Med kits and potions!

[Honved]

utterly incompetent medical treatment (such as "bleeding" the patient to remove the "bad blood" from someone who's already dying of blood loss).

I find this humorous.

Supposedly, George Washington didn't find it humorous hundreds of years later, because his death MIGHT have been caused or accelerated by a very similar situation.

Leeches were used to remove "bad blood".  Packing wounds with dirt was supposed to draw out and soak up the "bile" and other evil fluids, but often led to infection.  Bandages weren't sterile, and were often re-used still blood-stained.  More people generally died in the weeks after a battle than in the battle itself or its immediate aftermath, and a very significant part of that was a direct result of utterly incompetent medical treatment.  That doesn't even factor in the heavy losses to disease, where having a mass of densely packed humans under extreme stress was a situation ideally suited for spreading epidemics to and from every town the army passed through.  On the other hand, modern medical practice has rediscovered the "wound staple", which apparently was used extensively by the Romans for battlefield injuries, so there were a few situations which early medicine did handle credibly.

It would be much more realistic (not necessarily fun) if roughly half of your wounded generic troops would die instead of recover over the next few days, with the rate modified slightly by your party's healing skills.  While not "fun", I'd at least prefer that over adding "healing spells" and "magic healing potions" to the game.

 

[John the Roleplayer]

[...]
It would be much more realistic (not necessarily fun) if roughly half of your wounded generic troops would die instead of recover over the next few days, with the rate modified slightly by your party's healing skills.  [...]

If balanced properly such a system might actually be pretty good. The first premise would be that much fewer men die outright during battle. For instance only those taken out by head wounds or hits that caused enough damage at once to be considered lethal, would be dead right away. Everyone else, downed by several hits, is considered wounded. Modified by first aid and healing skill, time and a bit of luck would then determine how many of them recover. A further modifier could be if you party rests for some time after battle, increasing chances of recovery, or is travelling again right away.

To avoid this system getting too annoying, the healing skill could be made very effective, reaching success rates quite beyond actual medieval physicians. But since you'd have fewer dead immediately after battle, overall losses could remain similar to Warband. 

 

[Roccoflipside]

In the after battle report, casualties are broken down into two categories: Killed/majorly wounded, and lightly wounded.  However, the major wounds category isn't always included, which could mean that the game already tracks those units killed outright and those wounded too heavily to continue. If that's the case, then all you have to do is separate the killed outright units from those who took heavy wounds then allow those with heavy wounds to be healed slowly over time, with a certain percentage not being able to be healed due to "dying" or that their wounds were too severe, i.e. lost an arm/leg so can't continue fighting.

 

[Orion]

utterly incompetent medical treatment (such as "bleeding" the patient to remove the "bad blood" from someone who's already dying of blood loss).

I find this humorous.

Supposedly, George Washington didn't find it humorous hundreds of years later, because his death MIGHT have been caused or accelerated by a very similar situation.

Leeches were used to remove "bad blood".  Packing wounds with dirt was supposed to draw out and soak up the "bile" and other evil fluids, but often led to infection.  Bandages weren't sterile, and were often re-used still blood-stained.  More people generally died in the weeks after a battle than in the battle itself or its immediate aftermath, and a very significant part of that was a direct result of utterly incompetent medical treatment.  That doesn't even factor in the heavy losses to disease, where having a mass of densely packed humans under extreme stress was a situation ideally suited for spreading epidemics to and from every town the army passed through.  On the other hand, modern medical practice has rediscovered the "wound staple", which apparently was used extensively by the Romans for battlefield injuries, so there were a few situations which early medicine did handle credibly.

It would be much more realistic (not necessarily fun) if roughly half of your wounded generic troops would die instead of recover over the next few days, with the rate modified slightly by your party's healing skills.  While not "fun", I'd at least prefer that over adding "healing spells" and "magic healing potions" to the game.

George Washington certainly found it humorous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism

 

[King Yngvar]

Instead of this why not just add the ability to take over as one of your troops when you get knocked out?

 

[Crossbow Pig]

Just press Ctrl+H

 

[whereisthedevblog]

+1 I can see how walking on 1 health could be really annoying maybe if you have more skills in surgery you can mend your own wounds on the battlefield to restore yourself to fighting state

 

[FBohler]

Fantastic healing is already in the game, if you consider the time it takes to recover from near-fatal wounds.

This needs to be addressed!

We need more realism! We need permanent injuries, or at least ones that take decades to fully heal!

We need diseases and everything!

