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Also, Real Realism in healing often includes variations on the phrase 'you'll never have full use of [body part] again, I'm afraid'. (Which is why I'm generally not a huge fan of games that try to do 'realistic' wounds - I'd rather not have my character face-down in a pool of their own blood on round one due to a bad roll, thanks.)
That takes me back to my Rolemaster days!
GM: "You take 15 hit points of damage, and the critical hit leaves you with a punctured spleen. Unless you receive a Restore Organ spell within the next five rounds, you're going to die. While you bleed out, you're stunned, prone, and defenseless. Any last words?"
Player: "Yes. I feebly raise my fist to the sky and curse the critical fumble table!"
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Also, Real Realism in healing often includes variations on the phrase 'you'll never have full use of [body part] again, I'm afraid'. (Which is why I'm generally not a huge fan of games that try to do 'realistic' wounds - I'd rather not have my character face-down in a pool of their own blood on round one due to a bad roll, thanks.)That takes me back to my Rolemaster days!
"You take 15 hit points of damage, and the critical hit leaves you with a punctured spleen. Unless you receive a Restore Organ spell within the next five rounds, you're going to die. While you bleed out, you're stunned, prone, and defenseless. Any last words?"
Thus the running joke in our brief RoleMaster days
GM - "You see a weasel ahead."
Players - "Run!"
Sounds about right to me!
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The first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has almost hilariously lethal combat (even the winning side of a normal skirmish has roughly even odds of having somebody lose a hand or an eye or something).
Conveniently, it was also something where there were almost no choices to make at character generation save for your character's name. You could roll on random tables for everything.
So there was one event for which I wrote a program that would randomly generate WFRP characters when I hit a button, and would export as printable documents. So I brought a laptop and a printer with me, and ran a game where a bunch of people of diverse backgrounds had been abducted and put aboard a ship for parts unknown, then the captives took over the ship, and (since none of them were soldiers) crashed it on some rocks nearby some unknown country.
So we ran the game, where every time a PC would be killed, or otherwise rendered incapable of adventuring anymore, I would hit the button, randomly generate a character, hit print and hand someone a character sheet for someone else who happened to be on the ship. I think we went through about 40 characters in a 5 hour session. This wasn't exactly fair (since the tunnel fighter had a much better odds of survival than the exciseman or student), but it was hilarious.
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I've been thinking some more about Meat Points vs Abstract HPs. How does this sound?
From Level 1 to Level 5, the hit points a character accrues are 100% Meat Points.
From Level 6 to Level 10, 50% of the hit points accrued are Meat, and 50% are intangible Awesomeness.
From Level 11 to Level 20, the accrued hit points are 100% Awesomeness.
Unavoidable environmental damage, like falling or immersion in lava, ignores Awesomeness Points and goes straight to Meat Points.
Non-lethal damage could be re-worked to count fully against Awesomeness Points, but apply half damage when the character reaches Meat Points.
(Edit: Come to think of it, this would be less confusing to me than the baseline Pathfinder application of non-lethal damage!)
Awesomeness Points could regenerate at the accelerated rate discussed up-thread, and Meat Points could regenerate at the normal Pathfinder rate.
Bardic healing could heal Awesomeness better than Meat, and non-magic healing could heal Meat better than Awesomeness.
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You could really start moving away from Pathfinder's 3.x roots by applying progressively worsening penalties to die rolls when characters run out of Awesomeness Points and start losing Meat Points.
75% to 51% of Meat Points remaining = -1 to all d20 rolls
50% to 26% of Meat Points remaining = -2 to all d20 rolls
25% to 0% of Meat Points remaining = -5 to all d20 rolls
0 Meat Points and below = Same as baseline Pathfinder
Applying several or all of these effects would increase bookkeeping, but it would avoid the "I'm fine. Still fine. Oops, I'm unconscious!" problem with abstract hit points.
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You could really start moving away from Pathfinder's 3.x roots by applying progressively worsening penalties to die rolls when characters run out of Awesomeness Points and start losing Meat Points.
