General Fantasy setting question! but in riddle its ekstra hard to handle.

my question is:

How do you handle all warrior groups and wounds, wihtout any healer type magicians, its so damn hard to get the group back to health.

and not having any combat is to boring.

How do you handle, that there not are everyday magic stuff to help them heal up*?

I think the point in TRoS is that you don't. If your group gets f*ed up in a battle they should be thanking the gods they are alive. You don't just drink a bunch of potions and *poof* back unto the breach dear friends....

Mechanically you, as the GM, control everything in the world, including time. I would simply force the players to find a place to hole up until their wounds were healed. Possibly they can find a church or some other locaiton where a skilled surgeon can assist them and speed their healing. That may result in a large chunk of lost game time, probably some lost SAs as well because they had to turn away from their goals temporaily, but would only be a few minutes of real world time.

bergh wrote: General Fantasy setting question! but in riddle its ekstra hard to handle.

my question is:

How do you handle all warrior groups and wounds, wihtout any healer type magicians, its so damn hard to get the group back to health.

and not having any combat is to boring.

How do you handle, that there not are everyday magic stuff to help them heal up*?

There are some healing spells in the book:
Staunch Bleeding p 134
Seal Wound p 135
Regrowth p 136

but the target numbers are pretty high. Formalizing them and doing them as a ritual/using gestures, vocalization, and symbol drawing takes it down a bit. Personally I don't see the purpose of the inclusion of the vagary conquer other than to purposely drive up the CTN so that no one ever casts the spell as the pain would be no different (given the description of what is happening) than normal healing would have been (mostly the descriptions just say they are using growth and/or maturing to do the work...neither of which generates extra pain beyond what was already experienced if done at normal rate of time, so I see no reason why making time run faster would either). If I were Seneschal in a game, I would probably rip that Vagary out of there and drop down the TN a little. If I'm off base and there is a legitimate reason for the pain, I say big deal, leave it out anyhow....so what if healing is unbearably painful or is so painful it drives the victim unconscious. If you ask the guy who's entrails are sprawling out of his stomach all over the ground "are you sure you want me to heal you? It's reeaaalllyy going to hurt!" then do you seriously expect the answer "Oh, well in that case no, please just let me lie here with my entrails splayed everywhere because I don't want it to hurt"?

Sorry to the spell designer(s), nothing personal intended, I just have a major chip on my shoulder that healing CTN's are so ridiculously high that no one would ever want to cast them due to the massive aging that would result. I know it's by design, but for those of us looking for character survivability (yes, I know this is not the system for that), healing is a necessity at times, and driving up the healing spell CTN's for no reason other than to discourage casting of them kind of torques me off....especially in a system as bloody as this one tends to be. Even if a character plays top notch with regards to smarts and caution, every now and then the dice are going to screw you over, and it's nice to have a way to NOT have to roll a new character from scratch when you didn't do anything wrong but the dice still got you. Ok, tirade over, and yes I know my views above are not appropriate for the system. Personal Bias. Appologies.

Other than spells, you're pretty much stuck with First Aid, Surgery, and hospitals.

I think the main reason for the inclusion of the extra pain is realisim. There are reasons EMTs don't treatpatients on scene, they only stabalize them for transport. One of these reasons is that treating a patient is often more painful than the wound itself, wich carries with it increased risk of shock. More trauma cases die of shock than the physical damage caused by the wound. This is especially true of wounds like gunshots, which tend to damage a large area. Even without hitting a major vital center a gunshot wound can easily be fatal bgecause of the pain and stress caused by this type of injury.
Pain will immediately stimulate increased release of andrenalin, which is likely already present in large quantities in the blood because of the circumstances immidiately preceeding the wound (being in a fight). This causes two things to happen right away: first the heart begins pumping much faster and harder, second the artieries and blood vessels begin to constrict, thus increasing blood pressure. More pain will increase this effect, eventually the patient will either pass out, resulting in a sudden loss of blood pressure and possible death (insuficient blood reaching important organs) or die of shock (heart attack, embolisim, etc.).
Obviously you want to avoid this if you are treating a patient. So you use a large dose of morphine and stabalize the patient BEFORE you begin treatment. Since morphine hasn't been invented in Weyrth they have to use the conquer vagary.

One possible option to reduce the CTN would be for two sorcerors to work on a patient at once. Once could handle the healing spell while the other used conquer to control pain and avoid shock.

