What houseruled have you implemented to encourage non-magical healing?

[Ciaran Barnes]

What got me started on this was the the game's seeming reliance on wands for healing. Even though this was routine in 3/3.5, my group didn't fully join the trend until PF. It challenges my immersion, and feels pretty cheesey to me.

I was wondering what some GMs out there have put into their game to encourage non-magical healing. This is not so much a call for theories but what has actually been used, and if it seemed to work.

[Laurefindel]

You might know about Evil Lincoln's Strain/Injury rules. They work well around our table.

If your not familiar with them, hit points regenerate naturally in full quickly, except for "injury" damage, which does not regenerate naturally at all unless the Heal skill or magical healing is involved. Injury damage is provoked by critical hits, failed saves and "final blows".

Otherwise, I've played with several variations on the vitality/wounds rules as introduced in the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana and Pathfinder RPG's Ultimate Combat. Those can diminish the reliance on magical healing too. They have a heavier impact on the rest of the rules however, and increased the complexity of the game a bit.

[Keydan]

If my players don't do heal checks or at least verbally say they clean/cover their wounds, I retain the full right to give them some nasty infections or conditions.

[DonDuckie]

Keydan wrote:

If my players don't do heal checks or at least verbally say they clean/cover their wounds, I retain the full right to give them some nasty infections or conditions.

I'm with Keydan on this. Diseases are your friends in this.

I also allow for things like immediately donning filthy, bloodstained armor from a slain zombie to have an impact on social interactions.

Adventurers are a dirty bunch...

For healing: I have alchemical remedies for stopping bleeding and cleaning/sealing wounds (and pain killers) in addition to more historically inspired remedies/items (although my lack of knowledge of such makes me just call medical stuff). Mostly these things grant a bonus on heal checks and allow for greater effect.

[La'Vantis Tuen]

I allow time between adventures. This allows them to not worry about, I NEED HEALING NOW NOW NOW. They can hold up in an inn, tavern or library for a few days/weeks.

Also,

PRD - Heal Skill wrote:

Treat Deadly Wounds: When treating deadly wounds, you can restore hit points to a damaged creature. Treating deadly wounds restores 1 hit point per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount. A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day. You must expend two uses from a healer's kit to perform this task. You take a –2 penalty on your Heal skill check for each use from the healer's kit that you lack.

This is in the core rules. Though it DOES take 1 hour to do, you can rule that someone using Aid Another against a DC 15 or 20 reduces the time to 30 minutes instead of adding a +2 bonus to the skill check.

If you want a house rule to really quicken major injuries; add a Surgery optionto Heal. This'll take 8 hours of work (like crafting a magic item) and use up x GP in resources, but it heals a lot more damage. Maybe 5x or 10x character level?

[Balgin]

Remember back when a round consisted of ten segments in 1st edition? Back then people got attacks per segment (or technically an attack took something like 2 or 3 or more segments out of the round so multiple attacks were possible). The Cure Light Wounds spell had a casting time of five segments. Essentialy the person you were healing could get hit 5 times while you were casting the spell or, more importantly, you could get hit five times while you were casting it and if you did you lost the spell. No concentration or casting defensively back then.

In those days you didn't really cast healing spells in combat. You used them to fix people up afterwards. magic potions always had a 2d4 round onset period then too so using potions in combat was a gamble.

I've toyed with the notion of implimenting a similar house rule to discourage magical healing mid combat.

Another thing I've been considering is have the healing from rest be constitution based. When it's purely level based it punishes healthy people with lots of hit points. Healthy people heal slower while those with fewer hit points heal quicker. Some kind of healing rule to make the person's constitution modifier factor into it might help. Especially if I apply it to first aid and other medicinal & first aid healing but I haven't sat down and worked out any specifics yet.

[Laurefindel]

Ciaran Barnes wrote:

What got me started on this was the the game's seeming reliance on wands for healing.

Not a houserules about the use of the Heal skill per se, but if you want to take away the reliance on wands of CLW, you could charge gp for extra healing.

A wand of CLW (CL 1st) costs 750 gp for 50 charges of an average of 5.5 hp per use, or an average of 2.73 gp per hit point cure. Let's say 3gp to make nice round numbers.

Then you can have player spend this amount in exchange for insta-healing after a fight. You can even allow players to pre-pay their healing. This works better with the assumption that hp = plot immunity points rather than big bleeding gashes and broken bones.

For example, the players are spending a few days in town, eat well, drink some wine, sleep at the fancy inn and spend 3000 gp each; they have pre-purchased 100 hp of "healing" each.

Different fluff, same mechanical effect than spending 3000 gp on wands of CLW.

Alternatively, you can re-fluff wands of CLW as some other comfort food and drinks, armour repair kits, travel rations etc. spend a dose/glass/use for and extra 1d8+1 hp over a good night of sleep.

[Riuken]

Give every PC the Recuperation base mythic ability with 3 points of mythic power, and remove the "use of any class features" portion of the ability (italics).

Recuperation (Ex):

[At 3rd tier,] you are restored to full hit points after 8 hours of rest so long as you aren't dead. In addition, by expending one use of mythic power and resting for 1 hour, you regain a number of hit points equal to half your full hit points (up to a maximum of your full hit points) and regain the use of any class features that are limited to a certain number of uses per day (such as barbarian rage, bardic performance, spells per day, and so on). This rest is treated as 8 hours of sleep for such abilities. This rest doesn't refresh uses of mythic power or any [mythic] abilities that are limited to a number of times per day.

