[Basic] HP Recovery

[jacobmuller]

Your 10HP PC suffers a 6 to 11 HP Injury to a limb*.
After combat he checks, unmodified HT, for Crippling and gets Temporary.
His buddy does 10 minutes First Aid and, living in an enlightened age as they do, manages to heal 6HP.
So, no crippling injury, no wounds at all - one cup of tea, a bit of a chat and he's right as rain:D

Does anyone handle it differently? eg yes, the HP are recovered but his limb still feels like it needs a fortnight to recover properly. {ghost HP or Wound recovery or somesuch?}
Or apply a penalty to the crippling check per bleeding, eg 5-9HP is -1, 10-14 -2, etc

Edit: TQ for the feedback

*so far as a limb is concerned, this is the same difference. Okay, 11HP is twice as bad as 6HP if using the optional Bleeding rules option of keeping a record of actual injury for HT check penalties only... But you still only lose 6HP.

[Nereidalbel]

First aid is great for stopping bleeding, closing open wounds, etc, but a broken bone is still a broken bone. Temporary crippling for limbs is generally broken bones, torn muscles, and other things that take time to heal and no amount of bandages will help.

[johndallman]

To me, it depends on the realism level of the campaign.

In a realistic campaign, you definitely wouldn't be able to fix that limb with First Aid; given it was crippled, you probably can't fix all those hit points.

In a more forgiving campaign, which must have fairly high-tech first aid to have managed 6 points, I'd ignore the crippling.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

Does anyone handle it differently?

No, I handle it out of the book.

If the crippling is temporary, it's merely an effect of the lost HP - it's going to heal by itself, completely, in a matter of days.

If it's lasting, you've got a break or other lasting injury, and even if the HP are all healed the arm still isn't working properly until the amount of time specified in Basic Set is up.

If it's permanent, it's a goner, and needs replacement or superscience or magic.

You can't think of a 6-HP cripple that is temporary as broken. It's not, because it's going to heal pretty quickly. Lasting is where your breaks are. It even says so on p. B422.

[Dustin]

In cases like that, we usually interpret it as "not as bad as you thought" -- shoulder was dislocated, not broken; the arrow was through-and-through, hitting nothing but muscle, etc.

[Kromm]

Temporary crippling isn't broken bone or anything of that severity. You need to get to lasting crippling for that. Temporary crippling might be nothing but a severe funny-bone bump or impact-induced numbness. You learn this after the fact, when you see how many HP are missing once first aid is done. If you get to 0 HP, it might even have been psychological shock! If you're still missing 5 HP, there's probably a fairly significant wound. But if the HT roll succeeded, even the untreated 6-HP version isn't a broken bone . . . breaks result from failed HT rolls.

[Varyon]

This doesn't entirely match with GURPS, as this was something that had a bit of a "time-delay" on it, but a few years ago I hurt my foot during martial arts practice. It was painful but I could walk on it, so I figured it was fine - but I was incapable of walking within a few hours and for the entirety of the next day, thanks to the painful swelling. A proper First Aid check immediately after the injury probably would have prevented this. To me, that is what Temporary Crippling represents - swelling, dislocation, etc that doesn't cause much structural damage but that renders the limb temporarily unusable. Torn muscle/ligaments, broken bones, etc are appropriate for Lasting Crippling, while removal of muscle/ligaments, severely broken bones (a multiple compound fracture, say), etc are appropriate for Permanent Crippling (keep in mind Permanent Crippling can be fixed in some cases with sufficiently advanced technology/magic).

[Gollum]

I read something very interesting in a roleplaying game (I think it was Jorune, but I'm not absolutely sure): remember how it hurts to bang your big toe in a chair leg before jumping into pointless combats...

We all lived that. Banging our big toe, our knee, our elbow or anything else in something. It's terribly painful. So painful that we did believe that it was broken. And, indeed, we weren't able to move that limb during a quite long while after that, exactly as if it was broken... But, fortunately, nothing was broken. That was just pain!

As very well explained above by everyone, a crippled arm or leg is not necessary a broken arm or leg. It is just crippled. And pain is sufficient to do crippled a limb.

Damage, in GURPS doesn't only represent injury, it also represent shock and pain. That is why several little blows can eventually kills you, without any severe injury... Like in reality. Romans knew that too much whip lashes could kill a slave (heart failure) so, the number of whip lashes was limited by the law in Rome.

[apoc527]

Anyone have any suggestions for penalties to the HT rolls for crippling injuries that are somewhere between "crippling" and "automatic permanent?" Maybe at 1.5x crippling threshold, the HT roll is at -5?

[gilbertocarlos]

HP means dismemberment, and HP/2+ means Chance of broken bone, so, I'd give -2 for each HP point after HP/2. For giants and the like, I'd use instead -1 for each 5% of HP. So, he can get up to -10