A dead horse: The Bandage Skill. A rant.

[UnderSeven]

Yes.  I've been around the block.  I've hit just about every topic there probably has ever been at one point or another.  It is true.  I am very loose.  So why you might ask would I be coming back to this particularly dead horse?  Why well because it still bothers me.  

Here we have Armageddon 1 which is at this point an excellent testing ground for ideas for armageddon 2.  Small changes here could be implemented to see how well it would work on Armageddon 2 without any great loss to said game.  So why not experiment?  I'm sure the staff are, but one place I have not seen them experiment is with the infamously useless skill bandage.

But someone might reply, but Underseven, bandage isn't useless, it's got lots of uses for someone who uses it right.  Let me rephrase.  Bandage is useless.  It didn't always used to be.  Prior to poison cures, bandage was quite nice as it was the only mundane way to unpoison someone besides waiting.  Now with poison cures, a lot of magickers, that the skill only appears on one or two trees, can only be practiced on someone in pretty bad shape and the COMMON instance of failure resulting in said person getting in worse bad shape - has ensured this skill will probably top the list of the most useless skills ever on all of armageddon.  Seriously, it's right up there with Value, except value has been given added functionlity over time to make it at least something useful..  Seriously guys, thiis skill is useless.

To be fair it could be useful, but it would need some changes. As ARM 1 comes toward and end, this would be a GREAT time to put changes in and see which ones work and which don't.  

I'm going to go ahead and make some suggestions now and you will all love them very very mucch.  Seriously.  You will.

1) Make bandage far more accessible.
       Currently as I understand rangers and a subclass or two get this, where as ranger is by far the best at bandanging.  This is dumb.  The fact is most people with basic training could probably apply a bandage that would at least be better for said person being bandaged than the person would be were they not bandaged at all.  Are we really going to say the skill to wrap a piece of cloth around a wound is so super specialized that only someone really working hard at it will be able to do it even marginally well?  Can we even dress ourselves or tie our own shoes?  If the answer there is yes, then I think it stands to reason more classes should get a bandage skill with maybe just a much lower cap than ranger.  I would personally suggest all fighting classes get bandage.  Warrior, ranger, burgular, assasin and pick pocket.  Merchants and magickers maybe not.  This should seriously be a skill almost on the same level as cooking.  Seriously, in a dangerous world like armageddon you're telling me more people can cook (when raw meat is perfectly tasty) but they can't do a damned thing about the constant cuts and scrapes they probably get on a daily basis?

2) Make more wounds bandageable and make failure less suck.
       So basically here is the thing, you can currently only bandage someone who is under regen point,  but said person can sleep their injuries off and probably will, rather then get bandaged.  Afterall, bandaging is risky, expensive and did I mention useless?  Not only will they most likely sleep it off. . wait for it. . THEY'LL PROBABLY RP GETTING BANDAGED!  So why not make bandage expand so wounds that arn't below regen can also get bandaged.  Say someone has only lost 1 hp.  Say someone wants to bandage them, lets say instead of code saying they don't need it, code actually lets them try?  Lets say success gives them hp, failure does not, or hurts them.. Seriously, why doesn't the code do this?  I got a paper cut yesterday and I was able to bandage it with a bandaid.  I'm sure I didn't need the bandaid to survive, but it might of protected me from infection, helped it heal and helped it scab over.  I think the bandaid was a good idea all around.  Another thing that happened yesterday was my arm char got hit by an arrow.  She would of loved a bandaid I think but the code prevented her from applying one.  Something about not needing bandaging.
       Failure is far to painful.  At this point the likely event of failure makes a better option then bandaging being just sleeping.  Lets make it now so that only crit failures hurt the person and regular failures just don't heal them.  sort of like the skill pick pocket where only crit failures reveal you.
        Lastly lets make it so minor bandaginig can heal minor wounds.  In other words a low skilled bandager might not be able to do any serious good but maybe could give you between 1 and say 5 hp back.  Probably it wouldn't be used a lot, but lets just say we have a huge supply of bandages over the relatively small demand.  This is though because the skill is pretty much useless.

In conclusion I once witnessed a character die slowly (I mean over the course of a real life hour) in one of the major settlements of the game because no one could bandage them.  Are you serious?  Between all those pcs and npcs at this rather major event going on no one could save them?  Yes I'm serious.  Why? Because bandage is useless.  It is seriously time someone does somehting about this so we can see how this skill could be the skill it should be before arm 2 comes about.

I'd hate to start arm2 playtesting new bandage code we could of tried in arm1 or even worse . . . playining with the same useless bandage code we have currently.