75% to 51% of Meat Points remaining = -1 to all d20 rolls
50% to 26% of Meat Points remaining = -2 to all d20 rolls
25% to 0% of Meat Points remaining = -5 to all d20 rolls
0 Meat Points and below = Same as baseline PathfinderApplying several or all of these effects would increase bookkeeping, but it would avoid the "I'm fine. Still fine. Oops, I'm unconscious!" problem with abstract hit points.
It would. It also throws in a horrible death spiral, especially at low levels.
"I've been hit once, now I'm screwed."
Also true. I guess it's a matter of which bothers you more, people fighting like they haven't been touched until they suddenly drop, or low level characters being prone to death spirals.
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You have to be very careful in reducing a characters defensive abilities when they are already hurt, otherwise you get unavoidable deaths (since you were already doing bad, and now your doing worse) and suicidal characters (since they now can't succeed at running away, because their defenses are useless, they basically have no choice but to desperately hope for a 20 to kill the opponent), which are generally (at least to me) unfun
The Angry DM actually actually has an interesting article about this concept. We’ve Got Fighting Spirit, How About You?. Though in the end after reading it, I came to the conclusion that, while unrealistic, I have more fun with the everything's fine at 1HP default assumption, since I don't like spending my turns being useless and with no way to do anything useful to the group except die and free up a space on the map.
I agree. The "1 hit point = Fine, 0 hit points = Oops!" issue doesn't really bother me that much.
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However you feel about it, the first is how the game has been run and balanced (to the extent that it is), the second will be a drastic change.Also true. I guess it's a matter of which bothers you more, people fighting like they haven't been touched until they suddenly drop, or low level characters being prone to death spirals.You could really start moving away from Pathfinder's 3.x roots by applying progressively worsening penalties to die rolls when characters run out of Awesomeness Points and start losing Meat Points.
75% to 51% of Meat Points remaining = -1 to all d20 rolls
50% to 26% of Meat Points remaining = -2 to all d20 rolls
25% to 0% of Meat Points remaining = -5 to all d20 rolls
0 Meat Points and below = Same as baseline PathfinderApplying several or all of these effects would increase bookkeeping, but it would avoid the "I'm fine. Still fine. Oops, I'm unconscious!" problem with abstract hit points.
It would. It also throws in a horrible death spiral, especially at low levels.
"I've been hit once, now I'm screwed."
Yes, it would. That's why I described it as "moving away from Pathfinder's 3.x roots."
For the record, I'd be fine with dividing hit points into Meat and Awesomeness in a home game, but I wouldn't want to implement a radical death spiral mechanism at my table. It was just a thought experiment, not something I'm advocating.
Wouldn't it be easier to have static hit points and increasing ability to minimize the damage taken, that way it doesn't get wierd when you try to heal up that damage?
{. . .}
That line says that for creating those kinds of magic items you can't avoid to fulfill the spell requisite by increasing the craft DC by 5, but I was referring to another line that specifies that in order to fulfill a spell requirement you're not limited to using your own spell slots:
{. . .}Requirements: Certain requirements must be met in order for a character to create a magic item. These include feats, spells, and miscellaneous requirements such as level, alignment, and race or kind. The prerequisites for creation of an item are given immediately following the item's caster level.
A spell prerequisite may be provided by a character who has prepared the spell (or who knows the spell, in the case of a sorcerer or bard), or through the use of a spell completion or spell trigger magic item or a spell-like ability that produces the desired spell effect. For each day that passes in the creation process, the creator must expend one spell completion item or one charge from a spell trigger item if either of those objects is used to supply a prerequisite.
It is possible for more than one character to cooperate in the creation of an item, with each participant providing one or more of the prerequisites. In some cases, cooperation may even be necessary.
I wish they had put those lines adjacent or close to adjacent. Real easy to miss.
* * * * * * * *
ou could really start moving away from Pathfinder's 3.x roots by applying progressively worsening penalties to die rolls when characters run out of Awesomeness Points and start losing Meat Points.
