Tuesday 21 April 2015

Wounds and Healing

Here are the rules about wounds and healing to go with the recent combat posts.

Effect of Incapacitation
If you're incapacitated then you die unless someone tends to you after the battle, but you don't need a healing skill to do this - anyone can stabilise you.
For purposes of healing, incapacitation counts as 5 wounds, but track these separately as you are incapacitated until all these 5 wounds have been patched or healed.

I was going to play that beating incapacitation by 10 means death, but this is approx 10% of incapacitations, and it seems a bit of an anticlimax, so it should probably be a survival roll. But this is a no-go area for my players, so I'm steering well clear of it. There was still a sense of danger as they dragged Flairin's unconcious body away from the Ice Golems who were advancing up the ice covered stairs towards them on Sunday night. Any advice welcome!

Effect of Wounds
In addition to giving your opponent a bonus in combat, wounds act as a penalty on all Athletic or Acrobatic activities (such as running speed, or climbing or swimming) and all saving throws (poison / spells).

Patching Wounds
At the end of a battle, someone with Healing skill may try and patch a wound (takes 1 minute, only one attempt by one person per wound). The target they need to roll to patch each wound is 10 + the number of wounds or patched wounds.

For example, a PC is wounded 4 times. The healer needs to roll 14+ for each of the 4 wounds. They roll 14, 10, 8, and 16, so two of the wounds are patched so the PC is now W2, P2. But if they are wounded again then they will need 15+ to be healed (as the patched wounds still count).

Healing Wounds
Wounds heal at the rate of one wound per day plus one patched wound per day. A healer can roll to patch a wound every day. Incapacitation wounds heal first.

I've gone with a healing skill, utilising magical properties of herbs (so this isn't medieval medicine), as a change from healing spells. The increasing difficulty works nicely in play - you can be badly wounded, patched up, and then be OK but dreading being wounded again.

Magical Healing
The only magical healing is Revive, which revives someone who is incapacitated (but they still have 5 wounds which can be healed by a healer).

The rule is that spells should never directly make a skill redundant, so no open locks spell.

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