Trying to make consistent sense of what damage and healing represent

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by RobW

Yes, absolutely. I didn't mean what I wrote to be argumentative that way. It looks like what I wrote must have sounded dismissive, and I apologise for that. Believe me that was not my intention.

If I can rephrase? What I hear from what you're saying is that at some point consistency concerns on this point cannot be ignored, and you will go for consistency regardless (or mostly) of the game effect.

By "won't work", I simply meant game conventions about damage mean there will be weird effects regardless of how you approach the healing rules. I get it, you have convinced me, much of that consistency relates to things outside the per-wound/per-combat distinction. Even so, the more important to my mind is that one's ruling about healing and Physicker produces game effects that you like.

ANd by "wont' matter", I only meant that if someone thinks that "hard mode" is more consistent, but leads to too much PC mortality, it makes more sense to me to go for the desired game effect and not worry too much about the consistency angle. Similarly, if one thought "per-wound" was a more consistent approach, but led to undesirable effects (eg physicker being too powerful a talent), then again it makes sense to me to let game effects override the consistency concern.

If you find that your approach yields both consistency and the effects you like, then perfect.

Pretty much, yes.

I think what stands out to me about these and other repeated discussions where experienced TFT players play in different ways, is that different players have different conceptions of what the mechanics represent, and notice, care and prefer different things about them. And it sounds like groups of players that play together for a while tend to share a perspective. People house-rule where they see a need, and don't where they don't, and some players and groups agree what needs house-ruling and how to do it, and others have different ideas.

But when we play and GM immersive RPGs a certain way for years, our perspectives get pretty developed and it can be challenging to step into another player's different perspective.

In my case, when the topic is something I'm convinced of a strong opinion about, I tend to keep trying to explain that perspective until it sounds like people get what I'm saying, especially if they seem to be responding to my posts by asserting things in ways that seem to not get what I've been trying to explain.

And yes, I was a realism/simulation/consistency-oriented player even when playing "war" on the playground in third grade, and while playing TFT in fifth grade, and the seeming illogic of healing "per fight" was something our group couldn't ignore even then. Since we pretty much always did healing "per wound" as a consequence, we developed our understandings of TFT injury around that, and we very much like the effect on gameplay. Though yes, I still tend to choose consistency and more realistic-seeming detailed rules unless they're unmanageable... but I can manage quite a bit.

As I mentioned before, if I felt that per-wound were causing too much healing, no that would not have me use "per fight" healing because it's a consistency problem for me. Instead I'd address the perceived problem (I mentioned reducing the amount of healing per wound and/or adding random factors that tend to reduce the amount of healing). Or if I were sensitive to the four three-point wounds vanishing case, I might also use something like JimmyPlenty's elegant suggestion above, where 2+ point wounds can't be healed to less than one point each.

[MikMod]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lord

Skarg wrote:They all agreed that the RAW are an abstraction (most certainly not simulation) of reality. But they also all agreed that it was a vastly superior abstraction to the proposed treatment per "wound."

This is interesting. Can you say why they thought 'per fight' healing was better than 'per wound'?

[hcobb]

If you heal per combat then you need to track wounds taken in that combat anyway to not repeat the bug in the app of healing two hits after each non-damaging combat.

[Jeff Lord]

Hi MikMod. I'd be happy to try.

First off, I've repeatedly stated that I don't believe that "per wound" is actually a quantifiable thing. What is a "wound," exactly? We have a 5 second combat round (as opposed to 1 second in GURPS); a lot can happen. When a sword (any) hits you for maximum damage, that might be one good shot - or it might be two or three, or more. The same goes for a dagger in HTH. You take "hits" from a successful attack; that doesn't necessarily translate to a single "wound." Admittedly, arrow damage is harder to justify this way but that's a whole other story.

One of the reasons that I prefer TFT to GURPS is that these particular abstractions work for me and my players. YMMV, obviously.

Apologies in advance for trying to sum up (and/or condense) a number of Skype conversations. The gist of what the folks I spoke with said was as follows - "wounds" are not simply the sum of their respective parts. Hence they are not able to be treated as individual, discrete, units. If the human body takes (for example) four points of hits, that's not good. If it takes four points of hits and then another four points of hits, this is actually much worse than four points of hits X2. The accretion of damage will drastically impact the body's ability to "shrug it off." Trauma based shock is not fun.

This is, of course, only important if you want your abstraction to "lean" more towards realism than other abstractions. In the end, they are all abstractions. The argument for wanting to extend play by having the players able to deal with more damage is a powerful and compelling one if such is your desire.

In addition to healing considerations, this has led me to toy with the idea (house-ruled, of course) that players with less than half their ST (or whatever home-brew stat is in use) suffer a -1 DX penalty, just as players with 3 ST or less suffer a -3 DX penalty.

I think Skarg had the right of it when he said:

"But when we play and GM immersive RPGs a certain way for years, our perspectives get pretty developed and it can be challenging to step into another player's different perspective."

And I agreed with him again when he said:

"In my case, when the topic is something I'm convinced of a strong opinion about, I tend to keep trying to explain that perspective until it sounds like people get what I'm saying, especially if they seem to be responding to my posts by asserting things in ways that seem to not get what I've been trying to explain."

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lord

First off, I've repeatedly stated that I don't believe that "per wound" is actually a quantifiable thing. What is a "wound," exactly? We have a 5 second combat round (as opposed to 1 second in GURPS); a lot can happen. When a sword (any) hits you for maximum damage, that might be one good shot - or it might be two or three, or more. The same goes for a dagger in HTH. You take "hits" from a successful attack; that doesn't necessarily translate to a single "wound." Admittedly, arrow damage is harder to justify this way but that's a whole other story.

