Treat Wounds - A proposal to adjust it...

[HWalsh]

Okay, I'll preface this with the following disclaimer:

I do not want the game to have an easy way to heal up to full after each and every fight. I feel that allowing that option makes every fight, if it is to be of any actual challenging value, to be legitimately potentially lethal. I think in PF1, one of the things that ruined most of PFS for me as a player was the CLW Wand that made any kind of HP damage that was less than lethal virtually inconsequential.

I do feel that players in PF2 should be ready to go into battle at 70% HP and should plan on not always being at maximum health.

That having been been said...

The current Treat Wounds has utterly ruined one of my PF2 games. Literally the party insists on standing around for 40, 50, and 60 minutes of in-game time to heal up to full and instantly freaks out if they can't.

Note, that these same players have handled all of my content so far without any problems what so ever. The game difficulty has been fine. No, instead I blame Treat Wounds fully for this new development.

So here is my proposal to adjust it:

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TREAT WOUNDS
Requirements: You must use healer’s tools (see page 186).

You spend 10 minutes treating up to 6 injured living creatures (targeting yourself as one of them, if you so choose), then attempt a Medicine check. The DC is usually the medium DC for your level, though the GM might adjust this DC due to circumstances, such as trying to rest during volatile weather or when treating magically cursed wounds.

A given creature can be subject to only one Treat Wounds attempt per hour, so two characters can’t treat the same target’s wounds simultaneously.

Success You treat the patients’ wounds. Each patient recovers Hit Points equal to 1/2 its total HP (rounded down).

Critical Success Heal 100% of the target's total HP.

Critical Failure The patients are bolstered against your Treat Wounds.

Note: Once a creature has benefited from one use of Treat Wounds in a 24 hour period they may not benefit from another use of treat wounds if they have equal to, or greater than, 50% of their total HP (rounded down). If damage is inflicted willingly, and knowingly, toward a player character specifically to lower their health to below 50% of their total HP for the purposes of using Treat Wounds that character is automatically bolstered against treat wounds for 24 hours.

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What this accomplishes -

1. It stops players from rolling over and over and over and over again. One and done and then move on.

2. It stops players from entering every fight at full HP.

[The Once and Future Kai]

Thematically - I'd prefer some kind of weird overly complicated method that replaced lost HP with temp HP (well, that or rituals). But, mechanically, I like the solution that you've proposed. I think it cuts to the chase and I like how you've considered weird behavior like self injury.

[Zman0]

I too am not a fan of Treat Wounds as written for many of the reasons you have listed.

Here is my solution, it also functions as a gritty realism mod.

Treat Wounds: Only affects 1 target in 10 minutes. Creature can only be affected once per hour. Heal is Con mod x level or 3 x level, whichever is higher.

I also changed Hero Points, characters now receive two after finishing a long rest. Each options only costs one. Heroic Recovery gets them up at 1hp, and stops them from gaining or increasing the wounded condition. They also have a Heroic Resolve option that takes a minute outside of combat, it allows them to heal half their HP.

This is where the gritty realism comes in.

Treat Wounds no longer removes the wounded condition, wounded is reduced by one after a long rest with a successful fort save.

Essentially, my solution allows for a heroic version of healing where the heroes can take a couple of deep breaths, recover a big chunk of hp(at a cost of other heroics including Heroic Recovery) and get back in the fight. Treat Wounds lets them top off after combats for the day, or a moderate amount with little cost ie the whole party take a 10min break, and each gets a decent chance to heal 3xlevel or more hp. Getting dropped is scary because it results in a lasting injury. Getting really hurt means you might be feeling that nearly lethal wound for a day or more. Even if you are wounded, you can still function to full affect, just with added fear of being dropped again.

IMO, it just fills all the needed pieces of the healing puzzle, and also fills the vermisillitude realism niche I'm looking for.

[Jason S]

HWalsh wrote:

1. It stops players from rolling over and over and over and over again. One and done and then move on.

I'm most interested in this but will playtest it first.

[Matthew Downie]

HWalsh wrote:

Once a creature has benefited from one use of Treat Wounds in a 24 hour period they may not benefit from another use of treat wounds if they have equal to, or greater than, 50% of their total HP (rounded down). If damage is inflicted willingly, and knowingly, toward a player character specifically to lower their health to below 50% of their total HP for the purposes of using Treat Wounds that character is automatically bolstered against treat wounds for 24 hours.

It's far better to be at 49% HP than 51% HP in your system. By forbidding players to take advantage of this glitch, you're only encouraging them to try to get extra injuries in combat and make it look like an accident.

Maybe it should be something like, "After the first time you are healed by Treat Wounds in a day, further uses of Treat Wounds cannot bring you above 50% of maximum HP."

