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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5703868" data-attributes="member: 8835">My own goal for a combat system is one that looks realistic, but supports heroic play.  It's pretty easy to make a gritty realistic system.  Give few HP...That said, in real and movie sword fights, there are very few Solid hits.In a real sword fight, it's actually not good to clash the swords too much either (puts huge dings in the blade's edge).  So ideally, a few blocks and a killing move later and it's on to the next guy.In movie fights, the commonality is, you're injuries trend to be:a nick, that you might make a Wince check when it gets cleaned later (earning or losing reputation, depending on who's doing the cleaning)Dead, which pretty much takes you out of the scene/gameKO, not actually dead, but out of the fight.  Your buddies might carry you off, or you might really be dead.Debilitating wound that you might recover later from after reciting "You killed my father, prepared to die" a whole lot.That's about all you'd need to model (which some prior examples do).In fiction, KO and Dead are the same thing.  NPCs are Dead, unless it was useful to plot to have them return.  PCs are KO'd unless it is useful to plot/punishment to have them written out of the story.Debilitating is like KO, except you can say stuff and encumber the rest of the party.  In a way, John McClane was close to this state for most of the Die Hard movie.  He'd take a whooping, then get back up.Which brings us to plot protection points.  HP in D&D is basically that.  It is padding that says the normal combat system doesn't Dead a PC right away most of the time.PCs want Nicks to be common, Dead to be rare.  Debilitated to be a setback/complicationPlayers want NPCs to be Dead frequently, and the rest is just a nuisance as they hope to roll a Dead hit.I suspect that's the crux of what a combat system should be balancing, per tastes of the genre.</blockquote>

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