2W2P: combat, injury and recovery

Being an elaboration and expansion on my previous post synthesizing Marcia's B's thoughts on worker placement and the dice assignment mechanic of GHOST/echo.

general skill

This section supersedes the relevant parts of the original post. When counting the people participating in a task, consider their skill. The levels of skill are unskilled, competent (counts as one), experienced (counts as two) and specialized (counts as 4). At the GM's discretion, any character may be considered competent in a task that does not require special training.

Generally, competency requires a season's supervised practice, experience requires a year's practice and specialization requires four years' practice. Up to half of these requirements may be replaced by two times as much formal instruction. Self-study and unsupervised practice takes three times as long as supervised practice, if the information is available to the character.

A competent character may supervise one student, an experienced one three and a specialized one six. While supervising, a character may handle on only as much work on their own as the least-skilled of their students. However, for each period of work, a supervisor may add one die to any one roll made by one of their students. 

fighting skill 

Fighting skill is tracked more closely than other kinds. Each fighter is categorized by the number of life-or-death fights they have participated in; do not count drunken brawls, angry punching matches or sport fights; only fights where at least one side is trying to kill or maim.

• Green (none): 2 per 3 fighters + 1 for 2 remaining.
• Fresh (1-2 fights): 1 per fighter
• Tested (3-5 fights): 3 per 2 fighters + 1 for 1 remaining.
• Seasoned (6-9 fights): 2 per fighter
• Veteran (10-14 fights): 3 per fighter
• Hero (15+ fights): 4 per fighter 

melee

In hand to hand fighting, group fighters into "fronts" based on whether they are separated from or able to help one another. Each fighter contributes dice to their side of a front. Every 5 or 6 rolled is a felling hit and every 3 or 4 is a wounding hit. The other side decides which fighters take them.

A side may choose (before rolling) to roll some of their dice defensively; each 5 or 6 stops one hit of any kind and each 3 or 4 either stops a wounding hit or turns a felling hit into a wounding one. The side rolls an additional 1-2 dice for defense if everyone on the front has effective body and/or head protection.

For those in their physical prime, the third wounding blow is a felling blow. For everyone else, the second wounding blow is a felling blow. 

injury

A character who takes a felling blow cannot fight or move quickly. A character who takes one or more wounding blows fights one category worse than their experience level for each one.

Felling wounds and one out of every three other wounds must be re-set before they can be recovered; the GM should determine this secretly for non-felling wounds. Examination by an experienced surgeon or any specialized healer is needed to tell if a non-felling wound needs re-set. After a failed roll to recover a wound, any competent healer can identify that it needs re-set.

On the day that they took a blow, a character (and anyone treating them) rolls against the risk of infection; each wound has a separate risk. Beginning on the following day, each infection is a risk of dying. Examination by an experienced physician or any specialized healer can identify an infection the day after it sets in; any competent healer can identify one two days afterwards.  

recovery

A felled character (and anyone treating them) must roll against the risk of dying on the day they are wounded and each day until the risk is removed. Each infection is a separate risk of dying.

A character with wounds (and anyone treating them) rolls with the goal of recovering from a wound after each day without even light activity or after three days without strenuous activity. Recovering from each wound is a separate goal; however, if fewer dice are rolled than there are goals, the opportunity to recover from any leftover wounds is not lost. 

healers

To contribute even 'inexperienced' treatment, one must have a month of supervised practice or a season of instruction. 'Experienced' healers have two seasons of supervised practice or two years of instruction, and specialized healers have at least three years of supervised practice and two of instruction.

While some healers practice several, nursing, physic and surgery (these terms are going to be inaccurate, just relax about it please) are distinct skills: 

• Someone who is personally present with a patient while they recover is a nurse.
  A competent nurse may care for three patients at a time, an experienced one five and a specialized one eight. 
• Someone who binds wounds and sets bones is a surgeon (bone-setter, medic).
  A competent surgeon may treat two wounds or examine three patients in an hour. An experienced one may do three and a specialized one five.
• Someone who treats infections and non-traumatic ills is a physician (herbal, pharmacist).
  A competent physician may examine three patients or compound medicines for two patients in an hour. An experienced one may do three, and a specialized one five.

If a nurse is practicing other healing skills, they cannot at the same time give patients the benefit of their nursing but they may still supervise other nurses.

2 Workers 2 Placement

Update: see my 2w2p tag for all posts on this framework.

Or, "how to play an RPG as if it were a cooperative worker-placement board game." This (sub?)system is in response to Marcia B's worker placement manifesto, which I endorse. It inspired me in a specific way that I realized probably can't be communicated effectively in a couple of sentences so here it is as a whole post.

I have some additional thoughts about how to flesh out this mechanical skeleton (specifically, to use it to replace the overloaded die in the enchantingly fractal structure of Brendan S.'s Hazard System) but in the interest of actually getting a post out there I think this is good enough. Drawing the rest of the owl is left as an exercise to the reader.

structure of play

The GM describes a situation, and the players ask questions and decide what their characters are going to do. The GM identifies what tasks are being attempted, what their goals are and communicates what the risks are for each. The players make a final decision of which characters are on which task.

For each task, dice are rolled and its outcome settled. The GM describes the new situation and the cycle resumes.

before rolling

Find out the number of (six-sided) dice based on the number of people on a task: 1 die for an individual, 2 dice for 2-3 people, 3 dice for 4-6 people, 4 dice for 7-10, and so on. People with experience count as double their number and specialists count triple.

If task uses some scarce resource, there is a risk of using it up. At the GM's discretion, the players may declare that they are using up a scarce resource before rolling to roll one extra die.

after rolling

Once rolled, the players must assign individual dice to goals and risks: each roll of 5-6 achieves a goal or removes a risk and each roll of 3-4 advances a goal or avoids/delays a risk. If no die of 3+ can be assigned to it, whatever the risk threatens happens and whatever opportunity there was for the goal is lost.

Perceptive readers will note that this is more or less the dice mechanic from GHOST/echo, which I have previously riffed/elaborated upon.

Unless the GM says otherwise, no risk may be delayed more than twice, but advancing the same goal three times achieves it.

complications

To increase the difficulty of a given goal, divide that goal into multiple steps which are each treated as their own goals. The opportunity to work on a later step should not be lost as long as an early step is being advanced.

Similarly, risks can be heightened by splitting them into multiple risks; a simple way to do this would be to treat the same consequence for each participant as a separate risk.