Medical Treatment (Medicae & Chirugeons)

Treating a Casualty

A casualty is a character who is currently Wounded or Grievously Wounded. While in these conditions, a character is vulnerable to further mutilation, capture or worse. A character with the Medicae or Chirurgeon Traits can return them to Normal via the use of their skills, and any character can provide some immediate assistance via performing First Aid.

First Aid

All PCs at DuD, as chosen agents of the Inquisition, have some basic ability to deal with injuries in combat; as such, they have the First Aid Trait. By a few moments’ roleplay, they may determine the rough appearance and location of an injury (a quick OC check with the casualty for a description), and pause the character’s bleed count. As long as the character providing aid has both hands entirely occupied by applying pressure to the wound, holding the injured limb braced or so on, the bleeding character’s condition does not worsen. If they cease to do so, the bleed count resumes from where it left off.

A character who is capable of First Aid can also administer chems as a Medicae or Chirurgeon’s immediate proxy. Any delay in administering the chem wastes the dose through mishandling, but provided they obey the medic’s instructions promptly any character can follow through on tasks like “inject this into her arm!” or “get them to swallow this pill!”

Moving Casualties

Wounded characters cannot move faster than a slow stagger unaided, and Grievously Wounded characters cannot move at all.

Any character can move a casualty, via roleplaying helping them to move at whatever level of contact the casualty’s player is happy with – but if the assisting character is not a Medicae and the casualty’s bleed count is paused, doing so will cause the bleed count to resume. It does not matter if someone else is also ‘staunching’ a wound while the casualty is being moved – it is not possible for an untrained character to keep a bleed count paused while a casualty is in motion. To move a casualty safely, their bleed count must be stopped, or one of the characters moving them must be a Medicae.

Medicae

A character who is a Medicae can perform effective medical treatment in the field and under fire.

• They can stop a bleed count, via a short period of roleplaying the application of bandages, injectors, cautery, or similar.

• They can move casualties without restarting their bleed count.

• They can administer any chem, or direct other characters who are assisting them to do so.

• They can also make a diagnosis and if they do not discover a Complication with a Medicae Intervention option they can perform surgery to return any casualty to Normal.

Chirurgeons

Characters who are Chirurgeons the pinnacle of medical expertise, and with access to a proper operating theatre they can achieve almost anything.

• They can stop a bleed count, via a short period of roleplaying the application of bandages, injectors, cautery, or similar.

• They can administer any chem, or direct other characters who are assisting them to do so, and they can also make chems via Alchemistry.

• Chirugeon’s are skilled enough that they can make a Diagnosis with a few moments of examination. Provided they have access to a Medbay, they may perform surgery to return a casualty to Normal and resolve Complications.

Making a Diagnosis

Before a Medicae or Chirugeon can proceed with Surgery they must first perform a Diagnosis Check; a simple bead draw to determine if there is a Complication that will need to be overcome for surgery to succeed.

The base chance of finding a Complication is 25%. A standard method of making the check would be to use a bag of beads, 9 white and 3 red; on blind-drawing a bead from the bag, a Complication occurs if a red bead is drawn. Digital randomisers, dice or other methods are also appropriate, at the player’s preference.

Performing Surgery

To perform surgery, a Medicae or Chirurgeon must make use of tools to perform a period of roleplay treating a character’s wounds. Casualties must be given a dose of the Chem Opia in order to hold still for surgery without restraints.

If a Complication was diagnosed then the character will have to perform one of several roleplay options on the Complication Card, before they can successfully complete the Surgery. Only Chirurgeons can perform all options, Medicae can only treat cards with the Medicae Intervention, however they can perform Quick Fix solutions in the field if there is a Chirugeon to instruct them.

When surgery is completed, the treated character is normally restored to Normal with 1 Endurance unless a Complication specifies otherwise.

Medbays

A Medbay is defined as a well equipped medical facility such as a small surgery or a field hospital. Medbays are set up as part of the game environment and in some cases may be deliberately absent to present a challenge to players. A medbay is usable as such if an Officio Medicae Banner is set up in the environment by the Game Team or if the Game Team tells you otherwise.

It is possible for players to bring their own Field Hospital setups with Game Team approval you must have your own Officio Medicae Banner to set up - you may ONLY set up the banner after getting approval from a member of the Game Team.

Complication Cards

When a Medical Test turns up a Complication, a card must be drawn from the Complication Deck. In order to perform surgery, a Medicae or Chirurgeon must have a Deck available; characters with these Traits should download a copy from the website and carry it with them.

The character suffering from the Complication makes a blind draw from the deck, reads the roleplaying effects and hands the card to their surgeon. The card will include a description of what, if anything, can be done to resolve the effects of the Complication; the Chirurgeon and casualty should roleplay through the effects.

Cards may have three classes of effect on them. These are Medicae Intervention, detailing something that a character with the Medicae trait can do and the results of doing or not doing so; Quick Fix, which allows a Chirurgeon to get a casualty back on their feet with only brief treatment, and the results of this course of action; or Proper Procedure, detailing treatment that will take a longer time, but usually yield better results. Not all Complications have all three treatment options.

Automatic Complications

The effect of some calls – Sunder, for example – is to automatically generate a Complication as well as rendering a character a casualty. The casualty should ask for a card draw as soon as someone begins their Diagnosis as these complications tend to be a bit more obvious.