Thanks.


Ps, if bandage already has had some of the above implemented I appologize for not having used the skill in literally years.  The helpfile should probably then be updated to reflect it's not so uselessness if that were the case.

Thank you.

This is really not an attack against staff, it is meant to be an amusing rant about current bandage code.

[Fnord]

/agree.

I'd sooner face an ancient defiler than a n00b medic armed with a backpack full of bandages.

[Marauder Moe]

Yeah, I don't think this is going to be a particularly controversial topic.    :wink:

[Coat of Arms]

I definitely wouldn't consider bandage useless. It's not the neatest skill to work with because it can be very frustrating to both train and use in practice, but it certainly has its uses once you get past some of the restrictions.

You can't bandage someone who's only barely injured, that's true. While not particularly realistic, I believe this was a measure taken by the coders to prevent somebody from just bandaging up all the time without getting in any danger, and to avoid people powergaming the skill up too easily.

I had a ranger who worked this skill up far enough to branch from it, so I believe I've got some experience with bandaging, and I'd say it could be much worse. True, you can't really bandage anyone until they're too hurt to recover naturally which can be a big hindrance, but on the other hand you can end up healing some pretty big chunks of health with it. Even with scraps of cloth that are basically free. To me, it proved an invaluable tool that allowed me to avoid the very risky business of sleeping in the desert while badly wounded. Once the skill gets to a decent level you don't fail too often, and failure never results in a massive loss of health. I think the highest I've seen was around 10, so unless you're trying to bandage someone whose life is hanging by a thread - which should be a big risk anyway - you're not going to kill anybody with this skill unless you try to.

I'll agree that too few guilds get this skill. I think it's one of those things that everyone should be able to do, but as with many other skills this isn't the case. I'm hoping to see that changed in 2.0. Also, yes, it can be very annoying to train this skill because you'll have to find a severely wounded person to do it on and that's just not always readily available. This is one of the reasons that I've frequently suggested alternative methods to train a skill up to a moderate level without the need to use it fully.

One thing I would definitely like to see changed is the raw value of even ordinary bandages. They're squares of linen folded up and stitched along the hem, it's not rocket science, so stop charging 60+ 'sid for them you greedy, ignorant NPC merchants.

If you overcome these obstacles, you'll end up with one of the most powerful skills for somebody who often sees danger without a team of friends to back you up. For the lone ranger who lives in the wilderness, it's just pretty damn handy to be able to bandage yourself for 30 health whenever you're in a bad shape.

[UnderSeven]

I'm going to address just one thing said in that last post.  The bit about the healing restriction done possibly to stop cheating with bandage.

We shouldn't try to guess what coders were thinking, but in attempting to validate the way things are, my counter point would be that as long as we can sleep ourselves over regen and then regen at a relatively fast rate, the only place where bandage could possibly be useful is a situation where you can't sleep.  

Yes the skill has functionality but side by side with any other skill in the game, I stand by my arguement that it is useless as currently implemented.

EDIT: I just want to stress that we regen in this game.  How could it be cheating to use a skill to do what you can do anyway already?  If it was really a problem we could add on an extra thing where the quit timer is applied to bandage so you can't bandage a wound that is above regen if someone has fought to recently.  Say your target is not sitting still enough to bandage currently.   That way the delay should more or less equalize out any problem with potientally abusing bandage to get past small wounds.  I would also re-remind, you autoregen.

[Coat of Arms]

Well, the thing is that bandage is actually highly unrealistic in its fundamental function. Since we don't have a bleed code, the only way the skill can even exist is by making it just heal health points. In real world, if I get cut with a sword and someone slaps a bandage on the wound, I'm not really feeling any better aside from the fact that I'm possibly not losing as much blood. I can't jump right into the fray and feel no pain just because my slash wound is covered by a bit of cloth. Until we get an actual bleed code like the one SoI has, bandage is going to be a very hack'n'slashy skill, just as sleeping for an hour to recover from that arrow in your stomach is.

I think that realism is lost on this skill. To me, it has always been a playability tool that might make a shred of sense if you use it responsibly. I never tried to explain with realism how I just made my wound disappear by squeezing a square of linen onto it. My best guess is that if you're hurt enough that bleeding is a danger to your health, bandage can help you. If you've scraped your knee, a coded bandage won't do shit for you, but feel free to roleplay doing it to avoid an infection (which isn't coded and thus not something an actual bandage will prevent anyway).

With the current code, the most realistic way to portray bandage would probably be to have it increase your natural regeneration. I think that would be kinda neat, and it should work no matter how hurt the bandagee is.

