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Mr. Mask
2015-02-04, 11:58 PM
I had an idea. What if instead of rolling healing once or casting a spell, healing was a skill challenge with multiple facets, and wounds had several elements to treat? So, if someone is wounded, you need to first assess the wound, stop bleeding, deal with pain, and potential levels of failure like your patient losing a limb?

I think part of what makes systems with wounds feel unengaging to some, is that once you have the wound it doesn't give many gameplay opportunities. If medical treatment was interesting, it'd probably make wounds more interesting.


What do you think of this idea? Any ideas for it?

Firest Kathon
2015-02-05, 07:18 AM
Das Schwarze Auge (DSA, The Dark Eye) has this mechanic. The first check is to assess the injury and prevent infection. The second check, which you can only make after a successful first check, actually restores hit points, but only when resting. Simple injuries are easy to treat (fixed difficulty), actual wounds (which you get from heavy injuries or some special attacks) are more difficult to treat and require separate checks.

Healing magic is available, but limited to hit point damage (I think only priests of the goddess of healing can heal wounds). To save someone from death (negative hit points) requires a wizard to spend permanent arcane energy.

I will not say that it is more interesting than the D&D mechanic, but different. Instantaneous healing is rather rare, and after a hard fight you may need some days to recover. I think it does not fit well into the high-fantasy D&D premise.

NichG
2015-02-05, 07:22 AM
Well, I'd say it has two marks against it:

1. The game mechanics entirely consist of things which players will find negative, which they then must deal with, as opposed to positive things. E.g. presenting it like this is sort of like saying 'I want to take a role which is usually considered very passive and make it even more costly in terms of potential character diversity to stay competent at it'.

2. The bottleneck structure feels like it puts emphasis on the wrong side. That is to say, now you have very diverse mechanical things which all go into ameliorating the same '-X to rolls' or whatever that is caused by having the wound in the first place. So it becomes a game of go-fish as to whether or not you will be able to remove a static effect. The choice of whether or not the player's abilities will be relevant is made on the DM side of the screen in determining what kind of wound a given hostile effect deals (or by the dice). Increased investment on the part of the player just increases the chance that they will be able to be relevant in a fixed fashion, rather than actually giving them more choices. In general, it's better design that increased investment should equal increased options for the player to exercise.

Those aren't incurable flaws, but they're pretty severe.

Mr. Mask
2015-02-05, 09:25 AM
Firest: That's fairly interesting. So, you need to succeed on a first aid roll before you can heal with rest?


Nich: 1) Well... combat comes to mind.

2) I'm afraid I don't understand.

hamlet
2015-02-05, 10:55 AM
Alternity does this. I think it works pretty well. Varying degrees of medical care take different times (first aid is quick but long term care or surgery take hours, days, or weeks) and mess ups have varying degrees of consequences. Makes playing a medic character a real viable option.

xroads
2015-02-05, 11:55 AM
I had an idea. What if instead of rolling healing once or casting a spell, healing was a skill challenge with multiple facets, and wounds had several elements to treat? So, if someone is wounded, you need to first assess the wound, stop bleeding, deal with pain, and potential levels of failure like your patient losing a limb?

I think part of what makes systems with wounds feel unengaging to some, is that once you have the wound it doesn't give many gameplay opportunities. If medical treatment was interesting, it'd probably make wounds more interesting.


What do you think of this idea? Any ideas for it?

Interesting idea. But if your games are based around action (like most role-playing games are), then adding complexities to the ability of characters to recover will just hinder their ability to push the story forward.

NichG
2015-02-05, 05:22 PM
Firest: That's fairly interesting. So, you need to succeed on a first aid roll before you can heal with rest?


Nich: 1) Well... combat comes to mind.

2) I'm afraid I don't understand.

Compare this system to a system in which treating wounds is simple, then figure out what the differences mean for players.

Generally speaking, the need to heal wounds is a higher burden on PCs than NPCs because PCs are expected to not be TPK'd, so they have to live with the consequences of battle, whereas NPCs can be wiped out and the campaign continues. Which means that any detail added to the wound system tends to be asymmetrically disadvantageous for the PCs. On top of that, this is primarily passive engagement. Combat healing already has this problem (which is why the 'heal-bot' role of clerics is so widely unpopular). Even if you make the role mechanically important, it still consists of 'waiting for someone else to be injured, then dealing with their injury'. There's not much for the player to proactively decide there, they're basically waiting for the DM or the dice to give them an opportunity to use their abilities. So this type of system is usually just added burden, its not game-mechanically interesting.

