Damaging problems in Ygg - thinking out loud

[Christoffer Lernö]

Thinking out aloud here I'm not really expecting you to offer solutions. But maybe there is some food for thought, or maybe someone actually has a suggestion.


So what am I doing right now? Creating a world of trouble for myself.

I recently started on another game example to find out how I wanted the rules to play and ran into some unexpected problems.

I was pretty much satisfied with the damage system up to this point, but using it in the example revealed it's problems.

Basically it's "roll damage # of dice (D12) to beat opponent's Toughness score (which is augmented by armour), every success is one Wound. Every 12 gives a free extra die of damage"

For those familiar with the Vampire soak rolls, the effect is a little similar, but resolution is much faster.

The above rule comes from AHQ of course.

"Wound" being the abstract hit points of that game, but you can visualize it as actually being a real wound since you typically can take 3-4 before going down (because you are a powerful fighter) where the small goblins and skavens might die after one or two wounds already.

I "augmented" this by introducing "Serious", "Mortal" and "Killing" levels. Basically if you could take 4 wounds, then maybe 2 wounds in a single strike represented a Serious Wound (with penalties), "Mortal" was maybe 3 or 4 wounds in a single strike and meant you had received a mortal wound. This did not immediately mean you couldn't fight anymore though. Then "Killing" might be 5-6 wounds in a single strike which meant you instantly died, maybe by having your head chopped off or your heart pierced or something.

My idea was that after rolling damage the GM would determine the details of the wound. Like you got a normal wound (doesn't give penalties), then the GM might explain that as a chop to the shoulder which doesn't quite sever muscles, or a weak stab into the stomach or whatever. Serious wounds would mean major bleeding and stuff. Breaking an arm would be a serious wound. A mortal would might mean the opponent just cut your stomach open and your guts are spilling all over the place. The killing wound has already been covered.

OR to state it more clearly: Make the roll and let the GM narrate using the levels as guidelines.

I thought I had it all figured out.

Especially since AHQ handles armour so well. At first glance it might seem weird that chain mail only gives you a +2 bonus. But for a game with no hit locations that's brilliant. Basically the effect of a bonus is that the chance of getting hurt is reduced as is the chance of getting seriously hurt goes down and all that without simply capping the bell curve. You can interpret a high damage as the strike not hitting the armour.

No more the infuriating games where you roll damage and then hope you didn't hit the armour. Or the games where the situations where you need armour the most (when the opponent gets maximum damage on his roll) is exactly when it doesn't protect.

Perfect, right?

And you can simulate critical hits with bow by cutting tougness rating in half. Very simple.

But... what about aimed hits?

I thought this was no problem. For example, say you aim for the head and hit. Simply say the toughness is lower and the chance of a extra damage die is higher. In the arm? Higher toughness and less chance.

All fair and well until I ran into this example:

The hero, young Grendel aims for the throat of the Ghoul. The ghoul, being undead and all ought to be hard to damage, so flip up the toughness to 9. Usually the throat would be very vulnerable, so that's maybe 6 to toughness and a crit at 10+.
Enough rule talk, Grendel gets 3 wounds.

Question 1: Is this enough to take off the head of the Ghoul? What if the ghoul doesn't die no matter what is cut off? Every body part can live on its own or something. Maybe if the Ghoul had some virtual max wounds we could determine that 3 would be a mortal wound or something. But actually cutting of the head of a human would be a killing wound, meaning 5 wounds would be required to cut of a human head. It ought to be the same. One can't really both give advantage for it being a weak spot AND let it be cut off even though the damage isn't really enough to kill it.

Grendel, having successfully cut off the head of the ghoul (or so we pretend) tries to cut off it's left arm (because it's still coming at him). The arm is according to the rule tweaks less vulnerable and would maybe have 9 to toughness and no crit. In other words Grendel is gonna have a lot more problems cutting of the arm.

Question 2: Why should it be harder to cut off an arm than a throat. Let's for a second pretend they're equally tough to cut through, but the throat is easier because it's a more sensitive area. It doesn't make sense.

