Recovering from Symptoms

[Varyon]

Something I thought of during a recent thread, that would have been a rather significant derail, is how exactly one should handle recovering from Symptoms (B109) when the character has also suffered Injury from other sources. The best way to consider this is to think of there being two "types" of HP loss - those that cause the Symptoms, and those that don't. I can see four basic schemes that are possible.

1) Symptoms heal first. This is easy enough in most cases, and will mean Symptoms last just as long as they would if the character wasn't injured in another way. This gets problematic if the character has been struck by two different Symptom-enhanced attacks (say, one that causes a -1 to DX at 1/3 HP, and one that causes -1 to IQ at 1/3 HP), or if the character has been hit with a No Wounding attack with Symptoms (in which case recovering from Symptoms first delays healing from Injury), provided you allow for that.

2) Symptoms heal last. This strikes me as the worst option, as it means dealing Injury from other sources makes the Symptoms last longer, and still has an issue if you've been hit with multiple Symptom-enhanced attacks.

3) Symptoms and Normal Injury alternate. This might be proportional or a simple back-and-forth, but still has the issue (albeit much reduced) of option 2, that it makes Symptoms last longer if you're injured by other sources.

4) Symptoms heal concurrently. This basically means that each HP you recover also counts as an HP of recovery against the Symptom, and seems the best option to me (Symptoms take just as long as normal to heal, as does HP). So, if an HP 10 character has been hit by 10 HP Injury from an attack with a 1/3xHP Symptom, and 5 HP from elsewhere, he's missing 15 HP and has taken 10 "Symptom damage." Each HP recovered also reduces the Symptom damage by 1, so once he's healed 7 HP (still missing 8 HP), the Symptom damage drops below its 1/3xHP threshold and ends. Where this differs from option 1 is that it allows for tracking different Symptoms separately. Say our character had instead been hit with 10 HP from a 1/3xHP Symptom that causes -1 DX, 5 HP from a No Wounding, 1/3xHP Symptom that causes -1 IQ, and 5 HP from a normal attack. This works out to simply missing 15 HP, and also having 10 Symptom damage for the -1 DX, 5 Symptom damage for the -1 IQ. When the character recovers 2 HP, he's now missing 13 HP, and Symptom damage for -1 DX has dropped to 8, while Symptom damage for -1 IQ has dropped to 3 (and thus that Symptom goes away).


On a somewhat related note, I'm curious how Disadvantage:Unhealing should be handled for Symptoms. Does the Unhealing Symptom prevent the character from recovering from the Symptom itself? I feel it might be more fair, particularly when using option 4 from above, to have the Symptom heal normally, but not any HP until Unhealing is gone (this would also prevent other Symptoms from healing). If you want the Symptom to apply to itself, consider Cosmic, Unhealing damage +100%. I'd be willing to give that a small discount, perhaps drop it to +90%, if it doesn't kick in until the Symptoms do.
I also feel that using Unhealing as an Affliction, Side Effect, or Symptom to bypass Regeneration outright is a bit cheesy, and think it might be more appropriate to treat it as Negated Advantage in that case, but if any points are remaining I'd count them in the favor of the one doing the affliction, going Slow Healing->Partial Unhealing->Total Unhealing. For example afflicting Total Unhealing [-30] in some manner on a character with Slow Regeneration [10] leaves [-20], enough for Partial Unhealing. Doing it on someone with Regeneration [25] leaves [-5] left over, enough for 1 level of Slow Healing. Doing it on someone with Fast Regeneration [50] leaves [20], which rounds down to Slow Regeneration. And so forth. Note Limitations the target has on their Regeneration count against them here - having -20% worth of Limitations (say, an Accessibility) on Regular Regeneration drops its cost to [20], meaning we end up with [-10] left over, enough for 2 levels of Slow Healing. Of course, on the bright side, even in cases where their Regeneration doesn't apply (due to the Limitations), it's still protecting them against the affliction. Does this seem fair to others? Note some other traits may be appropriate to treat similarly (like Sessile simply reducing Basic Move, perhaps).

