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View Full Version : A new system for modeling health/damage. Any inputs/suggestions?



Vitruviansquid
2013-06-04, 05:14 AM
The basic idea of this system is that it's cool to gouge an enemy's eyes out and blind him, stab him in the leg to slow him down to, or, to be general, inflict location damage on an opponent for specific "debuff" effects. However, many RPG systems are rather poor at representing this, or don't represent it at all.

For example, in DnD 4e, location damage is almost always (if not always) represented on the attacker's side. This is problematic because sometimes the attacker's effect doesn't jibe with the defender's body structure. For example, the Fighter can attempt an attack on an enemy's leg with Steel Serpent Strike, but that wouldn't make sense if the enemy was a Beholder with no legs.

Some other systems, like Savage Worlds, represent location damage by having the attacker declare he's aiming for a particular spot on the enemy's body and taking an accuracy penalty for a potential debuff. Undeclared attacks are assumed to be aimed at the torso, which is the easiest location to hit but gives no bonus effects. This system is flawed in that nobody ever suffers location damage under it unless it's specifically declared. For example, you could have a grueling gun battle with tens of participants on each side, and nobody will get hit anywhere but on their torso.

So what's my solution?

The pacing of the fight is the same as in DnD. As the fight begins, all characters involved roll initiative to see when they get to act. The fight plays out in rounds, with players taking their turns in order.

Every character has a number of hitpoints, which represents the mass and hardiness of the character and does not improve as the character progresses. Like in DnD, a character is considered incapacitated and out of the fight when his number of hitpoints gets reduced to 0. Unlike DnD, each character also has a 12-entry Wound table, which looks something like this for a human:

1 - Narrowly Dodged - No effect
2 - Light Damage - 2 damage
3 - Light Damage - 2 damage
4 - Arm crippled - 3 damage, -1 accuracy
5 - Leg crippled - 3 damage, -1 movement
6 - Vitals Hit - 4 damage
7 - Vitals Hit - 4 damage
8 - Head Crippled - 2 damage, lose a turn
9 - Heavy Pain - 3 damage, -1 defense
10 - Light Damage - 2 damage
11 - Light damage - 2 damage
12 - Narrowly Dodged - No Effect

When a character attempts to attack another, he rolls a d20 and adds his accuracy modifiers (like for his skill, circumstantial advantages, and such), which is then compared to the defender's target number. If the attacker's number matches or exceeds the defender's, it's a hit result, and the defender must roll a d12 and refer to his Wound table to see how much damage he suffers and whether he must take an additional penalty effect. If the attacker's number exceeds the defender's by 5, or some similarly large number, that attack is a Critical Hit and instead of the Defender rolling on his Wound Table, the attacker simply picks the number that he wants.

When a character is wielding a weapon, the weapon may modify the way the result of the Wound Table roll. For example, a serrated sword might add 1 damage on top of whatever was rolled on the wound table, a two-handed battleaxe forces two rolls for each hit, and so on. Armor in this system works by modifying the entries on your Wound Table. For instance, a steel chestplate might confer -3 damage for 6 and 7. A full-body leather armor might confer -1 damage for 3-10 because it has better coverage, but is less protective. By definition, NPC's do not have armor, because they would simply have the effects of their armor directly on their Wound Tables. Similarly, a character's skills and training can also influence what happens on the Wound Table. A defensive fighter can choose to subtract 1 to his Wound Table rolls by partially dodging blows, allowing him a limited ability to choose what kind of debilitating effects he gets. A sadistic fighter might be able to deal additional damage for hitting the same number on his opponent's Wound table multiple times.

Because all damage done is based on the target, the players can inflict any effect on a monster that the GM has imagined. For humans, like the player-characters, this is kept relatively simple, but a GM can also set up a complex boss fight monster, as in this example:

Cyclops - A brutal giant with a red, bloodshot eye imbued with magic power. It stands taller than a house and wields a tree trunk club. The Cyclops has Three attacks. First, he has a Club Swing that can hit two adjacent opponents at once, dealing 3 extra damage on top of whatever is rolled for on the opponent's Wound Table. Second, he has an Eye Beam that can hit opponents up to 3 spaces away, and forces them to roll twice on their Wound Table if hit. Last, he has a Grab and Throw attack that only works on players climbing on top of him, and allows him to negate the effect as well as force the player hit to roll twice on his Wound Table. Each of the Cyclops's attacks has the effect "add 1 damage each time the defender rolls on his Wound Table for each Rage token the Cyclops has." The Cyclops has a gigantic 35hp, far above what the human players have.

