Critical hits = less damage (I figured this is the forum)

[Lugaru]

Ok, I decided to try making that card based game where the amount of cards you drop of a single suit is what determines successes, damage and stuff like that. Basically the rules work like this:

Resolution: You have 5 cards in your hand at a time, the amount you lower of a single suit counts as what would be successes as if it where a die pool game. Here's a few Examples: Deadeye Dan wishes to shoot a coin that's thrown into the air... the story teller say's "give me 3 spades and maybe you can make it". Problem: Dan has 2 spades in his hand, 2 hearts and a club. Well that wont do... so for instance he can drop the other 3 cards, pull 3 new ones and end up with 4 spades and a diamond. Now if he wants he can use all 4 spades to shoot the coin (since he has an extra one, he can add an extra detail... like "I did it with my good eye closed!") or instead of showing off he can save that one spade for next time he will be firing his pistol. Any way the amount of cards he drops will be replaced for new ones. Same goes with every thing else, maybe Jack the barkeep can drop some hearts to get that drunk tell him his life story (including information about someone he helped kidnap) or maybe that tough girl Stormy Sarah can use her clubs to bend the bars of the cell she's being held in! More on all that is in the attributes section.

Here's my idea though... lets say you have 10 chips or beans or points or whatever representing your health. If you lose all of them, no way you will keep fighting. Now on the other hand lets say you can trade certain amounts of damage for nasty side effects instead... justified using frases like:

"Several vital areas are well protected"
"Getting shot there hurts like hell, but its deffinatly not fatal"
"Actually it just felt kinda numb but when I finally got to see the wound it started hurting really bad"

Is this a good way to have players role play wounds, while more "heroic dudes" ignore their wounds until they die?

Here's some example critical effects that the story teller can choose from when the player chickens out of taking damage:

By taking one less point of damage the story teller can choose one of the following side effects for you, and this will last until you get a chance to rest for a few minutes:
- Temporary inacuracy: one of the cards you lower will always be ignored until the end of the combat. Causes: blood in your eyes (from a headwound), dizzyness from a headwound, sand in your eyes, eyes swolen from a hard blow.
- Incapacitated arm: The character will be unable to use one of their arms, allowing only one action to be performed at a time. Causes: being "winged" by a bullet, taking a hard blow to the arm, etc.
- Incapacitated leg: The character will be unable to dodge any thing. Also this causes the character to limp and move slowly, making it very hard to run. Causes: a sightly wounded leg, a hard blow, etc.
- Disarmed: You must spend a full action to get your weapon back. Causes: weapon was knocked or pulled from your hands.
- Seriosly bleeding: The character must put down a club every time they perform an action or lose a health chip. Causes: A serious wound.
- Bad pain: Usually a short but extreme moment of pain, simply causing you to lose your next action, but your fine after that. Causes: kicked in a sensitive area, getting shot unexpectedly, etc.

To avoid two points of damage, the story teller can pick one of the following effects:
- Crippled arm: You cannot perform any actions with this arm untill you receive medical attention.
- Crippled leg: You cannot move at normal speeds or dodge until this leg has been attended. All attempts at moving or dodging will provide only 50% its regular results. If your other leg becomes crippled, I sugest you stay out of combat for a long period of time.
- Head wound: The character falls unconcius. Basically that's it.
- Seriosly bleeding: unless the character can lower two clubs when they perform an action, they will lose a health chip.
- In serious pain: The first two cards you use will always be ignored, unless you have the willpower attribute and you can spend clubs to counter this effect.
- Weapon lost: That one weapon will not be able to be regained until perhaps once the fight is over. Examples are your pistol being deformed by a bullet, knoked into the river or taken from you to be used by your oponent.
- Weakened: certain blows will make it harder for the oponent to breath and peform, causing them to only be able to hold up to 4 cards in their hand at a time.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Lugaru,

Is this a good way to have players role play wounds, while more "heroic dudes" ignore their wounds until they die?

Well *koff* there is damage and then their is wounding.

The one thing most seem to forget is that Hit Points are derivative of the old wargame system, which worked fine for units.  Hits were subtracted from a unit and, at some point, a unit either lost its effectivess, became disperssed, or disappeared from the game altogethe; depending upon what the rules said happened.

