Health and Recovery summary, with houserules

By JonTheBold, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Posted at

As a part of working out precisely how health and recovery should be tracked, and to help resolve some issues we've had with strain, I've compiled a list of the rules related to health and recovery. I've noted my own house rules with the (HR) tag, and hope you find them helpful. Everything else should be accurate to Edge of the Empire, as written (and hopefully I've interpreted them correctly). I'd appreciate feedback.

Edit: I've created a PDF version of this list, which you can access here: Health and Recovery PDF, and modified the text below to reflect the new version's changes (mostly formatting).

Health and Recovery in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire
States of health or condition
Unwounded: No wounds and no critical injuries.
Wounded: Any number of wounds up to wound threshold (HR, the rules as written state "any number of wounds less than his wound threshold" which is likely a minor error).
Critically injured: Suffering from any number of critical injuries, regardless of current number of wounds.
Incapacitated: Suffering from more wounds than wound threshold, or more strain than strain threshold.
Calm (title is HR): Suffering no strain.
Stressed (title is HR): Suffering from strain up to strain threshold.
Overwhelmed (title is HR): Suffering from strain greater than threshold; character is unconscious, or simply dazed and staggered and unaware of surroundings and unable to interact with them.
Staggered: Cannot perform actions (including downgrading an action to a maneuver). By default this lasts until the end of the character's next turn. Multiple staggering effects add their durations, but not beyond the end of the encounter.
Immobilized: Cannot perform maneuvers (including those purchased by spending strain, from spending advantage, or from downgrading actions). By default this lasts until the end of the character's next turn. Multiple immobilizing effects add their durations, but not beyond the end of the encounter.
Disoriented: Add setback die to all checks. By default this lasts until the end of the character's next turn. Multiple disorienting effects add their durations, but not beyond the end of the encounter.
Thresholds
Exceeding wound threshold: Character is knocked out and incapacitated, and immediately suffers one critical injury.
Tracking wounds: Wounds must be tracked up to twice the character's wound threshold.
Exceeding strain threshold: Character is incapacitated (usually unconscious, though maybe just dazed, etc.).
Tracking strain: Strain must be tracked only to one point past the character's strain threshold. Once incapacitated, the character can process no further strain. (HR)
Reviving: Wounds and strain must be reduced so they no longer exceed threshold before the character is no longer incapacitated.
Critical injuries
Source: Can result from a critical hit during an attack, or from exceeding wound threshold, or from other means.
Random injury: The character's player rolls d100 to determine the specific injury.
Increasingly grave: Each critical injury a character suffers from adds +10 to subsequent critical injury d100 rolls.
Natural recovery
Bedrest: Each full night's rest heals one wound, regardless of current state of health.
Pulling through: At the end of each full week of rest, character may attempt a Resilience check to recover from one critical injury (difficulty = critical injury severity rating; success = critical injury healed; triumph = heal an additional critical injury; fail = heal one wound instead).
Catching your breath: At the end of each encounter, each player can make a Simple (-) Discipline or Cool check to remove strain equal to the number of successes generated (can also spend advantage to reduce strain, as normal). Assistance (HR?): A character can assist other character(s) (either skilled or unskilled assistance, per page 25), but cannot then receive assistance on their own Cool or Discipline check.
Relaxation: Each hour of not adding strain allows a character to remove strain. So after one hour, the character removes one strain. After another hour, the character removes two more strain, etc. (HR)
Sleep: A full night's rest normally removes all strain.
Medical/Mechanical care
First aid (encounter): A character may attempt a Medicine/Mechanics check to help a character heal. Each character may only receive one Medicine/Mechanics check each encounter. Difficulty is based on current state of health. On success: heal wounds equal to successes, and remove strain equal to advantages. A result of threat or despair may inflict wounds or strain.
Medical care: A character may attempt a Medicine/Mechanics check once per hour to help a character heal. On success: heal wounds equal to successes, and remove strain equal to advantages. (HR, for the once/hour limit). A triumph may heal a critical injury, while threat and despair may inflict wounds or strain.
Healing critical injuries: A character may attempt to heal a critical injury by making a Medicine/Mechanics check. Difficulty is equal to the severity rating of the critical injury. A character may attempt one check per week per critical injury. A triumph may heal additional wounds, while threat and despair may inflict wounds or strain.
State-of-health Medicine/Mechanics check difficulty: If wounds are at half or less of wound threshold, check is Easy (1). If more than half of wound threshold, check is Average (2). If wounds exceed threshold, check is Hard (3).
Self healing: Increase the difficulty of Medicine check by two (or Mechanics check by one) if attempting to heal your own wounds or critical injuries.
Proper tools: Attempting a Medicine or Mechanics check without proper tools increases difficulty by one. Using an actual Medpac grants a boost die to Medicine checks (no droid equivalent).
Bacta tank (organic)
Recovery: Wounded character heals one wound every two hours. Incapacitated character heals one wound every six hours.
Critical care: At the end of every 24 hour period, character may attempt Resilience check to heal one critical injury. Difficulty is equal to critical injury severity rating. Success = heal critical injury; fail = heal one wound instead. A triumph (HR to match natural recovery) = heal an additional critical injury.
Oil bath (droid)
Recovery: Wounded droid heals one wound every hour.
Nothing serious: Oil baths do not heal critical injuries.
Stimpack (organic)
Potency: Heals five wounds when used the first time. Second application heals four wounds. Third heals three, etc. (i.e. can be used no more than five times per day).
Renewed potential: Must wait till after full night's rest (or 24 hours) before effectiveness resets.
Application: Requires one maneuver to inject a stimpack. Character must be engaged with target to administer. A character with a free appendage may self-administer with one maneuver.
Non-critical: Stimpacks have no effect on critical injuries.
Temporary revival: Using stimpacks increases strain threshold by two, lasting until the end of the encounter (or roughly 10 minutes, if not in combat). Further administrations have no effect on strain threshold until the previous duration expires. (HR)
Emergency repair patches (droid)
Potency: Heals three wounds per use. Can be used no more than five times per day.
Renewed potential: Must wait till after full night's rest (or 24 hours) before more can be administered.
Application: Requires one maneuver to apply a patch. Character must be engaged with target to apply. A character with a free appendage may self-administer with one maneuver.
Non-critical: Emergency repair patches have no effect on critical injuries.
Temporary revival: Using emergency repair kits increases strain threshold by two, lasting until the end of the encounter (or roughly 10 minutes, if not in combat). Further administrations have no effect on strain threshold until the previous duration expires. (HR)
Other
Avabush spice (organic): Characters under the effects of this spice recover strain at twice the normal rate (i.e. recover two strain after one hour, and an additional four strain after the second hour, etc.). (HR) All other properties of this spice remain as normal.
Alternative medicines: Possibly more? Maybe even a droid chip? (HR)
Death
By critical injury: If a player's character ever rolls 141 or higher on the critical injury table, they die.
By logic: When it makes sense for you to die, you die (e.g. hyperspace travel into a planet's mass shadow). (HR)
Le Fin?: There's no coming back from death. Go make a new character. Caveat: may be possible to create "backup clones", at GM discretion.

