Breaking Bones

[Varyon]

So, a thread about the handling of bleeding has seen a significant derail onto the topic of breaking bones, so I felt it would be appropriate to split this out into its own thread.

The primary concern is that, while Bio-Tech and Low Tech give rules for setting a broken bone, the only guideline provided is that it's a common occurrence for Lasting Crippling to represent such when it results from Cutting or Crushing injury. There's also the concern that, while a failed bonesetting attempt has negative consequences, neither book supplies a consequence for not even attempting to set the bone. William Stoddard, the editor of Bio-Tech, has posted that the intent was that an unset bone results in Permanent Crippling.

I can think of three good, quick ways to determine if a bone is broken. For all three, "broken bone" is really only an option for Cutting, Crushing, and possibly Piercing injury. The first is a simple damage threshold - as twice the crippling threshold results in Permanent Crippling (in the form of Dismemberment for Cutting injury), 1.5x the crippling threshold results in a broken bone on any Lasting Crippling result. For the second, "Broken Bone" is a result between Lasting and Permanent Crippling, and you suffer it if you fail your HT roll by 5 or more. For the third, "Broken Bone" is a special case of Permanent Crippling - whenever you suffer this result, roll against HT again. Success means you suffer Broken Bone (repairable with bonesetting), Failure means you suffer Permanent Crippling (which may or may not involve a broken bone; the distinction is academic at that point), and Critical Failure means you suffer Permanent Crippling with a particularly nasty compound fracture - the wound suffers from Bleeding as though it were a wound to the veins/arteries!

[VariousRen]

I've decided to treak broken bones as the equivlent to dismemberment for crushing weapons. Double the crippling threshold in a single blow breaks a bone, which is harder to fix and always requires 1d6 months to heal even if it doesn't need to be set. Crushing weapons are a little bit more danagerous, cutting or impaling weapons don't break bones because they either cut through and dismember, or hit and bounce off of it.

Here are the rules as I have written them: https://the-fall-of-brekhan.obsidian...s/broken-bones

[Varyon]

By RAW, any injury that doubles the crippling threshold automatically destroys the body part - see B421. Your houserule makes Crushing damage far less likely to cause Permanent Crippling. Now, personally I'm not a huge fan of the various automatic breakpoints found in GURPS (although I grudgingly accept the -5xHP one), but I'd be tempted to extend something like your houserule to all forms of injury. I've got a system in the back of my mind that would make crippling more closely parallel the paradigm seen for consciousness and death for characters, but it's not really ready for posting yet.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

I've decided to treak broken bones as the equivlent to dismemberment for crushing weapons. Double the crippling threshold in a single blow breaks a bone, which is harder to fix and always requires 1d6 months to heal even if it doesn't need to be set. Crushing weapons are a little bit more danagerous, cutting or impaling weapons don't break bones because they either cut through and dismember, or hit and bounce off of it.

Here are the rules as I have written them: https://the-fall-of-brekhan.obsidian...s/broken-bones

Most casts are on only for 6 weeks, so 1d6 months seems excessive for the vast majority of breaks.
No one's Wolverine. But if you can't heal fully in a couple of months, you're probably going to suffer long term problems that equate to permanently lost points, in Gurps terms.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Most casts are on only for 6 weeks, so 1d6 months seems excessive for the vast majority of breaks.
No one's Wolverine. But if you can't heal fully in a couple of months, you're probably going to suffer long term problems that equate to permanently lost points, in Gurps terms.

Yah, 5+1d6 weeks would be closer for many fractures to get into the healing phase, but each injury is different.

My recent experiments with life as a ballistic object caused me to fracture my heel bone in a few places. Five surgical screws later, and it will be six weeks post operation until I can start to put weight on it, with 8-12 weeks for full weight bearing. Resuming 100% activity might take as much as a year. Wiki seems to have nailed my treatment timing:

