PF2 Treat Wounds - Simplified

[Zapp]

In short, how about this:

Remove all choices, checks and die rolls from the Treat Wounds trained Medicine activity. Replace with the following:

Treat Wounds makes the target regain a number of hit points equal to your skill bonus in Medicine.

So if your Medicine bonus is +7, the target gets 7 hp.

[Zapp]

For a more detailed analysis, I will ask that you head over to ENWorld, for the sole reason the formatting options here don't let me easily reproduce my findings.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/pf2-treat-wounds-simplified.670857/

You are obviously welcome to have a look over there and then come back her to post your comments and questions :-)

[Zapp]

You would still respect the various "cool downs" in the game. For example you would gain the indicated number after 10 minutes, and twice that if you keep treating the wounds for a whole hour.

Related feats would still operate (they wouldn't be obsoleted).

For example, if you have Medicine +20:
Battle Medicine grants you 20 hp in a single action once every day.
Continual Recovery grants you 20 hp every ten minutes (not just the first 10 minutes in every hour)
Ward Medicine lets you heal 20 hp to 2/4/8 creatures at the same time, not just 1.

The things you streamline away are making skill checks, deciding to go for DC 30 instead of DC 20, rolling d8's. You remove other variables as well from your decision making since you *know* how long the Treat Wounds will take - no more "we need to rest but we only want to give it ten minutes; but if we fail to become healed perhaps we should withdraw first, yadda yadda".

Instead everybody knows what 10 minutes or 1 hour will yield, and so can make much quicker decisions about what to do, for how long, and where to do it.

The ultimate benefit is getting back to the adventure faster, all without denying the character who focused on Medicine any benefits :-)

[Coldermoss]

Simplifying all of it in this manner removes most of the value in raising medicine above trained. You might want to take expert if you really want those feats, but unless you really want Legendary Medic? Nah, the return diminishes too steeply to be worth it.

If you wanted to solve a problem with your players taking too long with each rest, I suggest using the stamina rules in the GMG instead. Your players will treat wounds less often, but continued investment in medicine won't be subjected to the same diminishing returns your house rule would introduce. I suspect it would also help your pacing issues.

[Zapp]

Coldermoss wrote:

Simplifying all of it in this manner removes most of the value in raising medicine above trained. You might want to take expert if you really want those feats, but unless you really want Legendary Medic? Nah, the return diminishes too steeply to be worth it.

What?

If you want to point out I made a miscalculation, be my guest.

But please refrain from unsubstantiated claims. My point here is that as far as I can see the rules for Treat Wounds can be massively simplified with no change in "value".

If you disagree with that, then I ask that you explain - in detail - what and how "value" is lost. Thank you.

[Coldermoss]

Using your house rule, the difference in healing someone someone can do while merely an expert in medicine versus what they can heal if they're legendary is 4 hit points. That is not worth two skill increases.

[Taja the Barbarian]

Zapp wrote:

Coldermoss wrote:

Simplifying all of it in this manner removes most of the value in raising medicine above trained. You might want to take expert if you really want those feats, but unless you really want Legendary Medic? Nah, the return diminishes too steeply to be worth it.

What?

If you want to point out I made a miscalculation, be my guest.

But please refrain from unsubstantiated claims. My point here is that as far as I can see the rules for Treat Wounds can be massively simplified with no change in "value".

If you disagree with that, then I ask that you explain - in detail - what and how "value" is lost. Thank you.

In your system, each increase in proficiency is only +2hp healed.

In the current system, there is generally a +20hp increase in healing for each proficiency upgrade (except for Trained->Expert, which is only +10).

So, the basic issue is the Trained character will heal a total of only 6hp less than the Legendary character of equal level/gearing/stats.

[MaxAstro]

Hm... Depends on skill feat investments, though. The person with Ward Medic certainly still wants to be Legendary.

That said... I'm not entirely sure I see the point of this system when you can accomplish basically the same thing with no house rules by just taking Assurance (Medicine)...

[DomHeroEllis]

Maybe if you want to do it this way (I personally prefer rolling and don't find it complicated but there you go) make it heal

Trained; Medicine Check HP
Expert; Medicine Check HP x 2
Master; Medicine Check HP x 3
Legendary; Medicine Check HP x 4

[Zapp]

I have identified a mistake in my data.

Head over to my other thread for the details: https://www.enworld.org/threads/pf2-treat-wounds-simplified.670857/

My new variant becomes:

Treat Wounds makes the target regain a number of hit points equal to your skill bonus in Medicine plus double your Proficiency Rank:
Trained +4
Expert +8
Master +12
Legendary +16

So if you're Trained in Medicine with a +7 bonus, the target gets 11 hp.
If you're Legendary in Medicine with a +36 bonus, the target gets 52 hp.

(This is slightly generous to low level heroes, but they will hardly complain)

[Zapp]

I can add a question from my players:

Q. What about Assurance?
A. Assurance doesn't apply to Treat Wounds under this variant.

Since the variant doesn't heal less than with Assurance, and possibly saves you a feat, consider this a buff and not a nerf.

[Jon Goranson]

I put a response in the other forum for RAW. I want to ask a question about what is homebrew here.

I like your system, Zapp, assuming you created Henrio's Adventurer's Rest.

I'm looking for alternatives and am posting my thoughts here.

What if a Healer's Toolkits were limited to 10 uses?
What if an Expanded Healer's Toolkit was limited to 15 uses and was 2 bulk?

My group already does not like the dwarf's slower movement, so going over in bulk is not an option.

Due to bulk, even if all five have a healer's toolkit, they will go through that many uses quickly. It might make them pause. Or will all this do, in my case, is push them to use Lay on Hands more?

What if, as per the Henrio's rules, Treat Wounds, standard rules, could only happen once between encounters? With the infinite healer's toolkit, it will be used. With the limited healer's toolkit, they might think about it. Maybe it pushes them to make more potions or scrolls.

I think what throws me off about this is I'm too used to how bad 2E DND was in healing with no cleric. There were two players, me and another guy, and the DM, and it was brutal. After one fight, we had to find a place to hide and rest for three days! Natural Healing seems needed but superfluous due to Medicine.

Or, equally, does it merely create a different mini game? The point is to get back to full hit points between encounters without nerfing the person who is trained in Medicine. Rolling is fun and getting that critical for more healing is also a lot of fun, so not sure I want to get rid of that.

Thanks for the discussion!