PD/ED vs Stun Only

[Steve]

I've recently started toying with the idea of limiting the amount of regular PD/ED that characters can have but allowing them to buy additional PD/ED versus Stun Only (-1/2) instead of using the power Damage Reduction with that limitation.

 

This would allow more BODY damage to occur with normal damage attacks, which seems like it would better fit some genres, like martial arts campaigns.

 

Has anyone ever used this in a campaign?

[Crusher Bob]

Most defenses will be significantly higher than the amount of body done by the attack.  In a ~150 point martial arts game, I'd expext pd in the 6 to 15 range, and attacks in the 4 to 8d6 range.  So buying my 15 PD as 8 pd normal and 7 pd at (-1/2) is a point break by not a lot of actual difference in performance.

 

Sounds like either a genre convention switch or you should be using a more global disadvantage like 'lets 1/4th of all body damage through' as a (-1/4)? or (-1/2)? limitation on the whole Def.

[Sean Waters]

If what you are after is more 'long term effect' from combat I have used a house rule that every 5 full points of Stun through defences causes 1 point of Bruising damage.

 

Bruising damage can be used in a number of ways.  You can use some or all of them.

 

First you can add it to the total damage you have taken to determine if the character is KO'd (you can do something similar with END too - if you are bettered you have less energy).

Second (and this has more immediate effect) you can add it to damage through defences to determine if the character is Stunned.  If this is too nasty, you can add half of it, or whatever ratio you like.

Third (if you want 'more Body but not completely lethal) every 5 full points of Bruise damage does 1 Body.

Lastly, if you want a really rather brutish game you can deduct Bruise damage/5 from defences - once you are injured you are more susceptible to damage.

 

Bruise damage heals at REC/day, but faster if someone makes a Paramedic Roll.  Healing Bruising does not restore lost Body - that has to be healed normally.

 

This is more book keeping but gives a grittier feel as characters can not just run from one encounter to another with impunity after a minute of rest.  It also makes avoiding or reducing damage more important and makes Field Medicine a more important part of the game.

 

Bruising is not a characteristic.

 

You can obviously tweak the 5 points up or down depending on how much Bruise damage you want to inflict, and also mess with the Healing rate.

 

The way I see this is like a Boxing match - a minute's rest between rounds is not going to let you get all your health back, but most of the injuries you receive will be gone in a few days - and this despite the fact you may never have actually taken any Body damage directly from the attack.

[Steve]

Most defenses will be significantly higher than the amount of body done by the attack.  In a ~150 point martial arts game, I'd expext pd in the 6 to 15 range, and attacks in the 4 to 8d6 range.  So buying my 15 PD as 8 pd normal and 7 pd at (-1/2) is a point break by not a lot of actual difference in performance.

 

Sounds like either a genre convention switch or you should be using a more global disadvantage like 'lets 1/4th of all body damage through' as a (-1/4)? or (-1/2)? limitation on the whole Def.

 

No, I still want PD/ED to block all BODY damage for the PD/ED bought at full cost.

 

Character A has 10PD, an additional 10PD (vs STUN only) and is hit by a 10d6 attack. The character would take, on average, 0 BODY and 15 STUN. If a few sixes are rolled, bringing up the BODY total, then more BODY damage occurs, even if the STUN total doesn't change.

 

If I did it as you suggested, that same average damage roll would do 2 BODY and 15 STUN, which is mathematically different from where I'm trying to get to.

 

Heavier hits would be more likely to do BODY damage, which rarely occurs if a 20PD character is hit with a 10d6 attack. Yes, it could cause BODY if pretty much maximum damage is rolled, but BODY damage won't happen at lesser levels of damage.

[Steve]

If what you are after is more 'long term effect' from combat I have used a house rule that every 5 full points of Stun through defences causes 1 point of Bruising damage.

 

Bruising damage can be used in a number of ways.  You can use some or all of them.

 

First you can add it to the total damage you have taken to determine if the character is KO'd (you can do something similar with END too - if you are bettered you have less energy).

Second (and this has more immediate effect) you can add it to damage through defences to determine if the character is Stunned.  If this is too nasty, you can add half of it, or whatever ratio you like.

Third (if you want 'more Body but not completely lethal) every 5 full points of Bruise damage does 1 Body.

Lastly, if you want a really rather brutish game you can deduct Bruise damage/5 from defences - once you are injured you are more susceptible to damage.

 

Bruise damage heals at REC/day, but faster if someone makes a Paramedic Roll.  Healing Bruising does not restore lost Body - that has to be healed normally.

 

This is more book keeping but gives a grittier feel as characters can not just run from one encounter to another with impunity after a minute of rest.  It also makes avoiding or reducing damage more important and makes Field Medicine a more important part of the game.

 

Bruising is not a characteristic.

