realistic consequences suck
Jul. 17th, 2019 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI looked up some plausible consequences of all the times a character gets hit on the head
and made myself sad.
Mick probably gets fixed up by Gideon
maybe Willow could heal Giles?
but it's subtle cumulative long term damage that is the real bitch
like it's horribly dangerous to get a second concussion before the first one has resolved
(which could be up to 18 months if I read it correctly)
but if you survive them all
there's increased chances of Very Bad later.
Currently they are calling it CTE Chronic traumatic encephalopathy
because it happens from a wider range of causes than the old name knew
but it used to be dementia pugilistica, or punch drunk syndrome.
it was described as a sports illness from boxing or rugby but it's more happening now to military people since the armour got good enough they survive more kabooms.
Symptoms start like ten years after the initial injuries.
... I just keep thinking how many characters get hit a lot a lot a lot, and in the story that's fine, they're fine, they walk it off
but apparently all that bad could be sitting ten years in their future.
I was looking as part of thinking about alternate futures for characters, because they either get last minute rescues so no bad happens after all, or they get dead. Xander got an eye patch. Owen Harper got... consequences, but they wrote him off fairly swiftly, even though nothing about his new physical status precluded him having a role in the story. And like Cordelia Chase being declared a princess of another dimension had nothing to do with how she looked, so the story where she gets scars and has that same stuff happen is just sitting there waiting told.
So I was collecting teachers for a magic school, as you do, and figured after the bomb Doyle and scarred post auction Seer Cordelia and Jenny Calendar who survived a broken neck and Giles after some cumulative consequences to all the hitting...
... only now I've just made myself sad.
so.
:(
They would all have stuff to teach though, and badass but limited magical powers that would each have a context to shine, so that's a good start from a writing point of view.
Also I now want to cast flying carpet on a wheelchair.
Like you might have to work the fabric into the seat and make the seat carry all the weight, but not if it's the same spell as for broomsticks and doesn't need fabrics. And you'd need to check things were adequately load bearing in all the directions. But it's part of the magic you don't fall off unless you really work at it so. Hover chair. No lifts? No problem!
Except it takes a lot of time and effort to make a magic carpet and the same resources could be used for other spells.
So you have to come up with reasons why this set of people think this is the best use.
Also there have to be reasons why magical healing doesn't just whoosh everything, but between anti magic protective spells gone wrong, healed but not cosmetic smooth, demon physiology, and just magic hitting its limits like with ageing, there's lots of ways.
Actually ageing is complicated because there's spells in Pathfinder that can switch your age between old, middle, and young, but they assume that getting older swaps physical stats for mental ones, like plus to wisdom minus to strength sort of thing. If being younger wiuld make someone less ill you wouldn't get the same tradeoff occurring.
Also in DnD magic is an x times a day thing, so having to spend your spell on your health would be a significant disability, especially since it could wear off and not many spells last all day. In GURPS you use fatigue to do magic, u less you invest a lot of skill in it, so if you're trading which you need of staying mentally sharp or staying awake at all... that's interesting.
So as long as magic has some constraints, having magical mitigators is still a story.
Like having meds that work.
... I still get sad thinking of doing this to characters I like.
... except canon pretty much just kills them, so, consequences certainly improve on that...
and made myself sad.
Mick probably gets fixed up by Gideon
maybe Willow could heal Giles?
but it's subtle cumulative long term damage that is the real bitch
like it's horribly dangerous to get a second concussion before the first one has resolved
(which could be up to 18 months if I read it correctly)
but if you survive them all
there's increased chances of Very Bad later.
Currently they are calling it CTE Chronic traumatic encephalopathy
because it happens from a wider range of causes than the old name knew
but it used to be dementia pugilistica, or punch drunk syndrome.
it was described as a sports illness from boxing or rugby but it's more happening now to military people since the armour got good enough they survive more kabooms.
Symptoms start like ten years after the initial injuries.
... I just keep thinking how many characters get hit a lot a lot a lot, and in the story that's fine, they're fine, they walk it off
but apparently all that bad could be sitting ten years in their future.
I was looking as part of thinking about alternate futures for characters, because they either get last minute rescues so no bad happens after all, or they get dead. Xander got an eye patch. Owen Harper got... consequences, but they wrote him off fairly swiftly, even though nothing about his new physical status precluded him having a role in the story. And like Cordelia Chase being declared a princess of another dimension had nothing to do with how she looked, so the story where she gets scars and has that same stuff happen is just sitting there waiting told.
So I was collecting teachers for a magic school, as you do, and figured after the bomb Doyle and scarred post auction Seer Cordelia and Jenny Calendar who survived a broken neck and Giles after some cumulative consequences to all the hitting...
... only now I've just made myself sad.
so.
:(
They would all have stuff to teach though, and badass but limited magical powers that would each have a context to shine, so that's a good start from a writing point of view.
Also I now want to cast flying carpet on a wheelchair.
Like you might have to work the fabric into the seat and make the seat carry all the weight, but not if it's the same spell as for broomsticks and doesn't need fabrics. And you'd need to check things were adequately load bearing in all the directions. But it's part of the magic you don't fall off unless you really work at it so. Hover chair. No lifts? No problem!
Except it takes a lot of time and effort to make a magic carpet and the same resources could be used for other spells.
So you have to come up with reasons why this set of people think this is the best use.
Also there have to be reasons why magical healing doesn't just whoosh everything, but between anti magic protective spells gone wrong, healed but not cosmetic smooth, demon physiology, and just magic hitting its limits like with ageing, there's lots of ways.
Actually ageing is complicated because there's spells in Pathfinder that can switch your age between old, middle, and young, but they assume that getting older swaps physical stats for mental ones, like plus to wisdom minus to strength sort of thing. If being younger wiuld make someone less ill you wouldn't get the same tradeoff occurring.
Also in DnD magic is an x times a day thing, so having to spend your spell on your health would be a significant disability, especially since it could wear off and not many spells last all day. In GURPS you use fatigue to do magic, u less you invest a lot of skill in it, so if you're trading which you need of staying mentally sharp or staying awake at all... that's interesting.
So as long as magic has some constraints, having magical mitigators is still a story.
Like having meds that work.
... I still get sad thinking of doing this to characters I like.
... except canon pretty much just kills them, so, consequences certainly improve on that...
no subject
Date: 2019-07-17 02:30 pm (UTC)~
no subject
Date: 2019-07-19 10:35 pm (UTC)("I don't kill people, I just throw them down a flight of stairs four floors up and I mean I'm sure they're okay" comes to mind)
but hey I once wrote a fic that was the after and the healing from a literal gunshot to the head so that was a thing