Hey guys I'm fairly disappointed with the Blood Loss rules. Since my new Ballistic Critical tables incorporates more bleeding, this has come up.

1. It's too fast. A human body can bleed out in 3-4 seconds? No way. Even smaller animals can take minutes. A human in RL with a bleeding wound can survive 10 minutes or more.

2. It's totally random. 10% chance means it can happen in the first round OR the 10th round.. or even continue further (although it is likely to happen in about 10 tries)-

3. Everyone is treated equally. It doesn't matter if you're a space marine or a scribe, everyone without special unnatural form traits will bleed out equally fast.

So here is my fix. Although not 100% realistic it should take a bit longer (meaning Medicae can wait until after combat instead of the "D&D combat healing syndrome.", it is also based off Toughness and it's Bonus.

Blood Loss: A character with Blood Loss can remain fairly unaffected for TB minutes. Also, after each TB minutes the character must make a Toughness test or bleed out. The first such test is made at the Easy difficulty level (+30), and each consecutive test is one level harder (to the maximum of Very Hard (-30)). Any strenuous activity performed by the character incurs a -30 penalty on the next test

I also planned to include a Toughness test to avoid unconsciousness, but I haven't quite decided on which point to incorporate it.

Friend of the Dork said:

Have you considered treating Blood Loss somewhat like Fatigue? For example, at the point of acquiring Blood Loss, you effectively gain one level of Fatigue (and all of the penalties associated with that). Then, for every turn after that, you have to test Toughness (at your cumulatively increasing difficulties, Easy, Routine, Ordinary, Challenging, etc.) or gain another level of effective Fatigue. If you reach your Toughness Bonus in levels of Fatigue, you fall unconcious. If you reach twice your Toughness Bonus in levels of effective Fatigue, you bleed out. This, of course, is not counting any relevant medical treatment or Psychic Healing, etc. Just a thought.

I do like your concept, however. I have been uncomfortable with the RAW Blood Loss rules for a while now. But until you made an effort to correct it, I never took the time to come up with anything approaching a solution.

Hi "Friend",

sounds good, but I am not quiet sure if it should really takes minutes and more for the character to die from a "blood loss wound".

Keep in mind that before he reaches critical, he suffered a lot of (taken) wounds. These are (of course!) bleeding. The rules simply do not consider them relevant. Until the dreaded critical table tells you that suddenly you have taken something WORSE then the 3 to 8 hits before...

I remember reading the rules for the first time and thinking 'This blood loss has to be more than litteraly just bleeding to death.' I was thinking that maybe it encompased respiratory problems etc, it just seemed that it was the only ongoing life risk. Maybe it's an abstraction, I don't know, there's couple of arteries that, if severed, will kill you in a few seconds.

And it's not a level feild because you can get die hard and that re-roll of a 10% should keep you alive a lot longer, still very random though and getting to bleeding companion should be your first priority so in that way at least it raises the tension as you can't tell how long it will be before someone sparks it.

Hi "Face"

yeah, it is "random" and "strange".But the rules never seemed to be written with "overly realismn" in mind. They are more like "hard & fast". Which is a good thing in my book, otherwise I would be playing "rolemaster"

@"Friend"
How about changing "minutes" to "number of round equal to TB"? Still, under the assumption that this was -not- the first bleeding wound but something really heavy...and taking into account that wounds hail from combat and players still will be in combat after suffering such a wound.

I've always used a model a little similar to the one Sister Cat is articulating:

Each Round the character with Blood Loss makes a Toughness Test.

On a success, the character suffers 1d10 Toughness Damage minus their Toughness Bonus (minimum 1).

On a failure, the character suffers a level of Fatigue, and 2d10 Toughness Damage minus their Toughness Bonus (minimum 1), plus an additional level of Fatigue per two degrees of failure.

If a character is reduced to 0 Toughness in this way, he dies.

The Die Hard Talent allows the character to re-roll all failed Toughness Tests to resist Blood Loss.

Thanks for constructive feedback guys.

@Sistercat: The critical results that causes Blood Loss often also include either 1d5 or 1d10 fatigue loss by itself. Additional fatigue in addition to this might be overkill. Also it might be a bit confusing to include both nonlethal and lethal fatigue.