Back to the drawing board huh? Why did I ditch hit-locations to begin with? Well:

I...

1. Don't want Another roll to determine location
2. Don't want to make hit locations for every monster
3. Don't want to create arbitrary wound capacity for every hit locations
4. Don't want assign an arbitrary level of granularity (why "head" as a hit location? Why not add eye, nose, ear, lower jaw and so on? It's an arbitrary choice and I don't like to make those) to the hit locations.

Advantages to avoiding hit locations includes

1. GM can narrate wounds and effects more freely
2. Faster die resolution
3. Easier to use abstract hit points type of wound tracking


The problems pop up, maybe not unexpectedly in the transition from general to specific hits, because the system is now relied on to narrate parts of the effect instead of the GM.

To be concrete, here are the problems:

1. A character aims at a body part. If this is hit, how does one convert the general damage resolution system to cover specific hits? The old idea was adjusting the chance of doing (general) damage according to the hit location.

2. If the damage is adjusted according to hit location, how does one further decide on the extent of the effect at the body part? The "cutting off the throat" vs "cutting off the arm" highlights this problem. Hit location systems elegantly avoids this by assigning arbitrary numbers to decide how much damage can be sustained by a body part before severe effects occur.

3. How does one keep general damage equal to specific damage? If it's ALWAYS going to be better to aim when it comes to doing damage, then that is seriously unbalancing. For example consider a big bad monster. Let's say I always go for hitting the throat and thus circumvent the effect of the monster really having a very high toughness and originally is thought to be almost impervious to damage. Although this might be appropriate in some cases, in others it is not. (For an example, consider strange beast covered with a metal-like skin. This is represented by letting it have a toughness of 11. But with aiming that goes down to maybe 8 for no special reason really because every part of the body is equally well protected. On the other hand against a really tough and big ogre the 8 might be very appropriate).


Maybe you already disconcern how the problem arises from letting the system decide effects that earlier was the GM's task.

The obvious solution would be to disallow aimed hits and to allow the player to narrate wound effects.

Instead of: I try to cut off his head. Roll. I succeed. Roll for effect to see if the head gets chopped off or not.

You get: I hit him. Roll. I succeed. Roll effect. If the damage is enough I narrate that the head gets chopped off.

But doing it we eliminate clever strategies. What about hitting the eye of the cyclop? Or aiming for Smaug's weak spot on his belly?

Those things become random, determined by our DAMAGE roll and not by success of the attack resolution.

Of course one could make the damage roll and attack roll one. It has it's advantages, but I feel there are too many disadvantages to it (I'm not getting into details to it here) for the style of play I want to evoke.

We can say that we always state intent and the opponent's skill and one's own damage determines chance of success and effect of half successes. This is similar to the damage+attack roll in one with a twist. Basically I might say "I cut off his head" and get some difficulty depending on damage of my weapon and of my opponent's skill. If I succeed his head is flying off, with partial success maybe giving damage.

Another way might be to determine damage as by general method and then amplify results. A 1 point wound to the throat might be worth 2 or 3 points. By then we will suffer from a lot of cut off to our rolls.

Consider a roll of 8,7,8,6,8. "General" tougness is 9. So this is not a single point of damage. But this seems counter-intuitive if the attack is to the throat as despite being pretty high rolls it's not enough to even hurt the opponent.

Ideally one would like the following effects:

1. Aiming at a weak spot makes it easier to do damage
2. Aiming at a vulnerable spot makes it easier to do get lucky and do a lot of damage despite possibly weak damage factor for the weapon.
3. Actual physical effect of the damage should only be determined by how tough it is, and not how dangerous it is to be hit at that location (for example, consider trying to cut off a finger and the throat of a character. The finger being less essential to survival should not make it harder to cut off, and the throat should not be easier to harm just because it's a vulnerable place. However, increasing the crit range unfortunately creates that effect)

Right now I'm toying with the idea of rerolls. Say you have 5 damage dice usually. Then aiming at the head might give you 1 reroll for every die. And aiming at the throat maybe even more.

