Blast and Burn Damage Tracking

[SumDood]

My system divides possible hit locations into many body parts, all listed on the character sheet with different armor and damage resistance values.

One of the major difficulties I've had with my system has been the tracking of damage to multiple locations. I suppose I could create tables to calculate hit locations and damage modifiers, but I hate tables and I'm trying to avoid any tables that can't easily be placed on the character sheet. I do have a critical damage table, but I try to avoid using it because it slows down the game. (I use the Critical Damage table for player characters, but I generally just make something up when an NPC gets toasted).

The problem basically stems from the fact that I have separate hit locations for twenty some different body locations. In a computer based RPG game this isn't a problem since the computer can calculate all the damage rapidly, but in a pen and paper RPG, this can be a pain in the rear. For point damage (blade or bullet) the systems works well, but for area damage like napalm or an explosive, the system forces the players to modify all their damage points and armor. Again, this slows down the game. I've created a good usable solution for spray weaponry (automatic weapons) but I still don't have a satisfactory solution for flame weapons (which is why I don't have any flame weapons currently listed).

I do have central Damage Points (each body location does not have its own damage points) but the damage has to go through the character's shields, armor, and damage resistance before it gets to the central Damage Points. Calculating damage is one of the primary slow-downs of the game. I'm not sure how to accomplish this without using tables.

Any suggestions?

[Mike Holmes]

I know the exact problem that you're having. Similar problems occur when trying to model damage to things like walls. How big is the hole created? Etc.

I'm not sure there's a good solution to the problem as you've framed it. That is, if you focus on the idea of damage as something directed to a location first, then you have to add complexity to determine the effects of "wider" attacks. But this becomes a problem for even "narrow" attacks as well. I mean, how do I model an attack that hits a shoulder, skips off, and then ends up grazing the guy's leg? Or just blowing through a location. All very complex.

Are you bound and determined to use the Hit Location model for combat? With such detailed damage determination? Because if you're open to other ideas, there are many ways to handle this elegantly. If you are open, then we'd need to know a bit more about the system as a whole so as to make the suggestions fit.

Mike

[SumDood]

Well, changing it would be a major undertaking. I am open to ideas though.

Right now damage is determined by a dice roll specified by weapon, so there's no problem there. There are, however, several different types of damage modifications, and these are controlled by the weapon type.

I have Type I armor, that subtracts 1 point of damage from the armor itself everytime it is hit, and also subtracts the full value of the armor from the damage to the character. A 30 point hit on 20 point Type I armor would reduce the armor to 19 points and pass 10 points on the the wearer.

I have Type II armor that subtracts the full value of the armor and blocks the value value of the armor. A 30 point hit on 20 points of Type II armor would destroy the armor and pass 10 points on to the wearer. Type II armor typically has larger values than type I armor.

I have personal energy shields that operate just like Type II armor, but regenerate a specified number of points each round.

I have MEGA armor that only takes damage if more than 100 points of standard damage hits it in a single impact. (I also have weapons that do MEGA damage) This is for large armored combat (mechs).

I have ULTRA armor that only takes damage if more than 1000 points of standard damage hits it in a single impact. ULTRA armor gets used for starship and battleship hulls.

Lastely, there is Damage Resistance, which is the inherent value of the material to resist damage. It never changes, but always gets subtracted from the damage, and is also a factor in determining critical hits.

In addition to armor, each character has a set of central damage points. When damage points drop to zero, every hit is considered critical and gets a roll on the critical hits table. Additionally, any hit that does more than three times a target location's damage resistance is an automatic critical hit.

That's about it for the armor. I could flatten everything to just a few locations (Head, arms, torso, and legs). That would speed things up.

Do you have any other ideas?

[Mike Holmes]

Hmmm.

What advantage do you get right now out of your Hit Location system? "Realistic" effects of damage to different parts of the body? Something else?

Mike

[SumDood]

Primarily the following:

A can track damage to individual components of armor that can be replaced or repaired by the character at cost.

I can blow off individual body parts without killing the character. They can save them on ice for repair, or they can get cybernetics or bio-engineered transplants.

Some characters have natural armor, and I can track this individually.

Some characters have the ability to shape shift, and this alters the natural damage resistance in specific locations.

