Topic: How to heal a critical?

[Deeman]

Hello everybody,

I'm looking to give HARP a try and I'm getting familiar with the rulebook to run a test game with my group.  I ran an RMFRP game for about a year so a lot of this seems familiar to me.  I'm having some difficulty with the healing of damage though.  Take this type of critical for example:

Blow breaks a bone.  15 concussion damage.  -20%.

Now in RMFRP I'd have the -20% stick with the player until they had the bone fixed.  The healing spells in HARP could seemingly heal the -20% and the concussion damage and leave a character fully fuctional walking around with a broken bone.  How should this critical be healed?

Also I'd appreciate any advice on where the pitfalls might be for a fledgling HARP GM running his first game along with suggestions as to what book, besides the rule book, do you feel adds most to HARP.

Thanks in advance.

[Xamex]

Hi. Welcome to the forum. 

Look at the HARP book - cleric spells: Major Healing.

- Reduce a maneuver penalty by up to 50 points.
•- Reduce bleeding by up to 10 points.
•- Heal up to one half of the target?s concussion hits
•- Heal one fractured bone.

[Deeman]

I didn't explain myself well.  I posted too early. 

Ok, say a fighter suffers the (Blow breaks bone.  15 concussion hits.  -20%) critical and a cleric in his party says he wants to heal him.  The cleric uses major healing for two effects to get rid of the 15 concussion hits and the -20% critical.  The broken bone (lets say a rib) could just be ignored, is it assumed its healed with the other damage being healed, or do I as the GM impose another penalty on the character to get him to tend the bone?

[Right Wing Wacko]

Good question

I would let the above character be fully healed once the numerical critical results were healed (ie. the broken bone would mean nothing once the maneuver penalty and hit damage were healed- I assume the bone is healed as the penalties are) ...unless I hear something different here!

[Dr_Sage]

You have just touched one of HARP weak points. In my opinion the healing/critical system should be better integrated and revised at some point.

Without house ruling, I believe you would be right: a Cleric with only 4 bacic ranks in Major Healing could easly get rid of the penalties, without having to heal the bone itself.

The same thing happens with the terms "burns", "frostbite" and so on.

Personaly I demand the Cleric to scale up to heal the fractured bone AND to reduce penalties if he wants to get the job done, but its my house ruling, NOT the official ruling.

I do this to create a huge difference between the apprendice with 4 ranks in Major Healing and the experienced healer with 20 ranks.

Welcome aboard. 

[Dr_Sage]

Also I'd appreciate any advice on where the pitfalls might be for a fledgling HARP GM running his first game along with suggestions as to what book, besides the rule book, do you feel adds most to HARP.

Thanks in advance.

Ops I forgot to answer that.

I personaly like Hack and Slash combat system, but if you are starting, the basic Core Book will do just fine.

Martial Law brings some nice additions to Combat Styles and Maneuvers too.

Colege of Magics has tons of material also and Codex has numerous spells and new spell caster professions.

Loot is nice but in my opinion not good to start with. Its heavy campaign dependant.

Basicaly I suggest you to familiarize with the bacic combat rules and them probably you will want more at some point. That is when you may want to take a look on ML (complex combat system) and H&L (lethal, more random than Core).

Regards!

[Xamex]

You have just touched one of HARP weak points. In my opinion the healing/critical system should be better integrated and revised at some point.

Without house ruling, I believe you would be right: a Cleric with only 4 bacic ranks in Major Healing could easly get rid of the penalties, without having to heal the bone itself.

The same thing happens with the terms "burns", "frostbite" and so on.

Personaly I demand the Cleric to scale up to heal the fractured bone AND to reduce penalties if he wants to get the job done, but its my house ruling, NOT the official ruling.

I do this to create a huge difference between the apprendice with 4 ranks in Major Healing and the experienced healer with 20 ranks.

Welcome aboard. 

That is a good idea and solution. So in your house rule the cleric can only make one spell per wound?

[Deeman]

Thanks for the replies.  Are there any revised critical tables in Martial Law or other HARP products?  Some that might make it clearer when a bone, organ, or nerve repair is necessary?  This is a real stumbling block for me to give HARP a chance with my group.  Its main appeal is a combat system where your wounds can degrade your performance in combat.  This is a weakness of D20 my group doesn't like.

