My players are in an adventure where they more or less set the schedule, they are tracking down a treasure that isn’t going anywhere. And, as listeners of RPG Logic know, they got themselves pretty well hurt in the very first skirmish outside of town. Each has 1 wound and two have 2 wounds. They have found a place of relative safety and want to just hang out until they heal. No body has expertise in healing of 2 or more, so they probably shouldn’t be able to heal, unless they make some resistance rolls. For narrative purposes, how much time should pass for them to heal? 1 Week? 2? I’m thinking one week per wound. Thoughts?
Pg 291 Carousing Activities says that as a rule of thumb, 1 day is spent for every gold spent. Healing 2 wounds would cost 2 gold (See Recovery pg 294). So maybe only 2 days makes sense.
I don’t go into such details during downtime, the party has weeks of downtime. If the downtime period must be tracked carefully I would go with several days (3-4) per wound, depending what caused the wounds.
On one occasion I gave my players a choice of taking a full Carouse phase or pressing on with a time sensitive mission after a ‘limited’ Carouse phase. The limit was the only thing they could do was heal. Like your players party, they were pretty badly beat up and the risks of opening unhealed wounds was foremost in their thinking.
I ball parked it at 1 week down time for those who had 2 wounds. In their case that still allowed them to get where they wanted to be without risking the timeline too much.
If they aren’t content to treat their wounds and move on with their adventure, then I’d make them spend a carousing phase. You said they control their schedule so maybe they should stop in a town and pay the local healer to help them. Abort adventure. Upkeep and everything. Go find a proper healer. Healing requires a proper healer.
If not then consider that the recovery time described in carousing is healing in a comfortable, clean environment under the ministrations of a trained healer. A makeshift lean-to in the jungle won’t qualify for any of those.
Try this: If they’re really just resting somewhere they can’t take a proper carousing phase but don’t want to treat and move on, then rest in a cave for like 1 week per wound like you suggested and convert each wound to 2 fatigue to represent healing poorly. No free lunch. Otherwise they’ll try to rest in the woods every time they’re wounded instead of paying during a carousing phase.
Next carousing phase buy a healers kit to avoid a penalty to their checks to treat their wounds later. They just need a healers’ kit and a willingness to toss some doom in the pool to treat wounds untrained. Maybe some medicine resources to buy bonus dice on the checks to make up for being untrained. That medicine will refill from upkeep once they buy it.
First fight in our current adventure our barbarian took 4 trauma. I managed to treat him untrained with some doom and maybe a fortune (after throwing some doom in the pool to treat my 2 trauma). We moved on with the adventure. He’s aware that he’s one scary monster away from crazytown. It has influenced his roleplaying. We’re still pressing on. Your players could also press on, with the awareness that they should be throwing doom in the pool to defend themselves and buying dice to boost their defense rolls.