(This has probably been covered, I just can't find it)

How do you handle recharges and fatigue between scenes? My players have talents slotted in their party card that reduce fatigue and stress. If a talent card recharges in 4 rounds, and there's an extended time after a scene, then the talent card would essentially erase any stress or fatigue. For example: The party just completed a long combat. They end with a fair amount of stress and fatigue. Afterwards, they travel for 2 hours. Following the recharge times, any stress and fatigue from the combat (or from travelling for that matter) would be negated by the (multiple) stress/fatigue relieving cards.

The same goes for healing. I have a Priest of Sigmar in the party. There are little or no failure consequences in the rules for priests casting. Any wounds from the combat above could be completely erased with a few casts from the priest.

How do you handle these things? Am I missing something fundamental?

Edit: Doh! I meant to post this in the GM section...

That's how I've seen it play out in our games too. Essentially, other than insanity, there is NOTHING that lasts beyond each encounter.

jh

here's my call about this :

in encounter mode, the recharge token rate is one per turn.

in story mode (after the encounters you mention in example), the recharge token rate is slower... usually 1 per different scene, events or location in the same act. Remember the adventure book : adventure = X episodes ; episode = X acts ; act = X challenges, travels, shorts events.

That's how I deal with it. With that you're able to rule longer recharge rate, and longer action card effects too. ie : there's an action card "call of the wild" or something like that which help players during tests in the wild. I took off a recharge token per dice roll made in the same act.

At first I was saying "one magical heal a day" after my players attempted to abuse it. I was also running rally steps WAY too often taking the bit about "catching your breath" and thinking it works like a short rest from 4E DnD.

The glossary rulebook definition of a rally step is linking ACTS together and acts aren't like "encounters" from DnD. Yet another thing that was triping me up. Acts could be several encounters, thus no rally step between them (unless a DM allows one)

So now I streamlined magical healing to fit more with first aid:

Now magical healing works like first aid - ONCE per act. I hand out cards that say "I've recieved first aid this act" and "I've recieved magic healing this act"

This stops the abuse of healing full strength after a battle.

Because my rally steps are now much more infrequent than I was running before, the stress and fatigue don't go away nearly as quick.

I am contemplating some sort of reward mechanic for giving the players a bonus rally step.

I agree with much of what Sinister has said so far.

The game seems to rely on having things occur at the Speed of Plot. The mechanics are closely tied into the flow of the story. Rally Steps are a relief mechanic that's closely tied into the Three Act structure, for example. In other words, the mechanics are not separate from the plot, hence the plot is at times what guides the flow and rate of some opportunities like healing and fatigue recovery. The tension is not meant to die down until the three acts are complete.

Hence, it's not a matter of X casts per day, but rather at what point in the story should a particular event happen, based on the expected plot.

Lexicanum said:

Wow, you just summed up what I was about to post, right down to the Speed of Plot. Have we met before?

I tried limiting heals and recharging (and that's what we're currently doing). The effect this caused was that during a combat encounter, everyone was frantically trying to burn up resources to exit the combat as healed and stress/fatigue free as possible. It's causing a very mood breaking meta-game behavior which is more about mechanics than roleplaying. Instead of my Priest of Sigmar wading into battle with fiery righteousness, the group is shouting for heals before the combat ends so they are daisy fresh. It's a matter of time before they figure out they can subdue or toy with mobs to stretch out the encounter so they have more time to heal up.

I'm thinking of doing it like this: Talents and other '4 turn recharge' mechanics function normally in combat, but can only be used once in non-combat scenes (recharging as a new scene border is crossed). Then, I need to read through the Divine rules again and see if I can instituted a stronger failure penalty so that rolls are actually necessary and have a consequence if they push too hard (there needs to be a 'Divine Wrath' deck like the 'Spell Failure' deck).

I don't want to hobble my players with unnecessary rules, but I want to make sure scenes flow smoothly with a minimum of meta-game behavior.

Thanks for the ideas and input. Glad to see I wasn't just misreading something.

Yeah, those are all valid concerns. Thankfully no one wanted to play a priest of Shallya in my group.

There's no rule on when an encounter ends, other than GM's discretion. That is, an encounter doesn't keep on going until all the monsters are dead. Once you see the players have dominated the mobs finish it off by having them scamper away , surrender or by insta-killing the mobs in narration (and spare yourself the meta-gaming). So an encounter ends when whatever was being fought for has been reasonable resolved in favor of one side or the other.

