STUN, BODY, and Pacing

[IndianaJoe3]

I've been thinking about how STUN and BODY (and, to a certain extent, END and Long-Term END) function from a metagaming standpoint. It started by thinking about FATE and its Stress mechanic. Stress is explicitly not damage. It's the mechanism by which Fate moves a scene towards its conclusion. When a character takes stress, they either have to absorb it on their stress track (restored at the end of the scene), or take a consequence (which takes longer to remove). If they can't (or don't want to), they get Taken Out (the scene ends for them). I started thinking about the mechanisms that Hero uses for pacing.

 

STUN and END are clearly the primary mechanisms that Hero uses for scene pacing. They're easy to recover (less so in combat, but still not too difficult), and the long-term effects of running out are minor. Generally, any STUN or END lost will be restored by the start of the next scene.

 

BODY and LTE, on the other hand, are much harder to recover. They function more as adventure pacing than scene pacing. Running out of either will greatly impact the character's ability to continue with the adventure (either through death or exhaustion).

 

A problem occurs at the extremes. If a character is knocked out, they (generally) have no agency through the rest of the scene, and can be captured, have Inaccessible Foci taken, or have other lasting penalties. This is, IMHO, more severe than is warranted. A character that has lost all their BODY is, well, dead. They may be resurrected or stabilized at 0 BODY, but they are still effectively out of the adventure and, depending on campaign timelines, may be out of commission for several more adventures as well. Conversely, if characters arrive at the final scene with full BODY, the big finale can feel like just another combat.

 

How do GMs handle these problems? 

[Brian Stanfield]

This is an interesting metagame issue. I don't know if this is similar to what you are concerned with, but I was coincidentally looking at 4e Horror Hero this week, and the rules for horror are called "stress." There are different sources for stress, and different consequences that straddle between short term, long term and permanent. I don't have the book handy right now, but is that what you're pondering? Or am, I totally off?

[IndianaJoe3]

This is an interesting metagame issue. I don't know if this is similar to what you are concerned with, but I was coincidentally looking at 4e Horror Hero this week, and the rules for horror are called "stress." There are different sources for stress, and different consequences that straddle between short term, long term and permanent. I don't have the book handy right now, but is that what you're pondering? Or am, I totally off?

 

I don't own Horror Hero, but I don't think it's the same thing. I think that is the same thing as (or very similar to) Sanity from Call of Cthulhu. 

[mrinku]

From a Superhero genre viewpoint, BODY damage is typically MUCH rarer than in Heroic, and LTE very rarely in play (ditto for hit locations, which helps keep the BODY damage taken down as well). Regeneration and Healing are also more generally available (even if the PCs don't have it, UNTIL or PRIMUS or some other friendly organisation can usually provide a "heal up between scenes" fiat). The main issue you'll run into are the Knockouts... so using "GM's discretion" in the player's favour occasionally can help keep things on track. Having a guest star waiting in the wings to pop up and at least distract the villain until sleepyhead can wake up is also a good trick.

 

That also applies to a large extent for Fantasy. Armour is worn, healing spells are common.

 

Gritty and more realistic genres (Noir, Horror) probably want the effect to happen, but may provide more time between fight scenes. Those should always make the players careful about deadly force - usually they involve much more investigation and running from a gunfight, or working out the weakness of the monster than stand up combat.

 

So I guess it's mostly an issue for the Cinematic Heroic style genres (Pulp, Modern Action etc) where you can't really make your heroes bulletproof, but killing attack combat is constant.

 

Tuning and timing is important. Mooks should be a threat, but shouldn't be allowed to win unless the players are being cocky about that, or if they're support for a Boss. Don't show your rolls to the players - just because that goon rolled a perfect headshot and killed Doc Ravage outright doesn't mean you should implement it (in fact rolling hit locations for Mook damage is rarely a good idea. Even if you're using the hit location chart to regulate cover effects, just have it hit the hero's shoulder.)  Big Bads should be played fairly straight, but will normally BE the final battle.

[dsatow]

The general rule I've found is that HERO doesn't sweat the role-playing effects as much and the stats, points, et. al. are more for combat situations.  Between the action scenes, its usually encouraged for GMs to use more story telling than rely on rules mechanics.  

