Diseases, Poisons and Infections

non-magical healing is something I think should be applied AFTER combat.. not during. I kind of hate to say that because I want non-magical healing skills to be desirable to have but an enemy isn't going to stop trying to kill you long enough for you to get patched up and applying medicines and other first aide and more advanced procedures should take a little bit of time. Sure you COULD do in combat but it's basically saying "come hit me".

So magic would be the combat healing of choice but I'd rather non-magical options be a more logical choice out of combat

 

Why? we do it NOW during combat in real life. In fact the basic first aid we do without thinking (ie put a hand over a bleed to apply pressure)

 

Personally, I'd like even magical healing to be difficult during combat. Potions should take a moment to drink and take a moment to go into effect. Healing spells require a moment to make the incantation out loud, and a moment to go into effect, and low-level spells should require proximity to the person being healed.

Then there would always be options to put more advanced magic in the game, but not for starters...

 

Having an epidemic spread by contact in game would be interesting

 

Because combat 'back then' isn't like NOW. Now we hide behind things while people shoot at us. Cover allows us a certain amount of time while reducing the odds quite a bit of getting shot. Most medics don't run out in the open and do their work their.. they move the body so the medic can work with some measure of safety. You've also normally got friends with big guns making sure the enemy doesn't come and get you. In SotA your enemy is standing 2 feet from you swinging a large axe (or whatever weapon). There is no cover.

 

True but there are also bandages designed to be deployed in seconds for serious wounds and having used them there is no reason they WOULDN'T work with the technology back there. Combie bandages which have strips of cloth attached so they can be applied and tied off straight up, the adhesive dressings maybe more problematic because I don't know what kinds of adhesives they had back then but if we are making potions its not out of the realm of possibility for one of them to be an adhesive which could be pre applied and then the bandage could be slapped on in seconds

 

Be careful what you wish for, one of the disease models the CDC use is a plague which accidentally spread through WOW because of a mistake in one line of code

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident

 

Well now that is a little more interesting.. but it sounds like something that would require a more advanced skill to make. I would still say you'd have to get away from your opponent at least briefly. The person bring treated generally will have to be not making huge and quick motions. But application time would be seriously reduced.

 

Gum Arabic.

 

Don't know if that could have been pre-applied to bandages without drying up. But yea some physicians used a mixture of gum arabic and flour to harden bandages. The most commonly used thing for bandages in the Middle Ages was just egg whites.

Either way, even if could be pre-applied I still would argue it should take a moment out of combat and make someone a target. When games let you cheat in combat by buffing yourself up with healing it makes combat boring.

 

Honey was also used, especially in surgery (India, Arabia & Egypt), as it is bacteriostatic. Not for adhesion but as a poultice.

 

Even the bandages used today, by the wealthiest and most expensively equipped armies and field medical units, don't make the subject able to get right back up and in the fight. The wound that necessitated the bandage is still there underneath. IN SotA HOWEVER, those same bandages may well include magical components. At which point they MIGHT cause enough of a benefit to get someone up off the ground and fighting again, despite a gut wound, or a severed hamstring. In those cases, I wouldn't think there would be any INCREASE of vulnerability whilst applying the bandage, so much as a cessation of vulnerability after it was done.

If you've got a stab wound to your gut, you ARE ON THE GROUND CRYING. The muscle convulsions will take the biggest, toughest guy out there, double him over, drop his blood pressure to the passing out level, and then keep him there. Nobody is realistically getting up off the ground, defending themselves, or speaking full complete sentences when in that condition. Likewise, if you've lost enough blood to count as seriously wounded, you will be very lightheaded, and liable to pass out at any sudden movement. Severed muscle in a limb? Busted joint? You are NOT using that limb. Most likely you'll be in shock, trying to figure out why your toes are close to your face. I can TOTALLY see injury debuffs that leave you alive but unable to defend yourself, I just don't think it would get any worse if you were applying a mystic band-aid to restore function.

 

Unfortunately it's probably not likely that SotA will take injuries quite THAT far. It'll probably be more to the point that if you're THAT vulnerable in the middle of combat you're either unconscience or already dead.. but if a healer comes up with you with a bandaide.. there is no getting out of the way of an incoming attack while it's being applied.. plus the healer is also vulnerable as well.

 

Actually I have seen people stabbed in clubs who haven't even realised they were stabbed for 5 min, they felt like they were punched and then it wasn't till the bleeding got them that they realised differently. Personally I would go with the adhesive type bandage even though its not as realistic, it could be implanted with some new Britanian herbs or concoction which causes it to stick and also stops the bleeding. For a realistic time frame, well how long would it take to reach from your belt pouch to your arm or abdo to press it on? 2 seconds? The other idea that came to me was that some armies build tourniquets into the solders uniform so if they lose a limb they just pull it tight to stop the bleeding. Also you could have self inflating or self stiffening splints built in to treat you for broken limbs. The most obvious treatment though is going to be for pain, if you look at an epipen injector its designed to administer in seconds and then needs to be held on the site for 10 seconds and something like this could be adapted for new Britanian "morphine" or you could go with an oral administration which in real life would be slower but *shrug*

just depends how realistic you want to get

 

I've seen those stab wounds too. They have a descriptor in the charts. "Shallow". Means it didn't actually penetrate vital organs. Watch them try it with a sword instead of a pocket knife, I bet they'll notice.

 

We seem to be straying somewhat off subject.

 

The basic divide I'm seeing is between our hopes/expectations for the game (where there is magic) and our understanding of real world wounds and diseases. We can post for months about what we've seen or read about the real world, but the REAL issue is, how should it work in SotA? My think, is that how it will work in SotA will revolve around the power and availability of magic. Magic makes everything better, and the question is, how much will Portalarium put in the game? How much do we want them to put in the game?

 

(1) Injuries generally are incapacitating, with a range of extent from 'minimal' to 'permanent'. Even bruises hamper that specific set of muscle fibers.

(2) Most people have an 'emergency reserve' that enables very active motion even when injured, also with a range of effect (shock, adrenaline rush, berzerkerdom; the more suppressed the pain and bloodloss, generally the greater the strength but lower the complex dexterity/agility).

(3) Externally-sourced substances can invoke (2) -- epinephrine, meth, PHP, etc..

(4) Doing (3) generally provides a temporary boost with a severe 'snap-back' when it runs out. This can be enough to be fatal, even when the base or underlying injury of itself would not have been...had the wounded person not pressed past 'sane' limits.

So my suggestion is that there be Positive Healing (it actually undoes injuries and improves the wounded person's health), which require being out-of-combat while being applied, and take some time (for gaming purposes, not long but not-in-combat); and Negative Healing (which undoes the symptomatic effects of injury for a limited period of combat time, at the cost of doing further damage when the combat is over), which has a very high probability of requiring the 'extended' actor to collapse, in a state of incapacitation or even death.

Yes, Avatars will be much more prone to use Negative Healing -- paying the social cost of having to 'fit back in'. Whether that requires them abandoning their current role/status/position and starting afresh, or becoming known as an Avatar if they try to hold onto their current role/status/position, depends on a Player Choice.

 

Bingo. We could even have heals between players that work like this. Suddenly, the job of a healer in a party or raid is more than just "blast big numbers", and they have to balance negative heals with positive, and have a wide variety of each to deal with.

 

I don't see much in the way of practical application of 'negative heals'. If it's not healing damage it's not a heal. If it's a substance designed to just keep you going in spite of injury then you don't need a healer for that.. you just drink a cheap potion or something.