Attacking and Check Mechanic Thread
Note: This the Wounds and Fatigue System and Attack and Check Mechanic Threads are closesly linked

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=30614.0

Introduction/ Class Mechanic Thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=30612.0

As part of the Legacy of Heroes role-playing system, I am implementing a hit point alternative system. I’ve never seen a game system with a mechanic like this, so I don’t if I’ve hit the ball, got a home run, or had the ball give me a bloody nose.

Basically, rather than hit points, there are wounds. Specifically, there are three types of wounds: minor, medium, and major. Furthermore, there are also levels of fatigue, which give penalties to all characters checks and actions.

Each character has, instead of hit points, three different amounts of each type of wounds they can suffer.

Minor wounds represent cuts, nicks, flesh wounds, bruises, etc. They are the least significant, and a character can suffer many minor wounds without suffering a level of fatigue. A character can suffer the most amount of minor wounds.

The next is medium wounds. This represents being stabbed, muscle damage, fractured bones, significant slices, etc. Medium wounds work much like minor wounds, but the character can withstand very few medium wounds before suffering a level of fatigue.

Finally, there are major wounds. This represents being impaled, a wound that causes significant bleeding, a crucial bone being broken, etc. Every major wound gives a level of fatigue.
Every amount of wound damage of each type has a certain effect. A character can suffer the fewest amount of major wounds.

Half of the characters minor wounds: +1 level of fatigue.

All of the character’s minor wounds: +1 level of fatigue, all minor wounds inflicted are treated as medium wounds.

Half of the character medium wounds: +1 level of fatigue

All of the characters medium wounds: +1 level of fatigue, and all medium wounds inflicted are treated as major wounds
Each major wound inflicted: +1 level of fatigue

All of the character major wounds: Dead

Each level of fatigue: -5 to all of a characters checks and the attacker’s hits against the character need to score fewer degrees of success to score greater wounds

6 levels of fatigue: Unconsciousness

The amount of wounds dealt on a successful attack depends on a few factors: the base damage of the weapon, the attacker’s stat bonus to damage, how many degrees of success the weapon hit by, and the targets armor.

For example, a long sword deals 3 minor wound damage on a successful hit, 2 medium wound damage, or 1 major wound damage. Supposing the character has a strength of 35, it increases his minor wound damage by 2 and his medium wound damage by 1. So now he deals 5 minor wound damage, 3 medium wound damage, or 1 major wound damage. His attack roll beats his enemies defense roll by 22, so he deals a minor wound +1. Based on his attack roll, he hits the torso. His enemy is wearing hide armor, which provides 3 resist to minor wounds to the torso. So the character deals the target 3 minor wound damage.

What’s the feedback on this system? Too much to keep track of? Too harsh? It is definitely hard to balance. Compared to hit points, it can result in quick character death, or very slow character death. It greatly depends. Does anyone know of a game system that uses a wound system similar to this? Any other thoughts?

I like wound systems. Yours would not be the first. FATE and its children do amazing things with penalties (compels) in a wound system.

The one thing to watch for in such systems is that you don't create a death spiral. A death spiral basically gives a huge advantage to the first person to cause damage. Once you have an advantage, the next hit is easier, too. And that makes the next one easier, etc.

Realistic? Perhaps (but see below). Fun? Not so much. There is a good reason that D&D has a hit point system that doesn't affect your combat effectiveness until you reach 0.

I don't think it's even that realistic. People don't generally get worse at fighting as they take wounds. You don't generally think that much about the pain and damage till it's over. Hell, soldiers who are ordered to return to base to complete the mission often will get back to base, salute, and pass out with near-fatal wounds. Adrenaline kicks in during fights and makes you even more dangerous.

I don't think it'd be that much fun (for me) as a tactical game to track all that stuff either. Again, I'll ask, what's your goal here? What part should the combat system play in driving the kind of play you want for your games? You're a story teller, an author, a writer. And a game designer, too. What role does combat  play in this game? Is the game about personal combat? Does personal combat serve as the punctuation at the end of a long build-up? Is combat the last resort of desperate people? Is combat the final arbiter of mad men?