Having a limited amount of "oomph" that runs out over time when failing Toughness checks might not be a bad idea though.

For instance, I could change the rule to be "after TB failed tests you die."

But I'll let Toughness damage be something special and usually permanent from disease, smoke inhalation, warp and other potentially permanent damage.

Greg: My rules are based on clinical reports. It can take you 30 minutes or more to die from a gunshot wound to the gut. Non-critical damage is to me scratches, bruises and other insignificant damage, plus weariness and pain involved. Not large bleeding wounds that you can never die from. The actual amount of blood you lose from this would be very low.

But actually my first take on these house rules was to use turns instead of minutes. It would still make it unlikely for someone to bleed dry in a single combat (unless lengthy and unlucky), but it would mean the person needed medical attention right after the fight.

The bad side to this is that, as noted, bleeding to death might take minutes, and that the PCs are unlikely to have time to take a bleeding fellow to a nearby hospital or doctor.

@Face Eater: Yes there are wounds able to kill you in second. For example, severing the jugular vein in the neck and the windpipe, will starve the brain for oxygen (in the blood) and cause death in seconds (which is considered instantaneous). Note however that Blood Loss cannot really represent this as there is no saving you should that happen... you can't "medicae" a sliit throat.

Instead this sort of damage is best represented by very high level crits - and already is (7-10 crits).

If however you can provide documentation that people die in seconds from being stabbed in the gut (avoiding heart, lungs and other vital organs), then I'll consider that

Obviously I'll let the Diehard talent allow you to reroll Toughness tests to avoid dying instead of the 10% test. It should work as before and basically double your chance of surviving longer.

To ya'll:

I can consider changing my rules back to combat turns instead, maybe requiring checks at every TB*2 rounds instead. Which makes it possible to survive for a few minutes (12 rounds= one minute) at the least. OR letting it remain at every TB rounds but requiring TB failed tests before death occurrs. At every failed test you also take one level of Fatigue.

How does that sounds?

Example: Basic Guardsman Grunt #244 is attacked by a Genestealer who easily slices up the Guardsman tummy (7 Rending Critical to Body). He takes 3 levels of Fatigue from the Critical and is suffering Blood Loss. Guardsman has 30 Toughness so he remains conscious. Luckily the Genestealer has already taken him for dead, and is pursuing his fleeing comrades in arms as instead (the bastards left him to die). This is good, as fighting on with the gut wound will cause him to bleed out twice as fast (ordinarily 20% chance each round).

The Guardsman bites down his teeth, holds his guts as tight as he can, and starts stumbling away at a slow pace. After 3 rounds he must already test toughness. At +30 he succeeds. 3 rounds more and he succeeds yet again. However in the 9th round he fails for the first time (at 40% chance). He takes one level of Fatigue, which is unfortunately one too much. He falls down and everything goes dark. The player still has to roll for him every 3 rounds. He's likely to fail at least 2 out of 3 rolls though (30%, 20% and 10%), and thus after 18 rounds total he's dead (1.5 minutes).

Hmm seems to me I could still double the time between tests, or double the amount of failed tests needed to die. The gradually harder difficulty makes it very quick to die once you get at Challenging difficulty and harder.

Friend of the Dork said:

what I wanted to point out is that "wounds above critical" incorporate a little more then just scratches, bruises and other "insignificant damage". Under RAW, it -DOES- include said "gunshot to the guts" unless it was the shot that send the pc critical.

If a pc with a machinepistol opens up on a human npc (12 wounds)with a hail of bullets and the majority of this hits the "torso area" for three and four and three wounds (after TB), I do not think we are talking about "scratches and fleshwounds" or "just the shoulder" since the npc is down to 2 wounds. Some of the hit will taken belly, left&right torso etc. He will be "bleeding" in the true sense of the words... but no "bleeding" since it isn´t critical.

To me, this is the "30 minutes till death" situation where it is automatically assumed by the game that the pc (since he is a player character) will not die by the wounds (even if untreaded).

Thereby , I argue in defense of "bleed to death in a matter of some combat rounds" and against "a matter of 10 minutes or a lot more" as soon as we are talking "critical".

