What is Your Favorite Wound/Damage System?

[olskool]

Do your games go above Tier 1? Because 8 damage is a pretty low threshold unless you're never fighting anything beyond bandits and goblins...

Did you actually go and read how the system works? The vaunted Fireball can do 48 hit points of damage. To the Fighter, that would be 6 wounds inflicted. He might have a CON of 16 and can even Save for half damage. That means the Fighter (even at 1st Level) would STILL have 10 Wounds left before death. IF he makes his saving throw, he would suffer just 3 Wounds from a fireball spell. A Wizard with the same CON of 16 would suffer 12 Wounds on a failed save from the same 48 Hit Points of damage, and be pretty bad off compared to the fighter.

The Hobgoblin chief in the caves of Phandelver(?) does 2D8 damage(?) with his weapon. He would probably inflict a single Wound on the Fighter with each strike. That same Hobgoblin would average 2 Wounds inflicted on the Wizard per average striking damage. Of course, BOTH characters would run out of Hit Points and be laying on the ground winded from that loss of HP before any Wounds actually killed them. Then you have the effect of armor. It will absorb the most common damage types (piercing, slashing, bludgeoning) and that would reduce the wound counts by 1 to 5 based on the armor worn.

Hit Points will still often determine who wins a fight, but the creature in question will be laying on the ground pleading for its life rather than bleeding out.

[Psyren]

Did you actually go and read how the system works? The vaunted Fireball can do 48 hit points of damage. To the Fighter, that would be 6 wounds inflicted. He might have a CON of 16 and can even Save for half damage. That means the Fighter (even at 1st Level) would STILL have 10 Wounds left before death. IF he makes his saving throw, he would suffer just 3 Wounds from a fireball spell. A Wizard with the same CON of 16 would suffer 12 Wounds on a failed save from the same 48 Hit Points of damage, and be pretty bad off compared to the fighter.

Yeah but a wizard can avoid being hit with that fireball in the first place much more easily. They can counterspell it, or absorb it, or be out of range/around a corner, or be invisible, and so on. Obviously if they take the full brunt of it they'll be in more danger than a fighter would, but that's how hit points work too. That's what I mean when I say gritty wound systems tend to be worse for martials.

[Easy e]

I liked a simplified Shadowrun style two tier track of Mental vs Physical with 5 levels of injury; light, moderate, serious, critical, and unconscious and possibly dead. It was a bit of a death spiral but it made a clear risk v reward process.

I must say, that Masks system sounds really awesome!

[SteveLightblade]

I'm not able to respond often, so be ready for several bulk replies.

The best one I played was a home brew originally based on D&D.

The basic idea was that characters has action points, and un-used APs could be stored up and carried over to a certain limit.
Damage was applied to your CON
Each turn you generated new APs based on your current CON.
Armor reduced the amount of damage taken, but also reduced your CON.

Generally you started at max APs, unless you were surprised, or otherwise in disadvantage. There were certain feats where you could make a test against another characteristic that could generate more APs. The number of APs ot took to cast a spell depended on the level of the spell, and special attacks such as Power Attack cost more APs than normal attacks.

Combat generally started with a flurry, then slowed down. You’d do things like spend a turn resting and collecting your breath in order to pull off a major combo next turn. The end stages of a long hard fight had both sides moving slowly and swinging infrequently. If fresh reserves showed up it was a major swing factor because they were fresh and had APs to burn,

It made it feel like genuine combat, not the D&D BS of a character on one HP being fully capable of doing everything.

Do you have this system saved anywhere? I actually tried developing a system based on Pathfinder where the idea was that getting wounded would slow you down in combat. However, I mostly abandoned the project when I started overhauling magic and combat feats to fit around things like wounds and stamina, as well as changing how certain items worked and started coming to a point where, unless I cleaned it up, it would make FATAL or Hybrid look like Powered by the Apocalypse by the time I was done (In terms of rules. Don't worry, the fluff isn't as horrible as those games).

Depends on the style of game you intend to play.

My personal favourite is Rolemaster / Spacemaster. For those that don't know, every attack results in a damage code (like 6A, 13D, etc) where the number is the amount of hit points lost, and the letter is a critical code, and determines stunning, bleeding, limb loss and organ faliure, knock outs, etc. Targets are very rarely killed by hit point loss, usually being killed by critical effects long before their hit points are depleted.

But that system is very, very lethal, and particularly in Spacemaster, often comes down to who shoots first determines who dies, and so isn't suitable for a more relaxed campaign, as you could get shanked by the next goblin with little to no warning. For a more relaxed game, D&D does it right, as you have plenty of warning when somethings going south, and plenty of time to rescue a character from a potentially fatal situation.

I am personally a fan of grittier games where combat is something that needs to be carefully planned and executed, which is somewhat strange given my Pathfinder obsession. Rolemaster and Spacemaster seem fun. I will check them out. Hopefully I can find time to run a game within this millenium.

I generally prefer it when plot armor is separated from tissue damage.

