Bleeding out

[eiredrake]

Greetings all,

I just had our first real combat in my DFRPG campaign Troubled Waters and it got me thinking, mostly because I want to do things correctly and I've never run DFRPG before.

Say IRL I get stabbed. Getting stabbed sucks. Getting stabbed is painful and messy. Getting stabbed tends to bleed quite a bit. With medical attention a bad stab wound puts you in the hurt locker. Without medical attention a bad stab wound puts you on the coroner's slab.

I understand that when someone does damage to you, you take stress equal to the difference between the attack and defense with mods for stuff like armor and weapon. If you overfill your Stress track you have to take Consequences.

As I understand things stress is a bit like old school Hit Points in that it doesn't represent 'real' damage but rather your ability to avoid being actually hurt.

Consequences on the other hand, are sort of like actual physical wounds, bruises, pulled muscles and so forth.

PC #1 got surprise attacked by something icky that wanted to eat his face. He is the group's doctor and a mostly non-combatant character who decided to go down into a tight confined space where something was waiting. The rolls were:

Attack: Epic (+7) - Defense: Mediocre (+0) = Epic (+7)
Defender's Armor: Mediocre (+0)
Attacker's Weapon: Fair (+2)

Total Stress: Legendary (+9)

Now, it is my understanding that this will pretty much take out anybody and since this was a critter looking for a meal it wasn't going to play patty cake. The PC starts with 3 slots in his Physical Stress track.

You can take one (or more if you have the stunt for it) of each level of Consequences, which is what I let the guy do. He takes a mild and a moderate, leaving him ONE stress remaining to put on his track ( I assume this goes in Slot 1). With the surprise round over, the combatants roll for initiative and the player ends up with an Average. At this point I am starting to feel sorry for him because his dice hate him and he can't seem to catch a break. I remind him that retreat is an option and I recommend that he GTFOOT (Get the Frack out of There).

The critter continues it's attack. With essentially the same result. This time he remembers that he has Fate points to spend. At first he tries re-rolling all dice, but gets the same exact result. Then he decides to just add 2 to his final total, effectively letting him soak some damage.

When all is said and done he ends up fleeing with one remaining Physical Stress slot remaining and Moderate Consequence. With the amount of damage this thing did to him, I imagine he's bleeding all over the place. It is my understanding though, that if you survive the encounter Stress disappears immediately. After more reading I realized I'd forgotten that the attacker that inflicted a consequence gets a free Tag on it (which is lucky because he'd be dead).

Mild (-2): Horrified (examples: Bruised Hand, Nasty Shiner, Winded, Flustered, Distracted) - lasting for one scene.
Moderate (-4): Chest Slashes (examples: Belly Slash, Bad First Degree Burn, Twisted Angle, Exhausted, Drunk)- Lasting until the end of the next session after recovery starts
Severe(-6): Clawed open Face (examples: Broken leg, Bad second-degree burn, crippling shame, Trauma induced phobia) - Lasting till the next scenario or two to three sessions.

Mild says "Walk it off", Moderate says "get some rest" and Severe says "Go to an ER". So does that mean that the PC is going to keep bleeding? If so, what is the effect of that? In my head I'm envisioning the doc having to sew up his own face or talk someone else through it. If this occurs, does that reduce the level of the Consequence?

Incidentally the critter did get put down by another PC who was nearby. I think I'm going to need to reduce the power level of these things a little and make the one that nearly ate PC 1 a 'boss' creature or something.

[crusher_bob]

If you want the consequences to have some game effect, you compel them. 
For example:
GM: You cut open face is bleeding pretty bad.  You'll have to leave off <important thing you are doing> to go get some medical attention.
PC: Refusing compel, "I don't have time to bleed.  I put some superglue on it and continue doing <important thing>.

---------

To start recovering from a consequence you need a 'justification'.  The amount of justification needed depends on the consequence.

So, worse consequences usually require going to a doctor, or something to justify the start of recovery.  Though notice that recovery powers, etc may provide their own justifications for consequence recovery

[Wordmaker]

I think it's also worth noting that consequences can mean more than just the obvious description. I'd be reluctant to use "bleeding out" as a consequence, because it's a tricky descriptor. However, "vicious lacerations" or "animal bite" can continue to be relevant even if the bleeding stops, because they can represent not just the complications of bleeding, but also pain from recovery, problems with wound dressings or infection, or scar tissue.

[eiredrake]

PC: Refusing compel, "I don't have time to bleed.  I put some superglue on it and continue doing <important thing>.
[/quote

This is the year 1660 on a Merchant sailing vessel and the victim was the ship's doctor. He was stupid enough to put his non-combatant face in front of a hungry critter.

To start recovering from a consequence you need a 'justification'.  The amount of justification needed depends on the consequence.

So, worse consequences usually require going to a doctor, or something to justify the start of recovery.  Though notice that recovery powers, etc may provide their own justifications for consequence recovery

Ah... that's good to know. So... once out of combat, his stress goes away.... he can stop the blood on his own using pressure. I imagine it'd be a bitch to stitch up your own face with no anesthetic. But he could probably talk someone through it.

