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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 03:53 
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Healers kits, whilst fantastic to players when grinding away on monsters as witnessed by moi, are the single most irritating and unrealistic thing i've ever seen. The kits can give up to 50+20+heal skill HP back twice per round, which makes it hard to balance DM events, because people are more than happy to spam them off.

As a LARPer, i'm more used to putting up with 60 second counts to restore 1 hit point (often out of 3, 4 or 5 maximum hitpoints), the count being halved with an assistant.

My suggestion is, removing the kits from the game completely and in its stead replacing them with scripted kits. There could be a number of them that would require some time to apply, roleplay and so forth to be necessary. For example, 5 tools, each of which might heal d20+healskill/5, meaning that over time you'd gradually heal the target of their ailments.

Items might consist of Scalple (removing crappy flesh), Needle and Thread (repairing good flesh), Iodine (sanitising stitched wounds), Bandages (keeping stitched wounds clean), Splints (assuming the player is badly injured or worse). Each, to my mind, would apply a 'Recently X' debuff on the target (Recently banaged, recently stitched, recently sanitised, recently splinted, recently cleaned of damaged flesh), which would slowly wear off over time. For example, five minutes, three minutes, one minute. This would represent the minimal skills that a surgeon can make use of whilst on the fields of battle, and the limitations involved with regards to surgical healing as opposed to magical healing. A wounded man, after all, still needs time to recover. Constant stitching will not keep him alive if he loses too much blood.

In terms of tools for 'out of combat' areas, for instance cities, where it might be asumed that there is a hospital, or a temple, a pale masters tower, a flesh grafters lair and so forth, in which there would be tools available for surgery, we could have another widget for healing wounds, which would function as per healers kits, either with or without the "Recently Tended" debuff.

To those of you who enjoy the spamming of healing kits this might sound like a kick in the arse, but it does promote the play of priests and druids, of which we've very few. It also gives people the chance to be creative during events, set up a field hospital and make a base camp of operations whilst out in the deep jungle in wait of incoming wounds and perform surgery on their targets through roleplay rather than just clicking.

I personally would prefer to be rid of the heal kits. What would the general concensus be?

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 04:00 
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I think while it's a good idea roleplay wise - it isn't a good idea game play wise.

A better solution in my opinion would be to replace the healers kits with scripted healers kits that immediately heal a certain amount (lets say half of what they're currently healing) and then apply a regeneration effect for a larger amount.

The immediate healing can be seen as the painkilling herbs that allow the injured person to keep fighting while ignoring their injuries and the regeneration as the bandages and herbs encouraging proper and faster healing of the wounds.

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 04:06 
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Why not just make potions better and more expensive and freely available, since people don't seem to have taken to alchemy? The mending waters can be adapted to heal a % of your heal, or 2, 4, 6, 8, 10% of your total HP + the current amount, for instance. Which would give people with 1400 HP 28, 56, 84, 112 and 140 HP + the calculation already in place ( which is purposely better than the base potions of cure light, moderate, etc ), and have healing via kits as a roleplay thing? Magic should always out-do healing.

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 06:45 
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Or tell people not to spam them and if they do, just remove them from their inventory, no refund. (Or the player from the event.)

I do very much love the idea of custom healing options as I love cleric rp.
My point here is that as DM I will keep you at 1 hp if so I wish, and I don't care if you have regen.

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 07:24 
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(Ninja Glor posted while I was typing this. Posting anyway.)

Magic should always out-do mundane healing, agreed.

Personally, I love the alchemy system. Been dabbling with it for months, Redeeming Waters is the best I've been able to make so far (the fortitude checks should be made against poison, if they aren't already, in my opinion).

Glor once described Kymlun's freedom as the freedom to do the right thing. How much or how little people spam kits while playing on their own shouldn't be a huge issue; I know I wouldn't find much entertainment value in a script arbitrarily deciding I'll need to wait five minutes before the next fight. DM events, however, are an entirely different story. Wouldn't you be well within your rights to just tell people not to use the damn things excessively? I wouldn't have a problem with a DM deciding on a healing kit limitation or anything else for an event as long as it made sense IC.

[DM]Twilight: [Shout] Anyone using heal kits back to back without a 60 second cooldown is not getting XP cookies for this event!

