AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Translating The Heal Skill Into RP Competance.

I know this topic existed at one time but has since been lost to the deep deep dungeons of the Amian Forums so I figured its time to Resusitate it.

How does the staff/players translate a characters heal skill ratings into roleplayed competence?.

For example, a rating of 1-10 would be what, very basic first aid?

What about the higher skills above and beyond ratings 10-20? 40? What about the legendary levels past 60-100?.

Thoughts? Ideas? Discuss!

*Cough* I performed open heart surgery on a kobold in the middle of a field with my (33 ranks in heal) monk using it under DM supervision (three Nat 20s in a row may have been involved), so I suppose it is a commonly held belief that you're pretty good at medicine if you got them sexy sexy ranks.

In all seriousness, given the inherent penchant for healing magic to be considered "low RP" in this high magic setting, I suppose it really reinforces the benefit of having a good heal skill.

CouncilofAutumn wrote:

*Cough* I performed open heart surgery on a kobold in the middle of a field with my (33 ranks in heal) monk using it under DM supervision (three Nat 20s in a row may have been involved), so I suppose it is a commonly held belief that you're pretty good at medicine if you got them sexy sexy ranks.

In all seriousness, given the inherent penchant for healing magic to be considered "low RP" in this high magic setting, I suppose it really reinforces the benefit of having a good heal skill.

Its exactly this sort of use of the heal skill that the Salandrans live for!

I can truthfully say even though my main is a Salandran healer I have never given this topic much thought although I guess I should have, instead I have been more focused on slewing healing RP away from simply casting a cure or heal spell and leaving it at that into a more interactive RP experience for both healer and patient.

I would be initially reluctant to put titles of competence on a given range of healing skill ranks but then on second thoughts there seems to be a tendency on basing DC checks on the modifier of the skill or save to be tested rather than the actually difficulty of the task. I suppose this is to prevent highly skilled and experience characters from performing mundane or simple tasks easily......wait what? :lol:

Using the maximum value of 33 ranks which is the max for a class skill. (equipment and buffs are NOT included only the skill ranks + ability modifier) I have formulated some benchmarks, for easy of reference I have stuck with more contemporary terms ICly they might be referred to by a host of other names and titles relevant to the lore/race etc.

1-4 Basic skill, what in modern parlance would be termed "basic or emergency first aid", depending on how a player wants to manifest this skill level it could cover CPR, recovery position, monitoring pulse and respiration rates, cleaning and dressing of simple wounds, putting an arm in a sling, treating small burns and so on.

5-10 Intermediate basic skill, a more refined ability a little over "basic first aid" increasing the characters ability to deal with slightly more serious wounds, use of splints and generally improving slightly on the practical application of basic first aid principles without actually knowing anything more advanced, they are just moderately better at the basics.

11-20 Advanced medic, whilst not a doctor per se they are so highly skilled they might as well be. They will have mastered the arts of basic first aid and life support able to enhance the treatment with more refined techniques and the application of more advance alchemy/herbal means. Not in the job system sense of harvesting and production but of the medicinal use of the products. An advanced medic would likely be familiar with rudimentary surgical procedures and to set bones and impact fractures with a good chance of success without magical intervention.

21-30 Surgeon, Whilst able to render more mundane treatment with results bordering on magic its their ability to perform deep invasive procedures and have at least 50% of their patients wake up to thank them for it. They have mastered may ways of healing using more efficacious means and materials with absolute confidence to make the costs of such materials worth the investment. They are also likely to be involved or at least highly capable of being involved in R&D to find and refine new cures etc

31-33 Specialists, as with surgeons these healers can produce results on par with magic almost but they have likely begun to specialise in one or more areas of expertise raising the standard of care in their field/s to amazing heights.

Equipment and magic and other spell like effects can raise the heal skill to ridiculous levels and I feel a good way to represent that is not to suddenly proclaim some mundane yet divine insight or whatever but say that the equipment simply makes the healers job that much easier it effectively lowers the DC of the task.

Just my 50p worth (and the numbers are a for instance to provoke discussion

)

Since we are all epic characters I think epic rolls should be applied. Glim's model of lore checks may be of aid (*ba dum tsh*).

@VitalTouch You are forgetting that there's also Epic Skill Focus (+10) and Wisdom based characters often have a +15 modifiers. A dedicated healer can easily have 58 heal, without any gear. Then add the 1-20 roll. So while 31-33 can be a specialist, I would not go as far as call that surgeon amazing. Not when there are people with 58 base heal.

It does not come up often as there are always more suited healers, but my own char has maxed heal skill and i always figured him to be at best a field medic. Knows how to set bones, stick wounds, stop bleeding. A bit of herb lore for things that help or hurt the healing process. But that has never been his focus, thus id consider any real invasive surgery would be educated guess work. The real Doc imo is one that has ranks in the job system as Physician or something, on top of a maxed heal skill. Heal skill alone does not to me equate to a surgical mastermind.

You don't know need any ranks in Heal to grab someone's junk and ask for a cough, btw.

