Medical code overhaul

[Marauder Moe]

So as not to derail the other thread, I'm going to make a new one to propose a reworking of the bandage skill (others feel free to do the same here).

As it is now, bandaging is more of a weapon than a healing skill.  :wink:

Because it starts so low, and people can heal by just resting or sleeping, no one uses it at all, practically.  Hell, I'd say that at least 95% of healing (besides resting/sleeping) performed in-game is done by magick.  Those numbers should be reversed.

I propose that the initital success rate of bandaging go way up.  Something along the lines of 85% success (in varying degrees), 10% neutral failure (no consequence), 5% critical failure (doing damage).

Or, 50% success, 45% neutral failure, 5% critical failure, and cut the price of bandages in half (and double the success rate of the bandagemaking skill).

Also, I think the skill should convert the held bandage to a 'bloodied' bandage, which can no longer be used for healing, to give to the patient to wear (or even automatically transfer to their inventory).

I think this would significantly increase the skill's use, making for more realistic wilderness healing than setting up tent and taking a nap.

In addition, there should be healer NPCs (that also give out bloodied bandages) so injured people in the city have somewhere to go besides the Temple of Vivadu.

Thoughts?

[Moofassa]

Agree wholeheartedly. How can you possibly injure someone further when attempting to wrap a peice of cloth around a bloodied gash? Not -that- easily.

[Hidden]

I hate how the skill works. Currently the skill is twinky to use and useless almost, it would be better if it didn't have range. It should have a small percent heal and slightly faster HP regeneration for some time (or til fully healed) even if below 50% HP depending on level of skill. This would make the skill more useful esspecially since its dangerous to sleep in order to heal.

For example someone with the skill treats a wounded guard (20/100). Being almost maxed with the skill the guard is healed for ~10 HP, plus will heal when resting all the way back up to ~70 (slightly quicker afer they reach 50 HP) after that they will begin recovering at normal rate one again.

Well i suggested this in the other thread, so i'll just move it over here.

[Ghost]

Agree wholeheartedly. How can you possibly injure someone further when attempting to wrap a peice of cloth around a bloodied gash? Not -that- easily.

Well, if you stick your finger in it.  Or if you wrap it too tight and make the wound bleed more.

Starting with 85% is too high.  As I recall, someone posted about high bandage skill giving you like a crazy advantage.  I would agree to start with a higher skill than current, but not that high.  Also I would love to see bandage being applicable to damages where you are still in moderate condition.

[Maybe42or54]

It should be up to the bandager if he wants to lose a bandage because some guy lost 5 hp.

You come upon a scene with three guys holding a noble to the ground and a fourth guy looking dumbfounded at the bandage in his hands.

The noble screams, "WHY AREN'T YOU DOING ANYTHING?!?!? I'M bleeding to death you dimwit! Bandage my hand! It's falling off! I'm going to kill you for this! Holy shit I'm bleeding! I pricked myself with that big sharp sword thingy!"

The master healer says, "Uh.. You aren't hurt bad enough for me to heal you. My Lord."

The noble starts screaming again in pain and agony.

The noble looks at the healer and shouts, "Dimwit! I'll be the judge of that! Now use it or you die!"

[Hidden]

Its is funny that the only times that a medic or healer might be useful the skill won't work. To be honest i'd be happy if the skill was reworked to allow someone who had negative 50% hitpoints to regenerate back to where they can heal naturally without sleep. That would be useful the wilds or in other situations where people might not want or it not being safe enough to sleep.

I never liked the idea of being able to heal out in the wilds (maybe light injuries) without medical attention. In the city where its relatively 'safer' and 'cleaner', and you can at least virtually RP getting help i can understand but in the wilds. Na. It wouldn't be too much of an issue of playability either since rangers get the skill, so do merchants and you should be travelling with a guide,not to mention physian sub-guild on top of that, also expert warriors get it eventually to so they can still be brutal out there when they become experienced enough.

Editted to add (because i know its coming): You can actually RP being a physician without the skill or ever using the skill, the person sleeps, you watch them while emoting treating them (OOCly making sure you don't get ganked by nasties or someone tries to rob them). Many people do this, still its still nice to be genuinely useful to the game and have your RP supported by code.

[Twilight]

The bandage skill rocks, once you are good with it.  I've never seen anything really wrong with the skill.  At the beginning it sucks.  At master level it rocks.  Just like every other skill in the game.

