Are there any optional rules regarding infected wounds?

[megaplayboy]

It occurs to me that in any setting priot to the last 100 years or so, that real world combat injuries often became combat fatalities due to wounds getting infected.  Since we already have optional rules for: hit locations, bleeding, injuring and disabling wounds, I'm just wondering if such rules exist for the risk of wounds becoming infected.  I don't seem to recall any, but perhaps I was looking in the wrong place for them.

[Duke Bushido]

When it is relevant (gritty western, for example), I use a variant of the poisoning rules: ultimately, the effect (at least game-wise) of poison and the effects of system infection arent different enough to bother coming up with new rules.

 

The biggest difference is that I allow infection to eventually reduce Recovery as well.

 

 

[L. Marcus]

I know of no such rules, but I only go back as far as 5E. I'm gonna make up some right now, though.

 

Any wound of 1 BODY or more made by cutting or piercing weapons, as well as burns, will almost certainly get infected if left untreated. A wound made by a crushing weapon will too, if it can be interpreted as breaking the skin -- say, doing BODY Damage over 1/3 of the target's base BODY (an Impairing Wound).

 

As long as the wound is not healed, make a CON Roll once per day with -1 per 2 BODY Damage (that is, the final calculated BODY Damage done after modifiers, like for Location and such). Roll once per individual wound or attack. On a failed roll, the wound has been Infected and has one Infection Point. Keep rolling once per day per wound -- all Infection Points for all wounds adds into the same pool, but also track failures for the rolls individually for each wound. This will be important for getting better.

 

If a character starts accruing Infection Points, they start to feel poorly. The effect of the Infection is a Suppress, worth a half dice per Infection Point; total the dice as if every Infection Point is worth 5 CP of the base dice of the Suppress. The Suppress targets STR, DEX, CON, INT, EGO, PRE, BODY, SPD, END, and STUN, all together and simultaneously. Roll the dice as soon as the first Infection Point(s) have been totaled, and apply the Suppress as usual. If the character receives more Infection Points, calculate the Suppress dice for the latest addition, roll those dice and add to the total of the Suppress.

 

If the character should succeed with the daily CON Roll for a wound, remove one roll result -- the smallest one, á la an Explosion -- from the Suppress total. Keep all this up until 1/ all the character's wounds are healed, or 2/ they have perished.

 

If the character is resting and being tended by a trained healer/physician/herbologist (someone with First Aid), that person's First Aid skill is Complimentary to the wounded's CON Rolls.

 

This will, of course, lead to a whole heap of rolls. To make these rules less granular/clunky, make the CON Roll a weekly event, rolled once with -1 per BODY Damage suffered (after healing). For every failure, the character receives one Infection Point and suffers the effect of the Infection Suppress as above. For every success, remove one die's result from the Suppress total -- again, start with the smallest one.

 

--

 

That's what I got. I haven't crunched the numbers, obviously, but I think the figures ought to be pretty workable. It makes infections really pretty dangerous, and that's plenty realistic/plausible; and it shows why every Low or Heroic Fantasy party ought to treasure any healers -- why, even someone who knows how to apply needle and thread a poultice should be welcome.

[Chris Goodwin]

By RAW, taking really good care of yourself when wounded, regularly visiting the doctor, and so on, can double your BODY recovery, while not resting and continuing to fight can halve it, and living in poor conditions (including unsanitary conditions) can also halve it.  One could assume that the latter reduction is a result of infection.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah the esteemed Mr Goodwin has listed pretty much the limited bit the rules deal with this.  Why so little, you ask?  Because its not fun, entertaining, escapist gaming to have your character you know, die of Dysentery.  I mean having a super gritty survival game can be fun but generally speaking, few games are going to really want to have this kind of thing as a feature of the game.

 

That said, if you are going to, I'd treat it as an impairing wound, where the damage was done, with a CON Roll to resist it taking place.

[Steve]

Something like the Bleeding rules could perhaps be repurposed for this, changing the time frame to a day per roll rather than by turn.

[Ninja-Bear]

The Bestiary for 4th ed has animal diseases. They were built as powers but iirc it also discusses how to heal from it so there is a place to start.  

[megaplayboy]

I might do it as a plot point, if a wounded hero or NPC pushes on without properly treating an injury, they now get infected and it becomes a race against time to get to a proper healer/doctor.  

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, megaplayboy said:

I might do it as a plot point, if a wounded hero or NPC pushes on without properly treating an injury, they now get infected and it becomes a race against time to get to a proper healer/doctor.  

 

 

That is pretty much the teigger I use, unless someone is attacked with a weapon intended to cauae infection (spears smeared with... Stuff...  That kind of thing).

 

Then I handle the health effects akin to poisoning, but slower, and with reductions in REC and CON as time,goes by.