image - the party mage, sitting next to you poking you every 6 seconds for the next 4 minutes.  I'm not saying I have a problem with the spell, just that the idea of using it 130 times after every fight doesn't sit right with me.  "[Vitality] is a measure of your character's ability to avoid injurty" - so by the book (page 28) you aren't injured.  So why have it linger?  It's just more bookkeeping, more "the mage casts 130 spells because you are all down 30-40 VP" and it doesn't mean your group needs a Mage to avoid hours of sitting around healing between fights.


Options:
#Sletchman That's why I think for my next game I'm going to give healing spells a big upgrade, and have anyone who "dies" get a critical injury, as well as full vitality returned at the end of each fight - or something to that effect.

The Fatigued condition wouldn't change by having vitality refresh automatically - it'd still stick around as normal.  Unless you mean you want the players to start the next scene uninjured, but with increased possibility of injury?  If that's the case a simple condition would fill that need - something that makes them refresh to [Percentage] of maximum vitality for the next scene.  Probably magically inflicted, or as a critical injury (or even as a result of "death").


#MisterAndersen Vitality resetting to full at the end of a scene should be a fundamental mechanical baseline. Vitality is essentially just ablative armour that prevents you suffering wound damage. The vast majority of computer games these days make their health mechanic an issue during combat, then about a minute or two after the fight is over the regen rate spikes and you're back to full health.
Given that Spell Points already reset at the end of a scene, it's not any sort of stretch to expect vitality to work exactly the same way.
If you want to represent characters being worn down and run ragged, go with conditions instead. It's trivial to insert a campaign quality that turns off the baseline reduction of condition (grades) at the end of a scene if you want to string out the pain.

 ------------------------------------------

CURRENT VITALITY/WOUND HEALING
•   Natural Healing: Regain 1 Vitality per Career Level per Hour of rest, and 1 Wound per day of rest. (Rest = light to no activity); Occurs even with 1+ critical injury.
•   Assisted Healing: Mend (1 minute; 1/day; DC 15) = 2d6 damage split evenly between Vitality, Subdual and Wounds.
•   Action Dice:
o   Out of Combat: Spend and roll any number of AD to regain Vitality = to the roll’s results + 2 Wounds.
o   In Combat: Take Refresh Action (1 full round) to Spend and roll 1 AD to regain Vitality = to the roll’s results + 2 Wounds.
•   Spells:
o   Touch of Light: 1 Full Action; Cost 0 SP; Heal 1 Vitality
o   Cure Wounds: 1 Full Action; Cost 1 SP per 10 Vitality + Wounds = 1 (1 SP), 3 (2 SP), 6 (3 SP), 10 (4 SP)


So the question is, how much do people agree that this is a real issue? The second question is, how do we make a simple/elegant House Rule fix?  Based on what was said in the afore mentioned thread, it would seem that either an automatic replacement of Vitality is desired, or a compromise between full regeneration and the current system is required.

Since Vitality isn’t actual damage, but more a reflection of your ability to avoid damage (basically battle fatigue) we could go with the option that Vitality restores after combat, after a set amount of rest – the question is how long is viable?  5 Min, 10, 1 hour? Also, what does this do to change the existing system?

If you go limited, it would basically be full recovery, but a set number of times per day, basically like the Healing Surges of D&D 4E.

Thoughts?

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Two campaign qualities I think would be good to consider as we discuss this:

Dramatic Pacing: Durations and time restrictions lasting more than 1 hour instead last until the end of the scene.

Fragile Heroes: Class vitality bonus decreases to 1/2 normal (rounded down).

Hearty Heroes: Heroes are exceptionally resilient and bounce back quickly from injury. They benefit from natural healing even while they’re not resting, and their natural healing rate is doubled while they do rest.

The first could extend to the restriction of healing:
A special character regains 1 vitality per Career Level at the end of every scene, and 1 wound per [should this bit be left alone?], so long as he restricts himself to light activities during that time (i.e. no combat).
An unconscious character wakes at the end of the scene.

Hearty Heroes then doubles that if desired.

Fragile Heroes becomes activate-able with an GM Action Die in cases where they want to represent heroes being worn down.  [Not necessarily sure about this one.]

[Khaalis]

Those are some interesting ideas. However, I'd want to customize Dramatic Pacing so that it ONLY affected Natural Healing. I wouldn't want it to affect everything in the game with the hour time restriction. I would also definitely say that the effects shouldn't apply to Wounds, since Wounds actually represent physical damage.

