Healing in Conan (2nd Ed.)

[decker423]

I"m posting this here because I've seen a lot of questions get posted here and not on the questions forum.

This concerns healing, 2nd Ed.

P. 191 Conan RPG 2nd ed., a character gains hit points back by resting. If a character undergoes "complete bedrest and does nothing for an entire day", he gets double those hit points.

I have a few questions on this:

1. What is the difference between "resting" a day and "complete bed rest" for a day?

2. What activities can the person "resting" do? Does light activity (walking, shopping, lifting light loads, etc.) count?

3. Can a character gain hit points for sleeping/resting for an 8-10 period (read "sleeping and taking it easy from dusk to dawn")?

4. Can a character move and heal at the same time?

5. A day. Is that an exact 24 hour period? Again, please see question #1.

Thanks

 

[Malcadon]

1. "resting" is when you spend the day just relaxing and taking it easy, and "complete bed rest" is when you spend the whole day sleeping off your injuries - much like when you are recovering from an illness or a nasty beating.

2. Its up to the GM, but characters usually relax by carousing - drinking, feasting, and f***ing. A Sorcerer might just spend the day reading, scribing, or researching. As long as you avoid combat (like bar brawls), traveling around, spell casting, complex rituals, or wild sexual orgies (you can still have casual sex while resting, but pleasuring multiple women at once is way to much effort for just resting ).

3. I have no idea? The book seems to note natural healing that takes the the whole day to do so. But you can always use aberration as a GM to rule on hourly periods.

4. You can move around while resting, as long as you dont do to much of it - you can walk to one place or another in town, as long as its close, but you should not spend the whole day running around town doing this and that. With complete bed rest, you are limited to minimum movement - getting out of bed to eat or make offerings to the god of bed pans, then crawl back into bed (just ask yourself: what would you do when your sick in bed).

5. More or less. For characters, the day begins as soon as they wake up. Theirs is no point in bean-counting every hour of the day, as the characters live day by day. With how erratic their lives are - shifts to day time/night time activities, lost of sleep, and such - it helps to be flexible to help keep the narrative of the story, and flexibility is key to running a good game.

 

[Clovenhoof]

I agree with Malcadon's interpretation of the rules, and would add the following:

It doesn't improve the game in any way if you make the party camp for two or three days after each heavy fight. Hence, a PC should regenerate a sizable portion of HP just by overnight rest and otherwise proceeding as usual during the day (i.e. travelling up to 8 hours etc).
The GM might rule this to be worth something like 1/2 the normal regeneration, or even the full rate if you really don't want to linger anywhere just to heal up.
Either way, spending time in a city to squander your riches is definitely worth the full regeneration rate.

Just keep in mind it's a heroic adventure game, not a simulation, so never mind if it's "realistic" that a half-dead character is back at full health after three days. It's a feature.

 

[treeplanter]

Personnaly I allow 3 + consti + level hp for a night of rest (so like a casual full day)

 

[Saeros]

I agree with Clovenhoof regarding injuries getting in the way of the game moving forward.

My house rule is that after each combat an injured person can be healed (DC15) for Injured Character's CON Bonus + Healer's Heal Ranks (Not total heal skill, just the number of ranks). Each injured character can only be healed once after each combat, and this Heal Skill use requires one round per point of damage healed. This makes Heal skill a little more valuable, and all my players add a rank or two per level to Heal. This healing is in addition to the check needed to stabalise an injured character if needed.

At lower levels it really makes a difference in the number of combats that can happen before the players need to rest.

Saeros

 

[Teriudin]

We play that a days rest is simply a good night's sleep. This allows travelling, normal adventuring stuff, and makes decisions like who is keeping watch and when interesting.

Bed Rest is exactly that, all day in a bed for the most part. Thus, after, say the barbarian gets pounded and they get to town, the other characters can spend the day gathering info, doing stuff, shopping, and continuing the plot while the poor wounded guy gets his healing.

 

[Saxon]

My house rule is that after each combat an injured person can be healed (DC15) for Injured Character's CON Bonus + Healer's Heal Ranks

I like this...good idea

 

[Demetrio]

I like this...good idea

Me too. A nice idea that makes having high ranks in Heal worthwhile. It's simple but good ideas like this that should have made it in to the Warrior's Companion.

 

[Apple]

I like this...good idea

Me too. A nice idea that makes having high ranks in Heal worthwhile. It's simple but good ideas like this that should have made it in to the Warrior's Companion.

Ranks in heal is already worthwhile, you really want at least 2 people in the party who can consistently make a 15 on the roll. This house rule would make it THE skill to have. You'd practically be REQUIRED to have at a minimum 1 person with max ranks in every single party. Not a good idea.

I don't see how taking a couple days to heal up after a knock down drag out fight where you've lost most of your HPs somehow gets in the way of play. PC's "Okay, we rest 2 days, character X does long term healing night 1, character Y on night 2." DM "Okay." That took... 5 seconds?

That said I think a rule that increased the amount healed after a fight is worthwhile if your party is really small. With 4+ people the damage will get spread out and if 3 characters are injured and rest for the night that's 3x the healing you get than if your party is 1 or 2 people and only 1 gets damaged. Likewise 1 character with remaining injuries who needs to hang back doesn't have as big an impact on a party of 4+ as it does with a party of 1 or 2.

 

[Demetrio]

You'd practically be REQUIRED to have at a minimum 1 person with max ranks in every single party. Not a good idea.

Not really. As a 'first aid' roll it seems fine to me. If you like it could heal Con bonus + 2x skill ranks or whatever. The rate of further healing is a separate issue.

And as rolling 15 is already de rigeur, at least ten ranks of heal are going to be pretty much required already. So a party of level 6-8 already have to max out heal. With the proposed system, tweaked to taste, the number of ranks matters more at higher levels. I don't think that's a bad thing.

 

[Apple]

And as rolling 15 is already de rigeur, at least ten ranks of heal are going to be pretty much required already.

No, currently healing is nice to have but not required. Untrained but spending money on first aid kits you can still be getting 15 almost half the time with INT bonus, add even 5 ranks and it's usually enough to be a good healer. As soon as you pin the amount healed on ranks though it becomes so good of a skill that it would be foolish not to max ranks in it.

 

[Vambelte]

After the combat I allow a Heal check-15, the result will be the number of healed hps (I took this idea in this somewhere in this forum).

And for a day resting, I require all day long doing nothing but resting, and drinking/eating. Off course if you have carouseer you can go to the tavern and drink off your wounds...

 

[decker423]

I like this...good idea

Ranks in heal is already worthwhile, you really want at least 2 people in the party who can consistently make a 15 on the roll. This house rule would make it THE skill to have. You'd practically be REQUIRED to have at a minimum 1 person with max ranks in every single party.
I don't see how taking a couple days to heal up after a knock down drag out fight where you've lost most of your HPs somehow gets in the way of play. PC's "Okay, we rest 2 days, character X does long term healing night 1, character Y on night 2." DM "Okay." That took... 5 seconds?

I agree. I would think that every combat character would know SOME healing. It makes sense, if you live a life by the sword and of the sword, you KNOW you will be hurt sooner or later, best to have skills on helping yourself or battle buddies out.

I don't have it as a house rule though. If someone is stupid enough NOT to take the skill then they deserve what they get when it comes time to heal up from that latest scrap.

Healing doesn't have to be a long, drawn out narrative but it should be addressed, otherwise why track hit points and damage in combat in the first place?