Treat Wounds DC shouldn't be tied to Level

[Ring_of_Gyges]

The DC for "Treat Wounds" is a function of the doctor's level. The higher level the doctor, the more difficult the check.

A first level Fighter, a soldier trained in Medicine and somewhat talented (Wis 12), comes across the victim of an orc attack and wants to treat his wounds. DC 13 with a +2 means an 11 on the die to succeed.

First up, a 50% chance of failure at a routine task you have invested some of your very limited character creation resources into is frustrating. Healing 1 hp

Second, the odds of critically failing are very low (5%). So a common result will be the player declares an action, fails the roll, *nothing happens*, and he tries again, maybe nothing happens *again*, and he tries a third time and succeeds. That's boring and tedious.

Third, even if he succeeds, he heals the peasant 1 shiny hp. He's going to have to roll again. And again. And again. If the peasant has 5 points of damage, he's going to have to roll around 10 checks to deal with it. Why on earth is the system requiring 10 rolls to resolve a simple task?

Finally, late in his career, the same fighter comes across another wounded peasant, another victim of another orc attack. He is no wiser, but vastly more experienced (15th level! A god among men!). The new DC of 30 with a +16 means a 14 on die. Huh?

Why has the DC skyrocketed? The task is the same. His chance of success has dropped from 1 in 2 down to about 1 in 3. His chance to critically fail has gone from 1 in 20 to about 1 in 7. Why has his experience of patching up wounds through 15 levels of adventure made him worse at it?

At least if he succeeds he'll heal the peasant 15hp and be done.

Alas, even with that boost his total chance of healing the peasant has gone down with experience and training. Before he could keep rolling (and rolling) until he heals the peasant, he was likely to get his 5 successes before he got the critical failure that stopped the process. Now he's very likely to be done in two or three rolls (which is still one or two too many) but he is way more likely to critically fail, bolster the peasant against further attempts, and be defeated.

[NemisCassander]

Yeah, it doesn't scale well... even though 'fixing higher-level play' was supposed to be a design goal, no?

Anyway, the clear change to make is to make the DC based on either the target's level--meaning that a 20th level Healer can easily heal low-level people... as they should--or make the DC appropriate to the amount that you're trying to heal.

Small quibble... given that you're a Fighter, I would expect your stat increases to be, by default, Str/Dex/Con/Wis. Maybe Cha instead of one of the others if for some reason you need more Resonance. But with that Stat increase distribution, you would have an 18 Wis at 15th level if you started with 12, and there would have have the same relative number on the die...

which, _again_, demonstrates the coinflip nature of the rules. Why is a high-level healer no better than a low-level healer _when treating the same person_? The high-level attacker is much better at hitting a low-level defender... why is this not the same?

[David Silver - Ponyfinder]

Being able to set your DC seems to be the most elegant answer, in my limited view. If you can decide what level to check against, depending on if you're time crunched or not, that would change things nicely. Then even a level 1 healer can go for broke, and accept the risk involved, or a level 20 healer can gently kiss the papercut a random peasant has and cure it without thought.

[Deadmanwalking]

This is not really its own issue, it's an issue with the Medium Skill DCs in general and the fact that they get actively harder for people as they level. Which is terrible.

Having the DC be set would also be good (and make more in-universe sense), but would fix only Medicine, not the systemic issue as a whole.

[David knott 242]

Scaling the DC of these checks should be a result of the healer attempting more difficult tasks, not purely a result of the healer gaining levels. Tying the DC to the level or CR of the creature(s) being healed would address that issue.

[HWalsh]

They don't want you to be able to auto succeed and get infinite out of combat healing.

Treat wounds has already destroyed one of my games as every encounter ends with people scrambling for 50 minutes to heal everyone to full.

The game worked BEFORE this was added.

[Starfox]

Again, having that DC by level table is ripe for making bad rules with a sliding difficulty scale - where things actually become harder as you advance in level.

EXACTLY what the notes on the table says is should not be used for. Bards have it, now Medicine.

