As dramatic as it is to have one-handed, one-legged people hopping around into battle everywhere, the clean severance of a limb, though certainly possible, is a much less frequent result of battle injury than the permanent crippling of the limb. To cleanly sever a limb, it must be slashed into with enough force from a particular angle - to permanently cripple it, it may be crushed, pierced, slashed into from any angle, or slashed into from an angle that would sever it, but without sufficient force.
So, I would very much like to see some "but then I took an arrow to the knee" sorts of permanent invalids - capturing the banality of trauma.
Infections should have a chance to become gangrenous, prompting an event in which the player may decide to amputate the limb. (In fact, if memory serves, most cleanly severed limbs as the eventual outcome of battlefield injury in a world before antibiotics were not the result of clean severance in the moment, but of injury, infection, and amputation.) If the player does not make this decision, he should expect to almost certainly die. Player characters should be given the option of either getting blackout drunk for the amputation, slightly risking drunkard and/or depressed, or go into it dry, risking stressed if not brave, and additionally risking depressed if craven.
I need depressed, drunken generals (hopefully relieved of command) wallowing miserably about my court, mourning their amputations, as I wait for them to die childless so I can inherit the bribes I once paid them. It's the circle of life.
So, I would very much like to see some "but then I took an arrow to the knee" sorts of permanent invalids - capturing the banality of trauma.
Infections should have a chance to become gangrenous, prompting an event in which the player may decide to amputate the limb. (In fact, if memory serves, most cleanly severed limbs as the eventual outcome of battlefield injury in a world before antibiotics were not the result of clean severance in the moment, but of injury, infection, and amputation.) If the player does not make this decision, he should expect to almost certainly die. Player characters should be given the option of either getting blackout drunk for the amputation, slightly risking drunkard and/or depressed, or go into it dry, risking stressed if not brave, and additionally risking depressed if craven.
I need depressed, drunken generals (hopefully relieved of command) wallowing miserably about my court, mourning their amputations, as I wait for them to die childless so I can inherit the bribes I once paid them. It's the circle of life.
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