natural healing?

[Sedric the Hero]

Am i the only one who's a bit mistified at natural healing in Conan...i mean i've yet to play Conan (as ive been busy running my 3.5 Drow war campaign)..but it seems odd to me that you need a full day of rest to recover hit points...while in 3.5 you only require 8 hrs of Sleep to recover hit points naturally..

And then there's ability score recovery...the fact that it's fairly quick is fine..but if you should happen to have a low Con score (say a Con of 8 or 6) you could potentially not gain ANY ability points back with rest..as you recover 1+Con Bonus per hour of rest...so a -1 Con modifier means you gain 0 pts per hour of rest..

Other than this...i love the Conan rpg..and am really hoping i can convince my players to try Conan.

 

[Caz]

Holy crap, I wouldn't complain. Last time I broke a rib it took me a month to recover all my hit points.

 

[Supplement Four]

(as ive been busy running my 3.5 Drow war campaign)

That sounds like a fantastic idea for a campaign.

Am i the only one who's a bit mistified at natural healing in Conan...but it seems odd to me that you need a full day of rest to recover hit points...while in 3.5 you only require 8 hrs of Sleep to recover hit points naturally.

This may become my first house rule for Conan. I'm going to try to play the game as much as I can straight out of the book.

But, if you look at the definition of what hit points are on page 175 of the 2nd E rule book, the hit points really should heal quite quickly. I mean, the book says that hit points represent the health, fatigue, and combat awareness of a character rather than his true physical condition.

Given that definition, hit points should heal extremely quickly...I'd say an hour would be fine to bring anybody back up to full hit point level.

If we want to give a little more clout to the "health" part of the equation, and assume that an entire day is needed to recoup the strain of a combat encounter, then maybe the day is justified.

I'm still considering this.

 

[Supplement Four]

Holy crap, I wouldn't complain. Last time I broke a rib it took me a month to recover all my hit points.

It doesn't seem as though the game models things like sprained muscles and broken bones very well, though.

From what I've read, so far, there's really only three states addressed:

Fighting Condition, with 1+ hit points.

Incapacitated, with 0 hit points.

Dying, with -1 to -9 hit points.

(And, well, Dead, with -10 hit points.)


Where does breaking a rib fit into that? It doesn't fit well.

If I had to guess, I'd allow a character with a broken rib limited movement (maybe only 5 foot steps). His max hit points would be what he had at 1st level, no matter his current level. And, he'd always be considered as flat footed (barring Dodge and Parry options).

It's GM's call.

Wound effects in the d20 system seem to be either dead or completely healthy...without a lot of room to model bruised fingers, short of breath, sprained muscles, or even broken ribs.

 

[thelevitator]

The abstract and some might say convoluted nature of HP is one of the main reasons I started looking for a different approach. I think I have found something that is much more "Conanesque" than HP.

The system is FUDGE, but the Wound Track was a little too similar to HP for my tastes. I found a Non-Linear Wound system that is much more realistic. There are basically 4 types of wounds: Flesh Wounds, Severe Wounds, Critical Wounds and Traumatic Wounds. What I really like about them is that they aren't directly connected to each other, so you avoid the "death spiral" inherent in HP-based systems. Each type of wound has a resistance save to avoid further consequences of the wound, and each type of wound comes with a different negative modifier to the character's traits.

I'm not naive to say that this is the hands-down best thing out there for everyone. But in our initial testing, we've found it downright brutal, and makes HP systems have a Candyland feel in comparison. In fact, my guess is that it's really too gritty for most gamer's tastes, which explains why it isn't more popular.

I've struggled with the concept of HP for almost 30 years now. It was very liberating to find a different approach to combat. Although, I might still scale it down a bit to be a little less lethal.


My guess is that they intentionally made healing slower in Conan to make being injured actually matter more than it does in a standard D20 game. A higher threat of death usually does give a game a grittier and more dangerous feel.

 

[Sedric the Hero]

um you guys are missing the point....when it comes to hit point recover I am ONLY trying to point out is that it is easier in D&D 3.5 to naturally heal as compared to Conan...in Conan you need a days rest to gain hit points...so basically you have to spend a FULL day resting...when in D&D...one nights sleep and you're ready to get going (assuming you're healed enough of course). Why the difference?

As for recovery of Ability score loss...which is quite fast (which fits Howards stories..and balances the lack of Healing magic in Conan)...I don't care that it is fast...just that it becomes non-existent if you have a crappy Constitution score.. so why is it done this way?? you could get poisoned or whatever and NEVER recover your stat points...admittedly this may be somewhat realistic (well as realistic as rpgs get) but makes it difficult from a player's perspective

Ideally i'd love to hear from the Conan's game designers...but I tend to think that's unlikely.

 

[thelevitator]

I apologize for getting a bit off topic, but I thought I gave my opinion at the end of my post, so I don't think I missed the point, but rather, belabored it. :wink:

It's still my opinion that the Conan designers made healing a bit slower to make the world feel grittier and less "videogamey". Combined with the massive damage rules, among other things, I think the intent was to make combat more risky and dangerous than a standard D&D game. If a character has to rest a full day when injured instead of just getting some sleep, they might think twice about trivial combat and save their strength for when it really counts.

I've played in a few gritty games, and they have much less of the "hey look! It's breathing! Let's kill it and take its stuff!" kind of feel than a traditional fantasy game. My guess is that the HP recovery was part of the gritty and dangerous feel they were trying (and I think succeeded compared to D&D) to create. Maybe the thinking was that slower HP recovery would encourage players to think of their characters more realistically and not jump into every possible fight or they risk being injured for a battle that really counts in the story.

But, as I'm not one of the designers, your guess is as good as mine.

 

[Sedric the Hero]

thats possible..but i get the feeling it is simply a holdover from D&D 3.0...which had a full days rest required for natural healing too.