[Beux]

How yeh supposed to get it passed begginner level and nearer to master level if it's near impossible to practise?

I'm with Moe on this one, it needs to be easier at the begginning. Maybe not quite so easy, but small wounds should be easy to bandage, I don't think there should be such a thing as a wound too small for bandaging except no wound at all. Granted larger more severe wounds should be harder.

[Marauder Moe]

The bandage skill rocks, once you are good with it. I've never seen anything really wrong with the skill. At the beginning it sucks. At master level it rocks. Just like every other skill in the game.

It doesn't suck, it's useless.  Worse than useless, harmful even.  Not to mention difficult to practice.  You need wounded people, who will usually refuse to let you touch them after you made it worse the first try or two.  Also, military leaders themselves almost never know anything about bandaging so they can't teach it.


On another note, perhaps we need to take the severity of the wound out of the equation all together.  The penalty for having a low skill against a severely injured person would be that it's going to take a lot of time and bandages to heal them.

[jhunter]

I agree. I think that would fix it more or less. Remove the factor of how severe the wounds are from it entirely. If they are only slightly hurt, you can still fix up their minor wounds. If they are more severely hurt, on a success you are only going to heal them equivalent to your skill at it.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

:arrow: Going below 10% of your hitpoints should cause you to not be able to heal past 90% of your max hitpoints without medical or magical attention within three RL days. If you do not receive this attention, then your new max is 90% of your old max, never mundanely recoverable.

:arrow: The damaging factor in bandaging should be removed, leaving only null or minor positive effects for fails.

:arrow: There should be no wound too small for medical attention.


These three things would fix the bandaging skill completely.

[jmordetsky]

:arrow: Going below 10% of your hitpoints should cause you to not be able to heal past 90% of your max hitpoints without medical or magical attention within three RL days. If you do not receive this attention, then your new max is 90% of your old max, never mundanely recoverable.

:arrow: The damaging factor in bandaging should be removed, leaving only null or minor positive effects for fails.

:arrow: There should be no wound too small for medical attention.


These three things would fix the bandaging skill completely.

Seconded.






Enthusiastically seconded.

[Ghost]

Except the first one, I am in support of Venomz ideas.

[jhunter]

Except the first one, I am in support of Venomz ideas.

Yeah, permanent hp loss is a bit extreme. It also wouldn't take into account -how- your hp got that low and the permanent loss of hp wouldn't make sense.

[Beux]

Maybe having HP stuck at 90% until medical attention is received - not time limit on this. I get the gist that this is to inspire people to seek medical attention rather than just sleep it out, but I don't see why - if after the 3 days they haven't had it, it should be permenant. They should just be stuck with 90% - thats enough motivation in itself to inspire someone to seek medical attention, it shouldn't be permenant and irreversible.

[Ghost]

But a code like that would make everyone rush to pick physician subguild (unless the person in question is ranger or has healing magick).  I don't see any benefit in it at all.

[Beux]

It wouldn't make me pick physician, for sure. It'd make me be damn sure I knew one though.

[Twilight]

Hmmm, I found it pretty damn easy to get bandage to a point where it becomes really decent.  You may wish to think about how you approach using it.  To give you an idea:

It didn't take that many times getting wounded to get decent with the skill.

By the third or fourth time I was wounded, I trusted the skill enough (or was psychotic enough) and was skilled enough to bandage at 1 hp and did so.

Probably less than ten times wounded, ever, before I had pretty much mastered the skill and completely rocked with it.

Now, exactly what is the suckiness with the skill?

[Agent_137]

Everyone who spars with sparring weapons doesn't let their HP drop below 80% or so, and even if beginner bandage could bandage at that level (maybe it can? I haven't tried in awhile for the following reason), it just seems a bit ICly silly to bandage sparring bruises.

Now, if you're one of those playing with live nasties who like to cut you day in and day out, then yes, I imagine you could probably find enough instances to train your bandage skill.

[jhunter]

Maybe having HP stuck at 90% until medical attention is received - not time limit on this. I get the gist that this is to inspire people to seek medical attention rather than just sleep it out, but I don't see why - if after the 3 days they haven't had it, it should be permenant. They should just be stuck with 90% - thats enough motivation in itself to inspire someone to seek medical attention, it shouldn't be permenant and irreversible.

