Survey of Damage Systems

[Calithena]

In re critical hits:

"We have Rolemaster and The Riddle of Steel to thank for these, primarily."

This is just a historical quibble, but Rolemaster is years and years after The Arduin Grimoire and numerous optional crit systems in Dragon Magazine. Also, WFRP and now HackMaster have tables with flavor text and gruesome penalties of a very high caliber. This is an old and time-honored idea...

...I see a lot of these inaccurate historical statements on the Forge and don't comment, because it seems irrelevant to the issue being discussed, but the Arduin critical hit tables were such a 'moment' in gaming back around the U.S. Bicentennial that it seems a shame to see them supplanted by Rolemaster as a 'leading mention'. Rolemaster is a very, very late 1st generation RPG from the perspective of an old fogey like me.

I return you now to substantive discussion on the question, one in which I have keen interest but little to add that hasn't been said by others already.

[Calithena]

I actually did have a substantive thought about damage systems to add, after I slept on it.

One thing that Donjon got me thinking about was maybe using a more regimented 'fact-stating' system as a way of adjudicating combat. So if you had a Sorcerer/Donjon type resolution system with a multi-die damage roll you could translate your successes into various degrees of gruesome wounding. Sort of like a 'players option' critical hit system.

1 fact would establish that you hit
A second fact would get you a bleeding cut, or a lasting bruise
A third fact could get you an artery or a bone break
Fourth fact would get some internal organs

etc. It could be multi-dimensional too, so that you could take a fact on hit location to get the head for really debilitating injuries, or take a fact to nail the hand and disarm that bastard, etc.

This could be really fun if you enjoy this sort of thing, which I do...

[Michael S. Miller]

I actually did have a substantive thought about damage systems to add, after I slept on it.

Sleep is, indeed, a wonderful thing. Now if I can only get my hands on some....

One thing that Donjon got me thinking about was maybe using a more regimented 'fact-stating' system as a way of adjudicating combat.

Thanks for putting out that idea. I like it a lot. I think it would mesh well with the Emotional-Impact damage that Shreyas suggested earlier. Limiting the number of facts that can be stated by the number of successes adds a nice bit of crunch to something that otherwise could become a potential for stage fright syndrome.

By "stage fright syndrome" I refer to phenomenon I've observed when running games with high levels of player narration rights such as InSpectres and Trollbabe. Some players either freeze or just plain don't like when their dice roll results in the GM saying "So, tell me what happens." I've met with a good deal of player resistance over these free-form types of narration, but when I ran Donjon, I found that limiting the number of facts decreased stage fright syndrome considerably.

[Calithena]

Thanks, MSM!

I just wanted to clarify something about my history post: when I said "around the Forge", I didn't mean to suggest that the Forge was in any way especially bad about RPG history, or that there was any sort of conspiracy of obfuscation, or anything like that. In fact, the gamers here are amazingly smart and well-informed, and there are far fewer errors here than you tend to see on other boards where RPG history gets discussed. It's just that they are more jarring here, just like it's jarring when you discover how little some modern biologists know about Darwin's actual writings, or how little some modern philosophers know about Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, and Leibniz. One expects brilliant practitioners to be better informed about the history of their subject than ordinary citizens, and in general they are, but when they aren't, it strikes you harder than it might in other contexts.

[Harlequin]

A curious thought about fact-based damage allocation...

One could set out quite a short list of "relevant facts" about a wounding strike, to pick and choose from.
- Existence of the hit
- Location of the hit
- Immediate advantage (knockdown, knockback, numbed hand)
- Postcombat trauma (bleeding, shock)
- Direct impairment (fracture, agony, one eye blinded by pain or blood, etc)
- Lasting impairment (scars of all stripes, or make a Direct Impairment into the sort which won't be cleanly healable [assuming no magic]).
- Massive impairment (upgrades a Lasting, Direct Impairment to truly horrible - severment, full blindness, death).

Let the attacker choose one of these per success; the defender gets to delineate all the rest, minimizing them as much as he likes.  Run them in the above order.  To deliberately cut off your sword hand, I'd need six successes (though with five I could still sever whatever the defender had chosen as the Location); to knock you down, I'd need only two.  If the attacker passes on the Immediate Advantage point then the defender is likely to describe things agin him - his blade could be caught or he might end up off-balance at the end of the blow.

Adding the specified list ups the rule-complexity even if it does not increase the play-complexity, so I'd use it only if wounding was a game focal point.  On the other hand, this list could help inform some good examples for a more freeform Donjon-style fact allocation.

- Eric

[Calithena]

Great, Harlequin. This is the sort of thing I had in mind.

Some people who play traditional fantasy games are heavily focused in part on the erotics of massive physical damage. This is the perpetual allure of the great critical hits tables (Arduin, Dragonquest, Rolemaster, WFRP, Hackmaster, etc.). I think at the very least a system along these lines would make a great optional system for Donjon. Let the player take their fantasies of foe-mutilation to the limit....why leave them hanging on the DM or on a random table for their thrill?

[Harlequin]

Why, indeed.  Thank you, by the way.  If one were to make this a core mechanic in a game, then I'd recommend a structural addition: put those labels (Location, Direct Impairment, etc) on cards, so that the attacker/defender can share them out between them.  But again that's increasing visual/kinesthetic/informational weight... at this point I'd say it'd work best in, let's say, Donjon Duel - Getting Personal, a one-on-one variant for handling duels in great detail, where more things than just the wound system used those cards.  You could overload the function of the cards and maintain just one set of physical cards, if all actions had exactly (seven?) fact-types to be provided by one player or the other.

Say:
-= Second Slot =-
Maneuver: Advantage Gained
(Height, Flanking, Distance, Prop)
Psychology: Type of Mindgame
(Deceit, Confusion, Charm, Fear)
Damage: Hit Location
(Head, Torso, R/L Arm, R/L Leg)
          -====-

Something like that.  Win the roll by X points, define X facts of your choice by taking those cards - but the remaining ones are decided by your opponent.  Facts are always stated in the order of the card titles.  Winning by a little becomes a tradeoff game, where you define less facts overall than the loser but you get to pick which.

- Eric

[Plane Sailing]

Hi Michael,

Another two types of damage system which you could include in your review:

fixed hit points per location as used in the original Runequest. Characters have a relatively static number of hit points, and a lesser number per location (head, arms, chest, legs, abdomen). Because damage is done to individual locations you can easily end up with maimed limbs or even amputations. This is less anonymous than the standard fuel tank of hit points used by systems such as D&D.

Attribute damage as used in the original Traveller RPG. Damage from a weapon was applied directly to the physical attributes of the character. IIRC it was a little like backgammon dice in that each specific die result from an attack had to be applied against a specific attribute so it couldn't merely be optimised easily by a wounded PC.

Cheers
Alex White