Expanded use of healing skill

[General Barron]

Alright, here are some rules I'm pondering based on some 2nd ed stuff I used to use. The rule doesn't give the PCs any leg-up during combat, but it does extend their ability to perform longer without having to go somewhere safe and rest/heal up. These rules are especially suited to campaigns where the PC's don't have much or any magical healing, although it could work anywhere.

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This system requires that characters keep a tally of the number of separate times they take damage (called a wound from here on). Simple enough if you are already marking on a scratch-sheet anyways. Once you start taking damage, take a note of how many HPs you started with, then start taking your 'wound tally'.

Closing wounds: A character can make a heal check to 'close' a patient's wounds (essentially 1st aid), and thereby recover some HPs. The DC of this check is (5 + # of wounds character has). (Or should it be 10 + # of wounds?) If the check succeeds, the patient recovers (1 x # of wounds) HP. If the check fails by 4 or less, the character recovers (.5 x # of wounds) HP (round down, min 1). If the check succeeds by 10 or more, the character recovers (1.5 x # of wounds) HP.

A character cannot recover more damage than he had taken since he started recieving wounds.

Treating a patient in this way takes (1d4 x # of wounds) full-round actions. A character can take-10 on this roll when not under pressure.

A character can only make one attempt per patient (and therefore cannot take-20), although another healer may try as normal. (Each additional attempt by another healer takes an increasing penalty?)

Attempting to treat your own wounds is rather difficult, and imposes a -5 penalty to the character's check. Only 1 person may aid you at a time in closing wounds (either on yourself or others).

Once wounds have been closed, the wound tally starts over from 0. If wounds are left untreated for more than an hour, they become set, and are removed from the wound tally without any damage being healed.

With aid of magical healing: The use of magical healing (from a spell, potion, magic item, etc) helps in the process of closing wounds. If such a spell is used by the healer while he is closing wounds, the amount of HPs healed by the spell is added to his skill check. For example, using a 1st level CLW spell, the healer rolls 1d8+1. The result of that roll is healed, AND added to the healer's skill check. Only one single spell, item, etc can be used per check in this way.

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Feat: Expert Healer [general]

You are an expert at healing wounds.

Prerequisites: Wis 13, 6 ranks healing
Benefit: When closing wounds, you heal double the amount of damage as normal. When giving long-term care, you can treat twice as many patients at a time.

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[Thia Halmades]

Good morning. I hope someone warned you I'm dangerous before coffee.

So we're talking two separate columns; a normal HP loss column, and a separate tally of how many times you were actually "hit" and took damage, and that's a wound. But other than being marked at the same time, the two are unrelated, yes?

The system hinges on keeping track of wounds. A lot of people are frustrated with the superman aspect of D&D (I have 1hp - I hit him over the head with a hammer and drink of Potion of Heal.) If anything, this sounds like a great first step towards fixing that problem, and limiting the total number of wounds people can take before they fall over. But that would be a separate thread.

Closing wounds: A character can make a heal check to 'close' a patient's wounds (essentially 1st aid), and thereby recover some HPs. The DC of this check is (5 + # of wounds character has). (Or should it be 10 + # of wounds?) If the check succeeds, the patient recovers (1 x # of wounds) HP. If the check fails by 4 or less, the character recovers (.5 x # of wounds) HP (round down, min 1). If the check succeeds by 10 or more, the character recovers (1.5 x # of wounds) HP.

So let's say in an average fight a PC is hit five times; you're saying that with a standard success, they heal 5 HP, and with a good success, 7, and a minimal failure, 2, yes?

Why can't the user take 20? The rules say that you are 'effectively' taking 20 rounds because on average, that's how long it will take you to roll 20. Why couldn't the same rule apply here? They aren't making 20 attempts, simply being extremely careful and taking extra care of the wound. It wouldn't be hard to go around the table (for the healer) and take 20 on everyone, giving them back X amount of HP from their last fight.

Once wounds have been closed, the wound tally starts over from 0. If wounds are left untreated for more than an hour, they become set, and are removed from the wound tally without any damage being healed.

This makes sense to me.

With aid of magical healing: The use of magical healing (from a spell, potion, magic item, etc) helps in the process of closing wounds. If such a spell is used by the healer while he is closing wounds, the amount of HPs healed by the spell is added to his skill check. For example, using a 1st level CLW spell, the healer rolls 1d8+1. The result of that roll is healed, AND added to the healer's skill check. Only one single spell, item, etc can be used per check in this way.

I wouldn't've thought of this; this is clever & makes sense to me.