If the model is something like 'when you are wounded, you suffer penalties or incremental damage until the wound is dealt with in a medically complex fashion', then every piece of complexity you add is merely a barrier towards reaching the end state of 'the wound is removed/stabilized successfully' or 'the wound is not removed'. So these added rules (which would come with added skill requirements, etc) just increase the amount of investment that a character must make to be individually competent in dealing with the party's wounds. Furthermore, the added complexity and difficulty doesn't come with additional interesting decisions on the part of the players because for a given type of wound, the proper sequence of rolls is pre-determined (since the proper medical treatment of a given type of wound is pre-determined).

The usual response of players to systems like this is to try to find the loopholes in the game that allow them to avoid having to deal with it.

If you want to save it, you have to ask: 'what can the PCs proactively do with this?', and then make sure that the balance is such that its a consistently relevant potential course of action.

JNAProductions
2015-02-05, 05:31 PM
Well, this is a bit far from the OP, but what if Medics didn't just allow for healing, but for improvement? (And "improvement"?)

For instance, stat buffs, HP above the max, hiding gas bombs inside joints that go off in the enemy's face if they hit it, prehensile spines, extendable limbs, etc. The Medic himself could trigger these or augment them actively in combat-activating a gas bomb when an enemy draws near, or extending a prehensile spine and making a grapple check in a combat he isn't part of. Stuff like that. Alternatively, the Medic could just have the highest modification capacity, so he gets all the (horrifying) goodies.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-05, 05:44 PM
What do you think of this idea? Any ideas for it? Some things don't have a lot of details, because it was judged that the details add significantly to the complexity of play, but not to the entertainment value of the game.

Different people will judge different ways, but in the case of healing, I agree. HP damage isn't even always a physical wound anyway. The way I play, it almost never is. I prefer the freedom to describe things the way I want.

Mr. Mask
2015-02-05, 06:20 PM
Hamlet: That sounds cool, I ought to check that one out. Thanks for mentioning it!


Xroads: With many RPGs, I feel the story tends to be what happens to the characters, the story they generate through play. When a character gets hurt it varies from superficial HP damage, to concern when you're about to die, to annoyance when you get a status ailment that troubles you, to amusement interest or grief when you get a particular wound on the table. Games with wounds often ignore magical healing and have limited mundane healing, so that segment of the game tends to feel pretty inactive, acting only as a penalty. This would allow players to feel more proactive, with chances to reduce their wound penalties.


Nich: But, which system? There are a lot, and many have very different ideas of what a good wound penalty is. Each game will place a different importance on wounds.

I don't see why you're concerned with waiting for someone else to be injured. If there is combat, it won't be long. Whether it's NPC farmers you are rescuing, bandits you want to live for interrogation purposes, or your own allies, someone will get hit who you want to treat. This has been said to be a problem of the genre of TTRPGs, as diplomacy characters won't get a chance to use their skills in combat-centred dungeon.

Players who hate wounds should probably not play games which feature detailed wound systems. If they are playing one such game, they're likely to be interested in the treatment of their wounds. "DM rolled a 17," is a boring story for how your leg got blown off, while, "Medic had to pull me out of the firing line, which hurt my broken arm, then he managed to save my leg!" makes for an interesting story. Some people won't be into this at all, they want to fight at full fitness, then die at full death, with anything inbetween being an inconvenience. In general, that seems to be the crowd that likes abstract tactical combat, which is a bit different from the crowd who wants to know how their character got mutilated precisely.

And I wouldn't say this is added difficult. I'd say this is added agency and the chance to reduce difficulty. If your Medic is successful, which might mean something so interesting as giving first aid during combat, what would've been a terrible infection and losing a leg may become a splint for several days.

I see no problem in players doing their best to avoid getting wounded. That sounds like good roleplaying, the point of a deadly wound system.


JNA: You could probably have stuff like HP buffs or strength buffs, in the form of drugs. Theoretically anyone could administer these, but you'd really want a doctor to handle it to make sure you were doing it right. A doctor or alchemist would also know how to collect and synthesize these.