It's also important to bring back the point of using the First Aid mechanics for all types of healing. You can only heal once during an encounter, period. Either the Diety cured you completely or he didn't, so there's no heal spamming until you're good to go. (Rulebook p. 65)

Each character can only benefit from one successful First Aid
check per Act during an encounter. Outside of a structured encounter,
a character can benefit from one successful First Aid check per
scene , or per the GM’s discretion.

If you don't limit it thus you enter into the madness you describe. The rule is still quite generous allowing them to get at least one successful check in there, so re-rolls of failed ones are allowed. However, failed First-Aid rolls do have nasty side-effects. The benefit is that the priestly spells don't generally suffer those issues.

The game has little thought aspects to it, certainly. By the book, stress and fatigue are meaningless, because first there's the basic action Assess Situation which frees you from them and is as repeatable as you wish, and you also recover your stats worth of F/S after every encounter. This makes giving fatigue for being mountain-climbing for 12 hours in the cold utterly meaningless - you're as fresh and able at the end of it as at the beginning.

So yeah, that's the first thing I houseruled. No Assess the Situation action, no after-encounter stat recovery. This actually means the Rally Step action choice has some thought to it, because they can either get rid of F/S with a Resilience/Discipline check or attempt a less certain First Aid for health. Hasn't broken anything yet.

Lexicanum said:

This is confusing editing. Since a structured encounter is NOT an act.

EXAMPLE:

If I have a party who learns of a criminal that escaped (act 1) then trails the criminal fighting through a couple of encounters of his henchman and a random chance encounter with a troll (act II)

then what EXACTLY is the ruling?

My interpretation is:

You could only heal in one fight per act but after the fights the adventure goes into story mode, where you could heal once per scene. But does that mean you are just going to let your party heal in some sort of "heal" scene after a fight? To me the intent is, the story progresses to the GM's wishes, so once during a fight, and if the GM runs a scene after a fight, in which you could heal, you could try to do so.

That's needlessy arbitrary and argumentative for players which is why my once per act -first aid, once per act magic healing works. If they question "when is the act over?" I would respond "When you find and/or confront the escaped criminal".

Juriel said:

For this I would argue you could make cards unavailable for certain types of skill checks. I'm ok if some Assesses during combat because they lose and attack. You are correct, however, I would not let them use that action for mountain climbing.

Sinister said:

Also, although it isn't stated clearly in the book I think it's with GM caveat to decide that certain fatigue (or stress) can only be got rid of by certain circumstances or a sub set of the available options for "regular" fatigue.

This is certainly implied in the adventure in the main book, where fatigue due to poisoning can only be removed by a few days bed rest.

If this fatigue could be removed simply by the PC getting to a rally step or end of encounter, it would be pretty pointless, even worse if they could get rid of it simply by using assess the situation!

Unfortunately, i think a lot of the rules need to be taken based on their intent , rather than the pure RAW!

Sinister said:

It's one successful check per Act during an Encounter. So regardless of how many encounters the Act has you can only do one successful check during an encounter in that Act. In addition, you're also given one successful check during any scene. So if Act 1 consists of 2 scenes and an encounter, you get 3 successful checks.

All rules are arbitrary, hence why most of them have things like "or per the GM's discretion". It's always possible to conjure examples that sound ludicrous.

I am running with different recharge times.

For combat I use the standard rules and because of adrenalin etc. actions recharge fast.

Outside of encounter mode players can use their actions once a day.

Our Shallyan priestess (guy) tried abusing the rule about healing "once per battle" + "once per scene" by trying to heal when a battle was almost over. I talked her(him) out of it but if he tries that again I'll make sure the fragile priestess is the primary target for the baddies the next time! Let's see how she heals while KO'd. If the players don't listen, you can always allow them what they want by adding a handful of purple dice after they gather their dice pool.

Generally I allow them one heal and one first aid per fresh set of wounds and stress+fatigue removal only when appropriate (after enough rest or good sleep). I'm also ready to punish any attempts for meta-gaming with lots of purple and black dice.

Here's my final ruling for my game group:

I’ve been discussing the rules for stress, fatigue, and healing with
other GMs on the FFG boards. It seems that other groups are having the
same issues as we are. It also seems that others are handing it in a
similar fashion.

Just to solidify things, here are our rules for handling stress,
fatigue, and healing.

