Identifying wounds

[preiman]

not sure how hard this might be, but I'm putting it out there. I think it would be kind of cool if we had the ability to examine a wound either on a living character, or on a corpse to see what kind of weapon made it.
maybe it could be a new use of first aid, or possibly a new skill all together.
The way i see it working is, the higher your skill is the better you get at identifying something. at the beginning all you'd get is that the wound is a sort of cut. at higher levels that it's a cut from a slashing weapon, higher still that it was made with a dagger weapon, and at it's highest levels maybe things like how skilled the user was, what kind of dagger, and what the dagger was made out of.

Like i said, not sure how difficult something like this might be or how much strain this might put on the server, it's just my humble idea of what might be cool.

[jilliana]

What would be the reason for this other than just curiousity?

If we had a variety of ways to heal wounds other than bandages, poultices and Thaumaturgy, knowing the type of weapon that made the wound would make more sense.

[preiman]

a big part of it would be immersion, but it could also be very useful. less for still living characters, but say you find a corpse being able to learn what killed it could help you prepare for any impending badness, and go a long way towards ending some of the meta assumptions about random bodies.
I am sure there are more aspects I am not thinking of. but those were the ones that got the idea kicking around in my head.

think about it this way. you find a shopkeeper dead in mistral and no one saw the kill. being able to tell that the kill was done by a canim rather than an an assassin, infested or random psychopath could really effect how you respond to such a thing.

[criticalfault]

Right, "Mauled and partly eaten" is worlds different than "burned to a crisp" or however it wants to be introduced. It would give someone a lot more insight into how to defend themselves and the likes. Stuff like firebolts, arrows means shields will go a long way, though chain weapons means shields won't be as effective, etc. Could also be a really slick way of introducing new badies or stories!

[jilliana]

think about it this way. you find a shopkeeper dead in mistral and no one saw the kill. being able to tell that the kill was done by a canim rather than an an assassin, infested or random psychopath could really effect how you respond to such a thing.

This would make complete sense then. I would like to add another penny to this idea and suggest that it be something one could learn slowly at various levels of first aid.

[Kent]

It's too bad the forum didn't give us the ability to thumbs up or thumbs down posts. I would definitely give Prieman's idea a thumbs up. It might be hard to code, though.

I would think even a child could tell the difference between burned to death, chewed up by a canim, shot with arrows, and clubbed to death with a mace...no first aid skill needed for these distinctions.

[Jaster]

Pretty sure most normal children lack the cognitive ability to differentiate between types of wounds (booboos), not to mention their general lack of understanding for the concept of death.

I would go so far as to say that most normal people wouldn't be able to tell the difference alot of the time. There's a reason some Joe Schmoe can't walk in from the street and perform a (murder) autopsy like a coroner would. Even with my medical training, I would be sorely lacking there.

Of course, we're not talking about performing an autopsy. We're just talking about telling one wounds source from another. I'd still say in most cases the best I could realistically do is tell a cut from a stab, blunt trauma from penetrating trauma, stuff like that. But it would be hard to say, for instance, that a cut was from a shortsword versus a longsword, or that shattered ribcage was from a sledgehammer and not a mace, or that stabby looking wound was from a dagger and not an arrow (assuming the arrow was removed, of course). Certainly, the size and shape of a wound (and how far it penetrated) could clue you in, but without proper training (and beyond that, experience) most people are going to see a stab as a stab and a cut as a cut. And telling what material the weapon was made of? Good luck, unless you find some splinters of wood in there (stabbed by a dussack, hmm?).

But hey, in the medical field it usually doesn't matter what caused a laceration, because a cut IS a cut, no matter how big. It's going to be treated in mostly the same manner anyway. If my job were to find out what killed a person, I'm sure I could do much better. There's my grain of salt (delicious and iodized.. for health reasons).

