Trying to make consistent sense of what damage and healing represent

[Skarg]

Once again the topic of physicker healing logic came up in the main forum, so I'm starting a thread here to continue the discussion rather than have this sort of discussion there.

My position as usual was that the people I played with always found per-wound healing to be needed to make sense to us, and that we also liked the way it allows figures to keep adventuring until/unless they take more severe wounds.

And as usual, some people have different ideas about what does and doesn't make sense:

Originally Posted by Jeff Lord

This is what I wrote on 12/31/18:

"I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind those advocating that the physicker is able to treat each "wound."

Let's say I've got a ST 11 archer. He takes four discrete "wounds" of three points each (3/3/3/3). This takes him down to -1 ST. But with a master physicker and 20 minutes, he would be doing cartwheels? And if (however unlikely) the same thing happened five more times that day he'd still be at his full ST 11?

I realize that each roll might simulate one wound in a one-second GURPS turn, but TFT has a more abstracted five-second turn, so a lot can happen. A roll of 8 points of damage from a two-handed sword could certainly be imagined to have come from a single blow, but the same 8 damage roll from a dagger in HTH might be three or more quick thrusts in a five second span. I think the notion that a single roll for damage equates to a single "wound," in this case, might be oversimplified."

So, with respect, I think we should consider carefully when using words such as "logical" and "illogical." From where I stand, a physicker treating each "wound" is "intolerably illogical" (see above example). I think Steve got it right with RAW and his stated intent. Treating each damage roll as a separate "mishap" can be a perfectly fine, but no more logical, house rule for those who prefer it.

I did not mean to start an argument that my way is the most logical of all ways. Not did I mean to insist that because I mentioned logic, that anyone doing per-fight healing is not being logical. I also would like to suggest that the cases Jeff brought up above are points I agree with, but I see them as different issues about healing, not the same one we were thinking about. What I think about Jeff's points is:


Four three-point wounds:

The figure with four 3-point wounds either dying or being unhurt depending on whether a master physicker spends 20 minutes on him seems to me to be an issue with cumulative hitpoint effects. Those are multiple injuries which each alone would not affect the figure (not even -2 DX for 5 seconds), but since TFT adds all injury points to determine consciousness and death, four of them stack to take someone out or kill them.

I don't think that's a particularly realistic effect in most cases. In other RPGs and house rules, an alternative that avoids this is sometimes called a "wound system" where often taking many small injuries actually has no effect, or only slowly raises the "wound level" of a figure. This is one way to represent how in real life, some people can take a surprising number of wounds and still function for while and not die as long as none of them is itself critical.

In other words, what this example says to me is that TFT's directly adding all wounds together to determine unconsciousness or death is imperfect.

On the other hand, GURPS offers an explanation for its adding of separate wound damage (and the ability to heal it by first aid), which is that a large part of the effect of damage points represent shock, which can be treated by first aid.

So that's how I think about the figure with four 3-point wounds. Each wound isn't really very significant by itself, but with several of them, the person may collapse or die due to shock. But with immediate attention from a master healer, they may be not materially wounded. Being hurt for only the amount a physicker can completely heal is the unusual circumstance where this is possible.

I also think that such a victim would have some healing injuries left, but it's ok with me that they don't amount to lasting damage points, even though the victim would have died of shock if he'd not been treated.

To me, it does not impact at my feeling that injuries should be physicked individually, because if the same figure had received those four injuries in what were considered separate "fights", then per-fight healing would also have that victim be completely healed, or dead if there were no physicker. That is, the thing that makes no sense to me about per-fight healing, is that I don't see why a "fight" should be what determines if each wound can be healed or not.

If I did want to address the seeming weirdness of this issue, I might do something like add a house rule more like one of the "wound systems" I mentioned. Or I might just reduce the amount of physicker healing to 1 and 2 for master rather than 2 and 3 for master, and/or require physickers to roll for each act of healing to see how much is actually healed for each wound (DX and/or IQ rolls, and/or a randomized amount of healing).

I might also add an effect where physicker healing doesn't result in a wound completely vanishing, but leaves a "treated wound" which has some lingering effect until several days later. In fact I do do this, but it usually amounts to cosmetic description and GM discretionary effects. e.g. If the guy who just got his four three-point injuries healed did start "doing cartwheels", I might assign a chance that each time he does, his wounds may open up, undoing the healing status on them.


Some wounds might be multiple wounds

As for the idea that a TFT attack could represent multiple wounds, yes, sure that's a consideration that ideally would be taken into account. But I don't see why it would lead me more in the direction of treating wounds per fight.

For one thing, in some cases attacks seem clearly to be about one wound: missile weapons and thrown weapons in particular. And, missile attacks are also one of the situations where this come up clearly - if you're running into long-distance harassing fire or traps where volleys of arrows hit a group and then they have time to heal, then if you do per-fight healing, it stands out that the guys who take single minor arrow hits can have that happen over and over all day long and not be very hurt, but the guy who got hit by two or three arrows at once, even if they were each light hits, can't be healed very much by the physicker.