 

Ex: After a fight, instead of calculating how much LTE is burned, I'd rather just ask the players (if I don't know), how many of you have gone to single digit END.  I'd just then extrapolate that they are tired for a while rather than calculate the LTE, etc.  Most players don't seem to mind this.  

 

So if a person dies -BODY, it gets extrapolated out to a typical "death" in that style of fiction.  Comics, the heroes rise from the dead as a new type of hero, aka Phoenix syndrome.  In other genres, think what happens in tv shows when a character dies but the audience really loved them so the producers brought them back.  Similarly with the other stats.  LTE = tired but people with a high recovery, recover first from being tired, etc.

 

This said, when you start really fangirling (no offense to true fan girls) over HERO, you begin to do things like calculate what things in real life cost in HERO, calculate stats for characters in shows and movies, and basically try to use a RaW view on every minutia of the game.  There's nothing wrong with this but does require more in depth rules tracking.  In those games, the loss of BODY, LTE, etc. follows the style of D&D/wargames rather than story telling games like FATE.

 

I guess what I am really saying is, it depends on whether you are using hero more like a war game/D&D style or more story telling like FATE.  For me, between combats, I go story telling.

[Doc Democracy]

I've been thinking about how STUN and BODY (and, to a certain extent, END and Long-Term END) function from a metagaming standpoint. It started by thinking about FATE and its Stress mechanic. Stress is explicitly not damage. It's the mechanism by which Fate moves a scene towards its conclusion. When a character takes stress, they either have to absorb it on their stress track (restored at the end of the scene), or take a consequence (which takes longer to remove). If they can't (or don't want to), they get Taken Out (the scene ends for them). I started thinking about the mechanisms that Hero uses for pacing.

 

STUN and END are clearly the primary mechanisms that Hero uses for scene pacing. They're easy to recover (less so in combat, but still not too difficult), and the long-term effects of running out are minor. Generally, any STUN or END lost will be restored by the start of the next scene.

 

BODY and LTE, on the other hand, are much harder to recover. They function more as adventure pacing than scene pacing. Running out of either will greatly impact the character's ability to continue with the adventure (either through death or exhaustion). 

 

I like this way of thinking.  One of the problems with HERO is that you can actually plan everything to the point that you can guesstimate how many rounds a fight might take if everything goes with the average.  It can feel almost boring and mechanical (though players do introduce chaos to any such formulae!).

 

However, that problem is a feature here.  You should be thinking of this and utilising the detail that HERO provides to drive the pacing of the adventure and scenes within it.  As you can gauge things, you probably should, you can give the players a message that they need to do something or bad things will happen by highlighting the damage that they face.  You can manage things to give the players space to think or limit their time to think and push their need to adapt to the situation and do something unusual to have a chance of victory.  The mechanics on their own might be boring but they can be used to push the narrative and it needs the GM to do more than "Hit, 62 STUN, 16 BODY!!"  It needs the Gm to pain the picture and drive the story by describing how the attacks are causing problems and how few the hero might be able to stand up to, even suggesting that they might need to take cover or find a way of taking the opponent out fast.

 

 

Doc

[DasBroot]

If your players are fine with it and you want to mimic the FATe system stress and consequences you can do something crazy:

 

Stun damage (stress) becomes Body damage (consequences) when you go below 0.

 

Not at the same rate, of course, but perhaps at the body rolled rate ignoring defenses (edit: Too high.) or at 1/10 the stun rolled as body ignoring defenses (better - too low? Half body rolled instead... 12 on a DC12 blast does 6?)

 

ie: Supermonkey has 60 stun and 20 PD.  Over the course of the fight he's taken 0 Body and 60 stun. The Monkey of Tomorrow is on his last legs but refuses to go down (Conceding in Fate).  He's then hit for 20 stun through his defenses, which should KO him nicely - but this is Supermonkey.  He grits his teeth, takes 2 body (see - kind of low), and fights on!

 

Body is, by default, between adventure healing much like Consequences are.Running out of stun becomes a big thing.

 

The problem is that in HERO there's no shortage of ways to heal up said body, as mrinku pointed out.

 

In a heroic game, though, where defenses and attributes are lower and perhaps body healing is rarer I could see it working.