Correlating Player Satisfaction, Combat Speed, and HP / Damage Modeling

[innerdude]

So lo and behold, for the first time in five years of play, I've found a chink in the armor of my unabashed love for Savage Worlds---and it's related to the toughness mechanic.

Our current GM has basically been playing a game of "Up the Ante" when it comes to enemy's toughness ratings. For those who aren't familiar with the system, Savage Worlds doesn't use a hit point system to calculate wounds/damage. Instead, every foe has a "toughness" rating which directly correlates to their Vigor score. Armor in Savage Worlds does nothing to improve dodging or parrying, it calculates as damage reduction against the character's base toughness. To wound an enemy, you have to meet or exceed the enemy's toughness by 4 or more, after subtracting damage for armor. If you meet the enemy's toughness, or exceed the enemy's toughness by 3 or less, the enemy is not wounded, but is "shaken," a minor, temporary condition that makes it easier to wound the character in the future. Once an enemy suffers a certain number of wounds, as arbitrated by the GM, the enemy goes down. The maximum number of wounds an enemy can suffer is usually 4, but can ultimately be any number the GM decides.

The issue I'm having is that the GM is basically setting insanely high toughness scores for enemies, then layering armor on top of that. And though I didn't fully realize it until our group's last session, this is having a negative effect on my enthusiasm for the game.

In effect what is happening is that it sets up combat as a complete "all or nothing" scenario on every attack---either you've done enough to meaningfully cause a wound, or you've done nothing at all. As a player this gives the feeling that control of encounters is almost completely up to the fate of the dice. I'm not just hoping to get a "solid" hit on an opponent; I'm hoping that I get enough to get a raise (exceeding the enemy's parry score by 4 or more) so I can add my extra damage die, because without that extra damage die, I have almost zero shot of doing enough damage to have any effect.

This is made even worse by Pinnacle Game's decision last year to errata the shaken condition to be much easier to recover from for everyone---NPCs/enemies and PCs alike. On top of this fact there are many enemies who automatically recover from being shaken, making a shaken condition vastly less serious or worthwhile to inflict as a player. Before, causing an enemy to be shaken was at least a decent consolation prize; now it barely registers. "Oh, whoopee! He's shaken. For all the good it will do."

It's gotten to the point where it's brought back feelings for what I always felt like was one of the worst traits of GURPS, which was no matter how well you succeeded on your attack, all the enemy had to do was make a simple "success" roll on a parry or dodge, and your entire attack was negated.

Now, to a certain point, there are reasons that I like Savage Worlds' toughness mechanic --- one, it completely eliminates any need to do any kind of post-hoc rationalization of what a "wound" actually means in game terms---if you're wounded, you're wounded, period. I don't have to imagine some strange reason for hit points to naturally recover after taking a 10-minute breather. I don't have to wonder why someone with 1 hit point left is still navigating the battlefield at full speed, making attacks and acting at full strength, but as soon as someone breathes on them wrong and they lose their last hit point, they fall over unconscious. I don't have to play "Schrodinger's Wounds" to explain why someone was hurt enough to nearly die, but wake up a day later as if nothing happened. So for all these reasons, the wound/toughness mechanic has worked for me in the past.

Too, it seems that this sort of toughness/wound mechanic is more grounded in real life, where a fight's end is typically sudden and swift, due to one of the combatants scoring the "critical hit" they needed. Also, the toughness/wound mechanic allows for large-scale, cinematic encounters with far less GM overhead. Our last session we had a MASSIVE combat between 4 PCs plus 20 or 25 allied NPCs against 40 NPC foes that only took 2 hours to resolve.

But I have to admit, the thing I'm suddenly missing about D&D is the concept that every successful attack matters. Even if an attack ultimately only does 1 HP of damage, the enemy still has 1 HP less than they did before. For all of the problems of in-game verisimilitude, practical application, and slower pace of combat due to having to manage hit point totals, as a player I'm finding merit in the idea seeing my successful actions actually having in-game consequences, even small ones, rather than having to rely on luck to get "just the perfect die roll."

Interestingly, The One Ring's damage modeling is something of a hybrid between D&D and Savage Worlds. Every character has a "vitality" pool that can be exhausted through combat damage, fatigue, and exposure to Shadow. Once a character's vitality hits 0, the character gains the "wounded" condition, which has lots of unhealthy consequences, which doesn't go away without extended rest (a week or more, if I remember correctly). At that point, the character's vitality resets, but their pool maximum is lowered, and if their vitality hits zero again, the character dies.