So in the context of this discussion, I think it is very quantifiable. I'm fairly confident that those of us who land on the 'per wound' side of this debate would define a wound as a single hit or, more specifically, any successful attack action (or threat event) which results in damage to the target’s ST. To your point, that is still an abstraction, but an acceptable one and for the sake of consistency, we should agree on a common lexicon at least.

Originally Posted by Jeff Lord

Hence they are not able to be treated as individual, discrete, units. If the human body takes (for example) four points of hits, that's not good. If it takes four points of hits and then another four points of hits, this is actually much worse than four points of hits X2. The accretion of damage will drastically impact the body's ability to "shrug it off." Trauma based shock is not fun

This is exactly the kind of effect I was trying to address (in abstract, obviously) with my proposed change to how the Physicker talents work, namely requiring an IQ roll that gets harder for each subsequent 'wound' that the healer is attempting to treat.

Originally Posted by Jeff Lord

In addition to healing considerations, this has led me to toy with the idea (house-ruled, of course) that players with less than half their ST (or whatever home-brew stat is in use) suffer a -1 DX penalty, just as players with 3 ST or less suffer a -3 DX penalty.

I like what you are going for here, but I wonder if the half-ST threshold is problematic. Do we round up or down? Would it apply equally to a 30 ST giant as well as a 10 ST human? Should the giant really take a -1 DX penalty when he still has 14 ST?

[Jeff Lord]

TippetsTX wrote:

"So in the context of this discussion, I think it is very quantifiable. I'm fairly confident that those of us who land on the 'per wound' side of this debate would define a wound as a single hit or, more specifically, any successful attack action (or threat event) which results in damage to the target’s ST. To your point, that is still an abstraction, but an acceptable one and for the sake of consistency, we should agree on a common lexicon at least."

That's the problem for me. I don't find this particular abstraction "acceptable" at all. As a result, I am unable to agree to your proposed definition/lexicon. I am not calling you "wrong" and I understand that this works for you (and others), but my players and I simply, but respectfully, don't agree. I feel that the abstraction that we play by, "leans" in the direction of realism more than any other that I have seen thus far.

I maintain that a "wound" is still very hard to quantify. Nothing in TFT, LE or otherwise, would definitively indicate the intention of "hits taken" as equating to the concept of "wounds" under discussion. And I'm sure there are quite a few folks out there with fencing, HEMA, MMA, etc. experience (including myself) who would also maintain that too much can happen in any given 5 second increment of time to say that only one single "wound" could occur. It's one of the reasons I've enjoyed TFT for so long; it has never claimed to be a simulation. Still, the whole "leaning" thing. . .

TippetsTX further wrote:

"This is exactly the kind of effect I was trying to address (in abstract, obviously) with my proposed change to how the Physicker talents work, namely requiring an IQ roll that gets harder for each subsequent 'wound' that the healer is attempting to treat."

I liked your ideas quite a bit. I found them very well thought out. As stated, above though, I disagree with your base premise of "the wound." And, ultimately your proposed changes were just a touch too "crunchy" for my group's style - still cool though.

And finally:

"I like what you are going for here, but I wonder if the half-ST threshold is problematic. Do we round up or down? Would it apply equally to a 30 ST giant as well as a 10 ST human? Should the giant really take a -1 DX penalty when he still has 14 ST?"

Thanks for the catch; I should have said "half your ST or less." And yes, I think the giant should take a -1 DX penalty when he still has 14 ST. His overall system is just as taxed as his human contemporary (i.e. he has taken a proportional number of hits). It's still early days yet though and I'm not done playing around with the concept.

[hcobb]

Replace Physicker healing with the following:

Any figure may attempt to bandage up any other figure's wounds on a five minute attempt. First roll 4/IQ (minus one die for each of Physicker, Master Physicker, or Vet that applies) to know what you are doing. On a critical failure inflict one (or on a break weapon result two) hits and stop.

If this roll succeeds then roll 5/DX to attempt to fix the problems you have identified. Subtract one die for each of Physicker, Master Physicker, or Vet that applies, and subtract another die for having a Physicker kit. The degree of success is the number of hits on the target that are converted into fatigue. On a critical failure inflict one (or on a break weapon result two) hits and stop. On a "double effect" roll halve the fatigue inflicted. On a "triple effect" roll no fatigue is inflicted.

An undisturbed bandaged up figure with negative adjST purely due to fatigue rests for one fatigue per hour until they reach zero adjST.

Healing past this new baseline may be attempted once per day, but heals at most one hit per day. (Two for a double effect result and three for triple.)

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Any figure may attempt to bandage up any other figure's wounds on a five minute attempt. First roll 4/IQ (minus one die for each of Physicker, Master Physicker, or Vet that applies) to know what you are doing. On a critical failure inflict one (or on a break weapon result two) hits and stop.

While I agree that your proposal is a more realistic approach (assess then treat), it seems unnecessarily complex given TFT's default bias for simplicity. Obviously, my own houserule also contradicts this bias, but limits the impact to one roll instead of two... a compromise.

I do like your idea of using 4 dice as the base difficulty and reducing by 1 die if using a physicker's kit, however. I will be adopting that into my own ruleset.

[hcobb]

Do you like the degree of success as the amount healed? Then it doesn't matter how many wounds there are, just the skill of the healer.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Do you like the degree of success as the amount healed? Then it doesn't matter how many wounds there are, just the skill of the healer.

No, I still prefer the 'pass/fail' abstraction I initially proposed using the values from ITL.