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The D&D Next 'Surge' discussion got me thinking - what are people's tastes in systems for handling damage?

I think my favorite is WEG's D6 'Stunned/Wounded/Mortally Wounded' track.  It worked pretty well and had almost no book keeping.

I think I least liked OWoD, but that's at least partially because I never played it.  I only read the books.

For sheer awesome; Rolemaster

For low stress, dnd style HP are fine with me.


I find that many of the fancy ways to do dmage don't work for me.
Savage Worlds and Mutants and masterminds I am looking at you!

HP works fine for me.

I also like the HP/vitality split from star wars.

Damage tracks can be fun too. L5R managed to keep it simple but a lot of the time it becomes far too time consuming.

I like HERO with it's body/stun and normal/killing splits.

Basically I like a lot of different things but becoming too complicated/time-consuming or just being clever for clever's sake is a major turn-off.

I like HP for D&D and D20.

I like Mutant and Masterminds' Damage save.

I like condition tracks like Shadowrun.

And I like the HP/Condition track hybrid I came up with for a FUDGE build I made (It was based on preexisting systems, and a little like Shadowrun's). It worked like this:

You had 5 or 6 tracks, from Light wounds to Deadly. The number of boxes in a track was determined by your Body rating, converted to a number; so Terrible would be 1 box.

Any given hit could land on any given track, taking out a number of boxes; you could have a a Light wound for 10 points, and damage rolled over to the next track if you filled one up.

The neat thing was that even if you were almost full up on the deadly track, you could still fill the previous tracks before you were out of the fight (though Deadly damage bled over to dead). So you could still take a ton of light or moderate wounds that wouldn't automatically worsen your condition.

Harnmaster
You accumulate injury which reduces the chance of success for skill rolls and ability check.

Individual injuries generate various saving throws depending on much is inflicted in that blow. The least of which is that you fall unconscious. If you suffered a lot of injury your negative modifiers pile up until even a scratch will cause you to pass out. Other results include fumbling, falling down, amputation, and death.

It is simple and elegant.

GURPS
Your hit points is based on your Strength, and can be driven into the negatives.

When you get hit you need to make health rolls based on the severity of the damage. For example A hit over half your hit points is a major wound and you may wind up stunned or crippled depending on where the hit is.

Most of your rolls are made after the damage is subtracted and is based on the final total. For example every round your hit points is negative you need to make a health roll or pass out. If you go below negative your original hit points you start making death rolls vs your health.

The low number of hit points means even experienced characters have to take care in planning their tactics as they can be taken out by a lucky blow. The various saving throws means that a "tough" character can be made without having to represent them as having a lot of hit points. Finally the various saves means that going below zero hit points isn't automatically the end of the fight. Although you better hope this fight is the last one for a while.

I like Tenra Bansho Zero's system.

Damage is based on margin of success. You take Vitality damage and if you reach zero, you are defeated with no long term repercussion i.e. KO'd.

However, you also have a Wound Track much like White Wolf or Star Wars Saga and can elect to take Wounds instead of Vitality. This delays defeat and actually gives a bonus to your rolls, which gets higher the larger the Wound. However, Wounds take longer to heal and you start bleeding Vitality adding tension to the scene.

Finally, the player can tick the highest Wound called the Dead box, for a large bonus, representing the PC accepting thatbthey are willing to die to win the fight. However, having done so the PC will be killed if they are defeated.

I love its simplicity, the reverse death spiral and the way that the PC is able to indicate to a GM whether they accept the risk of their PC's death.

I'm fond of what I came up with for High Valor, damage is just another challenge the hero must overcome to succeed at tasks. Its tied to the power of the original blow/skill it was landed.

I'm fond of H&S as well, where you don't get hit until stress is cashed in, and then Fallout! Which is a wound/injury/mental impairment.


Of course the systems for D6, Shadowrun, and others are wonderful. I prefer interesting mechanics to straight Hit Points, in some ways, but Hit Points are very very easy to handle.

D&D Hit Points

RuneQuest Hit Points w/Hit Location

Classic Traveller's Ability Score damage

I like hit points, just like in D&D. Easy and effective.

My favorite D&D-like damage system is the Body Point/Hit Point system I use in Microlite74 Extended. Hit points are fatigue and recover with a full night's sleep provided you have no Body point Damage. Body Points represent actual wounds. You take BP damage when you run out of HP and when you take a critical hit (which does one point of BP damage per damage die of the weapon). Body Point damage heals slowly, reduces most D20 die rolls you make and reduces the amount of HP you recover from sleep. Being too active when you have BP damage can result in another point of BP damage. (HP also serve as spell points and the like in this system.)

