A Strange Damage Progression

[xenopulse]

I'm working on a tactical RPG. If you need to have some setting context, think of it as the unholy lovechild of Fist of the North Star and Vampire Hunter D (post-apocalypse, lots of ruined cities, plenty of mutants and super-powered protagonists). I've had this idea for a damage progression, and I wanted to run it by you all.

In the game, you're going to inflict (and take) wound levels. Depending on whether you're dealing with a frail civilian or with someone like D, the amount you can take can range from 2 to 20 or more. There's a token system at work for attacks, much like Iron Heroes on crack.

So when you first do damage, you inflict a Wounded condition with a certain rating on your opponent. If the rating surpasses their range, they are incapacitated. Surpass 1.5 times the range and their head explodes (or they die in some other gruesome way). So far, so so.

Here's the twist, though: When you inflict damage on someone who already has a rating, you compare the rating you're inflicting to the existing one. You keep the higher one as base and add half of the other one.

Examples:

You're shadow kicking a mutant that's already got Wounds 4.  You're inflicting Wounds 6. So you add your 6, plus 1/2 of 4 which is 2, for a new wound rating of 8.

The mutant hits you back with a dozen razor tentacles. You'd previously taken a serious beating and are at Wounds 8. The tentacles aren't all that effective and do Wounds 2.  So you take the 8 and add 1/2 of 2 which is 1, for a new rating of 9.

Now, you're asking: why? What's the point of the additional calculation step?

The idea is that this rewards very powerful single hits to the detriment of doing little by little damage. It also means that higher thresholds for wounds become increasingly useful, and smaller enemies can be more easily taken out with good solid hits while fights with major characters are going to be more prolonged.

Does this make sense? Is the additional step too much handling for the result? Is there any consequence of doing it this way that I am not foreseeing?

Thanks.

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Not only does it make sense, but I think it's attractive from a simulationist perspective.  Two wounds that were each half way toward killing you wouldn't usually mean your death.  Put another way, puncture one lung, puncture my liver, puncture my stomach, puncture my other lung, puncture my aorta... I'm going to die from whatever one kills me first; unless the unifying factor of each (the bleeding) kills me before that. 

(shameless plug: Perhaps I also like that because this theory works in AVERA, my system, as well)

I don't find the extra calculation step complicated; especially if you're comparing the combat system to some of the more popular tabletops out there.

-Jason T.

[Callan S.]

Hi Christian,

I don't understand the goal of it - I can only think it'd help make the results of combat hard to predict for anyone. It's dead easy to calculate old style to hit chance/damage roll in 'damage per round' in your head, but I'm not sure I could calculate it with your system terribly well, thus more uncertainty (or so it seems - there may be a predictable trend in actual play that I can't see right now).

But in contrast with voiddragon, I'm thinking in terms of gamist goals (ie, contested and uncertain ground to battle over), not game world for game worlds sake. That may be why it's not clicking into place with me, because of my mindset.

[xenopulse]

Thanks, Jason. Your talk on various wounds has me thinking of alternatives now, where you track each wound individually, but that might be too cumbersome for a fast action RPG.

Callan, this game is definitely aimed at Gamist mindsets. The goal here is to encourage guts and risk taking. It'll manifest because it'll be bundled with rules where taking one big shot at someone is riskier and takes much more effort than safely attacking a few times without taking a risk or angling for bonus dice, etc.

I guess this works sort of like damage reduction in D&D. If you're fighting a monster with DR 5, imagine you can do two attacks that'll do 10 gross damage each with safe attacks, or one power attack that does 20 but is riskier. The two attacks only net you 10 (10-5 + 10-5) damage while the single power attack nets you 15 (20-5) damage.

Basically, I want to encourage all-out gutsy moves, plus I want players to be able to game the system in ways to maximize the single damage output of an attack or combined attacks. This will, of course, make more sense in the full context of the rules. It'll also mean that two characters pooling their dice will do better than each attacking on their own, which is another thing I want to accomplish.

[Valamir]

Hey Christian, if I understand it right, it should work pretty well.  So...

2+2+2+2 = 5
4+4 = 6
8 = 8

What will you do with odd results.  This system will have some pretty profound differences based on rounding.

3+3+3+3 = 6 round down, or = 9 round up.  That seems like it will be a very big difference in your system.  Probably can come up with a cool reason for doing it both ways (round down normally, round up for "aggravated" damage type of thing).

[xenopulse]

Hi, Ralph. You are understanding it right, yes. Here's something interesting:

12+8+4=18
but
4+8+12=17

So it pays to do big damage early. Also sort of makes sense.

I was thinking of rounding up, to avoid 1 level of damage being a waste. But then, your point about differences is well taken. I'll think on that.

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Your talk on various wounds has me thinking of alternatives now, where you track each wound individually, but that might be too cumbersome for a fast action RPG.

I'm not implying that such a manner is right for your system, but I don't think it's cumbersome at all.  I like the way you're thinking now, and contrary to Callan, I think it's also great from a gamist perspective.  You said it yourself: the wounds would work differently based on how you timed your most powerful attacks, so a gamist would love calculating when to use what.  Depending on how things like wu xia martial arts and chi powers worked, with tactical requirements on the most powerful moves, this could be pretty cool.

But with tracking each wound individually, other systems do it just fine.  There is no stacking or adding wounds together.  You don't have to add, divide, whatever.  You just have the wound.

Your system, however, takes into account that the sum of the wounds does play a part; that all of the different wounds are bleeding at once therefore consciousness may be lost sooner than if it were just any one wound.  But it doesn't mean, in the D&D way, that 10 scratches from a cat can stack and kill you.  I say roll with it.