Also, if melee attacks are sometimes multiple wounds, that would actually imply to me that some of those attacks would require more time to physick, and that physickers would be able to do even more for those wounds.

So if I wanted to address that issue, I would actually house-rule more in the direction of per-wound healing. i.e. I'd probably reduce the amount each physicker can heal, and then figure out for each melee attack, how many wounds were inflicted. However that seems hard to get right, and like more fuss than I really want if I'm playing TFT rather than GURPS.

[hcobb]

Have Physickers leave behind one point of environmental fatigue per wound healed for blood loss. Recover one point per night of reasonable rest provided they have food, water, shelter, etc.

[larsdangly]

There are examples of simple games that have physically realistic ways of handling multiple non-lethal woulds. Boot Hill and Beyond Enemy Lines are two great examples that have been around for decades. If I were going to tweak TFT to be more like this, I'd separate wound effects from a running tally of ST, and simply impose a consequence for each wound. It wouldn't be that hard; a half page of rules would be enough. You would just need to use care not to make the game radically more or less dangerous overall.

[Skarg]

^ Both good ideas IMO.

[TippetsTX]

So I also prefer the wound-centric healing approach for Physickers, but I also think that healing as a skill shouldn't necessarily be automatic. In the other thread, I mentioned the idea of compounded damage and dimishing returns when it comes to applying the Physicker talents to multiple injuries so here's how I am handling that...

Following the model established by many other talents, healing via Physicker and Master Physicker will require a die roll (3d against IQ) to be successful. Treating a single target with multiple wounds is more difficult so each instance of damage after the first is at a cumulative -1 to IQ. Using the example in the original post, therefore, a Master Physicker with 14 IQ must roll 14 or less to heal the first 3-point wound, 13 or less for the second, 12 or less for the third and so on. This approach also allows GMs the optional ability to add bonuses or penalties based on in-game factors that might decrease or increase difficulty of the task (a bit more for for the GM to deal with, but it adds to player immersion and the drama IMO).

For a Physicker, a failed roll means no ST healed while a Master Physicker can always heal at least 1 ST for each wound (3 ST on a successful roll).

I'm also considering rules to scale difficulty based on the type of wound. A critical hit for example might require 4 or 5 dice depending on the severity.

[hcobb]

Here's my take: https://www.hcobb.com/tft/house_rules.html#IQ11Talents

BTW: Physicker is a magic talent, just like Alchemist (which it overlaps).

[MikMod]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Here's my take: https://www.hcobb.com/tft/house_rules.html#IQ11Talents

"The big reptile people are the ladies and the pretty ones are the gentlemen"

Best house rule ever... :)

[MikMod]

Like Skarg, we wanted to be able to keep adventuring instead of spending a lot of time resting up. We didn't use the one-physick-per-wound idea though, and as a result we had to (a) boost healing potions to 1d3 and (b) make them very easily available. At which point nobody bothered getting physiker and no wound short of death or amputation was the slightest worry unless potions were running low.

Not ideal.

This time round I'm going to allow one physicker heal per wound and keep potions under control. That should mean serious wounds have consequences, armour becomes more important, and high damage critters will be much more dangerous to the PCs.

It's not just a case of which version of 'realism' you are chasing re healing itself, it's the knock on effect on other aspects of the game IMHO.

[Chris Rice]

I've mentioned this before but it's relevant here. In short:

Fact: as the rules stand, a figure suffers no ongoing detriment till it reaches ST3.

Assumption: a figure is not "wounded" till it reaches ST3, all other damage being minor knocks, being winded, temporarily demoralised etc.

Therefore, all damage above ST3 can be quickly regained between combats if the figure has a little time to catch their breath, steel their nerves etc. A figure at ST3 or lower has actually been physically wounded and will require much longer to recover or healing intervention.

This allows for longer dungeon crawls but will probably require some amendment to the physiker Talent.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I've mentioned this before but it's relevant here. In short:

Fact: as the rules stand, a figure suffers no ongoing detriment till it reaches ST3.

Assumption: a figure is not "wounded" till it reaches ST3, all other damage being minor knocks, being winded, temporarily demoralised etc. ...

Fact? What about effects of injury (-2 DX, falling down, hit location effects)?

This approach seems to me to have the same problem it does in games with piles of hitpoints. It doesn't make enough sense to me that people would have a "cushion" of woundedness, windedness and demoralization being caused by attacks using to-hit mechanics. Or that light attacks almost surely won't actually injure me the first few times, but then they certainly will. Etc.

If I want the game to include a lot more whiffage instead of injury (which I might), then I'd (use GURPS and/or) tend to add more things that cause attacks to fail completely - such as active defenses or other traits or calculations that just make avoiding injury explicitly less likely, but are not so directly ablative and predictable the way hitpoints are.