I agree fully that makes sense in a "heal natural" situation...but the spell duration is instantaneous...meaning that the damage is instantaneously cured. Well, if all damage is immediately repaired, how could you possibly experience the adrenalin and other issues? I know, I'm probably just being stuborn and argumentative over it because it's a strong personal bias. I just think it sucks having all the magical power to crack the very mantle of the earth at your fingertips, but you can't do something as simple as seal a wound. My personal problem, not the system's.

This really depends on the situation, and I agree with all of the above, but sometimes we'll fast forward through healing, or have a "replacement" character on standby if one is put out of action.

I like the idea of realistic healing without magical aid, or potions or anything like that. Herbs that help healing and a competent healer are about all a character should count on (not that I would like healing to be too similar to middle ages healing - to many characters would have to be dumped because of impairments).

Making healing spells to easy is to D&Dish or unrealistic. An answer for the post referred to in another thread - How many 1st level types can a 20th level character kill? Answer- depends on the level of the cleric accompanying him and how many healing potions he has.

Even in high fantasy literature characters are knocked out of action at times while healing. Frodo was out of comission until Elrond could heal him from the Morgul wound. I am under the impression that even Gandalf with all of his magic could not have healed Frodo.

High TN's for healing spells rest well with me.

I wouldn't mind the natural healing route as much either if I only got "knocked out at times" like literature characters...but that isn't an option in this system. When you go down you spray like a Monte Python fountain and die in a heartbeat unless someone attends to you and does so QUICK. That doesn't happen to literature characters...they just get knocked out, overlooked, wake up hours or days later and quickly are fully recovered as if nothing happend to them in the first place.

Basically, my beef here (again, my personal bias problem, not a problem with the system...I want the system to be something it isn't, so that's my bad, not the system's) is that the characters are the "hero's in the story" and shouldn't die on the 3rd page of chapter one just because they got unlucky (bad dice roll ate them). To me games are a diversion...an escape if you will...from the stress, strain, and problems of the work week. If games modeled real life perfectly in every way, all characters would be screwed royally on a daily basis...and where's the fun in that? If that's what I was looking for in a game, I wouldn't need to play a game at all...I can get screwed over anywhere, anytime right here in the real world, no game required. To me, games are a "safe place" where my characters are the MAIN characters in a story that are expected to make it to or near the end of the story whether the story ends well or not, even though it has many dark and frightening times along the way. This system doesn't model the literature model...it models real life and is just as lethal as real life. I'll shut up now because I'm probably just wasting forum space on an issue that probably has been beaten to death long before my first post.

Again, my issues here are all MY problem as I am looking to get things out of the system that are not really compatible with the system's design and intended use. The system is fine, it's my expectations that need to be adjusted.

The Harn system allows the character to be knocked out for a bit, but can still be not real effective until they heal, though shock and infection could also kill them. I like that about that system, and understand your points.

But I don't think healing spells are the right way to do this. They "feel" to contrived. Making the combat system a bit instantly less fatal would be more the way to go, but still maintaining that realistic feel.

I do like dangerous combat, but do like characters being able to live and survive another day, with death being not too overly frequent. Scaling opponents up or down also seems a bit to contrived for me (this is a 7th level dungeon! you won't make it through if you are only a 4th level character). I like to think that PC's are a bit favored by fate, and get lucky enough to survive better than the norm - even if they don't always win.

Although, Boromir played a pretty exiting and good roll in TLOTR, and he died fairly early, the end of the first book. His death was somewhat heroic, however. I guess you would not want your character do die being clubbed over the head by the club wielding bandit who got enough sucesses.

Dain, here's some advice from someone who doesn't own TROS and hasn't played yet ... so take it with a grain of salt. (as usually I'd appreciate it if someone more qualified would correct my mistakes)
For one, as has been pointed out, the combat isn't really that deadly. Instant death, while possible, seems rare, provided players pick their fights well and retreat/surrender when necessary. Picking one's fights well includes knowing when not to fight, using terrain and ambushes, getting one's SAs firing etc.
Now, if you just want to "whack a mole" once in a while, since it is after all a recreational activity, you can easily do so. Better weapons and armour, and weaker opponents can be employed without messing with the system. If you don't mind a little tinkering, make healing spells easier, or simply increase the number of wounds a character can take by 1-3 additional slots.
Doing all this however has one fatal flaw: it takes the point out of the game. If you're "not really" putting your characters life on the line when fighting, the choice to fight looses meaning. Both in a general sense and much more directly in that the SAs become less important, since it becomes a reasonable option to enter into a fight without having your SAs firing. This means that the character's behaviour overall becomes less about what the character cares for (SAs) and more about other things. This way lies the generic "adventurer" who kills stuff because he .. well, kills stuff.
So, if the risk of loosing the character is still freaking you out and keeping you from enjoying the game, I'd actually encourage you to lessen that risk a little, trying to find to find your personal equilibrium. That point, where entering a fight is still a meaningful decision for the character and player, and there's still risk involved, but only to a degree you can handle well.