-Jason Scott Timmerman

[Justin Nichol - BFG]

I know this wouldnt work the same way that your system would work, but I have always favored systems with Soak, it's relatively quick, there's variatin based on the individual characters level of endurance, and it gets rid of some of the battle off attrition crap that Jason mentioned exists in D&D. But as for my opinion and not my preference, I don't think the system is too complex for play, and I think it could still be fast paced but I was also worried with the whole round up or round down issue and if it might result in more min-maxin (I don't know how your system works but I could see players trying to angle to get an extra odd point to do a little more damage which would peeve me personally, but since your stated intentions are gamist it might not peeve you).

[Callan S.]

Callan, this game is definitely aimed at Gamist mindsets. The goal here is to encourage guts and risk taking. It'll manifest because it'll be bundled with rules where taking one big shot at someone is riskier and takes much more effort than safely attacking a few times without taking a risk or angling for bonus dice, etc.

I probably need to see more of the rules. If your trying to definiately make it riskier to use when issolated from the rest of the mechanics, but when you include the rest of the mechanics there are various factors which makes its statistics fluctuate (and thus that definiate risk fluctuates and becomes non definate) then I think we'd need to see the rest of the rules - or to be more accurate, playtest them (playtest in as much as trying to learn the system so as to win even before play commences, is playtesting).

Just looking at the mechanic as it is now, I would say consider the extra handling time involved. Need to watch the game payoff (win or lose) Vs handling time ratio.

[xenopulse]

Just looking at the mechanic as it is now, I would say consider the extra handling time involved. Need to watch the game payoff (win or lose) Vs handling time ratio.

That's exactly right. Thanks for everyone's input, I'll go off and do some testing when I get enough of this thing assembled.

[Ian Mclean]

I would be intrested in seeing how this system might incorporate a method of making certain wounds, overall, trivial.

I mean your not going to care about a sliver when your missing the other hand. Just like your not going to care about a bruise when your suffering from a broken bone.

Would their be a fast, easy way to turn low enough wounds into trivial damage? so that 8+1 = 8 instead of 8+1 = 9? No matter how many times an ant may bite you, unless your allergic, it isn't going to be fatal. Distracting, and painful yes, fatal no.

To clarify my thoughts, how could you modify your system so that higher level wounds would still increase the overall woundedness of the character while sufficiently low enough level wounds wouldn't budge it at all?

[xenopulse]

I've thought about that.

One solution is to only apply the benefit of the lower-level wound if it's within a certain range of points of the higher-level one. But that leads to strange artifacts where inflicting a bit less damage actually does more altogether because you get to add half of the other damage.

The only other way I see, really, is to keep track of wounds separately and only worry about the worst ones, but having to heal all of them.

Now: in my current design, wounds and handicaps are treated separately. That alleviates a lot of the problems, because wounds are always the things that bring you closer to death. That means they either add together to shock your system, by blood loss, exhaustion, and so on. While handicaps add together to hinder you, and so a twisted ankle also adds to your issues even when you've already got a broken arm.

[BlackTerror]

One way to combine the limited effect of a 1 attack with the rounding issue would be to make 1 damage a special case. Normally you round down, but if you have 0 wounds and take 1 damage you end up with wounds 1. So 1+1+1 = 1; 2+1 = 2; 1+2 = 2. Getting scratched by a cat the first time hurts, but you're more likely to bleed to death from multiple cat scratches taken at different times than you did the first time.

[David Artman]

I mean your not going to care about a sliver when your missing the other hand. Just like your not going to care about a bruise when your suffering from a broken bone.

A more important question: does a splinter or a bruise actually DO wounds at all? I've never seen someone "splintered to death" or "bruised to death," though several of either could have mechanical effects on things like "dexterity" or "stamina" or "accuracy" statistics. As you say, they are distracting and painful but never lethal, by definition (i.e. you didn't say "infected splinter" or "bruised lungs").

One way to combine the limited effect of a 1 attack with the rounding issue would be to make 1 damage a special case. Normally you round down, but if you have 0 wounds and take 1 damage you end up with wounds 1. So 1+1+1 = 1; 2+1 = 2; 1+2 = 2.

Clever! I like this as a 1 rounding case, even if the rounding rules for higher odd values follow the "aggravated damage" notion above (round up, if agg; else round down).

David

[Narmical]

I really like the high level concept of your system. How all wounds don't add together to make you die, its what kills you first.

However from the gamest standpoint I see something I don't like.
Assuming that there are strategic decisions you can take to increase your single hit damage, true gamiest players will be encouraged to go to greater and greater lengths to make sure there attack does full damage.
Once a certain point is reached, however, this can no longer be done, and you are doomed to do half damage until the baddie dies.

The doing half damage is the part is what I don't like. Let me give an example.

Let's say your character has the following attacks:

Poke in the eye. Can perform at any time, 2 wounds
Judo Chop: spend 3 mississippis, 4 wounds
Super Death Beam: when the light from the moon reflects off the swamp gas in a near buy lake and the oceans turn to yogurt: 8 wounds.

Bad guy has 20 wounds.
I have 7 mississippis

my best cause of action would be

Judo chop   4
Judo chop   4+4 = 6
Poke (death beam not ready) 6+2 = 7

now at this point, unless I can get the Super Death Beam to work, I have to do half damage. And even if I could do the Death Beam. From then on I would do half damage until the Bad Guy expires.

Encouraging people to think and take greater risks to get full damage -> GOOD
Dooming a gamiest to do half damage for the rest of the combat -> BAD