Re: What's a mishap
 

Yes, a DX 15 MP can heal 1440 hits three at a time over a week for $100 or store up 9.537 hits of cure for later use for $300.

Re: What's a mishap
 

Do you have a bunch of ready-made reference tables for all of this or can you do all these calculations in your head?
;)

Re: What's a mishap
 

Unless there's a fight and you're hurt once, healed, then another fight right away and you're hurt, healed.

But if the injuries happened at the same times but in the same "fight", only one injury can be healed? Makes no sense, because the "fight" is just an idea. The wounds are the actual things that impact the body.

Re: What's a mishap
 

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.

Re: What's a mishap
 

I don't know about doing cartwheels - if you want more detail and realism (yet somehow don't like healing per wound?) then you could house rule that healed wounds are still there and have some effect impairing cartwheel attempts etc.

But essentially, yes. If a 3-point wound is something that can be effectively treated if you get them one at a time, then getting two "in one combat" has no physical reason why it should prevent the second one from being healed, especially since the guy who gets periodically shot all day long in separate events is also all healed up even if you do use the "per combat" system.

It's about consistency and logical physical cause and effect.

That is, the main line of reasoning is that even if limiting healing "per combat", then the same healing would be possible if the four (or nine) 3-point arrow hits all happened as separate "combats". So there is a huge effect on how much a person can be healed, based on what the GM says is "a combat". If you base it per wound, there is no such weird effect.



Maybe, but the more that's true, the less the armor mechanic makes sense.

And for attacks such as thrown and missile weapon attacks, it almost certainly is one wound.

And in any case, it doesn't impact the main line of reasoning I outlined above, that the non-physical idea of "combats" ends up having a massive effect on ability to heal wounds.

Re: What's a mishap
 

How does an arrow kill somebody? Historically arrow wounds have killed through infection. So if the archer didn't have some sort of critical success then prompt treatment of flesh wounds will fix you right up.

If you want to slow a party down then inflict one fatigue on the victim for each Physicking treatment.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5999391/

Re: What's a mishap
 

Skarg - thanks for your reply; apologies for not being clear in my original post.

When I wrote, "if (however unlikely) the same thing happened five more times that day" I meant that the archer was hit with a sequence of four, three point hits (3/3/3/3) and reduced to -1 ST each time. Net result: 72 hits received from 24 arrow wounds with six near-death experiences. Add one master physicker with twenty minutes to kill (X6) and the individual is back to 100%? No. As an EMT with more than 20 years of experience, when you write, "It's about consistency and logical physical cause and effect" I simply have to disagree with the "logical physical cause and effect" part (though you are quite consistent ;)).

As for the armor mechanic not "making sense" if one accepts that each roll for damage might not represent a single wound, I think one must consider that TFT (in this case, specifically Melee) is not meant to be a simulation. It's a very well constructed abstraction of combat. As such, the armor mechanic makes as much "sense" as the engagement rules.

hcobb - thanks for the link.

However, a careful reading of the article doesn't really support your assertions. "Historically," arrow wounds have killed with trauma as well as infection. It wouldn't take a critical hit to strike bone somewhere. And the removal of the 24 arrows is going to cause even more trauma. The character in my example simply would not be at full ST at the end of his (very unfortunate) day.

Re: What's a mishap
 

Well certainly I agree that realistically, 24 (or even 4, even 1 really) arrow wounds would not just "vanish" from physicking, I see that as a side realism issue, which would apply also to wounds healed per combat (though in cases like your example, it would admittedly be moreso).

But again, if I wanted to address that, I'd do it by adding a house rule adding effects for treated wounds. I don't see "per combat" physicker limits as really addressing that issue.


I sort of accept that a damage roll might not represent a single wound, though I tend to also think not all wounds would be equally easy to heal, and think it reasonably falls below the grain of the game's abstractions without a big issue.

But I like the rules to be more like a simulation than not, because:

* I like things to make sense and be self-consistent and not to strain my ability to suspend disbelief.

* I think it greatly aids immersion and ability of players to stay on the same page and engage and reason about the game world as if it behaves more or less as expected.

* I like games that seem to be about the situation they say they represent, instead of having gamey and/or arbitrary mechanics.

Those are all the reasons why I and my friends chose TFT and GURPS and rejected almost every other RPG: the rules tend to make sense and do a pretty good job of letting us play a game about the subject matter, engaging the situations as if they were really the situation in play, acting in ways that make sense and getting results that make sense.



Situations akin to what you described (those less uniform and extreme) came up in actual play and bothered us when we were still new to TFT and about 11 or 12 years old.

i.e. A group of characters in a party has a series of dangerous situations, and the people who get hurt twice or more in one event somehow not being able to heal as much as the people whose wounds were a little more spaced out in time. It was clear to us that was arbitrary and didn't make much sense, as well as being rather unfair, and also leading to gamey tactics, particularly when facing low-damage threats. (e.g. "Well, I already got hurt once this fight, so I'll disengage and defend - you guys come fight, since you haven't been hurt yet in this fight, so if you get hurt, it can be patched up, but mine can't.")

Re: What's a mishap
 

[QUOTE=Skarg;223266Well, I already got hurt once this fight, so I'll disengage and defend - you guys come fight, since you haven't been hurt yet in this fight, so if you get hurt, it can be patched up, but mine can't.")[/QUOTE]

If I were a fighter who had taken 5 hits and was facing multiple foes, you bet I would hide behind my allies.

Re: What's a mishap
 

Sure, but facing, say, some rats or foes with light weapons (e.g. shortbows when you have light armor and/or shields, so a hit does 1 or 2 points, the more injured fighters whose wounds were healed in a previous fight (even if it was only 15 minutes before), may be told to fight, instead of the ones who have a few scratches from this fight but are otherwise unhurt, because of the surreal gamey meta-knowledge about healing per fight rather than per wound.