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Healing spells should wake characters up and make them conscious.
1) If a character gets dropped, the party is probably in trouble. They need that PC back in action or you’re going to get a TPK.
2) Players hate when their PCs are CCed (crowd controlled), whether that’s through fear, charm person, sleep, or other spells. By forcing them to make a Recovery Fortitude save to wake up, even when someone healed them, you are keeping them from playing them game, which is the same reason they hate CC.
3) I hope one of the goals in PF2 is to be backward compatible so that PF1 players can easily adapt to the new game.
4) Even if you wake up from a healing spell, you still have the Dying condition, so there is still plenty of danger. Plus you’ve been knocked prone and lose an action to recovery. It’s already severe enough.
Using a hero point to automatically recover (Heroic Recovery) should also wake the character up. It’s that movie effect where you think the hero is down, they close their eyes, and then they wake up with that big gasp of air, ready to fight again…
You should still need to roll recovery saving throws if waking up naturally or through the Medicine skill of course.
When you are knocked out, you shouldn’t drop what’s in your hands. Mechanically, it’s too severe when waking up to lose 1 action on recovery, 1 action to pickup one weapon, and another action to stand up, your entire turn is gone! Again, you’re CCed and not back in the game, someone spent their turn healing you with no benefit, it’s too severe of a penalty, and you stand a very good chance of going down again, this time for good. Also in real life, it’s been shown before that when you die or get knocked unconscious, very often you have a death grip on your gun or weapon, so why doesn’t it work the same way?
By the way, I’ve had lots of experience with this mechanic since almost every combat knocks at least 1 PC out, sometimes more.
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And... this mechanic came into effect again last night.
Even when healed, one of the PCs still couldn't wake up after 2 turns and then spent another turn standing up, recovering, and picking up her weapon. 3 rounds of not being able to do anything. Not fun.
Hero points were already spent, so no Heroic Recovery was possible.
CC took me out of the boss fit at the end of the second book of Mummy's Mask (Tuesday before PF2 became available). I can attest to how awful it is.
"You're Panicked for ~6 rounds."
I was the flying, tanking, brawler....and useless. The rest of the party took 4 rounds to finish the fight, during which time I didn't really pay any attention beyond ticking off rounds of buff/debuff that I'd been effected with/had created.
Talk about anti-climatic.
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You’d still have the dying co diction, but a failure on your recovery save does nothing.
Coming from the “Hey, get up.” healing work of 5e, I’m happy to see this change. And that was with houseruked +1 Exhaustion for being knocked out and getting back up.
In D&D 5E, a PC can be knocked out and in the same round:
- They don't suffer any change in initiative.- A healer can heal them at a significant range (60'?) as a bonus action. Basically, a free heal that doesn't cost any actions, with no risk to the healer.
- The downed PC doesn't suffer any penalty or incur any risk. There is no Dying condition. There is no recovery action.
In 5E, the PC immediately hops back to their feat like nothing happened, they don't even miss a turn.
In PF2, I just finished telling you a PC in my playtest was out for 3 rounds. This doesn't even factor in the change of their initiative! In an RPG, that's a long time, and not fun for the player.
I'm looking for a solution that is somewhere between the two.
I will point out that every session you will have at least 1 hero point, so you can get rid of the dying condition and get back up right away anytime you need it.
No, that's one of the things I want changed, Heroic Recovery does NOT help you regain consciousness. If you were already healed, Heroic Recovery does nothing for you.
Heroic Recovery
You can spend 1 Hero Point (see page 300) to lose the
dying condition and return to 1 Hit Point (if you are at 0
Hit Points) no matter how close to death you are.
The Recovery save is like 50/50. The Buber of times someone will be unconscious for three whole rounds after being healed or heroic is pretty slim.
If recovery is 50/50, on average it takes 2 rolls to succeed. Two rounds of doing nothing is still a long time.
The chance of it taking 3 rounds (2 failed rounds and one to standup etc) is (0.5*0.5) 25%. It's not uncommon at all. Which is exactly what I'm saying, it's too much imo.
I still regret not having time to read the entire rulebook. What page is the "you don't wake up when healed rule on"?
I still regret not having time to read the entire rulebook. What page is the "you don't wake up when healed rule on"?
On page 295. Healing spells increase your hp, there is nothing to say you regain consciousness. You are at positive hp and still unconscious, you still need to make the recovery saving throw to regain consciousness.
Recovery Save Effects
If you are at 1 Hit Point or more:
Success You become conscious and can take your turn normally, although you lose 1 action this turn (so in most cases, you can take only 2 actions). You still have the dying condition.
The Recovery save is like 50/50. The Buber of times someone will be unconscious for three whole rounds after being healed or heroic is pretty slim.If recovery is 50/50, on average it takes 2 rolls to succeed. Two rounds of doing nothing is still a long time.
That's just the recovery of the dying condition. You're then in for another 50/50 to regain consciousness!
Also note that if you're fighting the boss, your odds aren't 50-50: You aren't trying to high-roll low-roll here, you need to beat the class DC of whatever it was that knocked you out!
Sure, against an enemy of equal level that'll be around 45% to 55%, but against a boss 2 levels above you? Now its closer to 35%!
Sure, against an enemy of equal level that'll be around 45% to 55%, but against a boss 2 levels above you? Now its closer to 35%!
Yes, you're right. When I wrote that, it was against a level 0 creature. Against a boss in playtest it's been as low as 25%.
So if you get knocked out against a boss, even though you are healed, it takes an average of 4 rounds to regain consciousness and get back into the fight.
There's no sense in talking about it however, it looks like they changed the death and dying rules.
The one other thing I hope they address in death and dying is non-lethal damage.
I dislike that when I knock someone out with non-lethal, that they can get right back up the next round. If they wake up naturally, it seems like there should be a 1 minute wait period, or something of the sort. There's isn't even a Dying condition associated with it, so they can keep waking up and getting KOed with no recourse.
The other rule that should be changed is making non-lethal attacks with lethal weapons, you're considered untrained with the weapon. The problems are:
1) Legendary fighters are more penalized than someone untrained.
2) Untrained PCs are not penalized at all.
It should just be a flat and easy -2 to hit if you want to do non-lethal, just like it was in PF1. It's simple and easy and works.
As GM I appreciated the Death and Dying rules. By removing the yo-yo effect it means enemies do not have a a strong incentive to kill downed characters. It felt far more organic.
However we did did have two moments where the alchemist had to not throw a bomb in order to avoid taking an ally from dying 2 to 3 due to splash damage. (during the lost star).
However we did did have two moments where the alchemist had to not throw a bomb in order to avoid taking an ally from dying 2 to 3 due to splash damage. (during the lost star).
Our group had the alchemist delay to let the other fighter get in and pull the unconscious guy away.
Hilariously that led to an AoO and he also went down.
Draco: As most creatures don't have AoO anymore, the act of rescuing a downed ally should normally be much less risky. Unfortunate that your poor fighter ran into creatures that could take advantage of his heroic act. Had it only been goblins or an ogre or orc brutes, he wouldn't have been so unlucky.
Oh, we're well aware.