Damage Systems in RPGs?

[RangerWickett]

I'm not aware of how WarHammer handles damage, dagger. Care to elaborate?

Rogue Trader (part of the Warhammer 40k universe) gives you hit points, and then when you're out of hitpoints, you compare the excess damage to a crit table. 1 is a minor wound. 9 kills you. 10 kills you and the overkill can actually hurt the attacker.

Like, get someone to -9 with a laser, and they die. Get them to -10, and their body ignites and stumbles for a few seconds, which might set people on fire if they're too close.

There are different crit tables for arm, leg, body, head -- each of those four for rending damage, impact damage, and energy damage.

 

[Wanderlust]

I'm a big fan of the Warhammer universe. However, I'm still wondering if there's a way or a system that handles damage in an altogether novel way. Not saying I'd want to use it, but I'm trying to get my thinking outside of a hit point paradigm just for the exercise of it. So far, I'm still thinking a kind of Stamina/Wound system, but again, it's fairly akin to HP at its core.

 

[Dausuul]

Like what, he asked with genuine curiousity. I don't pretend to be a roleplaying connoisseur, but I've seen my fair share of systems. Most of the ones I've seen either have some variation on the damage save mechanic, or the hit point mechanic. In fact, I'm struggling to think of any that weren't conceptually either one or the other.

Damage saves is the obvious example. I admit that a lot of the alternatives involve some form of "health levels," which are technically a hit point mechanic. But the usual number of health levels is so much smaller than the number of hit points, and the usual methods of calculating "damage" so different, that I feel it should be considered a different system, especially since health levels almost always come with death spirals attached.

(I can also conceive of a "paper doll" system, where you track wounds by location, and maybe some overall status modifiers to represent shock and trauma. That would be more bookkeeping rather than less, but could offer a lot of verisimilitude if done well, and a pleasing level of detail for those who like such things.)

I guess what it comes down to is, either you're okay with instant random death, or you're not. If you're okay with it, then it seems pointless to set up a WP/VP system instead of using damage saves or health levels. You're doing a bunch of arithmetic whose only purpose is to keep track of how much "random death protection buffer" you've got left; but your "random death protection buffer" doesn't in fact protect you from random death. Meanwhile, any time you face a damage source that lacks a built-in bypass mechanic, all the old verisimilitude issues resurface.

Myself, I do want a random death protection buffer, since my preferred approach to gaming begins with "Let me tell you of the days of high adventure." As you correctly note, WP/VP offers the benefits of hit points and addresses some of the verisimilitude problems, at a slight additional bookkeeping cost. So it's my system of choice. But crits that bypass vitality are going in a different direction*.

[SIZE=-2]*I have considered the "crits deal 1 or 2 wound points" approach. It's not a bad idea, but in the end I rejected it on GM headache grounds. Because monsters seldom get a chance to rest and recover, the GM can usually ignore the distinction between WP and VP for monsters and just track a single combined total. This is a considerable plus for the harried GM trying to run a dozen monsters at once, so I don't want to make the GM worry about monster wound points if it can be avoided. I think 4E has the right idea on crits--just deal max damage and leave it at that.[/SIZE]

 

[innerdude]

I haven't played it yet, but conceptually I really like the damage mechanic introduced in The One Ring.

Basically, all damage falls under the category of "Endurance."

Glancing blows, direct hits, travel, all can sap your Endurance pool.

In combat, if you get hit, all it does is sap your Endurance--unless an enemy scores a direct hit, indicated by the weapon's damage value and other factors.

At that point, the PC rolls a set of dice equal to their armor modifier. If the armor roll exceeds the damage dealt, then there is no wound, only lost Endurance. If the armor roll fails, the player takes a wound.

At the end of battle, if a PC isn't wounded, they recover Endurance at a very high rate; however, if they're wounded, it recovers much more slowly, and the character must receive healing treatment. A wound never goes away until the character's Endurance returns to its highest possible number.

If you reach 0 Endurance, for any reason, your character is incapacitated, and if at 0 Endurance and wounded, there is a chance of death.

