Medic DMs

[apoc527]

What are the DMs for Medic? For example, trying to do surgery with a pocket knife instead of a medikit. What about for injury--is the DM the same for Bob, who has 3 points off his Endurance from a minor fall, and Jim, who has two characteristics at 0 and the last with 2 points left after being mauled by a vicious critter?

For that matter, are there any rules for bleeding out?

 

[alex_greene]

Rules for injuries, including what happens to a body which goes without treatment, are in the core rulebook, p. 75 or thereabouts.

Penalties for lacking Medic skill are as for other skills: i.e. without even so much as Medic 0, it's a -3 untrained penalty DM.

Using improvised equipment, no antisepsis etc. also add a penalty DM to the roll. However, the Referee will have to adjudicate on what that penalty ought to be. Using a pen and a steak knife to perform an emergency trach in a restaurant; maybe -1, assuming the blade and pen have been cleaned. -2 if not. Doing brain surgery with a length of paper clip, forget it. The Referee can rule it out altogether, to the point of having NPCs haul the medic off the patient before he can inflict some real harm.

 

[AndrewW]

Using improvised equipment, no antisepsis etc. also add a penalty DM to the roll. However, the Referee will have to adjudicate on what that penalty ought to be. Using a pen and a steak knife to perform an emergency trach in a restaurant; maybe -1, assuming the blade and pen have been cleaned. -2 if not. Doing brain surgery with a length of paper clip, forget it. The Referee can rule it out altogether, to the point of having NPCs haul the medic off the patient before he can inflict some real harm.

And fit the medic with a nice straight jacket.

 

[apoc527]

Ok fair enough. Let's say you want an ER style drama. How would you use the rules to game out a patient brought in with multiple GSWs? What's the process for determining if the patient can be saved? It seems to me that it's really easy to save even the most mortally wounded patient with just a simple First Aid use of Medic.

Shouldn't it be harder to stabilize someone so traumatized? I've been reading the core rules and the Medic! Articles in S&P (nice work, Alex!) but these details aren't there. Maybe that's on purpose-if you don't die instantly, you'll live?

What do you think?

Edit: I'm assuming a fair degree of medical training. Doctors lose people all the time at TL7, and yet I don't see how that's possible within the rules.

I know you've got 5 minutes to receive first aid before it halves effectiveness. Then I guess you just have to do surgery and not fail?

 

[rust]

Even today, if the patient arrives at the trauma center alive, there is a
medical team present, the patient has no serious previous health prob-
lems (old age, heart problems ...) and the team can avoid serious com-
plications (infections ...), the patient has a rather good chance to survi-
ve, even with very serious wounds.

Most player characters will be comparatively young and comparatively
healthy, most of the medical equipment available today at a trauma cen-
ter will be available to field medics in improved and miniaturized form on
a higher technology level, and there will be much better drugs available,
too.

Therefore I do not consider it as implausible that most characters will sur-
vive even very serious injuries on a typical Traveller technology level.

 

[Sylvre Phire]

S&P 63-64 have expanded rules for medics, doctors, and medicine in Traveller. S&P 73 has an article exploring psionic healing. Those might help in some way.

Pax et bonum,

Dale

 

[apoc527]

Yes, I have those--they are helpful, but didn't quite cover the rules I was looking for. So I crafted the following rules for "mortally wounded" characters. It's pretty mean (and unplaytested), but I think they could work:

Mortally wounded = less than or equal to 20% of total characteristic points remaining (should be noted on character sheet somewhere)

Each minute, mortally wounded characters lose an additional characteristic point unless they succeed at an Endurance test (which is probably at a -3 DM).

A First Aid check will stabilize a mortally wounded character if it can heal enough damage to bring them over the 20% threshold. Because the standard first aid check requires 1-6 minutes, stabilization is often performed quicker with the commensurate DM. Fast Drug automatically stabilizes a mortally wounded character. At the Referee’s discretion, other types of similar medical equipment may provide a DM or automatically stabilize such characters. Stabilizing a mortally wounded character without a medical kit is a Difficult (-2) task.

 

[alex_greene]

Yes, I have those--they are helpful, but didn't quite cover the rules I was looking for. So I crafted the following rules for "mortally wounded" characters. It's pretty mean (and unplaytested), but I think they could work:

It doesn't require much of an effort to mortally wound a human.

There's a dreadful litany of hit locations all over the body where certain major blood vessels, nerves or major organs lie close to the surface, and where a well-placed knife blade, bullet or even casual blunt force trauma can render a man helpless instantly, and dead within a matter of minutes or seconds.