75% to 51% of Meat Points remaining = -1 to all d20 rolls
50% to 26% of Meat Points remaining = -2 to all d20 rolls
25% to 0% of Meat Points remaining = -5 to all d20 rolls
0 Meat Points and below = Same as baseline PathfinderApplying several or all of these effects would increase bookkeeping, but it would avoid the "I'm fine. Still fine. Oops, I'm unconscious!" problem with abstract hit points.
Pathfinder Unchained introduced Wound Thresholds Optional Rules that do what you want.
There's also Ultimate Combat's Wounds and Vigor system
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I honestly still wish there was an alchemist who didn't have extracts but instead had a alchemical creation pool, and improved versions of things.
One of my big regrets about the otherwise cool-as-beans Alchemist class is that it has so little to do with Craft (alchemy) and the various staples of that craft (tanglefoot bags, alchemical fire, thunderstones, smoke sticks, etc.).
But yeah, some sort of daily 'craft pool' for skills like Craft (alchemy) or some sort of daily pool of poisons a poisoner could make, or a daily pool worth of 'phantom GP' worth of potions or scrolls a specialist craftsmage could make (only usable by self, although they can be cast on/used upon/administered to other people *by* you, and hence pretty much unsellable), would be pretty neat, and allow a rogue with that ability to have daily uses of poison that don't eat up her WBL, or a 'scroll-caster' to prepare a daily set of scrolls that only he can use, but don't sit around becoming increasingly irrelevant over weeks and months (since they fade and 'go back into the pool' daily).
This allows an 'alchemist' who makes extensive use of alchemical items like tanglefoot bags and alchemical fire (and hypothetical improved versions thereof) to not spend his career setting his WBL on fire and 'throwing money at people.' (When, with some enemies, he might have had better results just handing them a 50 gp. bribe, than trying to kill or incapacitate them with 50 gp. worth of alchemical glorp...)
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I agree. The "1 hit point = Fine, 0 hit points = Oops!" issue doesn't really bother me that much.
It annoys me when a monster is at 1 to 3 hp remaining, and delivers a breath weapon or claw/claw/rend routine that remains utterly brutally effective on my character.
But when my character is the one at 1 to 3 hp remaining, and needs to deliver a full attack action, or cast a spell, and can do so with no penalty despite having just had his legs ripped off and spleen removed and worn as a fancy hat by his attacker, I'm suddenly a fan of not-so-much-realism-thank-you-very-much. :)
Hypocrisy, it's good for the goose, *and* it's good for the gander!
Speaking of nonmagical healing, has anyone used the technology items and hemochem in particular? It is non-magical, but requires a medical lab to create and those are kinda hard to find.
The thing is, right now healing magic is just cheaper and accessible enough to most people so they do not need nonmagical healing. The pressure to innovate isn't there.
But, as has been stated, you can have non-mundane things that aren't technically magic - like a monk's ki healing (if that wasn't so feeble).
Or you can have 'strain' HP damage that isn't considered to be an actual injury, and therefore can realistically be shaken off by a tough martial.
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But, as has been stated, you can have non-mundane things that aren't technically magic - like a monk's ki healing (if that wasn't so feeble).
Ki Pool (Su)
At 4th level, a monk gains a pool of ki points, supernatural energy he can use to accomplish amazing feats.
Supernatural abilities are magical but not spell-like. Supernatural abilities are not subject to spell resistance and do not function in areas where magic is suppressed or negated (such as an antimagic field). A supernatural ability's effect cannot be dispelled and is not subject to counterspells.
OK, bad example. How about this?
Renewed Vigor (Ex)
Prerequisite: Barbarian 4
Benefit: As a standard action, the barbarian heals 1d8 points of damage + her Constitution modifier. For every four levels the barbarian has attained above 4th, this amount of damage healed increases by 1d8, to a maximum of 5d8 at 20th level.
Extraordinary abilities are non-magical.
How would people feel about an item like this:
Trollblood Bandages (alchemical item)
Applying these to a character takes three rounds and a DC 10 heal check (DC 15 to use them on yourself). The recipient receives Fast Healing 3 for one minute and is immune to bleed effects for ten minutes.