In RPGs, for some odd reason, Hot Points have been retained, even in game that don't need them?

What?

Ok, figure it this way:  If you are simulating a HEROIC fantasy environment, then Hit Points make sense.  The represented how much punishment a character can take, or rather how much they can endure, which is more or less a reasonable way to simulate a Hero.  With a good GM your PCs shouldn't be sacrificial lambs waiting being railroaded into the charnel house.

Alas, practically speaking, it seldom works this way.

But, you're in luck, cuz I can tell you a quick fix.

If you want both Hit Points AND Wounding then you will need to set thresholds.  The first one, obviously, would be about mass HP damage.  Determine that if a character takes X amount of damage form a single blow then Y effect occurs.  Also, if you wanted to, you could say that any character than takes half their current HP must, say, roll a save verses going into shock.

That would be a good way to simulated physical effects.

Now, wounding. . .  you can leave specific wounds up to either A) player's announcing their intent to sever a limb (success based on how well their resolution roll turns out), or; B) by using a random hit location chart.

The latter used to be a popular one in many a game, probably still is.  Course there are many ways to implement that sort of thing, as I am sure many here can explain better than I.

Of course that is mechanics, what you want to know is about how to make it better for role-playing.  Now that is the tricky part.  I've had players who could take a bare bones system and make it sing, then again I've had players who could take a well developed system and make it seem like elementary school twaddle.  So, what I'd suggest, if determine a style of play.  How you want the game to feel.  And try to adjust your rules accordingly to your (or your players) satisfaction.

IOW: Many things that sound good on paper just don't work out practically in play.  Too, testing things in play tends to put the polish on.  Or, rather, if you work it right your players will finish your system for you with their suggestions.  ;)




Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Valamir]

Hmmm, let me see if I get you right.

You get 10 "life points".  When you hit 0 you're done.  Dead, Down and Out, whatever.

Normally damage just reduces points, whatever flavor description used to describe the injury is just color, the only game effect is to put you that many points closer to down.

HOWEVER.  At the players option, they can substitute a "critical hit" for point loss.  Benefit: you avoid taking that next step to being down.  Disadvantage: you suffer the side effect of the critical.

In play the result would probably be taking the Life Points first to avoid the side effects.  As Life Points approach 0 players would be motivated to start giving themselves criticals to avoid going down.  So the first few Life Points would tend to function like Palladium SDC...freebee hits points.

I like the idea alot.  Mirrors the effect of more rule oriented systems which mandate progressive effects from progressive damage without requiring an excess of rules or tables.  

Suggestions:
1)I'd be inclined to make the list of Critical Effects suggestive rather than menu options to allow for appropriate descriptions and GM interpretation.

2)I'd also be inclined to allow a number of points to be avoided in this way (instead of just 1 or 2) but that the maximum number avoidable from a single hit declines with the current Life Point total.  So that at 10 Life Points you could avoid a 5 hit blow with a big critical effect.  At 5 Life Points you could only avoid a max of a 3 point blow.  So if you take a  second 5 point blow the option to go with a critical is gone and you're eating dirt.  This would make the choice to take or not take the critical a little harder early on.  Rather than intial damage always being Life Points (when you have Life Points to spare) if the blow is big enough you might consider taking the critical early so as not to get to a low level where you're SOL later.

3) I'd probably also describe the "Life Points" (or whatever) as being more of a karma / luck / fate / hero quality rather than make any attempt to ascribe a physical attribution to it.

I like the idea.  I also like the over all game concept.  You might also want to check out Dust Devils for effective use of a card resolution mechanic.  It uses actual hands of poker rather than discards but there are probably some similarities in effect you can be inspired from.

[John Kim]

Is this a good way to have players role play wounds, while more "heroic dudes" ignore their wounds until they die?

My question would be: what is the effect you are trying for here?  Ignore the mechanics of how it is resolved, and describe how you would like play to be like without referring to cards or stats or whatever.  For example, is there an established genre which you are trying to emulate?  Is there just a general theme or atmosphere you want to maintain?  

