Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon
Ever since reading a scene in Elantris where a character was unable to heal a deep wound with his weak healing magic (the magic would just heal the surface damage, and then the wound would simply reopen and keep bleeding), I've felt it would be interesting to implement something in GURPS that made magical healing more difficult based on wound severity, rather than just meaning you can chip away at it with lesser healing effects (so you need a particularly potent potion, for example, rather than just being able to chug a quart of the weak stuff).
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GURPS Third Edition (Revised) beat you to it.
Compendium II, pages 154-157 features
I'm Not Dead Yet! An Optional Wound System by John M. Ford. Originally, it appeared in in Roleplayer 16. The first section, titled
Specific Injuries, introduced the idea of injuries being tracked separately to GURPS. Note that the total HP loss still mattered for things like seeing whether your character passed out from their injuries, death checks, etc. What changed was "wound care": the injuries are still recorded and tracked separately, including what it takes for them to heal.
In the next section,
Advanced Healing System, we get to something at least resembling what it is you were looking for. In terms of damage taken, by a human with 20 or less HP, it breaks down injuries by the damage taken:
- Superficial Wounds (1)
- Light Wounds (1 to 3)
- Serious Wounds (4 to 8)
- Critical Wounds (9+)
The rest of the article details how this affects recovery (Natural, Medical Care, Healing Spells, and Psionic Healing).
Relevant to your Elantris example, Minor Healing and Major Healing are revised, with Critical Healing added in because spells can only handle wounds of a specified severity and lower, with no effects on wounds of a higher severity. Limitations are presented for Psionic Healing if your power can only treat wounds of a particular severity. Most of the time, you cannot heal multiple injuries in a single attempt.
My high school group actually tried these rules out. The added bookkeeping could be a pain, but overall, we liked the results. We did add one change; instead of having absolutely no effect, or a functionally useless effect, we allowed weaker Healing Spells to have an incredibly minor effect. So, even if it was a Critical Injury, you could use Minor Healing to stop the bleeding and seal the wound with fragile scar tissue. As in, "Wherever we cast the spell, you have to lie there until something
else can be done."
It was a bit more detailed than that, but I don't remember the specifics. If it sounds too generous, this trick was ultimately inferior to no-roll-required bandaging of the wound. When you don't have any bandages, but could still experience downtime, it could be a literal lifesaver. Oh, and maybe we did it wrong, but you were allowed to mix and match methods of healing. Indeed, that was arguably the "smart approach": save the healing Spells for during combat, or other times you couldn't receive First Aid treatment. If your receiving full medical care, save the magic for the final step; let your physician properly treat the wounds, reducing their severity first.