[Plane]

This would also be important for FP since Symptoms can also be added to Fatigue Attack.

A point of comparison would be Divided Magery, where you have to track which FP you've spent on which spell.

In that situation the mage gets to choose which spell-pool gets the FP whenever he's able to regain some.

Which is kinda weird TBH because how can you make that conscious decision when you regain FP while sleeping?

Also I need to review how it works when you burn FP for other reasons like Extra Effort. I think you got to choose which spell's FP you sacrificed, but should that be so convenient when struck by Fatigue Attack or by Leech?

[Pursuivant]

I'd go with Option 4.

Treat Option 1: "Symptoms Heal First" as a Perk.

For Unhealing, the same idea should apply. I could also see a useful limitation to Unhealing: Not vs. Symptoms, -20%. That is, you can "virtually heal" damage at the normal rate, but only to eventually remove the effects of Symptoms, not to heal actual HP.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Something I thought of during a recent thread, that would have been a rather significant derail, is how exactly one should handle recovering from Symptoms (B109) when the character has also suffered Injury from other sources. The best way to consider this is to think of there being two "types" of HP loss - those that cause the Symptoms, and those that don't. I can see four basic schemes that are possible.

1) Symptoms heal first. This is easy enough in most cases, and will mean Symptoms last just as long as they would if the character wasn't injured in another way. This gets problematic if the character has been struck by two different Symptom-enhanced attacks (say, one that causes a -1 to DX at 1/3 HP, and one that causes -1 to IQ at 1/3 HP), or if the character has been hit with a No Wounding attack with Symptoms (in which case recovering from Symptoms first delays healing from Injury), provided you allow for that.

2) Symptoms heal last. This strikes me as the worst option, as it means dealing Injury from other sources makes the Symptoms last longer, and still has an issue if you've been hit with multiple Symptom-enhanced attacks.

3) Symptoms and Normal Injury alternate. This might be proportional or a simple back-and-forth, but still has the issue (albeit much reduced) of option 2, that it makes Symptoms last longer if you're injured by other sources.

4) Symptoms heal concurrently. This basically means that each HP you recover also counts as an HP of recovery against the Symptom, and seems the best option to me (Symptoms take just as long as normal to heal, as does HP). So, if an HP 10 character has been hit by 10 HP Injury from an attack with a 1/3xHP Symptom, and 5 HP from elsewhere, he's missing 15 HP and has taken 10 "Symptom damage." Each HP recovered also reduces the Symptom damage by 1, so once he's healed 7 HP (still missing 8 HP), the Symptom damage drops below its 1/3xHP threshold and ends. Where this differs from option 1 is that it allows for tracking different Symptoms separately. Say our character had instead been hit with 10 HP from a 1/3xHP Symptom that causes -1 DX, 5 HP from a No Wounding, 1/3xHP Symptom that causes -1 IQ, and 5 HP from a normal attack. This works out to simply missing 15 HP, and also having 10 Symptom damage for the -1 DX, 5 Symptom damage for the -1 IQ. When the character recovers 2 HP, he's now missing 13 HP, and Symptom damage for -1 DX has dropped to 8, while Symptom damage for -1 IQ has dropped to 3 (and thus that Symptom goes away).


