Survival skill and damage

Sabaron · 08-09-2005, 05:35 AM

Under the description of the Survival skill (B223), it states "To live safely in a wilderness situation, you must make a successful Survival roll once per day. Failure inflicts 2d-4 injury on you and anyone in your care; roll seperately for each victim."

I'm having trouble selling my players on this. I suggest that you might sprain an ankle or eat poisonous mushrooms, only to have them counter by saying they're bringing their own food and that sprained ankles shouldn't do as much damage as pistol bullets. One of them talks about "rocket flowers" that explode as you walk past them, to give you an idea of how ridiculous they think this damage is.

Any suggestions on where this damage comes from? I'm not knowledgable enough to convince them that it's reasonable for unskilled people to quickly die in the wilderness. I might add that they're used to D&D, which mostly presents wilderness as unthreatening except for the monsters within.

roguebfl · 08-09-2005, 06:01 AM

Umone the soraces of Damage is Exposure. Anyone with any real camping/hiking exprance will tell you therisk of that is very real.

Kyle Aaron · 08-09-2005, 06:19 AM

2d-4 is not a huge amount; they won't die in a day. That's 0-8 damage, with a good chance of its being 0. On average it'll be about 3 or 4 points.

Now, consider what 3 or 4 points is in other situations. That's a decent whack by someone with default Brawling skill. That's a wound that will be healed, on average, within a week.

What are some things that take a week to recover from?

Well, there's food poisoning, which includes water. They may say they're taking their own food, but are they taking water, too? A sedentary person requires about 1lb of food and 1lb of water a day. Of course, there's overlap there - if you eat a 4 oz apple, that counts as 4 oz of food and about 3 oz water.

If the person is walking around, their food and water needs double. If it's hot, their food needs drop, their water goes up. If they're somewhere cold, both food and water needs go up. If they're encumbered, their needs increase, too.

Our hosue rule is that if you're marching around, you need a weight of food and water each day, equivalent to the FP expenditure per hour. So a person with no encumbrance, that's 1 FP an hour, light encumbrance, 2 FP, and so on. It can be very easy for a person to require 4-10lbs of food and water each day if they're carrying their food and water.

You can pick up water along the way, but which water is good? It's not just microbes in the water, so boiling isn't always enough. The water can have minerals in it that make you ill, algae, silt, and so on. If it's very mineralised water, it could give you diaorrhea, and then you start losing more fluids, which tires you out, makes you miserable, and hurts. And of course then you need more water for washing, too, or else you might have your ****** hands touching someone else's food or gear, and they get an infection from you.

Now, that doesn't include water for washing, and washing is important. I knew guys in the army who'd not take their boots off for a few days, they'd get fungal infections of the feet. "Athlete's foot? Big deal!" Yes, it is a big deal. Walking on it all day, that small wound opens up. Your sweat and dirt gets into it, it gets infected, and two days later you can't walk on it. The same goes for crotch rot, or neck or shoulder chafing from shirts and backpack straps.

Then there's the weather. You can get sunburned. Sunburn can be very, very bad. I have seen a very pale fair-haired guy turn lobster-red, and for two weeks afterwards he had weeping wounds on his back. Not blood, but lymph oozing out. If you combine that with still marching along, and a bit of sweat and dirt, that becomes infected. I've seen a guy with a sunburned neck - the V where your collar goes - it was burned on top of the current burn, the neck become infected, swelled up, and the guy could barely breathe.

Then there's hyperthermia - you heat up. This can creep right up on you, when the guy's heated enough, he actually stops sweating, because his body's run out of fluids to sweat out to cool him down. Body temperature's a very well-balanced thing, in a narrow safe range. Too hot and the normal chemical reactions in your body just stop, your brain cooks, you get brain damage.

Of course you can get frostbite, too. That's not just in the Arctic. There were frostbite casualties in the Vietnam war, for god's sake. Frostbite occurs when the flesh freezes, which is at 32F - but it can be about 40F, combined that with being wet, and a wind, the effective temperature of the flesh drops, and it can freeze. Frozen flesh dies. When it thaws out, it's very painful, and the frozen part drops off, leaving more open flesh for infection.

