Pathfinder 2E PF2 Treat Wounds - Simplified

[CapnZapp]

In short, how about this:

Remove all choices, checks and die rolls from the Treat Wounds trained Medicine activity. Replace with the following:

Treat Wounds makes the target regain a number of hit points equal to your skill bonus in Medicine plus double your Proficiency Rank:
Trained +4
Expert +8
Master +12
Legendary +16

So if you're Trained in Medicine with a +7 bonus, the target gets 11 hp.
If you're Legendary in Medicine with a +36 bonus, the target gets 52 hp.

Spoiler: A mistake in the dataset has been found and corrected, leading to updated advice. Here's the original suggestion

Treat Wounds makes the target regain a number of hit points equal to your skill bonus in Medicine.

So if your Medicine bonus is +7, the target gets 7 hp.

 

[CapnZapp]

In less short:

I made the following observation over in the GMG thread:

What I mean by this is that some groups may find the Medicine skill and assorted feats to be incredibly slow and cumbersome to use in play.

You need to check up a lot of rules, roll a lot of dice, and make constant decisions so much so that the healing between encounters can almost be considered a minigame all of itself. Healing can be quick but it can also be very slow, all dependent on your luck in making skill checks. For one feat you need to track who supplied the healing; for another you need to track who was the target of the healing. Various durations ("cooldowns") last for 10 minutes, 1 hour or even a day.

It would be nice to have a variant for groups who find this to be an entirely unwelcome intrusion in storytelling, immersion and focus on where to go next. When every other encounter ends with maybe ten minutes of decision making (should we rest? how long do we need? what should I do during that downtime? etc etc etc) that is made harder by the sheer variability of how much healing you get.

[]

The GMG could have provided a variant where the speed of healing depends on your proficiency level in Medicine and which of the myriad of related feats you have taken, but still expressed in a number per 10 minutes that is automatic. "No rolls required" means reliable and with a minimum of fuss.

I then decided to put my mouth where the money is, and calculated the expected (average) number of hit points gained from a Treat Wounds roll, taking into account the optimal choice of DC at each level.

Spoiler

​	​	​	Trained​	Expert​	Master​	Legendary​
​	​	DC​	15​	20​	30​	40​
​	​	Healing​	10​	20​	30​	40​
Level​	Bonus​	​	​	​	​	​
1​	7​	Trained​	6,5​	8​	1,5​	2​
3​	11​	Expert​	8,5​	12​	3​	2​
5​	14​	Expert​	10​	15​	7,5​	2​
7​	18​	Master​	10​	19​	13,5​	2​
9​	20​	Master​	10​	20​	16,5​	2​
11​	23​	Master​	10​	20​	21​	8​
13​	25​	Master​	10​	20​	24​	12​
15​	30​	Legendary​	10​	20​	30​	22​
17​	34​	Legendary​	10​	20​	30​	30​
19​	36​	Legendary​	10​	20​	30​	34​

If I copy the formula from the level 1 Trained cell that yields 6,5 it is "=L$8*(21+MIN(MAX(-20; $J10-L$7); -1))/20".

Translated from goobledygook into somewhat easier to understand English, the formula reads
1. Take the average healing from the optimal use case (in my example, at level 1 we shoot for DC 15 for 2d8 healing = 10 if we round it to a nice number, which we did, didn't we, my precious)
2. Find out the number of 5% units between my bonus (+7 in my example) and my target (DC 15). That number is 8.
3. Subtract the number of units from twenty (plus one, because, well, math) to find out the number of die outcomes that gives success (21-8=13)
3a. The MIN and MAX business is just there to stop the computer from going stupid, like thinking it can milk more than 10 points out of a DC 15 check by having a +15 or higher bonus.
Actually, the critical success rule allows for an additional 9 points of healing, so maybe it's smarter than I give it credit for. Anyway, these nine points are still always smaller than the +10 we get from jumping to the next higher difficulty class, so let's ignore step 3a
4. Each die outcome that leads to success means 5%, so sum them up to find the percentage of success (13 x 5 = 65%)
5. Multiply the healing number from Step 1 by the probability of getting it in Step 4: 65% out of 10 is 6,5.

That number turned out to be very close to the treater's skill bonus, if we disregard critical successes and failures. (And honestly, since these doesn't double/halve the number, just the number of d8 dice, I would say it isn't worth the effort to nudge the numbers upward to take their effects into account. After all, the effects of a critical success is just 9 or less. I put a much higher value on keeping the formula simple and elegant.)

Just three examples: 6,5 at level 1 (Medicine +7), 12 at level 3 (Medicine +11) and 21 at level 11 (Medicine +23). I am sure my numbers are off by a couple of points here and there, but still, as a rules designer, I would choose "simple and elegant" over even pretty large deviations!

 

[CapnZapp]

You would still respect the various "cool downs" in the game. For example you would gain the indicated number after 10 minutes, and twice that if you keep treating the wounds for a whole hour.

Related feats would still operate (they wouldn't be obsoleted).

For example, if you have Medicine +20:
Battle Medicine grants you 20 hp in a single action once every day.
Continual Recovery grants you 20 hp every ten minutes (not just the first 10 minutes in every hour)
Ward Medicine lets you heal 20 hp to 2/4/8 creatures at the same time, not just 1.

Assurance does not apply to Treat Wounds in this variant.

Bonuses to your check would apply. Here's one example:

If you have Nature +7, Natural Medicine would potentially grant you 9 hp whenever we're allowed to include the +2 circumstance bonus.
(Based on a conservative reading of the rules, you can't shoot for the higher healing amounts that an Expert+ in Medicine can shoot for, so I would suggest Natural Medicine caps to a nice round number like 20 hp if you want to remain roughly faithful to the RAW)

 

[CapnZapp]

Efter getting feedback from my play group I've identified a mistake in my calculations.

Here's the updated data:

​	​	​	Trained​	Expert​	Master​	Legendary​
​	​	DC​	15​	20​	30​	40​
​	​	Healing​	10​	20​	40​	60​
Level​	Bonus​	​	​	​	​	​
1​	7​	Trained​	6,5​	8​	2​	3​
3​	11​	Expert​	8,5​	12​	4​	3​
5​	14​	Expert​	10​	15​	10​	3​
7​	18​	Master​	10​	19​	18​	3​
9​	20​	Master​	10​	20​	22​	3​
11​	23​	Master​	10​	20​	28​	12​
13​	25​	Master​	10​	20​	32​	18​
15​	30​	Legendary​	10​	20​	40​	33​
17​	34​	Legendary​	10​	20​	40​	45​
19​	36​	Legendary​	10​	20​	40​	51​

The difference is that the average healing for the four DCs should be 10, 20, 40, 60 (instead of 10, 20, 30, 40).

 

[CapnZapp]

This makes me adjust my advice:

Treat Wounds makes the target regain a number of hit points equal to your skill bonus in Medicine plus double your Proficiency Rank:
Trained +4
Expert +8
Master +12
Legendary +16

So if you're Trained in Medicine with a +7 bonus, the target gets 11 hp.
If you're Legendary in Medicine with a +36 bonus, the target gets 52 hp.