Something commented to another thread already but..

I've provided working houserules for these areas of the game:

New healing system
New monster critical
Advanced combat maneuvers
Monster A/C/E system improvements
New death rules

All of these have passed several session of playtest and are much more well received than original rules.

NEW HEALING SYSTEM is basically either First Aid (support) or Resilience check (self) based. Instead of automatically healing toughness amount of wounds healing is slower and more elaborated making wounds also more dangerous and persistent. Healing draughts are not used as "magic potions" but as to enhance the normal recovery. Also added a long-term care option of 3 nights rest for an improved check. Disease checks also covered in the system.

NEW MONSTER CRITICALS is replacing the critical wound system of cards which is focused on PC attributes than monster capabilities. Not many monsters are affected by a critical wound of +1 misfortune to Fellowship or Intelligence after all. My chart has three categories of attack type and much more severe critical impacts. Also, the number of critical wounds inflicted with a single blow impacts the severity of the critical effect.

ADVANCED COMBAT MANEUVERS improves the value of maneuvers as many PCs have difficulties of putting into use their "gain one free maneuver". This also enhances collaboration as you can with maneuvers now more clearly help other PCs, distract enemies, protect fallen comrades etc.

MONSTER A/C/E SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS mainly clarifies what A/C/E can be used for but also converts stress and fatigue towards monsters as reduction to A/C/E pool. I think its better than "stress and fatigue are wounds for monster" default rule. Why are there "inflict stress to enemy" actions for PCs anyways?

NEW DEATH RULES. I don't like binary expectation of death happening with certain threshold so I created a two-scale probability system taking in consideration the number of wounds and total severity of critical wounds. Two different scenarios are calculated as a reference for probabilities.

Please find them all documented as charts and tables here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12641813/WHFRP%20House%20Rules.pdf

Always interested to get feedback.

Some clarification on Healing and Death check:

I've designed these as an integrated mechanism.

Starting with Death-check : the probability table based on total severity of critical wounds and number of wounds over threshold allows weaker players (low Toughness) to die already with no criticals when over threshold (16% on first level of the table for character with To=2). On the other hand, it allows tough characters to cheat death longer than before - at least theoretically. While there's always room for tweaking the levels in both axis I believe this is more interesting than binary death based on number of critical cards in hand.

More interestingly, death probability is extended beyond the KO situation and it becomes critical for KOd character to have prompt and quality medical support as quickly as possible. This mechanism is created by having death check performed possibly several times:

a) First when character is KOd (instant death?)

b) Second when character receives more damage (to get him out of the harms way is important)

Then either third

c1) When First Aid has been applied (emphasizing the importance of getting First Aid)

OR

c2) When the encounter ends (i.e. not having received First Aid)

And then lastly

d) After each nights rest (assisted or unassisted) (so the character may still die the following night or even later)

Naturally, when character comes back to under wound threshold no more death checks are applied.

Healing is three staged:

First Aid is to help the character to escape death as described above but also the recover from the battle with few wounds less.

Unassisted rest is based on character Resilience check, basically meaning you are resting on your own trying to recover from your wounds.

Assisted rest requires a support person to applied Medicine check that is an option especially for weaker characters who don't want to rely on their own Resilience. For tough characters this is not relevant as their recovery is not being greatly affected by medical support (you could give +1 fortune if assisted still).

Three nights rest option is the long-term care option and design so that instead of throwing 3 nights assisted separately its a one combined better odds roll. Especially important when dealing with potential death-check situation is to get long-term care.

I've removed healing draughts as instant healing option and their are basically a booster to any healing check above.

--

All in all, these two house rules integrated dying and healing together more logically bringing all shades of grey to both but also in my mind clarifying the rules being all skill-check based with no connected checks (Medicine first, then Resilience check modifed etc like original rules).

They all look fine. As long as they don't slow your game down, I think you've got a good and interesting system there. Are you going to keep these on the GMs screen?

jh

All of the above are designed to speed up the game or at least match the speed of original rules. Tables are not complex. Death and healing are not most regular checks in the game anyways. I don't use GM screen as I have a laptop open with necessary powerpoint and pdf-files.