Ive been gaming for decades and spent the last two and a half as a Paramedic in the field, instructor and EMS Coordinator. One thing that has always amazed me is how completely unrealistic damage application is in most RPGs. Ive played plenty and read countless more sets of rules and none, NONE of them get it even close to right. (the conventional HP being the absolute worst) Now I know Im not the only medically educated individual to ever game, certainly some game designers have had or enlisted the aid of someone who had a little medical background right? Why does it appear that there isn't even an attempt to represent trauma in a fairly realistic manner?

Now some will say trauma is just, well too deadly for fun games. Ok, I get it, but there are many ways to artificially reduce the potential for serious injuries prior to the character effect. To be honest it would far more realistic if targets were missed or grazed more rather than soaking up huge amounts of damage without effect.

It might be fun to discuss how damage systems could get it right.

For starters, and this is just a blurted out opinion here - trauma tends to lean towards the extremes. Meaning - when one is exposed to trauma, be it penetrating, blunt force or whatever.. the effects are typically very minor (scrapes, grazes, superficial cuts, bruising etc.) or pretty damned serious (hemorrhage, broken bones, internal injury and so on) rarely is it in the middle. In addition, almost anything but the most minor of injuries SERIOUSLY inhibits the activity of the host. Lying down and groaning (or screaming) is the typical reaction to a great number of injuries be it in combat or a vehicle accident. Without immediate help most pass out or are as good as passed out very soon. Minor injuries almost always have  annoying effects too, causing limping, pain upon movement of a limb, shaking, difficulty concentrating, blurred vision, shock effects leading to loss of consciousness, etc.

A patient of mine fell down a hill through a mesquite thicket. (think thorns) He was essentially uninjured except for dozens of superficial but painful lacerations and punctures. He was a mess, could barely stand, shock had him shaking like it was freezing outside and he could barely answer questions. This all without a major injury anywhere or a significant loss of blood. In most games we would have handed him a couple HP and played on.

Sure, there are those 'walking wounded' injuries such as a wound to the shoulder, broken nose, severely bruised thigh or whatever that allow heroes to grin and bare it and continue on but its incredibly rare. Ask any field medic that has served in combat. How many guys finished the day wounded but still functioning with more than superficial injuries. Few to none. If your hurt, your typically out.

Why do you think this sort of thinking has been avoided in most games?

Do you know of any systems that model it accurately?

I don't know that they model damage "accurately," but I think Harnmaster and TRoS get closer than most.  There are plenty of other systems that are passably believable. For an HP system, MERP/Rolemaster isn't too bad simply because of the strong distinction between superficial damage and crits.  BRP and RQ with their "meat points" and major wounds by location are solid as well.

Mostly I think games don't model damage realistically because it is either unfun, unfitting, or just too fiddly to do so.

Dude, Phoenix Command!

QuoteIt's quite realistic, if a bit more complex than average.

For example, let's say I have an MP5 submachinegun.
Let's say I'm an average soldier. My target is average too, that means 10 for his stats. He's wearing standard body armor. The range is 30 yards. He appears, moving at a rate of 4 yards a second, running, with no cover (for simplicity). He is firing from a standing position, from a proper firing stance. Let's say it's mid-day, for simplicity.

I aim for 2 seconds and fire a burst of 7 rounds. I'll not use time of flight of the bullet, because I haven't learned how yet.

And scrap that body armor too. Too complex for here.

Here's the process:
Add up aim modifiers.

Aim time: 2
Range: 9
Target size: 14
Shooter motion: 0
_______________

Effective accuracy = 25

Now I look up 25 on a table.

My odds of putting the burst in the correct location are at 97%. I roll a 37.
The burst is at the correct elevation, so I look up my minimum arc.
It is .7, so the burst has spread over 1.4 yards. My rate of fire is *7, so I look up on another table the chance of hitting with a ROF of *7 and a MA of .7.

The full-page table says I hit with 1 round.

Now roll for the hit location. I roll a 292 and look up on the Side Hit table ( I hit him in the side ) and the bullet passes through the man's liver and stomach.

Now I look up on one of the 64+ damage tables ( yes, there's a specific table for a side hit to the hip socket ) and find the one for a side hit to the stomach-liver.

It turns out to be table S15 ( Lower Chest - Stomach - Liver ) and I look up my weapon's damage and penetration for the specific range. The table is a 10x26 table.

That's right, 260 numbers, only for this specific angle and location.

My weapon's damage at 30 yards is 3, and it's penetration is 2.3. This is for FMJ ammo.

My weapon does 1200 Physical Damage, according to the table.

The man fails his knockout roll with only a 2% chance of remaining in the fight. He recieves no medical aid and dies after 2 minutes 58 seconds.

It is avoided in most games because most games are based on the "logic" of adventure fiction, wherein protagonists tend not to be killed regularly. The odds, for whatever reason, are in their favor. They get through fights wounded, but still going.

