Healing in the TOR

[Hannibal_pjv]

I was reading rule book(s) and did find out that:
"Herb-lore
Whether used to identify a spice, a plant with curative
properties or a blend of pipe-weed, herb-lore is a knowledge
favoured by many races of Middle-earth. Among other
uses, this Trait may prove helpful when cooking, or when
preparing a healing salve."

• How does healing salve help healing? I Have not found any indication.
• Indentity plant with curative properties. How does curative plant help in healing?

Leechcraft
You are skilled, according to the tradition of your people,
in the healing of wounds and sickness.

• How does this help healing? Is it always automatic, when using this skill? Sound way too powerfull, or is it?

There are very little information of how and why Herb lore and Leach craft help in healing.
if they are traits, they just allow automatic success when using? Or allow experience point, or healing afterwards.
Getting harmed and healing are quite vital parts in any RPG system, because it concerns players very closely. In TOR this is very vague. I don't have a faintest idea what is mortal in TOR and what is not. MERP was pure fantasy, where there was cure to everything. TOR seems to be more realistic, but there seems to be no information beyond normal healing skill.

Example: Character has a mortal wound or injury. (His head has been cut of, or major artery is Broken) You use herb lore and a herb and character is immediately healed automatically?

Is there anywhere official rules how herbs help in healing?


If not, how GM use these skills in healing?

Examples
1. Character get wound and it is infected: In real wold you have to amputate leg or arm to prevent character from dying. What happens in TOR?

2. Character is bitten by dangerous snake. In real world character just die. What in TOR?

3. Character has no endurance and is wounded. In real word is pure luck. He may live or he may die. What in TOR?

4. Character lose his arm. He may die, but may live if you cauterize the arm quickly and/or use use bandages. How about in TOR?

5. Character get infected by some bad sickness. In normal world character most probably die and is rejected by all other people or is even burn, to avoid the sickness to affect other peoples. How about TOR?

[Rich H]

There are very little information of how and why Herb lore and Leach craft help in healing. If they are traits, they just allow automatic success when using?

You've hit the nail on the head right there. They are traits so can be invoked to auto-succeed on any related Healing rolls; pretty important when you consider what is usually at stake - eg, someone potentially dying or badly hurt.

Getting harmed and healing are quite vital parts in any RPG system, because it concerns players very closely. In TOR this is very vague. I don't have a faintest idea what is mortal in TOR and what is not. MERP was pure fantasy, where there was cure to everything. TOR seems to be more realistic, but there seems to be no information beyond normal healing skill.

Yeah, that's right, although herb-lore does support foraging for herbs and anything else the player can think of when invoking the trait.

If you want more complexity in the rules you'll need to make stuff up. I use the following additional rules to make getting great/extraordinary successes more attractive and investing more in the Healing skill something to consider:

These additional rules are to enhance the usefulness and application of the healing skill giving players additional reasons to increase their character’s skill rating.

TREATING WOUNDS & DYING CHARACTERS
In summary:

• Treating an injury begins at TN 14
• Treating a dying character starts at TN 16

The following cumulative circumstantial modifiers may affect the above TNs:

• + 2 if the character has also been poisoned
• + 2 if the character is diseased
• + 2 if the character suffered a particularly brutal wound. This is subject to Loremaster discretion but examples are wounds caused by torture, Morgul blades, crushed by a large rock, etc

RECOVERING ENDURANCE WHILE WOUNDED
When a healer successfully treats a Wound the recovery rate of Endurance is a follows when resting and not travelling:

• 2 endurance points per day on an ordinary success (as per the standard rules)
• 3 endurance points per day on an great success
• 4 endurance points per day on an extraordinary success

HEALING WOUNDS
Once a wound has been treated, a healer may also attempt to accelerate the time it takes for the wound to fully heal.

A further Healing check after the injury has been treated at TN of 14 or 16 depending on the condition of the patient, unwearied and wearied respectively, produces the following results:

• An ordinary successes results in the wound fully healing in 2 weeks
• A great success fully heals the wound in 1 week
• An extraordinary success fully heals the wound in 3 days

If the test results in failure then the wound worsens and reverts back to being untreated.

If the test fails and results in an C result on the Feat Die then the wound reverts to being untreated and the character is considered to be dying.

ADVENTURE IDEAS FOR HEALING
To further expand the importance of healing the following suggestions may be used as adventure ideas, etc.

• A wounded animal needs a gifted healer
• The characters stop by a village with a wounded person. Success is required to earn the gratitude necessary for the adventure to continue
• Use healing checks to determine the cause of death of someone or something
• Use healing checks to learn the cause of disease or toxicity

... but they do add complexity to the game and are they really necessary?

Is there anywhere official rules how herbs help in healing?

Yes, there are herbs in the Laketown supplement and then things like Undertakings to find Athelas, which is in the Rivendell book.

If not, how GM use these skills in healing?