Except you could get fucked and your hp permanently stuck for OOC reasons. You would find someone to bandage you up but there isn't a pc in your area with the bandage skill that is logged in when you are to bandage you up.

[spawnloser]

I don't like the 'can't regen past 90%' idea...because bandaging should be done early on in a wound's existance.  It quickens the healing process.

I'd rather bandage did that anyway.  When someone is bandaged, that someone should heal faster, not receive a jump in hp.

[ThirdEye]

Yeah, Venomz ideas were good except for the first. It could be incredibly bad for off-peakers and the sort.

[Manhattan]

The bandage skill rocks, once you are good with it.  I've never seen anything really wrong with the skill.  At the beginning it sucks.  At master level it rocks.  Just like every other skill in the game.

No.

[My 2 sids]

I don't like the 'can't regen past 90%' idea...because bandaging should be done early on in a wound's existance.  It quickens the healing process.

I'd rather bandage did that anyway.  When someone is bandaged, that someone should heal faster, not receive a jump in hp.

Perhaps a jump in HP would be due to some sort of physical therapy the doctor knew about?

[Sokotra]

A more gradual/realistic approach to the bandage skill seems reasonable.

I didn't read most of the replies, so someone may have already proposed an idea like this...

For example, at it's lowest - the skill may cause its wielder to bandage someone improperly and maybe cause a very small amount of damage and/or gradual loss of HP. (if you wanted to get real complicated, you could take bodyparts into account and "bandage Amos's arm" may cause the bandage to instantly be placed on his arm and would have to be carefully removed if it was done improperly, but we probably don't want to go that far just yet)

As the skill got better, a small jump in HP and/or quicker increase in health regeneration might work out.  The jump in HP may work considerably better if the bandage was a poultice or whatnot.

[Marauder Moe]

I think having a good chance to do damage with the bandage skill is a big problem, though.  In addition to discouraging practice, it makes having the skill actually more harmful than not having it!  Think about it: if you don't have the skill, you give your patient some bandages to wear and tell him to rest.  His hitpoints slowly come back or at least stay where they are.  If you have skill_bandaging, however, and aren't good at it you're probably going to hurt your patient.

[Twilight]

Manhattan, explain?  Which part do you disagree with?

Marauder Moe, think about how the skill works.  Having damage done at initial levels of skill is one of the great bonuses to being able to get this skill to a decent level.

You aren't going to use this skill out of the box and get benefits.  Just like bash is more of a detriment to use out of the box.  Partly because both skills, once they are good, can completely rock.  

You also don't need this skill for sparring bruises.  Its a skill for serious wounds.  Anyone can treat minor and moderate wounds.  That is why your hps regen.

I see people bash bandage over and over and over on this board.  Yet pretty much everything I see deals with the initial stages of the skill.  As far as I see it though, it is like it is for playability.  While this seems to be the issue with some people, I'd like to remind them that skills generally aren't beneficial at the beginning, and unless you are playing a guild that initially gets bandage as a starting skill, you probably aren't seeing how good it is once trained.

The skill is fine.

[bloodfromstone]

I found it frustrating to try to practice bandage when I had it, since people run screaming from Runner McMedicson when he's holding a bandage, but I don't think that is the skills fault.

Personally, I've only played with the skill at the bare bones of skill levels. Yeah, it sucked, but, like Twilight said, so do all the other skills. I've never gotten it up to a decent level, so I can't really say one way or another...

Personally, I'd like to see the ability to bandage people who are mortally wounded (maybe you can already do this once you're really good?) to try to bring them back to life, with the obvious risk being killing them dead.

[Ester]

As someone who's played a physician, I found it frustrating to encounter situations like this:

Joebob the Adventurer walks into the bar, bleeding profusely.

Joebob the Adventurer exclaims, "Krath, I just took a brutal beating from a scrab right t'side the gates!"

A bored physician who happens to be in afformentioned bar, stands up and says, "Aye, that ye did. Want me to take a look at that for yeh? Patch ye up some?"

Joebob the Adventurer, shaking his head, says to the physician, "Nah, it's just a scratch. I'm going to go sleep it off right now."


I agree with bloodfromstone's suggestion that physicians be given the ability to resuscitate the mortally wounded, maybe even those knocked unconscious. It would make them invaluable to caravans or to anyone, really.