 

[kitsune9]

I'm a hp fan myself, but I also really dig the WFRP (2nd Edition) in which toughness and armor takes away damage before applying it to the character and then increasing the risk of nasty critical hits.

I also like Herosystem's way of handling damage. You have two types of hp, Stun and Body. If you get hit with a "normal" attack it comes out of your Stun total with a little bit coming out of your body. However, if you get hit with a "killing" attack, it gets applied directly against your Body with that damage as a multiplier against your Stun. So if you play a 4 color comic game (i.e. Champions), you're more at risk for getting knocked out or if you play a fantasy game, swords and arrows can really hurt and take you out of the fight fairly quick.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

There are two systems I haven't seen mentions yet in this thread, and both are ones that I have enjoyed:

CP2020 has a set of 10 blocks of 4 hit points each. Armor and Body reduce damage like DR. At the end of each round that you take damage, you have to make a save to stay conscious, and if you have more than 5 blocks filled up.. you also have to save versus death.
This is a very gritty, lethal system where armor and cover matter alot.
Ken Hood converted this method for 3x as 'Grim-n-Gritty'. I like it alot.


Elric/Stormbringer has a system similar to DnD with three major exceptions. First, your HP total is equal to your CON score. Period. Weapons still deal the usual 1D8 for a longsword, etc.
Second, attacks are resolved by opposed skill checks. Strong defense scores makes for a more survivable character.
Third, armor is ablative and comes with a die rating. Hard boiled Leather, for example, stopped 1D8-1 points of damage.


Of course there is also WEG SW in which you had a threshold value. Any damage that dealt less than that was ignored. More than that raised your 'wounded' status.

 

[pemerton]

Rolemaster uses a variation on wound/vitatiity - but vitality (called "concussion hits" in RM) is not spirit/endurance/luck but rather physical toughness, and wounds aren't applied to a pool at all but are direct penalties to actions and/or disablement of limbs/organs.

The Burning Wheel uses a wound system comparable in basic respects to RM's (ie wounds as penatlies and disablement) but has no analogue of the hit point/vitality pool. Wounds taken are determined by (i) mapping the success of the attack to damage output, and then (ii) comparing the damage output to the "physical tolerances" stat of the target.

From memory, Jorune also used a straight wound system - I think replicating only stage 1 of the BW process.

 

[1Mac]

Damage saves is the obvious example. I admit that a lot of the alternatives involve some form of "health levels," which are technically a hit point mechanic. But the usual number of health levels is so much smaller than the number of hit points, and the usual methods of calculating "damage" so different, that I feel it should be considered a different system, especially since health levels almost always come with death spirals attached.

Health Levels are actually utterly unnecessary for Damage Saves to work, and I wish more such systems wouldn't try to use them. You rob Damage Saves of their elegance by adding other stuff to them, and it makes gamers who experience them assume Damage Saves are necessarily clunkier than they need to be.

 

[Wanderlust]

Primitive Screwhead, I rather like some of those ideas. I'll have to muse about them.

 

[Stormonu]

Savage Worlds uses a slightly different system.

Common bad guys have 1 hit point. Important NPCs/BBEGs and PCs have 3 hit points. You are "shaken" when you get hit and someone makes a damage roll with their weapon that exceeds your Toughness score (+1 hit point of damage for every 4 points you exceed Toughness). You can use bennies (hero points) to soak damage you take and reduce the number of hit points you take.

"Shaken" just sort of puts you out of action for a little bit - like a flesh wound, glancing blow or punch to the gut that sends you reeling for a moment; you can get back up from it and be little worse for wear. When you start taking hit point damage, things are getting serious (and you take penalties to checks). A character is safe from death as long as they have bennies; they can use them as extra hit points to mitigate damage (or to be aggressive and reroll actions if they want to be on the offensive).

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Another system I've been contemplating is one that gets rid of numbers and instead uses conditions. "Hurt", "Injured", "Maimed", "Poisoned" and the like. Each condition affects the character negatively in some way, and certain conditions can stack to make things worse. For me, this would eliminate the one thing I hate the most about hit points - where an opponent acts as peak efficiency until they loose their last hit point - at which they kick up their heels and just die.