Healing

[C5]

It's been some time I've been wondering about this.

I don't know if it's me, but I've always found the rules concerning healing in LUG being somehow vague.
For instance, there is not much of a time scale regarding assisted healing (I very much doubt the times would be comparable to the one of natural healing, we've seen characters being Near Death before, but they usually needed less than six months to be up and about), and there are some details that miss IMO (how many time between healing attempts, for instance).

Am I the only one thinking this, and if not, what ingenious rule did you come up with?

So far my player have avoided being injured, but since one of them is the CMO, she may have eventually to use her healing skills and I'd like to avoid inventing rules on the sly.

Thanks in advance !

[tonyg]

I know what you mean. It is especially odd when you consider that a character's Fitness makes little difference in the recovery time (the old "need a six on the drama die" problem that comes up with DIFF &+ rolls).

Genrally, most of the healing stuff seems to get passed on to the medical officers, who make medical rolls to "cure" wound levels. Everyone seems to be healed up before the next episode.

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

You could modify the healing table by making the edge vitality ADD to the rol instead of needing the required 6 on the drama. For NPC's you can let drama decide when they are healed and other such effects. For PC's however it gets more tricky-you don't want to have a bed ridden PC for a whole mission or worse yet for several episodes. I'd allow quick "dramatic" healing for them usually requiring the intervention of the other PC's.

Allow anywhere between an hour to a day between healing attempts (in-game of course), less if the situation warrants it.

If you want you could also have lingering side effects. Such as chronic pain, a medical problem or a drug addiction. I remember when one of my players had a terrible series of roles and stepped on a houdini mine. Everyone including myself thought he was dead-I managed to roll very very low and he barely managed to survive. He received immediate treatment and I gave him chronic pain since this was a miraculous situation. He spent the next episode in sickbay though he still took part in it.

[tonyg]

Still seems to work against characters with a high Fitness who don't have the itality edge. A similar problem exists with Strength and lifting.

The basic problem is that the difficulty scale in ICON was based around tests of attribute dice plus skill level. Any roll without a skill to add becomes much more difficult.


I was thinking of using a house rule that for those rare cases where the attribute is more important than the skill, to count the attibute as a stat and as the skill level . A 2 Fitness would roll 2Dice and add 2 to the total.

This would only be used for raw attribute rolls or as an option/modifcation for something like liftng where the stat is more important than in most rolls,

[C5]

Thanks for the input, guys!

I'm myself considering to add the Edge to an attribute roll instead of being more dice to throw. Maybe also will I adapt another house rule I devised for combat damage, and grant players 1 additional point when their relevant attribute is 3 or 4, and 2 points if it is 5 and above. I often ask my players roll Perception tests, and it bother me when they all come up with 4 or 5 no matter of their stats.

Back on the healing subject : do you have some time table for the time required for assisted healing, or do you assume that, as soon as a doctor is involved, healing lasts the time needed to reach the next scene ?
My players have taken little or no punishment so far (two out of three have Resistance 2, so I hesitate to put them into a fight), but I'd have some ideas of the healing procedure should some trouble happen...
Thanks again.

[tonyg]

I believe there is a table in the core rules. STUN = 1d6 minutes; Injured = 1d3 days; Wounded = 1d6 days; Incapacitated 1d3 Weeks; and Near Death 1d3 months.

Now a physical will greatly speed these times up by making successful tests to reduce the patient's Wound Level. Generally speaking, people seem to be up and around fairly quick in TREK.

One house rule that I used, based on what I saw on VOY, DS9 and TNG, was that even wounds healed by a doctor were still a bit tender and it was possible to aggravate them. Many time of TV we see the doctor repair a wound and then tell the patitent to take it easy for a few days. To reflect this, I have wounds "vulnerable" for a time set by one half the wounds recieved. During this time any strain or injury to the afflicted area can reopen the wound (bring the wound back to it's pre-treated state).

For instance a character who tore open his shoulded and took enough wounds to be considered " Incapacitated", is healed. The character is okay, but should take it easy for 1d3 days (as a Injured result).

[Greg Smith]

Originally posted by C5
Thanks for the input, guys!

I often ask my players roll Perception tests, and it bother me when they all come up with 4 or 5 no matter of their stats.

There is a Search skill. Of course you don't learn it during character generation . My players spent their experience on it pretty quickly though.

[C5]

The way I see it, the Search skill is used when players have to look actively for something. I use Perception roll only when there is something that my players could notice without being aware it has to be looked for (one example was some shout for help in the middle of a whole village in turmoil, while none of them expected it).
Same for instance when I ask for Empathy rolls when they want to have an idea of the state of mind of the guy they are talking to (and without having a Betazoid around to sense deception or hostility ).

But you're right, none of these lazy players bothered to take the skill, and they don't seem too eager to buy it. Maybe I'll have one Admiral lose one very precious and very small personal item in a haystack and ask them to retrieve it...

[Greg Smith]

Good point, C5. Perception is one of the most used skills in an RPG, and characters should have it by default IMHO.

I might change the Search skill to Perception and give it specialisations (search, spot hidden, listen). And I would perhaps give every character 1(2) for free.

[Diamond]

I like the specializations you have there for "Search."

[tonyg]

Could throw in track too.

[C5]

I too like it. I think I shall suggest it to my players.

Oh, and tonyg I like your house rule for healing recovery time. I'll probably use something along those lines.

[tonyg]

C5,

The base recovery times ARE from the rules, so give the credit to the folks at LUG.

I just twaeaked the recovery roll, and wrote up a rule to make character a little careful with thier "healed" wounds.

BTW, Another option would be to replace the ICON task resoultion system with a staight 2d6 roll+ Stat + Skill, and kick up all the difficulties by 5 or so. (THis is sort of what CODA appears to do, except the "zeroed" out ICON's 2's by subtracting 2 points or so from the stat bonuses -at least it looks that way from the pre-release stuff).

[C5]

Originally posted by tonyg
C5,

The base recovery times ARE from the rules, so give the credit to the folks at LUG.

I just twaeaked the recovery roll, and wrote up a rule to make character a little careful with thier "healed" wounds.

I know. It's just that there are no rules in the LUG books on the recovery time for assisted healing (wich involves doctors). There is only a vague line about "using similar times as for the natural healing" or something, and I couldn't come up with any idea about that (I can be very unimaginative sometimes). Hence, my thanks for you to provide me with this ideas.

[tonyg]

C5,

There are no times listed for medically assisted healing becuase, according to the rules, doctorsjust heal would levels with successful checks. As listed in the rules, a Doctor could heal a critically wounded patient to full health in a few minutes with some successful skill rolls.

On TV the medical tech is sort of inconsistent. Where or not some gets healed in 10 seconds, or hours depends on the needs of the story, and ICON TREK is designed to wrok the same way. Unfortunately, this can be a problem for those who want things more precise. The most consistent rules I could make out was that while they do see to be able to fix people quicky, it does seem to take some time for the work to "set". This seems to match what we see on TV, and makes some sense. People who undergo surgery in the real world might be sticked up, but have to be careful no to tear open thier wounds.

Realistically speaking, Doctors don't actually heal wounds, the patients only power of recuperation handle that. Doctors actually keep the patient alieve so that the body has the time to heal istelf, and do what they can to make the body's job easier. But, hey, this is STAR TREK.