Healing College - Healing yourself penalty?

[Dreadbane]

Originally Posted by SID

Some adjustments apply to healing when you have high HP: "Multiply HP healed by 2 at 20-29 HP, by 3 at 30-39 HP" etc. To keep the proportion between HP and skill level, I also adjust healing oneself penalties: “for the calculation of the penalty, divide HP lost by 2 at 20-29 HP, by 3 at 30-39 HP” etc. The dragon with 70/100 HP has a penalty of (30/10) = -3 when healing itself.

I'm thinking something about: -1 when injured until 3/4 HP, -2 until HP/2, -3 until 1/3 HP and -4 until 0 HP. And perhaps -1 for each multiple below zero. I may be mistaken, but I really don't recall GURPS applying penalties much greater than 10, and even -10 is regarded as "Impossible" ("No sane person would attempt such task", according to campaigns).

But for a normal human, with 10 HP, at 0 HP, -10 is what he gets to heal himself. For me this is clearly out of proportion. And having to rely on "heal yourself first with another method" don't correct the fact that the penalty is heavy handed at the first place. Just for comparison, a first aid with leaves and mud is at -5, and a surgery at TL 2/3 with improvised equipment is -10. Something is wrong when a healing spell, cast by a healer not injured to the point of risk of death, is in the same difficulty level that performing surgery in a campfire with a knife at the dark ages.

[swampthing]

Originally Posted by Dreadbane

But for a normal human, with 10 HP, at 0 HP, -10 is what he gets to heal himself. For me this is clearly out of proportion.

Someone at 0 HP has arguably got bigger problems, of the lucky-to-be-conscious-for-long variety. It's not like 10 HP isn't a lot, at least at human scale.

[Dreadbane]

Originally Posted by swampthing

Someone at 0 HP has arguably got bigger problems, of the lucky-to-be-conscious-for-long variety. It's not like 10 HP isn't a lot, at least at human scale.

I just talked about 0 HP for the ordinary human with 10 in all. But increase his total HP to 11 and now he is at 1, still at -10 to cast and at no risk to collapse. The conundrum remains.

[SID]

Move and attack has a penalty of -4 to skill but the adjusted skill cannot exceed 9. Healing oneself could work just the same, the trade-off looks balanced.

[Keampe]

Personally, I'd just drop it. If the same modifier applied to all spells or to all healing spells I'd be tempted to keep it, but it doesn't. Just the one case of a wounded mage healing themselves.

Seems punitive and doesn't really add much for balance IMO.

I might - might - cap it at -4 like shock, though, if people at my table thought it a good idea. My vote, however, would be to drop this rule.

- Shane

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Inky

And they say GURPS is more complicated than D&D.

Do “they,” really, much, these days? Audibly?

If so, I imagine that “they” are mostly people who started out playing D&D and haven’t played many other games at all. Many people seem to define every game except their first one as “complicated”, by which they actually mean “too much work to switch to when I’ve invested so much in this one that works okay”. And of course, D&D is most people’s first game.

But those people aside, excess complexity is a charge I mostly seem to see aimed at GURPS by fans of highly focussed minimalist games. Not the F20 fanbase.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Do “they,” really, much, these days?e.

No, they don't talk about Gurps much at all. My offers to do something with Gurps get little response.

They do complain about complexity but theri answer to that seems to be either OSR games or new and "simple" games (Shadow of the Demon Lord, Symbaroum) which everyone actually seems to get bored with in about 6 sessions.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

No, they don't talk about Gurps much at all. My offers to do something with Gurps get little response.

They do complain about complexity but theri answer to that seems to be either OSR games or new and "simple" games (Shadow of the Demon Lord, Symbaroum) which everyone actually seems to get bored with in about 6 sessions.

A lot of those games are designed with a 6-10 session campaign arc in mind, with no support for anything longer. I assume you're supposed to go and buy another game after that (and again after that).

[Inky]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Do “they,” really, much, these days? Audibly?

Well, nah, actually, what they (as in players of other RPGs or free-form roleplaying things) usually say when I mention it is "What's a gurps?"
I don't remember running into anyone who already knew what GURPS was recently, so I couldn't say whether the "everyone thinks GURPS is a scary advanced maths game" problem still exists or not.