Question about the flavor of "Mortal Wounds"?

[Vulpinoid]

I chose to sit out of this discussion for a bit, to see where it would head...then I come back a couple of days later and see things about the thread being closed without some kind of dramatic insight.

I guess it's time to step in with a couple of kick-starters.

Firstly, when I hear the term Mortal Wounds, I think of injuries that can't be healed naturally. If you don't get them looked at by a proper physician, they WILL KILL YOU. This doesn't necessarily mean that the injuries have nasty debilitating effects (at least not at first), but they tend to magnify other wounds, and generally make healing a more dangerous prospect. White Wolf kind of did this with it's regular wounds versus aggravated wounds (this concept has been touched on by a few people in this discussion).

Secondly, I like the idea that a character can only be permanently killed if they have suffered at least 1 "mortal wound". It gives players an idea of whether things are dangerous or not.

Now for my 2 cents...

Wound tables remind me of my old days with Rolemaster, under one GM it was great...the combat was quick and freeflowing, we worked with the concept that characters went into combat and attacked wherever they saw a gap in their opponents defenses. If the character got a critical and managed to roll on one of those really cool "Critical Hit" damage tables, we just ran with the idea that this was a really bad breach in the opponents defenses and that's the damage we managed to do when we broke through it.

Another GM tried to allow a more strategical and micro-managed style of combat. Hit high, hit low, swing from the left or right...then when applying these tables there were certain things that just didn't make sense.

I aimed low, but I got a head critical...what the??

If you're going to use them, make the intention of the mortal wound tables clear.

If you're favouring a strategic and micro-managed combat experience, then maybe a bunch of critical tables favouring different parts of the body would be good. If special weapons are a focal point of the experience, then a special table for each weapon type might be an option.

Don't resort to using these tables for every strike between adversaries, that get's really tedious and interrupts the flow of play. But I think using these tables to manifest specific "Mortal Wounds" in the game would be a great idea. You might get to roll on such a table if you roll a natural high on your dice, or maybe you get to roll on them if you beat your opponent's defence by X points.

Lesser wounds can be narrated out by players, they don't really have a major impact on the flow of the game. But these critical "Mortal Wounds" deal more significant damage in exchange for narrowing down the narrative options. Players might still be able to described what the appearances of their action is, but the results of the action are determined by the table result.

No matter how you were doing it, I wouldn't use more than 6 or so Mortal Wounds for each table.

If you were using a d6, this would evenly distribute the results.

If you were using d10s, I consider the idea that even results on the table are determined by the weapon while odd results are determined by the attack intentions.

eg. Using a sword and aiming high

2: Slashed artery
4: Sliced Muscle
6: Organ Puncture
8: Massive Bleeding
10: Limb Removed

1: Lower Arm Hit
3: Upper Arm Hit
5: Torso Hit
7: Neck Hit
9: Head Hit

If you switch weapons or change where your aiming, then you substitute in a different set of odds or evens.

I specifically haven't included suggestions for how these types of critical hit might affect the mechanics of the combat system, because we don't have any indication yet of how the combat system works.

I'd also include the idea that anything can produce mortal wounds. It's just far more likely for a sword to do such things than a fist (unless that fist is held by a master of martial arts), and more likely still that a gun will produce such a blow.

But my most important point here, and I can't iterate it enough...

If you're going to use a table in the regular play of your game, "keep the table special and rare". Make sure the incidents generated through it have significance in the game world, it's once the table gets referenced too often that people start to find it boring.

Also, I'd make sure to keep these "mortal wounds" in genre. If you're running a martial arts game, allow things like plucking out people's eyes...watch some movies based on a similar style to what your trying to achieve, read some books along these lines, forget about "realism", most people roleplay for a bit of escapism, and they'll play with your system to push their escapism into the world you've developed. Make your wounds reflect your world's version of reality, not necessarily ours.

I hope that's a little bit insightful to the topic at hand.

V

[David C]

Wow, what a well thought out post, Vulpinoid!

Mechanic wise, there aren't rules for hitting specific body parts.  A lot of games include rules for "called shots."  While this makes sense for guns and bows and such, I feel it doesn't make sense for sword fighting, where you strike at any opening. There are special attacks that sort of target body areas, like "choke" and "trip." I've decided to explain away called shots by explaining that they are these "special attacks."

In game terms, Mortal Wounds deal damage every few hours, inflict a -1 penalty to all rolls and are needed to kill something.  Unconscious characters are easier to wound mortally with a coup de grace type attack. Mortal wounds are usually caused by a very hard hitting blow.  A critical hit might accomplish this, or the great sword wielding knight might accomplish this almost every attack.  Usually the players have enough synergy going that they deal mortal wounds easily, whereas there are generally so many monsters making so many attacks, the players are doomed to receive their own.

I really like the idea of the table determining location OR "effect" with the player.  Any table I include would be optional, but for "basic play" I would have some recommendations.  The first recommendation is to use the table on players whenever they are mortally wounded.  Using the narration control tokens, they can of course, determine this themselves.  The second recommendation is to *only* use the table when fighting very special enemies, but it would be better to just skip the table and narrate something appropriately.  Really, I like the table only to determine what happens to a player, to get them deeper into the experience.  It's much more personal to know that you're limping along because of a broken rib, than to just have "Mortal Wounds: 1" 

[Rootlin]

I like your proposition David. "Mortal Wounds" is a good name. There may be a better one - proposed in one of the posts above but this one is also fine I think. As you mentioned in one of the first posts of the topic the wounds are serious. What else underlines it more then a strong name? I belive "mortal" is the right word. Those wounds can get one killed.

Also the wound system looks quite cool. I belive it can be very playable. RPG game is mostly about playabilty in my oppinion, and part of the game style and climate is fighting system, in which wounds play often vital role. They set the level of realism, which can be important to define the genre.

My first thoughts about the idea is that the number of wounds changeing can be used to give battle some more tastes.
If I understood correctly one can get more then 1 mortal wound in a single turn, and more then one mortal wound in a single attack.
5 mortal wounds kill. But 4 may make player unconcious, 3 unable to move and so on. All this may force him to take very hard "thoughness" tests.
This is very cool couse it may force player to train his thoughness, use armor or to invent other ways, which may be something like looking for or creating painkiller drugs that can let you fight no metter the wounds you take. In other words this is good idea which can develop many other aspects of the game.

There may be various character builds - same as is cRPGs. There are such in all the games. I belive an RPG should let player build compleately unique characters so builds should be infinite. The idea you present is good from that point of view as it extends also this the builds: A player may go to two aspects of combat which can be developed further. One in which he can build a character that is thougher and may get more hits in combat - he is good couse he is moderate fencer but can fight longer, other in which player can take small ammount of wounds but his points are put in fencing. It his hard to get past his defences and once you will... We know what happens. The system let players take such aspects which is cool.

Those are my thoughts. Hope I stay in the toppic. What I am thinking about are also combos.. Maybe there are ways, trained skills or abilities that let you deal few mortal wounds at once.

> Also my question is what will happen if a character get two mortal wounds in one location, e.g. head. Does he get killed right away?

> Can one buy as skill or trait which enables him to recive more mortal wounds without getting killed? Like 6-7. Is there a rece possesing such a skill - thougher then other.

> Some poisons may inflict mortal wound without dealing body damage. Mortal wound if I understand right is just "really serious damge".

Cool idea. It will work for sure!