Edited by JonTheBold
Posted at

Maybe I missed this in the book. Is there a point where you recieve too many wounds, you die? Like, twice your threshold or something?

also, fantastic write up. As far as I can tell, other than your house rules, you're spot on with what the book says, except for what I can't remember about death.

Edited by Rookhelm
Posted at

Maybe I missed this in the book. Is there a point where you recieve too many wounds, you die? Like, twice your threshold or something?

Strangely, no. Page 216 states merely that you have to track wounds until twice your wound threshold, and that's it. There isn't even an implication that wounds suffered beyond threshold cause additional critical injuries, though that would seem logical perhaps (I didn't houserule it, because, frankly, combat is dangerous enough as-is).

also, fantastic write up. As far as I can tell, other than your house rules, you're spot on with what the book says, except for what I can't remember about death.

Thanks! Oddly, the book doesn't have much to say about death beyond what I've noted, even in the GM section on page 300.

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this is a very helpful writeup! Thank you!

as far as player death...i could swear the core rulebook mentioned cloning somewhere...but I can't find it now

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Some quirky side effects of the rules (and my houserules):

1. By allowing an assisted skill check for Cool or Discipline after a combat, it's basically like a charming or calm leader providing comfort or inspiration to the troops through a short speech or a meaningful "Attaboy!" And in the worst case scenario, someone could offer an unskilled "Walk it off!" to his companions for a boost die.

2. With my houserules, by having strain cap out at Threshold + 1, and having stimpacks increase strain threshold by 2, it offers the interesting scenario of an incapacitated character being revived by the timely injection of a stimpack. I think that really puts the "stim" in stimpack. Of course, that effect wears off after about 10 minutes, so you want to make sure your revived friend gets to safety before he or she is incapacitated again.