That was one of the concepts for an RPG I was working on.

NichG
2015-02-05, 07:38 PM
Nich: But, which system? There are a lot, and many have very different ideas of what a good wound penalty is. Each game will place a different importance on wounds.

The point I'm making doesn't depend on what the wound penalty is, it only depends on wounds being primarily a negative object which create problems/penalties, and on wounds being primarily inflicted by exterior agency rather than self-infliction.



I don't see why you're concerned with waiting for someone else to be injured. If there is combat, it won't be long. Whether it's NPC farmers you are rescuing, bandits you want to live for interrogation purposes, or your own allies, someone will get hit who you want to treat. This has been said to be a problem of the genre of TTRPGs, as diplomacy characters won't get a chance to use their skills in combat-centred dungeon.

Compare the degree of choices different kinds of actions give the actor, and maybe you can see what I mean.

- Attacks: The character can decide the target, so the choices here scale with the number of opponents. In addition, it's very easy to expand the choices even further by allowing for different kinds of attacks that inflict different potential negative conditions. Even in the default 'blank slate' case, there are many meaningful choices.
- Movement: The character can decide where to move and therefore control which enemies can reach them/can be reached by them, as well as which allies they can reach. Terrain and other factors can give localized advantages/disadvantages which can be invoked by this. The choices available scale with movement range and mobility type. Even in the default 'blank slate' case, there are many meaningful choices.
- Battlefield alteration (e.g. utility powers): The breadth of options here comes from the diversity of specific things one can choose from and their placement. There are many ways to e.g. arrange a mud slick that inhibits enemy movement. Or instead create a wall. Or something that blocks vision. So this has the diversity of spatial positioning multiplied by the diversity of potential options.
- Diplomacy: You can choose who to try to manipulate, what the goals of your manipulation are, what you're willing to sacrifice to achieve them, make alliances, long-term connections, etc. Even applied to a blank slate case, there are many proactive directions you can initiate.
- Healing: In the default blank slate, you don't have a use for this ability. When you do have a use for this ability, your target is chosen by your enemy in terms of who they decided to injure. There are very few choices to make, and those choices are always reactive rather than proactive.



Players who hate wounds should probably not play games which feature detailed wound systems. If they are playing one such game, they're likely to be interested in the treatment of their wounds. "DM rolled a 17," is a boring story for how your leg got blown off, while, "Medic had to pull me out of the firing line, which hurt my broken arm, then he managed to save my leg!" makes for an interesting story. Some people won't be into this at all, they want to fight at full fitness, then die at full death, with anything inbetween being an inconvenience. In general, that seems to be the crowd that likes abstract tactical combat, which is a bit different from the crowd who wants to know how their character got mutilated precisely.


Individual matters of story taste are another factor, but they're not one I was addressing. All of those things apply on top of the underlying game design, which is primarily a question of structure: where are the decisions, which decisions matter, where are the bottlenecks that summarize over possible histories.



And I wouldn't say this is added difficult. I'd say this is added agency and the chance to reduce difficulty. If your Medic is successful, which might mean something so interesting as giving first aid during combat, what would've been a terrible infection and losing a leg may become a splint for several days.

I see no problem in players doing their best to avoid getting wounded. That sounds like good roleplaying, the point of a deadly wound system.

It works against your intent of making the wound system more interesting/complex. Its like making a very complex combat tactical mini-game but then making it so expensive to actually survive or win that the players just avoid the mini-game completely. Its counter-productive in terms of game design to focus a lot of detail in such a way that it actually encourages that detail to be avoided.

An example of this might be the 3.5ed grapple rules, which are about three times as complex as other actions in the combat system (and have more points of failure than a simple attack, and require more character investment to attain minimal competency than a simple attack, and only apply in more limited cases anyhow due to monsters often having huge size bonuses). The result was that many people just ended up avoiding grappling altogether in their games. It's an example where added complexity actually just made the subsystem irrelevant.

Mr. Mask
2015-02-05, 08:22 PM
Attacks: You need enemies present, worthy of attack. What's more, you need multiple enemies, and choice as to who to attack. If X is clearly the enemy you should attack, it isn't a choice. DnD is infamous with this for the basic fighter, where the "choice" of who to attack is about as interesting as playing Final Fantasy on Auto.

