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[Neonivek]

Or a self-winching under-over double-crossbow!

I don't know... that would put a LOT of pressure on the person's arm.

You generally want to stay away from peircing or rather thrusting weapons or ones that require similar actions when dealing with prostetics.

[SirHoneyBadger]

You might be right, although it seems like the crossbows--atleast small ones--wouldn't put a whole lot of pressure on the face of the stump, itself? I have no idea though...

what kind of kick does a crossbow have, anyway?

I've shot rifles and bows, but I've never shot a crossbow before. Anybody here fired one?

[Mel_Vixen]

Well Springs, Constraptions etc can lower the Impact. The guys around 14/15 Hundret werent idiots. They had some nice knowledge of mechanics even thought not every Villagesmith could do that.

Also you could replace the prothetic now and then with something mor fitting like an fork or spoon.

And i mean there were Full mechanik Calculation Machines in 1623 and we in comparsion debate about the use of Dwarfputors sometimes so why shouldnt our poor dwarfs get some a bit advanced prothetics?

Sure an Legendary mason wouldnt throw out masterworks with an handprothesis but atleast Normal stuff could be possible.

Why are arguing all about Clockwork? An Clockwork by definition is a Mechanik which turns potential energy into an movement of certain forse an direction. Clockwork-"Name of generic stuff" means only that this "Generic Stuff" is powered by an "Clockwork" controled Powersource. It doesnt Grant Superhuman intelligence and or "Life".

[Felblood]

That's the real issue right there.

Where is the energy in a clockwork prosthetic stored/produced?

Gears can transfer as much energy as they are strong enough to survive, but to max out those iron gears, you need some sort of power source.

Steam is off limits, and I doubt you could get that kind of juice out of any spring without an unreasonable amount of winding.

It isn't going to scare a goblin if you have to spend half an hour winding your hand back up, after you crush that rock.

Maybe this is one of the legitimate uses for magic. It needs other professions to help make it work (smelters, mechanics, surgeons and smiths), but it still adds a very cool element that would be hard to justify otherwise.

Though why you'd need windmills when you can get power from tiny, enchanted gears is something of an issue.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

We all know that dwarf anesthetic is a gallon of rum followed by a hammer to the skull.

[Hectonkhyres]

We all know that dwarf anesthetic is a gallon of rum followed by a hammer to the skull.

Bonus points if the dwarf has metal fillings in his teeth that grit together and produce sparks the moment he is struck with the hammer. He either explodes or turns into a dwarven flamethrower.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Just giving this a quick bump in order to list some internet sources on the subject of ancient medicine:

(Please note: Hopefully, these will be useful, but I haven't reviewed these extensively, so take the info presented here with a hefty grain of salt. The purpose of this is to give us all some good access to the same background research material, and if something I list here turns out to be unuseful, I'll either remove it myself, or just let me know and I'll check it out. I'll be reviewing these more extensively in the future, as my time allows me. Thanks!)

The Asclepion (a site devoted to ancient medicine):
http://www.indiana.edu/~ancmed/intro.HTM

The History of Medicine (a website):
http://resources.schoolscience.co.uk/abpi/history/index.html

A listing of medical history wiki-links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:History_of_medicine

A Wikipage on the history of surgery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_surgery

A Wikipage on the history of medicine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine

[Neonivek]

I found something hillarious myself... In the Armok 1 files

-Post-Decapitation Activities:  Perhaps players with incredible will power could take a single action after being decapitated -- if they can cast spells by blinking for instance, they might be able to repair or otherwise save themselves

[SirHoneyBadger]

That *is* hilarious!

I'm imagining that that is a reference to Samurai lore (it also reminds me of the movie 'Ghost Dog', where they talk about a Samurai committing one last act right before death, even if mortally wounded.).

[Mel_Vixen]

It reminds me on Phytons black-knight from Spamalot with the difference that the Arm crawls back to the owner.

[Warlord255]

Late though it may be, I'd like to offer my thoughts, looking at things through a coding/ RAWs logic lens.

Herbs; There are/would be a specific set of capabilities for herbs, and a means by which it would have to be applied.

[CURE_RAW:(cure)#)] - The raw herb must be applied.
[CURE_EXTRACT:(extract):(cure)#)] - An extract from the plant provides the cure.

The # relates to effectiveness. In the future, additions such as [CURE_SMOKE] or [CURE_COMBO] might be added.