Ultimately what I'm wondering, is for those of you familiar with other systems, how does the damage modeling for those systems impact combat pace and allow for higher (or lower) character engagement? I'd particularly be interested in hearing about stuff like Rolemaster, Runequest, or HERO, systems that I've heard of and have read bits and pieces of, but would never purchase material for them because I know I'll simply never play them.

I'm considering adding an "escalation die" house rule to enemy combatants, where an enemy has a timer/countdown value equal to their vigor die. If an attack does damage but doesn't beat the enemy's toughness, the attack instead reduces the enemy's escalation die. Once the die reaches zero, the next successful attack on the enemy causes a shaken condition REGARDLESS of damage dealt on the attack, and a wound will be caused if the damage meets the enemy's base toughness. Escalation damage ONLY applies when an attack succeeds but the damage roll fails to exceed the enemy's toughness.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

One of the things that was introduced later on in Tunnels & Trolls was “spite damage.” Using a d6 system, every natural 6 rolled for attack/damage (Combined in the game) will always do 1 point of damage, regardless of whether you beat your opponents roll.

In general, I’m not a big fan of “double-indemnity” combat models where you roll opposed checks to attack/dodge, and then to do damage/soak up damage (like Shadowrun). When it comes to combat, I think I would prefer erring on the side of speed of resolution and fun than "realistic" simulation.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Enemies in Savage Worlds do have Hit Points. It's just that many of them only have one Hit Point, and very few enemies have more than four.

Damage in D&D does represent physical wounds, unless you use rules that let HP recover by resting for a few minutes. You could set the healing rate at 1 point per day, if you wanted, though it requires substantially more work to do so in 4E or 5E than it did in earlier editions.

Many games that use a wound penalty, such as GURPS and Shadowrun, make it so the combat is effectively over after the first hit. Even in systems where you're unlikely to kill anyone outright, you get the massive anticlimax of the wounded party trying to hide or escape after it's clear that they won't be contributing to the fight any longer, and that can take longer to resolve than if you just needed to hit them a few more times. At least under the standard HP model, an injured enemy is likely to stick around after getting hit, since they might still make a difference in the fight.

 

[aramis erak]

Enemies in Savage Worlds do have Hit Points. It's just that many of them only have one Hit Point, and very few enemies have more than four.

Damage in D&D does represent physical wounds, unless you use rules that let HP recover by resting for a few minutes.

In D&D 5E, it explicitly does NOT represent physical damage until below half HP.

I'll note that combats change a lot when players used to penalty-less D&D play something like L5R where the death spiral is potent.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In D&D 5E, it explicitly does NOT represent physical damage until below half HP.

In 5E, damage is explicitly described differently by different DMs, with minor-physical-damage-only-when-below-half-HP corresponding roughly to the default setup where you can spend your hit dice and go from zero to full over the course of an hour.

 

[Nagol]

So lo and behold, for the first time in five years of play, I've found a chink in the armor of my unabashed love for Savage Worlds---and it's related to the toughness mechanic.


<snip>

Ultimately what I'm wondering, is for those of you familiar with other systems, how does the damage modeling for those systems impact combat pace and allow for higher (or lower) character engagement? I'd particularly be interested in hearing about stuff like Rolemaster, Runequest, or HERO, systems that I've heard of and have read bits and pieces of, but would never purchase material for them because I know I'll simply never play them.

Almost all systems have a variation on hit points. Rolemaster (1e), Runequest (2e, 3e), and Hero (2e - 5e) are not exceptions.

Rolemaster (1e) (and its smaller cousin MERP) characters have hit points. Where the game veers away from them is through its critical hit/fumble system. Criticals and fumbles can inflict a wide range of effects -- from extra damage, periodic damage, inflicting status effects like stunning, through to instant death. Death through hp loss is not particularly uncommon but the risk is overshadowed by the critical charts. The effect on play is to either make the table very combat averse or to turn the campaign into a form of slapstick.

Runequest (2e, 3e) characters have hit points. There is the total hit points for the character and then each hit location gets a portion of those hit points assigned to it. Exceeding the hit points in a particular location disables it -- leading to broken limbs, unconsciousness, sense loss, or even death. Add to the mix a critical/fumble system that inflicts extra damage and you get a situation where combat is more grim than D&D, but still somewhat predictable. Most PCs focus quite a bit on attack avoidance (parry or dodge) and damage mitigation (armour) to improve survivability.