More realism equals better game!!!

 

[Lord Brutus]

I think you've made your point abundantly clear.

 

[Orion]

...

Is this you acting out because your thread for antagonistic grandstanding was locked? I won't have any of that.

 

[Triune Impurity Rites 999]

Orion, I believe we are witnessing the beginning of an epidemic. As we are forced to swallow mediocre blogs and continue to wait for a game with no release date, more and more not-trolls are creating angsty threads of the lowest quality.

 

[Orion]

A bit overstated. Overall, we're doing fine. Some of us just get a little antsy from time to time. It's to be expected, and nothing to get worked up over.

 

[Triune Impurity Rites 999]

A bit overstated. Overall, we're doing fine. Some of us just get a little antsy from time to time. It's to be expected, and nothing to get worked up over.

I like to think of this community has a frothing mass of flesh eagerly and impatiently awaiting to be fed something other than hors dvores.

 

[FBohler]

Trying to convey my opinions without hurting "someone's" feelings:

I would very respectfully have a M&B game without potions just because this would mess the gameplay balance. I very respectfully don't f***n care if BL isn't neither 100% realistic or historically accurate, as long as it's good gameplay wise.

If my humble words ever hurt any of you, I'm really sorry, it's just my harmless opinion on this particular video game franchise.

PS.: I very respectfully disagree that stating my opinion in a sarcastic way is any kind of spamming.

 

[Orion]

Sniping at me in your posts won't win you anything but another mod's attention.

 

[Roccoflipside]

Seriously, how has this topic gone on for 4 pages? Everyone has agreed, we're fighting two sides of the same coin here.

 

[Honved]

I would very respectfully have a M&B game without potions just because this would mess the gameplay balance. I very respectfully don't f***n care if BL isn't neither 100% realistic or historically accurate, as long as it's good gameplay wise.

The game needs to strike a balance between "fun" and "realism", because what's "fun" for one person isn't necessarily "fun" for another, and almost everyone has some expectations that the game will remain within a stone's throw or so from "realistic", even if it does deviate in many ways for the sake of gameplay or technical limitations.  MOST players are quite willing to give up a little bit of realism to make it more enjoyable, but a LOT of players would be VERY upset if those "fun" changes included magical spells (high fantasy), repeating firearms (WAY out of the time period), etc.  If it's going to slip significantly further from realism than the previous games in the series, then it needs to be re-branded and marketed as such.  It wouldn't be "Mount & Blade" anymore.

If you take the "Fun > Realism" thing too far, then you end up with stuff like "Candyland in Calradia", some sort of "Mount & Blocks" Tetris clone or Lego game, or something else equally inappropriate to the original concept.

 

[Calamity]

PS.: I very respectfully disagree that stating my opinion in a sarcastic way is any kind of spamming.

It is when you post similar content in other threads (one of which was closed) that adds no value. That is spam. You've been treated fairly here.

 

[Triune Impurity Rites 999]

Trying to convey my opinions without hurting "someone's" feelings:

Hmmm, okay. Didn't think that was an issue to begin with.

Anyways, I don't mean to presume the mods, but I think this thread has derailed enough.

 

[jamoecw]

On the other hand, modern medical practice has rediscovered the "wound staple", which apparently was used extensively by the Romans for battlefield injuries, so there were a few situations which early medicine did handle credibly.

Roman medicine and medieval medicine were worlds apart. the Romans sterilized their tools before surgery, and actually cleaned their wounded. they even managed (along with Egyptians) managed some minor life saving brain surgery. they had used a primitive sort of antibiotic patch over wounds and used maggots to clean out dead flesh before closing large wounds. if you look at the rate of survival once one got to surgeon after a battle the numbers are about 90% during late Roman era. in medieval times it was about as good not to go as it was to go. after we rediscovered sterilization during the civil war we managed to get our numbers up to about 99% survival, a big upgrade but still only 10% better (mainly due to there not being much room for improvement). in WW2 we upped that number to 99.9% due almost exclusively to penicillin and in Vietnam we got those numbers up to 99.99% with the after the introduction of helicopter medivacs.

as for average life span dentistry added about 20 years, which nearly doubled the lifespan when it was introduced (a prehistoric innovation). the next big jump came from refrigeration, allowing the average person to get fresh food, which a good diet (not just bread, rice, etc.) adds about 20 years to the average lifespan. modern medicine accounts for the remaining 10 or so years in a developed country (and part of the reason men die off on average before women, in conjunction with workplace safety).