How come we have all basic cards, but not a First aid basic card?

If you read Splint & bandages action card, you'll see that it's almost as the first aid rules in the book. Why didn't just put first aid in the first place?

I'd say, figure out how often you want healing to happen in your game, and house-rule accordingly.

If you want a high-heroism game where people come back from near-death all the time, then photocopy the splints & bandages card and relabel it a basic action with recharge 0 or 2.

If you want gritty bloody combat where wounds are harsh and hard to heal, then rule more towards the opposite end of the spectrum, possibly even not allowing first aid during fights except for Rally Steps and if you've purchased the Splints & Bandages card. There is some logic in that. Patching up a sword wound does tend to take longer than swing a sword, after all.

As for the larger issue of why they didn't include an action card for first aid checks, and why "splints & bandages" is such a minor improvement over the default healing rules... well that's a whole other can of worms.

Ooh! I do believe I feel a rant coming on...

What we have here is a failure to communicate. It's a classic case of WWS, aka "White Wolf Syndrome", aka Right-Hand-Left-Hand-Disfunction. WWS occurs when multiple authors work on different portions of the rules of a game, and each believes that a particular concept logically falls in their section of the rulebook. So they each write up rules for how they'd handle that particular situation, and submit them as part of their portion of the manuscript. Because the editor gets the various chapters or sections one at a time from various authors, they might not catch that work has been duplicated, or that it's slightly different in the various chapters. In some cases, each author has their own editor, and there's no safety net in place to catch these things at all.

I'd be willing to wager money that the person who created the bulk of the action cards thought that all skill uses during combat required cards (or at least actions), and that someone else wrote up the paragraph about being able to make a skill check as a manoeuvre. Whether or not either of these two people were also the person who specifically wrote up the rule about being able to make a first aid check during the rally step is a fact unknown to me. Given that actions during a rally step are generally limited, and that first aid is also further limited in a different section to being once per act, and that episodes can have acts and acts can have episodes, I'm really unclear just who wrote what. Looking at the title page, I see we have 12 people with writing credits, and 4 with editing credits. That probably also explains why the list of specializations for weaponskill is so different in chapter one than in chapter nine.

These sorts of things happen, and have been happening pretty much since the industry began. Weeding through playtester's reports can be tiring, and while a GM might house-rule 5 things on a busy night, he or she will probably only remember to include the 1 or 2 most aggravating ones in the feedback. End result, anything that's a little confusing, but not game-breaking, doesn't get complained about. Remember there's various egos and social situations involved, and when some one's being so cool as to let you playtest a game 6 months before it releases, you're rarely motivated to bite the hand that feeds you. This isn't just FFG's problem either (or even just White Wolf and FFG's). The industry doesn't make enough money to fund extensive blind playtesting with cameras at the table recording problems as they come up, which is what it would take to prevent this from happening so often. Heck, a lot of games make it to market without any blind playtesting at all. As annoying as it is, we're kind of stuck with it.

I'd personally love to hold the editors responsible and "vote with my money" by only purchasing games where this sort of thing doesn't happen, but in general there's no way to know until you've already shelled out the dough, and have the contradictory rules right in front of your eyes. The larger the book or box, the more likely it'll happen. One of the advantages of the rules-light indy games is that they rarely have the page count to contradict themselves. But, you never know, sometimes even a really short rulebook can surprise you. Maybe we should start a petition demanding blind playtesting and rigorous editing?

Okay, I think my rant is over now. Apparently, I'm in a mood today. My apologies for anything that comes off too terribly snarky in the above.

This is wierd, in fact. I'm an editor myself (for novels, not RPGs... I would love it so much to do RPG edition, though!) and those kind of problems should be noticed on the first or second reading. This is too obvious to go unnoticed. Contracdicotry elements are probably the most obvious things editors notice. That and unclear/overcomplicated elements. Insanity system wouldn't get in the book the way it is if it got through my hands... but that's maybe just me.

