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apa64
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Joined: Mon 25 Jan 2021, 20:41

Healing damage

Thu 23 Mar 2023, 21:30

My player's characters seem to be getting damage often as we've been discussing this one funny thing with recovery. On p. 72 in Player's Manual it reads:
RECOVERY
The fastest way to recover from being incapacitated by damage is for
someone else in the same hex as you to treat you by successfully rolling
for MEDICAL AID. This is a slow action. If successful, you immediately heal
a number of damage points equal to the number of (success) rolled.
...
FURTHER RECOVERY
Once back on your feet, you will heal 1 point of remaining damage for
each full shift spent resting or sleeping (page 148).
So if you have a good doctor in the group it's worth to shoot (or punch, maybe, safer) a character who's hurt with just 1 point left. If a character with hit capacity 5 and current damage 4 gets 1 point more damage and becomes incapacitated, the doc can come in and throw their 2d12 to get 4 successes. Now the character is up again with only 1 damage! Otherwise they would have to rest for several shifts to get well again.

Yes, rolls don't always work that well but it's a funny rule anyway :) Or are we reading the book right?
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Healing damage

Thu 23 Mar 2023, 22:02

I would personally have a talk with any player that come up with a stupid idea like this.

But technically, if you hit your friend (something that can cause a critical injury btw), you become broken and that is the broken condition that the medical aid is for (the recovery is just an effect of fixing it).

But even if you would allow such stupid PvP things in your group, just to exploit the rules, you have to remember that you just made a friend incap and even if you are the best doctor in the world (AA), he has a chance of failing and if he fails he can't try again, so someone else have to do it or you have to wait a shift for him to recovery naturally. Also there is a good chance that he only get one success and that means that he have gambled with the chance of causing a critical injury in hope to recover some damage even though the damaged person was fully functional and now is back where he was before.

edit: sorry if this came across a little bit harsh.
“Thanks for noticin' me.” - Eeyore
 
Rolando
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Joined: Tue 14 Feb 2023, 03:26

Re: Healing damage

Fri 24 Mar 2023, 05:45

i would never allow for something like that but I would allow a character to do some medical intervention, maybe some kind of surgery, effectively damaging and then allowing an extra healing but it will be risky and with some chances of failure and worsening the patient.

How I would do it is not as an attack and then extra healing, but I would allow something if the players really ask for it and give me some plausible way.

As for the punch to get another chance of healing, I would treat the second healing attempt to heal no more than the punch damage, treating every "combat damage" as separate, and then have a talk about the kind of stupid ideas and gamey playstyle that ruins the good stuff.
 
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apa64
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Joined: Mon 25 Jan 2021, 20:41

Re: Healing damage

Sat 25 Mar 2023, 11:27

I'm running the game very much Rules-As-Written: if the book says something can be done the players are free to do it. Works the other way too, I roll in the open and don't pull punches. That's kind of why we noticed how the recovery rule could be abused, but this is one case where we haven't done everything the rules theoretically allow :)

Anyway, thinking here if it can be made to work in the game fiction and with the rules... Rolando, I like your idea of "damaging healing". Thinking about that, let's say that the character with 4 damage (1 left before incapacitated) would have hurt their knee. The first aid could be something like violently pulling and re-setting the knee. This would hurt like hell, would cause 1 damage and if it fails the character can't walk (=incap). On Medical Aid roll the best result would "cure 3 points" but yes, that is a lucky roll it can't be rerolled unless the situation or equipment changes. Hmm, I think here I would also be strict with modifiers, eg. bad conditions for perfoming the first aid would be -1. ... Yeah, that's the only way I see this could be justified in theory. I think we'll continue to smile at the loophole and not use it.

By the way, game story time! The doc in the group is a good one (AA) and has been usually succeeding in the Medical Aid rolls. Except on the last session. His best buddy got a 10 crit in legs and the doc got quickly there to stabilize ... but failed. Pushed, but failed again. So it was time for a death save - with a single d6. STR D and no Stamina. The buddy failed, pushed ... and still failed. The doc's best friend basically bled to death in his hands, in a dark rainy forest after midnight. They had been ambushed while trying to scavenge parts from destroyed vehicles (they even had a lookout - who failed the Recon roll completely). Lot of failed rolls in that session! This was our 15th session and the first player character death - it actually hit them hard "we can really die any time".

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