[NorthernDruid]

I like the idea of mundane HP recovery being capped in some way.

If there was a quick way of tracking "fresh" damage it could work better, then you could just set a limit for how high you can go. Basically, if taking damage temporarily lowered your max HP, possibly even requiring more powerful healing (or just different kinds of magic healing even) to recover.

In a way, that's what I like about the various system tweaks that split up the hit points abstraction (like Starfinder and the vigor optional rules from ultimate combat) into actual wounds and battle fatigue/stress. If the buffer is right, and actual wounds are hard enough to recover, then encounters can be harmful without being severely limiting or severely lethal.

[Ascalaphus]

@HWalsh: I like the general thrust of your idea, although I think you get mired in restrictions when you try to prevent gaming it.

Maybe more simple:

TREAT WOUNDS
Requirements: You must use healer’s tools (see page 186).

You spend 10 minutes treating up to 6 injured living creatures (targeting yourself as one of them, if you so choose), then attempt a Medicine check individually for each creature. The DC is usually the medium DC for your level, though the GM might adjust this DC due to circumstances, such as trying to rest during volatile weather or when treating magically cursed wounds.

Once a creature has been treated this way, it is bolstered against Treat Wounds until it takes a full rest or until it faces another (nontrivial) encounter with enemies or damaging trap/hazard.

Success You treat the patient's wounds. The patient recovers Hit Points equal to 1/2 its total HP (rounded down).

Critical Success Heal 100% of the target's total HP.

Critical Failure The patients are bolstered against your Treat Wounds.

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I think Pathfinder is so obsessed with "objective" time measures such as minutes and hours, while actually it wants to regulate things by "dramatic" time units such as "no more than once after each encounter".

The variant I'm proposing makes healing a little less hit or miss; you don't risk not healing the whole party on a single bad roll, or ending the adventuring day by rolling a 1. Medium DC is not a guaranteed success by any means, so generally not everyone is healing up after every fight.

It also means that facing another encounter - even one in which you hang back and don't take damage - is an opportunity for another Treat Wounds instead of having to spend resources. This creates more incentive for groups to press on but rotate their formations because someone needs a breather. On the other hand, if someone doesn't feel comfortable going into a fight wounded, they can expend actual healing resources to top up.

It does mean that you can get another shot at treating damage that isn't "fresh" anymore; I don't see that as a problem. You had to risk going into a fight with less than full HP for that. A hardened adventurer might overcome this morning's bruises by the afternoon after a couple more invigorating brawls.

[Matthew Downie]

Ascalaphus wrote:

Once a creature has been treated this way, it is bolstered against Treat Wounds until it takes a full rest or until it faces another (nontrivial) encounter with enemies or damaging trap/hazard.

"Nontrivial encounter" is a bit ambiguous for an important rule. If I talk an enemy out of attacking us, is that an encounter? If I talk a friendly NPC into attacking us, is that an encounter? If I go back to a trap I identified and avoided earlier and disarm it, is that an encounter?

[Igor Horvat]

Or even simpler:

Treat wounds, 10min action, DC 10

Heal target for your level × it's con mod(min heal equal to your level)

Every time the target gets healed between rests raise the DC by 5.

Crit succ; treat targets con mod as one higher(min heal eqauls twice your level)

Crit failure; no heal and DC is raised by 5 for aditional Treat wounds.

[Matthew Downie]

The only issue I see there is players trying again and again in the hope of getting a natural 20.

[tim hyde 706]

Having given it more thought over the last couple of days I have to say im not a fan of treat wounds being able to cure ALL hp damage in a relatively short period of time, and certainly not 1/2 or ALL HP damage on a single skill check as mentioned above. That approach would do much to make magical healing irrelevant.

I think I prefer this version
TREAT WOUNDS
Requirements: You must use healer’s tools (see page 186).

You spend 10 minutes treating A living creatures ( you may targeting yourself, if you so choose), then attempt a Medicine check individually for each creature. The DC is usually the medium DC for your level, though the GM might adjust this DC due to circumstances, such as trying to rest during volatile weather or when treating magically cursed wounds.

Each successive use of treat wounds on a single creature increases the DC by 1

Success You treat the patients’ wounds. Each patient recovers Hit Points equal to its Constitution modifer × your level or equal to just your level, whichever is higher.

Critical Success As success, but increase the healing by your level ×3.

Critical Failure The patients are bolstered against your Treat Wounds.

You may NOT heal a creature to more than 1/2 its total hitpoints in this way.

[WhiteMagus2000]

Funny, over on the other treat wound thread, the general feeling is that treat wounds is too weak. Guess paizo isn't going to be able to please everyone.