A "leaner" damage system

[Stephen]

Provided in response to a suggestion in the "TROS Death Spiral" thread below, I thought I'd try this.

This damage system is suggested as a sort of "lite" version of TROS' normal damage rules.

Instead of using the tables, the five levels of wounds are classified as Superficial (1), Light (2), Heavy (3), Critical (4), and Mortal (5).

A Superficial Wound has Shock 1, Pain 0, and Blood Loss 1.
A Light Wound has Shock 2, Pain 5-WP, and Blood Loss 2.
A Heavy Wound has Shock 3, Pain 7-WP, and Blood Loss 4.
A Critical Wound has Shock 5, Pain 10-WP, and Blood Loss 8.
A Mortal Wound has Shock 10, Pain 15-WP, and Blood Loss 15.

Shock, Pain, and Bloodloss function as per the normal TROS rules.

The fourteen zones are now collapsed to seven, as the difference between damage types (bludgeoning, cutting, and piercing) is accounted for elsewhere:  Lower Legs (A), Upper Legs (B), Right/Left Side (C), Right/Left Shoulder and Chest (D), Head/Neck (E), Stomach/Groin (F) and Right/Left Arms (G).

A bludgeoning weapon reduces all Damage Levels by 1 unless the blow is to the Lower Legs, Arms, or Head.

A cutting weapon does damage as normal.

A piercing weapon reduces all Damage Levels by 1 if the wound is to the Lower Legs or Arms, but increases Damage Level by 1 if the wound is to the Stomach/Groin, Chest, or Neck.

A Heavy Wound to either lower or upper legs requires a Knockdown Roll to stay upright; a Critical Wound requires a Knockdown at -4; a Mortal Wound to the legs is an automatic Knockdown.

A Light Wound to the head requires a Knockout+2 roll; a Heavy Wound requires a Knockout roll; a Critical Wound requires a Knockout-3 roll; and a Mortal Wound to the head is an automatic Knockout.

Other effects can be winged by the Seneschal using common sense.

This is totally off the top of my head and in no way proposed as a serious replacement.  I just thought I'd do a thought experiment and see what people thought.

[Valamir]

Not bad, but it really makes armor difficult.  With the current system its almost always possible to find an unarmored slot somewhere on most opponents.  If you collapse the locations down like this, then pretty much everybody is going to be fully armored everywhere.

[Irmo]

If we start collapsing zones, why not simply collapse them to the "vier Blossen" plus one for vertical blows? I.e. left and right below the belt and left and right above the belt. Armored locations could still be avoided with stuff like the accuracy gift.

[Tash]

I don't see the number of zones as a problem, picking where you are aiming a blow doesn't take any time.  The biggest problem for me is the locations within zones, which adds not only an extra dice roll (of a different die type, this is really annoying for me for some reason) and a much larger set of tables...

Edit: Forgot to actually finish my thought, got distracted by news on CNN.

I'm thinking about using the damage tables in the quickstart rules, with some modification to allow for types of damage and such.  Then allow the "full" table to be used with a "called shot" type of maneuver.  Basically the player pays a CP penalty and gets to aim for a specific location with the targeted zone.  The attack gets resolved normally and if it lands they can make the D6 roll.  They can then raise or lower the location number by 1 for each CP they paid (so if you pay 3 CP you can turn a 3 into a 6 or vice versa).  The accuracy gift would basically lower the CP cost for called shots by 1.

The idea is that most of the time a normal shot is good enough, but sometimes you need to have the option of going for specific areas (like a chink in the armor).  You have the choice but need to take a little extra effort to make use of it (hence the CP penalty).

How does everyone think this would work?

[nsruf]

The quickstart rules already contain a simplified damage system. Maybe work from there?

[Alan]

I developed a rules summary for my recent game that includes condensed Zone / Hit Location / Wound tables that retain all the original information - but are a lot easier to use.

Have a look at

http://www.seanet.com/~alanb/RPGs/TROSCombatSummaryv4.1.pdf" >http://www.seanet.com/~alanb/RPGs/TROSCombatSummaryv4.1.pdf

By separating the Zone d6 rolls out from the wound charts, I got the whole TROS wound chart appendix down to 5 pages.

[bergh]

not bad at all! great work

[Stephen]

The quickstart rules already contain a simplified damage system. Maybe work from there?

I'm actually the guy who wrote the Quickstart Rules.  This was designed to see if it was possible to eliminate tables completely.

For my own part I think the full tables are part of what makes TROS combat unique and realistic.  This is just a thought experiment to see if it's possible to minimize the sacrifice-realism-for-speed equation.

The armour is a good point, though.

