Healing and T20

[tear44]

Hey there,

New to Traveler. But am impressed. This world and system is great.

I was wondering if some one could give me an example of how a party would deal with healing damage.

I accept that Traveler has a different philosophy and mechanic for damage. The whole combat is deadly and people will die. I love it.

I just can't seem to get my head around the healing system. An example would be great.

Thanks all, and awesome work on T20

 

[DrSkull]

Machinegun Frank was shot up in a firefight. He is 4th level and had 25 stamina and 12 lifeblood (constitution 12), but the wounds reduced him to 4 stamina and 2 Lifeblood.

Scenario 1) There is a well-equipped medic nearby. Sawbones McGee runs up to Frank and applies a dose of Medical Drug (p216). This restores 11 points of stamina (3d6) and 3 points of Lifeblood. Frank now is Stamina 15, Lifeblood 5, better but still worrisome. So, they get to safety and Mcgee applies a dose of Medical Slow Drug (p 219). For the next 24 hours Frank is unconscious, but after that all his Stamina is healed, and he regains 4 lifeblood +1 for his CON bonus. His totals are now Stamina 25, Lifeblood 10. He's almost whole. he can go on, or since he is beyond the 24 hour limit for overdose risk he could take another dose of Medical Drug and probably regain those last two Lifeblood points.

Scenario 2) Frank is stuck all alone on Wild West planet (TL 4). He crawls into a cave, builds a fire and goes to sleep, he recovers 2 stamina points per hour, so in 11 hours his Stamina returns to full. Lifeblood takes a while longer. He is missling 10 points of Lifeblood, so it will take 10 weeks of rest at Miss Kitty's frontier boarding house, minus 1 week for his CON bonus of +1, or a total of 9 weeks for him to fully recover.

Sceanrio 3) Frank is rushed to a TL 13 hospital (p218). Stamina is recovered overnight. Using Growth Quickening healing techniques (p218), Frank's Lifeblood is healed at a rate of 5 per week, so in 2 weeks he's all better.

How's that?

 

[tear44]

Perfect. Just what I was looking for.

So there isn't a huge requirment for medical skills? Just the right equipment?

 

[Ellros]

Originally posted by tear44:
Perfect. Just what I was looking for.

So there isn't a huge requirment for medical skills? Just the right equipment?

Pretty much. Higher TL medkits give a lower DC for first aid attempts when stabilizing an injured party member. But I see no real need for a Doctor level med skill unless you or the player feels the need.
Plus you can get an autodoc for a ship which will function similar to a hospital stay.

 

[Kagesh]

DrSkull, I presume your second example is for Natural Healing (p216). Therefore, with Frank being 4th level he should recover 8 stamina points per hour ((1 + 1) * 4) = 8 and be at full stamina in 3 hours. Or is there a typo in the Natural Stamina Healing paragraph? If it's not a typo, why doesn't a character with a negative Con modifier get a level multiplier? I find this paragraph to be poorly written and confusing. Maybe, Hunter can clarify this.

Btw, this is something I brought up on the preview of the Lite Rules but never got answers on.

Mark

 

[scurry]

I noticed in your example that Machinegun Frank was reduced in Lifeblood without having lost any Stamina. How did this happen? I thought Lifeblood was only lost when Stamina ran out.

I'd love the clarification on this.

 

[Ellros]

Damage affects stamina first, then after being reduced by armor, the remaining damage goes to lifeblood. So you will always take stamina damage, but you might not lose any lifeblood if you armor is good, and the dice are poor

 

[DrSkull]

Originally posted by Kagesh:
DrSkull, I presume your second example is for Natural Healing (p216). Therefore, with Frank being 4th level he should recover 8 stamina points per hour ((1 + 1) * 4) = 8 and be at full stamina in 3 hours. Or is there a typo in the Natural Stamina Healing paragraph? If it's not a typo, why doesn't a character with a negative Con modifier get a level multiplier? I find this paragraph to be poorly written and confusing. Maybe, Hunter can clarify this.

Btw, this is something I brought up on the preview of the Lite Rules but never got answers on.

Mark

Great Stars yo're right.

 

[DrSkull]

Originally posted by scurry:
I noticed in your example that Machinegun Frank was reduced in Lifeblood without having lost any Stamina. How did this happen? I thought Lifeblood was only lost when Stamina ran out.

I'd love the clarification on this.

Say Frank was wearing Cloth armor (which just about anybody who's anybody does) AR 6.

Dirtbag Joe fires an SMG at Frank from 5 meters (ouch). He does a 4 round burst, using the extra damage option. So, Frank takes 3d10 damage.

Joe rolls 7,5,3 for a total of 15 points of damage, all applied to Frank's stamina. We then look at Lifeblood damage (every hit does both Stamina and Lifeblood damage).

AR 6 removes 6 factors from the attack. The first two armor factors remove the "3" and "5" dice results. There are four AR factors left, so subtract 4 from the last die. 7 minus 4 is 3. Frank takes 3 lifeblood.

Since cloth armor is so cheap and effective, and since lifeblood is not level dependent. You are going to find that low-level guys with low stamina points are going to be knocked out by stamina loss long before they lose all their lifeblood. But, high level guys are likely to lose their Lifeblood and die before they run out of Stamina.

You are also going to find that people without armor who are shot by bullets are going to die very quickly (as it should be).

 

[Ravdave]

The description for natural stamina healing is given as follows:-

"Stamina is automatically recovered
at a rate of (1 point + Constitution modifier per character level) per hour of rest. If the character has a negative Constitution modifier, the character will require a number of hours equal to (numeric value of Con modifier +1) to heal 1 point of Stamina, that it takes the character to recover a single Stamina point. For example character with a 16 Con (+3 modifier) would recover stamina t a rate of 4 points per hour of rest, while a character with a 6
Con (-2 Modifier) would heal at a rate of 1 point per 3 hours of rest."