I think things like permanent damage is good only if either retirement is expected or if prosthetics/regeneration is available and not a handicap. Either that or making a new character is easy and fun. Incidentally I think D&D misses an opportunity here, because it's fun to make characters but hard to lose them.

Have you checked out Star Wars D20?

There are some others where reading through them I think they would be a lot of fun, but my personal favorite that I've actually played has been Riddle of Steel.

The way it works in brief, every combat turn is paired. At the start of the first of the paired turns you get several action dice you can use to attack and defend yourself over various threats.

When you attack, you must choose a direction and type of attack. Which the target opposes with however many dice they have held back for the defense.

If your attack hits it deals the base weapon damage plus an additional amount based on how much more successful the attack was from the defense. The armor at the hit location is then subtracted from the damage.

Damage is then compared to a chart which tells the players how much Shock, Pain, and Bloodloss they have from the hit. Along with other possible effects (cutting at someone's neck is very difficult, but can lead to an instant kill if the hit was high enough).

Shock is immediately subtracted from the targets total action dice on the next turn.
Pain is reduced from all future action dice.
Bloodloss results in a health check to see if you fall unconscious, the check growing cumulatively larger the higher your bloodloss is.

Now, all of this seems complicated. And it is.

But because pretty much all of it is physically done by removing action dice directly and the damage chart is pretty quick to use if you just have it in front of you, once you get used to it the actual running of a round of RoS tends to be pretty fast.

And because it is pretty uncompromising, the end result of the combat system promotes gameplay I like. You don't run into combat without a plan. Armor is fantastic and you should wear it. Every round you need to be thinking about how much you need to hold back for defense, because if you take a hit you're going to be feeling it for the rest of combat.

But what it doesn't do, is create an action hero game where you keep on fighting at 1 hit point and beating the as yet untouched big bad. Which is a fine system, actually. But I always had much more fun playing with the RoS health system.

This is cool, I'll check it out as well. It sounds like something I would have a ton of fun with. Also, you technically are still an action hero if you narrow your list of action films solely down to the first Die Hard movie.

The irony of this thread is I just posted a system involving Hit Points as a type of "stun damage" and Wounds (derived from HP lost) for "killing damage" in another thread entitled "Hit Points as Flesh" in the Worldbuilding forum and it was not well received. It seems that the majority of 5e players like the "adventurer as superhero" concept of 5e and disdain "gritty 5e rules" that are harsher like reality. Still, IF you're interested, check out my posting in "Hit Points as Flesh (worldbuilding).

I'll look at your thread, because I have no idea what you mean by "gritty 5e rules". I played it quite a few times and personally was turned off by 5e due to how shallow the entire system felt, and that if I wasn't playing a full caster I was only going to have a fraction of the variety and fun everyone else was having. The game, in my opinion, also has this weird identity crisis where it wants to be 3e, but at the same time wants to be it's own thing. However, this is not a thread about ranting about 5e, so I won't write an entire essay about why I don't like the system that much.

[Mordante]

Depends on the style of game you intend to play.

My personal favourite is Rolemaster / Spacemaster. For those that don't know, every attack results in a damage code (like 6A, 13D, etc) where the number is the amount of hit points lost, and the letter is a critical code, and determines stunning, bleeding, limb loss and organ faliure, knock outs, etc. Targets are very rarely killed by hit point loss, usually being killed by critical effects long before their hit points are depleted.

But that system is very, very lethal, and particularly in Spacemaster, often comes down to who shoots first determines who dies, and so isn't suitable for a more relaxed campaign, as you could get shanked by the next goblin with little to no warning. For a more relaxed game, D&D does it right, as you have plenty of warning when somethings going south, and plenty of time to rescue a character from a potentially fatal situation.

I played some rolemaster fantacy setting a long time ago. But I didn't like the system much. For hitting and doing damage there were like 10 tables and so many dice rolls, just to find out you do zero damage.

[Mordante]

For Close Combat I prefer a system where wearing armour doesn't make you harder to hit. Armour should be damage reduction. When attacking someone with a sword it should be weapon skill vs weapon skill.

[MoiMagnus]

In an homebrew I'm currently helping to design, we have the following system:
(1) Characters have between 0 and 5 HP (recharging at long rest), plus a total of around 3 points of dodging/parade/luck/etc (recharging at short rest).
(2) After accounting for weapon skills and armour reduction, damages ranks are usually around 1d4 (though the dice system is much more complex than that), and the defending character can spend dodging/parade/luck/etc points can be spent to reduce the damage rank.
(3) When suffering damages, the character can chose between losing HP or taking wounds on a randomly determined part of the body (known by the player before the choice):
+ For damage of rank 1, it's either 1 HP or a minor wound (inducing disadvantage to all related checks)
+ For damage of rank 2, it's either 1 HP (same as rank 1) or a major wound (making related actions impossible)
+ For damage of rank 3 or more, it's either 3 HP, or a deadly wound (inducing death if not stabilised quickly)

[Telwar]

I can honestly say that the Vitality Point/Wound Point system as implemented in SWd20... let's just say I'm not a fan. Having critical hits skip VP and go straight to Wounds might be okay if the typical damage roll (3d8) didn't average out to more than a typical PC's Constitution. I generally like to be beaten up some before dropping, and we don't see PC types in the movies available at the time drop from one hit normally, certainly not from a minion type.