[UnderSeven]

Well, the thing is that bandage is actually highly unrealistic in its fundamental function. Since we don't have a bleed code, the only way the skill can even exist is by making it just heal health points. In real world, if I get cut with a sword and someone slaps a bandage on the wound, I'm not really feeling any better aside from the fact that I'm possibly not losing as much blood. I can't jump right into the fray and feel no pain just because my slash wound is covered by a bit of cloth. Until we get an actual bleed code like the one SoI has, bandage is going to be a very hack'n'slashy skill, just as sleeping for an hour to recover from that arrow in your stomach is.

I think that realism is lost on this skill. To me, it has always been a playability tool that might make a shred of sense if you use it responsibly. I never tried to explain with realism how I just made my wound disappear by squeezing a square of linen onto it. My best guess is that if you're hurt enough that bleeding is a danger to your health, bandage can help you. If you've scraped your knee, a coded bandage won't do shit for you, but feel free to roleplay doing it to avoid an infection (which isn't coded and thus not something an actual bandage will prevent anyway).

With the current code, the most realistic way to portray bandage would probably be to have it increase your natural regeneration. I think that would be kinda neat, and it should work no matter how hurt the bandagee is.

Yeah, bandage is unrealistic just like regen speed is unrealistic.  

The bit about bandage just boosting regen, I think that's an excellent idea.  I still feel bandage should be far more accessable to people, but if all it did was boosted regen.  We could even then LOWER regen across the board (for unbandaged people), thus making bandage really quite necessary.

Great idea.

Actually I love this idea so much that I think it is what should happen.

EDIT: But I still think bandage should be used to bring people back from - hp as it can now.

[NoteworthyFellow]

So then how about a bleeding and infection code?

Bleeding is pretty simple: once you're wounded past the regen point, or after taking a particularly hard hit even above the regen point, you lose health rather than regenerating it.  A bandage wouldn't heal you, but it would stop the bleeding.  Failure can just... make it not work.  There's really no reason to help kill somebody just because you failed at slapping a bandage on them, unless we're figuring that you're suturing the wound as well, in which case the skill should really have its name changed.

An infection code could be interesting and would go well with a wound code.  Say you get a nasty cut on your arm and don't bandage it: there could be a chance, perhaps based on your endurance, of the wound getting infected, which would make the limb that is infected useless and cause some injury to you if you move.  As the infection worsens, it starts having a similar effect to some poisons.  This could give physician-type characters another job, too: if someone didn't get their wound bandaged in time and it became infected, a physician could cure the infection with some herbal remedy.  Of course, I would say the physician should have to apply it themselves, rather than just making a pill to pop, but that would necessitate NPC physicians (since you can't count on a physician always being there), which might complicate things a bit.  So, an infection-curing tablet would work just fine, I suppose.

[UnderSeven]

So then how about a bleeding and infection code?

Bleeding is pretty simple: once you're wounded past the regen point, or after taking a particularly hard hit even above the regen point, you lose health rather than regenerating it.  A bandage wouldn't heal you, but it would stop the bleeding.  Failure can just... make it not work.  There's really no reason to help kill somebody just because you failed at slapping a bandage on them, unless we're figuring that you're suturing the wound as well, in which case the skill should really have its name changed.

An infection code could be interesting and would go well with a wound code.  Say you get a nasty cut on your arm and don't bandage it: there could be a chance, perhaps based on your endurance, of the wound getting infected, which would make the limb that is infected useless and cause some injury to you if you move.  As the infection worsens, it starts having a similar effect to some poisons.  This could give physician-type characters another job, too: if someone didn't get their wound bandaged in time and it became infected, a physician could cure the infection with some herbal remedy.  Of course, I would say the physician should have to apply it themselves, rather than just making a pill to pop, but that would necessitate NPC physicians (since you can't count on a physician always being there), which might complicate things a bit.  So, an infection-curing tablet would work just fine, I suppose.

I'm not arguing that bleeding/infection/phyisican code would be cool, I just think it's off topic.  I'm trying to suggest relatively small code changes that could fix what I view as an utterly broken skill at present.  I really would prefer not to get too far off topic from examining bandage and more importantly, convincing the staff to change it.

[rishenko]

I would suggest a overhaul to 'bandaging' to have it reflect a crafting skill.  You have various 'tools' (a bandage, a needle, threading, hot bone poker, etc.) that you hold in your primary and secondary hand that you then use to "craft" the wound.