That table is the greatest weakness of PF2.

[thenobledrake]

The Medium Skill DCs don't exactly "get actively harder for people as they level." The only way the DC-scaled-to-your-level actually has your chance of success go down is if you don't improve in the related activity at all.

Each DC has a different amount of "learn as you go" required to keep even odds of success at a particular difficulty level of check. For the "easy" checks, that amount is zero - whatever your chance of success is at level 1 against an easy thing for a level 1 character to do, is what your chance of success is going to be at level 20 against an easy thing for a level 20 character to do.

With the "medium" checks, the amount is +4. You can keep even odds for your Treat Wounds checks if you boost Wisdom at 5th, use a skill increase on Medicine at 7th, then again at 13th, and finally use either an ability boost or a skill increase at 15th level (which actually puts you at a better chance of success for one level).

Anyone that puts more focus on that particular skill will actually have their chance of success get better as they level, not worse. For example, a cleric or other wisdom key class that wants the best chances at Treating Wounds to keep their party going without taxing their spell slots as much can keep their die roll needed at 8+ through level 9, then get it down to 7 for a few levels...

The "flaw" of the chart is that level 13 has a bigger DC gain (that'd be fixed by dropping the level requirement to become Legendary in a skill to 13th instead of 15th, and then at level 16 there is again an increase to the DC that isn't offset by level, potential ability modifier, or proficiency level. Of course, if you add in an item bonus at the right time (such as appears only a bullheaded mutagen manages at current), everything but one level (16th going the wrong direction by 1 point) lines up so that success chance steadily increases.

[MaxAstro]

Thenobledrake hits the nail on the head.

I think a lot of people are thinking as Trained being equivalent to spending a skill rank every level in PF1e because the bonus is the same. It's categorically NOT. You spent one bit of progression on the skill, and then you stopped investing in it.

A better comparison is that Trained is equivalent to putting 2 ranks in a skill in PF1e. At second level, that's great! But at 15th level, you aren't going to be making your Stealth checks any more with 2 ranks in Stealth in PF1e, and that isn't because your "progression was stolen away" - it's because you stopped devoting character resources to the skill.

A character who does the PD2e equivalent of "putting ranks in a skill at every level" - that is, raise the associated ability, and go Ex->Ma->Leg in the skill - actually does now get better at that skill with level, much like in PF1e (of course, also like PF1e, you need an item bonus if you want to be truly obnoxious at the skill).

EDIT: This line of thinking does, however, expose what I think is the actual problem: I don't think characters get enough skill increases overall.

[Deadmanwalking]

You only ever get three skills much above Trained (unless you're a Rogue). If Trained isn't the equivalent of a rank per level, or at least a fair percentage of that, then characters in PF2 all suck at skills.

That's an argument that can definitely be made for all (non-Rogue) PCs sucking at skills in PF2 based on the current DCs, but it goes directly against the text describing Medium Difficulty DCs and makes for a game I'm not super interested in playing. So I'd prefer that they change it so that being Trained is indeed much like having a rank every level, and having more than that is like having Skill Focus or other bonuses was in PF1.

I am not alone in this.

Giving out more skill increases is another way to achieve similar things, but it gets messy real quick. The big advantage of doing skills this way is that you have fewer numbers to keep track of in terms of raising skills, and adding too many more ranks makes for issues with that. Really, adjusting the base DCs is simpler, easier, and lower impact.

[MaxAstro]

I don't think a character should get the benefit of PF1e full progression in a skill just from investing in a skill once and then never touching it again.

I do agree that characters need more skill increases, though.

[Unicore]

I like that the DC scales with the the amount of HP you can heal, but agree that a medicinal healer shouldn't have to try to heal the maximum amount each time. Perhaps the level x con mod needs to change so that there are significant benchmarks that can be targeted, because I do think it will be pretty obvious to choose a DC 3 or 4 lower and only lose 3 or 4 HP for most characters, but if a good balance could be achieved, it would could result in interesting choices. Maybe the ability to pick lower DCs for less healing should be a product of proficeincy, so it is something that only expert + medicine characters can do, meaning that less trained characters remain a danger as they level up with their healing as the kinds of injuries they are trying to patch up are more dangerous. Meanwhile, the master or legendary medic can divide the healing up into smaller blocks with an easier DC for a lesser chance of failure.

