Orcs don't really do magical healing - their thaumobiology makes them unsuited to the kind of magical precision it takes, and many look upon it disdainfully as the domain of the gods. Instead, they study mundane medicine, one of a few scientific fields in which they're actually more advanced than humans. Thus, OLOG needs a new framework for healing; inspired by the System Strain mechanic in Worlds Without Number, here is my take, and a Medic class to go with it.
OLOG: Health, Healing, and Injury
First things first: fiction-wise, hit points are not "don't get hit" points, as they are in some other games. They may represent glancing blows, flesh wounds, bruising, mental stress, or all manner of things, but, in OLOG, if you lose hit points, you got hurt.
An orc character begins play with 1d6+4 base hit points, plus possible small modifiers from virtues - even a relatively inexperienced orc can take a hit or two. Each even-numbered level adds an additional 1d6 base hit points; each odd-numbered level allows the character to reroll all their hit dice, reapply modifiers, and keep the new result if it's better. Base hit points can't usually go above 20.
As per usual for GLOG, if you suffer damage that takes you into negative hit points, roll for death and dismemberment. (The DnD table for OLOG will probably be pretty standard, so I'm not including one here.)
Here are some ways to heal.
- Lunch - Takes 1 hour. May benefit once per day, requires a ration. Heals 1d3+1 hit points and refreshes a virtue. Does not cause strain.
- Night's Rest - Takes 8 hours. May benefit once per day, requires a ration. Heals 1d3+1 hit points, refreshes all virtues, and clears one point of strain. Does not cause strain.
- First Aid - Takes 10 minutes. May benefit once within the hour after a battle in which you took damage (or an out-of-combat injury), requires medical supplies (1sp each, stack to 3). Heals 1d4 hit points, 1d4-1 if you're applying it to yourself. On a natural 3-4, the supplies are expended.
- Herbal Cocktail - 1 action, purchasable at any orc settlement for 2sp. Heals 1d8-1 hit points. If this isn't your first herbal cocktail of the day, Fortitude Save or suffer nausea (-2 to all d20 rolls for an hour).
Strain
Each time a character receives healing from a source other than lunch or resting, they take one point of strain immediately afterwards, even if they healed for 0 hit points. They take an additional point of strain if the healing they received would take them above their base hit points - if you have 6 hit points remaining vs 8 base, for example, healing any more than 2 hit points will induce extra strain.
A character's current strain is applied as a penalty to each further instance of healing they receive, besides lunch and resting. For instance, if you have two points of strain, a potion that would normally heal 1d6+2 hit points instead heals just 1d6. This can reduce the healing total to zero, or even to a negative number, draining hit points instead of restoring them as the character's overtaxed system rebels against the treatment - the character still takes strain regardless.
Strain dissipates slowly and naturally, one point per night's rest. There are ways of mitigating how much strain a character suffers, but very few ways of clearing it once it's there.
Surgery
Long-term injuries, of the kind inflicted by Death and Dismemberment, can sometimes be healed or mitigated through surgery. Orc surgery is a risky but relatively effective process.
Surgery requires a trained surgeon (1d6x5gp per operation if you're hiring one), a clean, quiet place to operate, surgical tools, anaesthetic, and 1d6 units of medical supplies. The surgeon chooses one of the subject's long-term injuries and conducts an operation that takes 1d3 hours. At the end of that time, the surgeon makes a Check, and the subject makes a Fortitude Save penalised by their current strain. What happens next depends on the results of those two rolls.
If the Check succeeds, the injury is cured. If it fails, the injury isn't cured, and any subsequent surgery attempts on the same one suffer a cumulative -4 penalty to both rolls.
The subject takes 2d4 points of strain regardless of the result of the Save, but, if the Save fails, one of these points is permanent, and will never dissipate.
Further circumstantial notes on surgery:
- Surgery by an untrained person is incredibly dangerous, imposing disadvantage on both rolls.
