Category: Blades in the Dark: Discussion

I’ve been reading the new Recovery rules and… hm, I think there’s a problem here. In v8, recovery is explicitly medical – you get a PC with Physicker or an NPC doctor to treat you. But Harm isn’t – Seduced is given as an example of Harm, and I’m not sure why we need a doctor to treat that!

Pulling together all Harm under one system looks good, but it includes things that really ought to be temporary conditions that only apply for the current Score – or at least ought to be treated differently for Recovery purposes.

I’m also not sure I like the way that it make Physicker almost necessary for a starting crew. Since getting a doctor is an Acquire Assets roll a Tier 0 crew is likely to get a very bad one. So a Leech with Physicker let’s you roll a minimum of 3d to Recover, and without one you need to take an action to get a doctor who is unlikely to be better than 0d unless you spend coin… it’s such a huge leap in effectiveness, but it takes up a PC’s special ability slot. That doesn’t seem like a great thing to do. Especially given that the Leech needs to pay 2 Stress to treat themselves, so it’s an ability that is much better for the other PCs…

There is the possibility of having a contact who can help, I guess. That takes some of the weight off the Leech, but leaves it entirely up to the GM what quality to give the NPC – and tying it to Tier still makes sense as the default for that.

Honestly, I preferred the earlier system where Physicker makes you better at healing people but anyone can roll an appropriate action or their lowest attribute to heal. Or am I misreading something here and getting it all wrong?