So, the characters finish a major battle with the forces of the big bad evil guy, but now need to scour through the city for more information about this history and whereabouts. At the end of the fight, they are bruised and battered, and in desperate need of healing, though they won't be in the city for more than a day or so.

How are DMs handling non-combat healing? We're torn between 3 options.

1. Rally step, then use the rules/actions for 'rally' only, with additional healing from long term healing if applicable.

2. Rally step, then characters can use any healing actions that they have to heal the group, but only one action per character max.

3. Characters can heal/restore fully, since the priests can heal and get back to equilibirum and heal again...

Basically, we're confused as to how you handle healing in a non-combat Act and how you transition from a combat Act to a non-combat Act

We allow a rally step then once per scene. Outside of that it's long term healing.

Bit of a mix and match really...

generally, outside of encounter mode the PCs can be healed once per scene, or when it makes sense in the story, i.e. when the PCs have a chance to rest, and reapply banadages etc

We only allow one type of magical healing (including healing draught) or regular healing per scene "change".

If the scenes aren't neccessailry clear, then a fortune refresh outside of encounter mode also triggers a "healing usage" refresh.

We use this kind of principle (the fortune refresh) for any action cards (not just spells) that have some kind of recharge mechanic, that are open to spamming issues outside of encounter mode.

One thing to remember is that travel is at walking pace, or barge or coach pace at best. Even if you have horses you generally walk them, not gallop them unless you want a dead horse at the end of the day. We often think too much in modern terms of car journeys between cities taking jsut a few hours or having to get everything sorted by the end of the day or week.

In the warhammer world you would think of travel as being a major undertaking time wise. Even getting things done around the same village could involve 5 hour trek to and from the wood, abandoned mine and small lake that the adventure revolves around. Thats three lots of ten hours travel. Chances are the adventures would take three days to check them out in turn rather than dash to all three in one day. So time for some rest and seeing to wounds each night.

Towns are on average a week or so away from each other. Nuln to Altdorf is what - 150 miles or so? At 20 miles a day being considered good going using average pre mechanised military campaign speeds, you are talking almost two weeks travel at medieval speeds. That is plenty of time for some major healing and recovery of critical wounds between a lot of adventures.

So unless your action is at hollywood breakneck action speed then there is a lot of time for healing up even in a general adventure.
E.g. The gathering storm could well last a week or more. 3-4 days out in the field for various investigations, plus a day or two in town. Maybe even a rest up day between events if they are a little battered.

i wrote a post called "a healing compromise" in house rules about how i have tried to simplify healing for myself. it is not raw but i like it.

pumpkin said:

Is this RAW? Can I have a page ref please? My PCs claim that, for instance, during an interlude that lasts 14 days, they can roll a resilience check every day in order to remove Criticals. I am looking for evidence to the contrary.

Ask them to show you where it says they can roll more than once during an interlude? Notice that during an interlude, the PCs only get to choose ONE action to do. An interlude isn't played day by day. It is one entity, and like all other story intervals (ie acts/scenes/episodes), they only allow one check per.

dvang said:

You say that interlude isn't played day by day, but this is an assumption, no? It's hard to argue this, If I say to them you stay in the town for a week. They will demand 7 'daily' resilience checks which IS stated in the rules (page 64 RHB)

Also, step 2 in interlude is Healing and Rest, step 3 is activities [which only allows 1 action, in most cases]. So, healing is among the actions where they pick one of them.

No, an Interlude is like an Act, or a Scene. It is one segment of "story time", regardless of the number of days/weeks. You are not roleplaying out each day, you are treating the entire period as one event. Hence my reference to the portion where an Interlude only allows one "Action" per PC, unless the GM allows the interlude to be longer and provide additional actions. There are many roll/actions that can only be used once per "story segment" (like once per Act, once per Scene, etc). These apply the same way to an Interlude, since it works the same. an Act, for example, could span a couple days, but an ability that is used once per Act can still only be used once until the next Act starts.

I would allow one resilience roll per Interlude action for each PC, since that fits in with the nature of the WFRP game.

Honestly, I would tell the players that an Interlude is one segment of game time, and gets one roll. Don't let them argue. You're the GM. Now, as I said, I'm not completely heartless. I'd allow modifiers, and I'd allow multiple criticals to be healed with the one roll (to represent the increased time spent recovering). There are several options for this. Just some ideas:

- You could have all criticals with a severity equal to or less than the # of successes rolled be healed.