As you improve in the skill, you gain further 'recipes' that allow you to perform more styles of 'bandaging' with more tools.  Some styles would cure poisons, some give hp, others just increase regen. There would be a delay with each style of bandaging as with other crafting skills that vary depending upon difficulty.

Code Select Expand

A Desert Place
A tall, muscular man is resting here, bleeding profusely.

>eq

<primary hand>    a thin bone needle
<secondary hand>    a small spool of thread

>craft stitches muscular
You begin to carefully stitch the tall, muscular man's wound shut.

[FAILURE - NO HP LOSS]
You fuck up the stitches, leaving the wound open.

[CRIT FAILURE - MINOR HP LOSS]
You fuck up while stitching and aggravate the wound further.

[SUCCESS]
Using the the needle and thread you carefully sew the wound shut.

>l

A Desert Place
A tall, muscular man is resting here, bleeding heavily.

>eq

<primary hand>    a clean, linen bandage
<secondary hand>    a jar of thick paste

>craft bandage muscular
You begin to carefully rub the salve on the tall, muscular man's wound.

[FAILURE - NO HP LOSS]
You make a mess of the salve and apply the bandage improperly.

[CRIT FAILURE - MINOR HP LOSS]
You fuck up while wrapping the wound and irritate it further.

[SUCCESS]
You appropriately apply the salve and wrap the wound.

Using this method, you can treat a variety of wounds in whatever way would be medicinally correct for the situation.  This could be abused (treating a poison with stitching), as with anything else, though that could be countered by flagging how the individual lost the last x amount of hp.

Code Select Expand

TYPEOFHPLOSS::HPLOST
slashing::5
slashing::25
bludgeoning::40

The physician could then 'assess' the health of the individual and tell what kind of wounds they have suffered.  They would then have to treat the wounds accordingly, thus matching the skill with the affliction.  Using the above example:

* The 5 hp slashing wound could be treated with nothing other than a bandage.  

* The 25 hp slashing wound with stitching AND a bandage.  

* The 40 hp bludgeoning wound would be treated with a splint and salves for swelling.

EDIT:  Note that applying a bandage/stitch/salve to a wound might not heal it complete, but at least remove it from the hp loss list. This way a person might gain hp, but if removed from the list, no other medical service could be performed.  If there are no wounds on the hp loss list, there can be no healing treatment.  That would keep people from bandaging to perfection unless it was done by a damned skilled physician.

Once the individual's hp is full, or one of the wounds has been treated, it is removed from the char's hp loss list.  NOTE:  An added bonus is that if this list was used, the ldesc for the person could be set to reflect what the HP loss table shows them suffering.


An example of assessing a person's health:

Code Select Expand

A Desert Place
The tall, muscular man is reclining here, bleeding heavily.
The short, obese woman is reclining here, covered in red rashes.

>assess health muscular
The tall, muscular man appears to be suffering from the following:
a light cut
a severe gash
a swollen forearm

>assess health obese
The short, obese woman appears to be suffering from the following:
a couple inflamed rashes
a set of several puss ridden sores

Note the obese woman with rashes and sores.  You could create different symptoms based on poisons and sicknesses, thus allowing an experienced physician to diagnose the problem and provide proper treatment.  Unlike wounds, poisons could remain on the HP loss table, even with full hp, to reflect a continued sickness or non-health draining poison.

[brytta.leofa]

The Byn should go through bandages like water. Er, I mean, like hot, salty stew.

Make bandaging much easier (and a skill that most guilds get with a low skill cap), and add consequences for not bandaging.

[WWYD]

I don't think bandaging, in particular, needs to be any easier. The three guilds that have access to it are going to suck with it when they start. This is good. Merchants tend to rip out their hair trying to get the most basic craft down. Should we make crafting any easier? Nope. A character in a clan with a regular sparring schedule that gets the supplies and keeps at it for a month or two will eventually get -good- at it. Like a merchant. Like they should.

Anyways..changing bandage to a craft-like skill is just icky to me. If you make it overly complex, people aren't going to want to use it, because either A) they've got more important stuff going on around them, B) it bores them or C) They're a twelve/thirteen/fourteen year old kid who does not have a measure of patience.

Call me callous, but I like the bandage code as-is, and yes, I DO play a character that uses it heavily. The only thing that pisses me off when you've got that person JUST in bandage able health levels and write out that awesome emote, and boom, they heal that one point and deny you the pleasure of making them have pain.

[X-D]

Actually, bandage -is- a branchable skill for some classes.

http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?warrior

Next, over the years it has been made much easier to practice.

http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?salvage

Next, it really does not take that long to get it to a useful level.