I can make individual locations more resistant to others in a logical fashion (so yes, it's highly accurate).

I guess the bottom line is accuracy, and the ability to allow the players to armor their characters as they desire. It's also good for tactics, since experienced characters will ask about the enemies armor and shoot for the weak spots.

Some weapons, such as quarks, are only stopped by shields, so they disrupt any type of material armor, making it moot (and keeping me from having to calculate it). Some weapons have specific armor penetration capabilities that give them advantagous against certain types of armor.

The Sword Combat and Martial Arts all uses body locations for specific attacks, giving bonuses for certain types of body hits. For instance, a Vertical Chop always hits the head, resulting in an automatic WP vs. KO and a good chance of a critical hit.

I'm probably missing some other factors. The system is really wired together using multiple body locations, unfortunately. I'd have a lot to change. I can't even remember where I got this idea. Probably from a video game.

[Valamir]

Hey Dood.

I'd was wondering if you could elucidate a bit on the advantages of the system as you've created it.  In your opening post you indicated a number of disadvantages you've come across as a result of this system (slows down play, too many charts, etc), what are the good things about it that make you willing to put up with those disadvantages.

For instance in you post above you indicate that the system lets you track damage to individual armor components so that they can be replaced or repaired by the character.

Why is this capability desired?  Why do you want to be able to do this?  Is a significant part of the game involve buying and repairing armor?  Is there some setting signfigance (like armor veneration or something) that makes it desireable to focus so much of the games attention on armor?

Or is the primary purpose to give the players another resource to manage.  "He who chooses the correct combination of armor and who spends his money on the correct things (like armor repair) will enhance the survivability of his character."

In which case the next question would be "is the survival of the character in the face of physical danger the focus of the game"  In other words would this sentence describe what the game is about.  If so than the complex armor rules provide a resource for the player to manipulate that has a direct impact on the whole purpose of playing the game...which is generally a good thing.

Where I'm going with this is that it seems you're putting a lot of attention and detail into a particular aspect of your game (the relationship between armor and damage).  This kind of level of attention is generally only given to that aspect of a game that is the games central feature, its raison d'etre so to speak.

If not, if the purpose of the game is something else entirely, than you may be taking focus away from what your game is really about.

[M. J. Young]

Ralph's got an excellent point; putting this much effort into tracking damage to individual locations is going to create the impression that this is the important part of the game, and if it isn't, why are you doing it?

I'll assume that it is. It certainly sounds like it from the description.

Let me make sure I understand the parameters:

[*]Twenty body part locations may each have different levels of protection, which could work in different ways; this works well for attacks targeted to a specific location.[*]Each of those locations may also have its own damage rating, such that you can tell when a character loses a leg or an eye, which makes combat a bit more gritty.[*]Notwithstanding this, there's also a central damage value, which if it is reached the character dies.[*]The problem is that area attacks, such as fire (and presumably acid, cold, corrosive gas, and others), hit the character everywhere at once, and you don't know how to handle that.[/list:u]
The problem is complex, indeed. After all, if you say that a flamethrower does ten points of damage, does that mean it does ten points total, or ten points to each body part? But I'm pretty good at fixes, so let me attempt a few.

First, I think that it's important to state that the area attack does damage measured in total damage, not multiplied by the number of areas hit. That will simplify things immensely.  You could include a factor to reduce damage if it's clear that the attack hit only part of the character.

There are two ways I see that you could handle the next step.

The first, and the one that appeals to me personally, is to build in an averaged defensive value system. It could be as simple as add all the armor values and divide by twenty, or it could be weighted such that each area contributes to the total according to its size or its importance. Then the area attacks hit that averaged defensive value, are reduced or deflected to the degree dictated by it, and points come of the total value but not the individual locations.

The second, which might better fit what you're after, would be to create an apportionment scheme. Assuming that it is at least highly unlikely that a character would be equally protected over his entire body, establish that the X weakest areas (say 5?) take the brunt of the attack, divide the damage inflicted among them, and just run the numbers for those areas. Assume that the better protected areas were not impacted, or that the impact there was minimal compared to those lesser protected areas. The character sheet should note which five areas are least protected for this purpose.

