Psion said:
But still, I see that as a problem. I don't want to have to be a Mike Tyson or Bruce Li in training to have a credible chance of having a bona fide impact on my opponent through fisticufs.
I think that maybe I'm just ranging further afield with the flavor text. My characters have always had concepts first and feats to affect gameplay second. Admittedly, I wouldn't do that exact feat progression with every single character, but I would definitely consider it as part of the lineup for, say, a Strong/Charismatic Hero who has some raw power but chooses to back it up with wisecracks and attitude. Like, say, Chris Tucker's character in the "Rush Hour" movies. He doesn't exactly beat people to a bloody pulp, but he knows where to punch to make it count.
Again, though, it's possible that I tie my characters only very loosely to their feats.
This, again, relies on taking feats and using weapons. My primary concern is fisticufs, something that does come up a lot in action movies. I am not especially concerned about nonlethal weapon damage, but that said, I certainly don't think that it unbalances weapons.
Frankly, if I were more into House Rules, I'd rule that any blunt weapon can be used to deliver nonlethal damage at no penalty. It's hard to "pull" a strike with a rapier so that it causes no real injury, but a baton or club can always just go for the legs or arms, with little "cuffs" to the head to try for a knockout.
As for fisticuffs, this may be the source of our disagreement. One of the things that I REALLY liked about d20 Modern was that, with the multiclassing focus and the BAB progression for most characters, this is the first d20 game that, in my opinion, lets you build a character who truly sucks at combat. If you focus on getting your skills and talents just right and faithfully work your "charming scientist by day, industrial espionage agent by night" concept, you can make a 9th-level character with a BAB of +3 (Cha3/Smart3/Infiltrator3). That's good stuff -- and it's more likely to happen in this game than it would in D&D, since in D&D, everyone has to be at least OKAY at combat. Even the wizard needs to hit with his ranged touch attacks.
Anyway, our disagreement might lie in whether or not you feel a character SHOULD be able to knock somebody out without having a) Specialized Feats, b) Specialized Equipment, or c) A High BAB to take the penalties to "do it manually". My feeling is that they were consciously trying to design a system where those who wanted to be good at combat could do some damage and knock things out, while those who focused on other stuff were gonna get slapped around a lot. This is definitely a new experience for most D&D players, I think, since the D&D wizard, weakest in melee, is a spellcasting monster -- but in d20 Modern, if you maximize your lockpicking computer-hacking sweet-talking bad-boy, there's a good chance that actual fisticuffs are NOT going to go well for you.
I think it's cool -- and I think that those characters SHOULDN'T be able to wear down an opponent. Wearing down an opponent is part of combat, and they're not good at combat.
(On the other hand, I would love to see a good house rule about only being able to fight in melee combat for a number of rounds equal to your Con before you start taking penalties from fatigue... having done full-contact boxing, I can safely say that you get tired REAL fast.)
I'm not sure why this is a problem. If you try to duke it out with a zombie, you are asking for trouble.
Sorry, wasn't clear. What I meant was that subdual damage (with Brawl and stuff) would be TOO powerful, because with the exception of undead and constructs, everything is vulnerable to subdual damage. I didn't have a problem with the zombies -- and if I were using subdual AND nonlethal, I'd probably put more "subdual-immune" stuff in there just to make sure that people didn't optimize themselves for pure subdual work.
That said, brass knuckles turn nonlethal damage into lethal, so if giving brawlers subdual damage is a balance issue, then brass knuckles are a bigger one.
True -- but the designers have since nixed that, saying that Brawl doesn't work with Brass Knuckles. You can do 1d6 nonlethal or 1d3 lethal, with a +1 to damage in both cases (as I remember).
I think you are trying to make nonsensical rules sensible through spinning them.
Thank you.
Let's just say I don't agree with you assessment and don't think that lethal/nonlethal damage puts near that much of a fine point on it. The d20 rules are rather binary in their division between lethal and nonlethal damage. In reality, it is more of a continuum. You can sort of try to capture this middle ground in a game, but take it from me, it's not easy, and dividing lethal vs. nonlethal along the lines of armed/sharp/hard and soft/unarmed is the one most games use, d20 included.
That's certainly reasonable. I guess my martial arts background gave me another way of looking at it -- and that might not be what the designers intended, but it made the rules "work" for me, so I went with it. I mean, personally, by the definitions I use, I wouldn't call Brawl "Brawl" -- because fatalities can and do occur in barroom brawls. The designers wrote the book with the mindset of "If you're unarmed, you do nonlethal damage unless you specifically try to do otherwise." My feeling is something of the reverse... even with just your fists, you generally do lethal damage, in that you're actually hurting things. Or, at least, I do. But I've got the Combat Martial Arts feat, by their standards.
So in my world, the default of "two guys flailing at each other" would be them taking -4 and doing lethal damage right off the bat -- not, as I said, because they want to kill each other, but because they're not trained enough to try for a knockout.
But as you said, different opinions are certainly possible. Mine just happens to be the one that works with the existing rules -- although probably not because it's exactly what the game designers intended. If it were, they wouldn't have called the feat "Brawl" -- they would have called it "Controlled strike" or something like that.
The "lethal damge" rules for unarmed combat strikes me as things like kidney punches and kicking character while he's down. As the d20 rules say, inflicting lethal damage unarmed is "aiming for vital spots."
So this, then, would be the crux of it. I think that lethal damage should be the default, with nonlethal being intricate pressure-point stuff. People still die in stupid fights -- getting punched in the head and being unlucky, or even just getting punched in the shoulder and hitting their heads as they fall. To take someone out with NO chance of serious injury is pretty difficult, and SHOULD require feats, in my opinion. What you're describing would be, in my game, a critical hit (for the kidney punch) and continuing to attack someone who's unconscious (for kicking while they were down). But I can see your point of view as well, now that you've explained it. It's certainly up for debate, and probably, there's some equilibrium point between what you think, what I think, what the designers intended, and what the strict rules interpretation without any kind of flavor text would support.
So, sorry if I was snippy earlier. Now that I can see your point of view more clearly, it's much more understandable.