The vagus nerve, the brachial artery, the femoral artery, the spinal column at the back of the neck - humans are such fragile creatures. Even the simple shock from the impact of being shot could kill, never mind the physical damage to tissues from the presence of the bullet.

As for your rules, only apply them when it's something major - for instance, your PC is a medic and it's the Patron whom the PC is trying to save, or it's one of the player characters and his life is literally in the hands of an NPC medic and the dice (and pray that the medic isn't a quack who prescribes two aspirins and call me in the morning for a major sucking wound to the chest).

Otherwise, if the characters do sustain wounds from a fight, occasionally rule that despite severe characteristic reductions they are walking wounded, more or less ambulatory.

They've got to be able to enjoy walking away from a rambunctious, climactic fight scene once in a while.

 

[BP]

...Mortally wounded = less than or equal to 20% of total characteristic points remaining (should be noted on character sheet somewhere)

Each minute, mortally wounded characters lose an additional characteristic point unless they succeed at an Endurance test (which is probably at a -3 DM). ...

Not bad sounding. Though the percentage system penalizes higher stat characters, while a point system does likewise for low stat ones.

As alex_greene pointed out - one can have a relatively minor wound and yet life threatening or at least temporarily incapacitating injury.

Since MGT is roleplay more than simulation, this is abstractly handled by the point system, but the abstraction does have its flaws.

For some time I've been working on a more detailed injury system without resorting to detailed simulation...

 

[rust]

For some time I've been working on a more detailed injury system without resorting to detailed simulation...

I think this would require a different system, with wounds connected to
specific hit locations instead of general characteristics and different ty-
pes of injuries caused by different types of weapons.

It would also require a different and more plausible handling of first aid
and medical treatment. For example, real world first aid does not heal
the patient, it only prevents further deterioration by shock, blood loss
and thelike, and keeps the patient alive until he can be given medical
treatment.

In my view the Traveller system is not designed for that kind of an ap-
proach, and to get a more detailed and plausible system one would have
to replace the basic Traveller mechanics with something quite different.

 

[BP]

Very well put as usual rust! Hence the 'for some time' and 'without resorting to detailed simulation...' - though I should have added 'without much success'!

It probably took me a lot longer to realize things - but you essentially hit on every one of the issues I had when I first approached this... (I was able to simplify things down to a mere 2 or 3 pages :roll

The current system is quite elegant, actually, and a good referee will supplement details and make circumstance based allowances. The never ending balancing of detail, believability, complexity and playability is a tricky business.

For me this means Level Of Detail meeting Keep It Simple Stupid. Sadly, a point I often only get to after extended periods of time and effort.

 

[Sylvre Phire]

Huh... I just realized I had a "Duh" moment.

Maybe this set of articles on Freelance Traveller will help you:

Medicine in Traveller: http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/science/tmed/index.html

To further aid you, here's a link to the BITS (British Isles Traveller Support) Task System - it will help you parse the T4 task system over to MGT: http://www.bitsuk.net/Archive/GameAids/files/BITSTaskSystem.pdf

And finally, in case you need further illumination on the T4 task system, a link to where you can buy a PDF version of the rulebook: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=204&it=1

I hope that gives you some additional help with your questions.

Pax et bonum,

Dale

 

[BP]

Thanks Sylvre Phire!

The 'book' on the FreeLance site is interesting - though a bit too comprehensive for my gaming tastes - this is similiar to what my 'system' started to evolve to before I put the brakes on

The BITS pdf is slightly in error at the top when it states that MGT uses modifiers instead of difficulty levels - this could be confusing to some.

 

[BP]

Just to re-iterate/clarify for original poster:

What are the DMs for Medic?

As mentioned - the DMs for Medic skill are just like any other skill. So -3 if no level 0 or above; DM equal to skill level otherwise.

For example, trying to do surgery with a pocket knife instead of a medikit.

See the Skills and Tasks section under Task Difficulties beginning on pg 48.

The ref should guage the type of 'surgery' and apply an appropriate difficulty level. If the 'surgery' is a tracheotomy, then the pocketknife might work just fine. If it is more involved and would normally require anesthetics, diagnostic (internal scan) and fine surgical instruments (root canal) then apply an appropriate difficulty level (Formidabe perhaps on this one).

Note: A medikit is for field operations - a DM for it is covered by the Situational Modifiers on pg 49 (+1 when appropriate).

What about for injury--is the DM the same for Bob, who has 3 points off his Endurance from a minor fall, and Jim, who has two characteristics at 0 and the last with 2 points left after being mauled by a vicious critter?

The End DM is based on the current End stat, not the normal, undamaged one (that the character may recover to).

