Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 08-17-2012, 08:34 AM   #11
JCurwen3
 
JCurwen3's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Default Re: Tracking Individual Wounds & Healing

Quote:
Originally Posted by martinl View Post
The following link may be of interest. (At sjgames.)
I like this article a lot, and in fact it was part of the inspiration for me wanting to try this approach. My problems with it were that: (1) it still seemed unrealistically generous as far as healing times go, especially for high HT characters; (2) because it applies a penalty to HT rolls instead of increasing the time between rolls, it doesn't really provide good advice for characters having any level of Regeneration, as even at the lowest level you're not making HT rolls anymore to recover HP; and (3) no mention of magical or ultra-tech healing means (like 4th Ed Healing and Leech).

Still, it does have several interesting ideas. And to be fair to the article, it is targeted at realistic, mundane humans as they would be found in the Hârn setting. Some ideas can probably be taken from Hârnmaster itself and adapted, I'd think.
__________________
-JC
JCurwen3 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-17-2012, 08:41 AM   #12
JCurwen3
 
JCurwen3's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Default Re: Tracking Individual Wounds & Healing

Quote:
Originally Posted by Edges View Post
I've done this a few times too and have used an elaborate set of house rules. Basically, every wound is labeled with a severity level based on the HP stat of the wounded person. After a week with the wound, a HT roll is made for each wound to see if it improves by one severity level. Critical success improves it by 2 levels. I have a list of modifiers to the HT roll that includes severity, level of activity, missed meals, treatment by physician, etc.
The only thing I don't like about this system of house rules is how long it took me to make.
This sounds very interesting. Could you share any more details? Like what your severity levels were, and effects of missed meals, etc?
__________________
-JC
JCurwen3 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-17-2012, 10:38 AM   #13
Edges
 
Edges's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: GMT-5
Default Re: Tracking Individual Wounds & Healing

Quote:
Originally Posted by vierasmarius View Post
Do you still use cumulative HP loss to determine when a character is incapacitated / killed? Or is that a result of specific injuries? I've considered doing the latter, since I've never been a huge fan of attrition-based damage systems. It gets rid of the "death by a thousand paper cuts" syndrome, though such can still occur (realistically) if bleeding damage is treated as a single, accumulating wound.
I don't use cumulative HP loss to determine incapacitation/death. In fact, once a given wound is translated from HP of injury to severity level, I no longer keep a record of how many HP of injury it did. To determine the effects of a given injury, I have a table that gives a result of each severity/location. It includes things like crippling, severed limbs, unconsciousness, decapitation, and death. Most of the cells in the table give a HT roll and many are modified. But only the most extreme cells actually result in a death roll. Most deaths occur due to blood loss.

Bleeding is treaded as a single accumulating wound only it does FP damage instead of HP. When you've bled as many points as your max FP, you fall unconscious (you may fall unconscious sooner if you have also lost FP from other sources). Every point you bleed past that, you roll HT or die. This makes death by blood loss a real danger. Each cell on my severity/location table also has a frequency of blood loss roll associated with it. So for a light wound to the torso, you're rolling avery hour for blood loss and for a serious wound to the neck you're rolling every 30 seconds. Bandaging decreases bleeding roll frequency and full application of First Aid (or Surgery in certain cases) eliminates bleeding.

This is only the tip of the iceberg for this system of house rules. I could go on. But it's surprisingly non-cumbersome in play. I handle most of the details and only tell the players what they need/want to know.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JCurwen3 View Post
This sounds very interesting. Could you share any more details? Like what your severity levels were, and effects of missed meals, etc?
There's a lot of details. I'm not up for writing them all out at present. But for Severity levels, I used the names in D&D (because I'm old school). So there's light, moderate, serious, and critical.

For recovery, I have a list of modifiers that apply to recovery rolls. Every day of missed meals, you suffer a -1 to the recovery roll. You round up so someone who needs 3 meals a day rolls at a -2 if they missed 5 meals during the week. Missed water is -2 per day. There's also modifiers based on level of activity over the week, margin of success of a physician roll, presence of a nurse (or equivalent helper), missed sleep, Rapid Healing (which has itself been changed), etc.
Edges is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-17-2012, 01:11 PM   #14
vierasmarius
 
vierasmarius's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Oregon
Default Re: Tracking Individual Wounds & Healing

Quote:
Originally Posted by Edges View Post
This is only the tip of the iceberg for this system of house rules. I could go on. But it's surprisingly non-cumbersome in play. I handle most of the details and only tell the players what they need/want to know.
Sounds awesome! I've taken a look at other non-cumulative wound systems (and worked on one of my own) but they seemed to add quite a bit of complexity. Do you have yours posted on a site, or would you care to share it here?
vierasmarius is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-18-2012, 09:00 AM   #15
Edges
 
Edges's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: GMT-5
Default Re: Tracking Individual Wounds & Healing

Quote:
Originally Posted by vierasmarius View Post
Sounds awesome! I've taken a look at other non-cumulative wound systems (and worked on one of my own) but they seemed to add quite a bit of complexity. Do you have yours posted on a site, or would you care to share it here?
I don't have it up on a site, sorry. I have it in a few word documents. If you were really interested, I could attach them to a PM I guess (unless there are filters I don't know about).

My system does add quite a bit of complexity. But it's complexity that I don't mind handling. And on the player's side, it's manageable. To the player, I would just describe what the wound look like and how much blood is visible. If they want to know the game-mechanical effects, I might say, "You have a moderate wound on your left arm. Every time you want to use it, you need to make a Will check. You have -1 to IQ and DX from the pain." If the player asks how often bleeding rolls need to be made, I'll tell him (in this case) 10 minutes. Otherwise, I just have him roll every 10 minutes and keep track of the loss and the effects of loss informing him when his weakness starts to be noticed (i.e. further penalties are incurred).

So it adds a lot of complexity but it's all behind the curtain.
Edges is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-18-2012, 04:35 PM   #16
Lord Carnifex
 
Lord Carnifex's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Default Re: Tracking Individual Wounds & Healing

This is from a slightly older game system, but might be applicable: "I'm not Dead Yet!"

From the house rag of some small-time publishing company...
__________________
An ongoing narrative of philosophy, psychology, and semiotics: Et in Arcadia Ego

"To an Irishman, a serious matter is a joke, and a joke is a serious matter."
Lord Carnifex is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-19-2012, 05:26 AM   #17
JCurwen3
 
JCurwen3's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Default Re: Tracking Individual Wounds & Healing

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex View Post
This is from a slightly older game system, but might be applicable: "I'm not Dead Yet!"

From the house rag of some small-time publishing company...
Thanks, this article is really useful!
__________________
-JC
JCurwen3 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-07-2012, 11:46 PM   #18
jabarto
 
jabarto's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Default Re: Tracking Individual Wounds & Healing

I realize this thread was revived by a spammer, but it's a good opportunity for me to ask about something that's bothered me for a while now:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maz View Post
Stopping bleeding have to be rolled for each wound individually at their individual penalty.
Is that a personal ruling, or is that how the book intended it to work? I ask because I like the idea of the bleeding rules, but the Basic Set says,

Quote:
At the end of every minute after being
wounded, make a HT roll, at -1 per 5 HP lost.
which implies that you go by the total amount of HP you've lost rather than tracking each individual wound (which sounds boring and annoying to deal with). However, most of the time when I see bleeding rules discussed, people say it's the latter. Am I reading it right?
jabarto is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
healing, injury, recovery, tracking, wounds

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 07:24 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.