Obscure Wound Question (Midi to Severe)

Burning Wheel Subsystem Advice and Guidance
1

So I’m putting together a Procedural Guide for Treatment and Recovery and I’ve got a question about the following hypothetical sequence of events:

You take a Midi wound. That wound bleeds long enough for it to become a Severe wound. As per the Bleeding rules, it stops bleeding at this point. Someone makes a Treatment test for this Severe wound and fails the test.

What is the consequence of this failed test?

Normally the consequence would mean that the wound keeps bleeding and eventually becomes Traumatic. In this scenario, however, the wound is no longer bleeding. If the wound had been treated while it was a Midi wound, the consequence would have been a permanent -1D loss followed by the recovery roll. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing in the rules about this non-bleeding Severe wound.

Some relevant passages from the book:

From the Bleeding rules on pg 490:

Midi—A midi wound must be treated before the conclusion of the session or else the wound becomes a severe wound. The wound ceases to bleed at severe.

Severe—A severe wound must be tended to before the conclusion of the second scene after its issue or else the wound progresses to traumatic.

From the Failed Treatment or Recovery rules on pg 495:

Failed Treatment for Midi through Traumatic

This is really bad. These tests require treatment in order for the recovery process to begin. Essentially, what’s happened is either the doctor has thrown up his hands and said, “There’s nothing I can do!" or fumbled around and made matters worse.

For midi wounds, one die is permanently subtracted from an appropriate stat, but the character can recover the other one. For severe and traumatic wounds, the injured character is bleeding to death and better get real help quickly or he’ll die!

Failed Recovery for Midi, Severe, and Traumatic Wounds

At least the bleeding is stopped. The character heals in the full length of time required, but only recovers half of the dice lost. The remaining dice are permanently subtracted from an appropriate stat. If that stat happens to be reduced to zero, the character is permanently comatose. Better save artha for your Health tests! Also, reduce the cap of the depleted stat by one. Thus, if you fail to recover from a midi wound to the arm you lose one die from—say—Power and your Power cap is reduced from 8 to 7. Take a die trait to represent this.

I also have this paragraph from Luke himself from this thread which somewhat clarifies these rules but still does not answer my question:

https://www.burningwheel.com/forum/s...nt-and-failure

As per page 495: You can’t bleed to death from a Midi. You lose -1D from a failed treatment test.
If treatment fails for a Severe or Traumatic wound, you suffer a mortal wound after the appropriate bleeding times.

If you fail your Recovery test for a Midi wound, you also lose -1D permanently.
If you fail your Recovery test for a Severe or Traumatic wound, you lose -2D permanently.
Your stat cap is also reduced by one.

Let It Ride (page 32) applies to these tests as it does to every roll outside of Range and Cover, Fight and Duel of Wits.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the character permanently loses -1D or -2D from a relevant stat and then moves on to the Recovery roll.

Thoughts?

2

Stopping the Bleeding and Treatment are not the same thing. You only need to use StB if nobody in the scene can feasibly make the Treatment roll, and you need to stabilize the wounded character so you can get them to a doctor.

Stopping the Bleeding is implied in the Treatment roll. You should be rolling one or the other, but not both.

For a Midi that’s bled to Severe, you Treat and Recover as if we’re a Severe from the start.

3

I’m aware that Bleeding and Treatment are not the same thing. I don’t think you understand what I’m asking, so let me try to phrase it better.

Midi wounds bleed to Severe and then stop bleeding.

Severe and Traumatic wounds keep bleeding until they become Mortal wounds.

Failed Treatment for a Severe wound normally means that it just keeps bleeding, which gives you time to change the circumstances enough to reroll a Treatment test.

If the wound started out as Midi but bled to Severe, we can’t use that failure result because that failure result assumes the wound is bleeding, which it is not.

Essentially, we can think of there being two kinds of Severe wounds: ones that started out as Midi and ones that started out as Severe. The rules tell us Treatment failure for the latter but not the former.