On the other hand aiming at the arm forces rerolls to successes.

Like this with the zombie example:

Hitting the throat
First roll: 9, 5, 8, 7, 5
1 success. This one is kept, the rest are rerolled (we have 2 rerolls)
Second roll: 10, 9, 3, 2
1+2 successes. The last two dice are rerolled (last reroll now)
Third roll: 6, 9

Total: 4 success.

Hitting the arm
First roll: 4, 9, 4, 7, 9
2 successes. These have to be rerolled.
Second roll: 6, 3
No success.

Total: 0 successes.

Now interpret this as the first roll gives the local effect and the final gives the general effect. In the case of the throat cut, there is 1 wound of local effect, which means it's cut into but not seriously damaged. On the other hand the total of 4 successes tells us that blood is pumping out of that wound pretty badly (not necessarily applicable in the ghoul case). The arm wound, on the other hand is serious, but it doesn't give any serious damage.

Maybe a better trim would be to give x number of rerolls instead of forcing reroll sequences.

Still, it seems it won't work out so nicely. In the case of low toughness it guarantees maxing out on weapon damage when hitting sensitive areas, and for high toughness less vulnerable areas are very unlikely to make any effect at all.

So it doesn't create the desired behaviour after all.

Let's look at what worked before.

In AHQ.

AHQ has ONE thing applicable... critical hits with bows.

Critical hit in close combat means you get to hit again. Critical hit with the bow means the opponent's toughness is half of its usual value. Neat huh?

It means you hit some weak spot, not really decided on where. And that works fine. Hell yeah it means you give more damage and SURPRISE! the GM can narrate exactly what got hit.

Again we have the GM narrating things. The damage roll gives us the extent of the narration again.

So what about this: Aiming at any spot gives half the toughness to the target. This is the BASIC damage, and then this is damage is amplified or reduced depending on the location.

Let's test it.

I hit the throat again: 3, 8, 4, 6, 4 that's 2 points of damage. Maybe we don't have to amplify that.

Let's consider the same hit to the chest. If this would have been a general attack's damage it wouldn't have given any damage at all. The chest attack should give approximately the same result. Maybe if we simply cut it in half for 1 point.

Finally the arm would be even less. Maybe 1/4. Dropping fractions we don't get any real damage at all.

If we compare expected results in this case with having toughness -3, toughness +-0 and, toughness +1 we get something like this with 5 dice:

Toughness 9-3: 2.9
Toughness 9: 1.7
Toughness 9+1: 1.3
Toughness 9/2: 3.75
1/2 * (Toughness 9/2): 1.9
1/4 * (Toughness 9/2): 0.9
0.75*5-1=
Toughness 6-3: 4.2
Toughness 6: 2.9
Toughness 6+1: 2.5
Toughness 6/2: 4.2
1/2 * (Toughness 6/2): 2.1
1/4 * (Toughness 6/2): 1

Again, this doesn't seem like a behaviour we want since hitting the checst ought to behave better or equal to the general damage roll. This is not the case in the easy case of dividing things.

Another method would be to subtract damage from certain locations again using the toughness/2 as the guide for the roll.

Maybe something like this: vulnerable +-0, normal -1, insensitive -2.

In that case we get for the "normal" case mean values of 2.75 and 3.2 for 9 and 6 respectively. This is to be compared to the general rolls which has mean values of 1.7 and 2.9. However the differences diverge, the result being that it's more useful to aim for the chest in the case of a tough opponent. This seems counter-intuitive.

The only thing we have left to explore is to take the same approach but use the Toughness-3 values instead. We then get 1.9 and 3.2 respectively. But here we get accumulated rounding errors. The difference from the mean values should really be identical namely 0.25*damage dice-1. Unfortunately that means we get problems when have damage dice less than 4 as it's getting increasingly worse to aim for the chest at that point. Again this is not a behaviour we want to see. While it might be more beneficial in terms of damage to use a very damaging weapon on a weak area, it should not be true in the general case.

Again it seems like simple mechanics fixes won't take care of this hole.

Back to square one.