- You could allow for the healing of 1 (or maybe 2 or more) severity worth of successes rolled. For example, if 2 successes were rolled, 4 severity worth of criticals are healed, and the player gets to choose which ones, etc.

Additionally, depending on the actions taken during the interlude, I'd probably give them additional fortune dice for the roll itself. You could also give [W] to the roll for the amount of time that technically passed (1 per week, maybe?). That's all up to you

If you don't want to put your foot down as the GM, then I suppose go ahead and let them roll for each day. Make sure to impose the criteria that they get a full nights rest. Don't give them any extra bonuses on their checks. In fact, feel free to enforce charging them outrageous lodging fees for each day, and impose penalties on the Resilience checks for less-than adequate lodging (which is mentioned in the rules).

dvang said:

Thanks Dvang. After I reading this, yesterday, I almost thought I had the problem solved. It really did seem simple. Well, that was wishful thinking. However, after a good night's sleep, I just remembered a tiny detail that I am sure my rules-lawyering players will use. Long Term Care happens in an interlude right? It specifically states a resilience check for each day!

You said that I should not let them argue, but it's not that easy, because it would create tension (hah, speak about party tension). You have to be there to see it... I do appreciate your help. Please do not take my constant argument with your interpretation personal, it's just that I put myself in my players shoes, trying to anticipate their counter-argument in advance.

In my opinion healing per interlude was introduced so players could heal some wounds in the middle of short, intense adventure. But imo there is no justification in mixing story length with recovery process. So if for example current act lasts for 1 month then players couldn't heal more than once? Than is unnatural and doesn't have any logical explanation. If for example act is about surveillance of someone players could take changes, 2 could stay guard and the rest of the can recuperate. And how can they tell them: "Guys you can rest and bandage your wounds all you want but you already spent your healing for this act"? Of course they will argue because its unnatural. And I can't really see how this "fits in with the nature of the WFRP game" as Dvang said.

We go with resilience check each rest with modifiers for type of resting place and conditions of rest. heals wounds, you need number of equals to severity to heal crit. If you fail to heal crit and have chaos star your wound have infected.

Sephirotth said:

Perhaps you are confusing Rally step with Interlude?

Rally step can happen in the middle of an adventure. Between acts.

Interlude happens between adventures. For instance when you have finished Eye For An Eye and you are in town getting ready to start Gathering Storm.

Yes I did, sorry for my mistake. Tnx plutonick for pointing it.

But point stays the same: Why should someone be able to heal for 3 times in one day if there is 3 rally steps that day and then wont be able to heal for month because its all one interlude. You have to give your players chance to, if they want to invest time for resting and healing, actually receive benefit from that time. If you don't, you can get in position that your players refuse to go to adventure out of concern of not being at full capacity. It is one thing when wounds start pressuring players when they are in middle of something and they can't forfeit it easily and totally different when they enter adventure half-dead. It happened to me that players couple of times skipped "quest" because not feeling confident about their condition and I'm glad cos of that because it shows their connection to their characters and that characters are not just expendable piece of paper ready to be cnced at any time to them. In case of only one heal per interlude I'm afraid deadlock could ensue.

I am struggling with what you describe below as well. Here is what I have come through by discussing the rules with other people from the forum

Sephirotth said:

What you describe, is a question I have as well. However, IF all rally steps occur within the same act, then keep in mind that each character can benefit from only one First Aid per act.

and then wont be able to heal for month because its all one interlude. You have to give your players chance to, if they want to invest time for resting and healing, actually receive benefit from that time. If you don't, you can get in position that your players refuse to go to adventure out of concern of not being at full capacity. It is one thing when wounds start pressuring players when they are in middle of something and they can't forfeit it easily and totally different when they enter adventure half-dead. It happened to me that players couple of times skipped "quest" because not feeling confident about their condition and I'm glad cos of that because it shows their connection to their characters and that characters are not just expendable piece of paper ready to be cnced at any time to them. In case of only one heal per interlude I'm afraid deadlock could ensue.