Maybe the first bench mark would be reducing the DC by 5 for half as much healing (or 1/2 your level x patients con),
and the second, by 10 for a quarter as much healing?

I don't think that is the best solution but something towards that could make the proficiency of the healer more relevant for providing quicker and more reliable long term care, while still giving the focused character the better chance of success.

[Deadmanwalking]

MaxAstro wrote:

I don't think a character should get the benefit of PF1e full progression in a skill just from investing in a skill once and then never touching it again.

It's a matter of perspective. You only get a certain number of skills, (less than 10 for the vast majority of characters...often much less). I have no problem with viewing the investment in that as a major character decision equivalent to investing a rank per level in PF1.

With this view, as I note above, raising skills to Expert or higher becomes the equivalent of using things like Skill Focus, only more common because (like Skill Feats) it comes from a pool that doesn't compete with combat Feats.

MaxAstro wrote:

I do agree that characters need more skill increases, though.

Like I said, I think that's a lot messier than just adjusting some DCs.

[Danith]

In the book it talks about climbing a tree at level would be the same as level 20. Healing a peasant getting hit by an orc at level 1 or 20 is the same. Now if that said peasant got hit by let’s say a +2 acidic great axe instead of a normal one i can see that the DC should be harder to heal than wound

[Tholomyes]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

This is not really its own issue, it's an issue with the Medium Skill DCs in general and the fact that they get actively harder for people as they level. Which is terrible.

Having the DC be set would also be good (and make more in-universe sense), but would fix only Medicine, not the systemic issue as a whole.

Agreed. I think tying routine skill uses to the table is a problem, as the table doesn't have enough granularity between Default chance of success, and level of investment, over 20 levels, instead setting an assumed level of investment, and layering that on top of a default chance of success. To me, this isn't a problem in most cases, as very few things mechanically tie to the DC table, meaning the GM can use it as more of a tool than a straightjacket. And what I don't get is it's not like all checks that aren't GM's digression do this, as Identify Alchemy is DC 10+Item level, and as far as I can tell, the only places that this comes up are Treat wounds (and effectively administer first aid, as recovery save DC is often tied to High difficulty DC of an enemy, who is probably roughly on level), certain bardic performances, namely Inspire Heroics and Lingering Performance, and Rituals.

[MaxAstro]

Danith wrote:

In the book it talks about climbing a tree at level would be the same as level 20. Healing a peasant getting hit by an orc at level 1 or 20 is the same. Now if that said peasant got hit by let’s say a +2 acidic great axe instead of a normal one i can see that the DC should be harder to heal than wound

I do feel that the Medicine DC should be based on the target, not the healer.

[swordchucks]

After crunching the numbers, I really just want to do away with the check. Make it take a bit longer and have the HP restored tied to the Proficiency level of the doctor. There's no reason to stop the game and roll 5-10 medicine checks after every fight. It's just too much random. It's also not viable for a low level party.

[Requielle]

MaxAstro wrote:

Danith wrote:

In the book it talks about climbing a tree at level would be the same as level 20. Healing a peasant getting hit by an orc at level 1 or 20 is the same. Now if that said peasant got hit by let’s say a +2 acidic great axe instead of a normal one i can see that the DC should be harder to heal than wound

I do feel that the Medicine DC should be based on the target, not the healer.

I think it should (somehow) be by the task - and that's where we probably go off the rails into unmanageable complexity. I'm not sure why healing a wound caused by a single magic missile should be any more difficult if the target is a raw recruit town guard or the legendary knight-hero of the realm. I could (in theory) agree that healing the damage from a magic missile cast by an ancient lich would be more difficult than the damage from the very first casting of that spell by a newly-trained apprentice mage... but how do you cleanly manage that within the rules? That sounds like a GM's nightmare to track and adjudicate.

