Cinematic heroes soak damage w/ energy reserve?

[Gef]

Thanks for the continuing input, folks.

My second thought upon reading Second Wind was this: Awhile after the fight's over, when everybody's recovered FP, then everybody heals themselves. After a fight in the morning, everybody is fully healed by suppertime. And that goes beyond cinematic and gets into the territory of magical healing.

And my first thought after that, much as you suggest, was to limit Second Wind to healing damage just taken. That's pretty much how my original proposal worked and I was visualizing it some kind of defensive manifestation of ki as a physical force. But that's not how cinema works. The hero is battered and going down, and then he pops back up again and wins at the last minute, truly a second wind. Or the hero has been resting and recuperating for awhile, from a great battle, and he is not yet fully healed when duty calls, yet he answers and performs in typical heroic manner "feeling" his wounds again only when the danger has passed. This part is not terribly cinematic, because adrenalin can work that way.

That's when the notion occurred to treat the HP as temporary occurred. A healer will still be necessary at the end of the fight, and an injured warrior might well wait, hoping to use his Extra Effort to better purpose, until he takes enough damage to slow his dodge or risk unconsciousness, then say heckwithit and pump himself back up, temporarily, to the level where no penalties accrue.

With the temporary effect, I'm not sure I need a rule like a minimum of one point per wound, and I don't want to keep track of individual wounds long after they're delivered, either. Not sure I'll stick with this but it's likely what I'll be testing when I get this campaign off the ground, if possible. Looks like events may derail that; Yucca Valley, CA, is not exactly the GURPS-gaming center of the universe (unless the universe is a donut).

GEF

Originally Posted by vitruvian

That strikes me as not quite action hero/cinematic as your original proposal, actually.

Why not just caveat it like you were going to in the first place with every injury can only be reduced to 1 HP this way, and then it's the healers' job to cure that remainder?

Either that, or Second Wind is only an option on the turn the damage is actually inflicted - if you let injury go through to actual HP, either because you're out of FP or because you're being stingy with it so you can continue to fight, you can't heal it later, because the expenditure of FP to save yourself HP loss isn't meant to represent healing but rather soaking up the damage by rolling with the blow, twisting away from its full force, etc.