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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5628108" data-attributes="member: 92305">Ah crap. Before I posted, I read through the 3.5 PHB to see if time was mentioned. It is, but I missed it. I didn't see that "standard action" part. I wouldn't have posted that question had I seen that. I read the skill in my Conan RPG rulebook several times, and no time is mentioned. In fact, the Conan RPG has a use of the Heal skill that is not in standard D&D: Short-Term Care. This allows an ally to clean and sew up wounds, apply herbal poultices, and so on. You can only use Short-Term Care on a conscious patient (HP 1+), and if successful, the, the patient regains HP = to patient's Level + CON modifier, to a minimum of 1 HP. Performing Short-Term Care takes 10 minutes.     So, I read that, and I thought about First Aid. It doesn't seem likely to me that, on average, a character can stop another from dying in around 3 seconds (a standard action). I understand the need to roll the check to stop the HP loss, but, c'mon. How believeable is this? Taurl goes down from his wounds. It's an abstract system, so we really don't know what wound he has, but we do know that the wound is bad enough that the character will likely be dead in less than a minute if someone doesn't do something to help him. Think about that. If a character goes down with -1 HP, and he doesn't stabilize on his own, he's dead in 54 seconds (9 combat rounds later). So....we're talking about a pretty serious wound here. We're talking blood loss, trauma, bad bodily damage. 54 seconds, or less, and the character prolly dies. Dead. And, someone can just pop over, spend 3 or 4 seconds with the character, and he's no longer dying? Really? Totally gamist.     Do you guys just allow this in your games? I'm thinking of going old school on this. The stabilization roll will be allowed if the player can tell me what his character is doing.  For example, Taurl goes down. I see he's got -4 HP, and I decide that his foe must have run his sword all the way through Taurl's gut. After all, the guy is dead in 36 seconds if he doesn't get stable. I'm not just going to allow a player to run over to him and roll a die check. I want to know what the character is doing to help Taurl. Going to stop the bleeding? Ok, how? Going to put a bandage on the entry and exit wound? Fine. What are you going to use for a bandage? Use your own character's shirt. OK. Pull it off, cut it in two. You need a rope or something, yes? Going to use Taurl's own weapon belt? OK. All of this takes time. The player providing aid isn't going to be able to run over to a downed comrade, spend a standard action on him, and then get back in the fight. He's going to have to spend some time on his buddy, helping him live. In most case, I expect that helping a downed comrade will take a character out of the fight. It will probably take "minutes" to get someone stabilized.     Now, I'm not going to be an ogre about the First Aid Heal check, though. I'll allow the first check as soon as the help arrives, even though the aid provider hasn't had enough time to evaluate the wound, much less pull any equipment to use.    I expect a First Aid scenario to go something like this... Character goes down. Somebody comes to help. And...we'll come back and finish this after the fight. The care giver will spend several minutes helping the downed character, and by then, the fight will be over. During the combat, the players will not know if the hurt character survives. After the combat, provided the caregiver has stayed with the patient the entire time, we'll just make the appropriate rolls per the rules. In this manner, the rules are served, as written, but the character realistically stays with the downed patient for the time required to help him.     EDIT:  Better yet, I think I'll roll the Heal check behind the screen and describe the results.  If I make the roll on the very first round, I won't let the players know this until they've done enough with the character for the result to make "sense". As with Taurl above.  He was stabbed through the gut, and the care giver is using his shirt.  I'll roll behind the screen on the first round the care giver arrives (when the player is just starting to evaluate the wound.)  I'll keep rolling every round, as needed, but keeping the results to myself.  The players can roleplay what they're doing to help. This can turn into some fun drama as I throw them curve balls.  "He's starting to convulse and cough up blood!  He's shaking!  What are you going to do?"</blockquote>

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