4

You’re totally right. Sorry, my reading comprehension skills totally failed me. So, you fail a Bleeding test on a Midi, and it becomes Severe. After that, it’s treated like a Severe. You Treat, and if that’s a failure, you bleed up to the next wound level, and so on until you hit Mortal.

It seems harsh to treat the StB test at Midi as a Treatment, so I would rule that you bleed up to Severe instead of taking the -1D for the failed Midi Treatment. You don’t need to make another StB test unless you fail Treatment for the Severe.

5

I’m sorry, my friend, but I don’t think you’re correct.

From pg 490:

Midi—A midi wound must be treated before the conclusion of the session or else the wound becomes a severe wound. The wound ceases to bleed at severe.

In this thread, Luke himself reiterates that you cannot bleed to death from a Midi wound. The worst it can possibly get is Severe.

https://www.burningwheel.com/forum/showthread.php?11852-Wound-treatment-and-failure

As per page 495: You can’t bleed to death from a Midi. You lose -1D from a failed treatment test.
If treatment fails for a Severe or Traumatic wound, you suffer a mortal wound after the appropriate bleeding times.

If you fail your Recovery test for a Midi wound, you also lose -1D permanently.
If you fail your Recovery test for a Severe or Traumatic wound, you lose -2D permanently.
Your stat cap is also reduced by one.

Let It Ride (page 32) applies to these tests as it does to every roll outside of Range and Cover, Fight and Duel of Wits.

A Midi wound that became Severe doesn’t stop Bleeding because of a test. It stops Bleeding because the rules explicitly say so.

Also, you seem to think I’m equating “Stopping the Bleeding” to Treatment which I’m not because Stopping the Bleeding doesn’t really factor into this particular discussion. Midi and higher wounds Bleed; that’s just a thing they do regardless of anything else. Midi wounds Bleed longer than Severe which Bleed longer than Traumatic; once they’ve bled long enough, they continue to stage up unless they started out as a Midi wound. You have the option to try to temporarily Stop the Bleeding. Doing so essentially pauses the Bleeding for a scene, after which it resumes according to the normal Bleeding rules.

None of that is my focus, though. I’m purely focusing on the wound progression and the actual Treatment test itself. If you fail a Severe Treatment test (for a wound that started out as a Midi wound), it can’t stage up to Traumatic, so there has to be some other result for failure.

This is probably just a rules oversight for an admittedly rare set of circumstances, and for that reason I’m curious as to what kind of ruling Luke would make.

6

It’s right there in the text you quoted: “For severe and traumatic wounds, the injured character is bleeding to death and better get real help quickly or he’ll die!”

The failure consequence is you ripped everything open again.

7

Yeah, that was what I was failing to get across. Bleeding from Midi to Severe - where the bleeding stops - has nothing to do with the failure consequence of a failed Severe Treatment.

8

My own 2 cents would be that failing to treat a Severe wound that started as a Midi still doesn’t restart the bleeding. You haven’t been successfully treated and can’t make your Recovery roll, but you can walk around with your Severe wound forever. If you’re capable of walking, anyway. It’s an interesting Fisher King setup, but mostly it means that you’re going to need to find someone who can treat your Severe wound

Yes, it makes failing to treat that Severe wound kind of toothless. I don’t love it.

The alternative is that failing to Treat does restart the bleeding, but since the bleeding stopped on reaching severe you have all the time you want to find the best possible doctor to patch you up. You’re not forced to go with whoever can give it a try before you bleed up to Traumatic.

9

This is a bit off topic, and I’m willing to make another thread to discuss this, but Wayfarer’s comment made me think. Do you guys usually roll for NPC doctors to treat wounds (or, for that matter, for NPCs to accomplish tasks for the players in general)? On the one hand, I feel like it’s cheating the player to have them Circle up a doctor or persuade/pay someone to treat them, and have the NPC fail: the player succeeded, but they did not get their intent. On the other hand, it’s seems like it would be a bit cheap if the player had a Relationship with the doctor who could patch them up at zero risk.

