Limb Viablity after being Severed

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

Yes it does! If you want the healing advantage to work on unliving things you need to buy an enhancement. (Unless you're unliving yourself then you need to buy an enhancement to make it work on living beings)

"Beings similar to whoever has the Advantage" is different from "living beings."

In GURPS, anything that weighs more than 1/64 of a pound has at least one hit point, as do entities with Insubstantiality and Shadow Form. Hit points don't represent aliveness, and losing them doesn't represent deathwardness. They represent integrity, and losing them represents breaking; restoring them represents exactly that, restoring the subject to its undamaged state. For a particular setting or system it may be so that "the only possible restoration of HP is healing living targets toward lifewardness," but that's not written anywhere I'm aware of in GURPS (noting that I'm deliberately not aware of anything in GURPS Magic). Hell, even the Unhealing disadvantage says that exotic means such as healing spells can restore HP even to entities with Total Unhealing.

You may not think of a healing spell restoring a corpse to an intact state, reforming a rock that was cleaved in twain or repairing a broken watch, but all of those things are represented in GURPS by restoring hit points to something that's lost them, and a valid application of healing. The Healing advantage doesn't reflect this, for reasons that baffle me, but I see no reason not to use Sorcery to, say, Afflict Regeneration onto a corpse.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by McAllister

"Beings similar to whoever has the Advantage" is different from "living beings."

Did you not read the quoted section?

Xenohealing: You can heal beings quite dissimilar from yourself. Examples, assuming you are human: All Mammals, +20%; All Earthly Life, +40%; All Carbon-Based Life, +60%; Anything Alive, +80%; Anything Animate (including undead, golems, etc.), +100%.

[mehrkat]

If they have any access to healing of any sort I would allow simple healing spells to extend the time to keeping it viable. Admittedly I'm a nice guy that way.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by mehrkat

If they have any access to healing of any sort I would allow simple healing spells to extend the time to keeping it viable. Admittedly I'm a nice guy that way.

Players tend to take cutting bits permanently off their PCs a bit uncomfortably (or a lot uncomfortably). You're reaching over and doing violence to their character-sheet, which can come across as rude. Like doodling on their sheet with a marker.
It's emotionally different when the players can do something to mitigate the situation, like being disarmed in combat. You could get your sword back! Or one of the orcs could steal it, but still, you have some agency in the problem.

I don't know if "We don't have arm-putting-back-on-abilities in this game world, so you don't get your arm back" registers as "worse" than "We have those abilities, but you'll never get to them in time, so you don't get your arm back". It depends on the player, probably.

That rambling basically goes to the point: It's worthwhile, for good relations, to come up with something they can do. This doesn't have to be guaranteed to work - it can be a thing that requires rolls every day for, perhaps with penalties on rolls. But a thing that they can do nonetheless.

Suggestions:

• Daily First Aid, Physician, or Esoteric Medicine rolls to preserve the limb. You're using magic to put it back on, it isn't necessarily as delicate as real surgery.
• Assess a penalty to the final re-attachment roll for each day (or each failed roll, or assess a small penalty for each successful roll and a large penalty for each failed roll)
• Let them seal it in an airtight container with a bunch of healing potions as "life support". The healing potions are consumed by this process. Perhaps connect the number of HP "healed" by the potions to how long they can keep the limb viable.
• They don't have potions? Give them a chance to fight not-too-difficult enemies for potions.
• Let consumption of expensive resources (like potions) offset those penalties to final re-attachment
• Let supporting Esoteric Medicine or Surgery rolls offset those penalties
• Pay for a Regeneration spell rather than a Restoration spell, and grow a whole new arm
• Which may require going on a quest to find someone who will do that.

[cdru]

Originally Posted by Bruno

It's emotionally different when the players can do something to mitigate the situation, like being disarmed in combat.

Some kinds of disarms are hard to mitigate if someone likes puns too much...

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by cdru

Some kinds of disarms are hard to mitigate if someone likes puns too much...

I-have-no-idea-what-you-are-talking-about.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Bruno

...
I don't know if "We don't have arm-putting-back-on-abilities in this game world, so you don't get your arm back" registers as "worse" than "We have those abilities, but you'll never get to them in time, so you don't get your arm back". It depends on the player, probably.
...

I once partly created a moral demonologist that started down that path to find a cure for his sick sister. A "mundane" cure did exist, but it was far too expensive for them. And he did find a "free" forbidden summoning text in the library he worked.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I-have-no-idea-what-you-are-talking-about.

Probably dis-arm-ing as in removing one's literal arm as a way to disarm them. Some games turn silly quickly.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Probably dis-arm-ing as in removing one's literal arm as a way to disarm them. Some games turn silly quickly.

Bruno is well aware of that pun. She's being sarcastic.

Personally I'm a horrible fuddy-duddy and hate these repetitious, predictable, time-wasting puns in gaming, and therefore dread it whenever the trigger conditions occur. At least the disarm pun is mostly harmless (yes, h-armless haha, very droll) and not problematic like the ones involving the chinks in armor rule, or rapier wit. :(

[VariousRen]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Players tend to take cutting bits permanently off their PCs a bit uncomfortably (or a lot uncomfortably). You're reaching over and doing violence to their character-sheet, which can come across as rude. Like doodling on their sheet with a marker.
It's emotionally different when the players can do something to mitigate the situation, like being disarmed in combat. You could get your sword back! Or one of the orcs could steal it, but still, you have some agency in the problem.

In a more classic DF game this would definitely be true (Although the problem would be moot, regrowing arms is old-hat there!), but in this case the character not getting their arm back isn't the end of the world. Our game is designed to be generational, most of the characters have apprentices, understudies, or allies who are there for the specific purpose of picking up the torch when the character dies or isn't able to continue adventuring. In fact, the de-armed character has a brother who's been traveling with the group for months and is looking for a chance to step into the spotlight.

My players have been hard at work doing some spell crafting and came up with a regrowth spell that requires the old arm (but not alive, just the decomposing chunk). It'll take a year for the new arm to grow back, during which it basically sits as a rotting piece of flesh (-4 to reactions, attracts flies constantly) as the new one grows in its place. So if the adventurers are willing to settle down for a year the character can grow their arm back.