Skills Review: Heal

[Starshadow]

Most players concentrate their efforts on combat and casting during encounters, but think little of their skills. I think skills were an excellent addition to the game, and are a highly overlooked resource. My plan is to post a review of a skill each week, with the invitation for you all to post questions, requests for rules clarifications, insights of your own, or examples in which you have used skills to your advantage in non-conventional ways. This will be especially helpful for those who do not have the literature.

Perhaps the skill taken by many, but utilized least, is Heal. At first people take it because they figure they could heal wounds. Then, after it dawns on them that this is hardly a Cure Light Wounds spell, it sort of gets dropped, with no additional points being added.

First. Let?s look at what the rules state, with my commentary being added in where I feel it is necessary, and then I will add some things the book doesn?t mention.

Heal (Wisdom is the ability modifier used)
Use this skill to keep a badly wounded friend from dying, to help others recover faster from wounds, to keep your friend from succumbing to a wyvern?s sting, or to treat disease. This skill may be used Untrained (you don't need to take ranks, simply roll a D20 and add your Wisdom modifier)

Check: The DC and effect depend on the task you attempt. See the list below.

First Aid: First aid usually means saving a dying character. If a character has negative hit points and is losing hit points (at 1 per round, 1 per hour, or 1 per day), you can make her stable. The character regains no hit points, but she does stop losing them. The check is a standard action.

Long-term Care: Providing long-term care means treating a wounded person for a day or more. If successful, you let the patient recover hit points or ability points (lost to temporary damage) at twice the normal rate: 2 hit points per level for each day of light activity, 3 hit points per level for each day of complete rest, and 2 ability points per day. You can tend up to six patients at a time. You need a few items and supplies (bandages, salves, and so on) that are easy to come by in settled lands.
Giving long-term care counts as light activity for the healer. You cannot give long-term care to yourself.


Treat Caltrop Wound: A creature wounded by stepping on a caltrop has its speed reduced by one-half. A successful Heal check removes this movement penalty. Treating a caltrop wound is a standard action. This feature applies to spells such as Spike Stones and Spike Growth as well, although with those spells, the healing requires a ten minute period of wound dressing to negate the movement penalty.

Treat Poison: To treat poison means to tend a single character who has been poisoned and who is going to take more damage from the poison (or suffer some other effect). Every time the poisoned character makes a saving throw against the poison, you make a Heal check. The poisoned character uses your result in place of her saving throw if your Heal result is higher.

Treat Disease: To treat a disease means to tend a diseased character. Every time the diseased character makes a saving throw against disease effects, you make a Heal check. The diseased character uses your result in place of her saving throw if your Heal result is higher.

Specialist: Many players are unfamiliar with Synergy bonuses. These are applied when the character is adept at something, having mutiple skills or perhaps magical items or feats that aid in a task that is generally related. If you have 5 or more ranks in Profession (herbalist), you get a +2 bonus on Heal checks.

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Here are the standard DC?s for each function:

First aid DC 15
Long-term care DC 15
Treat caltrop (or Spike spell) wound DC 15
Treat poison: Poison?s DC
Treat disease: Disease?s DC

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Special Tip

Some weapons and creatures have an ability called Wounding. Whenever a creature or weapon with Wounding causes a wound, that wound continues to bleed each round thereafter and the bleeding never stops on its own, making it fatal for those without help. The only ways to stop the wounding from continuing is a curative spell or a heal check. This alone makes heal a must for parties with limited curative spell casting ability. It surprises me that it isn?t listed in the heal section, but I guess they couldn?t print every contingency.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ February 19, 2004 04:52 PM: Message edited by: Starshadow ]</font>

[Lyssandra]

Am I mistaken, or do some of the benefits of using Heal have to be started immediately, like before the first saving throw? Spider venom comes to mind since a party member (Mer I think) got bitten and failed the throw, but Gwylln or Celene couldn't use Heal because she was too far away, and it was too late to use the skill to stabilize the venom's effect when she'd swam back to the main party.

[Starshadow]

Good question. The way I interpret the rules is as follows:

Whenever there is a need to make the saving throw, that is when the skill comes into place. So if the character was just bitten by a poisonous spider, for example, and you are close, you can tend it immediately, and use your skill to roll a save hopefully better than the victim's. If you are engaged in combat and can't get there for a few minutes, it is too late to stop the poison from fully entering the bloodstream.

However, with most poisons, you are required to make a secondary saving throw on the following round, or at some point after the first. Even if you were too late for the first save, you might still get there to assist on the second.