Regarding deadlock due to wounds, I have to add the following:

1. Wounds normaly heal easily during an interlude. It's the criticals that might stick with the adventures. But I think this was intended. It's a warhammer flavor. If you go buy the rules, i think they rules can be interpretted that they can roll each for resilience day.

2. Rules can also be interpreted that interlude is one story segment therefore they roll once for resilience, but you can give them bonuses.

3. If you want to go with 1 roll per day, you can hit them with them with 'room renting' costs,

4. If you don't want to make it too easy, you can interrupt their 'full nights rest' with various events.

5. If you are afraid of getting deadlocked because they characters don't want to leave town to go questing until they are fully healed, you can force the quest on them somehow. An NPC they like, has been kidnapped, or there is utmost urgency they leave sooner rather than later.

But all the above are 'narrative' ways to deal with the problem. I would prefer 'mechanics', or rules that were clearer.

I asked basically this at GenCon. The reason this is unclear is there was a rule in play-testing that didn't make it into the book in a clear way, but this should be corrected when the FAQ/errata is updated next. The rule is "other than where provided in the rules (such as rally steps), a character can only benefit from a given source of healing once per in game day." So you can be first-aided once per day, one healing drought per day, the minor blessing of health once per day, etc. This is also why there are some redundent seeming healing blessings.

Releatedly, you cannot buy the same action more than once on a given character, to get around this. (or to have a second of them available while one recharges)

plutonick said:

I was more or less quoting the rule at the top of page 65 in the main rule book, which talks about using first aid, once per act in encounter mode and once per scene outside of encounter mode. This does seem to contradict the rule that Larin mentions that is shortly to be added to the FAQ though, although the catch all "other than where provided in the rules" sort of covers it, i guess? I assume the rule is being added to the FAQ to help stop the potential for spam healing outside of encounters and the like...

As for healing once every 14 days, I don't think there is evidence to the contrary (or neccessarily that there needs to be any). It does seem reasonable to me that if those 14 days were played through, the players would get one roll per day, so even though they aren't played through, they should still have a reasonable chance of healing criticals?

I think one roll using the RAW only would be a little harsh and we implement one of Dvang's suggestions, which is basically this...

Wounds are assumed to completely heal during any reasonable interlude of time and one resilience roll can be made to heal criticals, BUT ALL criticals with a severity equal to or less than the number successes generated are healed.

Now that is not statistically the same as making 14 rolls, but it is much quicker (with only one roll needed) and will probably give more or less the same results. Chances are a high seveirty critical will still be hanging around either way and the low level ones will have been healed.

It also depends how you interpret long term care (which can also be applied to those 14 days), because the way we use long term care it is possible to heal 2 criticals per day (one for "standard healing" and one for the specific long term care rule)... is this how everyone else is interpreting long term care?

No, I believe (although I could be wrong) that Long Term Care is merely a modifier to the standard healing roll. Basically, it is "better". I'm going off memory here, so I very well could be wrong. Don't forget, though that Long Term Care requires specialized clean conditions with a medically-trained "professional" taking care of you. It isn't normal bed rest. You need a Shallyan hospice, for example. Basically, if you check yourself into the hospital for X number of days/weeks. That means the PC cannot do anything else except convalesce during that time, and I would expect such care isn't cheap either.

dvang said:

That's how we first played the rule, but considering it's difficulty to achieve as you already mention, it just seemed a bit under powered if used like that.

Regular daily recovery checks heal criticals based on successes or wounds based on boons

Long term care heal criticals based on successes or wounds based on successes too.

To me it doesn't make sense that long term care simply replaces the regular resilience check, as it isn't really that "much" better.

Regular resilience checks get additional fortune dice based on first aid, one per success, and additional expertise dice based on a medicine roll.

long term care, although at a lower difficulty level, gets a flat 1 expertise bonus die if treated with someone with medicine trained, and boons do nothing (other than the default option of recovering one fatigue for two)

If it's an either/or option as you suggest i just don't think the max +1 expertise die is worth the difficulty (and likely cost in hard gold) of obtaining long term care in the first place, plus long term care could actually end up being worse as you can only ever heal a critical OR heal some wounds, whereas you could do both using a regular resilience check.

This section of the rules is one of the least explained areas IMO and i hope it has some clarification in the new player's guide, when it comes out.