[Wildebob]

I second the idea of using Evil Lincoln's Strain/Injury variant. I love it.

And I think DonDuckie's idea of pain killers is really good for what hp represent. They're abstract. Just because the orc "hit" you with his greataxe, that doesn't actually mean he cut you open. If you treat cure x wounds spells like magical pain killers, that would explain how you could fight on despite getting beat up some in a fight. Of course, this is all for flavor. And it's assuming you're using the Strain/Injury variant to track injuries seperately.

[La'Vantis Tuen]

Sorry, I forgot to also second (so I guess 3rd now) the idea of Evil Lincoln's Strain/Injury variant. It does work well.

But I was just on the phone with a friend who reminded me of a PC who played an alchemist (someone with Craft Alchemy, not the class) who made a slave that took only 1 round to apply the Treat Deadly Wounds aspect of the Heal skill. You applied the salve and made a Heal check (with a +2 alchemical bonus). Use core rules as normal.

Only 1/24 hours, but certainly saved some bacon here and there!!!

-

To this effect, you could also make a feat, item, etc that double the amount healed from this effect (though it still only works 1 /24 hours. That's a great limiting factor).

[Remco Sommeling]

1) I have played in campaigns where damage up to half your hitpoints is considered non-lethal damage. IF a player comes over half his hitpoints it gets some real damage then non-magical healing is usually quite effective patching things up decently.

Also changes to the heal skill I have used:

2) Treat deadly wounds:

Dc 20 heal 1 hp per HD/lvl, +1 for every point that exceeds the DC.
You can treat wounds in 5 minutes of time by taking a -10 penalty.

3) Treat caltrop wounds and similar:

you can do it in 5 minutes if you exceed the check by 10 or more, if you exceed the check by 20 or more you can treat wounds in 1 minute.

4) Treat poison and dissease:

An additional +2 competence bonus on saves for every 5 points that the DC is exceeded.

[kyrt-ryder]

Step 1: dramatically improve 'rest healing.' I believe I allowed something like the character heals hit dice (so say a Fighter 5 Barb 2 would roll 5d10+2d12)+Con mod overnight, fully healed with complete bed rest or 8 hours of rest while being nursed by someone with the heal skill.

Step 2: Change Treat Deadly Wounds to heal a significant amount of damage (options range from 1/2 damage dealt in the most recent encounter, to the result of a heal check, to 1/4 the Healer's bonus to heal checks per hit dice of the patient) and reduce the time required for Treat Deadly Wounds to five minutes per patient. (Skill Focus Heal further reduces this to one minute per patient)

Step 3: Healer's Kits are not exhausted, and can be enhanced with Craft Wondrous Item in the same manner as a Cloak of Elvenkind, stacking an Enhancement bonus to the skill check ontop of the usual circumstance.

EDIT: on the subject of how well it worked, wand use dropped dramatically, becoming more of a fallback option carried by those who could use one 'just in case they lost their medic' rather than touching eachother with a happystick after every fight.

[Keydan]

Remembered 4 other ways I encourage the use of Heal skill:
1) One can quickly get a stabilized character to 0 hit points with a proper Heal check, saving up spells and potions.
2) Every time somebody goes deep into minus hitpoints, let them roll for a trauma, that could be treated with a good dose of heal checks.
3) Already mentioned disease, but really things like diarrhea, cold and such should be used more often [I can't believe I wrote that], and using Heal checks can grant you extra fortitude saves.
4) The sick maniacal torture via heal skill.

[Aratrok]

I'm implementing a few changes to the Heal skill. It's an Int based skill now (it's a knowledge and training based skill, not something intuitive), and uses the following rules for Treat Deadly Wounds (among other changes which aren't relevant to this discussion).

Treat Deadly Wounds wrote:

When treating deadly wounds, you can restore hit points to a damaged creature with a DC 15 Heal check. Treating deadly wounds restores 2 hit points per hit die the creature possesses. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Intelligence bonus to the amount of hit points you restore once for every 5 points your check exceeds the DC by. A creature can only benefit from its wounds being treated once every hour.

Time: 1 minute.

[Kelarith]

I usually allow for the Heal skill to attempt to make things like purgatives for poisons, and disease, or to attempt to stabilize. Recently I've used a system much like the Treat Deadly Wounds variant that's allowing for them to heal 2hp per die, but only up to half their hp.

[gamer-printer]

Wildebob wrote:

And I think DonDuckie's idea of pain killers is really good for what hp represent. They're abstract. Just because the orc "hit" you with his greataxe, that doesn't actually mean he cut you open. If you treat cure x wounds spells like magical pain killers, that would explain how you could fight on despite getting beat up some in a fight. Of course, this is all for flavor. And it's assuming you're using the Strain/Injury variant to track injuries seperately.

If you treat HP as abstract in your game, that's perfectly fine. However, in 30+ years of playing D&D, to myself and most of my players (who've also played the game for about as long). HPs are actual points of damage taken from the total your person has to lose. It isn't abstract, it's exact and specific. I see absolutely no good reason to treat injuries as abstract. Treating it as specific actual points of damage is much easier to manage, and heal on a point per point basis.

I can accept treating HP as abstract in anyone else's game - its a perfectly fine way to treat injuries. For my games, I cannot even wrap my head around the concept of damage being something else, so its not abstract in my games.