Quote from: Skywalker;593071I like Tenra Bansho Zero's system.

Damage is based on margin of success. You take Vitality damage and if you reach zero, you are defeated with no long term repercussion i.e. KO'd.

However, you also have a Wound Track much like White Wolf or Star Wars Saga and can elect to take Wounds instead of Vitality. This delays defeat and actually gives a bonus to your rolls, which gets higher the larger the Wound. However, Wounds take longer to heal and you start bleeding Vitality adding tension to the scene.

Finally, the player can tick the highest Wound called the Dead box, for a large bonus, representing the PC accepting thatbthey are willing to die to win the fight. However, having done so the PC will be killed if they are defeated.

I love its simplicity, the reverse death spiral and the way that the PC is able to indicate to a GM whether they accept the risk of their PC's death.

Can you die if you don't tick the Dead box?

Quote from: CRKrueger;593103Can you die if you don't tick the Dead box?

No. It must be ticked.

Quote from: RandallS;593098My favorite D&D-like damage system is the Body Point/Hit Point system I use in Microlite74 Extended. Hit points are fatigue and recover with a full night's sleep provided you have no Body point Damage. Body Points represent actual wounds. You take BP damage when you run out of HP and when you take a critical hit (which does one point of BP damage per damage die of the weapon). Body Point damage heals slowly, reduces most D20 die rolls you make and reduces the amount of HP you recover from sleep. Being too active when you have BP damage can result in another point of BP damage. (HP also serve as spell points and the like in this system.)

I'm not a big fan of using the term elegant with regards to game mechanics, but this is damn good design.

Once I was a huge fan of the damage track in true20. now I prefer hitpoints with my own crit/recovery system.

Quote from: Skywalker;593104No. It must be ticked.

Christ in a sidecar.  Ok, thank you my brother, I can always count on you saving me money.

However, the guy's found a helluva way to cut short the whole fudging debate.  There's something to the whole "harmony" thing he's got going, have to give him that.

Quote from: CRKrueger;593111Christ in a sidecar.  Ok, thank you my brother, I can always count on you saving me money.

I am astonished that it was even on your radar given your strict views on metagame mechanics. Happy to help.

BTW your second paragraph made zero sense to me.

Quote from: Skywalker;593116BTW your second paragraph made zero sense to me.

In the fudging debate, one of the reasons people were talking about fudging is to avoid character death.  This system eliminates that as a concern. if I can't die unless I specifically elect to risk death, then there is no clash of expectations.  We all get exactly what we signed up for, and we all know it clearly.

I've read some interviews with the author where he stresses the concept of harmony at the game table.  From his descriptions it sounds very Japanese in the group dynamic vs. individual dynamic sense.  Anyway, my point was, his game structures seem to match very clearly his design goals.

Quote from: Skywalker;593104No. It must be ticked.

SPOON!!!!!!


Good enough?

I'd say a basic HP system, but if there was one that both made states other than fine and dead matter and that were not subjected to the standard wound penalty system flaws I'd go with that as superior. There are games that do this, just not on tabletop, because it requires game mechanics that do not translate well into tabletop.

Quote from: CRKrueger;593106I'm not a big fan of using the term elegant with regards to game mechanics, but this is damn good design.

I don't know about "elegant" but it works well in play -- probably because it has been refined a lot over the years. I created the first version of this system shortly after I got a copy of C&S in 1977. I liked the BP/FP idea C&S used but not their implementation of it.

The system I use for my Phaserip game is that players have a certain number of points of Defense (Hit Points, essentially), that essentially respresent the character's ability to mitigate damage via bracing the body for a blow, a last minute turn or twist, etc, and are esentially a character's "energy". When these run out, any subsequent attacks reduce a character's Durability (Endurance). This can be mitigated by losing levels in other attributes as appropriate to the wound (a blow to the leg might reduce Agility, while one to the head might reduce Wits). While Defense points recover quickly, Attribute levels take a day (with medical care) or week (w/o medical care) to recover each, and there is a slim chance of permanent impairment, if any Attributes are reduced to Puny or below.

HP+Conditions/Injuries

or

HP+"stamina" ponts+conditions/injuries.