So if Bob has End of 11 and takes 3 in damage then treat him as a 8 for End DM (+0 instead of +1) till he recovers. This affects his recovery too!. Meaning he gets +0 till he recovers to 9, then he gets +1 going to 11.

If Jim is at 2 for his current End, then his End DM is -2! This means if Jim is seriously wounded he will die within a day without treatment - since his recovery rate per day is his current End DM of -2 (pg 75). This could indicate internal bleeding, organ failure (like lungs, kidneys, brain), external loss of blood, etc. (thus abstract per below).

For that matter, are there any rules for bleeding out?

Not specifically (to my knowledge), such is handled abstractly in the damage - and somewhat by the negative recovery DMs when End is too low...

 

[apoc527]

Maybe I'll give up on the bleeding/mortally wounded thing. The drama I'm going for is that moment in a d20 game when a PC gets reduced to -5 hp and has only 5 rounds to live. Someone else has to get there fast enough to stabilize him or he dies. Of course, in D&D, you have raise dead, so dying is less inconvenient than in Traveller.

As BP noted, the current rules still create a death sentence for anyone stuck in the wilderness while seriously wounded. Unless you use the random first blood rule, most heavily wounded characters will have negative End DMs and will bleed out.

Perhaps the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the medic gets shot by the machinegun is best represented by a PC who has died, but who the GM is giving some extra time for a dramatic death scene. I'd allow that assuming that the character hasn't taken too much additional damage past that needed to reduce all three characteristics to zero.

 

[alex_greene]

This really is a time where you as the Referee have to wing it. It's not a matter of numbers: it's a matter of drama, and for that you need to improvise.

 

[BP]

...I'm going for is that moment in a d20 game when a PC gets reduced to -5 hp and has only 5 rounds to live. Someone else has to get there fast enough to stabilize him or he dies. ...

Ha - you stumbled on one of the mechanics I've contemplated - damage reducing a stat below zero applies each subsequent round to the remaining stats.

This allows a characters condition to worsen even after combat is over and possibly even die without rapid assistance. First aid would go against this first (attempting to stabilize the patient).

This mechanic could also be explained as 'bleeding out'.

...I'd allow that assuming that the character hasn't taken too much additional damage past that needed to reduce all three characteristics to zero.

I've considered allowing a timing roll to death - when it is not overkill - and allowing additional limited minor actions on the extra rounds.

 

[apoc527]

Interesting. I think we should develop that rule, BP. Want to post it here and we can fiddle with it in this thread?

Edit: the bleeding out rule, I'm talking about. I like tension.

 

[BP]

I have a lot of rules 'contemplated' - with electronic and pencil notes spread about - but, I haven't experimented enough with the existing rules to really get a good feel for what will work and what is trash (most will be trash).

I prefer to try to work within the rules first - and apply the smallest tweaks neccessary. This requires experience - something I don't have enough of yet with MGT - and a reason I post so frequently on this board.

My analysis of things is very complex and drawn out - but the results I shoot for are always simple and concise. I prefer minimal out of character mechanics - like rolls, tables and predefined stuffs - things that only get in the way of 'playing a story'.

Even for design systems - I prefer simple equations and lookup tables. As long as I am not looking on one table to reference another - that is silly. I like everything to fit on simple reference sheets (equations make this easier - plus they aren't limited by page size like tables).

I look for game mechanics that support opportunity (like bleeding out...) but not neccessarily realism. Its a game - if I want reality I'll look outside or call my bank! I also don't want to be rolling tons of dice or using fractional counts or complex record keeping.

 

[apoc527]

I operate in much the same way at this point. I've been done with games like GURPS for a while--too much is done for "realism" or the simulation. I'd rather have a simple, fast, playable system.

I'm ok with certain calculations, as long as they can be done prior to the action sequence.

What I'm going to focus on, at any rate, is a basic "OMG help me now" rule that creates a little extra tension and drama during fight scenes. What I don't like about some games is the situation where combat only has consequences if you die. That's too all or nothing for my tastes. Then the only thing that becomes truly threatening is PGMPs or gauss rifles on full auto. That's too much escalation of violence for most parties.

Thus, a rule that allows a character to be greviously injured and dying but not insta-killed is helpful. It creates a sense of danger, but one that can be mitigated by quick action from your fellows.

I'm a little confused by the blurb you gave us regarding your rule because by my understanding, any damage left over after a characteristic is reduced to zero simply goes on to the next characteristic. If you didn't have that rule, then every single weapon would require 3 hits minimum to kill someone--that's not okay for rockets and PGMPs.

More in a bit...