On a somewhat related note, I'm curious how Disadvantage:Unhealing should be handled for Symptoms. Does the Unhealing Symptom prevent the character from recovering from the Symptom itself? I feel it might be more fair, particularly when using option 4 from above, to have the Symptom heal normally, but not any HP until Unhealing is gone (this would also prevent other Symptoms from healing). If you want the Symptom to apply to itself, consider Cosmic, Unhealing damage +100%. I'd be willing to give that a small discount, perhaps drop it to +90%, if it doesn't kick in until the Symptoms do.
I also feel that using Unhealing as an Affliction, Side Effect, or Symptom to bypass Regeneration outright is a bit cheesy, and think it might be more appropriate to treat it as Negated Advantage in that case, but if any points are remaining I'd count them in the favor of the one doing the affliction, going Slow Healing->Partial Unhealing->Total Unhealing. For example afflicting Total Unhealing [-30] in some manner on a character with Slow Regeneration [10] leaves [-20], enough for Partial Unhealing. Doing it on someone with Regeneration [25] leaves [-5] left over, enough for 1 level of Slow Healing. Doing it on someone with Fast Regeneration [50] leaves [20], which rounds down to Slow Regeneration. And so forth. Note Limitations the target has on their Regeneration count against them here - having -20% worth of Limitations (say, an Accessibility) on Regular Regeneration drops its cost to [20], meaning we end up with [-10] left over, enough for 2 levels of Slow Healing. Of course, on the bright side, even in cases where their Regeneration doesn't apply (due to the Limitations), it's still protecting them against the affliction. Does this seem fair to others? Note some other traits may be appropriate to treat similarly (like Sessile simply reducing Basic Move, perhaps).

As per B109, Symptoms are inflicted if the cumulative damage inflicted by an Innate Attack exceed a certain threshold of basic FP or basic HP and go away once the damage that caused them is healed. It specifically calls out damage that caused them as damage that crosses the threshold in the very next sentence when it talks about the example symptom.

As such it doesn't really matter whether the HP or FP that are healed came from the Innate Attack or from something else, just as it doesn't matter whether the Innate Attack that caused the Symptom in the first place, caused the Symptom to appear by crossing the damage threshold by inflicting 1 point of injury or 6 (assuming you go with the suggestion that an Innate Attack that inflicts Symptoms shouldn't exceed 1d).

Since GURPS doesn't normally require tracking damage from individual wounds separately, I would say that all that matters is that the cumulative damage decrease to 1 point below the threshold, and to not bother tracking damage from injury source.

On the other hand if you should have a healing system that does track healing by individual injury and doesn't already determine the order of healing, I would suggest the following protocol for healing: the body heals actual physical damage, i.e. cuts, bruises and broken bones first. Cuts and bruises heal more quickly than bones, and loss of blood gets first dibs from the body, thus the order is open cuts until scabbed over or otherwise closed off (nominally 1 point of damage healed), closed cuts and bruises, and then broken bones. This is followed by injury from disease and magically inflicted damage (and by magically inflicted damage, I'm envisioning damage from a wasting curse or the like, physical damage from a fireball, for example, will heal just fine, being treated as ordinary non-magical damage).

This order is modified by the severity of the injury, using the severity definitions of John M. Ford's I'm not Dead Yet! from Roleplayer 16. Critical (or mortal) wounds of 9 points or greater get first call, followed by severe wounds (4-8 points injury), then light wounds (2 or 3 points of injury) and finally superficial wounds (1 point of injury). In the event of multiple injuries in the same severity class, injuries heal in rotation, going from oldest to newest injury. Alternatively, you could follow John M. Ford's system more completely and allow a healing roll vs. HT for each individual wound per day. He suggests reducing the rolls to every other day or even every third day, if every day seems to be too much of a good thing. He doesn't provide any guidelines for when the switch in healing rate should occur, but I would suggest every third day while cumulative damage remains above that of severe wounds, every second day while equivalent to a severe wound, and daily thereafter.

As for Unhealing, by the RAW, Symptoms persist until the cumulative damage drops below the threshold, and Unhealing prevents healing HP at all. (Technically, there are ways to heal HP for Partial Unhealing and, if the GM permits it, possibly for Full Unhealing.) OTOH, Unhealing doesn't seem to bar recovery of FP damage, so Symptoms from FP caused injury should eventually go away, but HP-sourced Symptoms are pretty much forever.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

I'd go with Option 4.

Treat Option 1: "Symptoms Heal First" as a Perk.

Option 4 is actually an improvement on Option 1 - Symptoms Heal First doesn't heal the Symptoms themselves any faster, but causes issues with "which Symptom heals first," as well as causing problems if you have a No Wounding Symptom attack involved.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

For Unhealing, the same idea should apply. I could also see a useful limitation to Unhealing: Not vs. Symptoms, -20%. That is, you can "virtually heal" damage at the normal rate, but only to eventually remove the effects of Symptoms, not to heal actual HP.