Also, I wouldn't mind if large drops in HP (like <50%) would make you unable to recover to max HP, no matter how much you slept, unless medical attention was obtained (like getting the wounds bandaged).

[cisalus]

What about, instead of making bandages give an instant, drastic HP boost, the effect be changed to a short-term increase of the HP regen rate of the target?

When the bandage is first applied, there could be a small (tiny) bit of damage done to represent the "This might hurt a bit..."

[spawnloser]

That's what I said, cisalus.

[Dakkon Black]

What about, instead of making bandages give an instant, drastic HP boost, the effect be changed to a short-term increase of the HP regen rate of the target?

When the bandage is first applied, there could be a small (tiny) bit of damage done to represent the "This might hurt a bit..."

Yah, das is gut.

[cisalus]

That's what I said, cisalus.

Oh, sorry. Well, glad we have the same idea.

[Delirium]

I have played someone that was good at bandaging.

It was amazing.  My character could bring people from single-digit HP to well over regen rate with total ease.  Even if they failed, they only did a very minor amount of damage.

I agree that the bandaging skill could use some fleshing out, but as is, it is immensely powerful once you're good.

[ale six]

Delerium speaks truth - I think she even did exactly that to a PC of mine once.

I agree though that some of the suggestions in this thread are pretty cool, and bandaging could use some retooling.

[ThirdEye]

What do you do in those situations where (xxx) wacks your body, wounding you.

get bandage pack
hold bandage
em something about bandaging yourself up.
You don't need any bandaging.

I hate it

[Ghost]

Although I would love the idea to bandage smaller wounds, you can still emote bandaging your wounds.  They will heal as you emote anyway.

Or, in some cases you can RP as if they are flesh wounds, nothing deep.  Someone in game has done it, and that was well RPed.

[HarborGeek]

I think we ought to revamp bandaging to make it easier for Joe Shmoe to heal himself or his friend. Have it make regen of hp quicker than normal with a failure resulting in no benefit or slight damage. I think it shouldn't have much affect for those that are "mortally wounded", it should just keep them from bleeding to death. Once bandaged, those that are near death regen at normal if they sleep.

For those that are in dire straits and being "mortally wounded" why not a "surgery" skill. Now, this is where you should be able to do REAL damage if you were to fail. Wouldn't it also be fun to use for torture too? (smiling darkly)  :twisted:

ThugA holds down PoorBastard while EvilVillian uses some cutlery to surgery PoorBastard's left eye out?

Anyway, it would give the mortally wounded a choice to heal quick with a successful surgery, or heal slow with bandaging.

Thoughts? Questions? Death Threats?

[creeper386]

Main thing that I don't get, is ... It's really hard to make a wound worse. Someone mentioned sticking a finger in there ... Hmm ... Who in their right mind is going to be digging around in the wound unless they are trying to remove a weapon fragment or arrow or anything like that? Perhaps then I could see it being made worse.

And as far as bandaging too tightly. You really can't. Sure, if you LEAVE the pressure on for a prolonged period of time it'll due damage to the tissue in question due to lack of blood, but you due need to temporary reduce blood flow to the area to aid in clotting. It's way worse to not get something tied tight enough then it is to tighten it too much. As long as you don't leave it on after the area in question begins turning purple and black from lack of oxygen.

I'm in favor of reducing the chances of a crit. failure that causes damage. I think you'd have to be REALLY horribly bad to be able to do more damage while trying to bandage someone up, but then I don't really consider the skill to encompass everything about medicine like sewing someone up and such either. So maybe that's why I'm against the doing more damage.

[Ghost]

Now I think of it, yeah, bandaging someone should not lead to much of a damage in most cases.  You can make a wound worse if there is a broken piece of the weapon inside of you.  Arrows, or darts or knives mostly.  Or a splint piece of a sword.

Anyway, I think it could be better not to get any more damage.  Since you are already losing a bandage, you do not necessarily need to lose anything else just because you failed.

[Tisiphone]

I hate to be the devil's advocate, but...

the critical failures are specifically supposed, in my mind, to correlate to someone messing up while digging out foreign material. I see no problem with, at low levels, having damage be done to 'bandagees'. As a matter of fact, I would even go so far as to say, the MORE serious the wound, the MORE likely the critical failure; as you try to manage several different problems at once, remove nastiness, set bones, etc. etc.

