Quote:
Originally Posted by ajardoor
Let's assume we're not in a DF setting. Maybe we're in a TL 8 modern day Earth setting?
You do think we can assume a baseline value for a given human organ?
(And of course, injuries and cause of death probably affects what you can harvest from a specific corpse - Moe Green's eyes ain't worth a penny to an alchemist.)
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There was a thread a while back about how much human blood (specifically royal blood, but it diverged into discussion of any blood) might be worth as an alchemical ingredient, wherein I made
this post, giving some pricing schemes for blood (assuming you charge $1/pint for Status -2 blood). I'd say blood (all ~10 pints of it) accounts for roughly 1/5th of the worth of a human body for purposes of alchemy, so all the other relevant organs combined would be worth 4x as much.
For the division, I'd say all the eyes and brain are worth about as much as the blood (50% eyes, 50% brain), the heart and lungs are worth the same (50% heart, 50% lungs), the remaining individual internal organs are worth the same (divide as you see fit amongst spleen, pancreas, gallbladder, etc), and everything else - bones, muscles, skin, and hair - are worth the same (optionally, 25% each). For a Status -2 person, that's $10 for blood, $5 for eyes ($2.50 each), $5 for brain, $5 for heart, $5 for lungs ($2.50 each, although it wouldn't be improper to skew this based on organ size), $10 for the other internal organs, $2.50 for the bones, $2.50 for the muscles, $2.50 for the skin, and $2.50 for the hair, for a grand total of $50. A Status 0 person is instead worth $500. Adjust as you see fit.
You may also want to define how harvesting works. I'd probably take a cue from LTC3's rules for butchering. In that, success yields 40% of the carcass' weight in meat, +5% per point of MoS, to a maximum of 70% (with MoS 6+), and it takes 1 hour per 100 pounds of carcass weight. Here, I'd say the relevant skill is Surgery, although I'd allow for an Optional Specialization of Organ Harvesting. Success yields 50% of the corpse's remaining worth (draining the blood is a given; indeed, assume the corpse is already drained by the time it reaches the harvester) in alchemical ingredients, +10% per point of MoS, to a maximum of 100% (with MoS 5+), and it takes 1 hour per 50 pounds of corpse weight (organ harvesting is more precise work than butchering, I think). Failure ruins the corpse You may attempt to harvest some specific organs only; so long as you roll well enough to cover their worth, you are successful (if you get a Success but don't roll well enough, there's damage that reduces the values of the harvested organs), but a Failure only ruins those organs (Critical Failure still ruins the corpse for purposes of future harvesting).
Personally, I feel that an Average skill (like Surgery (Organ Harvesting)) at 12 is appropriate for an Average job, with every +1 to skill being +1 SSR to income, every -1 to skill being -1 SSR to income; this meshes decently well with the professions in LTC3. Let's say that a person who typically harvests from Status -2 corpses has an Average job (which supports Status 0). At around 3 hours per corpse, he could manage around 65 per month (with 200 work hours in a month), but we'll go with 50 instead (2 per day, giving him an extra 2 hours per day for setting up deliveries, cleaning up, maintaining tools, etc). With skill 12 and the above rules, we'd expect 25.92% of the corpses to be ruined (roll of 13+), 11.57% to yield 50% of their maximum worth, 12.5% to yield 60%, 12.5% to yield 70%, 11.57% to yield 80%, 9.72% to yield 90%, and 16.2% to yield 100% (roll of 7-). That means on average he'll harvest 56.239% of the worth of each corpse. At TL 8's income of $2600 for harvesting 50 corpses per month, that means he's making $52 off of each corpse. If we assume he typically doubles the worth of a corpse with his work, that implies the corpses themselves cost $52 each, and what he successfully harvests is sold for $104. As this is only 56.239% of the worth of a perfectly-harvested corpse, that indicates a bloodless Status -2 corpse, when perfectly harvested, would yield around $185 worth of ingredients; we'll round this up to $200, and round corpses down to $50 each (as the harvester now grosses an average $112.478 per corpse processed, this puts his net income at around $3100/month, around 1.2x Average, which is acceptable). This means, for a Status -2 corpse and using the splits I stated above, you'd be looking at $5 per pint of blood, $25 for the brain, $12.50 for each eye, $25 for the heart, $12.50 for each lung (or perhaps something like $15/$10), $50 for the other internal organs, $12.50 for the bones, $12.50 for the muscles, $12.50 for the skin, and $12.50 for the hair. You could probably get away with using the progression from the linked thread for higher Status corpses - while this would cause those with higher skill to increase their wages more rapidly than they "should" (they'd be working on higher Status corpses, and having a higher success rate), I'd interpret this as meaning they simply dissect
fewer corpses per month.
Note if you think this is too high or too low for Status -2 (perfect harvesting would make their body be worth around half of what they'd make in a month, provided they have a Poor job), it can be adjusted freely. If you want something real-world to base it off of, apparently one can make up to G$200/month (current-day $300/month)
selling donating one's plasma. While plasma is possibly the most medically useful part of the blood, I'd say its alchemical worth is based on how quickly it recovers compared to whole blood. Whole blood takes around 2 months to recover per pint. Now, selling plasma for $200/month is unlikely to be as sustainable as donating 1 pint of whole blood every two months, so let's drop that value to $125/month. That implies whole blood would be worth around $250/pint (it takes 2 months to recover), which multiplies all of the above values by 50, and means a person could be stripped for parts worth up to around 2 years' worth of their wages.