Ideally what we'd want is some way to determine a very general damage amount and then depending on where we hit that amount is worth different things. Actually one could even work out a neat advantage system by trading advantages for damage and stuff.

But let's start with what we had. Roll damage, GM narrates action and effect right?

And the problem starts when we want to reverse that by moving action before damage.

Ok, let's go with the "general damage" thing. We roll for action and then immediately for damage, but what difficulty do we roll against?

What we have is the opponent's toughness, armour and our own weapon+strenght rating. AHQ elegant solution worked nice, but a lot of factors was incorporated in the toughness, factors we now have separate.

Let's see... Toughness is: size (the bigger, the less impact of a single wound), natural armour (tough hide), constitution (to use the AD&D term), amount of sensitive spots on the body, ability to withstand pain.

Armour is: ability to absorb impact, ability to stop sharp weapons, percentage of body covered.

Weeding out the variating factors we have constitution, size and ability to withstand pain as invariants.

But we can't really use a toughness based on these invariants as our target number, because then that number has to go through the filters of armour and the other toughness factors. Basically we start with a big number and end up with a small one. This is a one way ticket to complexity land.

(The reason I'm not willing to go there is because I tried a whole bunch of replacements for the damage system in AHQ about a year and a half ago. None of them came even close to the original system, much less beating it)

So how do we make one single roll useful both in the general and specific case without going into the perilous forest of complexity land?

I'm trying to go over this back and forth but can't really come to any definite solution. The best would be a tweak to the AHQ system, but as you see my simple tweaks seem to go nowhere.

It would be nice to get all info and narrate damage and action in one, but since damage is dependent on action it seems problematic (the usual problem with player narratives in an otherwise GM illusionist game, the players know to little to make correct narratives).

I'm thinking of looking into other boardgames, maybe I can find a solution there. I don't know.

Another one of those ooops, did I just destroy that nice system I had built?

[Valamir]

Wow man...take a deep breath and repeat the following a dozen times:
"I am way over thinking things"

Don't paralyze yourself with such what if exercises you'll never make any head way.  No matter what your system is you can run it through an analysis similiar to the above and list off a bunch of areas where it isn't "perfect"...  Remember  "Perfection is the enemy of Good".

I read about half of your post and said "so what's the problem, sounds good".  I especially liked the normal / serious / etc divisions and the extra effects for that.


Re: Aiming for specific locations.  

There are two and only two reasons to aim for a specific location in the type of game you're trying to create (Note: this specifically exempts RoS which does so for reasons that don't apply here).

1) give a gamist decision about which option maximizes my chance to beat the opponent...take a penalty to hit in exchange for higher damage or take the more likely hit.

2) to replicate some special feature like the cyclops eye thing.

Item #1 IMO would be absolutely horrible for your game.  Based on everything you've described about how you want it to play, you don't want to turn it into some menu of tactical choices.

Item #2 is a valid thing but is and should be rare.  There was exactly 1 point in the Odyssey where the aimed shot to the eye comes into play.  There was exactly 1 point in the Hobbit where Smaug's scale comes into play.  These should not be every combat sorts of events.

Therefor you don't NEED (and I would argue vehemently don't want) a system where players have the option to call their shot with every swing.  What you want is the ability to allow it when there is a reason to do so without encouraging its use all the time.

I think you already had such a system with the advantaged move chart you posted a while back.  If you want to aim for the missing scale, or the eyeslit of a helmet fine...treat it like an advantaged move.  If you make you make it.  If the aimed shot really was to Achilles's heel than the the GM should already have an idea on how to narrate the result.  If it was just a routine kind of thing then give a benefit corresponding in magnitude to other advantaged moves (an extra d12 to roll for damage or something).  Then simply narrate the effect appropriate to the severity of the Wound and the location struck...issue closed.

It really is just that simple.