I think this has the beautiful effect described earlier. Primitive medicine is dangerous. 'tis often even more dangerous than leaving your body alone. Thus I think that Trader Joe running away at the suggestion that a physician heal him is entirely accurate.

These both being said, I do recognize that certain master physicians can actually perform miraculous acts of healing (relative to the others, of course - they don't have MRIs), so I won't say that the medical arts should NEVER have a positive effect, but only when the practitioner is well-versed. This leads to the ever-popular practice of self-experimentation, which can be absolutely hilarious roleplay.

I also believe the idea of having a certain 'minimum wound' threshold is silly. You can bandage up scratches just as well as you can (attempt) to bandage a femoral artery. However, perhaps the 'skill gain' should be wound-proportional. After all, you also don't learn as much from bandaging scratches as more serious injuries.

[Arrak]

I have some ideas about this.

In real life bandaging doesn't heal, but protects the regenerating tissue, _possibly_ enhancing the process. But I see it mostly as evading all sort of ill effects on the regenerating tissue.

So, there are several approaches to bandaging.


Use of bandage could:
1) Give a direct boost to hp.
2) Give a boost to regen, based on target's original regen speed.
3) Give a boost to regen, based on target's max hp.
4) Give a boost to regen, based on the amount of hp below max.
Of course a combination of these could work, too. They aren't exclusive. Let me build up an example, based on option 2.

Natural_healing_rate*((1+(v/100))-x-y-z)

v= variable - the bandaging skill
x= variable for subguild, for example 0.0 to physicians, 0.2 to others.
y= variable for bandaging self (0.2) or others (0.0)
z= variable for bandaging own race (0.0) or others (0.2)

Let's say Arrak was a non-physician, with the skill value of 57 in bandaging. That would give his bandaging the effect of 1+0.57-0.2-0.0, resulting in 1.37. So, it would mean he's recovering 37% faster than he would without bandage. The cap of the skill could be 500 for physics, 300 for others.

With this code a master bandager would make Arrak regenerate 6 times
faster than he would naturally, if his skill was 500. Of course you could wipe the variable x if the basic multiplier was 0.8 instead of 1. Then physics could start with a higher skill when they create.

Since the divider is 100, every skill increase would boost regen by 1%. If it was 50, every increase would boost it by 2% and so on. You get the idea, I'm sure.

The downside of that code is that ill effects of bandaging self or other races diminish as the skill goes higher, but I wanted to keep the example simple enough. If you want, I can make a more comlicated one later.

Another important issue. The bandaged person should ruin the bandage if they moved, so it could be some sort of forced rest, or even more critical state. It might be funny to allow only talks while 'regenerating'. So, in practise this would mean that you can only bandage resting people.

I like this idea because I think it would be realistic to see people always bandage themselves after a session of heavy beating.

The figures I put here are all imaginary, just giving you something to chew on and present the approach of the effecting mechanics.

[Edit] I added something to this post.

[jstorrie]

Here is another way bandaging could be taken. Rather than restoring HP flat out, it gives some 'phantom' HP that only count for regeneration purposes.

Say you have Jack Mul who has 140 HP, but stops regenerating if he dips below 100. Jane Elf sticks a dagger in his back and drops him to 75 HP. Jim Bynner rolls by and bandages him up, succeeding well enough on his bandaging skill to give Jack 40 'bandaged points' (which Jack needn't have any way of keeping track of) which is enough to allow him to regenerate as if he had 115, not 75, HP.

Over time these bandaged points could fade away. Strenuous activity could also make them fade faster, effectively ruining the bandage.

[tortall]

~uber bandage skill on thread~

This has come up in ATS again a few times recently.


Some good ideas were bought up on here, but I'd like to hear more.


My main problem is that I have to be at 50% of my HP to bandage myself. Yes. Half dead before I can heal myself. I don't see how that's realistic at all. I understand that uping it may mean Bynners will start smacking each other down to just practice bandage, but.... I really don't think that's the problem that everyone thinks it is.

I've had a 50 day rager only drop to the point of 50% of HPs 8 times. Most of those times she was too bad off to actually do anything. Got to bandage a total of.... 4 times? In 50+ days? Wasn't the type to stay inside either, and got hurt a LOT.

