Marvel Heroic RP uses a variant of @aramis erak's mode 3.
Meanwhile, Firefly? Everyone's a mook! Spend a Plot Point or you're taken out by any hit.Marvel Heroic RP uses a variant of @aramis erak's mode 3.
But in a game that doesn't really use HP or similar mechanics, this may not be necessary. In Blades in the Dark, this is all part of the core mechanic. Typical foes are defeated with one successful roll on the part of a player. If the player instead gets only a partial success, then perhaps an enemy may linger and only be wounded or similar. It kind of depends on the fiction and what the GM thinks would be best. But if a PC says "I'm going to stab this ornery guard in his neck for him" and then makes a Skirmish roll and gets a full success......then very likely that guard just got stabbed in the neck, and is either dead, or likely rapidly bleeding out. The position and effect set by the GM can influence this, but assuming a normal level of risk, then it plays out as above.
I'd definitely like to use these ideas - how would the narrative play out, and incorporate a degree-of-success (DoS) or two.If you want to make it somewhat variable - could be 1 hit, could be more - maybe look at something like first edition Fung Shui where mooks went down if you hit them sufficiently well (I think 5 over the target number) or Mutants and Masterminds where mooks go down if they fail a damage save at any level.
When I want a skirmish to go quickly, I skip the combat rules and just use a simple conflict - a few rolls from each player to decide what happens. The PCs usually win this because the opponents are mooks and the PCs have better things to do.
Skipping combat rules means skipping damage rules, for the most part. So how many successful attacks/actions does a PC need to make to drop/defeat a mook? "Just one" could mean the skirmish feels like swatting flies, and "until the opponent runs out of hit points" means the combat rules are back in effect.
I'd definitely like to use these ideas - how would the narrative play out, and incorporate a degree-of-success (DoS) or two.
Actual mooks, the "insignificant" ones, should be defeated with a successful attack - or even on a failed attack with something going wrong for the PC. It seems a little more cinematic if that mook defends a couple of times first, though. But it's probably not the worst thing if a mook fails to defend, because that's more glory for the attacking PC. The narrative can add the interest in place of the combat rules, describing the desperate attempts represented by each defense, and the final (or not so final) moments of the mook after the PC's hit.
A bigger mook though - tiger, ogre, BIG skeleton - might be expected to last a little longer, and this is where I might try a DoS. If the successful attack is just passing - the mook wears down. If the attack is critical - skip to death sequence.
Or a minimum number of contests for big mooks could work (the Owl's three-count is fair because it echoes strikes in baseball or extra lives in early video games). Then a big, seemingly tough, mook could still be defeated after one good attack as long as there were two interesting previous attempts before that, successful or otherwise.
Instead of having designated HP for each mook, you simply have a collective number of hits (like a swarm in D&D), allowing large numbers of mooks for a serious fight, or only a few for an easy one. Each success by a player's action (non-roll actions, like spells will have to be adjudicated by system) kills a mooks. At the end of the round, deal some damage based on the number of mooks from the start of the round. Continue until all mooks are slain.
Trippy. So the answer here is, "Mooks don't take hits. The scenario does." It would be fun to let the PCs make their rolls first, one roll per PC, with whatever action they wanted to use to help the situation. Then let them collectively decide how the first moments/minutes of the skirmish play out based on their results. I / the GM would intervene as necessary, assuming that the PCs didn't all roll successes, and/or the ones who rolled fails didn't add enough negative influence to the narrative.The combination of Position and Effect, and then Partial Success on the roll makes for a myriad of possibilities, but it's really all based on the fiction, and largely avoids any kind of math for NPCs. They don't even have stats.