Linking the DC to the healer's level is non-immersive and meta-gamey and dispiriting, if you view DC as being any objective measure of difficulty at all. Why would literally the same task (tending to Sven's shoulder wound) require more skill to succeed just because a more experienced person is attempting it? That is so counter-intuitive that it makes me tweak at just the thought of trying to run that mechanic in my game. "Well, Biff - the DC for you to take care of your gravely wounded friend is 27. But that NPC pig farmer over there can also try, with about the same chance of success, because he's stayed up-to-date on his Medicine for Peasants correspondence course and his DC for the same task is only 19."

[MaxAstro]

swordchucks wrote:

After crunching the numbers, I really just want to do away with the check. Make it take a bit longer and have the HP restored tied to the Proficiency level of the doctor. There's no reason to stop the game and roll 5-10 medicine checks after every fight. It's just too much random. It's also not viable for a low level party.

I think having a check involved is at least somewhat important to making the skill feel awesome for fully speced healers. At higher levels someone who optimizes Medicine can get up to a 35%+ crit success rate, and I imagine the kind of player who optimizes Medicine enjoys that experience.

[Starfox]

MaxAstro wrote:

really just want to do away with the check. Make it take a bit longer and have the HP restored tied to the Proficiency level of the doctor. There's no reason to stop the game and roll 5-10 medicine checks after every fight. It's just too much random. It's also not viable for a low level party.

This edition seems to be all about making many dice rolls in a series. Just look at lock picking.

[Ring_of_Gyges]

I suppose what the 15th level trained character needs to do is find a 1st level, wise, expert character.

A 1st level character with a 14 Wisdom and Expert proficiency has a +4 and only needs a 9 on the die.

"I, with my +17 can't do this. You, with your +4, will have to do it for me."

Skill at medicine becomes not based on level, but based on talent and training (the 1st level wise expert beats the 15 level sensible apprentice).

Talent and training being important is fine, but there is something deeply bizarre about the rules adding level to every check only to subtract it out again (in effect) at the DC stage. Why not cut out the middle man and ditch levels if you want to go this way?

[in◆⃟]

HWalsh wrote:

They don't want you to be able to auto succeed and get infinite out of combat healing.

Treat wounds has already destroyed one of my games as every encounter ends with people scrambling for 50 minutes to heal everyone to full.

The game worked BEFORE this was added.

I'm genuinely curious as to what sort of game you're running that can be destroyed by this sort of thing. Could you enlighten us?

[Danith]

I think the thought behind this is...

At level 15 for example. You are taking damage from MUCH scarier things which means that using medicine to heal is much more difficult.

At level 1, You may get hit with an arrow or an axe hit, not bit by a dragon and covered in lava.

[Vidmaster7]

How about instead of it being a DC instead you heal a certain set amount of hp modified by con equal to your roll so for example lets say you try to heal someone and total a 11. 11 will always heal 1+con or something while if you had a 13 it would be 4+con. not those exact numbers mind you just an example. Although I guess that means crit fail is out then? hmm I'll keep working on that.

[Quandary]

No I think it's reasonable to just consider flat amount, it's out of combat routine meat+potatoes baseline, why even need Crit effects? Scale with target level maybe modified by Healer's Rank/WIS. Those would be reasonable limits on how often it could be done. I just don't see the need to roll dice for absolutely everything, even not in combat with no time pressure, even for something absolutely routine & identical for every combat.

[Igor Horvat]

Idea is great.

Imprementation of the idea is dumb.

There is no point in raising the DC over levels except the self-sustainability of +1/level treadmill.

solution 1:
depends on the check roll on 1by1 basis.
Heal the target amount of HPs equal to the Medicine roll minus 10.
Target is bolstered until it rests for an hour.
10 min action

solution 2:
DC 15, heal the target of amount equal to 25% of ther max HPs
Target is bolstered until it rests for an hour
10 min action

Fail: target is healed for 10% of max HPs

Crit succ: target is healed for 50% of max HPs

Crit fail: target is bolstered only

[Vidmaster7]

Let me get something cleared up for me. So I can keep trying in 10 minute intervals until everyone is healed up fully as long as I don't crit fail right?

