Heal and Disease

[Russ Taylor]

Observed during Crimson Thorne playtesting:

The Heal check takes a lot of fear out of disease in either edition. A fairly simple check takes the risk of a failed save out of a disease, several such checks and you are cured.

Suggestions to address this:
* Only Fortitude saves should count for shaking off a disease. If the patient fails their save but the Heal check is successful, the disease does not advance, but the patient doesn't recover. This keeps in the potential for a patient being under care for some time, making disease relevant.

* Heal should be at a subsantial penalty for disease treament if you aren't under long-term care. At 10 minutes per check, a single healer could treat dozens in a day, which makes most diseases less than scary with even untrainedh Heal checks. I'd say -5 to the Heal check for 10 minute treatment, full value for the 8 hour long term care (which still allows treating 6 patients at a time, a pretty heavy workload).

[tasslehoff220]

Russ Taylor wrote:

Observed during Crimson Thorne playtesting:

The Heal check takes a lot of fear out of disease in either edition. A fairly simple check takes the risk of a failed save out of a disease, several such checks and you are cured.

Suggestions to address this:
* Only Fortitude saves should count for shaking off a disease. If the patient fails their save but the Heal check is successful, the disease does not advance, but the patient doesn't recover. This keeps in the potential for a patient being under care for some time, making disease relevant.

* Heal should be at a subsantial penalty for disease treament if you aren't under long-term care. At 10 minutes per check, a single healer could treat dozens in a day, which makes most diseases less than scary with even untrainedh Heal checks. I'd say -5 to the Heal check for 10 minute treatment, full value for the 8 hour long term care (which still allows treating 6 patients at a time, a pretty heavy workload).

I see your point but I disagree. 10 minutes seems right to me. Also, I have found that heal is already a weak and underused skill in any group with access to magical healing. I want to encourage not discourage my PCs from using it.