[Jake Norwood]

I don't know a whole lot about Ygg or what you're trying to create outside of this post, but I'm going to back up Ralph/Valamir and add that if you want to have the special cyclops/smaug effect, you could incoprporate (or use a pre-exisiting) fate or luck or drama mechanic that allows a player to do something exceptional (like the cyclops/smaug thing) in a combat or similar situation given (a) expenditure or use of that point and (b) dramatic or situational appropriateness. Spending this point would grant double dice for accuracy (or whatever) in cases like Luke and the Death Star or double dice for damage (or more...maybe even guaranteed resolution/death/explosion/etc) in cases like the cyclops or smaug. That would allow gimmicks and tricks like this one to pop up once every game or so, build on what you're trying to do, model the effect, and keep it from being an every-fight occurance.

Jake

[Christoffer Lernö]

Mmm, I find myself nodding in agreement here. Like you say Valamir, I don't want it to be a regular thing, it doesn't help the game at all.

Hmm.. the situations I want to use it is if someone being clever and makes a called shot to some vulnerable spot. Like the eye of the cyclops or the whatever weak spot they figured out a monster has.

Second use would be to do stuff in special situations, like kneeing that rude thug in the groin or something.

I think what you're saying here is "don't resolve this as if it was normal combat". Or?

[Valamir]

I think what you're saying here is "don't resolve this as if it was normal combat". Or?

Basically I'm saying you don't need rules to resolve it any differently than what you already have.  Any "special effects" should be obvious and can be narrated according to the degree of success of whatever resolution system you already have.

[Christoffer Lernö]

My concern is special situations like "what happens if someone hits an unarmoured part? How does the damage resolution change?"

Basically it's about the transition from general rules to detailed which always creates problems.

In the case where variation is low, this can simply be overlooked, but if the more detailed situation has greatly varying results depending on specific details?

On the other hand I might be answering my question at the same time.

Let's look at the damage resolution problem. Usually there is a rather random roll to cover hitting weak spots, having different power in the cut, hitting places not covered by armour etc.

All of those are included in the damage roll.

Now the detail is down to "I cut his throat".

Suddenly we seem to have to adjust the parameters to cover for us "knowing too much" about the situation. (QM parallells anyone?)

Of course this is the wrong approach. If it is known that
a) the sword hits the throat
b) the throat has no armour

All we need is a general effect roll to decide about how hard the we hit.

THAT can be considered a standard effect roll. If the normal skill resolution has its standard effect roll that could be used. Or simply flip a coin or something, or the GM decides that you cut off the throat because you're strong enough. Karma or Fortune, it's not really important how it's decided. The point is that we know the details, so trying to force the general system to crank out correct results using delicately balanced parameters is about as easy as using the lawnmover to give yourself a nice haircut.

Right?

[Valamir]

My concern is special situations like "what happens if someone hits an unarmoured part? How does the damage resolution change?"

However you want it to.  Someone makes a called shot, the shot hits with enough success to rule that it hit the desire area, simply reduce or eliminate the armor effect for damage...or blind the cyclops, or narrate Achilles dieing from a shot in the heel or whatever.

I don't know what resolution system you wound up deciding on, but this type of stuff is exactly why I really liked that "advantaged", "Improvise" success chart we talked about before.  Go back and read that thread.  The answer to all of this is already in there.

All IMO, OC

[damion]

Caveat:I didn't totally understand your system, so this is sorta generic.

What you could do is just have a generalized 'called shot'
This attack has it's difficulty increased in some way.
Depending on your system you could generalize this.
(The legs(50% of body) may be easier than the eye (~1%)

Option One:Specific Effect:'I shoot him in the hand to disarm him', the Cyclops eye thing, ect. In this case, you damage isn't increased, but you get the specific effect. The GM could arbitrate this based on how well you did.

Option two:You take some penalty, but increase the damage.
This allows highly skilled people to increase their damage. You just need to balance this so it isn't automatically better than a normal attack.
You could also make this a sliding scale possibly. I take X penalty, but increase my damage by Y.  Or I take X penaly and ignore Y points of armor or some such. This avoids the whole 'is the throat covered' thing. It could be narrated as a throat attack, but doesn't need to be.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Ignore the fact that the example is rather boring and that the "feat" mechanic actually is done with different mechanics. I think this might be a way to get the detailed hits to work within the system. Or maybe not. Just for no reason whatsoever, here it is (displaying some features of the current draft of the combat system as well):

GM: The three ghouls stagger towards you in the dim moonlight, their eyes glowing faintly with reddish evil.