Next, it is already an extremely powerful skill, I like it that way. If it was made easier and given to even more classes then you can also bet that its usefulness and over all strength would be decreased in order to balance. As it is, you must know somebody who has worked the skill hard, this helps interaction and balance. Going on a trip...well, you take a couple warriors of course. Maybe you know one of them is pretty skilled at bandage...got a choice of rangers...maybe you choose the one who is a better healer over the one that is a better archer...who knows.

The only problem I personaly have with the skill is that the fail to success ratio is much to high. You have to have the skill to very high level before that changes, and that is silly IMO. And that its either full success (heal) or full fail (damage) and no matter what you lose the bandage object.

The best help I can see for the skill is for there to be 2 other classes of fail. The middle ones. Fail, no hp loss and no bandage loss. Fail 1-2 HP healed and bandage lost. Still count as fail to skill increase but allow greater range of RP making the skill at least a bit more fun at lower levels and people a bit less fearful of the fledgling medic....though I don't understand why anybody really would be anyway.

Tools would be nice as well...at least to improve skill slightly and as RP props. Anything else to make it more complicated I'm against.

[Salt Merchant]

Instead of bandages healing wounds, I'd like to see them lower the hitpoint cutoff above which regeneration can take place without sleep.

I'd also like to see them do less damage and less often than they do now. Anyone with even a few minutes of training should be able to avoid misusing a bandage to the point of causing harm.

[Angela Christine]

One of the things about bandaging that has annoyed me is the teeny, tiny, narrow window that newbie bandagers have to work with.  

A newbie bandager can't bandage someone who has lost less than about half their HP, because they "don't need bandaging".  However, they also can't bandage someone who has lost around 70% or more of their HPs, because they "don't have the skill to bandage these wounds".  I suppose the latter restriction is to help prevent newbie bandagers from actually killing their patients, which should be a relief for everyone involved.   :lol:  But that means that there are very few situations where the new bandagers can even try to bandage.  

It also naturally leads to the situation where a person trying to bandage himself acts like a crazy person.  

> stand
> hold bandage
> bandage self
You aren't skilled enough to bandage these wounds.
>rest  

(to get your stamina as close to max as you can)
>sleep
>wake
>stand
>bandage self
You aren't skilled enough to bandage these wounds.
>sleep
>wake
>stand
>bandage self
You aren't skilled enough to bandage these wounds.
>sleep
>wake
>stand
>bandage self[/list]Repeat until you either get to bandage the wound (hooray!) or you over-sleep and heal to the point where you don't need bandaging.  Grr.





NPC merchant price for bandages is simply awkward.  It seems high, especially since they could theoretically be making bandages out of the odd-shaped scraps of cloth left over from making shirts and things.  A single bandage sells for nearly the same price as an entire length of raw cloth, despite the fact that each length of cloth can make several (usually 3) bandages.

However, if you are using the Bandage Making skill, it is nearly impossible to make a profit, or even break even with the NPC merchants.  The very best merchants will sell for 4X what they will pay for an item.  So if you buy a length of linen and then successfully make 3 bandages from it, those three bandages will probably sell for less than what you paid for the raw material.  O_o  But a newbie bandage maker won't be successful every time she tries to make bandages, sometimes she will manage to ruin the cloth without making bandages.  A physician trying to work exclusively with NPC merchants can expect to spend about 4000 sid before she starts to break even.  You can improve the situation a little by shopping around for cheaper materials, by selling to PCs, and by improving bandages with inexpensive (or free) herbs.  But it definitely isn't a skill you can make a living with.  It is much easier to live off foraging rocks than it is from being a physician, at least in the south.  (In the north the abundance of cheap/free herbs helps, since you can make tablets much more easily than bandages).

[Angela Christine]

As an amusing aside, here I am complaining about bandages as a newbie back in 2001.   :lol:  I used a clever pseudonym to avoid people from guessing who I was playing.   http://www.armageddon.org/HyperNews/get/general-archive2001/682.html

[alger]

I want to be able to apply bandages like actually make people wear them on certain locations.  You know like you want to bandage that latest unconscious scrab victim.  Just pull odd her clothes then start covering them with bandages.  Then they can wake up and go... wtf?

[jhunter]

I agree completely with Underseven on the subject. Bandage is near useless for really stupid reasons that could be fixed.

[Grey Area]

Just for an opposing viewpoint, I thought I'd chime in with the fact that I've had a non-physician character get very good indeed at bandaging, and it saved his and various other people's asses on many occasions.

Maybe it could be better, maybe it could be 'fixed.' But I sure wouldn't call it useless.

[rufus]

Nothing in this entire game is useless.