Trying to make consistent sense of what damage and healing represent

[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.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Skarg

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

These are all temporary effects in combat time scale. The -2 DX only lasts for a turn, you can stand up after a turn etc. Hit location is an optional rule. The -3 DX for reaching 3 ST lasts for the entirety of a combat.

[JimmyPlenty]

I am liking a lot of ideas here. I guess it comes down to personal desire to get deep with it.

Here's my combo of what you all brought up;

Unless the wound is a 1 wound hit(which gets completely healed), all other healing leaves a 1 wound minimum. Any severe wounds (5+ hits) require 3/IQ, major wounds (8+ damage) requires 4/IQ.

[RobW]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

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.

This is a really interesting idea I hadn't seen before.

So how might physicker be modified? It sounds like physicker would work as normal (however your group interprets that) until the character reaches 3 ST. Then what? Are they basically stuck at that level barring magic or extensive medical care and treatment? Or as Jeff Lord suggests, a saving roll for care to have an effect?

[larsdangly]

That could be a path to take if you like a game that has a kind of D+D like quality of stringing together chains of combat oriented encounters. On the other hand, if you go for physical versimilitude then penalties from injuries should appear or increase between encounters. I.e., the sort of wound modeled by a 5 point hit in canonical TFT (i.e., puts you back on your heels, even in the midst of an adrenalin fueled fight to the death) must represent a significant cut, sprain or blunt-force blow that in reality would have you moving very gingerly an hour later. And any punctures or deep cuts that serious would be life threatening over a period of hours to days without the intervention of skilled medical care.