Cost: 100gp
Is this (a) sufficiently nonmagical, and (b) balanced for out-of-combat healing?
Or is it nonmagical in-combat healing that people want?
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Eh, that's severely underpriced, since at a flat 30hp it beats out a potion of cure serious wounds, which costs 750g. And then you get into the immune to bleed for 10 minutes...
We do have Troll Styptic though.
Eh, that's severely underpriced, since at a flat 30hp it beats out a potion of cure serious wounds, which costs 750g. And then you get into the immune to bleed for 10 minutes...
We do have Troll Styptic though.
As out of combat healing goes, cure serious wounds is hideously overpriced and is a bad metric.
As a better point of comparison, 30 HP is about the same as 6 CLW wand jabs, which costs 90GP worth of wand charges. Bleed is enough of a non-issue that it doesn't really add much, either. Based on that, it is arguably a little under-priced, but not by enough to matter. 100GP would be fine.
Troll Styptic has a per HP cost slightly worse than CLW potions. If you had to have a non-magical solution then it would work, but you would never take it over magical healing if you had a choice unless you were expecting to face piles upon piles of bleed effects for some reason.
clw wand is 1d8+1 the average roll for me is 3-5 +1 and you got to heal 20-35 points of health that's 8-11 charges and somewhere around 700 gp for the wand.
Wands of Cure Light Wounds are still good value (unless you've managed to assemble a group of PCs who can't use them). If you've taken 25 damage, five charges (75gp) will usually do the trick. You can do that ten times before having to buy a new one, by which time (in a game with standard loot) you'll have earned far more than the 750gp it cost.
Also, consumed consumables should be counteracted by the GM giving out more treasure.
I feel that non-magical healing should be a big deal, so I bashed together a bunch of house rules to set the right tone for my game.
I started with the Strain-Injury HP Variant. Which basically says most hp lose in combat is just the stress of avoiding getting hit, and healed in its entirety if you just stop to catch your breath for 5 minutes. Real injuries are reserved for things like Critical Hits, failed Saving Throws, and dropping to 0 HP. I went ahead an said Injuries must be healed through natural means or very powerful magic like Regenerate.
I've added/changed a whole bunch of other rules to fine tune health and healing to my tastes, but that should be should be enough to get the idea that I've adjusted the rules to make natural healing, medicine, and medical knowledge a big deal in my games without forcing my players to take weeks or months of downtime to recover after every fight.
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I feel that non-magical healing should be a big deal, so I bashed together a bunch of house rules to set the right tone for my game.
I started with the Strain-Injury HP Variant. Which basically says most hp lose in combat is just the stress of avoiding getting hit, and healed in its entirety if you just stop to catch your breath for 5 minutes. Real injuries are reserved for things like Critical Hits, failed Saving Throws, and dropping to 0 HP. I went ahead an said Injuries must be healed through natural means or very powerful magic like Regenerate.
I've added/changed a whole bunch of other rules to fine tune health and healing to my tastes, but that should be should be enough to get the idea that I've adjusted the rules to make natural healing, medicine, and medical knowledge a big deal in my games without forcing my players to take weeks or months of downtime to recover after every fight.
That sounds like a good way to adapt the Pathfinder rule set for a low-magic setting.
That sounds like a good way to adapt the Pathfinder rule set for a low-magic setting.
It is, but I did it for a high magic setting going through an industrial revolution. I needed a way to make medical advances in technology really matter.
I may also hate the idea of dedicated healer role in a party. This makes it far less required and still leaves it open for those players that actually like playing healers.
Wouldn't it be easier to have static hit points and increasing ability to minimize the damage taken, that way it doesn't get wierd when you try to heal up that damage?That's pretty much how every RPG that isn't a deliberate D&D derivative does it, but it's a pretty basic part of D&D's design.