3. With the houserules, characters naturally recover strain as long as they are not taking further strain. After four hours without adding strain, a character will have reduced their strain by 10 points (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10), plus any stress they've shed from spending skill check Advantage during that time.

Edited by JonTheBold
Posted at

I like the assisted check for recovering strain...it makes sense in universe.

My only question would be, theoretically, couldn't each person get an assist from someone else? meaning that everyone gets a blue dice (at the very least) always? Are you allowing that? Or, are you making it that if you recieve assistance, you cannot give assistance in the same timeframe?

Capping strain gain at threshold+1 makes perfect sense. As does receiving a critical injury at wound threshold+1. I'm gonna use that one. It makes "dying" more dangerous than just, "well, after the battle, someone simply revives you with a skill check".

Posted at

I like the assisted check for recovering strain...it makes sense in universe.

My only question would be, theoretically, couldn't each person get an assist from someone else? meaning that everyone gets a blue dice (at the very least) always? Are you allowing that? Or, are you making it that if you recieve assistance, you cannot give assistance in the same timeframe?

My plan is that anyone providing assistance cannot receive the benefit of an assisted check themselves. Presumably, the person providing comfort has very good Presence/Cool or Willpower/Discipline, and will normally be quite good at recovering strain even without external assistance.

So maybe one character gives a comforting talk to the whole group, to give them the benefit of his 4 Presence. Or perhaps someone with 3 Presence helps to comfort someone with two ranks of Cool, while another character with 4 ranks of Discipline has a sit down with the character with 3 points of Willpower. It allows players to choose who needs assistance, and for others to provide that assistance in meaningful ways, which provides real value to the Cool and Discipline skills.

Capping strain gain at threshold+1 makes perfect sense. As does receiving a critical injury at wound threshold+1. I'm gonna use that one. It makes "dying" more dangerous than just, "well, after the battle, someone simply revives you with a skill check".

Thanks, but note that receiving a critical injury when wound threshold is exceeded is an actual EotE rule... I didn't make that one up. :)

Posted at
  • Wounded: any number of wounds up to wound threshold. (HR) (RAW: number of wounds below threshold)

As an aside, is this an error in the Core Rulebook? (page 215)

"A character is wounded if he has any number of wounds less than his wound threshold."

"A character is incapacitated once he has suffered more wounds than his wound threshold..."

So... what do you call a character who has exactly his wound threshold worth of wounds? He's still on his feet, as per the rules, but supposedly he's not considered "wounded".

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Very well done. This would make for a great PDF handout for players.

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Minor nit-pick. The last bullet point for critical injury should be "Each critical injury a character suffers from adds +10 to subsequent critical injury rolls," not +10%.

50+10=60, 50+10%=55.

Other than that, I love what you've done! Very nice, clean, and concise. Also, thank you for pointing out what's a house rule and what's not. Great stuff!

-EF

Posted at

  • Wounded: any number of wounds up to wound threshold. (HR) (RAW: number of wounds below threshold)

As an aside, is this an error in the Core Rulebook? (page 215)

"A character is wounded if he has any number of wounds less than his wound threshold."

"A character is incapacitated once he has suffered more wounds than his wound threshold..."

So... what do you call a character who has exactly his wound threshold worth of wounds? He's still on his feet, as per the rules, but supposedly he's not considered "wounded".

That is exactly right, and the reason for my "houserule" on it. It's a minor inconsistency, and easy to fix, but it's definitely an error all the same. I haven't checked the unofficial Errata post to see if it's in that list or not. I'll go submit it if necessary.

Very well done. This would make for a great PDF handout for players.

Thanks. I'll see about whipping up something nice-looking in PDF format, when I get the chance.

Minor nit-pick. The last bullet point for critical injury should be "Each critical injury a character suffers from adds +10 to subsequent critical injury rolls," not +10%.

50+10=60, 50+10%=55.

Other than that, I love what you've done! Very nice, clean, and concise. Also, thank you for pointing out what's a house rule and what's not. Great stuff!

-EF

Good point. I'll go modify that now. Thanks!

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That is exactly right, and the reason for my "houserule" on it. It's a minor inconsistency, and easy to fix, but it's definitely an error all the same. I haven't checked the unofficial Errata post to see if it's in that list or not. I'll go submit it if necessary.

