Healing and survival

[Nils_Lindeberg]

I read the very long healing thread that SJ started with his suggestion for a healing spell.

With a few minor modification I think one can reach a decent compromise between the larger than life dungeon crawlers and the "combat should be deadly"-crowd.

First:
Physicker can heal per wound, no matter when you got them. Physicker even without a kit should be able to heal 1 by improvising. And I would suggest an IQ 8 or 9, 1 point Talent; First Aid for a quick 1 healed point with proper equipment. And you can stop bleedings. If you buy Physicker and already have First Aid it will cost one less.

This makes a tank that takes a lot of small hits a real tank that can keep going, but if he gets hit by a severe blow he will be have a slow to heal injury that can last for weeks.

Second:
Instant death is way to common for heroics. I would add a bleeding out rule. You have fST and ST. Once you run out of one you start taking the other. If you go below 4 in either one your get -3, both -6. If one get down to 1 your are out for the count. If ST goes to 0 you start to bleed, 1 fST every turn.

This means that a crit will not usually kill you, but you will be mortally wounded and bleeding out, putting a timer on the combat. And there will still be the possibility of a party wipe, or the survivors getting captured or problems with leaving a friend behind, etc. No instant cure exists that gets them back on their feet in the middle of the fight, so it still feels "deadly" since you will lose, but you can take some risks and dare to be heroic as an individual. General melee combat will not change at all, except people mostly get knocked out rather than dead.

Third:
The wording of the Aid spell is changed so that the ST you get are fST. If they are above your normal maximum, you have two turns to use them. If you are already fatigued, it heals fatigue. This way a wizard can heal an exhausted or bleeding party member or speed up their recovery a little by taking on some of the fST himself.

Fourth:
Healing spells.
IQ8(T): Healing I, cost 1. Heal 1, once per wound, on one wound.
IQ11(T): Healing II, cost 1. Heal 2. Prereq Physicker or Healing I.
IQ14(T): Healing III, cost 1. Heal 3. Prereq Master Physicker or Healing II

The low cost is just a measure that it takes 15 minutes for the wizard to rest it back so the wizards won't be much better in the long run with many injured on a battle field for instance. The advantage for a wizard over a Physicker is that he is quicker, but at the cost of fST instead of time.

So a Physicker and a Wizard (also IQ 11) can heal 2+2 for each wound. So a good hit from a battle axe of 14 hits, minus some decent armor, lets say 5, gives you 9 wounds. Weak or wounded characters will be knocked out and start to bleed to death others will survive, get som healing and soldier on. A tank with 7 points of armor and a Physicker/wizard combo of 5 healing can stay on his feet and tank for a long dungeon. Every hit of 12 or less will be taken care off in between fights. Until he catches a crit, other spike damage or too many small hits in one fight and goes down. And in a long dungeon there will be a lot of rolls and some crits, the triple one will come. Is it from a small weapon he might even survive, but he will be knocked out. Especially if he had already been hurt.

If talents and spells are taken together, one will save a point or two (or 3 to 6 points if you are Hero) on the lower level healing spells that can be ignored if you have the talents.

With these relatively small changes we keep the feeling of TFT. We make tanking something that actually can work. Healing duties can be spread out and existing talents are still worth just as much as before. Wizard can full fill the spot of party healer if need be. And if he is a healer he won't cast only healing spells, because they are a little bit too weak for prolonged combat, unless you want to get someone unconscious back on their feet quickly so you can withdraw.

A lot less people will die if there is a healer in the group that have at least First Aid and som equipment to use it. But people will still go down just as fast. Except for wizards that will cast with fST and still have extra ST to take wounds, but they usually were too squishy for dungeon duty anyways and very boring to play once they got a wound or two.

Practically we used to mark wounds with a circle. Separate them into different groups, one group per wound. If we had a group with 5 wounds and it got physickered, we erased 2 of them and marked the rest with a slash. If we later on got Healed I we erased one more and marked the remaining ones with an X. And those X marked ones were long lasting and could only be healed with potions and rest. fST were kept as a running tally since there were no long term or limitations on healing or resting them back.