[Cutthroat]

My main problem is that I have to be at 50% of my HP to bandage myself. Yes. Half dead before I can heal myself. I don't see how that's realistic at all. I understand that uping it may mean Bynners will start smacking each other down to just practice bandage, but.... I really don't think that's the problem that everyone thinks it is.

I've had a 50 day rager only drop to the point of 50% of HPs 8 times. Most of those times she was too bad off to actually do anything. Got to bandage a total of.... 4 times? In 50+ days? Wasn't the type to stay inside either, and got hurt a LOT.

I agree it should be possible to bandage less serious wounds. What you described - sparring and hurting yourself to bandage - is interesting, but it's already theoretically possible with the current code (though it makes even less sense to try and abuse it). So as you said, it's not much of a problem.

A little scratch shouldn't get a Zalanthan Band-Aid though. But moderate condition? Those wounds should be able to be recovered by bandage.

[tortall]

Even "does not look well" would be nice. Anything that codedly tells everyone else that "you're bleeding all over their pretty floor"

'Cause it sucks when a templar's like "stop bleeding everywhere" and you're like. "......"


Then you die. :-D

[BlazinDayz]

Well, unlike in real life, your heal automatically while above 50% or so, therefore eliminating the necessity to be bandaged. Perhaps the bandage skill isn't totally realistic, but it fits the hp loss/gain code. The only thing I think should be impossible with the bandage skill is killing someone with it. Even if you fuck up trying to bandage someone, it should never bring them to below 0 hp. Only weapons should do that.

[Synthesis]

Well, unlike in real life, your heal automatically while above 50% or so, therefore eliminating the necessity to be bandaged. Perhaps the bandage skill isn't totally realistic, but it fits the hp loss/gain code. The only thing I think should be impossible with the bandage skill is killing someone with it. Even if you fuck up trying to bandage someone, it should never bring them to below 0 hp. Only weapons should do that.

Have you ever been dropped below 50% hp in real life?

I just ran "below 50% hp" through AccessMedicine and didn't get any hits....

[BlazinDayz]

My point was while above 50%, your health usually goes up in Arm. In real life, your wounds probably wouldn't heal so fast. So if you wanted to do a major overhaul of medical code, you might have to change how health automatically regenerates as is.

[RogueGunslinger]

I think it should be easy to bandage wounds around 80-100% of your max, and continually harder the closer you are to 0%.

Like in real life. Right Synthesis?

[Synthesis]

Bandage success is probably already affected by how badly the target is injured.  (And I don't mean in the trivial "he's too fucked up for you to even try" sense.)

It might just be confirmation bias on my part, but that's my suspicion.

As far as comparisons with real life go:  I prefer to think that there's some cosmic Vivaduan background radiation that causes everyone to heal up spontaneously, rather than attempt to explain such ridiculous nonsense in purely mundane terms.

[BlazinDayz]

I think it should be easy to bandage wounds around 80-100% of your max, and continually harder the closer you are to 0%.

Like in real life. Right Synthesis?

Yes.

[tortall]

I think it should be easy to bandage wounds around 80-100% of your max, and continually harder the closer you are to 0%.

Like in real life. Right Synthesis?

Yes.

Exactly. So, starting out, you can only bandage minor things. Makes sense. I've had first aide classes and such. I can bandage a sprain, stop the blood flowing, and such. But if someone was half dead? My n00n bandage skill wouldn't work.

Only Nyr said the bandage skill works as they intended it. I'd like to hear more feedback on WHY they intended it that way though. Everyone's ALWAYS trying to make things more realistic.... Why not this?

[Synthesis]

1. The level of injury you can successfully attempt to treat is affected by your skill.  (known)

2. Your chance of success is affected by a) wound severity and b) your skill.  (strongly suspected)

What else are you asking for?

[musashi]

Why you can't patch up smaller wounds, I think.

My main problem with bandage, as has been said by others before, is that you end up acting like a crazy person trying to work it.

>bandage self

You don't have the skill to bandage a wound that great!

>sleep

>wake

>bandage self

You don't have the skill to bandage a wound that great!

>sleep

>wake

>bandage self

You don't need to bandage those wounds, they aren't that serious.

GARKTAHT!!!!

[Synthesis]

Fortunately, getting injured is fairly easy, so you can always try, try again.