As for Fragile Heroes, I don't really think that option works so well. It almost feels like a seriously harsh penalty to apply to represent ongoing fatigue.

What I was thinking might be more along the lines of a new quality that meets somewhere in between?

Fast Healing: Replace the normal entry for Natural Healing of Special Characters with the following:
* A special character regains all Vitality at the end of every Scene. Additionally, they regain 1 Wound per day of rest, so long as they restrict themselves to light activities during that time (i.e. no combat). However, if the character does not rest for 1 hour at the end of the scene, they begin the next scene fatigued.
* An unconscious character wakes at the end of the Scene.


Is the fatigued condition too finicky? How often would it come into play? It would however give more options for healer types to use the Restoration spells if they really need to get up to par for another heavy combat scene, as well as a way for the GM to press fatigue for stringing together multiple combat scenes.

Also, I think the 1/Level @ end of scene, is still too low an amount of healing. Even if applying Another Quality (Hearty Heroes) that's still only 2/Level.  As MisterAndersen pointed out... would it work with simply regaining all Vitality, rather than 1/Level?  A 1st level Soldier with 16 Vitality, who loses 10 of it in a scene isn't really going to get much out of 1 Vitality gained at the end of the scene.

[Crafty_Pat]

I shall refrain from commenting on the timing here. It's not like the Crafty Games summit is next week.

Carry on...

[Khaalis]

Crafty Games summit??    Think I missed something...

[Crafty_Pat]

Crafty Games summit??    Think I missed something...

We have Crafty Games summits at least once a year, and this year there's so much going on that we may double up.

They're basically the points at which Alex and I convene in a physical location (we live in different states), and talk about upcoming releases. They're also the periods of most intense core system design, and this time around Spycraft Third and 10kB are front and center.

This year's summit is also a full two weeks, which is much longer than usual. Such is the importance of the time.

We'll be periodically blogging from the summit, though most of what we build there tends to trickle out over a longish period of time - and in this case a lot won't be seen until very close to the release of the products in question. Still, if you'd like to follow us as we spout madness (sometimes) triggered by the discussion at hand, here's where to do so...

www.crafty-games.com/needtoknow
www.facebook.com/craftygames
www.twitter.com/Crafty_Games

Onward and upward!

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Those are some interesting ideas. However, I'd want to customize Dramatic Pacing so that it ONLY affected Natural Healing. I wouldn't want it to affect everything in the game with the hour time restriction. I would also definitely say that the effects shouldn't apply to Wounds, since Wounds actually represent physical damage.

As for Fragile Heroes, I don't really think that option works so well. It almost feels like a seriously harsh penalty to apply to represent ongoing fatigue.

*shrug* They were just discussion starters.  Your idea is probably better.

Fast Healing: Replace the normal entry for Natural Healing of Special Characters with the following:
* A special character regains all Vitality at the end of every Scene. Additionally, they regain 1 Wound per day of rest, so long as they restrict themselves to light activities during that time (i.e. no combat). However, if the character does not rest for 1 hour at the end of the scene, they begin the next scene fatigued.
* An unconscious character wakes at the end of the Scene.

This is nice.

It's just a question of it at higher levels skewing the GM's tactics toward trying to use tactics that go for Wounds or other non-Vitality options just to be able to challenge the characters.  It makes damage a little odd because if the GM goes for high damage to whittle down Vitality they might have to hold back on the critical hits to avoid one-shotting a PC through their Wounds, but if they go low damage so they don't have to worry about that effect the enemy attacks are only rarely going to have much effect against all that Vitality.  Would this make stress and subdual better tactics for enemies?  Not that any of this is inherently undesirable, but these sort of tactical changes do have to be weighed.

[Bill Whitmore]

So the question is, how much do people agree that this is a real issue? The second question is, how do we make a simple/elegant House Rule fix?  Based on what was said in the afore mentioned thread, it would seem that either an automatic replacement of Vitality is desired, or a compromise between full regeneration and the current system is required.

Since Vitality isn’t actual damage, but more a reflection of your ability to avoid damage (basically battle fatigue) we could go with the option that Vitality restores after combat, after a set amount of rest – the question is how long is viable?  5 Min, 10, 1 hour? Also, what does this do to change the existing system?