I don't know what the players do, but I can tell you what I did as a DM. Any time Heal was relevant, I set a DC based upon the difficulty, one that I kept to myself. Then I checked the PCs stats. If they had enough ranks + bonuses in Heal to overcome the DC by taking 10, I didn't bother with it and allowed them to roleplay however they want with success being the ultimate result, barring some weird gaffe or obvious mistake, which I applied as a negative to the result. Positive circumstance bonuses were also applied to the checks for the details and actions in the rp, as well. The only time anyone ever rolled was if the DC was right there somewhere in possible fail territory. I did things that way to keep it moving as much as possible, to minimize distraction, to keep it fair as much as possible, and to keep it interesting/challenging, depending upon which the player made the player happy.

With the job system in place, I would add the following consideration before you finalize that guideline.

Remember, with the Physician job, you can represent someone who's meant to be a more dedicated healer.

High ranks in the Heal skill on it's own represents rudimentary healer's knowledge, the basics of attending wounds and such. It's the Physician who actually would have more in depth knowledge, really.

Dead wrote:

@VitalTouch You are forgetting

VitalTouch wrote:

(and the numbers are a for instance to provoke discussion)

This thread has seriously made me want to see someone take ranks in Physician and in the Heal skill but roleplay a horrible physician.

"Doktor, the baby is crowning! What should we do!"
"Get me some hot water and several towels!"
*Does so*
*Physican pours scalding water on the pregnant woman so that she screams and clenches in pain and fires the baby out* "Haha, works every time." *Dries his hands with one of the towels*

"Doktor, this man has a broken leg! What should we do?"
"Walk it off, weenus. Eat lots of meat and eggs every day and eventually it'll heal."

"Doktor, this child is turning into a giant blueberry!"
"Take her to the juicing room..."

Etc

Last edited by VitalTouch on Wed, Sep 24 2014, 0:03 AM, edited 1 time in total.

Grymia wrote:

With the job system in place, I would add the following consideration before you finalize that guideline.

Remember, with the Physician job, you can represent someone who's meant to be a more dedicated healer.

High ranks in the Heal skill on it's own represents rudimentary healer's knowledge, the basics of attending wounds and such. It's the Physician who actually would have more in depth knowledge, really.

There are not jobs to cover all "classes" and that many of the jobs are mechanically the same or similar as other jobs where the jobs are functionally the same (ie kill people) but the methodology is complete different (mercenary vs archer vs man-at-arms, for example) and yet the job system requires them all to go to X find and kill Y to get Z gold. The physician job is an irrelevant Con boost that's out stripped by a 400gold potion that is not limited to once use per reset so I do not see the relevance of this particular job other than its title in actually being able to mechanically or ICly heal people.

I reject the notion I must take physician in order that my 104 heal skill of which 84 is innate (ranks and ability bonus) to be considered more than a rudimentary healer.

My character has studied hard for something like 9-10 IC years to get to where she is now and I am not talking just reading a tatty old scroll in the Hin Inn I'm talking about the school of hard knocks, being in battle over and over and over again, dealing with treating the wounded in those battles as the fighting raged and then having to tend to the wounded after the battle was over and all the officers were busying making up lies and war stories to justify pinning more medals on each other! :lol:

And that was her experience ~before~ joining the Salandran faith. Abbey was noticing causality and trends long before she took any holy orders.

She is emphatically not merely "rudimentary healer" at rank 33 simply because with various general/epic/class feats that effective rank can be raised much higher. 33 rank is innately as high as its possible to go without ~much~ deeper training and experience that using an entire feat/s would represent and I do not think it should be discounted.

IMO suggesting that achieving the highest rank of any skill is merely basic on the premise that because the effective rank can be raised it is there for ICly still basic is roll play and I think there is a general trend downwards at times to roll play over role play, I would ask that we all think about that for a moment as role players on a role play server.

Magic is routinely being studied in the background of just about every campaign setting I can think of (in fact probably all of them) is it unreasonable that healing would be any less studied, that trends and causality will be ignored by those surrounded by the sick and wounded? So that over time in a setting a rank in a skill will effectively increase ICly even as the rank itself does not.

For example a Doctor at the top of his game in the Victorian era would be rank 33 a Doctor in the modern era at the top of his game would be rank 33 because the mechanics are the same but the level of knowledge and competency reflected by each rank pip is vastly different.

Yossarin wrote:

This thread has seriously made me want to see someone take ranks in Physician and in the Heal skill but roleplay a horrible physician.

"Doktor, the baby is crowning! What should we do!"
"Get me some hot water and several towels!"
*Does so*
*Physican pours scalding water on the pregnant woman so that she screams and clenches in pain and fires the baby out* "Haha, works every time." *Dries his hands with one of the towels*

"Doktor, this man has a broken leg! What should we do?"
"Walk it off, weenus. Eat lots of meat and eggs every day and eventually it'll heal."

"Doktor, this child is turning into a giant blueberry!"
"Take her to the juicing room..."

Etc

...I totally read that in the voice of the Medic from TF2. And yes, that would be hilarious.

Translating The Heal Skill Into RP Competance.

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