[mocking bird]

Without house ruling, I believe you would be right: a Cleric with only 4 bacic ranks in Major Healing could easly get rid of the penalties, without having to heal the bone itself.

I just noticed something about the spell description.  At the top it says it can be used to heal a fractured bone in its base form however lower there is a scaling option of +6 PP's for broken & shattered bones. 

While I don't have an issue with the way healing works in general (it is much simpler that RM) some of the wording between the healing spells and crit descriptions is a little inconsistent.  For instance 91-95 crush critical that breaks three bones with no maneuver penalty or pierce 81-85 that destroys a calf muscle and again no mnv penalty.

[Deeman]

Those devestating critical descriptions with no maneuver penalty bother me also mocking bird.  If ICE didn't address this in a later book, then I'm thinking of imposing my own penalty linked directly to broken bones, severed muscles and damaged nerves.  Don't want it to be too imbalancing though.  Maybe this can be taken care of by rolling a location for these damages.  Break a bone, roll leg, and you can't walk for example.  May make some of the lower crits too nasty though. 

[Pecete]

On RPG we must decide if we want a hard Hack and Slash game or rather we prefer a more realistic aproach, if you chose the first option its nice to have a fast healing spells just like the old D&D used to be (no criticals just heal hp spells), on the other side we can take the option of having criticals, that means that we prefer the realistic option and we must respect the injuries made with weapons and the consecuences, in form of negative penalties.

I use the following house rule first you must heal the broken bone or wound then you can heal up to 50% of the negative penalty, the rest of that penalty will be healed at the rate of -10 per day.

PD: by the way I use Hack and slash rules

[Deeman]

Looks like I'm just going to have to come up with something to represent specific physical incapacitation.

What are the Hack and Slash rules?

[Pecete]

Hack and Slash rules is an expansion for Harp sistem

[Michael Petrea]

I am surprised that Rasyr hasn't weighed on this yet *hint*cough*hint*

[Dr_Sage]

You have just touched one of HARP weak points. In my opinion the healing/critical system should be better integrated and revised at some point.

Without house ruling, I believe you would be right: a Cleric with only 4 bacic ranks in Major Healing could easly get rid of the penalties, without having to heal the bone itself.

The same thing happens with the terms "burns", "frostbite" and so on.

Personaly I demand the Cleric to scale up to heal the fractured bone AND to reduce penalties if he wants to get the job done, but its my house ruling, NOT the official ruling.

I do this to create a huge difference between the apprendice with 4 ranks in Major Healing and the experienced healer with 20 ranks.

Welcome aboard. 

That is a good idea and solution. So in your house rule the cleric can only make one spell per wound?

Thanks for the kind words and sorry for the late reply. 

For now I am not that evil (yet). 

Lets say for example that the group?s fighter received a big crush critical and ended up with: -40 penalty / -38 hits / broken arm (he had no shield).

I would not alow a cleric to reduce the penalties without scalling up enough to:

 4 pp = base spell cost
+2pp = "2 options" (hits + penalty)
+6pp = "heal broken & shattered bones"

Meaning a minimun of 12 ranks in Major Healing to even attenpt to heal the damage.

As I told before, this is a house rule, not the official one, but I think it works great.

On another subject: I have considered ways of messing up even more with magical healing, but that means improve the critical system and natural healing also. Tons of serious work here my friends.

[Right Wing Wacko]

Dr Sage... I like your way of healing... I shall make it a house rule in my game also!

[Alwyn]

I am with Dr. Sage on this one.  The bone must be healed before the penalties go away.  That's how we play it anyway. 

[Dr_Sage]

Thanks guys!

My mind is aways working to improve rpgs.
 

[Alwyn]

I really like the various injury results in Martial Law and the healing that is required to get the characters & NPCs back on their feet.  That is basically why I went back to ML after using Hack & Slash for a while.

Another reason that I like HARP:  It is easy to tinker with and make it your own.   

[Deeman]

So Alwyn would you say Martial Law has more clearly defined injuries than the core rulebooks crit tables?