| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Long-Term Care: Providing long-term care means treating a wounded person for a day or more. If your Heal check is successful, the patient recovers hit points or ability score points lost to ability damage at twice the normal rate: 2 hit points per level for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 4 hit points per level for each full day of complete rest; 2 ability score points for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 4 ability score points for each full day of complete rest.You can tend to as many as six patients at a time. You need a few items and supplies (bandages, salves, and so on) that are easy to come by in settled lands. Giving long-term care counts as light activity for the healer. You cannot give long-term care to yourself.
Action: Providing first aid, treating a wound, or treating poison is a standard action. Treating a disease or tending a creature wounded by a spike growth or spike stones spell takes 10 minutes of work. Treating deadly wounds takes 1 hour of work. Providing long-term care requires 8 hours of light activity.
Unless otherwise noted, damage to your ability scores is healed at the rate of 1 per day to each ability score that has been damaged.
As ability score damage heals at a rate of 1 point per day, a drug that causes 1 point of ability score damage remains in a character's system for 1 day, though some might cause greater damage and thus remain active for longer.
Anytime a character takes a drug he must make a saving throw, noted in the drug's description, to resist becoming addicted. If a character makes the save, he is not addicted and the effects of the drug persist as normal. If he fails the save, he contracts the noted form of addiction (see below). Should a character take multiple doses of the same drug in a short period of time addiction becomes more difficult to resist. The DC of a drug's saving throw increases by +2 every time a character takes a another dose of that drug while still suffering from ability damage caused by a previous dose. Keep track of how high this DC rises, even for characters already addicted to a drug, as it determines the DC necessary to overcome the disease.
The primary problem here is that a day is defined under ACTIONS in the Heal skill as 8 hours (which is shorter than any day I've ever heard of). And a day is suggested to be more akin to 24 hours in the Drug rules.
But let's go back to basics:
Ability damage: Healed 1 point per day
Drug ability damage: Healed at 1 point per day
Long-term healing: May be adminstered by treating a patient for 1 day or more
Proving Long-term healing action: Requires 8 hours of light activity
Long-term healing ability score of 2 points: Requires 8 hours of rest in a day
Long-term healing ability score of 4 points: Requires a full day of complete rest
So if I understand this correctly....
1. Patient action: Stays up 24 hours. Healer action: Nothing
Patient Result: Heals 1 point of ability points @ 24 hours
2. Patient action: Regular day and sleeps 8 hours. Healer action: Nothing
Patient Result: Heals 1 point of ability points @ 24 hours
3. Patient action: Regular day and sleeps 8 hours. Healer action: LTC (8 hours of light activity)
Patient Result: Heals 2 points of ability points @ 24 hours
4. Patient action: Complete rest during day and sleeps 8 hours. Healer action: LTC (8 hours of light activity)
Patient Result: Heals 4 points of ability points @ 24 hours.
I know that people who have been playing this game for decades as I have, probably as I have rewarded damage recovery (hp and later editions ability point damage) after 8 hours of rest. But given the rules as written for long-term care, ability damage, and drug (plus addition rules not included here) seem to suggest that at least ability damage must be recovered on a 24 hour schedule instead of an 8 hour schedule.
Yes, if you adventure for 16 hours and then stay up all night providing long term care, then you get no sleep and follow the fatigue rules.
But if you adventure for 8 hours and camp for 16 hours, you can provide long term care for 8 hours and still sleep for 8 hours, so no fatigue.
And if you can find a safe enough place to provide a full day of recovery, you still only need 8 hours of activity to provide long term care, so you have plenty of time to rest too.
Just remember that they need complete rest for the 8 hours, or for the full day, in order for this to work. So if they have to stand watches while you provide long term care, they won't get the benefit. So hopefully you have some party members who didn't lose ability score points to stand watch.
The short of it is that the Heal Skill is not a particularly effective way to handle damage of either the ability point or health point variety. A cleric of sufficient level can spend one days spell alotment to help the party along and it will take him less than 10 minutes to do so (after he can prepare spells).
Yes, if you adventure for 16 hours and then stay up all night providing long term care, then you get no sleep and follow the fatigue rules.
True, but if you adventure for 16 hours you'll be making forced march checks for the last 8, so this will be a rare occurrence. 8 hour adventure days are the norm.
Just remember that they need complete rest for the 8 hours, or for the full day, in order for this to work. So if they have to stand watches while you provide long term care, they won't get the benefit. So hopefully you have some party members who didn't lose ability score points to stand watch.
They can still stand watch, they just have to take either first or last watch. Technically, they can even take watch in the middle, as long as nothing happens during their watch, and still recover Hp.
I am a healer in the party and we had an encounter where most of the party took a lot of ability damage. If I use a heal check to provide long term care to the party do I have to be not adventuring?If we are adventuring and I provide long term care to the party while we camp will I be fatigued, we couldn't find any thing about it.
are there existing rules we may have missed?
10 years later with rule book in my hand and I needed this.
I guess this is the right way to necro a post