Health and Injury Systems

[Ranger REG]

VP/WP might sometimes make things lethal in the wrong sort of way, leading to player frustration, but it's a more gradient form of MDT, and in that sense it's more realistic.

Heh.

I don't know about it being "realistic" -- I never used such a term when it comes to roleplaying games, only simulations -- but at least heroes would think twice about exposing their chests and dive straight into a group of fully armed mooks.

Here's a question for those who play D&D: how many of you actually used and enforced the massive damage variant rule from the DMG for all your D&D game? How often do tournaments -- sanctioned or not -- used such variant rule as standard?

 

[genshou]

Heh.

I don't know about it being "realistic" -- I never used such a term when it comes to roleplaying games, only simulations -- but at least heroes would think twice about exposing their chests and dive straight into a group of fully armed mooks.

Here's a question for those who play D&D: how many of you actually used and enforced the massive damage variant rule from the DMG for all your D&D game? How often do tournaments -- sanctioned or not -- used such variant rule as standard?

Honestly, I haven't ever had the 50-damage thing come up before. Most of my campaigns end at 9th-level or lower.

 

[Nim]

Here's a question for those who play D&D: how many of you actually used and enforced the massive damage variant rule from the DMG for all your D&D game? How often do tournaments -- sanctioned or not -- used such variant rule as standard?

My experience with the standard D&D '50/DC 15' MD rule has been that by the time characters are high enough level to either be TAKING that much damage or DEALING that much damage, neither they nor their opponents tend to have much difficulty making the save. By and large, it's probably a wasted rule - both because the threshold is too high, and because the save DC is static.

 

[Ethernaut]

Heh. Here's a question for those who play D&D: how many of you actually used and enforced the massive damage variant rule from the DMG for all your D&D game? How often do tournaments -- sanctioned or not -- used such variant rule as standard?

At GenCon, I got whacked in the Goodman Games Tournament by massive damage.

 

[slaughterj]

I've of course played D&D with hit points, but found the massive damage rule to have been an after-though kludge.

As a Hero player for many years, I liked the split Body & Stun setup, which enabled people to be ko'd, or to be still fighting and bleeding to death, seemed to cover the full range of effects, which is appealing. (I.e., ko'ing people & subdual damage are yet another kludge on D&D hit point systems.)

I long liked d6 Star Wars' save system (liked the system in general, actually), and really like the M&M save system as well - a single blow can k.o. you or disable you. (Hero *could*, but it was really unlikely, and you had issues with small guns not being able to head-shot kill people.) My only issue with the M&M save system is that you can't "accidentally" get a lethal effect - even in Hero, if your regular damage martial artist hit somebody, they could roll a high body result and get that sort of effect.

After playing all these systems, I want a system that does the following:
1. enables a single blow to ko/disable (or kill, depending on the genre) a foe, i.e., no peasant with a longsword against a 5th level D&D fighter situations or Hero small hand-gun shot to the head situations. This requirement seems to eliminate "hit points" types of systems, because they are hard to line up with weapons' damage.
2. allows a range of results, from injury to disabling, stunning to ko'ing, but not in great detail, i.e., I'm not worried about if your wound was to the outer pinky or lower thigh, and whether a bone broke (those may be good for a few narrow games, but I'm looking for a fast system to play).
3. does not pigeon-hole an attack to *only* doing lethal or stun damage - tazers can kill people, and so can a boxer's fist, whether he means to or not. I'd like to see a good way to modify M&M's system to take this into account.
4. has minimal recordkeeping (e.g., vitality points, and hit points, and wounds, or whatever seem like more than I want to bother with).
5. doesn't feel like a kludge to get the above effects.

Basically it seems like the M&M system, with some modification to reflect that a bullet could k.o. you without killing you or a tazer or fist could kill you and not just k.o. you. I think that system would cover all the permutations most want, except in a really gritty realistic game where limbs are severed, etc., and could handle those effects as well as an add-on (e.g., hit location chart for the wound location, if injured there, then X penalty (e.g., in the hand, -2 to attacks or skills using that hand until healed), if disabled there, then Y penalty, plus potential long-term damage or severed part, etc.).

 

[Ranger REG]

Basically it seems like the M&M system,

Have you tried the Blue Rose health system? It's the successor to MnM 1.0e health system.

 

[melon-neko]

I've of course played D&D with hit points, but found the massive damage rule to have been an after-though kludge.

As a Hero player for many years, I liked the split Body & Stun setup, which enabled people to be ko'd, or to be still fighting and bleeding to death, seemed to cover the full range of effects, which is appealing. (I.e., ko'ing people & subdual damage are yet another kludge on D&D hit point systems.)

I long liked d6 Star Wars' save system (liked the system in general, actually), and really like the M&M save system as well - a single blow can k.o. you or disable you. (Hero *could*, but it was really unlikely, and you had issues with small guns not being able to head-shot kill people.) My only issue with the M&M save system is that you can't "accidentally" get a lethal effect - even in Hero, if your regular damage martial artist hit somebody, they could roll a high body result and get that sort of effect.