Then there's hypothermia - your body cools down too much. Organs slow and stop. You eventually stop shivering, and feel warm and sleepy, because your body's slowly shutting down. You're dying.

But in arctic warfare training, there are actually more casualties from dehydration than frostbite or hypothermia. There's water all around in the form of ice, but you don't stick that in a bottle next to you to melt, or in your mouth, because that takes away precious body heat. And body heat comes from two things - food, and from stuff you burn. Food and stuff you burn is more weight to carry, more fatigue, etc. So the water you have is precious, you warm it up in the mornings before you head out, make like a camel and scull it all down.

Knowing how hard to push yourself in hot or cold conditions is important, too. Go too fast in the cold, and you'll sweat, and the sweat will carry away that precious body heat again, and its fluids.

Survival skill also means, "an eye for ground," which way is comfortable and easy to travel, which is a good place to camp. If you don't have that, you could end up sleeping on top of a ridge line, the wind at night freezes you; or you sleep too close to a river and wake up with your feet or head in water.

Travelling an easy and safe way also means not having to push yourself too hard to reach a good camping spot. Let's suppose you're marching up a mountain range in the winter

"An eye for ground" also means on the small level. As you travel along there are bushes and stones and rocks and trees. It's pretty easy, if you're marching along and you're tired, to smack your head into a branch, or trip over a rock, or walk your leg into a broken branch, stabbing yourself, or get heaps of little cuts from thistly bushes, or bites from mosquitos, or from small spiders and snakes. It's not serious damage in itself, but equivalent to GURPS' 3 or 4 hit points worth.

At 3 or 4 points of damage for each failed roll, they're not dying in a day. Even if they have no survival skill at all, just their default of 4 or so, what it means is that after four or five days they'll be down to 0HP, they'll be bruised, have vomiting and diaorrhea, bites from mozzies, etc etc. They'll be exhausted and want to go home.

Is it reasonable that a person travelling four or five days in the wilderness with no real knowledge of how to look after themselves will be shagged out afterwards? I think so, yes.

Also, they talk about taking their own food and water, and I assume kindling, blankets, tents, etc. But how much should they take? Knowing how much people should eat and drink, how much crap to carry - that's Survival skill, too. Just consider one unpleasant aspect - having to crap in the bush. Do you take a shovel?

"Woops I forgot to bring a shovel, so I had to **** and crap behind that rock over there. Oh look, the smell of my crap attracted a large bear who took a swipe at me and caused me 4 points of damage. Bugger."

or

"Well I took a shovel but I was stupid and took a big one, it's four foot long, doesn't hang properly on my pack, the stupid thing smacked me in the head when I tripped over, woops, another 2 points of damage."

There are a zillion ways the wilderness can make your life miserable. Tell the lazy buggers that one of them should take Survival skill. Just a point or two should be enough, unless you're sending them to the Antarctic or something... remember that Survival skill is like any other, you get bonuses from correct equipment, taking time to do things, easier situation (Rockies are easier to survive in than Alaska) and so on.

Rolando · 08-09-2005, 09:05 AM

If you are GMing in a pseudomedieval setting and they keep with the funny coments, the ask the, seriously (but with a smile in your face), how they are keeping theyr food in good conditions, and tell them to make a survival roll to keep theyr food from keeping poisonous insects or atracting a bear (or the equivalent "monster")... the survial roll is not just to look for food, is for living in the wilderness.

