Design principles of healing - no mechanics allowed

[Mengu]

Design principles I'd like to see...

You should not need a healer.

You should be able to play as many encounters as you want in any specified period of time (hour, day, week, whatever). Maybe you need to go through 4 encounters in 4 minutes. Maybe you need to go through 10 encounters in 8 hours. Whatever the needs of the adventure, the system should be able to handle it.

That's it. Make that work, and everything else will fall into place. For me, hit points are just a number on the paper. I don't care about how they increase, decrease, or what it all means. I just want to be able to freely create an adventure, without having to worry about how the system forces me into time frames bounded by PC resources or levels.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think for tension in combat, some type of in-combat recovery mechanic is needed, e.g. hit points need to jump or down a lot. That doesn't need to require a healer, if the "damage" is not forced to be physical injury and/or we allow people to use basically willpower/inspiration to endure the pain of injuries to fight on.

If any physical injuries occur, these injuries can/should recover slowly, but that doesn't need to necessarily imply serious penalties for combat, if we once again assume inspiration and willpower allowing the character to endure the pain.

 

[pemerton]

When the hero is rendered helpless or nearly so by a serious enough wound, it generally sets up a 'quest' by another character - to heal him, or to take up the hero's mission.

I like this a lot, although maybe it is hard to do in a party-based, one-PC-per-player game.

D&D features heroes who fight a /lot/. Most of D&D needs to model the less-than-climactic battles heros fight in genre - unless, of course, the general tone/flavor/feel of the game needs to be changed to be vastly less combat-oriented, I suppose.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Although the heroes fight a lot, the players are playing the game (normally) once a week or less. So the players are probably up for a lot of climactic fights.

I think the pacing of combat, and of healing, should reflect this - that is, should make regular climactic fights possible. There are different ways of cashing that out in the fiction, but I think that "healing as morale/fate" has a role to play here, because constant serious injury, and recovery therefrom, can start to look a bit silly (a la the Black Knight).

On the other hand, if (contrary to my own preferences) the game is going to be based on non-climactic battles, then healing might be less frequent, because the pushing of the PCs to their limits less frequent. And that probably makes morale/fate less important, and creates more space for healing as the restoration of actual (but typically minor) injury.

 

[pemerton]

If any physical injuries occur, these injuries can/should recover slowly, but that doesn't need to necessarily imply serious penalties for combat, if we once again assume inspiration and willpower allowing the character to endure the pain.

What would injuries be for, then? Simply colour?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Design principles of healing:

1: Tell me what a Hit Point should be. Then we can talk about how you recover them.

 

[Shadeydm]

Is a hit always hit or can a hit be a miss and if so when? This will influence how I want healing to work.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

What would injuries be for, then? Simply colour?

Well, mechanics are disallowed in this thread, right. I don't want to violate the law:

I think they could work as some kind of "tagging", similar to how the bloodied condition. It doesn't do anything on its own, but something can use it to trigger an effect. If your arm is broken, an NPC "tags" your broken arm for a special effect (say, disarm you*). But tagging requires certain limited resources or occurences, say fumbles or criticals or spending some limited game resource like tokens or fight points or whatever.

The point for me is that I don't want it to be something that bothers you all the time and you have to continually apply. It leads to book-keeping for every roll and check you make, whichis prone to error, and slows down everything.

*) not the blood-splattering way.

 

[Leatherhead]

Healing in combat should be the exception, rather than the rule.

Healing outside of combat shouldn't eat up combat resources.

 

[pemerton]

I think they could work as some kind of "tagging", similar to how the bloodied condition. It doesn't do anything on its own, but something can use it to trigger an effect.

OK, thanks, makes sense.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Is a hit always hit or can a hit be a miss and if so when? This will influence how I want healing to work.

List it for both ways, with emphasis, if you can, on the common areas and differences. This is exactly the kind of information we want, and coming from a single person is great, because you don't have to tiptoe around your self.