Movement: You need a map where movement actually matters, or else it is incidental. Outside of combat, movement doesn't matter, and in many combat encounters its use can be near pointless. So again, you need enemies.

Battlefield Utility: Requires a battlefield, and a situation worth of altering it. I'm noticing a lot of combat-centred examples.

Healing: If you're being given chances for the previous three, you're being given plenty of chances for this.

Diplomacy: In my previous post, I mentioned the problem that diplomacy is an option that sometimes gets entirely sidelined in adventures. I'm not sure why you didn't even mention this possibility, considering its relevance.

Reactive proactive: If you are ambushed, is the combat proactive or reactive? If an enemy approaches you, is moving away from them proactive or reactive? If you run to a trench and start shooting the enemy, is this action defensive or offensive?


It is a good concern to keep in mind for development. Largely, this is a misunderstanding of the mechanics intentions. The idea is to make wound treatment interesting and expand on wounding systems, and in that it succeeds. If I wanted to make a game all about the mechanic, I'd have the players play as medics with plenty of NPCs getting wounded during skirmishes (I probably will do that in an adventure).

3.5 grappling is more an example of poor design.

"It works against your intent of making the wound system more interesting/complex. Its like making a very complex combat tactical mini-game but then making it so expensive to actually survive or win that the players just avoid the mini-game completely. Its counter-productive in terms of game design to focus a lot of detail in such a way that it actually encourages that detail to be avoided."
I can think of several cult classic RPGs that fit that description... DayZ also comes to mind. Not every movie should have fight and death scenes every few minutes, that tends to take the drama out of death and combat.

Milo v3
2015-02-05, 08:53 PM
Well, this is a bit far from the OP, but what if Medics didn't just allow for healing, but for improvement? (And "improvement"?)

For instance, stat buffs, HP above the max, hiding gas bombs inside joints that go off in the enemy's face if they hit it, prehensile spines, extendable limbs, etc. The Medic himself could trigger these or augment them actively in combat-activating a gas bomb when an enemy draws near, or extending a prehensile spine and making a grapple check in a combat he isn't part of. Stuff like that. Alternatively, the Medic could just have the highest modification capacity, so he gets all the (horrifying) goodies.

This makes me want to make a skill-based magic system, where instead of new skills like conjuration their is Heal magic, craft magic, acrobatics magic, etc.

Firest Kathon
2015-02-06, 03:55 AM
Firest: That's fairly interesting. So, you need to succeed on a first aid roll before you can heal with rest?

You still get the normal healing from rest (1d6, +1 for a successful constitution check). The successful check is required for the additional healing from a successful heal check, and an untreated injury may become infected.
Just for reference, an experienced DSA adventurer would have around 30-40 hp total. Combat with humanoid enemies is usually over after a few good hits, unlike D&D where high-level humanoids can eat dozens of hits without ill effects. This makes it quite different from D&D, and the combat system has a parry mechanic which allows for active defense (and armor works as a kind of damage reduction).


This makes me want to make a skill-based magic system, where instead of new skills like conjuration their is Heal magic, craft magic, acrobatics magic, etc.

So, DSA again? :) Spells are treated the same as skills, and can be improved individually.

goto124
2015-02-06, 04:12 AM
I kept reading the thread title as 'Medieval Game Mechanics'. No wonder I was confused...

NichG
2015-02-06, 07:20 AM
Attacks: You need enemies present, worthy of attack. What's more, you need multiple enemies, and choice as to who to attack. If X is clearly the enemy you should attack, it isn't a choice. DnD is infamous with this for the basic fighter, where the "choice" of who to attack is about as interesting as playing Final Fantasy on Auto.

Movement: You need a map where movement actually matters, or else it is incidental. Outside of combat, movement doesn't matter, and in many combat encounters its use can be near pointless. So again, you need enemies.

Battlefield Utility: Requires a battlefield, and a situation worth of altering it. I'm noticing a lot of combat-centred examples.


Yes, generally things need to be relevant to be relevant. That's a given. Lots of combat-centered examples because combat has received more attention in RPGs over the years than pretty much anything else. I can reference a ton of systems for understanding what is and isn't important in combats as far as giving players agency, so that's a lot of data to draw on.

