What if Surgery falls short? How many surgeries?

[PsiTraveller]

Odd question about healing and surgery.

Assume a Traveller has End 8 Str 8 Agi 8. They get into combat and take damage over several rounds.

Let's say the combat is really nasty and they end up with End 0 Str 0 Agi 2
So they are unconscious and need surgery. Their End DM is -3, so they will never naturally heal this damage. (pg 79 of Core Book)

So no first was possible, and they go to a hospital for surgery.
Surgery restores points equal to the Effect. Lets assume Medic 3 Edu bonus +1 Average roll 7 is Effect of 3. That is applied evenly across the stats so
End 1 Str 1 Agi 3 (pg 78)


According to the rules the Traveller would need 5 more surgeries to get to End 6 Str 6 and Agi 8. At this point the Traveller would have only 2 characteristics injured and qualify for Medical Care that restores 3 Points + End DM per day.

Am I reading this wrong? and how would you have 6 surgeries on a player? Did they miss something the first 4 or 5 times?

 

[Old School]

First of all, what’s Agi?

Points restored are divided “as desired”, not equally. This is stated in the first aid paragraph, and the surgery paragraph says points are allocated the same way as first aid. Only “medical care” divides equally. So the logical approach is to restore all points from surgery to the least damaged characteristic. This could still take more than one surgery, either due to the amount of damage sustained (you can only do so much in one session), or because of a low effect (yes, you missed something). If it takes six, find a new surgeon.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Whoops, I mixed up the Medical Healing (divided evenly) and the first aid/Surgery. My bad. Nice catch. That changes things, and makes healing the stat closest to full the priority. Once one stat is at full Medical care can kick in.

It could still require multiple surgeries.

 

[Garran]

It isn't unusual to require multiple surgeries in the case of really severe damage. The final one(s) might be for relatively minor things (mostly cosmetic/reconstructive), but sometimes you just can't deal with everything at once, if only because the person's body wouldn't be able to take it.

 

[PsiTraveller]

This raises another point. How fast can the surgeries be performed? Assuming the above example of needing to raise the Dex to 8 in order to get to the only 2 stats damaged level enough successful surgeries need to be performed to get 6 points onto the Dex stat.

One option would be to have the surgery be in 1 or 2 hour blocks, allowing a roll every increment of time. So in this case the surgery could last 6 hours if only an Effect +1 was gained on each roll. This would allow only a single surgery of X hours length and then the patient goes into recovery and starts Medical Care. So a single surgery might have 6 rolls in it to raise the Dex to 8, and last from 6 to 12 hours.

This would prevent the concept of a player being out for weeks or months as round after round of surgery is required. I know multiple surgeries over months is a reality after an accident or other major trauma, but to have a player out of a game for that length of time would not be fun for the player. This could also explain Autodoc's. Put the person inside them and surgeries last until the person is repaired enough to heal on their own.

Of course in Traveller you could have a surgery, have a dose of Slow Drug, get a month's healing in 24 hours, and then have a second surgery, but now the logistics of things are getting a little excessive. I am looking for a ship based system, like in Firefly with the medical room and Simon Tam working away.


Old School: Oops I mixed up Agi and Dex. I've been playing a lot of Savage Worlds recently.

 

[Old School]

Allowing back to back to back surgeries defeats the surgery rule, so I wouldn’t allow it. Maybe one every other day? Could get three and plus 24 hours with a slow drug to fully heal in the course of one jump.

 

[steve98052]

In the real world, people often go through multiple surgeries for serious injuries, sometimes in a rapid series, sometimes scattered over a year or more.

Game rules don't have room to define the course of a series of medical care procedures, even those with hit location rules.

Since it's not in the rules, there are two ways to handle it. One is just to leave things abstract, healing only in terms of game rules. The other is to improvise the rules.

For example:
"You got knocked down to zero dexterity through three different injuries. Let's count that as three injuries to limbs. [Dice roll.] OK, your injuries are to your left thigh, right shin, and right forearm. [Roll.] Success. Everything is stabilized for now. [Roll.] The doctors decide that you need surgery on the thigh first. [Roll.] Success, but you need a week in recovery before they work on the leg and arm. [Roll, roll.] The leg surgery is a success. But they had complications on the arm. Also, the hospital financial officer says you've used up your credit line, unless you are willing to mortgage your ship shares. And the other share ownersneed to approve the mortgage, or else you arm is going to be crippled until you can pay down your debts. Everyone OK with that?" . . .