Physick Per Wound or Per Aggragate?

[larsdangly]

I have always treated this as a 'per wound' thing, both because it is a simple house rule that makes the game much less lethal in a way that is both welcome and generally plausible, and because it makes more sense than the standard rule.

[Steve Plambeck]

I never questioned the original rule on this. The treatment is on the aggregate wounds from one fight, and I'd hate doing it any other way. Making players keep track of the separate hits from each wound is just an egregious bookkeeping burden to put on the players that I know I'd hate to do as a player.

More importantly I just don't think Physicker was ever intended to be so powerful. Healing 2 is healing 2, not healing 2 for this wound, 2 for that wound, 2 more for another, and oh look you got 6 hits healed and now onto the next patient for 4 or 6 or 8 more.

TFT is a high mortality game by design. I like a few tweaks but this one is both too messy and too big.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by tomc

Conan slunk back to town, bitterly snapping at the desperate villagers that he never made it to the evil wizard's tower. For he'd been swarmed by a pack of rats and wouldn't be able to try again for three or four weeks...

Not very cinematic/heroic, so I let each wound be healed separately. Though you do have to survive the encounter first.

On the other hand do you really want to argue over what counts as a separate wound? "You fell off the cliff and broke your leg". "In how many places? It'll heal faster if it's shattered than if it's a single break..."

[EKB]

My answer is "per aggregate" rather than "per wound" but that's for the sake of simplicity and because I have my own house rules. I could easily see myself making the other choice if I wanted to run a somewhat different game and was willing to pay the price in increased nitpickery (making players keep track of each wound separately) to do so.

In fact, now I'm going to have to rethink this. I'll probably keep "per aggregate" out of the KISS principle, but... I'm going to think about it.

[tomc]

Originally Posted by malloyd

On the other hand do you really want to argue over what counts as a separate wound? "You fell off the cliff and broke your leg". "In how many places? It'll heal faster if it's shattered than if it's a single break..."

Good point. I keep track of wounds by separating the damage with commas, like: 2,3,1,4 would be 10 total hits, reduced to 3 after the physickers get ahold of you. Which lets you have more combats in a dungeon crawl, at the expense of a little more fiddly-ness.

BTW, never argue with players. Those wounds could always result in a nasty infection...

[tomc]

Originally Posted by EKB

My answer is "per aggregate" rather than "per wound" but that's for the sake of simplicity and because I have my own house rules. I could easily see myself making the other choice if I wanted to run a somewhat different game and was willing to pay the price in increased nitpickery (making players keep track of each wound separately) to do so.

In fact, now I'm going to have to rethink this. I'll probably keep "per aggregate" out of the KISS principle, but... I'm going to think about it.

It depends on how you want your game to go. I like longer dungeon crawls, and more cinematic adventures, so big dramatic wounds have consequences, but we don't sweat the small stuff too much.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by tomc

Good point. I keep track of wounds by separating the damage with commas, like: 2,3,1,4 would be 10 total hits, reduced to 3 after the physickers get ahold of you. Which lets you have more combats in a dungeon crawl...

There's a perfect example of my point exactly: 7 hits healed. Forgetting about bookkeeping, 7 hits is a lot for a talent that says it heals 2. And if a second figure was similarly cut up, then the Physicker has healed 14 hits. I simply can't see that as the RAI.

I agree more healing is needed to keep a dungeon crawl moving. That could be accomplished by introducing more means of healing than just potions and medics, but that would be a topic for the House Rules forum.

[EKB]

Originally Posted by tomc

It depends on how you want your game to go. I like longer dungeon crawls, and more cinematic adventures, so big dramatic wounds have consequences, but we don't sweat the small stuff too much.

My house rules make healing highly cinematic and easy, even with per aggregate physickering. Per wound would make it even more so, unless I dropped some of the other house rules. But if I dropped those house rules, I'd end up with something less cinematic than my current rules even if more so than "standard" per aggregate physickering.

Also, I want to avoid skewing preferences toward "clumsy attacks that hit hard when they do hit," which is what per wound physickering would do. As you say, "big dramatic wounds have consequences, but we don't sweat the small stuff too much" - and I don't think that's quite what I want in my own game.