Taking the first "equation" of (1 point + Constitution modifier per character level) per hour of rest, I believe that the constitution modifier per character level part is just written confusingly and is intended to be just the constitution modifier..!! (A character with a 16 Con has a constitution modifer of level of +3, which is used to add +3 to the total available stamina for each of character levels, hence the modifier could be referred to as bonus per character level.

Therefore the character natural healing per hour rate for 16 Con would be:-

(1point base + 3point for modifier) = 4 points per hour.

This would apply whether the character was 7th level or first.

Nowhere in the manual examples does it state that natural healing will be more rapid for higher character levels. Also consider other healing aids such as the personal medikit. This boosts natural healing base of 1 point/hour to 2 points.

If the other method of calculating stamina was used

(1point base + (+3 modifer x character level)

then at 7th level this would give (1+21) = 22points per hour, but using a medikit would only change this to

((1point base +1point boost for medikit)+21)=23

which is clearly unbalanced, as it would indicate that higher level characters with any constitution bonus would not get any significant bonus whatsoever to stamina from a medikit, or likewise from medical care given by a trained medic which also boosts the natural healing base point by one point. Using a medikit I believe should give the following natural healing for ANY character with 16 Constitution:-

(1 point base + 1 point for medikit +3 points for 16 Con) = 5points/hour.

I would appreciate anyone elses views on this.

It would be nice if the authors (RPG Realms etc), could clarify this one, by possibly providing a suitable contact mechanism (e_mail or FAQ etc) as does Wizards of Coast for DnD).

 

[Linwood]

I don't have the book w/ me at the moment, but if I remember correctly WotC's Star Wars RPG defines healing rate for Vitality (their version of Stamina) as 1 pt/level/hr, +Con modifier. In their system, a 7th-level character with a 16 Con would recover 7 pts/hr from character levels and 3 pts/hr from Con bonus, for a total of 10 pts/hr.

Offhand I don't recall the rationale behind this, but I'm guessing that it was to speed up recovery of higher-level characters. Star Wars depends on Vitality to power Jedi force abilities as well as absorbing damage, so how fast you get the points back can be critical.

Hope that helps!

 

[Beladan]

Originally posted by Rav:

I would appreciate anyone elses views on this.

I have always read it this way. I think your argument about higher level characters and the use of technology, combined with the lack of balance this brings, is fairly conclusive in this. I also feel that the genre does not support the heroic healing for heroic (ie, higher) level characters, but retains that sense of mortality for all characters.

It would be nice if the authors (RPG Realms etc), could clarify this one, by possibly providing a suitable contact mechanism (e_mail or FAQ etc) as does Wizards of Coast for DnD).

I agree. The boards are nice but hit and miss. Traveller's Aid Alerts or some such replication of 'Sage Advice' would be most welcome ad have the double benefit of collecting clarifications into one spot instead of scattering them through a wide variety of posts and forums.

Beladan

 

[Forged]

I noticed in your example that Machinegun Frank was reduced in Lifeblood without having lost any Stamina. How did this happen? I thought Lifeblood was only lost when Stamina ran out.

I'd love the clarification on this.

Damage affects stamina first, then after being reduced by armor, the remaining damage goes to lifeblood. So you will always take stamina damage, but you might not lose any lifeblood if you armor is good, and the dice are poor

Remember the exception. Critical hits bypass armor and are applied directly to Lifeblood.

 

[sea_tyger]

The original idea behind natural HP healing in 3e was that since HP represented much more than just physical damage, that more experienced characters would recover them faster than less experienced ones. That said, the natural healing rate was set at 1 hp/level per day. Thus, a 6th-level character would get back 6 hp/day.

That said, it appears that the (1 + [positive] Constitution modifier per character level) equation means that either the character gets (1+Con bonus)*level Stamina/hour or 1+(Con bonus*level) Stamina/hour. Of course, that's per hour of rest, which would preclude things like driving/piloting a vehicle, performing maintenance, etc.

That would mean a 7th-level character with a 16 Con would recover 28 (or 22) stamina in an hour of rest. That would mean that the character recovers all of his stamina derived from his constitution bonus in an hour, plus 1 (or 1*level). An average character with d4, d6 or d8 hit dice completely recovers from 0 stamina within 2 hours, and an average character with d10 or d12 hit dice completely recovers within 3 hours. Using the example on p.216, however, means that the same 7th-level character with a 16 Con would completely recover from 0 stamina in 10 hours (d4), 12 hours (d6), 14 hours (d8), 15 hours (d10), or 17 hours (d12). That's 10-17 hours of nothing more strenuous than eating, reading or watching the news. I just think that's too long for "heroic" characters to be down in the middle of a story.

However, the equation example conflicts heavily with the second equation on p.216, in that a character heals 1 stamina in a number of hours equal to 1+|(negative) Con modifier|. Whereas (accoring to the first formula) characters with a 16 Con are recovering from 0 in 2-3 hours, characters with a 6 Con would take 5-9 days. IMO, that is too much of a difference in recovery times, so the example (just 1+Con modifier) would be more accurate (although I still think 10-17 hours of rest is too much recovery time for a heroic character).

(Note: For the "average" 7th-level character with 16 Con, I used the average number of hp per level based on hit dice, so d4 HD would have 39 hp, d6 would have 46, d8 would have 53, d10 would have 60, and d12 would have 66.)