Personally, if you want to focus on corruption, I'd avoid combat as much as possible. If your setting allows free combat between angry people without consequence, then no one will bother with corruption and intrigue; they'll just off their enemies. However, if combat is rarely a good option, players will have to rely on political methods. Make combat nasty to everyone involved, and make it less exciting a subgame than the political subgame. I recommend one roll on each side and cause damage to each other. Maybe you both die.

Which is actually much more common in reality than you might think. Quite often in exchanges on the battlefield blows would be struck close enough together that even though one warrior might be dead sooner, the other would not recover from the fight. If you want to encourage non-combat actions you can make combat hyper-dangerous. Conversely if you want combat and it fits, you can add a structured system by which it happens in less than lethal circumstances. Duels to first blood, fistfights, wrestling matches, or even more esoteric manners such as obstacle courses, footraces, etc.

Again, it goes back heavily to wat do you do in your novel. Because if you're doing a tie in you are better off with a consistent theme.

I never hear much about this game Its pretty new and based around a book series so maybe that explains it.

Green Ronin's Song of Ice and Fire RPG makes use of Wounds.
You also have Health (basically HP which are pretty low - average of 12) but upon taking a hit
You can instead take an injury or wound.
Injures are minor. (like your medium wounds)
Wounds are major (potentially life long -- limps -- poor use of certain fingers - bad scars etc)
injuries and wounds give you back health but you take negatives to fighting
Moderate ones for injuries and hefty ones for wounds.

I can't say whether your system would be annoying to keep up with - without seeing/feeling it in action but it doesn't see too bad.
Like most games that we aren't used to it will seem hard until we get the hang of it.
[sub]sidenote: I remember when I thought THAC0 was difficult. *blush*
Thac0 minus opponents AC - [glow=red,2,300]Bam![/glow] to hit number - simple pimple. ;) never understood the hate.[/sub]

GOOD WORK:
I didn't read through all your posts - only this one.
It seems you have a way of turning 1 attack roll into a way to determine success and failure - by what degree and where on the body.
That is outstanding. This (if you haven't figured it out/incorperated it) allows you to mix and match your armor pieces .. something that I abandoned long ago as being too complicated. Probably not with your 1 roll mechanic. Outstanding work!

Look up Green Ronins Song of Ice and Fire's QUICK START PDF HERE FOR FREE if you find my reference useful. (pg 16 for wounds and such)

Good luck
-Brent

Would it be better to go away with fatigue? Or change it so it does something else. In the numbers of the system right now, the primary of purpose of fatigue is:

A: To represent the wear and tear of battle
B: To simulate how a character can be knocked unconscious rather than killed.
C: To make heavily damaged characters easier to take down

Fatigue can be easily modified so that it doesn’t give the penalties to all checks, but only makes it easier to land heavier blows against the target. Realistic, maybe not. But it adds the mechanic of characters who have been fighting a long time and are slowly being brought down by stacking many different injuries.

Characters are intended to be vulnerable compared to D&D. I don’t want every problem to be dealt with the classic dungeons and dragon metagaming (oh, were powerful enough. Let’s just kill him!). Combat will be rarer, more dangerous, and not gone into lightly. However, as a violent and dangerous world, I DO expect combat to happen from time to time.

In my posts I tend to focus more on combat than corruption or role-playing. Why? 
A: Because it is generally more rules heavy and harder to balance, and what feedback is most needed on.
B: Because of point A, it is what I’m trying to get out of the way first.

By the way, thank you everyone for your feedback. You’ve all been a great help.

A. Everyone gains a point of Fatigue every round, just because they're fighting. Everyone.

B. When a character is defeated, their fate is unknown. Stabbing them more will not change this. (I suppose you could decapitate them or something, but ew.) When the combat is all done, make a roll to find out if the character lives or dies. This can be based on wounds but I'd make it based mostly on some kind of willpower stat or maybe even some kind of metagame stat.