Hit points are sometimes used when they are inappropriate, but then again wound tracks are also sometimes used when they are inappropriate.  For example, Decipher's Lord of the Rings RPG uses a wound track system which clearly doesn't fit -- and the GM's advice section even tells the GM to ignore the rules on this point.

[Valamir]

Hey John, I think you and Kester may be missing a crucial point in the post.  I definitely don't see this system as being a "Hit Point" system.  Nor do I see the question as boiling down to the pros and cons of using "Hit Points".  There's alot more going on there than HPs...

[contracycle]

Yeah, I think this works, but the beans need a new name, something other than damage.  Something like "opportunity" or "vigour" or something, to give them a suitably abstracted flavour.

[Lugaru]

I think I did kind of skimp out on mentioning the Genre... I intend to perform something like an Aeon Flux type western. In other words you have a lot of super heroic "I flip 3 times to avoid the gunshot" stuff combined with painfully deadly stuff. I've been reading kabuki too, hehehe. Kabuki for instance can still kick ass, even though on the long run she's lost a pinky, some feet of intestine, gotten shot on most parts of her body and slashed as well. Its a deadly world, but your a hero, so you can trade death for suffering.

Let's see if this works: skintight leather cowgirls, wall smashing strong guy's, weird guns & gizmos, quick war rules (kill people during a skirmish slightly affecting the outcome) and maybe some borderline fantasy stuff. A weird impulse causes me to think minotaurs somehow fit into bizzare westerns (cowboys, hehe)... perhaps if I take a mythology approach instead of a D&D approach...

Ok... the other thing I wanted to simulate is stuff like one guy surviving a few dozen stab wounds (like in real life I mean) v.s. some one else going down at the first stab (also seen much in real life). Nasty, ugly things happen to players... while their oponents usually just die.

About making wounding optional... I think its about how you play. Let's say your delicate character has 8 hp's and some one elses character has 15. Your character will walk out of the fight usually with a wounded arm and limping, while the other guy probably wont bother even tracking wounds since he can take so many hitpoints worth of damage without it being a big deal. So the "war marchine" type hero goes on like nothing happened while the "I have cool social skills" type hero bleeds and complains.

I mean all the dang Anime I have watched make's me equate heroic with "doing stuff despite wounds" instead of being impervious to them. On the other hand the players choose what happens, depending of course on their character and playing style.

Why only remove 1 or 2 damage? I hate the idea of wounds making you impervious to death or unconciusness. Its not a "one or the other" but instead a little bith of both worlds. This can also encourage people to take a more insignificant wound early on... because once they start getting hit no amount of wounds will save them.

This is why its a step away from my usual damage resolution:

In my usual ongoing universal system project thing whatever... you roll contested d6's to hit. My thoughts are

A well executed hit = more damage = nasty side effect.

Example: you did 10 damage because the difference between dice was 4, +4 for the sword and +2 for your strenght. No armor needs to be subtracted since none is being worn. Since you did 1/2 your oponents hp in damage, the critical effect is nasty (arm lost, decapitated, disemboweled, whatever) and you can choose it instead of determening it at random because the die difference was pretty good (again, a difference of 4).

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Lugaru,

About making wounding optional... I think its about how you play. Let's say your delicate character has 8 hp's and some one elses character has 15. Your character will walk out of the fight usually with a wounded arm and limping, while the other guy probably wont bother even tracking wounds since he can take so many hitpoints worth of damage without it being a big deal. So the "war marchine" type hero goes on like nothing happened while the "I have cool social skills" type hero bleeds and complains.

It all depends on the level of realism you want in your game.

Just be aware that if you do decide to 'make wounding optional' then your players will feel their characters can do anything without any direct consequences to their actions.  Which is fine in a game where characters don't matter and the players roll up three or four characters to have per gaming session.  Course, if you want the players to relate to their characters as persona then you may want to aim for a slightly different approach.

I mean all the dang Anime I have watched make's me equate heroic with "doing stuff despite wounds" instead of being impervious to them. On the other hand the players choose what happens, depending of course on their character and playing style.

This is where your support abilities and statistics come into play.