Iron Kingdoms RPG's wound system was interesting. You rolled to hit versus the target defense, then they soaked with armor and stamina. Damage was rolled into three locations, which depending on stats would be like 4-10 hit points, and if all the boxes were filled on that location the target took a penalty to something, but could still function until it went down. After combat, you had an automatic heal that, if you were clever, could uncripple that location. Having locations crippled after healing was bad, though.

I "grew up" with Shadowrun and World of Darkness wound penalties, and as long as it's clear that they don't apply to soak rolls, wound penalties are fine. The first game of Shadowrun I was in, the GM didn't understand that. That was even more of a death spiral than normal.

[Mordar]

I played some rolemaster fantacy setting a long time ago. But I didn't like the system much. For hitting and doing damage there were like 10 tables and so many dice rolls, just to find out you do zero damage.

Certainly not the point of this thread, but this (bold) is utterly false. You may have played some game like that...but ICE/Rolemaster uses 1 roll, and *perhaps* a second roll if you got a critical hit. D&D uses at least 2 rolls for every hit. 1 table per weapon. 1 roll per attack. If good enough result, a second roll to resolve the critical.

Yes, there were specific weapon tables, and yes, players had to perform basic arithmetic, but those are the characteristics that made it a distinct (and in my opinion, more enjoyable) combat system. I roll my attack, add/subtract modifiers, and get my result. Learning curve, of course. Once you learn it, as fast as AD&D or every version of D&D I played outside the red/blue boxes.

Added benefit was removing the cognitive dissonance of rolling a nearly perfect attack that resulted in 1hp of damage.

- M

[Milodiah]

I actually rather enjoyed Deadlands Classic's. It had hit locations, injury penalties, stamina versus major bodily harm, and damage trackers, all without being clumsy in play. Plus it handled creatures of differing sizes fairly well in my opinion, and also (for the most part) struck a decent balance between survivability and perceived danger in combat. Even a fairly low caliber revolver can be fatal with multiple shots or a critical hit.

[olskool]

I'm not able to respond often, so be ready for several bulk replies.



Do you have this system saved anywhere? I actually tried developing a system based on Pathfinder where the idea was that getting wounded would slow you down in combat. However, I mostly abandoned the project when I started overhauling magic and combat feats to fit around things like wounds and stamina, as well as changing how certain items worked and started coming to a point where, unless I cleaned it up, it would make FATAL or Hybrid look like Powered by the Apocalypse by the time I was done (In terms of rules. Don't worry, the fluff isn't as horrible as those games).



I am personally a fan of grittier games where combat is something that needs to be carefully planned and executed, which is somewhat strange given my Pathfinder obsession. Rolemaster and Spacemaster seem fun. I will check them out. Hopefully I can find time to run a game within this millenium.



Have you checked out Star Wars D20?



This is cool, I'll check it out as well. It sounds like something I would have a ton of fun with. Also, you technically are still an action hero if you narrow your list of action films solely down to the first Die Hard movie.



I'll look at your thread, because I have no idea what you mean by "gritty 5e rules". I played it quite a few times and personally was turned off by 5e due to how shallow the entire system felt, and that if I wasn't playing a full caster I was only going to have a fraction of the variety and fun everyone else was having. The game, in my opinion, also has this weird identity crisis where it wants to be 3e, but at the same time wants to be it's own thing. However, this is not a thread about ranting about 5e, so I won't write an entire essay about why I don't like the system that much.

Gritty 5e increases the lethality/difficulty by modifying the following...

Hit Points: these are reduced by a die type (ie D6 becomes D4). To help low-level survivability we give a full die type for zero level. So a 1st level Wizard would have 4 + 1D4 Hp. We only add the CON bonus to the Hitpoints ROLL. The max HP per level you can get is STILL the maximum you can roll on that die (ie 4 for the Wizard above).

Proficiency Bonus: we use the following...
0 Level = 0
1st to 2nd Level = +1
3rd to 5th Level = +2
6th to 9th Level = +3
10th to 14th Level = +4
15th to 20th Level = +5

Attribute Bonus: we use the following...
1 = -4
2 - 3 = -3
4 - 6 = -2
7 - 9 = -1
10 -13 = 0
14 -16 = +1
17 - 19 = +2
20 - 22 = +3
23 - 26 = +4
27 - 30 = +5

We also require a Proficiency check to cast spells. The caster must roll a DC of [10 + Spell Level, with cantrips being 0 level] to successfully cast a spell. This check allows the use of any Attribute bonus (based on class attribute used) and Proficiency bonuses on the roll.

Those are just some of the changes we made to make 5e a little "grittier" in play.