Discussion of Modern's Nonlethal Damage Mechanics

This thread has been started to avoid the railroading of another thread in which this was not the topic but was beginning to take over. I've placed my next reply here and hope everyone will bring the discussion here in order to avoid getting any further off-topic in the other thread. You can find the start of the discussion here.

Since SteveC mentioned Charles Ryan and his take, I thought I'd share it to make sure everyone is aware of what that take is:

Fisticuffs at Low Levels

One common complaint is that two 1st-level characters, both of whom have average Strength and no feats or special abilities, have no chance of ever harming one another in a fist fight. It's true that if two such characters simply trade blow after blow, neither will ever be knocked out, and neither will ever suffer any real injury. When you think about it, that's actually pretty realistic. (Think back to any schoolyard brawls you ever witnessed -- or took part in -- and you'll see what I mean.)

So how do such fights ever end? Well, there are several ways for untrained 1st-level characters to hurt each other. They can pick up two-by-fours or broken bottles and turn the brawl into an armed melee. One of them can attempt a truly damaging blow (taking the standard -4 penalty for dealing lethal damage with a nonlethal weapon -- in this case, an unarmed strike). Or they can turn the fist fight into a grapple. Once again, such escalation is pretty realistic -- these are the means by which real fist fights transform from mere bruisefests into genuinely dangerous engagements, both in real life and in the movies.

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This makes perfect sense to me. A human's unarmed strike deals 1d3 points of damage (average 2), just a hair short of a knife's 1d4 (average 2.5). And yet I wouldn't complain if a character brandishing a knife were able to take out their foes after only a short scuffle. So how does unarmed fighting between "untrained" opponents differ?

Well, next time you're in a fistfight for a few minutes, pull out some knives and see how combat changes. In d20 Modern's hit point system, hit point damage represents serious damage, not bumps, bruises, and scrapes. Sometimes with high-level characters it might represent a potentially lethal blow that was "only a flesh wound" due to training and overall toughness (not down to negatives yet, made the MD save). A black eye or a goose egg hurst like the dickens, but it's not going to immediately and utterly knock you unconscious for hours no matter your level. To do that with an unarmed attack, you have to utilize a lot of complex techniques and specialized knowledge of pressure points and other vital systems. That, or try to hit your opponent in a really vulnerable area. A -4 to deal lethal damage makes sense; which is easier, slicing a guy with a switchblade or punching him to the same effect?

I made a slight adjustment to the system to account for the fact that a critical hit should always mean something, even with low amounts of nonlethal damage (see the thread linked to near the top of this post). But swapping out d20 Modern's mechanic for D&D subdual damage just makes the problem even worse.

I'm usually very critical of how systems deal with nonlethal or unarmed damage. I'm a huge proponent of a system allowing a player to play a character that specialized in unarmed combat (and yes, I'm a big fan of ninjas). That said, I don't like the way d20 Modern, or even Star Wars for that matter, accounts for unarmed damage.

I don't care if it's realistic or not - I don't want unarmed fighters to get short-changed by the system.

I would never use a nonlethal damage system like d20 Modern. And Star Wars doesn't even have a nonlethal damage system.

For my variant ruleset (which uses VP/WP), both lethal and nonlethal damage reduce VP equally (since VP represents your ability to avoid inury altogether). When you are reduced to WP, then the damage type makes a difference. Nonlethal damage reduces your WP but you can't be killed by nonlethal damage - you are knocked unconscious when you reach 0 WP.

GlassJaw said:

I'm usually very critical of how systems deal with nonlethal or unarmed damage. I'm a huge proponent of a system allowing a player to play a character that specialized in unarmed combat (and yes, I'm a big fan of ninjas). That said, I don't like the way d20 Modern, or even Star Wars for that matter, accounts for unarmed damage.

I don't care if it's realistic or not - I don't want unarmed fighters to get short-changed by the system.

I would never use a nonlethal damage system like d20 Modern. And Star Wars doesn't even have a nonlethal damage system.

For my variant ruleset (which uses VP/WP), both lethal and nonlethal damage reduce VP equally (since VP represents your ability to avoid inury altogether). When you are reduced to WP, then the damage type makes a difference. Nonlethal damage reduces your WP but you can't be killed by nonlethal damage - you are knocked unconscious when you reach 0 WP.

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I think the Brawl and Combat Martial Arts series of feats are entirely appropriate for mechanical representation of the martial skills of ninjutsu. A ninja is a highly specialized individual, and you just can't expect every mook to pull off knockouts with the precision of someone who has trained so extensively.

