Wound Deterioration

[silverwizard]

Last week my party was three characters.
Dunwick, Israfil, and Adria, and they’d broken into The Castle of Thorns, a twisted undead mockery of the elven Castle Briars. They wished to recover the Seal of the Duchess of Barrowcross which was being used to authorize and sign for trades after being stolen. They managed to sneak into the castle, and had met with the Butler (a Vampyr) of the castle. After some pleasantries, they decided to sneak deeper into the castle, where the vines of the castle attacked them!

Adria began to pray to her Druidic deities and tried to control the castle, though not being confident took extra time, leaving the castle to attack her allies. Dunwick, being unlucky, took a B8 wound, which, due to it being thorns, I ruled abrasions.

Attempting to flee once the castle was bound in magic, Israfil decided to fight the Vampyr in a Bloody Versus to cover the escape, though taking a B5 wound (ruled a Burn due to it being from the soulless chill of the Vampyr).

Once they’d escaped to the abandoned town nearby Adria started attempting to clean and dress wounds.

She managed to successfully get Dunwick’s severe wound healed, and give him some extra Health dice. He rolled 3 successes over the obstacle on his Recovery test.

Then then failed to heal Israfil’s light wound due to bad luck.

So questions:

1. Dunwick I think, with 3 successes over the Obstacle is recovered in 4 weeks, and at -1D until then. Since it reduces healing by two steps. That’s correct - right? I keep wondering if I’m supposed to reduce it to 3 weeks per step.

2. This is the main one. Israfil’s player thinks that “Deterioration increases by one step” means that he now has a maximum deterioration of 4 (as a Burn it can deteriorate 3 steps, plus one from the failed healing), but I think he has a maximum deterioration of 3 steps, but the wound is now Midi and not Light.

Which of us is correct?

[luke (Luke Wheel)]

Hello. Sorry for the delay.
Let me run through this with you.

For failed treatment of a light wound, we have:

1. Wound is infected and requires additional treatment.
2. Permanent record: scars
3. Burns deteriorate up to three steps and the failed treatment increases their current state of deterioration: from 0 steps to 1. For purposes of additional recovery and treatment, they now have a midi wound. If left un treated, the additional deterioration will take them to severe, then traumatic wound levels.
4. Current recovery obstacle increases from Ob 3 to Ob 4.

Now, since the burn is infected (an all too common occurance), I would require additional treatment before allowing recovery, but that’s just me.

With a successful recovery (with an impressive 7 successes!) with MoS 3, Dunwick reduces the recovery time increment from four weeks to 1 week. So the first die is restored immediately and the other will recoup in a week of rest.

Does that make sense?

[silverwizard]

Perfect, yeah, that’s what I had read. Thanks so much.

One of those things that we did at the table where one person thought one thing and another thought another from reading the words. We ruled it that way and moved on. Israfil’s player just had the “deterioration increases” meant the max rather than current. But thanks!

And yeah - Dunwick got really lucky with his treatment.