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. :)

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

xenopulse wrote:
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 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).

xenopulse wrote: 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.

Callan wrote: 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.

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?

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.

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.

Ian wrote: 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.

BlackTerror wrote: 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.

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

Narmical, if it were rounding up as Xenopulse says, then that attack of 8 on a character who has lost 7 levels already would take 5 levels from the character; still over half.  I understand your point, but my take is that any gamist can disagree with the way a system handles damage with defense and soak.  Many perfectly good, gamist-oriented systems have enemy traits which reduce the damage that players deal.

The only time this rule even matters is when you're making an attack that would not kill a character flat out.  Meaning: You're not slitting their throat or shooting a hole in their head.  These are surface wounds that cause no other effect but to cumulatively kill a person.  As Xenopulse mentioned, effects that penalize a victim are handled through a separate mechanic.

The point being that, in this system, none of these attacks would kill the opponent individually anyhow.  If you actually make an attack that would normally kill the person, then you kill that person, no matter how much damage they've already taken.  Otherwise, you're just giving them a hernia or concussion or whatever.

-Jason T.

Yea, but I dunno, I could imagine a bunch of people not attacking an enemy because they'rewaiting to charge up a power or because they can't throw their partys most powerful attack, which would lead to some diluting and metagaming where all the characters somehow acted as though their first attack was the most important which isn't necessarily true to life or fiction.

There is some work that needs to be done on setting up exactly how attacks work.  I don't see the situation you bring up as posing a problem.

One way or another, if you hold back on an attack, you're not doing damage that would otherwise be done.  Wasting time in a tactical RPG has its own disadvantages, up to and including "your character could die while you're waiting around." 

Think about it this way:

Party's most powerful attack is a 10, but it takes 4 rounds to charge up.
Another party member can attack during this time with a 4 each time, doing a total of 10 damage (if they were all versus the same opponent), or simply not attack.
If the Low-Powered character does attack those four times, the powerful attack will take damage to a 15, when it would otherwise have been only 10.
If the Low-Powered character waits 4 rounds, the high powered character attacks with a 10, and it takes another 2-3 attacks after that just to get the damage about as high again, costing a total of 6-7 rounds for damage which could have been done in 4.
In a "fun" RPG, this powerful attack couldn't be powered up unless there is some necessary factor to powering up, otherwise there's no point to the time requirement; i.e., combat has already started, meaning the character is already under fire while charging.  Those could be a precious few rounds you're wasting.

-Jason T.

I'm getting a lot of good stuff out of this conversation. Especially the parts about not wasting rounds and powering up attacks. Cool. I was already thinking of using powers that have a primary and a secondary effect; often the primary being damage and the secondary a condition, with follow-up attacks being empowered (or enabled) by the conditions.

For example: throw a bigass fireball. Primary effect is damage (searing) on target, secondary is condition (burning) on area of target. People who use fire magic draw tokens from nearby fire conditions, so now they've caused damage AND increased their token pool per round. (And non-fire-resistant enemies in the burning area are going to take damage now, too.)  More tokens mean better powers.

Feel free to keep on talking if you guys have more insight :)  I need a day or two to digest and consider.

Justin wrote:
Yea, but I dunno, I could imagine a bunch of people not attacking an enemy because they'rewaiting to charge up a power or because they can't throw their partys most powerful attack, which would lead to some diluting and metagaming where all the characters somehow acted as though their first attack was the most important which isn't necessarily true to life or fiction.

VoidDragon wrote:
Narmical, if it were rounding up as Xenopulse says, then that attack of 8 on a character who has lost 7 levels already would take 5 levels from the character; still over half. 

"Diminished Return" only applies when you think in terms of how other systems use the numbers.  Remember, these numbers only exist in the first place as an abstraction.  HP is not a real, tangible thing. 