regrowing tissue all at once would probably hurt like a bitch. The natural processes your body has to go through to heal a wound involve repeated divison and replication of cells, consumption of resources, and lots of other weird shit on a molecular level. If you've ever had a serious injury before you'll know that the healing process can be very painful, sometimes even more painful than being wounded in the first place. I expirienced this when I was a kid healing from a very serious burn. The 3 months in the pediatric burn ward made the actually burn feel like nothing but a mild sunburn in comparison.

Now take that collective amount of pain and force it on a person all at once. There is where the extra pain comes it.

But if you want to make healing easier go for it. Riddle has probably the most flexible rules system I've ever seen. Finding a way to make your PCs more resilant and easier to heal shouldn't be hard.

Yeah, appologies to all...just a hot issue for me. As a 19+ year GM of dozens of systems, when I look at a new system I look at it from a survivability perspective. I like to make sure the damage potential is equally balanced against the remedy potential...that way I don't waste time coming up with a whole campaign and setting only to pitch the whole thing after 2 to 3 games because the players aren't having any fun because the woes outpower the cures. It sucks pitching all those ideas and starting over with a different system whose mechanics aren't compatible with most of the story line I would have used if the original system had worked out.

Not implying TROS falls into that category here! I think TROS is plenty solid enough to stand on its own.

As for healing, I don't actually desire spells that REPAIR the damage anyway. If those exist, great, but I'd be just as happy with spells that just prevent death. For example (raw outline only here, no real details):

Stitch Wound - Does just what it says. Takes existing materials (maybe small glass or metal fragment and a string of fiber out of ones clothes) using the Sculpture and/or movement vagaries in a spell of 3 to stitch up a wound magically (so my manual dexterity doesn't enter into it, and maybe not my First Aid or Surgery skills that I may or may not have either). Net result, Blood loss ceases, normal healing occurs at normal rate. Doesn't actually CURE the person, just keeps them from DYING. Haven't detailed it out yet, but I'm guessing the CTN would be a WHOLE lot lower than the CTN's of the spells in the book that actually cure the damage. As for the missing Conquor vagary?...well if the CTN was low enough I might consider adding it in, but if magic WASN'T involved and someone was doing it by hand the pain would be no different, so I would be inclined to leave it out and use whatever method hand stitchers use to deal with the pain...local anesthetics, alcohol (for getting them drunk), clubbing them over the head to knock them out, chloroform,....whatever.

Other such spells I'd probably go for might include

Cauterize wound - basically some method of heating metal and searing the wound OR some form of inducing a massive electrical current and arcing it into the wound, then letting normal healing take over.

Form Splint - moulds some sturdy material(s) around an appendage (assuming the bone has already been set manually).

Fake Skin - something similar to the old Liquid Skin product. Basically you coat an area with a quick drying non toxic substance that drys to an elastic finish (sort of like when little kids pour elmers glue on their hands and let it dry...but this stuff stuck better...not as good as a scab but good enough to keep a nasty exposed area (skin being scraped off or a burst blister or a bad burn) from direct contact with air, and it prevented seeping but still allowed the wound to "breath". Not sure what that material would be in game terms, but I'm thinking along the lines of bee honey (egyptions used that) or tree sap or....well heck, plain old gauze wrapping I suppose could be used instead).

Anyhow you get the idea...whole battary of spells that don't actually cure, but DO prevent death, infection, etc,.... and that probably have TONS lower CTN's than the spells that actually DO cure the damage.

Curing is better, but I'd be happy with just the above kind of thing. Keeps characters alive (they have to rest and move very slowly and carefully, just like they would if all that kind of stuff had been done "by hand", non-magically, or they'd re-activate the wounds), and then they just have to spend the time to heal naturally. In other words, my beef isn't that "god-like healing is too costly" but rather is that "just keep me from dying healing with minimal CTN's" isn't listed in the books. Now, yes, of course, I know I'm just whining because the spells aren't pre-made for me...which is just laziness on my part...I just need to go work out the costs and quit whining about it. Maybe no one has considered this approach before, and that's why they're not listed. Thoughts anyone?

my problem is simply that there are no wizards among the player group, so high or low CTN of spells in not something i have worried about yet.

my problem again is that i and my player love fighting! and we love TRoS becouse combat is to dangerous that you actully are thinking before shouting CHARGE!

but the players get wounded with no fast healing it seems like ages in-game that the players need to rest...

i need a wizard!!!!