Are you leaving the long term care, disease, etc. rules intact? If they get a 10+ would it triple the healing rate instead of doubling it? (3x Level?)

Other things: I would rule that a healer can be assisted, which adds two to their check if their associate succeeds (Aid Another) but additional attempts should probably follow the set rules -

Originally Posted by SRD
Try Again: Varies. Generally speaking, you can’t try a Heal check again without proof of the original check’s failure. You can always retry a check to provide first aid, assuming the target of the previous attempt is still alive.
Special: A character with the Self-Sufficient feat gets a +2 bonus on Heal checks.
A healer’s kit gives you a +2 circumstance bonus on Heal checks.

Good morning.

 

[General Barron]

Thanks for the reply. Here goes my reply to your reply:

So we're talking two separate columns; a normal HP loss column, and a separate tally of how many times you were actually "hit" and took damage, and that's a wound. But other than being marked at the same time, the two are unrelated, yes?

Correct. You would have your standard chicken-scratch to keep track of your current HP, and then you have a separate tally to keep track of the # of times you've been damaged (wounded). Like I said, I've played with a variation of this before, and it is simple enough to keep straight (especially when the PCs know it benefits them to keep track).

So let's say in an average fight a PC is hit five times; you're saying that with a standard success, they heal 5 HP, and with a good success, 7, and a minimal failure, 2, yes?

Exactly. Or with the Expert Healer feat, those numbers would be 5, 10 and 14, respectively.

Why can't the user take 20? The rules say that you are 'effectively' taking 20 rounds because on average, that's how long it will take you to roll 20. Why couldn't the same rule apply here? They aren't making 20 attempts, simply being extremely careful and taking extra care of the wound.

I'm already assuming that the healer is being careful and taking his time--not doing this during combat (perhaps I should up the required time still?). Rushed jobs should incur a a circumstance penalty of -2 or -5.

However, I'm thinking of this more along the lines of a knowledge skill: either you can figure out how to treat a character's wounds, or you can't. Hence you cannot try again, and you cannot take 20. I would think the same would apply to all uses of the heal skill (treating poison/disease, long term care, etc).

If you were allowed to take 20, players would pretty much always do that. I'd just have to up the DCs to prevent it from being too easy, and to make a point in upping your heal skill. The random factor would be entirely gone, making success based entirely off of your skill, instead of luck + skill.

Currently I'm basing my DCs off of someone taking 10 most of the time. This allows an untrained person to easily treat minor wounds (5 wounds or less), but to have to roll to treat something more major. I'm still debating whether I should make it a bit harder, and to up the base DC to 10. It all depends on the average number of wounds a character would take during a combat, which I'd appreciate input on.

Are you leaving the long term care, disease, etc. rules intact? If they get a 10+ would it triple the healing rate instead of doubling it? (3x Level?)

Yes. The rules I posted are additions to the RAW rules; not replacements. Success by 10+ on long-term care tripling the normal heal rate would be a good idea as well.

Other things: I would rule that a healer can be assisted, which adds two to their check if their associate succeeds (Aid Another) but additional attempts should probably follow the set rules -

I kind of mentioned this, although I guess I didn't make it clear enough:

Only 1 person may aid you at a time in closing wounds (either on yourself or others).

As for additional attempts, you would instantly know whether you succeeded or not (you stopped the bleeding, etc), and therefore would know if another person should try to heal them or not. I'm thinking that additional attempts should take a penalty, if for no other reason than to prevent a crowd of yokels from being more effective than a trained healer.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

What about a character hit by a flaming longsword? The burn and sword strike are one wound, or two? Does this healing get multiplied for restoring non-lethal damage? i think for magical healing, it's x5, but that'd be pretty high for a skill to cure. Also, what if a creatue with the rend ability hits the number of times it has to (let's say 2 attacks for 2 wounds)? Is the rend a separate wound? What about crushing damage from being swallowed? Does that leave a "wound"? Finally, since the amount of damage done by wounds is irrelevant, except for limiting the total amount of healing, could a party pelt the moderately wounded fighter with pebbles for 1 damage to add to his wound total and significantly increase the amount of hp he gets healed? Similarly, could the fighter encounter a small spider and just stand there and allow it to inflict multiple 1 damage wounds to abuse the system?

Sorry if i sound too critical. I really am all for anything that makes heal more useful. These situations just stuck out in my mind.

 

[General Barron]

No need to apologize, you bring up some excellent questions.

What about a character hit by a flaming longsword? The burn and sword strike are one wound, or two? ... Also, what if a creatue with the rend ability hits the number of times it has to (let's say 2 attacks for 2 wounds)? Is the rend a separate wound? What about crushing damage from being swallowed?