The ruleset you use in your Grim Tales variant to deal with nonlethal damage is *much* better than what Star Wars does (or doesn't). I still like applying the d20 Modern nonlethal mechanic to vp/wp, however. It keeps unarmed attacks from having the same effect on "heroic damage mitigation" that a knife does. I've recently toyed with the idea of making nonlethal damage work normally with regards to vp, but function under d20 Modern's mechanic when it comes to wp. That way when you get the crap kicked out of you for a while there's definitely a long-term, mechanical effect, because you're out of vp.

On the one hand the straight d20modern system seems to make brawls between 1st level smart normals a non-event because they can't ever knock each other out. On the other hand using D&D style nonlethal damage means that it is difficult to keep a fight going more than a round or two.

At the moment for d20Modern my favoured solution is to use massive damage threshold of CON or current hp... which means that low hp characters (or anyone that is severely wounded) becomes vulnerable to the unarmed punch that takes them out.

A completely different approach that might have some merit is to use the M&M "Damage save" mechanism for unarmed combat - that would have the dual advantages of allowing for one-shot takedowns of people (they roll really badly on their damage save) but also allow for cinematic too and fro-ing (gradually taking hits and getting more beat up before finally going down)

I mention the latter as a potential solution since d20M already introduces a different system for handling nonlethal, so why not consider something additional!



Another thought for consideration - and maybe someone more knowledgeable on physiology may be able to help here - how easy is 'nonlethal' force to apply anyway in real life? It seems that all the time we hear in the news about someone who dies as a result of excessive force, when one person was just trying to restrain or fend off someone else. Maybe 'nonlethal' in most cases means "take them to somewhere between -1 and -10 and then stablise them before they die" and could be handled by normal hp damage?

Cheers

Plane Sailing said:

On the one hand the straight d20modern system seems to make brawls between 1st level smart normals a non-event because they can't ever knock each other out. On the other hand using D&D style nonlethal damage means that it is difficult to keep a fight going more than a round or two.

At the moment for d20Modern my favoured solution is to use massive damage threshold of CON or current hp... which means that low hp characters (or anyone that is severely wounded) becomes vulnerable to the unarmed punch that takes them out.

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I saw this somewhere else (perhaps on the house rules thread I branched this discussion off from ), and liked it then. I still like it now.

A completely different approach that might have some merit is to use the M&M "Damage save" mechanism for unarmed combat - that would have the dual advantages of allowing for one-shot takedowns of people (they roll really badly on their damage save) but also allow for cinematic too and fro-ing (gradually taking hits and getting more beat up before finally going down)

I mention the latter as a potential solution since d20M already introduces a different system for handling nonlethal, so why not consider something additional!

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I'm not familiar with the M&M damage save mechanic, so I'll wait for you to explain further before I attempt to comment on it.

Another thought for consideration - and maybe someone more knowledgeable on physiology may be able to help here - how easy is 'nonlethal' force to apply anyway in real life? It seems that all the time we hear in the news about someone who dies as a result of excessive force, when one person was just trying to restrain or fend off someone else. Maybe 'nonlethal' in most cases means "take them to somewhere between -1 and -10 and then stablise them before they die" and could be handled by normal hp damage?

Cheers

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If you want to simulate this, make a house rule that a natural 20 on an attack which is meant to deal nonlethal damage (either with a nonlethal weapon or a lethal weapon taking a -4 penalty to deal nonlethal damage), always deals lethal damage regardless of intent, in addition to threatening a critical hit. With the way d20 Modern handles damage, this makes even more sense than the ruleset in which it was thought up (that ruleset being D&D). I'm not sure how well these rules would work in vp/wp; give me some time to look at this and I'll get back to you.

I think that the unarmed combat feats in d20 modern are very good. In every modern game i have played in or run there has been at least one character who fought exclusivly unarmed and obtained a body count equal or greater than his gun toting companions. They mostly use combat throw before finishing there enemies and it is VERY effective.

Carrying a quote here from the thread this was spawned from:

SteveC said:

How many films have a physically weak character in them who turns around and one-punches a bad guy when they absolutely have to and the situation calls for it? It happens all the time.

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There are indeed numerous examples of this. I suggest the following:
When you attack a flat-footed opponent with nonlethal damage, they must make a saving throw against massive damage regardless of whether or not their massive damage threshold was breached. Actually breaching the threshold adds 2 to the DC, +1 for each point of damage above their threshold.