First Aid

While you are bleeding to death, First Aid is the skill you are wishing someone in your party had taken the time to learn. If they had, they could be trying to stop the bleeding, set the fracture, and snap you out of shock. Unfortunately, none of your friends did so, and so you are dead.

Don't let this happen to your friends.

First Aid can be used not only to stop bleeding and set broken bones, but also to combat the effects of poison, illness, and disease.

If any hit location drops below zero hit points, that area is considered broken and will continue to lose one point every minute due to bleeding. The difficulty of the first aid attempt (to stop the bleeding) is 10 for each point below zero. Once the bleeding has been stopped, setting the bone is a separate operation, but has the same difficulty.

Illnesses such as colds, fever, chicken pox, and other (usually) non-fatal ailments can be treated with First Aid. A successful check will not cure the illness, but may relieve the symptoms and speed the recovery.

Diseases such as bubonic plague, smallpox, yellow fever, and other ailments with a high fatality rate, can also be treated, if the character was able to learn how (ie. if the society has discovered treatments). The results of a successful check are left up to the GM.

First Aid also covers knowledge of treatment for poisons.

In all cases, the difficulty assigned by the GM depends on the severity of the illness, and will often increase over time as the disease permeates the body of the infected. The difficulty of treating a poison victim will obviously increase much more quickly than the difficulty of treating someone with a slow-acting disease.

Each First Aid attempt requires one minute, as well as appropriate supplies.

Sample difficulties:

Hit location at -3	30
Cold	0
Fever	5
Chicken Pox	10
Bubonic Plague (in Middle Ages)¹	40
Smallpox¹	50
Rattlesnake bite²	10
Black Widow bite³	10

Notes:
  1: +1/day
  2: +1/hour
  3: +1/minute