Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 02-17-2019, 03:32 PM   #1
Sam Baughn
 
Sam Baughn's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and some other bits.
Default Cinematic Healing

I would like to make healing significantly faster in the next game I run, without including supernatural powers or ultra-tech.

Are there any published rules for unrealistically quick but mundane healing? Anyone got their own house rules?

I'm thinking of simply making everything happen four times as fast as normal; what usually takes a day instead takes four hours. So with optimal conditions, someone with Very Rapid Healing, treated by a Physician, can get 16 HP back per day.
__________________
My blog.
Sam Baughn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-17-2019, 05:55 PM   #2
edk926
 
Join Date: Jan 2017
Default Re: Cinematic Healing

You could simply base the healing rate on HT. The higher it is, the faster you heal. Sort of a quasi-regeneration.
edk926 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-17-2019, 05:56 PM   #3
Kax
 
Kax's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: God's Own Country
Default Re: Cinematic Healing

"If treatment is first aid, healed half by next scene and full by the scene after. If it's a doctor's or nurse's care, fixed by next scene. Either way they will need to wear bandages until hospital care is applied."

If it's that cinematic, it's effectively magic as they heal at the speed of plot. :D
__________________
Paul May | MIB 1138 (on hiatus)
Kax is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-17-2019, 07:01 PM   #4
namada
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Default Re: Cinematic Healing

The Cinematic Rules (like flesh wounds)? Or is that not what you're looking for?
namada is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-17-2019, 09:42 PM   #5
a humble lich
 
Join Date: Jun 2017
Default Re: Cinematic Healing

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Baughn View Post
I'm thinking of simply making everything happen four times as fast as normal; what usually takes a day instead takes four hours. So with optimal conditions, someone with Very Rapid Healing, treated by a Physician, can get 16 HP back per day.
I've basically done that: for a supers game I gave everyone +10 HP and Slow Regeneration for free, which basically meant that the PCs would heal about 6 HP/day. It worked fairly well, but if I were to do it again, I would add something like "First Aid heals the normal amount or heals you up to 0 HP, whichever is more." That means the character who is reduced to -30 HP will sill recover in a reasonable amount of time. (FYI, getting a double damage critical hit at point blank with a bazooka does a lot of damage.)
a humble lich is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-17-2019, 11:07 PM   #6
Kelly Pedersen
 
Kelly Pedersen's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Default Re: Cinematic Healing

I've been cooking up something like this for my own game, where one character is looking to pick up some strong medical abilities. Since I've allowed other cinematic advantages, like Gunslinger, Gadgeteer, and so forth, this is what I cooked up to try to be on the same level.

Medical Miracle-Worker
30 points


You're an incredible healer, capable of the sort of feats that make people declare "I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it with my own eyes!". You receive the following benefits when using skills to heal. Usually, this involves Diagnosis, First Aid, Physician, and Surgery, but other skills can benefit, if they are being used to heal - for example, a starship doctor trying to use Masonry to perform some field-expedient surgery on a silicone-based rock lifeform would be able to take advantage.

Universal Healer: You can determine the problems and at least attempt gross repair on all sorts of life, no matter how strange. When using Diagnosis, First Aid, or Surgery, you halve any applicable physiology penalties (p. B181). If a creature is so far from normal biology that normal medical skills wouldn't apply at all (energy beings, or spirits, for example), you can still try, albeit at -10.

Field-Expedient: You can make do with what you have. When suffering penalties for lacking appropriate tools, you only take -5 for no tools, or -2 for improvised tools.

Fast Fingers: For any medical task where haste penalties can be taken (p. B346), you can do things very quickly. If you take -10 on your roll, a task can be completely instantly. What this means depends on how long the task would take if you took -9 on the roll (i.e., reduced it to 10% of normal time). If this would be 10 minutes or less, the task really is instant - it takes only a second to perform, and can even, with an appropriate roll against something like Fast Draw (medical equipment) even be performed as a free action. If the task would take between 10 minutes and an hour after the time reduction, it instead takes 1dX10 seconds. If it would take between an hour and 8 hours, you can perform it in 1d minutes. And if it would take longer than 8 hours after applying the time reduction, you can perform it in only 30 minutes.

