What's a mishap
 

As we know, physickers heal 2 wounds for different "mishaps".
I can only suppose the language was deliberately changed from the ITL TOS to be vague.
I'm interested in what others are calling a mishap. We are still doing one combat == one mishap.

Re: What's a mishap
 

"Combat or accident", as in the last PDF I happen to have.

"Mishap" saves some words, which they might have done not for vagueness, but to avoid cutting content when they added words elsewhere. Simply saying "combat" would mean that Physickers couldn't heal accidents -- but combats are not the only way adventurers are likely to get injured. That might be less vague, but it's also far less useful, as well as creating an odd world where sprained ankles or scratched arms can't be treated, even though sword thrusts and axe blows to the skull can be.

Re: What's a mishap
 

The new Master Physicker text also uses the word "wound".

I think that's all the more reason to allow healing each wound separately, if you have enough physickers/time to do so.

The "per combat" of the original ITL was immediately unacceptable to us as making no sense. We didn't think the physical body would really have any reason to respond to "combats" - wounds are what happen to the body, so how they're distributed into "combats" would have no effect on whether they can be healed or not. That was at about age 11. My desire for things to make sense has only increased over the decades, not decreased.

Re: What's a mishap
 

Yes to rephrase. If in a single combat you are hit three times, is your physicker's healing based on the number of combats (1) or the number of wounds (3).

Re: What's a mishap
 

ITL pg 76. Combat example. Physicker can only heal 2 hits at the end of combat.

Re: What's a mishap
 

If you read the combat example (ITL pg 128-129), you'll also find that each PC was only injured once.

Re: What's a mishap
 

Nope. Heniochus takes two separate damages from the trap and from the troll. But gets to be healed only 2 pts

Re: What's a mishap
 

ITL LE, pg 9, "First Aid. A Physicker can give you first aid after an injury, healing two points of damage. A Master Physicker can cure 3. This takes 5 minutes."

ITL LE, pg 10, "First aid A Physicker can heal 2 points of damage from any injury; a Master Physicker can heal 3. If a “dead” figure can be restored to ST 0 or above by first aid, he didn’t really die."

ITL LE, pg 40, "Physicker (2): Healer’s ability. A Physicker can heal up to 2 new points of damage on any humanoid figure (wounds only – not exhaustion) within an hour after any combat or accident. He must have a physicker’s kit to do so. Efforts of more than one Physicker on the same wounded figure are not cumulative. Example: A figure takes 5 damage. No matter how many Physickers there are in the group, he can only be cured of 2. However, if he later suffers a different mishap, he can be cured of 2 of those new hits by any Physicker. It takes 5 minutes to heal 2 damage."

ITL LE, pg 44, "Master Physicker (2): You must already be a Physicker. A Master Physicker can heal 3 damage (instead of 2) if he has a kit, or 1 damage even without a kit. Either way, it takes 5 minutes. Treatment by a Master Physicker is not cumulative with treatment by a Physicker for any one mishap – that is, if you have both a Master Physicker and a Physicker in your party, you can’t use them both together to cure a 5-hit wound. The Master Physicker can cure 3, and the Physicker can watch and learn. Note: Either a Physicker or a Master Physicker can work on his own wounds just as he can another’s. A Master Physicker can also make the Healing Potion (see p. 147) as though he were an Alchemist."

Glad I went back and read the relevant materials. There seems to be very little that is vague here. Physicker seems to indicate that a "mishap" is any accident or combat. Further, if the intent was to mean that different wounds from the same combat could be treated separately, the wording in master physicker would be inappropriate. It does not seem that the rules support the desired intent of those who feel that multiple hits in the same combat can each be treated.

Having said all that, i will say that you paid for your game just like I did mine and you can house rule it any way you want to. have fun, that's what this is supposed to be all about.

Re: What's a mishap
 

Er, I still see mentions of mishaps, injuries, and wounds as what gets healed, not combats.

I don't see anything saying I'm supposed to do it by combat, except in original 1980's ITL.

And ya, we all can and will play how we want.

Re: What's a mishap
 

I think we're overthinking. The point is that a physicker is faced with a wounded individual. How many times the person was hit does not matter. It is the sum total of wounds that matter.

In RL a doctor will treat each injury separately. But in combat situations even the doctor will triage and treat most serious first.

SJ made the physicker a limited healer, the equivalent of First Aid in GURPS. He is not a doctor. This is the same issue with the Heal Spell. There is only patching up in TFT no real healing. Healing requires down time.

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.

Re: What's a mishap
 

If I could be allowed to wrap this one up....

First, for some reason I was thinking our group was weird in doing the per-combat physicking (mishap == a combat), so it was interesting for me to hear we're not such oddballs.

Merits for one approach over the over? "Realism" doesn't seem to get us too far, as gamey situations are easy to find either way.

A better reason to choose one over the other is what it means to the campaign. By wound makes physickers much more powerful, and means the GM can toss in low ST foes as fillers, whose effect on the players are gone after a half-hour of first aid. By combat means that every battle is more dangerous.

I suppose that's all pretty obvious stuff, but I hadn't really considered the possibilities before!