How much can a character endure?  Well that may depend upon their ENDURANCE score.

How much can a character drink before getting sot all?  Constitutions.

How much fight is in a character that has taken a shotgun blast in the gut?  Willpower.

Etcetera and etcetera.

If you are going to have a bunch of statistics then USE then make sure they are actually used for something.  A lot of games give you statistics that, frankly, are useless beyond adding modifiers to a character during character generation.  Try not to fall into that trap.

Why only remove 1 or 2 damage? I hate the idea of wounds making you impervious to death or unconciusness. Its not a "one or the other" but instead a little bith of both worlds. This can also encourage people to take a more insignificant wound early on... because once they start getting hit no amount of wounds will save them.

The problem here is that a game can only simulate the chaos factor of real life so far.  Mostly all most games really have is the simulation of random chance by die roll, which is why many authors supplement their basic systems with charts and the like.

If, however, you really want to simulate real life then you'll have to allow for a mechanic that literally kills a character in one shot.  Not very heroic, that, and the players may gripe.  But that's pretty much how it is.  Either a gun shot kills you or it doesn't.  If it doesn't you may bleed death, get an infection, or yet die because a surgeon failed his skill roll.

Which, of course, you already know.  That said, perhaps the 'well executed' hit can provide an effect which has a variable damage associated with it.  Thus, instead of trying to figure out what sort of attack would cause X number of damage, make the damage a variable factor all the way around.  Thus you can retain your desired affect, while at the same time ensuring that they are never going to be quite the same, if you follow?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Jason Lee]

I'm using a remarkably similar system (though, the numbers and details are a bit different).

One interesting mod I'm rather excited to start playing with is putting all of the responsibility of describing a successful hit in the hands of the player who's character just got nailed - whether you eat the full damage, take an impairment, or get knocked down.  The attacker describes his attack up to the point before contact, then the defender picks up where the attacker left off in standard improvisational 'and then...' style.  Theory being, this should create a process of 'hit location negotiation' between the two players without any actual dialog between the two parties that might interrupt the flow of the scene.  I also hope this will encourge colorful descriptions of attacks (the reward being a limitting of the defender's options when defining the hit), and wounds (because the player has to define how he was hit, because the results are entirely in his hands).

I don't know if this fits with your goals, but it seems to be a logical extension of the concept.

[Lugaru]

To Cruciel: well, Im actually going to say "the system might not be as important as the concept" so if the concept is working well with your gamers and they respond to it... for me that's really good news.

I dont know how well it will work with my own system... but I found a deck of cards laying around and tested a few hands and it seemed to flow ok. Players would get several flesh wounds while disposing efficiently of their oponents. The oponents they did not have enough successes to kill in a single turn would usually have their gun blown to bits or get knoked out with a chair to the back of the head.

All I need is players to show me the dumb things I missed of course, but so far it seems to work fine.

Edit: another idea as to why what your doing works... I think an attacker dosent always know what he did to his oponent, but the oponent has a pretty good idea as to what just happened to him. So if its narrative... the one taking the damage has more authoroty in saying whats going on.

[Jason Lee]

The jury is actually still out on how well it works.  Playtesting combat elements goes pretty slow for us, on account of so little combat.  We've been half-assing the concept for a little while now, but with the GM switch last week I finally got the chance to dump the offical test system on the new GM.  I am rather excited to see how it plays out, because I think the trade 'damage for impairments' concept is very interesting.

Just another idea...

There is another mod to such a system that wouldn't work for me, but might for you.  Some sort of 'chance of death' fortune mechanic that every wounded character makes at the end of combat.  It'd give merit to KO-ing yourself early, and provide for the possible instant deaths.  To use the card system you threw out (if I'm getting it), require the player to drop 1 Heart per 3 Hit Points of damage he's suffered to stay up (alive, concious, whatever) at the end of combat.  Success level would determine how injured he actually is (passed out, comatose, dead, etc).

Or...