EGAD!!! yes, you do...or some characters MAJORLY competant in First Aid and Surgery!!! AND with sufficiently high stats for whatever two stats those skills roll against! I think First Aid uses Per and MA and I think Surgery uses Per...but I'd check the book first. If no one has a highly skilled character in these areas, then the next person that rolls up might want to use his "extra MA skill points" to "beef up" those skills and/or take a skill package that has those skills...or if no one wants to do that, rolling up an NPC personal physician (possibly even a wizard/skilled surgeon combination) traveling companion comes to mind.

I'm new to the system though, so the above may not be perfectly correct. I'd go by what these other guys tell you to do. They're probably all "on the money", and as you can probably tell from my other posts here I'm still undergoing the "making my peace with the system" phase.

On page 135 is the seal wound spell.

Modifying it as a formalized spell makes it a CTN of 8.
Performing it in segments of spells of One however makes things a bit more interesting...especially if formalized.

Formalized composition component:
T=3
R=1
V=1
D=0
L=3
-2
CTN=6
Uses composition and intricacy to reshape the area of the wound.

Formalized growth component:
T=3
R=1
V=1
D=0
L=1
-2
CTN=4
Uses maturing to age the wound thus making it clot faster and stop the bloodloss.

Formalized conquer component:
T=0
R=3(can you really SEE someone's mind?)
V=0(a mind has no volume, as stated in the book under other spells)
D=0
L=1
-2
CTN=2
Uses repress to eliminate pain.

Thus, looking at it from this standpoint.. you don't really *need* the sculpture part at all.. growth/maturing and conquer/repress do the grunt work of the spell(s).. and thus you can use just those two individually. They are also much faster because they're spells of one.

A spell of three using the last two spells combines would result in this:
T=3
R=1, or 3
V=1
D=0
L=1(both levels are one, and it's formalized)
Thus resulting in a CTN of 6, or 8..depending on how you do the range thing. Thoughts on that specifically?

Doing it as a spell of one that is formalized, in its individual components is a major step towards what you are looking for IMO Dain. It's simple, keeps the characters from dying.. and isnt so uber-godly that it's crazy. It also leads to this thought, let's say that someone has a high WP and that negated the pain of a wound.. would you want to use the conquer component when it isnt needed? No.. all that would be needed is the bloodloss.. quickly done by aging the wound to clot verrrrry quickly.

Also, shock is a one time payment of dice... unless:
'An area is attacked multiple times, then the highest shock value is used'..
Thus, it doesnt really matter if shock is negated..unless the same area is hit a second time... in which case you have a whole amount more of things to worry about than shock.. new pain and bloodloss that would need repairing on the spot.. and would that same sorceror that healed you(possibly DURING combat) last time be willing to again.. and thus possibly incur more aging and take away dice from his SP? The separate spell components also help in the sorceror's world too, enabling him to help with the minimal amount of effort devoting to SAVING YOUR ASS.. which means he can focus more on roasting someone, shrinking their armor.. throwing them 100 feet into the air and letting gravity do the rest.. etc.

So there is the "just keep me from dying healing with minimal CTN's"..

-Ingenious
Appologies for any non-coherence and length of post.

Thanks Ingenious. Those numbers are a WHOLE lot more palatable.

Character survivalbility... tough one. Depends a lot on the players, anyway. If they pick their fights wisely etc. etc. they may live for some time. On the other hand, if they're assassinated (blindsided when unarmored and such), they are likely to die.

bleeding cases: when combat is 'over', blood loss drops by one. You could interpret that as one per wound. Then you could fiddle some with the "bleeding outside of combat" rules. For ex. if you succeed an endurance check and have aid, you will survive. Or something. This might help a bit - esp if 'killed' by several lev 2-3 wounds.

for dismemberment cases it's worse. Sure, the GM could always interpret 'severed' as meaning "dangling halfway off and totally useless, but might be healed by a skilled surgeon if taken care of within two seconds". As in: give the character in question one excange to finish his enemy or surrender. After this one exchange, he must hold the hand/arm/foot in place and get first aid/surgery within very short time, or he will lose his arm.

severed head or other "instant death" cases: wel... instant death is just that. go to backup character.

