[TW/ED] Healing

Discussion on game mastering Earthdawn. May contain spoilers; caution is recommended!
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The Undying
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Re: [TW/ED] Healing

Post by The Undying » Thu Feb 02, 2017 11:24 pm

At this point, I think we just might have different visions, which is fine.

For me, as Lys pointed out earlier, characters past their Death Rating are dead. The things that can bring them back from that are SUPER magic, not just simple magic. At this point, you are dealing with a no kidding corpse. For me, I can't justifying how stitching up the wound is going to help them become not-dead.

If you want some real-world analogies:
- Life Check and Death Cheat are very much in the vein of defibrillator paddles. You've coded, you basically just died, but the intervention keeps you from actually becoming a corpse.
- Last Chance (Nethermancy) is like the "push 10 cc of <that drug thing> STAT." You've coded, the paddles didn't work, but there's a VERY brief window while you're dead that all the tissue is still health, and you can restart the systems.
- Last Chance Salve and any interventions by Questers of Garlan are no kidding "you brought us a cold slab of meat." There's no real-world analogy. The body has been shipped off to the morgue, game over, time of death. Pushing more fluids, giving antibiotics, suturing wounds - none of that matters, this is a carcass.

As to much of the rest of your post, my opinions are well known on the whackadoo damage output available in ED4 close combat, I don't really want to revisit it here. :D Yep, it's unfortunate, if someone lets that hit through, there's a good chance that post maybe Circle 7, a fragile Adept or an Adept that has already sustained a decent amount of damage is at real risk of going down, and to an amount of damage that will keep them down, and that is truly unfortunate from a system perspective to me. Armor isn't going to keep up, the scaling function has failed. Your best bet is to focus on avoidance - Defense, the dodges (Avoid Blow, Steel Thought), staying out of range in the first place if you aren't build for combat, etc.

Telarus
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Re: [TW/ED] Healing

Post by Telarus » Fri Feb 03, 2017 3:17 am

The whole "may be revived X hours after death" thing comes from the story of how the Passions trapped Death (the Named spirit) under the lava of Death's Sea. The hand of Death is checked slightly by Her ( ;) ) imprisonment.

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Loba
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Re: [TW/ED] Healing

Post by Loba » Sat Feb 04, 2017 10:31 pm

The Undying wrote:
Thu Feb 02, 2017 11:24 pm
At this point, I think we just might have different visions, which is fine.

If you want some real-world analogies:
- Life Check and Death Cheat are very much in the vein of defibrillator paddles. You've coded, you basically just died, but the intervention keeps you from actually becoming a corpse.
- Last Chance (Nethermancy) is like the "push 10 cc of <that drug thing> STAT." You've coded, the paddles didn't work, but there's a VERY brief window while you're dead that all the tissue is still health, and you can restart the systems.
- Last Chance Salve and any interventions by Questers of Garlan are no kidding "you brought us a cold slab of meat." There's no real-world analogy.
LOL. I like the drug analogy.
Anyway - yes different visions. Mostly I view it as dying not dead. A character is past their death rating is going to die. The point you place is much farther than that for me. Generally, my reasoning is that the difference between unconscious and dead is not much. To have it be true death as you put it - I would rather the difference be modified by perhaps a factor of Circle x 2.5 or so. Characters are squishy - and with ED - At least once a game we have some number up around 65-70 for damage with Circle 6 characters.... so...there would probably be one death per game by random accident which is no fun. That extra 15 point buffer would truly be useful there.

I see where you are coming from though.

Scherme
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Re: [TW/ED] Healing

Post by Scherme » Fri May 24, 2019 4:35 pm

Wow this was a lot to read.
I apologize to anyone annoyed by me bumping older threads, I was late to the party.

I like the idea of "Recovery Points" that can be used to make "Recovery Tests" and to use certain talents and such.
This actually helps sort it out in my mind a little better. Although I tend to think any bonuses that would affect a characters recovery tests should affect any healing ability that would use a "recovery point" but I have will have to look further into it. Fireblood is something I would allow booster potions to influence for instance.
The Undying wrote:
Wed Jan 25, 2017 2:39 am
However, since it uses these "potential" tests, there's ambiguity as to whether "Recovery test" bonuses should apply, even though they aren't "Recovery tests" in the "test" sense. Mainly, I'm looking at you, Fireblood.
Coming from 1st edition
The Fireblood talent allows the character to make one of his available Recovery Tests in
the middle of a Combat Round, substituting the Fireblood step for his Toughness step in
the test.
This was left out of 3rd Edition, I have yet to get my hands on 4th.

It was common for warriors in our party to chug a booster while advancing toward an enemy at the start of combat in preparation for using fireblood. We kept this during 3rd edition and I will probably leave it in when running 4th.

We also used to allow a roll to be made on administering potions to unconscious party members (to make sure they do not choke) so that bonuses would be applied to their next RT which I consider as mandatory as the first RT of the day while damaged/wounded. I cannot think of a good reason to put off a RT while unconscious. I am sure someone smarter than me can.

Our groups rule for stun damage was as many of you suggested as well, stun damage is regular damage up until unconsciousness (non lethal damage) that must be healed regularly.

My feeling is the more generous I am with healing, the more generous I can be with damage lol
99.99% of encounters at my tables were randomly rolled. I can remember the day I found out not everyone does that, and it was and still is extremely weird to me. We would roll for a potential encounter, then if one was rolled there were charts (extensive) to determine what that encounter was. This made healing extremely important before moving. Although encounters were still possible while sitting in one spot, they were less likely unless in a particularly nasty area.

The blood damage taken for items that were thought to be used regular was tracked as regular damage, and was always the LAST damage that could be healed. Although if it is available to be healed, now that I think about it, how can cuts/bumps/bruises/wounds be healed before making oneself whole after the sacrifice of their own blood. Maybe blood damage that is available to be heal, should be healed first.

Any blood damage for long term uses (1year+1day) was subtracted from DR until the day it expires unless renewed.
In a perpetual state of lore overload.

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