If you go limited, it would basically be full recovery, but a set number of times per day, basically like the Healing Surges of D&D 4E.

Thoughts?

I read the other thread and, having played with a Personal Lieutenant Wizard who could cast unlimited Cure Wounds I from day 1 in my group, I don't feel it needs fixing (I DID at first, but 6 levels later my opinion on that changed).  I've had Scouts out foraging for 4 hours at a time getting food for everyone, so I wasn't really worried about a Mage patching up the party for a few minutes post fight.  While the description of a Mage poking you every 6 seconds is funny, you could just as easily use a description of a Mage placing a glowing hand on your shoulder as he slowly revitalizes you over several minutes.

Since I have dealt with this from the beginning I can say giving the party back full Vitality (and even full Wounds) each scene doesn't really cause any problems.

I am wary of making all vitality return after every combat, for a couple reasons:
    1) The classic dungeon crawl is all about conservation of resources as the party makes their way through whatever ancient crypt/ruin/castle/cave they may be exploring.
    2) I have scripted in the past events which see multiple smaller waves of combatants throw themselves at the party.  Often times we have dropped out of combat for about 30 seconds.
    3) I can just see a party deciding that a very temporary retreat is the best way to win a fight.
        "Well, we've killed half of them, but damn, we are taking a beating.  Let's get out of here."
        <A harrowing chase through the ruins commences until the party finally breaks contact>
        "We lost them!  I feel a lot better now, let's go back and finish them off!"

All of these make me think that the scene break point for restoring Vitality makes a lot more sense than a combat ending.  Leave the full restoration of health a tool in the hands of the GM, not the Players.

[spinningdice]

Every Scene is better, lets the GC have some control over the pacing, you want a long slog against bands of monsters, it's all one scene, you want them fresh for the next fight - start a new scene.

[Sletchman]

Wow, I come across as a bit of an asshole when I haven't slept for an extended period - why didn't anyone tell me?

To the topic at hand - so far, my thoughts are thus:
Natural healing: Refresh to full Vitality at the end of every scene.  I'd come up with a snappy campaign quality name, but I'm terrible at naming anything.  If the players try to cheat the system, remember that the GM choses when a scene ends - you wanna go hide for 30 seconds to refresh, you're not getting a new scene (which would be wear magical and mundane healing would come in).  Also new conditions and stuff for not refreshing to full (EX: Lingering Wound: Your maximum Vitality refreshes to 50% of maximum at the beginning of next scene, or remains at it's current value (whichever is higher).  You could probably make it a I/II/III with grades of % or durations - you reset to 25% in scene 2, then 50% in scene 3 and then 75% scene 4, back to 100 at 5 (or something like that - that math is an asspull).).

Magical Healing: Cure Wounds X cures a fixed quantity that can be split across Vitality/Wounds either as per a Medicine (Mend) check or perhaps per the Mage's whims.  So if someone suffers a crit the mage can hit them with 10 wounds of cure straight up (I'm still pondering ramifications of increasing the volume of healing that cure spells does).  Change all Cure/Cause casting times to a Standard Action (because Full Round and Touch is bunk).  Touch of Light becomes a Stabilise spell (probably just sets a dying person to 1 Wound Point - for reasons in my next paragraph).

No more death: An expansion/continuation of the stuff gone over in this thread.  As I was quoted saying above - I'm not a fan of PC deaths, especially to random chance.  Something like the PCs being defeated instead of corpses is infinitely better in my mind - and depending on what beats them leads to a dozen different and exciting narrative possibilities.  Stabilise would have to change - it'd stop the person being defeated (and suffering the consequences thereof).  So if we decided "defeated" was -Con in wounds, then Stabilise could set them to 0 - as could Touch of Light.  If it was at 0 Wounds - Touch of Light + Medicine (Stabilise) checks would set them at 1 Wound (not defeated - and not suffering the consequences).


To be honest, my group hasn't played any Fantasy Craft in a long while - I was running my GURPS game and planning to end it late last year and run a Fantasy Craft + Spellbound campaign after it (since it was supposed to be out Oct / Nov last year) but am now basically just waiting for it before I run anything fantasy based again.  So because of this I haven't done much beyond some sort of (broadstroke) theorycrafting for the world - considering geopolitical state, racial options, and ideas for class/paths/specialisation for the various roles the players could take.  No actual rulescrafting.  So my campaign book has a whole load of notes, sketches, and diagrams of what I want to achieve, but has literally no actual mechanics (or even consideration thereof).  There's dozens of ideas between the book and the noggin', but I haven't got much beyond the above - though it's definitely something I'd love to help hammer into some sexy and well formed rules.