In TOR the GM is encouraged to come up with rulings as and when needed so the above houserules I've quoted are effectively the same - I've just documented them in advance to use.

Examples
1. Character get wound and it is infected: In real wold you have to amputate leg or arm to prevent character from dying. What happens in TOR?

2. Character is bitten by dangerous snake. In real world character just die. What in TOR?

3. Character has no endurance and is wounded. In real word is pure luck. He may live or he may die. What in TOR?

4. Character lose his arm. He may die, but may live if you cauterize the arm quickly and/or use use bandages. How about in TOR?

5. Character get infected by some bad sickness. In normal world character most probably die and is rejected by all other people or is even burn, to avoid the sickness to affect other peoples. How about TOR?

1. There are no rules for amputations in TOR so this would be something the LM would need to introduce and adjudicate for his own story reasons.

2. Usually this is handled with the Poison condition which is explained in the rules. It's basically the same as being Wounded so can lead to death when other circumstances are satisfied.

3. That's covered in the main rules. Such characters are considered to be dying and will expire if he doesn't get help, which is explained in the rules.

4. This would be the same as in (1) above.

5. Off the top of my head I don't recall any rules for mundane physical diseases or illness within the book so it's up to the LM to come up with something. Likely that would be one or more tests depending on the strength of the disease with various effects, again depending on the disease/illness. There are things like Dragon Sickness and the Black Breath of the Nazgul described in the rules which TOR is more concerned with from a story/narrative perspective.

[Hermes Serpent]

I've always used Traits as narrative support.
"With my Herb lore I manage to find enough yarrow to provide a poultice to put on the wound and aid healing".

is how I narrate that I got a great success when rolling Healing and now get my third AP in Healing for invoking my Herb Lore.
Revised edition p212
"If two circles have been checked, then the Loremaster
should give 1 Advancement point only if something
exceptional was accomplished: the player obtained
a great or an extraordinary success, AND the player
can reinforce his skill roll with the invocation of a
pertinent Trait."

[Hannibal_pjv]

Thanks!

Some extra comments and questions:

I know that some things are in rule book (like how character die if endurance is 0 and he is wounded), but what I mentioned ask was "How healing salve and or leeches etc. affect the healing, compared the natural healing in those examples.


I did read that Lake Town part, and I have some questions:
1) You can only collect healing herbs in Fellowship phase?
"When spending a Fellowship phase in Lake-town, choose
this undertaking to make a roll on the table below."
That means that herbs are much more harder to get than I though originally. It also means that Herb lore can not make healing automatic, because it would make healing herbs worse than direct healing. Also herb only seems to reduce the TN to heal according the rules.
It also seams to be quite dangerous task to collect herbs. If you use your both Fellowship task to collect herb, you either collect two herb or get shadow points, if you are unlucky. Outch!
That also support the idea that it is just not possible to collect herbs while adventuring. That is/was hard part to me to consume at first, but now I want to ask what reasons other LM has given players, for not allowing to find herbs when adventuring. Thematic reasons?
What I have thinked so far are: 1 It is very hard to find herbs, it can take weeks or months and they crow in plases that are affected by shadow, so it is possible that player get those shadow points.
"Roll an Eye: You may roll again or stop searching. If you roll another EYE on the next roll, gain one Shadow point as you stray too deep into an unsavoury area of Mirkwood or the Long Marshes."


Now can anyone say, if there is any way of getting healing herbs while you are adventuring. I suppose that it requires some for of special ability like Woodmen Herbal Remedies Virtue and even then only in limited scale.
I am fine with that, but are there any other ways of getting healing herbs when adventuring than that?


This is interesting concept. I almost hope that there will be official Hand of Healer book, for handling healing, herbs, leaches and other interesting aspect of healing in the TOR

[Glorelendil]

A couple of responses:

First, when you talk about "Healing" are you talking about healing Wounds/Poison, recovering lost Endurance, or both? In TOR "Healing" does not apply to Endurance recovery. Furthermore, traits can only be used with skills, and recovering endurance is not done with skills, so traits (Leechcraft, Herb-lore, or others) will never be used to recover endurance. (If you understand that already my apologies; it's not clear from your post.)

Second, this question of "How can I use such-and-such a trait?" comes up frequently, and most often with Herb-lore. It seems natural, given how many other roleplaying games work, that if you know Herb-lore you should be able to find herbs that give you bonuses (for example, faster Endurance recovery).

But that's not how TOR works. Traits have three very specific uses, all applying to common skill usage: you can invoke them to earn AP after a successful roll, you can invoke them for an auto-success (with LM's approval), and you can invoke them to allow a common skill test when the LM wasn't otherwise going to allow a roll.

So why not also allow Herb-lore to let you find herbs that give bonuses? Simple: because if you do, then suddenly Herb-lore becomes the best trait in the game, because *none* of the other traits provide mechanical advantage. So then you've either got a trait that is "mandatory", or you've got to somehow come up with mechanical advantages for all the other traits, and all of those advantages need to be approximately equal.