- Surgery without proper anaesthetic requires the subject to be strapped down, imposes disadvantage on the Save, and causes an extra 1d4 points of strain. A heavy dose of alcohol may be good for morale, but provides no actual benefit.
- Amputation is very reliable - half price if you're hiring a surgeon, and automatic success on the Check. Basic wood-and-ceramic prosthetics cost 1gp each, but aren't fully functional: prosthetic legs impose -2 Movement, and prosthetic arms don't have functional hands, though they do come with a screw-fit harness that can hold a weapon (at -2 to Attack), shield, torch, or similar. Advanced prosthetics with no such penalties are known, but cost at least 100gp and are not widely available.
- Removing demonic mutations isn't usually possible without magical aid.
OLOG Class: Medic
Medic Virtues
More on virtues here.
If your first class template is Medic, you begin play with one of these virtues at random (roll 1d3). If you have Medic templates, you may choose these virtues as aspirations.
- Medic's Acumen
Active: Invoke to reroll a surgery Check, or a Check to identify or diagnose a disease, poison, or similar malady.
Passive: +2 Initiative. - Medic's Resourcefulness
Active: Invoke to reroll a healing die roll for any healing you personally administer.
Passive: +1/2 inventory slot. - Medic's Tenacity
Active: Invoke to reroll an Attack against a target that's threatening a downed or vulnerable ally.
Passive: +2 hit points.
Class Abilities
Starting equipment: Dagger, crossbow with 10 bolts, medic satchel (holds 6 units of medical supplies in 1 slot, starts full), surgical tools, flask of ether, flask of medical alcohol, flask of vodka.
A: Patch Up, Surgeon
B: Gentle Hands
C: Anatomist, Bedside Manner
D: Second Opinion
A: Patch Up
When you apply first aid, you only expend medical supplies on a natural roll of 4. You can perform first aid on yourself without penalty.
A: Surgeon
Step down the damage die of any weapon you wield, but increase its critical hit range by one point. Also, you are considered trained in surgery.
B: Gentle Hands
Whenever you roll a natural 1 while conducting first aid, it doesn't induce strain, and you may immediately conduct first aid again on the same subject.
C: Anatomist
If you have advantage on an Attack for any reason, your damage dice explode. (If you roll the maximum on a die, keep that result and roll again, adding to the total until you don't roll the maximum.)
C: Bedside Manner
If you spend 10 minutes tending someone's wounds and talking to them before they bed down for a night's rest, they heal 1 extra hit point from resting and may ignore the first point of strain they suffer the following day. You can do this for up to six people per night; you can't do it to yourself.
D: Second Opinion
If you can reach an ally within a minute of them failing a Save of any type and spend a round tending to them, they may make another Save of the same type. On a success, the effects of the initial failed Save are undone as though it had been successful - damage taken is retroactively halved or negated, compulsions are lifted (though any actions taken in the meantime aren't reversed), mutations dissipate, dead characters are revived, and so on. This induces two points of strain, one of which is permanent if the subject was revived from death.
Once you've used this ability, you can't use it again until you eat lunch or get a night's rest.
Design Notes
OLOG characters are, in absolute terms, tougher than those of some other hacks, but injury stays with them longer, and the constant accumulation of bruises, scratches, and patch-up jobs can take a heavy toll. The standard game loop implies long expeditions thick with potentially dangerous encounters, on which adequate supplies are a real concern and characters will take a serious beating.
I'm walking a difficult line with the Medic. There is a very real risk, in any game with any sort of healer class, that it will become all but mandatory to have one in the party. I'm hoping there are enough ways to heal with items that a canny party doesn't strictly need a Medic, without making them completely obsolete.
Incidentally, if you're wondering where the Medic's starting skills are, those aren't a thing in OLOG. Your class counts as a skill in itself, and you get a random background at character creation, but these don't give you any numerical bonuses, they just let you do things that people with your class and background should be able to do.
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