Bad sleep (over sof sand, rocks, etc) can bring one or two points of damage (if the character is heavy may bring at least two), some other from insect stings (one other), another from a sprain ankle and another one or two from something in the food... there you have your 4 to 6 points of average damage.

pator2000 · 08-09-2005, 11:37 AM

To go in a different direction for a moment:
Why not treat the damage they took as "fatigue damage" instead of HT damage. For instance if they really don't know what their doing, don't have food or water etc, start docking them fatigue. This is somewhat realistic. If you are hiking under bad conditions you are going to drop from fatigue rather than dropping from "wounds" which is what I (and this guy's players) interpret hit points as.

roguebfl · 08-09-2005, 01:16 PM

beacuse the Damage due to Expoture and bad travel, unlike Fatigue doesn't just go away 1 to 2 days of good rest. It is Really "un enjoyible" stuff

pator2000 · 08-09-2005, 02:26 PM

I am referring to general damage from lack of food and water, overheating, getting stung by mosquitos etc. Once you start eating again, the damage does indeed go away. Now of course frostbite, broken bones etc should be treated with HP loss. But it sounds like the issue at hand is: a couple of people go on a trip through the woods and fail their survival roll. People have this happen to them every day. Most of them come back alive and without permanent injury other than being tired and thirsty. Some don't but statistically they are in the minority.

Kromm · 08-09-2005, 02:32 PM

Note that the damage from a botched Survival roll is meant to abstract some combination of the unpleasantness described in Chapter 14. Anyone having trouble convincing players that 2d-4 is "fair" should send them to Chapter 14 to see how much worse it could be.

Luther · 08-09-2005, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kromm

Note that the damage from a botched Survival roll is meant to abstract some combination of the unpleasantness described in Chapter 14.

Should a "botch" be a critical failure, not ordinary one?

roguebfl · 08-09-2005, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pator2000

I am referring to general damage from lack of food and water, overheating, getting stung by mosquitos etc. Once you start eating again, the damage does indeed go away. Now of course frostbite, broken bones etc should be treated with HP loss. But it sounds like the issue at hand is: a couple of people go on a trip through the woods and fail their survival roll. People have this happen to them every day. Most of them come back alive and without permanent injury other than being tired and thirsty. Some don't but statistically they are in the minority.

agianlook at the Satic of the likehood of 0 HP. Must these case the allread have a fullday of bed rest, this includes.

These people Normly reacive First aid. that 1d HP.

Probible Damage for 2d-4 = 3
Probible Revobver 1d= 3.5
+1for Full rest.

Hardly sound like "perment injury" is being infliced now does it?

08-09-2005, 05:35 AM	#1
Sabaron Join Date: Aug 2005	Survival skill and damage Under the description of the Survival skill (B223), it states "To live safely in a wilderness situation, you must make a successful Survival roll once per day. Failure inflicts 2d-4 injury on you and anyone in your care; roll seperately for each victim." I'm having trouble selling my players on this. I suggest that you might sprain an ankle or eat poisonous mushrooms, only to have them counter by saying they're bringing their own food and that sprained ankles shouldn't do as much damage as pistol bullets. One of them talks about "rocket flowers" that explode as you walk past them, to give you an idea of how ridiculous they think this damage is. Any suggestions on where this damage comes from? I'm not knowledgable enough to convince them that it's reasonable for unskilled people to quickly die in the wilderness. I might add that they're used to D&D, which mostly presents wilderness as unthreatening except for the monsters within.

08-09-2005, 06:01 AM	#2
roguebfl Dog of Lysdexics Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Melbourne FL, Formerly Wellington NZ	Re: Survival skill and damage Umone the soraces of Damage is Exposure. Anyone with any real camping/hiking exprance will tell you therisk of that is very real. __________________ Rogue the Bronze Firelizard Gerald Grenier, Jr. Hail Eris! Rogue's Weyr