But okay, if you want out of combat, an example would be something like a spell which allows you to change shape into a regular animal of your choice. In one ability you have a lot of different creative problem-solving tools rolled into one, which you can use in a proactive manner. You can use it to travel distances; bypass mobility obstacles such as gaps, heights, small spaces, etc; gain extra sensory information via good sense of smell; avoid notice and spy on people; interact with other animals; ...

That would be an example of something giving a lot of agency and proactive potential.



Healing: If you're being given chances for the previous three, you're being given plenty of chances for this.


It isn't about being 'given' something, its about being able to 'take' something. You can proactively decide to employ attacking to advance your goals, without the DM having to put a fight in front of you.



Diplomacy: In my previous post, I mentioned the problem that diplomacy is an option that sometimes gets entirely sidelined in adventures. I'm not sure why you didn't even mention this possibility, considering its relevance.


Diplomacy doesn't get sidelined if you have a sufficiently proactive player, unless the adventure doesn't involve interacting with anything sentient at all (which is pretty anomalous). We're fighting an evil cult of Yuan-Ti? Well, I can go and try to join them! Or I can negotiate with them to sacrifice the population of a city I don't like instead of my home-town in exchange for X,Y,Z. Or I can just try to distract them while the rogue steals their ritual components. Or I can mine them for information which will help later on.



Reactive proactive: If you are ambushed, is the combat proactive or reactive? If an enemy approaches you, is moving away from them proactive or reactive? If you run to a trench and start shooting the enemy, is this action defensive or offensive?


Actions within combat can be proactive even if the premise for the combat itself is reactive. Combat has opposition which actively adapts against what you do, which creates the meaningful-ness that is necessary for real agency. Even if the outcome set is fairly simple, that push-back from an intelligent opponent is what makes it feel rewarding.

If an enemy approaches you and you move away, you decided to do that rather than to close the distance and attack, or ignore the enemy and do another action, stand your ground so the enemy can't get at someone else, or try to make the ground between you and the enemy difficult to pass or inconvenient. Where you move may matter, as may when you move, in systems that care about those things.



It is a good concern to keep in mind for development. Largely, this is a misunderstanding of the mechanics intentions. The idea is to make wound treatment interesting and expand on wounding systems, and in that it succeeds. If I wanted to make a game all about the mechanic, I'd have the players play as medics with plenty of NPCs getting wounded during skirmishes (I probably will do that in an adventure).

You're claiming victory before you've tested the system in actual play (much less written specific details to get feedback on). 'In that it succeeds', past-tense, is premature.



3.5 grappling is more an example of poor design.

"It works against your intent of making the wound system more interesting/complex. Its like making a very complex combat tactical mini-game but then making it so expensive to actually survive or win that the players just avoid the mini-game completely. Its counter-productive in terms of game design to focus a lot of detail in such a way that it actually encourages that detail to be avoided."
I can think of several cult classic RPGs that fit that description... DayZ also comes to mind. Not every movie should have fight and death scenes every few minutes, that tends to take the drama out of death and combat.

Yes, 3.5 grappling is an example of poor design. Without something better than 'lets just make it complex and realistic!', so, I would argue, is the idea of detailed medical game mechanics.

Many games have a few things they do very well, but also have things that they do really poorly. They can be enjoyable despite the bad parts, because you can avoid the bad parts or house-rule them away or whatever. That doesn't make the bad parts good design, or mean that you should intentionally emulate them in every way including the stuff that can be done better.

Mr. Mask
2015-02-07, 07:57 AM
I take it you'd prefer a different sort of system to the kind of system I'd be interested in. I'm afraid complex and realistic systems are of interest to me, DayZ being a topical exception (zombies annoy me the way they move, plus some odd simulation decisions). And indeed, I feel the mechanic succeeds at expanding on medical mechanics in TTRPGs, and in being interesting. If you feel all worthwhile options in RPGs are presented with equal proactivity, I'm afraid I can only disagree, and don't think we'll come to an agreement on this subject.

I discussed the matter with a friend with medical training, and I've decided I will work on the medical mechanics. Thank you for discussing the matter with me and helping me to come to this decision.