ANYways, the big survivability factor is the society. If everybody fights to the death, people will die. If they flee, surrender, take prisoners and ransom them - then people will survive. If your players are fighting orcs or other "monsters that do not deserve mercy", make the orcs slavers that try to capture people more or less alive (at least the first few times).

Tash wrote: I think the main reason for the inclusion of the extra pain is realisim. There are reasons EMTs don't treatpatients on scene, they only stabalize them for transport. One of these reasons is that treating a patient is often more painful than the wound itself, wich carries with it increased risk of shock. More trauma cases die of shock than the physical damage caused by the wound. This is especially true of wounds like gunshots, which tend to damage a large area. Even without hitting a major vital center a gunshot wound can easily be fatal bgecause of the pain and stress caused by this type of injury.
Pain will immediately stimulate increased release of andrenalin, which is likely already present in large quantities in the blood because of the circumstances immidiately preceeding the wound (being in a fight). This causes two things to happen right away: first the heart begins pumping much faster and harder, second the artieries and blood vessels begin to constrict, thus increasing blood pressure. More pain will increase this effect, eventually the patient will either pass out, resulting in a sudden loss of blood pressure and possible death (insuficient blood reaching important organs) or die of shock (heart attack, embolisim, etc.).
Obviously you want to avoid this if you are treating a patient. So you use a large dose of morphine and stabalize the patient BEFORE you begin treatment. Since morphine hasn't been invented in Weyrth they have to use the conquer vagary.

One possible option to reduce the CTN would be for two sorcerors to work on a patient at once. Once could handle the healing spell while the other used conquer to control pain and avoid shock.

A few more things to consider: you can use rituals to cast a spell into an item, when the spell is cast the item takes the aging, not the caster. Useful for an emergency backup "gotta save this guy NOW" spell that may have an incredibly risky CTN under "field" conditions.

Also stablizing a patient (in real world terms now) is much easier than than healing them. Basically it involves three things: stopping blood loss, treating for shock, and preventing infection. The easiest way to do this (in a medival setting like RoS) is cauterization (applying hot metal to a wound). Its messy, painful, and can cause infection, but it allows a patient to be moved to a location where more extensive messures can be undertaken (such as the casting of a ritual healing spell).

I was using shock loosely, as in "bad things that happen to you when you get hurt that aren't directly related to the thing that hurt you".

Usually adrenaline is what helps you respond to and survive traumatic injury. Sometimes it can hurt, such as when patients have compromised cardiovascular systems to begin with. I know of one case (when I was working in a hospital) where an older patient with an aneurysm (stretching/weakening of a major artery, often in the brain) died while having a compound fracture reset. The resulting increase in blood pressue due to (primarily) pain response was too much for the vessel, which ruptured and killed him.

Lack of facilities and equpiment is certainly a factor in not trying to treat injuries on site, but basically EMTs are taught to generally eliminate as much stress as possible while transporting the patient so as to avoid pushing them too far and causing more dangerous conditions to develop.

Sorry if I sounded harsh before. Im glad to see someone who knows what he's talking about when it comes to medicine :)
Im a bit tired of some of the BS on the issue that circulates in the web, thats why I over reacted when I read what you wrote about shock. I think I should have read the rest of the post more carefully ~~

I kind of grew up surrounded by medicine: my dad is Radiologist, my mother is an RN, both of them worked in trauma related fields before I was born. Typical dinner conversation would include things like partial amputations, crushed limbs, and foreign bodies lodged in strange places.
My older brother is also a Doctor, but not medical. He's a professor of Cognitive Neurosciences and does research on perception and awareness issues (like what is physically going on in the brain when we "see" an event occur).

Personally I did the first part of EMT training and worked as a hospital security guard before deciding I didn't want to get into the "family buisness" as it were.

Overall, I think most of the spells listed in the book are too much with required vagaries and CTNs.. But Seal Wound is about right on, if you ask me.

Consider: Sculpture 3 is obvious; Growth is too, because the new tissue needs to be generated. For clean cuts where the flesh sets neatly, perhaps growth might be unnecessary, though. Conquer is also necessary.. The reason isn't physiological reactions like adrenaline, so much.. as the raw pain of month's worth of healing happening in an instant. The patient would be out cold due to shock, if not dead. Shock as much as actual bodily damage kills people.. and I don't mean necessarily the type of shock caused by bloodloss.

Seal Wound is still better for level 4 wounds than first-aid though, I'll tell you that. Healing rolls are made against the unmodified pain score, so if you got a pain of X-WP, you're rolling against X. Much nastier CTN than 8-10, in most cases.