Gregorius21778 said:

If you mean wounds below critical, then no, I don't see the rules specify them as anything but abstract wounds with no mechanical effect. Lightly wounded are scratches that heal very quickly. Heavily wounded are basically scratches and minor injuries that take longer to heal. Critical damage is enough to hinder someone significantly, cause them to bleed to death or even get killed instantly.

In your example, by RAW the human NPC is still able to fight on as he wants to and will not bleed to death ever. In fact, in some time he will actually heal and get better. Also it seems he was very lucky to survive multiple gunshot wounds like that. A point blank Autopistol burst is often enough to deal at least critical wounds to NPCs and PCs alive. Mooks are likely to get killed by the Sudden Death rule.

Hi "Friend",

yes, I know the rules mechanics behind it. But again, "in the picture"..would really depict said (unarmoured) victim of a gunspray as only having received "scratches" from the bullet that hit him multiple times in the torso?

Do not get me wrong: I am myself not very happy with the fact that the RAW only switches from "this is a fleshwound.." to "OMG!". But to me, the "non-critcs" do cover a lot of serious bleeding..the system is just so cinematic that only if VERY VERY HEAVY BLEEDIND comes along (crit) it does care to use mechanics for it at all.

Another example: take an unarmoured guy who is getting hit by a chainsword. make him suffer 9 wounds at the head, 1 wound remaining (he was a ten-wound pc). Would you describe this to the players as "oh, just a scratch, no bleeding" ?

Gregorius21778 said:

In my experienced, most combat involving the PCs have both them an their opponents armored.

In your example I'd describe it as a dangerous slice to the head. Sure, it bleeds alright... and then it stops as the blood coagulates. Head wounds can often bleed profusely and look very dramatic without being anywhere near deadly, but sever the jugular vein in the neck and the blood will squirt out at high pressure and the poor bugger die very quickly.

If it was on the stomach, it would be a slice across the tummy. It would bleed, but not nearly enough to what it would do if his stomach was opened up entirely so you could see his intestines.

But both according to the rules and they way I play it, as long as a single wound remains the character is pretty much fit for fight and not slowly bleeding to death.

Friend of the Dork said:

Then you should have been in the last game I played in. Until we were "issued" our first bodyglove by our Inquisitor (Rank 3 or 4), most of our missions had us running around purging the unclean with naught but our clothes.

As an aside, Oops! I completely forgot about the crit tables that give "blood loss" also giving Fatigue. Ah well, I kind of liked Lasers' solution.

Sister Cat said:

So your GM (err... inquisitor?) demanded that you went in basically naked? One thing is not bothering to buy it for them, but this... yikes.

My team started off with basic gear at least. They all got flak or mesh eventually, and not some even have gotten light carapace. They might not always walk in it but they sure do bring it along.

Playing part 2 of PtU without armor is close to suicide... and also ridiculous because the NPC with you has Power Armor..

As an aside note feel free to use Laser's suggestion. I thought it was a bit too complicated and detailed myself.

Friend of the Dork said:

Oh, by the time we got to PtU we had our custom-fitted, best craftsmanship bodygloves. But we started with Maggots in the Meat ... our GM's soft-heartedness is, IMHO, the only reason we survived at all. Most of our "starting" armor got chewed off by "attack squigs" long before we got to the finale. So, we were pretty much "clothes-only" by the time we got to the wind-mill. It was an "eye-opening" experience.

And, in answer to your opinion of Laser's idea, I have found that most of (his?) "fixes" are more complicated than I would like. But all in all, they do have a certain mathematical elegance. Normallly, not for me ... but with a little tweaking, they can be useful. JMHO.

Ah ok that helps. Maggots in the meat is so dangerous I consider running it with my rank 6 acolytes...

Friend of the Dork said:

I would only consider doing that if you really change that adventure. Rank 6 Acolytes are going to be really quite bored until the very end where there's suddenly a big combat sequence. I have a very low opinion of it in general.

numb3rc said:

Hmm maybe I'll just go straight on to Shattered Cities then. I was hoping their was some investigation or background that could be interesting in Maggots in the meat.

Not that I need every combat to be challenging anyway, I think my acolytes like a quick and easy win sometimes.

Friend of the Dork said:

Nah, no substantial investigation to speak of. It seems designed more to give young acolytes a lesson in just how horrific the grim dark future is.