New try in combat

[steph]

Hey ....last night in my game i try to not tell the stun and body damage to the players they take in combat but to describe the wounds and tell how the characters feel and it work very well.........make the players very more prudent;)
other gm use this in the game..........
excuse my english not my first language
stef

[teh bunneh]

Yes, I've done that in one game I ran. It worked pretty well, but you really have to have the right kind of group, I think, or it would just fall flat. :)

[steamteck]

That's pretty much what I always do. Works great with my group.

[Maccabe]

I tried a variation on this; I only told the players what damage got past their defences. It makes it harder for PC's to gauge the attackers power level.

[Comic]

If they need to know how much Stun or Body they've taken or have left, they can buy the appropriate Analyze. ;)

[sinanju]

That's pretty much what I always do. Works great with my group.

Ah! But remember the old Traveller days?

For those who don't know, in Traveller your STR, END and DEX were your hit points. The first wound you took in battle had to be applied in its entirety to one stat first, with any excess spilling into the others. After that, you could divvy up the damage points as you saw fit. When any one stat was reduced to zero, you fell unconscious. If all three reached zero, you were dead.

The end result was that players could choose to be knocked unconscious whenever they took significant damage. Speaking for myself (though I'm sure it applied to the other players), I know that I sometimes gamed the results.

"Hmmm," I'd think, "one more hit like that and my PC will be dead. Looks like the other PCs have the bad guys on the ropes....Oh, look! I'm unconscious!" (And thus no longer a target.)

Or alternatively, "Ow, that hurts. But one more good punch/swing/shot will win the day. I grit my teeth and keep fighting!"

[CourtFool]

I have not done it personally, but I think it would really help the players stay immersed.

[stewart]

Yes, I've done that in one game I ran. It worked pretty well, but you really have to have the right kind of group, I think, or it would just fall flat. :)

i second needing the right group, and the right GM to do it.

as the FH GM, i'm already doing enough paperwork with the stats of the NPCs, so i don't wanna bother doing the PCs too.

it's also my personal style to do all GM die rolls out in the open, and just describing wounds would require me to roll damage secretly, something i don't like doing.

however, we do describtions after cruching the numbers. :)

[Rapier]

I've done this on occasion. My only concern, and I sound like some kind of parrot, is that it is one more thing that an already busy GM must keep track of. I tend to be fairly busy as a GM and do as much as possible to minimise my duties. I leave quite a bit of the gross recordkeeping to the players.

Having said that, it does add quite a bit of spice for the players to know that they are "seriously wounded" without knowing that it means they only have 2 BODY left! :)