Stabilising Wounded Characters -- Adventuring Or Healing Proficiency?

General ACKS Forums Ask the Autarchs
1

This came up last session.

We don’t use the Mortal Wounds tables, as we find them too arbitrarily punitive; the one aspect of the Old-School we grognards never preferred.

Instead we use the unconscious at zero, and bleeding out at every successive turn, idea.

Which begs the question: if a character seeks to “bandage up” a downed fellow player, should this action be covered under the Adventuring proficiency every character receives, or under the Healing proficiency?

As DM, I figured it should be covered only by skilled Healing, but one of my players made a good-faith argument that basic bandaging of wounds would be something every adventurer would know how to do.

I’d be curious to hear the opinions of Autarchs and others on this issue. Attempts to argue in favor of the Mortal Wounds table will be politely ignored. Random maiming of people’s heroic proxies does not encourage creative investment into the campaign and the game melieu around here :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Calum

2

In ACKS by default, anyone can stabilize a wounded comrade (that is, grant them a roll on Mortal Wounds), but healers give a bonus.

Since you are already altering mortality assumptions, the answer should therefore be based on what you want your new mortality assumptions to be. Requiring Healing to stabilize will make it easier for characters to die; allowing Adventuring to stabilize characters will make it more difficult to die.

If you are using some kind of roll to see if they get stabilized, you could split the middle by allowing anyone to try, but giving those with Healing a bonus.

The fact is that once you’re already into house-ruling territory, no one can give you a single answer, we can just tell you what our own preference would be. And you’ve already decided against my preference :stuck_out_tongue: So all I can do is offer you questions to think about.