[ChibiNyan]

Vidmaster7 wrote:

Let me get something cleared up for me. So I can keep trying in 10 minute intervals until everyone is healed up fully as long as I don't crit fail right?

Or you take so long that everyone goes to bed. Correct.

I think most attempts to full-heal will get a crit fail eventually before completion. Almost for sure if try to do this after every battle.

[Vidmaster7]

Hmm I'm going to have to play around with it more. It seems that it makes it to easy to heal up.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

We used the new healing rule last night in our playtest game.

The Cleric could only Crit-Fail on a natural 1.

Level 4 Cleric (DC 16)
Heal bonus +7

We had a tough fight against a pair of elementals, and then took 20 minutes to top the party up. For my Goblin Alchemist with 10 Con that heal check represented 4 HP (1 * Cleric Level (4) = 4).
For the Gnome Sorcerer with 18 Con that healing was 16 hit points.

We still topped up with a couple of my Elixirs and a heal from the cleric, but it meant we could walk into the next encounter with enough hit points and resources that we didn't feel we needed to have an 8 hour rest afterwards.

Considering we knew we were on a clock, ten minutes seemed reasonable but on a critically failed check that would have bolstered the whole party to that manner of healing, and that would have meant that the opposition would have caught up to us.

Felt like a decent risk vs reward.

[Deadmanwalking]

As others have mentioned in the extended Wand of CLW debates, there's little reason why healing up outside of combat after every fight is a problem.

Now, doing so resource free is a problem in some people's opinion (mine included), but doing this every fight without crit failing actually requires an investment of Skill Ranks, Ability Points, and time spent doing the checks, and will eventually crit fail and probably not be able to help the group further, requiring some other healing in the party as well.

That all seems fine to me.

Part of the problem with Wands of CLW was also thematic, inasmuch as it was unintuitive and didn't fit the fiction very well, an issue which bandaging people and performing first aid does not have (it's intuitive and common in the fiction).

[Vidmaster7]

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

We used the new healing rule last night in our playtest game.

The Cleric could only Crit-Fail on a natural 1.

Level 4 Cleric (DC 16)
Heal bonus +7

We had a tough fight against a pair of elementals, and then took 20 minutes to top the party up. For my Goblin Alchemist with 10 Con that heal check represented 4 HP (1 * Cleric Level (4) = 4).
For the Gnome Sorcerer with 18 Con that healing was 16 hit points.

We still topped up with a couple of my Elixirs and a heal from the cleric, but it meant we could walk into the next encounter with enough hit points and resources that we didn't feel we needed to have an 8 hour rest afterwards.

Considering we knew we were on a clock, ten minutes seemed reasonable but on a critically failed check that would have bolstered the whole party to that manner of healing, and that would have meant that the opposition would have caught up to us.

Felt like a decent risk vs reward.

That's good info I'd like to hear more reports like that.

[The Raven Black]

MaxAstro wrote:

I don't think a character should get the benefit of PF1e full progression in a skill just from investing in a skill once and then never touching it again.

I do agree that characters need more skill increases, though.

I see becoming Trained in a skill not as investing once but as marking a skill for continuous improvement.

Putting 2 points and only 2 points over 20 levels in a skill in PF1 make little sense

In my experience, smooth scaling of skills in PF1 was an illusion

Most characters, being poor in skill points, would maximize the skills they absolutely needed, sometimes spending a precious point to get through the trained-only gate

And this maximisation could end after reaching a target value (UMD to acticate wands) or keep on advancing forever (Perception, Stealth, Knowledges for example)

The end result was : 
- open-ended key skills with lvl ranks 
- other key skills at target value 
- some trained-only skills at min value 
- other skills at zero ranks

