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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1239856" data-attributes="member: 10201">Actually, FBI, police, and military research all agree: when someone gets a meaningful wound, there are 3 possible outcomes: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">target is incapacitated</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">target continues as if unwounded</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the injured body part is non-functional, but the target is otherwise unaffected</li> </ul>This is independent of the severity of the wound.  And there does not seem to be any way to predict the outcome.  Even a single person wounded in pretty much the same way multiple times (with recovery in between) may react differently.  It's pretty easy to predict the difference between 2 & 3--either the body part works, or it doesn't--but predicting whether someone will fall into 1 or 2, or 1 or 3, is not practical. Oh, and this doesn't consider instantly-fatal wounds.  You blow someone's head off, they stop.  But short of that, some people fight on, unhindered, despite a fatal wound.  Some people fight on when they should've died minutes ago. Others are completely incapacitated (unconscious, or curled up in a ball whimpering) by a hand wound.So, in one sense, D&D's damage is realistic: what felled a character one time (high damage roll) does nothing a different time (low damage roll); and there is no such thing as being generally hindered--you're either fully functional, or out.  But it utterly fails the realism test when it comes to single attacks (which should, likewise, be able to incapacitate).  Lowering the Massive Damage Threshhold to 10, as CoC D20 does, addresses this somewhat.  What would be neat *and* heroic would be to institute a system where wound severity isn't figured until after the fight is over.  It'd be a bit tricky to do with a hit point system, but the basic technique is to record wounds during the fight, and somehow determine their  fatality on the spot (maybe make a massive damage save: drop if you fail, no result if you succeed).  Then, at the end of the fight, actually figure out how much damage was taken (so, perhaps re-classify all weapons/attacks into a few categories from "minor" to "incapacitating", or something like that, ranging in damage from d4 to 4d8, so you coul djust record "3 minor hits, 2 major hits, 1 severe, 1 incapacitating", or something of that sort--probably check boxes).  Along with this, you'd want to change the definitions so that any negative hp total was "dying", so you wouldn't instantly die (that's what those massive damage saves were for) at the end of o fight, but you might drop and need healing.</blockquote>

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