I can't speak to any system that "models this accurately." First and foremost, these are games, not models. By game I mean they usually have resource management concerns (Hit Points the party can sustain against Healing spells and potions, for example). In general the games want verisimilitude, but not the actual costs and consequences of constantly going into battle.

As for examples that come closer, I think, to what you are talking about, there are many, and others will list them.

A favorite of mine is Classic Traveller.

The "To Hit" system has modifiers for both range and armor, which reduces the chance for effective damage. (Not whether or not a shot hits, but whether any hit is effective. It is assumed many "misses" might be hits that don't do enough damage to penetrate armor or do enough damage to stop the character cold.)

Once hit, dice are rolled for damage. Characters have three physical characteristics: STRENGTH, ENDURANCE, DEXTERITY. Each is generated with a 2D6 roll, averaging 7, though each might be raised a point or two in character creation. These three characteristics track the health of the character as damage is applied.

Most weapons do 2D6, 3D6, or 4D6 damage. Rolled damage dice are applied against the characteristics, subtracting the number of pips from the value of the characteristics as chosen by the hit player. (If a 3D6 of damage produce a [2, 2, 5, respectively] then 2 points, and then 2 points, and then 5 points must be removed, one after another, from either STRENGTH, ENDURANCE, and DEXTERITY. By dividing up which dice pips are applied to the characteristics, the Player can work toward keeping his PC's characteristics from dropping to zero.

Example: A character with STR 8, END 8, and DEX 8 takes the damage dice described above. The player assigns the two 2 pip dice to his STR, and the 5 pip die to his DEX, ending up with STR 4, END 8, and DEX 3.

If a single characteristic is reduced to 0, the character is unconscious. If two characteristics are reduced to 0, then he is unconscious and seriously wounded (requiring a hospital and/or intense medical care). If all three characteristics are reduced to 0, the character is dead.

OF SPECIAL NOTE: The first time a character takes damage in a fight, all the damage dice rolled from the First Strike are applied against one of the three characteristics, chosen randomly. The odds are good then, though not certain, that the first blow or hit will be enough to drop a character unconscious from shock and trauma.

Again, I'm not saying this is what you are looking for, but I think it is closer than the examples you have been offering.

As for why Traveller was built this way, I think its' because Traveller's designer, Marc Miller, served as an Army Captain in Viet Nam.

Quote from: CRKrueger;935969Dude, Phoenix Command!

Yikes!

I'm sure they are out there.  I think one of the original Conan RPGs had basically stamina/fatigue as "HP" then if you are actually struck serious wounds, like lose loss of an arm etc.   I don't think HP are the worse if you look at them more as stamina, maybe you should lose some HP when in battle to reflect that.  

We did something like this for several years in the late 70s and early 80s we treated a portion of HP as actual getting hurt, and there was some gruesome damage chart used.  The rest were called combat survival points and represented stamina-like ability.

The problem with more realistic damage systems is they are realistic.  That is in real life you get hit once with a sword and that is basically it, it's a death spiral from there if you are facing someone uninjured without a sword.   What they become in games where I play them is combat is a lot of missing with a blow resulting in death, all sorts of special rules or actions need to be in place or PCs basically die every adventure that has combat.  Or combat is avoided like the plague and rarely happens.

All in all HP seem to serve well enough, and you can set 0 HP as that point where you no longer dodged and are suffering adverse performance consequences.  I've seen qualitative damage systems but they are harder to implement and no more realistic except for evocative names for just as unrealistic damage effects, but there are damage effects.  They are a bear to use though as a GM if you want to be managing more than handful of opponents.  

For me the later is the deal.  For one-on-one type combats all this detail is worth it, but for larger group combats with say 6 PCs and 2-3 dozen opponents some level of abstraction is necessary to make combat tractable.

Quote from: rgrove0172;935964Ive been gaming for decades and spent the last two and a half as a Paramedic in the field, instructor and EMS Coordinator. One thing that has always amazed me is how completely unrealistic damage application is in most RPGs. Ive played plenty and read countless more sets of rules and none, NONE of them get it even close to right. (the conventional HP being the absolute worst) Now I know Im not the only medically educated individual to ever game, certainly some game designers have had or enlisted the aid of someone who had a little medical background right? Why does it appear that there isn't even an attempt to represent trauma in a fairly realistic manner?

The Short

Harnmaster, the only RPG with a combat system that pisses people off, in a good way. It very playable and resolves quickly.

GURPS is more abstract but accomplishes the same thing via a different method.

The Long

The way Harnmaster injury work is that a given attack generates impact. There are different types of impact, piercing, blunt force, slashing, fire, etc. You subtract your protection (armor mainly, but sometimes magic it a low magic RPG). You cross index the remaining impact against the body part. The result will give you a save and a number of injury level. The injury levels reduce your skills (5% per injury level) and your attributes saves(for example Strength). The saves can be for keeping conscious, stumble, fumble, amputation, and death. It works well because they have a very well laid out chart that makes it quick and easy. And the character creation frontloads all this stuff.

http://www.columbiagames.com/resources/4001/harnmaster-combattables.pdf

The bookkeeping involves writing down each injury and it's injury level. For example a Upper Arm S3. A serious slash to the upper arm with injury level of 3.

here is a link to a review of the combat system. https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9298.phtml

The rules are $10 http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/harn/cfg/single.cfg?product_id=4001L.