For the (cure) fields;

BLEED - Helps slow/stop bleeding.
PAIN - Helps reduce/eliminate pain.
INSANITY - Helps reduce/eliminate mental shock.
POISON - Helps against most poisons.
POISON:(poison) - Helps against a specific poison (see: antivenoms)

Other effects for problems such as necrosis/gangrene could be added.


Surgery; A Doctor profession would work, but would need or at least highly benefit from a Medicine tab in the Status screen. Such a tab could handle assigning treatments, checking on dwarves' injury status and perhaps control of practices/policies such as "give painkillers freely/restricted/never" to exert more control and allow us to preserve resources (i.e. if you don't want the doctors to accidentally use your Golden Apples on a miner when you want to keep it on hand for the legendary axedwarf)

Making hospital beds a sort of workshop might be a way to allow control/involvement beyond "throw doctors at it"; the Medicine screen could indicate what treatments are needed, and you would make judgment calls on what needs to come first (i.e. keep them from choking on their own blood first, THEN set the broken legs and sew up their face). This would also make it easier to integrate each treatment type as a job for the purposes of handling resources/fitting into the existing labor paradigm, and would easily allow check-ups to be queued.


Prostheses; Leave this to some kind of noble that is attracted based on your fort's medical prowess or the availibility of something worthy of his interest, such as a rare medical herb or live captures of a rare creature. That way, it's not dissapointingly common, and isn't guaranteed, plus it gives you new goals.

[Rhontos]

So here is how I imagine this all working.

First of all, there would be two nobles: the physician, and the alchemist. Having a physician isn't too hard to imagine so I will start by explaining the alchemist.

The alchemist as a noble will be different from a regular alchemist in that he will practice in his free time (making him gain experience faster) and can preform research. Research will basically just have a really low chance to create a recipe and take a really long time to preform. Recipes will just be reusable resources that allow the chief alchemist to create more advanced things at his workshop. This all becomes important to the medical system when the physician helps.

What I am thinking is that it should be made possible for the physician to collaborate with other dwarfs. If he collaborates with the alchemist, they will both enter the alchemist's workshop together and put their heads together for some research. As long as the physician helps, both will gain experience, the research will take longer, and it is guaranteed that the results (if any) will be important to the physician. Of course, the results will be along the lines of a medicine, which will have its own specific uses, and may become obsolete with more research.

I also want to explain a bit of how the physician should behave. Much like the alchemist, the physician should spend his free time practicing (an possibly researching) for experience. His research (if he does research) will create research papers, which could be required for medicines and other devices. More events should be added to wound dwarfs as well, so that the physician would be required to be on call 24/7, and would spend much of his time treating patients. The physician (and probably the alchemist as well) should gain experience slowly, a legendary physician should be slightly more common as someone who can do a triple heart bypass with an axe.

The skills of alchemists and physicians should be available to all dwarfs, but the non nobles won't spend their time practicing, wouldn't be able to research, and nobles physician will treat more serious wounds. Non nobles could act as assistants to the nobles, gaining experience and helping them out a bit. Two more noble classes could be added, assistant alchemist and assistant physician, once a fortress gets large enough. The two extra nobles would act as a transition from regular to lead, and would help with the logistics of the medical system in a larger fortress.

A few last things: A physician of high enough level should get a chance to fall into a mood that ends up with him collaborating with a mechanic, the result would be a very rare and sought after prosthetic arm or leg. Also, the introduction of a alchemist noble would make alchemy something other than useless.

[Pilsu]

1400s didn't have SCIENCE! \☺/ \m/_☺

Seriously, setting broken bones and basic surgery is more than enough. Perhaps you like the idea of golden dwarven cyborgs but it flies in the face of the 1400s limit and reality itself


Alchemy can be useful without making them research cancer cures. It's probably related to processing poisons and other extracts to a usable form. Even if we go the old route of turning lead to gold, they'll be anything but useless since lead as is is pretty worthless for things beyond making it into mugs and selling them to elves

[Neonivek]

The 1400s had science and the Surgical techniques people had access to even in the Neolithic times still astound scientists.

[Pilsu]

"Science" as you know it really began at 16- to 1700s. Certainly, empirical studies existed but they didn't have guys in labcoats doing research with the pharmaceutical industry "alchemists"

It's not something you develop rapidly. If anything, medical knowledge would be in the raws much like metallurgical knowledge is


Yeah, surgery should be in the game in some form. No triple bypasses because MAGIC! or some other nonsense excuse for getting past the 1400s limit. I can barely stomach the notion of prosthetics, largely because A: even we don't have stuff that sophisticated and B: losing limbs really shouldn't be trivial. If Toady insists on it, sure but until then it's up there with electricity. Not even worth mentioning