"Better" Combat Systems in RPGs - Feedback Welcome!
GMMichael
Guide of Modos
This is the hard part - with hit points and called shots. I don't know how GURPS treats it, but I know how D&D and Savage Worlds treat it. Real people don't take Damage, they take Wounds*. And not all wounds were created equal. It seems to me that any damage to the throat (greater than the minimum damage) is a life-ending event**. Vein-dead. Artery-dead. Spine-mostly dead. Trachea-dead, unless a surgeon does it. Anyway, Savage Worlds addresses the above-mentioned 4e bag of hit points problem by reducing everyone's health to three Wounds. But does that mean the neck can take three wounds before death? In D&D, neck damage gets lumped in with damage from everywhere else. Mythras - lumps neck damage in with head damage?
Creating a "better" combat system might involve addressing the issue of called shots/wound location, so that a player doesn't say something like, "I'll be okay, my neck only took 8 damage."
I hold a double-standard when it comes to called shots in combat. PCs can make them, and can choose to use extra actions on them to simulate the focusing on one attack. And like in GURPS, "get a high skill." NPCs generally don't make them, but if they do, PCs still get to narrate the damage they take. So the slit-throat problem is solved by 1) PCs not being at risk unless they want to be, and 2) a higher cost, and higher reward, for such an attack on an NPC.
* They also lose stamina, but that's for a different post.
** Given the three-or-so minutes that a person can survive without oxygen.
Bilharzia
Fish Priest
Correct, however such a strike could be combined with a "Bleed" special effect, which if not resisted will cause increasing round-per-round fatigue, then unconsciousness and ultimately death if not treated immediately. Such a strike might also be represented by a critical hit, which could bypass armour, or maximise the damage of the weapon, and so on.
Mythras special effects, such as choosing location, become available when an opponent fails to defend in some way - either they have tried to parry and failed, or they did not defend at all, then their attacker may use a special. So an effect like 'choose location' does not impose a penalty to hit like you get with a called shot, it's an opportunity that opens up if you get past someone's defence. As you can see from the Stay-Puft man example earlier, Mythras characters are vulnerable if unarmoured.
Bilharzia
Fish Priest
Aha, as great as Ali is, Dokes is only going for his head, he's not trying to, for example, kick him!
From what I've read, the dodging trope has come out of RPGs, and not out of any practical martial art, perhaps the idea is influenced by Errol Flynn (who actually parried quite a bit) and swashbuckling movies. You can include a certain amount of footwork and leaning into a parry action, but the idea that you can completely use "dodging" in a close combat melee is complete fantasy, which might be ok for your game, just depends on what your sense of verisimilitude is.
I wasn't arguing, really, just pointing out what people were probably imagining. I don't really have much of an opinion on the topic--not enough to rewrite mechanics over it, anyway. If a game divides making contact from doing injury, though, you could plausibly consider rolling with a blow to be mechanically similar to dodging.
Bilharzia
Fish Priest
The RQ6/Mythras rules that you go prone if you dodge (called Evade) generated enormous wailing and gnashing of teeth (going prone has bad consequences), although you can achieve some measure of swashbuckler-style dodging with professional skills or a combat trait, parrying is still superior though. Straight dodging is allowed in BRP as an alternative to a parry but it now seems unrealistic to me.
practicalm
Explorer
GURPS handles each hit location with modifiers around damage that penetrates. It can take some time to die but once you are down to 1/3 HT you have to make rolls to keep going.
There are locations for Face, skull, vitals, groin, torso, arms and legs, and hands and feet.
Example.
Neck (-5): The neck and throat. Increase the wounding multiplier of crushing and corrosion attacks to
x1.5, and that of cutting damage to x2. The GM may rule that anyone killed by a cutting blow to the neck is decapitated!
Jd Smith1
Hero
Sure, if you're fighting in shorts, limited to punching with padded gloves, with a referee in attendance, then I can see that. It's also influenced by movie fights, which are choreographed by dance experts, and designed to only score a hit when the script calls for it.
But wearing several layers of clothes, the outermost being metal or leather, carrying about sixty pounds of gear, and facing a foe without restrictions or rules who is trying to hit you with something three feet long, then not so much.