C. Death spiral. Making the injured character less capable in combat makes them more likely to die in combat. Note that in D&D 4E, some powers trigger when a character becomes Bloodied, thus making them MORE capable in combat when they get injured. Again, this is not an accident.

If you're trying to make combat gritty and scary, this will do it. However, the victory will often go to the character who gets in the first shot. Furthermore, players will figure this out quickly and tailor their characters to getting in the first shot.

If you expect combat to happen "from time to time," this is a far cry from a typical D&D adventure, where combat is 50%-90% of the game time. Your combat system should not be as exciting or as complex as your intrigue and corruption system. In fact, stop thinking about the combat system. ;) Go work on the parts of your game that excite you the most.

Combat doesn't HAVE to be "rules heavy and harder to balance." I have played games where the result of combat is determined by a vote of the other players.

The Babylon Project RPG had an interesting damage system that was wounds-based rather than hit points.  Unfortunately, it was also a charts-heavy system, which is a big no-no in my book.  But it did introduce some interesting concepts that are well worth considering.  One such concept was that when you get hurt, the injury is resolved in two steps: the first step takes place immediately, and applies penalties to you due to pain and abstract hindrance; the second step is postponed until after the fight, and establishes the exact nature of the wound and its long-term consequences, including broken bones, bleeding, and recovery time. 

The health system is still being completely reworked, but my current result is much simpler.
Basically, the system uses a standard hit point system now. However, instead of the critical hits of D&D, there is instead crippling wounds. Crippling wounds are debilitating injuries that have both an instantly penalty to a limb and an ongoing penalty. Also, instead of being scored on a high natural roll, they are dealt when the attack beats defense by a large amount.

Not particularly realistic, but simple and functional.

Leovaunt,
You've changed your wound system to hit points.
You've changed your combat mechanic to attack vs. static defense value.
You've changed your resolution method from d100 to d20.

Do you see a pattern emerging here? 

I'm not trying to discourage you from your work, only from the inclination to closely resemble another game.  The ideas you had before were fine, in concept; they just needed to be streamlined.  It takes a bit of mental acrobatics to get there, but when you do, the game will look a lot more like something that is yours.  How do I know that it isn't yours yet?  Because you're still making comparisons to DnD.  When that natural urge no longer exists - when the difference between your game and another is no longer merely cosmetic - then you have yourself a project really worth completing.

In my opinion, it would be a good idea to step back for about a week or so to make a critical evaluation of your work. 

Oh, I’ve very much noticed that it’s shifted it dangerously close to D&D, and I’m not happy about it. That’s why, since posting my last few posts, I’ve thought of ways to combine the two drafts. This is what I’ve come up with based on what I like and what I want to do.

1) D100 instead of d20, because I like the extra wiggle room and it’s not d20.

2) Reverting back to attack roll versus defense roll. However, it is different now because of two regards:

a) Single Defense Type: No more choosing between parrying, dodging, or blocking. It’s all been rolled into a single defense value that is added to the defense roll.

b) Combat Balance: Combat Balance now applies. The bonus or penalty per point of combat balance is 10. Combat Balance adds extra effect in this system now because of the risk of defenders rolling high, so you want to keep their combat balance low so you can hit them regardless of how high they roll.

3) Modified wounds system. There is now just light wounds and heavy wounds. It’s quite simple. You have a certain amount of each you can sustain. Attacks deal damage to your light wounds. When your light wound amount fills up, you take a heavy wound damage, and your light wound counter clears (except for any damage over your counter for the previous heavy wound). When your heavy wound counter fills up, you’re dead. In addition, whenever you take a heavy wound, you receive a random debilitating crippling wound to the limb that suffered the hit.

Slight addendum to the test mechanic:

D100 still, but reduce the amount of math that needs to be done. Characters till have an offensive and defensive value, and to calculate the chance to hit you do 50+ the target’s defense value –the attackers attack value and the roll over the number. Combat Balance still effects, with plus or minus 10 per point.

This works the same way with skill checks. Skill checks will have difficulty numbers which, when making the check, have the characters skill bonus subtracted from it and they roll over the end result.