There’s some excellent ideas in here. I’d really like to see a slightly more complex wound/infection and treatment system. Gives you something to do with all these medical supplies.
The trick will always be making it intuitive enough that it doesn’t confound a new player, but also deep enough that someone who understands it and is prepared can very effectively treat their infections.
Simply bandaging a wound can help prevent it from becoming infected… but using alcohol to sterilize a bandage before applying it is better. Iodine pills could be dissolved in water to create an iodine solution that can be applied to a wound to virtually nullify the infection chance on the next check (but that doesn’t mean it will heal, and it may still infect on the check after). Cauterizing a wound can help normal wounds from getting infected, but a zombie bite comes with infection included, and cauterizing maaaay actually be a very bad idea for zombie bites. And if a zombie bite gets infected you should have the option of cutting the infected flesh out. It hurts like a mother.
On a related note, I’d like to propose that you can’t cauterize or cut a wound without a certain amount of painkillers, the pain tolerant perk, or the masochist perk. Most people can’t just cut on themselves or hold a red-hot chunk of metal to their skin long enough to cook it closed. Despite what the movies show us.
