Limbs of War Mounts: Regenerate vs. Regrow; Lost vs. Severed

[Tor]

I was paying closer attention to War Mounts lately and got very confused reading their bio-regen capabilities.

For page references:

Behemoth 111 right
Dracos 114 right
Gorehound 117 right
Grendel 120 left
Leviathan 123 right
Strider 125 right
Zephyr 128 left

They all basically say the same thing:

cannot regrow severed limbs or destroyed weapon systems
(reduced to zero or less)
there must be at least two M.D.C. points remaining
to regenerate lost limbs
but such extensive regeneration takes .. days

The days needed to 'regenerate lost limbs' varies...

But I do not understand the difference between being able to regenerate a lost limb, but not being able to regrow a severed limb...

Clearly 'severed' and 'lost' must have distinct meanings, or at least 'regenerate' and 'regrow' do, or both.

If you can not 'regrow' a severed limb... what if a severed limb was re-attached (picked up off the ground and held up to the stump) so that it only had to re-attach instead of re-grow, would that work?

All I can figure is 'lost' may refer to broken limbs? So at some point a limb is crippled (unclear when), but if it is crippled with 2+ it can recover, but if it is crippled at 1 then it cannot recover on its own. Presumably in that case you would need to get your War Mount treated by a Saint to restore at least 1 MDC to bring them from 1 to 2 so they can heal on their own.

The problem is... I don't know how much MDC a limb has to take (a percentage to apply would be useful) before it is considered "lost" (crippled, not severed) so that I know when to take it out of action. Knowing what penalties to apply when a limb is crippled would also be helpful. Short of being unable to use weapon systems or being unable to attack with that limb I do not know what penalties would apply.

[Shark_Force]

i think you're reading too much into it.

severed or lost is essentially the same thing when talking about limbs. you don't say "i lost my arm" and mean "i broke my arm". it's just another word for the same thing.

this is a palladium books game, tor. it's not meant to be read like it's a contract. think of it the same way you would think of someone explaining something to you in casual conversation; nobody took the time to analyze each and every word for possible meanings. it's just stream of thought, basically. certainly, i'm sure some editing was done in an effort to clean up really big stuff, but it hasn't been gone through with a fine-toothed comb by any means.

[Tor]

Shark, the reason I am reading into it is because we are being told different things about these different terms.

If you are correct and 'severed' and 'lost' mean the same thing, then the book would be telling us:

"cannot regrow severed limbs"
"there must be at least 2 MDC remaining to regenerate severed limbs"

If these are synonyms, then the text would be immediately contradicting itself.

Believing that to be absurd, I am making sense out of what Bellaire may have meant.

Why did you not comment on 'regrow' vs 'regenerate'? This is the key issue I have brought up.

If you pay attention to the numerical guidelines, these are mutually exclusive terms, so you must be wrong about this.

If "severed limbs or destroyed weapon systems" is a complete thought, then a limb is only "severed" when reduced to 0 MDC (or less).

A "lost" limb can be regenerated if it has 2 MDC (or more) left.

Since the text says a "lost" limb can have 2 MDC, a lost limb is not always going to be a severed limb, if severed only means 0 or negative MDC.

It may be that the "0 or below MDC" statement is only talking about "destroyed" weapons systems though.

In which case... we still need to know, how do we know when a limb is severed?

If "lost" only meant severed, and you can't "regrow" a severed limb, what does it mean to "regenerate" it? The only thing I could come up with is re-attachment.

EDIT: also noticed that page 84 has similarly confusingly-worded text for Regeneration Basic/Enhanced:

Host Armor cannot regrow
severed limbs or
destroyed weapon systems
unless there is M.D.C. remaining
(at least one or two points)

So this means that Host Armor CAN 'regrow' limbs which are "severed" or weapon systems which are "destroyed" if it is above 0 MDC.

Which means that something can be 'severed' or even 'destroyed' without having to reduce it to 0 MDC...

yet I have no idea how to know when that happens, as I always assumed you had to reduce something to 0 to destroy it, and pretty much assumed the same about severing too unless there was some special dismemberment ability that bypasses the need to deplete damage capacity.

The way Regeneration Super is worded I get the impression that the Basic and Enhanced versions were not supposed to be capable of this though... so I am inclined to think that perhaps these should operate more like the War Mounts and only be able to 'regenerate' to restore a crippled (or re-attach a severed) limb, rather than regrow it from scratch, which seems like SUPER or ENGINEER territory.