[Suggestion] Medical Skills, Disease, and Permanency

[JerrylThesekar]

This thread expands on the medical skills already in the game and proposes a new "Disease" system, which the game is currently lacking in. Without the new "Medical Knowledge" skill, you won't know what disease you have, if you have one, rather only see a few of the symptoms (You might see two, but always at least one), which makes it hard to cure without proper knowledge. There will be many temporary fixes to symptoms, for example if you have a fever, you can wet a rag and put it around your head and it will eventually become a dry rag, but the effect of the fever isn't as bad while in effect. There are serious and even fatal diseases, but for the most part the most dangerous ones can only be caught through rare circumstances, and at most, if you are careful, will only catch the occasional cold, or stomach bug from uncooked food or other players.

Medical skills

[CHANGES] First Aid
Allows the crafting of Tourniquets, Crutches, and Splints. Increased price: 1000 LP
Tourniquets act like Gauze, you can apply it to yourself or a nearby hearthling to lessen the damage caused by Bleeding and Poison, and take up the 3L slot (gloves). Splints are similar, however cannot be applied to yourself. They cut the time to remove the Crippled Leg debuff while equipped (In the 7R slot) and are reusable, while Crutches lessen the effect of a Crippled Leg by allowing you to walk normally if one is in hand. You can apply Medical Salves to others.

[New Skill] Alchemy
Cost: 2500 LP - Required Skills: Plant Lore
"With every vial of success there is always a pinch of madness."
Allows the creation of Medical Salves from both wild and farmable herbs. These range from antivenoms to poisons caused by the plants, temporary and permanent cures to ailments, and an effective way of healing before you gain a steady supply of wool to make Gauze (That can be used with Gauze, huzzah!). This mostly uses the Herbalist Table, but now allows the crafting of 'Mortar and Pestles', either from wood and stone, or clay. These 'M&Ps' (To shorten the name) grind most plants and seeds up into a fine powder (Excluding some) which can be mixed. For example, a Ginseng Root can be dried, and then crushed into a powder and made into a tea similarly to how regular tea is made, but having an added effect (Like lessened travel weariness, increased stamina gain, or better LP gain than normal tea), but if too much is consumed, you gain a debuff called "Headache" which actually lowers LP gain, thus limiting you from consuming large quantities of ginseng enhanced tea.


[New Skill] Medical Knowledge:
Cost: 4000 LP - Required Skills: First Aid
"Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of my practice."
Adds an option to the flower menu when clicking on a hearthling to "Diagnose" if they have any symptoms what-so-ever. This will tell you what they have; Whether or not you tell them what they have is up to you (But that is malpractice!). This cannot be used on yourself, as you already instantly diagnose your diseases when they are caught (The debuffs will be named after the diseases rather than the symptoms in the top left). This also allows the crafting of better medicines than the medical salves from Alchemy. Finally, you can also apply medical salves and items to other players at an increased value (better base healing or effect based on your Psyche), but this doesn't apply to yourself.

Example recipes for items:
'Simple Mortar and Pestle': 1 Stone, 1 Block of Wood. Quality degrades slowly until broken.
'Ceramic Mortar and Pestle': 2 Raw Clay, fired in a Kiln. Quality doesn't degrade.
'Ginseng Tea': 2 Green or Black Tea Leaves, Water (1 liter), 1 Ginseng Powder, Teapot.
'Tourniquet': 2 String.
'Crutch': 1 Wooden Plank, 1 Block of Wood, 2 String.

Example new foragables:
Ginseng Root
Ginger Root (Used for Stomach Problems, sometimes painkilling.)
Sage (Used for Respiratory Problems, as smoked or incense. Note, possible incense burner for tables or placeable that burns incense plants for Effects?)
Willow Salicin (From Willow Tree Bark, used to help cure Fevers.)
Mandragora (Used for poisons, which I will explain in another thread, but possible Curiosity alternative Mandrake Root.)

Example Diseases:
Lockjaw: From Metal Weapon injury, mining without gloves, or animal attacks. Reduced Strength and Agility for a few ingame days.
Symptoms: Headache, Aches, Fever
Dysentery: Rarely from eating raw meats (Especially poultry). Hunger gain is increased dramatically, and occasional (Every couple of minutes) take a SHP hit.
Symptoms: Diarrhea, Stomache Cramp, Fever
Typhoid Fever: Rarely from drinking low quality water. Stamina drain is increased. Lasts a few ingame days.
Symptoms: Headache, Fatigue, Fever
Malaria: Rarely from walking in swamps. A mixture of Lockjaw and Typhoid Fever in terms of effect, but lesser, lasting 2 or 3 ingame weeks untreated.
Symptoms: Headache, Fever, Fatigue
Common Cold: Common debuff caught at random walking in shallow water, or being around other sick players. Small increase in stamina drain for a few days.
Symptoms: Coughing, Headache, Fatigue
Rabies: Fatal infection from animal bites. Rare, but there is pretty much no cure even nowadays. Will constantly damage you and drain your stamina until you die.
Symptoms: Shakes, Fever, Headache

I would suggest a permanent injury system, but I can see many flaws with that. Rather, I instead suggest a semi-permanent punishment for players who aren't careful (In the forms of diseases and Crippled Legs), that, like many other functions in this game, take time. Almost every disease I suggest, and others are treatable, with a few exceptions, and all can prove to be your downfall if combined with any other issue.

