[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

As I argued in that other thread, it is hardly unassailable logic that if you take 10 points of damage in 5 wounds, that a low tech Physicker could heal all of it.

The logic part is not about the total amount or the tech level. No matter how you interpret it, yes they can, IF each wound is 2 points or less, and they get healed between each wound. Having that be a requirement made unacceptably little sense to us.

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

I think if you are taking one wound after another, later blows worsening and complicating earlier wounds, while fighting hard, adrenaline pumping with blood bleeding from earlier wounds... then repairing all that earlier damage becomes impossible.

I think that's a rationalization, the only part of which that seems slightly plausible to me is that in the (usually quite rare, I'd think) case that a wound lands directly on an earlier wound, it could compound the damage. But in that case, I would want it to also have more effect during combat.

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

I feel that healing 2 points of damage per battle was quite logical for low tech healers.

This is a separate point and may be valid or may be not. I don't think it's terribly valid because it doesn't allow any minor wounds (i.e. wounds that have some effect during a fight, but can be healed up for no real consequence), UNLESS they're the only wound you take.

And if I were to agree that low tech healing is that bad, it still doesn't seem to me to have much to do with healing wounds individually, which you can still do just as well under your interpretation, as long as you avoid getting hurt more than once per fight, which is the part that makes no sense to me.

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

In Steve Jackson's other game, GURPS, bandaging had to occur within 1 minute of the wound and (from TL 0 to 4) it took 30 minutes to treat someone. Further the healing was per combat, and not per wound. (See page 424 of GURPS Adventures.)

It does have healing rules mentioning 30 minutes per victim to treat them for shock, yes. This is the idea in GURPS that damage points is sometimes about shock rather than actual injury, and there's an abstraction involved, and though it doesn't say "per combat" per se, yeah it has the same logic problem as your interpretation of the TFT Physicker talent.

It seems to me that almost surely the actual reason it's put this way in the Basic Set is so the basic healing rules are simple to use.

We have always tracked each wound in GURPS, as in TFT, for the same reasons it seeming so illogical to have healing for a wound be impossible if you take some other unrelated wound before being treated.

Also see Roleplayer 16, or GURPS Compendium II (pages 154-157) for optional advanced healing rules that offer another explanation and thoughtful details which are essentially what we were doing from the start (treating each wound), but give it more detailed thought. In this system, time spent is per point healed (5 minutes at most tech levels), and applies the 1d-3 or so (minimum 1) to each wound.

Of course, it also tends to get fair more deadly when you start tracking bleeding for each wound, and/or various types of nasty serious wounds. Triage after a battle can be a game unto itself, which I enjoy but is way beyond TFT's complexity budget. But that's another matter.

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

You have said that your way of doing this is clearly more logical. You've argued that taking five 2 point wounds in a combat, and not being able to heal all 10 damage is "impossibly wrong". I disagree, for the reasons given above, and in my sample write up for healing I have explicitly made healing tougher than you suggest.

Again, it's not about the amount, and your interpretation allows the same thing. The part that we all agreed made no sense was that what makes the difference is whether it's all in the same "combat" or not. Same injuries, but different results depending on when exactly someone starts physicking them. If you apply healing per wound, the results are consistent. If you apply physicking per combat, there is a massive difference (either "those 5 small wounds were all trivial so now that we patched them all up, you're mostly ok" or "those 5 identical wounds Sally took leave her still nearly dead and needing to rest in bed for three weeks because 4 of them became impossible to treat because of the gamey healing rules".

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

Now if you say, "It is really tough to gain a good number of talents in TFT, there is likely only one healer. Being able to only heal 3 guys is too harsh!"

Well, there is some truth to that. In GURPS, it is not hard for the whole party to pick up some first aid - enough to bandage wounds. It would not hurt my feelings to say that Physicking must start in 20 minutes, so each physicker can heal 4 people after a fight.

I do think that if a wound is not treated for a long time, you should lose the chance to heal it.

On reflection, I changed my mind about thinking there should be an expiry time on being able to heal wounds. I think there should be a chance that wounds eventually start having problems if you don't heal them, but I don't think that's modeled well by a healing expiry limit, because if that does happen, then you REALLY want to get help, rather than considering it useless because you waited too long.

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

But hopefully in the new TFT, the rules will be clearer.

Yes, if they make sense... ;-D