[CoC] - Combat and Sanity

[TheAuldGrump]

Interesting...

While I can't fight the math (not my forte), and despite trauma victims IRL, which I concede to you, on the watching another PC get killed, I still say that if the person isn't a friend, then it shouldn't carry the same penalty as Witnessing a Friend's Violent death. While people can be easily traumatized, they are less concerned for those who are not close, in my experience. Now, I could see 2d3-1 (1-5), but it just offends my sensibilities that seeing an acquaintance die would be as traumatic as a friend's death. I would also consider some gunshot deaths as not qualifiying as particularly violent, at least not violent in the way I assume the book means, which I take as "grisly".

Or perhaps the Sanity modifier should go the other way, 0/1d6 for an aquaintance or stranger, 1/1d8 for a close friend. As for grisly, unless you want to come up with a 'Grisly Table' I would just keep the standard rolls. Or rationalize, if after the event the highest San loss was 2 then obviously it wasn't all that grisly.

Now, as I noted on a different thread, I think maybe the Sanity loss for your first kill should be based on the way in which you performed the kill, and the appearance of it. Taking someone down from100 yards with a high-powered rifle is going to have a different effect than doing it up close with a knife.

Now that I'll grant you, nor would you suffer as much for, oh, planting a bomb, unless the resulting death toll was other than you anticipated. (The tenement next to the place you bombed collapsing for example.) Perhaps 0/1d2/ or 0/1d3. Ditto for dropping a bomb from an airplane. Long term effects from doing it many times might be what to watch for there.

However if your first kill was through a scope and you then killed someone with, say, a spoon you should suffer full San loss for the second kill as it is your first up close and personal killing.

I would avoid a general 'Take less San loss' feat, preffering ones that grant situational modifiers. A fantasist encountering a ghoul would not be as shocked as a gangster, but the gangster isn't going to be as bothered by the flayed corpse left on the doorstep.

[B} Oh well, when it's all said and done, I don't think we're going to agree completely mainly because we seem to be coming at the question from two very different directions. I've enjoyed the argument though. Seems like most of the time, when I post in a discussion, I don't get many responses. MY SO says it's because I make good points. I figure most of the time, people just don't know what the heck I'm talking about. [/B]

Same here, had fun discussing it, though as I said a lot of people blow off the effects of such shcks in a game while in the real world things are just a little harrier.

The Auld Grump

 

[Lord Zardoz]

To sum this all up...

Ok, so what I am basically hearing is that the sanity loss for killing and watching friends be killed should be either 0 or 1 on the success side, and between 1d3 and 1d6+1 on the failure end, and that the specific numbers chosen should be based on the Dm's Judgement and the circumstances of the event.

That works out fine for me.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[SpikeyFreak]

I'm not exaclty weak kneed when it comes to blood and injuries and stuff like that, but....

I have seen real videos of people being killed, one with a knife through the jugular and wind pipe, and the other a bound woman being shot in the head while she begged for her life.

Watching that, even when I knew what was going to happen, and I didn't know the person, REALLY freaked me out. I actually had nightmares about it that night.

I can't imagine what it would be like in real life or if it happened to someone I knew.

--Pansy Spikey