Author Topic: Tissue damage and healing  (Read 958 times)

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Offline Jengada

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Tissue damage and healing
« on: June 20, 2021, 10:25:20 PM »
My current party is challenging my mastery of the healing rules more than any group in 40 years. Specifically right now, a character received a burn crit that specifies "massive tissue damage" and "limb useless." Two other characters are healed of damage but have scarring over most of their bodies. I've pored over my RM2 books, and checked for guidance from the RMSS books, but there is an inconsistency in the description of injuries and their types, and the spells for healing. Crits and the injury recovery tables include a category for "tissue" distinct from "muscle/tendon." In RMSS the former becomes "skin/tissue," confirming the suggested meaning that's never spelled out. But there are no spells in RM2, or even that I could find in RMSS, for healing tissue damage. Bone, organ, muscle, blood and "surface" are the categories. Surface includes burn relief which could be used for either of these, I suppose. The first character could require Burn relief III to heal that leg of 3rd degree burns, and the other two could require Burn relief II to heal their whole bodies of 2nd degree burns ("one area" = whole body?)
Has anyone else run into this and found a better solution? What about tissue damage that's not burn or frostbite?
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Offline jdale

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Re: Tissue damage and healing
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2021, 10:54:43 PM »
It sounds like burn damage to me, so Burn Relief would be appropriate (especially given that there isn't anything else...). Is there tissue damage from crits that is not burn or cold related?

RMU adds spells for healing flesh wounds on the Blood Law list, that covers other tissue damage.
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Offline Jengada

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Re: Tissue damage and healing
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2021, 11:25:46 PM »
I think that's the key. I didn't look over all of the crit charts, but there are no tissue crits that I can find on the slash, puncture, crush, or impact crit charts. So I think you're right, it just comes down to burn repair. Now I'm just trying to imagine the burn to skin/tissue that would be so bad as to give -80 and make the limb useless.
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Offline Hurin

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Re: Tissue damage and healing
« Reply #3 on: June 21, 2021, 09:07:27 AM »
Yes, I think it would just come down to burn repair.

I would rule that a whole body constitutes multiple areas -- at least 6 and probably more (head, arms, legs, and torso might count as multiple).
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Offline Aspire2Hope

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Re: Tissue damage and healing
« Reply #4 on: June 21, 2021, 11:38:07 AM »
I think that's the key. I didn't look over all of the crit charts, but there are no tissue crits that I can find on the slash, puncture, crush, or impact crit charts. So I think you're right, it just comes down to burn repair. Now I'm just trying to imagine the burn to skin/tissue that would be so bad as to give -80 and make the limb useless.

So this is a bit tricky to abstract because it comes from experience quite close to home. But 3rd degree burns across the back of your legs will pretty much cover it. Generally, we seem to imagine that after a burn we will all be able to run around like a hero in a war film. Mostly though, burn victim scream in agony and if capable of movement do so in a way that has no purpose. Count the -80 as a sign of an inability to act rather than just the ability to move.

Offline Jengada

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Re: Tissue damage and healing
« Reply #5 on: June 21, 2021, 12:16:41 PM »
That's pretty much what I did, Aspire. I had the character writhing on the ground screaming. She had to make maneuver rolls to drag herself across the rubble (got 5') and to try to cast a heal spell (failed) - yes, it was the cleric that got flamed. And unfortunately, she only has Burn Relief II, not Burn Relief III, so they need to figure out what they'll do with her. They're in hostile territory where the only other clerics have declared her heretic, to be burned alive. (That's not the source of her current burns.)


I think that's the key. I didn't look over all of the crit charts, but there are no tissue crits that I can find on the slash, puncture, crush, or impact crit charts. So I think you're right, it just comes down to burn repair. Now I'm just trying to imagine the burn to skin/tissue that would be so bad as to give -80 and make the limb useless.

So this is a bit tricky to abstract because it comes from experience quite close to home. But 3rd degree burns across the back of your legs will pretty much cover it. Generally, we seem to imagine that after a burn we will all be able to run around like a hero in a war film. Mostly though, burn victim scream in agony and if capable of movement do so in a way that has no purpose. Count the -80 as a sign of an inability to act rather than just the ability to move.
We ask the hard questions here, because they keep us too busy to worry about the hard questions in the real world, and we can go with the answers we like the best.