I searched the first page of the unofficial errata thread and couldn't find a mention of page 215, so I assumed it hadn't been reported and thought I'd ask. Definitely report it in there if you haven't already.

And I'll add my thanks for that list in here, too. Nice job.

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What is the difference between first aid and medical care? They seem to be exactly the same.

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What is the difference between first aid and medical care? They seem to be exactly the same.

They are indeed the same, though taken from two different parts of the book. I include them both to highlight their different uses rather than any difference in effect (i.e. in-combat page 219, and out-of-combat page 112). In fact, looking over those two sets of rules again (especially 219), it seems to me that first-aid might not actually be able to heal a critical wound with a triumph result. I'm going to modify my list to reflect this.

Edit: I've updated my list and the attached pdf file.

Edited by JonTheBold
Posted at

For some reason, I thought that additional wounds taken once the player is incompacitated resulted in a criticul injury (with roll = +10 per damage taken from hit). Granted, that could get quite deadly really quick, but I'm under the 4E mindset that the mooks will assume a PC is dead when they go incompacitated, or otherwise move on to the next target, Afterall, if I'm in a heavy firefight, and I see someone go down, why would I keep firing at the fallen corpse when there are still a number of adversaries that are perfectly fine and still firing at me?

If it's not in the book, then I think I'll house rule it this way.

Posted at

For some reason, I thought that additional wounds taken once the player is incompacitated resulted in a criticul injury (with roll = +10 per damage taken from hit). Granted, that could get quite deadly really quick, but I'm under the 4E mindset that the mooks will assume a PC is dead when they go incompacitated, or otherwise move on to the next target, Afterall, if I'm in a heavy firefight, and I see someone go down, why would I keep firing at the fallen corpse when there are still a number of adversaries that are perfectly fine and still firing at me?

If it's not in the book, then I think I'll house rule it this way.

If it is in the book, then I must have missed it. I'm not sure what it will buy you, though. As you mention, the purpose of combat is to eliminate the threat(s). Once an enemy goes down, they are no longer a threat and so generally no longer a target. So, in most fights, this rule would only be triggered in the case of a total party kill (TPK), and then only assuming the enemy would continue putting holes in the characters for good measure.

In order to have the possibility of a character rolling 141+ (triggering the critical injury death rule), they would have to be suffering from at least five critical injuries (for a total of d100+50). That's a LOT of extra shots to put into a fallen body, and even then there's no guarantee that the character will actually roll high enough to trigger death since they'd need to roll at least a 91. To be absolutely positive that the characters are truly dead, the enemies would need to shoot each character an additional 13 times after they'd dropped (for a total of d100+140).

Assuming a reasonable enemy wouldn't want to go through all of that, the PCs will wake up on their own within two weeks, give or take. Each character gets 1 wound per day of automatic healing, plus possible extra from the Resilience check each week, and they wake up once their wounds no longer exceed their wound threshold.

This is why I suggested the "logic" house rule for death. Characters will either bleed out or die of thirst (or perhaps even die of hunger) well before waking up on their own. It makes no sense for a wiped-out party to stand back up after fourteen days and walk away.

Posted at

In order to have the possibility of a character rolling 141+ (triggering the critical injury death rule), they would have to be suffering from at least five critical injuries (for a total of d100+50).

Keep in mind though that Vicious weapons add their Vicious rank times 10 to critical injury rolls. Disruptor pistol would add 40 and Disruptor rifle 50, for example.

Posted at

Capping strain gain at threshold+1 makes perfect sense. As does receiving a critical injury at wound threshold+1. I'm gonna use that one. It makes "dying" more dangerous than just, "well, after the battle, someone simply revives you with a skill check".

Thanks, but note that receiving a critical injury when wound threshold is exceeded is an actual EotE rule... I didn't make that one up. :)

Oh...right, I guess I missed it :P

Posted at

I am thinking about using simpler healing rules using 4e D&D as a guide.

1) Each character has 5 healing surges a day. These HS act like Stimpacks and DRK for organics and droids respectively, but no CR cost to them. A HS can be activated with a maneuver.

2) Five minutes of rest restores all strain damage.

3) Six hours of rest restores all wound damage.

4) Crit healing is unchanged.

I like the idea of quick healing by PCs and don't want to get bogged down in too much detail. I know this will change some talents but I will deal with those on a case-by-case basis.