That's actually not a bad idea - require Unhealing to have this Limitation if it's part of a Symptom itself, unless you're also willing to pay for Cosmic, Unhealing +100%.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

As per B109, Symptoms are inflicted if the cumulative damage inflicted by an Innate Attack exceed a certain threshold of basic FP or basic HP and go away once the damage that caused them is healed. It specifically calls out damage that caused them as damage that crosses the threshold in the very next sentence when it talks about the example symptom.

As such it doesn't really matter whether the HP or FP that are healed came from the Innate Attack or from something else, just as it doesn't matter whether the Innate Attack that caused the Symptom in the first place, caused the Symptom to appear by crossing the damage threshold by inflicting 1 point of injury or 6 (assuming you go with the suggestion that an Innate Attack that inflicts Symptoms shouldn't exceed 1d).

Since GURPS doesn't normally require tracking damage from individual wounds separately, I would say that all that matters is that the cumulative damage decrease to 1 point below the threshold, and to not bother tracking damage from injury source.

You've taken 5 HP of Injury from something that causes a Symptom once you've taken 4 or more HP of Injury from it. You've also taken 7 HP of Injury from a mundane attack that didn't have any sort of associated Symptom. At what point in the healing process does the Symptom go away?

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

As for Unhealing, by the RAW, Symptoms persist until the cumulative damage drops below the threshold, and Unhealing prevents healing HP at all. (Technically, there are ways to heal HP for Partial Unhealing and, if the GM permits it, possibly for Full Unhealing.)

That's the way it works by the basic mechanics... just like how a Berserker who falls prone and has a pistol has to flop forward at 1 yard per second at a foe if they are within 20 yards, unable to fire because they are locked into using melee and unable to stand because Change Posture isn't one of the prescribed Maneuvers. As in the Berserker case, I think it's appropriate for the GM to step in and say "Is this appropriate, or is it a hole in the rules that needs patching?" The problem with making Symptoms (2/3 MaxHP Injury results in Unhealing, Total) +30% is that "Only goes into effect if cumulative Injury is equal to or exceeds 1/3 MaxHP, but also works against all Injury the target has suffered, regardless of source" should not be a -70% Limitation on Cosmic, Unhealing +100%.

[Anthony]

For the exciting case: you've been damaged by two different attacks, both of which apply (different) symptoms...

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Option 4 is actually an improvement on Option 1 - Symptoms Heal First doesn't heal the Symptoms themselves any faster, but causes issues with "which Symptom heals first," as well as causing problems if you have a No Wounding Symptom attack involved.

You're right. I should have read more closely.

My idea of a Perk that allows you to selectively heal injury imposed by a particular attack still stands, however. That would allow you to recover faster from crippling limb injuries as well as the effects of symptoms.

[sir_pudding]

HP are an abstraction anyway, it's simpler, and probably RAI, to just not track injury by source. The symptoms stop once you recover above the threshold (unless it specifies, as with many toxins, you don't recover until fully healed).

[Aldric]

Do we have an example of symptoms besides the one in Basic?
To me, it's not clear at all how and when symptoms are supposed to heal.
Healing the damage caused by the attack seem to require an extensive tracking of damage, more so if multiple attacks with symptoms are involved.

Considering Symptoms seem rather cheap for what they can do, I'd say they should heal sooner rather than later

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Aldric

Do we have an example of symptoms besides the one in Basic?

There are toxins thst use the same mechanics. There are almost certainly abilities that include the modifier in other sources too.

To me, it's not clear at all how and when symptoms are supposed to heal.
Healing the damage caused by the attack seem to require an extensive tracking of damage, more so if multiple attacks with symptoms are involved.

As I just said, it seems pretty clear to me. Nowhere do the rules concern themselves (outside of a few optional rules) with tracking injury by source, symptoms itself just says when HP drops below the threshold from that attack, therefore it seems to be that when you heal above the threshold, the symptoms end as well (the exception being toxins that explicitly say "until fully healed").