In contrast GURPS requires you to remember more rules. But it is easily mastered.

1) Your character has hit points nominally equal to your health. Heroic characters (150 points0 tend to have between 9 to 13 health hence 9 to 13 hit points.
2) If you take 1/2 your hit points in a single blow you need to make a health roll (equal to your health or under on 3d6) or you are knocked down and stunned.
3) If a limb is crippled you also have to roll #2 even if it less than 1/2 your HP.
4) For every point of damage up to 4 points you take a -4 penalty to your Dex and IQ for the next second.
5) For a Limb a major wound per #2 will cripple that Limb. For your hand or feet the threshold is your Hit Points divided by 3.
6) If the blow does twice the amount of damage to cripple the extremity then the extermity is destroyed (smashed, amputated, severed, etc, etc).
7) If you end up at 1/3 of your maximum hit points or less your Move and Dodge are halved (round up)
If you go below zero hit points you need to make a Health roll at the start of every second or pass out. For each full multiple of HP the roll is at additional -1.
9) At -HP you also need to roll a Health Roll or die. Roll for death at each multiple of your full HP.
10) At -5x HP you immediately die
11) At -10 x HP your entire body is destroyed.

Now in a normal 150 point campaign, characters either pass out or die within a few second (each combat round is a second) when they drop below to -1/3 hp. It known as a death spiral. But it possible if you have a high enough health and certain advantage that you can continue on for a while. However even then it a not good thing and you are certainly done for any further fights for a long long time.

Estar made me remember, Blackmoor had hit location and hit points per location and damage effects.  Different location charts per creature type.  I once thought this was the way to go, in the pursuit of verisimilitude, fun but very, very time consuming to use.

I recall Aftermath also had 30 hit locations, all of which could be individually armored and divided up hit points.

Quote from: CRKrueger;935969Dude, Phoenix Command!

Ok, I'll shut up and slink away now.

Quote from: rgrove0172;935964...Why do you think this sort of thinking has been avoided in most games?

Do you know of any systems that model it accurately?

 Answered the first question but I think Traveller did it the best, has the feel you are talking about with very elegant implementation.   I think it is a perfectly valid and fun gaming choice to make damage much more dangerous in an RPG.  It's purely a matter of taste, but boy are there systems that get lost in the weeds trying to do it.

Quote from: CRKrueger;935969Dude, Phoenix Command!

I liked the Aliens game using a lighter version. I'd totally play either.

Quote from: rgrove0172;935964Why do you think this sort of thinking has been avoided in most games?

Death spiral.
Modeling shock and/or trauma (I'm not a medical expert, so bear with me if I misuse terms) are often modeled as penalties. The infamous days of critical hit tables that give penalties to losing an eye or getting a concussion spring to mind.
But then playing out a combat with a broken leg, blood in the eyes, and laying in a gutter isn't very fun. And if it's possible to severely incapacitate a target with a good hit or two, then the group is going to suffer, and the enemies are probably going to win, and you just wind up playing out the combat's near-inevitable conclusion, hoping for a lucky hit to swing the combat back.

Now, I'm not saying this is a terrible way to play. Certainly it can be fitting for a gritty game like Cyberpunk. But I can see why most groups don't go for it.

QuoteDo you know of any systems that model it accurately?

Cyberpunk 2020 tried. I'm not sure how accurate it was, but they did have rules for shock and wound states.

Quote from: CRKrueger;935969Dude, Phoenix Command!

Was that example hyperbole, or is Phoenix Command really that detailed? :eek:

I'm not a medical expert...but I've been on the receiving end of trauma, and I've seen others suffer trauma.

Combat is all fun and games until a level of force connects with the human body. Then, its blood, pain, shock, fall down, scream, bleed, flee and/or die.

Surprisingly, OD&D models this just fine with 0 level NPCS having 1D6 HP and weapons do 1D6 damage. Higher HPs isn't more man meat, but instead "luck and expertise" that allows killing blows to simply graze so the PC loses fatigue instead of meaty bits.

Traveller has always been a favorite, but very few characters in Traveller suffer 2 hits and keep standing.

Quote from: Spinachcat;935990Traveller has always been a favorite, but very few characters in Traveller suffer 2 hits and keep standing.

Tangental: But this is one of the reasons I love Classic Traveller's combat system so much, in conjunction with the free-wheeling Throw system to resolve any other action. If you get into a firefight in Traveller, it means something has probably has gone wrong -- because who would want to end up in a firefight?

The combat system encourages Players to come up with schemes that will avoid fights, sneak around, blackmail, bribe, retreat and come back another day, search out weak points and exploit them, strike from unexpected directions, make alliance to acquire overwhelming forces, set up ambushes to take out the enemy before he can fire back, and so on.

I love the system for that.