Heal (the skill, not the spell)

[Witch Doctor]

Ok, for an upcoming campaign, I plan on introducing a couple house rules on skills (lower-magic campaign).

One of them is Heal. Now, magical healing isn't as prevelant as it could be in most campaigns, so for a fix, I was gonna do this:

At a DC 25, a character can heal a person of 1d4 points of damage. This takes 2 minutes and one charge from a healer's kit. You can take 10 on this check, but extends the time to 30 minutes.

well? questions? comments? concerns?

:: Editted for spelling

 

[hong]

Taking 10 does not represent taking your time to do as good a job as possible. That's taking 20. Taking 10 represents how, when not being rushed or threatened, how well you do at a task tends not to be as variable as it might otherwise be.

Assuming you mean you can take 20 on the check, a DC of 25 seems fine. Otherwise healing becomes something only possible for high-level characters.

You might also want to allow the amount of damage healed to vary according to the die roll. You do well on the roll, you heal more damage.

 

[Witch Doctor]

hmm, good point, so take 20 = 30 minutes and 1d4 healed

also, as a side not, should I make it scaled, meaning higher check = more healed?

 

[Steverooo]

Maybe one die closest to your level, or less? 1D6 at 7th level, etc?

Also, Profession: Herbalist should allow for some herbal remedies (higher DCs to make better cures). These generally work only on certain types of injuries; wounds, burns, poisons, certain diseases, etc.

 

[gpetruc]

In a low magic world where healing is needed you could consider also some house rules for herbalism (some of them have been discussed on this boards in the last months)

 

[Jeph]

I'd say that you can only heal a fresh wound--no restoring HP 3 weeks after the fact. Maybe, within half an hour or an hour?

I'd also let a very high check heal additional HP. Perhaps, the base DC is 25, to heal 1d4 damage. Eeach additional 5 points that you get on the check increases the die by one step (30 is a d6, 35 is a d8, 40 is a d10, etc.) to a max of d12 at 45.

 

[CCamfield]

If someone is taking 20 it should take 20x longer, thus 40 minutes.

The rule I'm using is DC 15, healing 1 hp/level of the recipient, only up to the amount of wounds recently received. (i.e. in the last battle, trap, etc) The healer gets a synergy modifier to the roll equal to the recipient's Con modifier.

If you go with a d4, higher-level characters aren't going to be as "healable", although their healing from best rest does scale with level.

 

[EricNoah]

I've been asked to post a couple of attachments here.

 

[EricNoah]

here's another, pertaining to "equipment" which gets into the herbalism rules. I really don't know what I'm doing here as you can probably tell. I also got some ideas from Cyberzombie's article in EN World Player's Journal.

 

[Witch Doctor]

I love the equipment, also might use some of the special rules for diseases and hebalism and such.

For the actual Heal skill I came up with this:

DC 20: Heal 1d6 HP, 2 minutes, needs a use of a Healer's Kit. Can take 20 but takes 30 minutes for Heal check.

DC +10: add +1d6 for the healing.

Was wondering if anyone has done something similar to this and does it scale well, or over/under-balanced?