Gorgon Zee
Hero
BRP (Call of Cthulhu) obviously: You get shot up close with a shotgun, you probably die.
Deadly combat systems
- Thread starter Jd Smith1
- Start date
Gorgon Zee
Hero
Pendragon: Ignoring giants and dragons, where any successful usually kills a knight in full armor, if you take a critical from a charge by any old knight, and fail to raise your shield, that's 9d6-8 vs your 25-30ish hits. Death is pretty likely.
BigJackBrass
Explorer
The main thing DramaSystem killed for me was any desire to play DramaSystem ever again.
Gorgon Zee
Hero
It's a very different system. It's heavily based on player versus player action, so that's a strike for people who like a less cutthroat environment. It's diceless, which many people dislike, and, of course, it's all about drama, not defeating the environment and becoming more powerful. When I run it, I make sure that people know what it's like and for many people, it's not for them.
In modern Fate Core, weapon ratings are an optional rule - the default is that weapons are a narrative element - if you have a baseball bat, you can club someone with it, if you have a gun, you can make a ranged attack, but they don't add anything to the rolls.
If your table is using the optional rule, a W:4 is at the top of the recommended rating for weapons, something pretty legendary, rather than something you expect everyone to have around.
And, most importantly, in Fate, if you have to take a hit that is beyond your ability to absorb in stress and consequences, you are Taken Out. Whether you are dead is for the GM to choose - if you didn't concede, the winner of the conflict gets to narrate what happens to you, and the rules suggest against the GM generally narrating death.
How deadly is the system when the system tells the GM, "generally, don't kill the characters unless it is a really cool moment to do so"?
Gorgon Zee
Hero
The Fate SRD presents two options for being taken out. The first presented is that they can indeed die. The second is to choose another options. The reasoning they give is this:
“The latter approach is recommended, mainly for the following reason: most of the time, sudden character death is a pretty boring outcome when compared to putting the character through hell. On top of that, all the story threads that character was connected to just kind of stall with no resolution, and you have to expend a bunch of effort and time figuring out how to get a new character into play mid-stride.”
This is not rules — this is recommendation. Moreover, it has nothing to do with Fate rules! It can be applied to any system, and indeed it has been. In 13th Age I think Rob Heinsoo suggests that only named NPCs can kill a player, which is a ruling I’ve adopted for pretty much all games I run.
In D&D Beyond, they say this about character death: “The point is, if a character should die, the player should feel as though they could have avoided it, or that at least their death was meaningful” - and then follows it up with six paragraphs explaining how being killed can be undone — basically “don’t kill characters unless it is cool to do so, and even then let them undo it if they want to”
There are games where the advice is to straight up kill always, I guess, but I‘m not sure I’ve ever played in them. Pretty much every game has advice that you don’t kill characters except when it’s meaningful, climactic, special or whatever. I agree with you that Fate games are more likely to heed the advice than D&D games, but it’s still just advice. @Jd Smith1 asked for “combat systems” that are deadly, and a realistic Fate game, with the optional weapon rules (which have been in most realistic games of Fate I’ve been involved with), make it pretty deadly.
If you include advice, Fate is not usually deadly, because the advice to the GM is not to be a dick. Older games don’t have that advice, so they are more deadly because the GM has more latitude to kill characters for being unlucky. But if you look just at combat systems, Fate can have you taken out easily, and the same style of GMing that kills a first level mage when a barbarian crits him will have the Fate character die too.
aramis erak
Legend
That varies wildly by edition.
CT, T4, MGT1, T5, and MGT2: yes. (Unless using Striker/AHL in CT)
CT Striker/AHL: somewhat less lethal, and not damage to attributes per se, but wound levels have far more effect.
MT? not directly.
TTNE: hp by location, no damage to attributes, low lethality.
T20: variant D20, armor makes survival almost assured, but younger characters drop quick, while Gunnies from hell will be mostly dead and fighting on until you kill them. Unarmored, you can kick someone to death if a few rounds... Even the Gunny.
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