Flaws:
This disease system can be lopsided, as players just starting will have a harder time avoiding some diseases as advanced players can avoid or combat them. This, however is realistic. In early days of yore there wasn't many treatments that didn't involve the release of 'bad blood' and herbal remedies that were hit and miss. However, at the same time, some diseases spread, so larger villages may be at a risk of epidemic if they don't have resident doctors. Some of these diseases can be death sentences (Like Rabies) but if you were hunting in dangerous conditions, and lucky enough not to be mauled to death, then it's something to be doubly lucky not to catch. With the addition of diseases, spread and caught in many forms that players use (Including mass drinking of water to regain stamina for work), then the game will prove to have an added layer of difficulty that might put some people off.

Other suggestion threads:
Stealth and Assassination Skills [Poison, subterfuge and deception]
http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38557

General Additions [More Animals, Foragables, Crops, etc.]
Not yet set up

More soon to come....

[the_portals]

Sounds good! How would poisons work, though? Is it something you smear on foods, or coat your weapons, and could you detect poisoned food?

[JerrylThesekar]

I planned on explaining Poison in the Assassination and Subterfuge thread, but I will give a short reply here; Poison can be put into food (And a person with high enough perception can notice it), water, on a weapon (Including arrows, and a newly suggested blow dart gun, but not a sling), and from Snakes, which are going to be a suggested animal that provides poison, snake skin (For awesome stuff) and snake meat.

You'll need the suggested Alchemist Skill and Murder Skill to craft these poisons, but anyone with Alchemy can create the antidotes for them.

[JerrylThesekar]

Updated post with link to my new suggestion page about Stealth Skills.

[shubla]

Tl;dr

[windmaker]

Tl;dr

a lot of ideas who is hard to development, and never gonna be writed..

[JerrylThesekar]

Well, it's good to see WHERE people become interested, and that is sad. I release two threads side by side, one about killing and one about saving people, and I get intelligent criticism about murder, and I get "tl;dr" about healing. Weird, and totally not a statement about the state of things as they are in the real world.

[venatorvenator]

Well, it's good to see WHERE people become interested, and that is sad. I release two threads side by side, one about killing and one about saving people, and I get intelligent criticism about murder, and I get "tl;dr" about healing. Weird, and totally not a statement about the state of things as they are in the real world.

Don't make the mistake of measuring interest by forum responses. There are many people who would like and comment about your idea, but who never read the forum because they just do their hermitage thing.

I agree with the things you're suggesting and I'd like to see this game becoming more hardcore and survival-focused. Diseases would diversify villager roles besides the essential farmer-crafter-hunter/fighter thing we would also have to have healer. I love the ultrarealistic idea of a titan being useless because of tetanus or a whole village being annihilated because they didn't have a healer to prevent widespread dysentery, or because they couldn't trade for the necessary herbs to cure everyone in time. Even the lone hermit would have to constantly fight against nature for his survival instead of just farming and fishing peacefully behind walls.

But if you want constructive criticism, mine is that you take this idea to another game; realistically speaking, it would hardly ever be implemented here. It seems too time-consuming for the devs to add at this point and it would make pvp'ing less rewarding, which would upset lots of people.

[JerrylThesekar]

Well, thanks for the pointers. I see it would be rather late in development for disease to be added. However, I would like to point out that PvP isn't supposed to be rewarding outside of either sparring (For entertainment) or raiding, in which the rewards (The enemies loot) outweigh the possible negatives of tetanus, crippled legs, and bleeding (Also possible death just fighting the guy). I feel that this suggestion works best for this game...and the only other place I could possibly see fit to put this to is a Minecraft Mod, or maybe Don't Starve. But even then you don't have the realistic group survival and PvP mechanics on the scale of HnH to shine in its full, disease ridden glory. I would love to have more roles for villagers outside of the Miner/fighter, hunter/archer/gatherer, or whatever else have you, but that was secondary to simply making the game more realistic, and in the sense of things like tetanus in your example, a noob catching lockjaw will lose maybe 1 or 2 points of STR and AGL where a titan would lose 20/30 STR and AGL, which can be a huge bane.

[venatorvenator]

Well, thanks for the pointers. I see it would be rather late in development for disease to be added. However, I would like to point out that PvP isn't supposed to be rewarding outside of either sparring (For entertainment) or raiding, in which the rewards (The enemies loot) outweigh the possible negatives of tetanus, crippled legs, and bleeding (Also possible death just fighting the guy). I feel that this suggestion works best for this game...and the only other place I could possibly see fit to put this to is a Minecraft Mod, or maybe Don't Starve. But even then you don't have the realistic group survival and PvP mechanics on the scale of HnH to shine in its full, disease ridden glory.

You can try contacting the devs of Life is Feudal and other survival games on kickstarter. Starter games don't have the scale of haven, but that might be good since I believe the larger the playerbase and the more advanced the game development is, the harder it is to make significant changes like these, for one reason or the other.