First case is Trained, based on the number of skills you can get to Trained vs how many you can get to Expert and Master (Legendary being akin to Mythic IMO) and the idea that the Devs want Skills to play a greater role in PF2. Which mandates that the number of skills you would put at level ranks in PF1 is lower than the equivalent in PF2 for a similar chance of success. And that is not Expert AFAIK

Second case seems to not exist anymore. Or maybe Assurance takes care of it

Third case now belongs to Skill Feats

Fourth case is Untrained

Tldr : I agree with DMW that Trained is indeed (or should be) for PF2 what gives you an equivalent chance of success as maxing Skill ranks in PF1

[swordchucks]

MaxAstro wrote:

I think having a check involved is at least somewhat important to making the skill feel awesome for fully speced healers.

That's a fair point. My objection isn't to requiring a roll but to requiring so many rolls. When you need to roll ~5 times, every time, it's fickle and doesn't feel as interesting.

Make Treat Wounds longer and raise the base healing slightly (maybe add WIS mod to it). Increase healing for every rank of skill (expert, master, legendary). Have one skill check for the time period with results of bolstered/half healing/full healing/double healing.

This gives the healer their chance to shine, rewards investing in the skill, makes it a little less casual, etc.

Add a skill feat to make it faster, if you want.

[MaxAstro]

Definitely agree that Treat Wounds should have feat support. I would say that all of your suggestions make decent feat ideas.

I think in it's base form, Treat Wounds allows parties without a dedicated healer to not need to full rest after every fight, and that's great. I think it would also be great if a character could invest in it and become a totally awesome out-of-combat healer who dramatically patches the party up after every fight.

If the base healing is increased, then I might suggest adding (as gamey as it is) "the target is bolstered against this effect until their next encounter". I might suggest adding that anyway, to deal with the "party sits around treating wounds until full after every fight" bit.

[swordchucks]

Increasing the healing would be strictly a step related to having it take more time.

Consider this paradigm:

Treat Wounds: 1 hour, anyone can do it, heals 3X to up to 6 targets (where X is some value)

Skill feat: Quick Patchup: 10 minutes, heals X to one target

Also, maybe:

Skill feat: Fast Treatment: Reduce the time required for the larger Treat Wounds in exchange for raising the DC (gate how much you can speed it up on skill level and increase the DC more for each speed-up - similar to how Battle Medic and Quick Repair function).

[MaxAstro]

I think it taking 10 minutes and targeting the whole party are the absolute most rock solid parts of the design and that is the last thing I would want to change.

I love the Darkest Dungeon-style "each PC has something to contribute to the post-fight rest", and I love how it all takes 10 minutes so that no one is waiting on anyone else. I would want to double down on that paradigm, not change it.

[Angel Hunter D]

MaxAstro wrote:

I think it taking 10 minutes and targeting the whole party are the absolute most rock solid parts of the design and that is the last thing I would want to change.

I love the Darkest Dungeon-style "each PC has something to contribute to the post-fight rest", and I love how it all takes 10 minutes so that no one is waiting on anyone else. I would want to double down on that paradigm, not change it.

Interesting post encounter options are awesome, and we need more. I'd love to see a crafter so good at fixing shields they can even patch up the wizard's Shield cantrip, and other fantastical feats (that don't need to be Feats necessarily)

[MaxAstro]

I will honestly probably fully embrace the gamification of this for my games. Something along the lines of defining those things as "post-encounter actions" and that each character can take one after each encounter, assuming there's time, but only one, unless the party takes a full rest.

That opens up room for feats, class features, or items to add new options in that space.

[Angel Hunter D]

And I see a bunch of people say stuff like "I guess they'll never have 10 minutes to rest" - which to me says that party concealment/fortification is another niche that could be done in myriad interesting ways. Ie. Distractions so the healer has time to heal and the crafter has time to fix shields.

[MaxAstro]

Angel Hunter D wrote:

And I see a bunch of people say stuff like "I guess they'll never have 10 minutes to rest"...

I'm gonna take a controversial stance here: GMs who can only challenge the party by denying them healing are bad GMs.