How about this:  1 die out of any attack pool is appointed the Armour-Piercing (AP) die (like the Wild Die in the D6 system; if it could be a different size or colour than the rest, that makes this easier).  All armour has both an AV (levels of damage stopped) and an AP rating.  Depending on the quality and scope of the armour, this rating can range from as low as 6 (for badly-fitting patchwork or ill-repaired, holey armour) to 0 (for an excellent piece of armour with only the minimal gaps needed for mobility).  Most adequate armour will have an AP of 9 or 0; only the very worst types of armour will be as low as AP 6.

If the AP die of a successful attack equals or exceeds the AP rating of the armour, then the AV of the armour is discounted for that attack.  The Accuracy Gift allows you to add +1 (minor) or +3 (major) to the roll of the AP die on an attack.

[nsruf]

[I'm actually the guy who wrote the Quickstart Rules.  This was designed to see if it was possible to eliminate tables completely.

Oops, er... good job, they sold me on the game... um, and now back to your regularly scheduled topic;)

[Stephen]

I developed a rules summary for my recent game that includes condensed Zone / Hit Location / Wound tables that retain all the original information - but are a lot easier to use.

That combat summary is amazing.  You should ask Jake if he'd be willing to host it on the main TROS site.

[Ingenious]

Well, we solved this another way. We just copied all the pages of the wound tables.. and threw it into a binder. Now we dont have to keep flipping back and forth between pages in the corebook.. and we can have a seperate source of info that can be readily utilized before an attack even takes place.. so, once you figure out the location you're aiming for.. you can turn it to that page even faster. And the piercing, bludgeoning, cutting damage sections are further seperated by the use of dividers.

Much, much faster... than even tabbing the corebook.

-Ingenious
Also, could we *stop* putting stuff into pdf formats on webpages that we're posting here?(That can not be downloaded?) My dialup can't handle that shit. Either that or my adobe is the wrong version for the file on that page.. in which case I'd have to download updates constantly.. and that poses the same problem.

[Eamon]

-Ingenious
Also, could we *stop* putting stuff into pdf formats on webpages that we're posting here?(That can not be downloaded?) My dialup can't handle that shit. Either that or my adobe is the wrong version for the file on that page.. in which case I'd have to download updates constantly.. and that poses the same problem.

Um... PDF downloads seem to be an internet standard.  And you should be able to right-click on anything and do a save-as pretty much regardless of what browser you are using.  So if you don't want to download a PDF, just don't do it.

As for getting a newer version of Acrobat, you can probably get a copy of it for free from Adobe.  It also comes packaged in quite a bit of software.  Being that you are in the continental USA, I'll even snail-mail a CD copy to you free if you like.

Finally, I thought the rule of the TROS forum was no cussin'.

[Stephen]

Also, could we *stop* putting stuff into pdf formats on webpages that we're posting here?(That can not be downloaded?) My dialup can't handle that shit. Either that or my adobe is the wrong version for the file on that page.. in which case I'd have to download updates constantly.. and that poses the same problem.

Rather than try to open directly by double-clicking on the link, right-click on the link and select the "Save Target As" option from the menu that opens up.  This will let you download the file without opening it right in your browser, which may be what's screwing up your connection.

You can also download Acrobat Reader v5 (the latest, I think) from www.adobe.com for free, if that helps.

[Mike Holmes]

Oh, sure, don't I look like an idiot. I post to the other thread to use a standardized system, and look, here somebody's already talking about one.

For the record, again, I think ideas like this are really good. I've been advocating such a system for a while. As I mentioned in the other thread, the neat thing about this system is that you get to narrate your own wounds, so you don't just keep getting the same thing over and over (I've refered to this as the "punctured container" syndrome after the most memorable of Rolemaster results).

Mike

[kenjib]

I still think it's too complicated if you really want to make things work without any rule references.  Again there's a chart instead of a simple mathematical correspondence and you have to deal with lots of exceptions regarding locations and whatnot.  How about...

Shock:  Wound Level x2
Blood Loss:  Wound Level x2
Pain:  Wound Level x3 - WP

For wounds beyond the first, if they do more damage than the current Shock, BL, and Pain then the new wound sets the current total.  If it does less damage than currently already acquired then just apply shock and add one to both blood loss and pain.  That's somewhat close to your chart but much easier to remember.

Get rid of hit locations altogether and give different armor types a simple coverage percentage.  So a chain tunic alone might only cover 50% - if you beat 50% on a hit it you've hit an unarmored spot and bypass the damage resistance.

I'm still not sure how to integrate knockout and knockdown though.  You could just give a basic percentage that you have to check - like 1-15 check knockdown, 16-30 check knockout, 31-100 no check needed, with TN set by wound level.  I think that adds too many extra rolls though when you consider the armor coverage roll too, so I'm not completely sure how to handle these.