Detecting injuries/illness

[FireGamer500]

How would you create a power that would let you touch someone and detect any injuries or illnesses they're suffering from? I'm making a character that can use the healing ability, but I'd like him to know what is/was wrong with the person.

[johndallman]

As an advantage, you start with Detect (Disease), from p. B48, and modify it with no range, Analysing, and so on. You have to agree with your GM if Disease is Occasional or Common, because that affects the base cost of the advantage. Then you buy Detect (Injuries) as an Alternate Ability, because that's likely to be cheaper than Disease. There are usually more people around with colds than significant cuts.

Another way to do it is Diagnosis skill.

[Refplace]

Detect with Anaylsis and use the Diagnosis skill to interpret what you sense.
Add other modifiers like Melee, C for limited range if you want it touch only.

[Aldric]

Originally Posted by FireGamer500

How would you create a power that would let you touch someone and detect any injuries or illnesses they're suffering from? I'm making a character that can use the healing ability, but I'd like him to know what is/was wrong with the person.

While you could build a Detect Power for a specific condition, it still requires a Sense roll, but skills can already give you many of the answers you seek, so not sure what exactly do you need from this power that cannot already be done with a Diagnosis check.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Aldric

While you could build a Detect Power for a specific condition, it still requires a Sense roll, but skills can already give you many of the answers you seek, so not sure what exactly do you need from this power that cannot already be done with a Diagnosis check.

Because Detect can give you more info than normal human senses. Its like using a medical scanner to help you figure out what is wrong.

[whswhs]

Using the mechanics in GURPS Powers, I would say, on one hand, that Detect Injury is equivalent to having high-end medical scanning equipment, and would give +2 to Diagnosis. On the other hand, Detect Illness will presumably work for illnesses that are not yet known to medical science, and thus counts as truly miraculous aid, which is good for a +4 to Diagnosis.

I don't think you need Analysis to do this; Detect by itself gives you the ability to identify what you've detected with a successful IQ roll (after the initial Per roll), and it seems fair to me to say that you're going to substitute a Diagnosis roll that gets a bonus from the Detect ability. However, if you choose to take Analysis, I would let that take the place of the Diagnosis roll, giving you an automatic success on identifying the injury or illness (though if it's a completely new illness it probably wouldn't tell you the prognosis or appropriate treatment).

You might want to think about taking Precise, which gives you distance, and thus would let you identify exactly where an injury was placed within someone's body, or let you identify which person in a crowd had an illness.

[RyanW]

A very basic version:

Diagnostic Touch [1]

By simply touching a person (or waving your hands through their aura, observing their chakra flows, etc.) for one minute, you may use the Diagnosis skill as though you had performed a basic screening, with no penalty for lacking tools. The GM could give a penalty, require more time, or call for more complex measures for obscure or complicated diagnoses.

[Eric Funk]

Originally Posted by RyanW

A very basic version:

Diagnostic Touch [1]

I would agree with this -- the Perks book recommends a Perk can replace basic equipment for skill use (Powerups2:perks p.10).

Consider as precedent the "Body-Reading" spell (M88) which gives +2 to subsequent Poisons or Diagnosis rolls.

[Christopher R. Rice]

GURPS Psionic Powers p. 46 uses "Detect Humans" for detecting disease and injuries. That's a 20 point Detect. Detecting any disease or injury would be one step higher and on par with Detect Life.

[Plane]

Some level of 'detect injury' seems to be automatic based on visual cues since there's a perk for Unkillable where you don't show signs no matter how injured you are.