Pathfinder 2E Discussing a new PF2 healing paradigm

[CapnZapp]

Surges are provided as an in-combat healing alternative. When you have five minutes, you heal a surge's worth of hit points but for free; you don't have to spend a surge.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I'm not. Put simply, the Pathfinder 2 game expects you to go into each combat at full health. Combat is calibrated with this in mind. Medicine and focus healing is provided to give heroes the ability to heal up fully between encounters. Combats are difficult enough when you start with all your hit points, and there's normally no reason to not do this.

Before Cody of Taking20 made a video about why he was leaving PF2, he made a video comparing the PF2 and the 5e rulesets. After reviewing (I think) 10 criteria, he gave the edge to PF2.

One of his criteria was long term healing. It made me chuckle that he gave the point to PF2 on the grounds that 5e’s “on a long rest you heal all your hp” was unrealistic, since PF2 does the exact same thing, only on a short rest.

 

[CapnZapp]

If only.

PF2 doesn't have short rests. Had there been a rule (or even variant) that said "after a short rest everybody's back to full health" I probably wouldn't have started this thread.

This thread is about those of you who look at focus spells and the Medicine skill (and its feats) and just go cross-eyed. So. Much. Complexity... for a game that doesn't work well if you don't heal back up fully between encounters!

All those rules end up doing is answer the question "will we need 40 minutes or will 30 do?" But who cares...?

At least with these rules there are no dice-rolling, no decision points, no nothing. Just "I need three surges worth of healing so we're ready in 15 minutes" boom done.

The end result is exactly the same* but with way less clutter.
*) I guess you save a few skill and feat choices, but I mean in the game

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

But doesn't that make the game worse if you do want to care about your plan for healing and how many minutes it takes?

 

[kenada]

But doesn't that make the game worse if you do want to care about your plan for healing and how many minutes it takes?

I don’t think CapnZapp runs a style of game where that’s important, so it’s probably a non-goal. However, in my experience, it’s also really hard to create effective time pressure in PF2, so it’s probably not even a big deal even then. I used to be a big advocate for that approach, but it eventually stopped working in my campaign. The PCs got a few levels, and they added a dedicated healer.

If you want to care about that stuff, and you want to facilitate attrition-based play, my suggestion would be to steal system strain from SWN/WWN. It should slot nicely over the default healing system in PF2. System strain limits how much healing you can take. That will make exploration much more dangerous and time much more precious. To avoid TPKs, you’ll want to have a retreat procedure (like the chase subsystem).

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

In my own experience running PF2e, it matters when it matters, most of the time if the players have a procedure established I won't demand to play out how long it takes, so long as we know its possible it happens. If its time sensitive, we track it, just like the difference between encounter mode and exploration mode. Usually that would be if I have enemies who may or may not come into the room at 10 minute intervals.

 

[kenada]

In my own experience running PF2e, it matters when it matters, most of the time if the players have a procedure established I won't demand to play out how long it takes, so long as we know its possible it happens. If its time sensitive, we track it, just like the difference between encounter mode and exploration mode. Usually that would be if I have enemies who may or may not come into the room at 10 minute intervals.

What techniques are you using to create time pressure, or is it just the specific scenario where there’s a chance someone can interrupt the PCs every ten minutes?

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I've experimented with different techniques and haven't found a strict favorite yet--

Random rolls to test the current location a certain wandering band of drunken rowdy ghosts is headed in a looping undead masquerade party culminating in a spectral reenactment of a massacre worked pretty well for that particular adventure.

Sometimes creatures will become aware of the PCs if the 'dungeon' isn't that large so resting just means they'll try and rush in to kill the PCs while they're resting.

Sometimes its a narrative time pressure, if you don't do X by Y, Z will happen.

Sometimes I just need to track time to know when certain times of day will occur, like dawn and dusk, midnight, etc. This is especially true if i just want them to have a sense of how long they've already been down here.

Sometimes, if not everyone is paused for the healing, someone is searching a room or something while others heal, they could technically trigger something worth knowing exactly how fast the healing happened.

Plenty of times I just don't, I know that since time isn't a constraint and they have the forethought to outline a healing procedure that legally works, and doesn't meaningfully consume resources, I just hand wave the actual time passing and be like "yeah you stick around to lay on hands and treat wounds enough to max out your HP" Pathfinder 2e doesn't need to limit out of combat healing resources to be challenging the way DND does, so its not a big deal-- if the players are investing the opportunity cost from a character build perspective, and have the unlimited time I handwave it, like I said, it matters when it matters.

 

[CapnZapp]

But doesn't that make the game worse if you do want to care about your plan for healing and how many minutes it takes?

I believe the Medicine rules were created in a PF1 mindset, where it is not inconceivable to keep pressing on (or at least being attacked) at low health.

But PF2 is simply not designed for that. Sure, a moderately experienced GM can calibrate encounters that work for a wounded party, but if you're running stock Paizo AP encounters, it significantly increases the risk of a random TPK. It's just no fun. The game is so very clearly fine-tuned with fully healed heroes in mind.

(It's not that fully healed heroes don't go down. They very much do. But the action economy can spiral out of control if that happens early. Look at it this way: if you're at half health every monster that hits you gets in a critical, so to speak. You just don't want to give them that handicap.)

So. Since the rest of the game presumes you rest up between encounters (again unless you or the adventure quite specifically sets up something else), the rules for Medicine, focus-based healing and so forth comes across as hopelessly out of sync. Those rules are very complicated indeed.

And I'm asking the naked-emperor question: Who says the rules need to be that complicated? Why do you need to make that many die rolls? Why are you asked to make decisions like going for a DC 25 treat wounds or settling for the DC 15 one? It's just a run-away clutter catastrophe imo.

But that's not the clincher. There are several ttrps with highly detailed rules. The clincher is that while highly simulationist rules might suit some games, it does not suit PF2, a game where you simply heal back up fully everytime you get the chance! Trust me, you don't care if it takes you 20 minutes or 40 minutes or 60 minutes. You do it because it is utter reckless not to! And since the healing is free (other than the time consumption) there just aren't any compelling reasons to rush it. PF2 just isn't anything like old D&D. Everything that matters is different.

This thread is for those of you that sees the wisdom in this line of argument. I'm not forcing anyone to abandon the complicated, time-consuming, analysis-paralysis-prone core rules. I'm just showing a different way, where you shuck all the minutiae without losing anything that's good about Pathfinder 2! I truly believe more people would play Pathfinder 2 if Paizo had had the courage to relegate the official rules for Medicine et al to a variant in the GMG, and instead printed something comparably quick and simple to these rules in the CRB!

 

[nevin]

I don’t think CapnZapp runs a style of game where that’s important, so it’s probably a non-goal. However, in my experience, it’s also really hard to create effective time pressure in PF2, so it’s probably not even a big deal even then. I used to be a big advocate for that approach, but it eventually stopped working in my campaign. The PCs got a few levels, and they added a dedicated healer.

If you want to care about that stuff, and you want to facilitate attrition-based play, my suggestion would be to steal system strain from SWN/WWN. It should slot nicely over the default healing system in PF2. System strain limits how much healing you can take. That will make exploration much more dangerous and time much more precious. To avoid TPKs, you’ll want to have a retreat procedure (like the chase subsystem).

yeah in PF you either end up with a game where everything is always critical and must be done immediately, (turning everything into a crisis which means crises are normal and not really crises to the party), or there's no time pressure. There really seems to be no in between.