Fracture wounds

[Rias]

Fracture wounds are now a thing. See the help/wiki article for more information.

If you suffer a fracture in combat to your weapon or shield hand, you might want to swap what you're holding to the other hand to utilize it without penalties. Dodge defense is extra susceptible to fracture penalties, as it considers wounds on both legs and both feet, so that's four sources of reroll penalties for dodgy PCs. You Warriors out there can of course use this to your own advantage against your enemies.

Fractures can be SPLINTed by a Physicker who has taken the Medical Splint ability. NPC healers do not treat fracture wounds, in an effort to keep PC Physickers relevant.

[TheCacklackian]

What happens when there are no PC healers present? Feel like that's going to make having fractures kind of annoying if they are particularly difficult to do things with.

[Rias]

That's the idea behind physicker-treatable conditions that NPCs dont deal with: They're annoying and you're going to want to seek someone out to help with them as soon as possible, but you can still get by in the meantime. They're meant to keep PC healers relevant instead of everyone just going to the automated NPC for everything they could ever need health-wise.

[TheCacklackian]

And if there are long periods of time in which there's not a healer active? What happens when someone starts getting 2-3 fractures, or 4-5+ and there's not a healer on for a couple days? Just lounge around shadgard until one shows up?

[Rias]

Or go about your business and just be extra careful to keep your penalties in mind? Fractures don't completely prevent anything. It's right there with frostbite: A nuisance, but it doesn't prevent you from doing anything.

Also: Poke the Physickers you know to be around more often, or poke your friends to sign up and play a Physicker. That's what I've been doing to the ones I know who said they felt superfluous next to the NPCs.

[Acarin]

I do understand the rationale for things like this but making a market for physikers by penalizing combat players and forcing them to interact with a physiker in order to fix potentially common injuries, in my opinion, is not an ideal route for making them relevant.

The end result of this is disuading people from combat, not making physikers relevant. It's the same sort of thought process as when you know an item will degrade so you don't use it. In this case, it's not permanent but it does raise that issue of having no idea how long it will be until the issue is fixed. Frostbite is something that is easier to avoid than getting hit. All combat characters get hit... and some nights, there are only 3 or 4 players on...

I do understand why this was implemented and the intent behind it but just stating that it's the first thing in this game so far that I know will frustrate me regularly and make me want to play less. I dont mind the fractures... just the physiker only requirement.

In short,
RAAAAAAAAAAAGE QUIIIIIIIIIIIT

[nobody]

I dont mind the fractures... just the physiker only requirement.

I definitely understand this sentiment, and if you'll pardon my curious but genuine prying, where do you estimate the "I would play less" line to be for you? If fractures healed on their own after 6 hours, most people would seek out a physicker, but not everyone - I imagine plenty of people would just go grind a craft or idle it out if it was at the end of their playtime, so lets tweak that alternative suggestion just a bit. If you had to logout on a nice bed for a long rest (something like 6-8 hours), would you stop playing as soon as you got a fracture or find another way to get your game on and go back to combat tomorrow? If it were only 1-2 hours would you log out right away and come back later, or just play out your game time and return to combat later? Alternatively, if this were a tiered ability that required 100 medical skill and worked very slowly for non-physickers or much more quickly for physickers, would you sink the skill and ability points to deal with it yourself?

As a side note, I play a physicker and recently counted down not just the days but the hours til I could unshelve them, but don't feel like I can properly opine from that side as I am an odd duck. I really enjoy healing the random NPCs that swing by. I kinda wish they had more variety in clothing or that like 1 in 100 of them would respond to 'ask <person> about chat' with something interesting (at least, after they've been calmed down), but I don't need to be needed by other PCs to enjoy that super mundane gameplay. I like book shelving tasks and tending NPCs, and sweeping floors. It is my jam. I'm here to RP mostly just for me. So, like I said, I'm an odd duck and I'd wager most physickers don't feel the same way.

[Acarin]

I think it really depends on how big a nuisance it ends up being. I haven't been hit hard enough to test it and I dont plan to let this happeb on purpose. If I had to wait 2-6 hours for it to heal on it's own, I probably would go do something else during that period or hunt through it. Basically, that's what I do after death too (the one time that happened). Anything more than that and I would go find a physiker (angrily) or slam my computer shut and not log on for a week. The thing is, this game does not allow a lot of room to play with skills or to pursue other hobbies for some combat characters. All my skill points are accounted for and I have only one professional skill (lockpicking) so not much else to do besides kill. It's not like I can work on crafting. Basically, having to find a physiker, if it's a big nuisance, means that I have to wait for a physiker and have a forced interaction (which is the intent, I assume) or log off until one comes. Like I said, getting an injury like that might make me log off for a week or two. I'm busy and on a short fuse these days because of work (I work in infectious disease drug development and its been exhausting) so I'm more likely to decide not to deal with it at all. I would seriously consider being able to do it on my own even if it look a long time but not sure where those skill points would come from so it would certainly be frustrating to have to change the plan and dig up the points. I had to do that with one unanticipated skill and it was not fun. If the skill system allowed more flexibility and more skills overall (meaning that there was room to experiment) it would certainly be on the list above many other things... even if slow.

[Bonehead]

I don't think you have to worry about there being an active Physicker around. I decided to take on the role In addition to my farming, in order to have more interactions with other characters beyond what I'm trying to sell them....in addition to being able to offer them more I can sell. Even with work picking up for me, I hop on as often as I can. With myself plus other player Physickers, your healthcare needs should not take to long before you are seen to.