The "Splints & Bandages" card in my opinion is pretty good, since in my opinion it allows for two First Aid checks in an encounter, instead of the regular 1 allowed by the base First Aid rules. If you count the "Splints & Bandages" action card as part of the 1 allowable First Aid check, then yeah it's pretty sub-par. But I'm pretty convinced it's meant to be used in conjunction with First Aid and not as a replacement.

Pretty good explanation, Lexicanum (as always ). Stiil, wouldn't be simpler to have a basic First aid card, and make a talent that make you use first aid twice per act per character?

Then again, is it me or rest & recovery and first aid mechanic are overcomplicated?

I would have them use the same mechanic (but now I'm house ruling, should I post this back there?). Something more or so like Splints & Bandages :

- Heal number of wounds equal to successes (without the additionnal 3 succeses success line...)

- Heal one or more critical(s) that as a severity equal or less of generated boons.

- 2 banes : 1 stress, 1 fatigue

- chaos star : suffer 1 wound

Same mechanic for Resilience checks after a night's rest with addition :

- if someone with First aid trained take care of the character, add 1 fortune dice.

- if someone trained in medecine take care of the character, add 1 expertise dice.

question? under this mechanic, does characters still need to recover wounds equal to Tou? I think so, but woudn't be too much?

Long-term care only reduce difficulty by 1.

I did a home-made quasi-action card to explain a normal First Aid action as it is one of the trickier skills.

I can see it would be useful to have a Resting card as well as stated above to set out standard checks there.

Spints and Bandages is an uber-First Aid roll as normally you choose "heal wounds" or "suppress critical" but it allows both at once.

Silverwave said:

I think many RPG editors are just amateurs with a nice title. There are just too many things wrong with how the WFRP rules are organised, and that makes it easier for these kind of mistakes to go unnoticed. I would love for FFG to hire a competent editor.

First Aid is a basic skill check which means anyone can perform it. You can use it to heal normal wounds or ignore the effects of a crit. There are no limits to the number of attempts that can be made, but each character can only benefit from one successful First Aid check per Act during an Encounter (once per Scene outside of an Encounter or at GM's descretion).

A First Aid check can also be made during a Rally Step and since it occurs between Acts, it can be done even if the character being treated benefited from a successful First Aid check in the prior Act.

Splints & Bandages is an action, not a maneuver. It requires training in First Aid, uses that skill to resolve the check, and produces potentially better results than a normal First Aid check by healing additional wounds and simultaneously allowing the patient to ignore the effects of a crit. Since it can be used on a character that has already benefited from a successful First Aid check during the Act in which it is used, it thus provides the only non-magical means of healing a character twice in the same Act. However, it can only be used once per encounter.

So in an Encounter with the suggested 3-Act structure, a character could potentially receive First Aid 5 times and have Splits & Bandages applied.

I still feel that S&B is of marginal utility; however, the only careers that have First Aid as a career skill are Barber-Surgeon, Initiate, and Acolyte and healing tends to be their shtick anyway, so it's not a awful choice for them to add to the repertoire. Anyone else has to spend the extra points to train First Aid as a non-career skill first, so there's plenty of more attractive action cards for most players, most of the time.

mac40k said:

Although it says in the Tome of Adventure that Rally Steps occur “between acts” (p. 14), when looking at the way Rally Steps are presented in the adventures (both in An Eye for an Eye and in The Gathering Storm, it is different in A Day Late, a Shilling Short), I do have the impression that they are treated as belonging to the act that they conclude. Since I did not find an explicit statement that the Rally Step First Aid check should be counted as an additional opportunity to provide first aid, out of the act structure, my impression is that there is some room for interpretation here.

My gut feeling says that normally, I would not allow players to benefit from another first aid check if they have already benefited from a first aid check in the act just before the rally step. At least not if they haven’t received any new wounds after that First Aid check. I guess I would allow players to benefit from an additional First Aid check only if (a) they have received further wounds after they have benefited from a First Aid check in the act before the Rally Step and if (b) the Rally Step is of the kind that would allow for an extended opportunity of providing first aid.

However, I might still allow them to do this additional First Aid during Rally Step check to under special circumstances (good roleplaying, very tight situation where you know a lot of damage is in store during the next act, etc.).