Hero (2e-5e) characters have 3 separate consumable traits: Body, Stun, and Endurance. Body is effective hit points: death comes when Body is at or below its negative maximum (i.e. Body maximum 10, death occurs at -10 or below). Stun keeps you conscious. The character is conscious so long as Stun > 0. Endurance (shortened to End) powers action. If it is at zero, further actions will cause Stun damage.

Almost all combats will start with Stun and End at full. While conscious, Stun and End heal once per combat turn (every 12 seconds -- where a typical character gets 3-6 combat actions each turn) plus any time during combat when an action is successfully used to recover. A typical human can recover all Stun and End in less than 2 minutes of rest. Recovery while unconscious takes longer and in the worst case, multiple hours may pass before the character wakes up on his own although with aid that will typically shorten to about 10 minutes.

Body loss is generally uncommon and is a much bigger deal. Body heals over weeks and months without special abilities. The amount of Stun recovered every 12 seconds is the amount of Body recovered every month (varies somewhat in the earlier editions, but similar ballpark). A typical human takes about 5 months to heal to full from almost dead. NB: a typical character isn't a typical human and healing rates twice that of a normal human aren't all that unusual.

Most combats are about inflicting Stun damage. Characters will typically fall unconscious well before death though it is quite possible to construct a character that focuses on Body damage.

 

[aramis erak]

In 5E, damage is explicitly described differently by different DMs, with minor-physical-damage-only-when-below-half-HP corresponding roughly to the default setup where you can spend your hit dice and go from zero to full over the course of an hour.

Considering it's in the basic rules, and in the PHB, and not marked optional, if they're representing it any other way, they're not playing the game as written.

What people houserule it as is pretty much "Everything under the sun, and all over the freaking map"... For some, only that last hit matters at all, for others, every HP is supposed to be a major wound... neither reflects the rules. The rules are clear that there's no visible injury at all until under half.

 

[aramis erak]

Really, only three kinds of systems exist:

Hit points; When X points of damage cumulate, Y happens
Damage steps: If damage is X+, level Y occurs; strictly speaking, damage doesn't cumulate. (In pure systems, lesser damage steps usually provide a bonus to achieving higher damage steps.)
Damage saves: Make a save vs Damage to avoid effect.

pretty much everything else is combinations of these.

Any cumulating damage step system is essentially a hybrid of pure damage steps and hit points.

WEG Star Wars, WWG's Storyteller, and several others use Hit Points combined with damage steps with hit points, in that if you've been hit for X-level damage, and step X is full, fill step X+1.

Damage saves aren't all that common, and most of the ones I've seen (about 5 different systems, but the names don't come to mind). More commonly, they are mixed with HP to avoid certain effects: GURPS combines them with Hit Points, as does Feng Shui. WEG Star Wars combines them with Damage Steps... by using them to determine which damage step is taken (and combines with HP because they cumulate).

Marvel Heroic uses damage saves and cumulative damage steps, too.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Considering it's in the basic rules, and in the PHB, and not marked optional, if they're representing it any other way, they're not playing the game as written.

It literally says, even in just the Basic Rules, that DMs describe HP loss in different ways. Immediately following that, it gives a "typical" example of what that might be like.

If any given DM wants to describe HP loss in terms of physical chunks of meat carved out of your back, then that's fully supported by the text; it's just not the "typical" example that they give. (Probably because it's too hard to reconcile that image with the default healing rates.) Their example isn't any more or less official than what any other DM comes up with, though; it's just an example, which they think happens to work well with the default healing rates.

In the DMG, they give options to modify the healing rates based on many different parameters, in order to help DMs align the in-game effect with the way they describe it. If you want to describe damage as purely physical, and cut the healing rate down to one point per day, then that is fully supported and every bit as official as any alternative.

 

[aramis erak]

It literally says, even in just the Basic Rules, that DMs describe HP loss in different ways. Immediately following that, it gives a "typical" example of what that might be like.

If any given DM wants to describe HP loss in terms of physical chunks of meat carved out of your back, then that's fully supported by the text; it's just not the "typical" example that they give. (Probably because it's too hard to reconcile that image with the default healing rates.) Their example isn't any more or less official than what any other DM comes up with, though; it's just an example, which they think happens to work well with the default healing rates.

In the DMG, they give options to modify the healing rates based on many different parameters, in order to help DMs align the in-game effect with the way they describe it. If you want to describe damage as purely physical, and cut the healing rate down to one point per day, then that is fully supported and every bit as official as any alternative.

Not for organized play, it isn't. (Heck, the DMG's actually not allowed! Excepting gridded movement and the magic item descriptions)