I'm not too impressed with many variants I have seen, like SW shaken/wounds, true20/mutants & masterminds "damage saves", nor most damage tracks.

I like the idea of a dwindling HP reserve that adds tension as the fight goes on but does not impair you immediately. But at the same time, if you get into a real knock-down drag-out fight, I want you to feel it later.

FATE works a bit like this (though is a bit too forgiving at times). When running D&D/Pathfinder, I add an injury system in that kicks in when at low HP.

Quote from: CRKrueger;593128In the fudging debate, one of the reasons people were talking about fudging is to avoid character death.  This system eliminates that as a concern. if I can't die unless I specifically elect to risk death, then there is no clash of expectations.  We all get exactly what we signed up for, and we all know it clearly.

Yep. That's what I liked about it. As a GM, the player has elected to risk death so there is no issue if they die. I am quite looking forward to seeing what will compel the player to tick the Dead Box. I can see it being a good creator of tension too, sort of a mechanical "this shit just got real" :)

The other part of the system that interests me is the reverse death spiral. Its great genre emulation to have the fights power up over time, rather than the usual RPG approach. I like how the player chooses between long term injury and bleeding out and immediate defeat.

Quote from: CRKrueger;593128I've read some interviews with the author where he stresses the concept of harmony at the game table.  From his descriptions it sounds very Japanese in the group dynamic vs. individual dynamic sense.  Anyway, my point was, his game structures seem to match very clearly his design goals.

It is a shame that Junichi Inoue is no longer designing games. He seems like a smart designer.

I like Savage Worlds for its simplicity: Shaken / Wounded / Incapacitated / Dead.

Blue Planet v2 had a similar "feel" although the mechanics were different: Wounded / Unconscious / Dead.

Really, if any RPG's damage system can tell me a character's "status" in those terms quickly and easily, I'll be happy with it. When a character takes a hit, I just need to know what happens next.

Quote from: Bill;593055For sheer awesome; Rolemaster

Winnah!

Quote from: estar;593065Harnmaster
You accumulate injury which reduces the chance of success for skill rolls and ability check.

Individual injuries generate various saving throws depending on much is inflicted in that blow. The least of which is that you fall unconscious. If you suffered a lot of injury your negative modifiers pile up until even a scratch will cause you to pass out. Other results include fumbling, falling down, amputation, and death.

It is simple and elegant.

I don't know if simple is the right word, but it's certainly reasonable.

"You're bleeding from several wounds and having trouble holding on to your sword.  Do you really want to press your attack?"

Hit points, all the way.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Bill;593055For sheer awesome; Rolemaster

Yes, hard to beat the "smashed flat, use a spatula" result.

Fudge.  It handles both jumping to a particular wound level and the accumulation of smaller amounts of damage into larger wounds after many hits.  It's also fairly easy to tune for different levels of lethality.  You can find the Fudge wound system described here (http://members.dsl-only.net/~bing/frp/fudge/fudge4.html#sec4.5).

Rolemaster was always awesome with those crits, but never my favourite, due to the complexity.

ACKS is my new light favourite with its add-ons to HP in D&D (roll for consequences/injury at 0HP).

Silhouette (used in Heavy Gear, Tribe 8, Jovian Chronicles, etc.) is probably my favourite damage system overall. The description will seem complicated, but in practice it's dead simple: you have a value for either general hardiness or armour you're wearing. Attacks have a damage value that is multiplied by how successful the attack is, typically based on an opposed roll. If it beats your wounding score (toughness or armour) you take a Light Wound, if it's more than double that value, you take a Deep Wound, and if it's way over, you are instantly killed. Two Light Wounds are a Deep Wound, two Deep Wounds are Death. Light Wounds apply a -1 penalty to all actions, Deep Wounds apply a -2 penalty to all actions.

Admittedly this ends up making combat potentially very lethal; damage accumulates, making things more and more difficult for you. On the other hand, this tends to make combatants very wary, and encourages seriously tactical thinking, as well as less ridiculous risk taking. Both I and my various groups have liked the effect this has had on gameplay.

I don't really have a favorite. I did like the oWoD death spiral (better than the nWoD treatment). I like the Legend/RQ6 take on hit locations and wounds. And I just love ACKS' 0hp and revival tables.

I do have a least favorite, though: Savage Worlds. I ran it almost to the exclusion of everything else for two years and I'm still not sure I did it RAW. I'm not opposed to the idea of a damage-save system, but SW's take on it is particularly grating.

