Minor wounds and healing

[Qcumber]

What exactly is a 1-point wound in real terms?

In GURPS terms it is an injury that takes a first aid role or one full day of rest to heal fully. However, I do not know of many injuries that heal totally in such a small space of time. Imagine a knife cut that is gone in 24 hours. Now I understand that a very minor scratch could cause pain and discomfort that is easily ignored the next day; but how does this relate to 1 point of cutting damage from a sword?

Also, take a situation where a character takes 7x1-point wounds during a skirmish. Following RAW it would take 7 days to fully recover. However, each wound in isolation would only take 1 day. Thus shouldn't the 7 wounds heal in parallel rather than sequentially; i.e. full recovery in one day of rest (7xHT roles), or 7 separate first aid roles?

I guess this has been discussed many times before so forgive my laziness in not searching thoroughly for a satisfactory answer.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Qcumber

What exactly is a 1-point wound in real terms?

A moderately severe one by most standards. A broken finger, a stab down to the bone on a limb, a handspan wide gash that didn't cut into anything important, half a liter or so of blood loss, first degree burns over much of your body, or second degree over about half a limb, something on that order.

In GURPS terms it is an injury that takes a first aid role or one full day of rest to heal fully.. However, I do not know of many injuries that heal totally in such a small space of time.

Yes, GURPS, and all RPGs are very generous with natural healing. This is because "your character is out of the campaign for the rest of the year" or "you've lost your first fight, looks like your adventuring career is over" is often a very realistic, but boring.
Though note you must "rest" in a rather strict sense *and* make an HT roll, which should be at a penalty in the field, so even a 1 point injury may stick with you a while.

[seasong]

0-point injuries include deep bruises, bad scratches, and embedded thorns... anything that is not significant enough to contribute to killing you, which is the only thing that hit points directly measure.

Healing from injury 1 to injury 0 takes roughly 1-6 days (heavily weighted toward the bottom, with an average of 2 days, and only 1.5% at longer than 6 days) for an average person. That gives a range of severity (since a 1-point wound is actually a broad range of severities), rather than a single "level" of injury, and can be described as "any injury which takes up to a week to heal sufficiently to no longer significantly impact your ability to survive further wounding."

One point of crushing injury would likely be a bone-deep bruise. It's sore for many weeks afterward, but it's only threatening for a few days.

One point of cutting injury would be a cut just deep enough to get into the musculature. A nasty gash will be visible (again) for weeks, but it will have knit together enough to not be threatening within a week.

Note that characters with HT 12+ need not apply to this analysis, as the effects of HT on healing are absurd by any measure (1-3 days, average 1.3 days, only 0.5% at longer than 3 days, for HT 12).

Also, truly life-threatening wounds (20+) heal way, way too fast, regardless of your HT (40 days is what I would expect to see the wound become survivable, but not reduced to bruising).

[seasong]

Ugh. Bad math. The above analysis only applies to 1-point injuries.

A 2-point injury heals in an average of 4 days, which is also less than a week, but may be up to two weeks.

So there is obviously some overlap in wound severity, depending on the HT rolls, wherein a 1-point injury can be discovered to have been as bad as a 3-point injury.

Also, the worse the injury, the more average its healing rate becomes, which is largely the opposite of real life, where small wounds tend to heal about the same for everyone, and large wounds tend to linger until the body can pull things together enough to start healing (with the linger-time being variable).

Anyway, I think the lesson is: HP don't map to descriptive values until after you've successfully recovered from them. Once you know how long it took, you can describe how bad it was.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Qcumber

What exactly is a 1-point wound in real terms?

In GURPS terms it is an injury that takes a first aid role or one full day of rest to heal fully.

Ah...no. That's not right. It makes no difference whether the wound has healed fully, as long as it does not increase the character's chance of death in a subsequent fight. The default is that GURPS characters have the resilience of fictional action characters as well.

Also, take a situation where a character takes 7x1-point wounds during a skirmish. Following RAW it would take 7 days to fully recover. However, each wound in isolation would only take 1 day. Thus shouldn't the 7 wounds heal in parallel rather than sequentially; i.e. full recovery in one day of rest (7xHT roles), or 7 separate first aid roles?

Too much accounting for too little benefit. And the more wounds you took the more likely that one of them is in a place where the stitches will tear open in subsequent action.

[D10]

I guess its campaign specific, in my games the pcs will first aid each other and it will be enough for them to ignore these wounds, until they heal, they stop affecting them in combat, but if something outrageous like being hit in the same spot happens, I would treat it as cumulative damage for the purpose of crippling the limb.

[Brandy]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Too much accounting for too little benefit.

Several people (myself included) do use individual wound tracking as a house rule. I find it works well.

[Qcumber]

Originally Posted by seasong

One point of crushing injury would likely be a bone-deep bruise. It's sore for many weeks afterward, but it's only threatening for a few days.

I understand what you are saying regarding minor wounds that are sub-1-point. I agree with the description of a 1-point crush injury- deep bruising can be very painful and restrict mobility; and in minor cases can be shrugged off after a day or two.

Originally Posted by seasong

One point of cutting injury would be a cut just deep enough to get into the musculature. A nasty gash will be visible (again) for weeks, but it will have knit together enough to not be threatening within a week.

Whilst a 1-point shallow cut would probably involve only the skin, deeper wounds are likely to involve muscle tissue. Even after the wound has closed the underlying tissues remain fragile for weeks. A deep gash would therefore not heal so quickly.

Originally Posted by seasong

Also, truly life-threatening wounds (20+) heal way, way too fast, regardless of your HT (40 days is what I would expect to see the wound become survivable, but not reduced to bruising).

Truly life-threatening wounds in reality can heal remarkably quickly, or at least moving from negative to positive HP, with correct emergency or intensive care. The later stages of the recovery tend to involve good pain management, improving range of movement and general rehabilitation. This stage can last for months.

The issue for me is being able to model this realistically, as the campaign I am planning will involve the healing process as a significant part of the plot from time to time.

[seasong]

Originally Posted by Qcumber

The issue for me is being able to model this realistically, as the campaign I am planning will involve the healing process as a significant part of the plot from time to time.

In that case, I would recommend some house rules. Tracking wounds individually seems to help a lot.

It may also be worthwhile to make all of the HT rolls ahead of time to determine the severity of the wound, and then use that to describe it. Medical care would cut this time down as follows:

1. Any Physician care: reduce total time by 10%.
2. Medical care (p. B424): Each "1 HP" of healing from medical care reduces the total time by one day.
3. Always roll First Aid's effects before making the HT rolls, since it can substantially change the long-term severity of the injury.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Qcumber

What exactly is a 1-point wound in real terms?

I think the only true answer to that is: "A useful abstraction of something which is far too complex to deal with in a realistic fashion."