 

You can obviously tweak the 5 points up or down depending on how much Bruise damage you want to inflict, and also mess with the Healing rate.

 

The way I see this is like a Boxing match - a minute's rest between rounds is not going to let you get all your health back, but most of the injuries you receive will be gone in a few days - and this despite the fact you may never have actually taken any Body damage directly from the attack.

 

I grok what you're saying, but this method introduces a third type of damage into STUN/BODY tracking. If I just tweak PD/ED like I am proposing, I can still use normal STUN/BODY and healing rates.

 

What have you seen when using your Bruising house rule?

[Tech]

Yes, Steve, I've used this... primarily with certain robots. Once in awhile, I tire of robots only being affected by the BODY of an attack. Therefore, I create a 'robot' with Stun with maybe a 5 PD and 5 ED but with +20 PD, +20 ED only vs Stun. This can represent that robot that's falling apart and massively damaged, yet keeps on coming. Just something I used once in awhile.

[Sean Waters]

I grok what you're saying, but this method introduces a third type of damage into STUN/BODY tracking.

 

...

 

Liked for using the word 'grok'.

 

[Sean Waters]

I grok what you're saying, but this method introduces a third type of damage into STUN/BODY tracking. If I just tweak PD/ED like I am proposing, I can still use normal STUN/BODY and healing rates.

 

What have you seen when using your Bruising house rule?

 

The problem with the healing rules is this:  Stun heals completely in a minute or so; Body takes a month to heal (even if you apportion it it will take 3 days to heal a point of Body) PLUS there is no real effect from taking Body damage unless you use the optional disabling rules.

 

At the moment you can be beaten unconscious every 10 minutes and it has no real effect on you.  I'm not sure how realistic or intuitive that is.

 

What have I seen?  More emphasis on healing skills, more consideration in getting into combat, more use of manoeuvres that reduce the damage you take through dodging or rolling with the punch.

 

Bruising is an additional complication, obviously, but you have to decide what you want.  Body damage (generally) means nothing until you hit a threshold.

[Steve]

What about Impairing or Disabling injuries? Do you use those?

 

There was also the 1/20 house rule that Kazei Five used, taking 1 BODY for every 20 STUN that gets past your defenses, which is another way to take BODY damage that the current RAW doesn't allow.

[Hugh Neilson]

It seems reasonable to discount the extra PD in the structure described - the character will take BOD as a consequence. -1/4 or -1/2 seems reasonable. If he were in a 12 DC game, trying for 20 PD + 10 PD not vs BOD, I would see it differently.

[DasBroot]

I've both done this as a player and seen it done as a GM.  It works pretty well for certain types of characters and I could see applying it campaign wide in certain genres.

 

(One of my games features an immortal with rPD vs Body damage only, and 75% physical damage reduction vs Stun Only.  It's a lot of fun to see in play ... a room full of gangsters with tommyguns is as 'dangerous' a threat as going toe to toe against something like the Hulk.)

 

I've also seen someone take a side effect on their PD - a single point of KA when its used.  Basically no matter how 'invulnerable' they were falling from orbit or being hit by a train 'hurt'.

[Hadmar von Wieser]

This would allow more BODY damage to occur with normal damage attacks, which seems like it would better fit some genres, like martial arts campaigns.

 

Aside of the mathematical discussion: I always thought the defining aspect of Martial Arts and Boxing movies is that the hero and the villains eat incredible series of hits without taking more BODY than a make-up artist is needed for.

[megaplayboy]

Aside of the mathematical discussion: I always thought the defining aspect of Martial Arts and Boxing movies is that the hero and the villains eat incredible series of hits without taking more BODY than a make-up artist is needed for.

Which is why the series titles don't progress from Kickboxer to Kickboxer 2: Slurring His Words to Kickboxer 3: Memory Lapses to Kickboxer 4: Pugilistic Dementia.

[steriaca]

Hero combat is cinematic combat. It is ment to mimic the 'realty' of combat in Comic Books, Television Shows, and Movies.

[Steve]

My current thinking is to set the maximum allowed normal PD/ED to be a little above the average amount of dice used, so in a campaign averaging 8d6, it would be 10. An average hit wouldn't do any BODY damage, but luckier rolling would start causing BODY damage.

[Matt the Bruins]

At the moment you can be beaten unconscious every 10 minutes and it has no real effect on you.  I'm not sure how realistic or intuitive that is.

It mimics the conventions of the comic book genre well, but yeah, in the real world getting knocked out is serious business and can have lasting effects.

[Hugh Neilson]

It mimics the conventions of the comic book genre well, but yeah, in the real world getting knocked out is serious business and can have lasting effects.

I'd say it mimics cinematic reality well. In what source material for any genre of RPGs do the effects of being knocked out get portrayed realistically?

