Heal: Autopsy
Human inquisitiveness and human obsession with mortality combine in this curious use of the Heal skill. In their dedicated crusade to avoid death, humans have been studying it for years. They have dug up, dissected, illustrated, categorised and catalogued more specimens of the dead than any other race. Most of their medical practices and their understanding of anatomy have evolved from patient examination of the bodies of the dead. Field surgeons, confronted by ghastly wounds of all kinds, have been able to learn a good deal about healing techniques by studying those they were treating.
When a human dies, his kinsmen naturally want to know why. It is typically human to be curious, to look into the whys and wherefores of things, rather than simply accepting and moving on. Human healers have thus evolved a practice whereby the bodies of the dead can be respectfully examined and the cause of their death ascertained. At the very least, a good guess can be made. Even when the cause of death is blatantly obvious, such as in the case of decapitation, an observant healer can discover other things from observation of the body, which might shed some light on how and why the death occurred.
Though this use of the skill is tentatively titled ‘autopsy’ it does not reflect a full autopsy procedure, but refers rather to the examination and (if necessary) the dissection of a cadaver in order to learn things from the body. It is an application of the Heal skill, because understanding wounds, diseases and poisons from a healer’s viewpoint allows you to identify their effects when found on someone who did not survive them. This application of the skill is not limited to humans, though humans have made the most use of it.
Such spells as speak with dead can sometimes make autopsy examinations redundant, as the dead person can tell you what happened in person. Nonetheless, an autopsy can tell you a great deal about the person’s death that the person himself might not even know. For instance, the cadaver might only remember a searing pain in its bowels, while an autopsy carried out by a competent healer could identify the poison that was used to do away with the victim. Speak with dead might reveal that the corpse’s last memory was of a blow from behind, while a thorough autopsy could tell you what kind of weapon dealt the blow and even what hand the weapon was in.
All information resulting from an autopsy is essentially guesswork and opinion. The character understands that he is not able to look into the past, but is instead using his technical knowledge and his imagination to attempt a reconstruction of events.
An autopsy cannot be carried out on a mostly decomposed corpse or a skeleton.
Check: You make a Heal check to study the body of a dead creature. The difficulty of the check determines the level of information that you are able to extract from these studies. You must attempt each check in order, if you do so at all. For example, you cannot attempt a Heal check at DC 15 to find out how long the corpse has been dead unless you have already attempted one at DC 10. Note that you do not have to have succeeded at an earlier check in order to progress to a more challenging one. Success conveys accurate information, while failure conveys wrong information. As the player should not know whether his information is accurate or not, the Games Master makes these skill checks in private.
DC 10: You can tell simple facts about the corpse’s station in life and their behaviour. For example, long nails would indicate little need to do manual work, decayed teeth would indicate poverty and a tattoo of a swallow on the bicep would probably indicate that the deceased was a mariner who had crossed the Equator at some point in his life. If the creature was not humanoid, you could deduce what its last meal had been and whether it was intelligent.
DC 15: You are able to determine the cause of death accurately (what kind of weapon made the wound, what kind of disease killed the person, what kind of poison was used) and tell how long the corpse has been dead.
DC 20: You can tell whether the corpse has been moved, or whether it is lying in the same place in which it died. You can ascertain whether death is likely to have been accidental or intentional.
DC 25: If the corpse was killed by an attacker or attackers, you may give a simple description of their likely height, strength and handedness.
DC 30: You can give a simple reconstruction of the likely circumstances of death; this is essentially an encapsulation of the last hour or so of the victim’s life, as close as may be attempted. Obviously, you cannot give names to people, but you can make such suggestions as ‘The stomach contents reveal that she met friends shortly before her death for a glass of beer, the nail scratches show that she got into a fight with another woman but that this was not seriously intentioned, while the stab wounds indicate that an invisible attacker was able to strike as she waited for her next customer, as she made no attempt to defend herself and had not even taken out her hairpin to use as an impromptu weapon.’
The following modifiers apply to the check. If the corpse has deteriorated owing to exposure, consumption by vermin, immersion in water, fire or acid damage or similar, the Games Master should apply a circumstance penalty of –2 to –10. This assumes that the corpse is still more or less intact despite its condition, as a deliquescing cadaver or a skeleton cannot be treated with an autopsy. If the character can examine the body in the place where it was discovered, he may add a +2 circumstance bonus to his check, as he is able to take environmental factors into account.
If the creature is not human or humanoid, a –10 circumstance penalty applies in the case of aberrations (whose anatomy is frequently alien), a –4 penalty for monstrous humanoids and giants and a –6 penalty for all other creature types. Undead, oozes and constructs cannot be given autopsies.
Action: Each successive Heal skill check takes 30 minutes of activity.
Special: A character with more than 5 ranks in Spot or Search may add a +2 synergy bonus to his use of the Heal skill to perform an autopsy. A character with the Diligent feat may add a +2 bonus to his use of this skill in this capacity, as his meticulousness is exactly the kind of qualification needed to notice giveaway details that others would fail to observe.