After playing all these systems, I want a system that does the following:
1. enables a single blow to ko/disable (or kill, depending on the genre) a foe, i.e., no peasant with a longsword against a 5th level D&D fighter situations or Hero small hand-gun shot to the head situations. This requirement seems to eliminate "hit points" types of systems, because they are hard to line up with weapons' damage.
2. allows a range of results, from injury to disabling, stunning to ko'ing, but not in great detail, i.e., I'm not worried about if your wound was to the outer pinky or lower thigh, and whether a bone broke (those may be good for a few narrow games, but I'm looking for a fast system to play).
3. does not pigeon-hole an attack to *only* doing lethal or stun damage - tazers can kill people, and so can a boxer's fist, whether he means to or not. I'd like to see a good way to modify M&M's system to take this into account.
4. has minimal recordkeeping (e.g., vitality points, and hit points, and wounds, or whatever seem like more than I want to bother with).
5. doesn't feel like a kludge to get the above effects.

Basically it seems like the M&M system, with some modification to reflect that a bullet could k.o. you without killing you or a tazer or fist could kill you and not just k.o. you. I think that system would cover all the permutations most want, except in a really gritty realistic game where limbs are severed, etc., and could handle those effects as well as an add-on (e.g., hit location chart for the wound location, if injured there, then X penalty (e.g., in the hand, -2 to attacks or skills using that hand until healed), if disabled there, then Y penalty, plus potential long-term damage or severed part, etc.).

Huh, thats what i wanted. I read true 20 and blue rose, and it wasn't quite what i wanted, because although i wanted a 5th lvl warrior to cut a peasent in twain, i dont really want said peasent to stab my 5th lvl warrior in the face (at least not easily). It's not finished though ^^;;

 

[slaughterj]

Have you tried the Blue Rose health system? It's the successor to MnM 1.0e health system.

I didn't see where that was significantly different than M&M, or took into account my issue of wanting to see lethal/stun crossover effects - care to elaborate?

 

[genshou]

I've of course played D&D with hit points, but found the massive damage rule to have been an after-though kludge.

As a Hero player for many years, I liked the split Body & Stun setup, which enabled people to be ko'd, or to be still fighting and bleeding to death, seemed to cover the full range of effects, which is appealing. (I.e., ko'ing people & subdual damage are yet another kludge on D&D hit point systems.)

I long liked d6 Star Wars' save system (liked the system in general, actually), and really like the M&M save system as well - a single blow can k.o. you or disable you. (Hero *could*, but it was really unlikely, and you had issues with small guns not being able to head-shot kill people.) My only issue with the M&M save system is that you can't "accidentally" get a lethal effect - even in Hero, if your regular damage martial artist hit somebody, they could roll a high body result and get that sort of effect.

After playing all these systems, I want a system that does the following:
1. enables a single blow to ko/disable (or kill, depending on the genre) a foe, i.e., no peasant with a longsword against a 5th level D&D fighter situations or Hero small hand-gun shot to the head situations. This requirement seems to eliminate "hit points" types of systems, because they are hard to line up with weapons' damage.
2. allows a range of results, from injury to disabling, stunning to ko'ing, but not in great detail, i.e., I'm not worried about if your wound was to the outer pinky or lower thigh, and whether a bone broke (those may be good for a few narrow games, but I'm looking for a fast system to play).
3. does not pigeon-hole an attack to *only* doing lethal or stun damage - tazers can kill people, and so can a boxer's fist, whether he means to or not. I'd like to see a good way to modify M&M's system to take this into account.
4. has minimal recordkeeping (e.g., vitality points, and hit points, and wounds, or whatever seem like more than I want to bother with).
5. doesn't feel like a kludge to get the above effects.

Basically it seems like the M&M system, with some modification to reflect that a bullet could k.o. you without killing you or a tazer or fist could kill you and not just k.o. you. I think that system would cover all the permutations most want, except in a really gritty realistic game where limbs are severed, etc., and could handle those effects as well as an add-on (e.g., hit location chart for the wound location, if injured there, then X penalty (e.g., in the hand, -2 to attacks or skills using that hand until healed), if disabled there, then Y penalty, plus potential long-term damage or severed part, etc.).

It sounds like what you want can be done, but not without added complexity and book-keeping. Pledge of Tyranny uses bodily hits and called shots to make wound damage more lethal, which means a lot more dice to roll and a lot more things to keep track of. I wouldn't recommend this for any but those who really love complexity in combat. Otherwise, you're better off sticking with a simple, abstract system.

[Edit: I really should proofread my posts more often. Half of it is just... gone. I'll rewrite in a moment.]

 

[Ranger REG]

I didn't see where that was significantly different than M&M, or took into account my issue of wanting to see lethal/stun crossover effects - care to elaborate?

Well, if a victim already suffered an Unconscious condition, and is hit again, she can now suffer lethal condition (Wounded, Disabled, etc.)

As for tazer killing people, one would have to take into account that it has effect against those perhaps with severe health problem, like a fragile heart (arrhythmia and such). So far, no such description have added to the tazer weapons (that's because they only take into account the manufacturer's testing, which is used to pitch sale on such nonlethal weapons).

The more "real" you want, the more complex it is going to be. Who knows? You might prefer the Random Freak Accident rule.