More Realistic Healing System (House Rules)

[Urlord]

In order to get the gritty, street-level, and deadly feel I want for my new campaign, I came up with these alternate healing rules. Please provide your feedback - Good and Bad...

 

Realistic Healing (House Rule)

This is a House Rule and supersedes the normal Healing rules.
 

Whenever a character is injured (takes BODY damage).  The process for dealing with an injury is Diagnosis, Treatment and Healing.  When dealing with injuries, each damaged area (according to the hit locations) is considered separately.  If the same hit location received damage more than once, the damage is added together and considered as a single injury.

Note: hit locations that have right and left are considered two different locations.

 

First Aid

First Aid (Healing Skill) is used to stop bleeding. To stop a characters bleeding, make a Healing Roll modified by -1 per 2 BODY taken (minimum 3- roll). This is a Full Phase action.  If the injured character begins exerting himself again afterward (using STR or Full Moving), the Bleeding resumes on a roll of 9 + (Bleeding d6) or less (check at the start of the next Turn).
 

Healing Kits (see Treatment below) may be used to aid First Aid. If used, modify the Healing Roll by +2 (regardless of the Healing Kit quality) and each use to stop bleeding consumes 1 charge.
 

PS: Physician is a complementary skill.  Make only one First Aid Roll for the entire body (All Bleeding).

 

Diagnosis (Optional)

Diagnosis is a Healing Skill Roll at -1 per 2 BODY sustained to that Hit Location (minimum 3- roll). If the Rolls succeeds, apply a +2 modifier to the Treatment Roll. If the Roll fails, apply a -2 modifier to the Treatment Roll.  Diagnosis requires 1d6 TURNS to perform.
 

PS: Physician is a complementary skill.  Make only one Diagnostics Roll per injured area.

 

Treatment (Optional)

Treatment is a Healing Skill Roll at -1 per 2 BODY sustained to that Hit Location (minimum 3- roll).  If the Rolls succeeds, the area is considered “Treated”. This stops all bleeding and allows the area to heal normally. If the Roll fails or the injured area is not treated, the area is considered “Not Treated” (see Healing below). Treatment requires a 5 minutes to perform for every BODY of damage to the area.
 

PS: Physician is a complementary skill.  Make only one Treatment Roll per injured area.

 

Healing Kits – In order to Treat an injury, the healer must have a Healing Kit. All Healing Kits have a limited number of charges.  When a wound is treated (successful or not), deduct the Body damage of the Treated area from the charges in the kit.  When the kit’s charges are used up, it can no longer be used to treat injuries until it is restocked.  They can be restocked in any settlement.  Healing Kits come in different levels of quality:

• Healing Kit, poor [+0 to Treatment Rolls] [25 charges], 5 sp, Restock cost 1 cp/charge
• Healing Kit, average [+1 to Treatment Rolls] [50 charges], 5 gp, Restock cost 5 cp/charge
• Healing Kit, good [+2 to Treatment Rolls] [100 charges], 50 gp, Restock cost 25 cp/charge

Healing

Each healing period (30 days divided by REC), an injured character makes a Healing Roll for each injured area.  A Healing Roll, is a CON Roll with a modifier of -1 per 2 BODY taken for that particular area (minimum 3- roll).  If the Healing Roll succeeds, the injured area heals by 1 BODY.  If the Roll fails, the injury does not heal this healing period.  If the Roll fails by 5 or more, the injury has become infected (see Infection below).

 

Modifiers:

Not treated                          ==> The Healing Roll is modified by an additional –2

Full bed rest for entire time ==> The Healing Roll is modified by an additional +2

 

Infection

When an injury becomes infected, the character must make an Infection Roll each day to check for infection damage for each infected area.  The Infection Roll, is a Healing Roll as above with the same modifiers.  If the roll fails, the injured area takes 1 BODY of additional damage from infection, and has an 8- chance of infecting each adjacent hit location (1 BODY damage to each). The infection is beaten for a specific area if the character succeeds at three consecutive Infection Rolls. Infection may also be combated with magic, herbs and amputation.

 

While any area is infected, the injured character may not make any normal Healing Rolls.  Once the infection has been beaten, normal healing rolls may continue after 30/REC days.

 

Infection in a limb may also be stopped by amputating the infected area.  The process of amputation does the character’s full BODY value time the BODYx multiplier in damage to the appropriate adjacent hit location. However, the infection is beaten.

 

Historically, it was more common to die of infected wounds than to die outright in battle. The chance of infection in these rules is less than is historically. justified for playability purposes.

[Lucius]

 

Looks workable.

 

Simpler than I expected infection rules to be.

