Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Menexenus" data-source="post: 2895811" data-attributes="member: 8951">Thanks to all those who provided suggestions.  They have all been quite helpful.  Here's what I'm thinking of going with now.  Please feel free to criticize and/or suggest changes.First of all, if the cause of death is obvious (like a crushed skull), then no Heal check need be made at all.If you do not touch the dead body, then you can do a Heal check to examine a dead body in one round.  Or you can spend 2 minutes looking and Take 20.  However, this type of investigation will only yield limited results.  Only wounds visible from the angle that the PCs are looking can be detected (DC varies from 0 to 20 depending on size of wound).  The type of wound (piercing, slashing, bludgeoning) can also be detected (DC 10).  And the ballpark time of death can be estimated, within plus or minus 100% of the actual time since the person died (DC 15 - better success produces greater accuracy).  If a poison with obvious tell-tale signs was used (like a poison that discolors the skin), the fact the person was suffering the effects of poison might also be determined by this kind of check (DC variable based on obviousness of signs and corpse's state of decay).  A separate knowledge/alchemy check would have to be made to determine which poison causes these tell-tale signs.  If you are willing to touch the body (e.g. turn it over, take off its clothes, etc.), you can potentially get more details, but if the Healing check fails, there is a -1 penalty to subsequent checks (because each time the body is disturbed, some evidence is being obscured or lost).  This makes Taking 20 impossible, but it doesn't restrict retries.  Merely turning the body over and looking at it could be done in one round.  Taking off the body's clothes would take 5 minutes (assuming they are not just being ripped off, in which case it would only take 1 minute).  Not only would this type of investigation reveal wounds that might otherwise have been missed, but it could also determine the angle at which wounds were received to determine whether the attacker was smaller or larger than the deceased (DC 10-25, depending on the magnitude of the size difference).Performing detailed autopsies (i.e. removing and examining internal organs) would require the Investigate feat and at least 1 rank of Knowledge (forensics) or 5 ranks of Knowledge (nature).  5 ranks in Knowledge (forensics) would produce a +2 synergy bonus.  An autopsy would take a minimum of 10 minutes with a -8 penalty to the check, a half an hour with a -4 penalty, two hours with a -2 penalty, 4 hours without penalty, and an additional -2 penalty if done without the proper tools.  This type of investigation could potentially yield the most detailed information, but retries would be very difficult (-10 penalty) because of the trauma caused to the body by a previous autopsy.  (Again, this makes Taking 20 impossible.)  Only a successful autopsy can *determinately* reveal the precise time and cause of death (without divination).In the end, as FranktheDM pointed out (and several others have agreed), the DC of discovering specific pieces of information about the corpse will depend on a lot of factors that will be difficult to codify into rules and are perhaps best left as DM fiat.  So perhaps this entire enterprise is moot.  Still, I think my game will benefit from putting *some* basic limitations on the use of Heal checks.</blockquote>

Verification