[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

I've been thinking about what we want from a healing rule and I'm thinking that, contrary to what some have said, what we want is something that lets a party be a never-stopping whirling circular saw of death.

If you include me in that category, you have not read my posts very carefully.

There's a fundamental problem with roleplaying combat: to be exciting the players have to feel they might lose, so the fight has to be close. But if any player characters get killed something precious is destroyed, and if there's no healing even serious casualties is a problem. Making injuries easy to recover doesn't eliminate the problem but it reduces it.

So bring on the easy, effective healing spells. In fact, bring the IQ requirement down. Let everyone have them.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic.

In any case, the reality is that TFT combats are extremely deadly - understandable, since Melee was an arena combat game. I don't object to that per se. The Melee tactical combat system would last way too long if you radically increased the number of hit points or allowed easy healing during combat.

But consider a typical starting fighter with ST12, DX12(10), broadsword, leather, small shield. If his foes have DX10 and broadswords, he'll take 2 hits on average after 4 turns of combat. Those 2 average hits will knock him down to ST4. If he's healed by a physicker (if the party is lucky enough to have one)* after the fight, he'll have ST 6. Regardless, he'll be killed if he takes two more such hits in a single combat. And many TFT weapons have a decent change of scoring 7 or 9 points of damage, which would kill him in a single blow.

This character would be very foolish to voluntarily engage in another fight.

An average second level AD&D fighter with 11 hp will take an average of 1 hit in 4 rounds of combat against a comparable foe (at AC 4, a 2nd level enemy has a 35% chance of hitting him). He'll lose 4-5 hp in each hit, assuming a longsword is used. He can fight 2 combats like this - twice as many as his TFT counterpart - without any healing before being in serious danger.

But if he has a cleric in the party, he can probably count on getting 1-2 Cure Light Wounds spells, which heal an average of 4.5 hit points each. With one Cure Light Wounds spell, he can fight an average of 3 such combats before being at ~3 HP and in serious danger. If 2 Cure Light Wounds spells are available, he can fight an average of 4 such combats before being at ~3 HP and in serious danger.

Bottom line - a 2nd level AD&D fighter can have 3-4 times as many combats as his 32 point TFT counterpart.

I've consistently stated that I want the ability to recover more ST *between* combats, so that a classic dungeon crawl is practical in TFT.

The spells I proposed are mostly usable after combat, so an individual TFT combat is just as deadly as ever. And I wouldn't much care if the spells were modified so that they take effect after a couple of minutes. This would preclude them from being used in combat.

That, it seems to me, would be a rather different situation than a "never-stopping whirling circular saw of death."


* I think a 32 point physicker is a tough sell to a player. Consider the archetypal beginning physicker with the archetypal fighter and thief below. He's worse at thieving and fighting than the thief and much worse at fighting than the fighter:

Archetypal Physicker ST10, DX11(10), IQ11. Talents - Literacy (1), Sword (2), Shield (2), Physicker (2), Thief (2) and either Bow (2) or Detect traps (2). Equipped with Cutlass (2d-2), Lg Shield (-2 hits) and maybe a horse bow (1d).

Archetypal Fighter ST12, DX12(10), IQ8 Sword (2), Shield (1), Bow (2), Running (2), Horsemanship (1). Equipped with Broadsword (2d), Longbow (1d+2), Cloth, Lg Shield (-3 hits total).

Archetypal Thief ST10, DX12(11), IQ10 Literacy (1), Sword (2), Shield (1), Thief (2), Detect Traps (2), Remove Traps (1), Recognize Value (1). Equipped with Cutlass (2d-2), Lg Shield (-2 hits).