Damage Mechanics

[RPunkG]

I'm working on game mechanics and I'm having a lot of trouble with weapon damage and wounds.  I was hoping to get soem help.  :)

I'm not too fond of Hit Points, I think that Hit Location is much more realistic and easier to adjust for modifiers (like -2 running if hit in the leg or -2 melee if hit in the arm).

My problem lies in the fact that a 13 year old kid, a 30 year old weight lifter and a 75 year old woman can each take different amounts of damage before a limb is "crippled."

I was thinking that each limb would have its own set of hit points (chest having the most and head having the least) but what mechanic of the game would determine how many hit points each one has.

Also, the hit location was going to be 2d6 to determine where the target gets hit, but how would that translate to an alien with four legs or a dragon of with wings?

I sure hope I can get some help with this  :)

[Jake Norwood]

Okay-

I guess I'm the damage guy in some ways, so first, in a very standard Forge-ish fashion...

What are you trying to accomplish with your hit locations and damage specifications? What do you want this to provide for the players in-play? Fear? Grit? Blood? Silliness? "Reality?" A combination? By knowing where you're going it's easier to get there.

As to your problem with hit location--especially when dealing with random tables--the difference beween a dragon, horse, and human are all going to be frustrating for many players. Most games do this by making additional charts. I was under the impression that, with The Riddle of Steel, that the charts were free-form enough that players could extrapolate (since the location isn't random), but it didn't turn out that way, and now we've got a whole section on non-humanoid damage in our next supplement.

If you make your table more "principle" based and less detailed, it will require less work to modify for lots of different kinds of targets. If you go detailed to, say, the Rolemaster level, you'll be in trouble on that end.

Jake

[Valamir]

Hey Punk.  
I think you'd get alot of great ideas from checking out Jake's game Riddle of Steel (in general, but specifically in regards to this issue).


Basically the game uses the concept of wound levels instead of hitpoints (lots of games have done this in various ways) PLUS associates wound levels with specific hit locations (I can't think of many that have done this).

This makes it easy to figure out broad damage effects.  We know that a level 1 wound is fairly trivial, a level 2 wound noticeable, a level 3 wound significant, a level 4 wound likely crippling and a level 5 wound pretty much losing body parts.  Even without reference to a table, knowing the relative wound level for a particular hit location gives a pretty good sense of how messed up someone is.

The difference between the kid, the strong guy, and the old lady comes in with the Toughness trait.  In RoS its a direct wound level reducer.

The strong guy might be a 7, the kid a 4 and the old lady a 3.  If they get hit for 8 damage, the strong guy takes a lvl 1 wound, the kid, a lvl 4, and the old lady a lvl 5.

Thats a concept you can tweak to your own mechanical needs which gives you the hit locations you want without the nasty hitpoint stuff.

[Ben Morgan]

Basically the game uses the concept of wound levels instead of hitpoints (lots of games have done this in various ways) PLUS associates wound levels with specific hit locations (I can't think of many that have done this).

I did something similar to this with Cyberpunk (which does the first part), way back when. I was hardcore sim back then, so of course it was overcomplicated.

I liked Cyberpunk's wound track, in that it got away from the idea that "Health" (or HP or whatever) was a resource that could be slowly whittled away until you fall down. Instead, wounds of varying severity were inflicted that interfered with your effectiveness in different ways (Stun Saves, Death Saves, and Wound Penalties). I had the idea to keep track of specific wounds to specific locations mainly for purposes of healing. After all, three small wounds to separate locations will heal faster than one gaping wound in one location.

[RPunkG]

I want a damage system that is fairly realistic and makes the players fear for their lives.  I think that a lot of games are too generous with their hitpoints and wounds; characters can stand in a street and shoot at eachother all day before someone dies.

I want a damage system that captures the reality that, if someone shoots you in the gut with a glok, you're going to the floor.

That way, when the bullets start flying, people go for cover opposed to just drawing their weapons.

At the same time I need this realism with armor ratings and weapon damage.  So whats the best way to figure it.  Should the weapon damages be static, or a dice roll?

[Jake Norwood]

At the same time I need this realism with armor ratings and weapon damage.  So whats the best way to figure it.  Should the weapon damages be static, or a dice roll?

With Riddle I did a combination of both. I'm a big fan of less rolls but more detail in combat. There's wayyyy too much die rolling per round in most mainstream games. Combat should be fast and furious, but that doesn't have to mean simple or cheap. Work everything so that it flies through actual play, and still has the detail you want, and you're gold.

Jake

[RPunkG]

So you're suggesting a more narritive approach to combat?

[Valamir]

Less rolls doesn't have to mean narrative.  RoS combat will still spit out an answer to the question of "how messed up am I" even if the players never utter a word (its of course much more entertaining when embellished).

[M. J. Young]

The problem seems to be this:

[*]There is an inherent logic to a system in which a character might be killed by a single attack; there is a certain sort of realism to this, as it isn't generally the case that we get whittled down until we're dead, but that we avoid that fatal hit until it finally gets us.
[*]There has to be some sort of weighting to weapons. A Glock is more likely to kill you than a .22; but a .22 can do it, given the right shot.
[*]There has to be some value to protections. A bullet proof vest doesn't mean you can't be killed on a single shot; it just reduces the chance.
[*]You can't make it too complicated.[/list:u]
I've got two ideas, both focusing on the same core concept but approaching it from different ends.

The core concept is this: forget hit points and go with some sort of damage levels. The highest level is immediately fatal, then critical such that the character will die if either he is wounded again or he is not healed, then crippling such that the character will have at least temporary and possibly permanent impairment of his abilities, then perhaps serious then minor. Maybe that's too many steps; the point is to forget the points and focus on the nature of the hit.

One approach is then to build a chart; it should have a lot of small increments, such as a d30 at least, maybe a d100. At one end of the chart you've got your fatal value and at the other your minor wound. Balance the force of the attack (e.g., weapon type, combat bonuses) against the value of the defense to find the column to check. The greater the force of attack over the value of defense, the larger that fatal zone is; the greater the value of defense over the force of attack, the larger the minor wound zone is. It would model best if the successively higher categories grew proportionately larger with the top category (in which case probably somewhere in the middle all damage levels would have the same likelihood of occurence).

The other approach is to use assigned dice types in much the same way. A 1 would always be a kill; but a glock might use a d6 and a .22 a d12, a switchblade a d20.

Either approach would require some refinement; but I think they get you what you want.

--M. J. Young