[jilliana]

Of course, we're not talking about performing an autopsy. We're just talking about telling one wounds source from another. I'd still say in most cases the best I could realistically do is tell a cut from a stab, blunt trauma from penetrating trauma, stuff like that. But it would be hard to say, for instance, that a cut was from a shortsword versus a longsword, or that shattered ribcage was from a sledgehammer and not a mace, or that stabby looking wound was from a dagger and not an arrow (assuming the arrow was removed, of course). Certainly, the size and shape of a wound (and how far it penetrated) could clue you in, but without proper training (and beyond that, experience) most people are going to see a stab as a stab and a cut as a cut. And telling what material the weapon was made of? Good luck, unless you find some splinters of wood in there (stabbed by a dussack, hmm?).

But hey, in the medical field it usually doesn't matter what caused a laceration, because a cut IS a cut, no matter how big. It's going to be treated in mostly the same manner anyway. If my job were to find out what killed a person, I'm sure I could do much better. There's my grain of salt (delicious and iodized.. for health reasons).

This is why I suggested that if this idea were to be implemented, it would be at much higher levels of first aid.
With as much bandaging as we do, I'm sure that after a while we'd learn to tell the difference between basic types of injuries and what caused them.

[Kunren]

Tiiiime to necro! I was looking for a good thread to post some ideas I had for first aid and this would be an amazing first step. One big problem I can see here is that weapons do different types of damage. A long sword can do piercing damage, or slashing damage, or hacking damage I think? But the way the current system is set up, you could, say, hit an arm with 30 piercing damage, and 25 slashing damage the next round. As the system currently is, that simply means your arm took 55 total damage, and it considered the same wound. a way to fix this perhaps, would be to consider each HIT a wound to that body part, allowing multiple wounds to exist on the same body part and have be healed individually, which would allow the individual wounds to show what they were caused by.

Stitching: This would be a lovely addition to first aid. Could be done with a needle and thread of course, using up the thread for each wound stitched. After stitching a clean bandage placed on it would be able to heal even the worst wounds, and with a poultice it would heal incredibly fast. Perhaps it would only work on cuts or stabs and have a severe penalty when trying to stitch up yourself as opposed to someone else?

Infection: I don't have any ideas really, but I'd love to see this put in somehow. A scratch in this time period was near as dangerous as a giant sword wound thanks to the lack of antibiotics.

[Acarin]

Tiiiime to necro! I was looking for a good thread to post some ideas I had for first aid and this would be an amazing first step. One big problem I can see here is that weapons do different types of damage. A long sword can do piercing damage, or slashing damage, or hacking damage I think? But the way the current system is set up, you could, say, hit an arm with 30 piercing damage, and 25 slashing damage the next round. As the system currently is, that simply means your arm took 55 total damage, and it considered the same wound. a way to fix this perhaps, would be to consider each HIT a wound to that body part, allowing multiple wounds to exist on the same body part and have be healed individually, which would allow the individual wounds to show what they were caused by.

Or you could just identify that any particular location wound was made by a variety of weapons if this is the case... There are enough hit locations already. We don't need to separate them out more.

[Alila]

Ooooh! Even if it required an ability slot, is there any possibility of this happening? It could be so much fun! Even if it's only on the way to the nearest temple, it is always interesting to try and figure out what killed someone. At the moment we are limited to "Hmm, there are few visible wounds, maybe it was cold or hunger?" or "There are brigands around here, maybe they hit it off on the wrong mace." But it could add such an interesting layer to finding the fallen, only because mechanically nothing is stopping a truly sneaky murderer from BURYing a body. But if they wanted to blend in with the surrounding mace-wielding brigands they would have to find a similar object themselves, or track them to somewhere else, or choose to specifically not use a blunted weapon. And it was mentioned before, but it could add a wonderful aspect to finding someone dead on the road and attempting to track whatever killed them. SO yes, mostly an rp tool, but a very unique and logical and exciting one.
Thank you,
-Alila
;)

[TheCacklackian]

I didn't even see this before I posted mine, I like this idea a lot, if you see someone standing over a freshly killed infested covered in scorchmarks, and that person doesn't have a torch, you could assume they are a pyromancer. Same goes for other forms of magic. You can asses how someone you found dead died, if it was from severe injuries then you know maybe someone/thing dangerous is around, whereas if there are no obvious wounds, you can assess that he may have starved or froze to death. either way, it's a cool concept!