Healing Proficiency - How many attempts?

So in our last session this question came up: How many times can someone with two ranks of healing attempt to heal someone?

The skill says “If the character selects Healing twice, he can neutralize poison, cure disease, or cure light wounds with a proficiency throw of 18+, once per day per patient.” Does this mean they can attempt to “cure light wounds” once and if it fails that’s that that? Or if the character rolls say a 14, can they try again every 10 minutes or so until they get a success (or something happens to interrupt them).

We felt it was clear that only one attempt could likely be made in the midst of combat, but weren’t sure if after a battle, with reasonable conditions and enough time to spare if a player could just keep trying to heal a given patient until they hit that 18+. I can see arguments on both sides of this (and we spent way too much time elucidating both sides of the argument during the session, eventually the Judge just made a ruling and we moved on, with the understanding that we’d ask for clarification later).

We’ve always played it as one attempt per patient per day, rather than one successful neutralization or healing per patient per day. Interesting interpretation, though.

Honestly, I would probably rule it the way you did, but others in the group felt differently, and I can’t say their arguments were unreasonable.

I’ve allowed one attempt per healer per patient per day - when the fighter gets poisoned in the first room of the dungeon, rolls 4 turns to live (module text for the poison was “dies in 1d4 turns”), and their witch fails her proficiency check, they might barely have enough time to get back to the herbalist in town for him to make an attempt.

I’ve been allowing one attempt per combat. I figure if it’s binding up wounds, applying ointments, and that sort of thing, they can do it again if there are fresh wounds.

The rule is badly written.

The official interpretation is that it is one attempt per patient per day.

As evidence of this, you can point your comrades to the rules for healing of disease in an army in Domains at War:

“Diseased units can be cured through treatment by divine spellcasters and/or healers. It requires one 9th level divine spellcaster, two 7th-8th level divine spellcasters, three 6th level divine spellcasters or chirugeons, or nine physickers to cure one sickened unit in one week. If there are a greater or lesser number of casters or healers, the rate at which disease can be cured is increased or decreased proportionately.”

A 6th level cleric gets one casting of Cure Disease each day. A Chirugeon can heal attempt to cure 5 patients per day. If the Chirugeon could keep rolling until he succeeded, he would be 5x as effective as a 6th level cleric. In fact, they are equivalent because the Chirugeon will fail when treating many patients.

Thanks Alex. That’s kind of what I assumed was meant, but wanted an official answer before next session. If nothing else that’ll let us make an explicit choice about if we want to follow the official interpretation or not.

Thanks!

While we’re here, what’s the stance on multiple healers? If every member of the party has a hench with Heal, can they drop (potentially) six CLWs on anyone who gets wounded?

it depends on if patient overlapping is permitted.

I’m inclined to suspect it doesn’t, based on the other aspects of patient-hood: 1d3 extra healing per day. If assigning multiple healers to the same patient allows multiple CLW attempts, then it would suggest they can gain any benefit of being someone’s patient multiple times, meaning they could potentially heal up 6d3 per day.

That being said, I am not an autarch.

I think this is somewhat reasonable, since it does represent the expenditure of six healing attempts and not all of them are likely to succeed.

IANAA, but my house rule would be that they could all make attempts, but only one success would count per battle. Once Henchman A fails and Henchman B passes a check, none of the other Henchmen can do any more healing until another wound is taken (at which point A and B are out of it because they’ve already made checks, so Henchman C can check to see if they can heal the poor unfortunate multiply-wounded hero).

Nitpicky question - is it one attempt per patient per day for any of the types, or one attempt per patient per day for each of the types? i.e. if I try to neutralize poison on my henchman, does that mean I can’t CLW the henchman later today?

A character with the healing proficiency can neutralize poison, cure wounds, and cure disease on a single patient in the same day.

http://autarch.co/forums/ask-autarchs/healing-clarification

Same approach here. Multiple healers can attempt up until one succeeds.