[Fathi]

Why you can't patch up smaller wounds, I think.

My main problem with bandage, as has been said by others before, is that you end up acting like a crazy person trying to work it.

>bandage self

You don't have the skill to bandage a wound that great!

>sleep

>wake

>bandage self

You don't have the skill to bandage a wound that great!

>sleep

>wake

>bandage self

You don't need to bandage those wounds, they aren't that serious.

GARKTAHT!!!!

Hm!

http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,37109.0.html

[Eyeball]

For more input, look here:

http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,15804.0.html

That was four years ago. It isn't going to change now, I'm sorry to say.

[tortall]

For more input, look here:

http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,15804.0.html

That was four years ago. It isn't going to change now, I'm sorry to say.

Yes, I read that as well. I was hoping ti bring it up again to stir things up and hope that maybe the imms would see that someone with a n00b bandage skill not being able to do ANYTHING unless they're half dead was a little crazy... But apparently I'm one of few who think that. Carry on with your lives, since few have any wish for change here.

[BlazinDayz]

Yeah, there could be a major bandage code overhaul to make it more 'realistic', but I don't see where all the strife is coming from. The bandage learning skill is very steep, but there are non-jarring ways to practice. My two medic-oriented characters both learned about how to bandage people very fast. I even think the bandage skill may be the quickest skill to increase. And once you are finally successful with it, you can really work wonders with bandage.

What I'm saying is yeah the bandage skill could be better, but for now, it's pretty good as it is.

[Lizzie]

I'm glad to see so many people feel this is a problem. Though, we -could- just emote the part out of healing someone (or ourselves), why bother having a skill, in that case? I mean, you don't need the coded skill to emote bandaging who codedly doesn't need bandaging. But if they are 20 hps down, why don't they need a stitch, or a bandaid, or a kiss on the booboo to make it feel better, or SOMETHING? Why won't the bandage skill work at all, if they're 20 hps down? That's a lot of hps. I mean, even if someone is "bleeding heavily" from a fresh wound, often that isn't "bleeding badly enough" to warrant a coded bandage? C'mon. That's nuts. If someone is bleeding badly enough to be "bleeding badly," then he's bleeding badly enough to benefit from a coded slap of an ace bandage, or a poultice, or some sawdust, or leeches, or something.

[tortall]

I'm glad to see so many people feel this is a problem. Though, we -could- just emote the part out of healing someone (or ourselves), why bother having a skill, in that case? I mean, you don't need the coded skill to emote bandaging who codedly doesn't need bandaging. But if they are 20 hps down, why don't they need a stitch, or a bandaid, or a kiss on the booboo to make it feel better, or SOMETHING? Why won't the bandage skill work at all, if they're 20 hps down? That's a lot of hps. I mean, even if someone is "bleeding heavily" from a fresh wound, often that isn't "bleeding badly enough" to warrant a coded bandage? C'mon. That's nuts. If someone is bleeding badly enough to be "bleeding badly," then he's bleeding badly enough to benefit from a coded slap of an ace bandage, or a poultice, or some sawdust, or leeches, or something.

Lizzie, we both feel passionate about this. And we agree. Clearly this means the imms are just laughing at us, thinking we're both just fooling them into THINKING we get along.

Thus, nothing will happen....





Or We could keep this thread going until they finally give in. I'm glad other players have figured out how to master bandage so quickly. Too bad you can't share that knowledge.

[number13]

When a player chooses 'physician', he's looking to be either an herbalist (which works out fine at char gen) or a healer. Usually, the intent isn't to play a gimpy healer-in-training.  Sadly, it one of those professions you have to put a significant time investment into before the PC is better than worthless.  Consider, a 10 day PC is 240 hours played, which is 200 hours longer than it normally takes to completely explore a typical console RPG.

I can sort of understand starting everyone off as terrible combatants. You don't want kamikaze PCs zerging other PCs. Skills like bandage/bandage-making?  There should be a standardize method of starting the skill at a useful level, be it a karma option or starting a character with an advanced age or (my preference) as a wisdom-scaled bonus of the physician subclass. 

Slightly off-topic, but the problem isn't so much how bandage works (though it does severely stretch suspension of disbelief) -- it's the time investment common to nearly every skill before they work as expected.

[Cerelum]

I agree that Bandaging is all jacked up, but I really don't think they are going to waste time coding it differently for this incarnation of Arm.