Do either of those ideas get you started somewhere?

--M. J. Young

[Christopher Weeks]

It kind of sounds like a combat board game (e.g. Battletech, Car Wars).  Is your game really 'about' combat or a story?  How this is approached is different for each answer.  My suggestions and questions below are based on the assumption that combat is the big deal.

Your critical damage table that slows down the game might be needlessly complex.  Did you moedel it on Iron Crown?  I think it's easy enough to have one simple table with just a few options that you can apply to any body part by just using common sense.  Unless you're really trying to simulate accurate battlefield damage and battlefield medicine -- in which case knowing how many cc of blood are draining into the victim's lung per minute might be valuable (though I'd pass on playing such a game).  Just set up criteria for when a critical hit takes place and apply the special effect to the body part in question.  If it's a hit to the head, really bad things happen, but when it's the foot, maybe it's just destroyed or severed.  As far as what those criteria are, it kind of depends on the particulars of the system.  Maybe 'any time 1/3 or more of the remaining Damage Points are taken in a single shot' or something.

How much would it simplify things if you kept your armor types but ditched the damage resistance?  That seems like it's probably a sticking point in figuring stuff out.  Otherwise it seems like doing it would be pretty fast.

I'd also be interested to hear how you're determining hit location.  In the games that I've played that were primarily combat sims, I've enjoyed silhouette-based targetting like Killer Crosshairs.

As far as area effect attacks, do you have in your mind a pretty firm notion of how your various armor types will respond to those kinds of stress?  I think that's the first thing to know.  Do your energy shields defend against fire, explosion, acid, poison gas, etc?  I lean toward disagreeing with M.J. on how to handle these attacks.  I prefer a system that determines what (if any) body parts are attacked, and then how that kind of damage interacts with those kinds of armor, and then accounts for it.  Really, how long could this take?  Maybe a clever charsheet with checkboxes, hashmarks, or something would speed it up.

Chris

[LordSmerf]

Clarification Request:  Are you considering area attacks to hit the entire body, or are you also asking for help with the possibility that just the character's legs are covered in napalm?  I believe that M.J. admirably covered the entire body option, but a spread of target locations is going to be more complex.

Also, i see the advantages of your system since it allows you to track component damage on vehicles and startships with the same damage system.  Have you considered using a different damage system for characters and larger objects, this might make things a little bit easier...

Thomas

[SumDood]

Thanks for the help. Some of these suggestions are definitely worth thinking about, and I'm going to take a good look at the system.

I think asking why I spend so much time with the damage system is fair. And, considering that, asking if the primary focus of the game is combat is a logical question. It was never my intention to create a game in which the primary focus was combat and damage tracking, but my players seem to have been focused on combat. I suppose a good reason for this is that I created the game when I was in the USMC and that it has always been played by jarheads. I've seldom had what most people would consider "typical gamers." So I guess it's not surprising that all of use were focused on making the combat system "semi-realistic" but still usable according to our own perceptions. I do not, however, feel that the combat system was the sole focus of the game.

As the GM and creator, I've primarily focused on the social, historical, and technological aspects of the game. The system itself only exists as a framework for providing the characters with a game interface they can understand.

One interesting point about the system is that it was created primarily for squad and platoon level tactics. If you look carefully at how it is structured, you can probably tell this.

Anyway, thanks for the folloing suggestions:

-Average Defensive Values
-Apportionment Scheme (X weakest areas)
-Charsheet Modifications
-Silhouette-based targetting

In Entalis, shields are actually the easiest defense to use. They operate just like you'd expect - extra external hitpoints. They are positronic and defend against almost anything with mass that interacts with the shield at a high enough speed (this includes light). They do not defend against poison gas, and liquid will splash off them, and then soak through (so acid will eventually get you - resulting in the old "I'm gonna do a hand stand and turn off my shield" routine.

Which damage locations get hit are determined by a list of damage locations marked by percentile values - you simply match them. This is effective at range, or in standard combat (when you don't have all that much time to target opponents who are often in motion). At close range, or when you take a round to aim, you can used the called shot hit locations, which allows character's to select the head, arm, torso, or leg (but then random rolls are used to determine what specifically got hit in that location). Of course, the character can still miss, in which case the GM can ignore the hit location (except sometimes to determine what was hit instead of the target).