Think about a woodcutters axe going through a tree.  If, each time, the axe is able to go 1/8 of the way through the tree, but a "successful hit" only constitutes hitting a tree in a general area, but not in the same specific spot every time, then there are naturally diminishing returns.  It will take plenty more than 8 swipes to fell the tree.  However, an ax swing that hits 8 times as hard will go all the way through and fell it in one, because it's all directed in one shot. (disclaimer: hardness of swing measured in game damage rather than real physics)

The idea about damage with killing intent (as opposed to damage with blinding or disabling intent) in this system is that a hit does constitute whatever opening you may have at the time.  You may end up causing wounds which, inherently, do not stack.  So, in this sense, there aren't diminishing returns: you're still causing every wound that you otherwise would.  It's just that two different wounds, assuming each insufficient to kill on their own, with no stacking quality, are not going to kill a character.

Your statement about 100 sword stab wounds not killing a character is a different issue.  Remember, such a character would have to be able to endure an attack the power of 51 of those same sword wounds at once in order to survive 100.  That means, that character would have to be some sort of behemoth at least.

In your final example, the "Final Attack" breaks the stacking rule (I assume that was your point, though).  According to my logic (I'm not trying to imply that Xenopulse is in complete congruence with me here), such a final attack would have to exploit the damage the enemy has already taken.  It would have to use the already existing wounds to the attacker's benefit.  It can kill someone, not simply of its own power (10 < 18), but can use wounds to do greater damage (8 + 10 = 18 > 14).  Such attacks that break the stacking rules may indeed be included in the system, and may make it more interesting.

Arguing from a gamist standpoint (as you do) rather than simulationist, however, you can think of the extra rule as a level of complication in the decision which the gamist is making.  Gamists like a fairly high level of complication in their decisions.  Otherwise, the game becomes too easy.  Numerically diminishing returns is not something that is hated by all gamists.  It creates another twist to their calculative exploitation that drives their interest in the game.  Gamists in general accept rules as long as they do not remove the Gamist's ability to profit from their strategy.  With this system, we are already seeing such ways of profiting.

-Jason T.

Hmm. If I keep the mechanism as it is, there will be plenty of times when it all just turns into a battle of attrition after all. If one big hit doesn't take out the opponent, the next one is almost guaranteed to. Because if I need to do 15 damage, I know I can't do it with my 12-point attack, but I'm guaranteed to do it with 12+12. So the first attack is always known to be non-lethal, and the second is always known to be lethal (unless I roll for damage, but that causes variances that bring small and big attacks too close together and that I'd like to avoid).

What if an attack has a chance to take out the opponent, based on how much damage it does. If that doesn't do it, some of that hit remains as a wound and adds to the chance of all consecutive wounds, because it weakened the opponent. That keeps the spirit of the original idea, but should make each hit more interesting, right? And it takes out the certainty of how many hits take someone out without introducing the option of your

Let's say a 12 point hit means that you have to roll your Toughness dice and get 12 points or more to keep on standing. Depending on your Toughness, that might be easy or difficult.  If you don't make it, you're out. If you do, you take a 6-point wound (half of the damage). The next time you get hit, you have to add those six points. So another 12-point hit is going to require a 18-point Toughness check. And if you make that, the next time you add both 6-point wounds and have to make a 24-point check. And so on.

I just realized that there might be some variant D&D rule that went something like this with Fortitude saves, but I can't recall where I saw that...

Oh! Follow-up idea: This way, you can actually have some powers that are better at taking people out but leave small wounds, and others that don't have a big Toughness check associated with them but deal higher lasting damage. That means more strategic options about short-term versus long-term, and when to time your taking-out attack.

that increasing dificult check sounds cool.

I dont remember a d and d varian that used it.

however 7th sea (pre d20) had a similar mechanic

there were 2 kinds of wounds, flesh and dramatic

you had to save vs flesh wounds + damage or take a dramatic wound.

You new idea would capture the usefullness of the big death blow

Alright,

I think your system is unique and extremely clever. I like it from all points of view.