(By the way, because of the above argument I would even tweak the Undertaking in the Laketown supplement, so that those with Herb-lore get to roll twice and pick their preferred result, rather than simply get to pick whichever herb they want.)

If you want to add color to your game by naming and describing herbs all over Middle-Earth, by all means do so, but use it only as a resource for the players to narrate. So that, for example, if they invoke Herb-lore for an autosuccess for a Healing roll they can describe how they found some out-of-season Athelas, but managed to make a poultice that did the trick. Or whatever.

But no bonuses. Seriously.

[Kurt]

Hi Hannibal,

As Glorelendil mentioned, healing is performed using a skill and the trait Herb-Lore gives one the ability for an automatic success, or a chance to earn an achievement point after successfully passing a test that reflects a trait that a character possesses. All heroes can attempt to heal a comrade. Healing in TOR isn't a magical thing in the way that "Cure Light Wounds" is in D&D, it's sewing up an open wound, applying a splint, knocking a shoulder back into its socket. A character can use traits to their advantage where applicable. The correct combination of herbs and plants mixed together may help clot blood, slow or neutralise a poison etc.

Having never seen a system like TOR before I too was confused about how traits worked. There is a long thread documenting how I could not figure out how traits and herb lore worked. It finally clicked thanks to a response from Glorelendil when he provided examples of trait usage using Cooking and Smoking. It's the examples of trait usage that helped me in the end. I really like the way that traits work with skills in this game, it encourages creative roleplaying.

I've written a little house rules document called "Herbs and Healing" in the house rules section. The "Herbs and Healing" document is light on modifications and it's rather an explanatory document with some examples. It explains how Herb-lore and other cultural virtues enable a character to understand the medicinal properties of plants and herbs and how to use them. There is an explanation for the increase in trade of medicinal plants and herbs as dangerous creatures in the world have begun encroaching into once peaceful lands. There are some house rules with respect to diseases and witchcraft; examples of how you can use the traits together with the skills; and examples of how you can work with another member of the company to take advantage of trait synergies. Hopefully you find the document useful. If you don't, feel free to provide feedback.

Having said that, I don't yet own the Laketown sourcebook and do not know the rules for herbs that are in it. There may be some inconsistencies with what is in my document and the Laketown sourcebook. I plan to get the Laketown book in the near future.

Rich H and SirGalrim have additional documents with rules on herbs and list of specific herbs and their effects. You should be able to find them in the House Rules Section. I believe Rich H also has a document on trait usage. Robin has a list of herbs in his Desert Campaign Guide.

Kind Regards,
Kurt

[zedturtle]

+1 on checking out Kurt's document, with the already given caveat that it provides a lot of ways to explain the Trait use in the fiction, but in the game system the effects available (automatic success, etc.) should remain the same.

[Hannibal_pjv]

Many thanks!

To Kurt:
The Lake town implements that herbs as much less mundane than your collection gives away. But there are also similarities. You definitely should consider at least PDF version. I like the lake-town supplement because the lake-town adventure background. It is quite popular choose. And because of those Fellowship phase adds that allow some new things to do while doing the fellowship phase.

[beardo1976]

Having never seen a system like TOR before I too was confused about how traits worked. There is a long thread documenting how I could not figure out how traits and herb lore worked. It finally clicked thanks to a response from Glorelendil when he provided examples of trait usage using Cooking and Smoking. It's the examples of trait usage that helped me in the end. I really like the way that traits work with skills in this game, it encourages creative roleplaying.

Kurt,

Is there any chance that you could link that thread? I'd love to see it as I am also having trouble wrapping my head around traits! Thanks so much!


Jason

[Kurt]

Hi Jason,

Instead of linking the thread, I have cut out the relevant parts. Half way through the thread Glorelendil posted some examples on using the Cooking trait and the Smoking trait ... it all started to make sense.

Cooking:

- Travel: "My delicious cooking, unappreciated by those boorish Men and Dwarves, sustains me on the road."
- Encounters: "I offer the gate-guard one of the savory pork-'n-pickle sandwiches I packed away."
- Fiendish Plots (spoiler alert): "I make a rich stew for the goblins, but lace it with herbs that will give them terrible cramps and gas."
- Healing: "Chicken soup. Chicken soup cures everything."
And so on.

Smoking:

Lore: "Hmm...I sit back and have a long smoke and think about this. Ah, of course, I remember now..."
Courtesy: "I notice that the merchant has an old pipe poking out of his jacket pocket, and offer to sweeten the deal with some Longbottom Leaf."
Travel: "Ahhh...nothing like a nice smoke after a day of hiking."
Awe: "I blow smoke out of my nostrils."

Rich H has a resources page here. His document on trait usage is #11.

So if you have the Healing and Herbs document that I wrote there are also some examples of how to use the Herb-Lore trait. It took me a while to get because its so different from other game systems, but now that I understand I really enjoy the way that traits work with the skills.

Cheers,
Kurt