Realistic Combat

[DreadPirateMurphy]

A while ago, I recall reading an article about wound lethality for firearms. I'm sorry, it was long enough ago that I don't have a citation. What stuck in my mind, though, was the concept that the only way to quickly drop a target with any certainty was to hit the brain or the spine. Central nervous system was the only guaranteed drop. Injured foes might eventually drop from blood loss or shock, but there was no guarantee it would happen quickly enough to keep the target from firing back.

It's also my understanding that soldiers are more likely to be wounded than killed. They might die later from infection or other problems, but that was more of a problem before modern medical technology. Some weapons are even designed to maim explicitly, so that the enemy expends resources caring for injured soldiers (and probably for psychological effect, as well).

I think the critical hit and massive damage rules are a fair approximation of combat without overbalancing the game against the players. But hey, there are more deadly rules out there. My understanding is that both GURPS and the D20 B5 game from Mongoose are far more deadly in terms of combat. If you really want things weighted against the players, you can always play Call of Cthulu, LOL.

The whole point of epic fantasy is to be the hero who prevails against challenges. The "or die trying" part is only there to make it more interesting.

 

[Stalker0]

For RPG, I think any realistic combat scenario should be combined with an action point, hero point, drama point, etc kind of system. This allows for the grittyness of one shot, one kill but still allows the heros to stand a chance instead of dying like chumps. To me, this is the best balance between realism and fun.

 

[painandgreed]

This seems to come up alot in RPG discussions and I've seen posters on other boards state that others had debunked Marshall's research in this area. I don't recall the author or article though. This is all I could find: http://hnn.us/articles/1356.html

Keep in mind that the idea of how a soldier fights in warfare was different then also. IIRC, When Marshall did his survey, the idea was that a soldier was supposed to take careful, aimed shots at an expected range of 1000 yards. This was done because they thought that the main obstical was getting the soldier to hit and kill his target and not waste ammo. This is one of the reasons that most armies in WWII still used bolt action rifles. Due to many factors, including Marshall's report, the theory behind this changed to getting the soldier to fire at the target, and sending as much ammo down range as possible. By WWII, things were changing with the US adopting an automatic rifle for it's main arm and the creation of assault rifles. Military thinking changed to firing as many shots as possible at a range of 200 yards. Calibers got smaller so that soldiers could carry more ammo and because it was not as important to kill a target as to wound him.

There is an FBI report ( I think <a href="http://www.firearmstactical.com/hwfe.htm" >this</a> is it.) that goes into fire fights. Basically, unless you hit the brain or spinal collumn, all death is caused by blood loss. People fall down, but there is no real reason for this and is greatly dependant on if they know they were shot. Just read the conclusions.

 

[Zaruthustran]

VP/WP is interesting, but how about a "shock" save vs. damage with a DC that increases per hit? Base DC of 10, add 2 per hit. Failure results in immediately reduced to -1 hit points (and dying). For this unique save, rolling a 1 is not an automatic failure. And only living creatures need to make the save.

As in:
Hit once, make a Fort save DC 10.
Hit again, make a Fort save DC 12.
Hit three times, Fort save DC 14.
Four times, Fort save DC 16.
Five times, Fort save DC 18.
...and so on.

Track hit points as normal, and keep the save vs. massive damage rule.

Actually... nah. Too cumbersome. Like someone else said, realistic combat is not D&D combat.

-z

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I like the UA Damage Save system for the "One Shot Down" Chance. I don't like that it is linked to Fortitude Saves, and I have an unfinished project to "fix it"...

(I am aware it was ripped from Mutan'ts and Masterminds or something...)

 

[MadWand]

I have tried to take the lessons learned from psychology into account when I roleplay. When I play a sane character that is exposed to near-constant battles or often participates in exceptionally dangerous fights (or worse, both!) with little downtime, that character tends to get depressed and morose at the loss of hope and the constant deaths of close friends. Sometimes it's not fun to roleplay a depressed character. "Insane" or psychopathic characters (by modern standards, although they are usually completely well-adjusted by RPG standards) have other ways of adapting, such as just not caring about the lives of the other PC's, or their own life for that matter. That's even more depressing, and one of the reasons I'm a little disillusioned about Shadowrun.

I prefer campaigns with downtime, and the chance to roleplay the occasional social event so my characters can stay sane and content. Still, my sane characters have to find some way of distancing themselves from the deaths they cause in battles or suffer for it. Many of my characters use ranged weapons, which helps a little. Merciful weapons help a lot. Blasting away with ranged spells like fireball, or even better, battlefield control spells helps the process of internal justification. "The magic killed them, not me." Dehumanizing the enemy always helps, which is why almost all of my characters have been very focused on slaying evil as a motivation for adventuring. The worse the evil, the easier it is to justify killing it. This may be the primary reason for D&D's alignment system in the first place.

Those few characters of mine who have played up-front fighter types have tended to be somewhat psychopathic, or at least very philosophic about their role. I always have to come up with some reason to explain why my character is willing to kill, and it is always reflected in the characters psychology and in the way I roleplay that character.

 

[3d6]

The Mutants and Masterminds/True20 system seems like it models that pretty well, actually. If you're lucky, you can take hit after hit with no ill effect; if you're unlucky you can go down in one hit.

 

[GlassJaw]

This is one of the better threads I've read in a while. Thanks everyone.

Agreed. This thread rocks.

I have tried to take the lessons learned from psychology into account when I roleplay. When I play a sane character that is exposed to near-constant battles or often participates in exceptionally dangerous fights (or worse, both!) with little downtime, that character tends to get depressed and morose at the loss of hope and the constant deaths of close friends. Sometimes it's not fun to roleplay a depressed character. "Insane" or psychopathic characters (by modern standards, although they are usually completely well-adjusted by RPG standards) have other ways of adapting, such as just not caring about the lives of the other PC's, or their own life for that matter. That's even more depressing, and one of the reasons I'm a little disillusioned about Shadowrun.

Just to address Shadowrun specifically, I've noticed the style of play of a particular group can vary incredibly. I know that in the group I've played with, violence is usually an absolute last resort, not only because combat can be extremely deadly but also because of resistance to killing civilians or at least other people who are just doing their job (like cops, etc). We tend to emply unarmed combat and social skills quite frequently.

The thing with the SR system is that from a rules perspective, it focuses heavily on firearms so many players gravitate towards that. SR plays quite differently if you throw a little *gasp* morality into the mix.

 

[Victim]

The Mutants and Masterminds/True20 system seems like it models that pretty well, actually. If you're lucky, you can take hit after hit with no ill effect; if you're unlucky you can go down in one hit.

And it has Hero points or Conviction (for True20?) so major characters can often avoid one shot drops. Mutants and Masterminds has the extra benefit of having its flagship setting focus on non lethal attacks.

 

[GlassJaw]

Being a fan of gritty combat and attempting to model "realistic" combat, I came to the realization while working on my own ruleset that VP/WP was the way to go. No wound system is going to be perfect but as I tried to use the rules to explain more and more real-world possibilities, the VP/WP seemed to make sense much more often than not.

In additional to crits causing wound damage, I also use the options that damaging a surprised or helpless opponent causes wound damage as well. These factors go a long way to modeling some of these real-world cases.

You can also rule that damaging an opponent that you have pinned causes wound damage or that you can perform a coup de grace against a pinned opponent. This takes care of the knife-at-the-throat situation.