My question is more on the front end of things: How is damage taking place in the first place?
The trigger mechanic for damage can drastically alter how your accruing of damage takes place.

Also, I also would like to re-raise the issue of less strategic options for characters, should the trigger be static and easily controllable.
Overall, I am extremely impressed with this simple and elegant mechanic. Hopefully your trigger has synergy with it.

~Mohammad

Hey,

I've been thinking about your idea a bit more.

If you intend on keeping gameplay as quick as possible, then it seems fine with minor tweaking.
If you want a more strategic or realistic style of play, think about a seperate "shock" value where repeated minor attacks are actually beneficial.

Thanks,
Mohammad

You want an overview of how the whole thing works together? Phew... okay. This is all still in draft stage, but I'll try to give you an example of how I'd like it to go.

This is a token-based game.  That means you gain tokens in certain ways and then expend them to use your powers.  Think Iron Heroes, only here tokens are much more fundamental, tactical, and useful.  One layer of strategy here is that tokens are earned in very different ways. There are regular tokens that you store and use up, and virtual tokens. Virtual tokens are not stocked up from round to round, you have to spend them right away. But they also don't count against your Pool limit and they're basically free tokens every round as long as you meet the prerequisites.

For example, you have Blood powers.  Your character has the following abilities:

Blood Pool II: you can hold 10 Blood Tokens
Vampirism: you gain x Blood Tokens by drinking someone's blood (can't be used during combat)
Bloodline I: You have a virtual Blood Token available every round as long as you have at least 5 regular Blood Tokens in your pool.
Weakness to Fire II: Your saving throw against fire damage is at -4 and you take 50% more damage from fire attacks.
Resilient III: Your damage saving throw gains a +6 bonus.
Power Attack: An attack action that uses a Blood Token for increased damage.
Celerity: An interrupt action that costs a Blood Token and raises your defense by +4 against the interrupted attack.

Let's say you have 5 Blood Tokens in your pool.

You are facing someone with the following abilities:

Flame Pool I: You can hold 5 Flame Tokens.
Inhale Fire: You gain 2 Flame Tokens if your area or yourself are burning, and 1 Flame Token from every adjacent burning area, up to a maximum of 5 Flame Tokens per round.
Firestorm: An attack action that uses Flame Tokens.

Now, the other character is attacking you with Firestorm.  The details for the power are:

Name: Firestorm
Cost: 3 Flame Tokens
Attack: +6 (+8/+10)
Save: fire 10 (12/14)
Effect: Fire Damage 2 (3/4) against all targets in area; inflict burning on area

The numbers in parentheses are boost numbers.  You can raise to the next higher number by spending additional Flame Tokens. Each boost has to be bought separately, so spending one additional Flame Token will either get you a +8 attack OR a +5 save requirement OR more inflicted damage.  If you completely boost up this power, you're spending 9 Flame Tokens.

So now the other character is using the power on you,  not boosting anything.  Let's say you use up a Blood Token to interrupt with Celerity and gain a bonus on your defense roll to completely dodge the attack.  The attacker gets to roll a +6 strike and you roll a +4 defense roll.

You used up your virtual token, leaving you with your regular 5 Blood Tokens. However, if you're using up one or more of those tokens on your turn this round, you won't qualify for the virtual token anymore next round.

Alright, on with the attack.  Say it hits.  You first have to save against fire to see if you stay conscious or even die.  The base save difficulty from the power is 10.  You've got +6 to saves against any damage, but -4 from your fire weakness, leaving you at +2.

Whether you make the save or not, you're taking 3 points of fire damage (2 plus 50% from your weakness).  Next time you make a save, you have a 3 point penalty.

Also, the area you're in is now burning.  This means two things: if you stay in it, the burning condition will work as an independent attack on you every round until it burns out.  It also means that your opponent is gaining Flame Tokens if she is in or next to that area, thereby feeding her own powers. As you can see, a vampire would be smart to quickly and decisively end a battle, because the flame powered opponent is going to turn the whole battleground into an inferno and steadily grow more powerful.