I'm going to recommend the Radiance RPG. It starts you with your Wound points, as determined by your race. And... very little else ever changes that. As you level up, you get more and more Vitality points, which both take damage and fuel your special class abilities. So mage types and mundane types both have similar Vitality pools, but the Mage is using his to fire off all his spells, while the Mundane just keeps doing his normal thing, leaving his Vitality intact to weather incoming hits. But certain things (lava, falling damage, vorpal swords, etc) specifically go after your Wound points and remain dangerous no matter what level you're at.
It has a fair amount of steampunk-ish stuff, so if that's not your thing, take warning, but otherwise, it should serve as a decent example of how that sort of thing plays out.
Also, Real Realism in healing often includes variations on the phrase 'you'll never have full use of [body part] again, I'm afraid'. (Which is why I'm generally not a huge fan of games that try to do 'realistic' wounds - I'd rather not have my character face-down in a pool of their own blood on round one due to a bad roll, thanks.)That takes me back to my Rolemaster days!
GM: "You take 15 hit points of damage, and the critical hit leaves you with a punctured spleen. Unless you receive a Restore Organ spell within the next five rounds, you're going to die. While you bleed out, you're stunned, prone, and defenseless. Any last words?"
Player: "Yes. I feebly raise my fist to the sky and curse the critical fumble table!"
I've only ever played Rolemaster once and never even got in a fight, but a friend of mine told the story of how his party got killed by sheep.
Not monster sheep, ordinary sheep.
Someone did the math and figured that in Runequest, in a battle with 100 men on a side that lasted a minute, there was a decent chance one of warrior would decapitate _themselves_.
I hate fumble tables.
I feel your pain -- back around 1980, when I was playing 1st Edition AD&D with my friends, one of them was DM in a session in which I was the only player (the DM's brother was not there at the time), and brought in some Fumble rules (I forgot where these were sourced from), and in the course of hacking away Shriekers (which either never managed to attract wandering monsters or only attracted some fairly insignificant threat, my Paladin went from having 2 picked up allies to being solo.
To provide a dissenting opinion, their does exist mundane healing. It just requires that you throw a large chunk of your build into it.
All it really requires is heavy investment into Craft (Alchemy) and Heal, access to Skill Unlocks, the Master Alchemist feat with traits like Precision Treatment and Battlefield Surgeon to taste.
So pretty much just an UnRogue then.
Easy access to a cheaper version of items such as Antitoxin/Antiplague as well as a decent selection of other alchemical items that benefit various heal checks through Master Alchemist stacked on top of the ability to heal relatively large amounts of hp with the Heal Skill's skill unlock gives you a decent breadth of ability in treating a large variety of issues.
I mean not as well as spells once they get going but if we compare a Cleric casting Neutralize Poison at the level they'll receive it, assuming average rolls, they can remove a DC 17 poison as a standard action.
An UnRouge dropping a chunk of gold at the issue can, assuming average rolls, provide a +9 bonus to the targets save plus the targets Fort Mod, or DC 19+, as a standard action.
In the same vein looking at Remove Disease at the levels cleric's receive the spell and again assuming average rolls, it's DC 15 as a standard vs DC 19 or a pair of DC 14's both adding Fort mod as an hourly action.
So, not the worst trade in the world though eventually the Clerics blows the mundane heals out of the water with their caster level constantly scaling.
As for hp damage at level 5 the UnRogue, spending an hour, can heal twice the target's level in Hp (10), plus the UnRogues Wis mod, and two ability points worth of damage once or twice a day.
At level 5 the Cleric can cure, as a standard action and assuming average rolls, 18hp with a Cure Serious Wounds.
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I strongly disagree with the sentiment that magic should be much better than mundane things at everything. It should be easier than anything mundane, and at higher levels be able to do things that we can't yet work out how to do (like control the weather or disintegrate people), but not better in every single situation.
In the case of healing, my preferred system would have magic be an easy quick-fix mid-combat, but would pale in comparison to actual hard work and trained medicine over a longer period of time.
This is all just opinion, and please consider it before taking offence right out of the gate. I mean to provoke thought, not anger.
