Hitting a brick wall, and breaking weapons

[BlueBuddha]

I'm toying with an idea to simulate the situation where a character hits someone or something with his fist, hurting himself in the process. Here's my idea:

First, you could build a power. Buy a relatively small HA, NND, Damage shield that only goes off when someone hits with his/her fist you and does no damage. This is probably best in a superheroic campaign.

Second, you could make it a ground rule that any time you hit something with your fist and it's defense stops all damage, you take damage: part or all of the original attack. You can get your own defenses against it. Proabably more appropriate in a heroic campaign.

I'd have to work out the details. It would certainly discourage people from punching robots or critters made out of stone.

Also, I thought of an idea for damaging melee weapons. You can compare the damage absorbed by an attack to the base damage of a weapon. If you hit something really hard (roll well on damage), and it simply bounces off (all the damage was absorbed by the DEF of the target), you may damage it. I'd, again, have to play with the numbers, but the more damage absorbed, even if it wasn't all of it, the worse it is for the weapon.

More thoughts:
The rules say that a melee weapon can't do more than twice it's base damage. You could modify this rule by allowing people to use their strength, push, and haymaker weapons beyond twice their base damage. But, doing more damage than it's potential at twice it's base (a 2d6 sword, being pushed to 5d6, for instance, rolling more than 12 damage), could also damage it.

So, whatcha' think o' that?

[Killer Shrike]

I vaguely recall seeing somebodies take on hitting walls a long time ago. I think the basic idea was to treat it similar to a move by.

[Lord Liaden]

Self-Inflicted Damage: This is a rule adapted from the original (pre-4th Ed.) Golden Age of Champions, with one modification from advice on the discussion boards (Thanks Alistair). I use it mostly for heroic level games, to simulate a normal person striking a hard, unyielding object with a part of their bodies and injuring themselves if they can't break it. Whenever you strike an object with resistant defenses (including characters), you roll your damage normally; if the Body damage you roll is higher than the resistant defense of the object, you take no damage. However, if you don't roll more Body than the resistant defense, you take the full damage yourself, modified by the multipliers for the Hit Location of the body part you used to strike with. If you're not using Hit Locations in your game, just use the original form of the rule, in which the hitter takes half damage as if he had performed a Move Through.

[Xandarr]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden
Self-Inflicted Damage: This is a rule adapted from the original (pre-4th Ed.) Golden Age of Champions, with one modification from advice on the discussion boards (Thanks Alistair). I use it mostly for heroic level games, to simulate a normal person striking a hard, unyielding object with a part of their bodies and injuring themselves if they can't break it. Whenever you strike an object with resistant defenses (including characters), you roll your damage normally; if the Body damage you roll is higher than the resistant defense of the object, you take no damage. However, if you don't roll more Body than the resistant defense, you take the full damage yourself, modified by the multipliers for the Hit Location of the body part you used to strike with. If you're not using Hit Locations in your game, just use the original form of the rule, in which the hitter takes half damage as if he had performed a Move Through.

And the nice part about this particular rule is that if you use your head to break bricks, and succeed, it looks really cool. Of course, if you fail, it's nighty-night time for you.

I like it,
Steve