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Zazen
I was creating some cheat-sheets for myself today, one regarding healing. I came up short trying to answer this question.

How long does it take to stabilize someone who has taken a deadly wound? Does it take merely one complex action to stabilize someone?
Grey
I just read the Biotech section in the main book and it doesn't say. It just says make a test, if you succeed, you stabilize the person. If there isn't anything canon on the subject, the GM can make it up, but I'd say it would take longer than a complex action. I'd say a base time of 20 complex actions (1 minute) and extra successes shorten the time.
Chodav
Isn't there a chart in SR3 that shows the treatment time for each injury level? I seem to recall that Light is 5 combat turns, Medium is 10, Serious is 15, and Deadly is 20. That would be a good place to start. It's at the end of the combat chapter.

Wait, wifey brought me the book. It's on page 129. Deadly is special. Go figure. Based on the rest of the chart, I'd say 20 rounds. That's one minute. Not too shabby, most paramedics would tell you, I bet.
Backgammon
QUOTE (Chodav)
Wait, wifey brought me the book.

You're a lucky man, you know that?
Kagetenshi
Indeed. My girlfriend would've made me wait until she finished reading the section on cyberware and the Awakened.

~J
Chodav
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
Indeed. My girlfriend would've made me wait until she finished reading the section on cyberware and the Awakened.

~J

Now THAT'S a lucky man.
Mongoose
I always figured it was an ongoing task- in other words, you have to keep attending to them. If you don;t want to be bothered attending to somebody- well, buy a stablization unit.
However, we do have the person stop taking damage as soon as the "stablization" process is initiated, which I think would eb the part where time is ofthe essence. You don't want them croaking while you work, despite your succesful efforts!

I suppose adding a task time (meaning the patient continued taking damge until the job was done) would make room for use of multiple successes (reducing task time), and be more realistic. But generally I think the medical treatment rules favor character survival over realism and mechanics consistancy. I we usually had the patient take one box of damage if the person doing the stabalizing fails (that's how you know it failed), and then somebody else can step in and take a crack at it.

Actaully, I guess there's your answer- it takes as long as taking a box of overflow damage. At that point, you will know if you failed or succedded.
Tziluthi
I guess it depends on what your character is supposed to be doing to stablise the patient. I mean, if he's just patching them up then that's one thing, but if he's attempting CPR and/or EAR then it could take anywhere from ten seconds to whenever he figures out that the person is dead. On that note, it also depends on how many people are working on it at the same time. Perhaps a base time of (1 min + 10 secs for each box of overflow) divided by successes and halved by an additional first-aidee. That's pretty arbitrary, so it should fit in well with the rest of the rules :)
Lilt
I'd say just apply it immediately. You make the test and, if it works, the character can stabilise that combat round. As long as you make the character take the medkit out and take an action to attend to the wound that took him down (cover it) then I think it's not unreasonable to say that the character would no-longer be bleeding to death.

Well: Sort-of. In this game even a good shot with a heavy pistol won't nececarily make you 'bleed' as such.
Sphynx
Takes my character about 1 turn to stabilize anyone (10 turns divided by the number of successes).... oh wait, not talking about the spell, eh? nyahnyah.gif

Sphynx
BumsofTacoma
QUOTE (Chodav)
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ Dec 3 2003, 04:04 PM)
Indeed. My girlfriend would've made me wait until she finished reading the section on cyberware and the Awakened.

~J

Now THAT'S a lucky man.

I have never had a girlfriend that liked rpg's. they were always my dark secret. all but the one girlfriend. She asked me where i was going I said to a friends to play role playing games she said

"are you cheating on me?"

if i was or wasn't is not the question, that reply was just so funny at the time I laughed my way to being single again. biggrin.gif
Sphynx
Actually, I'm pretty sure he meant that Kage was lucky cause it was a girlfriend, not a wife. nyahnyah.gif

*Sphynx ducks as wife throws frying pan*

Seriously, RPing was a prerequisite for me to marry someone. My wife's SR character is definitely one of the coolest characters out there, she rules lawyered the hell of of Kat.
Chodav
Actually, I meant he was lucky because his girlfriend liked RPG's, but now that you mention it, the girlfriend vs. wife thing is a good deal, too.
Kagetenshi
I'm currently assisting her in GMing a game at her university. It's much fun, because all of her victims are new to Shadowrun vegm.gif
We'll have to do a collaborative game sometime. She tends to be much more magic-heavy than I in her plots.

~J
Namergon
I think that, to stabilize a character sustaining a Deadly+ wound, one has to
- be aware that the character is sustaining such a wound. If one doesn't know, one may try to treat some visible injuries while the situation of the character continues to deteriorate.
- make a diagnosis : check the global character's state, list the symptoms and wounds, to finally evaluate the level of damage currently sustained by the character and find out that the character isn't in a stable state.
- finally apply first aid methods to stabilize the state of the character. This most of the time involves some drugs and tools. Without these, the conditions become bad or awful.

So, looking back to this task list, one can see that each will logically take some time to complete (if no magical means are used).
I think that if the second step is not successful (or not successful enough), the stabilization phase will suffer some +x TN modifiers. Or you can request a number of success to the stabilization test for it to really succeed. Or best, assume that each success allows to stabilize the character an amount of time.
The stabilization phase in these conditions would be a Complex Action.
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