On page 65 it states that a player may only benefit from 1 first aid
check per ‘Act’. Acts basically end when I say they do (though if you
stick with the ‘3 Act’ concept, it’s pretty clear when this happens).
Combat is usually considered an ‘Act’. So, you may benefit from a first
aid check during combat, and then another afterwards (though it will
consume it for the duration of that Act). Other first aid checks may be
applied when the time is right, when an act ends, when extended rests
are performed, and in other situations.

Divine healing will not be restricted during a combat. It will however,
be limited to 1 cast (per person) outside combat, per act, like first aid.

Likewise, Talents will recharge normally in combat. Outside combat, they
will begin recharged and may be used once per act.

Essentially recharging (Talents, spells, and anything else with a
recharge) only recharges at the end of an act. In combat, they recharge
at the end of the turn/round.

I don’t think this is very restrictive. It still allows for multiple
heals and first aid checks (as well as Talent uses) inside and outside
of combat while making sure wounds are serious and not to be taken
lightly. An alternative would be to design a ‘Divine Retribution’ deck
to account for over use of blessings. Hopefully there will be something
similar in the future.

As always, suggestions or comments are welcome. Hope this clears things
up a bit.

Nez

Nezzir, thanks for posting that for the benefit of all of us as well.

I already rules my game as Nezzir suggests for a while, and I must say it's running perfectly for my players.

I've been running things much the same as folks on the thread have said. While I don't have any priest players in my game currently, one of my players did run a priest during our demo session. After the demo, he came to me and asked about priest healing, and if it could just be spammed outside of combat until everyone is full healed. He was asking me this because he agreed that it just didn't seem to fit with the lore of Warhammer. We both decided to not allow such spells to be used in that manner.

Stress and Fatigue haven't really had a large effect on my game yet, although last session one of my characters should have been at risk to gain an insanity, but in the heat of running the game I missed it. Critical wounds, however, have been lingering since the first session, and at least one of my players is certainly fearing for his character's life with each passing moment in the game. Neither of my players have been able to heal their criticals, which is getting very interesting.

'Divine Retribution' is definitely in my GM bag, though I don't have any supernatural healer types in my group at present. But that holds true for any spell that someone wants to cast trivially. On one hand you can look at it like a test of faith; it doesn't count when it's easy. There needs to be some danger for the god to respond. If you continue to pester your god, or otherwise draw on magic irresponsibly, there are repurcussions.

A couple of easy ways to manage this are to allow the caster to continue to make checks, but adding challenge dice (and increasing the results of failure, perhaps by adding fatigue or stress to negative results). Or additional checks can add fatigue/stress. This way, the player may elect to push their luck to accomplish what they want/need, but at a cost.

As a side note, we've also ruled that in acts that span long periods of time, recharges (as stated above) also happen over night while resting. My party has a player with a high first aid skill, a priest capable of magical healing, and (when they can) will pay good money to rest in a decent place. I also give them a fortune die bonus to their resilience checks the next morning when they paid extra for a quality meal. All these things combined heal them up pretty good after a particularly nasty fight, but last game they were still left with a few crits between them even with all that resource.

In short, this seems to be working very well for us. They invest a lot into healing and they get a big return without it seeming too ridiculously overpowered. They are starting to treat combat more seriously. In previous games, they would charge head in, no matter what. If you didn't die, you'd be fine the next session. Now, with lingering injuries, my players are starting to talk things out before resorting to violence and have even explored *gasp* diplomatic solutions. Perhaps one day they will even run from a fight!

Thanks for all the input. It was a tremendous help.

Nez

Lexicanum said:

I'm not sure it should be read like that.

Acts appear within encounters; take the example in "A Shilling.." the encounter (played in enounter mode) with the beastmen is split into three acts, so the rule states you get one first aid check per act in that encounter (you also get the option of doing one in each rally step between the acts), so during the encounter with the beastmen each PC has the option of being healed via first aid 5 times, this encounter comprises the whole first episode.

The 5 does seem like a lot, but I think that is the intention.

Outside of a structured encounter, i.e. story mode, you get one first aid per scene, or as GM decides.

Episode two (with the merchant) is story driven and so the GM is within his rights to allow only 1 first aid check for that entire scene.

In understanding this, its important to think about how FFG have suggested to break down stories...

The way FFG are suggesting to break down an story is into 3 overarching acts (build up,main,tidy up), those acts are broken down into episodes and each episode should ideally be broken into 3 acts itself. The acts within an episode consist of one or more scenes, which are either played out in story mode or encounter mode; the important point though is that a scene in encounter mode itself is normally broken into the 3 act structure itself complete with 2 rally steps.

