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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 8071366" data-attributes="member: 32164">Okay, time to talk about the elephant in the room of all RPGs that is also the crux of the combat system - how do you handle DAMAGE?Reading about the early days of either Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson's game, it started pretty simply - one hit, one shot, one kill. All war-games really modeled, or were intended to, was "are they combat effective or NOT?" So the old war gamers, before they ever started doing much in the way of "roleplaying," had characters who were "commanders/heroes" who could take more than a single hit and survive. I've never played Chainmail or the like, so I don't the exact mechanics, but I know the principle behind it. It works, it's cool, and it's vitally important to enable the cinematic skirmishes that form the basis of combat in most RPGs. At first, they just let a character take more than one hit (2, 3, and so forth) before they went down. But that wasn't sufficiently granular for simulation-minded war-gamers. Because common sense says a sword, or an axe, can inflict more damage in combat than a dagger, right? And there were all those cool tables of weapons...One solution to this, and it worked, was hit points. It's not the only way to handle damage, and it's wonky abstraction has occasioned more than one argument on this forum and others, because they subsume the game world concepts of "not-fatigued," "lucky," "blessed" and "skilled," but somehow still also represent physical damage. D&D made a further mistake here, by having hit points scale with "level." So you can be hit (lose hit points), but not really be hit. This creates a (potentially giant and lengthy) attrition-based mechanic that has no direct meaning when it comes to narrating a fight.Early systems also tried to differentiate between different types of armor, different types of weapons, and damage types. You can obviously take this too far, drawing a distinction between two different .45 caliber semi-automatic handguns or two basically similar one-handed swords. But some of that is a good thing, making a player feel better about their choice of this or that weapon or armor vs. another.A few RPGs have embraced systems to solve some of these. Savage Worlds, 4th Edition, and Star Wars Saga Edition all allowed for characters that are minions who go down easily. A one shot drop may not be good for players, but it's great for mowing down a crowd of mooks in a lot of heroic action stories. D&D does this with escalating damage as you level up, and it works.In fact, most people agree that D&D hits its sweet spot somewhere in the middle-levels, where players both have cool things to do, as well as enough choices to matter that combat feels "fun," but are by no means invulnerable. So, the trick is: how does one maintain that feeling over the whole level range? That's a very good question, and I have some thoughts.Finally, what level of "risk"makes the game fun? That's a good question. Personally, I think it's important to have a situation where choices and consequences matter, and characters can be genuinely at risk. I like randomness, because it's part of what makes the game fun, but I also want to give some narrative control to players. For example, if a character starts to be less combat effective, or in danger of dying, it seems like they should have the ability to withdraw from combat, or even run away. Or they can know that they're pushing their luck, but if there's something to fight for, then they can choose to take that risk. A little bit of control over fate is a good thing here that encourages people to be creative.Next post: Luck points, stunts, tricks, zones and meaningful combats.</blockquote>

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