Brokk's Player: How far away are they?

GM: Well about 20 meters or so.

Grendel's Player: How fast are they moving?

GM: Well it will take them a little while to reach you. What do you do?

Grendel: GAAAH dead evils!

Brokk: Haw haw haw, just corpses. This is no problem little one.

Brokk: I pick up my axe.

GM: ok

Grendel: What are we gonna do! What are we gonna do?!

Brokk: Calm down. I throw my axe at the closest one.

GM: Ok, that's only 10 meters away now. You can count that as "Normal" distance. Roll.

Brokk's player: Ok, I do a normal hit.

GM: Roll for damage against a toughness of 9.

Brokk's player: 9? Ooops! 4, 8, 12 Yes a crit! aw a 2. 1 point of damage.

GM: With a sickening thud the axe lodges in the shoulder of the creature. It does not really seem to mind but its left arm is now dangling useless at its side. It hisses at you.

Grendel: Don't think it likes you.

Brokk: Ah, we can still outrun them. Can't we? I start jogging back towards the horses.

Grendel: I lead the way.

GM: You leave the ghouls behind and run for your horses. As you approach the place you left them you hear the panicing sound of a desperate horse.

GM: Roll awareness.

Brokk: I roll 8, that's Excellent Awareness for me.

Grendel: A roll of 7. Aw, normal Awarness here.

GM: Brokk, you can make out a pair of glowing eyes approaching Grendel's horse, of your own pony there's not a trace.

GM: Grendel, you can only make out shadows moving in the distance, something must be panicing the horses.

Grendel: I rush forward, drawing my sword.

Brokk: Wait Gren! There are more of them.

GM: Brokk you have no chance to keep up with Gren as he rushes forward.

Brokk: Oh brother.

GM: Grendel, now you see what's scared your horse is another of the Ghouls. Brokk's pony is nowhere to be seen. The ghoul turns to you and hisses.

Grendel: Of all that's holy! I try to chop his head off.

GM: Ok, you have the better move, you go first. Roll for it, 2 dice since you're aiming.

Grendel: 9 and... 5. Aww.. 5 is that enough?

GM: His defense is 4. You have what? 9? That's even a Spectacular (formerly known as "Improvised") Success. What are you doing?

Grendel: Well I dive forward swinging my sword with all my might in a horizontal strike to try and cut the head clean off.

GM: Aw-kay, roll a Power Feat

Grendel: Ok. My five dice: 1,8,8,8,3. With my Power of 6 that gives me (have to roll 7+) an Excellent feat.

GM: Wow! You cut the head clean off and it flops away to the side. Unfortunately, the body still staggers towards you propelled by some unholy force.

Grendel: Uh-oh.

GM: Now you said you had what? 9? I don't think you need to worry. He's Impaired considering it can't even see. I roll. 4, 5, 6 [he needs to roll 11+ on all his dice]. Nope, his vain tries to catch you fails.

GM: Brokk you're catching up now.

Brokk: Can I cut it with my dagger?

GM: Probably not.

Brokk: Aww, what the heck, I try.

GM: Ok, Grendel you have the highest move, what are you going to do?

Grendel: I assume the ghoul is going to attack me again. I want to cut off his arm, ok?

GM: No problem. Since the ghoul is impaired your disadvantage is gone. Roll a standard throw for this one.

Grendel: I roll 5 again. Ok, I cut into the arm with a strong vertical slash. I roll my strength feat: 9, 6, 10, 4, 6. An average feat.

GM: Hmm with your sharp sword that would be enough to cut off his arm. To your surprise it still staggers towards you.

... and so on ...

Basically there is a test against strength to see how powerful the blow and then the GM uses the weapon strength and toughness of the opponent to MAKE UP what's happening.

[Valamir]

Sounds fine, pretty much what I was suggesting your system could already do.