"The first phase of the rehabilitation after surgery includes keeping the foot elevated and iced for the first 2 days after the operation.[13] After those 2 days, using crutches or a wheelchair in which there is no weight applied to the affected foot is recommended to getting around. If no operation was performed, the foot should be submitted to frequent range of motion exercises.[14] The second phase occurs 6 weeks after and consists of keeping the foot elevated and iced while resting and performing exercises in which only slight weight is applied to the affected area for the next two weeks, others recommend six weeks of this phase.[15] In this phase range of motion exercises should be implemented if surgery was needed for the fracture. The third and final phase of rehabilitation of calcaneal fractures is to allow the full body weight to be used and use crutches or a cane if needed, between 13 weeks to a year the patient is allowed to resume normal activities.[12]"

[VariousRen]

Originally Posted by Varyon

By RAW, any injury that doubles the crippling threshold automatically destroys the body part - see B421. Your houserule makes Crushing damage far less likely to cause Permanent Crippling. Now, personally I'm not a huge fan of the various automatic breakpoints found in GURPS (although I grudgingly accept the -5xHP one), but I'd be tempted to extend something like your houserule to all forms of injury. I've got a system in the back of my mind that would make crippling more closely parallel the paradigm seen for consciousness and death for characters, but it's not really ready for posting yet.

This is a good point, and is the opposite of what I was planning to do! I'll have to think about what a good break(haha)point is for broken bone vs normal crippling injury.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Yah, 5+1d6 weeks would be closer for many fractures to get into the healing phase, but each injury is different.

My recent experiments with life as a ballistic object caused me to fracture my heel bone in a few places. Five surgical screws later, and it will be six weeks post operation until I can start to put weight on it, with 8-12 weeks for full weight bearing. Resuming 100% activity might take as much as a year. Wiki seems to have nailed my treatment timing:
...

Feet are rather fiddly, being modified leg-hands, and a bit of a dangerous bottle necking for our mode of locomotion. Everything slamming down on each individual tiny heel for every step seems a very poor "design", if you ask me. Which no one ever does.

My brother sleep walked, maybe*, out a second story window onto concrete landing heel first. He still has issues with his feet, despite healing FAR better than the doctors expected.

*There's some possiblity his fellow boot camp members "helped" him out.

My fingers are crossed for your speedy 100% recovery.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Everything slamming down on each individual tiny heel for every step seems a very poor "design", if you ask me.

That's probably not actually the best gait for our leg design anyway.

At least for running, I heard that heel landing was deprecated...

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That's probably not actually the best gait for our leg design anyway.

At least for running, I heard that heel landing was deprecated...

As a kid I noticed that I run rather differently than my brother. He's a heel walker/runner, while I'm always on the balls of my feet. I figured since he can run FAR longer than I can that maybe his way was the most overall efficient. Of course, writing that down, I realize just how much of a logical fallacy that belief is. Correlation does not always equal causation.

[Bruno]

Whether you're wearing shoes or not makes a big difference in gait.
It definitely seems like heel-first takes advantage of having less sensitivity in the soles of your feet (due to shoes). Going toe-heel instead of heel-toe gives you more chances to "take back" the step or rapidly adjust if you find your foot coming down on something uncomfortable.
Shoes also change the way the muscles in your foot act on your foot, so work more optimally one way vs another (doesn't force the gait change, but can reward it).
On the other hand, if you have the extra joint in your foot that about a third of humans do[1], you already use your foot a little differently. It changes your barefoot gait, but not so much your shod gait. No idea what the impact of toe-heel vs heel-toe is if you've got that kind of foot, but I understand it's more tiring to walk bare-foot on soft surfaces with the extra joint.

Heel-first with an elastic pad under the heel is how elephants do it, and is sort of how camels and horses do it (not strictly the "heel" in their case, but the back of the "foot" anyways). The stretchy elastic gel filled balloon in an elephant's foot absorbs the shock, and then rebounds to help lift the foot back up again for the next step.
Camels have a similar pad at the back of the foot.
Horses have a lesser version of this, where the back of the hoof is less stiff, and acts as a similar type of spring.

Much like some designs of modern running shoes. Although I don't know if those are good enough to fully overcome the shock and then pay back the energy effectively.

[1] They didn't know we did until this century. They thought it was an ape-only thing that humans got rid of when we went bipedal, but no, a [strike]full third of Americans[/strike] correction: 8% are estimated to still have it. Not sure about other populations.
It's just a variation, like how some people have a small extra bone in their left upper arm (ossified tendon) - does nothing, interferes with not much, part of normal human variation.