[swordchucks]

Well, I don't mind a 10 minute healing option, either. What I dislike is the way this option can devolve into rolling the same skill check repeatedly until you either crit fail or get completely healed.

Like I said, I'd like to see a 10 minute option remain, but have the real treatment take longer (an hour or something) to reduce rolling. To make that work, the hour option would have to be strictly better than rolling 6 times at the 10 minute option (or you'd need to put a time limit on the 10 minute option).

[Dilvias]

My only real issue is with someone who is just trained can treat 6 patients at once. Personally, I would prefer that trained can heal 1 person, expert 2 at once, master 4 at once and legendary 6 or 8 at once.

I'd also like it to explicitly state that the patient cannot take any actions while being treated ("Sit still, darn you") and if they do you have to start again.

[Gratz]

MaxAstro wrote:

Angel Hunter D wrote:

And I see a bunch of people say stuff like "I guess they'll never have 10 minutes to rest"...

I'm gonna take a controversial stance here: GMs who can only challenge the party by denying them healing are bad GMs.

Agreed and they could have done the same in PF1 and disrupt every Cure Light Wounds-wanding session, which at higher levels also took a considerable amount of time.

[Trastone]

Why not remove the level increases to skills and then have a table that has the DCs based on Easy to near impossible. Then you could still have your -4, 0, 1, 2, 3 or if they want it to scale more then you could do -4, 0, 2, 4, 6. DC could be based on amount of damage taken/trying to be healed. It is much harder to heal someone near death. Dying/Wounds 2/3 could have a higher DC to heal or just apply a -2 modifier per level of wound/or dying level. The higher level you get the easier it would be to accomplish many of those heals. It would definitely be more lethal at low levels, but you are also not the hero you are at higher level. I do think that the wounded should only be removed or healed via magic or time and not based on the medicine check.

I feel they could do that with all the DC’s with some of the higher DC’s only applying to higher level play and only meant for a truly skilled Master or Legendary skill capable of accomplishing. They could solidify the math very easily vs scaling and falling behind. I feel they have made this part unnecessarily complicated.

It would also mean that the easy lock is always the same DC regardless of the level. If you are in a higher level dungeon, you just never have that easy lock in it. It will be a master level lock and would require at least a master to accomplish. I do like that they require the certain trained proficiencies to even succeed on some of them. That makes it simple and clear. Even if its a DC 16 master requirement, then someone of expert level cannot succeed. I have no problem with that. It is an easy thing for a master or greater to accomplish.

Just remove the level scaling in the DC tables and add a few more levels. It is unnecessarily complex.

Table 10-2

Easy - 7 Anyone could accomplish
Medium - 15 Most people can accomplish even as commoners but somewhat inconsistent
Hard - 18 Average person might be able to accomplish, but likely not
Very Hard- 24 Average person will not be able to succeed
Extremely Hard - 28 Skilled person will succeed around 25% of the time
Nigh Impossilbe - 32. Only the most skilled has a chance and even then rarely and requires some sort of gear to accomplish. (If sticking with the -4 to +3 then a 30 is probably the max unless there is gear that could boost to this level).

I put in random values, and math should be used to calculate them verses my randomness. You could also apply the requires the different trained/experts/master/legendary modifiers to any level as a differentiator to increase difficulty as the gm deems pertinent. That way something might be a near autosucceed for a legendary person and still have a easy DC of 7, but only a legendary person would succeed.

I realize I kinda skewed toward all skills, but I do think that all of the skills should work similar. Also applying condition effects of +2 or -2 depending on factors could still apply.

[MaxAstro]

Dilvias wrote:

My only real issue is with someone who is just trained can treat 6 patients at once. Personally, I would prefer that trained can heal 1 person, expert 2 at once, master 4 at once and legendary 6 or 8 at once.

I'd also like it to explicitly state that the patient cannot take any actions while being treated ("Sit still, darn you") and if they do you have to start again.

Disagree on both, as that again completely defeats the purpose of each party member having a thing to do after combat and it taking roughly the same amount of time.