The big thing is I live off of Rule of Cool - I want everything the players do to be cool.  Period.  The biggest pleasure I get out of GMing is that players still bring up stuff that happened in my games a decade after that is campaign finished - I swear that's like GM crack or something.  If something is just a humdrum thing they do at the end of an encounter because it "has to be done" then I say eliminate it.  If they're going to do it anyway, why even bother to track that they did it?  Furthermore, why make it someones job to do it?  Gamers recap crazy escapades, hilarious "Oh @#$%!" moments, and some glorious deaths - not that they stopped and waited for the healer to do their job.  Plus it's more cinematic - the heroes catch their breaths and then dive back into the fray full of vigor.

Got a bit rambley there (it's like 6am and I've been up all night) - hope any of it is useful / sparks someones creativity.

[Mister Andersen]

I'm with the idea of removing the random factor from healign spells. You've already made classes give a fixed amount of vitality equal to the effective average die roll per level, there's no reason good reason other than mechanical nostalgia not to have the systems that restore it work the same way as your baseline. You want to randomise it, that's what you use a CQ for.

I'm good for damage remaining randomised. It's far more entertaining to maybe not roll as much damage as you'd like than to similarly mess up a healing check. When it comes to combat, folks want to kill not die.

[Sletchman]

I'm with the idea of removing the random factor from healign spells.

By "fixed" I didn't mean non-random as much as I meant abolish the 10vp or 1 wound business.  Make it: "You cure X points of damage, split across Subdual, Vitality and Wounds as the Spellcaster sees fit."  (X = 10 for Cure I, 20 for Cure II, etc.).  You could also fix the healing from Mend checks - not sure how much, but I think 10 points seems about fair.


Also, a thought just came to me - without Vitality needing to be healed, Bandage takes a slight hit, as does the Paladins Core Ability.  While Bandage is still a good feat for all the other Medicine options that normally need a kit, the Paladin gets a bit of a kicking.  I think a new core ability that lets him "Lay on Hands" to remove status effects might be a good start for brainstorming, if anyone else agrees.  Sample Text (add to end of existing text): "When using this ability you may also remove one condition from your target.  If this condition has multiple grades (Ex. Fatigued II) you only remove a single grade of the condition."

[Bill Whitmore]

Only slightly related to this thread, but I had thought about making the amount Healed from a Mend check be based on how good the check was, something like "You heal a number of points equal to (Skill check - 15), split as evenly as possible between Vitality, Subdual, and Wounds.  The character performing the check decides where to distribute uneven excess."

If someone bought the service "Healer visit, short" I'd treat it as a Skilled X character taking a 10 to perform the check at the current TL.  If you want Mend to be something that untrained characters can still accomplish, I would consider dropping the base DC to 10 and using (Skill Check - 10).

This would let the healing amount from Mend scale with level.  It probably needs some more work to be completely viable.  You are usually working with the same Wounds regardless of level, so the Wound Healing may end up excessive.

Lastly, I split the healing from Mend amongst all 3 damage types, even if the player doesn't have any actual damage of the type.  Resting a couple of hours to get rid of your subdual damage (or worse, having someone punch you in the face so you can take a level of fatigue to lose your subdual damage) doesn't increase the number of Wounds a medic can restore to you.

[Mister Andersen]

If you're going to treat it as based on the check result (a good idea), I'd take a poke at using something like needing to score above a certain amount before you can heal wounds, otherwise the check just affects vitality& subdual. A critical success increases the amount by 50%, a crit fumble reduces it to 0

[Bill Whitmore]

If you're going to treat it as based on the check result (a good idea), I'd take a poke at using something like needing to score above a certain amount before you can heal wounds, otherwise the check just affects vitality& subdual. A critical success increases the amount by 50%, a crit fumble reduces it to 0

I think the d20 Star Wars did something similar with Force-based healing.  I think they had 5 point brackets starting at 15 with each bracket giving increased healing benefits.  That would also play better with classes that have Perfect Medicine like the Keeper's Man of Reason.  Since the success gained from Man of Reason  would only give the lowest result, you could still get a little bit of healing when using that ability.