I am GMing a homebrew Pathfinder campaign. In this campaign, one of the characters was captured, tortured and ultimately kept alive while he was completely skinned. The rest of the party managed to save the flayed character before he was killed, but he now has no skin.
Would a normal series of healing spells return his skin to him or would something more need to be done in order to heal such a massive wound?
What do you think?
1 restoration for each area of the body. Plus cure disease or heal checks to cure disease as i imagine he wasn't flayed in a sterile room. Your post really made me laugh, btw.
Also, this should probably be done over several days long term care.
TheCorbysFancy wrote: I am GMing a homebrew Pathfinder campaign. In this campaign, one of the characters was captured, tortured and ultimately kept alive while he was completely skinned. The rest of the party managed to save the flayed character before he was killed, but he now has no skin.
Would a normal series of healing spells return his skin to him or would something more need to be done in order to heal such a massive wound?
What do you think?
Well, in entirely game mechanic terms, it depends on what kind of effects/consequences flaying had. If all it did was cause damage, series of Cure spells may do. I would however lean towards Restoration & Regeneration type spells as more of a "fix that nasty stuff" approach. Ultimately, question in my book would be "does it make for a fun RP challenge" - if players seem to enjoy figuring out how to fix this, give them a challenge to run with. If players just want to get back on the road, saying "Well, 27 spell levels' worth of healing spells and 5 days of recovery later, you're covered in brand new unblemished baby-soft skin. Sunburn is going to really suck for a while, by the way."
downlobot wrote: 1 restoration for each area of the body. Plus cure disease or heal checks to cure disease as i imagine he wasn't flayed in a sterile room. Your post really made me laugh, btw. I thought restoration was specifically for ability damage and negative levels. It doesn't really mention anything about returning major organs. I fell like I should be treating this almost like a loss of limb.
I beleive regrowing things is the domain of regeneration. Also, how is he still alive without skin, was he being kept alive via magic?
Captain Wacky wrote: I beleive regrowing things is the domain of regeneration. Also, how is he still alive without skin, was he being kept alive via magic? His torturer was keeping him alive through a series of stabilize and minor healing spells to keep him right on the brink of death. So, his current "alive" status is a bit tenuous at best.
+1 for the Regenerate spell (which also includes some generic healing), plus a Remove Disease and Neutralise Poison for any "rider effects".
I think regeneration is the appropriate thing here. The character will grow a new skin.
Otherwise...I dunno. I'm not sure without extremely high level magic it should be possible to have survived flaying for any significant period of time.
Yeah, my bad, regeneration was the one. Restoration couldn't hurt either...given the knock ons of having no skin.
downlobot wrote: Yeah, my bad, regeneration was the one. Restoration couldn't hurt either...given the knock ons of having no skin. Yah, I can see a lot of Con loss, people have a tendancy to bleed a lot when they have no skin.
Ok, so Regeneration to bring the skin back, Restoration to counter the massive amount of Con loss, and Cure Disease to stave off infection. That makes sense to me.
The group isn't high enough level to pull of a Regeneration spell. Do you think a combo of healing spell, restoration, and cure disease would keep him alive until they can get to someone to do a Regeneration?
Lowish level characters with no access to regeneration* finds their companion skinned alive... if they are in the basement of some evil twisted serial killers lair in the middle of the city then get him to a church, immidiately. Either they will have a priest who can cast regernatate**... or they can, at least, give him his last rites.
If they are in some back woods cabin and far away from powerful clerical magic... put the poor fool out of his misery.
*cudos on actually finding a use for an otherwise useless spell by the way.
**an excelent plot hook for further adventure to pay back the church for their services via adventuring
TheCorbysFancy wrote: Ok, so Regeneration to bring the skin back, Restoration to counter the massive amount of Con loss, and Cure Disease to stave off infection. That makes sense to me.
The group isn't high enough level to pull of a Regeneration spell. Do you think a combo of healing spell, restoration, and cure disease would keep him alive until they can get to someone to do a Regeneration?
Well, healing really isn't going to do much at this point unless he sustains further injury. They would have to make some pretty big healing rolls to keep him from bleeding out; Which is going to be very hard to do if they are planning on moving him.
He doesn't have any skin... bleeding is going to be constant, and keeping him sustained is going to be a full time job.
Has he lost 100% of his skin?
Tempestorm wrote: Lowish level characters with no access to regeneration* finds their companion skinned alive... if they are in the basement of some evil twisted serial killers lair in the middle of the city then get him to a church, immidiately. Either they will have a priest who can cast regernatate**... or they can, at least, give him his last rites.
If they are in some back woods cabin and far away from powerful clerical magic... put the poor fool out of his misery.
*cudos on actually finding a use for an otherwise useless spell by the way.
**an excelent plot hook for further adventure to pay back the church for their services via adventuring
Thank you, my players don't find it all that useless though , dismemberment is a very real thing in my games.
It depends on how long we're talking about. If you wanna go all realistic, you must remember skin is not just an envelope keeping organs from falling out - it's an actual body organ serving a wide range of functions, from basic environmental protection through body temperature control through secondary "breathing" organ. Someone who's had most of their skin flayed off won't be living for long - of course, pending magic. Once you start throwing in magical ointments and balms or baths that protect the body until skin is replaced, you're throwing science out. Again, I'd recommend using this as a roleplaying challenge, rather than "find the caster who can cast the correct spell by the book" nuisance.
Two plot hook suggestions for the fact that regeneration is beyond their abilities/resources:
1. A skin changer shows the character how to wear his own skin, which will allow him to survive for a time. But of course he wants you to do something ... and every week you need a fresh skin.
2. Tie in a race with regeneration, have the cure be a function of acquiring the royal crest of a Troll matriarch, or some such.
Combination of the two would work well. With one hook being for immediate survival, and the second being for the long term fix.
It's your call, but this all kinda depends on what resources they have at their disposal currently. It might just be easier, and in a lot of ways, more merciful, to just put him out of his misery and hit him with a raise dead later on.
A church might do it for free if they go on a few quests for them. Depending on how nice the church is and how good they are at diplomacy, they might do it before the quests begin. Or maybe the player can play another character during the quest line until he can get his PC back.
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