From: gusar@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (Sean A Reith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Swords of Sharpness and Incredible Constitution
Date: 29 Sep 1992 17:46:36 +0800
Organization: The University of Westrn Australia
NNTP-Posting-Host: uniwa.uwa.edu.au
Keywords: Trolls, regeneration, sword, sharpness, constitution

boelter3945@iscsvax.uni.edu writes:

>In article <1992Sep27.233456.10325@beaver.cs.washington.edu>,
>   guido@cs.washington.edu (Guido Hunt) writes:
>> [...story about finding Sword of Sharpness and what to do with it...]

>   Not being a medical student, I can't profess to know everything about this
>(or anything, for that matter).  But here's how I would do it.

Ditto, though my rather limited first aid knowledge disagrees with
yours (perhaps someone more knowledgeable work care to help?) slightly.

>   Losing an appendage, _immediate_ system shock check to avoid falling
>unconscious.

Sounds good.

> Each round unattended, lose x hp due to blood loss (where x is
>the original # of hp lost due to the hit), and another system shock check at a
>temporary -1 on CON (cumulative).

>   Major tending to will be needed to stop this process, taking one round with
>either a proficiency in healing (can't just 'patch up' this one), or a spell of
>at least Cure Serious level (ie: Cure Light or Potion of Healing will not
>work).

This I disagree with, tramatic loss of limbs will cause the arteries to
go into shock and thus blood loss would not be as great as expected,
furthermore, treating (here I refer to first aid during combat) will be
pretty much limited to a tourniquet, which is fairly quick.  As for
postcombat treatment...  your solution sounds reasonable, though
assuming the person didn't die from shock, they would probably survive
less disease, infection etc etc.

Also HPs theoretically represent dodging etc, and I imagine that losing a
limb would severly effect this (in game terms, a temporary significant
loss of max HP, with this slowly regenerating, but never quite to the old
total (reflecting (a) the advantage of a fully limbed person, and
(b) experience which is now no longer useful (in using the lost limb in
combat)).  Of course, losing a leg is going to make combat near impossible.) 
THACO is of course going to suffer to...  This is all rather horrible to
keep track of...  I though D&D's (rather unrealistic) ignoring criticals
was a good plan (tm), especially in simplifying combat, never did
understand why they included Swords of Sharpness and Vorpal Swords...
Sigh.

As a matter of interest, what will regenerate a limb?  Anything short of
heal?

>   No, reaching -10 will still cause death.  In fact, a troll hitting -10 will
>still dies as well, at least in my ruling.  It's the fact that they regenerate
>that makes it difficult to bring them to -10. :-)

Interesting ruling, though it would help explain why trolls aren't the
dominate race, though D&D never did bother about things like that :)
(Ignoring all the other races/beings who should be dominant (at least
over humans) :)  I always liked Terry Pratchett's (Discworld) trolls.

Enjoy, be free,
Sean.
-- 
Sean A Reith aka Lynscar             | gusar@uniwa.uwa.edu.au
C programmer and net.addict at large | sean@gu.uwa.edu.au
Obquote:                             | reith_s@kultarr.cs.uwa.edu.au
 "I have a cunning Plan" - Baldrick  | sean@his.own.really.fast.machine (RSN)