[Steve]

I wonder if getting knocked out could trigger some kind of lesser impairment result in a grittier campaign setting. If you get knocked out repeatedly, the impairment starts getting worse.

[TheDarkness]

I actually have been working on a highly gritty campaign for another game with a few special rules that could certainly be applied to any game.

 

Everyone makes three characters, so they have a quick replacement.

 

Good roleplaying does not prevent death, but a player who played their character well gets a 'good death marker'. If they go down, instead of going unconscious, they continue on, once that fight is over, they have a four hour window in which they can continue on, wandering the city bleeding and finishing their business before they die at the time and place of their choosing, but they get a roll, succeed at that roll, and they are found and end up surviving, but that character is out of the game for a good long time.

 

If a character gets permanent injury that prevents combat, they become an NPC.

 

In the latter two cases, that character's name becomes street legend, and all characters from the city would know their name. In the last case, that character will likely be training new fighters/detectives/what have you, and might even be one of the mentors or contacts of a new player.

 

/digression

[Grailknight]

I wonder if getting knocked out could trigger some kind of lesser impairment result in a grittier campaign setting. If you get knocked out repeatedly, the impairment starts getting worse.

 

Take a look at the Fuzion rules. You had additional Characteristic called Hit Points that were an intermediate between Stun and Body. You took 1 HP per 10(5?) STUN taken and if you ran out of HP, you took BODY. HP healed at REC per day.

[Netzilla]

Take a look at the Fuzion rules. You had additional Characteristic called Hit Points that were an intermediate between Stun and Body. You took 1 HP per 10(5?) STUN taken and if you ran out of HP, you took BODY. HP healed at REC per day.

 

Close.  Fuzion had Hits and Stun.  Hits were the Fuzion equivalent of Body but were on the same scale as Stun (so most characters were in the 20-50 range for both Hits and Stun).  For every 5 Stun you took past your defenses, you took a minimum of 1 Hit of damage.

 

Body, in Fuzion, was simply used to determine starting Hits and Stun and was a general descriptor of how big/tough your character was but had little direct impact on the game aside from subtracting from knockback distance.

 

Of course, different iterations of the Fuzion rules (Fuzion Core vs. Champs New Millenium vs. Bubblegum Crisis, etc) did have a habit of subtly changing things like this.

[Lucius]

This is a textbook example of a case where it's impossible to have a "one size fits all" Limitation Value.

 

Say you want ALL your PD to not block BOD. Then every single physical hit will do BOD to you. I'd say that's -2.

 

Unless you have Regeneration, and then it's maybe -1 1/2.

 

But if you want a fraction of your PD to be STUN only and the rest of your PD will block the BOD of most of the possible attacks you will face? Limitation -1/4 (because every once in a while you may take some BOD because of it.)

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wants to take PD and ED vs BOD only, and the Takes No Stun power.

[Ockham's Spoon]

I have used PD/ED vs. STN only, esp. for representing pain control for mentalists who are physically normal people but who still need to be able to mix it up with other supers without being too glass-jawed.  I haven't had any major issues with this and it is pretty straight-forward.

 

You might also consider using Damage Negation.  By removing DC before the damage it computed it tends to remove more STN than BDY from any hit the character takes which accomplishes a similar effect as the STN only PD/ED. It does have slightly different effects when you consider Knockback and start tacking Advantages on to the attacks, which may or may not be desirable depending on the exact sfx you want.  I have used this approach as well and it has a different flavor but it works well too.

 

Damage Reduction only vs. STN is also a viable option (there are examples of this in the Dark Champions supplement Predators, usually requiring a CON roll), although I find that if the base defenses are high enough that STN only isn't much of a limitation as the BDY damage doesn't get through anyway.

[Gauntlet]

Another option could be to use Damage Reduction Stun Only while only allowing a limited amount of PD/ED to be purchased and not allowing Armor and/or Combat Luck. Damage Reduction without being valid against Killing Attacks and with the "STUN Only -1/2" Limitation isn't too pricy. You could even include the Limitation "Must be Aware of Attack -1/4". The costs below.

 

Combat Roll - Low

Physical Damage Reduction, 25% (10 Active Points); STUN Only (-1/2), Must be Aware of Attack (-1/4)

6 Points

Combat Roll - Medium

Physical Damage Reduction, 50% (20 Active Points); STUN Only (-1/2), Must be Aware of Attack (-1/4)

11 Points

Combat Roll - High

Physical Damage Reduction, 75% (40 Active Points); STUN Only (-1/2), Must be Aware of Attack (-1/4)

23 Points

 

You could even have it purchased as a Custom Talent rather than as a Power.

[Doc Democracy]

I liked Sean's suggestion.  It is analogous to long term end loss.  The more big hits you take, the less able you are to take damage and longer healing requirement.

 

Not for supers but definitely in more heroic genres.

 

Doc