If the scene you are in is being played in story mode, you probably get 1 first aid check.

If the scene is being played in encounter mode, then you get one per act, of which there are 3 if the encounter is structured normally, plus one per rally step.

You may play a scene in encounter mode that consists of only 1 act, in which case you only get 1first aid check (and probably no rally step).

So in your example, if the "Act" contains 2 story driven scenes and one encounter mode scene, then there would be two first aid opportunities, one for each scene, plus 5 for the encounter (assuming it was a fully structured encounter using rally steps). I use the term "act" because this is just an overarching act and NOT, IMO, the act that the first aid "once per act" rule refers to.

All of this only really contradicts this statement "So regardless of how many encounters the Act has you can only do one successful check during an encounter in that Act." because I would say that if the act has 3 encounters (therefore in encounter mode), all of which have the normal 3 act rally step structure then the over arching act actually allows for 15 first aid checks, not one.

A lot granted, but i doubt you would normally structure an act of three seperate encounters, all of which comprise 3 acts in themselves. They would be better split into 3 individual overarching acts.

Basically, i think the intention is that while the action is going on and encounter mode is being played, you can be healed by first aid once.

But if that encounter is "big" enough to be split into acts itself, then you get one in the rally step and then one in each act that comprises that encounter..

I think the main problem is coming to a common vocabulary. I believe we're kind of saying the same thing, but getting lost in semantics. Unfortunately the rulebooks are clear in some areas, but rather vague in others.

Acts are clearly defined as " a single goal or action within an episode " (ToA p. 13). So an Episode is made of Acts, not the other way around. You'll also most likely see situations play out over several acts, like finding a cell of cultists or fighting an important battle will most likely be several acts. Acts are fairly constrained in terms of scope based on this definition, so Acts composed of Encounters composed of Acts is really complicating the issue. The first "Act" is not like the other "Act".

Where it gets tricky is that I haven't found a straight-forward definition of Encounter, aside from it relating to Encounter Mode vs Story Mode. For example, take "An Eye for an Eye", the first Encounter (capital E) is divided into 3 Acts. The last Act of that Encounter consists of the beastmen fleeing basically, yet there's the chance that the PC's might want to give chase and the Guards will open the gate. So there might be a scene in there after the encounter.

Yet the next part of the story is Encounter 2 to be precise, yet it's not divided cleanly into Acts and it's mostly being played out in Story Mode. So the problem for me is that this Encounter is not predicated on the fact that you have to be in Encounter Mode, thus confusing the vocabulary. It would have been much cleaner if they had said Episode 1, Episode 2, etc... instead of using the word Encounter.

Yep, i think the vocabulary of the Eye for an Eye adventure is poor, which is why I referred to "A day late.." instead!

Episode is a much better term as the first episode consistutes the encounter with the beastmen which comprises 3 acts (and corresponding 2 rally steps, although unlike A day late, this aren't specifically mentioned), in each of those acts and rally steps i think a first aid check is possible, and potentially sensible, as it keeps everything clean, even if this potentially means many more first aid checks are possible, than perhaps disirable.

In the second encounter (which we really think woulod be better called an episode), the action plays out mostly in story mode, so the first aid check frequency is pretty much up to the GM.

I guess the thing everyone wants to avoid (at least I Do!) is PCs trying to claim their first aid check that they are due just because they are in an act within an Encounter (in encounter mode) even if they haven't been injured during this act or don't really need it....

I think i would be inclined to rule that a first aid check can only occur during an act in encounter mode if you have been injured during that act in that encounter.

The first aid checks for rally steps remain, regardless, as this can be explained away by the applying of fresh bandages to existing wounds etc which should only be possible during a break in the action rather than happengin during the middle of the action.

We had a simlar house rule in 2nd ed, where you could only have a healing check after the encounter if you had been injured during that encounter. In 2nd ed the daily heal check was explained as re-applying of bandages to existing wounds etc.

Also, first aid check is synomous will magical healing in my house rule, so that is only one spell per act within an encounter, provided you have been injured in that act, and spell frequency outside of encounters is again at GM descretion.

You could possibly have magical healing and first aid together outside of a encounter but within an encounter, it is one or the other, only, too.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=167&efcid=3&efidt=312175

...Gallow's and Dvang's post in this thread perfectly sum up my idea of the act structure and what the options are, and are fair more succinct than my ramblings!