Wow. Examples take up a lot of space. That's how I imagine it'll work at this point, anyway.

Additional parts of the game will be lots of combos and aids that encourage a party to work together as a team, style tokens earned through cool narration that can be used as boosts for any power, and similar things.

Hey, this looks alot more crunchy than Beast Hunters (not as a negative feature).  But I think if you keep all of the powers working along the same kind of format you can keep things manageably playable.

If each power has its own rules / exceptions / minor differences than you can't play off the character sheet (unless the character sheet is pages long describing the powers in detail.  If each power pretty much works the same way mechanically (i.e. Attack +6 (+8, +10) works the same as Attack +4 (+6, +8) regardless of whether the power is "fire" or "claws") then you can learn one set of token manipulation rules and apply those right from the sheet without needing alot of cross referencing.  That sort of manipulation can be a lot of fun.

Question:  NPCs and GM characters...this could be alot of tracking work...any shortcuts in mind?

Hey Ralph,

Yeah, this is specifically meant to tickle the mechanical-tactical nerve that Beast Hunters suppressed in favor of the full-on narrative focus. Hence the crunch :)

I am trying to develop a basic system for all of the powers. They will all have the same way of being listed, with cost, attack, effect, and so on, and all of them listing boosts the same way. One additional layer of complexity there will be the conditions one can inflict (like burning).

As for NPCs... there'll be mooks and bosses, seeing that this is based on Fist of the North Star and similar sources. So the mooks will be easy fodder and will either have mook rules or just don't use tokens, only plain attacks. Bosses need to be statted out, but there'll be ability packages provided for that. So if you're meeting a vampire on the road, you look in the book and get all the basic Blood powers that the typical vamp has.

I do expect that this will be quite a bit of work for the GM if the player group is large and there are several bosses involved, but at the level of crunch that I would like, I'm not sure yet how to facilitate that.

Hi Christian,

I think the mechanical-tactical nerve is set off by the capacity to lose (or having already lost), rather than complexity. Along those lines I think the damage progression is neutral in terms of losing - it doesn't contain anything that gets you closer to losing in itself, it just deals with numbers another part of the game provided. Those numbers deliver your capacity to lose - so whatever part of the game provided those numbers is what will provide whatever amount of mechanical-tactical nerve trigger the game will have.

Currently char gen is providing those numbers. Can you win or lose just at char gen? It's something to check, because if you can then the games conflict will center at char gen - regardless of how funky the damage progression mechanic is.

Hi Callan,

There is a difference between tic tac toe and chess. Both are games without chance/randomizers, purely strategic. But one of them provides complexity through choices. There are different pieces and a larger board with many possible combinations. That's the thing I'm after here, and the complexity is a core part of it.

So obviously, the moves in this game need to not have an optimum, that is, you don't always use the same powers, but you have strategies, positioning, prioritizing, resource management, and so on.

I do NOT want the char gen to be more fun than the game itself (which is my experience with most D20 incarnations).  That's going to be somewhat tricky, but I'll see what I can do :)

The tricky thing about chess is that it is not a complex game at all. Play chess against a four year old and it's a simple game, almost as simple as tic tac toe.

The other thing about the example is that when the other person doesn't really have the capacity to make you lose, all the choices, options and such don't improve the game above tic tac toe.

In the example, that's because of a lack of mental discipline. But just as easily, the rules determine how much of a capacity the other person has to make you lose. The damage progression doesn't effect that either way by itself, it just uses the numbers plugged into it. Where those numbers are coming from will determine how much the other person has the capacity to make you lose and by that, how complex the game is.

Hey,

I like Crunchy games and made one a few years back.

Couple of questions:
      -Have you play tested? You might find a strategy that always works regardless of the opponent.
      -Do you have players willing to go through the labor of play?

I say, stick to it but play test a ton. Once the roles have been hammered well, go in and start creating standards to baseline against. These standards can be used to aid memorization as well.