All that would do is make the party rest 6+ times as long after each fight.

[BretI]

Trastone wrote:

Why not remove the level increases to skills and then have a table that has the DCs based on Easy to near impossible.

If you removed it from skills, you would need to also remove it from Attack Bonus, AC and all the other things using the proficiency system.

The system is meant to allow you to use skill vs. attack bonus, armor class or saving throw.

[Trastone]

BretI wrote:

Trastone wrote:

Why not remove the level increases to skills and then have a table that has the DCs based on Easy to near impossible.

If you removed it from skills, you would need to also remove it from Attack Bonus, AC and all the other things using the proficiency system.

The system is meant to allow you to use skill vs. attack bonus, armor class or saving throw.

Maybe remove it from all since everything is basically increased by that anyway just adding a layer of complexity for being complex. You get a +1 to attack and they get a +1 to ac because they leveled. Seems unnecessarily complex. You went up 1 level so you get an additional 1 on all your skills, so we are going to increase all the DCs by 1 to make them harder to reach.

There is not any 1 right solution. I don’t think its terrible as is, but I’m not a big fan of having to track all the time with healing back up. Now all my encounters have to have time elements/effects built in to be viable toward increasing difficulty or outcomes. Before I could have a time element, but I do not feel like I had to have it. It at least cost something before whereas now its just free.

Someone somewhere said: “Great now my fights have to be:”
“Boss Fight”
1 hour downtime
“Boss Fight”
1 hour downtime
“Boss Fight”
1 hour downtime
“Boss Fight”

I definitely get this feeling too as you can’t really have a: the party is tired and running out of resources because they are at full strength. Maybe they are running low on spells, but thats about the only limiting factor now. In the first scenario the group had to run back to town to heal up and take an entire night to partially heal up. That felt good to me as a GM. They are still battered and bruised unless they went and got some magical healing. It took a lot of time that was easy to track. 1 day... You want me to track minutes....ughhh. I like the idea of nonmagical healing, but why does magical healing have a huge cost and nonmagical is free. There should be some sort of resource drain that is easy to track. I’m fine with time, but how about hours or 4 hours blocks instead of 10 minutes. Make the time something significant.

Making a choice of 4 hours seems like the PC’s might have to think about it. 10 minutes is like okay...oh, 10 more minutes okay....oh, 10 more minutes okay....

Okay...just going to be quiet now..

[MaxAstro]

The entire point of this change was to encourage parties to continue adventuring with fewer resources, instead of retreating to heal to full after every meaningful encounter.

The existence of Treat Wounds should make players easier to challenge, not harder, because it makes it more likely they will enter encounters with fewer spells and other daily resources.

That said, as I mentioned above, I'd be in favor of only being able to Treat Wounds once per encounter. Something like adding "characters are bolstered against Treat Wounds for one hour, or until they complete an encounter of at least Level-2" to the results.

[swordchucks]

Trastone wrote:

just adding a layer of complexity for being complex.

I mean... it is Pathfinder.

More seriously, I don't really like the way it works right now. I don't like any of the mechanics which amount to "roll the same skill check half a dozen times", for that matter. It feels boring and like you're about to murder the players with arithmetic as they add each round of healing to their totals.

I'd rather see a "once an hour" quick patch and a significantly longer (1-2 hours, probably) downtime activity to heal. Tracking things in 10 minute increments seems too fiddly to me, but not having a "quick patch up" also feels bad.

Also, instead of healing everyone, maybe the quick patch action should give the healer an amount of HP to share among the party? For instance, they make a check and can hand out their (level x wis mod)x2 on a success, x5 on a crit, x1 on a fail? Exact numbers aren't that important, but it would add slightly to the realism (since he'd be spending his time in accordance with the healing) and would be valuable.

---

In general, the crit mechanic is what drives the desire to not have PCs walking around at low HP. At lower levels, especially, one-shot crits are very easy for monsters to get. As levels increase, they drop off a little, but a good round from a monster can still put most PCs on the ground.