You could pull the hearts from the deck, and make each heart a specific wound (Jack of Hearts equals a lost eye, for example).  You'd lay you're currently acculumated hearts out in front of you as your wound-o-meter.  You'd have to use cards with the symbols all facing one direction.  Suit up is damage (equal to the number on the hard) and suit down is the wound associated with the card.  I'm supposing you might tie this to the value of an attack card.  Lots of tricks you could do, I suppose.

[Tar Markvar]

Hi Lugaru, good to see you outside of That Other Place. :)

I'm working on a fast-and-violent game in which I'm thinking of implementing a version of this (since I liked the idea so much when you mentioned it elsewhere). What I have planned is a bit different, and it uses the attributes I have, as someone just above suggested.

My game uses hit-points (for lack of a better term so far) to represent being beaten and ground up by weapon fire. This will kill you, of course, if these points drop to zero. You may, upon taking damage, opt to take Trait damage instead, which is damage to one of your five attributes. The personwho damaged you gets to pick which Trait (based on the attack), and for every 10 points of damage you took, you lose one point of that Trait. This represents special effects, as you mention (losing physical Traits means you got hamstringed or broke a bone, losing socials means your face got cut up, or you got horribly embarrassed, etc.). If you take Trait damage, then you don't have to take the normal hit-point damage.

This way, as you say, someone with few hit points can take a bit more damage--they will just be disabled in a different way. It keeps low-HP characters in the fight longer and gives players more options for playing a loss in combat. That's actually my favorite part.

I haven't tested it yet, and I'd be interested in seeing how it would go. But I like your idea a lot, Lugaru--so much so that I've already yanked it for my own systems. :)

Jay

[Jason Lee]

To use the card system you threw out (if I'm getting it), require the player to drop 1 Heart per 3 Hit Points of damage he's suffered to stay up (alive, concious, whatever) at the end of combat.  Success level would determine how injured he actually is (passed out, comatose, dead, etc).

Just an interesting though I had about this suggestion.  The players would then have a tendency to hold onto the hearts in their hand, limitting their hand and essentially creating an injury penalty system.  They could choose not to hold cards, hence ignoring the injury penality (so to speak), and that would reflect the character pushing the limitting of his endurance when wounded - risking his own death.

[Lugaru]

About using a heart card... hmmm... I dont know. The thing is let me repeat how my skill's work: If you have for instance 3 in gun fighting, you get to draw 3 cards... so you could have up to 8 cards in you hand at that moment before performing your attack. So If you have 5 spades (purty damn good) you probably still will have a heart or two show up.

The only problem is that Im already using clubs (a phisical attribute) to reduce damage, being representative of dodging and soaking damage. If there's one thing I learned when I practiced martial arts is that sometime's not getting hit is really hard, but that dosent mean it has to hurt. If you move the right way while getting punched, you probably wont even bruise. And I could make spending hearts the requesite for taking a critical... but that would turn survival into a skill more than a right, and I think its a right all players should have at all moments.

Again, about the system... another "example" popped up where I saw this kind of system implemented. I was channel surfing and it landed on Buffy... I then realized that secondary heroes ALWAYS get a bone broken in that show or some sprain or something. Buffy might have that happen too, but usually just in really prolonged fights. In the end both the scoobies and buffy survive, because they become wounded when necesary.

Tar: about losing traits over damage... Ive tried that already and it works really well.

'Bout different cards representing different wounds.. I was really tempted to do that at some point but I really wanted to keep all cards available if you know what I mean. I did do something like this for a "quick and no pencil needed" wargame I was working on. You would pull a wound out of the plastic bag and put it on top of your character. Wounds had stuff like "eye wound, 1 damage, -1 to hit" or crap like that. Some where less specific just like "2 damage", "-1 damage" and stuff like that to make it more "fill in the blank". That way also the same wound could apply to a dragon or a tank. Yeah, I was working on a kinda "bah, just use any thing" wargame. Resolution was fast too, you just rolled dice, added them and depending on how high or low the result was a table of what happened... so a whole bunch of stuff could happen in a single roll. It was kinda a parody of all those games with dozens of tables (you rolled a 34, you slip and knock out some teeth) but using only one central table.

BTW: I did a draft of the system for gits and shiggles.

http://www.geocities.com/lugaru/cards.htm