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+--- Thread: Long term injury to a character, any ideas? (/showthread.php?tid=18542)
Long term injury to a character, any ideas? - Redrick - 02-13-2017
Hello everyone, the forums have been more then helpful helping me with lore now I have a question asking if any of you have any ideas for this.
Normally I'm rather good at writing real life injuries into a character, I do my research and I normally get what I need. This time however I'm struggling a bit.
I am creating/have created a character who I'd like to have been injured at some point, the injury would've been a severe burn to a small portion of his body and broken leg at the time of said injury. Smaller injuries wen't along with this as it was a traumatic turning point in his life that kind of carries the rest of his story along. Probably some chest damage and the like. My situation here is, I would really like for him to have some serious damage done to the leg on that side. To the point where he may have a slight limp, and on really bad days acts up from time to time possibly during certain weather conditions or things of the like that I can use at points to kind of break the character down from being this massive unmovable, controlled force to; 'aye... I actually need to accept some help now and again so uh... can I get some help please?'Â He's pushing his mid 30's I'm sure his body responds to it more often then it would at his younger age.
Thing is. I can't figure out a injury in the FFXIV universe or out of it that corresponds? I'm no doctor, I WEB MD my way through about everything and most of the posts I find about injuries that prolong through a lifetime are mostly head traumas. Which I'm willing to go with but I was curious if anyone else had ideas. Something that can't be 'healed' or if healed still causes some form of discomfort over time?
I'd prefer to not get rid of the leg completely because I feel it would damage the character to much at the point psychologically. I want to break him down and give him a weakness but not, shatter him? If that makes any sense?
RE: Long term injury to a character, any ideas? - Kazukata - 02-13-2017
Well, outside of the low-hanging arrow to the knee joke, I've noticed that a lot of people don't treat healing as a magical cure-all for all your problems. There's a bit of leeway to say that your character was injured so grievously that even after getting healed, their leg still doesn't work quite right, or they just didn't have access to a healer at the time and it had to heal naturally. If it's your backstory, you've got plenty of wiggle room. As for the injury itself, I'm not a huge expert on niggling injuries, but maybe focus on nerve damage? Certainly, I think a bad burn could accomplish that.
RE: Long term injury to a character, any ideas? - Kilieit - 02-13-2017
!! this post is like 70% headcanon/"what makes sense to me", proceed with due caution !!
Minor 3.5 spoilers, but nothing that wasn't in the trailer/patch preview - here's a good thread on tumblr that covers some of the ins and outs of magical healing (the replies in the notes have some good stuff). Thread TL;DR: It shouldn't be a magical fix-all, and it's not in the lore, even if for convenience's sake RPers are sometimes best served by treating it this way (e.g.: in fighting tournaments).
Something else I'll contribute is that the lore book states in Basic Aetherology that older, sicker people have broadly "less" aether than younger, healthier people. I can only imagine this is either a result of, or results in, a reduced "flow" of aether around the body... and we know (from Hydaelyn, the very planet itself, failing to regenerate after the Calamity) that a slowed or disrupted flow of aether prevents healing. This seems to be the in-universe reason for why, like IRL, older people are slower (when magical healing is not involved) to recover from illness and injury than younger people.
I feel like you could incorporate this into the reason why a healing spell isn't insta-fixing your character's problems? His body won't absorb the aether, or the aether is pooling in the wrong places, etc etc - it's no reflection on the skill of the healer themself, his body just isn't cooperating. Maybe the healer could undertake a longer plot to try and "fix" the disrupted flow of aether in your character's body - but even then it's better than an insta-heal (because it's a longer plot), and there's still the chance of it failing.
Though honestly, I think any healer who gets upset OOC because you won't let them take over and end your plot insta-heal your injury is a bad healer. Failures should be treated like a gateway to greater challenges (therefore more RP), not like a personal slight against the character/player.
Post TL;DR: Magical healing shouldn't pose an obstacle to doing long-term injury plotlines.
RE: Long term injury to a character, any ideas? - Riggy - 02-13-2017
Think of it like this: if you break a leg badly, they have to put it in a cast because if they don't set the bones properly, you heal incorrectly and your leg is messed up because it becomes misshapen. Even with things like magical healing, if you had a broken leg and healed it without properly setting it, you'd probably end up with a messed up leg, at least internally.