In my opinion, the whole deal with different surgical implents ventures far too deep into "annoying unrealistic realism rules" territory. Pointless micromanagement doesn't add to RP or fun; players can RP setting up a field hospital just fine with plain ol' heal kits. You could even take such a thing into consideration by lifting or easing the kit limit while in the hospital.

[DM]Twilight: [Shout] Unless you're in the field hospital. Then you can use three per minute.

Nobody has to use the healing kits unless they want to, and DMs should have the right to decide on what goes and what doesn't during events. No need to make it more complicated. However, if you do end up removing or changing the healing kits, I won't throw a fit over it. They're convenient but they're not oxygen - can make do without them.


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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 08:43 
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Perhaps make a Surgeon's table **placeable** for the player magic boxes?
(I guess dwarves could use the anvil as a table...)

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 11:49 
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Aside from the healing magic a bard, cleric or druid provides, we've got kits, cure wounds potions, alchemy potions, regeneration items, the odd heal potion or greater restoration scroll, and resting, all to restore HP.

Healing kits can be used both on yourself and others, and can keep poison and disease from getting worse. They also heal d20 + Heal Skill hitpoints without provoking attacks of opportunity, and you can take 20 outside of combat. But for it to be very effective you'll need to invest in the Heal skill or items with a Heal bonus.
Cure Wounds potions scale from 1d8+2 to 4d8+7, do provoke attacks and only work on yourself or your companion/familiar. If you didn't put points in Heal, they might be a quicker way to restore HP but also a quicker way to die. Alchemy potions work in similar if different ways.
A bard/cleric/druid can improve the effects of cure wounds potions up to 1d8+5 and 4d8+20, empower the spells, use them on someone else, and damage undead with the castings, but they can't buy a supply of a gazillion spells.
Regeneration from spells or items offers lots of healing over time, which means you can run circles around most monsters until you're fit for round 2, get all better while you stand around roleplaying or walk down a corridor, or in some cases won't take a wound that doesn't instantly heal at all. No activation of the ability is even required. The downside is you won't start bleeding out from 0 HP when your character is struck down, but probably simply die instead.
Resting is limited to once per 3 minutes, which is to say you're good to go after almost every encounter if the area will allow it. Full healing and you get your spells back over a period of 30-60 seconds.
Other means of getting full healing instantly are the Heal, Mass Heal and Greater Restoration spells, which may or may not cause an attack depending on the form they come in. These are easily outdoing anything else but unless you're a cleric or druid access is limited.

With all these tools available, there is no reason a character should be wounded before a new encounter, whether it's their second of the day or their hundredth. Changing that will probably call for a redesign that covers most or all of the methods, going well beyond healing kits alone.
As to the realism of breaking open kit after kit to instantly mend wounds while a bunch of monsters take whacks at you... Well, I suppose there's no realisim in fighting with full ability in the Near Death state or fixing Bad Wounds with a quick rest either. The concept of hitpoints and damage doesn't translate well to injuries to begin with.
It's the beauty of roleplay that we can leave those awkward mechanics behind and tell a proper story.

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 13:04 
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The idea of the surgical tools is that's exactly what you'd find in a healers kit. Salves, stitching, bandages, needles, scalples, etc. And where we're in the right to say "don't use healers kits", people will whine if they die as a result of it because they had kits that they could have spammed whilst simutaneously dodging six goblins swinging swords at their face. My idea of a healers kit is that it takes you out of combat and incapasitates you for a much better boon where you would usually die. In my honest oppinion they're overpowered comparatively. I'd rather see people use potions more frequently and kits less frequently, or even start plotting to make druids or clerics or bards to aid their companions, rather than stacking into heal (which isn't even cross path to any class) and building for solo play. If we could get the old party combination of cleric/druid, caster, fighter and rogue mooching about the orcs rather than monk, monk, monk, monk, fighter, rogue with enough points to put into heal that'd make my day, tbh.

I'd be more than happy to make a store which sells the alchemical mending potions and adjust the scripts so that they are superior to cure potions (and significantly more expensive). Alchemy also offers the positive boon of creating full heal potions. The DC is very high of course and the chances are slim that you'll find the herbs, but it's there.