I personally am just going to hope and pray that Arm2 has better systems in place.

And if not, I'll riot!

[BlazinDayz]

Alright, so you guys are asking if we can bandage characters with increased percentage level of their health. Instead of 50% maybe 65%, 75% or so. I'd be down with that. Additionally, when in the higher hp range, bandage gain/loss should be significantly decreased.

[tortall]

Alright, so you guys are asking if we can bandage characters with increased percentage level of their health. Instead of 50% maybe 65%, 75% or so. I'd be down with that. Additionally, when in the higher hp range, bandage gain/loss should be significantly decreased.

Yes! This. I'd settle for just 65%. I dunno about you others, but I usually FLEE and get the FUCK OUT OF THERE once I get even CLOSE to 65% of my HP. So unless you wanna play unrealistically and be half dead a lot.... Or find people who are willing to almost die for you... Then you'll never even get to use bandage.


I'm not asking for the to recode the whole thing. Just shift that one number that says what the HP loss has to be.

Granted, I will say I know NOTHING of the coding, so it COULD be more complicated than that.

[Lizzie]

I'd just like it to work like most other skills work, in the most simple terms. Examples:

Combat - piercing.

If you fail, you get a failure message, and a chance (not guarantee) to improve.
If you succeed, you succeed with varying degrees, each of which comes with its own message.

Kick:
If you fail, you get a failure message, and a chance to improve. Critical failure could result in the opponent pushing you down.
If you succeed, you succeed with varying degrees, each of which comes with its own message.

Crafting:
The item you want to work with is either craftable, not craftable to you because you don't have that specific skill, not craftable because you're not skilled enough, or not craftable.

I think the bandage skill is most closely related to crafting...

Notice in crafting, there's no "the item you want to work with is not craftable to you because it's too easy."

That's the part of bandaging I take issue with. The part where the echo says "he's injured, but not injured *enough*." "This piece of bone could be turned into a dozen things, but ten of them are too easy for you so we'll only let you make two." "Your opponent is too weak, so we won't let you kill him." "The sparring dummy is too stupid to fight back, so you will be incapable of trying to kick it."

I don't like, that you can't TRY to bandage someone who IS injured, simply because they aren't injured enough, no matter how well or poorly skilled you are.

Like foraging...remember they had to take kindling out and make it its own segment of foraging for wood, because once you got good at foraging wood, you never found kindling, and sometimes you WANTED to find kindling? Well this bandage issue is the same thing. Yes, I can heal a mekillot sawed in half, but no, I can't put a poultice on a guy with razor-burn?

[5 day lifespan]

I would say that yes, you should be able to bandage at any hit point damage, because if I want to spend 100 sid on a bandage for 10 hps that will get healed on their own in a few seconds anyway, then why not let me?  Bandage, like crafting, requires a monetary investment to get good at, but also in this case requires people to be nearly, but not quite, too hurt to continue on.  It seems that some injuries heal more slowly outside than they do in cities.  This means that being 30% down can be detrimental outside.  Why should I do the unrealistic thing of sleeping to restore those HP's instead of having my ranger friend slap 200 coins worth of materials on my arm.

Are we worried about abuse?  It is a lamentable fact of games utilizing systems that abuse is going to happen.  As an RPI MUD, we discourage such behavior, and I say that due to the associated cost with bandaging, there should be no reason why we can't train it up like any other skill.

As a proposal, I might add further modifiers for the heal skill based on environment.  If you are in the middle of a sand storm, it should be much harder to apply critical care than if you are inside in a quit room.  Thus, the code as it is written (for success and failure) should be sufficient to be the balancing force.

It seems obvious to me that people above 50% would have a higher success rate, and thusly skill ups will require your target to be closer and closer to death, also meaning that you are as likely to kill as to cure them.  First aid should be easy to get the basics of (it is) and harder for you to pull off trauma surgeon type heroics.

I would even be amused to see a scenario in the Byn (or similar units) where all troopers and above are issued one bandage, and anyone with the medical ability uses that bandage on them in the field in case of emergency (just like in the US army, each soldier has a personal supply of bandages that is to be used on them first in case of emergency to avoid the depletion of the medic's supplies as much as possible).

It's good to know I am not the only person curious about the difficulties with this skill and wanting to talk about it.