Thorvald Kviksverd said:
The problem with the "all or nothing" effect is most acute when it comes to the PCs. How many times has one of the main characters been merely "grazed" by a weapon that would probably vaporize anyone else?
None that I can recall. I suppose it might happen occasionally, but in general if they want one of the main characters wounded, they do it via some indirect effect (falling debris, usually) or with a weapon that is clearly
not a phaser. Or they do it to Data or some such character who has an excuse to take insane punishment (ST: Nemesis notwithstanding, and I'll spoil no more spoilers about that).
Phasers in classic Star Trek either kill you (usually via outright disintegration) or knock you out when they hit, period. Of
course you're going to have trouble if you do it any other way. People will recognize the break in the genre immediately.
You'll also notice that weapons in Star Trek seem to be wildly innacurate for that very reason. In GURPS, I'd say you'd use the "buck fever" rules combined with liberal allowance of Dodge bonuses to achieve this result, though frankly it can be a little tedious. ("buck fever" is, roughly, the tendency of a shooter's accuracy to be much less in a combat situation than in target shooting; rules are in GURPS High Tech and probably elsewhere).
WotC's Star Wars RPG achieves the same fiction by having most shots only cost players "stamina" to avoid, not actual "wounds," which has the anti-tedium advantage of a certain element of inevitability. In GURPS, you might give most "name" characters (not "mooks") some amount of Luck to try achieve this, since it can only save your bacon once per combat.