Quote from: Lynn;593546Yes, hard to beat the "smashed flat, use a spatula" result.

I am fond of the critical hit result "Foe staggers to a spot suitable for dying"

I like systems that are fast, so if there is another system except my own where damage is built into the skill/hit roll, id like that.
Otherwise it is my own, potetially deadly very fast, unless one has armor, and lacking that, perhaps most variants of the storytelling system.

I prefer when combat is dealt with fast, and thereby leaves more space for more combat and/or more roleplaying and/or skill tests, and so on.

Bare hit points do the job usually. The problem with more complex systems is you not only have to track them for the PCs, but for everyone else as well. A marvellously detailed hit location'ed damage track is awesome, but the accounting builds up quickly. One of those questions where the designer has to balance gameplay versus realism I suppose.

You could just call non-characters mooks and use simplified rules for them, but you're actually putting the PCs at a disadvantage there, since they have the fancy damage track and the mooks don't.

Sometimes I use a very limited version, whereby whoever gets to half hit points has a one point penalty on their action speed, which in wheel based intiative systems is quite severe.

Quote from: Catelf;593638I like systems that are fast, so if there is another system except my own where damage is built into the skill/hit roll, id like that.

Fudge not only has the damage built into the to-hit roll but also has a simultaneous combat system option where the two opponents compare their results and better result, past a certain threshold, hits.  You can find the OGL Fudge SRD here (http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/big/Omar/fudge/FudgeSRD.pdf).  The Fudge SRD is a bit of a "do it yourself kit" with a lot of options to choose from, but if you've written your own system, that shouldn't be a big problem for you and I think the core Fudge system (adjective ladder, resolution mechanic, simultaneous combat rules, and the wound system I mentioned above as my personal favorite) is worth looking at.

You can't beat flat HP values for simplicity, but I enjoy the idea of wounds mattering, and the idea that someone who lost 90% of his HP can fight just as well as a well-rested, full HP equivalent is kind of un-immersive at times. No biggie, but if a damage system can model wound penalties and/or fatigue without a lot of mechanical fuss, I tend to like it.

There was one problem with the while ICE system. Whle the crtitical hit charts were cool suppose you're aiming at a guy's head and you get a crit that says you shot him in the foot? Likewise what if you're firing out of a trench and it's impossible to hit you in the leg but sure enough the critical chart comes up with a leg hit?

I always found WHFRPG's Crit system quite a bit more fluid and flavourful than Rolemaster's, but yeah, random hit locations are always a bit strange to me, especially when options like an opponent's "foot" is included, but I tended to look at it this way - unless the player is making a called shot, they are basically just taking any opening in the opponen't's defenses they can exploit.

Quote from: Bill;593055For sheer awesome; Rolemaster

For low stress, dnd style HP are fine with me.


I find that many of the fancy ways to do dmage don't work for me.
Savage Worlds and Mutants and masterminds I am looking at you!

Rolemaster is for pussies.

If you want awesome, try Phoenix Command where you can get up to 5 MILLION points of damage to the heart when it only takes five points to kill a man!

Quote from: red lantern;593769There was one problem with the while ICE system. Whle the crtitical hit charts were cool suppose you're aiming at a guy's head and you get a crit that says you shot him in the foot? Likewise what if you're firing out of a trench and it's impossible to hit you in the leg but sure enough the critical chart comes up with a leg hit?

RoleMaster (this is based on 2e) didn't have a mechanic to let you choose a hit location to strike at.

And the crit table descriptions were purely color.  The GM was expected to interpret the results to fit the situation.

Quote from: red lantern;593769There was one problem with the while ICE system. Whle the crtitical hit charts were cool suppose you're aiming at a guy's head and you get a crit that says you shot him in the foot? Likewise what if you're firing out of a trench and it's impossible to hit you in the leg but sure enough the critical chart comes up with a leg hit?

What I did was change the description of the result from leg to shoulder; for example.

Quote from: John Morrow;593649Fudge not only has the damage built into the to-hit roll but also has a simultaneous combat system option where the two opponents compare their results and better result, past a certain threshold, hits.

Hmm ... fairly interesting, it is clearly quite a good system even for multi-genre games ...

However, it do feel a bit ... too "fudgy" ( :D ) for me, and i do not consider normal fighting to be resisted rolls either, unless the fighters involved do have some kind of more direct martial arts training.