Medical Inventor: When attempting to create palliatives, antidotes, cures, and other medical innovations, use the penalties for inventions listed under Gadgeteering, rather than the normal invention penalties for complexity. When dealing with disease treatments, assume that a palliative that suppresses major symptoms but doesn't stop the course of a disease, or a suppressant that prevents the exposed from developing symptoms (but doesn't stop them being infected) is Average, a vaccine that blocks initial infection is Complex, and a cure that reverses the course of a disease and lets the victim recover is Amazing.

Effective Healer: When you roll to see how many HP you restore with First Aid, you always restore a minimum of 3, or 4 at TL 9+. When you provide long-term care, a patient under your care recovers twice as many HP, whether from their own HT rolls or the ones recovered when you roll Physician.

Medical Techniques: You reduce the default penalty to attempt certain cinematic techniques, such as Instant Revival, and you can spend points to buy off the penalty for all medical techniques noted as cinematic.

Medical Techniques

Instant Revival
Hard

Default: Prerequisite skill-5.
Prerequisite Skill: First Aid or Physician.

This represents the knack for getting someone back on their feet quickly, patching their wounds just long enough to get them somewhere where they can be more properly healed. Of course, incautious sorts will probably use the time you've given them to just do more damage, but there's only so much a doctor can do.

This technique can be used on someone who's suffered physical stun, crippling injury (but not dismemberment), or reduction in HP to below 1/3rd their maximum. It requires 1d seconds of treatment with appropriate tools. If you succeed, your patient may ignore one of the listed conditions and function as if it were not affecting them - someone reduced to 1 HP would not halve their Move or Dodge, for instance. However, these conditions are not removed, merely ignored. At the end of combat, their effects return. Additionally, the patient suffers a -2 to their HT roll to determine the duration of any crippling injury treated this way, as using it typically exacerbates any underlying injury.

More serious conditions can be effectively treated as well, with a larger penalty: you roll at an additional -5 to treat unconsciousness or being below 0 HP, and an additional -5 for every full multiple of HP the patient is below 0. These penalties are halved (rounding down, towards a smaller penalty) by Medical Miracle-Worker, but only the initial -5 for the technique can be bought off.

Quick Procedure
Hard
Default: Prerequisite skill
Prerequisite Skill: Any medical skill, cannot exceed prerequisite skill+5.

This technique represents practice in doing a particular medical procedure hastily. Each procedure is its own technique. The GM decides what constitutes a procedure, but in general, it should cover a single relatively broad task and a body part, such as "surgery to remove foreign objects from the torso" or a specific disease or ailment that affects the whole body, like "esoteric medicine to prevent transformation into a vampire". When performing the relevant procedure, and taking haste penalties, apply the haste penalties against your level in the technique, and roll against the lower of the resulting level or your normal skill. This does stack with the Efficient perk.

A Medical Miracle-Worker or similarly cinematic healer can buy the technique up to the prerequisite skill+10, rather than +5.
Kelly Pedersen is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2019, 05:17 AM   #7
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default Re: Cinematic Healing

Regeneration (Regular) heals around the amount that the OP desires and is only 25 CP. It is possible to make it into an affordable gadget through the limitations of Breakable and Can Be Stolen. With DR 2, Unrepairable, SM-8, and Can Be Stolen through Stealth or Trickery, you end up with a 10 CP gadget (probably a mystical amulet or nanobot hive) that gives the ability and can be hidden beneath clothing or armor.
AlexanderHowl is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2019, 07:03 AM   #8
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: Cinematic Healing

I don't see any reason why healing four times faster than normal is inferior to any of the suggestions above. Its a setting switch, and its not inappropriate for action heroes that go in and out of the hospital.



As a note, 1/4th of a day is 6 hours, not 4.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2019, 07:15 AM   #9
Nereidalbel
 
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
Default Re: Cinematic Healing

If ridiculously fast healing applies to the entire world, you just call it a setting switch and roll HT for healing every 6 hours instead of once per day, and increase the dice rolled for First Aid to allow that to get people back into a fight at Hollywood speed.

If it only applies to the "important" characters in the world, everybody gets some level of Regeneration.
Nereidalbel is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-18-2019, 10:13 AM   #10
evileeyore
Banned
 
evileeyore's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
Default Re: Cinematic Healing

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nereidalbel View Post
If it only applies to the "important" characters in the world, everybody gets some level of Regeneration.
Nah, it's still a setting switch, just one that only PCs enjoy.


For instance when I run a game and use Impulse Points, I don't give every single NPC Impulse Points, only the PCs and important NPCs.
evileeyore is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
cinematic rules, healing

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 11:03 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.