1 - Narrowly Dodged - No Effect
2 - Pain - 1 damage. Add 1 damage for each time this entry is rolled during the round. 3 damage if the player is Climbed On the Cyclops.
3 - Hand Scratched - 1 damage, the Cyclops may not use his Club Swing for 1 turn.
4 - Deep Wound - 3 damage
5 - Climb - 2 damage, the attacker is considered to have Climbed On to the body of the Cyclops if he is using a melee weapon, and will move with the Cyclops if the Cyclops moves. The attacker may choose to move off of the Cyclops on his turn. 4 damage if the player is Climbed On the Cyclops.
6 - Gouged Eye - 4 damage, the Cyclops cannot use his Eye Beam during his next 2 turns. No effect if the hit that rolled this result was achieved by a player who has not Climbed On the Cyclops OR who is not using a ranged weapon.
7 - Stagger - 3 damage, subtract 3 from the Cyclops's defense until the start of the Cyclops's next turn.
8 - Climb - 2 damage, the attacker is considered to have Climbed On to the body of the Cyclops if he is using a melee weapon, and will move with the Cyclops if the Cyclops moves. The attacker may choose to move off of the Cyclops on his turn. 4 damage if the player is Climbed On the Cyclops.
9 - Deep Wound - 3 damage
10 - Annoy - 1 damage. Add 2 damage if the player is Climbed On the Cyclops. The Cyclops may not use Grab and Throw on his next turn.
11 - Annoy - 1 damage, Add 2 damage if the player is Climbed On the Cyclops. The Cyclops may not use Grab and Throw on his next turn.
12 - Enrage - 1 damage and the Cyclops gains a Rage token.

Rhynn
2013-06-04, 05:35 AM
What RPGs are you familiar with? You might want to look at systems from:

GURPS (hit locations, hit points)
The Riddle of Steel (hit location, wound tables, no hit points)
Rolemaster or MERP (wound tables, secondary hit points)
Artesia: Adventures in the Known World (hit locations, special effects, hit points)
RuneQuest (hit locations, hit points)
Twilight 2013 (hit locations)
Aces & Eights (hit locations, wound tables, hit points)
HârnMaster (hit locations, wound tables, no hit points)


All of these have different takes on basically the same thing (and that's just the ones I can think of off-hand). In creating RPGs and systems thereof, it's important to have a broad base of comparison and knowledge.

Your system seems light and easy until the fact that every creature needs its own table, which is a big, confusing, arbitrary workload. It's fine for a game with very limited amounts of potential opponents, though.

It's not very simulationist, to me, though; it's definitely gamist. The GM must invent "weak spots" and "special attacks" against each opponent. The main weakness, which may not be a big one (it all depends on what you want) is that the effect depends entirely on the opponent's wound table, not the attacker's actions. You can't actually try to gouge out cyclops's eye, you can just get a lucky attack that does so, etc. But that's pretty common, anyway; few games actually have something like an "eye-gouge attack."

My personal preference is for systems where you can aim at something, but those get really delicate to balance. For instance, in A:AKW, starting with the first fight, my players realized that attacking the face was always the best bet, because it's the most commonly unprotected location (open helmets) and the penalty to hit it is trivial (and easily offset by delaying and aiming). Cue a campaign's worth of enemies getting one-shotted by arrows in their eye. (That they die from one hit isn't the problem, it's that putting an arrow in someone's eye is a trivial task.) When I ran A:AKW with a complete first-time RPG player, she immediately realized that face-stabbing is the best approach, too.

But most games with hit locations and aiming thereof work fine, even great. TROS takes the extra-realistic approach of "aiming zones" - you attack at a swinging or thrusting zone (shooting falls under thrusting zones) and roll to see where, exactly, you hit; then you roll to see what, exactly, was hit. Sure, that's a total of 4 rolls (attack, defense, location, location) per successful attack, but that works just fine, because every single landed hit is significant in TROS, which models combat with brutal, realistic accuracy.

HârnMaster takes a slightly less precise approach, with High, Mid, and Low aiming zones (and optionally Arms) that overlap in parts (but the chances of hitting the legs are much higher when attacking Low than Mid).

So, cool system for what it is. Easily on par with the system in many published RPGs, but definitely outdone for realism (and, IMO, fun) by many other games (that's inevitable!) without loss of playability/ease of play on their part.

If you want, I can elaborate on any of the above-listed games' combat, hit location, and damage rules.