My system does focus on a certain amount of accuracy in combat, but it also involves a lot of role play. I'd hate to have to change the entire thing to fix this one problem. I think some of the suggestions here will probably help, and I'll experiment with them.

[contracycle]

Hmm.  How about this: the location injured is not determined randomly or mechanically - what is determined is which party gets to exercise fiat as to where damage lands.

This will probabkly require somne redesign, but it can be a useful action for resolving issues arounbd randomly located damage or partial cover and the like.  And then for burn and blast damage, "rig" the system so that it always or mostly distributes this authority to the GM.

[Mike Holmes]

Gareth, that's something like I was thinking. :-)

Have you seen the Aftermath! system, Dood? It does a lot of this, including something simular to what MJ suggests for "multiple location" attacks.

I'm glad you didn't respond in the afirmative to Ralph's "armor veneration" question. Because now I want to do that game! :-)

Mike

[Bill Cook]

I know we designers sometimes fall in love with implementing an idea so much that we lose sight of its relevance.  But fear not!  No good idea goes wasted.  It just shows up somewhere else.

You might consider separating your system into 2 different games.  Have one focus on "social, historical, and technological aspects," adding in some kind of meaningful procedure for exploring those priorities, and the other be more like a Car Wars for special forces.  You can still solve the problem with "bog down" if you wish, having lost none of your work.

[SumDood]

This is how I think I can work this:

This is a major modification to the damage system. Flattening the damage resistance for characters is the first step. All body locations will have the same damage resistance. Leave the row empty on the character sheet as it may be usefull for additional types of armor.

The next step is the creation of the rules for Flame and Explosive damage. This is damage of a type that does not harm the character's armor, but rather does damage directly to their damage points. Intense heat of short duration will not harm armor, but will burn the character's skin. Close range explosives do damage from shockwave, but don't harm armor much, so the damage goes directly to the character's damage points.

The next step is to come up with a good system of determing the effects of the damage to different body locations. Rather than track damage to all locations. The primary focus should be on the critical locations since these will determine if the character lives or dies.

The next step is to create weapons that do blast and burn damage. These weapons should have a "Spread" attribute in addition to the usual attributes. Spread determines the number of body locations up and down that are effected by the attack. A Spread of 1 indicates the rolled hit location plus one location up and one location down on the standard hit location chart. This is done for the purpose of determining critical hits and for determining if the usability of damaged limbs.

Standard damage that exceeds 3X the characters normal Damage Resistance causes a critical hit to the damaged location.

Standard damage that occurs when the characters has zero damage points is always a crit.

Crits to non-critical locations indicate a body location (limb) that is no longer usable.

Critical hits to critical locations require a roll on the critical hit table, or immunity vs. death for NPCs.

Thus the rules for blast and burn damage should be:

1. Determine the randomly rolled base hit location on the body.

2. Use the weapons Spread to identify the effected body locations around the base location.

3.Roll the damage taken to the specified locations.

4. Subtract the character's Damage Resistance from the damage and apply the result to their Damage Points.

5. Determine if any critical hits occured (X3 DR in damage, or Zero Damage Points).

6. If a crit occured to a non-critical location, it is unusable until medical attention occurs.

7. If a crit occured to a critical location, roll on the Critical Hits table.
For NPCs with a critical hit, roll Immunity vs. Death.

In all cases, the character loses a turn from being on fire or getting blasted. As always, a Will Power vs. KO roll is required for explosive damage. As always, character's on fire who do not have pain supression suffer incapacitating pain until they put themselves out. Other effects, such as duraction of the flame and additional effects of damage are listed with the attributes of the weapon.

Does this sound overly complicated?

I think it seems complicated at first glance, but once you know the system, it becomes rather easy. Many of the rules are standard, and all of the necessary material resides on the character sheets except for the Critical Hits table, which gets used for Critical Hits with all other weapons as well as with Blast and Burn. I think this will work, but I'll have to play test it.

Flattening the Damage Resistance is the majority of the work for me, and frankly Damage Resistance always used to be flat anyway. I don't know why I thought I should divide it up into damage locations, there isn't much of a varience between locations anyway.