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In the case of healing, my preferred system would have magic be an easy quick-fix mid-combat, but would pale in comparison to actual hard work and trained medicine over a longer period of time.
This is all just opinion, and please consider it before taking offence right out of the gate. I mean to provoke thought, not anger.
How would you accomplish this, aside from giving magical healing adverse effects?
With magical healing it's instantaneous, you're as good as you were, there's no downtime, no loss of functions of your body parts or gradual degradation of them, no period of recovery and retraining your body.
For what it's worth, Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved had an interesting mechanic for magical healing to make it a little harder in some ways.
The 1st level healing spell was called transfer wounds, lesser, and it healed a target 1d10 + Caster Level (don't remember the max), but the caster suffers half the damage healed as nonlethal damage. The 2nd level spell, battle healing, healed 1d6 + Caster Level, but didn't have the drawback.
I'm dubious that it was actually a good idea to reduce the efficacy of healing quite that much, but the system also used a single, universal spell-list for all casters, so I have to give it some slack.
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In the case of healing, my preferred system would have magic be an easy quick-fix mid-combat, but would pale in comparison to actual hard work and trained medicine over a longer period of time.
This is all just opinion, and please consider it before taking offence right out of the gate. I mean to provoke thought, not anger.
How would you accomplish this, aside from giving magical healing adverse effects?
With magical healing it's instantaneous, you're as good as you were, there's no downtime, no loss of functions of your body parts or gradual degradation of them, no period of recovery and retraining your body.
Yeah, the basic problem is that we assume non-magical healing is limited in the way real-world healing is, except even worse because we're dealing with pre-modern medical technology.
Recovering from things like large animal bites, burns and sword wounds takes weeks to months if you fully recover at all. Magic healing is better than that, not because of some theory that magic always has to be better than mundane, but because magic provides an excuse for getting characters back to playing the game quickly.
Firstly, yeah, I'd like magical healing to be just as instantaneous, but have diminished effects over time, to make it less than ideal for anything but an in-combat check-up.
Secondly, why are we bringing up real-world resources? We have plants in Golarion that have cool properties of their own, access to animals that have Fast Healing themselves... there'd be a lot of ways to speed up and enhance scientific healing just because of the flora and fauna that are demonstrably inherent to the world. It's still mundane science, even if the tools are clearly a product of a fantastic (but non-magic) organism.
In addition, you're eventually reaching the level of characters being unable to be detected by anything just through sheer skill (Disguise-focused Vigilantes), being able to trick the universe into thinking that you have magic (UMD-focused UnRogues) and the ability to hit an ant on a hedgerow with a sight-less musket from a hundred feet away without even trying very hard (Perception-focused Gunslingers)... all without magic. Why should the Heal skill be any different? To preserve the niche of poor, underappreciated mister Cleric? I say we should have a class that does for Heal what the Vigilante does for Disguise.
It may be mundane, but it's still a fantasy setting with superhuman individuals.
I'm sure there's a way to do this while still keeping the game fun, and the Path of War Medic is a good way to start. Heal can be made both useful and non-boring, I'm sure of it.
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"diminished effects over time" sounds interesting, but I'm not sure how it would work out without being nasty bookkeeping.
Boosting "mundane" healing up to apparently magical levels would be fine by me. That wasn't the impression I'd gotten from your earlier post, though: "actual hard work and trained medicine over a longer period of time".
Ah yeah, the bookkeeping would be a bit mean... I shall ponder this.
Oh I do see where I might have been a bit confusing; longer yes, but not real-life levels of long. Magic should absolutely be more convenient than mundane methods, but I feel like mundane should have the chance for better long-term rewards. A team of Dwarven demolitions experts can also outdo any fireball if given a few full-round actions to set up, for instance.
Often, in the moment, what are needed are instant effects, which is why Magic is so useful, but I feel like the eventual results should be able to be accomplished with dedicated effort and skill over a variable amount of time.
Obviously that doesn't apply to things like plane-shifting, however. Magic there is not used as a power source, but as a specialised tool for a situation in which no other tool will work.