08-09-2005, 06:19 AM	#3
Kyle Aaron MIB Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Re: Survival skill and damage 2d-4 is not a huge amount; they won't die in a day. That's 0-8 damage, with a good chance of its being 0. On average it'll be about 3 or 4 points. Now, consider what 3 or 4 points is in other situations. That's a decent whack by someone with default Brawling skill. That's a wound that will be healed, on average, within a week. What are some things that take a week to recover from? Well, there's food poisoning, which includes water. They may say they're taking their own food, but are they taking water, too? A sedentary person requires about 1lb of food and 1lb of water a day. Of course, there's overlap there - if you eat a 4 oz apple, that counts as 4 oz of food and about 3 oz water. If the person is walking around, their food and water needs double. If it's hot, their food needs drop, their water goes up. If they're somewhere cold, both food and water needs go up. If they're encumbered, their needs increase, too. Our hosue rule is that if you're marching around, you need a weight of food and water each day, equivalent to the FP expenditure per hour. So a person with no encumbrance, that's 1 FP an hour, light encumbrance, 2 FP, and so on. It can be very easy for a person to require 4-10lbs of food and water each day if they're carrying their food and water. You can pick up water along the way, but which water is good? It's not just microbes in the water, so boiling isn't always enough. The water can have minerals in it that make you ill, algae, silt, and so on. If it's very mineralised water, it could give you diaorrhea, and then you start losing more fluids, which tires you out, makes you miserable, and hurts. And of course then you need more water for washing, too, or else you might have your **** hands touching someone else's food or gear, and they get an infection from you. Now, that doesn't include water for washing, and washing is important. I knew guys in the army who'd not take their boots off for a few days, they'd get fungal infections of the feet. "Athlete's foot? Big deal!" Yes, it is a big deal. Walking on it all day, that small wound opens up. Your sweat and dirt gets into it, it gets infected, and two days later you can't walk on it. The same goes for crotch rot, or neck or shoulder chafing from shirts and backpack straps. Then there's the weather. You can get sunburned. Sunburn can be very, very bad. I have seen a very pale fair-haired guy turn lobster-red, and for two weeks afterwards he had weeping wounds on his back. Not blood, but lymph oozing out. If you combine that with still marching along, and a bit of sweat and dirt, that becomes infected. I've seen a guy with a sunburned neck - the V where your collar goes - it was burned on top of the current burn, the neck become infected, swelled up, and the guy could barely breathe. Then there's hyperthermia - you heat up. This can creep right up on you, when the guy's heated enough, he actually stops sweating, because his body's run out of fluids to sweat out to cool him down. Body temperature's a very well-balanced thing, in a narrow safe range. Too hot and the normal chemical reactions in your body just stop, your brain cooks, you get brain damage. Of course you can get frostbite, too. That's not just in the Arctic. There were frostbite casualties in the Vietnam war, for god's sake. Frostbite occurs when the flesh freezes, which is at 32F - but it can be about 40F, combined that with being wet, and a wind, the effective temperature of the flesh drops, and it can freeze. Frozen flesh dies. When it thaws out, it's very painful, and the frozen part drops off, leaving more open flesh for infection. Then there's hypothermia - your body cools down too much. Organs slow and stop. You eventually stop shivering, and feel warm and sleepy, because your body's slowly shutting down. You're dying. But in arctic warfare training, there are actually more casualties from dehydration than frostbite or hypothermia. There's water all around in the form of ice, but you don't stick that in a bottle next to you to melt, or in your mouth, because that takes away precious body heat. And body heat comes from two things - food, and from stuff you burn. Food and stuff you burn is more weight to carry, more fatigue, etc. So the water you have is precious, you warm it up in the mornings before you head out, make like a camel and scull it all down. Knowing how hard to push yourself in hot or cold conditions is important, too. Go too fast in the cold, and you'll sweat, and the sweat will carry away that precious body heat again, and its fluids. Survival skill also means, "an eye for ground," which way is comfortable and easy to travel, which is a good place to camp. If you don't have that, you could end up sleeping on top of a ridge line, the wind at night freezes you; or you sleep too close to a river and wake up with your feet or head in water. Travelling an easy and safe way also means not having to push yourself too hard to reach a good camping spot. Let's suppose you're marching up a mountain range in the winter "An eye for ground" also means on the small level. As you travel along there are bushes and stones and rocks and trees. It's pretty easy, if you're marching along and you're tired, to smack your head into a branch, or trip over a rock, or walk your leg into a broken branch, stabbing yourself, or get heaps of little cuts from thistly bushes, or bites from mosquitos, or from small spiders and snakes. It's not serious damage in itself, but equivalent to GURPS' 3 or 4 hit points worth. At 3 or 4 points of damage for each failed roll, they're not dying in a day. Even if they have no survival skill at all, just their default of 4 or so, what it means is that after four or five days they'll be down to 0HP, they'll be bruised, have vomiting and diaorrhea, bites from mozzies, etc etc. They'll be exhausted and want to go home. Is it reasonable that a person travelling four or five days in the wilderness with no real knowledge of how to look after themselves will be shagged out afterwards? I think so, yes. Also, they talk about taking their own food and water, and I assume kindling, blankets, tents, etc. But how much should they take? Knowing how much people should eat and drink, how much crap to carry - that's Survival skill, too. Just consider one unpleasant aspect - having to crap in the bush. Do you take a shovel? "Woops I forgot to bring a shovel, so I had to ** and crap behind that rock over there. Oh look, the smell of my crap attracted a large bear who took a swipe at me and caused me 4 points of damage. Bugger." or "Well I took a shovel but I was stupid and took a big one, it's four foot long, doesn't hang properly on my pack, the stupid thing smacked me in the head when I tripped over, woops, another 2 points of damage." There are a zillion ways the wilderness can make your life miserable. Tell the lazy buggers that one of them should take Survival skill. Just a point or two should be enough, unless you're sending them to the Antarctic or something... remember that Survival skill is like any other, you get bonuses from correct equipment, taking time to do things, easier situation (Rockies are easier to survive in than Alaska) and so on. __________________ * husband * father * personal trainer * gamer * ... in that order "Kyle's games aren't remotely thespy... I'd say they're more high-minded hack."

