Injury and death are, as it were, a way of life in the challenging and and adventure-filled world of Gemstone III.
If your character takes more health hits than he has, he dies.
Area injuries, damage to specific body parts, are the result of critical strikes you have taken. Area injuries can be seen by checking your HEALTH, or having another character LOOK at you. Those injuries you have incurred will be noticeable to everyone. When injuries are healed they may leave noticeable old wounds, such as scarring.
Some injuries, such as the loss of a limb, an eye, hearing, or nervous system damage, will leave you permanently impaired. These effects are not reversible by normal, mundane means, although certain magical arts for restoring limbs and crippled bodies, and effacing battle scars can be used.
Assuming you are stuck with your permanent injuries, the effects are fairly obvious. It could be that you will be seen to walk with a limp, be hard of hearing, exhibit strange twitching and muscle spasms, and look like a mess in general to those around you. The loss of limbs, especially your right arm (the arm that must be used to wield a weapon), will cut short your career as a combatant and affect your ability to hold and lift things. Sight and hearing loss, as well as the loss of coordination and muscle control, will also make it very difficult for you to survive and advance. Thus it is important to seek out healing for injuries as soon as possible.
The body areas prone to critical strike damage are the head, neck, arms, legs, abdomen, chest, organs, nervous system, and the constituent parts thereof.
Bleeding can begin when you receive critical injuries. The rate of bleeding is measured in health hit points lost per round (a round, in this case, is 30 seconds). Once begun, bleeding will not stop until some method of healing is successful. If not stopped, your character will eventually bleed to death.
Death due to poison or disease can be slow and painful if no antidote or cure is administered. They weaken you over time and disperse through your system. If the effects are not severe enough, the damage over time will lessen, and you will incur fewer hit points per round until the poison or disease has passed. If the disease or poison is of a serious nature, or if you are in a weakened condition, you will die due to hit point accumulation.
Diseases can be caused by bites from rabid or infected creatures or by plague. Poisoning can occur if you ingest poison potions, plants or are wounded by a venomous plant, creature or a weapon dipped in poison. Antidotes and cures, both mundane and magical, are available from empaths, herbalists, alchemists and the like, as are poisonous concoctions.
Spirit Points are a measure of your character's life force, the vital, ethereal power that separates normal, healthy beings who live and breathe from inanimate and lifeless corpses or undead creatures. Undead creatures, in fact, hunger ravenously after spirit points and will be extremely persistent in trying to drain every last drop of it from beings they encounter. When your spirit points are depleted through the draining touch of an undead thing, or by disease, you are weakened, tired, pale and listless. If you are sufficiently drained, you will suffer severe penalties to most actions.
Your maximum spirit points equals your Aura stat divided by 10, rounded up to the next whole number; e.g., if your stat is 75, your total spirit points will be eight. When spirit points are drained, they are regained over time. Special herbs, healing or magic may speed up the recovery of spirit points.
If your spirit points are ever reduced to zero, you will die. This form of death is particularly hideous, and should be avoided at all costs. Some spirit point deaths are permanent ones.
Because being healed in a correct and timely fashion is important, there are several healing types available in Gemstone III. This includes the healing and raising professions of clerics and empaths, first aid, healing items and the empath for hire.
The main method of healing in the field is to find the services of a empath, one who has chosen the calling of taking your injuries upon his or her self. An empath, using forces from the circle of Spirit, will first try to see which body parts are injured, by having a LOOK at a patient or using the DIAGNOSE verb. Once the body part or type of injury is apparent, the empath will transfer the wound from that specific site on the patient to his/her own body.
Training in the First Aid skill allows you to bandage yourself or others using the TEND command. The can be whatever part of your character's body that is bleeding. For example:
>TEND RIGHT ARM
>TEND BARDON HEAD
First aid is only useful for reducing bleeding. It cannot actually heal the arm. The amount of bleeding stopped and how long it takes to do this is determined by your first aid skill.
Healing may be purchased a number of ways. If you can afford it, it is not a bad idea to carry around some healing items with you, especially if you are adventuring alone or far from town. The herbalist and alchemist in Wehnimer's Landing sell a variety of healing herbs, potions, salves and other concoctions. These items may be applied, drunk, rubbed, or used in ways that make sense according to the form they are in. They have a limited amount of doses per item.
The empath in town offers his services to mend the ill or wounded adventurer, for a fee, naturally. If you are injured, and visit his tent, he will assess your damage and then proceed to heal you in stages, working on parts of the body and nervous system, and after that, lowering the amount of health points you have incurred, preventing you from going into shock. Keep in mind that the local empaths do have limitations.
Death in the world of Gemstone III can come in many ways. Depending on body training, constitution and race bonuses, your character is allotted a certain number of health points. These hits reflect the amount of pain and bleeding your character can withstand before going into shock or unconsciousness. Once you have received a total number of hits greater than your total allotment, you will pass out from shock and then die.
A fatal critical strike, equal to a major wound, can also kill you, even if you still have not received the number of hits sufficient to kill you otherwise. When an attack from a creature or another character results in a critical strike, specifying damage to a particular part of your body or nervous system, you receive major wounds. When a critical strike is one whose effect is fatal, you die instantly.
You can also take damage from overcasting, that is trying to cast more spells then your body can safely handle the power for. If this exceeds that amount by a large amount it is possible to not only injure your nervous system but kill yourself as well.
Once dead, your options are somewhat limited. You may talk to those in the room as a ghost, you many issue system commands to a limited extent, and you may wait to be healed and resurrected. Note that whatever items you held in your hands when you were killed will fall to the ground. Some creatures are intelligent enough to take these items. Some will even wield them against your fellow adventurers.
After a short period of time, if no one intervenes, your dead body will decay and your soul will depart, leaving behind all you carried on your person. If the gods decide to favor you with another chance at life, you will awaken in the temple, bereft of all your equipment. Note that having deed points is vital here. Without two or more deed points with which to bargain, you may find yourself back in the character manager, rolling up a new persona. Without deed points, death can be permanent.
If there is no one around to offer the hope of resurrection, or if you are in a hurry, you may type DEPART to cause your soul to give up your dead body before it decays in the normal course of time. Departing is equivalent to having your body decay, as described above. Note that decaying/ departing can have some negative effects, so it should be avoided if possible.
There are better ways than DEPARTing or decaying to return to life. If you are fortunate enough to have a cleric come to your aid, the cleric may cast a preservation spell on your corpse, while a empath repairs your physical body enough so your soul may continue to dwell in it. Then the cleric will have to use methods of resurrection (from his/her spell list) to bring you back from the dead. If you are resurrected, you will awaken with all of your worn equipment still on your person. Note that having one or more deed points will improve the odds of a successful resurrection.
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If you have problems, comments, questions, or complaints about the GemStone III pages you can send mail to Nora Melton (ntm@tamcon.com) aka Wanton Destruction.
Last modified 2 May 1996.