For simplicity's sake, I'd just say that 1 attack = 1 wound. So a flaming longsword would deal 1 wound (think of the fire as just increasing the damage of the blade; not as a separate attack of its own). Rend would just be extra damage on the 2nd attack, etc etc. Certain exceptions might be made if you take damage at different times from a single attack, but for common situations like the flaming sword, it would just be 1 wound.

Does this healing get multiplied for restoring non-lethal damage? i think for magical healing, it's x5, but that'd be pretty high for a skill to cure.

I hadn't even thought about that. But depending on what you consider to be 'non-lethal' damage, it might make more sense to leave it un-multiplied. I mean, you can't really do too much to treat a bruise, or sore muscles, or a pounding headache, or fatigue, or so on. Input welcome, of course.

Finally, since the amount of damage done by wounds is irrelevant, except for limiting the total amount of healing, could a party pelt the moderately wounded fighter with pebbles for 1 damage to add to his wound total and significantly increase the amount of hp he gets healed? Similarly, could the fighter encounter a small spider and just stand there and allow it to inflict multiple 1 damage wounds to abuse the system?

I was about reply "but you can only heal 1 hp per wound, so it doesn't matter", but then I realized that with high enough skill you can heal more than that. So technically, if you had a bunch of rules-lawyer players, and you had a rules-lawyer DM, and you took the rules exactly as written, then yes, this could happen. But obviously it doesn't pass the 'common sense test', so no right-thinking DM would let that fly.

99% of the time, you aren't going to take enough 1-damage wounds for this to be an issue. But if for some reason the PCs were taking a lot of them, then I would suggest keeping track of how many wounds were for only 1 damage, and then not letting those wounds count for more than 1 hp of healing. But considering the likelyhood of taking mostly 1-damage wounds, and having a skilled enough healer, I really don't see that as being a problem.

 

[Felnar]

thoughts:
i would like the option to attempt to close only some of a persons wounds in a sitting, seems easy enough to do

what if you only get a "wound" when you took 2 or more damage from something
so a healer can only help a wound, not "erase" it completely (no self wounding/healing abuse)

what if "wounds" could expire if not tended to within a set time limit?

what if some hp was regained immediately, and some later (after resting)?

i like some aspects of the Combat Medic feat by Sean K Reynolds
http://www.seankreynolds.com/skrg/free/002TNA/featpreview.html
i like that a poor medic can make a wound worse (inflict damage)
and that the more time the medic spends the easier the check
i really dont think its something that should require a feat tho

another thought
what if there were rules for untended wounds becoming infected?
that might be getting to complex...

 

[Thia Halmades]

I had considered the whole "unattended = infected" but that leads into a realm of wargaming that I dare not drag the unwilling into, so I left the question on the cutting room floor when I wrote my original post. However, while we're on the topic, both of these are good examples of why I was asking if the wound/damage were related or not. Not because I can think of those abuse issues, but because I knew someone else could.

Second! I remember now! HA! Second, in your question of Fatigue (which has rules, I think) and nausea (which I know has rules) would it be reasonable, if you're expanding the roll of the heal skill, to allow a healer to know that Ipicac is used to cure nausea? That wouldn't be far fetched at all, and could certainly get someone out of penalties quite quickly. Watching SPR or any other film that involves speed-treatment we know that a wand of CLW & a well stocked healers kit can do wonders for a downed soldier.

I'm with Felnar, though; there are plenty of disease listed in the game, allowing a PC to get infected would be the next logical step if the wound was unattended. We need to assume certain things; tending any wounds, even if the PC took 12 in a fight, would involve cleaning all the wounds in question.

Oh, in answer to your question of the estimate; that's heavily variable based on how things go and the composition of the party. A fighter might take 12 hits inside of two rounds of combat, counting:

- Precision damage at the beginning of the fight (per StreamOfTheSky, am I safe in assuming that Precision Damage stacks with base damage for purposes of counting as a single wound?)
- Iteritive attacks from MOBs
- Multiple MOBs
- Spell Damage (I'm assuming that Magic Missile counts as a wound? Do four magic missiles count as 4 or 1?)

However, your Bard can sit in the back, singing away and bolstering the rest of the party without ever taking a hit or breaking stride. I think the concept is great, though, so I hope this is helping. Oh, and for the record, I don't think that changing it so that '2+ damage = wound', you might just find it easier to ad hoc that into a battle situation. Anymore than a good DM wouldn't allow puppy murder to build up Cleave attacks.