08-09-2005, 09:05 AM	#4
Rolando MIB Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Panama	Re: Survival skill and damage If you are GMing in a pseudomedieval setting and they keep with the funny coments, the ask the, seriously (but with a smile in your face), how they are keeping theyr food in good conditions, and tell them to make a survival roll to keep theyr food from keeping poisonous insects or atracting a bear (or the equivalent "monster")... the survial roll is not just to look for food, is for living in the wilderness. Bad sleep (over sof sand, rocks, etc) can bring one or two points of damage (if the character is heavy may bring at least two), some other from insect stings (one other), another from a sprain ankle and another one or two from something in the food... there you have your 4 to 6 points of average damage.

08-09-2005, 11:37 AM	#5
pator2000 Join Date: Jul 2005	Re: Survival skill and damage To go in a different direction for a moment: Why not treat the damage they took as "fatigue damage" instead of HT damage. For instance if they really don't know what their doing, don't have food or water etc, start docking them fatigue. This is somewhat realistic. If you are hiking under bad conditions you are going to drop from fatigue rather than dropping from "wounds" which is what I (and this guy's players) interpret hit points as.

08-09-2005, 01:16 PM	#6
roguebfl Dog of Lysdexics Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Melbourne FL, Formerly Wellington NZ	Re: Survival skill and damage beacuse the Damage due to Expoture and bad travel, unlike Fatigue doesn't just go away 1 to 2 days of good rest. It is Really "un enjoyible" stuff __________________ Rogue the Bronze Firelizard Gerald Grenier, Jr. Hail Eris! Rogue's Weyr

08-09-2005, 02:26 PM	#7
pator2000 Join Date: Jul 2005	Re: Survival skill and damage I am referring to general damage from lack of food and water, overheating, getting stung by mosquitos etc. Once you start eating again, the damage does indeed go away. Now of course frostbite, broken bones etc should be treated with HP loss. But it sounds like the issue at hand is: a couple of people go on a trip through the woods and fail their survival roll. People have this happen to them every day. Most of them come back alive and without permanent injury other than being tired and thirsty. Some don't but statistically they are in the minority.

08-09-2005, 02:32 PM	#8
Kromm *GURPS* Line Editor Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Montréal, Québec	Re: Survival skill and damage Note that the damage from a botched Survival roll is meant to abstract some combination of the unpleasantness described in Chapter 14. Anyone having trouble convincing players that 2d-4 is "fair" should send them to Chapter 14 to see how much worse it could be. __________________ Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> *GURPS* Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just *GURPS* News]