 

But you did not define what the 'infection roll' is. I'd assume a modified CON roll.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Disinfecting a palindromedary

[Urlord]

"The Infection Roll, is a Healing Roll as above with the same modifiers."

 

It is there.

[Lucius]

I failed my perception roll.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says, Achmed heard defective

[steph]

very nice job !

[Doc Democracy]

You know, I never got into gaming to deal with real-life stuff and so I am pre-disposed against this kind of thing.  It does look like you have kept a handle on the detail but it is SO unheroic to die of a pus-filled leg due to a wound that never quite healed properly.  :-)

 

I have found, in my time, that while many of my players regularly moaned about stuff not be "true to life" or breaking the suspension of disbelief, almost none of them have ever turned their noses up at clean, quick mechanics to get rid of the after-effects of combat! 

 

 

Doc

[JohnnyAppleseed098]

Realism seems to be the case here. However, especially in fantasy, a lot of infections are unnoticeable, similar to how you can't notice a heart attack in 1500, so, my question is: How Would You Notice These Infections and Diagnose The Effects Of Them?

 

 

Additionally, this would remove the magic of clerics (Maybe, tell me if I'm going astray). This would limit the spellcasting and focus more upon swordfighting (Which May Be A Good Or Bad Thing, Depends On Your Campaign Idea).

 

 

Finally, I Would Believe That A Better Quality Health Kit Would Improve The Chance of Making A First Aid Roll (Which Really Could Just Be Paramedics IMO.) especially since that better quality health kits improve chances of survival IRL.

 

 

As Words Die, I Appreciate This System, Other Than My Suggestions

[Urlord]

You know, I never got into gaming to deal with real-life stuff and so I am pre-disposed against this kind of thing.  It does look like you have kept a handle on the detail but it is SO unheroic to die of a pus-filled leg due to a wound that never quite healed properly.  :-)

 

I have found, in my time, that while many of my players regularly moaned about stuff not be "true to life" or breaking the suspension of disbelief, almost none of them have ever turned their noses up at clean, quick mechanics to get rid of the after-effects of combat! 

 

 

Doc

 

We are just finishing up a very heroic, high magic campaign that we have been playing for the last 3.5 years.  When we sat and discussed what kind of campaign they wanted to play next, the words: deadly, gritty, realistic, street-level, low/no magic came up.  I even had a second discussion with them to make sure this is what they wanted and it was. Our first session won't be until June after we finish up the current one. If you want to read about the campaign I am creating, here are the links.

• Map of Edrios
• Fragments of Hope Player's Guide (work in progress)

Thanks for your feedback.

[Urlord]

Realism seems to be the case here. However, especially in fantasy, a lot of infections are unnoticeable, similar to how you can't notice a heart attack in 1500, so, my question is: How Would You Notice These Infections and Diagnose The Effects Of Them?

 

 

Additionally, this would remove the magic of clerics (Maybe, tell me if I'm going astray). This would limit the spellcasting and focus more upon swordfighting (Which May Be A Good Or Bad Thing, Depends On Your Campaign Idea).

 

 

Finally, I Would Believe That A Better Quality Health Kit Would Improve The Chance of Making A First Aid Roll (Which Really Could Just Be Paramedics IMO.) especially since that better quality health kits improve chances of survival IRL.

 

 

As Words Die, I Appreciate This System, Other Than My Suggestions

 

Healers, I think, have always been able to tell if an injury isn't healing right. There's excessive redness and tenderness, the patient feels hot to the touch and is swearing/shivering, the wound is becoming puss filled, discoloration, etc.  They may have called it different things, like Gang-green, sepsis, demon possession, and so forth.  Finally, the treatment for infection before antibiotics, were varied as well. Things like leeches, blooding letting, exorcism, and amputation to name a few.  Amputation seemed to emerge as a a treatment which had the highest rate of success. As for diagnosing infection, I personally think it could be done the same as any other diagnosis roll.

 

You need to read about the campaign to understand why clerical magic won't available for quite some time in the campaign. I have included a link to the documents below if you want to read it.

 

Yes, First Aid and Healing Rolls are just the Paramedics Skill. To me, the First Aid task is primarily... "By the Hells, that is a lot of blood!  We've got ta' staunch it or she's gonna bleed out.  Quick, get some rags/cotton/whatever to put in this wound."  This is why I gave all Healer Kits a +2 to First Aid. Because it is a ready supply of materials to stop bleeding.

 

Thanks for your comments as they help me think deeper about the system and justify the decisions I made.

 

Here are the campaign links if you want to read it:

• Map of Edrios
• Fragments of Hope Player's Guide (work in progress)