10

I do, although I tend to be generous with the doctors’ dice pools. Circles covers finding an NPC that is disposed toward helping you. I might call for a Resources test on a failed Circles - they find a doc, but she’s not about to get her hands dirty without payment up front. Neither of those guarantees the success of the actual Treatment.

11

If you want a doctor right now, as you probably do when wounded, you’re going to be facing some punishing Circles tests. If you have a relationship then it’s easier. Your sister the doctor probably will patch you up. She might balk at patching up your friends in the dead of night. Or you, the third time it’s happened when you still aren’t paying. And then she’s eventually going to ask a favor of you in return.

If a character is coming up a lot it might be worth establishing stats and having the character roll. In general, though, I don’t. The point of finding an NPC for a purpose is exactly that purpose. One of the points of Circles is being able to pull an amazing surgeon out of nowhere at need.

I’m also always more cautious if NPCs can step on PCs’ toes. If there’s a PC who can doctor then sister needs to be less available, of somewhat more limited talents, or otherwise not overshadowing the player’s role. NPCs who can provide a die or two of help are good. NPCs who need to accept a die or two of help also work, and they’re nifty ways to feed PCs some really high Obs without failure if you’d like.

12

I generally don’t. As GM, I rarely roll for NPCs unless it’s directly opposing a PC’s roll.

13

This. You’re stabilized, for now. Choose your doctor wisely while you can.

14

Some years ago I made this to help me through treatment & recovery; posting it now in case it needs updating.

15

That’s a great reference, Michael. Thanks

16

I went over the chart to see what needs updating. Here’s what I found:

1- Superficial/Light treatment failure does not lead to a direct recovery failure result at max recovery time. Player can still roll for recovery after failing treatment, with no penalty. (BWG 4th printing p.495)

2- When a midi wound is bleeding, it worsens to severe at the end of the session - not after Scene Inflict+2. (BWG 4th printing p. 490)

3- When the treatment of a severe/traumatic fails, there’s no permanent -1d to stat. (BWG 4th printing p. 495)

4- If a severe wound is left to bleed, it worsens after Inflict+2, not Inflict+1. (BWG 4th printing p. 490)

5- If a traumatic wound is left to bleed, it worsens after Inflict+1, not Inflict.(BWG 4th printing p. 490)

6- Mortal wound succesful recovery time is 4-24 months. (BWG 4th printing p. 494)

7- For sup/li/mid/sev/trau: After a succesful health test, MoS x 10% is reduced from recovery time. (BWG 4th printing p. 494) This is also the case for mortal, but that’s reflected on the chart already.

8- After the initial reocvery of the mortal wound; there are still 5 stages to go. These may have been left out on purpose, but I’ll just sum them here since I’m already knee deep in the Anatomy of Injury chapter:
a- Treatment is optional during these stages.(p.494) If treatment is performed, MoS provides advantage and MoF provides disadvantage. (p.496) Failed treatment at these stages should not otherwise have an effect -eg. bleeding to death (Just common sense)
b- Player will make health tests in a descending order from traumatic to superficial. Obs will be the same as regular recovery, recovery time will be the same as regular recovery. MoS x 10% reduced recovery time, failure indicates max recovery time.(p.496) If health test is failed between traumatic to light stages, gain a treat - this is in additon to the normally lost dice due to regular recovery failure mechanics. (p.497)
c- During recovery from a mortal wound, is it possible to remain comatose after a dice loss even if a Persona point is spent? I don’t know.

17

That’s very comprehensive, thank you very much!

Valannor has also been working on a corrected version, he may have caught these errors, but perhaps not all.

18

Ah, it seems he’s got most of them.

I’ve posted there to point out the one that he may wish to consider.

I’ll console myself with the fact that I wouldn’t have found the updated version had I not posted here! Thanks for pointing it out.