Intention of the Bleeding Rules, and Hit Location Effects

[VariousRen]

I am looking to replace the current bleeding rules from basic and MA with a harmonized bleeding system where hit location and the damage dealt cause more bleeding per minute instead of a penalized HT roll, and removes the need for tracking multiple small wounds to different hit locations.

My current efforts are written here: https://the-fall-of-brekhan.obsidian...evere-bleeding

I am happy with the general idea of the system, but I am running into some problems nailing down the specifics of how much damage bleeding is intended to do. How much damage is bleeding suppose to do relative to the initial wound under the basic set?

I have been thinking that for an untreated torso wound, somewhere between 1 and 0.5 of the initial damage is reasonable, more for hit locations that bleed more heavily (neck, veins, vitals). For a wound treated by a medic, anywhere between half and a quarter of the untreated value.

Do these values line up with the intended damage from the basic set, or are they way off?

[Maz]

First off. I do not think the bleeding rules are intended as a "follow up damage". I think they are there to add drama and tension.


First off, killing people straight out is actually pretty difficult in GURPS. Having just HT:11, Fit and maybe a single level of Hard To Kill means you are likely to survive your death-checks. In any game with a focus on violence, PC's tend to have even higher HT+HtK. Of course everyone dies one they reach -5xHP, bleeding rules or not, so lets keep that out of it.

Anyway. The point to me of the bleeding rules is that it's the killer. You might swagger in, take 3xHP HP loss and stay standing through the fight. That's fine by me, it fits heroes (action, fantasy or super). But unless you got someone to patch you up afterwards, you won't survive. This again fits most action genres. A Healer in GURPS isn't someone who heals HP in combat, but someone who makes sure you do not die afterwards. I like this and the rules support this.

Because, what the rules do is making sure that you have to have a skilled healer on your side to be able to patch you up and at the same time allow time for that to happen (without forcing the healer to be on constant "healer duty" during the combat). If you get worn down by a dozen gracing wounds and kicks and punches. Then you can power through by sheer toughness (See John McClane for a good example). But one very serious wound is eventually going to kill you unless you get help from a friendly nurse/medical student/veterinarian... but not before you can finish off the bad guy and have a short monologue (see most action movies or series).



In short, changing the rules to what you suggest just means PC's are going to die before they can get help. It won't add drama or tension.
It might be good in a game with magical/super healing though. Where the bleeding rules are usually so easy to overcome there's rarely a bother.

[Varyon]

My previous response indicated that your bleeding scheme results in somewhere around 1/3rd the injury of the Basic Set system. Of course, that was for a 5 HP wound on an HT 10 character - if we instead looked at a 30 HP wound on an HT 18 character, Basic Set would have him bleed for an average of around 1 HP additional damage (he'll likely get his three-in-a-row within 5 rolls, which on average would contain 1 failure), while in your system he'll bleed for a minimum of 3 HP additional damage (two critical successes, around 2.6% chance of occurrence), and on average is looking at around 15 HP of additional damage (maybe somewhere around 12 HP factoring in critical successes).

For consistency, I would suggest that, rather than treating bleeding penalties as multipliers, you instead treat them as additional HP of injury. That is, under normal rules you suffer a -1 to Bleeding for every 5 HP of injury you suffer, while in your system every 5 HP of injury results in 1 HP/minute of bleeding. So, have each -1 from Hit Location and the like result in a further 1 HP/minute of bleeding. If you'd prefer to avoid something like a 1 HP Neck wound bleeding at 4 HP per minute, you may want to dictate that the penalty cannot do more than double the bleeding rate (and then possibly do something to smooth out the progression, so that 1 HP of injury doesn't mean the difference between no bleeding - 4 HP to the Neck Arteries - and 8 HP/minute - 5 HP to the Neck Arteries).

Maz's points about the narrative intent of Bleeding are good ones. Make certain your system gives a paradigm you actually want - in your Neck Arteries example, a wound that would have called for a rush to a surgery is instead more-or-less unrecoverably fatal (and in short order at that) outside of magic. Adjusting to my suggestions won't really help that guy either - they would reduce that bleeding to 15 HP/minute, or 1 HP every 5 seconds (instead of 1 HP every 2 seconds).

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

...

I am happy with the general idea of the system, but I am running into some problems nailing down the specifics of how much damage bleeding is intended to do. How much damage is bleeding suppose to do relative to the initial wound under the basic set?
...

I don't think it's really set up as modelling an amount of bleeding per wound.

I think its more designed to model the fact that bleeding is a separate condition that is caused by the initial wound (but one that is very much effected by the initial wound)

Don't get me wrong you could crunch the numbers and work out the average damage from blood lose from any particular wound, but it going to depend on lots of factors outside of the wound as well (HT, access to first aid/surgery, Magic, TL etc).


Generally injury form bleeding is different from the underlying injury, because it is potentially open ended and ongoing over a period of time barring certain conditions being met.