A Walk through Harnmaster - Physicians

Physician

This is a four page article.

So now we get into how your heal from the injuries you suffered in combat.

Society of Physicians

This section gives some details about the life of physicians on Harn. The main difference is that they know the value of basic antisepsis (keeping things clean) although don't know why it works the way it does. And there are magical options available although they are covered elsewhere.

Injury Recovery

From the previous example Bjorn has a S2, Serious Slash to the Thorax from the fight. How does he heal? He has to be treated and there is a table for that.

Treatment

From the previous post, Bjorn is going to need surgery i.e. his gash needs to be cleaned and sewn up. A physician roll will get +20 as his cut not that complex to deal. This number comes from the EML (Effective Mastery Level) column. The next five columns list the result of the different levels of success plus what happens when there is no treatment (NT). If the Physician rolls a marginal success (MS). Bjorn's player now records that injury has a Healing rate of H5.

Each injury is treated separately.

Rob's Comment
The bonus EML for different injuries means a party member without anybody with a physician roll can take a stab at treating their friend. As you can see even a Critical Failure is better than No Treatment. (Sorry misread the table). The skill open up automatically at SBx1 when the attempt is made. There are also Herbs that give a further bonus by either knocking out the character to fighting infection. However there is a risk in a critical failure being rolled making the injury worse.

Healing

Once Bjorn has been treated he can now begin to heal. From the previous example he has a H5 rate. This means every five days of rest, he can make a healing roll. A healing roll is roll against the Healing Rate (H) of the injury time Endurance. In Bjorn case his Endurance is 12 so with a H5 healing rate he makes his healing roll verus 60%.  Also for human characters the healing roll is made every 5 days irregardless of the Healing Rate.

The goal of the healing roll is to have the Injury reduced to zero. For the first five days of rest Bjorn rolls a 56 and gets a Marginal Success (MS). His serious slash goes from 2 to 1. The second five days Bjorn rolls a 72, a marginal failure, and has no healing. The third five days, Bjorn rolls a 35 which is a Critical Success (CS), and heals the remainder of his injury. I would probably rule that he is healed three days in with that result. So Bjorn is out for 15 days healing from his fight.

There are spells, herbs, etc that can speed this up. The most common are herbs. For example injuries treated with Ichor of Agrik/Berilik Balm a paste made from Berilik Herb (Dragonhead) have half the normal chance of developing an infection. So if a Critical Failure (CF) is rolled and Berilik Balm is applied, roll a d6. On a 1-3 the infection doesn't happen.

yeah the Herblore article even has pictures of each type of herb.

There are two optional rules. One is how to treat Bloodloss if that rule is used in combat. The other adding a Diagnosis roll which add a bonus to the Effective Mastery Level (EML) either +10 for a Marginal Sucess (MS) or +30 for a Critical Success (CS). The authors leave to GM's discretion whether to apply a penalty for a failed roll. I don't recommend doing that, Harnmaster is pretty brutal to begin with.

There also mechanics covering how to use this for disease. Basically diseases are given a contagion index and a healing rate. You multiply the character's endurance by the Contagion Index (CI) to see if they save against the disease. If they fail then they contract the disease starting at the listed Healing Rate. A C1/H1 disease will kill most of the population.

Lingering effects of poisons are handled in the same way.

Instead of Injury levels going down, the healing roll for disease raise and lower the Healing Rate. At H0 the character dies and at H6 the character is free of disease/infection/poison. This healing roll is made every day.

That it for injury recovery, there is a lot packed into four pages of mechanics and like a lot of Harnmaster it handle the details in a straightforward manner that feels like how it would go in a medieval setting.

The previous post was Combat Part 2; The next post is Psionics.