I'd be happy to invest time into improving potions. In fact I have merged teh alchemy onactiv script with the latest one to fix the issue with the 'cool potions' not working as of last night, if it would make the difference. However if you guys just wanna win all the time i'll just make my mobs overpowered :P

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 13:26 
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I'd be happy to see those changes but we still have things I'd like done before then. Such as the transformation items I suggested a year or so ago.

Also my two cents on dming for people who want to win.
Let them.
I don't think it's an issue.

If I want a character to lose, I make them lose with a story not with 200 allstat monsters. I made people cry for a drow they met 5 minutes ago with narration. They didn't even know the drow's name, nor did anybody bother investigating. Poor drow he died! And everybody was talking about him for a few days.
You can do even better, it's your birth language.
Feeling frustrated about powerplay? Talk to the players.

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 13:43 
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No no it's not that i'm bothered about power play at all. The issue is, most of my campaigns involve a boss fight as the end which is scripted and it's often necessary to have a proper healer. There was a druid who healed people with Decora's first reign in the temple in the desert, and even then there was a 95% wipe. Caeldan managed to beat him in the end, and it was pretty heroic.

I'm not saying people should lose, persay. Just more that damage should be taken from time to time. It helps to enhance the mood, and it gives me personally more of a sense that the players are having fun, or at least that the encounters are challenging and they arent just killing for sake of killing. We dont need to include 5 different items. We can keep the one kit for instance, give it five charges per rest and have it require a bandage in the inventory. It's open to scrutiny and suggestion.

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 14:01 
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Add a script where all heal kits suddenly burst in flames, causing 1d3 fire damage per healer kit on the char. :P

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 15:21 
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I'll just add my own two cents which may copy what others already said.

I agree, spamming heal kits is definately not 'realistic'. Though in most of the events I have happened to be in that involved battle, they were needed or else all but the most supped up PC's wouldn't live through it.

Potions are a great replacement for this problem, though typically people can't afford to be chugging them down as they are too expensive for the ones that would heal back enough hp to keep one in the fight.

If a DM wants to keep kits used in a proper fassion in a fight or event or anytime, then the battle needs to cool too to a milder level or else all you're going to see are players complaining that they can't heal and keep dieing in the events

I'm all for better rp and better use of the kits however and would love to see something done to make everyone happy about it.

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PostPosted: Apr 20th, '10, 17:30 
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Were we to make herbs more accessible then, and spawn points more obvious and persistent so that people could learn and make use of the right herbs and their locations, and maybe make a few potions that could be used on other people, would that help? They'd essentially be free.

And as for the transformation scripts, remind me what you wanted to happen.

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PostPosted: Apr 21st, '10, 11:16 
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I thought I'd give my own two cents now.

I think, in a way, it's just a matter of the attitude of the player. My bard character is rather weak and only survived as long as she has due to support from people she met. She still can get horribly injured by a bandit attack, and did so a while back. Due to her regeneration items, the wounds were gone instantly. However, I personally don't think that regeneration is realistic or the wounds a character receives won't matter at all. Therefore I chose to ignore the fact that according to the stats, she was fine. I instead chose to roleplay that she'd gotten hurt and the other players went along with that.

If there's no one around and you're grinding and you're bored, I don't really care about regeneration and spamming potions or healing kits. But if you're in roleplay, why not take the time to roleplay it out and make something of it?

Another character of mine has only one arm due to a battle in her past. It annoyed me greatly when one or two players said "well why don't you just have a priest regenerate it." I agree with Loreweaver that it's not realistic that people can fight perfectly when they're at 1 hp, and I personally don't think that regeneration and healing kits are very realistic, but they're made for game mechanics. Games generally aren't very realistic. But I think that roleplayers can, and up to a certain level should roleplay their way around it. An in an event, for instance, take the time to roleplay that you got wounded and need to be healed. Sometimes people seem to forget that their characters are just that.. people. After all the gear and items and levels, your character can still get wounded.

Basically, I just think it's an issue for roleplay, not necessarily something that needs to be worked on in scripting. I believe those that do the scripting have enough on their hands already.

And as a side note, when I get the latest version of cep and I'm online, you're free to ask my bard character Silmathiel, or my cleric Yasraema for help with regards to healing. They're generally happy to tag along.


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PostPosted: Apr 21st, '10, 12:36 
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I agree with the above fully. I've had Anni walk around with a broken leg before and made up all sorts of excuses to "why don't u just kast grestore lol".

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