Once he does that, then recovery starts and the Consequence begins to decay? (read: starts to go away).

[JDK002]

Typically speaking, any soer of break in the action where the player gets a chance to rest should be enough justification to begin healing a mild or moderate consequence.  I would aslo personally suggest not to get TOO hung up on the wording or implied severity of any given consequence.  As a "stomch lacerations" consequence can fill the mild slot just the same as the severe slot.

Given that the character s a doctor, he pretty much always has justification to begin healing as soon as the scene ends IMO.  Narration would be he is able to patch himself up a little bit, or walk someone else through the process to at least get himself stabalized.

Consequences are only consequential if the GM uses them.  A consequence that is never compelled may as well not be there.  Make your player nervous about taking them and the battles get a lot more exciting.  It also makes them seriously consider pulling the concession trigger before they hit the "unwinnable downward spiral".

[noclue]

Was the character out of Fate Points?

[Taran]

I think having PC's visit a hospital is a good practice when they have a moderate or worse consequence.  For the most part it's kinda hand-wavey, "my character spends the night in ER"

But sometimes it might become part of the story, where baddies are tromping through the hospital attempting to assasintate your character who might have escaped.

In either case I wouldn't allow a PC to automatically start healing wounds unless they have a power.  Even if they have a doctor in the party - they'd need a good enough facility to deal with the severe consequence.  Just because you have a doctor stunt and a first aid kit, it doesn't mean you can deal with internal bleeding or a spinal injury...

For campaigns that don't happen in a modern city where medical facilities are more rare or of lower quality, recovery powers and even wizards constitution becomes more powerful.

[Ophidimancer]

Mild says "Walk it off", Moderate says "get some rest" and Severe says "Go to an ER". So does that mean that the PC is going to keep bleeding?

Yes, if it makes sense.  If it doesn't make sense, but not enough time has passed for the Consequence to go away you can also modify the Aspect to make sense.  For example if a character has Broken Leg, but has visited a hospital and been treated you can change the Aspect to Crutches.

[eiredrake]

Was the character out of Fate Points?

He spent the two that he had on re-rolls and got worse rolls the second time around.

[Wordmaker]

If it's becoming a problem in play and you find you keep ending up with Consequences that suggest they need to be dealt with urgently or the character might die, perhaps you could introduce a house rule that the names of Consequences can be changed, like other Aspects, between sessions?

So if you end a session with the "Bleeding Out" Major Consequence, between sessions you could change it to "Lost a Lot of Blood."

[eiredrake]

If it's becoming a problem in play and you find you keep ending up with Consequences that suggest they need to be dealt with urgently or the character might die, perhaps you could introduce a house rule that the names of Consequences can be changed, like other Aspects, between sessions?

So if you end a session with the "Bleeding Out" Major Consequence, between sessions you could change it to "Lost a Lot of Blood."

I like that idea. Though i'd say it'd be more like: Consequences that have had status changes can have their names changed.

So that "Bleeding Out'" becomes "Lost of a lot of Blood" when someone gets the chance to actually do something about it. Like stitch up the Doc' face, or apply pressure or something like that.

It is my understanding of these rules that consequences and aspects have no actual effect unless someone tags/invokes/compels them (I'm still sussing out the difference between those three things). So he's free to act however he wants until the GM throws a Fate Point (compel, right?) at him and says "Uh dude... you lost a lot of blood.", until some bad guy sees him and figures out that he's lost a lot of blood (tag) or until he decides to RP it out as a handicap (invoke).

[noclue]

An Invoke is when you use a relevant aspect for a benefit or bonus. A tag is an invoke that doesn't cost a Fate Point. A compel is an offer from the GM of a Fate Point in return for allowing your aspect to complicate the fiction, in a interesting but detrimental way.

RPing it as a handicap isn't an invoke (no bonus). It's what we call a self-Compel, which GMs should generally reward with a Fate Point.

There's no mechanical effect from an aspect unless its invoked or compelled, but it should still color the fiction. The player might decide tan aspect stops him from doing all kinds of stuff that doesn't rise to the level of a compel ("I have to take the elevator instead of the stairs" is only a compel if taking the elevator leads to an interesting complication).

@wordmaker are you sure that's a house rule? We've been changing aspects like that since I started playing SoTC. Otherwise a consequence like "Bleeding out" gets kinda silly after a while.

[JDK002]

Changing the name of a consequence is really just narrative flavoring when you get down to it.  The duration of a consequence isn't effected by it's wording and they all (should) be fairly easy to compel.

Also remmeber a consequence is just a tool to demonstrate the effect of lasting injuries.  A severe consequence of "bleeding out" doesn't mean the player is literally bleeding profusely for the next X months of game time.  It kist represents the continued problems because they suffered severe blood loss.

[Wordmaker]

It might not be a house rule, just something that makes sense to me.