You might be interested in looking on my core rules, too:
This link goes directly to the combat section.
http://catelf.webs.com/streedcorerulespg2.htm

Quote from: KenHR;593942RoleMaster (this is based on 2e) didn't have a mechanic to let you choose a hit location to strike at.

And that was a major flaw.

Quote from: red lantern;594008And that was a major flaw.

You seem so sure of that.  Why?

Quote from: Elfdart;593855Rolemaster is for pussies.

If you want awesome, try Phoenix Command where you can get up to 5 MILLION points of damage to the heart when it only takes five points to kill a man!

I tried to fire my gun when I played that game (or the Aliens version) in '99. I'm still waiting for my GM to figure out the math.

Quote from: Elfdart;593855Rolemaster is for pussies.

If you want awesome, try Phoenix Command where you can get up to 5 MILLION points of damage to the heart when it only takes five points to kill a man!

If Phoenix Command is anything like Sword's Path: Glory, then I'm truly a pussy. I tremble at the thought of using those charts.

Quote from: KenHR;594014You seem so sure of that.  Why?

Uh, because a system that does not allow for things like "I blow his goddam head off!" or "I try to shoot his weapon arm since we need him alive." makes it hard for players to do a lot of things that may come up in a RPG session.

Quote from: red lantern;594145Uh, because a system that does not allow for things like "I blow his goddam head off!" or "I try to shoot his weapon arm since we need him alive." makes it hard for players to do a lot of things that may come up in a RPG session.

You can do that without tracking hit locations though. I don't usually use them because I don't like the accounting of having to deal with them for multiple enemies over multiple combats, but if a player wants to shoot a zombie in the head, that's a -5 to hit, but a +5 damage if they do hit.

Quote from: red lantern;594145Uh, because a system that does not allow for things like "I blow his goddam head off!" or "I try to shoot his weapon arm since we need him alive." makes it hard for players to do a lot of things that may come up in a RPG session.

Some people understand that "shoot his weapon arm" is damn-near impossible to do IRL and would like their game to reflect that.

Some people understand that combat is very chaotic and, in the context of RM's 10 second rounds, called shots are kind of stupid.

And as many people have pointed out, even though RM doesn't have an explicit system for hit locations, the crit tables are supposed to be interpreted by the GM based on the situation at hand.  The flavor text is just that, flavor text.  So you can have your action movie moments if you want to, just use your brain and don't let a die matrix do that for you.

It all depends on what you are looking for the game.

Anyway, I prefer systems with Life Points, and the damage of weapons with certain numbers that increase as well you've hit.

Quote from: KenHR;594200Some people understand that "shoot his weapon arm" is damn-near impossible to do IRL and would like their game to reflect that.

Some people understand that combat is very chaotic and, in the context of RM's 10 second rounds, called shots are kind of stupid.

And as many people have pointed out, even though RM doesn't have an explicit system for hit locations, the crit tables are supposed to be interpreted by the GM based on the situation at hand.  The flavor text is just that, flavor text.  So you can have your action movie moments if you want to, just use your brain and don't let a die matrix do that for you.

And some people might understand that you can be playing a guy with a targeting helmet that aids his shooting, a neural interface to a HUD that links to his gun and makes him more accurate and is firing a laser with no recoil and goes at a velocity of c which all make an arm shot more likely than it would be today.  :p

I like the EABA damage system even though it relies purely on d6's. It has lethal and non lethal damage which is fine with me.

GURPS spent a few paragraphs denying that non lethal damage existed, then spent several pages on 'fatigue' rules and damage that amounted to exactly the same thing. EABA did it better by just having lethal and non lethal damage.

Also the blunt trauma and armor rules for EABA are some of the best I've seen.

Quote from: red lantern;594317And some people might understand that you can be playing a guy with a targeting helmet that aids his shooting, a neural interface to a HUD that links to his gun and makes him more accurate and is firing a laser with no recoil and goes at a velocity of c which all make an arm shot more likely than it would be today.  :p

But then...you wouldn't be playing RoleMaster for that, would you?

Quote from: KenHR;594357But then...you wouldn't be playing RoleMaster for that, would you?

I could be playing spacemaster, which used the same system.

Hit points, without a doubt. There are other damage systems that are good too, like WFRP's critical system (IF you use expanded tables, otherwise the whole thing starts seeming very repetitive very fast), but nothing beats the simplicity and ease of use/understanding of HP.

RPGPundit